The Poncho Duelers by midgard 2013-12-16T15:53:00
not a great test of reflex when you know EXACTLY when the time to shoot will come.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → NickMakesGames
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | Co | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | 35 | Shapeshift | Makeshift | compo | 42 | 3.95 | 3.76 | 4.38 | 4.14 | 3.43 | 2.25 | 3.65 | 3.80 | 32 | |
| 2015 | 34 | Two Button Controls / Growing | Running Of The Ball | compo | 114 | 3.79 | 3.64 | 3.64 | 4.29 | 3.43 | 3.18 | 3.96 | 3.38 | 53 | |
| 2015 | 33 | You are the Monster | Monstering Monsters | compo | 93 | 3.77 | 3.65 | 4.02 | 3.75 | 3.47 | 3.22 | 3.79 | 3.50 | 93 | |
| 2015 | 32 | An Unconventional Weapon | Star Power | compo | 704 | 3.00 | 2.78 | 3.70 | 3.44 | 2.14 | 2.38 | 2.39 | 2.23 | 45 | |
| 2014 | 31 | Entire Game on One Screen | LD scan | compo | 266 | 3.50 | 3.10 | 3.73 | 4.00 | 3.03 | 2.73 | 3.35 | 2.96 | 100 | |
| 2014 | 30 | Connected Worlds | Universal Charger | compo | 471 | 3.29 | 3.15 | 3.30 | 3.69 | 3.41 | 2.48 | 2.84 | 3.14 | 85 | |
| 2014 | 29 | Beneath the Surface | Undermined | compo | 191 | 3.61 | 3.09 | 3.96 | 4.19 | 2.91 | 2.75 | 2.47 | 3.83 | 100 | |
| 2013 | 28 | You Only Get One | Loose Cannon | compo | 282 | 3.28 | 3.39 | 3.28 | 3.44 | 2.86 | 2.41 | 2.67 | 2.93 | 74 |
not a great test of reflex when you know EXACTLY when the time to shoot will come.
It's an extremely pretty game, but the gameplay feels a bit stale. Additionally, it's frustrating that leaving the edge of the screen kills you instead of acting as an invisible wall like in most games of this sort.
maybe there's something I'm missing in the gameplay (it feels a bit un-engaging to me) but I can say fairly objectively that your neon green full-screen background is not working. Bright colors like that are often a bit of an eye-sore when taking up so much space
really unclear what the player is supposed to do.
clever interpretation of slaps.
brilliant work for a three hour piece. Strongly reccomend you expand this.
very enjoyable. Not terribly complex, but extremely satisfying and visceral.
the "sending" bar kind of made me feel really pressured in what seems to be a fairly casual game. Maybe it would have been better to let the player control each rover individually in real time?
the handling of the car is kind of slippery and enjoyable, but a good effort everywhere else. Maybe this could do with a post-mortem touchup in the mechanics department?
neat idea, kind of unfriendly to the user. There's a lot of redundant cross-referencing involved that could be made easier by highlighting certain characters/rooms at appropriate times
extremely enjoyable, and highly polished. A little bit of a stretch on the theme, I feel, but still a solid flash game
very tense and enjoyable, but a skip feature would be appreciated for the introduction. It's a bit lengthy when you just want to take another try.
still very cool, though.
web link seems to be broken in firefox.
difficulty is fine, so long as the difficulty curve is reasonable. It may have been wise to start the player off with larger enemy planes, making it a bit easier for them to land jumps, then have the challenge ramp up with smaller, nimbler planes.
I know there's a fun and rewarding game hidden in here somewhere, but I shouldn't have to work so hard to find it.
amazing. Aside from the goofy slapstick comedy that comes from the physics, there's a really quirky, charming, punny sense of humor behind this wonderfully silly little game.
I'm so happy that this exists.
I had a really good time with this. The enemy variety is nice, although, I found that as far as spells go, the second spell is the only particularly viable option. It's very easy to deploy it as a shield when most of the bullets are coming from a similar area, then charge up while you're safe and redeploy it when you can.
Even with this exploit, though, I found the game fairly challenging and enjoyable. Really great work!
wow. Simply wow. The physics feel incredible and extremely unique. I blew through half the puzzles in one go before getting stumped on level 15 (I have no idea where the exit portal is) but I'm leaving this on my hard drive to come back to and finish later, because it's just too cool.
the controls feel a little un-intuitive. I think things would've felt a bit smoother if the left and right keys were swapped to compensate for the fact that the player will be upside-down most of the time.
not really sure what just happened...but it was kind of neat visually.
there doesn't appear to be a link available to play this game. That is, as you may imagine, a bit of a problem.
neat idea. The mechanics escalate in a really satisfying way. The aesthetic is superb as well, has a real Papers Please kind of vibe to it.
pretty cool, although I should note that white text on a yellow background is often not a superb choice.
The controls feel a little clunky and sluggish, but the overall game was quite funny and charming in it's offbeat, quirky kind of way.
I like that your character actually leaves a trail of "footprints" behind. Makes it very easy to keep yourself from getting overly lost.
"De lock is busted. I cannot open it."
Man, I love this game. So worth waiting the extra 24 hours to play it as a jam submission.
It's really ambiguous how this all works. I feel like there's a fun game down there somewhere, but it's hidden behind a layer of confusion. :(
the dynamite mechanic doesn't really make a ton of sense, which is a shame since I think that would have really added a nice layer of direct interaction between players.
I don't know what that was, but I'm super glad I played it. Crazily memorable.
a little dull, but I suppose that's sort of the point. Really impressive in the audio-visual department, though.
it's not entirely clear what the player is expected to do. I think I was able to piece together the mechanics, but I don't feel like I'm getting enough feedback on my progress/failures.
wow. Absolutely freaking brilliant. Clever mechanics and superb application of them. Well done, sir. Well done.
@Cageinabird, that's a really good point about the appreciated/not appreciated methods of comfort. This was something I had noticed in my early play-testing as well, and I tried to remedy this by putting a small thumbs up/thumbs down icon before the text, but I suppose this turned out to be a bit less easy to see than I had noticed.
Do you have any suggestions on what might make it a bit more clear to players what is the preferred method as opposed to the disliked method?
Very much a "so bad it's good" kind of game. Fun times to be had here, man. Fun times.
I'd really love to go through this game, but it's current state feels buggy as hell and tough to interact with. The visuals and audio are spectacular, but the gameplay is really kind of unwieldy.
feels great, but it's a little confusing to start.
Excellent entry. Really interesting take on mechanically representing how people make conversation.
this is a really neat puzzle game, I like the idea of it alot.
I should note, however, that passing over a nutrient without actually landing on it (very common when speed is above 1) you don't actually grab that nutrient and it gets locked out because you can't pass over your previous roots. This can be kind of frustrating.
your web link just leads to a .rar download. Is there an actual web version of this available? .rars are a bit of a hassle for me.
don't be so hard on yourself. This is a little basic, but it's still a highly impressive tech demo and a great jumping-off place, if you were so inclined.
Brilliant idea. The color coding feels a bit vague/arbitrary, so it would've been nice to have reminders of what corresponds to what in-game, but other than that this was superb.
neat idea. I assume that players aren't supposed to see each other's moves until after both choices have been made?
This isn't extremely clearly communicated, but it made sense to me and made for a fairly intriguing bluffing game.
impressive, very well done. I love the puzzle design and how well it fits the narrative.
feels a a bit shy of skill or strategy, but it's kind of fun as a "test your luck" sort of deal.
I have to be honest and say that I didn't really enjoy this. It seems like there's something cool going on in terms of what I guess could be called story, but the gameplay is ... lacking.
It feels like an idle game with the automation cut out, which is the core mechanic of all idle games.
Kind of a typing game with a quirky skin on it, at the end of the day. Of course, games like typing at the dead are a great example of how little is wrong with that formula.
Much like typing at the dead, this is treated as a silly game first and a psuedo-typing challenge second, making it kind of fun to play.
I liked this a lot. Requires thinking ahead while under pressure, which is something I absolutely love in games. Well done.
pretty cool! The way that sound effects stack gets a little obnoxious, but the overall gameplay is actually really neat and challenging.
extremely polished for a 48-hour game. Music was nice, gunplay felt satisfying, movement felt smooth, and everything fit together nicely. My only complaint is that some sort of map would have been nice, as it's easy to backtrack accidentally if you're trying to explore the world a bit.
The animation quality is astounding, and the overall atmosphere is stupendous. Sadly, it feels very bland in the mechanical department, and the player's goal is too vague to really be very engaging, at least for me.
not bad, but also not terribly creative. I do like, however, that the finishing point is always the same tile in both worlds. It lends a sense of continuity to the whole thing.
If I may make a recommendation, it might be a good idea to round off the prices of each commodity. It's a bit of an eyesore to see so many places after each decimal point, especially in a game as visually clean as this one.
The mechanics aren't my personal cup of tea, but they seem competent enough to please somebody who enjoys trading games.
This game is flat out adorable. Some of the mechanics are a little unclear, but I stuck around because the world is just so vibrant and fun.
a really fun idea hampered by extremely frustrating controls. Often, side scrolling games like these allow players to move their fingers around slightly below where they want their ship to move, and the ship then stays slightly above the finger so that it isn't covered completely by a big meaty thumb. With a bit of tweaking there, though, this actually has the makings of a game that I would probably play regularly on my phone to kill time. Well done.
this was a lot of fun to play, but the maximum range on the guns results in the player often landing in un-winnable scenarios. If a monster happens to spawn outside of the player's range, then they can't do anything and they'll lose the round.
cool idea, but the DDR-styled combat feels a little out of place. Maybe I just don't like it because the button timing is a bit too demanding.
EXTREMELY creative game with just enough curveballs in the mechanics to keep me engaged. Well done.
really interesting. The gameplay is a lot of fun and very unique, but the controls could perhaps do with a revamp. Instead of having to click explicitly within the radius of a circle to grow it, things might feel a bit better if you just had to click somewhere on the correct side of a dividing line, similar to how Super Hexagon works on mobile.
wow. Really creative and enjoyable game. You managed to work an awful lot of mechanics into a tiny four-sided playing field, and that's damn impressive.
this was an awesome game. Really fun from an audio-visual standpoint, and really enjoyable with regards to the multitasking. The game completion felt a little arbitrary, but I had a fun time playing nonetheless.
The lighting effects in this entry are really impressive, especially for being done in so little time.
I like this alot. It feels very reminiscent of the early stages of spore done in a very minimalistic style.
this is actually a lot of fun. The tension ramps up very quickly once the progress line speeds up a bit.
Kind of like a sped-up crazy-taxi, in a way. Very frantic, and a lot of fun.
it has a lot of promise, but it doesn't seem like there's much to do at the moment. The player is only threatened by the large 2x2 creature (at least I think, since I steered clear of it until it randomly disappeared) and has no real obstacles outside of that.
I had a good time with this. I feel like the player is swarmed with a few too many enemies early on, but the combat is still fun and the music is stellar (pun fully intended).
the swinging physics feel pretty great. Seems like this may have been inspired slightly by floating point?
very clever and unique idea. Some of the puzzles (forgotten and under pressure, mostly) feel a bit obtuse. They might benefit from a hint given to the player after a couple of deaths.
Also, the game becomes unplayable if you pass the door in the Lost in Space world.
for only ten hours, this is actually pretty cool. It's a bit rough around the edges, but with some polish it could certainly be an exciting, almost star-fox like experience.
This doesn't seem to run in Firefox at the moment. Is there a fix for this in the works by chance?
I had a good time with this, but I couldn't help but feel like boat repairs were a bit overpowered. It only costs 10 metal, which can be achieved in one attack for the price of one armor. In exchange, you repair three pieces of armor. Assuming that you revert to combat whenever you only have two shields left, this cycle can (to the best of my knowledge) be repeated indefinitely without much skill or strategy.
reminds me a lot of the old bob-omb minigame from the New Super Mario Bros. on the DS. I think the only problem here is that the mouse controls feel a bit too demanding. It would be nice to have a small radius around each alien that allows you to pick them up even if you don't land your mouse perfectly on their body.
pretty unique take on the theme, and a very original game. I would like to say though that, especially in the later levels, it feels as though the player has to wait a bit too long after death for worlds to overlap again into a workable position. Maybe the game could benefit from a rewind function instead of a hard reset? I know that's a bit much for 48 hours, but I think it would fit well in a post-compo version if you intend to make one.
Probably not the first or the last olympic minigame collection, but the intergalactic theme was pretty cute and gives the game just enough charm to stand out, even if it does kind of move at a snail's pace.
This is actually a lot of fun. I feel like it would benefit immensely from having a background track with a rhythm that synced up with the ideal button press times. At least right now, it feels a little easy to get lost in the beat of the song and lose track of your button timing.
a solid and enjoyable platformer. It seems as though the game pulls randomly from a set pool of levels, which is cool until you start encountering repeats, which kind of breaks the mood.
really fantastic, if not a bit wonky in the difficulty department. The main levels are very easy, since there are no threats to the player so long as there is at least one enemy on screen to possess, and after possessing the last onscreen enemy, the last nearby threat to you is removed.
The boss fights, on the other hand, feel a bit obscured. It took me more time than I think it should have to figure out how to beat the shaman, and I couldn't for the life of me work out how to beat the helicopter.
I like the idea of this game, the graphics and the music are nice, and the combat is satisfying, but everything is ruined by how clunky and needlessly difficult it is to cross over the very thin bridges that the game builds for the player.
very cool. Probably one of the better takes on the theme I've seen so far. I like the idea of trying to satisfy as many people as possible, but the early game can feel a bit overwhelming, with islands being destroyed very quickly and not giving the player what feels like enough time to think about their options and set people up in preferable scenarios.
brilliant. The core mechanic reminds me a lot of an old DS game called big bang mini, where missed shots explode into bullets which are then lethal to the player. It works very well in a top down wave based twin stick shooter format.
awfully confusing, but still pretty cool.
The visuals are definitely the strong suit, here.
Very strange and intriguing game. I had a lot of fun with this.
very polished and well presented, but also extremely unclear. I couldn't figure out what the little mail icon next to any of the character's portraits meant, the requirements for any given action on the ship are never defined, and I have no idea what benefit comes from fixing a module, nor do I know what causes a module to break.
I'm afraid that this game was just a bit too confusing to really be engaging, but I do believe that there's something pretty nifty down there if you take the time to explain it a bit more carefully.
man, you really went all out with the theme, huh? You made an entire game out of just a few **pixels** of the screen. That's really cool, and extremely creative.
extremely polished, although not terribly unique or interesting. Everything felt very tight and responsive, though, and I'm hard pressed to find any serious flaws in this game.
One minor gripe I had, however, was that restarting a level felt like it took too long. A slight increase in the speed of the little curtain animation would certainly be a large improvement.
the magnifying glass over a zoomed out overworld is actually a really creative way to make the most of one screen, and it actually feels semi-functional, giving the player a strong sens of where they are in the grand scheme of things while simultaneously having a close-up view of themselves. Almost like a reverse minimap.
excellent work! I love that you can lure the incoming enemies into asteroids to clear up the field of play a little bit. I don't think I've seen anything quite like that before, and it's a nice added layer of depth ontop of what would have otherwise been a fairly generic avoidance game.
a pretty standard platformer, but still very well made. Nothing wildly unique or innovative, but nothing out of place, either. Nicely done.
pretty neat! I don't think I've seen anything quite like this concept executed before. I had a good time with this one.
very fun! I'm always a big fan of games that require multitasking like this. Well done.
I should also note that the game doesn't seem to load on Firefox. Got it working fine on Chrome, though.
very creative! The block placing mechanic actually introduced quite a bit more tactical depth than I would have initially thought. Not all of the blocks made a ton of sense, though, in terms of their effects in battle.
the four-directional shooting was pretty cool. That's usually kind of a rare thing for many platform shooters like these, I feel. The gameplay was overall fairly solid, but I feel like it would benefit from an increased spawn rate on weapon crates. I encountered a lot of scenarios where both my opponent and I were out of ammo and couldn't interact with each other, so we just had to wait patiently for the next weapon drop.
very clever. I like the idea of having to navigate an environment that shifts based on judge interest, but it can be very tricky to know where a judges screen portion will land until it actually shows up, which leads to some frustration. Perhaps having everything be at the same perspective would be easier for the player, and layers that are no longer solid could become semi-transparent.
just played this with my cousin and had a great time. Doesn't seem to be a ton of mechanical depth, but the reflex element adds a strong layer of skill, so the gameplay is still exciting and fun.
The feeling of movement and swordplay is also fantastic.
I also think it was a great idea to not show score until the very end of the match, so that the game feels suspenseful the whole way through.
the ending was fairly predictable, but the overall story was fairly strong all the same. I love the opening line "You said I looked great in green," and I thought it was cool that the amount of butterflies onscreen was kind of proportional to the emotional excitement of the memory.
clever. I love the idea of hats being your most useful tool. Very true to the source material.
I feel like the choices of path were really meaningless. There was no way of knowing (or even making an educated guess about) if anything different or unique would happen depending on the route you followed.
very cool! Reminds me a lot of Captain Forever, but condensed into a slightly more competitive environment. My only two major complaints are that
a) the player controlled ship is tough to find when you start, since it's basically the same size and shape as everything else.
b) grabbing parts to put onto the ship can be a pain sometimes, because your move speed is the same as the speed that loose parts float around at. This means you can chase after a piece going in the same direction as you and simply not close any distance.
shame that there was so little content. The core mechanics seem solid, and there's a lot of room to expand upon what you have with some more complex puzzles. I really hope you continue this after LD!
I'll admit that I didn't find the gameplay to be extremely interesting, but I was blown away by the quality of the pixel art. You've got real talent there, friend.
the gameplay feels a bit too easy, in my opinion. With slow move available at no penalty, the game is very little more than a simple maze navigator, with very little challenge at all.
That said, the visuals and sound design were very nice, and the glow effect on all the controllable blocks was fairly impressive.
I like the idea of trying to have to balance everything. Very satisfying and tense to keep everybody happy for long periods of time
the good:
creative take on the theme.
quick and simple to get into.
genuinely exciting and thrilling to evade the dreaded flyswatter. I wasn't expecting to feel so exhilarated the first time I got out of the way of that thing.
the bad:
the UI is a bit unusual. Having the player's fly-points hidden off in the bottom left is un-intuitive, as it's not a very common place to look. Also, the opening text and the text that display when you die kind of linger in the top left corner (it might just be my 1600x900 monitor having a wider range of view than it should, though.)
The buzzing sound after every jump gets a bit irritating. Recording a few different sound effects and playing one randomly would have been a big help.,
for the life of me I couldn't figure out how to progress. My goals were very unclear, nothing I clicked on seemed to do anything, and I was hemorrhaging money from the start of the game.
A bit of tutorial text at the beginning of the game would have really gone a long way, I feel.
after grabbing the hand item, I couldn't quite figure out what to do next. Perhaps a little popup text explaining what the powerup does would have been useful.
I really don't feel like pressing random buttons while hovering over a moving wound is a really great mechanical interpretation of a field surgeon's job. That said, it is pretty tough to invent brand new mechanics over such a brief development cycle, so I'll give you a pass on this one.
The presentation was super polished, with wonderful pixel art, superb music, and a bit of dark humor that I really appreciated.
pretty cute! A bit bare-bones, but very interesting all the same. I like the rainbow rings shooting out of all the audio sources. They add a nice sense of joy and happiness to the environment.
I couldn't actually find my character onscreen. It might be nice if there was a button you could press to briefly put a crosshair over the player so that they can locate themselves quickly.
it's a brilliant idea with an absolutely stunning visual aesthetic, but I feel like the actual mechanics fall a bit flat. Combat doesn't feel responsive, platforming feels floaty, and the mechanics are extremely vague and unclear.
A good start, though, and I'd love to see this built into a more polished product with stronger gameplay.
I found that in many of the worlds that were generated, pushers spawned in walls, and there were a number of cases where my destination appeared on the other side of a wall that I simply could not cross past. Additionally, not being able to move on diagonals felt weird.
I don't want to leave you with only negative feedback, so I'll note that you did a good job introducing the game. A lot of LD games either fall back on the giant wall of text to explain their game, but breaking it up into sentences that are displayed one at a time makes the intro feel a little less daunting and easier to get into.
really impressive! I love that the arena doesn't reset when you start over. Makes each new try feel just a little bit different, and it's cool to feel like you had an influence over the arena you fight on, as opposed to just letting a random number generator do all the work.
I have to note, though, that my goal wasn't immediately obvious until I read the submission page. Maybe adding a couple of blinking arrows pointing at the hatches would help to make them a more obvious target?
I feel like this relies too heavily on luck. Even in the "easy" mode which gives the player a couple of revealed pegs to work with, there are usually far more possibilities to guess on than there are chances to succeed, meaning that the victory of the player comes down to just being lucky with what they chose.
Unless I missed something, there doesn't seem to be too much here in the way of gameplay.
That said, you've made a shockingly vibrant and exciting world in such a short period of time, and I had a neat experience with this all the same.
I'm sorry, but I just don't get it. My goal is to just have the two worlds collide with each other? Is there any obstacle to that goal?
This seems to be a two-player game, is there supposed to be some kind of role-playing happening outside of the game? If so, what have you done to encourage that role-playing?
I really feel like this is far too simple, or at least far too poorly explained, to really be enjoyable.
this was surprisingly compelling. I saw it all the way through to all ten stars and had a great time doing so. The tiny map meant that screwing up never meant losing a ton of progress, and all the puzzles were just easy enough to piece together that they never felt frustrating, but just tough enough to actually be satisfying. An excellent entry, friend. Well done.
A brilliant interpretation of the theme. A step far beyond the typical entries this season.
I've experienced the same problem as everyone else, but ran the source code in Game Maker and had a pretty good time.
The particle effects and lasting bloodstains on the walls all work very nicely, and the game is pretty fun for the first minute or so. After that, though, I felt it to be a little repetitive, since no new enemy types show up and you never have to do anything besides move turn left/right and hammer away at the left mouse button.
The idea of stances was really cool, but I feel like it fell flat in execution. I didn't really feel like any stance aside from the default one was really practical in any way, so I really left that feature alone. I also thought it was something of a missed opportunity not to have the character actually change their sprite slightly to reflect their battlestance.
Finally, I really have to encourage you not to use comic sans if you can avoid it. It's considered by many to be one of the least professional fonts available, and very few people will take your work seriously if you use comic sans.
I can't say that I fully understand the story, so I don't want to praise/critique it. That said, I was very impressed with how well it was told given the time restrictions and the very minimalistic presentation. A lot of the text reminded me of the sort of writing you would hear in an old radio drama, alluding to things that just aren't visible but the audience accepts as being there anyways. It's a very neat trick and it works stupendously well for game jams like this.
simple, but focused. I like it. Took me a minute to figure out what I was doing, but I had a good time once I did.
very impressive from a technical standpoint, although a little low for my taste. Feels like a cool environment to traverse, and probably a great game for fans of the first-person exploration genre.
slow*
okay, let me get the first criticism out of the way - this maze is WAAAY too big for a number of reasons.
First of all, it's a significant eyestrain to have to find your tiny character on such an enormous landscape built out of sharply contrasting colors which are really harsh to look at.
Second, there is just far too much content to expect a player to complete, especially in the brief five to ten minutes that many people try to burn through jam entries in.
This problem of difficulty is made even harsher by the multiplayer component. I played this on my own (and had a rough time doing so) but made sure to test out how two characters could interact with each other. The element of bouncing wildly off of your opponents is an added layer of difficulty that I don't even want to think about having to deal with.
Okay, criticisms out of the way, let me hit on the good stuff.
Firstly, I liked the BGM. I think it would get repetitive after the thirty to forty minutes it might take to complete this game, but it's still a fun song.
Second, the player bouncing is actually a good idea, just not in this particular setting. Many multiplayer games fail to let players directly interact with one another and feel the impact of each other's actions, and the bouncing is a simple and elegant solution to that shockingly common problem.
Leaving character deaths persistent on screen is pretty cool. It lets you easily visualize choke points and feel real satisfaction when you clear them.
Finally, the controls were smartly done for a multiplayer game. Many keyboards have a limit to how many inputs they will process at once, which can be a problem with local multiplayer games where upwards of four keys are being pressed at any given time. By setting a character in motion permanently after just one button press, the issue of overloading the keyboard and creating unresponsive controls is largely reduced.
Oh, and don't listen to CreatorOfWorlds. I'm sure you don't need me to tell you to tune out haters, but I still wanted to offer the advice. Anybody who can't at least pinpoint what they don't like about a game without just objectively calling it "bad" has no idea what they're talking about and isn't really worth hearing.
very reminiscent of Plinko, but I appreciate having more control over the characters as opposed to just letting them drop and do their own thing.
I had a good time with this. The difficulty curve feels very nice, and the challenge ramps up to a very satisfying level.
I don't really think this changes up the gameplay of either pong or arkanoid as much as you were hoping it would.
As a breakout game, this struggles with a very familiar problem - waiting. You spend more time hoping that your ball will land in an advantageous spot than you do actually getting it there. What's worse, if your ball gets onto the enemy side without your opponent getting their ball over to you, the game becomes even *more* boring, as you don't even have to worry about managing a ball on your side. It's just stuck over on the far end for the opponent to worry about.
As a game of pong, I feel like this lacks a really critical feature - the ability to affect the trajectory of the ball based on where it hits your paddle. I was able to identify a very little bit of this in Arkan'em up, but not enough to be significant. Much of the strategy in pong comes from fooling your opponent into thinking you'll lead the ball one way, and then quickly shifting your paddle at the last second to send the ball flying in the opposite direction. That strategy isn't viable here, because the amount of variation that you can put on ball angle by using careful positioning is extremely limited, which cuts out a lot of the tactics and head-games from the pong element of the game.
visual novels aren't really my cup of tea, so I can't really give any strong praise or criticism to this game without being misinformed. That said, I can point out that it was a bit irritating that the arrow to advance to the next text box shifted location with every line of dialogue, which made it a little frustrating to advance the narrative.
doesn't feel like much more than a QWOP-clone, but it's still fairly impressive given the time frame.
ah, seems like we had similar thought patterns as far as "screening" goes. Great minds think alike, eh?
An excellent game, by the way, also. Lots of interesting choices to be made. It might have been nice to have the ability to improve subject mood slightly by skipping training, but I imagine that might create an imbalance that I haven't thought of.
the inputs didn't seem to work for me, so I can't speak to the gameplay. That said, the visuals and ambient sound was very impressive!
This was a pleasant surprise! Stumbled onto this through the Rating Rescue Ranger program, and it turned out to be a much more fun game than I was expecting! I didn't really appreciate the use of memes too much, but the core gameplay wasn't focused on them, so I can't complain too much.
I like how aggressive the enemies can get - you really have to keep your distance, or you're going to die real quick
as a recovering Tetris addict, I was happy to find this game, although I did come across a few minor flaws.
1) The "current" block should probably be above the "next" block, because that's how the majority of tetris games represent their incoming block lists and it's fairly unintuitive to have them flipped.
2) The difficulty curve is, as far as I can tell, nonexistent. Even something as simple as introducing a basic time limit that grows more demanding as the player progresses would make this game a lot better. At the moment, though, placing your first block really feels no different from placing your hundredth block, because the challenge never grows.
the overall game felt a bit generic, but the option for co-op was well appreciated, and the particle effects/screen shake went a long way towards making the whole experience feel more enjoyable. Keep up the good work!
sadly, button mashing *is* the best way to play this game, especially when only one ship remains and there's no pressure from having to multitask three lanes at once.
That aside, I'm shocked by how polished this is! The game is very pretty and has an incredibly professional look and feel to it, especially for a 48 hour entry!
(And as a word of advice, you should probably save your .exe in a .zip file and upload that, instead. Many folks are hesitant to just download a .exe on it's own, so you're probably missing out on a lot of well-deserved votes.)
very good for a first effort. The core gameplay is solid, although the UI and the visuals are a little bit offputting. Keep working at it, and you'll pick up on the tricks of the trade in no time.
I'm genuinely shocked that more entries don't have a button the player can press to locate their character like they can in this game. So many games this jam take place in a zoomed out perspective where it can be easy to loose track of where you are (this game being no exception), but this is the first I've seen somebody actually bothering to implement an easy locator function. Good work, team.
it's a cool idea, but I feel like it moves a bit too slowly. I think this would be a lot more enjoyable if there were more chunks produced by each killed orange(?) so that progress feels a bit faster and each kill feels more significant.
Simple, hectic, fast paced, and playbale on just one keyboard. A winning combo for any local multiplayer game. Had a great time with this one.
pretty cool. I like that the continuity of the screens breaks up after the first level, so there's a bit more thought required to progress. However, I did *not* care for the static that eventually blocked out screens after awhile. If it was manually scripted in such a way that it imposed a consistent time limit, it would have been fine. Unfortunately, since it seems to affect screens randomly, you can find yourself failing a level in virtually no time at all, even though you haven't done anything really wrong yet.
wow! I actually had a great time with this! I feel like there's a lot here that could be expanded upon if you intend to make a post-jam release of this game. There's already quite a bit of content in terms of enemies, and the bank is set up cleverly to allow for quite a few plans of attack/escape.
My only complaint was that enemies seemed to know where you were at all times. Being able to sneak around and outflank enemies would be great fun, especially with the bomb to open up new routes that would get you behind your targets.
reminds me a bit of Rymdkapsel, but it has a very interesting twist on the formula. Very neat.
very clever. Took me a moment to realize the relation to the theme, but once I realized that I was just wrapping around a single-screen sized world, I was actually very impressed. Especially once the more creative targets were introduced, like the grouping of blocks that got pushed around by the edge of the screen. Very creative and very enjoyable.
brilliant idea! Played in the proper setting, this could actually be a pretty serious survival horror game. There's a great use of the classic "fight or flight" decision in both the player's actions and the AI of the enemies, who seem to rush at you desperately just as frequently as they run away from the light in fear. A truly original and interesting game, and one of the more pleasant experiences I've found over the course of the jam.
with a name like Gay Love Cop, you know that it'll certainly be interesting. I'll admit that I found the game a little bit awkward, but it was ultimately very silly and entertaining, in a very offbeat way.
it's um ... well, it's a machine gun. I don't really feel like it's overwhelmingly "unconventional," even if bees don't usually use them.
That said, the machine gun *does* feel quite nice. The large bullet size, ample screen shake, light impact effects, and bee corpses really loan a great sense of weight to the gunplay.
This *really* came together quite nicely. I love the psychedelic wire-frame graphic style. It works especially well with the player ship when it's drilling - the spiral effect is really pretty.
The camera also works very well. I like that it automatically locks onto the next target so that you can focus on always closing distance between your next target and dodging missiles.
This is a cool concept. I like the thought of treating ideas as weaponry, and a game which examines how ideas spread is pretty novel. I found the game a little tough to play, because there's not a great deal of feedback around what you're doing and what it accomplishes.
this is an extremely novel concept which came together impressively well! I'd be very interested to see if this could be expanded to work with hand-crafted bullet patterns at all.
The game does currently work very nicely with random hazards, however, and might even work well on mobile as a twist on the randomly generated endless runner.
a pretty cute shoot 'em up. Slightly basic, but it does everything a good shmup does. Nice enemy variety, good sense of speed in the background, cool music. Well done.
not bad. I feel like the dubstep gun still functions a lot like a more conventional gun, but it's still a fun gadget to use. Syncing up the nightclub-styled effects to activating the gun was a nice touch.
I feel like the controls are a little uncomfortable. Having the option to use WASD instead of the arrow keys would have been spectacular. That said, it's a fun little shooter. I like that player attacks are so limited - it's a nice change of pace from the norm with shooters which feature endless streams of tiny, individually meaningless bullets.
there's a really cool idea here, and you made some pretty interesting puzzles around the capabilities of the spy's out-of-body character. The slightly buggy platforming detracts slightly from the experience, but it's not game-breaking, and it's easy enough to ignore.
I had a really tough time with this one. It's extremely difficult to identify where the stars are on the map, and the immediacy with which they fail you can feel a little bit unfair.
On a more positive note, I'm very impressed with the amount of options for customization/role play there are here. It gives players a chance to be just a bit more invested in the gameplay, which is pretty neat.
clever use of the theme. The idea of having to constantly one-up your previous character builds could be really interesting, but it's betrayed here by the fact that combat feels really bland. There's not much to the game outside of picking your starting gear and then bumping up against your foe for a bit.
This is an interesting idea for a game, although I found that it all moved too sluggishly to be much fun. Chasing down humans was tough with what felt like fairly unnatural controls (using A and D to rotate instead of having the beast point at my cursor felt particularly unwieldy), and the nom/gas bars seemed to fill up at alarmingly slow rates.
I think this game could be a lot of fun if it were sped up and streamlined a bit, but right now I'm not a huge fan.
I think that if I had to levy one major complaint against this game, it's that the movement feels extremely inconvenient.
I find that I have to hammer the movement keys to actually get anywhere, which is made even worse by the fact that each individual press contributes very little to my progress.
If that were to be fixed, I can see this being a neat little multiplayer game. The idea of racing to find and kill a human before other LD participants can is pretty whimsical and neat, but the execution needs to be tightened up before that idea can really come to life.
This game was really cool when I first started playing it. The graphics were very impressive, the background music was pleasing, and the crunchy feel of attacking enemies was gratifying.
Sadly, the game really overstays its welcome. The combat quickly grows dull, and this is made worse by some lengthy waves were nothing particularly interesting happens. There are just more and more villagers pouring out of the walls, but they rarely pose a threat and never require varied strategies to be beaten.
Ultimately, this is a really fun game which feels like it was greatly held back by some bland padding.
oh, man. I am super into this game. Having specific control over every joint in my ever-growing hydra head(s) is a real joy, and I love that right clicking causes every mouth to chomp at once, instead of just triggering a single head. It makes having a whole bunch of heads feel like a really significant increase in power.
I also really love that growing in power also comes at the cost of becoming more vulnerable as a bigger target.
This is an exceptional game, my friend. You should be really proud of it.
The music felt really nice and the opening scene in the village was fairly impressive. I like that all the villagers greet me and wished me luck as I left.
After that, however, I found the game to be a bit bland. There was nothing inherently wrong with it - the platforming controls were responsive, the level design did what it needed to, and the checkpoints were reasonably placed, but nothing about this game stood out to me as being particularly memorable.
interesting work. There are few games which encourage you to wait for enemies to show aggression before blindly opening fire on them. I especially like that you color-code characters based on whether or not they've shot at you yet. It makes the gameplay more manageable.
One tiny complaint I'd like to make is that using RMB to draw your gun feels a bit awkward. I usually really like it when games make a player manually un-holster their weapon before they can fire it, but the execution here was a bit frustrating. It was never said anywhere (aside from the instructions on this page) that I even had a weapon that could be un-holstered, let alone that it was done by right clicking. The other problem that I had with this system is that, in the web version, right clicking pulls up a right-click menu, which kind of interferes with gameplay a bit.
really cool! Scaring adventurers off only to run into a pit of spikes is easily the highlight of this game for me. The power progression was really cool and I enjoyed my time with this game overall. Nice job!
a pretty cool nod to dungeon keeper. I liked it, and thought it was pretty impressive for a jam entry, but I felt that it was lacking a couple of critical usability features.
The first issue was that it can be difficult to have to remember what number key corresponds to what action. Having GUI buttons available to switch actions with (or just a persistent text panel that lists the actions and their numbers) would have really helped make the game more enjoyable.
My other complaint is that digging felt a bit tedious. I appreciate that you can queue up multiple clicks for your worker to dig through in succession, but I feel like it would be more convenient to be able to drag over all the tiles I want dug in a single click. A bit of feedback as to what tiles are scheduled for digging would also be nice.
Minor complaints aside, however, I thought this was really cool. I'd love to see it expanded on - we haven't really had a proper game in this genre for quite some time.
everything in this game just *feels* right. The laser is big and destructive, the movement feels stompy and imposing, and the particle effects coming off of crumbling buildings are oh-so-satisfying. A wonderful little game you've made.
I really like the idea behind the final choice of this game, and I appreciate that it was very carefully explained before asking me to confirm my decision.
Overall, an excellent game. I'm really looking forward to seeing the results.
this is too funny. Everything about this game is a brilliant joke and I love it. Thank you so much for this game.
I don't think I've ever played a game before where the primary threat is being catcalled. That's a really cool addition.
The gameplay was simple but enjoyable, the platforming was smooth, the navigation puzzles were light but engaging, and the audio/visual presentation was really impressive.
I really liked this game - well done!
I didn't really understand how the game works. I feel that a few blocks of text followed by a head-first dump into gameplay is not usually the most effective way to get a player to have a full experience with your work.
I clicked around randomly for a bit, enjoyed the sound of shares as they cascaded throughout the board, but ultimately had no clue what was going on and didn't really feel engaged or rewarded.
cute. I like the idea of there being a kind of break room for monsters. It didn't seem like there was much outside of the break room, though (unless I missed something), so I found this entry to be a little underwhelming in terms of content.
felt a little basic, but there was nothing inherently wrong with it. The art and sound effects did their job, the controls were responsive, the goal was clear, and the dedicated button for snapping the camera back to your base was handy.
Ultimately, though, I really don't feel like there's much to this game. It doesn't feel all that thought intensive or satisfying to progress, and the gameplay doesn't really ramp up in any particularly meaningful way over time.
well it's very pretty, I'll give it that. Reminds me a bit of an abstract rhythm toy, something in the vein of Electroplankton. Nice work for being especially short on time.
I'm thoroughly impressed by this game. Between the simple but satisfying gameplay, the speedy progression curve, and the stylish graphics, there's a lot to love here.
I would like to make two minor complaints, however. The first is that judging attack locations felt a bit off to me. It seems as though the cursor points to where the monster's feet will end up, but it feels more natural in my mind to expect the the monster's center to end up at the cursor, leading to some awkward missed attacks here and there.
My other minor gripe was that there didn't feel like enough feedback when getting hit or dropping to one heart. Some kind of subtle persistent warning that my next hit would lead to a verbal warning would be greatly appreciated, as without it many of my deaths felt kind of sudden and unexpected.
Outside of those two small issues, I found this to be a particularly excellent game. I really enjoyed my time with it and look forward to seeing what you do next!
uh... okay....I still don't know 100% what I just played, but it seemed pretty cool so I guess I'm okay with it.
The overall style and presentation of this game was very impressive, but I really was kind of disappointed in the gameplay. It (typically) boils down to just being very simple multiple-choice questions which don't really pose any interesting challenge to the player. What makes this particularly frustrating is the lack of checkpoints. If I mess up while ... seducing the fish, I have to start all the way back at Uhara. Seeing as I've already answered her questions and none of them change, it kind of feels like a chore I have to get through before I can return to the funny parts of the game I haven't seen yet.
cute presentation, but frustrating gameplay. A lot of the collisions with enemies feel a little bit unfair. It's easy to get hurt by barely brushing up against a monster - it would be nice if characters had a few pixels of leeway on the borders of their hitboxes.
The other big problem I found was that there was very little real feedback when the player got hurt, which led to a lot of unexpected deaths because I didn't realize when I had taken damage.
This is a really cool idea for a game! The movement feels nice and having to scramble to find the right tile is a lot of fun. I feel like having to dodge electrically charged tiles is a little bit unfair, however, as it's very rare that you'll actually be in control of the limb that needs to be moved out of the way. At that point, survival feels more like a game of chance than a game of skill, which greatly detracts from the fun of the game.
a spectacular idea. I think that everyone's behaviour is a *little* tough to read right now, but with a little bit of additional feedback, this is very well on it's way to being a stand-out puzzle game that I could see myself happily losing hours to.
I don't often suggest that people expand on LD games out of respect (I personally prefer to leave my products alone after a game jam) but I think it would be really tragic if you didn't further explore this idea and flesh it out into something more complete.
oh my God, this is probably the cutest game in the jam. Coupled with some polished stealth mechanics and well-thought-out level design, Stealth Yeti is a real winner. Wonderful job.
Clever! I like that closing the eye to recharge darkens out all the enemies, since you can't actually see them in that moment. It makes that moment of vulnerability when you have to reload even more tense than usual. Very clever, and very enjoyable!
Wow. I checked this out on itch.io about a week ago without realizing it was an LD entry. It honestly seemed like the sort of game that had been developed with months of effort and care. I'm truly, truly impressed by this entry.
spectacular presentation! Extremely stylized, and gleefully vibrant. A real treat for the eyes. I felt that the music was also really nice, although a bit too calm to feel like a good match for the action on-screen.
You compared this to a blend of reversed Alien:Isolation and Hotline Miami, which is an excellent combination which you really nailed.
hrm... I'd love to play this game, but I find myself being stumped before I can even access the code editor. I've read through all the .PDFs, but none of them seem to explain what is expected of me on the opening screens of the game. I press enter each time as indicated, but the nuke just detonates and I go back to the title screen.
You've been pretty active in the comments, maybe you could give me a little nudge to get started with this game?
I spent a few minutes absent-mindedly wandering around the cute little world picking up rods before realizing that I was playing as a seagull with *fire breath.*
My enjoyment of the game picked up considerably from there.
cute, simple, and enjoyable. Has the makings of an addictive pick-up-and-play mobile game. My only complaint is that it can be a little tough to judge the path your projectile will follow in this perspective. A line drawn along the ground might really help make it clearer when you should be throwing rods at the bikers.
excellent presentation, but lackluster gameplay. Just choosing whether or not to execute a criminal isn't really all that interesting. I get what you were going for, but it just didn't really hit me in the way I think you were going for. It seems like a lot of the content was randomly generated, but a game like this really seems like it needs hand-crafted and fleshed out stories to make the player think really hard about a very deep moral conflict.
an excellent little first person platformer with a lot of personality. The teleport power is really fun to use!
I found the movement in this game to be a bit stiff, especially with the transformations. I understand why everything needed to be constricted to a grid, but this execution often feels a bit unwieldy, especially when transforming. It would be handy if a little semi-transparent overlay would pop up when you attempt an invalid transformation that shows you *why* it's invalid.
Also, I really like that you flipped the beveled edges on the pentonimo relative to the tetronimoes. It helped to make the pentonimo feel even more alien and foreign to this world. It was also useful for gameplay purposes, as it makes it easier to tell the pentonimo apart when it's pressed up against tetronimoes of the same color.
holy cow, there's some really impressive level design here! Of course, it's being supported by a fairly interesting core mechanic. Actually reminds me a lot of throwing around the damsel in Spelunky, although this time with a whole lot less guilt.
not bad. I felt like having movement limited to the cardinal directions was a bit strange considering that there were frames of animation where the boss faces diagonally, but it was easy enough to get used to.
I have to say that my favorite part of this game is the hero characters, though. They each feel like they have a lot of personality to them, between their randomly generated names and the surprisingly large pool of sprites that they seem to pull from.
Exceptionally polished, from the animation to the controls to the subtle heart-beat sound effect in the background. I felt that the game was a little easy at first, but things quickly ramped up when that giant knight showed up and ruined my day.
An excellent game.
I get what you were going for, but I don't really feel like you accomplished it. I can't say a whole lot about the political message of this game, as I'm not well informed on Swedish politics, but I found the gameplay to be a bit frustrating. Dodging and weaving through crowds felt fairly impossible, and it rarely seemed like any kind of navigable route through the madness existed.
interesting game. I like having access to a roar function that I can use to clear the way and keep people safe. It's also nice that killing a person makes you pause for a moment, which means wasted time and a real reason to want to spare innocent characters.
A really neat game. I found the two main draws to be the gorgeous, particle heavy visuals and the story.
The visual spectacle was executed brilliantly - the ever darkening night sky really is exceptionally pretty.
Unfortunately, the story was hampered by a bit of buggy text - I found that, when entering a new screen, the story chunk that was tied to it would sometimes cut off, and I would have to leave the screen and come back in order to read what it said.
A well polished rhythm game. It's difficult to do anything particularly special or unique in this genre, so it's tough to fault this game for feeling a bit vanilla. I'm generally awful at rhythm based games, so I didn't get to see much of this, but I did enjoy the brief time I spent with it.
a neat idea, but the gameplay feels like it takes too much control away from the player, and the upgrade system feels more like padding than anything else. I think that a shorter game that starts the player out with the full capacity they need to take out the player would result in a vastly more enjoyable experience.
not bad - a fun little stealth game. I really like the lighting effects, they're very impressive.
pretty cool. The mechanic actually feels more unique than I was expecting it to. My only real gripe is that it often felt like the game had some overly strict requirements for triggering a note, which weren't incredibly clear. Sometimes it felt like I needed to pause movement for a brief moment for a note hit to register, while other times it seemed like the game just wanted me to get closer to the note than what felt reasonable. If the player's goal was made just a little bit clearer, I think this would actually be an excellent entry into the twitchy high-speed skill avoidance genre.
I uh... I really didn't get it. The story was clearly the main draw of this game, but I honestly found it very confusing and poorly delivered.
the presentation is really polished, but I found the gameplay to be a little bit shallow and poorly executed in places.
My biggest gripe is that I can't really "queue up" inputs without failing. If I try to press "up" while in the animation to arrive at a "left," the game just fails me because up isn't *technically* the next button in front of my character. In a game whose primary mechanic is a test of player's input speed, it feels a little silly to be penalized for providing inputs too fast.
I also found the scaring mechanic to be a bit clumsy for two reasons. The first is that performing a scare covers up your entire screen for a few frames (which are precious things in a game as quick as this) in an abrupt and awkward fashion, which makes it feel like a generally clunky thing to do. The second problem with scaring is that, when a character is scared, this is only indicated by a fairly subtle change in their animation which is easy to miss when you're trying to read the entire screen at a quick glance. It might help if scared characters were color coded to make it more clear who you have and haven't scared yet.
That aside, this is still a very nice start to a game which could quickly turn into an addictive time-killer with just a bit more attention to detail on the mechanics.
it's cute, but a little underwhelming. Maybe I missed something, but the game feels a little light on interactivity. There's nothing inherently wrong with having a game which favors story over gameplay, but I found the story kind of disappointing. There only seemed to be five panels, and they didn't really do much to establish likable characters, significant conflict, or a satisfying end.
interesting. I like the idea of picking a bonus power and a curse - makes for a lot of interesting possibilities, especially if you have plans to expand this post-compo.
I felt that actually engaging in combat was a little lackluster, though, unfortunately. It didn't feel like there was quite enough audio/visual feedback when enemies or the player got hurt.
I think you're being too hard on yourself friend. The game is light on content, but what's here is actually really satisfying. The audio/visual feedback that comes from landing a good strong horse kick feels great, and the game's short length helps prevent that simple action from growing overly repetitive.
You did a really good job.
I like this game a lot. The presentation is very pretty and the mechanic is simple but used in some clever ways. The only thing I'd complain about is the lack of some sort of "undo" function. I have to play an entire level over again after one mistake, which feels overly harsh. It would be nice if I could step back one crane at a time and work from there.
it feels very much like a generic tower-defense game. It certainly works, but it doesn't do so in any way that feels novel or memorable.
The first time I pounced on a character, I was expecting to kill them on the spot, in typical stealth game fashion. Actually picking them up and getting to carry them back to my sacrificial altar instead was a pleasant, memorable, and uniquely satisfying surprise. It's a small thing, but it feels absolutely spectacular.
absolutely gorgeous. The painterly style of this game is really quite a rare treat. The music was also quite nice (although I'm guessing you may have taken it from an outside source since you opted out of the music category. Still, excellent selection!)
The gameplay was nothing terribly new or novel, but I did like that the Piranha Plants would die if they were over-used without actually catching a Mario. That was a clever anti-spamming measure.
I find that after a few moments of playing, all the characters disappear and I'm left with only the background. Tried a couple times and keep getting the same result.
In what little time I spent with the game, I noticed that the giant feels a bit slippery to control. Normally that kind of friction/physics would work well for a platformer character, but I would expect a giant to be a little more ... lumbering. He should stop and start very definitively.
I feel like the idea of making the player sympathize with generic platformer enemies has been done before, so I honestly didn't find it too impactful here, I'm afraid.
The actual platofrming felt nice and responsive, though, which is more than I can say for many entries. The music was also nice and catchy, which is always a pleasant surprise.
Honestly, far too slow for my taste. The game really *does* start out feeling exceptionally boring and repetitive, and takes its sweet time ramping up to the kinds of crazy shenanigans that your screenshots seem to boast. With a speedier progression curve and a bit more clarity as to when your next upgrade might arrive, this could be a great game. As it is right now, it's a sluggish start that does very little to make me want to see what comes next.
clever. I think the twist was relatively obvious given the theme for this particular LD, but the way that it was revealed was actually really smart. Not having enough bullets to shoot the "perp" because all six had been spent on the previous two murders actually really surprised me.
Well done.
The graphics and the music are very nice, but I found the gameplay to be a bit ... vanilla.
Killing monsters requires very little skill outside of just chasing them down, and reaching goal blocks is a bit frustrating when they are all hidden behind seemingly normal blocks.
I also found it problematic that there is no clear display of the player's health. I plowed through a bunch of apparently hazardous enemies in the second level before dying, not realizing that some enemies had the ability to hurt me if I touched them. It felt inconsistent given that my primary goal is to touch a certain type of enemy to kill it, and the visual distinction between the safe and dangerous enemies is a bit too subtle.
I couldn't open the windows version, unfortunately. I wish I could give you more details, but the .exe just doesn't really do anything. My OS asks me if I'm okay running the program, I say yes, and then nothing else occurs.
the graphics were cute, and the gameplay was simple but accessible. I think with a little bit of a higher skill ceiling, this game could be a really big hit as a competitive score-attack thing on mobile devices.
the color choices are very pretty, and the final death screen clearly had a lot of love put into it, but I'm not a huge fan of the rest of this game. I think the primary issue I have with it is that the characters movement speed is painfully sluggish. The slow movement speed causes the controls to feel kind of unresponsive, because it takes a very long time before you feel like you've actually made progress in a desired direction. After fixing that up, I think dodging and weaving through meteor patterns could become a real fun challenge.
hey, I came back after you told me about wall-jumping and found the game to be quite fun past the first level! My advice to you is to always try to teach a player new mechanics when they are in a safe environment. Having to learn about wall-jumping is a reasonable goal, but having to learn it for the first time while also dodging meatballs for the first time feels overwhelming.
I think the other issue with how walljumping is introduced is that there is nothing in-game to suggest that the player has that capability. If the character squished up against a wall a little bit when the player presses against it, that would help to visually suggest that the character is getting ready to spring off of that wall.
It's not bad, but I didn't really love it. I think my main gripe with this game is that it doesn't provide the player with much information as to where they should look for their target. Actually finding the intruder feels more like a game of luck than skill, since there's no real way of knowing what general area they're in.
I think that if there were objectives that the intruder was trying to complete, or extra disposable guards who the intruder could knock out, it would be much more enjoyable to try and read the field and get an idea of what areas the intruder might be in.
That would also help make it feel more rewarding when you uncover the intruder, because it was the result of your clever thinking and understanding, and less of you having lucked out and checking just the right crate.
I started by playing this on the standard "hard" mode and quickly decided that the progress towards unlocks was happening a bit too slowly for my taste. Maybe it was just unclear how to score a lot of fear points, but I was progressing very slowly with the starting magnet.
I switched over to fun mode to check out all the weapons, instead, and they're pretty cool! I really liked the spinning blade - it was a little unclear at first, but I had a great time tearing into ships once I figured out it was a ramming weapon.
very neat. The different disasters all feel unique and satisfying to use, although I felt it was a little unclear how they worked at first. A few tutorial levels might be nice, as well as a quick in-game explanation of how to switch between them and use them. I found that unclear until I glanced at the description on this page. Once I did, though, I found this to be quite a lot of fun.
felt a little bit shallow. Outside of the boss fight, there was no noticeable difference between the different masks, and the combat against waves of ghosts wasn't really all that interesting - it really just boiled down to hammering the spacebar and occasionally turning around to cover your back.
I am fairly impressed by the number of art assets in this game, though. The amount of backgrounds, enemy sprites, projectile sprites, etc. was greater than what I would normally expect from a jam game.
I like the idea behind this game - it feels very Jet Set Radio at heart. Unfortunately, I feel that the controls here are a little bit unwieldy, especially compared to the level that players are expected to navigate with them. I think the biggest problem is that it feels like it takes too long to stop/build up speed, which makes jumping off of ramps especially cruel.
I really like the graphics, though. Everything has a very loving, hand-drawn, watercolor feel to it which lends this game a real sense of uniqueness and personality.
okay, let's get one complaint out of the way immediately - it's very easy to misunderstand how the "charm" mechanic works. On my first playthrough, I was given a "90%" chance of "something" happening (it was not clear if this was 90% chance of success or failure.) I tried charming several people and failed each time because of the random numbers, which confused my understanding of the system.
Once I actually *did* understand how charming worked, however, I found it to be a little bit underwhelming. There is no real reason not to try charming every guest on each evening because your odds of success will decrease the following night, and there are more nights than suspicion bars, so charming becomes non-optional and doesn't require any kind of interesting decision making.
Although I didn't love the mechanics in this game, I did find the presentation to be exceptional. The limericks used for opening and closing scenes were wonderful, the silent film-noir style had a lot of character, and the subtle changes in facial expressions as guests grew more suspicious was a brilliant touch.
I'd really love to see this presentation style used in a slightly more fleshed out set of mechanics some day!
I liked this a lot, the controls felt great and the particle effects and chaos generally felt really satisfying.
My biggest problem with this game is that it feels like there's no way to avoid taking damage. In order to burn things in the city, I need to get within their attack range, which leads inevitably to depleted health. If there was some added layer of skill that would allow players to survive longer based on how they navigated volleys of arrows, this game would be vastly more enjoyable.
really really cute! I love that you have the option to use your powers for good or evil, and that the landscape actually changes significantly based on how you behave.
I think it was a little unclear at first *how* I could help the villagers, but once I figured it out I had a great time watching them build up their little settlement.
(I also think it's really adorable how the worm bounces off of objects when it's underground.)
brilliant. Simply brilliant. This is a hilarious idea which is executed on spectacularly well. The random generation helps prevent players from memorizing the procedures and keeps runs interesting, the option to request 5 more minutes adds a nice forgiving element that many jam games benefit from, the presentation is clean and manageable, and the writing adds a ton of character.
On top of all this, the post-jam print and play mode is a stroke of genius. At 20 pages a game, I can't say I'll be playing often, but I definitely want to try this thing out with friends at least once.
Well done, friend, well done.
really cool! I was expecting my attack to be a really simple little arm swing or something, but shooting giant rock formations out of the ground was a fun and powerful surprise!
I really enjoyed the gameplay overall - it kind of gave me Katamari vibes with it's emphasis on finding efficient routes through levels.
there are some neat ideas here, but I don't think they're ever really given time to shine. I quickly realized that using cloaking and decoys isn't really necessary, as you can easily complete most levels by just chasing civilians off the edge of the map and tractor beaming the stragglers with little resistance.
I can imagine that there are a lot of cool puzzles and encounters you could cook up with the mechanics that you've introduced, but I just don't feel like any of the game's current levels really take full advantage of those mechanics.
I like the minimalist graphics and how easy it is to quickly understand how the game is played. My only two complaints are:
1)The game feels a bit slow at times. Especially in the early game, you spend quite a bit of time just waiting for balls to hit your wedge, which is really kind of dull.
2)The controls aren't very well suited for mobile. Having to block anything that comes from the top half of the screen requires physically moving a thumb all the way up there, which can be uncomfortable, and can also really block your view of the screen.
I might suggest looking at a game called Gyro, which has a similar rotating mechanic with a more comfortable control scheme. You can slide your thumb left and right around the bottom of the screen almost like turning a dial that impacts the direction that the wheel faces.
not bad! I appreciate that the heroes you fight actually have different behavior patterns, instead of just growing more difficult through stat increases. It helps make each fight actually feel genuinely unique and interesting compared to one another.
(Side note, you might want to take down the web link, as it's intended for games which can be played in a browser. It's just a bit misleading, is all.)
I had a really hard time understanding exactly how this game is played. It feels like there isn't quite enough feedback to really understand what you can/cannot do and why.
This is unfortunate, because the idea of competitive subway navigation is actually a really cool one. The thought of there being a game where you need to find more efficient train routes than an opponent sounds really appealing, and I think this could be that game with a little more polishing up.
pretty cool! A lot of the placement of hazards seems to be fairly random, however, which led to what felt like a few un-passable obstacles. I guess the idea was that the player should upgrade themselves over time to be strong enough to bypass things like bear traps and riflemen, but the speed at which upgrades were earned felt a little too sluggish to be really fun.
interesting stealth game. The addition of special powers helps make this entry feel more unique compared to many other games.
Also, pretty cool that you used Cosmic DJ to make the music. I've never really considered it before as a proper music-production tool before.
I didn't really understand how to play. I couldn't seem to interact with any of the humans, no matter which direction I swiped.
for the most part, I found this to be a fairly typical take on an old game archetype. What stood out to me, however, was the moment where I lit my platform on fire using a loose flame that came off of the crackling fire to my right. On top of being truly useful and powerful (much like a *power*-up should be), it felt especially cool since it was integrated organically into the setting, instead of being an abstract falling power-up.
a functional side-scrolling shooter, but nothing terribly unique or out of the ordinary here. You could definitely expand on this and introduce your own new mechanics, but in its current state I don't really find this game to be terribly worthwhile.
wow, that was metal as hell. The shooting mechanics were exceptionally innovative, and presented in a fairly simple to understand way. The best part of this game by far, however, is the moment where you bite off the bosses limbs and get to wear them like trophies. It was a really satisfying surprise!
My only major complaint is that I feel the difficulty begins a bit high. You have a core mechanic which is completely novel, which really should be taught early in a short, easy to avoid bullet pattern.
Second,
(oops, I was going to mention that the boss health was a little difficult to read in the middle of a heated battle, making it hard to know how far along you are, but it's not really *that* big of a problem.)
wow. Gives me a "One Finger Death Punch" meets "Rhythm Heaven" vibe and I'm very much into it. The music is exceptionally high quality, the corresponding enemy arrangements are enjoyable to play, the amount of levels is surprisingly large, and the overall level of detail and polish here is spectacular. Incredibly well done.
really cute. There's something really charming about having to flop around the level for a bit before actually being able to fly like a graceful UFO.
The steady introduction of new mechanics into the game is also really great. Keeps the game interesting as it goes, and prevents the early game from feeling overwhelming.
simple, sweet, and super polished. Has a really nice bomber-man esque flavor with the grid based movement, but the combat felt unique to this game. I especially like that you're allowed to put coins down after you've picked them up instead of being locked into throwing them. I never found it necessary, but I thought it was cool to have the option to set up barricades by laying them down in strategic locations.
Man, oh man is this some gorgeous pixel art. This game is stunningly well presented.
Unfortunately, I found the gameplay a bit lackluster. Choosing monsters based on their explicitly listed skills rarely feels like much more than fitting round pegs into round holes, and choosing monsters based on their hidden skills feels like guesswork with almost no proper explanation as to what to look for.
I also found a couple of UI quirks that really detracted from my experience. The first is that switching between character's CVs required one too many clicks. If a CV is already up when I switch between two potential employees, it would be convenient to have the new CV pop up automatically. My second issue is that the "offer job" button is very easy to miss. The color choice makes it look more like a watermark that only exists for visual style than a button which can be interacted with.
I really wish I could be more positive about your entry, as it has an incredible amount of charm, style, and personality, but it just feels like more thought needs to go into the mechanics before this can be a really worthwhile experience.
an interesting flip of an old classic. I felt that the game was either too hard or not explained very well. I couldn't figure out how to do any damage as the werewolf, and successfully landing an attack as a zombie felt impossible given that the knight had vastly superior range every time.
highly impressive visuals, and exceedingly polished gameplay.
It was a little difficult to actually *find* crew members, bordering on frustrating. It would be helpful to have some kind of audio/visual cue to help you know if you're getting closer to the crew.
It might also be interesting if, as the game progresses, the crew grows more aggressive and tries to hunt you down, helping to reduce some of the dead time spent wandering aimlessly.
Well I'm certainly not the first person to say that this is like WarioWare, haha. As much as I enjoyed this collection of minigames, I feel like they were lacking in two key areas relative to something that you might find in other rapid-fire minigame collections.
1)WarioWare games have clearly defined and easily visible timers which make the end-point of a minigame easy to predict. In this game, the ending of a minigame feels kind of abrupt and unexpected.
2)WarioWare minigames are generally all-or-nothing. You either complete a minigame or you don't. You're told, in no uncertain terms, whether you did well or not. These minigames have kind of victory gradients which feel less satisfying. If I smash three bugs on the first minigame, should I feel good about that? Was I expected to smash that many? Was I expected to perform better than that? It's difficult to tell, which leads to a less rewarding experience overall.
I hope I don't sound overly negative towards your game - I actually really enjoyed it. The presentation is wonderful and charming, and really helps make this a fun and memorable game.
I had a little bit of confusion getting started, but after that everything was totally fine. The overall atmosphere and ambiance were astonishing, and created a very relaxing, lovely environment. I thought the mechanics were a little slow, but they helped contribute to the carefree atmosphere of the whole thing.
Nicely done!
The game is very pretty, but somewhat vague in terms of gameplay. I had a hard time identifying any real win or lose states, as well as how exactly settlements interacted with one another to move towards either state. Text was provided, but a little more real-time feedback, like resources moving back and forth between settlements, would have really helped.
very cool! A very pretty and elegant take on the old classic Snake. I really appreciate that the player's tree isn't just a single trunk extending out to pick up more pellets. The little branches growing out off the side really contributed a great deal to the aesthetic here.
very neat! Certainly not the only "growing vine" entry into this compo, but definitely one of the more polished ones. The pixel art and color pallet is clean and pretty, and the burning effect when you fail is very well done. Overall, an excellent submission!
I'm a fan of multitasking games like these, but there are a few areas of execution that I think you slipped up in. The most glaring is that there is no scoring system, and more importantly no penalty for failing a minigame (so long as you have another one open somewhere else). Instead of having a fun, frantic, multitasking experience, it's far too easy to just focus on one minigame and neglect the rest without punishment.
Really enjoyed the game, super fun idea. It was a little annoying that you can't see plates on the lower track until they come around, and after about Level 3 you can't really tell how many plates there are because of the overlap. The window of time to catch the plates seemed a little too tight, especially since the background music's beat threw you off a bit compared to the rhythm of the button pushes. Outside of that, though, the overall presentation and aesthetic were really pleasing and well done. With a little bit of mechanical polish, you'd have an excellent game on your hands!
It's a little plain, but understandable for your first entry into Ludum Dare. There is a nice level of polish on here, but I don't personally find the actual gameplay underneath to be terribly unique or interesting. It seems like you have what it takes to come back to the next Ludum Dare and make something really special, though, if you're willing to give it a shot!
An interesting take on the theme with a surprisingly detailed story! I felt that it took a little too much precedence over the gameplay in some places, but it was a welcome inclusion for the most part. The gameplay itself was solid, but seriously lacking in any kind of feedback. It was difficult to tell if I submitted letters correctly, when a typo had been made, when I was in danger of failure, etc... With a few more cues to help inform the player of what's going on, though, this has room to grow into a great game!
I'm not really sure what's going on with your audio, but the rest of the game is pretty great! The minimalist graphics are wonderful, the subtle squash and stretch on the ball is satisfying, and the core gameplay is tightly refined. Nice work!
this is too cool. I absolutely love the idea behind this, and if I were any better at it, I'm sure it would be one of the most satisfying experiences in the jam. As it stands, though, the depth perception and precision required at the moment feels a little too demanding. A wider sword might really help ease the burden on new players.
*very* clever way to squeeze a couple more inputs out of just two buttons. Mapping short hops to light taps of the button was especially elegant given that it has about as much horizontal movement as you'd probably want out of a brief press of the button.
I thought the game built around the control scheme was a little vanilla, but still well built with a nice difficulty curve.
Great job, overall!
Had a few issues with up and down controls wanting to scroll the page, but fixed that with entering fullscreen. The mechanics were simple enough to pick up, but it felt a little underdeveloped, and the slipperiness of the controls were a slight inconvenience. The difficulty didn't really pick up at all, and it ended unexpectedly. The audio, however, was stellar. Overall a competent, fun game, but I wish it had more content.
A very polished presentation, but with somewhat dull mechanics. I feel like the two minigames that are on display here have mechanics which are overall too simple to be really engaging or challenging in the moment. A little bit of added depth in some form (maybe charge moves for player attacks?, just spitballing...) is really needed to make this more enjoyable. Outside of the mechanics, though, the graphics, audio, and style of the game were brilliantly well handled and extremely charming.
I imagine there's some kind of interesting strategy game buried deep down here, but right now it's just not clear how the game is played. The "How to play" screen is a discouraging wall of text, and might be better if it were broken up into contextual notes that pop up at the appropriate times when a node is selected.
absolutely *tremendous* sound effects. I was pleasantly surprised by how meaty everything sounded. It really leant a lot of weight to the combat, which was also quite well done with a nice amount of enemy variety.
My friend, who is an aficionado of Lovecraft's work, thoroughly enjoyed this game; I had fun as well, but she tells me I can't appreciate it correctly given my lack of knowledge on the subject. The mood was immersive and true to type. I wish, however, that there were more choices involved throughout the storyline.
breathtakingly gorgeous, and backed up by some surprisingly simple and satisfying mechanics. Great work!
very clever idea! I totally forgot that there are a lot of crane games that use this kind of two button control scheme.
My only major complaint was that I thought waiting around for the claw to close was a little tedious. It would have been nice if the timer depleted more quickly if no buttons were held down, because that's kind of a signal that the player is happy with their position.
Outside of that, this was a terrific entry with a great idea, pleasing minimalist graphics, and a lovely little background song!
I played this with a friend and got murdered brutally. Even so, I had a tremendous time with this game. The tension of a wild west shootout has been used plenty of times before, but randomizing the players controls when the time to shoot arrives creates a beautiful second layer of panic and replicates the feeling of fumbling with a weapon. The overall style and presentation surrounding the mechanics was also excellent, and was the cherry on top of a beautifully done package.
This was a tremendous idea. Hulking out and busting through all the dungeon walls proved to be a surprisingly satisfying experience. Overall, I was actually really pleased with this entry.
Impressive! A little tricky to understand at first, but simple enough to get going after a few minutes. The real strength in this game is certainly the presentation, though. The slick cyberpunk UI and ambient music really steal the show.
Wow! This is a surprisingly well fleshed out card game! I'm impressed! I feel like some of the nitty gritty details were a little poorly explained, but I had a good time overall building up karma and countering my opponent's cards. Overall, a very interesting, funny, and enjoyable game!
I really like the idea of buying upgrades based on a timer - it has a bit of a push your luck element to it, where you always want to hold out for the next upgrade. I thought this was undercut a bit by how minor the upgrades actually were. It was very difficult to feel the effects of any one upgrade, to the point where the gradual improvements they granted just weren't very satisfying.
I also need to point out that the changing colors on the title screen were both very harsh on the eyes, and were often too bright to see the white text against.
Wow! I'm extremely impressed! This is an awesome idea, and it's really well executed with a lot of polish! I found that the puzzles ramped up a little too quickly in difficulty for me, with the eggplant zone being a particularly confusing part of the game. I wasn't sure at all what the Eggplant does or how I could use it, and it didn't respawn after being destroyed.
Maybe you could leave some hints in the comments or the game description? I'd really love to come back to this a bit later and see where it all goes.
Neat idea, although the mechanics felt a little bit poorly explained. A clearer tutorial at the start of the game would really help a lot.
very cool. It has kind of a Super Crate Box feel to it, which I'm really digging. My only real complaint was that some of the weapons felt a little underpowered or unsatisfying. What's especially problematic about this is that the hard to use weapons are the ones I tend to get stuck using most of the time, since I'll score kills with the effective weapons before I know it, and I'm back to a weapon that's tough to work with.
man, this felt great to play. The minimalist aesthetic made everything really easy to parse, so I could just focus on moving and shooting, which was delightfully satisfying. Great work!
a neat idea! I've always found games about rotating dice like this to be interesting, if not a little bit overwhelming at times. I think you did a nice job of communicating a lot of crucial information to the player, though, so that it's easy enough to make informed decisions about where to move next.
I felt like this entry was just a little too simple to be really enjoyable. Simply randomizing a shape and hoping it matches a target shape got boring extremely quickly, and there wasn't a ton of feedback to make success feel good or mistakes feel obvious.
It's a nice, simple idea that could do well if it were expanded on a bit, but in its current state I'm just not feelin' it.
As a piece of general advice, it's usually more convenient to compile Game Maker games as "Single Runtime Executables" instead of "NSIS installers." You might want to use that option in the future.
I really liked the aesthetic and the music. The whole game felt very upbeat and happy. I thought the mechanics were a little lacking, though. I didn't really feel like I had the ability to do any kind of shape shifting as much as I had a temporary power-up that felt really lousy to run out of. I think this game would've been really cool if both ship forms had their own pros and cons, instead of one just being objectively better with limited use.