Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → blubberquark
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | 59 | Signal | Signals Intelligence | jam | 524 | 3.44 | 3.50 | 3.23 | 3.44 | 3.65 | 2.85 | 3.34 | ||
| 2023 | 52 | Harvest | Lunar Harvest | compo | 280 | 3.07 | 2.94 | 3.26 | 3.05 | 3.26 | 2.47 | 3.44 | 2.81 | |
| 2022 | 51 | Every 10 seconds | Actions Per Minute | unfinished | ||||||||||
| 2022 | 50 | Delay the inevitable | SwimCity 2000 | jam | 890 | 3.38 | 2.93 | 3.54 | 4.20 | 3.93 | 2.55 | 3.30 | ||
| 2021 | 48 | Deeper and deeper | Deep Sea Settler | jam | 912 | 3.51 | 3.41 | 3.63 | 3.05 | 3.25 | 2.14 | 3.05 | ||
| 2020 | 47 | Stuck in a loop | Loopy The Robot | compo | 200 | 3.60 | 3.58 | 3.82 | 3.93 | 3.27 | 3.12 | 2.90 | ||
| 2020 | 46 | Keep it alive | Protector | jam | 1204 | 3.50 | 3.31 | 3.61 | 4.18 | 3.52 | 3.16 | 3.19 | ||
| 2019 | 45 | Start with nothing | The Trader | unfinished | ||||||||||
| 2018 | 43 | Sacrifices must be made | DIORTEM | jam | 867 | 2.96 | 2.96 | 2.93 | 3.33 | 2.43 | 3.50 | 2.50 | ||
| 2018 | 42 | Running out of space | Asteroidvania | jam | 357 | 3.60 | 3.55 | 3.34 | 3.02 | 3.72 | 2.75 | 3.32 | ||
| 2018 | 41 | Combine 2 Incompatible Genres | Dear Clicker | compo | 266 | 3.50 | 2.94 | 3.63 | 4.20 | 3.14 | 3.13 | 3.16 | 3.43 | |
| 2017 | 40 | The more you have, the worse it is | The Adequate Shepherd | jam | 898 | 3.08 | 2.53 | 3.11 | 3.50 | 3.55 | 2.69 | 3.00 |
The game is good, but I feel like I need to call you put for using SVN on a new game in 2017.
The need to re-fuel caught me off-guard the first time. I was first, but then I was on the wrong side of the track (and slow)!
I think I forgot this lighthearted emoji in my SVN comment :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: In my experience, knowing SVN makes learning git harder, compared to just starting from zero, so you better not start teaching SVN ever
$ git svn clone https://www.timbeaudet.com/ludumdare40/
muahahaha
This was surprisingly fun, especially the last level! The cats could be a bit more animated, and the pixels are scaled oncoherently, but the core gameplay works well.
I have no idea what the upgrades did. I guess you have to emphasize score more, because I just spent all my score for ammo all the time?
This is hilarious, and also surprisingly like souls-like: Knights, barbarians, slow parrying animations, dead princesses....
The idea is neat, a bit like super crate box, but the controls/collision/game feel make it more frustrating than it should be.
It's an interesting idea, but it feels _too_ simple to warrant playing it more than once.
The way it is, I get stuck all time time and it's completely unplayable. I would play a post-compo version. @ me if you make one! (This is like the sixth game about sheep I have played, but mine is also about sheep. Oh well)
Straightforward take on the theme, punchy audio, clean graphics, good game feel!
I like the idea and the way it zooms out when you jump down the final shaft is very funny, but the platforming physics leave something to be desired: You can slip off a block after you already stand on it, as if your feet were smooth and round.
I am very conflicted about the way the wall jumping feels.
Good progression, good graphics, nice mix of cookie clicker and tower defense
There's a lot going on, but this game didn't click for me. Also I got stuck in a beehive. The art style is very readable.
Oh my god I'm hyped. The first screen looked boring, but the game plays so well and the minimalist aesthetics works! The only thing that annoyed me was that you slide on the ground so much. Also I don't see the theme. But this was a really good platformer. Reminds me of the parts in _Super Meat Boy_ where you have to evade rockets.
Ok yeah, not so slippy-slidey this time. More like hard to gauge jumps because everything is so empty and you can jump so far. In the later levels I often had to tank shots in a calculated way to advance.
One thing I would like is a "smarter" camera that looks where you need to go, because I was too busy jumping to look up or down.
But the small dust clouds when you land and the way your rectangle leans back while running: Subtle, but great.
The coin stack was so well integrated into the level design, but why did you use this ugly antialiased font?
Great game, UI and turn-based combat looked great, mechanics were not what I expected based on the description, but easy enough to grasp in the first level. But why make me restart after I died on level 3?
Works well on Linux. Medium annoying UI thing: The camera did not pan to show enemies when they moved.
Great way to drive the point about the theme home, but I won by just holding down right and jumping when I got stuck. I wish you had spent more time on pixel art and textures, or even given the 3D objects pixel art textures, because it looks okay-ish now, but could be so easily improved. Overall, a nice game though.
It took me a while to figure out the mechanics of cursed coins and curse purging. Like coins is my curse and curse% is level curse. I like how levels and curses feed into each other. But it is always best to either pick coins or kill mobs first, never both together. I wish the dungeon was a bit more fleshed out, or Zelda-like one room scrolling maybe plus a map so it looks less uniform...
Sorry for wasting your time. I made your game better. Now it has a tweet your score function! :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:
https://blubberquark.itch.io/cursed-remix
I totally get that you probably needed more time for more stuff. That's how I feel about half the feedback in every LD too! We are looming over each others shoulders with a whip made of feedback!
This is one of the best takes on the theme yet, because of the way the long tail handles, and if there was even a slight upside to having more stuff in there, apart from the score.
I support your future plans (if you have the time)!
The game feel is great but I have no idea what I'm doing!
Reloading was awkward. Maybe this game wants to be played with a controller?
@meursault I have added some more visual instructions on the page!
Sounds work in the flash version now!
@elemel what was your problem and which version of mac OS are you on? I just did
$ lime build mac $ butler push export/mac64/neko/ blubberquark/the-adequate-shepherd:macos
without any errors from linux. Can somebody with a mac confirm?
@josefnpat almost nobody tweets their score! Only @Jupiter-Hadley and @gnihad ever press "T" How many did you save?
Thank you @elemel. It seems to be a problem with .app bundle permissions and not Unix executable permissions? I have no idea how to fix that on Linux? Maybe I'm lucky and it's the fault of butler and @fasterthanlime is to blame ;) Or it's something in haxeflixel or lime. Maybe the metadata that you need can't even be represented on ext4 and needs whatever stuff Apple uses to store permissions?
I'll look into this when get my hands on a mac...
@sbarrio Crashes how and on which version of OSX? Is it what @elemel described in the comments here or something else?
It's pachinko, but dark, and I'm generally not fond of these kinds of games that force your hand to make a point. Points for Mood though!
The flight controls feel floaty and un-plane-like
What a _stupid_ and unoriginal game idea, unlike my own, which is totally different and has **three** dogs!
Okay Freunde.
Eine geballte Ladung subjektiver Meinungen von jemandem der genau die gleiche Idee hatte (schlechte Nachrichten zuerst): - Die Kameraführung ist etwas hakelig: Ich hätte gerne meinen anderen Hund ind die Schafe mehr im Blick. Vielleicht hätte man eine Box um alle Tiere als Kamera-Ziel nehmen können, oder den Mittelwert der Koordinaten aller Hunde. - Die Kamera ist etwas zu nah. Ich kann nicht genau sehen wo ich hin muss. - Die Musik-Schleife war etwas kurz. Spätestens im zweiten Level wurde es nervig. (Wär aber perfekt für meine Cuphead-Parodie!) - Ein paar mal ist ein einzelnes Schaf in einer Ecke stecken geblieben. - Mehr Schafe sind immer noch sehr einfach, weil man nur 1 Schaf schaffen muss. Es wird sogar einfacher in Level zwei! Zusätzlich - Level drei ist sehr offen, und ich hätte mir mehr Überblick gewünscht. Die Schafe haben dauernd geblökt. Wo zur Hölle ist meine Farm? Wo endet die Weidefläche? - Ich hätte gerne die Zahl der weißen und schwarzen Schafe angezeigt. - Level 3 hat sehr geruckelt, Schwarze Schafe haben den Eingang zur Farm verstopft. Es gab ziemlich viel pop-in in dem Level.
Nun das Gute: - Art Direction ist prima. Ich weiß nicht ob das alles Niels @gnihad war, aber alles wirkt wie aus einem Guss. Der unschattierte Farbstil mit vielen runden formen ist gut lesbar, und sieht schön aus. - Wegfindung der Hunde und Schaf-Verhalten sind die besten die ich bis jetzt gesehen habe. (Auch wenn ich mir nicht sicher bin ob ihr einen Herdentrieb habt un wie stark er ist) - Die Übermenge an Schafen in Level 3 ist sehr lustig. - Die "Core Loop" passt gut zum Spielziel. - Ihr macht alles richtig was bei mir kritisiert wurde!
This needs - textures/landmarks on the floor so you can gauge your speed when there are no spikes - better game feel for the jump (mayve a different jump arc)
But I like the mechanical interpretation of the theme. Reminds me of managing your speed in _Canabalt_.
The graphics are great, but the combat was dull enough to compensate :/
I don't know how to balance it to make fights go faster while still being challenging, but as-is, it's a real slog.
Good idea, great execution! I like your flocking behaviour.
Sometimes attacks are telegraphed and sometimes more rhythm-based. Is this by design? I think I skipped dialogue a couple of times because I was mashing jump...
I can't believe I'm the first to comment on this. This is really funny and well-balanced! The pixel art style works well here. It was hard to understand the feedback loops/mechanics at first, but I figured it out quickly.
I can hardly believe how polished this feels! I just wish I got a bit more feedback when I take damage, or a dodge roll. The difficulty ramped up suddenly.
I like the interpretation of the theme.
This can totally work as a real tabletop card game!
What do you mean by damaged? Can't you repair it? That's well within the rules. Why link to something damaged at all?
The thing you put on itch as a Linux download is actually just the Windows .exe!
I can also play the WebGL thing, no worries, but it did not work in the itch app.
I survived for five minutes before I got bored, then I ate all the light and got to brightness 28.
This is too real, man. Also impossible to keep up with a trackpad.
Like @fasterthanlime's game, this could be printed out and played by hand!
What a clever take on the theme!
I like the slashing animation and the way chickens bob when they walk. I get a Vlambeer vibe from the whole thing.
Sheep would not breed and glitched through fences
Kind of like a towlr http://towlr.ludumdare.com/ or like FATHOM http://adamatomic.com/fathom/, but eh. Based on what you wrote on the blog, there is no point to telling you what I thought about the mechanics of the gamey part..., so I won't.
I wish there was a was to see if/when anything had changed and become interactable, because I restarted it once and noticed things did not immediately become clickable.
Maybe look into setting scrollfactor for your HUD instead of whatever you're doing now. I don't normally like the feel of the controls when you follow the standard HaxeFlixel platformer tutorial, but with your theme of getting fuller and slower it makes sense. The background graphics were sometimes confusing, because I couldn't tell if it was a difference in background color or a wall.
My hand hurts from clicking. The game was taller than my screen. I wish there was a restart button. Also the battery drained too quickly, it opened the 5%, 3% and 2% notifications while the last was still on, and just faded to black on the ending instead of ending on something informative or restarting.
I wish there was more to the difficulty than not falling off bridges in later levels.
Theme is good, but my hand literally hurts from clicking
I got stuck on beaches a lot. At first it wasn't clear, I would have liked instructions, but after losing the first game against AIs, I understood. At least I knew _why_ I lost when I lost my second game.
Also @mik3: I recognised the art style immediately. They got the graphics from @Kenney - https://kenney.nl/assets/pirate-pack
This is totally allowed in the JAM rules, but getting a high score for Kenney's graphics assets while Kenney is possibly also competing in this LD would be a dick move. So everybody has done the right thing here.
I didn't understand that *I* become the pirate when I have the least coins. It seems obvious in hindsight.
This looks and feels like you just put MouseLook and the standard character controller together without writing a single line of original code. You have to hold the shift key to run to make the first jump. I knew that because I also made games with Unity at one point. Otherwise I would have been lost.
I would strongly recommend: - make this third person - make the character slower or the platforms bigger - give the player more "traction" on the ground - try something else with the surrounding terrain to make it look interesting - add visible "checkpoint" flags when you die
Many Twine or Bitsy games also have no original code and only "content", but they at least have things to explore and a story. I may sound salty here, but I have played what feels like this exact same Unity3D game twice in every LD I participated in.
Also I did not see the theme at all. So yeah.
Evoland did it first, but yours has a different feel to the humour. I'm impressed with all the content you put in. The humorous tone you use excuses that almost none of the features (jumping, dashing, katana) are that well implemented, or deep mechanics, but that makes it boring toward the end. I didn't laugh out loud, but I smiled at times. The dialogue ties it all together.
This took me a bit to get running on Ubuntu. I managed to install libtcod and TDL and run from source eventually.
I like the idea of the game. I like the clean presentation. But the gameplay itself was meh. The calm music was at odds with the theme, which was good because I like the music, but I don't know if that was a deliberate misdirection. The transcript window was a bit small. I almost wanted to play this in an actual terminal, but a bigger window.
I like what you're going for, and how you stay true to the Berlin Interpretation, but something is missing if you want to make this work. This is less of a coding/more content problem and more of a design problem: How do you make moral choices meaningful?
I doesn't help that I personally hate games that force you to do a thing to progress and then judge you morally.
To end on something positive: This look much better than my first game for LD (also in Python), so keep it up!
The simple graphics work surprisingly well, and the coffee mechanic is neat, but the flying and shooting, the meat of the game, are not all that great.
Oppressive mood, 5/5, well done. Reminds me of several old space games by Yahtzee Croshaw. The gameplay is very trial-and-error and reliant of knowledge from the future, but you are upfront about that. The high production values in the art and feature-rich options and main menu make the spelling errors all the more jarring.
I like how the theme is incorporated into the story: The more witnesses you have, the worse it gets.
The lighting is either per-vertex or the normals are weird, and the physics of some of the tire stacks is always bugging out, but the theme usage idea is great!
crashed on me on Ubuntu 18.04 as well.
I have no idea how to rate this, but big mood haha
I tried multiple downloads and multiple browsers. none worked...
I had to move the asset files into a folder called "content" so the paths work, but then it ran on Linux
This is really good. The first game of this LD where I think it could see a commercial release. The visuals gave off a vibe of Introversion Software and Mode7games
This got really frantic in the end. I like the balance.
Maybe I did something wrong, but this was *way* too hard right at the very beginning.
Solid entry with lots of content and a smooth difficulty curve!
same thing, can't play
Inventory management minigame!
@local-minimum which version did you try exactly?
@local-minimum I assume you tried the NSIS installer `.exe`.
I recently switched from Python2.7 to 3.6 (finally!), and I don't know how to package things for windows with it, yet. So far, it looks like it will be easier with `pynsist` from Linux than rebooting to make an installer with `pyInstaller` or `cx_freeze` from windows.
http://pynsist.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
I also made a self-contained `.zip` file for the itch app. If you download that and click on the launch.bat, or run it in the itch app, it should _hopefully_ just work.
Packaging was mostly removing a bunch of functionality I used during development, like parsing command line args and saving .gif screenshots with `moviepy`, as well as stuff like Itch API integration with `requests` that wasn't really necessary for a single-player game.
@barrier https://www.twitch.tv/honestdangames beat it on twitch
At first I didn't even understand how this could be difficult, but then you surprised me with great puzzles! 5/5
This game is mis-tagged, both here and on itch. There is only a Windows download. I tried running it in wine though, and it worked. I am glad I didn't give up trying to get it to run: We had the same idea. Running IN space! (Except your astronaut has a rounder butt and my runner is not endless)
It looks like you enabled physics on your character so he bounces a bit when you reach the ground. If you make a post-compo version, maybe tweak that part so he doesn't bounce, or handle the ground-collision manually, or maybe do something interesting with the bouncing.
The slide animation reminded me of commander video in the first bit.trip.runner. Maybe that was a reference.
The levels generation is probably when you can improve the most. As is, sometimes there is an alien and a spike at the same time, and sometimes the screen is completely empty for a couple of seconds. Maybe there could be things you jump on top of, or maybe that's too much like bit.trip.runner.
At any rate, this is better than my first solo game. Keep it up!
the controls were awkward, and your logo on the resolution menu was to big i could not even select a resolution on my screen!
This sounds mean, I know, but you said it in the description already. This game was *surprisingly* boring given the screenshot. The mspaint art style looked charming and the idea of building a supply chain with trucks is interesting but then it's like an idle game that scales really fast.
I think it's missing more intricate traffic simulation or more different resources or some kind of resource gathering interactivity.
Still fun for a minute, but the design doesn't gel quite yet.
Your game is impossible to play for on my screen because of the aspect ratio. I can't click the buttons.
I don't think it fits the theme that well, but I see what you were going for. It certainly wears its inspiration on its sleeve. I wish drawing conveyor belts was simpler
Neat idea, good take on the theme. Got a bit laggy before I died.
It's like slime rancher, but with sexual reproduction.
It doesn't look like much, and the idea of growing fish by eating smaller fish a la Osmos and agar.io is so played out that I have seen it done four or five times already since my first LD.
It lacks polish, but you probably know that. You could flip the sprites when the fish swin left, instead of rotating for example.
But this game has really great humour in the form of visual puns. I laughed out loud when I saw the sea lions and sword fish and sea horses.
Linux build works for me, you can remove the (untested).
link is still not working
There is no Linux build there at the link although you tagged it. I know I shouldn't score unrunnable entries, so I won't, but this is NOT OK.
This is probably par for the course for a first Ludum Dare. The basic idea reminds me of Stalagfight on the OUYA (it's a good game mechanic!). You can make this a lot better if you tweak the numbers on the platforming a bit, and if you make sure you can't get stuck with your head on a higher platform so easily. I don't mean getting stuck forever and breaking the game, it's not that bad, just getting snagged on a corner can be really annoying.
"Game feel" is really important when you make a platformer. It took me two years to learn game feel and pixel art after I started making games, and I already knew how to code.
If you make a platformer for the next LD, work on your game feel and put just a little more variety in.
It'S not snakebird, but racing against your own shadow. The idea is neat, but I'd love to know which platformer is which one (1st, 2nd, 3rd).
There is no native linux build behind the linux link.
Please make sound effetcs for my next game!
If you're still up for it, my ld43 game has no sounds. If you make effects, I will add them to the post-compo version
Very Cyberpunk!
I am German. I love me a game about recycling!
A common idea, but the best execution of all I played!
The "human sacrifice" mechanic isn't really a sacrifice. They are not even smart bombs. It feels forced. I guess it is because it was the theme. Maybe I could sacrifice towers instead?
The graphics are charming, and with the music they create a great atmosphere. I could see the theme in the "lose lives to gain score" mechanic, but I don't think the mechanic works that well. I struggled with the theme too. The controls need some, and there is not much there in terms of mechanics (pickup, dodging moves). The bullet hell style collisions worked nicely.
I like the idea of a "slow bullet hell", but I don't know if the concept warrants a big game. The audiovisual aesthetic definitely does.
Best "programmer art" and "programmer sound effects" of the jam!
The screen is just uniform grey for me after I launch. IDK if that's a bug or my PC is acting up or something. I'll get backto this.
This looks like an idea that could be something bigger, but as-is, the driving is kind of boring. I wish the levels were shorter, and the cargo was more interesting, and the road was marked more clearly on the mission select screen. There are so many things you could improve in a post-compo version!
I once implemented that "hold C to not jump" mechanic as a joke to mess with players. I never thought somebody could make it work! Bug Report: I can't see my bullets in one of the colour palettes, the one with the stark white background
I would give you 5 stars on game feel if there was such a thing here!
@local-minimum I totally agree with all that. I wish I had my game idea sooner...
But I don't think this idea scales to a bigger game, so there probably won't be a big post-jam version beyond some bug fixes.
The old LDJAM site told me not to comment "I died a lot", and yet...
These bullets are soo small and fast! Make your bullets bigger!
This game is good in ways that don't fit into the rating system.
Lemmings is a straightforward take on the theme, but very well executed! In terms of innovation, Lemmings already exists, but otherwise, nice! (I think I cheesed level 7)
This feels very high-concept and arty, but it takes a while to get going and then I think the only winning move is not to play :expressionless: It certainly got a reaction from me.
I don't now if it's an oversight that everyone is referred to as male, or it's a political statement on gender pronouns, but even apart from that I found the crimes and names jarring sometimes.
"Lily Joestar - he was arrested for Memes"
Did you forget to set your page to public?
This game is marked as HTML5 and not win32 for some inexplicable reason
I can't aim the main attack with the mouse, so using the mouse for attacks felt weird. Reminds me a bit of Nuclear Throne.
I like the graphics. The biggest problem is probably the slow pacing and not knowing how long an infection will last. Not sure if it's randomised, or if there's a way to infect cows.
The platforming was the weakest link, and the web version almost melted my laptop. There's a small bug where your player rectangle doesn't quite land on the ground but hovers one or two pixels above it, but I couldn't unsee it. All I can say is "bruh".
Hello from the PyGame community. Your game runs fine under the current development version of PyGame 2.0. Unique idea, but it looks like there's no game over screen?
I really like the puzzle design, but I always got stuck here:Screenshot_2020-04-25 Tumble Baby by 01010111.png
It took me a while to understand the game of life thing that was going on here! There was a lot going on and I only understood when I died.
Greetings from the PyGame community! I'd like to inform you that your game *just works* on the current development version of the new and improved, SDL2-based pygame 2.0.
This is a super simple game, looks like golf meets angry birds, but it plays differently enough to be its own thing. I just wish the levels were both easier and more elaborate. It's a lot of trial and error and not enough thinking before you shoot the ball, but that's something that could be mitigated by level design.
It's very polished, but it doesn't really *do anything* with the theme. Did you generate the puzzles like [this]( https://blubberquark.tumblr.com/post/154241474475/procedural-generation-pattern-inverse-puzzle)?
I really like that the puzzle mechanic is immediately obvious from the screenshot/itch thumbnail. As far as puzzles go, it's a little on the short and easy side, and I don't think there's any more to do with the puzzle mechanic, but this was *just* enough content for a jam game, and the conversation broke up the puzzling nicely. If you wanted to make more content, you could add more mechanics of course. There was a slight progression in puzzle difficulty, so the later puzzles weren't super boring retreads of the first one, without breaking the flow and make me forget about the story.
This is really tightly designed, simple but surprisingly difficult. My only complaint is forgetting what the colours do. They are very abstract. I wish the game showed me a tooltip on mistyping a letter.
Greetings from the PyGame community! Your game is a good test case for our new and improved version 2.0 of pygame. It will feature automatic, hardware-accelerated window upscaling, but it looks like your game is crashing on the current pygame master, so we have a way to go still.
So, hello from the Pygame community. Your game runs well on the PyGame 2.0-dev master apart for one bug in transform.scale that we ought to fix.
I ran your game inside a firejail, out of habit, heh.
As for the rhythm game part, I think it can be compare to bit.trip.beat!
UDPATE: The bug was in set_alpha() and the fix is now being merged pending code review.
> I guess I’ll hold off on updating until some errors are fixed!
Oh come on, this way we never get any good bug reports. Also new-ish OSes really hate SDL1.2.
Hello from the PyGame community! It took a bit of fiddling to get your game to run on my machine, and it doesn't quite run on the current development version of PyGame 2.0, so we'll use your game as a test case.
I liked your programmer art. It's very legible and quite charming!
I wanted to like this, a very straightforward take on the theme (5/5 on theme btw), but the controls were ever so slightly unresponsive, and the level design required me to make several leaps of faith. Once I died but Phil was in the water, and the game told me Phil died. In its current form, this game falls just short of greatness in ways that are painful but hopefully easily fixable. This is the game most worthy of a post-compo release of all the ones I played so far. I wish the levels were easier to sight-read, and the text had undergone some kind of proofreading, also maybe slightly bigger text would be good. At least the GIF in the description told me that you *do* have to make a leap of faith.
5/5 on mood!
Greetings from the pygame community! It looks like your game does not work with the current SDL2-based development version of pygame 2.0 (it runs but it doesn't look right) so we'll use your game as a test case and get hacking!
Gameplay-wise, I think this is really good and reasonably complete, but I really wish it was a bit faster-paced and more difficult.
The music is super loud, and the voice acting was comparably quiet. Is there a way to turn down the music separately, or have subtitles? That's probably fixed in the post-jam version. The decoding/cryptography part of the game feels underdeveloped. Worst case it's just clicking on decryption methods until one works. Great presentation of course.
1430939768.png **Programmer Art Award**
I'm not sure the main mechanic and theme quite fit together, but it's novel idea for sure.
Greetings from the PyGame community. Barring that one line that calls the win32 API, which I had to comment out because I'm on Linux, your game runs great on the current development version of pygame 2.0. You may be pleased to hear that your resolution/window scaling code may be simplified once pygame 2.0 is released.
I really liked this game, because it's a totally different direction, mechanically, from most other games I played, but it just takes the theme very literally, with a funny story. Much better than the 20th platformer that just says "if you don't beat the level in 30 seconds you don't keep it alive".
This game ran slow as molasses on my machine! I like the way the bullets move, aimed clearly at the dog abive your head and not yourself. Great way to reinforce the theme in the mechanics.
Here's your harsh criticism: 1. I don't know why you can't look up and down a bit. 2. It was hard to predict how/when the water actually hits the plant without running back and forth. 3. The white walls could have been rows of small green shrubs or something else you can see over. 4. Mouse sensitivity is a bit high for me. 5. The "Linux" download link leads me to a windows.exe (but the html version worked so no big deal, just annoying)
I find the dog/bone theme really weird, because the bones you show are like the kind of cow bones you give to a dog to chew on, not dog bones. That gave me mixed feelings. Was it a "dog chasing bones" idea first, and you changed it halfway through? Why would a dog chase its own bones? Is dissonance this part of the humour?
Some more constructive criticisms follow. This game needs: 1. A way to change window resolution. 2. More structured level generation: Start out easier, make the jumps more difficult further back, provide a "safe" but slow path and multiple "fast" but tricky ones. 3. More varied environments (I realise it's just a jam), for example something like a wall or raised block that stops your jump might have gone a long way, especially if you place it to "catch" the player character in a safe spot before a chasm, or as a ramp to make further jumps. Maybe you did that. I didn't get terribly far. 4. A better visualisation of the hunger clock/advancing wall of Doom (hello Ludum Dare 14) to know how far ahead you are. Could be floating numbers and lines under the playing field, I don't know.
2 and 3 together could really turn this from a hard to control YouTuber humour experiment to something with replay value. As it stands right now, the gameplay doesn't deliver on the promise of the strange story intro.
I didn't understand the controls for the tank at all. At first I thought they were "tank controls" but they were not.
Greetings from the PyGame community. Your game runs smoothly in the current pygame 2.0 development git master.
Good take on the theme, nice graphics!
I particularly liked how you changed the look of the planet based on the parameters. Was this hand-drawn or did you generate it?
I like the graphics. The biggest problem is probably the slow pacing and not knowing how long an infection will last. Not sure if it's randomised, or if there's a way to infect cows.
I like the mood and visual aesthetic of the game. It wears its inspirations on its sleeve, but I like it. I think the whole game could be played with the mouse only, or the bar could be stopped with space. I wish there were more different events or more information about upcoming event types. The few event types were repeating on my first playthrough.
It doesn't to anything interesting with the theme (keep yourself alive, that's how every game with hitpoints works), or the main mechanic. The shooting and moving doesn't feel particularly satisfying. The spawning and death effects of the enemies are very polished though.
I don't know how to rate this game on graphics (good job, Adam Saltsman!), so I chose not to rate it at all in that category. This game definitely engages with the theme, albeit in an obvious and straightforward way. Maybe it's the detailed tiles combined with the unanimated character sprite, but I found the player character hard to control, even though the controls weren't floaty or slippery.
Watching the car go felt nice, but getting it right was just trial and error, I didn't feel like I was getting better at the game or gaining insight, I just tweaked the power until I won each level.
I like the Myst-like atmosphere of the puzzle, reflected in both the graphics and the mechanics.
I got a crash on game over too. (Ubuntu 20.04)
I had the a similar idea, but your execution is very different. Among the "set up a loop and watch it run" games, this is the most polished.
Please make your bullets bigger, and the enemies, and the player character. This game could really benefit from the Nuclear Throne treatment.
This is great puzzle platformer. The game idea would certainly justify a post-compo version, and it would easily hold up even if you didn't know that the game was made to fit to a theme. Right now, I think the weakest part of the game is the platforming/game feel. It felt like the hardest thing was executing jumps correctly, but then again, I didn't get all the coins.
You're taking the theme very literally, but it works, and I haven't seen anybody else do something as simple yet.
I *only* run games in a sandbox since the last time. I like the polish and content you put into this. The only thing that's missing is controller support...
Your game tells me Firefox 81 doesn't support webGL. That's not true. I can play other webGL games fine.
What OS is this for, how do I run this, do I need the exe or can I open the javascript in a browser?
badgame.png
=Balancing= This was tedious. It was an exercise in frustration. It's like minit except with grinding. I can't even say it's badly made, it's probably balanced like this on purpose because of the theme. After the fifth loop it dawned on me how grindy it would be.
=Scope= If the game had been just a bit less grindy, the big map would have been a big plus. I assume you're supposed to grind in the lower-level areas some more so you can exhaust yourself faster instead of walking for miles and dying for few XP, so the big map is wasted on the loops.
=Graphics= For a game about exploration, it probably wouldn't have hurt to de-saturate the trees, make the grass a bit more varied, and have some transitions between the tiles, but I guess making a Wang tileset could easily have meant 20x as many tiles.
=Audio= Nice and relaxing ambiance.
Overall, okay game, ambitious scope, very grindy.
It's the same game mechanic I had last Ludum Dare, except polished and not janky. Unfortunately I couldn't restart a level after breaking a vial, I can only start from the start. I wish I had a level select.
I think I beat it in the shortest possible time on my first try. I wish there was a slightly higher draw distance and more landmarks to orient yourself with. I think you nailed the theme though.
This feels like something from back in 2012 when Flash games were still a thing, in a good way.
When you fire the big bullets backwards, they aren't mirrored, oh well.
I could run the game's .exe with my own love2D binary on Linux, and in wine.
Neat little Python game. Runs well on my Ubuntu 20.04, with PyGame 2.0-dev.
The most room ofr improvement is in the handling/feeling of the player character's jump.
The connection to the theme is barely there, but I trust you didn't start this before the compo started.
(the game didn't have a clock and the lightning ran super fast in the main menue.)
Yeah, I can confirm what Patrik said. Looks like the Linux download is broken
This is the second Puzzlescript game I played with loop-making mechanics, and the contrast makes me appreciate the gentle learning curve of the level progression.
I didn't realise what the problem with the controls was at first, but the sword shows where you walk, and the mouse cursor is not offset on the screen, so you can aim the mouse at solid ground and still walk right off a cliff!
I don't really understand the way the loop theme works. Isn't it supposed to be while ((not A) and (not B) and (not C)) or maybe while (1){ if (A or B or C) break} instead of while (A or B or C) {continue}? It's not anchored very deeply mechanically anyway, it's just a puzzle platformer with additional conditions and curly braces in the level.
I also don't understand why you don't use standard Unity controls and allow arrows plus WASD (W to jump), but that was only a minor annoyance. A far bigger annoyance is that I clicked to dismiss the intro screen once, and failed the no dashing rule, and once pressed space to dismiss and failed the jumping rule.
It's a nice idea, but it's held back a bit by the up-and-down clicking. I really wanted the UI to be drag-n-drop, or all keyboard-based (up, down, tab). It's a lot like human resource machine. I like how you differentiate it by giving me the lines to rearrange, makes it less zachtronics sandbox and more like a combinatorial puzzle.
What is this supposed to mean, regular PC? You can make a windows-only game without being all smug about it, but you took the effort to edit it?
I wanted to keep playing this game way after I should have moved on to the next one. This is actually fun. This game is like five stars of fun. There are many things that could be improved, for example the loop could be nicer looking, and reflected projectiles could flash or change colour to make clearer what is happening, but the gameplay is great already.
Maybe it would be easier to play if you swapped controls for the left and right thruster. As is, this is impossible to play for me. My ship got stuck upside down, my ship got stuck on the side, I lost cargo all the time.
You said all the criticisms of your game yourself. Looks like you didn't like the theme, and the controls are hard to reach even with two hands.
This is (in a good way) a poor man's Subnautica. The level design is GREAT
Thanks, I hate it!
I don't like the gameplay loop particularly, but I must commend you for the variety of monsters you have in your game. The simple controls would lend themselves well for a mobile/tablet game.
I liked the combination of incremental game, random quests, and exploration/digging, but for some reason nothing increased my sensor radius
ld48_dieper.png
I wish the diagonals (pressing up and left on the keyboard) were aligned with the iso grid. More on that in my [rant about isometric controls](https://blubberquark.tumblr.com/post/621835025877499904/isometric-controls)
I love the mood and the audio, especially on the win screen.
@c4scar @local-minimum
There are no turns. It's more like Reus in that regard. I was trying to see if this is self-explanatory, as there is basically only left-clicking (and hitting ESC to bring up the menu). I wrote a small how-to now, it seems like I need to.
Controls: **Click** on a tile to get a selection of tiles you can build. If you cannot build on a tile, the border of the **buildable** area is shown on screen.
There are two types of resources: You see three **building materials** at the top of the screen: metal, oil, and science juice. You need to spend these as a one-time cost to build on tiles, but mining buildings will also generate some resources (but they cost you space).
The other kind of "resource" is **products** of tiles that power settlements. They exist on the map, and depend on the current tile configuration. They cannot be saved for later. To sustain a population of N in a settlement, you need at least N energy, N food, and N Oxygen from adjacent tiles. The output of some tiles depends on its adjacent tiles.
A settlement with N people allows you to build inside an N-tile radius, up to 3. If you hover over a settlement, you see the population of the settlement, the building radius, and the products of adjacent tiles it can use. If the output of adjacent decreases, the population and building radius can shrink, but existing built structures outside the radius will stay in place. The goal is to have a **population of 25** or more people over all settlements.
The game is probably too easy as of now, because mines give a lot of resources, the map is large, and fish farms are cheap, but that was a deliberate decision to make it possible to win on your third attempt.
@mariszin have you given it another try after I explained the controls?
big Owlboy vibes!
Wow, that was surprisingly tense!
I wonder if this couldn't have been made better and faster with something like ncurses or a similar terminal app framework. I hit tab so often but there is no tab completion
Obviously, if you use Unity, you have much more freedom to add graphics down the line if you decide to do that, but as is, it feels like a worse version of the terminal emulator GUIs that already exist. There is not even a cool phosphorous glow and CRT distortion effect.
You could also go the completely opposite direction and open "windows" instead. Or maybe add some scroll bars...
On the one hand, this is a really *clever* mechanic, and a good fit for the theme. On the other hand, the way the puzzle interacts with the platforming is often frustrating. I wish there was a "go back one room" or "go to last checkpoint" functionality. Basically, I agree with @honey-pony.
Also this reminds me of _Recursed_ and _Inside a Star-Filled Sky_. Were they your inspirations?
You are always making the most polished PyGame games! If you are having trouble with PyInstaller, you could try stealing my own packaging method, which just uses wheels, portable Python for windows from python.org, and a batch file. It works well enough in the itch client, and can be deployed from Mac or Linux.
I wish there was visual feedback for pushing the button, not just for missing a note.
As for keyboard controls, now that you are using pygame 2.0, maybe consider using asdf hjkl and scan codes instead of 1234 7890
...or a MIDI controller, or perhaps one of those Rock Band controllers...
> And glad to see my LD46 entry didn’t scare you away for good.
I'm not a fool, I run all games inside firejail
As for scan codes, they are the codes of the position on the keyboard. Keyboards report the scancode, because they don't know if you changed the keycaps out. The OS does the mapping to actual characters. Pygame 2.0 keeps the scancode in the event, so you *could* use those, but then you'd have to make a UI graphic of an unlabelled keyboard and refer to the keys by position.
Very straightforward mechanical interpretation of the theme.
Controls: The keyboard controls were almost impossible, but it was OK with a gamepad. I would have preferred arrows+X+C I think. I did not know I could air-jump at first.
Balance: It was difficult to sight-read the levels, fighting was often not worth it. I sometimes had to stay high up to wait for more of the level to spawn in, which was annoying. A more vertical screen layout might have helped.
touchdown.png I did not get far, but that was fun!
I had to edit your code a bit to run it on linux, but I really liked your take on the theme, and the attention to detail. The football players all have different numbers!
I wish there was visual feedback when the propellers spin or something like that...
I can't believe this is the first Inception-themed game I am playing this jam.
Cool ambiance, terrible hitboxes. The eating animation sometimes snaps my guy back after he is already out of the way - this is the Dark Souls of fish stealth games! My suggestion is mouse-based or analog-stick steering with free 360° movement.
I had to change your source code to run your game on Ubuntu Linux. I had to rename Fish.png to fish.png. Try to use the exact capitalisation in your file name and in your game code.
I thought there was a reason the blocks were coloured like oxygen and energy bars
Impressive, to make an aquaria/lovers in a dangerous spacetime/gravity ace thing in that short a time. And it only uses one button! Were you eyeing an iPad port from the beginning?
I liked the straightforward take on the theme, but I wish there was more to *do*.
cavetest.png
Best game so far! 5/5 on innovation. Sometimes I struggled when a left and right flipper were in the opposite configuration, but apart from that, it was great! (I used a lot of fake quarters though)
If we were still doing the awards from the old site, I'd give you this jam's programmer art award
At first I was a bit annoyed by no arrow keys, but then I realised your game has *touch controls*
I came here expecting something a lot more mechanical and strategic, and I was surprised.
I don't know if this is a problem only with the web version, but the controls were very weird. I could only walk slowly, so I bunny-hopped everywhere. That was kind of jarring. Also, some trees were floating above the ground, and shadows appeared in front of me. This was very immersion-breaking *for me personally*, because I could figure out how this happened, as I had implemented similar games with low-poly terrain in Unity myself. I won't deduct any mood points for this, but I would like to see baked shadows or high-priority light sources or something like that.
The "mountain" was not the first place I went to, and I wish there was a snowy peak visible so I would know that this is the mountain. I could climb up the pillar that leaned into the mountains, maybe they should have added some invisible walls at strategic locations. The polaroids felt like they were intended to be a bigger game mechanic in the initial design, and then they just stayed in.
This is all rather nit-picky, because the game looks *complete* as is.
This game really made me remember all the things I loved and hated about point-and-click adventure games. Especially the pixel hunting. Simon the Sorcerer had a feature where you could hold a key and it showed you all the clickable things. Fortunately, the shortness of the jam game format emphasizes the good parts before the bad parts get tedious.
If you want to make this a more full-length game, or a full-length game with a different story based on this engine, you'll need to address the pixel hunting.
I just strip mined everything. That made it too boring and too easy. Also cargo space was not really a useful thing. I could just take more trips.
The graphics are interesting, but they make the game harder to play. Maybe mouse-only with left and right click would be easier, or two controller sticks.
Your Linux download link leads to a Windows .exe
Please fix, or remove the penguin.
There is a scaffolding here for an interesting game, but as it is, there is little reason to go deeper after you understand the principle. It's just more of the same. I wish the key repeat speed or movement speed or whatever it is was slower, because you run out of ropes so quickly if you overshoot.
If you want to emphasise the puzzle aspect more, you could probably make the upper levels persistent (so you eventually run out of food), or you could show the calorie values more prominently so I can plan ahead.
Have you heard the good news about the new PyGame feature pygame.display.set_mode((300,200), pygame.SCALED)`
I would have understood the way you do it if you generated anti-aliased text at high resolutions, but you scaled pixel fonts up, so why not scale up the whole screen?
Also, why re-create the window every frame?
This is an interesting idea and the main mechanic has potential, but I don't think the ship layout and the enemies work right now. I'd consider duplicating some controls in the ship, or changing the way the engine works. As it is right now, the safest place is always inside the engine room. That makes gameplay stop-and-go.
I get it. It's a "walking simulator". It could really have benefited from some polish on the __walking__ and __opening the notes__ parts. There is a reason why games like Dear Esther and Bioshock use audio. This way you can hear the story _while walking_. It's really unfortunate that the comparison to Dear Esther is the first thing that comes to mind (spoilers) orpnhfr Qrne Rfgure unf gur fnzr raqvat.
The other big area for improvement would be the writing of the notes/letters. Some of them felt really flippant/terse/jarring, given the serious subject matter. I guess you wanted to keep them short in order to not interrupt the flow of the game.
Some PyGame-specific feedback based on looking through your code ( https://replit.com/@BrianDavis7/A-Disguised-Far-Muse.zip )
You should look into `pygame.display.set_mode((400,200), pygame.SCALED)` instead of scaling in software.
Your intro animation had parts of the next frame sticking into the current frame.
Probably pick a better pixel art font, and render without antialiasing, or run your game at a larger resolution and use a bigger font size. I mean, as it is, you could render fonts at 800x400 screen res and have art at 400x200, then text would be more legible.
It would probably be easier to play your game with a mouse cursor, or with a cursor on the grid moves with arrow keys. This game feels like you should play it over a teletype.
The scientific float notation of the resources is distracting, it would probably make it easier to read if you rounded them to int() first.
(I know I'm one to talk, I made my game in PyGame too, and it's not even object-oriented!)
I tried to play this a couple of times. I gave up on beating your game. It's a real shame this feels so unfinished. I had trouble finding the theme in this, but I don't doubt you played by the rules. If you had started early, it wouldn't be this ambitious mess. The art styles of the planets and the space part don't fit at all, and the planets feel like they were quickly slapped together in Unity. I won't hold that against you, it's not your fault I can recognise the terrain and character controller, and it's not your fault Unity makes this easy.
I died in many ways. I ran out of fuel, I fell off a mountain, I ran out of oxygen. The planets were too big, and although the terrain was interesting in the large, it was boring in the small scale. The game also felt very laggy in WebGL. Some of that could probably be remedied by marking geometry as static and baking the lighting. If there is ever a place where your game needs dynamic lighting, I haven't found it.
I'd like to see a video, or a text walkthrough of this game, or *a balanced, more focused post-compo version* - not necessarily because I think this game can or should be turned into a proper commercial release, but because I am dying to know what this was supposed to be.
I really wanted to like this, and I realise what I think is wrong with this game is exactly the same thing I found wrong with Human Resource Machine: The assembly is too low-level and the machine is limited in a deliberate attempt to make programming into more of a puzzle, which makes it more cumbersome than a puzzle game and less fun than coding for a real computer.
I just won't rate on fun, or innovation, or graphics I guess. I am just really conflicted.
Reminds me of the Dijkstra quote: APL is a mistake, carried through to perfection.
The biggest *constructive* criticism is probably it would help if you could scroll by moving the cursor to the edge of the screen
This is basically top-down super crate box, but it works really well for such a simple idea! Does the disc gun home in on you on purpose?
Neat, but very stressful. I didn't even have time to move my index finger to use an item!
Floods are an obvious, but very fitting take on the theme (I had the same idea), and this feels like the most distilled version of this idea. Simple but addictive.
@extar my bad, the link should end in swimcity-2000. I changed the name on itch after making the LD submission m(.
Well, I also fixed a crash on re-start this morning, so you couldn't have played anyway. And then I fixed a crash on start on Linux. Oh well. Now it should run.
@edwingamedev M1 or Intel?
- The mspaint.exe protagonist sprite and the grass are definitely the weakest link of the pixel art. - This feel like a rhythm game but also you have to go fast? At first I thought I have to move on the beat or something, but it's the other way round. Turns out it's moving like a roguelike, but with a wall clock timer. - The controls flashed briefly and I thought I had missed something at first. Maybe make them fade out over a second instead. - Music is ambient, fits the mood, doesn't get in the way (after I figured out this is not a rhythm game). - Theme is on point - Collecting hearts past full was unnecessary. I was at 3 most of the time until I got hit by three things in rapid succession - I got to level 8, score 40640
The platforming is surprisingly well designed and innovative. Who would have thought that you cab design a game around fixed jump arcs?
The UI was a bit wonky in Firefox. Maybe this could work better if you could drag/turn the arrows in the right direction instead of clicking/tapping multiple times. This was certainly a unique take on the theme, more fun and less dark than many others.
This is a great city builder, and although the theme is not very prominent, it shines through in the interactions of the mechanics.
This is a great take on the theme!
Thanks, I hate this! Fits the theme really well. Very stressful
Heh, same idea!
Was finding the station *supposed* to be this difficult?
This game is a straightforward take on the theme, but ever slightly too difficult in my opinion. Starting the lava a bit lower, having it climb a bit slower at first, and making the generation just a bit easier would go a long way. It would also help if I could jump further up than the screen, or if the controls were less floaty with pressure-sensitive jumps.
Beast take on the theme so far!
I can't say it's `fun`, but it's certainly a big `mood`.
This was surprisingly good, given the slow start!
I think I'll change the volume levels and re-upload. I already made one small post-compo change when I realised I couldn't include libnoise in the windows build without re-booting into Windows or cross-compilation, so I added a fallback in pure Python. I think that one was well within the rules, and so is lowering the volume of everything if it hurts people's ears.
By the way, if you're on a Mac or on Linux, you can just use a recent Python3 and then install the latest `noise` and `pygame` from PyPi via pip, delete the `lib/` folder with the windows binaries, and run the game from the source code. The Windows stuff is just there to make it easier to play without installing anything.
Updated the windows build, added a linux build that will run on recent Ubuntu. Only change was volume and some path things to make the Linux build work.
Feels kind of brough-like
@john-gabriel I figured it out! Try right click and "show only this frame" on itch. This way, no cross-domain requests!
Great puzzle game. The main thing this needs is undo.
This is a fairly straightforward take on the theme. I don't know what to say that you probably don't already know. - I got to the edges of the world early on. Those could be telegraphed/thematically incorporated better. - Consider adding a trigger monument in the game world to spawn the next wave early - The enemies were the weakest part of the design - Movement game feel was too floaty for my taste - spooky mood
Looks like we had the same game idea, but your webGL build does not load
I wish my character had a rainbow trail. Or maybe it does but my score was not high enough..
I survived for 234 seconds, and I have a lot to say that you probably already know: - The theme is a bit wonky. Not in the sense that it doesn't fit with the LD theme (so no marks off there), but more that the virus theme doesn't quite fit with the gameplay. - The difficulty starts way too low, then after 2 minutes the game becomes moderately engaging, and then it gets really fast around the 200 seconds mark. - The little critters often overlap. - The way I assume this is *intended* to be played at high levels is to strategically let some green ones sit and remove some blue ones early. It's hard to gauge which ones just spawned and which ones have been around, so there is not much strategy to that strategy - I really wish there was something to buy with my blocoins.
Overall, this is surprisingly deep for such simple gameplay, but I would *not* recommend that you make a commercial version out of this for the app store.
This was really well balanced
I tried to run this in firefox, but it didn't work. Something about headers.
The controls were definitely the weak point. Even having arrows+X+C would have been better.
I wish the camera was better. At least I chuckled at the game over screen.
This is pure genius! Also the smooth jazz music creates a fantastic "noir" mood together with the frantic gameplay and the chess gangster story.
Also, traditional Chess opening **and** endgame knowledge is mostly useless, because there is never tempo or Zugzwang, kind of like how all ideas about life-and-death, shape and influence in Go is go out the indow if white takes two turns, then black takes two.
And that's great!
I see it's on purpose that you have to use the same hand for both... I hate it! That's probably also on purpose, to some extent.
5/5 on mood. So much content. Best take on the theme!
Turn based fantasy football?
I wish I had the attention to spare for the striking visuals, but my eyes were stuck on the lower left corner. Either this should be easier overall, or there should be safe areas, or fast travel, or a transcript, or re-spawning at fountains, or something, please!
I expected the controls and the track to be in 3D at first, and was confused by the space setting. A plane over a flat world might have fit the gameplay better.
I can't decide if these are the best, or the worst graphics i the jam.
I got a date with captain! The shmup part was really fluid, and the talking tied into it nicely, with all the reloading and stuff.
So much game feel!
It took me a while to understand that this is a match-3 plus bullet hell
Great theme/idea, but it gets old fast. If you update, I'll try again!
Great mood!
I like the idea, but the balance of waves, feeding, mob movement speed combined with the UI makes this rather clunky. Unlike most games in this LD, which have clever ideas that could not sustain a longer game, this could be a fun mobile game if expanded upon and developed further.
I haven't played your game yet, but I have fought flatpak for an hour. It would have been faster to compile from source...
Points of Criticism: - Starts are confusing. I wish my car had a distinctive colour. - I don't see how the others influence my outcome. I can just come in dead last and get points. - I wish there was a minimap.
But after I finished the first race I was pleasantly surprised! Neat idea to combo these!
Your slurping sounds were funny.
The game feel/polish/presentation was good but I wish there was more depth to the tactics.
The tower defense part didn't have much depth, and there was little depth in managing the burger army. I wish you could interact with the tower defense more. Still, a quick and entertaining game.
Is there any music in this game? The idea is really neat, but either I am missing something or the game is way too frustrating. I would like some better feedback when I hit/miss notes at least, some kind of flashing animation or a sound.
Ok, sound is working. Seems like somebody else's game had crashed my pulseaudio. But now it feels like the music doesn't sync with the game beats...
The hardcoded(?) window size is bigger than my screen
I wish there was a way to skip the intro, or a way to get a lengthy description of the place I am in. I assume this takes place in a grid world? The sounds of the ground got really repetetive when I got lost...
The game can be beaten in 10 minutes by the way ;)
@elemel I can make a webGL version, but I'll have to fix some bugs first. Or I'd have to run the unity installer again and install macOS build support. I'll probably do webGL first.
@Ananace Thank you for this comment. Dear future commenters: I would like to know if you played and/or enjoyed any of Dear Esther, TRIHAYWBFRFYH, Cookie Clicker, or Candy Box.
@smbe19 Yeah it was a bit too dependent on players knowing Dear Esther, because it follows the form/structure of DE in an exaggerated way, except it turns everything around and changes the meaning. I am kicking myself for making something so... high-context.
Thanks @dollarone. Now I feel bad giving such negative feedback on your game.
Also @elemel html5 version is up.
For anybody not getting this game it's riffing on Dear Esther. Here is somebody enjoying the hell out of Dear Esther:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2twq0TFYEU
I can see the two genres you were going for, but better level generation and more interesting monsters in the roguelike part could make the racing part so much better. As is, the levels are what's holding this game design back.
The bullet hell starts right away when you click, that was so unfair!
It doesn't capture keyboard in FF, so I scroll all over the place!
This was surprisingly fun. Reminded me of ridiculous fishing, and I liked the mood and the music.
I was very curious about the hardboiled noir problem sleuth story and then it just ended... Oh well.
The UI was really funny. I like how the box shapes work, because the story is told by examining things and talking to people. So Maureen being a box, and characterised by dialogue is actually genius!
Best graphics so far in this LD!
Oh boy! There is A LOT of content and game mechanics there!
The hearthstone inspiration is also very clear.
What this game is lacking, though understandable given the amount of things there, like cards, packs, levels, etcetera - is first of all UI polish and game feel.
UI - The green on grey is hard to read - The scroll areas are larger than they need to be - The deck builder doesn't show how many cards are left - There is no way to quit/forfeit a level when you get stuck - Why do I have to right-click after typing a number for a card?
Game Feel - I can't hold down the mouse to fire continuously - There is no screen shake or effect when the bullets hit - I can't tell the range of my gun easily - Mouse sensitivity was very high - My cursor would point at a faraway wall, but the bullets struck a nearby obstacle
Balance/Game design/levels - Triple shot feels useless - My drones got stuck in a wall and didn't walk around - Levels were grey all around, and disorienting without landmarks - The 6th level was nigh impossible because by view jerked straight up and down and I couldn't move for half a second and got mobbed - Are guys spawning ON me? - The others before were easy - Why can I even look up and down at all? There is nothing there for the first 6 levels! - The last one is like a shooting gallery
Because this is such an ambitious idea, and I can't really give you a 5 on fun or innovation, I'm giving you a *5/5 on theme*. I hope you make this into a better shooter, post-jam!
Is there another level after the first wave? I almost cleared it!
This is tied for the best rhythm game this LD! The beats line up with the buttons! What more could you ask for?
I never beat any of the stages, but I like it anyway.
I would like to load and save and share pinball programs. Also maybe have the pinball programs running in parallel while I am in the clicker part, if you want to make this an idle game along the lines of universal paperclips.
I like the graphics and the take on the theme, but without a bit more focused level generation and goals, this feels unfinished. There is no difference between grass and mountain tiles.
The audio actually aligns with the rhythm game. That's great!
This needs some sound effects, screen shake and maybe an animation that shows how the dice interact, by moving them around or hitting your ship with the dice after rolling. Or just showing how you shoot the missiles and how many miss. Otherwise, quite good. I like the clean art style.
Also 2 d4 are usually better than 1 d8.
I like your take on the theme and the story. Unfortunately, the platforming and shooting is the weakest part of the game.
Thanks. It's good but I hate it. Fits the theme perfectly :/
Very incompatible.
This certainly gets 100% in mood and audio, but there wasn't much to the flying gameplay.
Could not run this :frowning:
``` Set current directory to /home/USERNAME_REDACTED/.config/itch/apps/Unojo temple/LD 41 Unojo temple (Linux) Found path: /home/USERNAME_REDACTED/.config/itch/apps/Unojo temple/LD 41 Unojo temple (Linux)/UNojo temple.x86_64 Mono path[0] = '/home/USERNAME_REDACTED/.config/itch/apps/Unojo temple/LD 41 Unojo temple (Linux)/UNojo temple_Data/Managed' Mono config path = '/home/USERNAME_REDACTED/.config/itch/apps/Unojo temple/LD 41 Unojo temple (Linux)/UNojo temple_Data/Mono/etc' Preloaded 'ScreenSelector.so' Unable to preload the following plugins: ScreenSelector.so Invalid serialized file version. File: "/home/USERNAME_REDACTED/.config/itch/apps/Unojo temple/LD 41 Unojo temple (Linux)/UNojo temple_Data/globalgamemanagers". Expected version: 2017.4.1f1. Actual version: 2017.3.0f3. (Filename: Line: 1298)
PlayerInitEngineNoGraphics settings: Failed to load PlayerSettings (internal index #0). Most likely data file is corrupted, or built with mismatching editor and platform support versions. Failed to initialize player ```
The movement was a bit weird (player continuous, objects discrete), and I was sorely missing a way to undo a move or restart a stage. Also the guards don't reset the stage, but I have to restart in level 1!
Reminds me of Ernesto the RPG. How does health gain work? I didn't understand that. Do you just lose one max hp per level?
The game stopped responding at some point, even though the trees were still swaying in the wind, and the music played, there was no response. It was hard to gauge the height of the incoming blocks correctly. Great graphics though, with all the effects.
Five stars! Great puzzle design!
Funny take on the theme! I liked the gun animations and aiming down sights. It fit the theme perfectly, but was very jarring at the same time.
This could actually be "fun" if the golf balls were bigger and the guns were less realistic, more arcadey, but as-is, it's up there with "Modern Bowlfare" by @derek-wilson and "COD of Duty" http://rjevans.net/post/41629208761/cod-of-duty-the-premier-first-person-shooting
Great theme and funny, but not *fun*. The controls were harder than they needed to be. I reckon you took the difficulty from Flappy Bird and not from Tetris.
At first I thought the chess theme was just in the graphics, but the upgrades! That is so clever!
Surprisingly many dating sims here. I like your hand-drawn aesthetic, but the platformer level design really was only so-so. I died a lot on purpose until I found out I can walk away and start again.
The jumps are *always* precision jumps and the penalty for failing them is always death and the controls were so tight they were practically strangling me. More checkpoints and lower gravity please! (same jump height, but slower vertical speed)
Simple, but polished! Could be a nice mobile game.
To be frank, I don't see how this uses the theme at all. Neat game though.
As Frank Lantz once told me: I really liked your game, but it made me physically sick. (It's the scrolling textures, but I'm not holding it against you.)
I just fixed a ton of bugs. All I had to do is replace all the data structures, re-factor the code for the map, units, text and explosion particles to be actually object oriented, implement A* instead of the hacky depth-first pathfinding I had tried to get to work, and re-work the state management from state=new_state assignments into something that handles state transitions between frames. And wouldn't you know it, this bug fixing replaced 60% of the compo code because if you replace the data structures, you kind of touch everything. I tried to be gentle, but I changed some animation speeds because I was impatient waiting for text, and I changed some pixels of the UI a little bit by accident, and I may have also changed the way vision ranges are calculated, but the previous way was a bug, and I didn't change the balance numbers. It's still basically the same thing as the compo version, minus the bugs. I did change the starting units, so you start with one of everything, since you can't build. It's probably way harder now.
If you want to rate my game, the broken version is still there on itch. It's unwinnable as is. If you want to actually give me written feedback, you may want to consider the bugfix version.
> The whole signals system doesn’t really feel worth doing, even though the feature looks like a lot of effort was put into it
C'mon, man! That's the theme, and it's literally the thing I programmed first and built the game around!
@richard-baltrusch No, it wasn't COMPO. It is a JAM game. I am retyping this because the LDJAM web site ate a long comment detailing the things changed in the bugfix version. I fixed a lot of bugs in the enemy AI, and in the game's state machine, and I made it clear in the UI that building was not implemented. The original build was basically unplayable, because of enemy AI problems. I wrote a whole postmortem about this.
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/59/signals-intelligence/ruthless-criticism-and-self-criticism-a-postmortem
Feel free to yell at me about taking "fixing game-breaking bugs" too literally, because the original version had at least *five* game-breaking bugs, and you can see them in the video uploaded by @local-minimum. I also took out some stuff from the UI to make it clearer that it wasn't implemented. But content-wise, it's all the same units and the same map generation and the same moves and so on.
As for the multi-unit move (UGH I HATE RETYPING THIS AGAIN), there is an implementation problem (pathfinding performance, see postmortem) and a design problem: The player may want to move-attack, but they use multi-move to move-move accidentally. Both multi-unit move and multi-step move may lead to these problems. I guess I painted myself into a corner with this design...
Neat game. The visuals don't quite do the complexity justice. It would probably be a fair bit easier if it was on a grid. If you make a post-compo version, you could maybe let the player place things in addition to the pixel-based stuff, but I loves the pixel based stuff. 5/5 on fun, graphics need improvement.
Never before has a game needed controller support so badly. Well, then you'd also have to make it more difficult...
Very juicy! The comparison to Undertale feels intended, but in 48 hours I can't expect the same "oompf" in the music. It got easier and easier over time. I just kept close to the ball and waited for bolts to spawn.
Graphically, this reminds me of something somebody would have written for "Intermediate 3D graphics and C++" seminar in university in 2005. It really works, though.
During playtesting, I had some puzzle design feedback, but your game answered all my questions before I finished. I only have one: When you designed the first puzzles by hand, did you check/enforce a uniqueness constraint?
This could be 5/5 in "Fun" (and every category) if only the controls weren't so fiddly, if only there was a way to rotate the pieces with the mouse, if only there was a way to drag the piece under that piece...
It feels like there should be more games with riddles like this. It feels like a theme interpretation that makes me think "Why didn't I think of that?"
It seems there has to be a reward for getting things right the first time, but then there would need to be some sort of hint system to balance it out, or limited cues that only say how many you got wrong, not which ones. As is, this is fine for the compo. If you wanted to make it a full release, there would have to be more feedback, more limited feedback, more gradual feedback. Maybe some censor bars go away and you lose points. Maybe the censor bars go away in the ones you got *right*.
The most constructive feedback I can give: If you're doing a bugfix, you might as well fix all the typos: moral, disasterous, recieved, feul, persued... Really takes me out of it when it's right in the opening text...
The battles don't feel all that strategic, or maybe I'm missing where I can see my HP and XP.
I think the puzzles are kind of uninspired, but that !> "The Witness" style ending where there is a puzzle in the world
caught me by surprise.
constructive minor nitpicks: - The puzzle UI is small and fiddly - one puzzle right before the ending says it needs black but it needs white - The station textures are grey and washed out - I think I need a reticle to click on panels and for motion sickness
The big problem from my perspective is that the puzzles themselves aren't interesting. They just teach me how the pieces work together, and then I'm already at the ending. I understand why you wouldn't want to stump the players who are rating your game, but it's a missed opportunity. Unless you can show me an interesting puzzle, I won't tell you that this this is worth pursuing as a post-jam idea but that's no stars off your rating.
This the first game I can give a lot of constructive feedback to, so I'll go into detail. **Zooming:** Zooming in and out is kind of pointless, because either I'm too zoomed in and can't see everything, or space is wasted. I can't pan around. The tool selection is obscures some of the playing field when zoomed in. I think the game should just figure out its viewport size and zoom in so nothing is obscured and no space is wasted. Alternatively, let me scroll/pan around. **Controls:** I wish I could more easily drag a unit around, instead of deleting and re-placing. I also wish the oscilloscope was easier to use, and the waveforms had markings on the Y scale. **Puzzle Design:** This game struggles with one puzzle design problem common to these games. The puzzles aren't interesting. They only teach the mechanics. I don't know if the game wants to be more SpaceChem (focused on building) or Stephen's Sausage Roll (more spatial puzzles), but it's kind of neither. One level was going in one direction, one in the other, and the rest just taught the mechanics. I think you should pick one and go deeper. **Maths:** Dividing sin(x) by sin(x) should have discontinuities where x=0! **Polish:** You could make it clearer how wires work by drawing lines from sources to sinks (marching squares or something like that), or even better, by having little pulses travel down the wires.
There are many lost or unrealised (I know it's the time limits) opportunities here: You could have introduced single-input-single output components like inverters, or single-output components. These would have made the game more like factorio. But you could also have introduced components like filters: Wavelet filters, gaussian filters, that kind of thing. You know, the kind of filters from **signal processing** that smooth noise or amplify certain frequencies. I was waiting for these, because of the theme.
I think the most important question you should ask yourself, and the question I asked myself, is whether the wires should be on a grid at all. I think the answer is 90% ease of implementation during a game jam. Still, what if you could connect the sources and sinks free-form, like in ShaderForge or simulink? Ministry of Synthesis already did that, so I understand why you wouldn't go down that path again, but puzzle games live and die by the puzzle design, and your game is all tutorial and three good puzzles. That's probably okay for a game jam, but I wish there were more.
I really liked that you picked a straightforward mechanical interpretation of the theme. I respect and appreciate that you didn't twist the theme until it fit the kind of game you wanted to make all along.
Why are all these train games so nerve-wracking?
I survived 13 days. I don't know if that's good or not.
I made a game based on the same "playing with lag" mechanic for Ludum Dare 36 (on the old site), but it was a really tortured interpretation of the theme. It didn't even occur to me this time that you could do this with this theme. I really like the idea!
I like the visual aesthetic, and the cars. I just wish I knew where work is, at least after I died three times. Give me a hint!
HOW DID I GET HERE? Screenshot 2026-04-26 at 08-21-42 Signolium and the Hunt for the Mutineers Part 3 ldjam.com Ludum Dare game jam.png
The same way he did... Screenshot 2026-04-26 at 08-23-07 Signolium and the Hunt for the Mutineers Part 3 ldjam.com Ludum Dare game jam.png
UI elements behind level stuff Screenshot 2026-04-26 at 08-25-17 Signolium and the Hunt for the Mutineers Part 3 ldjam.com Ludum Dare game jam.png
The waves travelled down little crevices/seams between objects, and I don't know if that was intentional or a bug. Also the ping really needs some kind of sound effect. It's probably hard to pick one that wont get annoying after 100 times. I wish the controls were for two hands, like arrows and X+C, instead of of WASD and E and Space – or maybe let me ping with the mouse...
I liked that you picked a mechanical interpretation of the theme. That's always a plus.
This is a really clever theme. I mean... It's not exactly a clever take on the theme "Signals", but it is a really clever take on *Frogger*. The gameplay hit me like a brick after that wacky exposition story. It's "out there" in a way, but also so obvious I kept thinking "Why hasn't anybody thought of this before?"
I don't know what to say about the gameplay itself. That almost feels beside the point. Great humour and innovation.