TorNado by Igor KinGamer 2021-04-30T22:45:08Z
I liked this. I think it would benefit from fading the background object a bit more just to make it clearer what can/can't hit the player.
Also, nice job making your own kotlin engine! That's huge!
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → ArguablyArugula
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 48 | Deeper and deeper | Nadiria | jam | 1449 | 3.20 | 3.01 | 2.65 | 3.90 | 3.30 | 3.69 | 2.24 | 3.55 |
I liked this. I think it would benefit from fading the background object a bit more just to make it clearer what can/can't hit the player.
Also, nice job making your own kotlin engine! That's huge!
I think this has a lot of potential if you keep working on the concept. I liked going off after the shadow to find the words, but when I was trying to activate them in the water I just got an error noise.
Has a very esoteric feel. It's fun, but more than being fun it's...cathartic, maybe? I dunno, there's something meditative in just wandering the desert looking for words with the music on low.
@ancient-pixel Ohhh, that actually makes so much more sense. I'll need to revisit it later, as I was a bit bummed out not to be able to plant any trees.
I liked it, the only real difficulty I found was that sometimes the "a" or "f" key presses weren't registering fast enough to keep up with the slider.
Great visuals and sfx.
The art is really good, I found that the attack delay wasn't really an issue. It reminds me a bit of games like Castlevania with needing to actually stop and attack very deliberately rather than running around spamming it.
I think it could use a little more visual feedback on when hits are landing on the player, and moving the player's health bar to a static location on the screen would help to make sure it doesn't disappear among the skeletons or generator.
I don't have anything to say about this game that hasn't already been said above, so I'll just leave it at great job, this is the best game so far!
Very addictive, very fun!
I like the weapon variety, too. Only request would be a sprint button to get a bit of distance from the mobs/boss when you're getting slammed.
I love it! It would be good to have some kind of feedback for how charged up a slash is when holding the attack button down.
This was amazing! I don't know what to add that hasn't already been said so many times above, so I'll just say that I hope your team makes a full-fledged game from this concept, even if it's a different aesthetic, the base of an awesome fast-fighting game is here.
Amazing! would've benefited from a flying enemy later in the game to tack on some difficulty.
This was very well done. I really liked the scanning feature, and the use of the flashlight to push the fish away further down added some complexity to evading enemies. I also thought the timer/energy meter combo added tension and made it important to actually watch your surroundings and not just scan indiscriminately.
I also appreciated the prompt to let players know scanning the same type twice was a waste of energy because it's actually a very important detail.
Excellent art and execution. I really could've used a block button.
I liked it. I was confused as to whether or not I'd beaten the game or just sucked at the swimming portions until I saw the title card at the end. The wall-jumping felt a little iffy at times as I'd be switching arrows after leaving one wall but I wouldn't actually get traction on the other. I don't know if it was a hitbox size thing on the player or not.
Was the orb's laser effect proximity based? That was what I thought was happening whenever I'd be in a room where I had to drop the orb and go for air.
@pbg I didn't think it was ham-fisted at all, I really liked it. I'm glad I understood it as well, and I think you've done a great job conveying the mechanics and themes without resorting to raw-text tutorializing.
There's a lot to unpack here. I don't exactly know what I just played, but I got to the tree and I eventually picked "F*** yourself" and I think I wound up back at the beginning?
The looping nature of it was disorientating but the use of changed options helped to make it clear that the entire game hadn't full-on restarted.
Good stuff!
The grid movement seems unnecessarily difficult, and the combination of arrow keys and mouse don't go very well together.
I really like the soundtrack. I found the clusters of little turret enemies shooting out a tonne of bullets at once to be a bit unfair. All the other enemies were tough but fair. I also couldn't figure out how to buy anything, whether I wasn't hitting the right button or if I didn't have enough money.
Strong entry, good work!
I liked this a lot, it could work really well as a mobile game using gyro controls to turn the map. Reminiscent of the special levels from the original Sonic.
Well done!
This was awesome! I wouldn't change a thing!
I like it, I had a bit of trouble looking around at first because my mouse sensitivity was really high and so I was getting turned around a lot in the corridors. The audio really establishes a strong atmosphere.
It's a good entry, I enjoyed the hookshots once I got them, but I found that it suffered as a platforming experience because of the first person perspective, it was a bit too easy to miss landings.
Great visuals, love the gravity mechanics, and while I never wanted to golf with a rocket-ship in the past, apparently it was a lifelong goal of mine to do so.
@felixmreeve Absolutely the biggest shortcoming in my opinion was the level design. I was really trying to tighten things up towards the end of the jam, but unfortunately I'd made too much of it before getting into comprehensive play-testing, and the result was that moving any one piece meant a lot of reconfiguring the spikes, dash-barriers, and enemies surrounding it.
I may actually continue refining the design though, after taking a break. If I do the first thing I'll be sorting out is scaling down the map!
Thanks for playing!
@diabolical-sloth Thanks for the feedback, Dash-cancelling is definitely something I would've liked to put in.
It's funny that you mention retaining momentum from the dash - that was initially how it worked. I ended up zeroing out the momentum because I kept overshooting and hitting walls in my early tests. I think I would revere that decision in hindsight.
@christian-jallas Are you saying you were able to fit into that small gap in the wall just after the first treasure?
I hadn't meant for that gap to be there, and I only noticed it pretty late in testing, but every time I've tried dashing into it I couldn't get the collider to go through. Thanks for letting me know.
@shubart I hadn't even thought of a map, but that's a good idea. Do you think a map that starts blank and fills in as you explore would make sense for a game like this?
I had intended to add an effect to the dash and some bubbles from the Diver to show motion/add a bit of flavour, but I ran out of time. Aside from the excessive distances I think the biggest issue for me with the final product was that it just doesn't have any juice, really.
@AFlatThrasher Thank you so much, I'm actually so happy to hear that you enjoyed the floaty slowness of it, and I immediately get it because I also normally hate that in games so seriously thanks for mentioning that!
@gimmers Thanks so much, I'm really happy you liked it!
@midamida I was pretty happy with how the dash turned out, so I'm glad you enjoyed using it. :)
@wheffle Thanks for the feedback!
Yeah, the big open sections are a bit of a drag, and mostly there because I ran out of time to play-test and make changes before the deadline.
I actually made all of the assets myself! Music, sprites, sound effects, the whole shebang. I'm glad you liked it and that it enhanced the mood.
Thanks for playing!
@simpathey Thanks again for playing it on stream! It was an amazing first-time experience for me to see a game I made on twitch, and the positive comments in the chat were just the best.
@igor-kingamer Thanks for trying it, and I really appreciate the feedback.
Yeah, I'm planning to continue development, I'll be adding parallax background and a more landmark-ish approach to help players keep track of their location. My next element to implement is a minimap that you can fill in as you play, though.
Thanks for playing!
@willoxs I appreciate the feedback!
I'm actually working on a full-fledged game from this design, and I fully agree about the dash. I'm shortening the cooldown, and the plan is to move the camera back a bit more so you can't dash off-screen. I also plan to have a lot more trial-and-error level designing to make sure that there aren't so many unfair deaths from dashing into the unknown.
Tightening up the level design is a big focus, as well.
I really appreciate you playing the game and taking the time to give such a detailed response, thanks again!
Really good job on this. Did you use any specific game tools to create it or just js?
I especially liked the glitched out messages that deleted themselves before anyone noticed.
If you are going to be continuing with development on the game, I wonder if it might be possible to try to procedurally generate groups of exercising characters, so that if a player "loses" and dies, instead of restarting they can move on in a new group with a new character, and try to figure out how to get out alive?
Either way, great job!
This was such a unique entry, loved it. I hope you'll find ways to keep going with it.
Good job! Only issue I had was that some of the wall textures made it a bit hard to see depth. I sometimes couldn't tell if I was looking at a corner or a dead end.
I really like this, the difficulty ramps up so well once the daylight runs out, but the visibility of all subs in the early stages really makes it easy to pick up on the puzzles before getting thrown into the deep end.
Good concept, good art, and the music and sfx fit the mood perfectly.
I liked it. This was a nice take on the theme. My only feedback is that it would be nice to restart at the school instead of the beginning of the game after going to "rock bottom". I liked that happiness was represented by the simple act of enjoying flowers as opposed to something more superficial.
The spikes were a bit much in the heart at times. That aside, really unique take on things, and fun to play.
I like the concept, and the tutorial was well executed. Good call including the arcade mode as well.
I liked the graphics and sound. Took me a minute to realize the movement used tank controls, my first round was very fast and confusing as a result.
All in all a very strong submission, and hopefully you can get to 20 in the next week or so!
Super cute animations and I love the jumping and dialogue approach. The banjo really adds to the atmosphere!
Actually a lot of fun, deep, deep debt. Like a deep dish worth of it.
I got pinned by a pizza car from the top of the map all the way to the bottom, really added to the chaos of the whole thing. Nice game!
I didn't find the puzzles too difficult to figure out, I thought enough information was provided in the setting and dialogue to figure it out. At first I felt the "hope" puzzle's fog was too thick, but even then the puzzle mostly winds up being that you have to move into a direction where the fog dissipates.
The only thing I'd really change is just using the "shift" speed as the default. I spent the entire time in sprint mode as the walking speed was too slow without it.
@1minatur I guess for my purposes the sprint speed, but now that you mention it I can immediately see the accessibility gains from implementing both. I read relatively quickly and I tend to take that for granted, and I've straight-up released a text-adventure game in a different jam in the past where there was a page of text that disappeared after a time limit and I got complaints that it was too fast to get all of the info.
So with that in mind, I'd say you made the right call. Also for the record having sprint as a toggle rather than hold is always the right decision.
I love Fungy! So cute!
The walk-cycle animation is especially strong. Well done.
One thing that really threw me in the beginning of the first level was the delay before scrolling started. I didn't realize it was an auto-scroller until I'd died from climbing down the ladder a couple times and looking around the first screen for some alternative movement. Having a barrier at the edge of the screen that stops movement if you're climbing down a ladder in that scenario instead of killing you as though you'd fallen would probably resolve any issue there.
Everything else was great, really well done!
I liked the character selection you've included. Was there any difference between the characters other than sprites?
I felt like one might have a slightly higher jump, but I wasn't sure.
I liked it, the concept and execution were unique and the milk management was complicated without being ridiculous to handle. The only gripe I had with it was that the ladder hitbox seemed a bit too narrow to be able to climb effectively.
Above all, this game is really pretty and the SFX/music pair really well with the visuals. Very strong aesthetic. Well done!
not bad at all. The platforms could use a bit more solid portions, it was almost impossible to avoid falling down pits just moving and dashing around, let along getting hit by the bugs.
The movement felt a bit clunky, and it would be nice to have access to WASD as well as the arrows when using keyboard + mouse. This was a good first entry.