HootBow by Pixelulsar 2013-12-29T14:54:00
Very cute pixel art. Jumping felt a little too fast, and I'm not crazy about the level design either, but the bow was quite fun to use. Overall, a fun little game.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → BluShine
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Category | Score | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 🥇 | 2020 | 46 | Keep it alive | The Heart Of The Keep | compo | Mood | 4.58 | |
| 🥇 | 2015 | 33 | You are the Monster | Found Bigfootage | compo | Theme | 4.55 |
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | Co | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 48 | Deeper and deeper | Unfinished | unfinished | |||||||||||
| 2020 | 46 | Keep it alive | The Heart Of The Keep | compo | 179 | 3.82 | 3.19 | 3.14 | 3.95 | 3.88 | 4.21 | 4.58 | |||
| 2019 | 45 | Start with nothing | 👥 | ___ Pinball | jam | 4.00 | 3.50 | 4.00 | 2.83 | 4.33 | 3.83 | 3.50 | 4.16 | ||
| 2018 | 43 | Sacrifices must be made | 👥 | Serve The Gods | jam | 5.00 | 5.00 | 5.00 | 5.00 | 4.00 | 5.00 | 4.00 | |||
| 2018 | 42 | Running out of space | Decal Royale | compo | 3.87 | 3.62 | 4.12 | 4.56 | 4.06 | 3.37 | 3.85 | 3.28 | |||
| 2018 | 41 | Combine 2 Incompatible Genres | Neko Drift! | compo | 439 | 3.22 | 3.25 | 3.66 | 3.95 | 3.13 | 2.81 | 3.64 | 3.17 | ||
| 2017 | 38 | A Small World | Balanced Upon A Turtle | compo | 135 | 3.66 | 3.52 | 4.14 | 4.52 | 3.90 | 3.42 | 3.21 | 3.47 | ||
| 2016 | 37 | One room | Table Jockey | compo | 415 | 3.10 | 2.75 | 3.95 | 4.05 | 2.80 | 2.50 | 3.65 | 3.00 | 42 | |
| 2016 | 36 | Ancient Technology | CANOE & SPEAR | compo | |||||||||||
| 2016 | 35 | Shapeshift | The Shapes of the Druid | compo | 155 | 3.65 | 3.35 | 4.25 | 4.25 | 3.95 | 3.40 | 3.73 | 28 | ||
| 2015 | 33 | You are the Monster | Found Bigfootage | compo | 78 | 3.81 | 3.13 | 4.32 | 4.55 | 3.91 | 3.90 | 3.75 | 3.63 | 41 | |
| 2015 | 32 | An Unconventional Weapon | Golf Heist | jam | 205 | 3.60 | 3.38 | 3.92 | 4.08 | 3.29 | 3.22 | 3.59 | 3.33 | 33 | |
| 2014 | 30 | Connected Worlds | Interdimensional Plumber | compo | |||||||||||
| 2013 | 28 | You Only Get One | One Job One Shot | compo | 30 | 3.91 | 3.62 | 4.08 | 4.18 | 3.99 | 3.52 | 2.24 | 3.53 | 87 |
Very cute pixel art. Jumping felt a little too fast, and I'm not crazy about the level design either, but the bow was quite fun to use. Overall, a fun little game.
Interesting concept and mechanics. But it would really have been much better with some simple starting puzzles, rather than getting thrown right into the deep end. Of course, that's tough to do within the limits of the compo. Graphics were cool, and it really worked well with the combination of ambient noises. But, it's pretty obvious that this was designed for "two colors", not "you only get one" :P
Awesome accomplishment. Is all the server code included in the source? I might try to take a look and mess around with it later. I could see this becoming a "super-light MMO framework"!
Maybe I was missing something, but it didn't seem like there was much "gameplay". It felt more like an interactive animation. That said, the animations and music were pretty good, and it was funny. But I just felt like I was mostly sitting and watching, not actually playing the game.
A pretty interesting twist on top-down stealth! It reminds me of Guitar Hero, where you save your star power bar until you get to a really hard part of the song, except you're saving a bullet. But I wish the vision mechanics were more obvious, it's hard to tell when I'm hidden and when I'm not. Also, the camera is focused somewhat above the character, so you can't really see enemies that are below you. I kept getting killed this way :(
A nice little puzzle-platformer. Graphics are a little too minimal for my taste, it seems more like "ran out of time" rather than "intentionally minimal". But with the clean simplicity of the gameplay, it doesn't make a big difference.
Nice idea, and the gameplay was pretty interesting once I started to understand the strategy. It seemed a lot more complex than it actually was, with all the stats and stuff that didn't really seem to do anything. But really, the core mechanic was solid, all the issues I had were simply a lack of polish. I could see this game being really awesome with some cool art, battle animations, and sounds. The 48-hour compo version is fun, but I'd love to see a full post-compo version.
Kind of cool having different ships to switch on-the-fly. Even though it kind of goes against the "you only get one" theme. Controls are definitely odd, but I still managed to win the game, but I only used the starting ship.
Simple yet satisfying gameplay. I love all the little details like how dead enemies slide around and the scarves wave. It's kind of annoying when enemies drop on top of a snowball or vice versa and you die really fast, but it's fun when an enemy drops right in front of you for an easy kill. I would love to see a multiplayer version of this, even if it's just local multiplayer.
I love the way you integrated the theme into the gameplay. Although I wish the ball wasn't thrown with so much force (or had more friction), it's sometimes tough to get it back. Combos were really cool, and the dash was surprisingly useful for mid-air ball-catching.
Got to the end. The level with a ton of teleporters ran extremely slowly (like, 1 fps), but otherwise no technical issues. A pretty interesting twist on the block-pushing puzzle idea, reminds me of the four sword puzzles in Zelda Minish Cap. I liked the level design, some of them really make you think, but I wish there were some harder levels. It's kind of weird how the sprites use a bunch of different styles (lo-res pixel art zombies, 3d-rendered barrels, textured bricks, hi-res pixel art wizard). But the music helps set the tone of the game, and makes it feel kind of with all the zombies.
Not too bad for 5 hours! Short but funny.
Very fun, awesome idea for the theme, and cute pixel art. I agree that the camera movement is annoying. Unfortunately, the game kept freezing about half-way through the third level.
Abstract and cool. I loved the music. The ending was unexpected and very awesome. I got 132960 points. It might have been nice to see a little more depth, maybe more levels or difficulties, but the game worked very well as a tiny, short, awesome package.
Lost $528 in bribes by day 10. The gameplay is basically luck and memory, but it's a funny use of the theme.
Awesome idea, solid gameplay, cool graphics, catchy music. Didn't really go with the theme very well, but no big deal!
Windows EXE didn't work, asked for DevIL.dll. Installed LOVE and ran the game that way instead.
I got 4 jumps with seed 007. It was going pretty well until I spawned right on top of a bunch of turrets and I died in about 3 turns. Really interesting concept, it's like a roguelike strategy game. You really have to budget your resources, which makes the game much more interesting.
I guess the upgrades aren't implemented? I like the idea of a sort of platformer-shooting-defense game with randomly-generated levels, but the generation usually gives pretty crappy levels, unfortunately. But when you do get a good one, the game gets pretty fun. Music, sound, and graphics are all quite nice, and they work together very well. But the connection to the theme is, well, a bit of a stretch...
Fun, funny, and clever use of the theme. Some of the mechanics could be more transparent (I wish bishops had a "happiness meter", and I wish regions were colored differently to separate them or indicate population/income), but the game is still very playable.
It's like I Wanna Be The Guy... only harder. The air dash thing is a cool mechanic, but really hard to use! I don't think I can ever hope to be able to beat this game.
Wall sliding seems to glitch-out sometimes, and you get stuck to the wall. Sprites seem kinda weird, the bamboo spike tips don't always line up with the stems. And the jump sound is quite harsh.
Gameplay isn't anything special, but the graphics and sound work together to communicate the message and help us understand the disaster.
Cute graphics, nice use of the theme. It's fun, but it's tough to control the elf's arms!
Very simple gameplay and graphics. I ran the LOVE version, and the game freezes for a while when I start it, but then it ran fine.
Really cool aesthetic. Would have been nice to have some sound, though.
Controls were hard to figure out, but I think I got it (click on mushroom, flick the mouse). The direction seems pretty random, though. Maybe there's something I'm missing?
Short and silly.
Gameplay was fun enough, pretty much a basic "infinite jumper" game. Graphics and sound are fine. Would have been nice to see more variety, and it seems like you usually die from just bad luck. Still, it's pretty impressive for only 15 hours.
Cool graphics, although some sort of grid would have helped. I liked the idea, but it was hard to play. The text was tough to read, and I wish there were more indicators for remaining health (both the player's heath and the enemies).
Simple and short, but really cool. Wish there was a bit more challenge, though. Like limited fuel or damage from colliding with debris. I liked the music, although I'm not sure if the compo rules allow you to use music that you didn't create yourself.
Not exactly an original concept, but I like the atmosphere it creates with the audio and the cool effects.
Had some major issues (random lag, particuarly bad when hitting a wall and teleporting after the lag, often through walls and falling out of the level). But I still managed to get through a few levels. Cool idea, and I loved the jokes at the end of each level. Art and music weren't very good, but it helped add the the humor!
I got the best ending on my first try, then got a few others. Although when I told Sehya my species was "dog", she said "oh, you're a Corsean?" I also liked the response when you tell Sehya your name is Sehya! Awesome art, and a cool story, too. The music is simple but really helps set the mood.
Graphics were very good, functional and polished. Music helped set the mood, too. I played it about 4 times, walked around and managed to find three chests in the dungeon, sometimes containing boots, chest plates, helmets, and shields. I tried killing enemies, but found it impossible to attack them without getting myself hurt. I kept searching for a weapon, it felt like the theme was "you only get 0 weapons". Fists are not very effective against bats, apparently. So I ended up just trying to dodge the bats. Eventually, I got bored and gave up. The walking speed was so slow, and every room seemed identical, so exploring didn't feel very satisfying.
Funny use of theme, and nice art too. Plus some rockin chiptunes. The levels get really hard.
Very funny! Obviously not much gameplay, but I like the way you interpreted the theme.
I beat the game. Awesome art, cool music, and fun puzzles. The concept is very similar to the game I made, but very different in execution, and that's amazing to see.
My wall fell quite fast when the cars started coming, but I was surprised when that didn't end the game. Income felt quite slow, especially at the start, I would have liked to have some cheaper upgrades. I wasn't quite sure what bases did, even after I bought one. But it was pretty fun anyways.
Awesome concept, I definitely see the potential. Unfortunately it runs super-slow on my laptop, probably because of all the fancy shaders.
Nice art! I liked the story, too. Gameplay reminds me of the tile-matching levels in Plants Vs Zombies.
Great idea, uses the theme in an interesting way. Like other people have said, the bullets move so slowly that it's tough to hit ships. I ended up just putting points into missiles and shields, which worked pretty well. I wish there were some lasers or railgun or something.
Fun little game. It took me a bit to figure out how to aim properly, but it's a lot of fun once you figure it out. Art and levels are simple, but they do the job well.
Short and sweet. Nice pixel art and fitting music. Would have been nice to have some gameplay, but I think it works pretty well as short interactive "picture book" of sorts.
I absolutely LOVE the idea. It seems like a lot of other games tried the "hold onto one item through the whole game" idea, but I think you really perfected it. Every new enemy made me think "hm... do I *really* need to use my arrow here?" The art and music were very nice, too, reminded me a bit of Zelda II, and I like the limited palette. Although I also have to agree with a lot of the other comments, I ultimately couldn't beat the cyclops, and gave up after a bunch of tries. I'm not sure if the difficulty itself was the issue, I think the game just needed to be more clear about "this is a puzzle you need to solve" and "this is just a part where you need to be really good at platforming games". But the mystery did make it a bit more interesting, and definitely made it a harder choice about using the arrow. But it's annoying how the punishment for making a mistake is starting over from the beginning.
Your link goes to the google drive webpage, not a direct download. Not a big deal, but kinda annoying. I clicked run.bat, but it just opens a console window and then it instantly closes.
I love the low-poly aesthetic, and it really works well with the fog and the music. Boat controls are tough, but rewarding once you figure them out and you can do cool maneuvers using reverse thrust. There was one time I got stuck on the terrain, but I was able to get out of it after a few seconds of randomly hitting keys. Camera often goes inside the terrain, but it's mostly a graphical issue not a gameplay one. I do wish there was some on-screen indicator for the time left and how much power you've collected.
Thanks for all the feedback so far! I just tried the Windows version on another PC, and had similar issues, I'm gonna see if I can fix it. For me, the SWF opens up in Flash Player, not a browser window, although that will probably change depending on what you've got installed. I'll upload a non-zipped SWF too, if that works better.
I'm glad people like the challenge, I was worried it might be too difficult. Each level is really a puzzle (figure out the best starting location and route) and a challenge (steer the bullet), so if you're having trouble, try starting from a different location, or taking a different route. For the fourth level, I found that the easiest strategy is to start near the top-right, and wait for three of the guards to be standing in a line. Then shoot straight all the way through the building to kill them. When the bullet comes out the opposite side, steer it around the outside of the building to kill the fourth guard.
Let me know if you get the "secret" ending, it's quite a challenge!
More awesome feedback! Thanks, everyone :D
I think I fixed the Windows compiled version. Let me know if it's still broken.
@Ted Brown: I probably should have put this in the instructions, but you can move the helicopter with left and right arrows (or a and d keys).
Oof, that was tough to play, and I mean that in a good way (if that makes any sense). The part where the choices stop working was simple, but it definitely puts you in the shoes of the person, and was really powerful. Gameplay and story working together perfectly.
Cute art, but very hard. Music was fine, but starts to get annoying after a lot of restarting. I couldn't make it past the level where you have to bounce on a bunch of pillow guys in a staircase. The pillows kept doing weird super-jumps and then standing in mid-air.
Funny little game. Jumping over reptilians is really tough. And the anti-gravity powder is a cool idea.
My score was 504. I really like the game concept, it was a little hard to get at first, but once I understood the game it was pretty interesting trying to go fast and save villagers but without missing. I like the level design in the second level. It would have been nice to see some music and animation, but the gameplay worked fine without it.
Cute little game. I like how the rabbits come in fibonacci numbers! And, of course, the holy hand grenade is awesome. But it's really easy to just camp the spawn portal with the machine gun button held-down. This might be solved with random spawn points, or maybe giving some reload time to the machine gun so you can just hold it down on top of the portal.
Download is super-slow for me, too. Took about 4 minutes. You can survive forever by just walking around the corners of the screen, giving the ninja a second or two to catch up before you keep going. No sound, no animations, only one level, and to be honest, I have no idea how this fits the theme...
Clean and simple gameplay, nice graphics and animations. Would have been nice to have some music. Also, the game got a little boring, I wish it had more enemy types and introduced new types faster. I made it to round 12 or 13, and then I killed all enemies but the timer kept going down and I died. Maybe an enemy went off-screen? Anyways, pretty fun.
Not really sure what I was supposed to do. I chased around the orange 1 in a forest of green ls. I think the thing on the top is a timer in binary? Sometimes the ls disappeared. One time, I chased a 1 into the blue circle and it disappeared.
Very basic FPS, but pretty fun. The time limit makes it very intense. I got bronze on most levels, except for one where I got gold. Simple graphics, but it was fun to shoot the random objects in levels.
WOW. Great art, amazing writing, awesome concept. I can't believe this was made in 72 hours! Seriously, good job.
T-t-they're all Hitler!? EVEN THE MUSTARD!!!
The red square moved so slowly compared to the blue square that it ended up being more a game of patience than skill or strategy. Unfortunately, I don't have much patience and met death by walking into the red square after a couple minutes.
Game seems a little random, but maybe there's some strategy I don't understand. It's almost more psychological than strategic. I had a hard time getting the timing/rhythm right, maybe some sound effect or music cue might have helped. Character customization is awesome.
Funny from the splash screens to closing the game. Of course, it was more of an animation than a game, and even limited to pressing one key, it might have been nice to have actual gameplay. I guess that's because it's a commentary on AAA games, but it's not much of an excuse. Still, it was funny.
Awesome idea. The concept is actually quite similar to AlanZucconi's entry, 0rbitalis http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-28/?action=preview&uid=21108 but the execution is very different, and that's cool to see. No music and the graphics aren't exactly polished (but they're effective enough). I wish there was a time slow/speed-up function to make it easier to line-up planets, but otherwise it was quite fun and interesting.
Very simple and relaxing game. The nice pixel art and occasional goals from the king help set the mood. The one thing that would make this game perfect is some chilled-out 12-minute-long classical guitar music to listen to while your one worker slowly constructs an entire castle.
Well, it's definitely more of a prototype than a game, but hey, it's better than nothing! And it is kinda cool how the menu is part of the level.
Simple and short, but very fun. Didn't have any issues with controls or anything else. Loved the music. A lot of people made "you only get one arrow" games, and at least one other person made another "one arrow shoot zombies" game, but I like the pure, simple, and fun way you took the idea.
Gameplay was mostly luck after you hit the first shot, but really it was pretty fun just to watch everything exploding. Sometimes it went on for a while!
Very funny idea. When I first took a hit early in the game I was like "hey, what's that thing that fell off", and then I hit the ground, and then hit hits me: the thing that fell off was my parachute! The game felt like a small but perfectly complete package, built around that one idea, and it worked perfectly.
Funny idea, although it would have been nice if there was more humor throughout the game (play the other Hitler-based entry to see what I mean). Gameplay was fine, but not particularly interesting or innovative. Graphics looked ok, but I wish it was easier to tell which way the people were facing. Music and sound were ok too, but also not particularly notable.
WOW. Amazing music, beautiful art, and great gameplay. Reminds me a lot of Shadow of the Colossus, with a bit of Sword & Sworcery in the graphics department. The boss battles were very cool and unique, each one felt very different, a mix of puzzle and action. I loved that each boss battle seemed easy to just dodge, but became really hard once you tried to start attacking with your bow. The ending was... interesting, I'm not sure I really understood the meaning of it. But overall, it was one of the best games this jam. And a very cool implementation of the "one arrow" idea that a lot of people seem to have used.
Probably the weirdest game I've played in this LD, and that's saying something, because there's some really weird games out there.
Flash version runs super-slow, HTML5 one was much better.
The basic mechanic is really cool, and it works well with the randomly-generated levels. I wish zombie AI was a little smarter or more random. It's easy to get them into a big ball, and then just run in circles killing them. Also, zombies do not understand water.
Cool concept, and hard but fun gameplay. I kind of wish the overall game speed was slowed down a bit, it might allow for more interesting levels without making the difficulty too insane. Also, it would have been nice to have more levels. And some graphics that weren't colored squares. I made it to the last level, and I think I could have beat it, but I couldn't seem to trigger the exploding box. I literally tried 10 times, and when I shot the box my bullet just went right through it without the box exploding.
Very funny intro. And not only are you a duck wielding laser sharks, but the sharks wield laser ducks!
Music was good too.
Gameplay was pretty basic, though. Kinda just felt like some funny sprites dropped on top of a standard top-down shooting game.
Not bad for 12 hours, though!
Love the retro graphics with the slight pixel "grid". Controlling the kite was unusual and fun, great interpretation of the theme! Although I couldn't quite figure out how to hurt the other kites without taking damage. AI seemed a bit weird, too. And I would have loved to have some music and sound.
Obviously not very fleshed-out, but I can definitely see where this was going. Love the concept, and the awesome music really gives it a cool feel.
Great concept. Love the variation in spells. At first I was kinda frustrated at the short cooldowns, but when I realized each spell had a separate cooldown I really started having a lot of fun. I found a pretty good combo going between hot chili, hamburger bomb, and the cheesy beam thing. I only got to level 11, but I think I probably could have gone further if I played safer and used healing.
The tutorial was a little long and text heavy, I think I would have preferred a tutorial level to teach me how to use spells. Also would have have been good to have more variation in the waves, but the spell variation kept things interesting anyways.
Great concept, fits the theme perfectly. The mechanic ends up being pretty unique since you have to worry about the positioning of objects as well as yourself and the enemies. I had to think about where I was shooting things so that I could go back and pick them up later. I played with an xbox controller and it worked great. Oh, and cat is funny.
The art is great, too. There's a lot objects in the game considering you only had 72 hours.
Not a whole lot of gameplay/depth with only one level, it's more a prototype than a full game. But still fun.
Some music would have been nice, and really added to the game's atmosphere.
Very pretty, loved the graphical style. Combined with the sounds it created a cool atmosphere.
I found the talisman, book, and necklace, but couldn't find the flute. I also met the beast but couldn't seem to interact with it.
The way the map worked was a little confusing. Hard to tell what was the edge of it, and what was a portal to the next tile. I also kept accidentally clicking on myself and opening my inventory when I was trying to interact with something in the world.
Simple, but a great concept, and quite fun! A little bit of sound would have really made it sparkle.
A pretty standard top-down shooter, although the "backwards" aiming makes it a little more challenging. Sounds are gross, but the music is good. It's really just a fart joke, but at least it's pretty polished.
Test
A little tip for the first heist: you want to get the big shiny diamond.
Unfortunately very buggy. Kept getting stuck on dead soldiers, and half the time my ice pick seemed to do nothing. Wasn't able to make it past the third level.
Played the first two levels, but started running into some bugs :(. Here's a pic of the issue http://i.imgur.com/BRqKZhe.png
Interesting mechanic, and great use of the theme.
The two enemies provided some nice challenges, as well as the puzzles. It was pretty fun at first, but didn't seem to have much variety after the first few rooms. I wish the colors and music would change as I advanced in the game. The music and graphics could definitely use some work, but it's way better than a silent game with boxes!
Awesome concept. Took me a minute or two to figure out how to "catch" the bullet. Have to press spacebar, and *then* press c while the bullet is inside the blue circle. The platforming was also a little difficult to get the hang of. But once I figured out the controls, the game became a lot of fun.
The destructible terrain also added an interesting element. The whole level being one tower with no checkpoints made it really hard, though. Also, I kept running out of bullets. I made it to the green bat guys, but I ran out of bullets while trying to kill them.
Overall a great idea, and pretty polished too. One of my favorites in this ludum dare.
Cool idea. Couldn't get past the first level, tho. Tried killing towers, but they respawn pretty fast. And I tried rushing the base but it kills me before I kill it.
Funny idea having black licorice as the monster, and the sound/graphics work well with the idea.
Good take on the theme. A little bit of graphics would definitely make it more exciting, but as a parody of idle games it makes sense to have no graphics.
Amazing art and sound, great job doing all this in such little time! The timer was a really good choice, it made you have to play fast and rely on instinct (or prejudice), and it really worked perfectly paired with the scoring at the end.
Got to 1,476,669 points before I died. Music was awesome, especially how everything pulses to the beat. Gameplay was fun, although I found it a little hard to get used to the controls. But I guess that's part of the challenge!
Not sure I get how it ties into the theme. But the writing and art was very charming!
Awesome art style, and great sound effects too. After the first try, I got the hang of it: you basically just have to hold down the beam on the edge of the screen and know which enemy types to prioritize. After I figured that out, I was able to pretty much go forever. It didn't seem like the difficulty increased over time or anything. I got to 535 points before I gave up.
The herding is pretty weird. Seems like the gobbos only want to get herded diagonally. I wish they had a bit of momentum instead of just running away as soon as you stop herding them. But perhaps that's realistic gobbo behavior.
The human AI isn't amazing either, most of them just walked off the screen. But a few of them did seem to turn and try to flank my mommas.
I ended up getting through a few levels. I agree with the other comments that some music/sound would have been nice. Some variety in level backgrounds would have been good, too.
I walked around and clicked on everything I could find. I think I figured out the story, but it would be cool if there was something to tell me "you found all the objects". Or something where I have to answer questions to prove that I solved the mystery.
Not bad for your first Ludum Dare. Obviously the gameplay isn't very deep, but it was short and funny. Decent art and sound effects, but I kinda wish there was some music.
Surprisingly interesting and challenging game. Some music and animations would have been nice, but the game still works fine without them. I love the usage of the theme, and it's a great idea to simulate this kind of scenario.
I didn't have too much trouble buying all the houses except for 1. I kept trying to lawsuit them, but it failed ~10 times and then I lost the game. I had more than enough money to buy the house, but after suing them it seemed like it would be impossible to raise their willingness high enough to buy it legitimately.
I think I lost the first time, but was a bit confused because the game didn't show a "you lose screen". I restarted and managed to beat the king on my second try. Very short game, but it runs, it was pretty fun, and you managed to make multiple enemy types, art, and even music. That's more than can be said for a lot of Ludum Dare entries, so it's pretty dang good for your first game jam!
Great idea, I love the sort of Frankenstein interpretation of the theme. I got down to 7000 people, and started finding shredded parts. But at that point, progression seemed to hit a wall. I wasn't getting much better parts, and was just sticking hands and feet everywhere. The UI looks great and works well, but I wish the game had some kind of graphical display of the monster so I could visualize how the parts are attached. Still, the game was very polished overall.
Really great work! The step-climbing animation is so adorable, it made me smile when I first saw it. I love the character's faces, too. The art is perfect.
The puzzle difficulty really surprised me. It ramped up really fast, and the levels demanded a lot of very precise planning or else you could easily get stuck. You're really forced to plan out your moves, unlike some other puzzle games where you only ever have to think 1 or 2 steps ahead and can just trial-and-error your way through. I enjoyed it, and managed to reach the end.
As other comments have mentioned, the only issue is the lack of music.
Anyways, fun game! I'd love to see this released as a mobile game with a bunch of different levels.
Managed to beat it, here's my score: http://i.imgur.com/ezmGjf0.png
The difficulty level was perfect for me! I liked that the character is kinda floaty in the air, although I wish that platforms were a little less slippery. It was really hard to stay on those small blocks. Also, I kept falling off platforms while trying to kill enemies. But it felt good when I managed to transform and save myself by gliding down onto a lower platform. Music was good, and the pixel art is awesome!
One thing that I disliked about the controls is that you had to keep switching keys whenever you jump. Every jump is pretty much "C, X, C C C C". I think it would be better if you could just press "C" to jump as a human, and then if you press "C" again in mid-air, it would automatically transform you. You could still hit "X" if you wanted to manually turn back into a human, but I can't think of any situation where you would want to hit "X" on the ground to transform instead of doing it after jumping.
Also, I have to say that I really liked your respawning system. Not only can you pay coins to continue, but it also spawns you back at the last "safe" place you stood, and there's even an invincibility timer when you spawn! That's a level of polish that is very rare to see in a game jam. Very nice touch on top of an already fun game!
Made it through to the last level. Interesting mechanic! I would have liked to see it explored a bit further, though. Maybe just one more level but extra difficult. I still enjoyed it a lot though. Also, props for including music and sound effects, the music really helped set the right kind of puzzle-solving mood. Also, it was nice that the download was so small and fast!
Love the style. Music really helped set the mood, too. I switched it to fullscreen but the colors were almost too intense, I had to lean back a bit in my seat! The story mode was quite short, I might have liked to have a little more stuff to explore. But the overall experience was very enjoyable.
If I were to offer one bit of feedback on the controls, I think you should add some kind of visual or audio effect for when you press the "up" button. As a caterpillar, I had to spam the up key to be able to climb up slopes. At first, I was confused and thought I had gotten stuck. Not sure if this was intentional, or if I was missing some aspect of the controls. And, of course, when you start to age as a butterfly, I really wanted to mash that button to try and get just a few more circles. I wasn't quite sure if this mashing was how the game is supposed to be played, or if I was exploiting something, or if I was just doing it wrong. So, some kind particles or sound effect might have helped signal to the player "yes, you're doing this right".
As for the story mode, I really wished it could have ended with finding another butterfly to mate with, and lay eggs to hatch a new caterpillar. But obviously that would be extra work that's tough to do within the time constraints.
Level 7 is quite tough, but it's definitely beatable. Don't worry, you aren't missing too much, there's only one more level after it :)
Also got stuck on level 4. I didn't realize that you had to use all the shapes. Definitely needs some kind of indicator to tell you the total number of shapes that you have left to place. The scrolling interface isn't really intuitive, I would have preferred some kind of drag-and-drop interface instead. Also, I agree with other comments that some kind of visual indicator would have been useful to see which way a shape is going to go. It's hard to tell the difference between penta- hexa- septa- and bigger n-gons.
That said, the puzzles were still pretty interesting. Not too bad for 24 hours.
Very spooky music! The game was pretty confusing at first, but I figured it out after a minute or two. I managed to find and kill the monster on the third try. Cool idea, but would have been nice to see maybe a bit more content, or more utilization of the theme.
Awesome game mechanic, and very cool implementation. Perfect use of the theme. Loved the puzzles, especially the water jar one. Art was pretty minimal, but the style worked well and the animations really made it cute and fun to transform into different objects. Controls were a little floaty, and music was too repetitive for my tastes, but the sound effects were good, and you did helpfully include an option to mute the music. Great work overall!
Very cute. Lovely animation and quite funny too. A little bit of sound and it would have been perfect!
I managed to find 4 different words. It was kinda fun in the same way as scribblenauts, but I definitely agree that it needs something extra to keep you typing.
Great writing, cute graphics. Would have liked to have some sound, though.
Neat puzzle mechanics. Was having fun until I got stuck :O
Here's a screenshot of the issue: http://i.imgur.com/TTtOngB.png
At the title screen, you use the left/right arrow keys to select the number of players, and the up/down arrow keys to switch between the two gamemodes. Z or C starts the game. You can't play "versus" with only 1 player, so it won't let you start the game unless you choose a different mode, or add more players. Hope that makes sense!
After a few tries, I managed to make it to year 2 month 6 before going out of business. I discovered a few of the ratios, but I experimented too much and eventually ran out of goods.
The game already gives a decent amount of feedback, but I can't help but wish for a little more, even if it was vague (or maybe written in hieroglyphics). Like, if something is waaaay off (10x too much water), a hint about that would be good. It was fun to sell 100% pure water beer, though.
Oh, and the graphics, UI, and sounds were all great.
Nice little riff on the theme. Love the animation.
Great little game. Absolutely perfect use of the theme! Nice graphics, too. I would have liked a little bit of sounds or music, even just sfxr sound effects. But honestly, it was a lot of fun and surprisingly challenging.
I managed to get the elephant out in 3 minutes with 9 points. Although I think I did more damage to the furniture than the elephant lol. I manhandled the large sofa to the point where it fell through the floor, which made the game considerably easier.
Neat idea, it was definitely fun to try and kill the zombies with the knockback power or simply by luring them into pits. The kinda clumsy AI actually worked really well! I also liked how it slowly ramped-up the difficulty by spawning more zombies, although it seemed like they only spawned in the center area, so you could avoid most of them by running around the edges. Although that eventually backfires when you have to face a huge horde.
The sprites, sounds, and music weren't super-polished, but they were still effective and helped set the mood. It would have been nice to see some more variety around the level: different walls, more props (besides the trees), etc. Also didn't really seem like a great fit for the theme, I definitely spotted more than one room...
I died pretty quickly the first time by accidentally falling into a pit. I restarted and managed to survive for a solid few minutes before committing the same mistake while running from those fast hat zombies. After I died the second time, the game froze at a brown-colored screen and crashed.
Killed 213 and survived for 2:01!
Fun little game. It would have been awesome to see a little more depth: enemies with different movement patterns (instead of just speed and size), or more interesting movement abilities. Good job with the art and sound, and the music was quite fitting. Not the most creative use of the theme, but I like the title of the game!
Great voice acting and music, great art, and interesting story. You definitely stuck to the theme, although a one-room adventure game might not be the most original idea...
Once I figured out how it worked, the "wrong question" mechanic was pretty cool. I like how it encourages you to focus your line of questioning rather than trying to explore all the branches at once.
I didn't really like the "click on objects for inspiration", though. I ended up just closing the ouija board and then just quickly clicking through every item in the room, then opening it back up. I think it might have helped if the ouija question menu had little icons of the objects that inspired the question, since it's hard to keep track of when you've got a large number of choices to scroll through.
My one complaint is that you didn't have subtitles during the actual game. It's not super-essential, but it would be nice for accessibility.
Fun little game. Ev
Funny little game. Even with an autoclicker I couldn't get more than -100 points. Some more score feedback might have helped.
I like how the flames from the garbage make it so that you notice it even when you're not looking. Nice job with the slowly-escalating music, too. Graphics were simple but effective, I liked the "outside".
Difficult little game. The controls were odd but kinda cool how momentum was always relative to your mouse rather than absolute in the world. The combination of the weird ambient sound and abstract graphics created a really strange mood. Also, I like how the big transparent version of the enemies helps show you their location. I did have an issue where the game would quit when I tried to restart, but at least there wasn't a long loading screen or anything. Overall, pretty good for your first LD.
Pretty fun. I got 15 molecules before getting stuck on one of the water container things under a desk, and I couldn't move or jump to get out: http://i.imgur.com/D2ZwXxp.png
Sounds and music worked well, and the laboratory was impressively large. Good use of the theme. Also, nice job with the intro cutscene! I do wish that the laboratory was a bit more colorful and cluttered, like a Katamari Damacy or Chibi Robo level.
The climbing was a bit weird, and I didn't like how you had to spend a lot of time if you fell off of something. The platforming was pretty fun, although the controls could have been a bit tighter. Also, the FOV was very narrow for my tastes.
Very creepy. "Snowpiercer" definitely came to mind as I played it, even before reading the comments. The sensory descriptions were great, I felt like I could hear the rickety sounds of the train, the unnerving smells and sensations. Great job with the atmosphere.
The way you rarely used names and wrote in third person got a little confusing at times. There were parts where I wasn't quite sure which character "she" and "her" were referring to. Not sure if that was intentional or not.
There were definitely seeds of the theme in there, but it didn't feel particularly central to the game. I also agree with the other comments that there wasn't much "game" to it. Even in a Twine game I think there's still plenty of room to do interesting game mechanics, which would have been nice to see. I didn't mind the shortness of the story, you definitely got the point across quickly and effectively.
Very difficult. Had a hard time figuring out any of the puzzles. The movable doors idea was pretty cool, though. Also, I didn't really like the combat at all. I would have rather just had a straight-forward puzzle game without the goblins.
Very impressive how much you managed to get done. 3D models, levels, sounds, animations, different weapons and items, etc. But I would have preferred that the gameplay be slightly more-polished, even if it meant that some of the content had to get cut.
Awesome! Very cool idea. I was surprised how much variety there was in the puzzles. A lot of fun to play through, even if it wasn't challenging, kinda reminds me of Monument Valley in that way. Perfect use of the theme. The silly music worked great with the concept of the game, too.
My decorating earned $-2292623. I'm not very good at word games, I guess!
I think 100 levels in a row is too much, although it's impressive for 48 hours. I would rather have a random set of 10 levels with increasing difficulty, so I can play a short session and then try to improve my score.
Graphics were very nice, very polished. I think a little bit of sound would have gone a long way.
Yeah, I switched Q/E and A/D for furniture controls because rotation seemed more important when you're playing as furniture. But I wrote the wrong keys in the description! I've fixed the description here and on itch.io. I think the in-game text is fine (it just says "WASD to move"), so I'll leave the in-game text intact.
Awesome game. I actually really liked the controls, it's hard to get top-down driving right (especially with physics thrown in), but it felt very responsive and awesome to drift and swing boxes around the map. It was just a joy to nail enemies with a heavy box at high-velocity. The guns were fun too, but I feel like the game would have been just as good without them.
I also liked the art a lot. Felt very much like playing a classic Gameboy game, which was a great fit for the gameplay. The music got a little repetitive after a while, but the game was fun enough that I didn't really notice. As for the theme, I think you nailed the "room" part... but kinda missed the "one" part. But it is nice to play a level-based game when so many other people interpreted the theme as "one-room arena brawler/shooter/etc.".
Amazing work. I loved the art and the dark, subdued art style. Good use of music, too. Both fit the story very well. Also, very creative use of the theme. The story was very well-written, despite the rather abrupt ending.
The heart clicking mechanic was a neat idea, although I feel like it could have been explored further. Maybe it could have affected the story somehow, or created some sort of challenge or trade-off? Given how light the game was on "gameplay" (no adventure game puzzles or VN-style dialogue branching as far as I could tell), I think it might have added a bit more depth to the experience.
Cute little game. Good pixel art, and nice music and sound effects.
I wish the gameplay had a little more depth, though. Maybe some enemies inside the house that have to be avoided or defeated? Or randomized platforms that make it more difficult to navigate?
I also don't really understand how this ties into the theme.
Great work! Loved the art, and the parallax effect made it look extra good. Music fit well, too.
I grew all the plants, and even grew a "Glorious" Mushaum. I liked the experimentation gameplay, and the note-taking made it feel more meaningful instead of just pure trial-and-error.
The swipe to open the menu was kinda annoying with a mouse. Would have been nice if I could just click it or even just press enter or something. The game also didn't seem very tied-in to the theme, but I didn't really mind.
I agree with other commenters that this would be a cool mobile game. I think I would like if there was some kind of limited resources (seeds, pots, etc.) so that you had to think more carefully about what experiments you're gonna perform. Or maybe experiments could take a certain amount of time, and you have to come back later to see the results. Like Neko Atsume, but for plants!
Neat little idea. I managed to build up about 20 of each unit before the flood of red dudes broke in and slaughtered my units.
I liked the kinda dumb units and inaccurate pathfinding. It felt like I actually had to consciously think about how I mined a corridor to keep them from getting stuck. It was kinda annoying how digging and building cost resources, though.
Some sound and music would have been nice, as well as some art that made it easier to tell units apart. Especially since it ended up being a Jam submission, so you could have just tossed in some stuff from Freesound. Also, it didn't feel like a particularly interesting use of the theme.
Criticisms aside, it's still pretty impressive that you managed to make an RTS in such a short time!
Cute little puzzle game. I liked the graphics and audio a lot, the robots and monsters were great! The combination of clicking buttons and robot using pressure plates was a pretty neat idea
The robot actually seemed to go way too fast for me, maybe because I had a low framerate. You could probably fix that by doing something like "velocity += force * Time.deltaTime" instead of "velocity += force".
I also ended up getting stuck on the elevator level after my robot fell off and didn't respawn. http://i.imgur.com/AkICDpT.png
Also, if you could upload some Windows/Mac builds (along with the web version), that would be great for those of us with crappy laptops. Unity's downloadable builds tend to run significantly faster than webGL builds.
Funny interpretation of the theme, but I would have loved to see it pushed further. It would be nice if there were a couple different types of worlds to fight, even if it was only visual differences.
Great job with the sound. It was simple, but fit the game perfectly. Graphics were also a good fit, and I liked the death effects. But I would also have liked to see some more effects, maybe some particles or lighting?
I died twice, and beat it on my 3rd playthrough. I'm not sure if there's some kind of trick to the timing, but I managed to beat the game by simply mashing the attack button as fast as possible. I didn't mind the difficulty, or the fact that there was only 1 level. But I do wish that there was a bit more depth to the fighting. Maybe a couple different types of attacks with different speed/range? Or some sort of block/dodge/parry move?
Interesting idea, but the execution didn't really click with me. Maybe it's just because I understand the basics of circuits, but the puzzles seemed way too easy. They did a decent job of teaching "don't create a short circuit", but the puzzles trying to teach resistance didn't seem to actually match-up with the text: the lightbulbs didn't seem to dim based on resistance, and solving the puzzle didn't require you to understand the concepts.
I didn't personally have any issues with the UI, but I agree with the other comments that the text should have been bigger. Also, the wire limit might make more sense if you showed some physical wires in the scene that disappear when you place them, instead of simply showing a number in the corner.
Graphics were very clean and functional, although I wish they had more... flavor? Maybe some particle sparks, or some little electronics tools in the background. Also, it would have been nice if you made some custom UI buttons instead of using the default Unity graphics.
Music was nice, and fit the theme of the game well enough. But I wish it didn't reset when you start a new level. Is there a reason you disabled the "audio" ratings?
Awesome game. Great name, great gameplay, cool style. I made it to 700 points and everything stopped, so I assume that means my llama reached maximum RADICAL status.
It took me a minute to figure out what to do. I think a litle bit of sound effects would go a long way to indicate when you're doing something "wrong". But once I got the hang of it, it was pretty fun. And when I realized that it kept adding more stuff as you built a combo, I just had to keep trying! For a while I was trying to fly in a circular pattern, but then I switched to a rapid back-and-forth pattern which worked a lot better. This is definitely one of the most fun games I've played so far in the jam.
I liked the art style and simple, rhythmic sounds. It made me want to play this standing up at an arcade machine with a glowing CRT and a old-school arcade stick.
Great little puzzle game. I managed to get to the boss a couple times, but I always seemed to lose by running out of height to stack tiles, or by getting starved of either right or left turns. I thought the difficulty level was fine (although perhaps that's due to my previous Tsuro experience), but it might just be a little bit too random.
At first, my strategy was to try and stay within the middle with fairly short paths. Avoiding the corners/edges means you can't get screwed over from turn tiles because you can usually save yourself from the edge with either a right or left turn. But the problem is that the tile stacks always fill up by the time you get to the boss. Then I tried to fill up the whole board evenly, but it's just too easy to get destroyed by a bad run of 4 or 5 tiles.
Aside from the randomness, I wish there was just slightly more polish and effects for the board movement. Maybe a different color to show your previous path? That would be especially useful for communicating "this is why you lost" after you fall off the edge.
The gameplay definitely fits the theme, although I would have liked to see the graphics do a better job of communicating the theme. Like, maybe some grass and plants on the tiles, or a sun/moon that orbits the world.
As other comments have mentioned, some music would be very nice.
Oh, and I also agree with the idea that this game would be fun on mobile.
Amazing work. That aesthetic was awesome. I managed to get to the end, and I like how it kind of "shows you the secret" at the end.
The puzzles weren't really challenging, but it was still a neat experience just to explore the world and collect the red dots. I didn't really mind the lack of difficulty.
I agree with some of the other comments that the music didn't really seem to fit the rest of the game. But I think that's a fairly minor nit-pick.
I managed to arrange the house perfectly on my first try, so that I finished the daily routine without having to move any furniture! Perhaps my real-life small apartment experience gave me an advantage :). I kinda wish there was some score at the end based on how many moves you made, it might be fun trying to optimize and find the most efficient furniture arrangement.
The art style is wonderful. I like the drab colors combined with the clean, simple shapes. The music was a great fit, too. The sound effect volume seemed slightly too loud, which is a shame because I wanted to hear the music.
The interface was the biggest issue. I tried the post-jam version and it's certainly an improvement, but it still was pretty clunky. Honestly, I think I would rather have just played the game with keyboard controls instead of mouse controls. I was also a little bit confused by some of the red square while placing furniture. It seemed like some areas near the walls would just randomly turn red and not allow me to place furniture.
I did like the idea of splitting the game between a "placement" phase and an "action phase", with limited maneuvering during the latter. When I was initially arranging the furniture, I assumed that the family would just move around automatically through the house. The idea of shuffling around furniture and people is pretty cool, and I wish there were a few more levels that forced you to start doing that.
It also might have been interesting if the player had to directly control the family during the second phase. So, if you want to push/pull objects, you actually have to walk a family member over to it. Maybe heavier objects could even require 2 people?
Anyways, I love the idea, and it's a great use of the theme. Despite the issues I had, I would love to see a larger, more-polished version!
After the first 8 levels I was getting pretty bored. Especially since there's a "3, 2, 1, 0" countdown between each level that seems to actually take more like 15 seconds! And I couldn't figure out a way to skip the countdown, either.
But, when I got to the 9th level I got a little excited about the possibilities. I quickly dispatched the targets on my home planet, then powered up my cannon and took aim while I waited for the planets to align. I fired, but totally missed the target and my bullet flew off into space. Then, seconds later, the bullet came back, looped around the planet, and came down directly onto my gun, blowing it up!
I with the levels were a bit more interesting at the start. After 2 single-planet levels, I'm ready to see the advanced stuff!
Sound effects were nice. Graphics were very simple, but they got the job done. Some music and maybe some backgrounds would have been nice to help set the mood.
Cute concept, fun little game. I liked the graphics and the music, and they fit well with the game's concept. The sound effects seemed a little out-of-place, though.
I didn't mind the floaty controls or large hitbox on the dinosaur. I felt like it actually kind of helped make the dinosaur feel like a big, clumsy creature.
I found myself wanting a little more depth to the game. Maybe the city could have different districts, with different rates of pedestrians/cars? A little bit of variety would help a lot.
First off, this is easily my favorite creative interpretation of the theme so far. Awesome concept.
The execution is also very polished. You don't see a lot of LD games that actually implement a minimap! The in-game field-of-view cones are also a good touch. However, the AI for your ex-partners can be frustrating at times. This one lady just decided to stand right in front of my delivery truck and stop moving for about 30 seconds. I can see why I broke up with her!
I felt like the game was missing some kind of time pressure. You can basically just stand on the side lines and just wait forever for the perfect moment to deliver your gift without any danger of being caught.
Also, I like having the gender choices at the start, but I'm curious why the game doesn't let me select *both* male and female partners?
Great job with the art, too. The characters were quite varied, which is obviously important to the gameplay. The environment was also good, and it fit well with the characters and gameplay. I do wish there was some music to help set the scene.
An interesting experience. I'm not really sure I "got" the gameplay, I just randomly placed a couple houses and commercial buildings and got tons of money, then clicked the construction site and won the game.
The narrator was definitely my favorite part, I liked the comments when I built a fire station before I was "supposed" to. The graphics were very simple, but they worked pretty well. The dark color pallet complemented the mood of the game nicely. The music was also very good, it added a somber feel to the game.
Thanks for the feedback, @sebastian-lague @killtolive @martenscedric. Looks like the problem with level 3 is caused by a physics issue in Unity WebGL, so I have removed the WebGL version on the itch.io page. The downloadable version does not have this issue, I hope you give it a try!
Neat interpretation of the theme. The window resizing was cool. Gameplay was very simple and relaxing.
Digging is always a fun game mechanic, especially when it leaves a trail behind you. The ladybug controls were less satisfying: I kept getting stuck on branches and eventually managed to jump and fall out of the world.
I didn't like the art very much. The individual parts were fine, but they were very inconsistent when put together. Big pixel art dirt, oddly realistic sky background, and hand-drawn bugs walking around. I would rather see a game that just sticks to one art style.
The music was ok, but it seemed like a very short loop, and it felt very repetitive by the time that I had almost eaten all the green dots.
Cool idea, somewhat similar to my game about balancing a world, but a totally different take on it. The graphics were lovely, the sounds worked great, and the music was nice and chill.
I managed to get to year 2500 before my planet died. Although once I got past 2000, it became impossible to actually see most of the objects on the planet so I was placing them blindly! I do think it might be easier to have some kind of balance indicators, but it was actually kind of fun trying to figure out the balance by simply placing an object and then observing what kind of effect it has on the planet.
The biggest issue I had was trying to place hills. I kept getting stuck because it there was actually no empty area on the planet large enough to fit a hill. I think it might make more sense if you could place a hill "underneath" trees and houses. Or maybe placing an object would shove other objects out of the way? The "held object" slot was definitely a good feature, I managed to save myself a couple times by storing the hills until the planet expanded and gave me more room.
The graphics were probably my favorite part of the game. Not only were the models good, but the lighting and even the UI were done very well. Also, nice job with the slow zoom-in to the planet at the start.
Very cute. Loved the dialog and the art was great.
Unfortunately, the gameplay didn't really do much for me. I might have enjoyed it more if the waves were shorter and more intense. It also might have been more interesting if there were additional mechanics besides jumping and shooting: maybe some kind of interesting movement ability? I made it through to wave 3 and lost right before the end of the wave. Also, some of the aliens seemed to not stop moving while they're stunned (although I could still paint them if I managed to catch up), not sure if that's a bug or intentional. Audio was quite good, the cat sounds were adorable, and there's a lot of music for a LD game. The world wrapping was also a good use of the theme.
A very pleasant experience. I think this is the first time I've seen someone build a music puzzle game for Ludum Dare.
I never managed to figure out the 4th puzzle, so I just clicked the ? and skipped to 5. I think the game would have been just fine without the puzzle elements, but I also didn't really mind the puzzles until I got stuck. It might be nice if you start with all 5 levels unlocked, and completing the puzzle in each level unlocks a new musical element to use?
The aesthetic fit well with the music and the gameplay, although it felt a bit spartan. I would have liked to see some more visual effects. Make the squares jiggle, fade, bounce, emit particles, etc.
Doesn't seem like you really used the theme, but the game was enjoyable without it so I didn't mind.
Very challenging, although it seemed like the game might have been running too fast? Not sure if that's intentional. I played the windows executable. After watching the gameplay video, I think it might be a bug. Still, I kind of liked it, it was a bit like Devil Daggers. Also, I figured out that you can just mash all the WASD keys and shoot rapidly in all directions, which was pretty fun.
I really liked the art. Even with such a small number of assets, the animations and colors had a really cool feel. And the effects were amazing, I loved the beams and the tiny green area within the purple wasteland.
I agree with the other comments that some sounds would have made it even better. The art was already so weird and evocative that I found myself wondering what kinds of sounds these strange crystal beings would make as they walked around.
A nice relaxing experience. Fun to play around with, and nice chill music. I saw a meteor once, which was pretty awesome although I was slightly disappointed that it didn't leave a huge molten crater or cause an ice age or something like that. Anyways, great work!
Very pretty.
Wow, this person I adventured through seemed to be dealing with some stuff. I hope they're doing ok. I felt like there were definitely some kind of messages going on, but I wasn't quite sure I was understanding them fully.
Interesting take on Tetris.
It felt very hard to set-up interesting combos with the color-match system. I think part of this is just due to the layout of each piece. Each tetromino seems to have one 1 possible color scheme, and half of the pixels are neutral gray which blocks combos. So, even if you can set-up a color combo, it can't be combo'd into a chain that clears all the blocks like the combos in most Match-3, Puyo-Puyo, Puzzle Bobble, and similar combo-based puzzle games games. Also, the tetris inputs was missing a "hard-drop" button.
The audio was nice, but the music was a bit too short.
Awesome idea, and perfect use of the theme! But I wish the invenory management had a bit more interaction with the monster-fighting mechanics. Combining backpack items to craft better items, or fending-off tiny loot-stealing rodents. The art and animation was great, I really loved the image of a hapless adventurer with an incredibly helpful intelligent backpack!
Really cool concept. It was fun experimenting and finding out what each item does. The pace does escalate pretty quickly, as the screen starts to fill up with tons of bags and boxes of all sorts. I would have liked to see the difficult ramp up a bit slower. Also, I wish there was a bit of variety to the enemies: maybe enemies who spit items, or enemies that light loot on fire.
Interesting use of minigames and timed choices in Twine! Hurriedly deciding what to pack is a fun choice! I played through 2 different endings, but still felt a bit unsatisfied, like I had missed something interesting.
It's definitely fun to just play around with the physics. Feels like you're holding the leash on a big dog who desperately wants to lick every person who walks by. I like the idea that you're trying to save the monsters while also protecting humans, good use of the theme. I don't really mind the lack of scoring mechanics, but I do wish that the chain grabbing was a little easier. I think it would have been very helpful if there was a circle to highlight the nearest chain, and change the color of the chain that you're currently grabbing. I also wish that the game was a little more fast-paced and frantic, so it had a more chaotic feel.
Fun little game. I made it to the end. The last two levels were pretty tough. Everything was really polisehd, but I wish there were more levels. It looks like you had some cool mechanics with the destructible blocks, death blocks, and bouncy blocks. I liked how you could control multiple cables on the end screen, that would have been a fun thing to explore in some levels. Using the battery as a timer is a clever way to integrate the theme. But I do think you could have explored it a bit more mechanically so it actually felt like a life bar and not just a timer. It's not super adventurous or avante-garde, but overall, one of the more fun games I've played so far.
I met a friendly penguin, but nobody else seemed interesting in staying. Every time my fire got more than 2 or 3 sparks, it seemed to burn faster than I could put logs on. I saw lots of stuff happening in the text log, but I wish it was a bit easier to actually see the other visitors. Reminded me a bit of Neko Atsume.
Love the graphics. The troll is great.
The writing had some funny bits, but it started to get repetitive after a while. Maybe because I see too many trolls on the real "twister".
Retort seemed to be the best answer for most situations, but I couldn't really figure out if there was any kind of pattern to the options. I guess I'm no master troll feeder. It would be funny if you could see a few other stats, collecting likes or followers depending on your replies.
Sound effects would have really helped with the humor. I wanted to hear some fun troll grunts, yawns, and angry noises.
Thanks for the feedback so far! I'm glad folks are enjoying the writing and mood. I didn't expect to see people calling it a metroidvania! I originally had an idea for a much more Metroid-style platformer, but I scrapped it after not making much progress during day 1, and started over with Bitsy. I guess some of the metroidvania flavor bled into the final game. Here's some level design sketches from the original idea: IMG_3752.JPG
@james-beninger I used Audacity to create the background sounds. It's a single ~1 minute looping track. I started with some samples of breathing, heartbeats, wind noises, and mechanical sounds. I used a combination of pitch shift, Paulstretch, echo, and reverb filters to make the samples sound deeper and spookier, then chopped, sequenced, and layered it all together for the final track.
Thanks for all the feedback so far! Cool to hear that people have been finding the multiple endings.
The "North West" thing was a random mistake on my part. Or maybe the whole game takes place in a spooky mirror world? Feel free to imagine your own interpretations.
The movement stuff is a limitation of Bitsy. Being able to hold down a movement key would definitely be useful! If I make another Bitsy game, I might take a look at the source and see if I can hack it in.
Wow, 1st in Mood! Thanks for playing and rating, everyone!
The puzzles seemed cool, but I didn't really like the combat. Dynamic music was great, and the graphic style worked really well. I seemed to run into a lot of bugs, and wasn't able to finish the game. I think I accidentally grew a white flower before I unlocked the red flower. So Tilde didn't seem to notice my white flower. Then I created a weird purple bud, but I couldn't plant it and it broke the game. When I tried to plant it, it told me I needed to put it in a special place in Tilde's garden.
I think the seed puzzle aspect wasn't tutorialized very well, but it was definitely pretty cool once I figured out how it worked. The overworld and combat elements just didn't really click with me, unfortunately. I think there's potential for a really cool puzzle game here, though.
Your download links are missing @joshua-vaughn
I managed to do a few trades, but I wish it was clearer what "Extreme/normal/low" means. I figured that all I needed to do was start making a profit, so I tried to trade 2 Extreme demand chips for 4 Low demand fuel. But no ships seemed to want it. The best trades I managed to make were 3:4 profit ratios, and I wasn't fast enough to keep my station afloat.
I think it's pretty hard to make any kind of trading sim interesting. It eventually just boils down to buy low, sell high. The fun part is usually about predicting the market, but I couldn't detect any trends. It's also usually more fun when there's big swings up and down. It might be easier with a graph of demand over time, and maybe some news stories or a twitter feed that helps you predict demand. "New orbital solar farm under construction" could signal to the player that energy is going to be cheap tomorrow.
Station keeping is a fascinating idea. The name had me expecting something with gravity maneuvers, or asteroid mining. Replacing and trading for resources is an OK mechanic, but it's not something that usually gets me excited. Platforming controls were fine, but it would have been more interesting if there were hazards within the ship.
Sprites were quite nice, and the sound effects were a good touch. I liked the warning sound when resources started to get low. The level of polish and complexity was very impressive. The UI was fairly intuitive after reading the instructions, the resources were all conveniently color coded, and the trade interfaces were very smooth. Really impressive work for a game jam.
Pretty tough, but it's really cool to see someone make a word game for the jam. I like the minimalist aesthetic, but I kept forgetting which color was which. It might have helped if the letters that you typed changed color to show whether you matched properly or not. It also seemed like long words were a disadvantage because it made it easy for the black bars to catch up with you, but maybe I just didn't understand that mechanic.
The choices of fonts and sounds were good. The music definitely had an elevator music feel. I liked the connection to the theme of keeping a conversation alive. But the gameplay didn't feel that much like a conversation, it's more like you're just talking to yourself. Some kind of AI that gives you words to play off of might have made it feel more conversational. Or maybe it could just be a game about talking to yourself in an elevator!
Very polished overall. You did a great job of pulling the parts together and keeping the theme cohesive.
I've definitely been in that situation, taking care of a cactus in a small apartment. I didn't manage to get very far, the physics were pretty unreliable and the mouse aiming was very sensitive which made it difficult to control. Screenshake at the end was funny. I think some sound effects would have really helped the whole experience, even if it was just some ambient noise and free stock sound effects or sounds made in SFXR.
Impressive UI. It felt very smooth and easy to use. It's definitely not easy to make a party-driven RPG for a game jam. I liked the animations, models, sounds, and music too. It definitely captured the feel of an SMT game. I think the lighting is a bit rough, makes it pretty hard to see the characters.
The gameplay is pretty straightforward for an RPG. You've got lots of buffs, debuffs, single target heals, aoe heals, etc. It's cool that all of these seem to be pretty fully implemented, functional, and even have particle effects. But in a game jam, I honestly like to see games try to be a bit more experimental. Give me some weird surprising twist, rather than playing it safe with such familiar game mechanics. I don't mind that the battle is incomplete. I never manage to finish big JRPGs anyways lol.
I was hoping that the game would be more creative in the use of the theme. Most RPGs are about keeping your characters alive. It might be more interesting if you had to keep the boss alive, and try to sabotage your damage-dealing character?
Cool concept, but a little tedious. "Keep the language alive" is definitely interesting. I wish there was more opportunity to experiment and learn the language through playing rather than by reading the tome. Maybe that druid could have been a little more helpful? I made it to the bloody door but couldn't figure out how to make any more progress. The death conditions seemed too brutal, would have been nice to have an "undo" button. I also ran into some issues with the dictionary. It seems like some of the dictionary pages were too tall for my 1080p screen, so I couldn't read all of the text on some pages. Also, hitting the close button on the dictionary seemed to create a bunch of errors and break the game. error.png
The game makes a very strong first impression with the art style. The sketchy materials and monochrome look with red highlights pulled me in. The character designs are very stereotypical: the "Boy" and the "Girl", and of course the Girl has to have a red bow on top just to make sure you know which one is which!
But there wasn't really much to the game besides the look. The gameplay was tedious, just collecting objects as they randomly drop across the map. The map itself just looked like a test map, and didn't seem to have any representation or meaning. The main focus of the game seemed to be the dialog, but it was very repetitive, the same declarations of love followed by "I know". There didn't seem to be any character development, we never learn why the Boy character loves the Girl character, and the Girl character doesn't seem to have any agency of her own, she just stands in the middle of the level forever.
I reached the end after 5 boring minutes, and I feel like the ending is just trolling me. An identical clone of the player appears out of nowhere and apparently the Girl has fallen in love with this new Boy. You can still move around, but there's nothing else to do except hit alt-F4 because the game doesn't have a quit, a menu, or a restart button.
The music was very nice, even if it got repetitive after 5 minutes.
@toxiccomputer looks like your itch.io page is still not public. Did you forget to hit "publish" on itch.io?
Neat idea, but the flight physics felt very weird and the game seemed impossibly difficult. I played it for about 15 mintues and was never able to collect more than 3 crystals in a single run. Some of the crystals are on top of mountains that seem impossible to reach. The time limit is extremely pushishing, and the one-time-use air streams also make it very difficult to explore the map. The flight physics seem extremely janky. In most flying games (and in real life), turning loses energy, and the optimal path between two points is almost always to fly in a straight line, so you try to fly directly between points while making smooth turns when needed. In this game, you will crash very quickly using that strategy, even if you hit every air boost. Instead, you have to exploit the weird physics. It seemed like if I dove straight down and reached a speed of 30+, I could then swoop back upwards and actually gain energy. This was how I managed to navigate the map and find most of the crystals that aren't placed along the boost path. But the problem is that it takes 5 or 10 seconds to reach 30 speed, and then swoop back up, and there aren't enough stopwatches on the map to keep you alive. Also, while this technique can help you gain altitude, you still lose speed very quickly while flying horizontally, so you have to keep repeating the technique just to stay above the ground. Oh, also the roll keys seemed way too sensitive and hard to control. But it didn't seem like there was much of a reason to roll in the first place, so it's not a big deal. As for the theme, it seems like a bit of an afterthought. I think there was a bit too much text to try and explain the plot. And while playing, the gameplay didn't really give me the feel of "keep it alive". It was more like "don't run out of time". The graphics were fine, it's a cute low-poly style and the island has some decent variety, especially for a game jam. I think some animations on the main character/vehicle could have made it a little more interesting to look at, and some trees or animals on the islands would have helped them feel alive. I wish the UI had a little bit more love. I spent a lot of time staring at the little speed meter in the corner. I wish it looked a bit prettier, and it might have been better to have it bigger. The music and sound effects were great. The music is really the thing that made me keep trying to figure out the game, it really fits the atmosphere perfectly. I think the wind sound effects were also very good: subtle but really makes it feel satisfying to be diving through the islands at high speed.
@talops Once I started thinking of it like Mario 64, it helped a bit. I think Mario 64 helps you learn the rhythm of the swooping motion because it basically forces you to dive after a minimum velocity. For the roll, I think more angular damp would help a lot. Also, add a bit more acceleration but put a hard cap on the angular velocity. Another solution would be to just implement auto-roll, so the plane slowly rolls itself upright. I realized that going through the rings automatically levels you out, so at the bridge island part I just flew upside down until the ring at the end spun me around.
Cute animations. I liked that you could choose to do whatever you want during the day. Just sit in bed and post on social media. Or put your phone away and go for a walk. There's no reward for getting likes or followers, there's also no reward for exploration. I think it might be interesting if there's a bit more interaction. Maybe you could see a bird or a deer while going for a walk. Or maybe you could get different replies depending on what you posted. But it's nice as just a short little experience to mess around with.
I managed to beat it, got a score of 214. It's really tough at the start, but once you build up a decent buffer of dinos you can survive a few meteor hits. The controls were a little hard to figure out, I didn't like that you have to hold down the space bar. I think it would be much easier if you tapped space to grab a meteor, then tapped space again to launch it. The aiming arrows were also a little bit hard to see. I liked the gravity mechanic. Throwing a meteor upwards is fast and easier to hit other meteors. Tossing a meteor sideways made it hard to compensate for gravity, but even if you miss, the meteor would usually loop back around and might hit something else. I was a bit confused by the speed of the meteors. Sometimes it seemed like I would launch a meteor super slow, and other times the meteor would rocket off the screen and take a while to come back. The music was OK, but it didn't really feel like it fit the theme of the game. I'm frantically trying to protect a tiny planet from hundreds of giant meteors, but the music is just a short chill upbeat background loop. Graphics were cute, I liked seeing all the little dinos running around. I wish the meteors felt more impactful, maybe leave a crater on the planet. I think it would also have been nice to see more variety in meteors, they all looked the same except for different sizes. You could have comets, plutoids, alien artifacts, etc. It's a very straightforward interpretation of the theme. I think the fact that you can actually see the dinos made me want to protect them.
Played the version 0.0. I'm guessing this was gonna be some kind of escort mission where you're a bouncing bouncer who tries to defend the cute anime girl? I pushed the girl into the jeep and "won". Obviously not much gameplay, but I kinda liked the art. You should make a game about the anime girl next time!
It's a neat little 1-screen survival game. I survived for about 18 "hours". Doing that for 60 days as mentioned in the instructions seems impossible!
I liked the art, but I think the interface could use some work. I wish that the meters were placed next to the relevant thing: dragon health next to the dragon, pig feed next to the pigs. The text for the resource numbers was also very small. It would be cool if this could be represented visually, with stockpile sprites that could stack up.
I think the story and the instructions were a bit too long. For the story, it might be more interesting if you started the player on a farm without the dragon. You could slowly introduce the dragon and other mechanics as the player progresses. This would also help save time with the instructions. I think a lot of the instruction screen was unnecessary, you already had some warning messages for each of the actions that tell you stuff like "you need corn to feed pigs". The one thing that didn't make much sense to me was clicking on a rock to get water. Using a well or a pump to get water might be more intuitive.
I like how you turned the theme into "keep everything alive" on the farm. The dragon was the focus, but everything else is connected, the dragon can't live without you, your house, the corn, the pigs, the river, the woods.
Love all the little jokes and Nick Cage (no relation) references in the activities. The pixel art is pretty great, and the background music helps set the mood. I survived through the first day and made $200, but then Nick died from drinking his health away in an attempt to lower his stress. I think some of the time management stuff could be a bit more clear, maybe some kind of day/night clock to visually represent time instead of "Hour 4". Or an energy/sleep mechanic to limit how many things you can do each day. I very quickly started to see the missions repeating, the soundtrack repeating, and the animations looping. It's hard to create a huge variety of events for a game jam, but it helps if you have some kind of filler actions or delays that spread-out the content. I also wish that some of the actions had more visual representations. Instead of buttons for "yoga" and "drink", have a yoga mat and a bottle of whiskey, and some simple animations for slamming back shots and doing downward dog. It would also be cool if Nick left the room while he's on a mission. The overall experience was very short, but the humor was great and it didn't outstay its welcome.
This is an interesting type of game to attempt for a game jam. But after the first cycle, it just felt very uncomfortable. I hated that she was asking to be left alone, but there was not way to actually do that other than closing the game and quitting. The player was forced to start a fight, and speak in a way that felt almost abusive. The hand holding section also felt very uncomfortable, I really didn't like that it felt like you were trying to force her to hold your hand. The gift minigame was also very strange in all three parts, I don't like that it's framing the relationship as a competition. The broken/repaired heart thing was a little strange, and I'm not quite sure what you were trying to communicate with that mechanic.
The conversation in the third cycle was the most interesting, it felt like the first time where there were meaningful choices, to ask questions or communicate your feelings or make requests. I wish that part had more focus, giving the player a chance to apologize, or set boundaries, or just listen to the girlfriend character's needs. At the end screen, it felt like a very unhealthy relationship, so I decided we should each go separate ways. The ending still felt like a let-down, I was hoping for some kind of epilogue.
The art was quite good throughout, and I liked how it changed throughout the game. I think the gameplay for most of the minigames was too long and drawn out. I thought about playing through it again to see other endings and dialog, but I really didn't want to sit through more silence and handholding. The happy/sad music felt a little too obvious. It also started to get repetitive as the game went on. I would have rather had some ambient sound that could change for each minigame/scene. The voice sound effects also sounded a bit strange and got repetitive as the game went on.
I love the little expressions that the two frogs have. The mechanics were simple but fun. The lack of checkpoints is a bummer. Especially since the level is pretty long and starts very slow. If the level was shorter but much harder, I wouldn't mind it not having checkpoints. I also think just some simple sounds made in SFXR or LabChirp would have gone a long way. I wanted the creepy organ enemy things to make some weird squelchy noises!
Love the aesthetic. Super stylish. Obelisks are awesome. At first, I didn't realize that I kept dying because I was shooting too fast. I always ended up getting overwhelmed by a giant cluster of cubes, or the white orb spawns and kills me. My main strategy was just to hold down sprint and mash jump while circling around the obelisk. It worked pretty well, but I felt like I just couldn't shoot fast enough to kill the cubes faster than they spawn. I wish there was maybe 1 additional mechanic, maybe an AOE grenade, a knockback ability, or a melee attack, or even an exploding enemy that could be exploited. I did have a bit of trouble perceiving enemies behind me. A spatial audio system might have helped, or maybe some kind of lighting or particles around the enemies. It also seemed like there was some randomness in the enemy spawns. Sometimes the D20 enemy would spawn quite early and be easy to kill, but sometimes 2 would spawn at the same time, or they would spawn along with a big cluster of cubes. I also never quite managed to understand the cube movement either. It seems like they would sometimes aggro you if you got close enough, but they also sometimes just decided to bounce around super fast so it was really hard to dodge or shoot them. Sounds are good, except for the spatial perception issues I mentioned earlier. I didn't pick up on a strong connection to the theme. The obelisk didn't seem particularly "alive", and I spent most of my time focusing on killing and dodging anyways. Despite the difficulty, the gameplay was still very compelling.
It seemed simple at first, but there's a really fun gameplay loop where you're trying to decide when and where to place trees. Background music is really nice and helps set the mood along with the pleasant color scheme. I like that it's a fairly chill game, you're just strategizing about building tree networks and exploring, don't have to worry about enemies. Lots of chill gardening vibes. I'm not sure the plant mechanics worked as well. I planted a bunch of them along my tree paths so I would automatically walk past them as I move around. This seemed to work pretty well, but I couldn't quite figure out if the investment paid off or if I should have just planted a lot more trees. I wonder if I could have cheesed the system by just pacing back and forth on tree paths and waiting for plants to grow energy? I'm just really impressed by how fun the core tree planting mechanics felt. I think you did a really job of creating a sort of gardening/survival game within a short time span.
nurture_end.png
It's breakout, and it's playable! That's pretty good for your first ever Unity game jam. Colors and speed ups would have been cool. I also think you should try to add sounds. If you need to make sound effects, SFXR and LabChirp are great tools for game jams.
If you wanted to change angle of the collision based on the angle between the ball and the center of the paddle, you can put a script like this onto the paddle gameobject: ``` OnCollisionEnter2d(Collision2d collision) { //calculate the angle of the collision. Vector3 angle = Vector3.Normalize(transform.position - collision.transform.position); //Change the ball's angle, but use its old velocity. collision.rigidbody.velocity = angle * collision.rigidbody.velocity.magnitude; } ```
I don't see any download links here.
Cute robots. I successfully repaired it, but at what cost? I wish I could repair all 3. Reminds me of the game Assemble With Care. I think the mouse and keyboard interface is a bit unintuitive. Something that's nice about Assemble With Care is that you play the whole game with a touchscreen. I think the theme isn't really used in the game. Have you ever tried replacing the save battery in a gameboy cartridge? It's tricky because if the cartridge fully loses power it will erase your save data. You can't just remove the battery, you have to hook up a backup power supply first, then replace it. Something like that would be interesting, where you have to work to keep the robot alive while you're also repairing it. Overall, it's a nice little experience. I didn't mind trying to play around with the interface a bit to figure out how to repair it properly.
I love the art. Great drawings.
The gameplay was very difficult. I kept dying after the second day. It was really hard to find houses that wanted to buy matches. And sometimes they disappeared before I could get there. It also seemed hard to move around. Sometimes the character would move slowly, or would try to move to the side even when I wasn't pressing buttons.
This is the start of something fun. I like that you decided to make a game about keeping something alive while it's also trying to kill you. The knockback and acceleration helped make it interesting. Nice title screen, too. I think this could really have a creepy-cute vibe, especially if you added some sound effects and background art.
The current version of this is a very basic prototype, but I can see you had some cool ideas and I would be interested in seeing it expanded.
Hey, looks like you only uploaded a .c3p file. Most people won't be able to play your game because they will need to install Construct 3. If possible, can you export your game as an HTML page or a Windows exe? Those two formats will allow most people to play your game.
I got a score of 100 before I decided to stop. Gameplay was fun but very simple and didn't change. It would be more compelling if the game got more difficult over time.
The pixel art was clear and colorful. I wish there was a bit more variety, maybe some different colored worms. It also would have been cool to see the plant grow and eventually flower.
Some sound effects would be exciting. I want to hear a satisfying "SPLAT" when I hit a worm. Some background music would also help set the mood of the game.
The reactions to the wishes I granted were definitely not what I expected! It was fun seeing the silly things that people wish for and the random consequences. I lost the first time, but won the second time. Once I started recognizing repeats, it wash pretty easy (protip: ice cream is bad, organizations are good). Pollution didn't seem like a very big constraint, the hard part was keeping people alive and happy.
The sound was pretty minimal, and the music didn't really hook me especially since it was only on the title screen. I also wish there was a little bit more art. I wanted to see the consequences of my actions somehow, either seeing the earth change or seeing a picture after I granted a wish.
I think the pacing was really good. Ten wishes was the perfect amount. I saw a couple repeats, but not too many, so there was just the right amount of content. A lot of other people made management-style games where you try to keep something alive by making choices and watching meters, but a lot of those other games are too slow or too repetitive. But the choice to make a limit of 10 wishes was really smart and made the game feel like a really nice complete package.
Windows version worked for me!
Very intense, very fun game. I got to the final boss and was so close to beating it, but died just before I won. The early levels were all pretty easy, and felt more like Geometry Wars or some other twin-stick shooter instead of a bullet hell. But the boss level was really tough, and totally filled the screen with bullets!
I was very impressed by the number of enemies and the variety of upgrades. It wasn't just numerical boosts or "+1 damage", the upgrades actually added extra effects to the dash, and added more bullet spread to the player's weapon! Very cool.
The art style was wonderful. The soft watercolor aesthetic just looked gorgeous and worked perfectly with the game. Especially in the final level, when there's just huge swarms of dots attacking you, and you leave tons of blotches of color on the ground after you kill them all.
The delivery mechanic was an interesting way to force the player to move around the level. It might have been more interesting if it was slightly more complex. It's kind of weird that you automatically get the next order as soon as you drop one off. You could make it so that the player has to return to a restaurant to pick up more food before they deliver to each house. Or you could make the player collect ingredients to cook each take-out order. I think this would make the "delivery game" aspect more interesting.
The procedural generation didn't seem to have a huge effect on the gameplay. Maybe I just got unlucky, but all of my levels felt pretty similar. I wonder if the game would have been better if you just used handmade levels? Still, it's pretty impressive that you made a procedural level generator for the Compo!
It also would have been nice to have some sounds and music. With most bullet hell games, the music is such an iconic part of the game. So it feels a bit sad to have a bullet hell game with no music. Even if you didn't have the time/skill to create music, I still wish there were some simple sound effects for shooting, taking damage, regenerating shields, and hitting enemies. I think this would have also improved the gameplay by clearly signaling those events. Without sounds effects, it's sometimes hard to notice when you take damage.
Overall, it's one of the most beautiful and most intense games that I've played so far in this Ludum Dare. Great job!
Great genre combination! I liked the chalkboard graphics style, Scottish accent intro, and sounds/music. The fighting mechanics felt very satisfying and fun. The golf UI and controls were pretty good, and I'm impressed that you even had a putting mechanic. But it was almost impossible to get a decent score because you couldn't even see more than a few feet ahead of you! Camera scroll/zoom and a shot preview would have made the golfing much more enjoyable. I think the golf ball also rolled a lot further than I expected, like I was golfing on bare dirt instead of thick Scottish grass. A good solution I've found to simulate grass physics is to increase the ball's drag and angular drag while it's on the ground.
I like the idea of a DDR + racing game mashup. But I wish they were blended together more. It really just feels like playing 2 completely separate games in splitscreen. Each individual game felt fairly polished. Graphics worked well, good music choices, and good job with the feedback sounds. I think the sound for successfully hitting a DDR note was a little too loud, and should probably be more of a percussive sound (like a snare drum or cymbal sound instead of a synthesizer note). I beat it on the first try, so I guess I still got those Stepmania skills! It would be nice if the game had some kind of difficulty option (maybe just increasing note speed + driving speed). The "racing" mechanics also felt less interesting than the DDR mechanics. Even though it was more challenging than DDR, it felt more like an "Infinite Runner" game than a real "Racing" game. I think it might have been more interesting with an acceleration button, or a steering/drifting mechanic. Or maybe lean more into "Infinite Runner" mechanics, and add powerups that give you a boost, or give you invincibility on the DDR screen. Alternatively, you could add DDR rewards that give your car a boost if you get a good combo. Overall, I definitely had fun with the game. Even though the basic mechanics were simple, they were well polished and successful.
The visuals were very nice. The animations and menus were very polished. I found it odd that there were sound effects in the menus, but no sounds or music in the actual game.
I found the puzzles extremely easy. Almost all of them ended in 4 moves or less, and the solutions were immediately obvious. The moving platform levels were the only ones with a bit of challenge. And only one level seemed to use the shooting mechanic at all. It seemed like there were a lot of game mechanics that didn't really get used fully. I kept waiting for the puzzles to start getting interesting, but I felt like it never really went anywhere. I would much rather have had a game with fewer mechanics, and only 4 or 5 levels with challenging, interesting puzzles.
I also didn't really understand the story.
Great beats and gameplay. I beat it twice, although I didn't notice much "difficulty" increase besides the faster tempo. Interesting control system, I like that you did something new and original instead of just copying Necrodancer. Using the d-pad to dash was a little weird because you have to take your hand off of the joystick to do it. So I never really used the dash outside of the pits you're required to cross. Good job with the level design/tutorials, especially for the dashing. It's nice that you started with a non-combat area to help teach the player the basics.
Like some other comments, I had a bit of trouble with the beat detection. The "auto-sync" thing is a decent idea, but I don't think it worked very well for me. I would much rather just have a Necrodancer-style beat indicator that shows you when to tap.
It's a little weird to see this called a "roguelite". I didn't notice any procedural levels, items, etc. But I guess the definition of that genre has always been somewhat nebulous. On the other hand, the rhythm game part was awesome. A lot of people tried to make rhythm games for this theme, and it's a really tricky genre to get right. But this is probably one of my favorite rhythm games in the jam.
Graphics were great, and I liked how everything in the world danced along with you. Glad to see the rude bear is still doing his rude thing!
Amazing combination. More difficult and even more fun than I imagined! I finished the game and I felt like I was getting pretty good at dodging those enemies. Great job with the variety of enemy types and movement patterns, it really helped make the fights more interesting. I like the way you re-interpreted classic Zelda graphics with vector art. The sound was a little rough (engine volume too low) and some music would have been nice.
I think it would have felt more fleshed-out if it had just slightly more Zelda mechanics. It's a little disappointing that enemies never drop anything. Maybe add keys, arrows, or bombs. A small overworld area or a few branching dungeon rooms could have been cool. Maybe even some block-pushing or wall-bombing puzzles. Or alternatively, you could add a few more racing mechanics like timers, checkpoints, boost, fuel, drifting, etc. Of course the scope is very limited by the jam timeframe, but I think the game feels a little sparse and just 1 extra mechanic to keep track of would really make it sparkle.
I really enjoyed playing it, and would love to see the concept expanded upon.
Good golf and good shooting! I made it to wave 6 but just couldn't beat it. I love that you decided to put multi-ball levels in the game, I laughed the first time I saw that! But it's really hard to keep track of all 3 balls at once, especially with all the zombies and other objects on the course. It might have been a bit easier if the balls were bigger, or if you had an arrow pointing at them at all times.
The helicopter is a smart idea. I like that it lets you fly around without having to worry about camera angles or being attacked by zombies. The zombies are also a cool way to add time pressure to the golfing, and I like that even when they explode they don't always completely mess you up. But the pink spheres can make it hard to see where your ball is, especially when there's multiple zombies piling up.
I do wish there were a few more golf courses. But the waves mechanic is a smart way to get around having to make lots of different levels. It's a great way to make the most out of the limited number of hours during a game jam.
I like the idea, reminds me a little bit of Phantom Dust. I like the variety of cards, my favorites were triple shot and FOV increase. I wish the move speed increase was slightly more powerful. The limited duration of each card was also a little bit confusing, at first I thought the cards were permanent. An on-screen timer or card indicator would have been very useful.
The graphics were a bit disappointing, I wish the environment and characters had more life and color, even if they are robots. I think the pace of the game was also a little bit slow. The waves felt pretty repetitive because there was no change in enemy types so you could just keep running in circles and shooting behind you. Which was very effective, but also somewhat boring. More enemy types, more enemy movement patterns, faster waves, or faster enemy spawning would have made this more interesting.
I really like that you gave the player full deck customization. A lot of the other card games in the jam used "draft" style interfaces, or a preset deck of cards. Getting to pick everything beforehand was fun, and added an element of strategy to the game.
Very interesting combination, a little similar to Fract OSC. I love the graphics, great job with the lighting and the strange abstract architecture. I got past the second puzzle, and that cool view left me wanting to explore more of this world!
I personally liked the sound memory aspect. Memorizing specific notes without any other cues (letters, colors, etc.) is something that you rarely see in most games, so it's a surprisingly fun challenge. I'd be interested to see how you could expand on the idea.
Amazing concept. Probably my favorite genre mashup so far! The rotation color-swap mechanic is genius. And the fact that you can absorb bullets to clear them out of the way is very useful. The whole thing works so well. Very challenging, but also a ton of fun. I especially love how the music changes seamlessly when you rotate pieces.
I wish that the tetris aspect was a little bit more fully-featured. A "hold piece" feature and a "next piece" display would have helped. Also, the ability to rotate left or right would have been very useful for the L, J, and T pieces. It also didn't seem like the game properly implemented the "bag draw" system for choosing tetris pieces, or the bonus points for double, triple, and quadruple line clears. But the bullet hell aspects were very polished, especially since this was a compo entry!
I managed to get a high score of 2700 points. Those bullet patterns get really challenging once they start moving at different speeds!
@Evan-Minto thanks for the feedback.
The slipperiness is intentional! That's the "drift" part of the title 😁. Unfortunately I didn't quite get enough time to put in proper skidmarks and tire screech sounds. Lightly tapping the controls is a good strategy. If you're having trouble staying on the track, you can also try letting go of the accelerator to slow down. I tried to give the player plenty of time on the clock (at least at the start of the race), so it's a good strategy to take it slow and focus on trying not to fall off the track, instead of trying to go fast and keep restarting checkpoints.
And you're right about the towers. You definitely have to be careful about where you place them. The towers prioritize whichever target is closest. So, if you put them right next to the track, they'll be very good at pushing cats away, but you're also likely to get caught in the crossfire. If you put them further away from the track, they're more likely to get a cat *before* it reaches the track. But the trade-off is that they might not be able to target cats that land on the track.
Thanks for the feedback, everyone! I've made some more changes and uploaded new post-compo builds for Win, Mac, and Linux (compo version is also still available on the itch.io page). The biggest changes are new effects for drifting, range circle indicators for towers, and various balance tweaks to make the earlier rounds more forgiving. A more detailed list of changes is on the itch.io page. Previously, I was only able to survive until wave 5, but now I've been able to make it to wave 8. Let me know if you can beat my high score!
@Kappa-b Thanks for those ideas about the cat mass and the collision layers, they worked well. I increased the car's mass by around 10x, so the cats are now more like heavy boxes instead of solid walls. If the road is completely blocked, the player can slowly push their way through, or knock a few cats off the track. But it's still easy to get knocked out of control if you hit a cat at full speed. The collision layer thing is pretty subtle, but it definitely prevents some frustrating occurrences where your own towers mess you up.
This is amazing! I'm not quite sure what I was expecting to play, but it turned out to be some kind of Dragon Ball Z style 3D fighting game with a very muscular chef!?
I loved the graphics and the humor. Great job with the cutscenes. Not very many Ludum Dare games have 3d animated cutscenes!
I'm not quite sure I fully understood the fighting system. The later opponents were very good at dodging ranged attacks, and the heavy attacks didn't seem to do much damage. So I mostly just spammed light attack while trying to dodge their projectiles. It worked pretty well, and I was able to defeat Paprikaman! I had a lot of fun with it, and I especially liked all the particle and sound effects (even just for moving around).
The one thing that might have been cool to have is some kind of cooking mechanic. But I have no idea how you would manage to combine that with the fighting mechanics.
Awesome concept, and good execution. I love the variety of cards and the ability to build a deck while you're progressing through the levels. I made it to level 8, but just got overwhelmed by enemies that killed all my units before they could attack. I guess training dummies and speed boost may not have been the optimal deck... I started over and tried building an explosives-based deck, which was a lot of fun until a moth got stuck in a wall and I couldn't kill it (even the mines and the nuclear rat refused to explode next to it). The tank cards were also very good.
I liked the voxel art style, and didn't mind the lighting that some of the other comments pointed out. I did have trouble seeing my own summons apart from the enemies. I liked the level layout, but I think a bit more scenery would have been nice. I also wish that there was a bit more variety between each wave. Maybe change the sky and lighting colors between each wave, or give each wave a funny name.
Very tough! I kept running out of food, jewels, and medicine. I had plenty of arrows, though! The game was pretty fun, but the concept didn't feel particularly original. I think Oregon Trail already did the "Adventure + Shooter" mashup...
I really liked the graphics and music. Lots of variety with the enemies. And I also liked the little text interludes along the journey.
Cool idea. But it just didn't really "click" for me. The deck-building element was cool, and it was fun to unlock new card packs and slowly build up a collection of better cards. But none of the cards seemed to interact with each other, which takes out a lot of the fun of a card game. The shooter aspects also didn't really work for me. The levels didn't have particularly interesting designs, and it was very easy to get lost or turned-around because they had absolutely no landmarks, textures, or even colors! The enemy designs didn't have much variety, weren't very challenging, and weren't arranged to create interesting tactical situations. I got through most of it by just strafing and spamming the shoot button until things died (also, I really wish I could just hold down the button).
The music and sounds were decent, but felt a bit too repetitive. I don't think this would be an issue if the game was shorter, but some of the levels can take pretty long just because the rooms are so large.
The menus and variety of cards was pretty impressive. And the core idea and mechanics are cool. But I think the game is just held back by the level design and graphics.
Nice pixel art and fun gameplay. Very challenging, you gotta be really quick to successfully use dive and spit. I was hoping that spitting at a bug would give me a bunch of bonus points because it was so tricky! It seemed like eventually the game would just generate some impossible brick formations, but maybe I'm just not skilled enough. I do wish the game had sound, even if it was just very minimal SFXR sounds for flapping, spitting, etc.
Short but fun. Reminds me a lot of Rocket League and Jet Car Stunts. I think my Rocket League skills definitely helped me out because I managed to finish the game! I think a checkpoint somewhere in level 3 might have been a good idea, though.
The handling took a little bit to get used to, but it wasn't too bad once I figured it out. The braking seemed a little weird, especially while turning. I ended up using the "reverse" button instead of "brake".
I liked the bright, super-saturated art style. The chromatic aberration effect while boosting was good too, but it would have been even better if the car's model had an actual jet booster on it.
I didn't really like the music, it felt a little too stereotypical. The mixing of the music also seemed a little off, but it's hard to describe what was wrong with it. A more experienced sound person could probably explain it better.
In the end, I had fun with it, and would love to see it expanded upon.
Very polished game. The arcade games were pretty fun on their own, and the added ghost mechanics was a cool challenge. The arcade world was also done very well. Overall a very good experience.
The horror didn't really work for me. It was a bit more silly than scary. Although perhaps that's what was intended for a "spoopy" game!👻👻👻 I think the sound was pretty good for a horror game, but I didn't have any feeling of tension, and there weren't any big scary jump scares. Even when the ghost popped out of the second arcade machine, it was more funny than scary. I think it might have been creepier if there was more weird ambient stuff in the arcade itself. Maybe have the ghost wandering around the arcade, and you have to hide from it when it gets near. But anyways, it seemed like the horror parts worked for some of the other commenters so maybe I'm just too old and jaded...
Despite the horror stuff not really working for me, I found myself enjoying the 3 different arcade games. The first one was especially fun, it was interesting how you have to dodge your own hammers but also shoot fast enough to break all the boxes before they reach you.
Great combination of genres. Very good use of the theme. The survival mechanics were well developed and balanced, and worked well in combination with the card mechanics. I particularly liked the trade-offs between "forage", "wood", and "farm": forage seems very useful early-on, but wood and farm become better as you upgrade your tools. It was also cool trying to decide which cards to keep, and which to discard, especially the ones that required resources to use. I was constantly running out of "eat" cards. It might have been interesting if there was a mechanic that let you upgrade your deck by adding/removing cards.
The graphics, UI, and sound were solid and effective. Good job designing all the card images, items, and animations. Aesthetically, I wish it was a bit more unique. Maybe experiment more with color palettes, gradients, lighting and effects.
I also played the post-Ludum Dare version after I died, and I really like the added music. It really helps you get into a relaxing rhythm of gathering, upgrading, eating, and resting. I managed to upgrade my sword to level 4, so the monsters weren't much of a threat. My biggest challenge was just discarding fast enough to reach an "eat" card.
Lovely concept. I really liked the art. Inferno was no match for me, but I liked his hair so we're best buds now. I figured out the fighting mechanics right away, so it wasn't much of a challenge. But I wish there was a bit more story and dialogue. I wanted to be able to taunt my opponent before/during the fight!
53.7 seconds!
Those letters come really fast, so it feels great to get a good streak. It feels a little more like a reaction speed test than a typing game, but that kinda works with the racing aspect.
Nice pixel art, good sound, and good music. And great job managing to do all 3 of those things at once! Also, great job with the UI and the tutorial! The UI worked flawlessly and the tutorial was very effective at visually showing me how to play.
Wow, those levels are tricky. Just immediately throws you into the deep end and makes you use the mechanics in interesting ways (I didn't realize I could air-jump until I looked back at this page and saw the gif). But I enjoyed the challenge, and it left me wanting more levels after the end!
I agree with the other comments that it feels more like a puzzle game than anything else, and the camera zoom was a bit annoying.
I think the "platformer" side of the genre mashup was done pretty well, but I wish the cards were a bit more interesting. Usually, cards mean that the game will have some kind of shuffled random element. And usually, a card drafting mechanic means that you're being force to commit to the cards you're drafting for the rest of the game. But the fact that the cards are the same every time and you can instantly redraw means that the drafting mechanic doesn't have any real stakes.
The graphics were pretty basic, but very functional and it fit with the theme of the game. The music fit well, too. I wish the player character had a little bit more personality.
Interesting idea, but progress was a little slow for my taste. I know it's kinda in the name of the genre, but it just takes a lot of clicking (and/or time)! The depth concept combined with tic-tac-toe wasn't quite interesting enough to keep me playing. For a clicker/idle/incremental game to be compelling, I think it needs to introduce new mechanics, or tell an interesting expanding story, or slowly evolve the gameplay in interesting ways. Even if it's just unlocking new snippets of text or new images, I think it really makes the progress feel worthwhile.
Funny idea, and a lot of fun to play. The shooting segments felt very polished and smooth. Good job with the variety of levels, enemies, and weapon upgrades. That's a lot of content for a short amount of time! The fishing mechanic itself felt a little bit shallow compared to the shooting mechanic. It might have been more interesting if the fishing and shooting had more interaction. It mostly felt like the fishing rod was just a level select button for the shooting game. But maybe that's not a bad thing because it put the focus on the strongest part of the game.
The music was great, and the underwater audio filter was a *perfect* choice! The art was very simple, but the lighting and effects helped it look more polished and finished.
Also, the "tutorial" is very clever. I think a lot of players might not have even noticed the upgrade shop, but the fact that you start out with no rod/gun is a good choice. One thing about the interface is that I wish there was a big notification to tell you how much money you earned at the end of each fishing level.
I liked the funny/surreal background music. The racing mechanics were a little bit disappointing, since you're not really racing against anything, or even a timer. It felt more like Sanctum, Orcs Must Die, or any other action/tower defense mashup where you control a character that can build towers and help fight. The driving mechanics might have been more interesting if there were some kind of obstacles that were difficult to avoid, or if enemies fired projectiles that forced you to move around the map and dodge.
The difficulty was also definitely an issue, since 1 turret alone seemed to be able to take care of every wave. An easy way to fix this could be to simply make enemies spawn faster with every wave (that's what I did for my tower defense game). Personally, I'd always rather have a game that's too difficult and ends quickly instead of a game that's too easy and goes forever, because you can replay a difficult game and try out different strategies.
It's a funny idea, but it really just feels like a straight-forward coin dozer game rather than a mash-up of two genres. At the start of the game, it's pretty boring because there's just not much that you can do. But once the machine starts to pay out, it really just gives you tons of coins. And it's kinda funny to just keep dumping absurd amounts of coins from the sky until the game starts to slow down.
The coin physics seem a little weird. They act really squishy, and tend to bunch-up in odd ways. Part of this is probably just due to how Unity physics works. But it might also work better with a smaller board, thicker coins, and messing around with various physics settings.
I think some sound effects would really have improved the experience. Stuff like particle effects and flashing lights would have also been a nice touch. A casino game is really all about flashyness, and I think winning coins deserves a bit more fanfare than just some floating colored text.
Great pixel art, and nice music too.
I managed to cook 13 recipes. At the end, it started to get impossible because my chefs just couldn't move fast enough to complete a 3-step recipe within 15 seconds. I agree with @Eugene-Myach that it might be more interesting if you could command multiple chefs. It also might be cool if there were Paper Mario style minigames that let you cook faster.
The UI worked pretty well for me. But I wish that it supported arrow keys so I could *really* get that classic JRPG feel!
I also loved the random orders. Who is out there ordering "sliced boiled butter"? Why does it need to be sliced first? Well, don't knock it 'til you try it I guess!
Also, I appreciate the random misses and taking damage. It's a small touch, but it really helps sell the JRPG aspect of the game. I wish there were critical hits, too! Or maybe there actually were crits and I just got really unlucky...
Very fun. I loved the art style, sounds, and music. The wrestler descriptions and move descriptions were very good. I'm not sure I fully figured out how the mechanics worked. At one point, I went for a choke hold and won on the first turn! I imagine the audience might have been a little disappointed with that match. Later, I realized that I could just spam the spacebar until I won by pure chance. But it was still fun just to see the random results of the fights.
Despite being a very short prototype, I really enjoyed it. The mechanics and interface worked well, the art was cute and effective, and the sound was simple but worked well for a rhythm game.
As other comments have mentioned, the idea is awesome, and I'd love to see a bigger version with more cards, enemies, music, etc.
The strange abstract world was very interesting. Great use of lighting, colors, and effects. The concept was very ambitious. Unfortunately, the writing just didn't live up to the concept. On top of the spelling and grammatical errors, the story wasn't compelling. It also didn't feel like it tied in to the mechanics or the game world. The platforming and shooting aspects also didn't seem very polished.
Wow, really great job! Loved playing this. The basic mechanic was already a cool idea, but the boost and hover abilities worked together super well. The optional objectives was also a very smart choice, and I really like that you have a level select that shows you which ones you've done for each level and an overall completion percentage.
The level design felt really great, too. Some of the levels started to get a little bit repetitive about half way through, but there was also some cool stuff with moving platforms that interact in interesting ways with the music rhythm. I think you could probably have cut it down to a smaller number of levels, and focused on making those levels as good as possible. But that's a very minor thing.
Easily my favorite platformer I've played so far in the jam. Wonderful work!
Interesting idea. The way I played, Eliza fired back insults at everyone who was rude, but was chill with everyone else. I liked how that response worked occasionally, but it also got me a lot of insults hurled in my face. By the end, I was playing really defensively, and immediately shielding my ears after every interaction. It was kinda funny, but also pretty sad that this had become Eliza's automatic response to the world. It felt really good when I occasionally ran into nice people who said encouraging things (or at least neutral things).
I also loved the art style and the music. The color picker thing at the start didn't seem to do anything, though.
ball is life.PNG Coming soon to a fashion runway near you.
Cute graphics, and funny idea. It would have been cool to see the full thing, but honestly a dressup game is pretty fun even without "real" game mechanics.
Cool concept. It was tough, but I managed to complete 1 3x3 area. Then the game crashed a minute later (on Windows).
I liked the ASCII graphics and the color choices. The mouse interface was a little weird, and I think keyboard controls might have worked better. If you drop both gravity sources so that they overlap, they kinda become stuck together. But in a way, that just made it slightly easier to control.
Despite the difficulty, I found myself wishing that the game was faster-paced. I wanted to see 3 or 4 tetris pieces orbiting around simultaneously!
brokentower.PNG
The UI seemed pretty broken. I couldn't get the upgrade interface to go away. I also couldn't figure out how the shop worked.
There's a surprising amount of content here. Lots of towers, enemies, upgrades, cards, etc. Unfortunately, it wasn't very polished, so it was pretty hard to actually place and upgrade stuff properly.
I figured out that I could keep getting more cards every time I hit the "start wave" button. Then I just spammed the meteor and icicle cards to clear-off the entire screen. It was kinda fun to just see a mess of particles all over the screen. And it worked really well! But I get the sense that this probably wasn't the intentional strategy...
If you have the time, you should try to make a post-compo version that fixes some of the UI issues.
I love the idea. It's really tough to divide your attention between multiple intersections, even *without* the tower defense aspects! I think it's good that the tower defense parts are not as difficult as the traffic management, because you can mostly let the towers do their own thing and only check-in on them occasionally.
The number of levels is very impressive. But, they get a little repetitive. I made it to level 8 before quitting. It's not that I disliked any of the mechanics, but it just felt exactly the same as the last 2 or 3 levels. Ideally, each level should introduce some new mechanic or force me to learn a new strategy. But By the time I hit level 8 I felt like I was just doing the same thing over and over. It might have been less tiring if the levels were shorter, though.
I really like the different choices of tower. 3 options felt like the perfect amount. I never felt like I needed upgrades or powerups or anything like that.
I did wish that there was some sound and music. I think music would have really helped set the tone. I wasn't quite sure if this was supposed to be a silly, wacky zombie game or a dark, weird zombie game, or what. I think sound would also be very helpful. Often, I would be very focused on one section of the screen, when I suddenly noticed that something important was happening in another area (traffic jams, cars exploding, zombies breaking through defenses). If there was some kind of warning noise, I think it could help make the game more intuitive and exciting.
It was kind of funny that the cars politely stopped to let zombies cross the road, and the zombies totally ignored the cars. Maybe they were driverless automated cars? It might be kind of nice to have a little bit more world/story behind the game. Even if it was just 1 line of text before each level.
I really loved how the two mechanics interacted with each other. Great idea to combine those two genres!
Nice, short, and fun. It's definitely a similar premise to VA-11 Hall-A, but the 3d world with physical ingredients and a cauldron is a nice touch. I wish there was a bit more interaction and responsiveness. Punching, complimenting, and brewing the wrong drink didn't seem to have much of an effect. Also, because the world is a 3d space I wanted to be able to walk around and interact with it. You could walk down to the cellar to get a new keg of beer, or go to the backroom to cut more lemon slices. You could serve people at tables, or just walk around and have conversations.
I liked the tone and the use of humor. The writing wasn't mind-blowing, but it was entertaining enough to keep me playing through the end of the game. The little touches like the "punch" button and the boot ingredient were great. The character art helped set the tone and theme of the game. The 3D assets mostly looked like stock 3d models, but they did help create a fantasy atmosphere along with the music and sounds. The 2D interface also fit the theme of the game, but it also didn't feel very polished. For a mostly text-based game, I think it's pretty important to have a smooth, clean, and easy-to-read UI.
@Kainkun hm... I think it's a combination of factors that make them look like stock assets. The proportions, material choices, and colors are fairly realistic. But there's no little details or aesthetic flair that makes them look unique. Especially in a fantasy setting, props tend to have little bits of decoration, weathering, damage, or unusual elements that make them feel unique and interesting. It's kind of hard to describe, but maybe some examples will help: [Void salts](https://i.imgur.com/htjUetA.png) and [Fire salts](https://i.imgur.com/DYxIEVJ.jpg) from Skyrim. The void salts bowl has an interesting scalloped pattern, and looks like it's made out of some kind of smooth translucent stone. The fire salts are in a thick, chunky, 3-legged grinder bowl, and notice that the edges seems slightly worn-down from use. [Primordy oil](https://i.imgur.com/cgCEMJF.png) from Slime Rancher. The 3d model is very simple, and has hardly any detail. But notice the very unique color and material choices. The cork is a bright purple/pink gradient, and the glass outline has a very saturated purple/green gradient. It's a very unique color choice that you wouldn't see in any other game. [Grog Tankard](https://i.imgur.com/88d42XJ.png) from Sea Of Thieves. This model has an almost ridiculous amount of detail. The edges of the tankard are heavily chipped and worn-down, so you can see the wood material underneath the paint. It has a bunch of leather straps wrapped around it and a metal band at the bottom to hold it together. And even the leather straps have lots of cuts and worn edges, and an aged surface patina. It looks like this tankard has been in multiple knife fights!
You can notice similar stuff in a lot of other games. Potions will have little tags, or bits of string and cloth tied around them. A knife will have a little gem in the hilt, or runes carved into the blade. A tree branch will still have leaves attached. A piece of meat will have grill marks, thick streaks of fat, and a bone sticking out.
Of course, you have very limited time during Ludum Dare, so you don't want to spend too much time detailing a single model. But you can still add a lot of quick little details to the texture. [Here's an antique tankard](https://i.imgur.com/Lhm3iTc.jpg) that has a nice little repeating pattern around it. [Here's a clay flask](https://i.imgur.com/FYDuyMu.jpg) with a simple geometric design. I think this kind of little detail can really make a 3d model stand out, especially if it's an important item that the player can interact with.
The name gets a perfect 10/10. Well done! 😆
There's not much in the way of "game" mechanics, but despite that I still had fun just playing around with it. The audio was especially good, and really made it fun to mess around with. After I got the rhythm down, I just started playing around and improvising. I liked that there wasn't any penalty for failure, so I was free to just come up with my own random syncopated beats and stuff.
Brilliant idea, and I love how fully-realized it is, despite the extremely short length. I finished it and I'm still just sitting here just laughing at the idea.
Your website is giving me a server not found error (just the game page, the rest of the site runs fine). So I downloaded the source file and managed to run the game.
It was tricky to figure it out at first, but once I did I managed to destroy that cocky opponent. It was surprisingly fun trying to read and type quickly to hit the ball back. And I loved the descriptive writing. It really did a great job of setting the mood with the crowd, the announcer, and the opponent taunting you.
I kept typing stuff like "hit", "smash", "curve", "lob", "drop", etc. hoping that it would have some kind of effect, but I didn't notice any difference. It would be cool if that was an advanced technique, or even just affected the narration.
Fun game, and great use of the theme.