Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → Bumblepie
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | Co | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | 38 | A Small World | Slime Assault | jam | 701 | 2.70 | 2.29 | 2.64 | 2.41 | 2.42 | 2.86 | 2.23 | 2.61 | ||
| 2016 | 37 | One room | The IT Room | jam | 740 | 2.91 | 2.80 | 2.69 | 3.54 | 2.57 | 2.91 | 2.66 | 71 | ||
| 2015 | 34 | Two Button Controls / Growing | Homeworld | compo | 263 | 3.52 | 3.42 | 3.80 | 4.17 | 2.91 | 3.17 | 3.26 | 71 |
Story games like this one always impress me. I have no idea how people manage to find the time to write stories during the short time in the jam. I would definitely recommend that everyone tries to find all 3 endings, or else you won't really appreciate this. One suggestion would be to be able to skip some dialogue you've already listened to.
I really like the use of both themes here, the controls feel natural with two buttons, and the growing theme is used extremely creatively. It is a lot of fun watching your trail grow and change the background of the level. I would suggest upping the difficulty a bit, either by increasing the rate at which the bugs spawn or perhaps more thematically, by making you go ahead of the sunlight and have your leaves get the sun. This may be hard to implement, but would be really cool to see. Overall, a really great, creative and atmospheric entry with a good core mechanic.
This game absolutely blew me away. It really is amazing for something made in such a short time! What got me most was that I was constantly learning about the mechanics. I didn't notice the help tooltips next to each resource, so I had to figure out what each of them did myself. I really like the subtelty of the mechanics, it reminds me very much of a recent game called Kingdom in that you more give suggestions to your helpers rather than directly controlling them. I learned a bit later in the game that unflagging all the resources would not recall all my helpers who would then help me clear the base of weeds and would instead result in them just waiting in base. Oops. Another great thing about this game is how well it captures this sense of paranoia about the vines creeping in, and the inevitability that you will get surrounded by them. The music and simple but effective graphics really help drive this home. I do have a couple of suggestions, mostly to do with the helpers, as they could be a bit unhelpful at times. It would be great to be able to direct them to clear an area, so like being able to mark an area for them to clear similar to marking resources. As well as that, I think having a lose state is very important in this, it helps to have payoff for all the paranoia. I think the base getting engulfed in vines would be appropriate. And a day/night cycle would help set the mood, and perhaps offer opportunity for variation in gameplay, with vines growing faster at night , making it harder, and letting you explore at daytime. This is almost certainly my favourite game so far, and one of the few i would come back to and play again.
Really great atmosphere, a really simple but effective way of storytelling. I love the simple graphical style, and the music was chilling. This game is amazingly well presented. My only problem with it would be that the gameplay is a bit lacking. I did a second playthrough and deliberately tried to fail, but could only be killed by the bandit. Don't get me wrong, it's scary to go off the path, but if something happened on the second night or something if you broke the rules, it would make the game so much more effective. Or be able to break the rules and explore. Overall, a really good interactive story, less good game.
I really think this game is fun, a very good take on the two button themes. As others have said, it is a bit too difficult, bordering on impossible due to having to restart from lv 1 every 3 deaths. However, I believe the issue lies not in the damage taken, but in the lack of inertia of the ship. This really made it a little too difficult to control, especially to turn around and go left. Overall quite a good effort for the jam.
A nice simple game. Good use of the two button controls restriction. Would like to see more levels.
A simple game, with simple mechanics executed well. The game had visual appeal and offered an uncomplicated kind of fun. I think the game could be improved with a few different enemy types for some gameplay variety, and the collision of the bullets with the enemies could be tightened up a bit. The game definitely has character, I love the little things, like the aliens falling out of the ships!
Really simple endless runner game. I liked the main character's visuals. I think the controls make it a bit hard to play, they are really quite unintuitive at first.
I love the visuals for this game, it really is pretty. I also enjoyed the idea behind it, it was an excellent and innovative use of the theme Growing. With a bit of tuning, the platforming and charge mechanic could feel more intuitive and make it fun even without being able to take damage, and with dynamic enemies this would be a really enjoyable game. Like most game jam games, it comes down to scope, and it is really hard to reign that in during the short time allowed. Would love to see further work on this concept and visual style.
This game is super polished, especially for a compo entry. Nice job on the presentation! The gameplay was also simple and compelling. However, I felt like there were a lot of situations where I couldn't do anything against the enemies, possibly due to random spawning, possibly due to my position on the map. Really good effort.
It plays quite similarly to agar.io, and perhaps could have worked better from a top down perspective rather than a 3rd person one. I found that it was a bit difficult to control with the mouse, and extremely difficult to shoot enemies as you had to hit their heads and they moved so fast. That said, it is well put together and the enemy AI is good for a game made in 48 hours.
This is a really well polished game, the visual style is gorgeous, and the sound design is beautiful. The level design does a great job of teaching players mechanics and then combining them in interesting and unique ways. The main gameplay issue with this entry lies in the camera. It's really difficult to react to enemies coming from offscreen due to the way the camera drags behind the player. I see what the idea was, to ensure smooth camera movement, but when the player takes up so much of the screen, and they're so far towards the edge, it can be an issue. As well as this, it does make the situations with blocking the lasers with the box more difficult in an unnecessary way. I don't see how either of the themes was used at all. A great game for 72 hours work, but not an amazing jam entry because of that.
I actually played through this several times (5+). This is easily the best story based game I've played so far, the writing is engaging and really personal, it makes me want to know more about what's going on, even with the limited information. I can see why there's the whole "empathy increases by 5" thing, but it does kind of cheapen the experience for me. And it's difficult to quantify 5 empathy, it doesn't really mean much to me (although I can see it affects things later). I also think there could have been a bit more payoff at the end of some of the arcs, especially Simon's. James' ending was good though, nice and simple. There is a bit of false choice in the game as well, which does make the meaningful decisions stand out more but is a pain for multiple playthroughs. But that is all just nitpicking because this is a great effort, especially considering the restrictions of the compo. Great work.
I like the use of both themes. It has a simple and fun core gameplay mechanic, the only issue I would have with it is the lack of variety in gameplay. Perhaps add more targets worth more points, or even negative points in order to make aiming more of a decision and less just shoot and hope.
A really great entry, similar to multitask. The difficulty grows really quickly, and it is a lot of fun to try and beat your high score. It does a great job of making you feel like you're improving, and each time you die, you really want to do better, and focus on the minigame you failed, making you die on another one! A really fun game, great work.
My Highscore was 89, although that was slightly because it bugged out when I was at 60 something and let me start from 70 despite not reaching it already.
https://gyazo.com/343d3c8d2c42ddd9b6ffd4c4667c2109
I'm really impressed that you made an editor, that's a great achievement for such a short competition. I like the idea behind a more claustrophobic kind of snake, with narrow winding hallways etc, but I think the level design could be improved a bit. I can see that you were doing things that are fun for a game designer, like hiding stuff behind the player's spawn rather than things the player would enjoy. This is an easy trap to fall into. I think the game would also be better if growing affected the gameplay in some way rather than being purely visual. This could really work in the game's favour as it could become a puzzle based game where you have to figure out which diamonds to collect in which order so that you aren't too big to navigate the maze properly.
A nice simple endless runner. I like the way two button controls were used to do several things, but it did feel a bit odd, I kept trying to jump while phased. I think the platforming design could be improved a bit, perhaps by introducing slopes rather than blocky levels. It was really annoying to get caught on a one block high wall. I like the simple aesthetic though. The music was great, especially for 2 hours work!
Love the look of the game, especially the crashed sleigh at the start, very cute. I think this game could do with a bit more direction, perhaps if you were going around a set map with boundaries, delivering to specific indicated locations it could help give a sense of purpose. I felt like I was fighting the controls a bit, but it did make tail swiping cars more satisfying. As it was, tail swiping cars was really the high point of the game. I think this game could really work as a high paced drive around tailswiping cars and delivering presents to a destination kind of game. I couldn't find the grinch unless he was one of the default cars.
I played through 2 of the endings, an I have to say that this game probably has the best atmosphere of any I've played so far. The tension created through ambient sound and grungy visuals really sold the game for me. The voice acting quality was well above what I would expect for a Ludum Dare game, and the writing was mostly funny and well done. I would like for a bit more gameplay than a few binary choices (although I do see the theme connection), but overall it was a really enjoyable and impressive interactive set piece.
I really enjoyed the simple charm of the game. The story and visuals were cute, and kept me playing, and the gameplay made good use of the two button restriction. One thing I noticed was that you could just press both buttons, and you would land in time to dodge the next guy, so you didn't really have to predict or react to which way the enemies were going. This can be easily remedied through changing the timing of the enemies though. Good entry!
I really enjoyed the creativity of this game, the idea behind it was really great, and the simple graphics didn't detract from the gameplay. However, the camera movement really made it difficult to click on things, as the mouse's position in the world would change as the player moved. In particular, there were some sections where you had to click as the player was in the air, which was extremely difficult. This could be addressed by either slowing down the gameplay a bit, or giving the player some leeway before the camera starts following him.
This is a good first effort, and I think you can take away some really valuable lessons from this experience and apply them to games you make in the future :) One thing I noticed is that you move a lot faster diagonally than straight up or down, which I believe comes from the horizontal and vertical velocities just being added to each other without scaling down afterwards to have a consistent magnitude. I think this could be a step towards balancing the game more in the players favour, as you can make the enemies slightly slower than the player so that they only catch up if the player makes a bad decision about where to go. I really enjoyed the creativity in this entry, and would really encourage you to keep making games!
The graphics of this game are absolutely adorable! The music also helps set a really nice chill mood. The controls really helped add to the difficulty of this game. I think it would be really good to perhaps add in a katamari damaci style thing where once you get big enough, you start eating the trees, and so on, changing the visual style as you go on. It was a bit unintuitive to do so with the dogs, perhaps they should change sprites when you can eat them? Nice, chill game.
I really enjoyed the visual style of the game, the pixel art was impressive, and a good level of detail was put into the main aspects of the game. The endless runner mechanics were solid, but I think a few design decisions could have been better. One example is the monsters which you have to be the same size to kill, it feels strange taking a hit from a tiny monster when you are so massive, and the icicles already give you an incentive to shrink. As well as that, there wasn't really an incentive to go fast, I think that perhaps slowing down enough should also lose you a life, as it could really help the pacing of the game. This could also show off the monster better, and make it feel like more of a persistent threat rather than a reminder of your health. Overall a great job though :)
I really like the polish of the game. The visual effects on the snake and the background music really helped the mood of the game. Insane mode was extremely difficult, as it was hard to loop back on yourself due to the slow controls and fast speed! Overall, while not innovative, the execution of this game is really good. I would like to see some more features like enemies or walls or something added to increase the variety in gameplay.
I like the creativity behind this game, I think it's a great idea that could be made into a really interesting game. I would really like to see that brought into the game mechanics. It would be really interesting, for example, if it was more of a stealth game: you had to sneak around the lumberjacks, and if you moved in their sightline they chase you and try to cut you down, but you could kill them from behind and stand still to pretend you're just a normal tree. I enjoyed the visual effects added to give a bit of feedback.
A really simple text-based adventure, it had a good sense of humour and was easy to play. I would have liked to see more depth, perhaps a longer campaign where your choices earlier affect those later rather than being a kind of decision tree.
This is so ridiculously polished, so great job on that. The visuals are so cohesive and extremely well done, the effect of scrolling with the land coming up/going away was very impressive. You guys did a great job of setting a small scope and nailing down a simple core mechanic. Overall, this is a great, really polished entry. I am terrible at it, I wasn't able to get 1,000 let alone 25,000 to unlock a character! If I had to come up with a single improvement, I think it would just be that there isn't much variety in the gameplay, there isn't much to keep someone playing over and over. Adding in some modifiers like areas to avoid could help this. As well as that, the controls can be a bit over sensitive, so it is a bit difficult to control yourself (although that is probably intended). Overall, an extremely clean and impressive game, you guys can be extremely proud of yourselves.
This game is really polished, I really like the simple visual style and the sound effects. They work well to give it a charming mood. The gameplay seemed balanced quite fairly, I failed a few times because I was too careless about getting hit by meteors, but once you realise that the most important thing is dodging them and you don't really have to worry about the generator dying (because you can just heal it), it's not very difficult. One suggestion I have is to make the plant decrease in size over time, to force the player into a more active playstyle where they have to risk getting hit in order to grow the plant, rather than simply healing the generator and waiting for a gap in the meteors. As well as that, perhaps something could be done to put a bit more variety into the gameplay, perhaps enemies being more likely to spawn opposite to your side, or multiple types of enemies? I found that more often than not, they would just spawn under me and die immediately. Overall, this is a great compo entry, with a nice simple concept that was executed really well.
I really liked the variety introduced into the gameplay from the enemies. They really made the game more enjoyable. I also enjoyed the rainbow visuals on the snake, and the controls were tight. I remember seeing a game (made by Nocturne I think for one of the GameMaker Community jams) in which you had to constrict larger objects to eat them, and I think that could be applied here to destroy the larger asteroids. Or cut through them or something, it just looks odd to eat a giant asteroid! Background music would be a great addition. I think with a little more polish, this could be a really great game.
A really creative use of the tow button theme in order to provide a really varied gameplay experience. It was really clever to allow the player to rotate to change weapons. I think the difficulty could be lowered by a substantial margin initially, and then slowly increase it, as it becomes a bit too bullet hellish before you really get to grips with the controls.
I really like the visual style of the game, it's really cohesive and cute. Love the snowman. I think the scoring might be broken, it didn't stop going up for me. I'm not sure exactly what the AI of the people were doing, but they didn't seem to chase me. It was fun for a bit, just chilling (pun not intended) and going around getting bigger. Eventually I started chasing people down since they weren't trying to stop me but I couldn't eat them and they didn't kill me at that point. I think it was intended that you're supposed to stand still so that the people dont detect you, and if they do, they chase you down, and I really like that idea.
I really liked the style of the sprites, they were simple and effective, and really good for something made from scratch during a jam. Really good use of both themes, I feel like using the two buttons contextually for a number of different minigames was a great idea! The minigames themselves seemed a bit easy, as for the crystals and fishing one, you could just hold Z and win, but the wood chopping one was a nice simple timing minigame. I think that this game had a great concept, but was hard to execute on given the time limit on the jam (so scope had to be small). I really think this could be a great game if the two-button restriction was taken away (to improve usability) and with more development time.
I like the concept behind the game, it's a clever idea that fits both themes really well. However, I think the execution fell short a bit, here, it is really difficult to make something like this easy to control, and it is quite hard in this game. The physics kind of felt a bit off, which kills the game a bit for me. Would love to see this with more dev time.
I really enjoyed the visual style, and it was funny how the music and mood of the game was really chilled out despite being about a volcano. The gameplay was simple but effective, and it was great how it was challenging despite the simplicity. One improvement I might suggest would be for more enemies with greater health, or with a minimum time between shots, so that you have to focus down some enemies. Overall a really fun game.
The game has a simple charm with easy to learn gameplay and a good use of the growing theme. I think this could be better with a cleaner UI and a bit faster gameplay.
Absolutely gorgeous visual style, and the music was great. I enjoyed the simple gameplay mechanic, which makes good use of the two button theme. I also thought it was a really good idea to put a combo in with timing so that button mashing isn't as effective as carefully timing punches. I had a couple of issues where the detection of punching seemed a bit off, enemies on the other side of the screen would die, or enemies on top of me wouldn't get hit, but this didn't detract too much from the experience. I think a couple of things that would really bring the game to life would be to add the ability to knock robots into each other with the combo punch, and to really nail the explosiveness of the visual and audio effects on successfully landing punches. I'm talking explosions, fire hands, make it really satisfying to land the punches. Overall a really impressive effort. I would probably play this on my phone with a bit of cleaning up.
The aesthetic appeal of this game is great, the pixel art has been really impressively done. The mechanics of this game are also simple but effective, and it is a great concept behind it. As well as that, the procedural generation of premade parts put together ensures consistently well generated maps rather than impossible random layouts. One thing this game suffers from, however is a bit of lack of clarity in the mechanics. I found it difficult to internalise that going down into a gap or an enemy would kill me, but that going sideways into them was fine! As well as that, the levels generated did get a bit repetitive due to the limited number of premade tiles, but that should be easily remedied with more development time. Really like the idea behind this game, good job!
I love the concept behind this game and games like Rocket League have shown this kind of game can be really succesful! I found the controls extremely difficult, particularly trying to set the direction, I ended up rotating left then right then left over and over again, perhaps increase the damping, or have an option to, or even make tapping the button opposite to the direction you were previously going stop your direction rather than start turning you the opposite way. This game is very fun with friends, but I think it could be even better with powerups, obstacles etc to mix things up. Also, I think the audio is a little bit grating and takes away from the game a little bit. Still, it is great to see a multiplayer game in the Dare!
Hey @Jwatt, thanks for the feedback, however I would really appreciate it if you would play the game for a bit longer. It would seem that you quit before the game really starts, as the difficulty ramps up after introducing the enemies (about 2 minutes in). As well as this, you can take multiple hits, your health is shown by the color of the center of the planet, the redder it is, the more you are in trouble. You can take 10 hits from the orange enemies before losing. Finally, because the difficulty gets significantly higher, with enemies coming from multiple sides, you really do need to be able to reverse direction.I would really suggest replaying this, as it seems you didn't fully experience the game.
A really creative use of both themes, love the concept behind the game! I think the eating phase could possibly be a bit harder, perhaps add in some sushi that has gone off that the player has to avoid? Conversely, the combat phase s really unforgiving. It's brutal. I think the visual feedback could be made clearer, and this would make it much more playable.
Love the graphical style of the game and the voiceover, they were very cute. Really interesting mechanic to use the two button theme, and I guess your goal was to grow your debt, so well done on using both themes! If I had one complaint about the game, I guess it would be the lack of variation in gameplay. It would be good to have perhaps a security guard or debtors you have to avoid, or something. Really enjoyed the humour of the game, good job!
Okay, I'll start off by saying that I really like this game. It is really well put together and has a clean aesthetic that doesn't distract from the gameplay. However, I do have some suggestions for improvements if you'd like to take this further:
- Really run with the sound idea, base level design around creating music
- Take out the scoring aspect and make the mazes more puzzely (if that makes sense) rather than a trial and error physics kind of thing. On that note,
- Add a bit more variety into the gameplay through things like zones where you can't place lines, or areas/enemies that kill the ball.
Like I said, I really enjoyed this, and would love to see what you do with this in the future
I really enjoyed the art direction in this game, the level select in particular stood out to me as being really creative and clever. The mechanics of the game were also quite creative, it was a refreshing take on the platformer genre. However, it was let down a bit by the controls which seemed a bit inconsistent and sticky. I would really like to see this with more development time, cleaner controls and more levels.
Man, that was a little messed up. Not my kind of game, but I can see why people would find it compelling, so I rated it based on that rather than my own enjoyment. The production value is very high which is impressive.
I love the idea for this game, and it's clear you guys put in a lot of effort, the variety of enemies is great! The game is gorgeous, very visually striking, but extremely difficult. I think most of the challenge came from the controls: I think perhaps locking the player's direction to pointing away from the nexus could help, as I don't think the aiming of the sword really benifits the game. I'm not entirely sure of the value of parrying, I think I blocked a ranged enemy's shot once, but couldn't do it again and had to watch as it took my nexus down from 76 to 0 by itself. Is the ranged enemy Satan? Cause it's hard.
I think that aside from balancing, this game could really be improved by locking the player's direction away from the nexus and adding a small knockback to the enemies you hit so that your weapon has more punch to it. And make parrying a tiny bit more forgiving.
Overall though, great effort, can't wait to see what you guys do with this and look forward to the balanced version you guys say you're putting out soon :)
I enjoyed the simple nature of the game, you did a good job of setting the scope, coming up with a core mechanic and focusing on that. I also liked the visual presentation, it had a really charming quality to it. The gameplay was a nice boss fight kind of thing, it was challenging but fair. I think it could be improved a bit if you couldn't shoot while repelling, as otherwise there isn't really a choice, it is always better to be repelling than not to. As well as that, I think there could be a bit more clarity as to what things do. It was a bit unclear what I was supposed to be shooting, if it was doing anything and whether saving the black balls was damaging me or the enemy. I think some audiovisual feedback could go a long way to improve the playability of the game. Overall, a nice entry, well done!
Really nice atmosphere, I enjoyed the background, and the music (although perhaps a more chill piano theme might fit the gameplay more). I liked the visual style with the exception of the raindrop, I think the main focus of the game should probably have a bit more emphasis on it. The gameplay was nice, if a bit simple, and would benefit from a few varying levels or something to add variety into the game. Really good job for a first entry though!
I have to say, I do really like the rough graphics, I think it really fits the theme of the game well. The ambient sound is also really good, I think it helps you get into a zone of smashing crates and jumping really well. I think you guys did a good job of locking down the core mechanics of jumping and smashing crates, because both felt satisfying, and it was great to be able to chain them together. I think something that I would like to see in this would be a score or combo meter that could go up as you smash more boxes in a shorter space of time, or something to add a bit of variety into the gameplay. Seeing a X4 multiplier or something coming out of the smashed boxes would really nail down the game feel, and showing the score going up could help give the player instant feedback on their performance, and help give it a spectacle fighter kind of element. I am really curious as to how you guys did the procedural generation, was it preset pieces fit together or randomly spawned walls? I think they both have benefits, but the former could really help make the level design flow more if it's not already in use (as well as take out some awkward situations where it's impossible to progress). Overall, I really enjoyed this, great job.
This is a really nice effort, it is really difficult to try and create an ecosystem kind of game. It has a great ambient mood, which is helped by a great choice of music. I can see this game being great to just chill and waste time with. I think there's a bug at the start cause it said I only had one person, but there were two, only one of whom could collect things? Perhaps it's because I checked out the tutorial (which spawned two people) before checking out the main game. I think this game would be greatly improved with a cleaner visual style, but that is understandably hard to achieve in such a short space of time. Good work!
A nice simple game with good use of both themes. While the visuals vary (there are three distinct stages), the gameplay doesn't really have a lot of depth. I would really like to see multiple types of enemies.
The art was nice, and the core gamemechanic was a cool idea. I'm not sure if there's anything after that first dragon thing, but I can see the charging/choosing which power to have working well when you're facing multiple enemies with different weaknesses etc. However, the difficulty seemed to stem from the controls rather than a fair challenge, I would recommend increasing the friction on the player, as I was often slipping past the light beams when I was trying to charge up. Also, I think increasing the visibility of the enemy projectiles would be a major addition to the game, because in it's current state there were a few that were really difficult to see and it felt like I was dying for no reason because of that. The last thing is that I think being able to deflect the monster's projectiles with your shield would make the difficulty more fair. I think there was a homing attack (even if it fizzles out after some distance) which when combined with the main projectiles and the wall of fire attack made it basically impossible to dodge everything. I think there's a good core idea here, it just needs some tweaking to make it more playable.
It has a really interesting idea behind the core mechanic, but I think the level isn't really designed around it. What I mean by this is that most of the time you want to simply stop rather than go backwards, so you just spam the spacebar, which is hard on the eyes due to the rapid changing in visuals and the way the player vibrates between a number of positions when you do this. Additionally, the large hitboxes make it extremely unforgiving. I would suggest thinking about ways to design the levels so that you want to go both backwards and forwards, such as activating things that when rewound, cause the player to take another route. I think the idea has a lot of potential!
This was really fun, I think it really shows how having a simple, easy to implement idea can be the best way to go in game jams. The controls were tight to the point where whenever I got hit, I knew it was my fault. I think the only thing wrong with the game was that the next level of orbs would spawn immediately upon collecting the last green orb, which led to a lot of situations where I would collect orbs and get hit because they spawned on top of me. Additionally, some chill background music would be nice. Great job!
A really interesting concept for a game. I think the core mechanic needs to be improved a bit though: as it is the game is pretty prescriptive in terms of the solution being always face scan and just shoot dudes when they show up. The game needs something added to it to add some complexity and difficulty.
A nice simple concept, and the simple artstyle suits this. However, the controls feel a bit too sticky, making the game a bit annoying to play.
The sprites and visuals are nice, I found the gameplay a bit off though. I think it's lacking game feel for a few reasons:
- It's not satisfying to kill enemies as is, adding a visual and/or sound effect when you kill them would help a ton.
- The controls are awkward, as the mouse should be used in combination with pointing at something. Use a button instead to attack, as the mouse just feels awkward to use as well as space and the arrow keys.
- I think the gameplay would benefit from more variation in having different kinds of enemies which force the player to use different startegies and move around.
- I wouldsuggest having different, darker music, the current music doesn't really fit the mood of the game.
- Slow the enemies down so that the player can get used to the gameplay, and have them spawn in waves to help the difficulty progress naturally
There's probably some other stuff, but these are the main suggestions that come to mind. Good luck with the post-jam version!
The core game mechanic reminded me a lot of Slash Quest, the game that won LD34's jam. The mechanics have been changed a bit though, and the visuals use a different but still pleasant style. I think having the difficulty coming from poor controls rather than smart enemies makes the game a bit too frustrating, and you can't tell which enemies your sword can kill. I think having an indicator for that would greatly improve the playability of the game.
The art style is adorable, but as others have said, the platforming feels super weird as it's unclear where the colliders are
A really simple game, but it is challenging and complex enough to be fun. I found the controls a little unresponsive, I think it was because I was trying to jump slightly after I fell off blocks, it would probably be nice to let the player jump slightly after falling to give them more control. Also, because the blocks fall so fast, it might pay to give a flashing warning sign or something when they're about to fall.
This is really cute! I think it would be really cool if there were a few different kinds of enemies rather than just the slimes. Loved the voice acting!
I like the idea behind this in that mashing space to run faster could be a fun mechanic. However, I found that it was somewhat inconsistent as to whether my mashing would be registered, and even mashing as hard and fast as I could, I still could barely move at the guards pace at my fastest. As such, the game could be greatly improved by increasing the player's speed.
This is so cute, I love how wholesome it is haha. I guess it would be nice to have more voice lines for the announcer, it repeated quite a lot, or to have more in-depth gameplay (although I guess just mashing stuff is part of the charm)
I like the art style, it's really interesting. I played for a while, but I never quite figured out how everything in terms of how to attract people into the room, whether eating them was good or bad (it seemed to reduce happiness, which you use to buy things) or what the overall goal was.
The art style and music are really cool, and create an interesting mood. The player definitely needs to be faster, the game is really slow paced as it is. Additionally, the hitboxes are extremely unforgiving, and it would be good to have a clearer indication of where the shooting traps are.
I like the core idea behind the game, but as others have said, the control scheme is quite awkward, which prevents the gameplay experience from being really engaging the player. I think one possible approach would be to focus on the automation side of things rather than having the player running around doing things, as I feel that the automation is core to the game, whereas the player running around is less so.
A really interesting control scheme, and nice, clean visuals. I'm not sure how the theme was incorporated into the game, are you climbing the room to get to the light?
The hitboxes on the spikes are pretty unforgiving, but for me the main difficulty in the game came from trying to remember which arrow key controlled which direction. This was addressed with the arrows in the bottom left of the screen, but it still felt a bit unintuitive. That said, it would be difficult to come up with another control scheme given the camera angle and the fact that the levels are designed around diagonal movement. One small issue I had was that in certain levels, it was not obvious where some blocks ended and others began (due to the isometric perspective). Additionally, while it was fun that the keys spelt out words, it was a little annoying to have to press keys all over the keyboard at once: if you consider continuing developing this I would consider having a standard set of keys which are close together to use. Overall, a fun game, and I can definitely see the potential for this being made into a more fully fledged web game or something in the future!
The idea behind the game is really interesting, it's a shame that it bugged out on me (each time I tried to play, an object became unclickable).
I like the idea here, and it does present some interesting platforming challenges. However, the controls feel off, especially when climbing, and it is often unclear what you can and can't climb. Adding an indicator for that would help the game's playability.
I really like the main idea behind the gameplay and the mechanics, but the game suffers from a few major flaws that kind of killed the experience for me. The main one was that the enemies have absurd amounts of health! I tried playing the archer at first, but I ran out of arrows before I even cleared the first room, so I had to play the swordsman instead. Even after I grinded and upgraded my sword about 3 or 4 times, I wasn't able to get past the second room as it still took ages to kill the most basic enemy. I think good difficulty in games comes from giving the player a challenge they have to overcome from skill rather than stat checks, so I found it sad because I really wanted to enjoy the game! Also, I think it would be good to be able to hold the mouse button as spamming it does get frustrating after a while.
The theme is cute, but as far as I can tell there's very little strategy outside of applying the Monty Hall problem, as it's all just guesswork.
A really amazingly well polished game, the visuals and audio together are absolutely stellar. While the platforming isn't really that innovative, the way you switch worlds using the consoles was cool. I found that jumping was a tad annoying as I would often try to jump right after landing, but was not allowed to as there seems to be a slight delay before you are allowed to jump again.
I feel like I'm missing something because others are mentioning an "idle" genre. Is this the name for the kind of clicker games where the objective is to automate the game so it plays itself? While that kind of genre doesn't appeal to me a bunch, I can see the appeal in this game. It has very cute graphics, and the CHOMP CHOMP the robot makes is adorable! However, the gameplay feels extremely slow, and there doesn't appear to be a whole lot to do. I think if the game had a bit more personality, like if the robot went around interacting with stuff, or if there were more options around what to buy, this would be a lot more fun.
I really enjoyed the core mechanic of deflecting bullets to kill enemies, and I think the way it was implemented in the game was done really well (with the freezing of time). I can understand why the controls were to use teleportation instead of moving as normal movement using the control keys would probably make it too easy to dodge the bullets. However, this does make it so that you are somewhat at the mercy of which way the enemies shoot, and the gameplay is extremely reactive with fairly long periods where there's not much to do. Additionally, it would be great to have more different enemy types or modifiers such as gravity wells which curve the paths of bullets or walls which the bullets can deflect off. I also think it might pay to look into using regular movement as it would allow for more enemies which shoot faster to introduce difficulty in a different form. It would be interesting to see how the gameplay changes. It would also be interesting to see how a time slowdown rather than freeze might work as it would again force the player to make their decisions faster and make the gameplay more active. However, these kind of game design decisions and additions are pretty much impossible to make perfectly in a short-form game jam, so really well done for making an innovative and interesting game that I would love to see more of post-jam!
Also, forgot to mention, but the hitboxes and reflection angles are a little weird.
A really interesting experience, although there doesn't seem to be much gameplay (I guess that's the point though). Some really nice visuals and visuals, they work well to create a really offputting atmosphere.
The controls are intuitive, and the visual style is very nice, there is some great pixel art in there. While simple, the gameplay is satisfying, but I did run into quite a few bugs regarding collision when moving around
Really amazing job on the visuals and audio, they really work well together to create a kind of quirky mood.
I can't speak for the multiplayer, so I might be missing some hidden complexity, but I think there's room for improvement in the core fighting mechanic of the game. I think that perhaps controlling the height or angle of the sword rather than simply which side the fencer is holding it on would help make it more satisfying. That said, I was using keyboard controls, so it's possible that the joystick controls provide better game feel.
OK, I finished it in 2:48, and it was definitely fun. However, as others have said, it is a bit too unforgiving, mainly due to the difficulty in controlling your jumps. I would definitely recommend weaker gravity and more slower acceleration of the player to give the user more control.
The graphics are cute, and the audio is great! I found the gameplay a bit lacking though, as there simply wasn't a lot to do.
I like the core mechanic behind the game, I've seen it done a few times, but it is always a fun experience. I found that the particles got in the way of the readability of the game: it was difficult to tell whether you hit an enemy regardless due to you flying in the opposite direction, and the massive amount of particles didn't help that at all. Also, when I died, I couldn't restart for some reason.
The idea behind this game is very cute, and the gameplay is simple but challenging.
I like the kind of twin-sticks shooter gameplay, but I think there are a few ways in which it could be improved for this game. Firstly, while losing points for shooting the furniture makes sense in that it prevents you from spamming your absurdly fast firing gun, it is impossible to get a positive score, as the rangers also destroy the furniture. Additionally, the graphic for losing the money is a bit distracting. It also makes the best strategy to immediately just go outside and spam kill them from there. Secondly, the fast rates of fire for both yourself and the enemies mean that there's very little strategy outside of spray and pray. I think if you could only shoot one chainsaw before having a short cooldown/reload time and then reducing the enemies rate of fire would greatly improve the game. This would also provide the opporunity for enemies to attack with different bullet spray patterns, leading to a richer gameplay experience where you approach different enemies and situations in different ways. Additionally, reducing the range of both you and the enemies would allow for much more satisfying combat, as you would be interacting with them onscreen, and seeing their death animations etc as opposed to just looking at the arrows offscreen.
It's a pretty simple game with a neat concept. I love the idea of rebuilding the map, and it makes pretty good use of the theme through this mechanic. The difficulty might be a little high, or I have no idea how to play these kinds of games cause it seemed like I would get pretty much one shot at most points in the game.
This is an absolutely stellar entry into the jam, great job! The audio and graphics were absolutely amazing, far beyond what could be expected for a 72 hr jam. The gameplay was pretty simple run n gun platforming, but with a nice twist which used the theme in a really cool way. I do have a couple of minor suggestions I have with regards to improvement:
- The color palette seems to hide the enemies and platforms in the first level specifically. In the second two, you did an amazing job of separating the background, foreground and enemies through the use of colour, but in the first level, there are a few places where it's unclear which parts are platforms and the enemies don't stand out as much and can surprise you.
- I might be wrong, but it seems like you limit the fire rate by allowing the player two bullets at a time. This can seem pretty weird when controlling the player as it can be inconsistent. Also, having a reload animation to show when the player can shoot could add some readability and feedback to help this.
Again, these are minor things that don't really take away from how great this is. Great job!
This was interesting, and a good use of the theme. However, because of the visual style, it was really difficult to figure out what to do. I opened the fridge, I have no idea whats in there. I tried interacting with other stuff, dude says no. Perhaps let the look command describe stuff to give the player more info.
An interesting game, extremely short, but probably the right level of difficulty. You definitely have to come up with a plan to actually beat it, as the zombies are much faster than you. I think the doors swinging around and getting in your way was a bit frustrating, but it does add to the tension and the atmosphere.
Pretty simple game, but the feedback when you kill the enemies is great! I think that with this kind of game though, you have to choose between using the mouse to let the player shoot in any direction OR using a button to shoot in the direction you're facing as it feels unintuitive to use the mouse as just a button without pointing at anything.
Really solid top down shooter gameplay, and a nice grim artstyle that suits the mood of the game. However, I think the gameplay could be improved in a few ways:
- Increase the visibility of the enemies (either by having them much brighter than the background or giving the player a cone of vision where they are bright) as it's super unclear what to aim at atm
- Slow down the bullets to making dodging more rewarding than hiding around corners
- A better variety of weapons would be nice as it gives more choice than just guns with slightly different firing speeds/patterns (it's unclear if they do more or less damage, the HMG seemed to be crazy good compared to the assault rifle for example) and give the player an inventory so you can switch between weapons.
Creating an online multiplayer game for LD is super impressive so great job! I would like to see more depth added to the gameplay either via interacting with other players (pulling them back etc) Or through powerups, or enemies or traps, just something to add a bit of flavour to the game.
I like the core mechanic here, I think it's really cool to control a large mech by running around inside it! However, the controls really got in the way of the experience: I felt like I was fighting the game to get it to do what I wanted a lot of the time mainly due to the player's large jump height, slow fall speed and the difficulty in controlling the small robot mid-jump. The game reminded me a lot of Lovers In A Dangerous Spacetime, and I would recommend taking a look at how the controls work in that game for ideas on how to streamline the experience if you want to do a post-jam version.
This is pretty much everything you can expect from a jam game. A solid core mechanic that makes great and original use of the theme (rather than forcing a game idea to work around the theme) and a simple but appropriate artstyle. As well as that, the sound effects and music work well together to create a great mood. The difficulty is probably at an appropriate level: it gets difficult and stressful later when all but one of the rooms are full, and you have to move people into rooms they dont want to be in yet to make room for others. I can't really think of any major flaws in the game at all.
Super fun game, the game feel is on point. I ran into quite a few bugs including:
- Dunks sometimes counting as 3 pointers
- The ball spawning at the wrong end of the court after a basket
- Noone getting the ball off the tip-off and noone being able to pick it up off the ground afterwards
- The ball getting stuck on the hoop
But none of these really were enough to break the game experience for me. However, what did make it less enjoyable was when I figured out that you could shoot from basically anywhere and it wouldnt matter. I found it easier in fact, to hit three point shots from over halfway as soon as I got the ball. I would suggest adding in a power bar to make you have to wind up for longer shots and give the player more control over whether the shot misses or not, as well as reducing the accuracy of shots from further out. Also, no idea how the game relates to the theme. That said, a really fun experience.
Overall, a really good game. The core mechanics were defined well, and there were quite a few levels considering the short time available for the compo. One thing I found was that most of the levels had the same kind of solution: one box needs to travel across another box's line to get to it's goal, so I would have liked to see a few more different ways the mechanics were explored. Additionally, I think the UI could use a little improvement as the two levels often get in the way of each other when you're building a solution.
The art is charming, but I'm not really sure what to do in the game, or what is going on at all! I interacted with a few things, and then there seemed to be some bullet hell sections which eventually became crazy difficult. I have no idea how you're meant to dodge the shadows, as the character is really slow!
I like the main idea behind the game, and this is a solid beginning to making it awesome! I like the graphical style and music. I found a few things annoying: firstly, you can't tell which enemies you have killed as they dont shut their eyes or anything on death. Secondly, you can't attack while in the air, which is quite frustrating as it takes a lot of the control away, mainly due to the weird physics. That is probably the main issue with the game as is: you are truly at the mercy of the random massive explosions that seem to happen, and the physics just generally seem inconsistent, so it is difficult to plan around. Additionally, the fact that you can't attack in the air means you can't really attack much at all in the game, taking away something that could really add a lot of depth to the gameplay. I would love to see a post-jam version of the game, as I think these are all issues that could easily be ironed out in time to make an awesome game!
Hey erdiizgi :)
I basically made it from scratch using OpenGL following these tutorials http://learnopengl.com/#!Introduction and messing around, so I don't think I can easily export it to web.
Smashing the boxes is fun and feels rewarding, but I feel like the biggest element in how well you do is luck in that the main way to die is for a death crate to spawn directly on top of you with no chance to dodge.
Pretty simple color matching game, I think the visuals sound effects could be improved to give more of a sense of satisfaction when you match stuff or get off combos.
I like the use of the theme, and the boss rush was a cool idea. One thing I found was that after defeating one of the bosses, I could just stand there and wail on the others without any strategy or trying to dodge and still win. That was what actually helped me win, as the only really telegraphed attack was the snowman's one, and the hitboxes were super unforgiving. I think if the bosses had clearer windup animations it would greatly help the game. Great job on the graphics and audio! Oh, also I think having the controls for attack and jump on ctrl and space felt super awkward, you couldn't spam attack reliably, and it felt weird. I would reccomend using z and x or even better, having rebindable keys (probably overkill for a game jam) when using arrow keys as the controls.
It was kind of fun, and the graphics were very cute! I think the controls could use some work, the player character should feel a bit stickier, (so up friction/decrease acceleration), and sliding up the walls felt kind of weird. By giving the player greater control, it could allow you to change the timings of the shooting traps so that you can get through them more due to timing than luck (at least I found it was more based on luck than timing, I could just be bad).
The voice acting was amazing so props for that! I love the idea of spinning taking you to other dimensions in theory, but I think the puzzles in this game didn't really come together well and I didn't really feel satisfied when I solved them. I think the first issue was a lack of feedback in the user's actions. For example, when spinning, it is completely unclear that you are changing dimensions, and because it is tied to your movement, it feels super weird and is easy to miss. Additionally, there should be audio or visual cues when you get something right, as I kept looking for new clues after putting in one of the passwords correctly as I thought I got it wrong (it's not clear until you start typing in a new password). For me, this lead to overthinking the puzzles and looking way too deep into red herrings (I was convinced the boxes and paintcans would be useful haha). I also thought you might have to press something to submit the password because of this. I think the idea of spinning to switch dimensions might suit a different kind of puzzler which focuses on platforming instead, or perhaps it is just the lack of a visual or sound effect that makes it feel a bit weird here. In summary, this was really really cool, the lack of feedback just made it a bit frustrating.
Really simple concept, executed well with nice clean graphics. The audio was really great as well, it fit the mood of the game perfectly. One thing I would say about the gameplay is that I can't really think of many different ways to strategise outside of targeting the player with the highest %. Overall, a really well executed game.
Obviously there's not a ton to this game, as it was made in pretty limiting circumstances, but it's surprisingly polished despite that.
I like the general idea behind the game, and I think there's definitely potential there. I think it could be improved in a couple of areas though, namely the flying controls and the clarity around the economics system. The high thrust force on the spaceship and low friction (which kinda makes sense in space) means that quite often you go flying past planets for example, so perhaps adding some kind of gravity mechanic so that you lock on to the planet within a certain radius to make this a bit less frustrating. The economics system also seemed a bit random (unless I was missing something) meaning that the strategy was just buy something, and go to each planet until one of them wants it for more than you paid for it. Perhaps if each planet had a tendency to value certain goods more than others, it could make the game more engaging by allowing the player to form a strategy. This could be combined with the prices of goods fluctuating over time so that you are forced to evolve you strategy over time, or even make it so that the player selling a good to a planet makes the planet value that item less.
I love this game. I thought that the main mechanic was original and really well thought out, and all the other mechanics surrounding it really complemented it perfectly. Some great game design decisions were made, for example, forcing the player to risk getting eaten by the monsters in order to regain magic faster in water. My main complaint would be the delay when using magic, it feels like the main cause of death (for me at least) was running off the edge about a second after pressing spacebar - maybe make the ones next to the player spawn instantly?
I really like the idea here, like a kind of superhot but multiplayer. However the execution is a bit off - the idea hasn't translated well as it's really difficult to actually manage what you're doing. I think that what could help it is if your movement was more restricted, and you were placing bombs rather than shooting - like first person bopmberman but turn based. This would greatly improve the intuitiveness of the gameplay, as timing a shot as well as considering the enemy's movement in 2d space is simply too difficult and random to pull off without coordinating with each other. Additionally, this would make the playback of the turns more readable which would help the player learn how to play much faster.
It's really impressive to come up with something similar to worms in the short time allowed for a game jam. The controls for the game felt a little off somehow, perhaps due to the pixel-based platforms instead of using vector shapes? Additionally, the weapons were a little imbalanced. Also, I nuked myself next to the enemy cat and only I died, that's not fair at all!
Very cool idea, possibly the best use of theme I've seen so far. I like that the main mechanic is centered around the fact that the world is small, and that informs most of the player's decisions. I did have a few complaints regarding the gameplay, mainly that the bigger enemies make way too much black territory. It seemed like I was dying offscreen to them sometimes, by accidentally shooting them. Additionally, if you don't move straight away, you just straight up lose the game, so that's not good. The bullets collide with each other which was funny. I wasn't a fan of the movement system - the bullets weren't restricted to the tile-based movement, so it made a really unerring contrast between the two making t seem like the player was at a much lower framerate than the bullets. That said, I'm complaining so much because I really like the core game here, it was interesting, original and fun, so great job.
I like the idea for the game, similar to factor.io. However, I think that there aren't a lot of interesting decisions to make. You just kind of figure out what runs out the fastest and build that. I would suggest adding some greater goal like rebuilding a rocket, for example, that you have to build up to as staying alive seems to easy. Similarly, I would suggest adding a way to harvest resources on specific places on the map, to make exploring useful - otherwise this game could effectively just be played in a menu. I think there's definitely potential here, but the player needs a clear challenging goal for the game to be more fun.
I think that the difficulty of the game needs to be toned down a bit. There's a lot of content here, which is awesome for such a short development time, but the difficulty stems from being impotent in combat due to the controls. If your knife falls just short of an enemy for example, there's not much you can do. If an enemy respawns right next to you, there's not much you can do. I think if you had a button to retract the knife, or at least start off with two knives, it might be managable, but as is, it feels like you have to m,anipulate the game mechanics to beat the game.
This game has surprising depth for something made in a game jam. I really liked the core mechanics behind the game, and it was complex enough that there wasn't an easily identifiable strategy to just win. However, I would say that the game balance seems slightly off: it is noticeably easier to destroy the earth than achieve the other victory conditions, for example. The gathering of resources is also frustratingly slow, compounded by the fact that you lose it all when you are killed. This leads to a particularly annoying pattern I fell into where I'd need a lot of resources, so I'd just mash the end turn button in order to get them faster (just waiting and gathering isn't fun so I want to to happen fast). However, this meant that the enemies would often appear out of nowhere and kill me as you get one turn's notice due to reduced vision and I was mashing the end turn button. This was for sure my fault, but I think it could be avoided by increasing the resource gain rate on the planets (or reducing the costs of the weapons).
Some really nice simple run n gun gameplay. As I said on stream, there's a few things that could be done to improve the game balance, notably: - Don't let the enemies shoot from off screen (it feels unfair and preventing it would allow for introduction of more player focused gameplay challenge - Reduce the activation range of the enemies (this would allow the player to specifically take out groups of enemies, allowing for a more strategic approach) - Improve the level design (Either through making more linear levels with a clear path the player is especed to follow allowing for carefully crafted challenges, or through areas of carefully crafted challenges) - Reduce the speed of the bullets (Again, this allows for more "fair" difficulty - allow the player to dodge them if they're good enough and allow the challenge to stem from player skill - being surrounded is basically game over as is)
Overall though, a really solid first time entry, with awesome game feel - I loved the feedback you got when killing the enemies, both the blood and sound effects really added to the experience.
As I said on stream, I think the controls kind of take away from the game. It feels a bit awkward when trying to jump near the end of a platform, as if you don't time it absolutely perfectly you will just fall off. This is compounded by the way the player moves at a constant speed rather than accelerating, as it becomes hard to make small adjustments. The level design could help this - I think you mentioned that the beveled platforms actually affect the hitbox, meaning you can't jump at the edge. Additionally, adding some variation to the size of the jumps required, and the platforms you have to land on, could really help the game.
I gotta be honest, I couldn't figure this one out. It had an interesting aesthetic with the 3D cutout style, but I think the main mechanic could have been explained better. I couldn't tell what caused which spikes to grow, or whether I was supposed to even be getting all of them green! I'd also recommend making the controls WASD or arrow control based rather than mouse based as it felt a bit awkward.
The game has a really nice aesthetic, I especially like the way the healthbar is obvious yet non-intrusive. I think the gameplay is great, fun and challenging, however, as a rhythm game, I think the music should inform the movements the player is forced into making - as such, your movement should be a bit more restricted and you should be able to kind of anticipate what's going to happen in game by the pattern of the music.
I can see the potential here, the camera controls felt intuitive and the aesthetic, while simple, had its charm. However, there's obviously not a whole lot you can do in the current state. Look forward to seeing what you make with it!
Great aesthetic and music, and I thought that the game made good use of the small world concept. I think the puzzles could have made better use of the world-wrapping mechanic though. Additionally, the one with the blowing statue took quite a while (I had to cheat by watching another youtube video from someone else) because the timing required was so pixel perfect. I would recommend making the difficulty of the puzzles based more on figuring them out rather than doing a set of actions perfectly, as not being able to do something that seems like it should be simple can be pretty frustrating.