Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → Aquanim
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | 60 | Old Tech | 👥 | Buggy Bot Bedtime | jam | ||||||||||
| 2025 | 58 | Collector | 👥 | Trading Postage | jam | 85 | 4.00 | 4.00 | 3.90 | 4.30 | 3.61 | 3.46 | 3.13 | 3.79 | |
| 2025 | 57 | Depths | 👥 | Journey to the Centre of the Ocean | jam | 392 | 3.62 | 3.74 | 2.85 | 4.00 | 3.00 | 2.96 | 2.66 | 3.23 | |
| 2024 | 56 | Tiny Creatures | 👥 | Deadly Trails | jam | 313 | 3.78 | 3.70 | 3.88 | 4.08 | 3.26 | 3.08 | 3.48 | 3.60 | |
| 2023 | 54 | Limited Space | 👥 | Compact Domain | jam | 91 | 4.14 | 4.12 | 3.56 | 4.10 | 4.35 | 3.48 | 2.76 | 3.69 | |
| 2022 | 51 | Every 10 seconds | 👥 | Regular Railway | jam | 222 | 3.87 | 4.00 | 3.63 | 3.94 | 3.33 | 3.32 | 3.21 | 3.48 | |
| 2021 | 48 | Deeper and deeper | 👥 | Polyomino Prospector | jam | 478 | 3.79 | 3.79 | 4.11 | 4.32 | 3.50 | 3.69 | 2.89 | 3.37 | |
| 2020 | 47 | Stuck in a loop | 👥 | Crocodial | jam | 646 | 3.61 | 3.82 | 3.86 | 3.79 | 3.30 | 3.19 | 3.75 | 3.50 | |
| 2020 | 46 | Keep it alive | 👥 | Vivere Computatrum | jam | 600 | 3.76 | 3.28 | 3.74 | 4.22 | 3.52 | 3.00 | 3.16 | 3.63 | |
| 2019 | 45 | Start with nothing | 👥 | Warp Trash Flotilla | jam | 28 | 4.26 | 4.24 | 4.43 | 4.33 | 3.67 | 3.66 | 3.62 | 3.99 |
Aquanim leaves an average of 17.4 feedback comments each event.
Nice puzzles. The limited number of jumps is an interesting mechanic to accompany the powerups. As previous commenters mentioned the jumping itself feels pretty unforgiving at times especially near ledges, and the combination of that with "finite jumps" and "jumps requiring precision" was pretty aggravating at times, and distracting from the "core" puzzle mechanics. Still fun overall though.
Not sure I quite understood everything that was going on here, but it is a fun concept.
Synchronizing the clock in the lower-right is a nice touch. I... may have deleted my homework folder once or twice.
The collision with enemies when wrapping around the screen borders did not work in the way I expected. Not a terribly important detail though. Nice minimalist design and execution, well done :)
I found there were some cases where I expected enemies to aggro onto me, red vision cone and what not, but they just stood around and didn't chase me. Maybe had something to do with failing and restarting the final level a few times?
Anyway, fun concept and very well executed in terms of visuals and gameplay.
Nice enemy variety; I found the bullet guys by far the most difficult to deal with. Would be nice to have an endless mode at the end where you see how long you can make your snake, rather than ending at a certain length. Still quite fun as it is.
Definitely enjoyed the variety in enemy designs requiring different tactics to defeat. It seemed like there was a lot introduced in the second level and not as much in the third (at least on medium difficulty), but overall the introduction of interesting new stuff was at a reasonable rate.
Definitely enjoying the minimialist aesthetic of the art and gameplay working together - and despite being simple the gameplay is quite compelling.
I figured out that the enemies stay in the same place, but didn't realise that the dark square could ignore bullets. I think having to remember where the enemies are, rather than having a persistent visual indication, makes the game more challenging and fun. Maybe there is a way to convey that the enemies are persistent without drawing them on the light side.
Would be nice if there were a clearer indication of when your weapons have become available again. Still fun though :)
Very solid idea and execution. Definitely feels like a game one could put quite a bit of time into and keep getting meaningfully better.
On one occasion I had two enemies spawn on top of one another, followed by them both shooting and destroying each other.
Might be nice to be able to see where the next enemy is going to spawn so one can plan ahead a bit. But maybe that would make it too easy.
I certainly hope the pistol is a feature :p
Have to agree that rolling energy drink > medpack > medpack at the beginning of my first run left me pretty perplexed as to what I was supposed to do in the game.
When I finally got some guns they all felt pretty interesting and different though, so good job there.
Neat concept, and each new game element is introduced at a quick enough pace to keep the game fresh without being overwhelming. Definitely appreciate being able to see what each button is connected to in the planning stage.
In a couple of missions it felt like one or two crew members could just walk to an escape pod and leave on their own without really being involved in the larger puzzle. Overall the level design is pretty solid though, the last couple are reasonably challenging.
This game is certainly an experience.
Not sure if getting stuck in a "loop" on the last level was intended or not, but either way the game does give you enough of a clue as to how to actually progress, so if it is meant to be a bit confusing but not too much then you hit the mark. (If it's just a bug then, well, happy accident I guess?)
Definitely digging the graphics style. Reminds me of playing Hexen back in the day.
You're not kidding about this being hard. I'd have liked to have a tiny bit more margin of error in terms of dealing with the enemies so as to be able to focus a little more on the platforming aspect. My technique could probably be improved, though.
The guy keeping his hands in his pockets while dodging fireballs and jumping over pits is a definite mood. Agree with some of the earlier comments about the difficulty and a very long way after the post-timer room without checkpoints, but the fundamentals are solid. Nice work :)
Very sweet concept and well executed. I got a bit stuck on my first try since the first or second balloon spawned in a really hard to reach spot above the wheels; perhaps for the benefit of the learning experience the first few balloons could be restricted to easier spots? Even so this was a lot of fun.
The zoom-in at the start so that you get an idea of the course before starting is well done. Reasonable difficulty curve (with a bit of a spike on the final level). Overall good job :)
Given all the circular motion I felt like I would have had an easier time playing this with a controller rather than the 8-way controls given by a keyboard. Fun game though :)
I found myself getting stuck on the ground/walls in odd ways more than I would like but the core concept and the visual style are really good. Nice job :)
The graphics are lovely and I like the attention to details like the moon and being able to run both directions around the loop. Well done :)
The gradually building surreal feeling is really well done. I did run into some of the small annoyances others have mentioned above but the core idea was still compelling. Really good job :)
The video on this page showing the "player's" perspective is a nice touch :)
Cool idea - the last couple of loops on the way to 100 coins got a bit tedious since there aren't all that many different strategies/paths to try but overall I had fun.
I... wish I had decided to play this at some time other than "just before bedtime". Yikes.
Fun puzzle game. Arthur's little eyes are cute :)
(I wonder if it's possible to cheese some of the levels by placing and picking up robots over and over rather than making a loop to take them back to the start...)
The art style and the music work really well together.
It would be nice if your slo-mo capability refilled when the targets are reset, since otherwise you can be forced to wait and go around again to have enough slo-mo stored up to have a reasonable shot at actually beating the course. Even despite that the game is a lot of fun though :)
Definitely an ambitious game but it delivers. I was struggling for a while until I reread the controls and found the map key :p
I'm not sure exactly what was going on with the water basin-looking things that teleport you, are they intended to work like checkpoints?
Overall a really engaging game. Nice job!
An elegant take on the theme. The sound of the tree falling down is especially good. Nice work :)
Wrapping the out-of-context parts in block comments is a nice touch. If you're looking to expand on this later I think the best effort/payoff ratio thing to start with is probably in expanding the Complication Tables. Definitely an interesting take on the whole notion of Ludum Dare.
I like that the nucleotide chains make some effort to untangle in a natural-looking way, even if it doesn't always work perfectly. I think the music is pretty decent and you have provided a mute button if people don't enjoy it which is nice.
I kind of expected to start with that I had to make a loop with the four listed nucleotides rather than just have them be read once in that order, but the way you have set it up is also good. I definitely enjoyed playing this. Well done :)
The enemies' attack patterns have a bit of a Galaga feel to them that I appreciate, but *your* movements definitely have to be quite different to make best use of the time warp mechanic
It took me quite a few tries to get through it, but then again I am not all that great a shmup player so the fact that I beat it at all probably means it's not too hard.
The aesthetics are lovely and the game as a whole feels smooth, great work :)
A solid concept and really well executed. Definitely requires some practice to get good at it. I made it to the first creatively named checkpoint :)
Every once in a while it seems like the rhythm dots "run out" and then suddenly reappear again but it's pretty rare and I didn't lose many beats to it.
I agree that some kind of interaction with the trees and rocks would be nice (at its simplest, perhaps the passengers pay more for seeing nice scenery?)
It would also be nice if the game kept playing when I open another window, but I don't even know if you can do that within the limitations of the engine and webpage.
Overall the game is smooth and does what it sets out to do, nice work :)
I'm not sure if you need many more robots on the screen at any one time, but there could be less downtime between one wave and the next.
I did like the little detail of the train carriage wobbling around a bit rather than being locked in a fixed position behind the engine. Really sells the feeling of being on a train.
Well, I got well and truly lost a few times, so the game's name is certainly appropriate.
I like the music and the graphics - is the scary face in the trees intentional? Big dark scary trees would frighten a child lost in the woods...
Interesting interpretation of the theme as well. Definitely a fun experience all in all.
The sound, graphics and dialogue all work together very well towards the overall character of the game. Took a few tries to work out who I needed to talk to and what order to do it in to in to finish before the time limit but I cracked it eventually.
I'm not sure what the pumpkin carver is using for materials, since she says she needs a pumpkin and candle but, once you have them, you get a Jack-o'-lantern but get to keep the pumpkin and candle as well :)
I feel like I might have been a bit confused about the premise of the game if I had not seen another game with the same general principle in the past, but the puzzle design is pretty good and the graphics and audio are top notch.
I tried both the web and downloaded versions and all the lines draw properly on the downloaded version, but with the web version I saw the same lines-failing-to-draw issues that others experienced.
Everything about the mechanics of the game has been carefully thought out, from the anti-cheese of making coins only count if you reach a checkpoint, to the rules about when and where you can place a frame, to the easy switching between waypoints to go back for coins... and the level design is excellent. Speaking as somebody who has made a puzzle game or two, I lift my hat to you.
The music is nice and chill and appropriate as well.
This is an interesting interpretation of the theme and the art is indeed really good. The blue player on an often blue background is a bit odd but the colour palette in general is really compelling. Walking through the portals looks really good.
> I initially thought I had it when I found the chocolate pie, but then it was wrong and it was actually the room with keylime pie. That felt bad.
This happened to me as well.
The stairs on the second stage are definitely beatable if you experiment a bit to figure out where the rocks won't hit you. I like that most of the time you can see what is going on with each section beforehand (maybe jumping over a rock every so often) and can plan out your movements (assuming you understand the lava sign :p). I definitely prefer platformers that are "fair" in this way.
(If the lava sign were at the edge of the drop with a downward arrow rather than on the ceiling maybe it would be clearer?)
I felt like the enemies in Stage 4 were pretty easy to avoid or defeat compared with the other obstacles throughout the game, but otherwise the difficulty pacing seems fine considering that you intended it to be pretty challenging.
I enjoyed this interpretation of the theme and *definitely* enjoyed the music. The physics interactions are solid.
Overall a really great game.
I'm guessing based on the loading station way *way* up in the air that you come from the Rollercoaster Tycoon school of ride design :p (to make no mention of the ride attendants walking around upside down and a... unique grasp of health and safety requirements).
This game is a pile of things that make little sense and I love it.
A good and simple concept, solidly executed. The difficulty ramps up nicely from "introduction" to "easy" to "satisfyingly hard". Very nice job overall. Didn't notice any bugs, and the object collision feels good.
The zero-G controls and attention to detail with the sounds and various paraphernalia floating around the ship took what could have been a kind of boring item collection game and made it interesting and engaging... and a little bit spooky, too. *Why* is the ship un-powered and on a collision course with an asteroid?
Those semicolons have absolutely no chill 0.0
Despite its simplicity this game has quite a lot of character, between its aesthetics (please tell me the code lines are sampled from the game's own source code) and the gameplay (switching between the forms puts a twist on the basic platformer experience).
I found myself getting stuck on walls a little but that is a pretty minor issue, and it's generally possible to get out of it with weapon recoil. Overall a really nice job.
I'm afraid I didn't have the required knowledge of millinery to solve this on the first go, but I got there in the end. Cute concept and characters :) and yes, it looks like a lot of writing went into this.
Some sort of extra obstacle like enemies moving around on the rings would keep this challenging for longer but I enjoyed playing a couple of rounds.
The physics do feel good so the time that you spent on them was worth it :)
The hull breaches come pretty thick and fast, especially if you try to do something outrageous like, say, sleep for a few seconds :p
The screen jiggles around a bit as the dude moves around the ship but otherwise I like the graphical style. The varied styles of resources and systems to manage makes the overall game quite fun.
nice
Implying that it was a guess... :p
You might have run out of time to implement more tricks and turns in the murder case itself, but you should be happy with the underlying game code because it seems rock solid; the UI responds exactly how one would expect.
(By the way, the Ludum Dare page has a place underneath the description where you can put download links, which is where most people will look first... although maybe you just wanted them above the images?)
This game definitely evokes the feelings that it sets out to. The graffiti on the walls is subtle but it reinforces the tone nicely.
The bin is a little janky sometimes but overall the physics hold up nicely.
(A little bug: when I was sweeping at the very end of the day, the sweeping sound keeps playing through the dialogue.)
I love all the little details like your coworkers' typing noises and the ducts in the ceiling :)
I like that you have to go looking a bit for some of the objectives (aimlessly wandering around a corporate hive really sells the mood here), but most of them have some clues. For instance, when you are told to go to the coffee machine you've already passed through the cafeteria so you have some idea where to look. The boss being in an upstairs office is a nice touch; it would be even better if you could see him glowering down on your office area from above though his window while doing your earlier tasks :D
Seems like the basis for a solid game :)
With respect to the mechanics that are present here, a couple of suggestions: - Some way to select what planet the altitude/velocity displays refer to would be nice when setting up a rendezvous. At the moment I feel like you have to get pretty close to a smaller planet before it switches which can leave you without a lot of time to slow down. - At high time warp factors the rotation controls are *very* sensitive. Possibly making them less sensitive or just disabling them completely at high speeds is a good idea; one would mostly be using these during interplanetary journeys, and while you might want to turn around and look at the scenery I doubt there will be many course corrections made at warp factor 8.
A nice little platformer overall.
I got myself stuck in the floor under an elevator :)
Very cool concept, and all the details are nicely polished. I had a lot of fun.
It seems like there are two divergent strategies: - Try to beat the level in one go. - On your first one or two lives try to damage as much as possible and don't worry about dying, then save your previous lives with the next one. If you try to live a long time on your first life by dodging enemies, but then die, your second life is liable to mess up where the enemies were and get your first life killed before its time.
It took me a while to realise that the E abilities' cooldown decreases when you defeat enemies.
I had a good time. Fun game and level design.
The difficulty pacing is overall very good (though I have to admit I found Bowtie more challenging than anything that came after it).
Between "how do I solve this level?" and "executing the solution" I found the levels tended more towards the latter. There are definitely a few levels like "Why are you sideways?" which go the other way though. Having some variety like this scattered through the levels is nice.
The "door unlock" sound seems a bit harsh but the others work well.
Is there a level restart button? If so I couldn't find it.
I'd love to see some more of this story. Great job :)
Lots of fun and nicely polished.
You can build up quite a bit of speed by facing in the right direction and using all your movement options :)
Simple, elegant and beautiful. I like it.
The core gameplay idea is exceptionally clever, and the graphics/music is quirky and well executed.
As a few other commenters above I found that surviving the first couple of days was very tricky (perhaps even requiring a bit of luck), but when I did manage it then going on to maintain a steadily growing population was largely straightforward. It's nothing that a tutorial, a late-game objective/threat and/or possibly a balance tweak couldn't adjust though, if you wanted to work on the game further.
Thanks for the game, I had a lot of fun :)
The level design as a whole is elegant and introduces new mechanics at an interesting rate even after all the controls are unlocked. The final level isn't altogether easy even once you have figured out the trick; "difficult but fair" isn't always an easy target to hit and you've done a good job here.
I found sometimes the brightness of the player cube made it a bit difficult to see what I was doing, but from a purely aesthetic standpoint I enjoyed the overall visual and audio style.
Overall a nice, clean platforming experience :)
I got a bit of a nasty surprise when two decimals dropped their digits on top of each other... ;)
As ways to practice typing go this beats the hell out of repeating "the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" over and over. Nice work!
LD58 — Collector (22)
Gems of Kaine by MateusBoga 2025-10-11T00:16:37Z ♥ 1
I am very impressed by either the random level generation or the number of levels created. I can see the outline of how it would be done by building the level in reverse, but making the levels consistently non-trivial sounds like it might be trickier.
By the end it did get a little repetitive - one more kind of gem which twists the rules a bit (shifting the meaning of adjacent gems, for instance?) might have been interesting, but of course that would probably make the game a _lot_ harder both to play and to create levels for.
Allowing moves to be reversed (not sure if it is unlimited? seems to be quite a few), but any mistake sends you back to round 1, is an interesting choice. It does mean that any "immediately safe" move can be made without looking deeper, since if you end up in a dead end moves-wise you can always back up. I think the way you have set it up works well in the "learning the rules of the game" phase but perhaps less well in the "I understand the game and am just executing a depth-first search algorithm" phase. Given that this is a jam game and most people are likely to spend most of their time in the first phase, I do not think you made a bad choice here.
Anyway, this is a fun and well polished experience. Well done :)
BallBoy! by Neandi 2025-10-09T07:35:17Z ♥ 2
I also had the tennis players stand still and stop doing anything for a while (with neither basket empty) but they eventually started playing again. Not sure why.
I did expect there to be a penalty for running through the court while there was a point in progress, but the game probably is more fun as it is.
Fun concept and fun game :)
Call Hector by Pikario 2025-10-07T22:47:58Z ♥ 4
I have to admit that I button-mashed my way through one or two of the puzzles without really understanding the goal - but I did go back and figure out later why it had worked, and the answer was always satisfying. The art and the music are great. I had a good time.
Auction Antics by Dining Philosopher 2025-10-07T12:12:29Z ♥ 1
A cute concept, and executed well. The voice lines really sell the atmosphere. It did take me a little while to work out that some of the purchases were useless, depending on the current desired collections - but I might just be slow on the uptake there.
(My best is 7.)
Cold Side by Thierry 2025-10-07T11:32:12Z ♥ 1
The atmosphere of this game is very strong - between the music, the growling and the lights turning out, the game does a pretty good job of being scary even before you see the monster, and the lab itself has quite a bit of interesting variety as well.
Being taunted by the bots is giving me some nostalgia for late 90s - early 00s Quate/UT bot deathmatch...
Hex to the Max by Beebo Studios 2025-10-07T11:02:37Z ♥ 5
The aesthetics of the game are top-notch. The mechanics seemed pretty straightforward once I got the hang of it - stacking multipliers on a single tile and then collecting it seemed to be good enough for the eight main missions. Some more complicated mechanics might keep it engaging for longer. That being said, I did have fun :)
Astrocracy by slay a stone 2025-10-07T10:33:28Z ♥ 1
The core economic system here seems pretty solid. The game might be more exciting if there were more ways for things to go wrong and need fixing; as long as you build an economy capable of producing basic resources at the start, it seemed like the worst that could happen was having to wait for a while for one resource or another. Still, it was pretty fun.
Build-A-Bot by Tykki19 2025-10-07T09:41:30Z ♥ 2
Upon failing Day 5 I would have liked to be able to replay only Day 5 rather than having to play through from Day 1 again. Otherwise, this was very fun!
Precious Cargo by summerfield 2025-10-07T09:04:13Z ♥ 1
I think you have done a really good job of making the game hard enough to be a real challenge, but still very fun. The fact that carrying more items makes you slower leads to an interesting risk/reward tradeoff, especially when you are grabbing items far from the mailbox.
Do you inflict more damage by running towards enemies as you throw items?
Dustrunner by ghpxi 2025-10-07T08:44:20Z ♥ 4
The game seems pretty easy as long as you keep half an eye on your fuel gauge, but I still had fun :)
Evacuation Protocol by DmitriyCI 2025-10-07T08:32:08Z ♥ 3
I also found the graphics a bit disorienting, but in the context of the kind of game you are going for here maybe that's a feature rather than a bug. Walking into doors that didn't open and then having to figure out what to do to escape the resulting black screen was the most difficult part I think.
I think the music fits OK - both the music and the game have more of a "panic" horror theme than a "expecting something to jump out at you around the corner" kind of horror.
Supergalactic Trash Collector by 7uc4s 2025-10-07T08:08:05Z ♥ 4
The movement physics are just clunky enough to introduce a bit of challenge without becoming obnoxious, and the music is nice without being too distracting. It would be nice to get some sort of new ability in the later levels so one does not just feel like they are doing the same thing against tougher obstacles, but the game is quite fun as it is :)
Dust Collector Testing Facility by Jcourt 2025-10-07T07:08:15Z ♥ 2
I like that your character moves pretty quickly. This game could easily be tedious if you were waiting seconds between inputs, but as it is I rarely found myself waiting for long.
The music is... kind of incredible, actually.
Being able to softlock yourself in room A2 is rather unfortunate. On the other hand maybe I should just get good - it was a completely predictable outcome of my own actions. Sucks to suck and all that.
Levels C1 and C2 seem pretty well designed to me - an appropriately-sized increase in difficulty and complexity for the final levels. It seems like you don't have to interact with most of the west wing of C1? That's not a big deal, though.
Last Minute Shopping by Ajile3105 2025-10-07T06:38:45Z ♥ 2
I guess this shop only sells ostrich eggs?
The difficulty levels seem pretty well chosen. Easy mode is not trivial while you are still learning the controls, but with some practice hard is quite beatable.
DEBT? DECLINED. COLLECTORS? DEFLECTED. MY BALCONY? A BASTION. by BigTasty 2025-10-07T05:00:25Z ♥ 2
Nice level of challenge - definitely achievable, but I was figuratively sweating a bit by the end. The new weapons and enemy types keep things fresh through the length of the game without being overwhelming. I had a really good time with this one.
Florarium by GullynGames 2025-10-07T04:43:05Z ♥ 2
A pleasant and relaxing experience, with a nice level of challenge. Well done :)
Reply All - The Most Realistic Office Horror Ever by 042a 2025-10-07T01:39:41Z ♥ 1
I have never before in my life been this productive.
(Seriously, though, the pacing of the game is well managed. I never quite had time to get bored before seeing the next button to click, and the new elements are more and more visually interesting. Great job on your game!)
Niji by KnownAsPhi 2025-10-07T00:49:38Z ♥ 4
A beautiful and relaxing experience. Well done :)
Final Buppo 64 by Anson Rutherford 2025-10-07T00:25:12Z ♥ 1
The (asynchronous?) multiplayer is very cool. Did not encounter any bugs. Nice game!
Do Not The Mushroom! by hirsch 2025-10-06T23:55:25Z ♥ 2
Great game! I like the way that eating has both upsides and downsides which you need to manage.
I do wish that I could check the name of the mushroom in my hand without having to throw it to the ground. I guess if you play the game enough you will start recognising the pictures.
Cat Catcher by Arthur Iung 2025-10-06T23:36:13Z ♥ 1
The visuals do a very good job of making me feel bad about dropping kittens, well done :)
I'd love to have a keyboard hotkey to buy a new box, so I don't have to move my cursor all the way to the bottom corner. Not a big deal, since you can buy boxes in advance when you get a moment of downtime.
The Collector by Kazuren 2025-10-06T23:27:54Z ♥ 3
Nice game - the visuals are great and the movement controls are smooth.
I was mashing my keyboard a bit trying to find the correct key to progress through dialogue at the beginning. It looks like right-arrow or clicking on the flashing arrow would work, but the correct answer is Enter. Skill issue on my part, I guess.