The adventures of the Squire and the Liar by JonathanG 2015-09-04T17:11:00
Great game with lot's of polished content hampered only by a too steep learning curve.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → Arnage
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Category | Score | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 🥉 | 2015 | 33 | You are the Monster | Open the door and smile | compo | Graphics | 4.70 |
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | Co | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | 59 | Signal | 👥 | Deep In Debt | jam | 689 | 3.14 | 2.78 | 3.08 | 3.28 | 4.17 | 1.50 | 2.59 | 3.64 | |
| 2018 | 43 | Sacrifices must be made | 👥 | Dinner with a hot chick | jam | 222 | 3.76 | 3.65 | 3.73 | 4.17 | 3.92 | 3.84 | 3.55 | ||
| 2017 | 39 | Running out of Power | 👥 | Running out of PEWer! | jam | 167 | 3.75 | 3.71 | 3.14 | 3.67 | 4.17 | 3.67 | 2.33 | 3.60 | |
| 2016 | 35 | Shapeshift | Wayang | compo | 300 | 3.40 | 3.27 | 3.27 | 3.43 | 3.68 | 3.28 | 56 | |||
| 2015 | 33 | You are the Monster | Open the door and smile | compo | 25 | 4.04 | 2.93 | 4.08 | 4.29 | 4.70 | 3.31 | 2.00 | 4.24 | 85 |
Great game with lot's of polished content hampered only by a too steep learning curve.
Great idea that takes the basic pinball gameplay and gives it a new, and very theme appropriate, interpretation.
There were many monster rampage games this time, but the inclusion of specific goals makes this one a lot more interesting then just crashing around until you either die or get bored.
Great execution, but the basic gameplay let's it down a bit. Still worth playing just for the music and that goofy smile on the monster :)
Feels a little rough, but what's there looks great.
Considering how little oxygen you have it would be nice to have a clearer indication of the soldiers "hitbox". Currently it's very hard to catch a breath in between multiple soldiers as you can't really see when they'll hit you.
I wanted to stop them just because the Wheeee! sound they make when they pass you gets quite annoying. Though I suppose that could be seen as a brilliant bit of game design :)
Lovely art style. I wished the city was a little bigger though, you run out of buildings way to quickly :)
Some technical notes:
- On a xbox 360 controller the button mapping don't match the instructions.
- The web build gave me an error. (firefox on win 10)
Would have been great with some more actual gameplay, but funny concept nonetheless.
Are 5 star ratings even possible on all levels? It seems impossible to respond fast enough sometimes.
Other than that I agree with most of the others here, nice concept, but initially a little too hard and confusing.
I would have expected another ending after playing all guitars and not smashing anything/anyone, (expect for the required bushes) is there something else you have to do to properly de-monstrate yourself?
Turns out hovercrafts are not very practical in urban environments...
The online scoreboard is great addition btw.
Well written and features quite a bit of content. Balancing was indeed a bit of an issue, but that's hard to get right in such a short amount of time.
Very polished and quite fun to play too, great work!
Definitely has potential and has a nice build up, though as of now the ending feels more like the game bugs out then ends.
I must admit I ended up playing this purely because of the great name which stuck out from the rest on the voting page :)
The overall style, both in visuals and music choice work great. I also like the overall dynamic of offense and defense, but I have to agree with the other commenters that the gameplay loop of constant clicking lets the game down a bit. Additionally the jam version also seemed very hard.
The post jam version works a lot better. It did make me wonder if we were expected to be able to click that fast as it seemed way easier than the jam version.
Great concept, great art, great levels, just great :)
Great writing and artwork. Feels very polished overall.
I got 39.2 :)
I like the positive interpretation of the theme and the original concept you made with it.
When you've grown a bit it becomes quite hard to actually hit something while you'd expect the opposite.
Still breaking stuff is always fun and I like that the rubble stays around to visualize your progress.
I'd think you could have made her a bit more hideous. Sure, she's sewn together and ghastly pale, which would probably scare most people, but she is not necessary ugly. Especially her face looks more cute than horrific in the art, while the story implies otherwise.
Overall a great experience though, loved the mood you managed to evoke.
For some reason there were no capitalists in my game. Does that mean North Korea has won and has taken over the whole world?
This definitely needs a post compo version with the final elements described implemented. What's there is all nicely polished and the concept is quite good, but the gameplay sorely needed those missing features.
Great atmosphere and production values, though it seemed kind of arbitrary what causes you to die.
how are you supposed to "click" with no mouse button? Just hovering over the yellow ones does not seem to work.
Not bad for a first attempt. I also like the idea, it made me feel like a brat who isn't very good at building sand castles, so instead I destroy those of others.
Great interpretation of the theme.
Cool visual style and a lot of content for a compo game, well done!
PSA: Don't zoom in your browser to get a larger view of the game as it will cause issues with the game.
Some more polish would have helped, but I like the underlying idea.
It makes me wonder why I'm the monster: Is it because I dress up as one? Or because I'm the killer and outsider in their world. Great use of the theme!
The art and variety of the mutations was great.
The double jumping was really hard to pull off though, which made reaching the higher platforms quite difficult.
Great mood and twist at the end.
Not sure I agree with the control scheme though, it seems unnecessarily complex.
The people of that village sure are rude, running away from that friendly creature...
Interesting gameplay and great use of the theme.
Interesting interpretation of the theme and quite well balanced.
This game has some nice twists that put it ahead of most of the eat everyone entries in this LD. Great work!
I would recommend some kind of visual feedback while charging as I initially didn't know what I was doing wrong, but it simply turned out I did not press space long enough.
With the speed the cops get to you it would have been great to be able to shoot and walk in separate directions. Especially before I noticed being able to bounce bullets back at them.
Some variety in the encounters would have also helped, but that might be too much to ask within the time limit. Anyway great work for a first entry!
Lovely interpretation of the theme.
I would recommend raising the deadzone on the controller sticks. It seemed like the menu was broken, but it turned out one of my controllers was just constantly changing the selection.
Other than that I like the concept and the chaos. All the arms can get quite confusing, but instead of feeling annoying it feels more like an Octodad kind of endearing clumsiness.
Some more effects would have helped make the game more manageable. For example a color change or glow when a box is in a trigger area. Currently it can be hard to be sure a box is in the trigger area. Additionally this would help with noticing boxes in your peripheral vision.
But overall a nice looking game.
I really like the fluid movement of the player and the tiny humans. It would have been nice to have more interesting interactions (such as the humans hiding behind the houses in the example custom level) in the generated levels, but still a nice entry.
Aren't the monsters you are eating also innocent people that were turned into monsters? Wouldn't that make you just as evil as the wizard for killing them? :P
Btw. It's quite easy to jump out of the left side of the world in level 3, which causes you to fall endlessly.
Got me a feeling a little cross-eyed, but definitely a well executed and interesting concept.
Wow.
Could have used some more death sounds, they get repetitive really fast.
Thanks for all the feedback :)
@Manou: There's a material function that handles that effect, but also look at the way the models are build/smoothed. That was essential to get the final look.
@LoeM: I think you might have to be placed on a watchlist if you rate this game high in humor...
Again thanks for all the comments!
@Grhyll: Adding a keybinding menu was a little bit too much work for the compo, but the arrow keys should work fine for AZERTY users. Additionally the game can also be played with a controller.
@marvalgames I agree I should not have included that category. It was late when I finally finished though and didn't pay to much attention to the categories.
Not sure what happens to the rating if I remove it now, but feel free to put that one on n/a.
@ButtonMasherBros: cool, thanks for playing and I'm glad you seemed to like it. Also great work pronouncing my name, you managed to almost get it correct...
@pi_pi3: The actual shader was really simple, it does little more then pushing vertices along their normals based on a noise function. It's the irregular geometry and hard edges throughout the meshes that created the final look. If you look closely you can see that the one model that I did not manage to replace in time (the basic cylinder of the florescent lamp in the bathroom) looks a lot less interesting and crappy even though it has the same kind of deformation.
Regarding the control issues people are having: by linking the laser directly to your movement it becomes very hard to avoid the incoming fire. If you linked the laser to the view direction you could strafe around enemies and add a bit more strategy to the gameplay.
The controls confused me for a moment, but they gave the game a nice puzzle element. The momentum buildup and impacts also feel great.
@DragonGino alt+f4 works
I had some issues with unresponsive input which was a bit distracting, but other than that I loved the idea and the various scenes.
Great concept and I love all the voice work.
Also thanks for the credit, I barely helped out, so I didn't think I deserved that :P
Most relevant comments have already been made, so I'll just add: great game :)
Love that you switch between such unique shapes.
I did manage to fall out of the world, though I could continue playing with the other shapes :)
Since it's a Jam game I'm curious if you made all the art during the 72 hours or is you reused some existing assets. Because it would be really impressive if you made all this content in just three days!
With the addition of a score counter this could be a great arcadey game. Although bees piling up on the ground is also quite a satisfying "score" already :)
This game feels like a lovely welcoming door that, when opened, leads directly to a solid brick wall.
Still was a nice door though...
Nice title.
Maybe giving the player and the sheep round collision shapes would add some more challenge to the push mechanic?
You shouldn't undersell your own game so much, it's not bad at all. Almost everyone intents to make something bigger and better than what they manage to build before time runs out. (If they even manage to finish something to begin with...)
Just learn from the process and use that to your advantage next time :)
Great art and concept!
Just discovering new effects was surprisingly fun, great work!
Nice concept that is visually very polished, but the gameplay itself could use some more tweaking.
For example there's no hint at all that you can also change the shape of the end objects which you'll need to solve one of the early puzzles. Makes me wonder if something similar is not communicated for level 8 as I'm also stuck on that one.
Still, impressed by the amount of content and overall quality.
Indeed a promising start, a shame you couldn't finish it.
A hard to control but interesting interpretation of a player changes shape platformer. The selection of shapes is a nice twist from the geometric primitives a lot of people used this LD.
Aesthetically I think it would looked better if you stuck a little closer to your inspiration. Things like the smooth particles on death kind of clash with the rest of your style.
Finally, you might want to remember that unlike your inspiration a modern PC has quite a lot of buttons, so it's not just a simple what does A do? Okay, now let's try B and I know the controls world anymore...
Not the most original, but I like the execution.
Nice twist on a familiar genre.
Minor nitpick: it's a little confusing that the menu can't be controlled with the mouse.
That's a lot of content for a weekend, love the overall atmosphere!
Nice little game. I did miss some kind of visual indication at which depth I would actually hit the walls though, as that could seems a bit sudden.
Well done overall.
Based on the fact that you didn't include the audio category I assumed you didn't include any. I noticed some other commenters are talking about audio anyway. So if it is supposed to be there it might be bugged, as I didn't hear any.
For the game itself I would personally prefer if the controls were either all relative to the ship or relative to the screen. Currently you move relative to the ship, but shoot relative to the screen which doesn't feel intuitive to me. (I played on a gamepad in case this works different on keyboard)
Your suspensions were right, as someone who has not played much KSP that was really hard :)
Some more interactions that would make the levels feel less like basic mazes could be a nice addition.
Love the overall feeling of the player controls. Line was a bit hard to get the hang of, but overall very solid gameplay.
Well done for a first game!
I would recommend slowly increasing the difficulty, even without shifting, as currently it is quite easy to hit the gems at the starting speed even when small, so you can just stay like that forever.
Also, always put the score on the game over screen for a score based game, you don't have time to look at that when you're scrambling to survive with your last bit of health.
Love it, great story!
Great combination.
It seems most important to focus on the bottom part, I guess it might have been nice if the different effects in the fight had a little more impact, as it now seems most important to just hit a shape instead of strategically choosing which one.
Nice twist on the shape through hole gameplay. My only complain is that the transitions are a bit slow, making it feel a bit sluggish, which can be frustrating considering how fast the patterns come your way.
A little on the short side, I would have liked a circumnavigate the globe option, but other than that, a nice interpretation of the theme...
Very complete package for a jam game, well done!
Can you actually finish first or is reaching the finish line without running out of energy your only goal?
Great menu art btw :)
The art is definitely the high point here :)
By far the best audio work of the games I've played so far! The rest of the game also works well to create a very strong entry, great work!
Very polished and lots of content for a LD game! Minor critique: the platforming section at the very beginning seemed a bit hard compared to the rest. (or I'm just bad at jumping...)
Thor went from god to maintenance dude :P
Great game, especially love the mood of it all!
Overall very good, (especially for a first try!) but since you asked for criticism: - Maybe start off with some easier obstacles, my first couple of tries I died with a nearly full battery on a hard first obstacle. Get your players to invest in the game and then kill them when they like it :) - Showing the area after death is nice, but doing so at full brightness is a bit jarring, maybe place a large gradient around the player to still allow the player to see where they failed while preserving the atmosphere. - At the beginning you already show the start area. The effect of the dragon would probably be greater if you can only spot it behind you with your flashlight. - While I understand your explanation, I agree with BAJARYMI that sometimes its hard to see what kills you. Especially at the spikes at the edges of some of the platforms. It might be clear that they are deadly, but where the killzone ends is hard to judge and critical information for an instant kill. - If you use Kongregate as your primary distribution platform, try to match their template size to avoid the scrollbars. (And add a full screen toggle)
But as stated before, it's great already :)
Quite a unique and trippy (in a good way) combination of elements :)
Love the the robot swarm!
Super minor nitpick: labeling the upgrade buttons with the numbers 1-4 would make mouse/keyboard play a little more intuitive :)
Could definitely use some instructions! If you didn't have time to include them in the game, please add some to the description page to help your players. As it stands you tend to be unsure whether features are missing or you just don't know what you're doing as a player :)
Minor bugs: - In the webplayer you can't close an upgrade window without switching to full screen. - Upgrade windows don't block clicks, so you can click on stuff hidden behind them.
I would recommend adding some screenshots and a cover image, that should help to get more people to actually play your game. Usually games that don't have those tend to be mostly unfinished as well, so I ended up pleasantly surprised that was not the case here. However, others might just skip it because of that.
As the others stated there are some (mostly visual) bugs, but when you get past them there's a nice adventure underneath. Props for going the story based route, that's hard to pull of in a jam.
Great twist in allowing the player to continue after running out of power! Also quite a lot of content for a compo game, well done overall.
Nice work all around. Would have been nice to have some other stuff to do then just turning cranks, but I guess that the nature of LD and short deadlines :)
I had the same issue as @Ramou, but other than that a very funny and polished (if a little shallow gameplay-wise) take on the theme!
Great graphics and polish overall! I couldn't hear any music though, only some sound effects, even though other comments indicate that there should be some. So I abstained from voting in the audio category.
It's a bit hard to respond to the asteroids in time, but overall the style is indeed properly weird in a good way :)
To get the high scores going: I updated the top screenshot with mine :)
@linus Yeah, it would have been nice to add mac and linux ports. We didn't have access to build machines other than windows though :/
However, since it's build with Unreal it should be easy enough to build it yourself from the source. (In proper Linux fashion :P)
Nice mix of theme, gameplay and story and overall very polished and complete!
I would recommend that you specify in your description which assets were created during the jam and which were bought/imported. External assets are obviously fine for a jam entry, but knowing what was created and what was added makes judging more fair. (Especially the graphics category)
Other than that, nice work!
A bit on the hard side, especially when you occasionally just can't find the bugs in time. But other than that, a great entry with a lot of effort in the various elements and a interesting take on the concept :)
Nice, the simple but effective effects make it feel really good! One minor suggestion: I would like some feedback when it is/isn't possible to grab a weapon. (Maybe a highlight?) The fights can get pretty hectic and missing a grab can easily spell your doom.
Took a few tries as the feedback is a little confusing as others have mentioned, but I made it to the end. Great atmosphere!
Thank you all for the nice comments! @igor-silva-19 & @thormoth, if you are stuck finding anything, here are some hints: - At first you only have the blinking speed of the tracker to indicate you're getting closer to something - Finding them will allow you to upgrade your tracker, to make finding more hidden ones easier - What you are looking for is quite shiny, so once it comes in view you'll know what it is - Try the very front bit of the ship first - Diving deep might be scary, but can also be rewarding...
@ghpxi thanks for the feedback, do you maybe have a controller connected? The game supports controllers, so if you have a controller lying around with something resting against the right stick (or which has a bit of stick drift) that can happen. I experienced that myself while debugging another game and finally spotting the controller lying face down with the stick against something 😖
That's a weird one than, normally I'd like to debug it on our end, but since it's a jam game, that's not allowed 😅 Still, thanks for playing the game and providing feedback!
@itero-proto Yeah, the only thing I could recommend is: have you tried another browser?
Thanks for all the feedback, all :)
@aleksey-salion I posted some hints a little way up in the comments here that might help.
@byte-bark regarding the swim speed: dus you spot that you could hold shift to swim faster? That's in the accidentally too tiny instructions in the corner.
I wished there was controller support for some analog movement, but I get that the 8 way retro style was intentional :)
Some minor bugs I encountered: - The game over screen was stuck for me. This might be what Pojemnik also experienced. There was no back to title button and the pause menu also didn't function anymore. There was only "Signal lost - auto-recall in progress" on the screen. - In the second level the starry background broke. There was only a lot of pixel noise on the top line of the screen, which I assume was supposed to be distributed all over the screen to form the stars.
Still well done, our game has bigger bugs :D
It made me wonder how the camera on that RC car managed to float behind the car :P Kidding aside, great entry!
Catching up to the heli to upload can be quite tricky, but overall an interesting take on the theme :)
Interesting mechanic for a detective story. Good to see you took the time to make a post jam version as well, as the potential was already there in the jam version.
Very ambitious concept with some lovely world building.
I did find an "exploit" that might help rhythmically challenged people: there seems to be no penalty for pressing the wrong button, so to turn it into easy mode you can just press QWER all at the same time each time :P
Well done, very polished and complete entry! (And indeed very Defcon)
Very nice twist indeed, though I shouldn't have read the comments before playing :P Love the physics based "lemmings"!
Very well done entry, with a lot of polish!
Only encountered one super minor bug: if you win on the last of your charges the lose screen can trigger as well. Showing that you lose but then switching to you winning when the signal reaches the destination tower.
Nice, very literal implementation of the theme that works well as little puzzle game. Nicely balanced progression and quite a few levels as well.
I've got to agree that the platforming was a bit too annoying this way. I get the no air control part, but what took it from challenging into annoying territory for me was the instant loss of momentum when hitting any corner. Some coyote time and no instant acceleration might also have helped make the platforming feel better.
But other than that it's a very polished and has a lot of content for a jam game.
Since most of my potential comments have been mentioned here already, I'll just mention that the shading on the 2D sprites was very nicely done :)
Some minor bugs in the minigames, but I still managed to reach the end :) I had read the story here on this page first, and thought that set the mood very well. Would have been great if the storytelling through fragmented messaged made it in the final game, but we all know a jam means you have to make aggressive cuts. We didn't even manage to get any sound in our game :P
Very good example of the benefits of a minimalist but polished style. Well done!
As already stated, well done story! Very polished experience for a jam game.
You certainly managed to set a nice mood :) Was all the art and music created during the jam? If so that's really impressive.
I like the first impression, but abstained from voting for now as I seem to be missing something.
It's easy enough to find the baboon's signal (and God's), but I'm unsure what to do with them as the only thing that I seem to be able to actually interact with is the eye (if it doesn't wander off screen). I assume I have to do something when the signal is the strongest, but I have no idea what 🤔
Lol, that makes a lot more sense, thanks for putting that into the description for jam-induced sleep-deprived people like me :)
Managed to reach the end now and rated the game. Great absurdist styling and writing in this one!
Very nicely balanced difficulty progression for a jam gam, well done :)
It feels like you brainstormed how to integrate the signal theme in a game and then made a game with all of the ideas from that brainstorm :) Well done, especially the game's design and scope!
Great entry! Took me a bit of trail and error to learn the interaction between the different mechanics, but I suppose dying on your first runs fits the spooky atmosphere well enough :)