Living Mandala by wdebowicz 2020-05-02T01:36:55Z
This was amazing. I think it's the first ludum dare game I've ever played that made me feel a strong emotion. It wasn't what I was expecting, but I think it was just what I needed. Thank you.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → BlaiseRascal
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | 47 | Stuck in a loop | RESET HOOLIGANS | compo | 339 | 3.36 | 3.26 | 4.00 | 4.18 | 3.42 | 3.50 | 3.11 | 3.17 | |
| 2020 | 46 | Keep it alive | Tusk Til Dawn | compo | 652 | 3.30 | 3.47 | 2.18 | 3.19 | 2.86 | 3.08 | 3.50 | 3.25 |
This was amazing. I think it's the first ludum dare game I've ever played that made me feel a strong emotion. It wasn't what I was expecting, but I think it was just what I needed. Thank you.
Made it to level 3, then gave up. At first, I didn't understand that you move items by clicking on them then clicking the destination (as opposed to drag and drop). Also, I still don't know the point of destroying the red pills.
The songs were pretty good, but the story (including the title of the game) were a miss for me.
This took a long time to load in unity webplayer, but when it did, it was an enjoyable art game! Very atmospheric. I loved the little drawings of the creatures. I'm not sure what it has to do with the theme, though.
I was really hyped to play this when I saw your beautiful progress screenshots on discord! Really, you should be proud of the art, and of the impressive number of rooms you created.
candydreamegg.png
Occasionally the mechanics of this game led to unexpected situations. In this image, why can't the egg get to me? Pressing up does nothing.
candydreamegg2.png
Same question here...
Also, I personally enjoy platformers where the character has acceleration & a higher max velocity. That makes jumping over spikes more of a matter of timing and less of a matter of memorizing hitboxes.
zoomoutscreenshot.png
This does not show up particularly well on my high-resolution monitor. I'll refrain from giving it any ratings as a result...
I enjoyed a lot of the dialog, and the graphics and music were impressive! I made it to the skeletal boss once and got destroyed, then decided to stop playing. It felt like time spent farming upgrades was more important than skill, since the projectiles moved too fast for me to dodge...
Cute arcade game! I never lived long enough to hear much of the music, but it sounded nice.
For some reason, I kept pressing incorrect buttons. Maybe if the controls were laid out in a square it would have been more intuitive for me? Also, you might consider making it so that holding a key changes the ACCELERATION of the rope, rather than changing the VELOCITY of the rope. (Think of super mario brothers, where you go faster the longer you hold left or right, up to a maximum movespeed.) Just a thought!
I really really liked this game! I played it a lot, and it's one of the best ones I've played so far. That being said, here are all my nitpicks, haha.
After buying a gun, I checked this webpage to search for the key to cycle between guns. I heard explosion sounds, and returned to the game, but my crystal had already exploded. I expected the game to pause when it wasn't the active window. But maybe that's on me.
When I bought a gun, I expected to be able to cycle through all my guns, but was surprised to see that not only was I stuck with the gun I bought, but it disappeared when I fired all the bullets. It felt more like the gun was a "temporary powerup" than a "gun" - perhaps the guns could have the appearance and names of "temporary powerups" instead?
The visuals were quite good, but there was no clear indication about which sprites were powerups, and which were enemies. Took some trial and error to figure it out.
Does the same amount of money spawn every stage? It seemed like I picked up all the money I saw, but I still had different amounts of money between different playthroughs. It was kind of a feel-bad moment when I would make it really far, but have no means to improve my character because RNG did not bless me with much money that playthrough.
I always wanted to lure monsters away from the crystal, but it seemed like they only chased me when they were close to me or facing me or whatever. But since their movement & facing felt kind of random, the ability to lure them away felt random as well. I wish there was a way to put that more under my control. (In general, I question the decision to use RNG for the monsters in this game. What do Castlevania, Ikaruga, Zelda, and Crypt of the Necrodancer have in common? It's that the monsters have no RNG. Those aren't easy games, but you know how the enemies will act in every situation, so you only have yourself to blame if you die.)
Idk, but my gut feeling is that the attacking might feel more precise if you attacked 1x per second, rather than in bursts.
Lastly, I feel like the game MIGHT play better if there was no crystal, and you only had to keep yourself alive. You have control over your own health because you can dodge enemy attacks, but you have less control over the crystal's health because it's stuck in place, so the ability to keep it alive feels overall less skill-testing. But then it wouldn't fit the theme as well, I guess. So whatever! IDK
Anyways, sick game!
The art and animation were gorgeous, and your music selection was very fitting. After the game loaded, I just sat in the menu for a while, enjoying the mood of the game.
During gameplay, at first I didn't understand the fact that spells took time to cast, that you could only cast one spell at a time, that you had to type the number every time, and that you had to click your target after you selected your spell. It may have helped if, say, your cursor changed when you selected a spell, and changed again when you were hovering over a legal target. I also couldn't tell what every spell did (how long did the silence effect last?).
Also, your decision to make spells cast at the end of the cooldown, rather than the beginning, was one I didn't understand. Since you have to choose your target at the beginning of the timer, you have to predict who is likely to be the most injured by the time the spell completes; but because unit injuries are based on random enemy actions, there's no way to know who will need healing, other than guessing.
One more thought: The wizard, archer, and knight did a lot of actions (defend! poison arrow! barrier!) but it felt like none of those actions actually influenced my decisions of what to do. You could consider cutting all that stuff from the game, and just make it the enemies that have special abilities.
Sorry for being so nitpicky. This was a fun game, and you all should be very proud!
Thank you so much for all the responses! For those who are having trouble winning, one tip is just to create lots of cavemen, and completely ignore other units (especially cavemansplainers). Looking back, I wish I had balanced the units better, but it's tough to do everything in just 48 hours :)
Super ambitious and impressive game! I admit that I had a difficult time telling what was happening. I would have really appreciated an output terminal that described events as they happened. Example:
>Placed EARTH SEAL. >Enemy attacked EARTH SEAL and was stunned for 1 round. >Enemy destroyed FIRE SEAL. >You played HOT SPRING. Effect: You have 1 FIRE SEAL next to one WATER SEAL, so you gained 1 ki.
And so on.
Another thought: I wish it had cost 0 gold to remove cards from the deck. It makes sense to pay to remove cards from the deck in roguelikes like Slay the Spire, because you always have terrible cards to remove and you can't farm gold; but in this game, the cards I added were often worse than the cards in my base deck, so before long I stopped adding cool new cards to my deck, for fear of them making my deck worse and me having to pay to remove them later.
Anyway, I look forward to seeing what you all make next!
Ah heck yes, programming games are my jam! Though I do feel like this one might have been a bit too easy (at least in the first half of the game, which is all I had time for). Maybe it would be trickier if the player had a limited number of arrows to drop? Also, I always forgot how many spaces the different squares would go - maybe as a suggestion, the square with five stars would go five spaces, and the square with 7 stars would go 7 spaces, or something? Just a suggestion; feel free to take it or leave it. Anyway, great work!
Can anyone tell me how to get past the first puzzle? Haha
Absolutely jaw-dropping art and atmosphere on this!
Thanks for the comments, all! Here are a few of my thoughts on my game:
-Yeah, the first level is too hard. I wish I'd made the timing more forgiving. Balance is always so hard for me in 48 hours!
-The second level is too easy, and unclear - I wish I'd had time to make the "reset" machine be separate from the hooligan, and made it so the icicle had to hit the reset machine instead of the hooligan, to knock it away. And if the icicle hits the hooligan or the girl, the level would be over.
-This was my attempt to make a point and click adventure game with a time-travel story, AND a time-travel mechanic, but the combination of those two ended up making this a very ambitious endeavor. I spent so long trying to get the time scaling mechanic to work, that I ended up not having enough time to tell the STORIES of the levels. (For instance, in the first level, the hooligan accidentally fell off a roof. He can use his time machine to repeatedly rewind time by a second, but he can't get himself out of the predicament completely - that's where you come in.)
-I find it funny that people seem to like the music; I made it in a whirl in the last ten minutes of the jam, haha. I almost cut it from the game at the last second, but I guess I'm glad I included it.
Anyway, here are a few things you may have missed:
-In the first level, there are quite a few things you can speed up and slow down! They include the falling hooligan, the time machine, the tree, the laundry, and the walking guy.
-In the second level, the hooligan is repeatedly resetting time so he can try to get a better outcome for his date - and every time he resets the date, he says slightly different things, all in an attempt to figure out how to win the affections of the girl.
This was fun! I especially loved the procedurally-generated reason for your revenge; that was an awesome detail.
If I were to be a little critical, it would be about the procedural map generation mechanic. While it works fine, there's not a lot of difference between different levels, making me wonder why procedural generation is necessary. But maybe that's just my anti-procedural-generation bias, haha.
Keep up the good work!
HERO BURGER is an incredibly powerful game name
Good work!
This was a neat concept, and it worked well! I love time travel as a narrative theme.
I wasn't sure whether this game was meant to be more of a puzzle game, or more of an adventure game, or more of a top-down platformer. Maybe if it was made more difficult in any of these three areas, it could give the game more of an identity. Just an idea, feel free to take it or leave it!
Very good puzzle platformer! The levels were unique and really well done. The mobius mechanic added some strategic thinking and "aha" moments without feeling gimmicky.
If I were to nitpick, it would be about the decision to use a physics system, rather than hard code behavior for all items. (Sometimes it felt like I was spending more time chasing down a rolling ball than solving puzzles.) Also, you may not be aware of this, but the level with 3 boxes was unsolveable if you pushed the first box all the way to the left - but ONLY if the third box landed to the right of the second. I'm not explaining this well, but it is at least one example of a time when the randomness caused by the physics engine opened up (or closed) puzzle solutions, which I don't think is ideal.
I don't see the controls anywhere. Is it a one-button game?
In any case, this works pretty well! One complaint: At high speeds, you press the "jump" button before the landing area has entered the screen, so it's impossible to know where you will land (and thus whether or not you will be safe).
Neat pixely graphics and good choice of music
Fun and addicting! Though, the jump lasts so long, and the screen moves so fast, that around 700m, I was pressing "jump" when the destination platform wasn't even on screen - so there was no way to know whether or not I'd land safely.