Slime Laboratory by Jimbly 2018-12-04T22:55:53Z
I really am not a fan of pipe games. I hate that much clicking on the same pipe to turn it so much.
But your game idea is quite nice and challenging. Good job.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → backurio
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 48 | Deeper and deeper | π₯ | How to Swim! | jam | 352 | 3.86 | 3.70 | 3.90 | 4.22 | 3.35 | 3.70 | 3.98 | 3.58 |
| 2020 | 47 | Stuck in a loop | π₯ | THE INNER CIRCLE | jam | 1264 | 3.16 | 2.82 | 2.46 | 2.56 | 3.24 | 3.37 | 2.87 | 3.21 |
| 2020 | 46 | Keep it alive | π₯ | MyTube | jam | 146 | 4.07 | 4.03 | 4.17 | 3.71 | 4.37 | 3.83 | 3.67 | 3.82 |
| 2018 | 43 | Sacrifices must be made | Village of Sacrifice - LD43 | compo | 95 | 3.74 | 3.66 | 3.53 | 4.37 | 3.42 | 3.42 | 3.21 | 3.46 |
I really am not a fan of pipe games. I hate that much clicking on the same pipe to turn it so much.
But your game idea is quite nice and challenging. Good job.
That pink blob monsters are crazy. The rest of the game seems interesting, but with a lot of bugs as some already mentioned. Good work for 48h.
The game is not bad but it seems to me that you have planned for the "making connections" theme and not directly for "sacrifices must be made".
Good: - Graphics, easy and clean - Controls work good - Changing of the numbers for each playthrough is nice and challenging.
Bad: - It's really hard to play without music. Not having music kills the overall feel of the game for me. Sorry. - The theme is not really present for me. - Not really any time to read the text. I was just looking at the numbers on the table and decided if I connect them. Maybe you could have taken that time to focus on some music. - All three days are the same. I was really dissappointed to not get anything special after playing all 3 days (15min)
Bugs: - It's possible to connect to the same pin on the right side. (screenshot 1) - It's possible that the same number calls 2 times simultaneously. (screenshot 2)
DoubleConnection.png
SameNumber.png
Really awesome game. The graphic is simple but perfect for this game.
The physics are a little of sometimes, especially when you are hitting an edge, but it's fun to sling around like crazy :laughing:
Didn't make it past lvl 14. Damn you down runner.
At first I was like "meh" just a PacMan clone, but it was better than expected. Nice job. The game was a little boring at the beginning, but as soon as the enemies got faster and I found the sprint key things got really interesting :wink:
The animations have a small problem with going to idle for 1 frame or so when running left/right. Maybe you should put the sprint key on a different button which is easier to press or can be pressed with the right hand (right shift doesn't work). But that could just be me :laughing:
I made it to level 09 on my first try
Level 09.PNG
Best Compo Game I have played so far. I'm really impressed on what you have created in 48h.
- Love the gameplay although the throwing was a litte weird at the beginning. - Love the different kind of sheeps and their abilities. Yellow one is my favorite. Feels like a machine gun :laughing: - The music is just awesome - Theme 100% achieved - Maybe some sound effects would have been nice, but I don't count that too much
Had to play it a second time even if it is quite easy, but it's just so fun to run around with an army of sheeps.
Love it. Like all of your games :thumbsup:
Interesting small game. Love the remembering of the rules.
A little challenging, but not to hard.
However, for me the theme is not really present. Sorry.
I really the art and music of the game. Top points for that.
The gameplay is interesting, but maybe a little boring because you have to wait so long for things to build.
Small bug, the buffet popup shows 5$ instead of 1$.
Really enjoyed the game. Would love some better graphics and more levels, but time was limited. Music was good. Only the moving left/right sound was a little weird. Loved the Credits scene and had to laught. 5 stars for humor :wink:
Sorry, but I don't understand your game. I can't make it through the second level because that AI are snipping me as soon as I open the doors. I really tried to beat the level, but I can't.
Really interesting "wall defense" game. I was a little confused because you are shooting stones in the first round but in the second i got the promissed peasants and cows :laughing:
Was really easy until level 6 but then i got overrun really fast o.O
Anyway, I liked the game. Good job.
Gameplay is really nice. The movement and shooting are good. I managed to reach the endboss quite easily two times but didn't manage to kill him until I read the tips from @fat-cat. Maybe a small hint on the sacrificing of your beloved ones and the benefits would have been good.
Graphics are nice and sound effects too.
Good job.
As many people suggested the game needs a little balancing and some improvements to the dragging of your people. But overall I like the idea, mainly because I decided to do the same :smile: I like the music, gives a good vibe to the game, but there should be some sounds when sacrificing people and when the rocks hit.
Record was 170-something, but the rage and happiness bars fill in a weird way.
Maybe you want to check out my game too :wink:
@hadryel Agree, the sacrifice button is not perfect, but that is due to the development of the game. First the idea was to sacrifice single villagers and the god only preferring one type of villagers instead of wanting a specific type. But that was too much clicking on + and - all the time and so I changed it. Right now I would place a button next to the god happiness for sacrificing. Am I allowed to change this after the deadline?
@hadryel @sarwin @craftlord Yeah, you have to get the hang of it first because you are tempted to produce villagers as fast as possible, but that will cause your resources to drop really fast. Try to not overpace at the beginning and get a good balance between the resources and think twice if you have to build a house right now or if it can wait, because you get free beds as soon as you sacrifice some villagers :wink: Wait with sacrificing villagers til the very end so that they produce resources as long as possible. And of course, it is also a little bit luck involved, especially if the god wants to have that almost useless miners :laughing:
I will try my best today and post my highscore afterwards :wink:
118 Days is possible with some clever managing. I'm curious if anybody could top this.
118DaysSurvived.PNG
@wwh Nice, 85 days is quite good.
@aplite An upgrade system was not on the to-do list, but I wanted to add some additional resources, which I had to scrap due to the time limit. Also, the balancing would be crazy for more resources. But I could think of some sort of statue (out of stone) to please the god for a certain time to stop the happiness from decreasing.
I will add this point to my to-do list if I continue to work on this game in the future.
Thanks for your feedback.
@kramdar Thanks for good feedback. I really appreciate it.
Yeah, there are a lot of things that can be improved and a lot more was planned but I cut my goals to be able to publish the game in time. Maybe I will work on it in the future. I already have a few things on my to-do list for this case.
@adventureislands Balancing was surprisingly easier than I thought. Good for me, because I started to really balance it 2h before the deadline with tons of variables to tweak, but I was able to get it to the current status in 1h only.
But after playing it a few times now and seeing the reviews, I have a lot of things on my to-do list to improve already to make the gameplay smoother.
@ale Thanks for your feedback. I know that the button is not really clear, but it went through several iterations where you were able to sacrifice single villagers. If I'm going to continue my work on the game, i will make it clearer and add a better introduction :wink:
@ursagames I really enjoyed watching you play my game. It was a little sad that you kept getting worse the first three tries, but you got the hang of it on the fourth try and reached a really decent score. Getting close to 100 is really nice for the current balance settings.
For the future I will for sure change the balancing and make a better introduction/turtorial.
@sheldonzs thanks for your feedback.
Yeah, at some point the game had to end and I tuned it so that it should be possible to reach around 100 days (=500 seconds played). I thought making it longer would bore some people and making it shorter was also no option.
If I continue working on it, I will definitely work on some goals (maybe multiple levels) and a better balancing ;)
@chao Thank you very much for your feedback. The guy with the 118 days is me, the developer. One can say that I cheated but I have to admit that I got really lucky with the wanted sacrifices of the god. I only made it above 100 two times in about 20 plays.
Yeah, you are correct that the cap is created by the spawn rate of the villagers, which was needed to not produce and sacrifice villagers too fast. This cap was trimmed as best as I could that a score of 100 should be possible, which is the result I see from the statistics here.
About your suggestions, they are already on my to-do list if I'm going to continue working on this game.
Btw. I think you would have been able to reach a score above 100 if your village didn't die that much. (compared to my statistic)
Good job for submitting a game for ludum dare 43, but as already mentioned there is a lot to fix.
- Look up a few tutorials on camera controllers. - For the character controller, use a capsule collider or a circle collider for the feet so he is able to run up the hill to push the boulder over. - I have no idea what the intro is for :laughing:
Keep up the great work and never stop learning.
itch.io link not working. I guess you changed the name of the game. So, please update the link :wink:
Is this game only playable on Mac? I would really like to see these graphics in action :heart_eyes:
@beaver please mention me in a comment when this is done :wink:
@beaver I have no idea what your files are in your links. Maybe for Apple?
I see that you used Unity. So, can you please build the game for Standalone and upload it again. There should then be a .exe in the folder.
Small tip for the uploading part. This was my first game jam too, so I had a look at the publishing on ldjam.com and itch.io before and even created my game pages beforehand so that I won't waste any time uploading my game.
Second tip, don't wait til the last second to upload your game.
Btw, I would really appreciate it, if you test my game ;)
@beaver do you have discord? I would like to help you get your game uploaded correctly.
Really good game for a game jam. Could use some better controls (moving around) and maybe zooming ;)
AI is kind of boring at some point and does nothing, but I guess this is quite hard to program decently in such a short time.
So many questions :question:
- Why am I able to put a bomber on the button when it kills one of my snipers? - Why are the walls opening on the top, but I can't go through?
But I run out of time which is sad.
The music is creating a good atmosphere. Really like it.
The player controller could be better. Maybe look up some tutorials on Youtube. Looks like you used forces to control the player which makes it really squishy (right word?).
@craftlord Yeah, I can easily understand that you had plenty of ideas. Was the same for me, but you have to sit down and break it down before you start and try to have some backup plan if you are not able to follow your time plan.
Anyway, good that you finished something in time. I hope you participate in the next Ludum Dare with a better time management :wink:
I would really like to play this game but my sheeps are always running around like crazy. I only managed to breed them directly at the beginning when controlling them to the sugar. Any other way resulted in an early death. Maybe you could give me some tips :wink:
The game is for sure not fast paced.
On the positive side. I really like the graphics, especially the sheeps plus their silly animations. The player walk animation is weird though. The music is also really good.
I'm compeletly blown away by what you have created in 48h. Alone. It seems that you have made such a game before, because coming up with all this in 48h is totally crazy.
That said. Your game is awesome. Full points in every aspect.
The only things that could be improved are the controls. And maybe the usefulness of the knight. He is the victim all the time :laughing:
Full points from my side.
You are really up to an awesome game. Please continue the work on it.
I really like the graphics of the game because I like that voxel style a lot. Music was really good and fits perfect.
But I have no clue on how to play the game :laughing:
- Is the house working because I can't create more farmers? I managed to get some farmers inside the house but never out again. - Is the backery working? - Is the game over at any point? - Why did you opt-out from music?
@nakami ok, I will give it another try then.
Maybe you want to check out my game which is quite similar to yours from the base idea.
As always the graphics and the sound are top-notch from Noa, but I expected a really awesome game because Noa was not working alone this time. It's really sad that it just turned out to be a top-down shooter, Noa created a few times already. No real innovation on this side and the game was not really fitting the theme for me.
Sorry about that.
Bugs: - The movement seems to have a bug, because some times i just can't move anymore. - Is it a feature or a bug, that the ghosts can't be killed and you have to run around in circle all the time? - Should there be no additional boss when reaching level 8?
PS: I liked your second small game a lot more Noa. :smirk:
Really innovative game. Enjoyed playing it, but I just couldn't get past the level with the purple circle where you have to swing up (or right). Neither of the ways was possible for me to make...
Sorry for talking so long to play your game, but I finally found the time. As already mentioned your team is just the biggest I have seen in any game jam so far and this is clearly visible in your game too. You can see all the work that was put into the game.
I played the 0.1.3 version for the sake of the jam, because the 0.1.5 post jam version might have stuff in there that would falsify my rating
Let's talk about the parts I liked about your game. The music is awesome. I really like the menu with the sliding animation. Might steal this for a future game ;) The controls in general feel good and I love that you put a sprint button in there because the normal speed gets boring after a while. The graphics are also very nice. I like the office scene a lot with all the animations going on and the sound in the background. I also enjoyed your take on the theme and the point that you focused on a very important topic. Anxiety. It is very important to show people who don't suffer from anxiety how it feels for people who does and the game medium is really awesome for that.
However. I was really confused by the mind forest part. I was just wandering around, not really knowing what to look for. The only thing that I was sure was really good was coffee, but I only found 2 during the several trips I made to the forest. I was not sure if it was good to go to the forest, why I got out of the forest at some points. The monsters/demons were also a little confusing. Some of them cause a direct panic attack, others just increase the stress. The shadow ones do nothing or basically just show the paranoia.
I was not sure what the glasses, the sugar cubes and one other thing (can't remember what it was) was doing. I was checking the journal and there was no useful information about them.
I made it to day 4 with something like 8 blackouts and 3 panic attacks. No idea if that is good or bad. But. As I found the book for the first time which is great for paranoia (if I remember correctly), the game jumped to the end screen. That was a rough and completely unexpected end :D
The forest also gave me some walking simulator vibes which in general is ok, but there was just no clear goal in which direction I have to go and the story was only progressing in the real world. So it was a little boring to wander around aimlessly.
The forest background/ground also was a little weird with the the character just running over the printer and plants and stuff, but that's ok for a game jam game.
Overall, I would say that it's a nice game, with some points that should be clarified to the played better.
Really awesome game. Came here from the MaxLouisCreative stream because it looked very interesting and it's exactly my type of games. Got 146.526 on my first try. I guess that's quite high. Could have gone a little higher but i just focused on the puzzle at the end ;)
Can't really say anything bad about your game. I take back the comment on the background because I completely faded it out when focusing on the different tasks. Fantastic job for being alone.
As promissed on my game here is my feedback to your game.
Graphics, music and sound effects are excellent. The controls are also very good and my clicks are always registered correctly. I also liked how you used the theme in the game to show the life of a tree. Similar to how we showed the life of a Youtuber in our game :smile:
The game felt a little repetitive, but due to the rather short play time and the possibility to speed the game up it was not really bad. I enjoyed the quest book. It does not add anything to the game because you basically complete all quests if you survive until the end, but it gives a nice feeling to seeing these items ticked off the list ;) We also planned an achievement system for our game, but the time was too short...
I was really missing a way to pause your game. I don't know if there was a key for that, but there was no button in the game. Pausing a game is important if people have some issue that comes up and has to be handled immediately and implementing it in Unity is not that hard ;)
Similar to our game, your game was also not really challenging, at least in the first part, because you have enough time to click on the threats. The second part was a little shock, because the gameplay really made a 180Β° turn. However, I enjoyed the challenge the game provided in the second part and the attack animations were just too funny :D
I was a little angry that I fucked up the last letter of the 5th sequence and had to attack another time, but I managed to win the fight and complete your game.
However, I have to say that I'm not sure if the fighting part is tweaked correctly. I have played the game on a 144 Hz Monitor and the letters for the 5th sequence had no space inbetween and for the 6th sequence the letters were all on top of each other. Is this intended or have you missed a Time.deltaTime somewhere?
To sum it up. Really nice game jam game you have created there. Keep up the great work.
You fooled me. Your screenshots of the game look really cool and I was expecting some cool gameplay, but yeah...
To be fair enough, you mentioned in your description that you had some problems and the game is not where it could have been. However, I think the graphics really look awesome and I totally like the idea of you protecting your small brother or child which you have to charge up from time to time.
I'm totally in love with the cable physics. Do you have any tutorial for that? I would love to recreate this and build it into one of my future games.
I think I don't have to talk about the bad/missing parts because you already know it.
I hope you had a great time during the jam and I would love to see a post jam version of the game. However, I know that this is something that rarely happens. Also with my games :see_no_evil:
Sorry to say that, but I'm a little confused by your game. I'm kinda stuck at day 7 and I lose all the time although I have like half my live left. Can't progress any further, so I have to base my review up until that point.
The graphics and the background music is nice. The controls are in general ok. So, good job on that part. However, here are now some things that could be improved: * First of all my problem from the start. I don't know why I'm losing. You should always show the player why they are failing at your game. Otherwise they can't get better at it. * The sound effects are super weird and not fitting at all. I don't know where you got them from, but clicking around with bfxr or something similar should get you some fitting sound effects https://www.bfxr.net/ * The physics system for your enemies is weird because the faster enemies (katana dudes) are pushing the slower ones towards the player, which overwhelms you very fast. * I don't know why you have the well in the middle, but I would remove it and give the player the whole play area to move around. * The delay for shooting feels completely off. Stuff like shooting and jumping are things that in a fast paced game have to happen immediately when the player performs them. I know that you have a nice shooting animation, but in this game it would be better to shorten it to give the game more responsiveness. * I'm not really sure how buying health and attack alters the game, because I have no real connection to how much damage I get from the enemies (maybe a damage popup and a number for the health would help) and I have no idea if I shoot faster or stronger, with the attack upgrade. Everything was a oneshot, so stronger would not make sense to me.
Anyway. Please don't see my feedback as negative and use it to improve this game and future games you are working on. You can be very proud of you to finish the game within the time. It will always have some flaws, like my games have too, but that's what you get for having a time limit. It's important to finish, have fun and improve.
Thank you very much for your feedback. It's unfortunate, that the game got stuck for you at such an early state, but it might be that your PC just can't handle that many objects, which I know is a problem that can occur. But the idea was to have all that bubbles flowing over your screen, mesmerizing you. That's also a reason why the challenge part was tuned down a little.
@aryanjumani I just recognized that the game is really not running well for the WebGL version on some PCs. If you, and all the others who might read this, have the change to play Windows version of the game, please do so. This version should normally run very smoothly and super smooth if you have a decent graphics card.
@theinkskeleton Thank you very much for the kind feedback. The Web version should have a soundtrack, but we used FMOD the first time and we had some issues. I think the web version does not like FMOD so much... On my PC it's working fine. On my laptop it was very choppy... Things you learn at a game jam I guess :D
@jay-berlin Thank you very much for your positive feedback. Our goal wasn't to create a very challenging game. It was more about the concept of all the stuff moving around that should at first look great and fun to watch. The challenge was second, but I spent a lot of time tweaking the parameters to get the numbers somewhat believable. For a good challenge curve there was just too little time... sadly
@zampi Thank you very much for addressing me directly. Having all these entities on screen was the main idea of the game. It should be a crazy mess of moving items on the screen. That's why I also decide to lower the challenge aspect a little bit. But as I already found out, it was lowered too much. Big note to myself, don't make your game too easy :sunglasses:
@saering Thank you very much for your in depth feedback. I really appreciate your feedback a lot. All of your points are totally valid and also things that were still left on my todo list. So the blame here is on the time limit and my bad time management maybe :see_no_evil:
I will of course return the favor and give you an proper feedback for your game too. I'm just very busy because the next game jam is coming up. Don't worry, I will not forget it :wink:
@saering Yeah, the time management was a little on the optimistic side and slightly shifted back more and more, making it impossible to work on the points you mentioned. I'm really unhappy that this happened, but yeah, getting a game jam game to be perfect is something very unlikely. It's also more about trying out new stuff and creating a unique game instead of some default game that was done thousands of times before.
I don't know if you will ever play an improved version. I have many other game ideas going which I think have more potential than this game. But if there is an improved version, I will inform you, but you can also follow me on twitter if you want. Info on my ludum dare page.
@max-louis Thank you very much for the feedback and playing my game on your stream yesterday. I really enjoyed watching you and I'm looking forward to you streaming more of my games soon ;)
I will of course also checkout your game as soon as I have time. I already checked the website and it's crazy how many people you worked with on the game.
@flying-dog-fish It is tweaking to be easy intentionally. But, as a lot of the comments mention it, this was not a good idea. Lesson learned, I guess.
I don't know how, but the son of our musician was able to achieve negative numbers. Don't ask me how, but so much to not being able to loose :see_no_evil:
@justmars OMG. Thank you very much for your feedback. I'm so pleased that you liked our game and yes you are completely right that the game is on the easy side and we wanted to focus on making the game as juicy and most enjoyable to watch as possible. And yes, we also wanted to show how the life of a MyTuber (YouTuber) looks like. I think we did a good job on the research part because none of us is a YouTuber.
The game was made with the traditional Unity approach of GameObjects. If you have a PC without graphic card or an older one, it could happen that you get some lag, but I turned the amount of bubbles down quite a bit so that the game would run as smooth as possible. I was thinking to go DOTS but I was already to far into the project and due to me having no experience, I did not want to risk the completion of the game and I kept the GameObject approach. However, I will soon take a look into DOTS because more bubbles would make the game more awesome.
You are also correct with the shader, but shader sounds more fancy :sunglasses:
I will checkout your game before the deadline for sure. Have quite some games to play, but time is sparse.
Really cool game idea. I have played a similar game with this idea once in a game jam and I really liked it. The theme is well transported with keeping your kitchen/restaurant alive. However, there are some things that I would have made differently.
* First of all, in my few plays I never had to use the right fridge. So for me it makes not sense to have a button to cool it down. Maybe I was not progressing far enough to have used it tho. * I like the idea to play twister with your fingers, but it was very annoying that the buttons switched for each game. I would go for a fixed button layout, that way the player could really get better in the game, because they can memories the recipes and perform the required button requests out of muscle memory. * As I got more and more recipes, I was not really able to recognize which step was used for which meal. So I would recommend to use some sort of color coding or similar, so that I know exactly waht to do to finish one meal and avoid the incoming list of meals to get full. * I don't like the lose condition of running out of buttons at all. I know that there are only limited buttons on the keyboard but by following my second point you could resolve this issue. Maybe it would also make sense to match the position of the buttons to the position on the kitchen, to also give the player an easier way to make the eye to hand coordination of finding the buttons. Or the other solution to the problem, if you really want to keep the random buttons would be to delay the button instruction until the needed buttons are available again. Just don't let the player fail because of this. * Last but not least, the kitchen looks really nice, but it feels very static. It would be cool if there would be some movement on the screen to keep the player entertained.
Please don't get my list of things to improve wrong. I really liked your game and you could improve on it.
Btw. I got your game recommended by your former student colleague Veit, who is now one of my colleagues in the Master's program ;)
Very cool game idea, running on the back of a giant sand worm :laughing: It' crazy what game ideas people have. Good job on that and also in general for finishing your game. I love your honestly about how you got stressed out completely at the end, which is normal for game jams. I participated in a few game jams already and only I had only 1 or 2 where I was really finished with everything at the end and super happy with the result. But in general, there is always something that can be improved. It's kind of a curse of developers or programmers. It is important to keep track of all the things you have to do and don't be to ambitious for a game jam, because there is just not enough time. Identify the important mechanics and focus on them first and then add stuff if you have time.
Back to your game now. As you already now, the aiming mechanics are very weird. I would have personally removed the strength because there is no real need in changing that and also the left and right could just be from the normal movement direction. It would also be cool to make the enemy hitbox a little bigger. Does not make the game much easier because you still have to aim, but you should always tweak the game in a way to make it a little easier for the player and harder for the enemies to hit you (if you have any). This will make the player feel better, because they perform better in your game. However, don't use this if you are making a multiplayer game, there it should be quite tight with the controls/hitting/whatever mechanic to really focus on the skill of the players playing against eachother. It would also be cool to keep aiming while running to be faster at clearing the waves. I really liked that you implemented the enemy indication arrows.
Other than that I enjoyed your game. Highscore was 12.
Cute little game. Would have liked to have some more levels but there is just so much time at a game jam and you did all by yourself. So, good job first of all for finishing your game in time.
Now to some stuff, that could improve your game. Some of these points might be an issue of not enough time. * Add some sound effect to give the player more feedback. It is incredible how adding some sound effect changes your game. * Personally, the character is moving a bit slow and the jump feels weird. So, some tweaks for the physics system might be cool. * Your character is slowing down on the ramps which feels weird to me. I guess the issue here could be that your character has either no physics material attached or one with friction. Try to set the friction to 0, which would also solve the problem with slowly falling down when touching a wall ;) * There are some inconsitencies regarding your story. The flower drains all the water, which means your checkpoints should have some sort of unending water supply to really count as checkpoints. Additionally, there was one checkpoint (I think the last one) which did not had any water next to it. That would not work as a checkpoint at all. Make sure your story and game mechanics are in sync with eachother ;) * I don't think dropping the flower is needed in this version of the game. Maybe you had more in mind with that mechanic, but it would be simply enough to step into the water to refill the flower.
I hope my feedback helps you improve this game or any future game you are making. Have a nice day.
First of all, congratulation to finishing your first game jam and doing all by your own. That is really a great feat to accomplish. You can really be proud of you.
However, due to your lack of experience your game is of course not as good as some other games, but just keep going and your games will soon look and feel the same.
Here are some points that could be improved for your game: * Some of your sprites are very washed out. If you have pixel art, then please select the "Point (no filter)" option in the filter mode for the sprite.
Annotation 2020-04-24 155546.png
* Your character controller needs some serious work. It feels to floaty and the gravity should be increase. Just increase the gravity scale in your Rigidbody 2D component for the player.
rigi2d.png
* Your graphics need improvement, but that will come over time.
I hope you had a lot of fun during the game jam and you keep working on making games.
Ok, that was a very interesting first game to play for the LD46. I'm quite biased already because there is not really much negative to say about your game. It looks, sounds and plays really awesome. The controls with the mouse are ok, but I think it will work even better on a mobile device with swipe actions. I guess you had something like this in mind. If not, go for it, because it will be a really cool mobile game.
I was not really testing the boundaries of your game, but the first time I went off-track I directly found a structure without collisions. I think it was after the first laser enemy. But that did not lower my score for your game.
@anrqangel Yeah there are some bugs because time management was again a problem, but we are glad that you still liked our game. I also have a friend who's antivirus program flagged the game, but I think this is a problem with several games. Your AV program just wants to protect you from unpacking random .zip files. I think it should not be a problem if you use the itch.io app to install the game.
@gonzalol Our plan was to implement the theme in several ways. First of all, we interpreted "Stuck in a loop" with "being in the loop" which means that you are in the inner circle of the government, which you are infiltrating as a whistleblower after you find the documents in the first level (tutorial). The second loop is that you are playing the same level/layout all over again. The final loop is that after you helped stop the current government that everything is the same with the next one which is why our game loops around to the first level. In addition, the start menu is also a loop :laughing:
I have to admit that we overshoot with the target a little bit and that we ran out of time to properly communicate the story. The level was way to big and you don't know where to go.
@fax I was really confused by another game, that used this scheme for controls, because I am only used to WASD (like many others). Big thank you for your feedback because I would have never thought about making the game functional for an AZERTY keyboard. Will do this from now on. Btw. controller support was planned for the game, but unfortunately dropped to low priority due to other issues popping up. The post-jam version will have both, AZERTY compatibility and controller support.
@fax Yes, that's the easy way, but I would like to have a proper look into keyboard layouts so that I don't run into any other conflicts. Also for future games. It's not about making any quick fixes now, it's about doing things properly and learning for the future.
I also have to check if there is an easy solution with the new Unity input system.
@nusan @tinykidtoo @firetwoonenine @manusaiz
Thank you very much for your feedback. I'm really impressed that you made it so far into the game, because as some of you mentioned, the game is too slow paced for the short attention span of game jam players :laughing: Yes, the game has quite some features, a lot of assets and a (too) big map with few stuff to do and playing "Where's Waldo" with keycards :see_no_evil:
We put our goals too high and although having 8 people, we missed the role of a project manager that would have defined milestones within the project and make everybody focus on completing them. We had a very stressful last day, where we put everything together and didn't find much time to balance and playtest the game. But, we learned that this role is crucial with this size of a team and we won't make this mistake again for the next jam.
Btw. We are already working on a post-jam version, because we want to show off our skills and have a game that we can be 100% proud of :sunglasses:
Checkout my twitter if you want to see some sneak peeks of how the game should have looked if we had a better organization and a little more time https://twitter.com/FireTotemGames
@blobo @mahalis @kaafirookie @krysh @remus-rain Big thank you to all of you. Your feedback means a lot to us, especially because we are not 100% happy with how the game turned out. We again had a very crunchy finish and a lot of polishing and balancing tasks were not finished. It is nice to hear that you guys still had fun playing the game and hearing the voice acting.
@kaafirookie Maybe it was an inside joke. Maybe not.
We are already working on an updated version to really show off the awesome artwork and the missing voice lines that unfortunately didn't make it into the game. Additionally, some bugs will be fixed that caused the game to freeze. If we are really motivated we will also update the map and objectives to make the levels more interesting and to avoid getting lost with no clear indication where to go.
Stay tuned and follow my Twitter if you want to get updates on the game. You can also follow me on ldjam if you want.
https://twitter.com/FireTotemGames
Damn. Best game so far for me. I haven't tested so many yet, but I think this is hard to top. This game just has everything, from a simple but engaging story, awesome graphics, music and sound and of course an innovative and genius game mechanic that is implement almost flawlessly. (Not perfect for me because sometimes I have to start the swing a second time to make it up, although I'm pivoting around the exact same spot. I guess the physics engine is doing some fun stuff there).
The level design is also brilliant with using the same levels over and over again but with the longer sword, which each time is making the previously hard section easier. And it creates additional playtime with reduced design effort. Making the last sword golden is a nice touch to indicate the final level, which by the way was fucking brutal on my first playthrough. Level 1-4 were a breeze, but level 5 tool 13 minutes to finish, resulting in a 21:01. Sub 20 would have been nice, but that's saved for another playthrough. YES, I will come back to this game and give it another try. :crossed_swords:
DeepestSwordPlaythrough1.png
Btw. I see which game you took as a reference and I'm happy to see other developers also getting inspired by the great Bennett Foddy. Your game is more inspired by Getting Over It, while we choose to follow the QWOP route. Normally, I don't ask others to play my game, but I would really love to see your feedback on it. π
I hate to be the bad guy, but I think a simple "Nice game" like some others have written in the comments won't help you at all getting a better game dev. I see that you already made some games for other ludum dare game jams and I assume that something was just not working out during this jam, because there are several issues that I didn't like at all. Sorry to say that, but I will also try to explain how to make it better. - No instructions at the start. If you are not making any tutorial, at least put the controls there. In your case it would just have been A and D or left and right, because no other button was doing anything for me. - Simple controls. It's nice to have simple controls and not have tens of buttons to press, but simply going from left to right is just not a fun game mechanics. You could have spiced this up by allowing the player to dive down faster or slower by pressing up and down. Or add some moving stuff the player has to avoid. - Slow gameplay. The diving speed and movement speed (left and right) was very slow and just not interesting to play. You should at least consider cranking up the left and right movement speed. - Repetitive sections. I played until 200 m then the game got to repetitive for me because I had to go through all the sections again and again without anything to do, because I collected all of the coins already. You could either solve this by having multiple levels or auto-generated levels (not sure if yours are auto-generated), but it would have been fun to have new coins to collect or start at a deeper checkpoint. - I'm ok with having easy graphics, but you should try to make your scene look more interesting by throwing some assets in the background (fish), adding some particle effects (bubbles) and maybe some post-processing. Nothing crazy, but all these small things pay off big in the end. - Playtesting. I'm not sure if anybody else than yourself playtested your game. If yes, then your testers are not honest. If not, then try to get some (honest) friends together and let them help make your game more fun (before the deadline).
Again, sorry for being so harsh with your game, but I hope my feedback helps you improve this game or your future games.
Have a nice day.
PS: My cat was enjoying your game quite a bit due to the nice contrast of the character against the background :laughing:
Very cool game idea, that is fitting the theme very well. I really like the idea with having to deal with our ghosts from the previous floors. It gets messy very quick, but I managed to stay on top until level 32, where my run and fun was over real quick. I ran into one rather annoying bug due to the random spawn positions of the player and the walls.
I spawned on the bottom left corner with a wall also spawning very close. I couldn't move at all and the wall was pushing me off the platform. I would suggest having a look at the spawn algorithm and don't spawn walls too close to the player and also don't spawn the player too close to the edge.
Another small issue that was quite annoying was the aiming. The white line was not matching with the tip of the pointer and also the bullets where not following the path. Not sure if you have some kind of bullet spread or if there is something wrong with the direction calculation, but it would be nice in such games that the bullets are flying where I want them too, because every bullet too much is hurting me in the next levels.
Other than that, great game. Really good art and polishing. Good job.
Btw. I submitted my game to your list. Can't wait to see your playthrough. Curious if you can make it to the end, or give up :sunglasses:
Screenshot 2021-04-27 023651.png
Congratulations on this game. I had a blast playing it. The story is just too funny and the graphics are well made. The puzzles are OK. No ground breaking new mechanic, but well executed. Levels 1-3 were really easy. Level 4 took me quite some time and I was about to call in unsolveable but I didn't give up. Your story hooked me so much, that I went the extra mile to collect all gifts.
I think I have to play it a second time to find out what happens when you don't get all gifts (or not enough gifts. I don't know if there is a threshold). Anyway, the final image was a little disturbing, but I was celebrating the stock image.
I think there could have been more puzzle elements compared to the text. Don't get me wrong, I loved the text, but I also love solving puzzles π 2 levels between texts would have felt a little bit better I would say. And maybe some special tunnel-pieces to spice up the game a little bit. Like a portal or so, which would add another dimension (pun intended) to your levels. But I guess that's not very realistic, but hey, they are having cellphones too, that work underground.
Also, a right click to remove a tunnel-piece would have been nice too, but there was enough space to move pieces around anyway. Just being nitpicky now π
That was a really interesting entry. Nice game concept and execution. Not too difficult for me actually because I'm a fan of puzzle games, but the level difficulty was a little bit off. Some earlier levels felt harder than later levels for me, but that could just have been me getting into the mechanics more. Would have loved to have more levels to play to be honest. I'm not sure what happened with the end screen where you could walk around infinitely.
There is actually not much to complain about the game because the controls are well implemented, the graphics are nice and the music is really relaxing, perfectly for a puzzle game. The story is also funny, but as already mention I would have loved more levels and more story.
Very good entry for the game jam. Going to follow you in case of an update π
@spacelawnmower Yeah, swimming is a rather complex task (at least if you are ignoring your feet). People who can swim take it for granted, but we forget how hard it was to learn at a young age. We wanted to reflect this with the game and the opportunity was there to finally work on a cool rage game π We hope you come back and give the game another try. Once you get the hang of it, it's quite easy and doesn't take long to finish.
@paragonraptors Thank you very much for this detailed feedback. Tweaking of the game was really one of the hardest parts. On the one hand we wanted to create a game that is equally frustrating as QWOP and Getting Over It, but on the other hand it would also be nice for players to finish it and give us a good rating for this jam. In the end, we decided to go the QWOP route to see who is really determined enough to make it all the way to the end. This might cost us some rating points, but we stayed true to our initial idea.
You gotta do what you gotta do, but if you get the hang of the controls, it is really easy to make it to the end. To be honest, I was never good at QWOP either, but I was fascinated by the game. I would say that our game is easier than QWOP and not as frustrating because you don't have to start at 0 when you fall and the controls are symmetrical for controlling your arms.
@oeschmid Better than QWOP? Wow, that's a cool feedback. Thank you very much. Also thank you for mentioning the bug. I'm quite sure that this might have to do with FMOD, because we are having all kind of problems for the WebGL build. If you want the best experience download the Windows or Mac version. Let us know if you make it all the way to the end. π
@oeschmid Yeah, executables are the best bet when it comes to stability, but for accessibility a WebGL version is just better, because people can simply play the game without downloading anything. I usually go for the Unity Audio System, but it's so much easier to get good sounds with FMOD that vary with the depth like in our game. Shoutout to our musician for creating such a nice sound track and sound effects. Hit me up on Twitter if you need some tips :wink:
@ratrat44 OH MY GOD. I'm speechless. ... Your comment was FUCKING AMAZING. I was crying tears of joy while reading through it. ππ I was completely hooked by it and it just kept getting better and better. You sir (or madam) have just made my day (or night, because it's already quite late π) and your comment alone makes all the hours I put into the game worth 10 times.
I think you are the first player after the official release who really made it to the end. Maybe you spoiled it a little bit for others, but I guess not many will check the comments before they play the game. Nonetheless, you went through the exact emotions that we tried to evoke with this game and you explained everything in the best way possible.
I hope you have a great day and I can't wait to checkout your game soon.
@smelly-games I will add it to the list for future development, but for the Ludum Dare version we really focused on the core gameplay and didn't want to add anything that is disturbing the simple but already challenging enough game loop unnecessarily.
@rolly Yeah, the credits for this idea goes to one of our playtesters. At first I was not sure if we really want to add it, but then we decided to do so and I think it's perfect. At least it should get us some humor points in the rating :sunglasses:
Thank you very much for the feedback. The "arms against water" sound is called "swim" sound. It was first planned to be connected to the arm movement, but the sound was just not playing smoothly due to the different ways player can move the arms which sounded like shit. In the end the sound is simply connected to the forward velocity of the diver. Why go complicated when the solution is so simple
@hilvon Yes the game is really hard, but this makes reaching goal so much better :sunglasses: It's ok if you come back later. The game will always be ready for you. The question is: Are you ready for the game :laughing:
Yes, having the objective animation at the start is a prime example of "Show, not Tell" when it comes to game mechanics and objectives. Showing the player where they should head is always better than just telling them "Dive down 100m"
Just keep reloading the game. The Music should then work. Thanks to FMOD for fucking with the WebGL build...
@ezgoodnight Thank you very much for the feedback and playing our game in your stream. I would be lying if I say I didn't laugh seeing you fail to swim π But that's the point of the game. Send it to a friend and watch them fail.
I really enjoyed how you celebrated the trolly tutorial button, but as others also mention, it is actually helping, because it describes the movement you have to perform. There's a reason why I used a timestamp in the link.
@arancutter Thank you very much for the feedback. I made the deliberate decision to see how the game can look without using any third party graphics and I think it really turned out great. All the sprites you see are either Unity internal sprites or done with systems that Unity provide.
We are sorry for any frustration or rage caused by the game, but we hope you come back later and make it all the way to the end. I wouldn't call buoyancy an enemy directly, but you will find out why soon enough.
We really hope that **How to Swim!** will be a classic like QWOP but for that to happen, we need some big streamers to play our game, which is not that easy.
@gimmers Thank you very much for the great feedback and yes, we really think that we got the QWOP essence very well implemented in our game. However, I'm right now testing a hard mode, which is switching the movement of one should and the other elbow around. I can tell you, that is the final endboss. I'm really good at my game, but that mode is just pure nightmare π€£π€£π€£
I think you are talking about the comment from @ratrat44 who described the emotional rollercoster, that we tried to achieve in this game, spot on. That's the best comment I ever got on any game π
@silkworm-sweatshop Congratulations. Another one that made it. Thank you very much for finishing our game. We know that it's not easy and many will not make it (which might hurt our rating), but we decided to stick to our initial inspiration QWOP. And, as you mention, as soon as you get the right rhythm, the game isn't that hard anymore. If you then start to increase the stroke-frequency (weird wording sorry) you easily make it to 100m. The game was actually tweaked around 10% harder, but we made it a little bit easier.
But, we have a nightmare mode in the makings, which we might release after the voting, together with leaderboards and other improvements.
@arthurds It's been quite some time since I wanted to do a QWOP like game or a rage game in general, but I didn't had a good idea. I almost didn't participated in the LD48, but it turned out that it was a really good decision and I now have a rage game in my portfolio. And I think it's a quite good one. The challenge is on a nice level and the controls feel really good.
Thank you very much for your feedback and sorry again for the rough start to your stream. I really wanted you to finish the game. Btw. 2 other streamer made it all the way to the end ;)
@romana-kapustova Yeah, diving 100 meter deep in real life isn't that easy. You are right.
We are currently working on some modifications which might have an easy mode for beginners and nightmare mode, for those who really like to suffer π
And yes, we also had the most fun watching our playtesters play our game. Watching others struggle is one of the funny things about this game.
@dae-udain It's sad that you got so close but didn't manage to get to the treasure chest. If you made it to 80 meters, then it means that you got the main swimming rhythm right and what you should work on is your stroke-frequency. Try to perform the next stroke faster. That should usually get you to the chest quite easily.
Good little game, with some pros and cons. Don't get fooled by the long text in the Cons list. I'm trying to come up with solutions to improve these points.
Pros: - Graphics and animations are nice, especially with the changing character modell. Not all games need millions of pixels - The sound effects are selling the mood very well, but the howling is a little bit too loud. Maybe adding some volume sliders woudl have been nice. - Clear objective
Cons: - Not clear what to do, when not reading the itch.io page. There should always be a tutorial in the game and as nice as the idea of having the moon as a start button is, it is not obvious for the players and some will struggle right there. I was reading the itch.io page and I knew what to do, but having the instruction on the wizard is weird and takes away preasures time during which the timer already starts to run. Some kind of movement tutorial would have been nice, followed by a cutscene of the player getting bit by a werewolf and the wizard then telling the player to find the berries. - Thowing stones feels weird and I'm not sure how the scaring away works, because sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. The arc is also a little weird. It makes sense for the stone to not get thrown too far, but it felt a little short when trying to scare away the wolves. - No real challenge if you realize that you just have to watch the trees for the yellow berries and as soon as you have 5 you return. You can't get killed by the wolves and fighting them off is super easy. There should be some consequences if the player is not doing this fast enough. - No true pixelart. The biggest issue here is the rain which is clearly not following your pixel sizes for all the other elements. If you make a pixel art game, it would be nice if you stick to the minimum pixel size, in this case: the stone, and not have any object with a smaller size. In addition, the background is not following the pixel raster because it is moving continuously, instead of pixel by pixel. Give the pixel perfect camera of Unity a try ;) - I have no idea what the square UI elements are. Some clarification would be nice. The long one is obvious after picking up a stone or berry.
That's it from my side. I hope my feedback helps you improve your game and any future game you will work on.
Have a nice day.
Interesting little game. First of all congratulations for finishing and releasing your game. You guys can really be proud of yourself.
Now some feedback. I hope that we can agree, that the game might lack some interesting gameplay and the concept and controls are a little on the flat side. I'm sure you could have added some more interesting gameplay aspects to the game.
I would do the following to improve the game: - Make the player smaller. Right now he is way to big for the scene. - Scale the obstacles accordingly. - Make the controls more responsive and turn the sprite immediately when you press in one direction. Having direct feedback is important. The game feels a little floaty right now. - Make objects that shoot at the player or move in a more interesting way to add another layer to the game loop. - Maybe think about making levels instead of an endless runner. (No idea if the game is getting any harder the farther you progress)
I hope my feedback helps you improve this game or make your next games better.
@grounddoon Another thing that I forgot to mention. Make the collider for the player and enemies a little bit smaller than the sprites. It's always nice to tweak a game in favor of the player and give them a little tolerance when it comes to getting hit/killed. This makes near-dodges feel even better. (But don't overdo it, so that people don't know where the collider really starts and ends)
Btw. the inverse applies for pick-ups. Those colliders you should increase to make picking them up easier, less frustrating and less tedious.
Sorry to say this, but the game was not very enjoyable for me. I made it all the way to the end, but it was really tedious and boring due to nothing to do rather than holding the movement key into one direction + shift to sprint. At least I was able to watch Youtube next to it, which made the time fly past a little faster.
Due to a comment from you, I assume that you worked on this game together with your child which means I'm not going to judge the music and textures that critically. They are very good for an 8 year old.
But the game mechanics and the game loop are just boring. I hope you can admit that too. There is no challenge and the maze is not really a maze because it's just a huge H-letter. It would have been nice if there was an actual maze and the player was forced to find their way to the keys. Don't try to buy game time by just making stuff longer. You could have also had some jumping sections or actual obstacles that hurt/kill the player so that people have to watch out. Regarding the controls, it would have been nice if the camera would also turn the player and W would always make the player run forwards. There should be enough tutorials out there for a proper 3D character controller to achieve this. Other than, a different texture would have been nice to get a feeling for the movement speed and distance, but that was already mentioned.
Please don't take my feedback as negative, I'm trying to help you make this and future games better.
Have a nice day.
Very interesting take on the theme. Something like this was clearly not on my long list of ideas, but I like it. Very well made game, with a few points that were a little bit frustrating (but who am I to judge with a rage game entry π)
- I appreciate you going for the compo and doing everything yourself, but the music got repetitive very fast. Everything can't be perfect in a compo game jam, but music can make or break a game. Don't misunderstand me, it's not terrible, but also not perfect. - The start was really annoying with the sperms separating this quick. It would have been nice to get them a little further in from the start, because I always killed off all of them except one so that I could focus on collecting all the "coins". I stayed in the main area the whole time because that's the fastest way to unlock upgrades. I think that's not the main idea behind a roguelike, but it's really crazy that you made a sperm-roguelike game. - Although, collecting quite a lot of coins each run, the level up process still took a little bit to long for my experience. - Is there a way to make the game screen bigger? It was really small for me.
To end my comment with some nice words. Congratulations on finishing the game in time for the Ludum Dare. I know how tough it is solo. ππ