Ludum Postal by jvolonte 2021-04-27T03:06:32Z
Really well done. A very complete experience for a game jam game! The poster designs were fun.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → CasualNothing
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | 59 | Signal | π₯ | Roids | jam | 734 | 3.03 | 2.69 | 3.59 | 3.82 | 3.36 | 2.90 | 2.16 | 3.09 |
| 2025 | 57 | Depths | Delivery | jam | 4.00 | |||||||||
| 2024 | 56 | Tiny Creatures | π₯ | Datiny Five Hundredths | jam | 515 | 3.57 | 3.55 | 2.76 | 4.07 | 3.86 | 3.91 | 4.10 | 3.83 |
| 2024 | 55 | Summoning | π₯ | Helloons | jam | 1090 | 3.00 | 2.73 | 3.89 | 3.18 | 3.26 | 2.94 | 2.92 | 2.94 |
| 2023 | 54 | Limited Space | π₯ | Garbage Stack | jam | 926 | 3.13 | 3.13 | 3.05 | 3.50 | 3.05 | 2.86 | 2.77 | 2.97 |
| 2023 | 53 | Delivery | π₯ | Psychopomp | jam | 908 | 3.26 | 3.17 | 2.93 | 3.97 | 3.15 | 2.36 | 3.21 | |
| 2023 | 52 | Harvest | π₯ | Tune-uki: Human Harvest | jam | 594 | 3.21 | 3.05 | 2.73 | 3.05 | 3.28 | 3.89 | 3.34 | 3.05 |
| 2022 | 51 | Every 10 seconds | π₯ | Major Magics | jam | 1051 | 3.00 | 2.60 | 2.84 | 3.36 | 2.78 | 3.18 | 2.44 | 2.89 |
| 2022 | 50 | Delay the inevitable | π₯ | The Dam Repairman | jam | 725 | 3.50 | 3.66 | 3.16 | 3.80 | 3.26 | 3.02 | 3.72 | 3.02 |
| 2021 | 49 | Unstable | π₯ | Traffic Jam | jam | 861 | 3.44 | 3.65 | 2.76 | 2.47 | 3.76 | 3.57 | 3.41 | 3.52 |
| 2021 | 48 | Deeper and deeper | π₯ | Spooky Ocean Game | jam | 1573 | 3.07 | 2.97 | 2.67 | 3.77 | 3.15 | 3.72 | 2.09 | 3.85 |
Really well done. A very complete experience for a game jam game! The poster designs were fun.
The art was very nice. I liked the graphical effect for the wobbliness.
I liked the mechanic! It was creative.
An interesting game! I ended up finding a stable configuration on Ross 128 b. I think this has the bones of a fun game. My only criticism would be that I'd like a bit more information exposed. Even without that it's still fun!
PlanetGame.PNG
All the art was very nice. It served the atmosphere very well.
A fun little game for sure. Straightforward and tight mechanics that worked.
Great atmosphere. Good theme execution. I noticed one small thing where I could lock myself back in the starting corridor if I returned my lamp checkpoint to the one at the end of said corridor. The bricks come up behind you and you have to go back to the beginning lamp to reset. Not game breaking and maybe even intentional. Overall cool. Great work! Puzzles are hard to design.
@hekateras Yeah, we intended for the monster to track you throughout the maze but we couldn't get their movement to work correctly near the end of the jam, so unfortunately they ended up being stationary. Such is the case during game jams sometimes though.
@peachtreeoath Yes it is! One of our team members thought it would be funny to name the game after it.
@ninjacreeper47 Yes, we intended for the monster to chase you around, but couldn't get that working before the end time of the jam.
In terms of player, monster, and goal locations, yes that is bound to happen. Each of those three things spawn at random empty locations in the map. We had intended to make the location selection behavior for those things more advanced to avoid spawning you next to either the goal or the monster, but again, we didn't have enough time to do so and had to settle for random locations.
@nobongo Thank you! I worked very hard on getting the wave function collapse algorithm to work properly so we could use it for level generation. If you're into procedural stuff WFC really is great at making things generate with desired characteristics. We combined that with some A* pathfinding to make holes in the generated level to make sure there was always a route to the finish from wherever the player starts.
Simple and clean.
@coderaurus you're definitely right about feedback we didn't end up having time to implement proper mechanisms for that. We ended up making this game in about 12-15 hours because of our schedules not allowing us to use the full time. Your score is (number of items) * (height of highest point in the stack). The colored box indicates whether the game judges your stack as stable or not. Red is not stable, yellow is currently stable, and green is currently stable and has been for 3 seconds, which is the point in time where your score is recalculated.
@breadstick Thanks! I had fun making the 3d drawing and am pretty happy with how it turned out.
@piw For sure, I agree. We did have someone implement scoring code, but we weren't able to incorporate it and test before the deadline. And yes, a tutorial would have been nice but that's a classic thing to go out the window in a game jam because of time. The full controls list is shown on the page here.
@budster16 Thank you! Getting the AI to drive well was a challenge. And yes, with more time we would have liked to add a drift mechanic. Glad you liked the characters!
@kluvenlaroplan Thank you! We had some wonderful artists designing the characters and their art. To answer your question... maybe :grin:
@phyrocast Thank you! And yes there is! 3 laps completes the race.
@julia-nistel Thanks! I'm not sure what you mean about the exit button though, did it not work for you?
The keeper's hands trailing the movement of the player with the trail renderers was a nice visual effect. The in-world explanations for the various types of opponents were fun. I think you made the right call erring on the side of fun vs difficult. Great work.
Really cool system and game. It got hard quickly for me (the first level with commercial trains), so I'd have to practice, but it was fun and everything worked!
An interesting story with a few fun puzzles. The image in question for walkthrough point 14 was a little hard to track. I liked the portrait art for the characters.
A fun game with some nice emergent mechanics and a very cool mascot!
@astraltraveller Thanks for playing! Glad you liked it.
@5n4k3 Thanks!
@richjbaron The frustration is understandable, but is the concept we wanted to explore for this game. That's also why we made the ships as slow as they are, so it's not overwhelming while dealing with the delay.
@reed-molbak A fair criticism. The buttons do make a sound when pressed. Physically moving the buttons was on the todo list, but we couldn't get it done within the jam window. Also agreed on the camera look + zoom combo. Were we to do it again I'd try for camera translation with mouse move instead of camera rotation.
@digital-bacon Thank you! That's basically what we were going for with the delay.
@nikaz Thank you!
@glitchproduction Thank you! Our 3D model maker did great work. Yes, the delay was intentional. We wanted the explore the idea of the delay you'd experience over very long distance communication.
@cloverfall Thank you for giving it a chance as a mechanic! We felt it had some depth to make it worthwhile in the face of the surface level frustration.
@mattlevonian Appreciate the detailed comment. We wanted the control setup to have some level of awkwardness so it felt like you were controlling them remotely rather than just simply piloting the ships. It's a balancing act in that way. I do agree that, while it is present, the delay information could have been communicated more clearly. The first person perspective was again chosen to make you feel like the player 'character' is there in the control tower rather than at the terminal in the ship, but I could see how a static interface would make for easier control. I will concede that the screens could have been a larger portion of the player's screen. When playing the game on full-screen (rather than on Ludum Dare's embedded web build) it's easier to see what's happening with the screens. The linked itch.io web build supports full screen. Gamepad input would be great but wasn't in the cards for how much time we had. What would you suggest for making the the asteroids easier to parse visually? I agree that making the signal delay more prominent would be helpful as mentioned above. If by the 'main view' you mean the window above the control console, that would be an interesting idea.
@artemget Nice work! We could have made the ships faster but we kept them slow to make the game not overwhelmingly difficult. The video feed delay is present by design to simulate the communication over long distances. As the ships get closer to you the delay decreases. And actually, as a peek behind the curtain, it's just the video that has the delay. Your commands sent to the ships happen instantly, so there's no delay in 'input' per se. In fact, if you watch the ships out the main window above the control panel, you can see them responding to commands with no delay.
Simple game that fits the theme. The juice has a lot of polish. Transitions, object slide-ins, etc. I got stuck on one of the ciphers where there's apparently 2 words for a 3 word decryption. Might be a bug or I might be missing something. Good work though.
It's an interesting idea, but I can't figure out the first message. The instructions say to do the messages left to right. The first can on the left says to triangulate. I'm to begin a ritual with the message type. The guide says magenta corresponds to triangulation. I send up magenta smoke. I'm told the color is wrong and I have to restart. What am I missing?