Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → kavs
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Cm | Co | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2011 | 21 | Escape | Escape Paradise | compo | 153 | 3.17 | 2.79 | 2.21 | 3.48 | 2.79 | 2.83 | 2.82 | 1.79 | 8 |
Stuck at the bee for some reason. I had a good wall hugging technique going (like the rest of hte player seem to have used) but could never get past the bee.
I like the web mechanic, but it didn't feel like I was escaping. Maybe if there was rising water and you were escaping inside a drain pipe or something, like a reverse itsy-bitsy spider. :)
Loved it, Chevy. :D I got to 73 tokens and want to keep playing, but I have another 520 games to review so I need to keep moving. ;)
I'm going to look into the source for this one for sure! Love the monochrome aesthetics.
Quite fun! Wish it had some simple sound effects and maybe some expanded gameplay elements for pickups/dodge items, but it was good for what it was. If you had time to add some art and animations, that would have made this much better. :)
Good wokr!
I liked it, but nothing about it felt 'escape' to me (except the name ;P). It's a nice puzzle game though!
I wish that when the user has no more nodes to drop, the line stops drawing to the cursor so it's immediately apparent there are no more moves. Also, is there a way to undo a single node? I couldn't find a way on my laptop using a trackpad.
I enjoyed all of the timing-related levels and figuring out how to best use the moves you were allocated.
I loved this game! Played it for probably 30 minutes beyond my normal review time. :)
I wish you had more time to add some fire spawn logic, as I found it was totally random if you could beat a level or not. There were instances were I spawned in a room with all of the fire start locations, and relinquished them with a water bomb and I could walk wherever I wanted. On the other hand, there were times where both fire spawns were in rooms adjacent to the exit and I spawned across the map, so there was no hope of me ever making it out.
Anyway, I love what you did with it and had a ton of fun. I liked making decisions about how many people to save before I got myself out instead. Felt bad to leave them behind. ;)
So good! The art style fit through and through, and I loved the audio.
I liked that you showed the ship you escaped from at you were sent down in the pod.
I wasn't sure that the pods were escape pods at the start, as it felt like I had missed some content in the level. I wasn't sure that I had beaten it already.
Not bad! Smooth gameplay and I finished at just the right timing, so your pacing is good.
I was confused with the startup that it puts you on that screen, and don't really understand the story or why I have the end time that I did. Or the artifact rating. I guess it's a parody of MegaMan or something? :P
Either way, well done!
Beat it with 4:20 left, but it felt like a fluke that I made it. I had no idea where I was going most of the time, but kind of stumbled upon the items.
The style of everything is quite unified, and the sound made me constantly think of escape. :)
I beat this on my way to work this morning after about 5 tries. It took a while to get the timing down.
What do the pickups do? I have no idea, but collected them all anyway.
The art and audio were nice, and it felt nice and polished from an aesthetic point of view. The gameplay got a bit dry toward the end due to repetition, but it was a fun little game while it lasted. :) Would have loved to see increased speed or maybe a change in the player position as they got closer to the end. Something to mix it up a bit.
Not bad, but the slow rate of the screen refresh made my eyes hurt. :D I found the player blended in a bit too much with the paparazzi and it might have been more helpful to have him flash colors, or have some kind of background or other stand out feature so it's easier to track.
Well done!
Horrifying audio. ;) Fun (but hard) little game!
I won with 830 and took about 10 minutes.
I found the walljump to be a bit too hard to use with a keyboard. I always fell from really frustrating places and it didn't feel fair.
Nice music and art though; it all fits the same theme.
There is nothing about escaping in this game, though. :P
The version I had used the installer, which I actually went through with but it made me /sadface. :( Happy to see you fixed that.
I tried to play this on my laptop and the ninja just glitched around the world, then fell out? Maybe the laptop isn't running well enough to play this game, but it was completely unplayable for me. :(
Except for the menus, at least!
I totally forgot I had ninja star until the very end. A simple tutorial area where a destructible wall was blocking the door would have helped, but that might be holding my hand too much.
I died twice and didn't try a third time to finish it. Died on the boss because I forgot I had stars, and tried to bob zombies on the head. :D I'm so dumb.
Nice art, could have used some music, and the game was pretty fun.
I got confused and couldn't beat the second level. I actually wasn't able to progress past the first room because I was playing on a laptop and it wasn't immediately obvious as to how to hack using the mouse. Explanation of this would have gone a long way. :)
Nice game!
I tried twice and made it to the final boss on my second attempt. Died super easy though! The game is pretty hard, or I missed anything more than the 2 potions I found.
I would have liked to see the bats and eyes be a bit more aggressive. They float around and hover a bit too much, and since the combat doesn't really flow well while moving/punching, I found myself sitting in a corner punching out in all directions waiting for them eventually to close in. This is probably how you meant it, which is fine, but it was annoying on the beholder boss because it was so hard to skate and punch at the same time.
I think I may have preferred to have the flippers and skates be a passive effect. That might have made micro-managing on these surfaces a bit better, but it did make for some interesting fast-switching gameplay.
The one big criticism I have is that it doesn't really feel like I am escaping anything. Sure, I start in a prison, but after that it feels like I'm on a quest instead of trying to escape.
Either way, incredible entry notch! I spent 45 minutes on it and had great fun with the puzzles and figuring it all out. :)
I found myself extremely confused as to how to play. I tried to harvest the plants in the circle in the first level but that didn't work because of the wall, and only after I dropped all of my turrets did I see it coming in from the sides. I clicked on 'Impressum' not knowing what it did, and it quit me out of my game in the middle of my level. :(
A little polish and player handholding could have helped understand it right away.
I would have loved to have some sort of audio with this, but I'll take it for what it is. ;) Love the setting and story.
Rarely knew what I was clicking on or how it worked, but I thought it was funny and cute. I won by just clicking on random things and progressing when I could. :3
Nice game, but I do agree that the map is too large. :) I had fun exploring, but ultimately didn't finish the game due to feeling like the game world is miles wide and I didn't have any context for my progression toward the end.
I'd love to see this blown out some more. :D
Feels like you were going for a portal vibe, but it felt good! It's one of the better examples of 'Escape!' I have seen; I felt like a prisoner inside the facitily.
Good job on the audio, and I had fun running through the rooms. There were a few deaths I felt were undeserved and were more of a fault on the platforming mechanics, but no big deal.
It's quite small (as mentioned in another post) but I laughed a lot. There isn't another game quite like this in the competition. :P
Nice work.
Tough to get into, but amazed at how much you did in 48 hours. :)
Wish mana regenerated a bit faster so I didn't have to wait as much. :(
Nice! :D
I would have liked it more if the counters didn't reset when players leave the square. Twice in my game I moved a character by accident and it caused the counter to reset.
I played this over and over on the train home today and made many notes about how much fun I was having. The lava filling up the screen on the intro/game over screen has a mesmerizing effect. A lot like winning a game of Solitare on Windows. :D
It wasn't very hard, but it was enjoyable. I had to micromanage my player position while scouting ahead for the viable route. I found that the red lava was a nice contrast and gave me enough information via peripheral vision so that I knew where it was walling things off and it ended up helping guide me home.
Well done! Super polished and super fun. :) I like how the lava sped up. I barely made it!
I wish you had time to add some music and sound effects, though. That would have been the icing on the cake.
I had a lot of trouble with the elastic 'resetting' on me. I'd get down to what I assumed was a 'checkpoint' (the larger balls) and I always seemed to randomly get pulled all the way back to start.
I only seemed to be able to make progress when I had the ball in what appeared to be a glitched state. I was moving way faster than I ever had and managed to get to the second large node in one go. Unless this was just me figuring out the physics for a split-second. :P
I loved the audio, the art, and the vibe. I just couldn't finish due to constant resetting and got frustrated.
Would have loved to see an auto-fire feature, as it was nearly impossible to play this without a mouse (using laptop touchpad). Level 3 kept murdering me! It feels like they kept spawning more the more I died.
Anyway, love the style and what you had going. I had fun. :D
Excellent audio and nice art, too. It felt very polished and I enjoyed playing through it.
I HATE being forced to press Up to jump, though. I would have loved to see it also mapped to spacebar or something like that. I don't understand why so many games insist on using that control scheme when you could just have it doublemapped.
I found it a bit hard, but probably because I'm bad at platformers. I found once I was in the water, I was pretty much dead anyway so it seemed useless to struggle (unless that's what you were going for).
All in all, an excellent entry!
Pretty nice game, but it would have been 5x as good if I could interact with a mouse click. Toward the end I was tempted to turn it off because I was so sick of spamming 'E'.
This is a nice looking entry, though. Interesting take on the theme, too. Well done!
I ended up getting murdered by some sort of hand thing and there wasn't much I could do. I caught onto the concept after about 10 rounds or so. I'd have loved to see the choices have a bit more meaning behind them, like instead of the unicats making you stronger, maybe opt to turn them into a key? Not sure if that's the right solution.
Anyway, it was an interesting little experience.
I don't like how the sharks teleport randomly. If they shifted over a lane or two that might be better, but it just feels like I'm hopeless to save them and I'll do just as good if I let the people fall randomly.
It took until about the 5th wave for me to realize that the preservers shifted their lanes. In the description text, maybe make it more obvious as to their functionality? I thought I could just throw them and if they touch, they are saved.
I got to 9 saved before I stopped playing. I like the idea of loading up and running for the gates, but there are a few things that I wish you had time to adjust. ;)
The deaths are completely random, as you mention. A lot of times, the player gets stuck in a place where they are unable to do anything about 2 or 3 people jumping at nearly the same time, and you can't do anything but watch. A little more logic on their spawning would have been super helpful.
Also, was it a design decision to disallow people to hold down/up and left/right at the same time? I was often stuck turning into a building too early, and thought it might have been nice to slowly grind up the wall even if I cant turn left/right directly yet. Hopefully you get what I mean. :P
I apparently missed a few falling prisoners, but my truck felt like it was perfectly lined up. It seemed to happen with the high falling prisoners the most. A bit frustrating, especially when I miss another prisoner because I chose this one.
Either way, it was a fun game to play on the train home, and great for a first LD. :)
Nice and simple!
I found that if you spam the tap buttons too fast, it doesn't work that well. I wanted to spam click as fast as possible and that's what lost me the first time around, but I won on the second attempt. :)
Nice game! The walljump is a little tough to conrol and he felt very clingy to the walls (in a negative way) but I had fun with it.
I don't really understand the need for a health system. I have 100HP, but it takes a split second to lose it all. Maybe make it a short regenerative system, so it only punishes the player if they stay in collision with the zombie for too long?
Your pop-up text boxes are sexy, by the way. I'm going to have to peek into your source and see how you did that. :)
Good submission. :)
I... think I won? I just ran around the level border boosting and then I got a credits screen.
I never really felt like I was escaping, unfortunately. I like the idea of proximity, but would have loved to see more aggressive enemies.
Felt very slow. This was kind of nice for giving it a bit of a creepier vibe, but the gameplay itself isn't really that creepy so after a while I was just annoyed at how slow it was.
Artistically, it has a great theme. The audio fits how the world looks, but I can't get over how slow it plays.
This is minor, but I wish that at the start of a new level, your energy level was at full so you can sprint right away. The movement is so slow that I try and sprint whenever I can.
The player's hitbox is much larger than the character sprite, which causes some frustrating moments where you are trying to move, but can't due to invisible collision.
All in all, great theme and was atmospheric, but it would have helped a ton to speed the player up and tighten his hitbox.
I only encountered one plane on my entire trip, and it was right before the landing pad. I could have avoided it entirely if I wanted, but I shot it down to see how it felt.
I was bored just driving across open ocean and didn't have any reference for how fast I was going. Next time, I'd suggest adding some more detail in the water tilemap or adding more islands so I feel like I'm exploring or getting somewhere.
I'd have loved to see a 'range' on the compass as well, so I know how long I have to fly in that direction. I almost quit because all I saw was water and no enemies, but if I had context for how far to go it may have been better.
Nice! Loved the presentation and it was a great quick playthrough. The art was a bit inconsistent but the audio was spot on. It felt like the collisions on the bear traps might be a bit off, or I just suck at aiming.
Well done!
Would have loved some low-fi sounds with this one. :) I got stuck on level 13.
Maybe a lite hint system or something, too? I don't know. It was a fun experience while it lasted. :D
I played this this morning, but didn't finish for two reasons.
1) The character moved so slow! It felt like he could be sped up 2 or even 3 times and it'd feel a lot better.
2) No health pickups (that I encountered). Death seemed inevitable after a few minutes in, so it was frustrating to crawl back and forth to the location you died.
The collision felt a bit off, as well. How was the hitbox done? It feels like is isn't pixel perfect and I was hit by shots I felt like I had dodged.
Either way, it ran smoothly and I had fun trudging around while I did. Speed would have helped out immensely here, though. :)
Hey Gornova!
I really wanted to make the spiders wander (they have a full spritesheet to support it) but I just ran out of time. If I had another 6 hours I would have made them wander, animated the player, and added some game music... but such is the nature of LD48, I suppose! :)
Thanks for the feedback and I'm glad you have a deep appreciation of my beatboxing. Untz Unts Untz. <o/
Ah shoot, I thought I removed all instances of that happening. :( I should have added an 'escape' hotkey for the compo that places you right in the middle of the room. Would have taken 3 minutes and prevented that from happening for LD.
@wbobeirne, yeah, I would have loved to add some more challenges or at least moments where the player has to think. I have learnt a lot about pacing from this LD, so hopefully my next one is a bit better.
@jedi, if you watch my timelapse you'll see me fighting with myself to do the character animations. I feel like I'll never do them justice, so I just postponed it... indefinitely. ;)
@PaulSB, I'm glad you enjoyed wandering aimlessly!
@Rich, had I known my competition would be mushroom trips, I would have upped my game! :) How can I compete with that?!
Thank you guys so much for checking it out!
@matthias
Thanks! The world was supposed to be 8x8, but I'm happy I scaled down or it would have been so incredibly boring. ;) 4x4 is a good enough size for the scope of the game I ended up with.
I beat the game (11 minutes, 26 deaths).
I would recommend making it clearer that the whole tile is affected. The electricity between the beams could have been a solid laser instead of the wavy thin line. And I'd suggest making the trigger tiles cover the entire tile, and maybe change color as soon as you step on it so you know it's active? I died a lot because I wasn't sure if I had triggered the tile or not, and it took a while to figure out exactly how they work.
The last level tricked me a few times. Well done. ;)
Love the art! LOVE LOVE LOVE! Best I've seen all competition. The audio was nice, too.
I got a bit dizzy with the amount of parallax going on. Anyone else? I think it was just the foreground layer, or all of the colors. :P
I felt like the player should have died once the llama was inside the crowd, but he doesn't die until he goes off the left-hand side of the screen it feels like. The first time I was close to them, I thought I was going to die, but once I realized I was still alive it wasn't as intense.
The style is incredible, but I wish you had time to replace the font with one of your own style. Everything jives so great except the font.
I died, but the game over screen said llama won? I don't understand. :P
Good work!
Text scrolled way too slow, but I had fun doing the minigames. Played through twice and had the same result each time; lost all 3 minigames. A bit more feedback for the player might have gone a long way in helping understand the games. :)
Well done! Awesome voice acting.
I agree with the others that have mentioned that there isn't enough contrast to tell where one platform starts and the other ends. I fell a lot at the beginning because I missed my jump and though I was further than I actually was.
I would have liked to see the enemies move a bit, and have their projectiles move faster. I was only ever hit once, and that was just to figure out what it did.
The movement was smooth, though! I died probably 5 times before I beat it.