Celtican

Islands of Chess by frozenfire92 2021-10-08T03:39:02Z

Reminds me of [5D Chess with Multiverse Timetravel](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1349230/5D_Chess_With_Multiverse_Time_Travel/)

I played one game with my girlfriend, and I tried to capture her king with a rook crashing through the ceiling. But I miscounted how many times the tile was travelled over, so it stayed topside. Then, she captured my rook with her knight, causing *the knight* to crash through the ceiling. She squashed her own king!

My king was so mortified that he ran to the bottom layer and leaped into the void.

Fun times! I think I won that game? Technically..?

Systems Unstable by David Brož 2021-10-11T15:56:37Z

Classic arcade game! Makes me want to play Gradius again.

Some things I would have liked to see in the game:

- A crunchy sound effect for when a bullet is fired/hits a ship. There's already one in there, but it took me a while to realize it existed - More juice for hitting a ship/getting hit. e.g. camera shake, ship wobble/shake, explosions - Faster bullets, weaker enemies! This is an action game, I wanna see my gun go zooooooooom - To show the fact that the ship becomes unstable, make the ship become gradually more unstable over time - A longer level in general

Also, I had a bug where I died near the end of the stage, and it said Victory. Oopsie!

The ApprenDice by ChuChuGeralt 2021-10-08T02:36:13Z

I like this one a lot :)

It got a lot easier and fun once I fully understood the rules. Nice job.

Crash Fraud by Ventuscaclium 2021-10-12T01:09:17Z

@cheeks For Level 2 I had to remove these two blocks quickly right here. I'm not really sure where you're supposed to apply the lock mechanic in that level, but I didn't need it Screenshot_30.png

Mixed Worlds by Riper 2021-10-11T15:37:04Z

Nice submission! It's an interesting idea that the player plays a passive role in the defense. I also really liked the map, I'm a fan of exploration.

Some things I would have liked to see in the game: - A sound effect for picking up candy, and other juice to accent that event - Likewise, a sound effect for placing candy in the cauldron/tower, and maybe make them jiggle a bit when that happens - Multiple portals that the monsters can come through. Perhaps they would randomly pick one or two portals to go through. Alternatively, you could remove the three unnecessary towers, they didn't seem to do much - A "big" candy that gives you 5 candies when you pick it up - Tiny variation in monster health/speed, just call `MathUtils.RandRange(x, x)` on start to add a good bit more life - When space is held, continuously add candy to the cauldron/tower, preferably at an increasing rate

Good job, see you in LD50!

Unstable Concoction by zet 2021-10-09T19:19:50Z

I wish baking soda + vinegar was possible :disappointed:

Nice little sandbox though, I sure felt like a scientist, mixing wasabi and soda together to make the most scrumptious drink :slight_smile:

Corvin and The Cauldron of Who-Knows-What by Celtican 2021-10-08T04:02:14Z

@garett yes! The chicken is definitely the hardest part, mostly because it's the one that has the least spell variety (hey, we had to cut something to fit the time :shrug:). Also, I'm pretty sure the tip system I wrote in ten minutes was bugged, oops.

The next stage is the last and most fun in my opinion, you even potentially go to space! I added the combinations in the description in case anyone needs it

Corvin and The Cauldron of Who-Knows-What by Celtican 2021-10-09T15:32:09Z

@jesusonwheels I'm glad you enjoyed it! The audio for our last game was A++, but we did miss the mark this time around. Our dedicated musician was busy the whole weekend, and I only had the time to make the sound effects in twenty minutes. Alas!

Regarding the ending, I did accidently make this game "Corvin and The Cauldron of Dark Souls." To get the good ending, your score has to be at least 1,000.

For those curious: you earn 100 points when you cast a spell for the first time, you lose 10 points when you cast a spell you've already cast, and you lose 25 points when you cast the "dud" spell (the one with all the purple fog). I believe there are 17 possible spells in the game (12 are tied to an ingredient, 5 are the goal spells), so it turns out you *really* have to know the game to get the good ending.

Corvin and The Cauldron of Who-Knows-What by Celtican 2021-10-12T14:38:14Z

@bbqyqyqy 'Tis! Originally, we had Garvenovena (our artist) spend around two hours recording it on an authentic harp, with the aim of handing it to the musician for them to mix at their pleasure. Alas, after the recording, she was much too shy about her work to release it into the world. So, Marshmallow (our musician) recreated it with a synthetic harp

Corvin and The Cauldron of Who-Knows-What by Celtican 2021-10-16T15:52:51Z

@avareii Gosh, those well-fleshed-out background effects were the death of us. Most of them look pretty, but they took way too long to implement.

Tip for future Ludum Darers: Don't make content-based games for jams. Content-based games are games where the experience relies on a continuous stream of new ideas/visuals to make the game interesting. Corvin and The Cauldron of Who-Knows-What, along with our previous jam game—Palette's Bottomless Backpack—are both content-based games. You'll want to avoid these simply because content takes both time to create and implement. In both Corvin and Pallete, the artist created more artwork than I, the programmer, could put in the game (i.e. there was a planned event in Corvin where the guests would turn into chickens if you used the chicken feather).

If you *do* decide for some unholy reason that you want to make a content-based game, like we did, then you must ensure that the time it takes to create more content is put to a minimum. In Palette's game, items on a dinner table were content. It took us relatively little time (but still more than I'd like) to make the asset, import it into Unity, give it a hitbox, put it in the bag somewhere, and optionally give it dialogue. But in Corvin's game, every spell was *huge*! Each spell required multiple items, firstly an ingredient sprite (with a hitbox/assigned color/multiple assigned types), secondly either a second sprite (for transmutation effects), or particles (for spectacle effects), or code (for particularly custom effects, such as going to space). Because it took so long to put in the effects, we were only able to put in 17 spells of the 31 planned.

Thus, while Palette's Bottomless Backpack was *mostly* complete, Corvin and The Cauldron of Who-Knows-What was only half finished! Even though we made twice as much code and art! We lacked the time to put in other areas of the game, such as physics polish, sound design, animation, etc.

TL;DR: Make games with good mechanics instead of games with good content :slight_smile:

Unstable World by Rayo 2021-10-08T15:20:09Z

I also got stuck in the pause menu my first playthrough. My second playthrough I also got stuck in the pause menu, but was still able to move around, so I just played while the pause menu was up

This game definitely seems more polished than other entries—due to the asset store, of course. I always had the impression that using 3rd party graphics and sound were okay, less so an entire framework. Oh well

I was guessing that the water would rise, but instead it fell and completely disappeared! So, I ventured out into the unknown desert, secretly hoping to find the end of the world and jump off, but there was an invisible wall after a while :(

I didn't get past the gunner objective. Alas, I would rather not kill any innocent men, women, and gunners that fall out of the sky

Schrödinger's Cat by ZoraKilla 2021-10-08T03:02:27Z

I adore the art! Although I definitely wish there was a jump animation, that would have sold it :)

It took me a good bit to beat the game, but it was totally worth it to find out that the cat was in fact alive in the box.

Fractured Space by JesusOnWheels 2021-10-08T04:20:18Z

Neat Katamari Damacy look-alike! Very moody game all round. My only two complaints are the camera and the enemy projectiles completely destroying you, but I made it to the end and had fun regardless.

Water Rises by Samuli 2022-04-06T02:03:09Z

I'm not really sure what I was doing, but this was fun! Super relaxing. Considering "Delay the inevitable" prompted so many more survive-as-long-as-you-can non-stop-action games, I'm really pleased to find one that lets you take your time. I am also pleased with the sfx and bgm. Quite pleased.

I'm not sure what the religious buildings were doing. Was a mechanic that wasn't fully implemented?

The feature to split buildings into pieces was also new and interesting. I haven't seen that before, and it's quite welcome here, where I want to place them on top of each other as much as I can. I made it 15 rounds!

Alien Recon by Tony Li 2022-04-06T22:23:55Z

Tower defense game! Woot!

It was pretty fun balancing between placing refineries to get more income in the long run and towers to actually survive incoming enemies. I also liked that you have to build factories to place the different towers, instead of just having access to everything off the get-go. More tower variety would be nice, but of course, overlord Mike Kasprzak only gives us a measly 72 hours :shrug:

One criticism that I do have is the exploding enemies. A shorter radius and/or weaker damage would have been nice. I couldn't last too long with those little devils on the field, they are the main antagonists of the game. Maybe I'm just a dummy, it sounds like other people in the comments made it farther than me.

I spent a good bit of time playing the game regardless, it's super fun. I hope you'll make another fun game in Ludum Dare 51!

Inky Towers by Shane Gadsby 2022-04-05T23:30:08Z

All of you guys are playing this game wrong. It's not buggy, it's intentional!

InkyTowers.gif

If you put yourself in a hamster ball, you are inside the and then the jump raycaster detects something beneath you and allows you to jump. So just spam jump, because you'll always be in that thing :stuck_out_tongue: I quit when I got the first 1000+ score. Honestly I think this is the only way to get a good score, because for some reason the game deletes your drawings after a score of 300 or so. Maybe if you wanted less wonky physics, perhaps the player should have had an "ink gauge," and random pickups would refill it?

I like this game. I've seen the concept of drawing platforms before, but never with physics. The only thing missing from this game is a satisfying drawing sound :slight_smile:

I conclude my ramble. Keep up the good work, both of you better be in Ludum Dare 51!

...Rise of the Toasty Tomato by snesgaard 2022-04-09T17:04:49Z

@sodoj You might've forgotten to end the turn! When you play your three cards, try pressing enter, then space.

@snesgaard I never dared to build a deckbuilder for Ludum Dare. It would be too much code for such little results, it would be hell to add in a comfortable amount of cards and enemies, the bugs would be through the roof, there would be too many mechanics for me to add in such little time. But you made a deckbuilder! In a compo, none the less!

I think this is a solid compo entry. It lacks a lot of polish of course, but you have a solid amount of diversity in monsters and cards, you innovated in the mechanics (this is like a cross between STS and Gwent), the monsters and descriptions are humorous, you plain did a good job. Adding to what other people have said, here are some notes (you probably realized most of these, but, eh):

- This is probably really confusing for people who don't play deckbuilders. To help, I would consider removing the "spell stack" in favor of instant effects, people would immediately see their results and understand them. I would also consider removing the attack/block symbols on the bottom of cards if they have 0 attack/block. That would just make it easier to read and mentally parse. - There was a bug (feature?) where if I defeated a monster with my last card, I would die. It made me sad. - The coins don't seem to do anything, consider removing them (at least visually). Currently they're another UI element to look at and worse-case get confused by. Alternatively, consider adding easy card effects that manipulate coins (e.g. Gain 5 coins and deal 20 damage, Gain 5 coins and increase attack and block by 5, et cetera). - Consider making it obvious when flavor text is just flavor text. For instance, for the Slap and Block (and upgraded variants) cards, consider making the flavor text gray. Again, for easier reading. Games with lots of text benefit from being easy to parse - The early game was quite difficult, even when I learned to save my cards until I needed them. To make it a tiny bit easier, maybe add a new starter card (like "Draw 2 Slaps", although I know that would probably clash with the code), or allow the player to pick an extra card to keep at the start of the run. After the first two encounters the difficulty was fine though

I really liked this game. It felt satisfying when my numbers started getting big. Monsters and players trading damage instantaneously made it so I still had to play my cards carefully when they were low on health. The card rewards were neat, too, I liked that I could remove cards as I added them.

Good game! You better participate in Ludum Dare 51. You better!

Running the Clock by Boykala 2022-04-06T23:27:22Z

This felt refreshing. Short, but effective. I can only take educated guesses about the true meaning of the numbers at the end, but I enjoyed this game! I don't think I have anything to criticize. Nice job! I hope to see all three of you in Ludum Dare 51!

Robots attack! by Lichead studio 2022-04-09T18:09:23Z

I liked this game! The lighting added a moody feel, and I really liked that towers didn't automatically aim towards enemies, I never saw that in a tower defense game before. The simple mechanic of picking up drops from enemies to return to base was also refreshing.

The controls were also strange to me, particularly because this is a control scheme I'd never encountered before. It's not bad, it's just hard to pick up because I don't have experience to pull from. When I saw the game, I envisioned a standard WASD to move, and maybe a GUI to buy towers from. The result however was space to move towards mouse, which I'd never heard of, and both mouse buttons to click/place, which I have heard of, just not in a tower defense game. Even though the control scheme might be better for this game, most people have different mental images of what the game should feel like.

Honestly though, once I learned the control scheme (which wasn't too hard after reading your instructions a few times), and learned how to interact with the world, the game played nicely. It felt satisfying to create a solid defense. I lasted until the fast robots came in, I didn't have enough towers to hold them off. I don't think I could have gotten enough towers, since the movement speed was so slow. The movement speed in particular was a killer for me. There were plenty of gears around for me to build a favorable defense, but I simply didn't have the movement speed to collect them. I'd recommend plain doubling the movement speed, it would probably make the game easier a good bit, at least until stronger enemies appear. Alternatively, if you want to keep the movement speed where it is for moody reasons, I'd recommend allowing the player to hold several gears at a time. Or just make it so that when you step on a gear, it adds it to your gear store. I might've played for a whole lot longer if the darn movement speed didn't bug me so much.

Regardless! I really enjoyed this. Keep up the good work, please participate in Ludum Dare 51! See you around!

Against the Dying of the Light by Celtican 2022-04-05T14:47:33Z

@olenikimid Thank you! The ghost image effect I came up with pretty early on, but we weren't really sure if we liked it. The intention was to hint at lethargy, but unfortunately that effect can also be associated with super speed. Hopefully more people like it!

Against the Dying of the Light by Celtican 2022-04-06T01:31:03Z

@tony-li I would have loved to make a WebGL build. Unfortunately the game was lagging a bit in the editor (no thanks to the several thousand bits of grass that I could only optimize so fast), so I figured it was best to not make a WebGL build so that the chances of someone having frame drops remains minimal (especially with a game so geared around immersion).

Thanks for giving it a chance! We definitely impressed ourselves with the art.

Against the Dying of the Light by Celtican 2022-04-06T03:21:53Z

@boykala I was really afraid of giving that impression to be honest. But! The game is a bit more than that. If not just a little bit. Thanks for playing and enjoying :slight_smile:

@wainini Oops, I forgot to add arrow key support! That's a minus on my part. And I have to agree with you on the "one handed gameplay" part. At some point I experimented with having a light source that looked in the direction of a mouse like a flashlight. Unfortunately the player was already drawn with a lantern so it didn't really make sense to have a flashlight-like light source with a lantern. I probably could have made left click an alias for interact. I think it crossed my mind, but I was busy with other stuff.

Point is: I'm also mad at myself for only using WASDE haha

Against the Dying of the Light by Celtican 2022-04-06T03:28:23Z

@rschoellgen Naming the kid (and parent to a lesser degree) was a great way to make the player feel connected with the game. I'm really glad I thought of that. In the original idea for the game, your brother/whoever else was with you camping went out to find help and would return, but we opted to have the player and their kid be alone for the tension. And yeah, I would have loved to have the rangers appear, but I'm not actually sure how I would have implemented it. Thanks for playing!

@cover-club-media I like the art, too :slight_smile: @gardenovena did a great job. Way better than our other two entries.

Against the Dying of the Light by Celtican 2022-04-06T22:45:41Z

@saryah Onions? I didn't put onions in the game. They must be *really* hidden. I made the map! ... Oh, also thanks for playing and murdering that forest :slight_smile: (you have a cool game, too)

@gabriel-corbani Experience is what we were aiming for! I think a little more dialogue would have improved the experience a good boot, for instance, no implemented dialogue mentions the bridge. I could have also written plain better dialogue, although I'm not much of a writer. On the other side of the coin, silence can be good in a moody game, so it wasn't completely a loss. Our first jam game, [Palette's Bottomless Backpack](https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/palettes-bottomless-backpack), had so much dialogue that you could potentially not have a single moment of silence the entire game if you were fast enough. But that was a humorous game, not a moody game, so that also worked out! ... Anywho. Thank you for playing and you have a nice cat!

Against the Dying of the Light by Celtican 2022-04-08T01:18:58Z

@mrevilguy Thank you! It is quite relaxing. There were moments in development where I turned on the game just to have the ambience and visuals in the background while I worked on dialogue.

There is an ending as well :slight_smile: As a hint, you have to find an axe to collect wood and eventually find a bridge to repair. On the other side of the bridge is a win condition, more or less. It starts a timer.

Unless you already reached that ending. Yes, the "you won" ending is quite ambiguous... Anywho, thank you for playing ad enjoying!

Against the Dying of the Light by Celtican 2022-04-08T01:35:03Z

@mrevilguy Gotcha. Unfortunately the game did turn out a little more difficult than I was aiming for. I also tried hinting at the ending with the quest prompts and whatnot, but! There's only so much you can do in a jam!

Against the Dying of the Light by Celtican 2022-04-09T15:33:41Z

(I typed out this whole comment and then I lost it by navigating to another page, fun fun fun)

@pixelydian Thanks! I quite liked the opening dialogue. It set the stage and mood very effectively, and also gave an opportunity for naming the player and kid. And! It doesn't take too many assets to make. The only assets in the dialogue screens are the font, navy background, soft yellow light, and snow particles. All of those are used elsewhere, it was an easy copy-paste. I think more jam games should use an opening dialogue, especially moody games that really need to set their theme quick. I also have to agree with you on the axe note, there is not much indication that you can do it besides (un?)common sense and a tiny graphical indicator. I originally planned to add a few extra tutorial quests, particularly "Chop trees with E" and "Pick up logs with E," but, y'know, time crunch and all that (although it would not have been hard). I also should have made the third gif include logs, it only shows twigs, which makes it seem rather boring. It was my first time making gifs though, so I can't be too mad. Thank you for nitpicking (I love nitpicking)! In return, I've given you a rant. Fair trade, no?

@jitspoe Thanks for playing! I'll be honest, I don't think this game is the best for streaming, since streams (at least in my experience) tend to drift more towards being entertaining with humor and good times. But our game is not about humor and good times, it's about dying children and very very bad times. I'm not a streamer myself, though, so perhaps I'm wrong. Maybe viewers do enjoy dying children and very very bad times. Anywho! Thanks for checking it out!

@ugly-robot I wouldn't quite say I'm a master at game design or anything (the only three games I finished were these last three LD jams), but thank you for the kind words! Admittingly, there were a lot of things we wanted to add but missed. Notable examples include: a flint mechanic to relight a dead fire (removed for realism), an axe chop animation (I tried adding this in the last 10 minutes, needless to say it caused a screaming headache), an interact animation/sound effect, more dialogue (I think this game has a fine amount of dialogue actually, Silence does well here), multiple layers of blizzard that get worse over time, a child shivering animation (this was not added because of a small miscommunication between artist and programmer sadly), swaying twigs/trees, and... uh, a fishing minigame or something. Every RPG needs a fishing minigame. We did quite well considering the circumstances and our relative inexperience, so I'm pleased. [We did really well on our first jam game, too.](https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/palettes-bottomless-backpack) (shameless plug, sorry) I should probably play more games so we can actually get scored. Anyways! Thank you for the wonderful words!

Against the Dying of the Light by Celtican 2022-04-11T02:40:28Z

@mickxe Thank you! I personally don't think this particular game has enough going for it to play for more than 15 minutes, but maybe with some hefty modifications.

@drumgadget-433 Perfect. That's what I was hoping for. With the way the gameplay ended up, it's unfair enough that you'll probably die your first try just as you learn how to ration resources and manage time, but I've seen that people usually beat the game on their second attempt. I think I like that, as it does emphasize that this is a dire situation, it really shouldn't be easy. When we were first designing the game, we thought that it made sense for the game to be *really* hard. It would take multiple playthroughs to beat, and you would have had to harvest nearly the entire forest to win. We decided against that in the end though, simply because you guys are expecting to play these LD games for just a few minutes, and frankly it would be a waste if you didn't see the ending. So, we made it much easier than we originally hoped to (perhaps by accident). Oh, there is an ending by the way :slight_smile:

Against the Dying of the Light by Celtican 2022-04-13T01:12:08Z

@d0monation Thank you! I have nothing to commentate about. I'm running out of commentary :slight_smile:

@pashaloban I agree! Two things I didn't implement that I wish I did was a flicking fireplace light and a shivering child. I didn't have the script ready for the child—although I did plan out how it would function—but I did have the script for the flickering fireplace (copy-pasted from a previous prototype of mine), I just forgot to implement it in time. Thanks for playing!

@unpronounceable Two seems to be the golden number. I don't know if anyone managed to complete it in their first try (someone @ me if you did), but it doesn't seem to take much more than two. It can't be too easy, after all! Thank you for giving it a shot!

Keep Yourself Alive by Nocuous Pinch 2022-04-06T23:57:10Z

Honestly this was pretty fun, the graphics were effective and the music was catchy. I liked the theming and the idea that the player is always losing health. Pills spawn fast, but there can only be a maximum of two on the screen, so you have to be constantly moving, even if you aren't getting hit by enemies. And you have to be careful not to be constantly shooting, or else you won't be moving fast enough to keep up your health. Fun!

One thing I would have liked to see is feedback when you hit an enemy, right now it's not too fun when I hit them. Some small particle effects on hit, and/or a sound effect, and/or a brief color change would have been super satisfying. Shooters are best when the player gets rewarding feedback, or at least I think so.

I had a high score of 101! This was solid and fun. How did this guy bring a gun into limbo, by the way? And who's leaving pills everywhere? ... Anyways, I hope to see all of you in Ludum Dare 51, this was a good game!

MAGIC-281: Intro to Alchemy by ninjacreeper47 2022-10-22T02:46:45Z

A really nice experimental concept. I do think this could be turned into an actual game, at least something narrative with the alchemy lectures as a side thing. I took notes and tried to take it as seriously as I could, but, alas! I suck at studying, I only managed to read about half of each slide. I wonder if I would have done better if I instead tried to read all the slides as quick as possible and rely on dumb memory.

C'mon Morris, couldn't you have let us read some of the textbooks *before* throwing us that exam...? I don't think my 11/18 passes...

A shame I missed the rating window, I would have at least given this 5 stars in Theme and Innovation.

Starmony by bamberga 2022-10-05T15:34:54Z

For some reason audio wasn't playing on my side, alas! But the game was quite fun, I really enjoyed the variety in the levels, although my game crashed around level 16 when I mashed the buttons too much (which was very enjoyable, by the way) :sweat_smile: The variety in the levels was really enjoyable from what I did play. I'd be down to play it again if the audio issue gets resolved! But maybe that's just on my end.

You did a wonderful job on the art, Gwen! This game look great! Great submission all around, really!

Starmony by bamberga 2022-10-09T18:01:57Z

@benk Just now getting back to this! The audio issue was apparently my adblocker. It sounds great!

Raidar by Paul Merkamp 2022-10-05T02:19:39Z

I'll be honest, I didn't finish much of the game... but I loved what I did play! I died a few times before finally achieving the first mission, but I didn't have the willpower to go through all of that pain again lol. Perhaps some small story segments would have made me want to finish it.

The art and audio were top notch, and I really like the interpretation of the theme. Great submission!

Kangaroo Court by Celtican 2022-10-04T02:37:09Z

@fedir I'm sorry you're having trouble! The entire game has two simple mechanics: wacking guilty/innocent with the gavel, and reading the docket/conversations. If you're having a hard time using the gavel, try slamming the gavel up and down on the desk. If you're having a hard time getting the cases right, try skimming the docket before the plaintiff/defendant start talking. The quicker you play, the more bonus time you get!

Sorry again. I thought I did a pretty good job with the tutorialization. Ah well, that's what I get for implementing an obscure mechanic ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯

Kangaroo Court by Celtican 2022-10-05T02:45:05Z

Wow, I was about to respond to two comments when I refresh my page to find three more :eyes:

@joshua-denk Thanks! I've heard your game is pretty fun too, but I haven't gotten the chance to play it yet. This weekend had me beat haha

@paul-merkamp Oh of course. I really tried to make it feasible to just slam "GUILTY" through the entire game, I knew people would love that :smile: Funny how we both rated each other's games at the same time, your game was rad. Good luck!

@moonblast I love our audio designer's work on this one. It's the first time I've had the pleasure to work with something like that in Ludum Dare, and it's been a blast. I recorded the footsteps, some animal voices, and the (faint) gasp sound, and Miguel mixed them up. My favorite sound effects are the footsteps, it just triggers me to laugh for some reason :slight_smile:

@firebelley Thank you so much! I've been a little worried that the game would be *too* stressful, so we added some features to make it easier—like the intermission and extra timer. Actually, I'm worried that most games this LD are too stressful, since it seems like a stress-inducing theme. I haven't played too many games yet, so who can say!

@fedir The gavel is something that I wanted to improve but never got time around to doing it. With the way it currently works, you have to lower the gavel and then quickly raise it a certain amount in a certain timeframe. So, if you smack the desk just once with the gavel (and don't raise it), no response happens. I figured most people would enjoy smashing the gavel up and down quickly so I wasn't worried that much. I'm glad you enjoyed it regardless!

Kangaroo Court by Celtican 2022-10-05T15:49:44Z

@gwenckatz Hey Gwen! Now that you commented on the game, I can actually find your Ludum Dare page and rate your game :smile:

Yup, we did some testing on our dialogues and removed/edited those that seemed like they didn't get to the point fast enough (except the one about Yertle walking over the lawn, because humor). I just wrote two test cases, but they ended up being funny enough that (with some tweaks) they ended up in the final game. @cinderwolf42 is the real genius behind the dialogue!

Speaking of dialogue, I'm surprised no one has yet mentioned the case that had the, uh, blackmailed pictures :thinking:

Kangaroo Court by Celtican 2022-10-09T01:00:09Z

@wildmusketeer All the cases are pre-written, the only element of random chance is the order of the cases that you get! Regarding the name of the game, we knew what it was going to be named since the start of the jam. It's kinda hard to miss out on that pun, right?

@irriadin Thanks! We definitely put in a lot of features to slow down the game to keep it less frantic, but hopefully we didn't divert too far away from the theme.

Kangaroo Court by Celtican 2022-10-09T16:21:22Z

@wfmg I'm sorry that you had such a hard time, I thought we did a pretty good job (considering the time constraints anyways). We realized a better way to make the voices, but ran out of time to rerecord and remix them; that probably would have helped with the disorienting nature of the whole thing. Regarding the gavel, the original idea was actually to just have the player drag and drop the gavel over the Innocent/Guilty blocks (then playing an animation). However, we wanted to give a bit more immersive controls to the gavel to make up for the simplistic nature of the game. That did make the gavel less reliable, but I'm quite satisfied with how awesome it feels to bash "GUILTY" over and over! Perhaps an option to switch between the two modes would have made it easier for people. I'm not sure what you mean by the hitboxes being too small though, frankly they're massive and could be shrunk. There are also visual and audio cues when you're running low on time, but I suppose we could have done a better job on that front (I'm thinking that the timer should be closer to the center of the screen).

I don't work on jam games after the jam, I prefer keeping them preserved for historic and sentimental reasons. Thank you for the feedback regardless! The whole point of receiving feedback on games is to remove your biases from your own creation, so honest (albeit sometimes harsh) feedback is appreciated.

Kangaroo Court by Celtican 2022-10-20T04:30:08Z

Woops, I'm late on some comments!

@hawkin Forcing you to make a gut decision is what we were going for, yeah. Originally, we had the idea that the conversations would last longer than 10 seconds, and the easy hints would take place after the 10 second mark (you would have to use up some of the bonus timer to get the full story). But, we ended up using the current model instead. It's an interesting design to think about: overload the player with so much information that they intentionally don't take all of it in. Weird, huh?

@alex-de-la-cour Feel free to nitpick about the gavel. I thought that most people would smash the gavel violently and continuously when they made a judgment, and the gavel works better when you do it like that. I spent the last two hours or so fixing bugs and adding polish when I should have spent the last two hours fixing bugs *and* fixing the gavel. Playtesting the game would definitely have helped, maybe that's something I should try doing next Ludum Dare :thinking:

@fribolin The vegetarian koala case is probably my favorite one, because it requires out-of-game knowledge to fully make the correct judgment. With the language issue though, it was something I was really worried about going into the game. We added in a bonus timer and some intermission to help, but that's not a real solution. After the jam ended, we realized a better solution would simply be an option in the settings to enable extra time to be given, if only we thought of that sooner. Thanks for enjoying it regardless!

Kangaroo Court by Celtican 2022-10-20T04:43:16Z

@pauls134 "Video games are akin to art: they are never finished, only abandoned." I could polish constantly, its probably my favorite part about game dev. Trying to jam in as much polish as you can into a single weekend is a really fun challenge to participate in. And while I am quite pleased with our performance this time around, there's always more room for more polish! Thanks for playing, your game is rad, too!

@tomatolamp It's interesting that you managed to get the good ending (presumably on your first try), I was afraid the game was too difficult to make it to the end for most people. Did you win first try? Congrats if so! Balancing games is quite difficult, especially for jam games. Maybe we did an alright job at it, even though we did very little testing? :eyes:

@bqq Thanks for playing! We tried to use bullet points to outline to cases, but I think we only managed to do that to a few cases. As I mentioned in an earlier comment, we certainly should have added a setting to increase the time you had—it's a shame we thought of that afterwards. Thanks for pointing out the wiggle animations, I made those, and I agree that they really add a lot of punch to the game!

Kangaroo Court by Celtican 2022-10-20T15:37:43Z

@sheol Finally, someone who appreciates the tutorialization! :sob: I thought the tutorialization was awesome, but my heart wavered when the first comment rolled in. I do think that we might have gone overboard on the tutorial with Randel the Crow comes in with two big tutorial speeches that are unskippable, it's been a common criticism that those scenes should at least be skippable. Still, solid tutorial besides that little bit. Thanks for playing!

@molpe This is actually the first time I've seen anyone play the game! For our past entries I at least went into Twitch streams and showed off our games there, but I hadn't had much time to do that this Ludum Dare. I haven't even seen anyone on my team play it! I saw a few bugs while watching you play, playtesting is definitely something We should do next time :laughing: Thank you for enjoying the game!

Kangaroo Court by Celtican 2022-10-21T15:40:10Z

@epeachyband Alas, that's the nature of the theme. _\*cough\* the theme always sucks \*cough\*._ We felt like the game was already only loosely fitting the theme since we already gave the player *way* more than 10 seconds—it ends up being closer to 23 seconds if you count reading the docket during intermission and using the entire bonus timer. The game is absolutely trying to emphasize quick decision making... maybe we should have made the tutorial guy say "heck, you probably won't even be able to read all of the docket!" Games are art, there's always improvements to be made. Thanks for playing!

Time Protection Initiative by EncryptedEntity 2022-10-05T01:47:39Z

Hey! I can't access your itch.io page, it's coming up with a 404. Maybe it's marked as private? (it looks like someone else already rated :eyes:)

Lavender Fields Forever by Rongo Matane 2023-01-10T00:17:19Z

Really nice work from an excellent team. There are definitely a lot of small problems with the game, but it's impressive what you guys managed to create over the course of one weekend. I love the graphics, music, and sound effects, they tie really well together, although I felt a distinct lack of exposition the entire time I was playing. How the heck am I building stone foundations with lavender, why do the gnomes despise me and my friends so? Regardless, I *really* enjoyed the game (this is a seriously great base for a seriously great game). My game time ended with me surrounding the base with walls causing a pathfinding crash, oops!

Some thoughts: - I felt no need to explore at all. I wonder how different the game would be if you had to explore and pickup the perks and upgrades instead of spending lavender on them. - Eventually this felt like a "automate everything" game, but I never got to the point where I could place down enough towers to automate the gnomocide. Perhaps a buff to the towers was in order. - Because I couldn't destroy tiles, I ended up restarting the game when I understood how things work so that I could create an optimal base. - At first I was confused when I realized I could shoot as fast as I clicked, but I actually really like the idea! Especially for a small game where you'll be playing it for less than an hour, you might as well let the player have fun! - Unfortunately the final build of the game has the hammer tool build menu open instead of the default tool view, so it took me FOREVER to figure out the controls. The first thing I figured out was "press R to draw gun" and I was thoroughly confused. _I'd really recommend putting the controls on the LD/itch page._ - Can we talk about how the animals are called "friends" instead of "workers" or "animals" or the like? It really tied the game together cuteness-wise. Whoever first called them "friends" deserves a metal or something.

Great game! I'm excited to see what you make next time around, too!

Bogged by InfinitySamurai 2023-01-24T23:29:25Z

I'm surprised I hadn't seen this game yet since one of you were the first to comment on mine!

I love this. Besides delicious cranberries and friendly spiders, this actually hits a lot of things I talk about a lot and want to see more of in games:

- Water is 70% of the planet, we should see more water in media. - Games with a little bit of physics tend to be more fun. - Unique mechanics make unique experiences. - Shaders make games more visually appealing. - Non-violence in games leads to greater creativity.

Definitely not the prettiest game. But looking past that, I enjoy this a good bit!

Ether Warp by Celtican 2023-01-09T19:54:03Z

Oh gosh I already have ratings and comments :open_mouth: c'mon guys, at least give me time to decorate the page with gifs first!

@rohanmoon Thank you! This was the first game that I made OST for, I've only recently started to experiment with making music in the last few weeks. It turned out pretty well though! It took me a LONG time to make it sound okay. I was really struggling with creating a melody for the song—which is not normally a struggle for me—but then I realized that the song I was making was too slow. I bumped up the BPM from 80 to 120, put in a more intricate melody, and made sure to still put some empty parts into the song (still a space game after all) and then it finally felt "right." Fun to make for sure!

@ty Oh gosh, I didn't even consider the trackpad. I did a lot of playtesting with my girlfriend to try to make the controls feel good and the difficulty balanced, but there were definitely some things I could have still improved. I don't even know how I would have solved the trackpad problem if I had thought about it—maybe just offering alternate buttons to shoot/harvest would have been a step in the right direction. I learn something new every time!

@aruspice Thanks! I was overpreparing myself for running out of time, so one of the things I triaged early on was the art style. I didn't have time to texture things or add pretty colors, so I literally just drew outlines for things and colored it in-engine. It worked out really well though: it both looks decent AND it took minimal time to make!

Did anyone manage to buy the FTL upgrade? Hint: the FTL Overdriver is always available for purchase when you reach a certain threshold of money :eyes:

Ether Warp by Celtican 2023-01-11T04:49:32Z

@deepfreeze Thanks you! Your complaints are super valid of course. It's interesting creating controls for a space game since the controls should be both slippery (due to no gravity in space) and also tight (because that's how players like it). I started with overly slippery controls at first, but eventually realized that it was only hurting the game, then I made the controls much tighter. I probably could have made them tighter still. I still really hate bumping into asteroids: I whipped up a quick solution when I really should have dedicated more time to that. Alas, but lessons learned!

Losing your leftover money between warps was an intentional design, the idea is to encourage the player to explore more of the sector and try to quickly harvest crystals before too many pirates arrive. But I think I didn't communicate that to the player well enough; maybe adding a bit of text in the warp gate that says "You lose excess money when warping to a new sector" would have sufficed. Or maybe it was a bad design in general.

Thank you for your feedback!

Ether Warp by Celtican 2023-01-24T22:41:25Z

Catching up on replies, I'm *super* late...

@paconedved Thanks! The ship appearance change is actually an upgrade: the upgrade does nothing except change the cosmetics of the ship :joy: And FINALLY someone mentioned the FTL Overdriver upgrade! I had the idea for the FTL upgrade pretty early on in development, and I soon realized that it was so fun to upgrade and the idea of "removing your max speed" was so interesting that I decided it would be the endgame condition. Super fun. By the way, I loved your team's interpretation of the theme! Awesome game on your end.

@zluca Yeah, the "victory condition" is not really obvious since most other games literally just say "You Won!" In this case, the FTL Overdriver is the victory condition, but I think I really should have emphasized that the FTL Overdriver is the end of the game. After the climax story beat, end the game as quickly as you can, y'know? Looking back, I think I should have changed the FTL Overdriver's description to "Removes your maximum speed and wins you the game." Also yes, the AI sucks horribly, I haven't yet done non-grid pathfinding and I didn't want to spend too much time researching how to do that during the compo, alas! Instead I triaged by only spawning them when there was a clear path between their spawn point and the player (which helped, but didn't solve the problem). Thanks for playing!

@flying-dog-fish Yeah, the crystals being both money and fuel was an interesting idea. I think I could have experimented with it more, though. An idea I had that I feared too much to implement was the cost of certain actions getting more expensive as you upgrade your ship. Another idea that I had that I didn't implement was losing crystals whenever you take damage (imagine Sonic rings). But the ideas are just what-ifs for now. Thank you!

@loiclegrosfrere The idea of a game where you start weak and end strong has been something that I've been experimenting with in several games for a hot minute. I think it started when I played [Vampire Survivors](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1794680/Vampire_Survivors/) last year. The whole concept is really interesting, and I think it has the potential to spawn a new genre, just like Cookie Clicker did. It's really really satisfying! But I have to tweak the idea a bit before I'll make a game that's ready for liftoff :thinking: Wish me luck, and thanks!

Combative Crops by AntonioTheReis 2023-01-13T02:22:39Z

Definitely a solid idea, it's reminiscent of the LD 41 Jam winner—Dark Soil—but with a different take. Lots of potential! There just isn't enough stuff yet to make it really satisfying. But you're very close!

For some constructive feedback: - I would have played the game longer if there were more colors of slimes and more pitchfork upgrades. That's all this game needed to feel like a good incremental game. - The attack-as-fast-as-you-can-click mechanic felt weird at first, but it felt nice to just be able to spam click to win. Just like an incremental game! - There wasn't anything stopping me from just placing down one slime each day. Perhaps the easiest way to offset that is to have the player pay "rent" each day, with the rent increasing slowly and constantly. - I'd say the healthbar isn't adding much. The enemies are already really easy to kill, and removing it would make me okay with placing down more slimes. - More kinds of upgrades would have been nice to see: area of attack and movement speed come to mind. - I'd increase the size of the farm. It feels really cramped in there, considering I'm supposed to be fighting in it. Alternatively, get rid of the fence and allow me to plant/fight slimes everywhere.

Seriously, I think this game has potential to become a really satisfying incremental game, on the same vein as Leaf Blower Simulator. Kudos to you for coming up with it, I hope to see you in LD53!

Inter-dimensional Asteroid Harvester by Deepfreeze 2023-01-10T22:59:57Z

I felt like I had to play this game since there were many similarities with my own submission (mining asteroids, space pirates, warping into new sectors, etc.) :joy:

A fun arcade game in the spirit of Asteroids. It's really satisfying to destroy the asteroids and watch them blow up into smaller pieces, and then collect the goods within. The game as a whole felt like it had an amount of challenge appropriate to an arcade game, the pirates especially felt fun and interesting when I realized they were aiming for the side of the screen to shoot me and I could aim at the side of the screen to shoot them.

I'd say the first thing missing from this game is a sound effect that plays when you take damage. At first I thought asteroids couldn't hurt me. I would have also liked to see more drops from destroying asteroids to better fit the theme—plus it would just be so satisfying.

Fun game all around, the screen wrap was fun to play with. I hope to see you in LD 53!

Reap what they sow by ZLuca 2023-01-13T01:52:37Z

I like the game, although the only time I won was when I didn't bother to buy any cards and immediately sold everything I drew (luckily I only drew crops/crows). I ended up at 24 coins while second place had only 2 coins. Some balance is in order, me thinks!

Some thoughts: - My favorite part of the game was planting asparagus/potatoes and watching the piles get huge. I really like how you randomly rotate cards in piles, and how the coins scatter absolutely everywhere! It makes it feel like a real-life messy tabletop game. - I thought I would win about half the time, but I ended up winning only about 1/6 of the time. Maybe the NPCs should start with less cards in hand. - The coins didn't really feel like they played a major role in the game until the ending tally. Some options to offset that would be: - Get rid of them altogether and have the end score be based off a tally of each player's cards on the field and in the hand - Make some cards cost coins to play. - Other people want the shovel to be more common and for it to only effect your own field, but I think it's fine the way it is. I'd instead like to see recipes be able to use crops from your field. I was never able to use recipes though, so maybe I just don't know how they work. - You could add some more strategic decisions to the game by reworking the shop. Split the shop into three separate piles and keep the top card on each pile revealed, for instance. Too often did I receive recipes for crops I didn't have. - I might be biased about the recipes since I never got to play one, but reworking them a bit could make some interesting results. I propose the recipes be removed from the shop pile and instead there be three recipe zones that are available to everyone: when a player uses a recipe, they get the coins as normal and a new recipe is drawn in that zone. - I really liked the different NPC profiles/playstyles. It made it feel a little more like I was playing with real people! - It felt bad when I had to pass a turn and get rid of extra actions I could have taken. Perhaps drawing a card should be free to offset that (and then also remove the free card draw at the beginning of the turn). I was thinking that gaining a coin could also be an action, but that would probably just make players gain 3 coins every turn and pass.

All in all I'm really glad to see this take on the theme, card games are rare in Ludum Dare but they're always soooo good! Nice work!

Scarecrow's Dangerous Job by gubidubi 2023-01-10T23:24:18Z

I really wanted to make a game where you play as a scarecrow as well, but I went with something completely different. I'm glad to see another team picking up my slack :joy:

I agree with Pengu, decrease the time between waves and change the shoot/plant to left/right click. I'll also add on that note that it may make more sense to plant things where the player is standing instead of where they are pointing, just because that's how other games do it and so that's how I expected this game to do it.

Some thoughts: - I love that the plants fight back. I was expecting this to be a game where I had to protect the plants, but no, they're practically protecting me! It felt like a throwback to Plants vs Zombies, in a good way. - Sometimes the plants disappeared. I think there was an expiration mechanic? It wasn't very clear. Maybe the expiration mechanic could just slowly decrease their health over time instead of hiding their lifetime invisibly—I could have made more strategic decisions and generally felt more satisfied. - I noticed the green bar on the plants are how close they are to growing and the blue bar is their health. Switching these would have been more clear: green is already associated with health in this game, the plants should be no different. Better yet: just hide the blue bar and make the green bar associated with both health and growth. - The game was quite hard for me. I made it to Horde 4, reset, and then made it to Horde 5. Developers tend to be better at their games than their players, so usually the way to make games appropriately easier is to make them way easier than you think they should be and playtest it with other people while developing it. (I think it was just the blue wisps being very fast that made it hard, but still)

Lovely game, I had fun playing it! I hope to see you in Ludum Dare 53!

Golden Hour by Tyrannas 2023-05-03T20:08:54Z

Love this. This has some properties of a Survivor-Like game, in the sense that you constantly grow stronger as you defeat enemies.

Good list

- Pirate theme is a good theme! Yar har! - Upgrading after defeating an enemy is a very satisfying design pattern. Blowing up ships lets you blow up ships faster. - The map was wonderful. Flavor-wise, it's clear that this is a stolen map. Gameplay-wise, I was using it constantly, and felt intelligent when I could plan out a route ahead of time (even if that plan went sideways). - The shifting music was superb. - The controls could use some work, but I do like the overall control scheme. Being able to fire in only two directions is very refreshing when most games let you shoot anywhere. - Likewise, the enemies only being able to shoot in two directions was satisfying as well. I was always balancing whether or not to stay still and aim, or going side-by-side the enemy and risking getting hit. - Art's good. Looks great! - The theme interpretation is great. You aren't delivering anything, you're *interrupting* the delivery of things. (This is the same interpretation we had with our game, so I'm totally biased.)

Bad list

- I quickly found that the Speed upgrade was perhaps the most important one, due to the enemies being incredibly fast at the end of the game. However, even when I grabbed Speed as much as I could, I was never faster than the final ship. - There was no tutorial prompt in-game that told me to open the map. Luckily, I read the text ahead of time, but—as I'm sure you know—most people don't. - I also occasionally had trouble with the cannons. For the most part it was okay, though. Ultimately I still like the mechanic. - I'm not sure how I feel about the cannons inheriting some of the player's velocity. I've struggled with this same thing before, I'm not sure what the most satisfying solution may be. - The "Level" text above each ship looks a little sloppy.

Wish list

- A way to reach destinations more quickly would be much appreciated. Perhaps if you are moving in a straight line long enough, you get a gust of wind and an increased speed. - On the map, I would have liked to see the player's ship as an arrow instead of a square, that way I could tell where I'm going. The enemies should have arrows instead of squares, too, but it's more important on the player. - Perhaps it would be cinematic if the camera zoomed in while a ship was nearby. - More ships! I think this game could lean a little closer to the Survivor-like genre by simply adding in more enemies. - I really want to be able to slowly rotate even while I've completely stopped moving. It might not be entirely realistic, but it would be less frusturating. - Perhaps you could hold down left and right arrows to charge the cannons to fire longer distances? Preferably, the player should also be able to see the path that the cannon will follow. - I'd like to have the camera not be restrained to the bounds of the map. The camera not being locked to the player sometimes might be why I dislike the cannons inheriting velocity: my viewpoint is occasionally relative to the landscape, not the player. Perhaps there should be a fog that slowly damages the player if they sail too far into it?

Overall, really nice job. It's fun to see a team full of programmers for a change.

Also, wow, the Ludum Dare algorithm really did just give you a ton of reviews in a few minutes, nice :sweat_smile:

Cablepunk by Whismirk 2023-05-03T20:16:15Z

Be sure to set the game's page to Published on itch.io! The idea sounds really fun (love the title), I'm crossing my finders that I'll get to play it :eyes:

packet.Breach() by Celtican 2023-05-03T02:54:14Z

Guys, stop rating my game before I decorate the page :sob: I'M A PERFECTIONIST OKAY

@osvaldo Thank you! The dialogue gets a tiny bit darker towards the end of the game, but I'm worried that the game is too difficult that most people won't make it past level 2 anyways! There are 3 levels in total: a beginner green level, a labyrinth teleporting crazy factory blue level, and a death zig zag red level. Fun times! While you're here, I love your trash game, looking forward to the release :tada:

@digx7 `"solving one of the critical issues of tower defense games"` EXACTLY! This idea was something that I came up with a while ago, when I realized that I had two problems with tower defenses (even though I love TDs): A) When you place down a tower, it sticks around until the end of the game. B) Towers don't synergize with each other, they just add damage to enemies. Of course a lot of TDs solve these in straightforward ways (like "enemies can damage your towers" for instance), but eventually I came up with this weird Factorio math TD idea... and here we are. The clockwise/counterclockwise towers are correct, but the concept of "rotating velocity" is not very intuitive and so we struggled to figure out a good way to portray it. Alas! And for the lives, I 100% agree, I just had so little time to balance the game :eyes: Looking back, I think maybe a mechanic like "when you complete a wave without losing a life, you gain a life" would be best. Thank you!

@darzu Even though I didn't have as much time as I wanted to to polish this (IRL stuff, you know how it goes), I'm definitely really impressed with how solid the concept came out. I definitely want to break my convention of "don't update jam games" for this title, it's just too good to pass up. Very good constructive criticism as well, I agree with your points—although I hadn't thought of being able to see what's ahead of the camera. I like that idea, thanks! ... And thanks for complimenting the writing, I wrote it on Monday and was really worried that it was too cheesy :sweat_smile:

packet.Breach() by Celtican 2023-05-18T16:52:53Z

Catching up on comments :muscle:

@abram Thank you! It's maybe not the most unique game I've made, but it's definitely out there. The tutorial I threw in literally last-minute, I wish I had gotten to that sooner :sweat_smile:

@lathomas64 It does! The lighting effects helped out a lot. I was worried that they would be difficult to implement, but it turns out it was pretty easy to have the setup that we wanted and I implemented it in maybe 15–30 minutes. Thanks!

@highskies Thank you very much! The story was originally going to be inspired by Johnny Mnemonic, and it was going to somehow involve the protagonist selling their memories to make room for more RAM in their brain or something, and the story would be about them trying to get their memories back. But I ended up pivoting in this direction, taking a little bit of inspiration from Mirror's Edge's "Project Icarus" and having the protagonist be the "secret weapon" against the hackers. I really stumbled through the transition scenes between the acts but hey, I'm a programmer at the end of the day, not a writer. Thanks for enjoying it!

@slightly-ajar Yeeeeep this game is hard. It took *me* an hour to beat. *Me!* I created the darn thing! Anywho, I definitely should have made Level 1 easier and I should have taken a bit of extra time earlier on to balance Level 2 (there's a few moments in that level with drastic difficulty spikes). Level 3 is fine, in my opinion. For a final level, anyways. I'm glad you enjoyed it!

@lisek-gagatek Thank you for the feedback! @gardenovena already commented, but to add a few thoughts: I'm thinking that it might have been a good idea to allow the player to overwrite towers with new ones, or have a bomb that deals damage to enemies and destroys nearby towers or something. I also like the idea of being able to see 3 tiles ahead, and getting a small amount of progress to the next stock whenever a tower hits the left edge of the screen. Ideas, ideas. Thanks for enjoying the game!

@link270 I was playing Tears of the Kingdom when I saw this comment, so your username was funny, heh. Anywho! Yes, I 100% stole the keyboard typing thing from Superhot. It works great in that game, and I figured it would work even better in this game, where you can pretend to be a 1337 h4x0r with a 300 WPM typing speed. If I ever continue working on this game, I'll definitely make optional tutorial levels where you learn by trial. Thanks for playing and enjoying the game!

@mountaininn I kept on trying to figure out how to describe the game, and I still can't really figure it out. I want to put the word "Factorio" in the description somehow, since all of the towers work together, just like machines in a factory. "Factorio Meets Tower Defense" or something, I dunno. You describing it as "Tower Defense with Puzzle Elements" isn't something I considered before, that's a good way to look at it. And yes, Rust lang has been voted the most beloved programming language for at least the past three years, so I thought it would be funny to insert a hot take in the narrative (don't worry, I'm a Rust fanatic myself, a rustacean). Thank you muchly for enjoying the game!

packet.Breach() by Celtican 2023-05-20T02:02:42Z

@rustywolf Thank you! I've been experimenting with new concepts for main menus/intros in the last year or so. The typing is 100% stolen from Superhot, and being able to name the protagonist came from an idea I had [a few Ludum Dares ago](https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/against-the-dying-of-the-light). And in a non-LD jam I made what is probably [my best main menu ever](https://celtican.itch.io/heart-string). Good times. Thanks for playing!

@thesmellofoxygen Firstly, nice username. Secondly, thank you! Thirdly, thank you for coming back to beat the game! It means a lot. Level 2 is definitely really hard with the boss... I, uh... didn't test it until the jam ended. Level 3 is way easier :joy: And yes, the ending is definitely dark. I don't know of any cyberpunk story that has a happy ending. Thanks for enjoying the game!

@0x-void-x0 Popcorn guy! Thank you for enjoying! You're the first person in this comment section to mention the `Scholar.breach` towers, I didn't realize that they were that powerful until a friend played through the game and managed to get a bunch of them and abuse them. I always considered `Rosett3.breach` (the green flower that triples packets) to be the most powerful tower until I saw him abuse the hell out of a few `Scholar.breach`s. If I continue working on the game, I'll probably create a common version of the tower that doesn't duplicate packets and instead just slows them down, it's a solid strategy. You don't need bullets everywhere, you don't need 10 `Fatale.breach`s (Medusa heads), nothing like that. A few `Scholar.breach`s will do. This is the kind of game that is meant to be abused, thanks for abusing it!

@corrupt-spaghetti This whole idea came from a GDC talk ("Cursed Problems in Game Design") that talked about player perceptions and how some games do not satisfy those perceptions, creating a "cursed problem." So, I identified that there were some cursed problems in typical tower defenses: A) players expect to always be building towers, but towers stick around forever and clog the screen, and B) players expect to strategize, but towers don't synergize and the best strategy is usually to just build the strongest tower. Lots of brainstorming later, and here we are! Thanks for playing!

---

Looking forward to ratings coming out tomorrow :fingers_crossed:

I'm On My Way by KorionArt 2023-05-21T05:23:45Z

Fun fact: if this game was rated, you would have gotten 45th place in Graphics. Out of 2,000 submissions. Nice work!

One more parcel - sorting plant by Pamuk85 2023-05-03T20:14:01Z

Be sure to set the game's page on itch.io to published! It looks like someone already rated the game, alas

"The Presentation" made in Unity by mxtsumae 2023-05-03T18:50:32Z

I also can't run the `.exe`! You'll have to zip all of the contents of the Unity build, the `.zip` (or in your case the `.rar`) should look something like this:

Screenshot_11.png

The concept sounds funny, I'd love to try it when it's available! You should opt-out of the Graphics category if you used external assets though. I'm also not sure why you linked tutorials.

Mr. Money's Phenomenally Soggy Water Removal Romp by Rhoka 2025-04-08T22:16:04Z

This was the first game I rated this jam. It set a high standard!

- The biggest laugh from me was when I opened up the shop and saw the first upgrade was "Your Hands." Good stuff. - The combo of incremental game + exploration game is nice. I think this is a really undersaturated market that is healthy for new games. - The art was nice. It hit the sweet-spot between stylized and easy-to-make. - The progression for obtaining the skateboard was very natural. First, you have to walk around the world to find the items for the roller skates, and then you have to progress in the game a bit before getting the last piece for the skateboard. This was the most natural-feeling progression in the game. - Moving around on the skateboard and roller skates feels good—I'm scooting around while I type this review. - I saw the punchline coming a mile away :)

Feedback: - The trees and background wall/grass texture conflict with the rest of the pixel art. The trees look cozy while everything else looks jank. You could have both, I suppose, but I feel like there was a missed opportunity in there somewhere. - By the end of the game, I kept spamming engine pumps everywhere to get the water ASAP. If there was something very expensive to get (even a vanity item like a party hat or something), I would have valued the chemical upgrade more. I can't tell if the game wants to act like the player has some agency or not (many incremental games don't), but right now it feels like the player does not. - The music was nice, but it always faded out somewhat suddenly, and had long periods of silence. With games like Factorio, the music feels like it naturally fades out. I'd guess it's just a matter of having a smoother transition. - In the middle/late bit of the game, I largely was just standing around watching the water go down while waiting for me to get more money for more pumps. - The central mechanic of scooping water felt under-utilized. At some point, the pumps give way more money, and the path from the water to the nearest deposit point is very long.

Overall, I enjoyed this game a good bit :)

Bloody Heart by Celtican 2025-04-16T14:49:36Z

@xoudz Thanks! Definitely the edgiest game I've made. My partner recommended I lean into an occult theme to make the game distinguished, but I ended up fusing Cultist Simulator with Doom in this case.

@aveezavr Thank you! I was hoping to add more to the combat, but, y'know, time and all. As much as I love cards for their simplicity and readability (and, gosh, the amount of things you can do with them), they take a while to implement.

@toreskovic Maybe after I finish releasing my current roguelike with a twist haha—thanks! For polish, I went with my go-to tool PrimeTween for easy procedural animations, and my newly-acquired Text Animator for the text stuff.

@scoobysnacks Thank ye! The original idea was Cultist Simulator/Stacklands themed as a dungeon crawler, but early on I thought of this mechanic of dragging weapons around, and it felt very visceral and violent. So I made it!

Bloody Heart by Celtican 2025-04-27T18:29:10Z

Holy shit I got 4.7 stars in overall. If I actually rated more games I might've won