Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → Bobap
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | 59 | Signal | Prospects | jam | 623 | 3.28 | 3.02 | 2.84 | 3.69 | 3.26 | 2.27 | 3.15 | |
| 2025 | 58 | Collector | The Antiquary | jam | 543 | 3.31 | 2.88 | 3.47 | 4.18 | 3.16 | 2.10 | 2.95 | |
| 2024 | 56 | Tiny Creatures | An Itsy Bitsy RPG | jam | 137 | 4.01 | 3.77 | 4.28 | 4.32 | 3.54 | 2.90 | 3.45 | |
| 2015 | 33 | You are the Monster | Gulliver | jam |
What a wacky concept and surprisingly well executed. The tutorial in the description was very helpful in understanding what was going on. The money and refund UI are very jarring when compared to the polished look the rest of the game has.
I'm not sure what I like more, the art or the audio. This is an absolute gem. I loved seeing the city grow with the upgrades. Would've liked to see some sort of "Congrats you got every upgrade" sort of flair at the end, but I like still being able to chill and watch the city afterwards.
It's a very fun mechanic, there's just not much game happening.
@scriveneroflight Dang, nice work. I was really hoping to get additional enemies implemented so it wasn't such a long grind just farming the basic fly.
@imberny Oh boy was it ever. I lost all of Saturday to the nav and ended up scrapping that whole implementation because it was so clunky. There are a few edge cases where it bricks itself that I didn't have time to patch for the jam. All that said, I'm very happy with where it ended up.
@mrbananaz Yes, one of my favorite parts too. That's one of those bugs -> feature scenarios.
@risminator True, there are some nav mesh issues that I have a fix for, but ran out of time to implement. It's a lot easier to navigate on controller, but for some reason there are issues with controller on the web build.
@kotolazer Agreed. I lost a lot of time to the web movement mechanic. I have additional "enemies" and a full skill tree planned, including the ability to cocoon bugs. Hopefully I can find time to implement them later this week. Will probably update the Itch version if that happens.
@mistagiggles I do have a fix for that, it has to do with a delayed collider activation so you don't end up with zero-distance strands. The delay is just too high.
@necrotwist Not as is. I have a more in depth skill system planned out, but ended up running out of time for the jam entry. Now that I'm rested from the weekend I realize I could have slapped some more stat boosts on the attribute point system for lack of the full skill tree.
@goldhand Yeah, unfortunate side effect of the generation system. I have fixes for most of the issues, but gonna have to wait until after the jam period.
I ended up surviving on the first level to a point where the fps tanked, likely from too many entities. While I wasn't failing to feed the rabbits, the additional "crowd" of rabbits was gathering faster than I was clearing. The spawn rate seems to keep increasing past the point of critical mass for max uptime on all 12 of the "demand" nodes. It was about 2-3 fps in the screenshot (on web build)
pasture_entity_packing.png
I really wanted to keep playing but the tank controls were not it. Reminded me of Army Men: Toys in Space from my childhood. Fantastic retro vibe, just please reconsider the controls.
Holy kelp! I was not expecting such a massacre so quickly. The art is so much fun. I may have accidentally hit R to reload and it black screened the game. Pretty sure it took me to the start screen, but didn't actually load the elements properly.
The game is cute. Town has a great feel to it and the character models are fantastic.
Attacking felt good, though the spell didn't seem to do much. Also, aside from a bit of max hp, it didn't feel like leveling up did anything either.
Fighting the monsters was fun, but most of my time in the game was spent walking around the empty dungeon afterward trying to find which direction the sacred leaf was in. Would be nice to include an indicator pointing the way.
Lastly, I haven't worked with GameMaker in a while, so I'm not sure if it's the only export method, but the installer felt like overkill.
The game was very fun, the experience was terrible. I enjoyed the strategy and playing around with team compositions. The theming with the kids toys is cute and inspired. I especially liked building out my army with the choices at the end of each level.
Unfortunately I had no idea what was happening for the entire first level. I didn't understand that the enemies would be moving upward or that I was trying to protect the king at the top. The descriptions that mentioned "at the end of combat" I thought would only trigger once per level. I think the more apt term would be "after each turn." I thought none of the UI was working because the buttons weren't doing anything. The problem being that it was all drag and drop which was not made apparent by the UI. Additionally, none of the actual buttons in the game seemed like buttons since there was no "hover" or "pressed" states, they just looked like regular text. It was cool to see new units as options to expand the roster, but it wasn't communicated at all what those units would DO until after you chose them.
Also, the Four Horsemen absolutely dumpstered on the last level. Overall so much fun, but a very steep learning curve.
I'm getting banana peels by randomly clicking on the crowd, the indicators don't seem to actually be pointing at the right spot for it. Occasionally the whole game would randomly restart. The art and vibe is great, I guess I just don't really understand what the game is.
I can't really explain why, but it feels like the whole game is AI generated
This game deconstructs the civilization sim genre down into the simplest of terms. Very well executed, fantastic atmosphere, and surprisingly straightforward to understand and play.
The vibes are immaculate
Fantastic game feel, A+ on the puns and references, phenomenal use of theme. I love the mixed media. Difficulty-wise it feels RNG dependent on the care package drops you get. Got the win, shotgun slaps. Only gripe would be the tan enemies on the pink background are sometimes tricky to spot. Oh, and thank you for the sensible default audio levels. Excellent design choices all around.
Fantastic vibe, phenomenal art direction.
The pacing and dialogue is great. The vibe is super chill. The art is stunning. Overall a fantastic experience.
Fantastically well done. Simple mechanic, fun gameplay, beautiful art. The big challenge for me was splitting attention to control both dogs at once. I wonder how the difficulty would be with a co-op partner. UI is simple and elegant. I wish there was some sort of level select to go back and replay my favorites. There were also times I wanted to restart the level because I messed up early.
I just wanted to run over the gnomes the whole time.
The branch wiggle is top tier. Tearing off the leaves is so satisfying. Wish there was some sort of indicator for when a branch is "complete" had to go back a couple of times for a stray leaf.
Love the concept. Really wanted to be able to press spacebar to start the level. Wish I could move the frogs after they were placed without having to reset the whole level.
So adorable. Axolotl is the bestest boy.
My submission is the polar opposite and now I feel like I'm the bad guy in your game.
As a fellow spider game dev, I appreciate your web-slinging action. I had fun zipping around and kicking slime ass.
The whole game is very atmospheric. I love the shaders and was definitely not prepared for the guitar playing to be so intricate. Well done.
Not really sure what I'm supposed to be doing
Felt like I was fighting against my graphics card more than the monsters. Fun game, would Survive again.
Really enjoyed this one. You knocked it out of the park. I got a very large amount of critters by the end and it became a little difficult to select the tile I wanted. Would have been nice to be able to rearrange the tiles outside of the planet. Aside from that, excellent job. I cleared with a full prey build and might go for round 2 with a different strat. You may have fumbled on the title a bit since I think Xirnu's Next Top Planet might be more enticing. suck_it_up.png
Was a fun little platformer. Loved how the cube expanded with the movement. Would have liked to see it squish a bit when you hit a wall as a nice little indicator when a wall jump was available. The directionality of the movement was a little weird. Not an issue generally, but made wall jumping tricky when you tried to rotate the camera about. I think flow would have been better if the cube didnt have to "turn" to face camera forward and just moved in the direction of input. Overall nicely done.
That is a lot of art assets you managed to pull together in 72 hours, incredible work. I was envisioning something of the sort for my take but had to pare it back to a simple text based system to fit in the timeframe. Really love what you guys were able to pull off. No notes.
Very cool idea. I love the use of theme both for the Jam and for spooky month. You executed it perfectly too. The art is phenomenal and encroaching darkness was very ominous. Felt very Don't Starve vibes. It was great how the music got more intense and spooky as you got further out, and then went back to the "cheery" tune at the safe zone. No notes.
Holy shit, I felt like I just finished the tutorial when I got thrown into a huge boss fight. Did not expect that.
I like how the boss hands bounced around after dashing at you. Moving around felt good, I liked that the character shifted left and right of middle to give a sense of speed. I do think it was a tad overexaggerated and slightly disorienting. Would like to see the movement shift like half as much.
I like the low poly style and overall it was an engaging and well constructed fight. Just wish I got to fight a few more "trash mobs" before the boss.
I love the style and unique concept. The controls felt a little sluggish. Would have really liked to be able to use mouse controls. Had trouble reaching 100% on all the levels. Would have helped to be able to remove body parts already placed since the learning process involved a lot of trial and error.
@zexurge I get that, I knew it was a risk going in, but I figured if I could limit the design to work with minimal art, I could get a lot more of it assembled for the jam. Haven't heard of that game before, definitely going to check it out now though. Thanks for the rec.
@adrien-tremblay I definitely would like to add more tags, primarily "sub-tags" for like [weapons] > [swords] or like [stone] > [marble] which could just be like bonuses for more specialized sets or something. Couldn't work without expanding the item list enough to have enough overlap just yet though.
I like the idea of influencing requests, perhaps the requests prioritize types of items in your collection.
The game is sorely lacking for audio though, I didn't even touch sound for the jam this time.
@nolamosoft It absolutely needs the juice. Really wish I had time for some more animations and audio feedback for all the interactions.
@blazerker Icons are a fantastic idea. I can definitely see it for the item Types. Might be harder for Civs and Materials though. I had thought about color coding them which would help identifying them at a glance in a similar way.
@thdudk I was definitely worried about the onboarding for the game, in fact at the last minute I tried making some of the buttons stand out more since I couldn't implement a proper tutorial. Glad you were able to figure it out. Definitely looking to add in more ways to influence the market to help "fishing" for request items. In retrospect for the Jam build I should have broadened the individual Visitor item pools.
@ayu Absolutely want to have the Renown and *nonexistent* Disposition system facilitate that growth for future versions.
@beebster-games The entire thing is made up of Godot's Control elements, primarily Panel, HBox, and VBox containers with of course a good amount of Labels. The art I did create was made in Illustrator, but the only elements I needed to make were the background, the fading notification log bit, and shockingly the checkboxes for the "Have" column. I'm sure there's a way to do that using Godot nodes too, but I already had some premade checkbox icons from a previous project. Styleboxes doing all the heavy lifting here.
@mololo Yeah, it's poorly explained. If you right click an item it goes into your Collection tab and Renown is based on rarity of items and set completion for your own personal collection.
@greenpig Yeah, onboarding is a nightmare since it throws so much at you at once. I thought about slapping a music track in, but wanted to find the right one, then would need audio options and building a menu for that...really just got hit by the deadline.
@khamekaze Honestly a lot of the UI features kind of got smashed together and didn't turn out as elegant as I had planned since I just had to get it in. Definitely ended up in some time sucks that were completely pointless. I spent like 4 hours getting stacked menus to properly close with ESC, but that minimizes fullscreen so who would even use that. That one hurt a bit.
@holysparks Definitely interested in expanding it and improving the UI flow.
@sick-machine Music was culled by the deadline unfortunately. The goal is technically "collect all the things" but there's 270+ items and some are ridiculously rare spawns so that it entirely unlikely to be reached. A small gold goal for the Jam would have been smart. I was too focused on full game elements instead of a proper vertical slice.
@ditam I'm glad you powered through the lack of tutorial. Based on the feedback I definitely need to have better communication about visitor item pools and more agency over visitors that show up. Renown is gained from items in your Collection. If you Right click an item it will transfer from yours or a visitor's inventory to the Collection. Definitely going to have harder requests show up with Renown growth, but as is the 2 Tag requests are still generating buggy outputs. There is no way to deliver x [IRON] [POTTERY] for example.
@grummelchen Yeah the code cross checking the tags against each other doesn't work right. Real oversight on that one. Most of the items were also added in the last few hours so the pricing is pretty much just initial values that I never had a chance to tweak. Glad you enjoyed though.
@schu Glad you enjoyed.
@void4 The Renown is from placing items into your Collection using Right Click but doesn't do anything currently.
@vladcfg Thanks for playing. I just updated the Itch build with a small tutorial to help onboarding.
@marudziik You're absolutely right, I just updated the Itch build with a bit of sound and music.
@skale Strangely enough I also noticed myself getting sucked in during playtesting.
@prunus-padis I was trying to shoot for Compo but on Sunday I realized it was far too barebones and pushed it to 72 hour. Icons would have been tricky with 270+ items, but would definitely like to add some in the future. The Itch build has been updated with some music and sounds.
@denissobolev You're not alone. The Itch build has been updated with a small text tutorial at the start.
@andreadbx Absolutely, my design revolved around being able to manipulate the RNG more, but ran out of time. I updated the Itch build to have many more items per visitor to compensate for now.
@someone Done. Tutorial and audio added to the Itch build. Yes the overall goal is to complete your own personal collection but with 270+ items and many of them being very rare, I don't think it's feasible currently.
@derek-glennon Definitely considering having a daily cost that goes up as you collect more items.
@dumchevdev Thanks for playing.
@torami Yeah, the size shifting was a last minute bug that cropped up with the addition of all the new items. I still haven't had time to hunt that one down. Great idea with tag types corresponding to difficulty, I'll add that to my balance list. I kind of like the 100% liquidity aspect, but for sure that needs to be fixed. Renown is useless right now, but will be huge in a future version to scale item rarity and request payouts. Daily "rent" is definitely on my list and will also scale with Renown. So glad you enjoyed it and thanks for the great feedback.
Really well done. It was already interesting with the initial tutorial setup, but then more and more tiles kept being introduced and it really became intricate. For what it's worth, I think the level goals are a little too easy to hit. The last one being like 800 or something I ended up finishing with like a 9k collection drop. Three tiles to choose from may have been a little limiting once all of the specialty tiles were introduced. There were times I had to choose between like a 5, Swap, Collect and basically just had to drop a dead tile to reroll. Overall incredible work, I had a blast playing.
The spin on asteroid collection is fun here. It seems like the upgrades don't help out a whole lot and I'm not sure how to get the higher rarity minerals. I really like the space particle system you made and the UI is pretty slick. It would be fun to see a little blip on the Event Horizon UI to visualize how close we are to increase tension.
Art direction was on point with this one. The pots were a bit fiddly with sliding around to fit in the light. Felt a little cramped for space. I liked balancing requirements of the different plants to try and properly sustain at a critical mass. I really like the mechanics of growing plants to feed better plants. The amount of inputs required to feed the plants got tiresome by the end. I would have liked to see the inventory screen open up automatically when interacting with the pot, would have made it a lot more streamlined. Beat it, loved it, not sure how it relates to Collector though.
Tax collector was one of my initial brainstorms, love that somebody ended up doing one. The lighting is blindingly harsh. I didn't mind it much for the first mission, but it kept just shining straight into my eyes the whole game. Would have been interesting if it got later in the day as you completed each mission. Tuning the sun back by half and adding in a global light to soften the shadows would do wonders for game feel. Also, a stone instead of a locked gate was definitely a choice. The credits cave with the cat shrine was a nice touch. Would have been interesting if the gnomes fought back, could even just be throwing whatever item they're holding at you. The last mission was particularly tricky since he kept running away when I entered an area. Cheeky little twist. I harassed far too many innocent gnomes and did not do well. Still had a great time.
I was so very close to making a foraging game. I think they're so cozy and fun. The mushroom spin was a nice take and being able to level up your gear and stats was great. Did not expect that twist at the end. I can't place my finger on why this was the case, but the transparency made it seem like we were in front of the trees instead of seeing through them.
Holy cow, I didn't even realize you made it native HTML and JS. That is massively impressive. Well done.
The concept of collecting bounties is fantastic, bummed that didn't occur to me during my brainstorming session. Very fun idea.
The blood when they die kind of detracts from the beauty of the board since they just look very static compared to the rest. If you reduce the opacity on the blood pool, it might give a nice "ground-staining" effect and blend it in.
I didn't really feel very threatened by the enemies, they mostly just ran away from the VERY long arm of my revolver. Would have been interesting to have more HP for us and the enemies and having to exchange shots/stabs more back and forth.
I wish there was a way to cancel a single action, like if I click to move but decide not to, the only way out is to cancel and remake the moves. Right click may be a good solution for canceling.
I second the request for enemies to move together, at least for the ones that aren't attacking or something else of importance. I pushed 20 enemies and it became a real chore to wait for them all.
Saw the skill tree was last minute and the game definitely needed it, it adds a good sense of progression and power growth. That being said, it was very tricky to realize what had already been purchased. I had a similar crunch for the Request system in my game, it may be a little underbaked, but it's functional and that's what matters.
The character designs are so cute, I love it, and the level "generation" animation is peak. UI and font really fit the aesthetic. Great job.
Toward the end with 20+ enemies I actually got to make good use of the melee attack to stay out of danger. I played until I got properly ambushed. blood_and_bounty.png
I second the sentiment about coins popping out quicker from dead enemies. I love the art style and the upgrades system was busted. +Jewel is overpowered. Loved the boss fight at the end, was a little stilted by the fact that I don't think there was a way to die, so I just kinda face tanked it.
A cute little adventure game. I may have missed something, but I had an empty item slot even after collecting all the cats. Also the pet shop boys have a duplicated dialogue box bug if you speak to them again without walking away first.
It's not particularly clear on the purpose of the "charisma" stat is. It was also very difficult to gauge difficulty when none of the stats we have access to relate to our combat ability or upgrades that had been purchased. The players primarily seem to be left guessing as to engagement requirements. Additionally in the later levels it seems like the only way to reach the bounty target is to fight ALL of the bounties offered. Didn't seem to be much player agency. Overall kind of an incoherent jumble of themes.
Doesn't seem like there is any way to make money in the game. The "Last Week's Report" was only ever the sum of expenses for the workers. None of the income streams ever provided any income. I ended up with 4 $10/w workers and was still at -$40 every week.
Absolutely phenomenal work. I loved digging through all the evidence. The UI easily could have been overbearing and a big pain point, but you nailed the flow and it felt good to navigate. The diegetic storytelling was wonderfully immersive. Well done telling a compelling story using corporate emails. Very impressed with what you were able to put together and would really like to solve some more mysteries in that manner.
PS the Main Menu button on the end screen seems to be broken
Very cute. I like the feel of the victory lap level at the end. Up until 9 it seemed pretty straightforward, but the verticality of that level was tricky to figure out. Resetting to the start on the previous levels wasn't too bad, but 9 was such a long sequence of moves that it felt truly punishing. Because trial and error seems to be the only way to solve the verticality puzzles it would be nice to reset to either where you fell from, or perhaps checkpoint to the last switch pressed. Otherwise, solid puzzle game. The colored cubes filling up as you collect them is a nice touch.
I like the inclusion of bonus effects like Sticky and Dizzying. Saved my butt after a couple misplays. I ended up getting the Pad but didn't get a chance to use it. I love the pithy item descriptions and enjoyed putting sets together for maximum damage. No notes. Well done.
Art is fantastic and herding might be the best use of the theme I've seen yet. The shadows were interesting, but I'm not sure made up for the 3D overhead associated. Probably could have just gotten away with a darkening overlay. I definitely liked the art more than the 3D assets and think it could have been more cohesive with a singular style instead of some bits being outlined and others borderless. Not sure what caused it but at one point I ran 2 lambs down from up top and when they got close to the safe spot they just disappeared. At first the controls were frustrating, but quickly came to love the difficulty of them and the mastery of them. The splash art is the best I've seen yet, nicely done.
If it's all 2D then it's really well done. You did a great job with the shadow casting then. I had a stutter at one point that I thought might have been caused by loading the packed sheep in the safe zone when panning back over them, but that's definitely not the case if they're just 2D assets.
TCG was part of my initial brainstorming session. I like the spin on identifying fake cards. I love the card art and the Hell Terminal is well made with the sorting options. Also the computer "mouse" is hilarious. Just a few couple sticking points for me during my playthrough.
The patience meter began counting down before the card was fully on screen which probably doesn't make a difference balance-wise, but feel-wise it felt unfair.
I wish that there were was one of a number of things implemented to make the game a little less punishing. Either the patience decay pauses when in the Hell Terminal or that the Hell Terminal automatically opens to show the currently offered card or that you could select a card in the Hell Terminal to "pin" to the appraisal screen to reference side-by-side. I found that most of my time (patience meter) was spent just scrolling to find the card in the terminal.
Maybe I was missing something, but I couldn't figure out how to restart after losing aside from refreshing the page.
I also kept losing runs because there weren't enough non-fakes offered to meet the goal. Basically had to keep hoping for a run with a non-fake $600 cost to make up the difference.
Also, and this is just the UI designer in me, but the Hell Terminal cards have a larger font size than the appraisal cards.
Great work, very cute game.
Very cute. Some simple yet interesting level designs. Would have liked to click on each state to go to a different level. Could be cool to expand to a full 50 levels with the flags of each state and selectable locations on the country map.
I love the searching concept. Would be nice to have like a shadow indicator to see where your hand is in the pile since I got lost a few times.
Absolutely incredible. Unfortunately I think not having a playable web build will really hurt your chances at getting ratings. Extremely dynamic system, very emergent. I had fun just messing around and making monstrosities outside of the quests. The ending was a shock. Kind of wish there was an "endless" mode at the end with dynamically generated objectives. The goblin parts felt surprisingly "heavy" when moving them around compared to the honkin' big rock you could yeet just as easily as the teeth. The art direction was great, simple and cohesive. The sounds were at times beautifully unnerving. Loved the game, very well done.
I felt a little bad about this one, but it fit the quest requirements, so I think that makes it your fault. goblinmaxxing.png
Sound effects are satisfying. Was bummed there wasn't an Avatar bug and was instead Four Nations. Took a few attempts, but got the whole collection in the end. The delay on the swing was a nice touch and having multiple lives was a godsend. Too many of the Jam games seem to be 1 hit = restart which is a bit of a pain to try and experience the whole thing. I wish the bugs avoided the obstacles on the map since a few times I did a blind catch over the log and didnt realize a bomb beetle was chilling there. Well done overall.
Absolute gem. I love the floaty movement of the drones and the satisfying tink of the collection sound. Was a little disappointed that the cost of the collectors scaled beyond the HQ price before I could completely fill up the resource nodes. Aside from that I have no notes.
I wanted to see if there was a hard cap on jump distance/speed. Seems like there is since I never truly achieved proper flight. for_the_hoard.png
Beautifully done. I love how the jobs got harder and changed as you "got older" in the game. The progression of the methods of purchasing cards was a nice touch. What really carries it is the goofy cards with the adorable illustrations. There was a lot of art that had to happen for this and you nailed it. Had a great time.
Absolute gem of a game. The art is adorable, the secrets were amazing, the quality of life was there. I was not expecting to be suddenly vacuuming up everything in the house, nor was I expecting a breakdown of the last few % to be collected. The upgrades were thoughtful and allowed regular power increases and access to new areas. The few times the couch got hit by visual culling I thought I had actually vacuumed it up and it was going to end Katamari style. Overall very well thought out and masterfully executed. Amazing job.
Amazing work. The UI was so easy to use with great functionality. I love that orders would stack with themselves when pressed multiple times in a row. The rovers have great personality in their simple designs. There were enough new elements added in each level to keep it interesting and challenging. Being able to select any of the levels from the start is nice so there's no fear of losing progression for Jam purposes. My only notes would be a toggle for 2x speed. Testing some of the longer sequences got a little tedious when you realize you missed 1 command at the end of the chain. Also a nice feature would be having the commands delete automatically when pressing [-] when they're at [1]. I did manage to clear all the levels without using the energy crystals except for the once on level 4. Overall loved it, great game.
The rock throwers were surprisingly tricky to dodge, but those arrow dudes were on a whole other level. Loved the art. Got the shiny and celebrated. Very cute game.
Interesting concept, but had trouble finding out how to take enough items to clear level 3. Didn't seem like there was much choice than to steal as much as possible.
Getting Wall-E vibes from it, a little trash robot trying to save the plants. I'm not sure what the point of making it 3D was, I think it would be a smoother experience just as a 2D game. The trash collection mechanic itself wasn't very compelling, a lot of holding and waiting. However placing the resources in the machines was strangely interesting. I wish I could queue multiple actions on one machine, like being able to dump all the resource at once. Maybe not with a single click, but without having to wait for the action to fully complete first. Would be nice to have a collection percentage or fraction on the collection UI to let me know I'm like 4/9 plants collected.
Extremely disappointed that I collected all the trash and still only had 10/20 "Trophy" collectibles. Maybe there was a mechanic I missed to spawn more trash, but I ended with 9/9 plants and like 17 unusable seeds. Perhaps growing seeds after 9/9 could grant like 50 trash or recyclables so you can turn them into the remaining collectibles.
Very cute little game, I like how you double dipped on the Collector theme.
Not really sure what was going on.
For sure Katamari and Donut County were part of my initial brainstorm. Love that the menu was exactly what I wanted from the menu and nothing more. I definitely got the infinite size glitch when I played. Only gripe was the camera didnt zoom out far enough toward the end. I basically couldn't see anything aside from the collection that was me and it was very difficult to navigate.
A bit disappointed that all the puzzles were just moving the box around. Art was fire, kudos to the artist, they knocked it out of the park. The crazy teeth and funky character designs really carried here.
Had a great time. I really like the how the sonar system specifically shows only the edges of the collision that it hits and naturally forms sonar shadows. The map wasn't difficult to navigate despite the reliance on intermittent sonar, so you did a great job at designing the caves. The little white dots (fish) that appear and swim around made if feel a lot less lonely and empty. I even found myself following them around the map sometimes when sonar was on cooldown.
My first attempt ended because I didn't realize how to refill the fuel and o2 supply, the HELP button came in very handy and was easy to understand.
Really appreciate the inclusion of the speed values in the top right. There were periods where I was navigating blind solely using the speed values as a reference.
I loved how the collection mechanic was key to keeping the dive going by refilling the meters instead of just tacked on as a side element. Also, the floaty controls definitely gave the feeling of being in water, so kudos on that.
Overall you crushed it. Keep up the good work. Here's the last screenshot I got before beating the game and testing out the "Surface" button.
deep_sea_02.png
The ship is so cute, lots of character. The idle animation gives it so much life. Great job with the parallax and "screen shake" to give accelerating a sense of scale. Initially I was avoiding the asteroids afraid of crashing, but kind of love that you can just barge them out of the way. A little bummed I got to max upgrades so quickly, was hoping to push for more. Had a good time, great job.
I get that it's a jam game and flat models are to be expected, but its just way too bright. Change the model color to something slightly darker, or better yet just color each of the models to something different. Like a red stool, brown table, blue walls, whatever you want, just to have that little variation even with solid colors would add a lot.
Collision was a little sticky in the small room, I would suggest using colliders with rounded edges to allow for "sliding" around obstacles. Capsule and sphere colliders are your friends. I like that this was the first Jam game I played with lore and dialogue and the 2d art was really well done.
Wow, there's a lot here. The shots do seem to fire to one side of the cursor instead of where the aim is. Not really sure where Collector comes in. I'm also not sure what the point of killing the enemies is since it seems like all the rewards are just from rushing to the next level. Impressive how much you got done during the Jam period though, kudos.
Not sure if this is intended, but the tower shape works to end the game with any power switch allowing the game to end without solving it all. Very cute puzzle game. Not entirely sure how it fits into the theme aside from the tower art added to the last room and bananas seem like a random choice for collectibles.
The handshake sound is very satisfying. The reactions on the faces are so good. Simple game with a great scope. I actually found myself getting better at the shakes after a few rounds. Managed to get up to a "simmering" response. As for the mouse issue: most game engines have a "limit mouse to window" option. As a stopgap it would be simple to have the option to fullscreen the web build and then it becomes a non-issue.
@rum-ham Thanks for playing. It did end up becoming more of an idle game sadly. I ended up fumbling the core game loop in the end. The manual collection was initially part of the soft-lock prevention and I didn't end up pivoting properly after realizing I wasn't going to be able to complete the automation bit. Deposits being "mined out" after a time would have been a decent quick fix. An inventory system would have been nice, but based on my past experience I knew it would have taken too long to make properly.
@maxence-delacroix You nailed it with the analysis and suggestions. I wanted to have all of those things. You can tell how shallow it is since all the upgrades and systems were kind of the proof of concept bits and I never found the time to make them more interesting. In hind sight I would have changed from crunching the environment elements at the end and developed the actual systems more.
- The code for random ore values is actually there, but I bailed when I determined the UI would take too long. - Turbo I thought about when attempting to sprint a few times when on the bike and actually would have been really quick, but I just forgot. - Minimaps are actually a mystery to me, I definitely need to look into making them so I could have them in my toolbox for next time. - The scan pitch **is** random, good catch. I use the same code and audio pool for playing basically all the sounds. I had the same thought when I initially added the scan ping, but it got pushed to the end of my polish list unfortunately. - I 100% wanted more bikes. The code is all there to adjust maneuverability, speed, acceleration, and turning, so it would have been quick to make them. As you may be able to tell, the hoverbike that we do have is actually still placeholder art I made the first night of the jam and would have felt bad half-assing additional bikes without making a proper first one. Should have just bit the bullet on that one. - The auto mining rigs were literally the next thing on my list and would have made it in if I skipped the environment bits. So sad about that.
Controller UI might have been simple to implement, but I don't have the experience with it and got scared away from attempting it during the jam. I also found some crashes when using the controller to enter/exit the bike, so careful with that. Might be a problem with my controller double-inputting though.
You didn't miss anything and all your points are absolutely on my radar. It ended up being a lot more shallow than I was hoping. Taking away important lessons from this one about prioritizing better and playtesting core gameplay loops before diving into QoL and polish.
@adam-gallina Thanks for playing. I totally get it, I definitely didn't provide enough aspiration for the grind.
@mostlypants That is curious, because those are the settings I use. Should have fit and given you black bars. Could be that the native resolution I set it to was 1920x1080. Did you play on ldjam or itch and was it fullscreened?
@kkritselis Good note. The material spawn locations *are* randomized, but the first material nodes are huge and there are a lot of them meaning that there *should* typically always be one nearby. It's likely you got an unlucky seed. Seems like the solution wasn't sufficient. I should definitely force one close spawn before running the random gen for sure. The balance was trying to have one in scanner range, but not on top of you so that you have to at least move a little bit for the first one.
@mostlypants You don't happen to have the browser zoomed to 150% do you? I also set the embed viewport to be 1920x1080 which is probably way too much.
I for sure wanted to get way more obstacles in. Hostile creatures, or creatures in general, would be fun. I actually hadn't thought of that. Imagine the horror of accidentally splatter killing a poor little critter.
@someone Thanks for playing. I too feel like there's some good potential and want to expand it further. Just a bummer I wasn't able to deliver my full vision for the Jam. The upgrades do stack, yeah. You can see the stats at least for the scanner on its UI at the top with the "Range" and "Interval" values. I noticed the double controller inputs after submission and haven't had a chance to look into why that is happening. Thanks for the feedback on that though since I had initially thought it was just my controller because it's old.
@ragtagradical Very happy with how the speeder controller turned out. Wished I could have included more obstacles to navigate around to really make good use of it.
@nnovak The meta is definitely to skip over materials. I didn't get a chance to balance the economy. A rotating "stock market" of materials would definitely help encourage targeted farming.
Excellent use of theme. The mood created through the cohesion of graphics, sounds, music, and animations is spot on. I love how you handle the collision visuals. At first I thought it was odd that sometimes the clustering of dots was tighter in spots. Realized after a bit that it was likely due to the, I'm assuming, raycast sweep update rate, speed, and distance from the ship. A very elegant approach. It took me until the final beacon to realize the the "clock" in the top left wasn't a timer and actually directing me to the next objective because the flashing made it seem more like a warning than an indicator. Overall fantastic job.
Love the music choice, great ominous ambience. The tank controls wouldn't have been my first choice, but ended up working surprisingly well and were quite smooth. The background particles were a nice touch to keep the background dynamic. Started out slow, but was fun when the enemies began showing up. Interested in a version where the enemies start swarming right away and are the only source of materials. UI was clean. Excellent job.
I appreciate the audio being set at a reasonable default level. The reset at the end of the time period was a little jarring. Would have of course been nice to have it be endless or even a sort of "Congrats on winning, the game will now reset" popup. The controls were terribly frustrating. It was an odd choice to have it be clearly meant to be played on a controller, but still restricting movement to 8 axis. Furthermore on a controller the input had to be EXACTLY (1,0) (-1,0) (0,1) or (0,-1) to move cardinally, otherwise it would lock into diagonal movement. As such, when playing on a controller, you are virtually restricted to only use diagonal movement. Otherwise, I do love survivor-likes and it was a very cute game. Just not sure how it relates to the theme at all.
@exofrenon To be fair, the art for the attacks could be swapped out with pretty much anything and the game would play exactly the same. In that regard it could have fit any theme with just 3 asset tweaks. It came across as a controller game when none of the UI could be clicked on with the mouse and WASD didn't work for movement. Arrow keys haven't been the standard for movement in PC games for nearly 3 decades. Good news is, aside from the diagonal lock, it works flawlessly on controller.
Instructions unclear. After successfully sending the first package and getting paid, I think the wave machine or the antenna broke. Could not for the life of me figure out how to operate the purchasing panel. After typing in anything to the purchase UI it would lock and not allow any further typing. Nothing I input **or** clicked on seemed to do anything. From what game I *was* able to play was interesting, however getting on the ladder was frustrating since the [E] prompt was overridden by the [F] prompt and pressing it did nothing. Since they're separate inputs, I don't see why they couldn't both be available interacts in the same space. Sorry I couldn't figure it out, your team made a decent attempt.
Short and sweet. I love the art. Hit 1 ring and it basically ended the game since it was more than enough to buy all the upgrades. Feels like complaining about too much of a good thing, but I would have liked for there to be a few more upgrade tiers to stretch the game a little longer. Had a good time; great game.
Love the concept. You got a lot done with this project. Not much to play through for the jam, but great bones for future development. The UI was intuitive and the ability to move and resize the panels felt great. Being able to press up/down on the arrows to quickly re-enter commands was huge. Lots of quality of life inclusions. A little curious as to why you chose a 3D environment when it feels like it was made for 2D unless it was for some feature that ended up being cut. No real critiques other than wishing there was more of it to explore.
Absolutely incredible work to get all of this together during the jam. This is the most complete game I've reviewed so far. I ran into a bug toward the end after defeating the hive and couldn't get the waypoint arrow to the final tower to show up. Couldn't manage to get the arrow to appear at all again even with the cheat menu. It's like the indicator had just been removed entirely from the game. My only gripe would be that clicking the upgrade buttons was a little finicky and would sometimes require 2-6 clicks to register. Might be due to the lag from playing on the web build. Also most of the time the drone depot upgrade menu would extend off the bottom of the screen, making it difficult to buy the Network Connection or Crystal Focus options. Overall, excellent job. I had a great time.
It took a second, but I finally was able to clear all the levels. At the end there was a tiny bit much fine tuning required. I had to resort to screencapping the image into photoshop to compare and find the needed adjustments. The concept is fantastic, the execution is excellent. I'm not even sure how you managed to do the magic with the image adjustments. I did find the image easier to match than the audio, might just be how my mind problem solves though. There were cases with fewer animals where the audio helped toward the end. I can't say I really understood why the visuals were animals and a UFO, could have easily been representative or abstract art and done just as well. The precision required in the end felt very "hard mode" whereas it might have been more approachable to have some room for error in completion like getting 95% of the match and having it count. I appreciate the unique take on the theme and the implementation of a mechanic I haven't seen before. Very well done. synesthezoo_completion.png
Great use of the theme. The popup notifications were great to mark milestones. Love that it had a definitive ending. Felt like an incremental game on fast forward. Could have maybe stretched it a bit with a few upgrade steps. It felt a little jarring suddenly going from 1 wifi to being able to use ALL of them at once. Overall, very well done.
Could not tell what the difference between the units was, and it definitely doesn't help that they're all named "Ranger-...". It's slightly odd that the mana cost of the units is basically completely random and, if you set up the board right, completely opposite of the unit's power level. The meta seems to be setting up the best buffs on the left side of the board so when they roll down that way not only are they super strong, but also super cheap to play. Then you just reroll during the match til you draw your 1 cost, 20 damage, 6 range units. Additionally it seems like the only stat that really matters is range, and maybe a little bit of damage on top. A single unit can basically power down a lane then. The customization and randomness introduced by the plinko board was interesting to play around with. A couple things stood out as a little frustrating while playing: 1. The health icon and the damage icon both represent "power" and were hard to tell apart at first. I would suggest changing health to a heart icon. 2. The connector seems to get stuck to the first unit that touches it and if you send a faster unit down the lane later, it would be nice if it passed the connector to the unit in front. That being said, it would also be interesting if the enemies grabbed the connector and brought it back down the lane when they pass by it. 3. The range, attack speed, and movement numbers ranged from like 1-3 on premade units and were in line with the plinko board upgrades, but the damage numbers ranged from like 5-20 on premades and only increased 1-4 on the plinko board. That made it only worthwhile to upgrade units with high damage. 4. The only text description of the stat icons that we get is when it's chosen as a plinko board peg upgrade. Would be nice to have it explained elsewhere to avoid confusion.
Overall, very interesting game. Would have preferred janky mspaint programmer art over the random gen-AI that ended up being used. Would have given the game a lot more character.
Would have been nice to be able to retry a level rather than fully resetting to the beginning. Once I figured out where the detection point was and how far **ahead** of the gates, it became a little easier. The frustrated drivers fading to black and making it harder to figure out their color is brilliant. I also liked that you are still able to tell the car color by the shape of the car even once they become black (still got it wrong a few times though). The increased speed of the later levels really became challenging and timing was **very** important. Would have been interesting to either have the last level as endless or as a second option after beating the game. The high score could be the amount of cars that you got through gates + the total time it took. The music is fantastic, as are the sound effects, and the art is an absolute delight. Very well done.
Perfect scope. The art is adorable and the audio matches the mood perfectly. If I had to come up with some sort of critique, it would be nice to see the arrow change colors to match the red/yellow/green sections. Well done.