Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → argensis
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 57 | Depths | Deep Guild | compo | 191 | 3.33 | 3.12 | 3.23 | 2.35 | 2.90 | 3.17 | 2.61 | 3.10 | ||
| 2024 | 55 | Summoning | Mana Tactics | compo | 193 | 3.40 | 3.03 | 3.13 | 4.00 | 2.73 | 2.39 | 2.85 | |||
| 2020 | 46 | Keep it alive | Attack of the Space bugs | compo | 4.00 | 3.50 | 2.50 | 4.00 | 3.00 | 2.00 | 2.00 | ||||
| 2019 | 44 | Your life is currency | Lifelong Quest | compo | 2.08 | 1.50 | 1.42 | 2.50 | 1.42 | 1.17 | 1.67 | ||||
| 2017 | 40 | The more you have, the worse it is | Grand Vizier | compo | 2.00 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 2.83 | 2.33 | 1.00 | 1.67 | 2.00 | |||
| 2017 | 38 | A Small World | Generation Ship | compo | 3.00 | 3.00 | 4.00 | 5.00 | 3.00 | 3.00 |
argensis leaves an average of 14.2 feedback comments each event.
The art is nice, the music is enjoyable and I do like that the limited unit cap forces you to think about how to allocate stuff a bit more than your traditional endless idle game (and the time limit helps with that too)
The concept reminds me of those typing tutor games from the 90s.
I think when enemies are coming up from the bottom edge the equation is quite slow to actually be on screen and readable compared to the other three directions, maybe it makes sense for it to appear on the side determined by the enemy's path to the player?
I enjoyed building up a larg3e number of units and some of the abilities. A bit like a vertical scrolling shooter in disguise really :)
The music did well with the atmosphere, though Wrath of the Lamb was clearly an influence on the art style ;)
There is something about the rendering that causes some eye strain for me too.
Not sure if I'm missing something, but the spider webs didn't seem to drop any string for me which seemed to what was needed to progress. Also the drop rate on logs feels really low, feels like I have to click for ages. It feels like an idle game where there should be something to start automating the process, but if there is, I didn't find it.
Is the web build on itch up to date? I could see two abilities but appeared trapped in the spawn area - I see people in the comments mentioning a dash ability that has a big "not implemented" label covering it
A pretty well executed hack and slash, was impressed by the amount of content for the time.
I did just charge and spam the final boss with the powered up sword after my second attempt and it worked, maybe a damage cooldown on the boss would work.
Liked the enemy variety.
Definitely a Threes/2048 style feel for me, the mechanics are intuitive and work well and the game is pretty polished too
The theme is very relatable and the aesthetic is very nice. It's not entirely clear how the star ratings are awarded though - I didn't see any clear paths to doing less than 5 moves, but that was 3 stars for the 1st and 3rd ones, but 1 star for the second one.
EDIT: Ah, did a second playthrough, the scoring seems based on minimising the total increments across all moves.
I was surprised that fewer peopled tried something with drawing out summoning circles. However, in this case I got to the third stage and the first time I had to draw the pride symbol, it worked, but on the second time I needed pride, I just couldn't get it to recognise the gesture, which was a little more sensitive than I realise.
I do like the concept and the art is pretty neat too though.
The memory mechanics are obviously going to make the difficulty very different depending on your memory (I had to keep notes!), but after that there are definitely interesting decisions between spending turns revealing more tiles to give future options or summoning something now. I think it would be nice if the catapult was more predictable where it would target, and it doesn't feel great to have the number you need randomly squatted by a spider.
Not levelling up too fast is definitely key with the increasing costs for each unit at each tier, and sunk one of my early runs. I like the sort of combo of idle game and wave defense.
I like the idea of choosing monsters and power ups to counter your opponent, but I think the balance is a bit off It feels like the optimal strategy is to just spam as fast as possible to get as many units up and ignore the balance. I think it would be better if either there was some cooldown on placing tiles or if there was a penalty for losing units to discourage that behaviour. That also means choosing powerups feel like they don't have as much of an effect as they could.
I think the core concept/idea is solid though, so with some more time to balance it so player choices matter more, I think it could be good
The animations and graphics were definitely the high part for me as well. I did go through the first two difficulties before I realised the rival necromancers were also going for the same graves as I was, so the strategy was to find graves before they did. Some additional actions or inputs for your summoned creatures would probably help the gameplay. Also in one game I had the last two summoners chasing me just out of screen and didn't realise so was wondering why the map was so empty.
A simple hack and slash type game, it feels the summon unit is a bit weak though - it takes 3 enemies to defeat and at best 1v1s one enemy. It would also be nice to get a bit more feedback on hit, sound effects for strikes and a personal heath bar would be nice additions.
Played through a bit of this - I think the idea of summoning the tower defense towers is good, but a little more explanation on what they do before placing would help - e.g. the heal tower as your first tower seems an inevitable game over. Also the ranged (orange) tower just seems better than the aura (blue) tower?
Basically the aim of the game is to use the summon's pathing to activate entities on the map. The variety of monsters was neat with the button press and lighting mechanics, could have have more levels though!
Also for anyone who was confused like me originally playing it the embed size, the map is partially cut off in the embed in Firefox, expand to full screen to see the full map.
It took a little bit to figure out at first but eventually I got the concept of it being a game of balancing the resource consumption. It wasn't clear to me that e.g. the portal didn't seem to start without purple mana, so placing enough purple to start it immediately drained all my red leaving me at 44% win progress but a game over.
It would be nice to maybe have a delete option, or a number associated with the rate of depletion.
One of the most graphically polished entries in the jam and the mechanics work pretty nicely too. I finished the game but had only a small sliver of health left on both my tank and my base. Agree it's not really to theme, but it's a neat game all the same. I had a good time with it all the same.
I played through the first few levels not quite realising the summon mechanic, until the level with the knights where I (foolishly) blew my entire budget on a queen, not realising it wouldn't carry over to the next level. Turns out taking on bishops with checker pieces is not the easiest lol.
I think a seperate summon button from the score would make the UI a bit clearer.
Other than that, everything worked fine and the idea is nice.
Also ran into the reset bug, but I cleared all three levels and it's certainly a good starting point of a concept to build from with some interesting possibilities for level design hinted at by level 3.
Completed in 14:36.
Serious classic GTA vibes, reminds me of playing GTA2 at an age where I probably shouldn't have been.
I may be the world's worst hitman though. "Sorry, Larisa, it's time to die.. Wait a moment.. Back a bit.. Forward... Oh I'm stuck between the car and the door... Back in. Ok, now Larisa, it's time to die"
Got to level 8 and a score of 47,000.
It got frantic near the end as the hordes were closing in, which definitely helped with the mood.
Like the active mechanic, definitely had me sucked in.
It gets frantic pretty quickly! I took a little while to figure out how to attack back while dodging and it felt like 10 or so units and their projectiles ended up on the other side!
The concept is pretty neat, might be worth having different types of summons if you were going to enhance it for a bit more strategy.
The concept is nice, it seems pretty easy so far - I wonder if it would make sense to ramp up the challenge, like increasing the number of ships or pirate to friendly ratio etc. Got a score in the 30s and felt I could go on forever.
Enjoyed the business sim type game, the debt target reminds me a bit of games like Recettear. I played to the end and completed it. The aesthetic is really nice and the music fit well with theme. I think there's definitely some balancing could be done, it seems upgrading to a few tables as soon as you can is the clear best option. I guess the time it takes for guests to reappear after closing and opening is meant to be the counter to that. Would also be nice to be able to upgrade or move tables after the fact too.
The real time chess-ish theme with capturing your opponents pieces to get them as your own was nice and made a clear game loop. The atmosphere with the graphics and music were pretty neat too. I'm not sure the puzzle is working - the instructions say click and drag but it doesn't. I think some of the cards like the lightning/death card might be a little too powerful. Overall I had fun
SO I've played a few rounds at this, getting to 2, 1 and 2 cases won respectively. I'm not sure I quite understand the mechanics. Each choice has two icons, and I guess the icons are supposed to indicate the effects of each choice.
What I've noticed:
The judge seems to have different affinities? Like sometimes he'll emit a +++ or a - for the green head with halo, the red devil or the yellow face. I think this is selected per case?
The second icon has different effects, e.g. the red sword lowers the opponent score, and the green face without multiples ... something... by 1.5. Maybe it's the score from the other symbol?
But then win or loss feels randomly determined by whether the faces the judge prefers comes up, and it's not clear when you should use the sword to attack vs build your own points.
The art and setting are really nice, but I just couldn't wrap my head around the gameplay.
So I like the framing of a witch summoning creatures to clear out her dungeon. It seems a bit rogue-like in that you keep the resources after you die and I guess the dungeon is persistent. The music is also a nice touch.
Some feedback though:
1. The game seems to freeze up if I'm in the dungeon for more than a minute or two, which makes it hard to see if anything happens once I clear up the dungeon. 2. There should probably be some grace when you spawn into the dungeon so you don't land in and immediately die - this even happened to me on the witch stage on my second attempt which confused me as to why it appeared to skip a stage until I noticed the same happen when playing as a skeleton on a later attempt. 3. It would make things feel more impactful with a few sound effects, e.g. when your projectile goes out, when it hits, when you defeat an enemy. It actually feels kind of laggy because the animation feels disconnected from firing a projectile because there's no feedback.
The concept of picking up devils that summon you crazy taxi style is definitely neat. The implementation as a memory game is alright, though it does seem like there's a limit to how far you can go since delivering fares doesn't recharge your timer.
Devin kicked my butt, the music is really nice though and it's cool how the combat evolves boss by boss. I enjoed it :)
It was neat seeing that you added a intro cutscene to lead into the game, set the scene a bit.
It did seem very short and more of an experience than a game, there's no way to lose and it's just a matter of picking up all the furniture? Also unclear why some breaks on the first throw and some needs picking up a second time.
The balancing felt a little off. On my first few attempts, I got the small unit pack near the spawn that seemed there (most but not all times), but apart from that, it felt the enemy grown outpaced my own and I wasn't sure what I was doing wrong. After trying to 4v4 a group of the basic sprite enemies in an early run, I thought the play was to start off by going around and picking off the small packs, but it seemed enemy density and variety kept increasing. So it felt like there was something I was missing.
Also I can see portraits for each of my unlocked unit types in the top left, but also one with the red health bar that doesn't seem to correspond, maybe this is a boss of some sort, but I didn't run into it in the map if so.
The art style fit really well together though and the enemy sprites and group movement gave a nice feel to the game.
The robots seemed quite difficult to control for me. I did like the graphics of the thunderstorms and when I noticed it the robots getting out of the cart and into the tower. The wall of text explanation could be delivered better in game, and it felt like having more than one beacon at any point might have been what's confusing the robots, so maybe an option to place a beacon clearing old ones?
Fits the theme well, mechanics eventually clicked though the meters are _very_ small which made it hard to read information to make decisions. Didn't make it past the aggresive creatures stage, though that might be my fault for killing off all the outer units at tbeginning assuming they were the hostile ones.
Quite challenging. The shooter mechanics work well and it fits the theme. I liked the arcade style game over screen with a high score.
I had some issues actually playing this game:
I read the help, and started the game. I wasn't quite sure of what the objectives are:
Fill the map? Is that possible in Life, won't they all just die the next turn?
Also I got trapped in the help menu, couldn't exit out when I pressed esc. If that's the wrong control, might be worth putting it on the game page, or just putting the contents of the help page here in general.
After a second attempt, I managed to trigger the simulation, and then harvested the plants, which gave me currency and I ended up in a screen where I could place cells.
But then I had no idea what to do from there, none of the Sow/Pause buttons seemed to do much at this screen.
After a bit more playing about, I figured out that the goal is to profit by making more points when you harvest cells than you spent to start it.
So then I went back to the continent screen, and tried to unlock another one. After finishing level 1, I had 27 currency, and continent 2 looks to cost 10c, but I couldn't figure out how to unlock it.
Not really very much in the way of gameplay, though the audio did help with the lonely feel and the graphics also helped bring that atmosphere across.
I guess the goal is to get the most postive - negative, but it wasn't clear until I first saw the game end screen.
Just beat it, I liked the soundtrack and the gameplay did well focusing on its primary mechanic. It was very polished for a game jam. The game works fine in wine for any Linux users.
Level 9 felt a bit out of place in terms of difficulty curve, and still feels like the hardest level, but maybe I missed something.
I liked the idea but I found it was let down by a few usability issues:
1. On my nvidia shield the aspect ratio was wrong. The left and right edges of the screen were clipped off. 2. There's no way to reverse? Or maybe that was off screen because of the aspect ratio issues. On my first few runs, I hit a wall and couldn't turn around. 3. Performance started to lag once my score hit around 100.
On the plus side, once I got into the swing of things it was fun and I like the art style.
* The controls are a bit weird * You could do with tooltips or something to explain what each building does * You give people a large chunk of cash on turn 1, but it seems to be their second turn, so they might assume that that's their base income (I did) and then be confused as to why they're broke the next few turns. * There should probably be a zone of exclusion to force players to build their bases further away.
LD57 — Depths (29)
RainDrops by Geckoo1337 2025-04-12T23:19:00Z ♥ 1
Very nice atmosphere, and definitely agree with others about the scanner sombre vibes. Like others, I also missed there was the bubbles in my first playthrough, which makes it much easier. Possibly the right difficulty is in between the slow sonar and machine gun bubbles.
Also a falling/landing sound effect could be quite useful in case you do fall off the platform. I did in my first playthrough and hadn't realised I had at first, which was pretty confusing.
d6 pool by Uzpykes 2025-04-10T23:03:09Z ♥ 1
I found it a little unsure if I was meant to be aiming the coloured balls into the hole or off the edge. I wasn't able to get any coloured ones into the hole to see if it e.g. gave more score than knocking them off the edge, but since it's actually quite difficult, I wonder if it makes sense to reward people for doing that.
It did feel a bit like the arrow indicator was backwards from what I expected when taking my first shot, but once I figured out how it worked that went fine.
I wonder if there's more that could be done with the fact that the playing field is a dice.
Project: Coreline by AlvaroRomeral 2025-04-07T23:16:16Z ♥ 2
Small comment: The "HTML5 (web)" link type is meant for games playable in a browser. Yours just seems to link to a download page for a windows build? I see you said you used Unity, it should be possible to export a web build and make it playable on itch directly, might get you more ratings.
Beneath by Doonutsaur 2025-04-07T22:19:12Z ♥ 0
The graphics and atmosphere is really nice. The sound effects and graphics really help sell the atmosphere of all the sounds of the old machinery.
The Guildmaster by Sylvic 2025-04-07T21:21:50Z ♥ 1
I can see what's a good concept, and a start towards that, and a lot of pretty nice UI. The actual systems are a little incomplete still, like I don't see anything costing me upkeep, or any way to assign specific parties to missions or characters to parties or why I'd say no to any applicant ever.
Knocking On Hell's Door by Frib 2025-04-07T21:09:05Z ♥ 1
I liked the fast paced combat and the bgm is fun.
I did find that just running around at the start of the level to bunch up the enemies then backpedalling around the edges of the room to be too effective of a strategy. It seems the AI all just tries to follow you and shoot at where you are which allows for that. It might be good to consider giving the AI a mix of strategies, like having some that try to lead their shots, or others that set themselves up in the centre of the room and basically turret at you.
Talkie Escape by Yvanor 2025-04-07T20:55:05Z ♥ 1
It's definitely short, but the 2.5D style works well here and there's a lot of polish in here for a jam game. Good job!
Shootwell by Sevatoxin 2025-04-07T19:52:26Z ♥ 2
I can see how you can develop skill in this, knowing when to jump when enemies are starting to switch to your side without doing it so often that you end up not killing enough enemies as you're jumping too much.
I got to around 2500m on my best run, but I evidently didn't manage to develop this skill lol.
Selective Drilling by Xwilarg 2025-04-07T19:48:00Z ♥ 1
I found drilling straight down on the sides to be a winning strategy for one of the endings (escape) as it limits how many angles you have to worry about attacks from.
One thing that would be useful (as someone who dug their starting hole right at spawn) is to either increase the range of indestructible tiles around spawn/the vendor or have a lockout on the controls for a few seconds after spawning. I'd often die in combat and still be pressing buttons when I spawned back in, which resulted in launching myself straight back down into the pit with no chance to interact with the vendor, or digging out more holes making more ways to fall in at spawn.
Down Wheel by neowhoru 2025-04-07T19:38:14Z ♥ 1
The platforming ended up being very challenging for me. I to the second checkpoint in the water level, then when I was doing the jump from the ledge I got stuck and died a few times and then it panned down and seemed to not place my character model again.
The idea is good, just probably takes someone better at platformers to enjoy it.
One thing that it did take me a bit to realise in the first room was that you need to dash then jump, rather than jump then dash.
It's That Deep by jazzydingo 2025-04-07T19:05:59Z ♥ 1
I can't say I managed to follow the logic on the puzzles, passed the first one with just brute force.
oroBOREos by Whirlwind 2025-04-07T18:57:16Z ♥ 1
Some neat ideas here, I think the "salvage" % is a little confusing until you see the first salvage amount upgrade, and eventually it feels like I'm running out of (ore? fuel? Yellow) in range of my initial starting point which feels like a little bit of a soft lock ending.
escape-the-dungeon-what-did-he-do-to-deserve-this by BarnabeWild 2025-04-07T17:31:02Z ♥ 1
Good job on getting your game done!
One small comment: It would be better if the edge on the bottom of the screen was cut away, especially for rooms like the fifth one where you have to jump to a hidden platform (I see someone else also managed to get stuck on the 3d terrain)
Fathom by Tristam MacDonald 2025-04-07T17:18:58Z ♥ 0
I liked the scan line and retro vector art aesthetic!
I think since the gameplay and graphics are very simple, some 8-bit style sfx would have gone a long way too.
Handbag Havoc by fnelix 2025-04-07T16:58:18Z ♥ 2
Unique idea! It's a bit crane game-esque :)
The controls a little funky using a mouse for me, I seem to have put the hand/grabber out of the click sensitive area on one of my runs, and sometimes it's hard to bring the hand down to the bottom. I wonder if wasd or arrow keys might make sense as PC controls?
Poor Julio... by Sayeg 2025-04-07T16:52:44Z ♥ 1
Alas poor julio, we came to know you well
Minesweeper 3D by LittleGamer 2025-04-07T16:46:26Z ♥ 1
I like the idea of 3d minesweeper!
I think having a way to slot to more 3d revealing camera angles may help with the depth.
The background was _extremely_ nauseating to me though :( I had to stop playing after a few minutes.
Also nice cover image, reminds me of PS1 cases :)
Oakhaven by bentglasstube 2025-04-07T16:34:17Z ♥ 2
Art is fitting and I get the general idea, it ends up feeling a little slow paced with the movement speed when you need to check your understanding of what the sliding tiles puzzle indicates and then backtrack, especially with nothing else in the zone. It might be nice to have a minimap of "revealed" rooms to cross reference.
Music certainly gives it an eerie vibe
DeepFrame 9 by JavaSaurus 2025-04-07T16:23:40Z ♥ 1
I enjoyed the music here, and the gameplay idea is simple but effective. Pretty good fit for the game jam style.
Depths Ascender by d-demetori 2025-04-07T16:16:48Z ♥ 1
Kind of reminds me of octodad!
Deep space journey by Gaspar 2025-04-07T16:12:08Z ♥ 1
I liked the space effect and the planet shrinking in the distance.
There wasn't a whole lot of "game" in the end though. Just walking to the same 3 objects and pressing E.
Drilling in the Deep by Jiri Hysek 2025-04-07T16:06:34Z ♥ 1
I played through to the end of it, the graphics are very nice. The swimmming speed is weird, the speed compensation seems to help a bit, the first time it was actually nearly it impossible because it would take a full oxygen tank just to get to the starting ores, never mind exposing any of the deeper ones for the drones.
With the compensation, it seems to work better, but also sometimes it would randomly give me turbo boosts which is probably not intended :p
Overall though, the atmosphere was very good on this one.
Sammich Snatcher by Stacy Davidson 2025-04-07T14:53:16Z ♥ 2
I guess this is a placeholder for your Jam entry, since there's still 10 hours left.
The Mine Beckons by dnp 2025-04-07T14:51:48Z ♥ 1
Congrats on completing your LD game!
As others said, I think basic sfx would have helped a lot. Also I wonder if the clear condition would work better as "mine all ores", as clearing all the grey squares ends up feeling a little grindy and just a stat check at that point.
. by protzz 2025-04-07T14:43:41Z ♥ 0
Definite Balatro inspiration here as others have mentioned :) I enjoyed figuring out the card puzzles to try and fit it all in. Minor bug though - for some reason the clubs are labelled "hearts". Also it would probably be good if the tutorial text when you look at the deck was either excluded from the blur effect or repositioned somewhere where the effect isn't so strong.
Echoes of the deep by BadPinkChicken 2025-04-07T14:27:36Z ♥ 1
The presentation is really nice here. I like the water and radar sounds and how it combines with the lighting effects to build the whole atmosphere.
Some things that slightly confused me at first:
- The death message seems to always be "You went too deep", which left me wondering "Huh, but isn't the point going deep? Isn't it going deeper on its own? Is it just forcing me to die and buy upgrades a few times" until I experimented by immediately slamming into the wall and saw it was the same message. - The first torpedos are "light" torpedos with no description. I assumed this was as opposed to "heavy" torpedos at first, like "not very powerful torpedos" and so fired them off the bottom of the map thinking they'd clear away enemies. Only after one got stuck on a wall did I realise that they're torpedos that exist to emit light.
Overall though, great job!
Depths of the Deity by LukyStudios 2025-04-07T14:12:28Z ♥ 0
I found it very challenging - like another user, I also didn't realise at first you could shoot the dispensers, and if you're too slow the enemies seem to bunch up down the bottom of the level. Also it's kind of awkward to have all the initial enemies be clinging to the bottom of the ceiling when you can only shoot horizontally.
Gameplay was fun though once I got the hang of it.
Nightmare Digger by OnnGD 2025-04-07T14:10:31Z ♥ 1
I played a little while and I think the core gameplay with the lighting makes for some interesting fast paced feeling gameplay.
I'm not sure if it's got an end state or if it's just last as long as you can - I think some sort of progress indicator like a floor number would help here.
Seed from Depths by Zamizmi 2025-04-07T13:51:36Z ♥ 1
There's some weirdness with mouse sensitivity in your web export - if I don't full screen it during the loading bar, I can't look down while in the game, and the cannon is moving painfully slow.