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Ben Lehman

Games

YearLDThemeGameDivisionRankOvInThCo
201430Connected WorldsGetting Control of Your Life in Five Easy Stepscompo8292.943.562.9328

Performance over time

overall score (left axis) percentile (right axis)

Scatterplots

Innovation vs Overall

Theme vs Overall

Comments by Ben Lehman

LD30 — Connected Worlds

H.O.C.M.A. by Techblogogy 2014-08-25T07:07:00

I want to like this game. But I feel like right now you've made something, while it may be cool to you, is totally opaque to me. I would like to understand what your vision for the game is, but as of right now it makes no sense at all / doesn't work. (I honestly can't tell if there's a game you've hidden in there somewhere or if there are bugs that are causing it to fail to work.)

My experience playing:
* I hit the "add atom" button and then draw links until I'm at molecules. I can link them in a line or a tree, depending on how I draw the links, but this makes no difference in the actual game. Between this is a lot of tedious waiting.
* I now hit "add molecule," same.
* I now hit "add cell" until I run out of link health. Game over.

Now, you might say "use the 'heal link' button" but it does, literally, nothing. It takes an energy and adds 5 link health. But, in the time it takes to get 1 energy, I lose 5 link health. All that button does, that I can tell, is waste time treading water.

Which brings me to another point: the game is totally opaque and the controls are non-intuitive. It took me until late in Molecule for me to realize I could rotate the screen with the A-D keys. Not that this seemed to make any difference in the game. The clicking to link things sometimes works, sometimes doesn't, with no feedback at all if it doesn't work.

If you want this game to be functional, you should:
* Write some directions.
* Make how you construct your stuff matter.
* Have "heal link" perform a function.
* (related) make it possible to pass "Cell" stage.
* Have an actual puzzle or strategy going on.
* Maybe don't make us wait through long stretches where nothing happens. I will admit, by the time I was doing the 15 second countdown with "cell" I was opening other browser windows.

That all said, this could be a good game. It just requires some elbow grease and some actual explanation. Yes, games which just let you figure things out are cool, but they use intuitive controls. Your game does not: you need instructions.

P.S. HOCMA stands for Human Organ Cell Molecule Atom.

Match And Shoot by skymarionsky 2014-08-25T08:24:00

I liked this a lot! I enjoyed it and I think with a bit more work it could be a really fun game. Here's a few thoughts:

* I sometimes got "combos" but it wasn't clear what they did for me.
* It would be neat if the attackers came at different rates -- in waves and lulls, basically -- which would give a natural cycle for reloading. Maybe this would make it too easy, though?
* I want to get more bullets for collecting large numbers of circles.
* As it is, the circles game is just "spot it," there's no real puzzle element. This is fine, but if you want it to have puzzle-ishness you should do that.
* The theme is a bit disjointed, but that's actually fine.
* The graphics are simple, but I like them anyway.

Might be better played with a touchscreen? Or maybe with two mice, one for shooting one for loading. Anyway, it's a fun game and there's a lot of cool places you could take it.

Battle of Khe Sanh by SuperChihuahua 2014-08-25T08:19:00

I got very frustrated and had to stop playing. It's very hard to tell what's going on, and if you accidentally fill up your order queue you can't change it.

I think that the concept -- you're a base commander under siege, and you have to handle the logistics -- is very cool. There could be a good game written about this. Right now this game isn't that, yet. The decisions are too opaque: I need more information. The graphics are such that I can barely understand what's going on. Etc.

Also, tellingly absent from my order list is a request for air support. Given how many tons of bombs the US dropped on the area surrounding Khe San, you would think that would feature heavily.

While we're on the subject, it's sort of horrifying to have the Vietnam War reduced to a series of order requests. I'm not sure whether or not this is intentional, or if you care, but it was disturbing to me.

I think that there's a good idea here: it might be worth reworking from scratch and thinking more carefully about how the player receives information and places orders.

R-elink: A link between worlds by RaycoSantana 2014-08-25T06:48:00

I think that this could be the start of a very interesting game, however right now there's not a lot of there there. Particularly the teleport and the bring objects over don't seem very connected. I think if you wanted to expand on it, you could, but I'd try to:
* Figure out a more coherent theme.
* Integrate the puzzle mechanics more than just "spot a thing and press the button."
* Do a lot of level design.

Spirit Aerie by tanjent 2014-08-25T07:31:00

It's a very relaxing game. I played about halfway: I was playing with a trackpad and I probably would have enjoyed it more with a mouse (or on a touchscreen device.) I think that the game mechanics could use a once-through to try to figure out what you want to do. As it is, the amount of time you get from matches isn't really enough to get the same amount of animals: you end up having to do most of your collection with only the two default hourglasses, which is stressful (and thus, kinda runs against the relaxing feel of the game.)

I love the art. The animals are totally adorable~!

I think with polish this could be a very good iOS / android game.

In My Garden by MercuryLegba 2014-08-25T07:16:00

I liked it. I don't feel like the video added much, but that might be because I'm on a small screen and couldn't have both windows open at once. I think that the hypertext could have been a little less railroaded, and maybe could have spent more time with the relationship between me and the garden than in the nursing home.

I'm also not 100% sure about the view of institutionalized people: a lot of times uncommunicative people have a lot going on, internally, rather than becoming vegetative. From that perspective the nursing home section becomes escalatingly nightmareish, as your choices narrow. But, also, make the statement you need to make.

I think with more work to integrate the text and video, plus a rigorous re-edit of the text, you could do a good story here.

Silent Sky by GeeItSomeLaldy 2014-08-25T19:22:00

Neat concept. Unity Version seems stuck on "real time" speed which makes the game unplayable. T_T

Caravan of Worlds by Eero Tuovinen 2014-08-29T01:01:00

I like this game a lot! I already gave you some feedback privately. I think that the biggest thing that needs tweaking is caravan generation, but it's a pretty brilliant premise all-round.

Race to Colonisation by matthewj234 2014-08-25T08:08:00

This game is really fun! I played it to winning twice (you can see my high scores.)

There is a bug which means if I start a new game after winning, I get a new high score with a time of "0 sec." Also, it treats it as if I won instantly: won't let me play. I had to restart the application to play a second game.

The controls are a bit fussy. The acceleration in particular feels "off."

Building trade networks is really fun. I would like to see more trade goods!

As it stands right now, I am worried that there is a degenerate strategy which is basically "find two weapons planets right next to each other, just hang out there and collect." That's sad, because the fun part is flying around checking on your old planets.

I would love to see bonuses for a diverse economy. I'd also love the mechanics to be slightly more transparent (how much money do I collect each time? How does money accumulate? Etc.)

There's lots of empty space and a very small window. It can be really easy to get lost. Maybe have a minimap or at least a homing beacon?

The graphics are meh but they get the job done. I'd much prefer to have planet appearance = good, rather than the random way its assigned right now.

Anyway, I really enjoyed the game! Hope you do something more with it and, please, let me know if you do.