Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → CataclysmicKnight
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | Co | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | 59 | Signal | 👥 | Exegenesis | jam | 482 | 3.50 | 3.46 | 3.70 | 3.75 | 3.07 | 3.68 | |||
| 2025 | 58 | Collector | 👥 | The Forgetful Dragon | jam | 492 | 3.37 | 3.17 | 3.66 | 3.60 | 2.98 | 3.56 | |||
| 2025 | 57 | Depths | 👥 | Into the Depths | jam | 142 | 3.94 | 3.82 | 4.33 | 4.05 | 3.47 | 3.98 | |||
| 2024 | 56 | Tiny Creatures | 👥 | The Grinning Hill | jam | 528 | 3.57 | 3.38 | 3.80 | 3.21 | 3.50 | 3.70 | |||
| 2024 | 55 | Summoning | 👥 | The Summoned | jam | 199 | 3.95 | 3.67 | 4.40 | 4.00 | 3.45 | 3.67 | |||
| 2023 | 54 | Limited Space | In Space, No One Can Hear You EXPLODE! | jam | 321 | 3.82 | 3.79 | 3.79 | 3.68 | 3.33 | 3.74 | ||||
| 2023 | 53 | Delivery | Sidequests Only | jam | 1016 | 3.10 | 3.18 | 3.47 | 3.10 | 3.10 | 3.02 | ||||
| 2023 | 52 | Harvest | Crawling to the Brink | jam | 405 | 3.50 | 3.50 | 3.87 | 2.92 | 2.93 | 3.68 | ||||
| 2022 | 51 | Every 10 seconds | The Epicathelon | jam | 258 | 3.84 | 3.47 | 3.73 | 3.31 | 3.50 | 3.35 | ||||
| 2020 | 46 | Keep it alive | MacGyval: Use What You've Got, Survive or Not! | jam | 650 | 3.73 | 3.42 | 3.97 | 3.37 | 3.57 | 3.42 | ||||
| 2013 | 26 | Minimalism | ASCIIvader III | jam | 156 | 3.44 | 3.36 | 3.06 | 4.00 | 3.15 | 2.36 | 2.97 | 61 | ||
| 2012 | 24 | Evolution | Evolutionator! | compo | 191 | 3.32 | 3.52 | 2.32 | 2.84 | 2.56 | 1.27 | 2.26 | 2.49 | 100 | |
| 2010 | 18 | Enemies as Weapons | The Adventures of Rubberman! | jam | 1 |
Thanks for your comments! Yes, the hit detection was a bit off on where the insult hits Rubberman, so it sometimes causes the insult to go toward one of the insulters on the other side - possibly even exactly directly behind Rubberman...
And again thanks very much! I love the audio idea :)
It was quite fun! I got the freeze during the green/friendly alien portion as well, both times that I played it actually... And I'll admit I let the first alien get all the way to the bottom to see what would happen too :)
LOL the ending was funny!
@racarate: LOL no no, I totally understand on the map... I was worried about that too since I don't even think I put anywhere on that screen "click to go to a level"... And I was saddened I didn't get to upgrade the graphics after I finished the game. I've honestly never made any enemy AI before that wasn't "move the same direction always" or had enemies drop items, or even make different bullet upgrades, etc... I appreciate your input and compliments!
@aschearer, thanks! I didn't get to balance the gameplay much because I ran out of time, I'll definitely have to make sure to do that :)
@Milo: LOL yeah there's the "almost-dying normal shooting" and then the "upgrade and annihilate anything quite easily" shooting... Not really an inbetween LOL
Weird, CaptainIcy... I wonder if there's a glitch in part of the levelling up that stops you from dying... And thanks so very much for the compliments!!
Maacus - Thanks! I started with the story and a joke about using a roomba that gets more and more powerful. Thanks for taking the time to read the story! :)
Alex - that's one of the best comments I've EVER gotten, thank you so much!! And thanks Accidental Rebel :)
I couldn't get the timing on the unicorn level, but I think it's got a lot of potential, and great start on a puzzle game :)
It keeps loading almost all the way and then freezing up :(
Nevermind, I got it a bit later, must have been a connection glitch on my end or something :)
I like the ability to choose whether or not to steal their powers!
HAHAHAHAHAHHAAHA for "There are 1,000 of it"
WOW! This game was insanely difficult, but I kept trying and trying, very addictive
I love the concept about this game, the message behind it is super awesome :)
Yes, I loved the idea of breeding with other blocks to gain new powers, that has a lot of potential!!! And totally agreed - "jump on it like Mario" is too hysterical ;)
I will say that I'm curious to see what happens next :)
The way this game worked was AWESOME until the enemies... I got stuck on that level. Sometimes the level had enemies generate right on me or very close, other times there were just so many I couldn't get past them... This makes for a great adventure/exploration game though!!!
It took me a bit to figure out exactly how to play, but it was fun once I got it! I did seem to run into a bug though - once I got to really playing it the right way, all my creatures ended up eventually dying (of course), but it still showed my population at 4 and so it kept going
I felt the same way - the speeding up didn't seem to make the cube count go up faster, and it definitely dropped the monthly earnings. There was a point where I'd make over $1,000 if I ran it at 1x, but at 16 I made like $50. Very fun game though, I stuck with it a long time ;)
I liked the random powerups throughout, and how you could actually manage not to get them if you are just kind of hiding while the others all kill each other :) And using an ant farm as the background is genius!!
That was hysterical, particularly the last evolution :)
Definitely very funny! I'm pretty ashamed that it took me so long to get the great answer... But very funny :)
LOL "less like a ransom note". I feel the same way about the battles, but definitely a good job in such little time! And I love how the visual changed with each "evolution".
JoCo in a game automatically wins a 5 in humor for me, let alone the concept :)
Thought it was super awesome except that since the walls were all the same, I had issues remembering which way I was going... But then, I'm not that familiar with 3d games, so that's very possibly a big part of it :)
I died a few times heading into level 4 or 5, but once I got the hang of it I ended up annihilating them! Very well done, especially in just two days, nice!!!
I really wanted to get further and see what happens but I couldn't get more than about 7 or 8 green ones without losing all of them; I'm not very good with reacting :(
The movement and shooting were a bit laggy and slow, but other than that it was quite fun! I liked how you could keep coming back if you hid long enough :)
Wow, that was one heck of a game! And it was so different from the first play to the second because of how the enemies mutated; good job! And I for one prefer WASD and arrows over mouse and keyboard, so way to go :)
I was doing okay until the third time it got darker.. I was playing with my monitor dimmed all the way (laptop overheating issues) and had to max the brightness, but I still couldn't really make anything out, especially with the game on a white background. Maybe put the game on a black background, or give the player a way to see in the dark (an orb around him or a beam of light?)
I saw that it said to make sure to use the audio, but I wasn't able to do so (my end of things, nothing wrong with the game, I promise!). If that made it easier to play, then sorry :(
Very intriguing, curious to see what else could be done with this one!
The game was definitely quite difficult until my laptop started overheating (not your fault, my laptop's fan isn't working properly or something) and I set it to Power Saver. Even though I was at almost 25,000 points it slowed the game waaaaaay down, making it much easier ;)
Absolutely loved this game!!! And am in total agreement - the word art style is genius! I do love the evolution of the cow as well though :)
Very addictive! Laptop overheated and all I could think of was coming back to play more of it; I wanted to get further :)
It is definitely fun, but I would beg for an easier version... I couldn't beat the 2nd round for anything... And when I did beat the first round, it was BARELY!
What an awesome way to celebrate board games!!! So awesome!
Yeah, the game is quite fun! And does get difficult as it goes, too :)
Nice job making it a one button game! And cute graphics btw :)
I like the way it points out the importance of moving around and change ;)
It gets CRAZY difficult but it's addicting and fun!
ROFLMAO well it's definitely funny...
Don't be so hard on yourself, not only was the name awesome, the game was fun too!!! My only issue was that when I went off the screen I couldn't get back on...
Yeah, it's got some good potential - I look forward to seeing the rest of it some day!
That game was super-fun, easily one of my favorites, if not my favorite entirely (after 60+ reviews) :) I played it through twice so I could see all the upgrades!!! And now I'm playing it yet again in the "improved edition" :)
Yeah, definitely an awesome ending... And I do love how the game kind of became more simplistic due to simply randomly clicking spots and letting it load up... Very creepy, very awesome!
It was quite fun! I had to play on easy though because I kept dying on the harder levels... My only qualm was that on one play through I was doing pretty well, then a tank appears diagonally up-right from me, not even one full tank-size apart, and killed me very quickly. Perhaps a buffer space?
Quite fun, and it was a blast messing with their abilities!
LOL way to end it :) And definitely agree - the art style was awesome!
It seemed like a few times when I wanted to jump it didn't respond, so I'd jump and then move to make sure it would succeed. Very difficult but, especially in so little time, very well done!
Very awesome!!! Amazing you got that much done so fast; I was really hoping the story would come to an end and it wouldn't be a "more later". Great job! :)
Very intriguing, and I loved the crazy bounce into the blue talisman!
After playing a round I was able to figure out exactly where it'd turn, and even got to learn that it moves quickly if you turn, so if you zig-zag around you can really take out some enemies ;)
I loved it!!!! The ONLY thing I could think to do is make the text scroll faster so it moves along a lil quicker, but it's really a lot of fun and a fantastic twist on Rock Paper Scissors!! Also absolutely love the graphics and game size, retro-glory!
Definitely very well done, and I had to play through every time to get the good ending and solve it all :) Super creative, loved it!
YES!!!!! Potato AND minimalism, way to go!!!
Such a fun way to handle combat! The letter pressing minigame where you have to repeatedly press the letter that pops up was VERY difficult though and I always got slaughtered... DOH! Loved the quotes btw!
limb/head/wing/etc part collecting was far too funny and awesome and genius! Had lots of fun with it :D
The game seemed fun, but the little girl moved so slowly that it made the game unplayable for me... Very likely due to my slow computer that I have to run at minimal speed. I didn't rate it since I didn't want to rate what I didn't fully play, and I think I really would have enjoyed it otherwise, for what it's worth :D
DOH!!!! I can't edit that, but I totally placed it on the wrong game, I'm so sorry!!!!! :( I thought it was hilarious, and totally agreed on the Lost comment. Also the "tall grass" reference :D
By level 12, it really did get challenging! Very intriguing game :) I do agree that having numerous files to unzip inside a zipped file was kinda annoying, but I understood the tutorial perfectly fine. The P key was hysterical, btw!
WOW!!!! Once I got the concept, this was an awesome game! Sure, it gets repetitive at the end, but it really is fun, and the art style is AMAZING! Games = art? This sure does! I'd love to see this played on an urn, or perhaps a future version with multiple urns, each with their own challenges?
Okay, I can't believe no one has mentioned it yet, but... The Terry Crews weapon?? SO AWESOME!!! LOL way to use that!
Very fun way to use the art and minimalism!
Certainly intriguing, and fun riddles! I had to hit New Message about 15 times before I got to the last riddle, though; it kept playing ones I'd already seen...
This was a really intriguing game, I liked it a lot! I would love to see more levels and more going on with it :)
Agreed - triangles were pretty hard to see, but it was nice to be able to use keyboard or mouse to control :) And using the other as a shield was nice too!
I definitely agree that bacon blade is an AWESOME name! I had to use keyboard, but I can see how fun it'd be with a 360 controller and rated it accordingly :)
The shattering cannon is great, too, btw!
I played about 8 times and couldn't get past first lamp, even after reading the other comments... I definitely wished that it was easier to restart after death, too.
Absolutely hysterical! I won't admit how long I played around with it :P
The game seemed fun, but the little girl moved so slowly that it made the game unplayable for me... Very likely due to my slow computer that I have to run at minimal speed. I didn't rate it since I didn't want to rate what I didn't fully play, and I think I really would have enjoyed it otherwise, for what it's worth :D
It took me a while to realize I had to move the arrow with the mouse to get it going, but once I realized that, it was a great game, very enjoyable, way to go!
Starfish Powers Activate is definitely the best version name I've seen thus far :)
Such an awesome idea, and it's so genius to see play out!!!! Fantastic job!
First off, WOW for physics in two days!!! Secondly, it was definitely very fun (and challenging!). I got stuck on the level with the really long sticks, but that was because I couldn't figure it out, not because the game was wrong :D
Probably just my version of Java, but it was unplayable for me because it kept flashing all-white very frequently... I did get to play it a little, though :)
I really like the concept of using the flashlight to see the zombies while you shoot and hunt them. I played alone so I was VERY glad for the invincibility, but I could see this becoming a very fun game.
I got 999 points! I ended up with 99 bullets and I dumped at least 30 or 40 medicine into the house before I let the slimes kill me and end it. I like that you have to choose between using 3 medicine for yourself or giving 1 to your home, but I wish there was ore to the game. As it was, I basically ran around in circles until I had lots of stuff, went to the middle, killed the slimes, dumped all of the medicine (after I found the F key each time) and then repeated the process. Not bad at all for a compo game though!
OH! You can walk off the screen to the right! I was walking around in that first room for sooooooooo long before I realized that. I'm not sure if there's an end or not and it kinda looked like the last switch had multiple flowers to check off or something but the lever never did anything and when I walked off the bottom of the screen the game restarted. I tried dropping the flower there and playing through (third time through total) and the flower wasn't left on the floor there, it was back at the original place.
Love the concept of a robot taking care of a flower on a spaceship though :smile:
I really like this game!! I could totally see this as a tabletop game as well, and there was a LOT of tension as I was throwing cards down and hoping that I wouldn't end up getting knocked out. I lost a column around turn 8 or 9 and it was a real tug of war! Very well done, my fav LD entry thus far :smile:
I sure did @trifectuh, and if you end up doing more with this game lemme know, I'm definitely interested!
@trifectuh That would be AMAZING!
Really unique concept, pumping it with liquid and food and stuff. The buttons didn't always seem to make sense so sometimes I was just hammering on stuff, but the mystery may be an intriguing part of the game. The theme is perfect and you nailed the art style, plus the animations for unlocking new meters and the reset game screen were all superb. Well done!
Some extra explanation on how the game works would've been helpful. One of the times I played, it seemed like I was really kicking butt and making the bar bounce back and forth. Later, I could shoot the enemies infinitely (even at 3 damage each time) and not accomplish anything at all. My score that game was 0 even though I'd gotten to level 3. The concept is super cool and the balancing act can be spectacular.
Oh, and as mentioned elsewhere, the game was too tall for my screen. I could only see about 70% of it at a time.
I really liked the concept here, trying to keep the warlock alive to hold back a curse, and the twist (the ability to "break" enemies temporarily with their weaknesses) is super awesome. I'll admit I gave up when I lost 2 screens worth of progress to a "dual attack" from a Mage Hunter that dealt 400-ish damage and took out my warlock, which ended the game. But the game had a cool twist, was well executed, and you got a LOT done in a few days!!
Holy crap, those turtle-costume-wearing cats were an awesome touch. This is a highly polished little game that you made in a weekend, well done! I had a VERY hard time playing since I use a touchpad mouse that's built in to my laptop but that's not your fault at all, and I watched @molpe 's video to get a look at the later game. Really nice work here!
There's a LOT of content in this game, and your art and humor were fun. I was confused at first why nothing was happening when the number dropped to 0 but eventually realized that it must check if an enemy is nearby at that point. This was a bit weird at times as I was able to shoot through walls in some places and in other places I couldn't shoot at someone who was right beside me. I love the balance between protecting hostages vs shooting when running, but I dunno if the hostages can actually die since I was extra careful. All in all, though, well done!
This is SUCH a unique game! I had no idea what the heck I was doing for the longest time because I didn't see any instructions anywhere, but once I realized that clicking the bat does my power-down to it and that I could click on the bricks/blank spaces to add/upgrade bricks, it was cool.
It seemed like every time I clicked the bat (when the powerdown was available) it ended up being unable to hit the ball, but I might've just been timing it really well :smile:
This is a compo game?? Well done, you got 3 levels and a crazy concept done in that time! I dunno why I was lucky enough that the baby never died from all of the electrical outlets but I'm glad cuz that would've been an insane level! And hey, the cake ISN'T a lie!
This game is hilarious in concept! I honestly didn't have any problem with torches because I was able to go through and just hit all the switches while the first torch stayed lit for what seemed like forever. I play games with my audio muted but giving people the ability to play with the trumpet was awesome, and Trumpet-Chan was hysterical.
I played this through once without understanding what the poop was for, but then I went into the help file and figured it out. I think my main confusion was that the critters are called "eggs" but there are also eggs that they hatch from. Also, at one point like all of my green dudes died without warning... I know you get warned for hunger but it didn't seem like there were warnings for the other two things, so maybe they got bored and died.
Definitely a great effort for just a weekend, and it wouldn't be tough at all to really polish this up and make it something awesome!
@dannyk1994 I don't doubt the tutorial will help a lot, and I really think that out of most of the games I've played this LDJAM, this is one with the most potential. It'll be even more addictive to try to maximize happiness and juggle feeding the King while also using powerups and stuff once all of the rules are made clear :smile:
Whew, I didn't expect that one zombie type to throw stuff at me! I like that you allow the player to be at a little distance and still throw wood into the fire. Even with my crappy built-in laptop touchpad mouse I was able to play this one fairly well while still having difficulty avoiding zombies.
There was a fair amount of gap between enemy rounds, but I needed that to build my fire back up, so it was welcome.
Also, while there's a typo in that title, it's brilliant!
@flyingthunder Thanks for trying out the game! I doubt I'll get many plays and even fewer ratings/comments, so I really appreciate yours. I'd always heard that LDJam accepted tabletop games so I figured I'd enter this time :D It means a lot to hear that you had fun!
Thank you so much @AdonisDevs!!!!! I'm so glad you enjoyed it :smile: Did you play the print and play or the spreadsheet?
@adonisdevs Hurray!!!! I didn't figure anyone would print it and I think it's way better as a printed game than a spreadsheet!
Thanks @thristhart for the detailed feedback! I love the cooperative take on it, and I'm really glad that you enjoyed it as a group. That alone made this jam worth it :D That might be a new direction to take the game in the future!
And yep, that was the end goal (although I think I bloated it a bit with the scoring mechanics): to be as goofy and crazy as possible, having to explain and argue whether you could pull the things off with what you have.
@zenandanna well done and thanks for the details! Great use of sunglasses btw, you got some solid use out of some very ordinary items in your run :smile:
Edit: and using a tape measure as a rope? Brilliant! I thought that said roll of tape at first, but tape measure is even better!
@Dannyk1994 Thanks so much for saying so, I was worried with so few obstacles it wouldn't be very replayable and I especially appreciate that you tried the printed version as well!
@debbie-berlin LOL thank you for saying so about Excel! I never used a spreadsheet for more than random numbers before and figured Ludum Dare was a perfect excuse to try something new!
@minibobbo Thank you for the comment about excel as well! Like I said to Debbie I'd never tried using Excel for more than random numbers but it was a fun challenge and perfect excuse to try it. Really hope that your kids enjoy it with you too! Hopefully it isn't too difficult for them, or hopefully they can come up with some extra silly, funny stuff!
@synystercola Thanks for the double-feedback! Another comment about cooperative mode really makes me think it has to be a necessary part of the game, and once the voting is over I'll have to update the files to add it in there :smile:
@somg Thank you so much! I really appreciate that, and I hadn't even considered the debating skills even though my gal and I argued a fair bit about how different things might or might not work.
It took me a while to realize how to play but then learned that it was my own fault since the instructions were right under the web game lol. I tried about 12 times and I was fairly hooked but couldn't get past the part with the second level because I couldn't teleport myself up there. I'm not sure if it's just not possible to do it or I wasn't doing it right.
For what it's worth, I use a laptop with a built-in trackpad mouse, so it's trickier to play games that rely on quick and accurate mouse movement.
Also, sometimes when I went to move, the game screen would slide down quickly, which would cause me to only move partway.
Cool concept and definitely addictive!
Whew, I saved 230 people my first try... and then FAR less the next several lol. Finally ended up with 270-ish at the end but my poor guide died :( Even with that choice alone - 230 alive but nearly dying myself vs 270-ish but the guide died - it's tough! Some additional threads would help I'm sure but this is very nice for a 72-hour jam game!
@zenandanna WOW, there is?? I really just assumed that there had to be losses, it's cool that you coded in an ending where players can potentially save everyone! And it's great that the decisions can be longer lasting than just the next screen. You both did a great job, especially while not feeling well and doing it in one day! :smile:
It took me a bit to understand but once I did, I found a game that's really unique. I'm excited to see where you take this! Engine- and deck-builders are my fav games, and I love that this really started getting exciting around round 7 or 8. That was when I started reaching the limits of what a space could hold, so it became important to build in the right places vs just "throw everything I can afford on the next space that'll get triggered" like the rounds before.
Well done! And I really do mean it that I'm excited to see what happens in the future with this game :smile:
You know those ideas that you see and you're like "dang it, I'm jealous af why didn't I think of this?" and then you're like "this is better actually because I didn't have to make it myself but I got to play it!"? Yeah, this is definitely one of those. The mood and atmosphere deserved like a 30 out of 5, and the humor and theme were top-notch too! I really wished there was a button to skip to the next 10 seconds because sometimes I'd sit there waiting for like 1-2 dots I'd missed but otherwise this is phenomenal, and I'm amazed you made it so fast!
This was fun! I wish the "play again" button was in the same place as the back button cuz I almost exited when I wanted to play again, but that's super minor. And there was one animal I couldn't figure out the special power for (I wish I remembered which one) but once I realized the bar on the left was the special power timer, I really got into the groove! Plus it's soooooooooo cute!
This was cute :D I liked hunting for the gold, although I stressed myself far more than I should've with the whole "you can totally make this unwinnable if you're not careful" thing lol. I'd be curious what happens with this game with even more built upon it, but it's a cool experience as it is as well! :)
I saw this on Itch and I couldn't help but try it out. It's super adorable! And I was sooooooo nervous going into this game because I have issues with time stress AND memory, but I rather quickly picked up on creating the drinks (especially thanks to the handy menu) and it felt great to do that! A greatness I wouldn't have felt if it was just "click here to make this drink and here to make that one."
[LIGHT SPOILERS IN THIS PARAGRAPH] Plus, yeah, the whole "give the cat with a knife the money" or "the hysterical butt-forward monsters toilet paper" were especially hysterical.
Very well done, this was fantastic 🙌 I really hope y'all continue to expand on this one, and if you do...PLEASE let me know! I followed on Itch so hopefully I'll see any updates there :heart:
This was WAY more than I expected it to be, and it was awesome! You really created a whole world around the sport/art of tracking time, and I liked that it was mixed up some. I was sad that I had to beat each person separately, even when the competition was against multiple people (like beating two others at once didn't count for beating them both individually as well). Also for some reason my text glitched after a while? So I was trying to go back and discover the "secret" but the text was so garbled that I couldn't lol, whoops.Ten Second Games glitch.png
I was SO PROUD of how well I did a few times though; I'm normally awful at this and got a couple of really great times!!
Ten Second Games.png Ten Second Games 2.png
This is a fun concept, and I think some post-LD time (altho it doesn't sound like you're super interested lol) would go a long way for touching it up. There were two different games where I started it and before I could even tell what was going on, I was surrounded by three of the type that kill me and I was unable to do anything about it. Then every time I finally did catch something I could defeat, an opposing type was right on my trail so I'd die as I was defeating the other one. And at one point I was a pair of scissors for a loooooong time lol. But I really genuinely love the theme (and how you can make it more/less complex with classic RPS or RPSLS). ESPECIALLY in 8 hours, this is awesome!
Oh my goodness!!! LOL I love that this includes so many aspects of LD but ALSO includes sleep and relaxing and eating (even hydrating with water)! This was an absolutely delightful surprise of a game, and that's coming from someone who normally hates Warioware-esque stuff :rofl: Well done!!!
I didn't end up with a great score, and what a surprise I'm still terrible at art :rofl: but that was amazing!
Okay yeah this can't possibly receive anything less than perfect for mood (I don't wanna die and I hope they change the penalty for me messing up to something smaller by the time next Thursday rolls around!) or humor or theme. And it's so unique! I mean, I've always said I was a speed-reader, and this ABSOLUTELY put that to the test.
I saw you said you hope to perform better next LD on Itch, but I mean... you already did so darn well!
It blows my mind that you made this in 2 days omg. And you even managed to include a really cool lesson in the game?!?! Well freaking done. This is my favorite game of LD so far at least :D I saw it on Itch and couldn't resist it! You've absolutely got a new fan now for sure 🙌🥳 All the 5-star ratings are belong to youuuuuuuu! Now excuse me, I'm gonna go talk to some gates :)
This was fun for a bit but I agree with other comments that I wish it was trickier about not shooting the debug. After I realized I shouldn't shoot that, it was super easy to avoid shooting it in the future until I purposely shot it to end the game (the screen where a bunch of debugs came up at once made that quicker thankfully lol).
With that said, though, the concept is super fun and this was great in such a short amount of time. Plus yeah, I remember how awful it was squishing coding bugs :rofl: so I wish it was always done like this irl!
Beyond the time constraints of Ludum Dare, I can see you doing quite a bit to expand on this :smile:
I really expected to lose the game when I purposely didn't push the button for like 50 seconds straight, then pressed it with about 8 seconds left the next loop, but liked that instead there are just MANY more people lost. It made it feel more like my button presses meant something. There were quite a few typos, though, and I noticed I was getting the same prompts back a few times. Some of them were really funny though, like losing people to FF XIV 🤣 And you captured the mood quite well!
I definitely agree with others that this was practically a break from the high-stress games others (including myself tbh lol) created, which was awesome! And you really got this together well :smile: I do also agree that the game seems quite random and like a war of attrition against the enemy, really, as it seemed like I slowly just overwhelmed them with units. I'm not sure if this was just the way mine worked out or how it's balanced, but when balance is the only thing I have to say that's less than stellar, that's a fantastic place to be after a weekend! 🥳
I really like the foundation of this game (and I love deckbuilding games!) but agree that it was difficult to follow and I just kinda clicked stuff and hoped I'd do well.
With that said, these are things you already know so I don't have anything new to add there lol, but I genuinely did like the concept and the art is cute and I would love to play more of this as it gets updated!
Good grief, that was brilliant! I'll admit I couldn't quite finish it myself, but I found a speedrun(!!) of it that showed me the rest.
Brilliant use of QR codes, of learning how to play and to complete the game, and with such a magnificent use of the "every 10 seconds" theme. Plus I loved that you could just blink anytime to also just reset the timer, as a lot of the games I've played thus far don't allow you to choose to reset whenever you want.
I'm definitely a big fan :smiley:
I would've liked a timer for when the teleportation would happen, but not having it added a little tension (am I gonna teleport in time? idk!!) and meant I focused more on the game.
I also accidentally happened upon what @yaroslav-gozak found (where you can teleport outside of the room) and it made the game infinitely easier, so that'd really be my only recommendation: to ensure that can't happen :D
I also loved the music in this, and the SFX were fun. Well done!
This game is so cute, and I love the concept of it: a kitty drinking so many mana potions that they have to continually cast magic spells. And I love the mechanic of balancing both destruction (which kills enemies ALL OVER via fire!!) vs creation (creating new trees TO BURN) vs protection (the ice seemed to maybe create separation areas so the fire wouldn't necessarily burn EVERYTHING). I'd love to see this expanded upon and play around in that world more!
I liked this quite a bit, but I've never been good at or a fan of games where you had to die a bunch to figure out what to do... With that said, I honestly think that a few tutorial levels or something (I never quite figured out what to do with the crates) would make this something really awesome. I totally get why there aren't any, this is LD and it's amazing enough to get a game done at all (trial and error is the tutorial lol). I guess I'm just trying to say that I'd love to see this continue to be worked on :smile:
Also, I managed to beat the first level using just wall jumping and jumping through the crumbling ledges and it felt kinda epic tbh lol
Edit: while I get that it would go against the theme, some kind of button to skip to the next gravity shift would be nice :grin:
This seems like it'd be the perfect game to use different challenges per run, like "kill [x] frozen enemies" or "forget [x] spells in one run" or "get [x] kills with the sonic spell" etc because I found a rather good rhythm with a small fireball, a big one, two frost bolts and an earthquake to kill everything I froze and then never changed it lol
I do appreciate you adding the "move your mouse over a spell to see what it does", and I can really see further development going a long way for making this more and more playable :smile:
OMG this game is SO CUTE and it's fun but kicks my butt lol and it's so polished and with so much variability and it's just mind-blowing that this was done in 72 hours, good grief! VERY well done everyone! This is one of my fav entries 🙌
Yay, I did it! The laser room seemed like a lot of guessing, and I wasn't sure what I was doing wrong with the code entry part but eventually it worked so yay :D I really like the concept of this, and all of the additions you had (like the voicing, the cute art, etc) were wonderful. I have no doubt that with another week or so you'd have this polished up nicely :D
@mandytoh LOL yeah that was actually one of my biggest learning experiences on this game: trying to make rules more concise, yet accessible for people who likely don't play many tabletop games (or certainly don't expect to see one here). I was super proud of myself for fitting it on a single page, but I'm sure I could've squeezed it down more 🤣
OMG thank you @mickxe, that's one heck of a compliment, and I'm saving that in my list of awesome stuff people have said 🥳
@ditam LOL you know, I never even considered it Snakes and Ladders-esque until you and a friend of mine mentioned it... And now I love it! It's also a super easy way to explain the game "yeah it's Snakes and Ladders but better (hopefully)" :rofl:
I absolutely plan to take the overly abstract board and make it thematic as well, I just ran out of time, 10 seconds at a time I guess :D In fact, this game didn't even have a theme until Angel came up with it the morning Ludum Dare was ending, and I hadn't even started on the rules page at that point and just whew!
Oh my goodness @flauschzelle thank you soooooooo much for your in depth comment!! That means sooooo much to me as I really plan to expand on this and make it a more full experience :) I'll reply to each point here, but also I'm taking notes so I can address them in a future iteration of the game
1. Good question lol. We just picked, but if I just put a meeple icon or something on one of them (or only highlight one that color for now) that should make it clear without the added choice going into the game (I hate when I have to make choices before I even know what the game is like lol so I hate making others do it too) 2. OMG I meant upper-left! Thank you for that catch, and way to choose the "right" square to start on. 3. At the end of each player's turn. So if one player moves the meeple/token on the morale track onto the green "time progressing" space, they move the time one space ahead. Then if the next player doesn't move the morale tracker meeple/token at all, it'll move the time forward again. In theory, this will encourage players to go ahead and "waste" a die (even if they can use all of them) for the betterment of all of the players, but if one player is way ahead they may purposely leave it there... And, well, we only tested this version a couple of times (and the current time track once) so it remains to be seen if it works out that way lol 4. That's exactly correct: treacherous spaces count as one space, and you can exit with either a 1 or a 2 by moving to the corresponding space 5. Also correct: the meeple should move back to the green space instead of a pink space. I didn't even consider this, thank you :D I'm hoping in a "final version" there will just be some kind of "recovery space" icon that'll clear that up 6. (and also 7) Nope: they fall all the way back to the most recent pink space on that row, even if it's through an impassable space. In my brain this was like if you were to slide down a mountain or back across water that you couldn't possibly have gotten up/through, but can absolutely slide back down or gotten carried back by a strong current...but when they just look like squares and Xs, that doesn't come across, and that's absolutely my fault :rofl: 8. (actually 8) Correct: you would fall back to the pink space in track 2 even if you were on track 1 when you fell back. I've been told repeatedly to avoid edge cases and then here I go creating so many of them :rofl:
Again, thank you so, so, so much for this! I got a lot of value out of your questions, and Ludum Dare is actually the closest I've come to "blind playtesting" one of my games! I'd heart your comment 500 times if I could 🧡
Oh, and I forgot to mention that seeing the photo is SOOOOOO COOL!!! That's the closest I've come to feeling like a ***real*** tabletop creator :D
Thank you so much @aj-studio, that means so much to me :D
@akai-syuuichi Thank you! I'm normally terrible with rules, so the idea of writing them in a matter of hours, fitting them on a single page (which I never do because I just go on and on and on and on...), and then not having the time to edit them myself was terrifying :rofl: So it means a LOT to hear that
@panfil-alexandrina Thank you! Yeah, the art 100000% needs work, and a lot of it. I appreciate you being honest about that :D And thank you as well for the kind words, unique is my middle name lol
@flauschzelle The fact that there were points that weren't clear isn't a surprise (especially since I had to slap the rules together so fast lol) but knowing where the issues were is more valuable than I can express :D
I will DEFINITELY let you know when it's done :) I have it slated for next month (I have another game to finish this month for my Patreon, we promise one game per month and it's the 20th and I haven't started mine lol; then next month I've got a TTRPG I'm making for a jam and a TTRPG course I'm making) and hopefully that actually happens :D
Yeah, the "when to move the time tracker" is one of those things that, in the game's current state, is hard to explain in a clear way. I mean, even now I'm like "wait, how DID we do that when we playtested?" I'm like 99% sure we played it where, if the morale meeple enters that space it moves the time track, and then one more at the end of each player's turn (NOT including the player who moved it there) if it's still there. So, say, in a three-player game, if player 2 moves the morale meeple onto the green space, the time track immediately moves one space. If they don't move it again, the time track doesn't move again yet even though the turn ended there...but if the third player doesn't move it either, then time passes once more. The next round, if the first player doesn't move it AGAIN, then the time tracker moves again too, etc.
In other words, in most cases the time tracker should only move once (maybe twice at most) each time the morale meeple reaches a green square. But with that said, I need to make it much easier to remember that and for it to be easy to follow in the future. If even I'm having trouble writing it out, I definitely can't expect anyone else to learn/explain/follow it :rofl:
In fact, I think I like your rule there even more, and I'll definitely have to test it: that you merely ignore the green space entirely if the morale meeple passes it. It makes sense, since the same thing happens with the other spaces. Then it'd just be unified and without any special circumstances to remember :)
And yes! Examples sound great! I love seeing them in rulebooks too, and I definitely think it'd be worth it to make the rules two pages but have examples and illustrations included.
Awwwww thank you so much @unidaystudio!!! I love bringing visibility and attention to lesser-seen stuff 🥳 And it'd be awesome if you do it too, definitely let me know if you do :)
Tips would really just be to aim for as few required items as possible. I ended up with way more than I wanted to use here lol, I was hoping for a couple of dice at most or something and ended up with a slew of meeples and dice, whoops 🤣 But between the time constraints and just running with something that was fun, it worked out. AND it's still way fewer than the first prototype had. If you want more details, I blogged about it actually. It's on Patreon but our blog posts don't require someone to be a patron, just the access to our games does (and early access to posts once in a while)
- The first 24 hours --> https://www.patreon.com/posts/ludum-dare-51-24-72752334 - Postmortem --> https://www.patreon.com/posts/game-files-ld51-72875466
And thank you so much for the comments :D You're exactly right: find a fun core mechanic and just build on it, chisel away what detracts from that fun and add things that utilize it even more :) Plus you skip the whole bug-hunting aspect of video game dev and if you wanna try something else, you literally just add a component or remove it lol. Shuffling is annoying though, video games definitely have tabletop games beat for that 🤣 And for the ability for others to play them! OMG I miss just embedding a flash file and calling it a day, and having people get video clips and stuff...
Whew, I did very poorly with this game lol. I kept messing up with talking to people so I never got the code, and after a while I'd get a "hurry to the medallion!" screen where my screen would go fully dark but the game wouldn't end so I had to shut down and restart. But I watched a video of Super Space Squid finishing it on Itch (in the comments) and I'm glad I got to see the rest :D Cool concept, quite funny, and well done especially in 48 hours!
I'm pretty proud I managed to make it to 0.233 early (and it required me to do my normal "1-mississippi, 2-mississippi" up to 8 instead of 10 lol). I really liked the way the game played with time, making a counter go too fast or slow, the metronome fast or slow... It all worked well! Plus it's a cool concept in general :smile:
YAY!! I am winner!! This was a lot of fun, and best of all, I can really see you doing a lot more with it too! There was good humor, the voice acting was fun, there were numerous types of baddies, and the weapons were a joy to use. It's rather on the easy side (I'm normally AWFUL at these types of games and still had like 70% of my health left I think when I beat it?) but I appreciated that since it meant I could finish it and it wasn't stressful :smile:
I was sooooooooo bad at this lol, and I'm with @terracottafrog there: even if there was a different difficulty setting that literally only slowed the enemies and bullets down a bit, it would've been super beneficial for me. Or as they and others recommended making the game ramp up in difficulty (or both: allowing people who are better at it to just start at a faster speed so they don't have to deal with the slow beginning for the rest of us lol).
But with that said, well done :D
I didn't quite understand why there were only 10 seconds for each message, and since I could just re-click each one again after that it removed the time stress, but that's good because even with all the time in the world I failed this so bad lol. I thought hubby was having a secret affair with his best friend Ryan from childhood oops 🤣
I DEFINITELY appreciate that you explained it at the end. These are some of my favorite types of games when done right, even though I'm often terrible at them, and this one was done very well :smile: Just enough info to continue but required me to figure it all out myself
This is super cute and I love how polished it is (sorry to use the same word everyone else is lol, it's just super fitting). I may or may not have died several times from not being used to using a keyboard to move quickly (I'm a console gamer :sweat_smile:) but I really liked this and could easily see it being on a handheld or something :D
9 saved, 7 devoured (and then an 8th devoured: me lol). This was interesting, and ***REALLY*** atmospheric. I was slightly anxious at first with the setting and then as it got darker in areas it got me even more... until I saw the devourer and was like OH NOOOOOO!!!!!!
Good job with this game! :D
Good grief, this is a compo entry?!?! You got it working really well! I made sure to play the 48-hour version and it was great! I was a little confused at first cuz for some reason I assumed I was the right-side so I wondered why my units were randomly getting summoned til I paid better attention 🤣 It's a great foundation!
I also played (and didn't rate this based on it I swear!) the post-jam version and WOW you added a lot since then! It was also waaaaayyyyyy harder lol, but it seemed like if I played a few more times I'd get a more firm grasp on the new additions and be able to rock it :D Well done!
Anytime, thanks for making it! I just noticed that the boxes could be checked and unchecked before playing (it's hard to see on my laptop cuz the color on the monitor is slightly off on the monitor itself) and yeah, I turned the bottom two on and that helped a lot! I also realized just how powerful empowered vampires can be, omg that was EPIC
Whew, yeah, this is a very tough game but it's gorgeous, an awesome idea, and super unique. I wish it was quicker to restart, but that's a super minor gripe, and the game is epic as heck! Very well done :D
This was freaking incredible! I came across it while playing a different Ludum Dare game on itch and couldn't help but click through. I'm dreadful with a keyboard and mouse, but the game is so freaking cute and I'm hoping I can try it with a game controller sometime!
I'm hyped to see what you make in the future!
I'm so glad you came by my stream to let me know about this, because if I would've missed it I would've been sad :(
BTW I really do plan to harvest this thing in 75 days, see?!
GaC.png
This was really fantastic! I had a lot of fun playing through it, and I'm definitely looking forward to seeing what the other endings might be. I loved that there were hints of what was going on with each of the people and yet it wasn't fully obvious what the right decision was (if there even IS such a thing as a right decision).
VERY well done! Even the toddler couldn't hold you back 🤣
This was lovely! I'm so blown away by how much gameplay is in this game! I ALMOST finished it (was up to like 130 lavender with two maxed shelters of animals) when I tested what happened if you fully enclosed your area and the game just like 100% froze on me.
I really loved my time with the game, though, and it was super chill to stream :D
Definitely an effective and short little story, and certainly fitting of the theme! Also: harvest/fall is my favorite season too :D I enjoyed that, thanks for making it!
Aaaaawwwwwww this was so lovely!!!! I wanted to play this the other day but for some reason the file kept erroring... today it worked though! This is such a sweet little story and a clever puzzle game. The art is fantastic too, but I loved how clever the game made me feel, and the story was an amazing, surprise bonus!
I knew whatever you released this time around would be great after Alarm Clock Arcade, and I was right 😊🥳
Oh wow, this was so freaking unique!!!! It hurt my wrist because I had to stretch my thumb back so far sometimes, but that was 100% my fault for using a laptop *on my lap* lol. This was super fun and I loved playing it, plus it was so fun to show it off!
This was hysterical 🤣🤣🤣🤣 I literally laughed several times as I was playing this.
I'm very fortunate to be a quick typer (and not have to look at the keys when I type), but I wish the game had health or something so it wasn't auto-fail. I still looked down at the keys a lot to make sure I didn't mess up, and eventually still did (typing a set of letters out of order).
With that said, the fact that this is a compo game is AMAZING! Well done 👏
I definitely couldn't get the items picked up and then died because my weapon was too weak (and honestly when I would run over to get the items, because there's no moment of invincibility after getting hit, I would sometimes die merely from running through the center (let alone trying to press additional buttons to grab stuff).
But with that said, the game is cute and it's a good concept! I'm REALLY interested in seeing what else comes of this game in the future if you (hopefully!) continue working on it, as it seems like something I'd really get into. And with this being a compo game you did an awesome job with it!
This was freaking amazing. I appreciated you coming by my stream to tell me about the game (and also that I should make sure I get to the end, which was 100000000000000000000% worth it, trust me!). This was wonderful and I highly recommend everyone checks it out!
Seriously tho, that ending 😮😮😮😮😮😮
Thank you for making it! And for coming by my stream to share it, it was a delightful find! And I'm so, so glad that others are discovering this game and enjoying it as much as it deserves 🥳
It took me a while to understand what I was doing (because I didn't read the bugs listing for how to get the bombs to go lol, and missed the whole "press E to absorb new ability" so I couldn't even figure out how to move the first time, whoops, but then I got it!). Also I died at one point and was disappointed that the whole game reset, but it's totally fair given that this whole thing was made in 72 hours!!! 😮 That's a heck of an accomplishment, and I really hope to see more from you, whether that's progress on this game, releasing more stuff, or both :D
This reminded me of a super unique twist on Missile Command, with a way cooler theme and some deckbuilding elements, which was super cool! I wished I understood what was going on a little better, but I had fun with it, and seriously that theme is really epic!
Thank you so much @october10! The last board game I made was like 99% game and 1% theme (the theme was there, but I didn't have time to get it onto the board itself) so I really aimed to achieve more theme this time. And it means a lot that you found it struck that balance well! Thanks for checking the game out :D
@pinchazumos It does indeed work with multiple colors :D In fact, until I remembered that I had a game with 100 dice in it, I did exactly that. One of the rows was two different colors, and the other was one color. It made remembering which was which a little harder, but I just used one thing of each color beside that row as a reminder :)
Thanks so much for the wonderful comments, and yeah lol, I realized too late that I went too far with the themed names for things. I literally had to look up the terms I used myself each time I used them 🤣🤣🤣 But it's also good to know that my concern about overusing them was justified with your feedback as well :D
Aaawwwww thanks @dob!! Y'all are making me feel super welcome as a tabletop creator :D I started as a video game designer making little flash games and, a bit before Flash died, I quit it. It was a long time before I gave tabletop games a shot, and it's been such an eye-opening experience!
I appreciate your feedback so much, and yeah lol the themed names definitely went too far here. If this were a packaged game it would've been so much easier to just refer to the colors of dice or something, but... Oh hey that actually gives me an idea! If each set of dice was a different shape (d8 vs d6, for example) then one wouldn't even have to worry about the colors on the dice...
So yeah! Thanks very much to you and to @pinchazumos for pointing out the terminology issues as it led to this idea for another iteration post-jam 🥳🥳🥳
This was a neat idea, and awesome you pulled it off in 2 days! I really like the concept but the tension from the real-time play made me fail really hard the first time lol and then I got lucky and figured out how to do it the second time. But I'm just bad with real-time stress 🤣
This was super cute, and I freaking loved the THWACK sound of the flyswatter as it, erm... scared the rats away without hurting them of course 😊 Congrats on the game, it was so well polished!
I love clicker/idle games and this one definitely had me hooked with the curiosity/expansion/"numbers go up" aspects, but I really wished that things increased more quickly. For example, I had 5 plants and they were outpacing the truck, so I bought the truck upgrade and suddenly I was making 7 or 8 money instead of 10 with each trip of the truck for some reason, even though there were still always more plants to bring back and sell than the truck could carry. So then it took even longer to get to the next truck upgrade, etc.
But with that said, this game does make me wanna download it on my phone and play it while watching TV or something :D Well done!
This was an amazing, terrific adventure, and it blows my mind that you made it in 48 hours. It's a full-fledged adventure with some sweet, adorable writing and some cool light-Metroidvania-ness going on! I especially loved gliding around, and it was great how tight the controls were even on my laptop keyboard!
I gladly 100%-ed this one and look forward to checking out other things you've made, as well as future LD entries from you :D
Whew, this gets tough! I love the concept and execution though, especially in 48 hours! It's cool being able to make so much with just those four shapes, and it's so much more intuitive to move yourself to rotate the shapes than to move the mouse or something.
I got a bit confused at one point when I picked up a shape and was trying to place it but it was already rotated or something so it didn't go the way the top piece was lined up, but I just set it aside. And I wish that your hands would get emptied after a round, as I sometimes had to empty them after the round began and lost a few seconds because of it. But neither of those is any kind of major a all, it was fun! I got to the fourth day before one of the shapes blew my mind and I didn't quite finish it 🤣
LIZZIE made a potion that turns people into RAINBOW slimes and that didn't CONFORM. OMG that's the first thing I did and I love this so much. Lizzie is one of my nicknames and I'm trans and love rainbows so that's freaking glorious 🧡
This was a much bigger game than I expected. I really figured I'd be giving those five things out, and that the challenge was to remember who to give them to since the name doesn't show at that point, but nope! Way more to it than that! I loved how much interaction there was between the people; it feels like many of the delivery games I've played during this LD have nailed it on delivering things but not been great on feeling like a community of people, and this one did that really well :D Plus the art was super cute and so were the characters! And I can't remember which one it was now but they kept referring to one of the characters as "they", so unless I'm wrong... hurray for nonbinary representation!!! 🧡🧡🧡
Once I realized there was no limit on how far you could yet yourself, I couldn't stop cracking up! I really wanna see a video of someone completing level 1 in one shot. Level 2 on the other hand... omg I think I got close to the end but idk. I love that a roof was added so it couldn't just be a yeet-stravaganza again (and that it was left as an option for the first one!), and the way that it meant the box would roll and tumble as it hit it (or even as I shot low but far so it would have loads of forward momentum as it hit the ground) was just as hilarious and fun. Great job!
The art, animations, and style of this game are so cute and terrific! And once I got a grip on what the map was like the route went way better (which is 100% accurate for when I was a delivery person myself; learning my surroundings helped sooooooooo much!).
And seriously, this is soooooooooooo cute!!! 🧡
I love these kinds of games! This one had a lot more thinking than a lot of em do (I usually play idle games where loss is impossible, and the puzzliness of figuring out where to put the depots was a cool addition!). I didn't make it all that far, but I did unlock all of the areas which was cool :D And it was super fun watching all my vehicles run all over!
OMG I have no idea how people are getting such high scores 😭 I literally do customer service for a living and have for like 20 years, so this was a delightful experience (no sarcasm, I really mean it). I really enjoyed being able to turn around the bad moods of these cute animals (I'd be upset about stale garlic bread too tbh) and then I played it one last time so I could be super rude back since I can never ever do that irl, but it made me sad inside being mean to them. I'm so glad I validated that in a video game though instead of irl (and losing my irl job in the process).
Oh wow, this is such a clever idea, and my favorite twist on the theme! And that ending, omg 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 That was 100% worth it. It was fun being able to "chat" with mythological gods, and I ended up getting Zeus to give me the answer after like 3 prompts (I literally just asked), which was even more amazing and epic than having to overcome tricking him or something honestly 👏
The art in this game is SOOOOOOOOOO freaking cute!!!!! Goodness, watching the delivery people bob around picking stuff up and come back is so lovely 🧡 Plus it all looks like papercraft on a piece of paper, that's brilliant! This is definitely one of my favorite LD53 games so far :D Plus it was a lot of fun once I figured out what I was doing lol
Oh my goodness, this was absolutely hysterica, and it was a lot of fun (and tense af!). I'm soooooooo glad I'm a quick typer cuz otherwise I never would've stood a chance, and the fact that I've actually texted and driven far too many times probably helped too 🤣 But shhhhhhhhhh 100% would not recommend. Seriously though, this was incredible! I had to play without audio so I'm sad I missed out on the voice acting, but seriously this was a huge surprise of a game and had terrific dialogue, gameplay, and art, and it was done for Ludum Dare?!?! Howwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww?!?!?!
PS: I love the baby delivery comment lol, way to get that into the game in addition to being a game about making deliveries 🤣
Wow, the ??? ability is so clever! I love what a twist that adds to the game, although I'll admit I got stuck later in the game on a screen because I just couldn't make the ground do what I wanted it to do 🤣 It was still a fantastic, really unique experience! And I'm excited to see how it ends, I'm super curious where the game is going 👏
Wow, this was an epic entry, especially for a compo entry! I totally expected the game to end after the first set of levels and was all set to say how easy it was, and then... there was so much more! And there were a lot of cool additions throughout that led to lots of cool thinking/planning/feeling super smart 🧠
Well done!
This was cute, and as someone who used to make deliveries (and actually rolled a box truck down a hill... I was fine, the truck wasn't), this was very fitting! I did learn, though, that using the arrow keys to move without touching WASD means the timer never starts. I was just fiddling with them to try to make the camera angled up better and it made the vehicle move and I noticed that. But it was still nice having the stress of not losing anything out of my vehicle!
I liked this one, well done :D
OMGGGGGGGGGGGG this is such an adorable game and I aspire to be as cute as rollergirl! I'm already as clumsy as she is 🤣 Literally when I first heard about places where people on rollerskates brought food out, I knew this is what would happen if I worked there (and I got 1 star on most levels, soooooo...).
I also loved that there was no potential failure, so I could still explore all of the levels, even with my minimal number of stars 🤣 Y'all did amazingly well with this!
@terryg If you click that link it'll take you to the Screentop.gg page for it. If you click the Play button there
Sidequests Only.png
It'll open up a page with the game loaded up :D Sorry for the confusion! I know it's extra steps beyond what most games require, and then having to read all the rules and stuff on top of that lol, but I appreciate you trying 🧡
Edit: this is what the page looks like with the game loaded up:
Sidequests Only 2.png
Thanks for checking it out @garlic, and taking the time to read the rules :D And I definitely appreciate the honesty too about not rating based on estimated enjoyment lol. And hurray for tabletop games, yes! I used to do LD like 10 years ago with Flash games and then swapped over to tabletop games and decided to do LD anyway cuz I love LD so freaking much 🧡
@francis the rules are in the "guides" in the top-right corner. I would have loved to have made a video but didn't even have time to fully edit my rules, whoops... Gotta love the time constraint, amirite? Although I swear if not for tight time limits, I would never accomplish anything 🤣
You're very right, though, that something like that would've been very handy. Especially compared to the other games included in Ludum Dare, that are so much more intuitive and easier to pickup and play.
With all of that said, I appreciate you commenting and I'll definitely keep that in mind for next time. I'm sure if I make a video to explain how to use Screentop and include that as supplementary, it wouldn't technically be a part of the game and therefore should be fine for not breaking LD rules. I'll aim to do that for next time :D Thanks for the idea! 🧡
@francis OH YEAH it's a ? I forgot about that lol, I didn't go and verify that when I saw your comment... My partner has been playing the new Zelda and I've been watching her play it while playing/rating LD games 🤣
I didn't even consider adding that info here, good idea! I know it'll be super late but I can get that done on Monday so people can see it. Most of the time when people playtest tabletop games together, it's via voice, so someone explains how to use Screentop (or whatever digital implementation is being used) plus the game. So this has been a learning experience for me 🤣 And I really appreciate you taking the time to figure that out and suggest making a tutorial here on the page, because yeah, there are two things that are super easy to miss but 100% vital: that "?" and the button in the top-left that allows you to join a game.
I was thinking this was a lil too easy but as the game went on it got worse and worse and then I barely ran out of time... Which means this was really well balanced! I loved how tense it was and how it really felt like every choice mattered. You did a great job with the art and the text, it set the scene so well!
I loved seeing the aurora borealis, and then whatever that red sky was! And I'm still so curious about what some of the events were, but my people sure didn't enjoy seeing them as there was so much awfulness out there that they kept freaking out 🤣
All of that to say that I loved this, and it's one of my fav LD53 entries! Well done! 🧡
This was so cute 🎁🧡 I was confused why the bunny I delivered a gift to often kicked it away, even though the color matched, but it WAS really cute seeing them boot the gifts away 🤣 Plus the music is super fitting and I liked that there were two game modes! I would've loved a lil ring around the bunnies to show where to drop the gifts as I very frequently missed giving the gift to them, but these are all things that can be addressed with a post-jam edition. Well done!
Plus, seriously, it's so so so dang cute!
This is really well done! I actually played twice in the hopes that I could get a different ending and, while I didn't, I did appreciate the slight differences. Without spoiling anything, I also really liked the change in the minigame toward the end, that felt really impactful! I also, in hindsight, love that I couldn't get (or at least couldn't figure out) a second ending as trying to make a king do something they don't wanna do is essentially impossible (and the point anyway tbh lol). Well done!
Oh and I forgot to mention that I LOVE how well that art style works, and the animations on the king. And the concept of learning how to speak with him in a way that'll actually matter is so epic!
I liked the idea of this, and I dunno if it was just bad luck or what, but basically all the cards I could purchase until the second-to-last round were either "cry and reduce cost by 2" or "draw more cards". I needed to deliver a bunch of tears, and when the trades came up post-delivery, almost none of them were for tears.
With that said, I could totally see this being awesome with some more time balancing and such :D I totally get that you had limited time, especially in the compo! And I looooooooove trading in games, so heck yeah!
This is a really cool, clever game, and the use of "limited space" as "limited safe space" (especially in the area where the trees thin out) is done super well. I'm not a fan of horror games, but I do love tension, and this game walks the line between both of those perfectly! Well done!
This is cute and hilarious. I ended up losing the first time because I messed up the controls (I thought when you chipmunked food you either ate it OR spit it out), and then a second time because the cookies fell on the floor and I couldn't reach them. Each time though (including the third time when I understood it better) the score stopped going up and my stomach wouldn't show as getting any fuller. I could still spit, though, which is always hilarious. And the way the arms move is so dang adorable, as is the game concept as a whole.
WHOA, this is easily one of the most unique games ever! I wasn't great at it lol but I enjoyed every moment, and the tension that the shrinking window brought with it was lovely. Plus adding the other pop-ups and such was brilliant. This is so polished, which is wild for such a unique idea in such a short time frame.
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Whoooooooooo I did it!!! This was super cute, and I was surprised at how quickly I got used to controlling both characters. I would love to try to speedrun this, quickly handling both characters at once rather than going back and forth between them.
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I remember Quick to Judge and I had to check this one out too! It's hilarious devouring adventurers, and how the tables turn from a horde of them chasing you and barely getting around to having SO MUCH SPACE and practically letting them fall into your trap of merely existing 🤣 Well done, even while sick!
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Oh my goodness lol I'm so bad at this... 😅 But it's a lot of fun, super cute, and a great way to capture the ridiculousness of capitalism and trying to afford school! 🤣 The art is great, the music is cute, the stress level is good (even for someone like me who gets SO FREAKING STRESSED OMG), and I love the mix of "standard" and puzzle modes... Even if I demolish nearly every single car in puzzle mode and still take 5 mins to do it.
This is a fun concept, and I think it can become a fun game with additional work. As it is, I would either kill the enemies too quickly and not be able to grow/harvest before the next round and run out of ammo or I'd take lots of damage and never get a chance to heal it up. It's awesome you got it made in time, though, well done!
I'm in camp "not sure how I was scoring points" but it seems like you get them based on how many vehicles you have on the dock? I lost twice because I was more interested in slamming the jiggly cars 🤣 And whoops, half the time I'd ramp off a car and into the water myself...
This was super clever and I really enjoyed it! I'm always delighted when I come across a game using the smart filter that I really like, and this definitely fit that :D
Also omg @adhesion that's brilliant to block the others with the bus! I need to try that now lol
That map layout is epic and especially awesome considering the theme of this game. I read the instructions and controls and still forgot that I could press M to check the map 🤣
This is a really clever take on ghosts in the woods, and you got a lot of scene/setting out of simply choosing one of three directions to go each turn. Plus the whole "fading to black" as nightfall closes in was super smart too!
OMG I was so close to the end and died and then had to restart 😭 This was really unique, clever, and interesting though. I love the world you built in a few sentences and the act of building and hiding (but rarely destroying) things with the thread.
Whew, this is quite a long game with a full reset; I got to about 7 keys but never found a way to heal so each of the enemies hitting me a couple of times eventually took me out. I did find two of the three secrets, and hi to you too! 🙋♀️ I liked the way the scanner made me feel like playing safe, but the timer made it so that I still pushed myself out of my comfort zone.
Whew, this gets harder as it goes for sure 😅 It's a clever idea for a game where your spacebar uses whatever ability is next (in order of picking them up), and if I were better at games I would likely have a much better time with it 🤣 But as it is, it's super unique, clever, and interesting for sure!
This is the longest I've spent playing a Ludum Dare game this time around so far, and it's amazing how much you did here! Not only is it a gardening game, it's also a puzzle game and has some cool other stuff going on with the meritocracy, other people, and even just generally gardening on top of a building 🤣
I also enjoyed that messing up once (I was short on flowers, whoops!) didn't immediately end the game.
This was really cool balancing everything! And I loved gardening as a puzzle game.
@meru You can play it digitally on Screentop --> https://screentop.gg/@BethMakesGames/InSpace
@fizzbark OMG that was some amazing luck getting through the first half so well, I guess it had to turn around and get some revenge on you after that 🤣 And thanks so much for the kind words and all, it means so much to me!
YES!!!! A reminder card of how to play the game is on the top of my post-jam to-do list, but I hadn't even considered recapping the theme as well, I like that! Thanks :D
Oh wow, thank you so much for sticking with it and not only playing through once but twice, @sgtweirdo! I know that tabletop games without an actual video game implementation are a lot harder to get into and play (especially when the rules are written at the last minute like this 😅), and for you to take that much time to grasp and play it is super appreciated!
Congrats on beating it and thanks so much for the kind words :D
@oadt Thank you so much for the detailed feedback here! I was in a huge rush with the rules and I know they suffered for it, and having specific points of improvement and struggle is invaluable!
I also love the idea of gaining an extra die after the first half to allow for a more difficult second half of the game. It would also make sense for that "repair and flip" space to be like a planet or something where you can repair, get an additional energy die (maybe by way of saving people from the planet as you race past, but also some of them are capable of helping, so you get additional energy from them), and then race toward safety. That adds some cool theme vs just "Oh hey here's this random point in space where everything is okay in the middle of all the chaos!" 🤣
As for when to shuffle the threats, it's intended that you reshuffle them at the repair & flip spot. There are exactly enough cards to get you through each half without shuffling :D
And OMG the rule page flipping!!! For the longest time I actually had it in upside-down, and only after someone pointed out that the rules made little sense did I realize I messed that up 🤣🤣🤣
And thanks for the kind words, too! Having a fun core mechanic means that everything else can be polished up and improved 🥳
@themaydayman Thank you so much, that's a really awesome comment!!! If you happen to get it on Itch (just grab it for free there) you'll get an email when I update and improve it if you want to wait for it to be better before printing and playing. I kept the deck small though so it shouldn't be too much hassle if you have to update them :D
Thanks for saying so @dan-str! And @anper thank you too :D LOL I keep going into Ludum Dare like "Okay THIS time I'm gonna make something simpler so it doesn't have a big ol rulebook and people can quickly get into it" and then I don't 🤣
This was great and absolutely hysterical. I also appreciated that death wasn't a full reset, you just have to pay some coins to come back. The overall concept is brilliant (getting the starting area "for free" and then buying the rest via DLC), and you did a fantastic job within the 48-hour period. Plus you freaking NAILED the theme!
============== SPOILER ==============
Plus, I did NOT expect that boss to be so epic! It wrecked me so hard lol, and then that second stage of it looked freaky as heck in the best of ways. Unfortunately, I got stuck in a death-lock where every time I'd revive it would kill me before I could move away, so I didn't quite finish it, but I had a good time with it!
Whew, this was intense! At first I thought I lost instantly when the red light hit me and that it was just an animation of the screen going red before I lost, but when I realized that there's still time to escape it actually made it MORE scary lol. I definitely felt like I had very limited space in this game, and it's amazing how well you captured the emotion of fear here!
This is SO BRILLIANT!!!! I'm literally begging you to continue developing this and make lots more puzzles because I'm super picky with puzzle games and I LOOOOOOOOVE this one. Like I keep playing it, and then dove into the post-LD version so I could play the user-submitted ones too.
Seriously, you've made a new big fan here, and I'm sure I'm not the only one, especially from all of these comments (and pics of people with way better scores than mine lol).
I knew I had to play this the second I saw the title, and when I saw what it was about I needed to play it even more! This was hysterical. Very well done, this was glorious.
I had a really hard time controlling my character but I'm not super experienced with keyboard movement anyway so it's probably just me 🤣 I liked the concept though and I agree with another comment that the "wooden ship in space" is super cool! Having someone outside of the ship to grab fuel and oxygen from space is a super dangerous job (evidenced by my dying several times lol) but I bet it pays well! Plus it seems like this is a "lone captain" kinda situation, and I'm imagining they're a trader hauling good from one place to another while recycling the junk in space into oxygen and fuel!
Oh my goodness, this was hilarious and adorable and I loved it. Definitely COSY and the commentary from the people throughout the game added a lot too. Plus the physics went from super useful to OMG what just happened?!?! in the best of ways.
I appreciated that this is a very forgiving game, and it was clear from the features included that this could easily be expanded post-jam into something with even more challenges and levels.
This is such a freaking cute game, and I love all of the comments as the items keep coming out. I also appreciated that I could be all: "actually... this is nicer than this, I'm getting rid of it." And it absolutely captured the "I'm sad I don't have enough space but I need to get rid of this" vibe with the cat shelves from "when cats ruled the world" 🤣
All that to say: I LOVE THIS!
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OMG this was hilarious!!!! I loved the squeaky clown noses as I put them in and moved them around, and the clowns were all so freaking adorable!!! I was sad at first when they fell out but then they looked just as happy so I FLOORED IT every time I was heading to clown college and laughed as they (and the vehicle!) bounced around. 10/10 would play again 🤣
Oh my goodness, this is stellar! I never would've guessed this was made for Ludum Dare, it's super polished and even has bonus modes!!! I struggled a little at first but quickly picked it up, and I love the cute art, the characters, the music, and everything about it. Plus I REALLY appreciate that (aside from the bonus modes) you don't fail for not getting enough right.
I wasn't sure what a few things were, but figured my way through it as they were all optional anyway :D And hurray! I got a good score, too 🥳
Also, I'm so glad that the sunhat was a requirement for the sunny beach getaway, I never go anywhere without my hat 🧡
This was really chill and cozy and I liked how different items combined, folded up, and even re-shaped when combined (like toothpaste & toothbrush). When "limited space" won as the theme I was hyped for some inventory management games, and this delivered that perfectly!
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I went a fair portion of the game before realizing that I could change the camera angle, and then I seemed 100% stuck behind a wall of fire before discovering that the space bar made me jump. I still ended up somewhere that I felt I couldn't surpass after saving the second person, but by then I was only one hit away from death anyway so I just tried my best :D
I love the theme of rescuing people from the burning building, and the art style you went with is neat! :D
I liked the idea of a platformer version of escaping a labyrinth, and that you can't even fight back (which makes sense against such big, frightening wolves!). I wish there were save points along the way, though, as I would mess up and have to start all over.
I do agree with the other comments that being able to see down before jumping would be nice and that the use of the fairy light was great. It was all super thematic, too!
I found it so surprising that I could move the objects through other objects and even myself when moving things around, and that only the character had gravity (which ended up being funny at times), but it certainly made the game easier :D I'm super curious what you'd do with this post-jam!
(Edit: I forgot to say that I loved your theme and the idea of the place being so freaking full of stuff left behind that it took all that effort just to reach the bedroom! At least there wasn't a bunch of junk in there too!)
This is fun! The art is super cute and I love how tactile it feels with things getting hit, the screen shaking, zooming in when a new wand is grabbed, etc.
I'll admit that it helped me that the framerate would massively lag when there were lots of enemies 🤣 But I'm assuming that's just because I played in the browser.
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Whew, that was intense but fun! I got lucky and won each case the first time (or I'm a genius lol) but I did lose one round against the second dude. This is a hysterical game that's put together well enough to be a small Switch indie game or something already 🙌
OMG lol this was hysterical and absolutely wild. Plus more cute critters died in this game than probably any other game I've played 🤣🤣🤣🤣 I eventually kept running right and left down a road with a 1,000, a 100, and a 300 machine and was making BANK but couldn't keep up with that 50,000 rent payment... I tried, darn it 😅
This was cute! I love the idea of a fish fighting back by summoning all of the other fish around until they can scare off (or destroy lol) the fishing boat. I'd be sad if I couldn't eat fish anymore (I kinda prefer being a pescatarian) but if the fish are smart enough to do this, maybe we shouldn't be eating them 🙌
Well done! I will say I wish the movement was a bit smoother: I loved when I was scrolling across the screen because I could leave the mouse in place and press space repeatedly. But outside of that, I enjoyed it. Oh, and once I summoned and a fish was on the other side of a wall and it just went through the wall to get to me lol.
- ✨Beth
Whew, 63rd place for any%! I'll take it lol, that was a wild ride! It's really unique only having the ability to dash or jump when summoning a friend, and that you can pick up more friends as you go through the level. Plus it's cute as heck!
It took me a bit to get used to these controls and the way the game worked, but it was fun! I liked summoning, attacking, getting into formations, leaving some of my people behind, etc. It was a nice loop, although it felt slightly slow overall.
Great job overall with this though!
I honestly assumed this was multiplayer as in "lots of enemies online that are AI" not actually true multiplayer, that's epic! I was rather confused the whole time I played this, but it was definitely interesting and I felt awesome when I won fights and felt super lucky when someone would help at the last minute, etc.
Thanks @brandsma! :D
@knatt that's a great idea for a digital version, or if someone laminated. As it is you'd have to reprint all of the pages to play a second time if the score sheets were with the rules
Aaaawwwwwwwwww thank you so much @dyingwolfwood, and @anaastaska that's huge praise, thank you! It's always fun finding a balance between my tabletop/TTRPG creation and Ludum Dare, and that's pretty much the biggest compliment I could get!
Thanks so much @goddzeproject! Bringing something new is also incredibly amazing praise :D Almost all of these were based off of other small dice games I found, I just added some twists like adding dice, rebalancing, making them solo, etc.
@its-capp YES!!!! I don't use TTS because of their homophobia but Screentop.gg is great. I didn't have time to implement it but honestly just putting some dice and the rules there would be super easy.
@ajpl Thank you so much for all of the details! I don't think it's just because of English not being your native language; rules writing is a very tricky thing in tabletop games and usually my rules suffer because of the deadline with Ludum Dare. You did very well I'm sure, and your comment here is very well written! I can only imagine how rough digital dice would be here as so many games require you to put dice different places, lock them, unlock them, etc. I really appreciate all of this! I do want to continue it, in fact we have plans to make a set of zines (basically little booklets) that would have one or two games in each, and each would tell a fragment of the story basically pulling pages from the genie's diary. I think focusing on one or two games at a time would allow the rules to make more sense, and not be as overwhelming as sitting down and playing a dozen games at once 🤣 Especially while people are trying to go through and rate a bunch of games omg lol
Thank you so much @cananaman!!!! That's super awesome of you to say :D I'm hoping to set up a digital implementation sometime in the future, although it'll likely be a while
I was pointed here by a post @monika wrote, and I'm looking forward to trying the game even though it's too late to rate it, but OMG you were FIRST PLACE in innovation?!?!?! That's so incredible! And 109th overall!!!! You nearly broke into the top 100 (and you were way into the top 10%) with an analog tabletop game, that's incredible!!!! I'm an analog tabletop creator too and this is so motivating and awesome!
@hamsel I had this issue with like every game I make. I go into Ludum Dare like "okay THIS TIME I'm making a super simple game everyone can learn the rules to in 5 mins" and then make something super elaborate with a 20-page rulebook (okay not 20 pages but still).
I love that you managed to pull off your goal (or at least came very close; I was able to figure the rules out and it seems like lots of others did too!) and I look forward to what you make in a few weeks if you take part in LD56!
I enjoyed this! It helped me out soooooooooooo much when I realized I could hold the "shoot" button down rather than hammer it. Also I couldn't get the cheat mode button to work, but I did enjoy playing this and the concept is hilarious.
And I agree with Random-storykeeper - the fact that the boss was easy was actually REALLY refreshing and nice!
I thought I was so smart using a bunch of archers and then saw the comments 🤣 I do agree that there are ways to mix up the game with more enemy types, adjustments to the level layouts, different mana amounts, a limit to each type of unit, etc. But this is a super cute game and I had fun to plow through levels! And it's VERY fitting of the theme 🥳
This was actually one of my favorite games out of the 20 or so I've played so far! Impostor syndrome and seeing what we've created as bad is such a common thing, and I promise you're not the only one. Even when I'm super proud of what I make, I'm like "hey this part is bad and hopefully I'll work on it more later (I won't lol) but enjoy!"
It's such a hard habit to break, and it feels WEIRD to be confident. But it's worth it :D And you definitely deserve it! Making ANYTHING in 48 hours is an incredible feat, let alone something like this! I love anything with physics but they're so easily broken by bugs and glitches; this game had none of that at all, which is kinda mind-blowing tbh.
And for what it's worth, regarding the last part, I'd LOVE to see this become more. In fact, if you have an email newsletter or a Discord server or something I'd love to join and follow along with this. Please, please keep up the good work, and I hope one day you realize what an awesome creator you are :D
This felt like the begnning of an awesome mobile game, or an idle game of some sort where you gain mana over time or via additional minigames. It felt like a bit of a slog replaying the same minigames and then playing the gachas until I got another egg.
BUT this is adorable and well done!
This is freaking adorable, and I made it all the way through! I was heckin stressed a few times lol but I made it. Well done!
Yay I did it!!!! You did a great job with this game :D I really appreciated that it seemed like each candy would spread, and that even when your suspicion fills you then have to be found and caught before you lose.
I was so freaking stressed lol but I did it!
I also wonder if there's a glitch or if I got impatient: I lost once, then tried again and it seemed like no one ever fully got blue. So I refreshed the page and it worked :D
WOW this gets difficult as the game goes on! I thought I was so smart for a while there and then I was struggling to meet goals and still had like 5 rounds left 😅 This is really clever and I love the deckbuilding/destructing element of it.
This was a clever puzzle game, I've never seen one where you summon invincible units but also vulnerable radars to find the enemies. This felt really smart, and I like the combo of what felt like magic and tech.
I also appreciated that it was a little on the easy side, lol, I get stressed super easy 😅
This was freaking hilarious! I love the progression here: it starts off simple and I wrecked so much, but then eventually my Glorbles would get shoved out of the ring and die even if they would easily win otherwise. That got so chaotic and awesome!
Whew, this game gets TOUGH after a while but it's super clever, cute, and super creative. The art is really awesome too, as is the premise of summoning demons to help with homework or curse a teacher 🤣 Well done!
I like how puzzly this is, and how (unlike so many of these types of games) you are supposed to get ALL of them through, not sacrifice some along the way. I had a hard time with resetting the level when I didn't know what would be needed next (especially on the third puzzle) but otherwise had a good time with this. Well done :D
I'm sure people have done it with far fewer speeches but I did it in 18 lol. There's a really cool blend of stress with managing the crowd sizes and feeling AWFUL for creating infighting in the first place. And goodness is this a perfect creation right before the American presidential election lol
As far as the game goes, it fits the theme perfectly as these people are such tiny creatures before you, and I LOVE the visual of your kingly hands on the window as you watch and give speeches over the years. It was also so awesome to hear vocalizations of so many classic Latin phrases, including Ludum Dare!
WOW, it blows my mind that this was a compo game. Making it in 48 hours with the adorable art and clever game mechanics was super terrific! I was especially surprised by the final enemy as I had not been planning toward that type of combat lol.
You also did a great job of making "exiling" a die feel awful. Like how can I leave any of these adorable animals behind?!?!
Whew, that was tricky! I ended up running back for that respawn spot so many times because I'd die like 5 rooms later and go all the way back 😅
I had a good time with it! Super cute art, and I loved the way the different critters worked and the different enemies moved. It made each room an interesting puzzle :D
I never used the bunny's ability lol aside from accidental uses, and I didn't notice what the third one (bird?) did aside from fly. I did catch that the rat could eat the snails (or it was perfect timing?) and the owls heal when killing an enemy (OMG I LOVE THE OWL!!!)
This was super cute. And I feel proud as heck for figuring out the whole game (I'm usually not great at these) including the gate puzzle without hints (compo version).
The art is fantastic, and I liked playing through it all to see how things went.
OMFG LOLOLOL that ending really surprised me! That froggo ruined everything... Or perhaps the bots just need a group of at least three for their ultimate mission 😅 Sorry, galaxy, for ruining everything!
Seriously though this was super cute. It gave me major old-school adventure vibes, but was also super adorable and silly.
Whew, it took a few tries but I got 5 cleared (according to the end screen) on my best try. I have NO IDEA what the difference was then lol even after making 2 mistakes and seeing the whole screen, I dunno which ones were the erroneous ones. Maybe a little thing showing which ones were wrong when losing would be helpful, to be like "oh okay in the future I need to look out for that!"
But at the same time, it makes me feel very clever to learn those things on my own, so maybe not :D
Hurray for peace in the woods!!! This is super cute and I totally didn't get it at first (I killed my critter for meat lol and the second time they demolished my sword cuz I didn't realize they could) but once I got it, it was a lot of fun! And a challenge to beat it in as few resets as possible.
This is a super addictive game that I was super happy (and proud) to finish!
Aaawwwwww yay I loved this, and coming out as mice at the end with that lovely reception 🧡🧡🧡🧡 I'm a trans gal and can 100% relate to that challenge... Although I at least have an easier time typing than this :D
This was such a clever, unique way to explore a narrative, and fit the theme perfectly! Plus the whole thing is adorable af and I was surprised how well I got used to it!
This was fun, and you came up with a really clever boss enemy there. I was proud that I didn't need most of the upgrades, and so glad that the enemy didn't regain their "health" each time I died lol. It's clear this could easily be made into an even bigger adventure, and I had a lot of fun with what I did! Well done :D
The game felt a little repetitive, but I really love the system here. I'm a tabletop creator myself and this was super genius the way you level up unused dice and reduce dice when you deal damage against a blocking die. Such a clever idea!
I really hope you keep working on this, I'd love to see it become something even bigger! 🥳
Yay, I did it, I did the thing! I thought this was so sweet, and it was nice having the interactivity of dealing with the conflicts. The sound effects, art, and UI are all incredible! Everything got lots of LOVE and attention here. It made me a fan of yours immediately 🙌
I had to go deal with our air purifier after it messed up and it took a while. When I came back there were soooooooooo many conflicts, omg!!!
Also dealing with the bird conflicts is especially wholesome omg lol poor birdies
Oh and I just realized after leaving this comment that there are no conflicts after upgrading everything! Yay, I actually really like that decision, now the city is just pure love 🧡
Aawwwww oh my goodness, this is so freaking adorable! Even knowing there was zero pressure to quickly make choices, I felt so much stress to save as many morgis as I could! I ended up saving 10 🧡
The art in this game was great, and I loved the way you really captured the stressful nature of a fire demon destroying everything and all of the obstacles.
This was such a chill experience. I started playing it before reading the page and thought the darkness would kill me, so I kept playing music and hoping I wouldn't run out of breath 😅😅😅 Then when I read the text I understood the game and had a lovely time with it :D
I love the way you gather and send the oompets to work, and how over time the whole area is full of light and new oompets!
Whoooooooo 122 points lol, accidentally ran into two tractors in a row there. This was so cute, and my goodness, a pico8 game! I loved the animations and the art, it was all so adorable, and this reminded me of the old-school atari games in the best of ways.
This is such a happy lil buzzy game! Bees freak me out irl but this was so sweet and wholesome and the adorable lil bounciness is awesome! Almost right away it felt like I had an infinite amount of clicking to do, which I love. It makes it a fun challenge to click on bees a lot and then eat lots of honey and then hatch lots of new bees. And watching the bees fill up more and more of the space was wonderful too!
I really wish there was some more after the game ended but yeah, I have to agree with everyone else: it's super clever in its darkness and what happens to these adorable lil critters. I was like I'M FEEDING THEM WHY ARE THEY DYING and then realized why after the second one passed away 🤣
This is SUCH a clever way to present this! It's a tower defense, idle/incremental game popup book using an old-school computer monitor. Really clever! I couldn't beat it lol but I did have a good time playing it once I figured out how to play it.
This was super clever! I love that even when I returned to the beginning, the solution was slightly different each time. And that you remained true to the theme of the puzzle each time. I gnome I'm not very good with puzzle games but this genuinely made me feel clever and want to play repeatedly to see the different puzzles!
Oh my goodness lol I only made it to level 5 before my brain blew up 🤣🤣🤣 I'm not a great puzzle game player... But this was fun, and super cute, and I loved the way the different pieces work in different ways! Well done!
ROFLMAO I agree with like every comment here. The landmine made me go WHAT and then so did the feet, omg! And then I ran into the red line and my lil dudes went SPLAT.
This is super clever and I hope you keep working on it, I love the usage of people as this expendable little faceless force with the single purpose of standing on buttons to open doors.
Really great controls and especially fitting sound effects lol
OMG this is so clever and SO RIDICULOUSLY STRESSFUL omg the amount of time you get for each puzzle after like 8-10 rounds is soooooooooo short lol. I still got a lot more than expected and I had a lot of fun with it, though! And I suppose this does a fantastic job of capturing how frantic, hectic, and overwhelming life can be... So definitely kudos on that!
Plus, the concept of this and the execution are just soooooooooooooo clever and solid!
I really liked how the little "creatures" would flutter around the bottom of the screen after letting some in by accident (or at least it happened during the last level for me). This is clever, and I got super stressed with the time limits as sometimes it just took a LOT of spray! And then the final ability, ummmm.... I felt awful using it lol but sometimes it had to be done!
OMFG LOL this is hysterical. I loved how frantic and chaotic it got, and the art and vibe are ABSOLUTELY AWESOME! I played without volume and from the other comments it sounds like I really missed out. But goodness, this was a lovely experience. The ending was even amazing lol, and then I had to replay to see what would happen if I purposely let one of those things-that-doesn't-exist into the frame...
Whew, I got my butt kicked on wave 7, but this is SO ADORABLE! I love that you can make the enemies your allies but also just grab em and shove em back while you wait for another piece of equipment lol. Really clever idea, and with such adorable art!
Oh my goodness, thank you so much @nimidori311!!!! That means a LOT to me :D
I'm so glad to introduce you to it, @imberny! It's a huge field of TTRPG/tabletop stuff. We make solo journaling stuff about adventures like these or even just IRL encouragement stuff. It's a fun genre to play around in :D
I had a hard time understanding how to play this, but as I kinda figured it out, I started to enjoy it (even though I kept getting my butt kicked lol). Well done!
PS: I never expected lil rectangles to be so cute but somehow you pulled it off lol
This is a really cool system! I'm a tabletop creator which made this even MORE my kind of game, and I had a blast with it. I'm also blown away you made such great tutorials and even four difficulty modes for the game in this single weekend, that was epic!
WOOHOO, I did it, I destroyed colonized everything! LOL that was super cute and funny, and I loved the sound effects so much. Well done! This was a clever little gravity puzzle game!
This was so fun! For a while I was like "this is so easy, especially with my shotgun king, I can't lose!" and then I started facing additional opponents...
The AI isn't great, which I'm assuming inspired adding additional enemies to play against, but honestly the unpredictability of the AI was a positive in the long run. Can I put a piece somewhere it can be attacked to set myself up next turn and not get jumped? Probably, but it's still a big risk!
Also the animation on this was GREAT, and I loved the variety of pieces!
This was a super cute game! It felt a little repetitive (toward the end I was just bouncing between more fish in the pond, more "fishy research", and then upping the cheap upgrades to get the fish faster) but it was super cute. And I LOVED that you have that level of balance in there in the first place! Incremental games are my absolute favorite and if they include loss, it's always like "well now you came back with all these upgrades!" which removes any stress of failure.
All of that to say this is a terrific entry and I loved it! One of my favorites between the art style, the fun music, and the balancing of upgrades.
Whew, this was stressful but fun lol. I had so many wrong guesses in that last house 🤣 I love how the houses got bigger and the clues got more open to interpretation and vague, yet never felt like "well I never would've guessed that!" They all made perfect sense once I found them :D
OMG I LOVE THIS!!!! I'm a huge fan of incremental/idle games and this really scratched that itch. It's such a fully fleshed-out game for a single weekend, and with adorable art too, goodness. Well done! I wanna play this over and over again 🙌
LOL I was 374th place 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 That was fun! I love incremental games, and I thought it was really interesting that you basically set your own challenge level by increasing the spawn speed and spawn level. I'll admit I had a blast toward the end especially when I was constantly powered up and like 200 drones just slaughtered everything instantly while my beam was branching across the screen.
This game felt a little long (lots of back and forth without really any changing of the game itself or control over the cards) BUT it was super fascinating. And I love that, even though it's likely impossible to lose if you don't purposely try to lose, there IS a loss condition! After winning I couldn't resist playing again to see what would happen if I didn't play any cards...
Well done, especially over such a short amount of time! I'm looking forward to your future work :D
Whew, this seemed super easy at first and then quickly got HARD! Even when I was like "wow, these level-ups are super useful!" lol
I had fun with this, and enjoyed my time struggling to survive as long as I could :D
Also congrats on your first Ludum Dare!!!! This is a fantastic first entry!
WHOA, this game went way harder than I expected. The gameplay isn't the most frantic (on normal at least) yet it feels SO FLUID AND EPIC! The style in this game is just spectacular, and I didn't expect the story to go in that direction either!
I did end up with my screen kinda orange while fighting the boss, I think I killed it as I got hit and maybe that did it? I assumed my vision was obstructed by honey or something thematically lol.
And omg the room with a bunch of ants and getting that huge combo felt SO AWESOME!
This was cute! It reminded me of, like, Pikmin with bubble guns 🤣 The lil dudes were a little slow to follow but they followed commands well, and you set up a neat level here. I especially loved the design of the characters, they were so silly and adorable to watch walking around and attacking. Well done!
This was fantastic, and I love the way that it ended! I thought it was a little wild how the first resource became kinda worthless after a while (the fish were making so much of it that there was zero chance of ever using it up), but then was shocked at how quickly the third resource was generated faster than the second after a while lol. A really clever balance of stuff there.
Mostly, though, this was just sooooooo chill, and I loved clicking the fishies to get em to move faster. That kept me engaged and made it even more fun than simply watching it happen! 🧡
This was cute! I couldn't get the #1 button to work, and #3 kinda seemed hit and miss. #4 didn't work during the tutorial but was SO FRICKIN EPIC during the fight!!!!!
I also loved the way the buildings fell when the city took damage lol, that was super cute and fun to watch.
Aaaaaawwwwwwwwww omg I love this!!! I'm a trans gal and faced my own "transformation" after 14 years of being with my partner. This is such a sweet, lovely interpretation of the "would you still love me if I was a worm?" question, and I love the little interactive bits within. So short and sweet! 🧡
This was cool! It was really clever to use the two wires and then basically use the bots to build bridges, passages, etc. And you controlled them all super well, and I say that as someone who is NOT GOOD with games that use the keyboard and mouse at the same time 😅
Oh wow, this is SO clever and fantastic! I love the way you uncover new scenes, and how you can then view each of the scenes in order. The way the art shows each scene looks like a flipbook!
I've enjoyed your previous Ludum Dare games a lot, and this is absolutely not an exception. One of my favorites this jam for sure!
Wow! This seems so simple at first until all of the different buildings come together and make sense. You REALLY capture the chill vibe of building in the depths, but also the (minimal) danger of losing buildings along the way.
This was a really fascinating game that explores the theme incredibly well!
PS: I forgot I was playing on easy lol, and it sounds like the other difficulties get less "minimally" dangerous 😅
I became a fan of yours after Donut Park Here, but goodness, this is another level of awesome. Now I'm gonna gamify falling asleep, oh no 😅 I LOVE idle/incremental games, so this was right up my alley, and goodness THE BABY LOLOL
This was a wild ride, and I loved it. Easily one of my favorite Ludum Dare entries so far 🥳
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Oh my goodness, this was a blast! I know some comment about the miners being useless but I LOVED them, and appreciated the auto-click (in my desk corner here my hands get icy and it's hard to click fast even though I LOVE idle/clicker/incremental games).
I also loved the "ascend" option! I wish it was easier equipping my lil miners but otherwise this was fantastic 🧡
This is so chill! And I LOVE that I recognized all of those references for game night 🤣 "Monotony" made me crack up so dang hard!! And it's brilliant that you got the sigil into this from your Steam game! Also the way that it felt like such a challenge to make everything fit, but even I (who am awful at fitting things lol) managed it... it felt like an awesome achievement! And so enjoyable to see it all finally done, aaaahhhhhh...
That was a really interesting, dark, wild ride! I love incremental games, and while there were a couple of moments where things seemed to particularly slow down, there were also several times when things skyrocketed and NUMBERS WENT UP!
This was a fantastic game, let alone that it was made in 72 hours! 😮 And you really captured the vibe via the music, sound effects, and art.
I was confused at first because I assumed (for no reason lol) that NOT jumping over one would kill me too. But then when I saw the comment about fall damage, I was able to make solid progress. Goodness, this is so cute, and I LOVE the art and music. It's so retro and yet so ***adorable*** on top of that. Definitely addictive: I kept trying over and over to get better scores, and once I got to the second level I was like "Oh, this is easy now" and then immediately died twice on the top floor of level 1 😅
I am so glad to have played this, it's so lovely and fun and cute!
PS: "died of the hungries" and all of the text in here is amazing
Oh my goodness, this is brilliant! LOL such a clever, fresh take on "depths." I appreciate that you created the images and shared them even if you won't have time to create it! Both images are fantastic, and "Splunkr" sounds like an app I'd download for exploring caves and then embarrassingly delete when I realized what it really was 😅
Whew, this game gets TOUGH! After getting used to the controls, I really enjoyed this (not your fault, I'm not used to using mouse and keyboard lol). You REALLY made me feel like I was there, between the screams and intense fights and how the enemies could appear from basically anywhere AND you have to keep your crew alive to have any chance AND fix your ship...
This was a chaotic, wild ride, and I loved it!
WOW, this is incredibly stylish AND has really solid controls. I shouldn't be too surprised, I loved Critter Switcher previously, but this is an incredible feat in 72 hours. It reminds me a lot of Flinthook as far as the general use of a hookshot-kinda thing, although the entire rest of the game (puzzly nature, progressing through levels, etc) is entirely its own.
The music is great, the gameplay is solid as heck, the graphics are incredible... And there are so many levels!! Goodness, y'all did an amazing job here.
Whew, this gets hard when your health drops! It feels like when I'm down under 20 health, getting more food barely covers the health I lost getting to the food in the first place. But this is frickin awesome, and I saw in one of the comments about Spacedinant so I tried that out too and OMG!
I also learned on my 3rd or 4th play how useful that "gain 40 health" upgrade is, that allowed me to live SO much longer!
Well done, and I've gotta admit, I'm excited to see that update when Jimdinant has a gun 🤣
Hi there @fae-pdf, and first of all, thanks so much for sharing all of these details! I definitely plan to put a lot more into this, so these notes are invaluable.
I TOTALLY understand not playing the whole thing! Especially when someone can easily play and rate a good 5-10 games in an hour, the idea of playing something for 2-3 hours (at least lol) is a huge undertaking even without the exhaustion and insomnia!
I'm also delighted to hear the rules made sense. I always worry about that, especially in a crowd that's often less familiar with tabletop games! 😅 Rules are easily honed with lots of people playtesting, but impossible when (almost) alone because obviously I know how to play, so I'd never notice gaps or issues... 🤣
For point one, I totally agree that the game is missing meaningful decisions, especially at the beginning. Heck, the first chapter, you don't even have the lantern or the effects of the cards, so you literally just choose which card to take (with zero information) and when to stop (which is often "I guess odds are bad now so I'll stop"). And you gave some great options here! I originally was going to include a shop where you upgrade yourself, but felt like that would be too much to think about and downtime between rounds. I do like even allowing people a choice of when to use their relics/food. It would also ensure people don't forget about them as often; when Angel and I played, we sometimes forgot we even had abilities until the round ended and then it was "Oh yeah, if I remembered that, it would've gone way better!"
I also totally agree with point two here. In fact, thematically, I really like the idea of just drawing from the deck. It takes away some of the agency in an even more obvious way (choosing a space on a grid FEELS like more of a choice, even if it isn't). In fact, even making the game play out like that for a chapter or two before opening up into a grid would make sense, since that'd let people ease into the concept of the game even more. I never considered altering the actual way you play through the mine, but that's brilliant!
LOL okay this is what I get for writing this as I read it, because I also totally agree with the third point. I could've just said I agree with em all upfront 😅 And clearly you know tabletop games, omg! I do like that idea: it felt like a lot of effort to get into the "main" game here. And it would even give new options for how the game works, like... your overall score determines your battle against greed. The end of the game, since you didn't get there, is a split between either earning a ridiculous amount of $ and giving into greed or purposely losing, resisting the temptation. Having your score affect that from the beginning of the game sounds really interesting, I like that!
Finally, thank you so much! You might even be someone who frequents like unpub or online playtesting events, because you have the perfect blend of "this is great, but what if..." along with solid, specific, useful details. And that's exactly what we need as creators: insight for what can be better in a kind way like this 🧡 Thank YOU for taking all of this time to play it AND give feedback!
@fae-pdf Our games in the past have been smaller, and in fact it's funny because my #1 rule for Ludum Dare is "make it quick, easy-to-learn, and only using a deck of cards or a couple of dice or both." And then I break that rule every frickin time 🤣
I used to stress so much over getting ratings, but the more of these I do, the more I'm just really happy to make something and push myself.
Also omg the comments about our work are so frickin sweet! I dunno if you struggle with the same issue, but it feels like we can get sales and downloads but not comments. Not like... "hey, I liked this" or even "I like libraries and you made a game about books!" Angel and I were discussing that earlier today, actually. So to hear anything at all means SO much!!! 🧡 Also I played your entry and loved it, and went to search for you on Itch only to discover I was already following you. I'm not sure what got me to follow you, but I was blown away by the work you've created.
And it's funny, you mentioned the struggle specifically with solo games and... yeah. I don't know any long solo games, now that you mention it. I remember Rahdo doing a solo roll-and-write game (like "Hadrian's Crawl" or something?) and it was a much bigger, longer thing but even at an hour, it was considered long.
So yeah, I think going forward with this, I want it to be shorter, tighter, and more replayable. Capturing the "replayable" is gonna be the tough part with this core mechanic, but I have more than a weekend to figure it out now 🤣 Heck, writing this game took 60% of my time: it was ALL of Sunday and Monday for me to write the first draft, then convert it to Canva and add the art there and such. 😅
And yes, as you're actually a tabletop gamer, you're far more used to these types of rules and running analog things yourself vs people who never play them. LOL that's very fair. But still, someone who plays a lot of tabletop stuff would be familiar with major flaws in the rules, so I still take it as a win 🥳
It's funny you mention the printed sheets; Angel mentioned it as the first post-LD addition. Like a sheet where you write your scores, it shows you the # of days and what your special abilities are that chapter, etc. And her first idea was to pull the card from the deck! In fact, it was really cool doing that because if, say, you pull a valuable diamond as a relic and hold onto it, you can't draw it again, and the odds of good cards goes down.
And I totally get that contradiction too. I LOVE engine-building games, but I also love super quick, push-your-luck stuff like Can't Stop. We generally play light/medium games, like... Gizmos is great, the Fallout Shelter game is far better than expected (and I LOVE Fallout), etc. We've played some Gloomhaven, so we can handle heavy, but it's such a chore to set up and dedicate time (we live with her fam and get interrupted a lot lol).
PLEASE let me know any ideas you might have with your ideas if you try the game out! I'll gladly credit you on the game too if we do stuff with your ideas. I do absolutely agree, all around though, on taking all of this and squishing it down into something tighter, smaller, and quicker.
I think when I was making this in Canva, I went thoroughly through and changed the beginning and a lot of the like... first few chapters around. The original story had literally nothing about the customers, and I was like "but you're a SHOPKEEPER?!?!" But as I went, time got tighter and tighter, and I changed nothing with the later parts. In fact, the "give into temptation" ending went WAY off the rails and kinda defeats the whole narrative I ended up with: that all of this was about you. There are no other shadow creatures, the shadow was just your conscience, and over time it turns into an encouragement. Like the angel and demon on your shoulders, but they look identical clad in darkness. It tries to scare you away to keep you from the temptation. Having a whole cadre of the seven deadly sins around you is SUCH a departure from that and it's the #1 thing I'm changing when I work on t
You nailed it so perfectly, goodness, that's exactly what design feels like... dropping it into a void and not even hearing it hit the bottom of the well. IS there a bottom of the well? Did it get stuck to the side somewhere? There's no way to know...
I'm so glad that the first Ludum Dare was like that for you!!!! I've always found the community here to be so lovely too, even as a tabletop creator people are so encouraging and kind. Heck, the fact that anyone plays my stuff means people are going way out of their way to do it 🧡 And those down moments... goodness... I'm bipolar and after transitioning as a woman, I REALLY had to face the depression. It almost took me out a few times over a couple of years... I'm out of that now, cautiously monitoring for signs, but what I mean is that I can relate to that and I'm so glad that you got out of it too!
HADRIAN'S WALL, that's it! And oooohhhhh I forgot they made a tabletop version of Slay the Spire, too! I really need to get that, I was a huge fan of the video game and playing it with Angel would be awesome! Plus, it's "research," ya know? 🤣 That's another great point too, though: campaign games often have solid "break points." Like... you can set the game aside and come back to it later, you've completed something meaningful in this sitting.
YES!!! My City was great! We played that on Board Game Arena with another friend and, yeah, the small touches that change the game each chapter (3 games?) are really cool. Also another great model for this, as My City is such a quick game (especially when playing digitally lol).
For Gloomhaven, we bought one of those sets of inserts, it cost more than the game (and Gloomhaven is PRICY! It was like $250 for both!). It took us hours to assemble it and, yeah, it was a necessity but ouch... We played maybe 1/2 of the campaign and haven't finished because it's SUCH an obligation to pull everything out, set it up, play a chapter, and then "well, it'd suck to stop after one because it was so much work getting this out, so I guess we play another?"
You're adorable too! :D 🙌 It's absolutely my pleasure, no question. Each Ludum Dare, we write a postmortem and I went into even more depth than usual this time. I'll be putting that out on Tuesday (our blog has a lot of posts right now and we're doing one every 2 days so we don't overwhelm people lol) and I'll tag you here with a link in case you're curious!
It really is/has been a delight to meet you, Fae(.exe). Thanks again for reaching out with your comments and insights, and opening up!
Well thank you so much @eeldam, I never even considered it like the mining in Stardew Valley (my favorite part of that game btw, aside from the general-awesomeness-of-that-game lol). I hope you and your kids enjoy it, although depending on how old they are, I have to warn you the game gets dark. It never gets vulgar or anything, but it does take on some semi-scary, dark tones and vibes, an evil shadow, etc.
Thanks so much @whysguy52!!! That's so kind of you to say :D I keep hoping more tabletop creators will take part, Ludum Dare is such an amazing experience!
That is TOTALLY understandable about 45 minutes, especially since most Ludum Dare games take like... 5-15 mins to fully play through, often repeatedly! I always tell myself I'm gonna make a short, replayable game THIS TIME and then never do 😅
I appreciate you commenting! And hey, maybe you can get your cats to rate the game then 🤣 I think it's so adorable thinking about the cats joining in, as destructive as they are 😅
Thank you so much, @eugenik! :D
Aaawwwwwwww thank you so much @tokto!! I definitely plan on pursuing this game a lot more in the future, my goal is to finish it before the next Ludum Dare 🧡
Thank you so much @inavtr! If you do play it or read more, I'd love to hear your thoughts :D And the same for you @kristinamay, thanks so much for the compliment on the PDF :D Normally I struggle to do anything more than just a plain PDF with a few lil images throughout, but I dove into making this one special 🧡
OMG thank you @atoxigner!!! I'm hoping to streamline that even more in the post-jam edition, but I'm delighted to hear that it isn't overwhelming :D And the gradual evolution is EXACTLY what I was going for! It, too, needs some streamlining but I'm so glad my intentions came through! 🥳🧡
@ditam Literally none of the art is my own, I use Canva, which has lots of premade stuff. I did fiddle with it more than usual (adjusting colors, saturations, etc, and layering images upon other images) but I created literally none of the images myself. I wanted to go with a "happy, cheerful art turning into darker visions throughout" but lacked time toward the end and, yeah... lol.
For the throne, there is no failure: you merely continue playing until reaching one of the two endings. I definitely should've clarified that, especially since it's so against the rules of the other chapters.
I really appreciate this in-depth response to the game, it means a lot, and helps me know what to fix and where to focus on the final version I'll be making later this year! And I really appreciate the compliments here too, Ludum Dare is often a growth experiment for me and this time a lot of that was around mood and story. I rarely craft either of those, and it was so fun here!
Also yeah LOL, I envisioned that a cartographer had put off naming things until the last day and was stuck naming a lot of stuff all at once 🤣 "Mountainy mountains? Yeah sure, that works, done"
@dock-frankenstein That's totally fair and valid, I definitely made each chapter too long, especially the first one where it was all about learning the system. Another person recommended making this 2-3 days rather than 7 and I totally agree: just enough to give you a grasp of the mechanics, not enough to make you play for an hour 😅
And hey, giving scores without experiencing it all is totally valid; I learned that when I did video game reviews for a while. People said that it as wild to imagine everyone play through hundreds of hours of games each month and so you should just play enough to get a grasp of the game. In a tabletop game, a lot of times you can even just READ it and get a feel for it. And I really appreciate the high scores!!!! 🧡
As for the art, thank you so much for saying so! I'm still quite new to fiddling with art assets beyond like "here, this fits!" I opted out because I didn't want anyone to give me points based on art I didn't make, even if it did take a lot of time to put it in place and make it work. A lot of people here make their own (or have an artist) and those people deserve the credit for what they created 🧡🥳
Thanks so much for your thoughts and taking the time to write all of this out, I really appreciated it! It'll help a lot for the final post-LD version :D
@fae-pdf I wrote a postmortem for this game. If you're interested, you can check it out here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/126374625
No pressure of course :D
WOW, this was way bigger than I expected it to be. Lots to unlock, a big ol' map to explore, great Metroidvania-esque exploration... Well done!
When can I get that soundtrack on Spotify? Seriously though, this was super clever, very retro, and the start of every level made me SO HAPPY! I even showed my partner 🙌🤣
This was such a clever blend of "water level" with puzzles that were genuinely interesting-yet-not-impossible and dodging enemies. Well done!
And I'm fourth place right now whoooooooooo!
Wow, this is fantastic! The art and format are terrific, really drawing me into the setting. The music's changes made me feel more and less tense as I read (wrote). The writing itself is so free-flowing and yet so poignant. One of my biggest fears, what brings on my depression the most, is a loss of purpose. I smashed that "I hope you purpose" option in a heartbeat lol.
Really fantastic work, let alone in a 72-hour jam! This game SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO put me right in that space and pushed me to figure it out, yet it felt like I was creating it at the same time...
Oh wow, that was quite intense! After the first... event... I turned and cooled my finger off SO MANY TIMES lol. And it really felt like a race back out, too! Well done, you REALLY captured the vibe of being trapped in the dark here, going deeper into the depths.
This was great! I am SO glad you can recharge everything between rounds because I never would've made it otherwise, and for some reason I really struggled with the battery replacement, but as long as I smashed the rocks when they came up and kept generating energy I'd make it to the next 100 meters anyway :D
You REALLY did a fantastic job of adding more stuff over time, and making this FEEL like I was right there dealing with it all.
Wow, in 48 hours, goodness! I love that the enemies kind of hint at the game's ending, and speak of how it's all just an endless cycle of destruction and corruption. Nice job with this!
Ah, I see what happened here. The two of you made a mash up/tempura combo that was so incredible that it stopped time for two weeks, and thus you were able to make this game so incredibly polished in every way. It's silly, it's adorable, it's extremely stressful but also casual, it works really well... Honestly my ONLY complaint is that I never knew what to do when I burnt something 🤣 Oh, and for some reason I kept forgetting that tempura meant "throw it in flour first" 😅😅😅😅😅
This is MAGNIFICENT, and seriously, one incredible feat for a weekend!
Oh my goodness, this is SO precious! I loved it so much, and I was so surprised to see who made it! I always follow creators I like and I've loved your work in every Ludum Dare I've seen, so I have no idea how I wasn't following before. That's fixed now 🧡
Goodness, I love idle/incremental games, and watching this mine get bigger and bigger is so epic! I love the chill music, the flow of MONEY, and watching all of the miners work. It's also honestly really refreshing that nothing bad happens when you go "too deep"! That's been a pretty common theme in this jam, with our game too lol
This was a little confusing at first but I quickly figured it out: you generate the shovel dude who is typically used to hire jackhammer dude, and jackhammer dude is used to hire whatever other unit, which then works the job! There was a lot of work done to mix that up, and it was hilarious you even hire denizens of hell to work for you 🤣🤣🤣
I also like how the different machines are used in different levels, like a driller does no good when excavating lava!
I do wish the money was more useful: I didn't have enough early on to buy jokers and after a few missions I could easily buy all of the jokers, which didn't do much to help anyway. Maybe buying some permanent unlocks or something? But then I worry I'd buy the wrong ones and screw everything up 😅
But I understand that making SO many levels, setting all the art up, and all the AI and stuff is massively time consuming 😮 Nicely done, I really like idle/incremental games and I really liked this one too :D
This was a really fun surprise! I love roguelites and this is such a clever little twist on them: far more simple, but also far more of a push to do it in as few attempts as possible.
The sound was REALLY helpful, and it felt stressful af despite being so cute. Well done!
This is absolutely hilarious! The various options for "pieces of art" are all really awesome, and come together to make some hysterical works of art. I also loved how clever I felt when I figured out how to combine stuff!
This game is absolutely beautiful, and you set such a great mood and scene for this game. I'll admit that I quickly became super overwhelmed with the puzzles (especially the set that had five stars instead of three), but I really enjoyed it nonetheless.
Oh my goodness, this was hysterical. I didn't expect that at all, neither the gameplay nor the ending 😅
This was amazing! So cute, and a really massive growth from beginning to end. I had a lot of fun here, and it was the perfect length :D
This is frickin hysterical 😅 I loved the balance of managing the computers and dealing with collectors. The ending was especially amazing 😳
As someone who worked collections, and also someone who has used all sorts of free apps (and both my laptop and phone for ridiculously slow, passive income) this hit home HARD in the best of ways.
This is such a silly little game, and I LOVE the theme. I'm a huge fan of building collections, finding "treasure," and then making a profit from it all.
I did struggle, though, with how quick the digging sections are and how to put items together. It was also rough starting negative with money and earning so little each day, to where it took forget to get into the positive and start being able to buy artifacts or pay for things.
I'd love to see where this goes in the future, though!
I'm always a huge fan of your games for Ludum Dare, and this one is SO moody! Despite normally hating horror lol, I love how dark and just genuinely CREEPY this feels.
I'll admit, though, that I wasn't good at killing the swarm of enemies each morning so I lost to them :(
This game was hilarious! I LOVE the music and art, especially the way the music distorts with actions.
I ended up kinda invincible lol. By the end of the first round, I almost never took damage; by the end of the second, I just hit the boss over and over, healing or dodging when I couldn't use all of my dice up in other ways.
I'd love to see what else happens with this game!
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This is really neat. It was really an interesting twist on the classic, where you bounce the boats back and forth if caught in the middle and try to have all three running at the same time so you can be more efficient.
I think a timer or like a goal per "level" or something would be cool, to encourage people to keep playing, but this is a great foundation!
This is really interesting! I've played soooooooooo many Ludum Dare games about collecting as much as you can, and this game is absolutely about the opposite. It's a breath of fresh air for sure!
This was hilarious, and I definitely appreciate the hints section. The ending was especially terrific too :D
I don't know why exactly, but between the sound effects and art/animations, this was really addictive. It felt so good to produce and collect resources!
It was confusing to get drones at first, and then the cost increases got wild (it would have cost as much as the headquarters EACH for the auto-generators of two different resources). And I wish the window for manufacturing buildings stayed open (I had to reopen it quite a bit). But this was wonderful!
Oh hey, a tabletop game! This is really clever and unique, I love it! I'd love to see a physical version of this too, to play against another human player 🙌
This is solid and super fun! I love that the money earned and your jumping ramps up with your current money, too; it made it feel like an incremental game!
When I saw the text about going to heaven, I assumed this was a humorous game mocking the rapture news recently, how it was supposed to happen. So I expected the end to be, like, "Well, nothing happened!"
And that might be why the end surprised me SO much! Well done!
This was awesome! I love games like Brotato, and the crafting mechanic addition is really epic. I didn't realize that my newly crafted weapons weren't equipped until about round 5, so on that round I got WAY more epic lol.
Really clever idea! I would love to see some enemies shoot, but what you accomplished is amazing.
This was glorious lol, I revel in the anti-AI/anti-data-center sentiments here. The voices were fantastic, and I absolutely loved the use of the singular AI image. I thought it was an incredible ending, tbh. And I was shocked to actually beat the game since I'm usually pretty terrible at using the keyboard in precise-ish games 🏆
That was cool :D The controls were nice, and I loved the bonus of using cutting the wire as a boost for a jump. I missed two feathers (one of which was right above your truck, and I knew how to get it once I got back down there but it was too late lol).
And the end was sweet, too 🧡
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I loved this! I’ve yet to play Disco Elysium, but with the comparison, now I want to. This was HILARIOUSLY written, and even though I’ve never worked in an office, I absolutely felt it in my bones.
I also thought it was hysterical that I failed almost every single attempt at a challenge somehow 😅
This was frickin fantastic, I loved it! I was so worried this would be a horror game, because I get SO scared so easily lol 😅 Really unique and clever mechanics, great sounds and music, fantastic acting and video. I struggled sometimes with doing things for a set amount of time, and especially with the chin (I kept clicking the mouth instead). And sometimes I had to right-click again after turning the TV so it would register my presses, but that's definitely not your fault.
Anyway, all of that to say that this is easily one of my favorite LD59 games!
This is so adorable and cozy! OMG, that second-to-last one took so much caution lol, but I still got it on the first try 🧡 Great job here!
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Whooooo! That was clever, and it was fun to use both the signal and just the space between you and enemies as tools to defeat enemies :D
This is such a cozy, adorable game, omg. So sweet. And literally my childhood dream: I always wanted a metal detector as a kid to hunt for treasure, and dug a massive hole in our backyard trying to find stuff 🧡 Doing it all for a present for mom is even more incredible!
I did struggle a bit at the beginning, because the first treasures are so slow to find and worth so little, but once the upgrades started happening it was like a rocket ship of unlocks!
I love incremental games, and this one is no exception. I loved getting that bouncing chain, and the way the money skyrocketed after some of the upgrades was epic.
I did struggle at the end, though. After 8 photos, I couldn’t get more. I was a multimillionare lol, which was awesome, and the waves were going out so far and so fast! I had everything unlocked, and I’d often get purple pings to scan that anomaly x more times, but even after it reached 1, it would never finish and would eventually revert to like 20 more times.
Other than that, it was great, and I love the concept!
Very nostalgic vibes from this game, and I like how simply you control it, yet how much stress the game has from being cautious. And it all makes sense: demons make ore but cost food, then traders let you trade those three different things around. Again, I really liked how you managed to make this so simple, yet still had such vibes of caution and stress.
I love this game! I actually played through it three times, but kept failing on the screen where you lose a health when you explore. I even got the blindfold, and used it, but it didn’t save the damage (I thought maybe it’d keep you from seeing horrors lol, but it’s fair that it doesn’t protect you from anxiety). I hope someone else beats this, so I can watch a playthrough :D It was also cool playing both chasing insanity and making sure I was as sane as possible, as that changed cards and the environment up, and that’s super epic.
Note: In the browser version, when I failed and restarted the game, there were still 5 travel icons (two were full) and I had no health. The travel cards also said they removed one health, but after using two of them, I still didn’t die (so either they removed health but I wasn’t shown my proper health, or they didn’t actually remove health). After refreshing the page, it fixed it.
@ciaranw I did see the travel alternative on my last attempt, but wasn't able to get it at the time. I do think that, even if the game isn't technically a roguelike, I like that roguelike aspect of it: learning what's helpful and when, then aiming to prep for it. For example, my first playthrough, I didn't understand how fires worked until about halfway through, and then I struggled to set up the smoke signals. The second playthrough, since I learned about that card, I was able to prep my wood and make it happen.
I legit look forward to you working more on the game, and it's awesome you've already made some fixes!
Oh hey @thoastbot, thanks so much! There's no pressure to play it anytime, I'm pretty close to the 20 rating threshold now 🧡 I do hope that, whenever you play it, you have fun with it though! And if you have any issues or anything, and you let me know, I'll do what I can to fix it :D
Have a lovely day!
@cazik21 This is a PDF, so it should be usable on Mac, I think. I'm not familiar with Mac, but from what I'm aware of, PDFs aren't exclusive to PC. If you can't use PDFs on Mac, what file format is used for documents there? I use Canva to make our games, so I may be able to export it as that file type :D
Oh whoops, thanks @ciaranw, somehow I forgot to mention the deck of cards 🤦♀️ I was terrified I forgot to mention it in the actual PDFs, too, but luckily I didn't 😅 That's fixed now, thanks :D
@zhangzhimu thank you so much for saying so!!! Admittedly, it's a lot easier to make something on paper than to code it: I have to word things properly, but code won't break if I miss a period or semicolon or something 😅
I really appreciate you checking it out and playing it!
@vidarn I'm so glad to welcome you to the world of journaling games! And I love that you ended up crafting a good story, even if you didn't fulfill your goals. Thank you so, so much for such lovely words and compliments, they really mean a lot 🧡 Thanks so much so sharing about your gameplay!!! In the TTRPG world, there's a huge issue of people reading games, but never actually playing them 😅
@wendel-scardua OMG that's a nasty typo, thank you so much for pointing it out!!! Ugh lol that's the major part of the rules, too 😅😅😅😅😅 I went ahead and fixed it now, I'll just wait til the rating period ends to upload the file :D
If you're interested in journaling games, but want a shorter one, there are LOADS of them on Itch. I would be happy to recommend some if you're interested :D
As for not being in the graphics rating, we opt out each jam because we don't create the graphics ourselves. The rules when you enter a game say "Opt-out of categories here if you and your team didn't make all of your graphics, audio, or music during the event." I would love if there were a separate, like, "UI/layout" category because I've absolutely seen games that do a great job with their UI but didn't make their graphics, and I think that using other art in a way that looks good is a skill of its own too. But also, thank you for saying it's well-illustrated! That's all on Angel lol, it would've been a very plain PDF without her 😅
@ciaranw Yeah lol, we always approach our Ludum Dare creations as "okay, we need to use as few items as possible and make it SUPER easy to understand! Maybe a page of rules at most." And then we write 15-40 pages 😅 I assume a lot of people just read the rules and assume how the game will play, then rate that, but honestly a LOT of TTRPG creators do that to each other too... so it's not exactly unordinary 😅😅😅
Congrats on 463! I love that you got to feel the swing of luck like that. It's always one of the hardest things to aim for in anything tabletop: trying to hope for luck to influence the game, but then not make it feel less fun when luck goes too well or not well enough.
I LOVE the idea of "solved" cards. That whole section was overly wordy and repetitive due to not having a defined term, and I definitely agree that going back and defining them separately makes a lot more sense. I'll see what I can do for defining those next week, after the rating period ends.
YES!!! That hack with removing cards is absolutely intentional. It makes it a bit of a struggle to choose whether you want to go for a score or for your suit. Early in the game, it's probably best to maximize score (and also get more of the easier-to-grab Breakthroughs), but later on you may sacrifice score by playing "less well" so you'll fail to solve the entire Snippet, but score a lot of your suit. But if you play too badly, then you just lose all of the cards anyway 😅
I LOVE your story!!!!! That's absolutely perfect, honestly, and you went above and beyond on fleshing that out. Really fantastic work, that's kinda the best I can hope for from players tbh. 🧡
I never even considered how people would journal the Breakthroughs, that's a good point. In my head, it was like "I saw this thing, I'll write down the parts that pertain to my goals." But you're right: if you were truly experiencing all of this, you'd want to write it all down to reflect on later. I'll see what I can do about that. Honestly, that aspect was never playtested: when I journaled in playtesting, I BARELY wrote anything, I was just testing mechanics 😅😅
And yeah, I can see the current form being too easy. Honestly, my last playtest had like 4 more circles to finish the game, but I worried that would be too long (it's already too long as it is lol), so I cut it down by 1 circle for each Breakthrough.
What I plan to do, once the rating period ends, is go back through and playtest again to see if I can tighten up the length and difficulty. Then work on the few things you pointed out: defining cards that are still in the Snippet vs those that are removed; add a "gameplay hint" text block about sacrificing score to focus on your suit (to make it clearer that you can do that); figure out how to encourage people to journal their breakthroughs more easily; and then re-proofread everything again. I usually proofread what we do at least 3-4 more times than I did here, that's usually the biggest struggle point for Ludum Dare games lol is that we don't have enough time to polish up the writing. And since it's not a video game that handles rules on its own, the writing is vital.
Also, thank you so much for sharing your log, and also for all of the detailed feedback! It really means a lot, and helped so much! 🙌
You somehow managed to create a great feeling of momentum despite the minimalist graphics and size. I thought that was fantastic! And the art on the, ummmmm…. “Creature” chasing you was great, too.
I would’ve loved a guiding arrow or something toward the next beacon, as I often ended up exploring the same areas, but you did well here!
Oh my goodness, I thought I did well at this game, but then I saw the high score board 😅😅😅😅 Very well done! Really cute idea, great art, great mechanics and UI (I especially love the edible mushrooms become highlighted when you rest). I also loved how replayable the high score board made it, and how much randomization went into each replay.
OMFG that ending!!!! But also, while it took me a WHILE to realize I needed to HOLD the "D" key, and then how to fight in the battles, this was a heck of an experience. REALLY powerful vibes.
Also, sound is almost a necessity to play this as there's no signal that pressing (and then holding) D does anything aside from the "D" disappearing from the screen. I tried this a few days ago and got nowhere, and then today with headphones on it made more sense :D
This was fantastic!!! I love games where you earn money from your bag management like this, and you did a good job with spacing out upgrades and revealing new surprises (the fish you can’t catch at first). I played the heck out of this and saw it through, and had an awesome time with it. This is one of my favorite Ludum Dare games this time!
Only getting to dig up one item the first day(s) was rough. My first day, I found a $1 pop top, so it wasn’t til the second day that I got an upgrade. Even after upgrading my damage, I could only get one thing a day. There’s a lot of luck on what you dig up, which then leads to a lot of luck with how quickly you can upgrade and earn more treasures per day. With that said, after that, it got to be a lot of fun! I loved upgrading and finding the treasure, and that the game ended when you get all of the treasures (without also running out of stamina at the same time, which happened to me the first time lol).
Using the sonar to auto-dig treasures, and then digging up sonar charges, was also a really epic combo. I loved that!
This game is frickin adorable, and it’s great you managed to use those graphics even if they weren’t for your RPG. And it made for a fantastic-looking room! It’s also awesome you came up with something so clever as an idea, well done!
PS: I’m always hyped to check out your entries, and this time was no exception :D
This is really clever! I don’t think I’ve ever even seen a video game where you signal for airplanes (let alone dragons!), and you executed it well here. I love the bonus for remembering poses (even though I never remembered any lol, so I never got the bonuses), and the art and control layouts are really awesome.
Great work! I really enjoyed checking out each of the trains, and even though I didn't end up getting any wrong, there was still that stress of "please don't let me be owned by the railroad company!" 😅 The endless final day was a nice touch, too, as was your allowing players to walk around the desert, the audio, and the rumbling of the screen as trains came and went.
I'm also SO glad you wouldn't allow the trains to be sent without closing the door, because I forgot that almost 60% of the time!!! 🤦♀️
I love idle/incremental games, and I really enjoyed the visuals of this one. It was short and sweet, so it didn’t overstay its welcome. I wish I could zoom out and see all of the fireworks (including the ones that exploded lower on the screen), or turn the sides into bumpers so more fireworks would end up at the top, but I really enjoyed this. I actually played it twice because I was halfway through it when I went to bed last night lol, and I had to see the rest of it play out.
Well done!
I love these kinds of games, and the humor and shortness of the game really made this a fun experience. I’ll admit that the unlocks are unbalanced (I don’t even think I needed any between levels 2 and 3), but seriously, this was a lot of fun to play while it lasted.
I love nonogram puzzles, and the twists you added here are AWESOME! I’ve played soooooooooooooo many nonogram games, but I’ve never seen anything that really messed with the way the hints were given, or things like the mirrors.
If you continue working on this, and I really hope you do, I’m sure you’ll add some introductory levels that explain the basics (as many people may not know them). But as a seasoned nanogrammer, this was terrific!
Oh wow, this was incredibly clever! Really beautiful, and I felt like I was there. And then there. Which was an INCREDIBLY twist, btw. I do wish there was some kind of feedback that I was doing the last puzzle correctly, but I got it right anyway 🧡
This is one of my LD59 favorites!
This is super unique, omg lol, the visual of hopping around and interacting while keeping your blood flowing (but not TOO much!), and wrecking all of the stuff that’s in your way is incredible. I really struggled to find a balance, and pressing all of the number buttons was irritating sometimes (although the fact that I kept hammering them all in order all the time is probably why I failed lol), but it was a very clever and unique game.
I do wish there was an autobattler-esque option, like maybe a “nervous system” or something (I’m sure you’d have a better idea than me lol) that automatically “pressed” each number button for you. But this was awesome!
I got 10:03, and I'm super happy with that :D I'm a huge idle game fan, although I'll admit that despite the outline around the tower, I thought I had to click on the tiny little black dots flying by, and none of em ever counted 😅 But after a moment, this was super solid! The ending especially got me 😮
This was really neat. I don't use that word often lol but it seems fitting here. I like seeing the trees and rocks disappear as they're used up, and the way that it becomes automated so quickly into the game was really nice.
I often ended up clicking on everything to trade because it was quicker and easier than looking at each one, and an automated trading would've been nice (especially if it sought specific resources), but it certainly isn't required.
The art here is fantastic, with such little details everywhere that I didn't realize until I sat with the game for a bit. And it was a very cozy experience!