VOXELTRONIC by mungoman1 2013-12-16T05:43:00
Very cool, but the gameplay needs some clarification. It's very easy to instantly die!
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → Bogden
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | Co | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | 56 | Tiny Creatures | Apex Elysium | compo | 116 | 3.65 | 3.79 | 3.18 | 2.90 | 3.54 | 3.97 | 3.50 | |||
| 2022 | 51 | Every 10 seconds | Headcount | jam | 548 | 3.54 | 3.35 | 3.36 | 4.22 | 3.74 | 3.53 | ||||
| 2022 | 50 | Delay the inevitable | IRS: Infinite Record Sorter | compo | 48 | 3.98 | 4.12 | 4.21 | 4.08 | 3.82 | 3.83 | 4.11 | 3.71 | ||
| 2016 | 36 | Ancient Technology | Cryptoglyphics | compo | |||||||||||
| 2015 | 34 | Two Button Controls / Growing | Simultaneism | compo | 68 | 3.92 | 3.89 | 3.97 | 3.98 | 3.06 | 3.93 | 3.58 | 77 | ||
| 2014 | 31 | Entire Game on One Screen | Off Screen | compo | 62 | 3.86 | 3.79 | 3.89 | 3.71 | 3.11 | 3.48 | 2.19 | 3.10 | 100 | |
| 2013 | 28 | You Only Get One | ONE.Platformer | compo | 490 | 3.01 | 2.86 | 3.74 | 3.90 | 2.58 | 1.30 | 2.50 | 2.46 | 55 |
Very cool, but the gameplay needs some clarification. It's very easy to instantly die!
Nice graphics, interesting idea, but not very fun :(
Love the aesthetic. Couldn't get it to run unfortunately. My antivirus seems to be taking out LOVE.dll
Very cool. The mood is great, and I was really into it. Definitely jumped when that thing came out.
Fun, but a bit difficult!
Very fun!
Well written.
Amazing game! Everything was great! Definite 5 star, although I couldn't see the theme. You really get to redo directional choices as many times as you want.
Nice story, fun to play. The "only one try" thing feels like kind of a cop out for the theme though :P
Good game, but can't really see the theme, and seems like a port of other games
Neat idea. Good puzzles, nice tiles.
Couldn't run. Missing a DLL
Couldn't get it to run :(
Looks cool though!
The look and feel are quite creepy, but the gameplay itself is fairly vanilla
Just kept dying!
Very neat. Great idea, and reminds me a bit of I want to be the guy.
Fun, but upgrading was strange
Thanks Berzee. Looks like that's a bug in the physics engine I'm using. I edited the level to remove the wall, and (hopefully) the bug.
Silly use of theme!
Fun, but the controls hurt my hands!
Super fun, very creative, awesome use of theme.
Great graphics! Very pretty
Amazing use of music to set the mood, tone, and gameplay at various times throughout the game.
Got System Error: "The program can't start because openAL32.dll is missing from your computer."
Neat concept. Nice retro look :)
Ugh. The game is good, but the ads....
I like the idea. Very adult theme for such a cute looking game! Haha.
Very cool game. Pretty well implemented, and felt fun to play. The physics worked well.
A few points though:
-The game should get harder over time to give a sense of progression and to avoid boredom. I ended up getting tired of the gameplay after a while and decided to end it myself. It would be cool to add new colors over time, speed up the conveyor belt, etc.
-Minor thing, but if you get over $1000, the score disappears.
-Being able to switch from one color to the same color can lead to a long stretch of doing nothing. I had double green for like 3 switches.
Didn't have a second player, but I bet the two player version is super fun!
Very cool game. Nice music. Pretty well implemented, and felt fun to play. The physics worked well.
A few points though:
-The game should get harder over time to give a sense of progression and to avoid boredom. I ended up getting tired of the gameplay after a while and decided to end it myself. It would be cool to add new colors over time, speed up the conveyor belt, etc.
-Minor thing, but if you get over $1000, the score disappears.
-Being able to switch from one color to the same color can lead to a long stretch of doing nothing. I had double green for like 3 switches.
Didn't have a second player, but I bet the two player version is super fun!
Love the music!
Love the take on the theme. Great camera angle!
Very fun. Love the warioware vibe. The random color tiles are awesome. Definitely one of the most fun things to first program.
It's so peaceful! Blown away by the atmosphere you've created.
Oh my god! I totally meant to opt OUT of Humor and Mood. Accidentally opted out of everything else :P
Should be fixed now!
Holy cow furriKira. I'm impressed!
@swedishbacon Only up to level 12 ;)
Neat little game. I like the fact that it's kept to short and sweet gameplay.
I like the take on the theme
I feel so guilty trying to stop Christmas from coming!
Nice visual style. Neat take on rock paper scissors. Did take a little while to figure out what the symbols/controls were.
Nice visual style. Neat take on rock paper scissors. Did take a little while to figure out what the symbols/controls were.
Thanks for bringing up the issue with ratings on my game. Think I fixed it (http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-31/?action=preview&uid=31759)
Love the art!
Love the use of theme and the great game setting. Fun little physics game.
Very interesting concept!
Nice ideas here! Really like the art style.
Awesome! Rhythm games are great!
I really like the idea. Controls are a bit hard to get used to, but neat gameplay!
Neat idea, but kind of hard.
I like the idea. Pretty simple concept, but would be cool to have something affecting the layout of the inner board.
Awesome game! Couldn't figure out what the red and blue powerups did, but the game feels great, and the credits falling in is hilarious.
Neat game!
Great graphics man!
Holy cow this game is hilarious. So unexpected.
(Fixed the available ratings on my game btw (http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-31/?action=preview&uid=31759))
This is the most amazing game ever. Amazing on all fronts!
Fun little game. You've got a nice idea here.
Love the snowmen!
Neat game. A little on the hard side, but fun nonetheless
Awesome idea! I'm blown away by how cool the mechanics of this game are. Managed to beat it!
Short and sweet. Beautiful and fun. Love it!
Awesome game. Love the ramping of difficulty. It seems so simple at first, but gradually gets harder and harder. I love how the controls are mixed between each of the tasks, making simple tasks even harder than they should normally be. Awesome entry!
Nice lightning effects. Wish there was more!
Is the source code for this game available somewhere?
Great polish
Incredible entry. A bit short, but what is there is awesome. Would love to see more of this on a mobile app!
Agree very much with Nick's thoughts. Lots of potential here though! I like the graphic designs.
Awesome game! Love the art style and gameplay. Really fun.
Neat little concept. A bit on the hard end, and the only thing that really bugged me was trying to jump straight up and accidentally moving one way or the other.
Very cute. The voiceovers are great!
Also not to be a stalker, but saw your comment on another game, but check out my game if you're into multitasking type games.
Awesome game! Super fun when it's multiplayer.
Thanks for the compliment doitle! Thanks to your suggestion I learned that kongregate lets you upload iframes as games! Who knew?
http://www.kongregate.com/games/Bogden/two-buttons
@SSJMetroid, It's not a lie! The name of the game changes as you play :D
Holy cow, finally beat it. Super addicting game! Loved finally mastering the gigantic leaps forward. Really cool mechanics
Is the source code for this game available somewhere? I'd love to learn more about how to use this hexr library. The results look awesome
Any chance you'll post up the source now? Saw the time lapse and am super interested in your editor
Neat! Love the uses of the theme. Reminds me of I am Bread
Really cool idea, but the game is kind of unloseable if you just flip the tree dude's attack to 1, and constantly buff his defense. You keep getting points for spending 3 cards per turn, and you get way more defense than he can take out.
http://i.imgur.com/qL2dwqA.png?1
Would have been cool to make the attack grow every turn or something. Awesome graphics though!
This is really neat! Love the idea!
Neat, well polished. Would have been neat to see more uses for the 4 bases.
Neat concept! Pretty fun
Loved Katamari Damacy, and I love this!
Fun background music!
Nice looking game!
Nice! Fun little game, with some cool graphics. Really like the theme interpretation.
The sound effects can be a bit jarring though.
Crashed a few times, but super impressive game with what I've seen. The music is amazing for something you did in just 48 hours!
Interesting idea! A bit short though
Awesome game! A couple bugs here and there (hehe) but really cool game.
Oustanding! My favorite entry so far. Really awesome job in only 48 hours!
Hmm, the audio doesn't seem to be working for me in Firefox.
Got it to work. Very innovative!
Oh man, this has so much potential! I'm like super sad there's not more levels!
Outstanding entry! The gameplay is great and I love the ideas. Unfortunately I think there's a lot of UI/tutorial elements missing that could definitely make it hard for new players to get into this.
For instance, it's not obvious when or when not a placement is invalid. Turning a connection red when dragging over invalid areas would be helpful, for instance. You might also want to consider a more graphical way of choosing the actions you take for each node, rather than just left and right clicking.
I would LOVE to see a most compo version of this, potentially with online play.
Outstanding entry! The gameplay is great and I love the ideas. Unfortunately I think there's a lot of UI/tutorial elements missing that could definitely make it hard for new players to get into this.
For instance, it's not obvious when or when not a placement is invalid. Turning a connection red when dragging over invalid areas would be helpful, for instance. You might also want to consider a more graphical way of choosing the actions you take for each node, rather than just left and right clicking.
I would LOVE to see a most compo version of this, potentially with online play. I would definitely focus on the competitive aspect of this moving forward, and I think it has a lot of potential to get on steam.
If you do work on this more, couple thoughts for multiplayer:
- Definitely add a limit to how far you can move and connect. It's too easy to cripple your opponent on turn 1 by jumping across the map.
- Maybe add a built in +1 connection to the home star, since you basically lose as soon as you lose all your connectors.
- Think about adding map obstacles to encourage certain types of expansion/gameplay
Neat concept. Like the way it interprets the theme. Really liked how the arrows followed a sort of logic in what the combos meant.
Outstanding game aesthetics. The ambiance is very nice, and the graphics really fit the game well.
Just gonna put this out there, but the art is... a little... nsfw?
Love the music!
Nice snowmen!
Neat little game. The sounds add a really nice touch that remind me of Elektroplankton
RGSS102J.dll can't be found
Awesome game! Very innovative. Loved the atmosphere.
Extremely fun! I love how ridiculous I got towards the end of the game, filling the entire screen with bullets.
Awesome, awesome jam entry. The art is absolutely amazing, and the procedural music was a genius touch.
Out of curiosity, do the Goombas have procedural parts as well, or are they just selected randomly from a set of a bunch of different goombas?
Others have mentioned, but the mechanics around running and jumping need a bit of tuning. Feels quite different from the original mario, especially with how slowly you can change direction in midair.
If you decide to keep working on this, it would be super cool to have procedurally generated enemies that are more than just goombas. Wonder if there's a way to mix and match stuff like wings, shells, arms, etc that would still feel mario-y.
Again, amazing entry overall. Definitely one of the best this LD.
Tried playing the game in Chrome, and wasn't able to switch to the club or attack the lizard dudes right at the start. Maybe it's a Chrome bug? Art looks really cool though. Would love to give this another try if I can.
Really neat art style.
Gameplay wasn't super interesting to me, unfortunately though. Not a whole lot of interesting decisions to make, so ultimately felt like I wasn't participating to a huge degree.
On the whole it does feel pretty well polished though, which is impressive for a Compo game. Good job on that!
Oof, went broke real quick. I'm just not well suited to the Consolateur lifestyle!
Really good world you've got here. Music and art all fit together very nicely to make a really cohesive experience. Great work!
Yikes, looks like the game stops working if you run out of Plot!
g_rgPlotCues[0] is undefined :(
Nice little game here. I like where you're going with the aesthetic. Nice job getting sound effects in there too.
On the critical side, I think the gameplay is a fair bit too slow given how action oriented it seems to be. Would also be great to get some sense of progress, either through a score which gives you points for dealing damage or destroying things, or just a simple kill counter.
There's a few glitches too around trying to fire while moving, but those types of things are pretty par for the course in a jam. Well done!
Excellent jam game. Not a ton of content, but it feels extremely well polished. The game could easily be expanded with many more levels as well, now that the rest of the game engine is there.
Would highly recommend adding more levels and putting up a post-compo version. Think you're onto something really good here.
Great mood, and very impressive modeling for just 48 hours.
Didn't really get a strong feel for the gameplay though. Kind of wandered around, moved some bottles around, and got a Congratulations! message.
Think you did a really really nice job with the models though. Especially liked the pieces of paper with drawings on them.
Neat! Great job on a first entry. Hope you enter again!
For Graphics, I'd recommend sticking to simple shapes and sprites if you're not an expert on making assets in photoshop. A little can go a long way. Here, for instance, I think the game could actually be improved with some really simple boxes and shapes instead of some of the higher-res assets you used.
I would definitely definitely recommend trying to add sound for your next entry. If you haven't done sound effects before, it's actually really fun to try and get sounds in, and they go a long way in making a real time game feel more polished.
Gameplay is really solid and feels smooth. Good job!
Day 142... I'm not willing to say how many days I've been here.
...Has he been there for 142 days?
Neat concepts, very much got a FEZ-like vibe going on. Unfortunately had some pretty bad frame hitching which made it hard to move around and play.
Really impressive music and artwork to do from scratch in only 48 hours too! Great job.
Feels like there's some good potential, but as you already know the game is extremely short, so it's hard to say a whole lot.
Didn't really seem like the items had much of a purpose either. Didn't really need them to reach the end of the two levels.
Interesting idea, but the instructions are super dense and the controls are a bit wonky. Lots of potential, but the UI is real rough to get around.
A little odd that the copper gears look like there's a progression from 1 to 4, but they end up just going in different directions.
Could be really cool to introduce gears over time so you don't overload the player with all of them at once.
Really neat idea. Educational to boot!
Couple of gripes with the gameplay: controls were super awkward, and some of the chemicals felt really hard to get to. Think I tried (and failed) to get Barium like 4 times. Also felt really punishing when you picked up a wrong chemical because you had to take it all the way to the canon to be able to pick something else up. If there was some way to drop the chemicals, I didn't find it.
That aside, I think you did a really good job with the concept, and I can see a lot of potential with a game like this, where you mix up different chemicals to create different firework displays. Great work for a first Jam!
Woohoo, got the spoon! Loved the music.
The art is super random, but it ties together pretty well. Fun little game.
I ended up feeding the king some water with the spoon, but not sure if that was the end of the game or not. Would be good to have some sort of measure of progress or goals, since it's hard to tell how much you need to do.
I really really really like where you're going with this. The mechanic is super interesting, and could totally lend itself well to an RPG type game. You could totally make a full final fantasy or zelda style RPG based around this mechanic, and it would be awesome. Reminds me a lot of Seqeuence or Before the Echo.
Would be really interesting to have some sort of spellbook as well. Could maybe select an ability somehow, and then play the correct musical sequence to activate it. Or maybe you just start playing, where each of the buttons is a note, and different musical sequences create different effects.
Just spitballing, but you guys are onto something really unique and interesting here.
Really neat idea.
The grading is a little wonky. Spelling is only 25% of the grade, but it seems like that's where the most interesting part of the game is. I tried again and just clicked through all the levels and baked empty slabs, and ended up getting 0s on spelling, but 100s on everything else, so the score was actually pretty high.
I really like the concept of writing like an ancient student though. Awesome use of theme, and really cool idea. Reminds me a bit of the Papa's Pizzeria / Diner Dash genre.
Definitely would recommend adding some background music for a game like this too. Could be very zen (or super hectic)
Humor: 10/10
Writing: 10/10
Gameplay: Who needs it?!
Very eye catching logo!
Hmm, is there only 1 level? The intro is a good start, but there feels like a lot lacking.
The controls are a bit difficult to maneuver around, and the physics around moving feel more suited to a vehicle than walking around. Not being able to accelerate while in mid air is little odd for this type of game.
Glad you hit on bits of audio and graphics for a compo entry though. Always good to see that. For short compos like this though, I would recommend aiming for simple game experiences that you think you can implement in 48 hours. As it is, it doesn't feel like much of a "game" with the amount of content it has.
It's pretty impressive for being done in WebGL in only 48 hours, but there's nothing wrong with using game dev tools like Unity or Game Maker to do things quickly!
Got to portal 3, but had trouble sticking with it. Really nice fundamentals, but it all felt too similar after the first portal.
Think you managed to do a good bit with the graphics with just the couple of shapes you used, but I might use some more mellow colors next time. You should give audio a try too! Shooters + audio are always a good mix.
Good ol' FPS fundamentals. Great for a first LD! Glad you took the time to put audio in, the intro really takes it from a little demo to a game with a neat setting.
Surprisingly interesting gameplay for how simple the mechanic is. Well done on that!
Kinda felt like a rhythm game too. Woulda been cool to really emphasize doing stuff on the beat.
Really interesting idea. Loved the season mechanics.
Would have liked to see an arrow power meter or something. It was pretty hard to aim the shots and control the shot power.
Graphics are really good, and everything fits together nicely.
Would have also liked some sound effects, even if they were just simple auto-generated sfxr sounds. Couldn't help but feel incomplete without audio.
Awesome job overall.
Really dig the aesthetic, but I think you could have benefited a _lot_ from a custom font and a bit more CSS. The simple minimalistic web-page look is great for what you're doing, but the default fonts give off a vibe of un-done work that I don't think was exactly what you were going for.
The puzzle mechanic was super cool too. They're pretty well designed. Would have been nice to keep track of the branches you've explored though. Really well done overall.
This game is amazing! I'm super impressed with how much you managed to achieve in just 48 hours. The music fits the mood perfectly, and the art is super cute. Fun gameplay to boot!
Awesome game idea. Digging the art style, and the core mechanic is super on point.
Totally agree with @mvasko2 though, in that I don't think the speed-up mechanics quite match what you would expect, in the way that SUPERHOT progresses time. If I move my mouse 500 pixels, it should probably go through more time than if I move it 300 pixels. Kind of felt like there was a pretty low max speed, and you could sort of cheat by moving faster than time.
This mechanic could go really well in a number of other game types too. Well done on the design.
Awesome idea, has a great FEZ vibe to it. Slap these kinds of puzzles on a more intricate navigation system, and you've got a really great game going.
Biggest gripe is that the very start of the game is very confusing. If you just start the game and hit "Go", you basically can't do anything else. It should probably start you off on the first planet or something.
***SPOILERS***
Anyone manage to get past this puzzle on the 3rd world? https://i.imgur.com/J7QO3Ii.png
I'm really confused by the 3rd example, which seems to indicate that it's not exactly base-12. 8+1A in base 12 should be 26, but the answer seems to be 27. Also there's not enough "1" runes to complete the puzzle if it was just base-12.
@Move127 If that's the case then I think there might be an error in the coordinates given after the 3rd planet too. Might want to double check them, since I wasn't able to locate the next after solving the 3rd planet.
Dinobook's logo starts with an F. Literally unplayable.
No but really, this is definitely my favorite game of the Jam so far. Graphics, Audio, Humor, and Gameplay are all super on point. Awesome take on the classic missle defender.
The explosions feel amazing too, so big kudos on whoever made those effects!
Minor critiques:
"Missile range" upgrade effect was unclear. Did it mean explosion radius?
Being unable to switch around upgrades made it feel kinda bad when losing a level multiple times.
Yup @Rico The Jammer, the glyphs do not persist across levels. They're entirely symbolic. Just thought it would be fun to contribute to a library of symbols that other people would be playing with
@MirrorPolygons Any advice on the UI in particular? Would love any detailed feedback you might have.
@slam_nine thanks for letting me know. Think it should be fixed now.
@spacewarp you can always skip if you get tired of drawing! :D
@TeamPoops what browser are you using? Should be working on Firefox and Chrome.
@Jwatt this type of puzzle is known as a cryptogram. You're able to solve it using letter frequency and order clues, based on the glyph representations. Here's a website that explains them: http://www.cryptograms.org/
For instance, if the puzzle was "THEY GOT THE THING", the cryptogram might be "BQLE JUB BQL BQRWJ". The big hint here is the sequence "BQ". It occurs three times, and "TH" is the most common digraph in English. So you can try that out and see how the puzzle looks. "TH__ __T TH_ TH___".
From there, you can see that the three-letter word "TH_" is almost certainly "THE", which gives you "THE_ __T THE TH___".
After that, it's mostly guessing and checking, with the last clue being that the first letter of "__T" matches the last letter of "TH___".
Hope that helps!
Nice little simulator, and the art looks pretty good. Love that there's a swear button.
Think it would have been helpful with a little bit more instruction on the order of operations to grow plants. Just a little drawing on the side of a dude going from axe to shovel to hoe to seed to water woulda been really helpful.
Not sure if I missed more than just growing some plants and taking care of weeds, but this does feel like a good foundation for a more complex game involving selling crops and buying upgrades. Good work for a jam!
Nice fundamentals. Interesting twist on a classic genre as well.
Only big gripe would be missing keyboard shortcuts for the abilities.
This game caught me super off guard, but in a good way. Definitely one of my top few Compo games so far. Music was a short loop, but fit the game extremely well. Had a big grin on my face as soon as the lava started rising and the frantic race upwards kicked in.
The platforming mechanics feel a little slidey, and those 1 block gaps were pretty annoying to jump through, but it was a fun and unique mix of typing game and platformer that I've never seen before.
Really liked the easter-eggy letters that came in from time to time. Was actually really close to losing when I got INFERNALFLAMESGUIDEME, and it felt super cool to recognize and type the words just in the nick of time.
Really good job on this. Excellent concept and good execution!
Managed to get to 812.
One of the best games of the Jam for sure. Incredibly solid work for 72 hours. Super well polished, and comes together very nicely. Really impressed by the bosses as well.
Art and audio are top notch. The only critical point is that the gameplay is a bit too derivative, which is totally fine if you're going for an homage to the great history of Megaman/Metroidvania type games, but would be great to see this kind of polish with some really unique gameplay.
Awesome work.
Graphics: Really smooth, the aesthetics match the style of a game board really well. Almost felt like a model that could be on a tabletop, with a sweet forest model around it. Camera controls were really smooth too.
Audio: Love the voices, the unit responses were pretty funny. Was the wind also done a capella?
Theme: Pretty well incorporated.
Fun: Unfortunately the gameplay didn't quite come up as strong as the other areas here. The mechanics of the actual game didn't feel very balanced, since you only move and attack with one piece per turn, you effectively can't ever move within 4 tiles of an enemy piece. The pieces also move suuuuuper slowly, and the turns progress slowly as well, making it difficult to play out a whole game while keeping it fun.
Innovation: I like the idea of making a simple tabletop game with rules that anyone could pick up, so good job on that!
Overall a pretty sweet entry that feels very polished. I might spend more time in the prototyping phase to make sure you nail some fun gameplay elements before doing the rest of the polish. Paper prototypes could help out too, especially with a game like this, where it's essentially a digital board game. Good job!
Great compo entry!
Really awesome work for just 48 hours. The music you made fits the game really well, and the audio reversing is an awesome touch that makes the game feel really polished.
Also a big fan of how smoothly the gear transformed.
If you decide to go with random colors again, try to keep the generator away from 100% saturation on anything. Pure red, green, or blue really start to hurt the eyes after staring for too long. Also kinda bugged me that the menu and replay buttons weren't perfect circles ._.
This game is such a perfect jam game, and I love the story that you created.
Gave me a lot of "The Beginner's Guide" vibes. Thought what you did here was super interesting and unique.
Now, to dissect and analyze the game, I don't think the text advancing system did you many favors. The pace was slowed to a bit of a crawl because of it, which detracted from my own personal experience, unfortunately.
The sound effects were also put in so sparsely that they kind of caught me off guard when they did happen. Glad that you put some in though, instead of leaving it silent.
I also actually think you also have the kernel of a really interesting typing game with the mechanics you created. Essentially you had made a rhythm typing game without the music. I could totally see that as a real thing to help people learn to touch type.
So glad you made this and shared it. It really embodies LD well.
P.S. Left you a comment on my game around how to approach the word puzzles. Hope you'll give it another shot!
Great ambiance and mood! Loved the way the background stories came out through all of the little pieces of memorabilia.
Does feel like it needs a bit more of a goal or direction though. The ending actually kind of let me down compared to how cool the other elements of the game were. Think this can be expanded into something pretty awesome. The world-building was super on point.
Love the artwork. You've done a really awesome job with the main character animations, and it kind of inspires me to do some stop-motion animation in the future. How much time do you think you spent doing all the animations? Think it was feasible to do in a jam setting?
Nice little puzzle game. Good job thinking up the mechanics around the puzzle. Not something I've seen before, and I think you've done a good job of making something simple enough to understand easily, while being complex enough to create some interesting puzzles.
Audio is really relaxing as well. Biggest gripe is that the graphics could be a bit better, and some animations could go a long way here. Great job!
Well executed puzzle game. Would have liked to see more interactions with the water mechanics (maybe growing more stuff when water falls on it?), but overall a very nice job. The different water levels showing different graphics was a very nice touch.
Pretty good graphics as well, though a few of the textures don't quite seem to match up with some of the others in terms of resolution.
Thanks for this first intro into brainfuck. Neat progression of levels, and good that they gradually incorporate previous solutions.
Screenshot 2022-04-12 193842.png Screenshot 2022-04-13 233507.png
Had a power outage which finally ended my buddy's run, but I like to think I gave it a fulfilling life. I hope I was a good friend :'(
Definitely think you're onto something here, but not sure what the solution would be to making a game like this work for folks who just accidentally close it out for one reason or another before becoming invested in the story or its character(s). The whole "actually exiting the program kills your buddy" idea is great, but wonder if an in-game "click the quit button to kill your buddy" would work better in practice. Super curious about your thought process when making this though!
Really cool concept, loved the style. Unfortunately the gameplay got fairly repetitive fairly quickly though. I think the core issue was that parts of the game became quickly irrelevant as I advanced, so it became little more than sitting through sequences and waiting for stuff to happen. If all of the pieces were somehow kept relevant at all points, I think it could be a lot more engaging.
Really clever take on the geometry wars archetype mixed with the theme. Well done!
Not much gameplay here unfortunately. You mention that you're inspired by Vampire Survivors, but this game is missing the multiple weapons/items that make Vampire Survivors interesting. Without variation, the gameplay just becomes floating around left and right while clicking "faster attack" every now and then. There's not really any strategy or meaningful decision making, which seriously dings the game on "fun" points.
Hah, I had to go back and play it again to see the other ending, turns out it was identical! So sneaky...
Also similarly surprised by the rankings, think it should have scored higher!
Graphics and audio definitely your strong points, gameplay was definitely the weak point.
Wow, I'm floored by the ambition here! I'd never have the courage to try to make something of this scale in 48 hours, kudos to you!
How this got anything but a 5 in theme is beyond me, haha. Excellent entry, and I am truly wondering if I really reached the end...
This game is weirdly addictive, just like QWOP, I spent way too much time on it, so far my record is 13.668!
Wow, real time online multiplayer racing in 48 hours? Incredible! Really love the fact that it's not immediately obvious that you want to maintain top speed by not steering too much until the avalanche first catches up to you!
Really interesting concept, thanks for sharing! Really liked how you made it take longer to craft new blocks vs refreshing them, had to do an interesting balance of when to refresh and when to grab a shape.
Incredible entry, extremely fun, unexpected, and way too hilarious. Love those text messages.
Really great game! Awesome graphics, gameplay, and sound!
Would definitely love to see this game continued further and released on steam!
These are nitpicky, but I played this away too much: * You can infinitely kite a zombie around a block, getting infinite cash
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* You can just die if you start a level on the edge of the map without any warning * You can move as much as you want between levels, which is cool but maybe unintentional. The zombies don't animate in right away though, so you can end up with the "spawning" way into the middle of the board because they made a bunch of moves * If you use the destroy all card, you don't get the benefit from destroying cards in the shop, which I thought was the whole point of the item * It didn't seem like there was much point to picking up health after a certain point in the game, damage was way more important * If you use a card and destroy it while it is attacking, it breaks stuff
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Definitely agree with pretty much everything in the last two comments!
Especially the last bit from Daniel, what makes this interesting or unique? It just seems like a very basic tower defense with few towers, no upgrades, and a strange money collection mechanic that doesn't seem to have any reason (why am I hovering over stuff vs just getting money from killing stuff like in most TDs?)
TDs have been made in so many ways, you really need something to set yourself apart if you're going to make one nowadays. You didn't have any new, interesting take on the genre, and it all felt kind of like a placeholder demo project for how to make a TD.
What you have is a solid tech foundation for a much more complex and interesting game, but there's not much more than that. It's not particularly satisfying to find a good strategy for the game, nor is it satisfying to execute on a strategy you came up with. Much of the fun in TDs comes from playing with many different weapon and enemy types, and figuring out what works best.
Know you wanted some honest feedback, hope this helps.
Art style is delightful!
Saw your ask for more honest feedback, so I'll be very direct, hopefully this helps!
My overall takeaway was that the game had a pleasant, but not astounding presentation. However, it had an extremely shallow core game loop.
The first thing that struck me was that the game did not seem to have an immediately intuitive and clear goal for the player to achieve.
Think of the player journey: I start the game, I see a ship, three squares, and some stats in the top right. My instinct is to click on a square and build something random. A hull? Sure. Now what? I see a timer that's still counting up, and a build number that's gone up to 2. Okay, let's build something else now. A sail? Sure.
And now I see what the game is (maybe?) about. Going far, right?
So I play around with the parts some more, see my ship going, and eventually run out of spots I can build.
...Now what?
Up until now things have been shaping up to be a fairly interesting game. Looks like I have a good number of options for what to build, seems like they all will have some unique effects on the ship. Great, excited to see how I as a player can now use this information to strategically make meaningful decisions to perform better, and to quickly see the results of those decisions.
...Except now that I'm done building, the game has become a very boring game of whack-a-mole. No more interesting decisions to be made, just mindless clicking until the ship sinks.
In my very first play through though, I never even reached that point. Just sat around for a while, waiting for something new or interesting to happen. I got bored of clicking on panels, so I just let the ship sink after 10 minutes. Unfortunately for a jam game, this is already likely beyond the point that a player will stick around. Most people would close the game here, leave a rating, and be done. This is likely a large part of why your game did not score well. It grabbed my attention, briefly held my interest, then quickly pushed me into a tedious, uninteresting gameplay pattern.
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That said, there's a lot of interesting systems here. I played a few more times to better get a sense of what the various parts were doing. There's definitely a lot of potential. I'm actually not sure what you were aiming for in terms of overall gameplay though. What were the core design pillars? What was your vision? What was the player fantasy?
If it was intended to be a game about trying many different configurations to get as far as possible, then focus the game on that component. Make the primary goal extremely obvious. Cut out or drastically reduce the whack-a-mole, let the player extremely quickly see the results of their builds, then scrap it and get out to do a new one. Let the player build something, see how it performs, then build something new, all within 60 seconds.
If it was intended to be about experimentation and creation of novel ships and seeing what new parts would do, then add many more parts to the game. Add progression elements, allow the player to reach milestones to unlock additional content and play around with new things.
If it was intended to be about the execution in repairing and maintaining a ship as it (inevitably) falls apart, focus on that. Either make it either more strategic or more action-based. Either way, make decisions matter. Make execution interesting and not tedious.
If it was intended to be multiple of these things at once, make sure you have your scope set out at the onset. If you can only realize one of these gameplay pillars in the time you have, focus on that thing and do it well. Otherwise, you end up with a variety of mediocre gameplay patterns, which will do far worse than one narrow, but brilliantly realized piece of gameplay.
Some extra thoughts, but this feedback is far less important than the above:
The art was pleasant, but a few things are a bit inconsistent from its painterly look that keeps it from being a stand out. The UI and build selection window definitely brings down the overall aesthetic as it kicks you out of this somewhat consistent storybook feel. With this type of an artstyle, you likely want a hand drawn UI as well to fit in. You can see some bits of art are more zoomed in and have thicker outlines, leading to an inconsistent look. The animations are a good start, but with this art style, I expected some more multiple frame animations, more than just translating sprites around. The particle effects and propeller animation greatly helped, and wanted more motion of the sails and the water against the ship.
The audio was nice, but the background loop was a bit dry and a bit short. The SFX was definitely a bit odd and felt out of place, particularly the sound effect for a hull starting to fall apart, almost sounded like a robot starting to say something.
Finally, on the tech side, I was astounded to see that y'all had implemented this game fully in vanilla JS. Super impressive to get this much done in vanilla JS for a jam, but we don't get points for technical excellence, do we? Think about using a game engine (could even be your own) if you want to get the most done in the shortest period possible.
Really cool concept. The graphics are great!
Neat little game! Really enjoyed the partial destruction mechanics of the boat. Would love to see the partial destruction idea explored even further with bigger boats and ever more destructive weapons!
Oh no! Could you let me know what platform you're running on @hinesite?
Thanks for playing @sinus!
The inspection just checks to see if you have 50% of the forms sorted, and if you don't, you get an infraction
Really hilarious entry, but +1 to nardandas's comments about wanting some more feedback about what I was doing well or poorly. Maybe that was the point to make it ambiguous and have misleading announcements, but if so, that wasn't clear either.
Particularly enjoyed the announcer sound effects. Just kept waiting to see what would surprise or mislead me next!
Cute, fun, and great story!
Loved the presentation, but not sure how I feel about the core gameplay, haha. Great entry nonetheless, well deserved top 10 in humor!
Interesting concept!
I think the premise of "Vampire Survivors + Rhythm" is excellent, really curious about how that premise would look with a couple of different designs! There's a lot of different directions you could go with just that tagline!
Y'all are really onto something incredible here. I can see some amazing potential for this concept.
It's just a jam, so understandably didn't have time to do a lot of interactive tutorials or anything, but if you build out a much more robust gradual onboarding to the game, this has some real commercial potential.
Other main gripe would be the platformer physics. Gravity feels too high and as a result the jump feels too quick. Even when editing a run, I ran into a single width spike multiple times by either jumping slightly too early or too late. The window for timings should probably be forgiving enough that players with full visuals should be able to execute correctly 95%+ of the time.
Would love to see more innovative implications of the replay vs recording modes, with lots of interesting mechanics. What happens if there's something that isn't affected by the replay/record? How about elements of the map that are only visible and/or interactable during one mode or the other?
Keep up the good stuff!
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I got way too carried away with this game. It's so repetitive, but I couldn't put it down! Eventually I just called it quits at floor -105, but I had to AFK for 7 whole floors for the enemies to churn through my many, many, many kevlar vests. Good work!
Would love to see this fleshed out with more content, boss battles, and a proper ending! And then doing it all over again with different difficulties and challenge modes ;)
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This game is SO good. What an amazing variation on the Vampire Survivors core loop! Y'all are really on to something here. I think if you keep working on this you could have a huge indie hit on your hands.
Love love love how each zone has its own music, and each weapon plays its own instrument.
Wonder what it would be like with additional mechanics like passive items, or the ability to customize when your attacks fire off in the sequence. A player could even make their sequence of attacks _sound_ the way they want it to, ignoring the strategic placement of things! Oh man and you could then export the sequence at the end to your hall of fame to play back another time. The possibilities are endless...
Please keep working on this! Had to call it quits after 171 rooms since the scaling never caught up to me, but that's just a minor balancing and content thing.
Fun game! Feels like it needs a little bit more content/scaling to make sure the game ends, but really great stuff you've got so far! Really love the idea of picking the upgrades for the enemies, but there's definitely a couple that you can just abusive and dump all of your upgrades into.
Was enjoying myself enough that I got all the way up to -105% reload just to see what would happen though!
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Really cool entry, y'all landed on a really solid and interesting mechanic. Would love to see the boundaries pushed a bit, but loved some of the level designs, particularly the 2nd to last one which made it abundantly clear that you had to use your teleportation power in certain ways that distinguished the game from other similar stealth games.
Small UI note, but it would have been nice to be able to more accurately tell when the teleport was about to go off. Maybe it was an intentional decision to not make it clear, but personally found it to be more frustrating than an enjoyable challenge.
Nice job on this one, reminds me a lot of my own game!
Wow, what a cool concept! Love the idea of having relative positioning matter on a rubik's cube you can't control. Could see a lot of cool games arise out of that core concept, very nicely done! Wonder if there's any other games that use that same premise...
Fun game, quite challenging though! Wish you restarted at the beginning of a level rather than the beginning of the game.
All in all, wishing there were a few more unique aspects to the game in terms of gameplay and mechanics. This type of top-down 2d shooter has been done many times before, so would loved to have seen some unique twists on the genre that would help put your game apart from others.
The concept is really cool, but the execution is a bit rough. Getting stuck on surfaces was frustrating, but my biggest gripe was the inability to end the cycle early and move on to set the moves for the next cube. Was especially frustrating when the 3rd cube was introduced.
Enjoyed the puzzle designs, but they were definitely a bit execution heavy even after the solution was figured out.
Just a few quality of life improvements and you're on the way to a really great game!
Love the physics controls y'all landed on. The art and audio are really awesome too!
From a gameplay perspective though, I think it would have been really interesting to use this same base to create a game based on fish acrobatics, rather than collecting some parts and delivering them to a single point. Like @druvsaft mentioned, the game is mostly just sitting around and waiting for parts to come by.
What you have is a fun physics simulation, but it just needs a layer of gameplay on top of that. Well done on the execution though!
This is really, really, really good for your very first game! Well done!
Web build isn't working for me, same error as @lincolnsalles
Alright I love the name of this game too much haha. Great little concept, and could be a really fun way for kids to practice math!
The screen is perhaps a bit uncomfortably small though, and the timing for levels seems pretty demanding for anyone who's not familiar with the game right away. Could be nice to be more forgiving to start and decrease that time quickly.
Great job!
Really really really super cool game! Squeaked over the finish with an ecosystem in collapse in 16:30 and then played through the whole thing again aiming for a more sustainable finish and got it done in 12:35! You're onto something really cool here. There's not a ton of replayability if that's something you want in the future, but you could keep adding a lot onto this.
This has some great potential to be an extremely satisfying educational game, and teach kids and adults alike firsthand just how fragile ecosystems can be. It would drive the point home even further if you added mechanics like natural (or man-made) disasters that end up putting a lot of pressure on just one species and seeing how that effect ripples throughout the whole ecosystem.
In terms of mechanics, a small gripe that all creatures seemed to be instantly aware of food no matter the distance, which in practice meant massive swarms of things just instantly making a beeline for available food, causing traffic jams and instantly killing stuff off, like in the case of the parasites vs the predators. A small improvement that would go a long way I think would be making it so that entities have a smaller awareness radius, and are prompted to be more restless/travel more when they are starving.
Seriously great job with the concept, I hope you continue with it.
@pomo @garys @jammygunns Glad y'all are finding it engaging enough to go for the gold! Let the high score chase begin!
@human-writes-code I was waffling between fixed dash and completely controlled. I think this is more unique when it comes to games like this but not necessarily better. It does lend itself to an extremely high skill ceiling, which might not be a good thing.
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@garys @pomo
Congrats! The true high score has been unlocked. Can you beat it? ;)
@garys I believe in you!
@garys See?! No problem! My turn!
@willianfhs It's based around a concept called "boids"! Essentially each entity has a relatively simple set of rules. There's a few forces acting on each one. 1. Try to get close to neighbors 2. Try to stay away from neighbors if they're TOO close 3. Try to align in direction with neighbors
That's the basic logic of boids, with lots and lots of potential for tuning those forces differently that make them behave in very different ways. Then for this game there's 2 additional forces. 4. Try not to get too close to the border 5. Try to stay away from the player (but the red ones don't try as hard as the white)
@budster16 Thanks for playing! The dash indicator is the level of yellow fill on the player. I tried to do it in a more diagetic way, but I guess it wasn't clear enough. Thanks for the feedback!
Holy cow @garys you are my hero!!
Might have some bugs? It looks like sometimes the reels show one thing but a different effect happens.
Cool concept, but it felt like the strategy ended up being pretty straightforward. Wanted some more interesting decision making, but that wouldn't be too hard to add, the systems are in place for some really interesting gameplay. Good job on the game!
@weirdbitgames It happened a few times, I think most frequently I was trying to grab a shield or something and it got replaced by a monster. Or other times going over a monster and nothing happening and just going to the next reel after that.
My strategy was pretty simple, since it didn't seem like it needed to get any more complex to beat the game. Always nudge to a star if you see it. Always nudge off a monster if you can in one nudge. And once you get a ton of stars, just nudge all the monsters off.
That's more just about balance though, too many stars relative to the amount of combat you need.
There's a ton of different mechanics you could introduce though. Reels could impact each other, items could be more complex / interesting, like relics in other roguelikes. You could add a resource that encourages more combat, since food seemed kind of useful, but kind of not necessary to win. You could add more actions than just nudging, and special mechanics for monsters that make you think more about how you fight them.