Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → ave
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | 44 | Your life is currency | 👥 | Something Of Legend | jam | 407 | 3.56 | 3.40 | 3.90 | 3.47 | 3.92 | 3.65 | 3.88 | 3.42 |
| 2017 | 38 | A Small World | Space Keeper | jam |
Great concept, I think your prioritisation of features given the time constraints is evident and wise, and it's exciting knowing that you can now apply these principles to other projects going forward. Really well done mate! :)
Hey, it's Josh. As you might have guessed, I really liked the art. Did NOT expect the music to make me feel mellow and chilled out haha.
Mechanically, I think the combat is really tough - I struggled to stay alive long enough to figure out what was going on. I like that your attacks (and the spiders) have a telegraphed hit-radius - that's something lots of games don't bother with but I think it helps, especially when picking up unfamiliar weapons/items. Speaking of, the intrigue for just how many weapons/items they could drop kept me playing, a bit like _Enter The Gungeon_.
Maybe when scoping next time you can cut back a little on the vision - shop and lots of enemies etc., and focus on polishing some core mechanic. It's impressive what you managed to get done all by yourself. :)
Things I liked:
- Loads of polish! Great line-work, lovely little animations - Ingenious way to spin the theme - The core gameplay loop, and the frog croaking - the consistency made it engaging
Things that could be improved:
- I felt like I didn't know how to fail - it was too easy, I think. Perhaps there should be only one or two correct combinations per tale and not spotting them in time punishes you - Pedantic, but with so much polish and such a simple UI, things like no button states (hover, down etc.) stick out a little
Really well done!
This was a really smooth experience - a very well realised concept with some interest programming-slash-audio problems that you've solved in a way that made me go "aah!" when I got involved and moved my mouse to modulate my pitch. I loved the consideration for introducing you to the game world, with the cinematic riverboat and cyclists etc. It made me smile and I had fun, can't ask for much more than that.
Really interesting idea, especially for a jam - surprised you got the audio tech in! The art is awesome too! I played it at work so I just rubbed my finger over the microphone haha
This is great. I liked how you styled your Itch page to put you in the right mood before it loaded. Overall it's consistent with the theme, and there were some nice _a-hah!_ moments as I discovered more of the mechanics. The notion of switching the kind of character you are in order to move throughout the level reminded me of _Gianna Sisters: Twisted Dreams_, and I like that you contextualised it with dialogue.
I think you did the right amount of levels for a game jame - I wasn't bored!
The only thing that confused me was that trading life for items didn't seem to make sense thematically - you didn't use the grey robe, you used the fact that you were old to tell a story. Maybe this could be resolved by just changing the item names to better indicate what is going to happen. At first, I assumed there might be a penalty for buying the sword since it _cost_ life, and I didn't think that you'd be able to switch back.
The only thing that I think could be improved as a quick-win, mechanically, would be that I expected to be able to trap the guards or kill them on the spikes/fences when I flipped the switches, but they just slid out from under them.
Really neat, and it benefits from its simplicity. Good job! :)
What a ridiculously novel idea! So satisfying to play when you get a rhythm going, I like how forgiving and not bogged down in mechanics it is. I love how outlandish the graphical switch-up is - reminds me of when 90s cartoons would do that and you'd just feel uncomfortable.
My only complaint is that it would be nice if you could transition from one direction to another more seamlessly - for example, being able to press up and left at the same time to swish the movement over, instead of letting go and waiting, then pressing a new direction. Also the voice acting was a little jarring quality wise, if only because the rest of it was so good.
Things I liked: - The destructible terrain, although it didn't seem to impact the gameplay, made me go "oooh" and was a standout feature - The sound design having the auto checkout "unexpected item" - The concept and ergo the game loop, since they build off a game show, are super understandable - The voxel art was nice - I'm surprised you managed to get so intricate in the time given
Things that could be improved: - Odd random bugs, one I had that wasn't mentioned above was that when I visited the bottom right corner of the shop, I started sliding to the right and couldn't stop it, so if I stood still I was always moving... - When you go to the bottom of the shop, the wall re-appears over your view - maybe look into a making that wall toggle semi-transparent once you're in?
Overall fun and well-realised :)
@firellon thankyou for taking the time! From having played to friends, we anticipated that people might have trouble understanding the mechanics straight away - is there a particular aspect you found to be too-much-data - for example, the time beat mechanic, or the blocking? Once you did get to grips with it, did you have fun? Lastly, how far did you make it? :)
@player2point0 I'm glad you managed to figure it out. Thankyou for the kind comment, we'd prioritised polish above anything else :)
@peachtreeoath Confusion over the controls seems to be a recurring piece of feedback, but I'm glad you managed to figure it out, and more importantly had fun! I wasn't sure if the characters we were making were actually funny, and it was quick a quick process writing them, so I'm happy that the intrigue for what was coming next as content spurred you on!
@Duke Hey, thanks for stopping by! I also appreciate your honesty, and I think it's spot on. I also ended up just spamming, and the music and sound was a little bit of an afterthought. We'll probably aim for simpler mechanics next game jam just to polish it up. RE the art, [I did a write up you might find interesting](https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/something-of-legend/art-sound-retrospective-by-a-programmer-who-does-neither) - definitely sketchy, I think we wanted to make sure we had _enough_ content, which meant making more characters than I could "clean" up. Lessons learned for next time ^_^
@very-dark-lord Glad you enjoyed! That's a better name than "The Squib" haha
@simplepotential we definitely could have been clearer on the controls - the actions you see in the middle are key combos - when you've typed one in, press space to send it off. They all have cooldowns, represented by the ticking timer to their right.
To beat the first enemy, press the right arrow key, then your space bar. Wait one second, then repeat.
Please consider giving it another go! I'd hate for you to miss out :)
@coleslaughter thankyou for taking the time - you've commented on some things that others hadn't yet! A common theme with our feedback has been confusion over controls, but I hadn't considered it would be because we went straight into a menu. It was a quick-win programatically, as each _era_ was a scriptable object starting with a store listing.
We did have fun! I'm glad you liked the art. We felt the inclusion of a custom name was easy to implement but would help you embed yourself into the character and help make it your own "legend". :D
Fantastic amount of polish on this Reigns-crossed-with-Darkest-Dungeon like game. I found the bluntness of the writing morbidly funny. Great job!
I had more fun with this than I expected. I liked that the shop guys spawn in front of you when you switch to good-world (even though they can spawn in trees), I liked the blue attack graphic and light effect, and I liked the rounded world. Although world-flipping is a concept that's been done before, I think the fact that your health depletes in good-world was a nice addition that made it feel fresh.
If you had more time, you could put some one-way walls up on the tree-line that enemies can pass through one way but your player can't the other - I immediately just walked straight out of the map to see if I could (and found some big spikes coming out of the floor lol). Further to that, the control scheme was a bit half-and-half - I'd have preferred it if WASD controlled strafe direction (not A & D doing angle) and the mouse controlled angle (not strafe). Good job though given the time frame!
This game looks beautiful, the sound is great - I would genuinely pay for this if it were a mobile game. Maybe against an AI opponent?
I love this! It's like it Warioware became a micromanagement sim and wore the skin of Theme Hospital. The minigames were the best bit, and running between patients added a layer of urgency to it.
I think it's clear that you made decisions about the mechanics for the context of a game jam, which could be expanded if you were to develop it further - for example, the decision to not penalise you for turning patients away, and the decision to pause time when trying to fix something - these were good calls.
I think it could have done with a run button, and some slidey collision with the walls - I got a bit frustrated moving about. Also, some icon indicating a person has not yet been diagnosed versus successful recovery would have been nice - not to spoon feed, but admitting patients en masse means you might not know where they've gone, and it ends up with confusion that's more work than fun.
Overall really well polished, even down to the pause menu - and funny to boot.
This is great - don't be disheartened by the bugs, for just your second Dare this was a great little game with charming art and sound, and a really easy to understand concept!
I tried to play the online version but it said "this website is sleeping"?
I liked the idea of this - short of the reset button as others mentioned above, I think this was a good feasibility study of Godot given the time frame. I've been interested in working with it myself! I also thought it was a nice touch to make the circles path to move out of the way of your dead square.