Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → benk
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | 54 | Limited Space | π₯ | Swarmed In | jam | 535 | 3.60 | 3.67 | 2.60 | 3.27 | 3.83 | 3.19 | 3.63 | |
| 2023 | 53 | Delivery | π₯ | With the Grain | jam | 343 | 3.80 | 3.28 | 3.51 | 4.22 | 3.84 | 3.77 | 2.50 | 4.16 |
| 2023 | 52 | Harvest | Fruit Market Express | extra | ||||||||||
| 2022 | 51 | Every 10 seconds | π₯ | Starmony | jam | 433 | 3.65 | 3.58 | 3.21 | 3.14 | 3.98 | 3.88 | 2.59 | 3.82 |
| 2022 | 50 | Delay the inevitable | Delay the Dragon | extra | ||||||||||
| 2021 | 49 | Unstable | π₯ | DUNGEON ECONOMY | jam | 358 | 3.80 | 3.67 | 4.27 | 4.25 | 3.46 | 3.37 | 3.12 | 3.48 |
| 2019 | 45 | Start with nothing | π₯ | House of Volans | jam | 686 | 3.33 | 3.08 | 2.88 | 3.11 | 4.22 | 3.35 | 3.19 | 3.63 |
I see what you were going for with the reverse idea. It sounds really neat but in practice I had no idea what I was supposed to do and it was frustrating. Maybe clearer iconography? Or just something to make it more obvious. I like the aesthetic and sound effects though.
Just when I was about to give up, I finished the game :-) Nice reward too. Like other people said, super cool atmosphere with the music and art, definitely has a thing. I didn't mind the combat, you could obviously do a lot more but I still enjoyed it.
Like other people said, I eventually figured out the only way to survive more than a few seconds was just to right click as quickly as possible and spam the energy nodes. I think there is a lot of potential here though. - I wasn't sure what the meter did, it seemed to have no effect. - Ditto connectors. - Took me a while to get comfortable with the controls. - The art was really nice, especially the enemies, but generally the vibe. - Music was cool. Wish the explosion sound didn't totally interrupt it though. - Maybe with some balancing, auto-firing combat nodes, resource management... it would have been an awesome game.
Nice one, had legit fun playing this. It reached a point where I felt I'd figured out the game, but then micromanaging tiles to get hamsters to the end was a little tedious, but a lot of things were satisfying. Smaller levels might have helped, or just something to make it feel like less effort to play.
Beautiful art and mood. Reminded me of kentucky route zero. As said before, it was pretty short and I didn't really feel a challenge, but it almost could work as a walking simulator anyways because it's so pretty.
Really tight game, congrats. The progression is well balanced, great level design. I got all of the coins except those ones past the spike pit, didn't think to use recoil, good puzzle though.
The slow slug speed was getting a bit grating after a while but I didn't think to fly around with the gun. I'm tempted to go back to do it but I don't really want to go through the start again :-)
My other criticism was the lack of feedback and tank-ness of the (first?) boss. I thought I was supposed to hit it in the back or something, it didn't feel like it had any effect, and with the recoil it was annoying to climb up there all the time.
Nice, liked the game and did remind me of my first jam (though it went far more badly). Great artwork Liked the way the music changed though like somebody said it was janky and I had to mute it after a while :-(
A challenging and fun experience! I liked the aesthetic and the human buzzing sounds and the chips in the shape of a hive. It would have been good to have a marker of which level or how many levels total there are. I did maybe 10 levels but got stuck and if I'd known how many more levels there were, I'd be more motivated to continue. A camera setting would be good - couldn't handle the inverted camera. :)
I loved the mood of the game, especially the wind noises and effects like the moving leaves and trees. For a game based around the wind it works well. I found it pretty unforgiving and frustrating when the place you need to go is directly into the wind... some tuning there would be nice to make it so that it's always possible to progress?
I liked the art style - it had a lot of personality. I'm also glad it had audio though variety would be good - there are tools like bfxr etc that are worth looking at for next time? Took me a little while to figure out what to do at the start (i.e. to click on the gems).
Cute game, I liked the aesthetic and the mechanic. It needed some tuning though - it felt like I was cheesing the game, running around quickly and killing the occasional ghost to fix a rift. You could take that mechanic in some interesting directions.
Like a couple of people said it took me a bit of time to figure out how it's supposed to work. Written instructions at least would have helped; in-game hints even better of course.
One problem I was having was the sparks on the spaceship were hard to fix, the hitbox for it seemed to be off, so the ship wasn't repairing.
but once I did figure it out - super fun. I really liked how the graphics and music and personality worked together. A good balance of fun and satisfaction. I could imagine fleshing it out with a difficulty curve of some sort.
Having an opening cutscene was a great touch.
Really enjoyed the game, music and graphics worked really well to make a dark mood. I liked the way the theme tied into both the gameplay and the graphics and general mood.
Tying the player speed to the magic made me not want to attack because the movement became quite slow - I think some balance there would have been good. My favourite strategy ended up being to charge up magic and fly through the level. Nice to have a tutorial, but the blocking text boxes were pretty distracting - a more passive tutorial would have been nicer?
I had a good time with this game. Got to day 14. The highlight for sure was the shop loop of get gold -> buy item -> items get more expensive but better -> get gold. The shop was really well balanced. The game in general was fairly well balanced, but I found the sword was basically useless because the enemies attack so fast and quickly that timing the sword strike is super hard. Tuning that vs the fireball would be good. Having a poweful fireball that fired really quickly was super satisfying.
Some suggestions: I found the SFX unpleasantly crunchy. The bears knocked me out of the stage a few times and I got stuck. Music would elevate it since it's such a rhythm based game.
love it, felt like a complete game - the sfx, (evolving) music, art, environment, level design, lighting, even the plot. I was feeling pretty sorry for these little robots, guilty even, and the final race down the end with the last robot made me legit emotional.
a quality of life improvement would be a kill switch for the current robot, like another person said. the controls felt a little hard to control sometimes. i swear i somehow ended up in a bad state with the doors in the top right, and had to restart the game, but i finished it the 2nd time around. i would play an extended version of the game with more to explore, if there were clues about what door was being affected.
Fun game, I especially appreciated the rhythm of the music matching the flow of the game like the lasers, and nice touches like the balls that you can attack becoming more solid. Generally it felt really polished and well thought out. The photon torpedoes were super badass, I kinda wish they happened more frequently.
Some other feedback: the laser hitbox on the balls seemed a bit off and I was punished for that a few times. Audio cues for the colour changing would be nice - having to look down on the screen or use my memory to see when a change was happening took me out of the moment. The upgrades might be even more fun if they were tied into a reward somehow, it felt random when I got them (and took me out of the flow).
Neat platformer, music and graphics made me feel nostalgic which is a good thing. Sound effects were satisfying and the music was great. I'm not sure if it was deliberate, but the music matched with the pace of the game which feels really good. A little loud perhaps overall. I know you're aware that in terms of a platformer, it's really floaty and imprecise which can be frustrating. But making responsive platformers in 48 hours if you haven't done it before is insanely difficult, so kudos.
laughed out loud the first time the shadow realm happened, the art and music is so ridiculous and so incredible. all of the voice acting was super well done and funny. the game has a Night In The Woods vibe to it or something.
even if the monsters didn't actually hurt you, they were still terrifying and i avoided them anyway.
Most fun and polished game I've played so far, amazing, well done. Really well balanced (for my skill level at least). Feedback: - I wasn't sure how to balance the walls and the fields, and the storm happened so quickly and with the graphical flashing I wasn't able to get feedback. Maybe a subtle slowdown when the storm hits, clearer animations, or sounds, I dunno. - Rotating the walls was slow so I just ended up never doing it and placing a bunch in the wrong direction. Maybe they could rotate to face the correct orientation (perpendicular to the storm) initially when you buy them? or have them only rotate a 45 degree angles and press to rotate? not sure, probably a bad idea, would need to try out. - Loved the music especially the 20 second musical queues, but it started getting pretty out of tempo with the storms which made things hard.
@pat-cleaver Thanks :-) Yep I did use fmod, and it was a pain sometimes, though now I've more or less figured out how to get initialisation to work (https://gist.github.com/kalman/c6eb68caafa639900aebbb372f287678). You're right about it feeling a bit static, for a jam I'm pretty happy with it, but modulation is an interesting idea. And/or a more varied chord progression (if I'd been more careful with level design I could have introduced notes more gradually). I would have liked to do something more interesting than just vertically adding layers in the music itself.
@bison-warlock Oh bummer about the sound, sorry about that. There is a windows build there if you're curious.
wow, so polished, cute and really well implemented aethetic and sound. i'm humbled by how many little bits and pieces go into making this game feel so polished. i did find the gameplay an odd mix of relaxing and stressful from all the body-slamming, i just want my bunnies to run around gathering resources :-) (and not building a statue to an annoying panda)
Such a great game. simple, fun, original idea really well executed. loved how well the music synced with gameplay. as others have said, an ammo indication would have been nice, and pity you didn't have time to add more levels, that would have been fun. also the default should have been rainbow :-)
The music was the highlight for me for sure. It was really moody and having the music puzzle was a nice touch. I think you could have leaned into that a bunch, like tuning the puzzle rotations with SFX or the notepad or something. The game felt like it was missing SFX in general. I also think having something be animated would make things feel more alive.
Really cute, the graphics and music worked together great to set a cheeky mood, which fit a game about racoons. The various SFX were used really well. I felt ownership over the farm and wanted the racoons to go away for sure. Walking around collecting things felt nice, I actually really enjoyed wandering around before the raccoons arrived :-)
I played through it a few times and never figured out how to get a tick in anything other than "farm" - some more in-game help like highlighting what you can do with items, maybe making the icons next to them more prominent, would help. Also getting rid of the racoons didn't seem to do much, they'd just come back, and fixing what they did didn't seem to improve my end outcome? Also it was pretty hard to *not* get all the carrots, so they didn't seem very important? I think that if your actions had more weight to them (like permanently changing the world, or giving you a score feedback, or whatever) it'd be really fun, with a bit more variety like the ability to run.
I think basically I want a mini farm simutor where you need to chase away raccoons.
Nice job, loved the art and the core game loop was fun and satisfying, having to balance the repairing and the salt thing. The humour was great too. The lonely-haunted-house vibe really comes through. Some hopefully helpful feedback: (1) I liked the sound design a lot HOWEVER the TV sound was giving me a headache so I needed to turn the volume waaaaaay down :-( it was loud and something about the waveform messed with my brain. Also some more subtle ambients would make this next level (low-volume creaking, footsteps, whatever - the clock was great though). (2) It did get really hard around 30 seconds to go? I didn't finish and the game was too long to go back and try several times. Maybe a shorter loop? (3) The death loop was opaque to me, maybe you can make that more obvious.
I'm not a very good gamer, which is sad for me, because your game looks cool. I gave playing it a decent attempt but couldn't figure out the controls or what I was actually supposed to do :-( so I can't really rate it. Hopefully this feedback helps.
I truly enjoyed this game. Short but hey it's a jam and sometimes I don't have time to finish platforming epics, and your game made me want more, which is rare.
A large part of why I enjoyed it was the atmosphere of the whole thing. The music really suits the mood and the sound flourishes are well implemented. Given the lack of a rating for the audio I guess you didn't write it and you got the effects elsewhere? I wish I could rate it though, if you just had a disclaimer for where you got them from.
You chose the palette well. The radiation effect was suuuper well done, perfect. The water canisters were the only jarring graphical thing, maybe you could have edited them to desaturate at least. Also like others have said... I'm glad to have something to collect, cos I'm a gamer, but some sort of weight to it would be nice.
The platforming aspect was really good but a little floaty so I found it hard sometimes.
Hey @fuse-in-a-bowl / @bradleypollard - I was looking through my past reviewed games, and remembered yours. I liked it a lot but commented about the sfx/music. I wanted to ask if you'd be down for me helping out with that next time you do a jam, let me know on discord (btkal#5723) maybe?
I played this through a number of times and I enjoyed it, there was enough going on to bring me back in for another round, and I enjoyed how goofy it was. I appreciated the audio cues on the countdown. Some hopefully constructive feedback: the mouse sensitivity was too high for me personally, and with the camera rotation style I found things a bit awkward. I felt that something should happen to the zombies when the bomb went off, not sure what. I couldn't figure out the hitboxes on the zombies so dying seemed a bit random.
Game was fun, and funny, which I enjoyed.
...unless left/right malfunction :-( could you have made it wrap around or something? at least then I don't have to just sit there staring at fruit falling for 10+ seconds, depending on how the randomness plays out.
Wow, the most complete game I've played so far at this LD. A lot to do and the loop of plant -> fly around -> harvest -> kill crows -> upgrade -> etc was pretty deep. I enjoyed it a lot.
I thought that the crop planting and harvesting mechanic was the most solid, the way that there were only a few slots per asteriods, and that the asteriods flew around so you couldn't find them. A good way to solve the problem that other LD games seem to have with similar mechanics. It also just felt really good, maybe it was the sounds and animations.
The shotgun was my favourite weapon for sure, nuke was also fun at the end to spam.
The combat wasn't as strong as the harvesting IMO. Fun because of the upgrades, but it felt a little off somehow. The lasers and crows were hard to avoid, they tracked you really close. But there also wasn't much of a downside to getting hit by lasers anyway (once you had enough energy). Also I thought the timing could have been shorter between waves... maybe more smaller waves or something. But the variety of the weapons and enemies well made up for it.
Fun game! I liked the first level *a lot* and I played it a few times to see how long I could get the mouse. It's a nice riff on Snake to avoid the tractor. That with the sound design and the music[1] was a really nice package.
Having the different animals with different control schemes and obstacles keeps things interesting... like warioware for animals. Like other people have said though, I found the gecko super difficult, the bird unsatisfying to control, and the frog a bit too slow (and the obstacles not super meaningful). If it was a matter of time, dropping the gecko and tuning the others might have been better.
[1] The music was super cool *except* I found the loud-trombone section maaaybe out of place with its intensity. Felt like a chase scene from a Pixar movie. Either way, it was very effective, and the sound design was great.
Really original game! Good balance of cutting down the correct crops and trying to get the farmers out of the way. Graphics were cute and the grass especially was really well done. The sound design was excellent (and funny). Music set the mood well.
I did finish the game, but found it pretty time consuming and challenging at times. Some things which could have helped: - Make the hitbox of cutting down good crops a bit larger than the hitbox of the bad crops. - Have a magnet sort of effect on the corners of the crops, they were pretty difficult. - Have some indication that there is a farmer messing up your stuff (like a subtle arrow, or spatial audio). - Something felt off about the position of the ant thingy and what crops it was actually affecting.
And a nice satisfying addition would be to fade in the completed crop circle at the end of each level rather than just transitioning into the new one.
But overall, it was super polished and I enjoyed it a lot. Did you disable ratings on it or something? I don't see a way to.
@dikkop looks like the ratings have appeared now so all good :-)
Daaaamn loved this game. Graphics and colour palette were great. Wonderful animations (especially at the end). Music was amazing... great tunes, really made the mood, and changed with the game perfectly. Did you write it for this jam? SFX were good and well done though competed with the music sometimes. Maybe EQ them differently? I dunno.
Gameplay wise it was really fun at the start when it was more challenging, but as other people have said, after a few rounds when you've established a bunch of trees (especially the powerful ones) it's impossible to lose, and nothing to do other than sit there and watch. Which really, at the end, was still fun. But before then, there wasn't much variety. Maybe there could be? Like have another couple of enemy types that get introduced gradually.
Gameplay wise... maybe make the better trees more expensive (like way more, 4 or 5). Have some way that trees die or something. Basically just some reason to stay interactive over the whole time.
Ending was hilarious, kudos.
@fuse-in-a-bowl thanks! No, I haven't played Dredge, hmmm. You're right about the block-puzzle thing being the most interesting part of the game, and that there isn't enough of it. I initially didn't have the double-click placement at all because my idea was purely a block-rearranging thing, but it was too difficult and not really much fun. If I was to spend another day on this game I'd rearrange things a bit. And yeah good call on the timer, I had something like that on my list but didn't have time.
@sakura-magika thanks! Hah I'm not surprised you ran into a bug with the "start again" logic. It was very, very rushed. My first version had keyboard movement actually, but I took it out just to keep things simple and click. A keyboard-only control system would be interesting.
@fatpenguin thanks! I never managed to break $100. There is a moderate amount of randomness to it, it's not the most finely tuned gameplay. Maybe I should fix that inventory bug later, seems like it triggers pretty often.
@pincushion thank you! Glad you appreciated the opening "cinematic", I put a fair amount of time into getting that feeling right. The sound crackling is an issue with fmod in some browsers unfortunately.
I liked the world building / setting a lot - the flavour text, graphics in the base, the way the harvesters come and grab the crop when you cut it down, the beasties, and the way the game mechanism(s) worked alongside that. I also liked the variety of gameplay - having to water plants and balance that with actually planting, and defending the base (while not killing the plants), chopping them down, all with different items.
One big thing for me though was all the insult text. Not my sense of humour, but also gameplay wise it hid the status text of the plants and it was really hard to figure out what was going on (especially with the beasiest running at you). It was almost a fluke that I managed to harvest a plant. IMO it would have been better with everything being graphical... like a progress bar at the bottom, and only having 1 status not 5.
I like your game. The mechanic of putting together combinations of things that change each turn, with that limited resource, and making a number go up is classic in a good way. The setting of that being in a market with those icons and little 3d sandbox worked well, it has a lot of character. It felt like it belonged in a Fire Emblem game or something. I would for sure play it every day.
There is definitely a lot more that you could have done here, but it's compo so I'm not sure if that's a useful thing to say. For me... if the score system were more "achievement / objective" based than "high score" based it would have scratched a bigger itch. It's also a natural tutorial sort of thing. I was a bit lost at the start feeling out what I was supposed to do and having like "cook a meal with potatoes" or whatever would be satisfying.
It's nice having some chill music to go with the whole thing. Works well for how short the loop is, though IMO something more lively would have suited it better. A much smaller change would be to make the ground green, brown is a bit depressing.
Hah, fun game. The music was a highlight for me, especially on the first minigame, but the contrast to the 2nd minigame was very well done too. The minigames themselves were cute and well done. The axe one at the end was pretty distressing.
My 1st time around was a funny commentary on doing what you're told in games, and the message at the end made me laugh.
My 2nd time around I just let the humans die to see what would happen.
My 3rd time around I was trying to keep things stable and get something other than those 2 endings... the promised "the credits is not the end"... but after 9 years I ran out of time (for the evening) and honestly patience :-( I'm not sure what I was supposed to see? But something does need tweaking.
I had fun running around (very quickly) gathering poo (looking for the unicorn) and seeing what the different weapons did. A couple of balance issues was that the unicorn was pretty OP since if it sits next to the silo you can farm a lot of poo, and that the weapons were pretty expensive so I got a bit tired of it.
I know I was *supposed* to be killing goblins (right?) but they were hard to find and pretty hard to hit too. Having the velocity of the player affect the velocity of the bullets would have helped.
The audio was fun. An area for improvement would be to have multiple sounds then cycle through them randomly to give some variety, it got tiring after a while hearing the exact same farty effect.
Fun game and super polished. It all felt very tactile with the graphical flourishes and the SFX.
I'm envious of your screenshots, because I never came close to doing that well. Managed to harvest some corn but that's as far as I got, and I did try for a while.
Some things which IMO would have helped: - Have mouse controls as well. Sometimes I'd fail (or just get confused) pressing the wrong j/k key, or not really sure which direction I needed to face. - Have the tool colliders be larger so that they can't overlap with each other. It would help with the problem where they'd overlap for me and it'd be hard to pick up the right one. - Be less difficult especially at the start?
Really original, good sense of humour, and a bunch of really nice touches especially with the audio (e.g. being close to the band). I enjoyed this game - the dialog was fun, the room had a lot of atmosphere, everything worked well together.
I wasn't really sure what the hide mechanic did. I seemed to survive even though I didn't hide, or maybe I did? I got into a state where grabbing the gem would instantly fail.
The whole steal mechanic was definitely necessary but seemed a bit too tedious. The dialog portion was more fun to me. I especially liked that the guy down the bottom had completely different dialogue. I wish that the different fancy people had different sets of correct answers to the same questions, it seemed to be a bit like that with the Marxist guy? but it would have been better with even more of that sort of thing.
i think there is something here, it's like "what if the witcher was a delivery guy" and i'm into that. it's too much for me in a jam though - the scope needs to be pared way down. the cars were getting stuck in the water, the map was beautiful but hard to use, and giving blood to the bats didn't feel significant. IMO, more time making it feel good to play, less time developing complexity.
There was something enjoyable about running around following an arrow along the road (though the road had no effect?) and avoiding the cats. The music helped a lot. Something to add stakes would be good, like a score or things changing besides spawning cats.
this is incredibly polished and satisfying and i really want to finish it... but i must be missing something... how do you finish level 3? i get to here using i swear the most economic movements: Screenshot 2023-05-02 at 5.48.49 pm.png
really charming and polished game. the animations + audio + pathfinding hints and path following made it feel really snappy. the tutorial flow is very nice. tbh the economy aspect didn't grab me, i know that this stuff is super hard to balance / scope creep etc / but different packages and other variations would have helped.
btw i *never* plug my own games, but the moment i spun into yours it reminded me of ours :-) similar sort of vibe and audio cues... but with trains, and puzzles instead of an economy. i won't link to it out of politeness, but check it out if you're curious.
the highlight for me was the atmosphere of the game, especially the music, but i also really liked the art aesthetic, palette/fog. having some lore running through it is what made me want to keep playing to the end.
some nice additional touches could have been: - smooth camera (ideally smooth character movement too), as others have said. - faint bobbing animation that matches with the sound, slow in the foyer and faster in the tunnels. - something to distinguish the gameplay. - a way to make dialogue go faster (on subsequent runs at least), or something to do while the dialogue is scrolling.
nice job though!
super fun music, incredible visuals, great touches like all the audio cues and the way the tentacles reach out. i found throwing the cargo difficult, the little plaform on the boat didn't have any utility because they'd just fall off and it was more fun trying to fling them anyway. great game :-)
Really sweet game, glad I played it. Touching in a way. The characters were the highlight for me and the quirky planet arena the whole thing suited it well. Music was great. I think some audio ambience and highlights would have elevated it. I was also losing track of who the letters were from or about... some kind of avatar popping up when somebody was referred to would have been good.
you have made a perfect game, because it might be the funniest game i've played since warioware. amazing. audio was perfect.
graphics... well i didn't get many of the cat images because i was enjoying the words going past too much. the gameplay is obviously pretty easy but it doesn't matter, it's all part of the joke. to me anyway :-) the david tennant dude was wonderful, i guess AI generated?
@joaopbax thanks for playing & the nice words. the camera is zoomable actually - using z/c keys. Wish we'd had time to implement mouse controls!
I really dig the art style and the overall vibe with the lore and music. Feels alive. The mechanic was nice but it seemed incomplete, the main challenge was switching between the rods but that was pretty finicky.
Incredible, so well done. Puzzles were so inventive, like "what-if-portal-but-ludum-dare-and-stretching", I was genuinely excited to keep on playing right to the end. The plot payoff gave me a lot of joy :-) The music and audio was subtle in the best way.
@jarn0r @zungryware hmmm thanks for reporting that, I've never had issues with the web build. Tried mac/windows (both pretty beefy computers) on chrome/firefox/edge/safari.
In any case, I just uploaded a windows build so try that if you like? Thanks for playing / your comments :-)