Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → Catie Jo
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | 45 | Start with nothing | 👥 | Fairytiles | jam | 33 | 4.22 | 4.11 | 4.31 | 4.03 | 3.52 | 4.05 | 3.68 | |
| 2018 | 43 | Sacrifices must be made | 👥 | Welcome to the North Pole! | jam | 25 | 4.20 | 4.16 | 4.21 | 3.83 | 4.21 | 4.05 | 3.53 | 4.18 |
Oh wow this is so fantastic! Such a novel take on the theme, and it captures that helpless of awkward first dates so well!
I'm in love with the art style and how minimal and clear the UI is -- the pink speech bubbles to indicated points is such a nice touch! This was a a very sweet little game, and a real treat to play :) Thanks for making it!
Hey this is a really cute game! I love how the objects' motion accent your really great soundtrack! The whole mood strikes that cute/creepy vibe really well.
I had a lot of trouble figuring out how to sell things because I didn't realize the dollar amount turned into a button in the shop -- a small tweak that might help is to turn the sell place into an image like a basket or shelf, and when it's empty, display hint text that says "place items that you wish to sell on the shelf", and once there's an item(s) in it, have the 2 buttons appear...one that says "sell for $XX" and the other that says "cancel". I also still can't figure out how the oven works?
Overall, the mood is great and the mechanic is super nice. I think some UI tweaks and tightening the core game loop (eg making the ghost move a bit faster, and allowing for multi-item purchase/selling to make it a little less repetitive), are all that's needed! Really excellent work--I enjoyed playing it a lot :smiley:
Very cute game! Something about the jumping mechanic feels a bit strange--I kept trying to get a running start for longer jumps, but it didn't seem to help much and I kept falling off the platforms. I really love the art style and how cohesive it is, though! Nice work!
Well executed game! The soundtrack(s) are amazing, the pacing is nice, and there are some nice little touches that add a lot of polish (eg pressing enter to skip the intro, litter boxes, and the humorous little asides like "They deserved that!"). I definitely echo what has already been said with the controls -- they don't allow for a lot of precision, so it often feels like the kitty is walking on an ice rink. The 9 lives were definitely all necessary, but overall a fun little game! Plus the title is a pun so I automatically love it :smiley_cat:
So great! I didn't watch the gif all the way to the end at first, so it took me a long time to figure out that the symbols were also letters but once I understood it made me SO HAPPY. It's such a cool way to build up the game--fantastic work! The whole thing feels really nice and complete; I love how you kept the scope small, but still innovative and fun!
Definitely agree with beepyeah that a touch screen would make it more fun -- the swiping was really buggy on web with a trackpad; maybe it's better with a mouse? Cute concept, and I thought the music was quite good, especially for a first time! Overall the mechanic is nice, and it's super cool you did all this as a compo. Just tweak the swiping mechanic to be more responsive...maybe you could add a line that shows the swipe motion as you draw it, then have it disappear when your cursor releases?
Holy polish batman! I suck at these sorts of games, but the art was enough to make me keep going :) I can't believe this is your first jam entry--super well done! The only feedback I'd have for future games is to draw more attention to the text hints, maybe through animating their appearance and/or different placement. It took me forever to notice the "try ducking" part with the red blobs :laughing: Love love love it though; definitely one of the best I've seen so far!
This is so cute! I'm a sucker for 8-bit, and the purple-haired witch is AMAZING. I really like that you put in the extra effort to have music and non-default font, and the story is promising! I really liked this game, so I wanted to write a ton of feedback in case you wanna take it further than the 72 hours :smile:
* FYI, when your game is in normal mode instead of fullscreen on the web build, your font overlaps (see attached photo) * From a pacing perspective, I'd put Petunia after the cauldron (maybe where the guy is?)...I hadn't even realized how to make potions when she told me I could combine them. This is a super teensy nitpick though. * It'd be helpful to have some feedback for selling ingredients/potions...I totally thought Petunia just stiffed me (+$XX rising up from her and fading out as it goes up would also allow me to easily see how much I'm getting for the things I sell her!) * The music is super cute! a little short. an easy hack to make game music longer is to build it over time (eg add a track in every 2 or 4 bars instead of all at once), then remove tracks the same way...it gives a bit of arc and length to the music without needing to write more music :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes: * Sound effects (eg for walking and item pick up/drop off) would make it feel even juicier! * It took me awhile to figure out what the green box over the cauldron was for...that interaction could use some finessing. * How do I interact with the guy? There's no interaction speech bubble, and I've tried giving him potions or ingredients to cheer him up, but he still won't talk to me! :cry: * It would be great if you could select several items from your inventory at once...making potions got repetitive after awhile.
Overall, really nice work! Looking forward to your future jam games!
Screen Shot 2019-10-08 at 19.46.33.png
@nathan-wash thanks so much for writing back! and so thoroughly!
I love the idea of NPCs wanting different potions or unlocking ingredients, especially the Toadspeak (I totally forgot to mention that in my previous wall of text, but the potion names are THE BEST)...making the potions have different effects on different characters would be a really fun easter egg!
For the title card bug, I was on the latest Chrome browser, but I'm also on a 15" Macbook, so my screen may be too small? Chrome was full screen though. It looks like an anchoring problem to me (like each word got pinned 100px from each edge, so when it got too small they just overlap eachother), but not 100% sure tho).
And I'm so glad you liked our game! We have tons of ideas for new storylines and audiovisual polish to add...I wish there was a game jam specifically for taking old game jam games to the next level :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:
Really well done look and feel! The music and sfx really sell the vibe, and I really appreciate the small touches like skipping repeated dialog and the punny names (oh man, Rick R Mortis!). Fantastic work; one of the best overall contenders I've seen so far :)
Love the concept and polish! The frog audio voice was amazing...instantly sold :frog:
The only thing I'd keep in mind for future games is avoiding text being in a different place than the action, and especially with timing based games, avoiding text whenever possible. I wanted to read the story, but really couldn't without losing lives. At the beginning, I thought the text meant I was in an intro sequence, then promptly died haha. It also wasn't always easy to distinguish life-losing obstacles from game polishing details...I kept avoiding sticks and leaves, only to realize accidentally that they were actually fine.
Again though, excellent work! The whole thing came together really well, and I laughed out loud at "childwen, childwen!". Keep up the great work! :smiley:
Super cute graphics and music! Love the idea of an "inner garden" :two_hearts: The controls were a bit difficult -- it didn't feel like I was having much effect, but I'm also using a trackpad instead of a mouse rn, so that could have affected the effectiveness somewhat. Overall, cute vibe and nice work!
Music and vibe is great! Really well done story based game :) We also did a narrative game, so I'm impressed with how many branches you had...did you use Twine? Something else? Nice work!
@mao whoa, that's so awesome that you got so many of the achievements! If you want some hints, D and O require an egg, G means you to like cats, U is on the "hi" branch, and you can find P if you ask for some hints! :cat:
@blobo OMG YES I'M SO GLAD SOMEONE FOUND THAT ONE.
@trifectuh we're so glad you liked the game! we're both pretty big fans of yours, btw!
@drcheetos thanks so much! lemme know if you need any hints :wink:
@sylvie totally agree with more words! We wrote the storyline with the help of scrabble world solvers, and it's crazy how we still find words we didn't catch! Are there any specific examples you had in mind? I'll probably be updating the storyline post-jam!
@justcamh we're so honored you loved the game enough to spend so much time on it! we had a lot of fun trying to get the storyline to make sense with all the different possibilities...it was a bit like a written improv game from our end haha. And I'm so glad someone found Voldemort!! That was one of my favs :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:
@rroni so glad you enjoyed it!
@apace aww, so glad you enjoyed it! thanks so much for playing and commenting! We were having a lot of fun with the narrator; I'm glad you liked him too haha
@yomissmar thanks so much! also I just played your game and loved it! I tend to make silly games (like this one haha), so the depth you guys managed to convey was super impressive to me :)
@rose thanks! we used a Scrabble word finder to try to catch most of the common words, so I'm glad it worked!
@sarah thank you! @fre spent a long time trying to get that smooth scrolling working, so it makes us so happy that you noticed it!
@kirroyal totally agree! if it helps, pressing backspace/delete lets you go back to the previous juncture without starting over from nothing, so you can explore routes more easily. Unfortunately since there are so many words for a given set of letters, longer storylines get exponential pretty quickly, but I'd definitely love to add a bit more content in the future!
@palemek ooooh, adding your game to my to-play list! thanks so much!
@cataractar good point! I'm actually a musician, so I'm super ashamed to have not thought of it before the deadline haha. If we take it further, we'll definitely add music and sfx into the mix!
@purrseus oh man, you're making us blush! thanks a million...also The Toad King is fantastic as well! I have literally started laughing randomly a couple times just from *thinking* about the king's voice :frog:
@dk5000p thank you! 10 achievements? that's awesome! lemme know if you want hints for any of the letters!
The amount of visual polish on this game is fantastic! The detail of the environment, the glowing effects, the character animations...it all feels really cohesive and I loved the vibe I got while playing it! My only nitpick are that the level felt a bit repetitive at times and without a super clear goal (though the experience enough was worth the play through imho, so that was less important to me). Especially with the incomplete lighting, it was sometimes hard to tell if I'd been somewhere before or not. Adding some distinguishing features to some areas (signs, flora/fauna, or new kinds of enemies) could help this maybe. I liked the checkpoints and boss at the end, though! Overall, a game I would definitely play more of if it gets developed further :)
@dodelov those are so cool! yeah I totally get that the time constraints limit what you can do -- the best and worst part of jams is how little time there is haha. My feedback totally isn't criticism of what you managed to do in 72 hours; what you have is seriously impressive! More just things I noticed if you wanted to turn it into a full game...which honestly I really hope you do! :smiley: Thanks for sharing the art!
Hey this was a great game! We also did a story-based game, so I'm especially impressed by the amount of content. And world is so much bigger than I expected! I really love how everything comes together--the characters are super cute, the simple but consistent world, and overall aesthetic went really well together. I also really appreciated some of those more time-consuming bits of polish, like separate music scores for different areas, pacing (I thought it was great that you could very easily find the free bread ending, which made the goal of the game super straight-forward), and making sure objects become transparent rather than occlude the character :smiley:
The only things I noticed were small... 1. The character to the left of the King (inner castle) gets part of his dialog occluded, so I wasn't sure what I could trade with him. 2. I also think the world could use a bit more geometry...I think the simplicity really helps interactive objects stand out, but there are smaller tweaks (like adding thickness to the floors, beveling edges, and maybe some normal maps to add texture), that could make the game just that much more cohesive. 3. The typing transition was slower than my reading speed...perhaps the words could just appear automatically?
Thanks for making such a great game! I was already convinced by your cute title image, and the game exceeded my already high expectations. I only completed 3 of the endings since it's late here and I need to go to bed...but I'd totally to play more of this game!
Cute concept! I really enjoyed the art style of the main character, and the check points were definitely helpful because I kept dying when I forgot which key to press haha. Combining powers (like for lava) was also a really nice touch, and the pacing of introducing one power, then another, then together, flowed really intuitively!
The WebGL version definitely seems a bit buggy with the sound, but even though it's buggy and from an external source, I think it definitely helps the vibe a lot! Great work adding it in at the end :smiley:
For future games (or this one if you take it further!), I would recommend spending a bit more time on providing feedback to the user. It took me awhile to figure out how the vampires/skeletons work since there's no specific key for them, but that was the only really confusing part. You already have some steps in the right direction with tinting the buttons and de-illuminating harmless objects, so I would just play them up more. The lighting effect in particular was really subtle, and I often found myself glancing to make sure I was pressing the right buttons. One way to go about it would be animating the objects, then turn off that object's animation when the correct power is activated. Another quick and dirty option is to drop the saturation when an item is rendered harmless (e.g. red/yellow jackolantern and flames to a b&w version) but be careful with color-only indicators since color-blindness might make that less noticeable.
Overall a super nice game! I made it all the way to the end!
As others have said, the concept is super original--great work! I also loved the "this sound took two hours to make" note on the load screen :laughing:
I struggled a lot to understand what was going on at the beginning. Once i figured it out, the minimal look and feel was really cool, though.
Overall, one of my favorite interpretations of the theme! Super cool :smiley:
Hey, congrats on your first LD game! The concept is really interesting -- I like the maze concept a lot.The selectively visible maze was an especially cool mechanic! Sounds like you had some great takeaways too (especially with scoping and playtesting -- I feel like I keep learning those over and over again haha) :smile:
Two points of feedback:
First, even though I read through the how-to on your game page, it still took me a bit to understand the question mechanic. especially since there was only 1 option for the first two questions. I ended up figuring out how to get to the switch before N had gotten there with the question (he was still on "Are you ok" because I hadn't pressed 1), and then spent a long time trying to flip it myself. I think always having more than one option, and also numbering the responses, could help with that. Also, if someone doesn't answer a question in time, I think it's fine to overwrite it in favor of the more recent one -- that way even if someone doesn't figure out the question mechanic, they can still move forward with the puzzles!
The other feedback I have is concerning the camera -- since I didn't have feet, it was sometimes really hard to gauge where I was, so I kept falling off (especially in the second part). Additionally, something about the width of the field of view and mouse-controlled rotation made me nauseous after awhile (I'm more prone to this than the average person though, so I'd ask others for feedback as well).
Overall, this is a really impressive solo game! Good luck with your future games! :smiley_cat:
THIS ART IS SO FANTASTIC! I love pixel art, and you guys have managed to make it both cute and beautiful -- well done! The music was also really calming and peaceful, and the whole thing flowed together really nicely. I agree about the text moving too fast, but overall I think it came together really well. Nice work!
Signed, Future (Adoptive) Crazy Cat Lady :cat:
Totally agree with everyone else -- it's musically and visually stunning! I'm really bad at time-sensitive games, so I died a lot trying to get to the end -- unfortunately a bit too hard for me, but beautiful and intriguing enough to try for a good while! Overall, excellent job!
The only suggestion I have for future games (or this one if you go further with it!) is to make it a little more clear when an object is interactive. For example, I had no idea hitting the little circle with the ball did anything -- a pulsing glow and/or slight animation may have helped me realize that sooner, or in keeping with your existing UI, a textual hint saying something along the lines of "if only I could hit that switch somehow". But I really had to rack my brains to find even that much feedback -- the overall quality is so polished and professional! Fantastic work :)
Hello! Your photo looks really nice, but there don't seem to be any links to the game? Just wanted to let you know in case there was supposed to be a game listed here (the website can be glitchy sometimes)