Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → cerno-b
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Category | Score | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 🥉 | 2018 | 43 | Sacrifices must be made | The Omicron Fleet | compo | Theme | 4.50 |
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | Co | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 50 | Delay the inevitable | Eternal Crisis | compo | 103 | 3.81 | 3.90 | 3.15 | 3.43 | 3.80 | 3.70 | 3.34 | |||
| 2018 | 43 | Sacrifices must be made | The Omicron Fleet | compo | 9 | 4.22 | 4.22 | 4.30 | 4.50 | 3.54 | 4.06 | 2.64 | 3.87 | ||
| 2017 | 40 | The more you have, the worse it is | Boiler Room Defense | compo | 88 | 3.83 | 3.85 | 3.71 | 4.15 | 3.64 | 3.52 | 2.58 | 3.25 | ||
| 2017 | 38 | A Small World | A Perfectly Lovely Expedition | compo | 112 | 3.72 | 3.54 | 3.45 | 4.18 | 3.83 | 3.46 | 3.06 | 3.52 | ||
| 2016 | 37 | One room | Henry Snackleworth's Weird Day | jam | 263 | 3.59 | 3.49 | 2.97 | 3.71 | 3.31 | 3.45 | 3.20 | 3.22 | 82 | |
| 2016 | 35 | Shapeshift | Grokh's Arena | compo | 446 | 3.24 | 3.33 | 2.69 | 3.26 | 3.12 | 3.08 | 2.42 | 2.94 | 98 |
I really like this. At first I thought "Meh, it's just a Kami clone", but where it really shines is the vs. computer mode. The transition effect is very well done.
I wish there were some tranquil music to go with it and you could add a sound effect when the player chooses the same color as the opponent to know that you can't pick it (I thought it was a bug at first).
Unity player tries to allocate too much memory and doesn't run the game (Win7/Firefox).
I'll try the windows download instead.
Okay, windows works. It's a good concept, although I wasn't really sure what my task was. If it is to fill the board as fast as possible that is mainly up to luck, since it depends on how many werewolves appear.
Then I tried to hold out as long as possible, which was the more interesting mechanic but apparently not what you had in mind.
The graphics are good and I like the concept, maybe it could be fleshed out a little more.
Wow, I don't know what to say.
The atmosphere is great, the graphics very nice, sound is good and I really like the idea of having a game set to a poem.
But I don't get it. So we're two, I guess ;)
What went wrong? Out of time? Out of ideas?
Since you already invested all the effort to bring it this far, maybe you can continue working on it and turn it into an interactive story, where lines of dialog the player chooses have an influence on something that happened in the past and is revealed through the poem.
Great one! I love how you represented the different distortion parameters using two axes. Only minor quibble (apart from the obviously missing sound and music) is that it wasn't clear to me whether I have to click a pixel or just hover over it. After the third try I figured it out though.
I got 1474. Very nice little game. I love the aural and visual feedback you get when the shape changes. Also the multiplying mechanic is a very nice touch and feels like a very important decision.
One suggestion would be to add some visual cue about how many hits are remaining on a monster. Since it seemed to me that you need two hits per enemy, I guess a second sprite that shows a damaged monster would be a sensible addition that can help with strategy.
Overall I really liked the game!
My Firefox/Windows 7 does not like the Unity player version of your game (it tries to reserve too much memory)
The Windows executable ends with an error message that it expects a data folder. I can extract the exe file (it's just a zip container), but there is no game inside, only game data files.
If you fix the issue drop me a message and I'll try again.
So you went ahead and made a lo-fi Dungeon Keeper in just two days. That is pretty insane by itself.
The execution is very neat, I love the pixel art, the music and the sheer volume of content.
I found a bug though that made it fairly easy to win the game (unless that is by design). When I heal the bear, it does not cost me 10 mana but instead it gains me 10 mana. So it means I cannot lose and I can easily rack up mana points to get more workers to get more gold to get the good rooms to kick out the heroes.
All in all one of my Compo favorites of LD35. Great work, would definitely be worth pursuing further. A well made, low resolution content-rich Dungeon Keeper game would be something I could see people pay for. I might.
Very nice entry. Everything feels so polished. The art is very nice, the music supports the visuals without being repetitive and overall the game is a lot of fun.
What stands out though are the controls, which are super tight.
PS: I didn't find it too hard, but then again I just came back from a Dark Souls session so my judgment may be a bit off.
Sometimes the game won't load for me (Unity tries to allocate too much browser memory), sometimes it just takes a lot of time (Win7/Firefox)
When it works, it's great though. The theme is spectacular.
Using Alt for Kicking in a browser game is a bad idea though as Alt activates the menu bar in Firefox.
Good job. I like the graphics especially the spiders. The dong drill was a fun surprise.
Have I understood correctly that I can just dig up the spiders with no negative effect?
From a presentation standpoint I think the game would gain a lot if you wouldn't progress in a checkerboard manner. If you could instead progress the screen pixel line by pixel line and also only dig up the ground for the width of the drill, that would look terrific.
Very nice entry. I almost made it, or so I thought. Only 4 shoes left but ran out of fingers.
Looks good.
I can't wrap my head around the transmutation wave mechanic though. Do I understand correctly that I need to have the color wheel memorized in order to know where the wave has an effect? Maybe some info graphic somewhere on screen in the game would help here.
I love the graphics style and PC classic gaming midi soundtrack. Awesome entry with lots of personality. Difficulty is quite brutal, so I couldn't finish the boss. A health bar would have been nice.
Personally I would have preferred a different control scheme for keyboard (arrows and x/z for instance), other than that it's awesome!
Awesome entry, I wonder why I didn't find it sooner.
The amount of content you put together in 48 hours is mind-blowing. I wish there would have been music, but I guess you can't have everything if the rest is so good.
The difficulty was spot-on for me and I totally got that Metroidvania vibe I am sure you were going for. Awesome atmosphere and even a boss fight.
One of my favorite entries.
I voted for your Greenlight project, all the best of luck for that. A recommendation for the upcoming work: I think the controls need a little bit of polish and they lack a certain visceral quality which can probably be achieved by working on sound effects some more, especially when jumping, landing and hitting. Let the player feel the impact. Also it should be visually clearer which platforms you drop down from and which have a wall to one side.
Wow, really really good. I love a game with a twist and yours was very satisfying. I love the crass contrast and especially that you get to run around in the nice world and see what you have done. The music really works in favor of the game.
The only room for improvement I have is that the balloon form could use a shadow to indicate that we are actually flying up. Other than that a great entry and one of the most memorable games so far.
Beautiful little game. I love the upgrade mechanics and the art.
It's short but sweet and doesn't outlive its welcome. Great job.
Minor nitpick is that some keyboards have the z and y keys switched so allowing z and y for jumping would really help.
Can you feel the thunder inside?
Wow, just wow. You, sir, are immensely talented. The visuals, the music, sfx, tight controls, balancing. You totally nailed it. Great job, one of my favorites this LD. I played it a handful of times and will certainly return to it.
My only complaint would be that after a few tries I had no motivation to return to the robot mode, as I didn't really need the faster firepower. The bigger enemies had too tight shot patterns to squeeze through.
Overall, great game, kudos.
I can't praise this game enough. As a sucker for pixel art, you pretty much nailed it with the flowing animations and cool tech design. The difficulty is hefty, but the game kept me motivated throughout. This is bited-sized fun on a very high level. My overall LD35 favorite so far.
The only issue I have are the controls. Let me elaborate:
- I found the jumping served no purpose because it wasn't possible to fire at the same time. Air-sliding is possible but I didn't see any advantage.
- The combination of up+left for firing up was not assigned, so I couldn't use that although it would have been more intuitive.
- It is not possible to slide while firing, which could be pretty useful. I don't mean to slide and fire at the same time but to have the slide command override the fire command so I can slide without letting go of the fire button
- I would recommend a different control scheme which I think may be a bit tighter (with YXCV keys I mean the ones on the lower left on the keyboard which may be different depending on locale):
* Arrow Keys: Move left/right, aim up/down
* Y: Fire
* X: Jump (allows jumping while firing)
* C: Slide backwards (instead of two keys for sliding)
* V: Block
This allows to keep the Fire button pressed and have the slide and block function interrupt firing as long as they are active.
Please let me know what you think about this scheme.
- finally the game over screen takes a long time to disappear. It's possible to speed that up by pressing ESC but any key should do the same.
Please don't get me wrong, I love the game and you got the highest score I have given in this competition so far, I just feel the controls stick out as being less streamlined than the rest of the game.
I came here after watching your timelapse which was super interesting. The game is awesome too. Challenging but good. Fits the theme well. Some sound sound effects for collecting the balls would have been nice.
My only complaint would be that the collision detection could be a bit more precise. Overall a challenging and fun game.
I see you also used chronolapse for your timelapse, but somehow yours seems to be much more fascinating than mine. Probably because I spent most of my time in Visual Studio ;)
Wow, the mood is really great. The music plays a big part in this. Missing sound effects fit the space theme well. I really loved watching the packages slowly float in position.
The actual game part could have been a bit tighter as to provide more of a challenge that is steadily increasing in difficulty.
As a prototype it's really great though and I can see it as the basis of a more complex game. Great job!
This is awesome. It looks so polished and atmospheric. The sound effects are really good. As an exception, having no music is actually a plus here. The ambient sounds fit much better to the scenario. I have to say though that I didn't get the cues that allowed me to identify the shapeshifters, mabye with more time...
This is insane. You must have a lot of experience with the genre in order to pull if off that well in such a short amount of time. The graphics are oustanding. The music takes me back to my old Amiga days. Pacing is very good and you even threw in a satisfying boss fight. I'm impressed. Five stars.
It's a fun beautiful entry, well done. The art is really amazing. I never tried hi resolution games in AGS but it seems you made it work without trouble.
I found one bug though: After cutting the wire you can still get electrocuted if you touch the wire on the balcony. That had me second guessing whether I missed something else, but I solved it in the end.
I also got a blank screen, but the screenshots look promising.
A fun little beat em up / jump 'n' run. Graphics are really well done, and the music is quite catchy. Nice.
The controls are a weak point though. Wall jumping feels a little sluggish and the punches lack a bit of oomph. Maybe with better/more sound effects this could be remedied.
Anyway, I played a dino punching game, that was worth the time spent.
I am really bad at FPS but this was so great! Really took me back to my old Doom days. Even more impressive that you did it all yourself and nailed all graphics, coding and composing. You sir/madam are a talented person. Kudos!
Pity that the shapeshifting part didn't work out but the game stands its ground easily nevertheless.
A really creative and well-thought out entry. Unfortunately I'm too dense to get past the first levels but I can see that it deserves all the praise it's getting.
Definitely one of the more memorable games. Unfortunately, the gameplay part seems a bit unbalanced. If the goal is to collect GBs, then that is easily accomplished by rolling the ball until you run out of GBs, then spamming the upper screen with mouse clicks until the ball is full. Repeat for infinite GBs.
Maybe more of a challenge would have been nice, as otherwise the game is visually very appealing and your choice of music is spot on. Very nice entry!
Despite the basic hero visuals there is a lot to like here. The animation is really lovely and the sound effects super funny.
As was said before, it was very short and the controls could have been tighter (especially the hero acceleration was much too slow).
Overall I really enjoyed what little there was to see. Good job!
Brilliant! So you've taken the Vlambeer design approach. Awesome. I laughed out loud at the narwhal unicorns. Very fun game, five stars. Nitpicks include the simplistic music, navigating narrow corridors and coins moving slower than the character, but overall I love it.
I had to return to the game to try and finish it. I enjoyed the boss, although it was a bit easy. Overall some status indication would be nice to show how far you have progressed in the game, it made me wonder whether there was an end to it.
Very funny entry, good job.
Looks very good, but it's not really my genre. I like the concept though. Some music would be nice. Witchy McWitchface! :)
Awesome. I love how the shape juuuust fit into the holes and how you can vaguely make out the next shapes through the holes in the upcoming shape.
Minor quibble: I wish there would be two difficulty settings because once you've got the knack it takes too long until the game becomes challenging again. I grant five stars.
My record is 117 points but only because I found an exploit where you could wall yourself in with unwatered seeds. The bugs can't eat the seeds and you can harvest inside your fortress as long as you want.
To me the difficulty needs some tweaking, and the controls could be a bit improved (I would like to be able to click the icons at the bottom). Graphics are very basic though (understandable given the format), but the excessive screenshake made up for that (at least for me).
Apart from these issues though the game has a lot of potential. It feels great, it sounds great, it made me want to try a few rounds to get behind the mechanics. I probably would have spent even more time if the game was better balanced.
I think you are onto something here and would encourage you to keep working on it. I can totally see that format in extended form with proper visuals in a mobile store somewhere.
Great job!
Really really well done. Not only did you motivate me to stick with it til the end, but you also threw in a story, incorporated it in the game design and finished with a nice ending. One of the best entries I've seen so far.
You sir are a genius. Your uncle too. Please tell me that you will make a full length game out of this. It is so cool!
Very innovative concept. With a little bit of polish the game could be really great. For instance, if you made the shift take a second and indicate which shape will come up next it would give more strategic depth.
It would be neat if you had a clearer indication of which shapes win against which other shapes.
A technical note: The Unity Web player went to 100% and then took its sweet time finishing the rest of the download, so it seemed like it was stuck. Manual download confirmed that this might in part be due to a slow server connection.
The music is a bit grating, but finished with 40870 points on hard. I may be mistaken, but I also found the visuals were a bit off the beat.
As a gameplay recommendation, it would have helped to have each shape on a different key to make switching more intuitive.
Good job overall.
Visually beautiful game. Did you rotoscope from an existing source or did you record the dance moves yourself?
Unfortunately the music was a bit grating and it took me a while to understand that I had to push each shape multiple times to stay in the game.
One complaint: You might have chosen to punish hitting the wrong key as the game is easily winnable by spamming all four keys at the same time.
Wow, very innovative use of screen space, I really like the idea. Kudos for being brave enough to upload a file to Dropbox called ANTI_VIRUS.exe. Dat end game screen tho. ;)
Great job!
Neat game. I had some fun laying traps for the zombies. For balancing, I would suggest slowing the eating time for the meat to make laying the traps a bit easier. Also I found the traps taking too many points to activate. It was much easier to just stick to the dynamite, which undermines the whole shapeshifting idea. The art style is very creative and fresh.
You made a fun little game. I love the walk animation. It could be a bit more challenging and follow a purpose more to keep the player entertained, like i.e. machine parts getting broken or the boss changing the order mid-production, but overall it is promising.
Awesome art and music. I agree that the shifting animation takes too long. Also I seem to die when standing next to a wall and shifting back.
Was it on purpose that I trap myself by destroying the block in the first goat level?
Overall a great puzzler and I am amazed that you created this in 48 hours. Kudos!
Hey, thanks for the patience after my game didn't run for you. It seems that you need a newer version of vc_redist.x86.exe. You can find the installer next to the game's download page on itch.io.
Sorry for the inconvenience :(
The game came out well due to the very nice character design. Add to that the procedurally generated landscape and I have to say you achieved a lot in two days.
The main weak point is the challenge that might be improved by adding missions or levels. It may be even more rewarding if the gameplay was a bit snappier, which is in part due to the controls.
I guess a VR version might be worthwhile as it fits your mood and the control scheme better. That way it plays its strengths as an exploration type of game which does not need snappy controls and a challenge.
A simple shapematching game that fits the theme. Graphics fit the task, music is nice.
I would have preferred to have one key per shape which makes reacting to the requested shapes faster.
Also I can totally fit some of the shapes through the wrong holes (which of course is an error, but looks doable).
Very beautiful game. Hard to believe you crammed it all into a compo entry.
Maybe you should add a "loading" and "saving" message as people might get confused when they have to wait a lot after starting the game. I guess that would count as a patch.
I wish you good luck for more people to play this!
I love the graphics: Parallax scrolling, the motion of the sky, the horse animation.
Gameplaywise there is also a lot more depth than meets the eye. The upgrade mechanics, the obstacles that force the player to keep in the middle and having to shoot the barrels for bonuses.
For me, personally the difficulty ramps up too much. I upgraded reload and damage in the first night and stood no chance in the second night.
Reloading on RMB would be cool, or at least E instead of R, since R is too far away from WASD, especially since the player needs it constantly.
Some spooky music would really augment the experience, as would better and more sound effects.
Overall great entry!
Really lovely game. I liked the awesome retro graphics and the procedurally generated bosses. Congratulations on a very polished game.
Very cute little game. I chuckled on some of the jokes and I feel they were quite clever.
From a mechanics standpoint I didn't get why you needed the scrolls and the fact that there are only two of the menu fields active lets me guess that you had planned more for this game.
I like it and think the concept could be expanded. Good job.
Your game definitely stands out due to its unique idea. Great execution as well! I could see it in extended form as an app store download.
Very innovative concept, I had fun.
One thing that could improved is the accuracy of the collision check when shifting. I had to try an average of about three times until I transformed even though I was really close to the character.
Great graphics judging from the screenshots, unfortunately I am not able to play, since the character immediately falls through the floor at the beginning. :(
Neat little game. I think it would benefit most from explaining more what the shifting is for. So I managed to shift into two cat forms, but couldn't figure out what they do. Also the attack range was not visible, so it was a bit guesswork. I love the title image.
Wow, really unique little game. Reminded me of Nethack, but as a puzzle game. I liked it.
I wish you would have opted for a WASD control scheme. Using ULDR tied to pressing the enter key gets a bit tedious after a while.
Also adding PC speaker-like beep sound effects would be a treat.
I really like the graphics of your elemental, the cubey particle effects work really well. I couldn't figure out what the other particle thingies were. After reading the manual I was able to win the game pretty easily.
I wish there would have been sound fx and music.
Now for some criticism:
Overall the game would gain a lot by being a bit faster and more challenging. Since you only need to stock up on wood and only quickly change your shape to fire and back when at a torch, there is not much competition here. Maybe you can play around a bit with different mechanics, e.g. introduce enemies that chase you and drain your energy. Make the player fill up a fire gauge at a torch before it is lit. The gauge will increase while you are burning at the torch and it will decrease over time as you move away (e.g. while you avoid monsters).
Then if time remains you could add multiple levels where the number of torches increases but at the same time each level introduces something new, like a new monster, a new skill etc.
If you get manage to offer small rewards to the player they will keep motivated and if you offer a challenge you will reward that motivation.
It's a solid concept for that short amount of time, I am sure you can expand on it. First you should add some sfx though, you'll see how that will do wonders to the feel of the game.
Addendum, I didn't realize the other elementals were the enemies. They should definitely be more aggressive, as someone else pointed out.
There is a pretty old study from 1944 by Heider and Simmel that shows (for game makers quite obvious really), that humans have no problems to attribute intent and purpose to moving objects even if they only take the form of shapes.
That said, even if your enemies only appear like particle clouds, their motion should be enough to let the player understand they are chasing us and clearly mark them as the bad guys.
There is a very good article about some basic AI programming by Ray Wenderlich, which I used as the basis for my game. I would suggest you give it a read and try outfit your enemies with the "wander" and "arrive" behaviour: https://www.raywenderlich.com/24824/introduction-to-ai-programming-for-games
...and by "game makers" I meant "gamers".
Beautiful little game. I especially love the graphics. The controls are a bit clunky since the player has to move the mouse away from the screen's edge before transitioning and I encountered a few bugs. Once I got stuck in autofire in hunter mode (convenient), and a few instances the characters were stuck in position. The music is nice and mellow but the game could really use some sound effects.
I love the graphics and style. It would have been cool to have music. The shifting mechanic didn't really make a difference to me. Are the cloud's shots weaker than the witch's
It's good. Although I'm not really a fan of the genre I can see that some thought has gone into planning this. Maybe the levels may be a bit smaller in the beginning to allow for a bit more motivation. Sadly, background music is missing and I found that the object sometimes hangs at corners. Other than that, a good game.
Very polished and well-made game. Music and sound effects would add so much more to it. Please consider extending the game with new mechanics and a deeper plot. There is a lot potential here. You hit the mood just right and the butterfly imagery is very beautiful.
Took me a while to understand that I had to copy objects in the world, and even after that I couldn't get the hang of the game really.
However I admire how you pulled off all the visual content in the allotted time and put together a nice looking game like this. Kudos!
I love SHMUPs and this one is very well done. If I had one request, that would be to allow pressing Y in addition to X since on German keyboards these keys are switched and it's really hard to play like this (maybe other locales require key switches as well). The only game so far that I would continue playing after LD (if that keyboard thing gets fixed that is). No music is pity though.
Yeah, I have sound after all, must have overheard it. Sorry. I was a bit tired yesterday.
Technically, the keyboard fix would count as a bugfix according to LD rules right? So you could add it to your regular release if I'm not mistaken.
I just returned to the game after you fixed the buttons and I have to say it's really lovely. I got stuck at the second boss though. May pick it up again later.
I would encourage you to keep working on it. A bit of polish (e.g. boss energy bars), more content, powerups and so on and you have a game that you could sell on itch.io for a few bucks.
The visuals are quite unique and it's fast paced and fun. Great job again.
The boxes keep getting stuck in the ground :(
Maybe some criticism for improvement: For me it was not quite clear why the blob could kill the baddies while in box form, especially since pressing attack in box form just made me quit the box. Maybe a visual cue could help here, for instance have an attack animation that plays every time you exit the box so that the player knows that's the way to attack.
To get bang out of your game I would suggest the video "The art of screenshake" by Jan Willem Nijman of Vlambeer. It gives a lot of good pointers for adding more crunch to your game.
Of course, music always helps to set the mood.
I like the idea.
The graphics and music are good. Physics works well. Sometimes I have the feeling that the levels could have been thought out a little better. For instance, I was able to complete the last one with two balls left.
All in all, a solid entry. Maybe you can polish a bit and release it on an app store?
I couldn't play it either. It just loads a view of the maze with the instructions but nothing is happening. I clicked the game to give it focus but it doesn't work.
I'm on Windows 7 / Firefox
I have a QWERTZ keyboard and cannot get the controls to work, but usually that's only because y and z are switched. Here, however, no keys seem to work. Mouse doesn't either.
Just letting you know that it still does not react to key presses (just in case you changed something and need some testing feedback)
Nice one! Is there an end to it? I got swarmed to death. I like the different shapes with their unique attacks. I wasn't able to find a good strategy though.
How do you pronounce your game anyway? Ludum Bah-ray? ;)
This is exactly my kind of game! The retro charm combined with fluid gameplay.
Unfortunately I cannot play it due to my qwertz keyboard without breaking my fingers. Maybe you can make triangle either y or z. Or allow 1,2,3,4 as an additional input scheme.
I'd love to play this some more, especially since there seems to be a boss involved. So if you decide to extend the control scheme, drop me a note and I'll come back to give it another go.
Despite its shortcomings you managed to make a beautifully looking game. I would encourage you to continue working on it a little more since some of the missing things shouldn't be too hard to accomplish.
Sound effects can easily be generated with sfxr or downloaded from the web and there is lots of royalty free music available.
It would help to move your character away from her shadow when flying, that should give a good indication of what's happening there.
I see you were hoping for the "You are the weapon theme" ;)
Overall nice game, although a bit frustrating at times because it's too easy being hit in bullet form. Only made it to stage two once. I like the concept though.
Very beautiful and polished pixel art game. I love the presentation and all the details. Could do with a little more AI (of course hard to accomplish in 48hrs) and the music is really repetitive. But overall, I liked it a lot.
Good game! Not sure whether it's by design but it would help if the bottom bro grew, the top bro standing on it would rise with him, instead of staying in position and then dropping down when selected. Overall it's a fun concept.
The graphics and audio cracked me up. OGRE TIME! The controls didn't really grab me, as the main character is really slow when he's not a ninja, but the game has a lot of charm and was worth my while.
Outstanding entry. Almost nothing to argue about. I really love the presentation. Maybe a second difficulty without pulsating shapes? It's a tad too easy as it is.
I think you could extend this a bit and sell it on a mobile store. Great job!
Solid entry. I like the randomly generated levels and audio feedback when you slice enemies to pieces. You also added a visual cue for when the enemies are about to fire, which I found very important. Presentation overall is great and the theme is well represented with a fresh idea.
Now for criticism:
First, for me the random environments were too uneven in their difficulty. If the areas are narrow then chances are high that enemies get cut off and you have less room to maneuver. The enemies pile up and you stand little chance.
Second, it is easy to get stuck on blocks was a bit annoying when I was close to getting one of the foes shortly before they fire and then they suddenly got just because I tripped over a corner. With one life and fairly long levels that dampened my enthusiasm to play more.
In general I see this idea with a lot of potential for continuing work on this game.
Ah, a text adventure, it has been a while. It was fairly fun, although the almost rectangular map made it a bit too easy. For that medium, I would love to have read a more immersive story though.
Wow, Ultra-compo in just 3.5h ;)
Even if it didn't grow beyond a tech demo everything is there except music, sound and additional levels. Great job so far.
A few hours more and I'm sure you would have quite a good puzzler on your hands.
Awesome graphics, but I didn't really understand the gameplay part. Is the shape that you turn into completely random? If so, I guess it's impossible to play it with a strategy.
Music would have been nice.
I love SHMUPs! And yours is a very good example. I had a lot of fun with the different weapons configurations, trying to empty the useless ones and conserve ammo for the good ones. The graphics are beautiful. The audio feedback is very nice and hail of bullets very satisfying.
All in all a great entry.
Two minor complaints though:
1) The spaceship moves soooo slowly. I guess it is necessary to help avoid all the projectiles, but maybe a slowdown key would help here (especially since you only have one action key for firing). That would allow the player to move both quickly and slowly based on the situation
2) There is no death invulnerability. So once I got killed in a corner and there was an incoming bullet shower that I couldn't avoid, so I lost two lives almost instantly. Two seconds of invulnerability after a hit would be great.
I just realized that there is a second button to change shots based on the experience points you gather.
I see a problem with that though: The good weapons give lots of XP so you can change soon but don't want to, while the bad weapons give little XP (because you can't kill many opponents) so it's usually easier to empty the ammo.
That is a minor concern though. What I find really frustrating is the issue with the invulnerability. Maybe it's possible to file that as a bug and fix it? ;)
Exceptionally done. I love the marriage between old-school pixel graphics and modern 3d dof-environments. The puzzles are really nicely done. One bug I need to mention: If you drop off the edge in the first room before picking up the map you get stuck in the main game without an inventory.
Sorry, the source code is within the zip file next to the exe.
@pixlark The idea was to let the player figure out what works best for what, but I assume the motivation may not be there to play long enough.
Spoilers:
- Wizard is strong against archers (since the other characters take too much damage approaching them)
- Fighter is strong against slimes (since he is fast enough to dance around them)
- Golem is strong against knights (since he is armored and only takes little damage.
- Wizard is weak against slimes since he takes a lot of damage and too slow to avoid them
- Fighter is weak against knights since they have longer range
- Golem is weak against archers since he can't avoid them and is too slow to approach.
And yes, I wrote the music in about an hour. It's just two drums and a trombone from Sonatina and an organ from CamelAudio Alchemy. Pretty good VSTs.
@retrogradeorbit: I added a separate link for the source code.
@Cerno_b: Uh, It's really four drums ;)
@nicotuason I know, right? :) I wanted to have different sound effects based on which kind of hits were effective, but time was just too short, I had other cool ideas as well that had to be scrapped. Maybe next time ;)
@Max Amaden: Yeah it's a shameless rip-off*cough*homage. Watch the timelapse linked above and you can see that it's actually a pixel by pixel copy of Dark Souls' death screen ;)
@CMLSC: Yes that was on my list. I wanted the knights move their pikes like in the SNES version of Zelda and the archers to actually lose the arrow when firing. Also all the character art was supposed to be colored later on but time ran out.
@Wevel: Do you mean the sound effects? That's what you get spending 15 minutes on sfxr instead of recording proper sounds, but I couldn't fit in anything else.
@everyone: Thanks a lot for the nice feedback. I'll try to play/review all of your games later.
@WizzardMaker: Yeah, the health bar glitch is a known issue I wasn't able to iron out at the end. I know why it happens, I just couldn't fix it on time. It's a minor issue compared to the missing win screen and the fact the game just exits out on you once you win (nobody noticed yet, so I guess the difficulty is just right) ;)
@fanatiko: I agree that the music clashes a bit with the visuals. Maybe I could keep working on it later and change the instrumentation to be more retro but retain some of the oomph of the current version.
@urfbound: Thanks a lot for that detailed review! My original plan was to use the black shapes only as outlines to get a feeling for the visuals and then fill in colors when the game is playable. The tight schedule made short work of that. Maybe I'll keep working on the game to fix some issues. I could try and put in the boss fight I was planning from the beginning. Then I could deal with making the strengths and weaknesses more obvious visually and with better audio cues. Really glad you liked the controls, that makes me proud. The audio cue for the health bar was also planned but scrapped. I had indeed fun, although I never had as much stress in my whole life as during these two days.
@TerraCottaFrog: Wow, the game should be everything but slow. Just in case you return here, would you mind telling me your setup? I had some slowdown on my wife's laptop but that disappeared so unfortunately I cannot reproduce it.
@psychomonster: But, but, I did. :( It's right there next to the download on this page and it's also included in the zip file of the game.
@everyone else who I didn't mention: Thanks a lot for your kind feedback.
Congratulations to Madsj, the first person to actually complete the game!
I'm sorry about the missing ending screen. I had to wrap up the game in the last remaining minutes and wasn't able to shovel in an ending screen. I could have gone back to the start screen, but my sleep-depraved mind didn't think of that.
As LD35 draws to a close, I would like to thank everyone who played and rated my first entry. It has been a lot of fun. Reading all these positive comments was exhilarating.
Surely there is a lot of room for improvement and I really learned a lot which I hope I'll be able to apply when I participate in the next LD.
One final breakdown of comments:
Thanks to Jupiter_Hadley for featuring the game on her channel. The game's audio messed up the recording so I wasn't able to hear her comments but I appreciate she took the time to play it.
@Diel Mormac: Turns out you need the newest vc_redist.exe which I added as a download link after the deadline. I know it's stupid to ask people to install something for an LD game and I will not make that mistake again.
@Everyone: I truly appreciate the kind words and also the criticism. Most of the issues reported were things I would have done differently given more time. The soundtrack was not one of these things so I found it interesting how it kept people on the fence between "good" and "not retro enough" so I guess I need to train my retro music muscles for the next LD.
It's a good concept, but I feel the execution could have been better. It's a bit tough to find out how to play without reading the manual.
Once I found out that you have to build momentum I was able to see how this may work after all given a bit of additional polish to the controls.
Awesome idea! I think it's worth exploring more. I see a lot of potential here! Love the fact that you can carry around your Kaiju by storing the code somewhere.
Please consider giving more insight into the evolution process. Make the connection between the input and the upgrades more visible. Maybe use a dictionary to assign certain words with skills and upgrade accordingly. There may be a word list around that already makes the connection between words and themes, maybe you can use a thesaurus.
You can put a lot of psychology into it I guess where positive comments will create a more loyal creature while being negative can grow a mean bastard.
Gameplay-wise I think it could be extended to contain a single player campaign. The fighting format can even stay that way, only the enemies are randomly generated and grow stronger from fight to fight.
Awesome little game. I like how self-contained it is and how the progress is constantly visible. You even threw in an awesome ending.
Graphics are a treat, music is serene and fits the atmosphere.
I like it a lot. Great entry!
I hope you had fun making the game and learned a lot.
There are a number of issues, which I assume you are aware, like getting stuck in the walls sometimes, or the audio glitch when you press hard into a tunnel in human form.
I very much liked your audio effects, especially when you picked up the last remaining cheese. The music shows promise and reminded me a bit of classic 80's scifi movies.
It took a while to figure it out because I didn't understand right away who the shapeshifter was. I think the game concept overall is very good and the graphics fit the theme well.
Music would have helped the mood a lot.
The point that made me quit after winning round two was that I couldn't skip the story, which I found hard to get into, especially since the text progressed quite slowly.
I think overall it's a very solid entry that needs a little bit of extra polish.
Nice rendition of a match-the-shape game. The hearts are a nice touch that add another dimension. The black ones are a bit difficult to spot though.
The music is nice and the visuals fit your game well. The design is solid over all.
I feel that this genre really benefits from a control scheme where each shape is assigned a specific key instead of cycling through the shapes. I found going from square to circle to square to triangle instead a normal cycle between the three shapes a bit confusing.
It's one of the concepts that you grasp instantly. Blow up one wheel to make a turn, nice. I only played the solo mode and that was quite fun.
I think the concept could be expanded on and the main character is visually unique to make the game interesting to a wider audience if polished some more. I got a bit of that Carmageddon vibe.
Just read the comments, I swear I wrote mine before reading Big Cow's! What a coincidence. :)
Terrific effort. The graphics are gorgeous, as is the animation. The visual design overall is super smooth and fast paced to perfection. The music accompanies this splendidly and sets a good fast beat that matches the frantic shooting going on everywhere.
Unfortunately for me, the gameplay does not quite catch up. The screen scrolls too slowly compared to the player speed and the limited range takes a lot of otherwise fast paced fun out of the game. I feel that either shooting upwards full screen or hacking in four directions with limited range would have worked better. Rescuing villagers does not really seem to have that much of an impact.
Don't get me wrong, I totally love this game, but in cases like these where I see a lot of potential for making it even greater, I tend to nitpick a lot which may sound like I have a low opinion of your results. Quite the contrary!
Overall I think you can be proud of your achievement. I could totally see an extended version of this with more in-game story and more variety on Steam in the future.
Nice little pinball machine. Not much for presentation, but it has some charm due to the cute sound effects. I wish the RPG-theme would have gone a bit further and the Shifting theme did not really convince me, but overall it's a good application of a physics engine.
Really tough but well-made entry. I love the triangle guy although I got the best dumping results with the shockwave dude. Couldn't make it past 6 dumps though.
I found it funny how rapid firing can kind of create a counter point to the music's beat.
Really funny game. I love how it turns into a cacophony of man-made animal noises. It gets really tough after a while so I stopped listening and started shooting all animals that moved too close to my wife. The graphics are hilarious.
As a suggestion, maybe you can introduce new mechanics after each few rounds that add something fresh, e.g. something you have to click on within a time limit to divert the player's attention.
Can't play it unfortunately. I get the error message "he browser could not allocate enough memory for the WebGL content."
I'm in Win7/Firefox. The game looks really wicked, I was looking forward to it.
I tried the game again and now it works for me. Really neat entry, but the difficulty is brutal. Sometimes the character wouldn't roll, which was a bit frustrating.
You nailed the atmosphere though, great job!
Very cute. Took me a while to figure it out. Without reading the manual I would have been lost. A little less repetitive music and more visceral audio feedback are my only points of criticism. Very well done.
Great pixel art and music. I have to agree that shifting is not really necessary to beat the game. Nice idea though.
Nice Tower Defense game. I think it may benefit from some upgrade functionality and the possibility to replace towers.
I was able to get through quite well by spamming basic towers.
Neat entry, at first I thought it was made with RPGMaker but apparently it's Godot. I really liked the graphics style and the soothing music. Also the idea of switching between future and past was pretty nice.
Some of the puzzles were a bit far fetched, like the one with the worms but at you tried to find unconventional solutions to obvious problems, like the chainsaw puzzle. It might need some work to make them convincing though. It kinda reminds me of the puzzles I would make for an Adventure game only to feel annoyed later that it isn't logical enough.
I wonder whether you can convince Godot to use a more precise pixel representation, because your pixels are all different sizes (look at the berries in the trees, which are sometimes square and sometimes rectangular.
Overall presentation is really nice and all assets tied very nicely together. Controls are butter smooth, which is cool.
This is one of the games Ludum Dare is made for. It is brilliantly made, introduces a fresh concept and is generally a joy to play.
The graphics are simple but effective, the humor is spot-on, the game is full of surprises and the ending satisfying.
I love the creepy sound the hands make when they hit the wall. Great job! Certainly one of my favorites this time.
The trick is to look for a cat that is not black, but brown. :D
Initially I found the cat by accident because I was standing right next to it when I tried what happens when I press space. When I knew what the cat looked like, it was fairly easy to find it a second time.
Graphics were nice. Movement could have been a bit faster and mouse support for swinging the flashlight around might help the game pick up the pace. A moving cat could counter the decreased difficulty by having faster light movement.
Cool game, impressive presentation and neat music.
Unfortunately the gameplay isn't temper-proof. I managed to get over 16000 points just by spamming the three buttons, much better than the score I got when I actually tried to play well.
Apart from that I enjoyed playing Rhythm Rink.
It's a great concept, but it was too confusing for me. Maybe a slower version? Or having the ability to stop time? Or even a turn based version?
The implementation is really smooth, but I wish the controls were more precise, which is probably easier said than done for this idea.
Presentation was top notch though.
Overall it plays like a diamond in the rough.
Awesome entry!
Despite the simple visuals your game has a heart of gold and just works. I had a lot fun. Controls are spot on and every new hourglass gives the player a new surprise. Using the mouse as a design element was a nice touch.
Two very minor things regarding controller support:
A game like this should really support the D-Pad. Playing it with thumbsticks was a bit weird.
You assigned "quit game" to one of the controller buttons, which could lead to frustration if someone decided to try other buttons later in the game and accidentally booted themselves out of the game.
Great job overall!
Cool entry, love the graphics.
Unfortunately it crashed on my towards the end of day 4 or 5 when I got all the nerds on my side and was about to kick the last bully's butt.
Awesome entry, congratulations! The music sets the mood very nicely. I love the idea of the changing rooms to solve the puzzles. It took me a while to figure out what the fan was for because I thought it was a seashell. I liked it a lot overall.
Great entry! It's a little messed up and a bit too easy/short but it really shines.
How did you do the sound effects? They are pretty neat!
I absolutely love the music! Also neat camera work and cool character design.
The different resolutions between characters and background were a bit jarring, maybe you could have simply doubled the character resolution. There was a lot of detail in the design that was hard to appreciate because everything was quite small. Also in a pixel game I would advise you to switch off pixel interpolation (there is a setting in GM:S).
I had a controller connected so it started a two player game. While controller support is really nice, apparently there is no proper way of playing the game with one player and a controller because you always get two characters.
There is a video on youtube called "The Art of Screenshake" which I would highly recommend. Your game will become so much more fun if you add some of the ideas presented there (I didn't have time to do that for my game though).
Keep up the good work!
I love the art, the humor and the music.
Implementation-wise it is lacking a bit. The game could benefit a lot from tighter controls, visual enemy hit feedback, animated shots, special effects and sound effects.
I like to recommend the video "The Art of Screenshake" for some pointers on how to make your game feel more powerful (although I have to admit, that my own entry is lacking in that department as well).
Visually very nice, especially the animations which are awesome! I also really liked the music.
Gameplay could be improved to be more snappy. Sound effects and hit feedback would do wonders for the game.
A really really well made entry. Visuals and atmosphere are awesome, the music is really fitting and the special effects add a lot of fun to the game.
The difficulty is tough but appropriate.
The only real crime are the controls. Using up for jumping is not really my favorite and game like this absolutely needs controller support. Keeping shift pressed at all times really cramps up my fingers, so I wasn't able to finish. That's a real shame because I would have loved to see the end.
Cool little game. I enjoyed the core mechanics and the sleek visuals. I would really like to see this more fleshed out. If you have any updates please let me know, I'll be glad to give the game another shot.
Some recommendations from my point of view:
- One life is pretty harsh, especially since it takes a long time to build up your upgrades
- A game like this really comes to life through sound effects. It will take you about half an hour to generate effects in bfxr that will be perfect for your visuals.
- Controller support is really easy to implement in Game Maker and it would make the game so much better.
- You didn't tick the "Windows" box on itch.io, so I can't download the game in the itch downloader which I really like to use.
Gorgeous pixel art and design. I loved the idea of the circular level layout.
I wish the difficulty ramp was a little slower to be able to get a grip on the controls and what the specials do. Sound effects an somewhat faster fire rate would also help.
Besides that, a very neat entry.
Nice and gloomy atmosphere with decent writing, good job! I played until after the first fight and would have probably continued if the character had moved a bit faster, which was a bit of a turn-off.
The problem with RPG Maker games is that they tend to look quite similar to each other so I always have a feeling of deja vu when playing one. I guess it's pretty hard to make a game that looks truly unique with this tool.
Also, did you do all the sprites yourselves? If so, that's very impressive! If not then it's hard to judge the art side of the game because it's impossible to tell which part you added and which was taken from an asset pack.
Anyway it's obvious that you put a lot of effort into the story, and I think that part is what really stands out in this game.
I love the ant's walking animation and the bare-bones design. Also the gameplay is fast which is fitting for this type of game.
The game itself is tough, which is perfectly fine, but then the controls need to be very tight as well. The ant doesn't jump properly when next to a wall. There are situations when the lizard cannot be avoided. The hit box of the spider is too small when taking into account that the targeting system is a bit fiddly. Also a game like this needs a really fast restart after dying (see Super Meat Boy for reference).
Overall I had fun with the game and I was really motivated to finish it because the flow is really nice, but I had to give up due to the controls. I managed to kill the spider, but was killed at the same time.
The idea was very creative, the premise allows to go much deeper, so I would like to see what you can do when you build up on what you have.
There may be different ways of breaking the trance (like breaking line of sight or manipulating the victim instead of the vampire. Add more than one vampire/victim per level and you may have a neat time-based puzzler.
The weakest point are the controls though, so you may want to work on those first:
- You can only pick up the picture if you stand next to it (extending the hitbox would probably be easy).
- The mix of mouse and keyboard controls (game vs. menu) forces the player to switch back and forth. A game like this can perfectly do without the mouse which would keep the player in one control mode.
Don't get discouraged though, I see some promise in your game.
Awesome graphics and design! It had really nice feel to it. I love the idea of watering the whale.
The game could benefit from faster ramp up and to me the dubstep was a little out of place for the visuals.
Overall it's a really tight game.
Such a depressing theme.
The art is really great, but it seems the game design itself is lacking a bit. Don't give up, though. There are some pretty cool videos online with some simple pointers that show how you can make more out of your game.
For starters have a look at "The Art of Screenshake" and "Juice it or Lose it".
Those visuals are insane! Great work! Sound effects and choice of music were really good as well. I liked the melancholy atmosphere.
The controls were a bit wonky though. Jumping next to a platform didn't give the full jump height and hitting was delayed, which took a bit out of the fun for me.
I found out by accident that the yellow barrels contained gold and the red ones health, I guess this could have been communicated better. I thought the red ones would explode.
I managed to finish the game though and only afterwards I found out that you could block. All in all it was a nice challenge and I had a lot of fun, despite some frustrating moments. My favorite part was luring enemies into the ballistas.
Very cool entry. I enjoyed the story very much, although I didn't finish it. Makes me want to retry and get through a second time. I didn't realize at first that you have to freeze more than one person at a time to keep them alive longer so everyone died when I met the lichen people.
One of my favorites so far.
I am a real sucker for games with tight controls and you pretty much nailed it. The game hat a lot of bite so I wasn't able to clear it but since you immediately restart after dying (reference to Super Meat Boy?) it keeps you motivated. I haven't found out why you can shoot, but maybe that comes later.
The only issue that really nagged me was that the game does not support D-Pad. Playing a tight retro game like this with an analog stick really is a crime.
Addendum: Don't listen too much to people that say the game is too hard. I am sure you meant it that way. Super Meatboy was hard by design and people love it for that.
Cute game, graphics and sound fit very well.
I wish you would be able to trash the place, let the owners get what they deserve for leaving us alone at home.
I absolutely love the graphics and animation.
The game could benefit from a little clearer direction, especially some sort of scoring and level progression. A game with such great graphics deserves tighter control.
Those. visuals. are. insane.
All other aspects are really solid too. The puzzles are well thought out and the difficulty ramps up nicely and keeps motivated. I could totally see this as a commercial title with added mechanics.
Awesome game overall. I came here via your timelapse posting which I found very impressive. The game itself is no less.
It was challenging with a very good ramp up and kept me motivated throughout the more tricky passages.
The level of detail in the graphics adds a lot to the atmosphere of the game and the music was fitting to set the mood.
I especially liked the subtle separation from the one room mechanic at the end as sort of a release from the confines of the game.
My only point of criticism would be missing controller support, which is fairly easy to set up in Game Maker, and my personal (subjective) preference of switching x and c for interaction and jumping.
Played until 149 then gave up. Graphics are really cool and the mood is awesome. It would have been neat if she followed the cursor with her eyes or head. Also nice touch to set up the game with throwing the stone out the window.
From the game mechanics, I could see some improvements. Maybe you could omit having to click to raise the arm, that's a bit extra effort that does not contribute to the game and makes the controls a bit confusing
I was not able to aim down, which was a bit of a bummer, since the creatures on the bottom are a bit hard to hit that way.
Some progression would be nice. Not necessarily extra monsters, but a faster ramp up in difficulty. Maybe you can try tweaking it so the rounds become shorter by reaching a challenging difficulty level faster. That way you may invite the player to replay in order to top their high score.
All in all a very solid entry.
I wanted to play your game, but I don't have a google account. Maybe you can host your game somewhere else?
I wanted to give it another go and now the download link is broken. May I suggest you upload the game to itch.io? Many people do and it's a great place for hosting your games.
I love the shader, it gives the game a lot. Making a game with that presentation and that name sets the expectations really I, so I was a bit let down that you cannot actually walk up walls and thus get a better sense of where you started.
Overall it was a solid entry and I really enjoyed playing it.
Funny little game. Didn't make it though though. I ended up getting stuck trying random answers since I wasn't clear which path was the right one. Love the graphics. The writing is not all that bad.
Great idea, a Breakout clone in 3D. It was a bit hard to really control the ball and I had to reset the balls a lot.
Music and sound would have added a nice touch, maybe some visual effects.
Overall it was a really interesting experiment.
Oh and thanks a lot for streaming my game!
Wow, great satirical entry about the state of gaming in 2016.
Awesome work! Deep too.
Really neat game! The controls are tight and the pixel art is very pretty.
My only concern was the grappling hook (love the idea!). It often did not drag in the enemies which resulted in me losing patience and not taking care of timing enough.
Also faster player movement may have been nice. If you restricted it to a small radius around the obelisk you might have reached a similar effect in game mechanics but with smoother movement for the player
This game has so much potential!
The graphics are nice, the soundtrack outstanding. The idea is fresh and promises some really neat puzzles. I would have loved to see more.
Unfortunately the controls are not very tight which makes the game really frustrating. Up key for jumping is a no-no, also the wall jump was a bit fiddly.
Gameplay-wise the stereo-mechanics look and work pretty well, but I would have liked some way to reset the effect. When I missed a jump it took quite some time until I could try again which breaks the game flow a bit.
Two minor things: Sound effects would have been really nice (bfxr ones would fit perfectly) and a Game Over screen instead of restarting the game would be a bit more satisfying.
Overall it's a great entry. I liked it a lot.
Lovely game. I really enjoyed it although I didn't find the instructions that easy to understand. But it was a nice and chaotic experience. I had a chuckle at the ridiculousness of the premise of a constant mismanagement that resulted in only one bedroom for all the guests. Nice work.
This one is so stylish. From an artistic standpoint, it doesn't get much better than this. Graphics and music are brilliant!
The idea of transforming the room through music is terrific, there are many nice touches like the "score" being made up from words and removing the books from the shelved by wriggling.
What could be improved from my point of view is the gameplay. Better visual indicators for when a key was hit correctly would add to the feel of the game.
Unfortunately the controls are not temper-proof: I was able to finish the water song with almost no errors just by spamming the keys. Since there is no penalty for mistakes it's easy to cheat.
Also the reward for getting segments right is purely visual but it is disconnected from the actions. It doesn't become clear throughout the game how to actually reach transformation points. Is is by playing a section correctly or by getting a certain number of notes right? Maybe some better visual and aural cues about when a success was achieved might improve the game.
Overall it's easily one of the most stylish games I played during this LD, great job!
Outstanding art style and rock-solid game design. The sizes of the witches were well reflected in the level design. Cute writing rounded everything off and motivated to stay til the end through the challenging final stretch.
Music was obviously missing and the game could easily have benefited from some open source music from jamendo or a similar source.
Another minor issue would be that the branches look a bit unnatural in their square form, so a little less strict edges might appear less sterile.
Overall a great entry. Real shame that there was no music.
Very nice game. Graphics and music are great. Gameplay is pretty smooth, might be a bit tighter.
The only real complain I have is that it seems that a new virus can spawn at exactly your location which makes you lose immediately and there's nothing you can do about it, which is a bit frustrating.
With a bit of polish this would be nice on an app store.
Lovely art, I had my eyes on this one ever since I've seen the WIP. The whistling adds a nice touch and I had a good chuckle. The "success" whistle could use some variation especially since the first levels are quite easy and you tend to hear the same recording repeated a lot.
For all the great ideas and the awesome visuals I wish the gameplay itself offered a few more surprises toward the end but over all it's a very good entry.
What can I say. Certainly one of the most innovative entries I've seen so far. Great job! Some simple sound effects would have been really neat.
I liked the music and the overall gameplay, which runs quite smoothly.
If you want some pointers about how to improve the game, I would strongly recommend Jan Willem Nijman's talk "The art of screenshake" on Youtube. If you implement some of his ideas, you will see a difference of night and day.
Good luck to you!
Nice puzzler, I really love the presentation.
Not really my genre though so I only played a little. This being a Jam entry, I would say that some mellow music would have done wonders to the game.
A marker would help identify the distance between each person and their corresponding switch, so that the player doesn't have to guess whether the characters are placed correctly.
Awesome entry!
Similar yet very different from "Was ist das für 1 Room?" It took some getting used to moving the furniture out of the way to place other items, but it was a lot of fun. I played till level 8.
Music was toned down enough to not be repetitive, graphics were very nice although for some items it was a bit hard to figure out the correct orientation (especially desk and fridge). The comments mechanic was a really nice touch to remind the player what was amiss while staying in the background and thus not breaking the flow of the game.
That this was a compo entry made this all the more impressive. Kudos!
I'm so glad you made this game! Believe it or not, I was brainstorming a similar game where you play a house with legs and arms that eats people who are having a party in its living room, but I didn't think I could pull it off so I made something else instead. Really happy to see the idea actually executed in some form.
About the game: It's really well made and fun to play but hard (impossible?) to beat because it is not clear what the victory conditions are and there is no indicator about how much time is left.
Again, thank you for making this.
Gorgeous pixel art and atmosphere, great job!
Unfortunately it clashes a bit with the non-pixel art parts in the menus, especially the text.
Controls are were bit wonky for me. Navigating the menus is a bit of a hassle, and some items should not revert back to the standard cursor, like street lamps and trees.
There was an audio glitch that caused a click sound to play about every 2 seconds.
But overall still very impressive for a Compo game.
Nice idea. I loved Antichamber and I see the reference here. I wish you rolled a bit more with the premise and added some more surprises beyond "Dead end, turn around, new path". I like the art style and the controls were smooth. A jumping sfx would be neat as would music.
Overall a solid entry that is worth getting a few more iterations to flesh it out more.
Very nice entry. The overall atmosphere is very good. Graphics are simple but fit the genre. Audio is perfect.
Gameplay-wise I'm not really sure I understand how to win. First I thought it was a puzzle game but upon replaying I wondered whether it was a guessing game instead. I didn't understand how to spot the supporting walls.
Anyway, with a bit more polish and a lot more levels, this game would be perfect in an app store. Very well done.
Funky little game. The reduced graphics and animation were nice. I loved the ghosts with guns and how you used shades of gray to convey damage.
I would recommend watching the video "The Art of Screenshake", you will find some good pointers on making your game more responsive and fun.
Very nice entry! It's simple but very polished.
The music is great, the graphics cute. Controls are really smooth.
Like it a lot!
Nice game, but too hard for me. I was stuck on day 1 but at least I managed to reach one object.
I used to play Sokoban as a kid so it's a great take on that. Some background music would be a nice addition and some intro or explanation about the goal of the game would help a lot.
Are the levels randomly generated? Maybe a tutorial room in the beginning that is hand-crafted might soften the learning curve a bit.
All in all a very solid entry!
Very nice entry. I love the pixel art although it's sometimes difficult to see what's going on, especially since you have to be quick to react to a new level. This sometimes makes it a bit tough to get off to a good start.
Overall the game has a lot of charm and I will certainly revisit it to try finishing the game (I only made it to 1 - 2/3 - 1/4)
Awesome graphics and great atmosphere. The game itself felt a little slow, which may be deliberate to set the mood.
That was great fun. Made it on my first try.
Graphics and music are insanely well done and the hand crafted floor patterns feel like a lot of thought has gone into them.
Great job!
Great job! Easily my favorite so far.
I loved your LD35 entry and this one is even better. I honestly don't have anything negative to say.
However I found a bug: When you start out with all the same rooms (say only swimming pools), the game freezes.
It's tough but good. Visuals and audio are really nice, the game is fun to play.
I wish the balancing was a bit better. I wasn't able to pass the stage where the shooty guys appeared and I tried different strategies. Getting the shotgun first and then upgrading fire rate seemed to work fairly well, but I got entangled in the dashers too often.
So my only complaint to an otherwise very well-done game would be these balancing issues. The dashers could use a smaller hitbox since it becomes frustratingly hard when they come at you at a specific angle and you can't do anything to evade them. Maybe the game might be better off without solid enemies that the player can pass. For me that would alleviate a lot of frustration.
Overall it's a really fun game though, one of the games I played longest this LD. It's really motivating to go "just another round".
Lovely game, I really enjoyed it. Feels very polished and complete. I didn't finish it though. Anyway it's a keeper, maybe later I'll challenge it again.
Very minor nitpick: When you run out of moves it would be better to fail the game immediately instead of letting the player try another turn that never happens.
I count myself among the people who didn't understand how to solve this, but I tried a lot anyway. The premise is brilliant and the idea of reading the papers at the end to find out whether your actions actually achieved something was a nice touch.
I wish it were possible to visit the different times as often as you wanted to play around more with the cause and effect side of things.
Actually extending the idea beyond this competition would be really interesting. If you can make it a game where you have to time travel to achieve a specific goal but a lot of things you can do have a butterfly effect and you end up worse than what you originally tried to prevent and have to dig yourself out of that mess.
I made it to Wave 26, then gave up. I liked the concept of feeding the room blood to not die. I think I would have more fun if the game cycles were shorter, i.e. that the difficulty ramps up more steeply so the player is challenged to try again and increase their score.
The merchant was an important addition as it keeps the player motivated to level up their stuff.
The game would have benefitted a lot from adding some sound effects and music (freely available on the net).
I had some issues with the hit direction and it was not clear to me how to control my direction of attack, which was a bit frustrating.
Overall, neat little entry that could use some polishing.
I imagine this is a fairly realistic depiction of a normal work day at a webhosting company ;D
Neat game, fun concept. Could use some polish, especially since you are permitted to use sound effects and music from the internet in the Jam.
Concretely I would have liked if the character was flipped when moving to the right.
I only got to 222. It's a neat concept that could use a little polish. But the basic premise works. I could imagine the game on a mobile store if you get someone to redo your graphics (you know the competition is harsh over there)
Let me elaborate a bit on feedback since you held my entry in such high regards.
The basic setup works for me, the difficulty seems to ramp up by introducing more complex shapes, but there is little sense of achievement since all you do is rack up points until you die. Take a look at the mobile game "Threes" which has a similar buildup but is really rewarding in getting the player into the "let's see if I can top my previous score" mindset. Well it may help that Threes oozes charm. As an experiment, try to add googly eyes and stickman-arms on your paint canisters and let them give a little cheer when you clear a line. It's cheap but it might give the game some more personality. Another cheap trick would be to add a simple back story. Nothing fancy, just a few lines of text to set the mood.
One important factor here is that the gameplay should be pleasant and smooth. The controls and animation are really smooth in this case, so it may be the sound effects that make the mood a bit jarring. Also the factory looks a bit drab, which may be a bit of a problem. Since this is the jam, you could have just grabbed some free relaxing music and slapped it on top of the game which would have greatly increased the mood.
Next up are the special tasks you are given. It's a neat idea to break up the monotony of the main game, but it does not feel like a rewarding goal to follow. Once you finish your task, you get the next one. It's like work. One option here could be to drop the endless game mode in favor of a mode where you can actually finish a level by achieving a number of tasks that are presented to the player in advance. They could be either to clear a certain number of lines or to produce certain shapes.
That way they have more sensible control over how to structure the incoming colors and you can have increasing difficulty paired with small achievements of finishing a level, something really important to keep motivation up in a mobile game.
I found one minor thing, you seem to use a fixed 4x4 grid for your shapes and place the mouse cursor at a fixed position relative to that grid. This causes problems when you have a single stone because the cursor is not centered on it as would be expected. A solution may be to take the position of the top left and bottom right block within the 4x4 grid and average those. That could be your mouse pointer position.
I hope you were able to find these points useful. Good luck on releasing a mobile game one of these days, I think you are on the right track with this.
Nice game, a similar idea to my LD35 entry: http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-35/?action=preview&uid=83463
I love the custom sound effects.
This is a game that would greatly benefit from some of the ideas presented in the youtube video "The Art of Screenshake".
Good job.
One addition: With a keyboard it is not possible to shoot diagonally in all directions because you have to press three keys at the same time and that doesn't always work well on many keyboards. Controller support would not have this issue.
Awesome game. I wanted to do something similar to your idea but I would never have pulled it off so well.
The puzzles are really tough and I tried for over an hour but I just can't finish levels 13 and 15.
Great job overall!
Stunning presentation. The parallax scrolling does wonders to the game. All animations are silky smooth.
The music was generally very good, but the high-pitched notes become grating after a while.
For me the controls were a bit too much to handle. Juggling four keys with one hand (keeping one pressed all the time) was a bit frustrating, especially for a game this fast. Maybe having a stationary character or auto-load whenever the player is in front of the computer may be an possible alternative here.
Gameplay-wise I liked the game, but sometimes the initial shot of a newly spawned enemy came so quickly it was hard to shot the windows in time.
Finally, sometimes the player wouldn't shoot which I attributed to a bug at first until I found out that he doesn't shoot the walls (makes sense). Some indicator, like a colored mouse cursor or something like that might help avoid confusion here.
Overall a very neat game, especially visually. Loved the ending.
Thanks for the comments. I know about the hit boxes and the balancing. It was all I was able to do with with a foggy mind yesterday. I may remedy that as a bug fix.
Good news everyone. I uploaded version 1.1 which fixes a lot of concerns, most of all those pesky hit boxes. So if anyone should return to try it again, let me know if you still have problems.
Yes, I noticed.
I already decreased the size of the hitbox but it's not enough for the rays.
I could probably resize the player's hitbox just for that section and then return it to normal afterwards.
Yes, exactly what I had in mind. But the time was missing to put it in.
I wanted...
- attack upgrade actually be a venom upgrade so the bosses would continuously lose life along with some visual representation
- The bosses were also supposed to flash and have invincibility frames just as the player. That would make balancing a bit more easy and the fights could become more challenging without becoming unfair.
- I also wanted to add wind-up animations for most of the attacks. The painting boss has one for one attack and the fridge boss also has one, but the others are missing theirs and it really annoys me.
- I totally forgot to add a sound for hitting the bosses. Not they just stand there like doofuses and don't seem to take damage at all. After fixing the hitboxes that's my biggest annoyance right now.
I could change some of that now but I think those things are outside the boundaries of what constitutes a bug fix.
@pyokoanarogue: You're just too good then. You were not supposed to win against the Fridge without double jump. Kudos to you!
@mirta000: Thanks again for putting up with the controls and for taking the time including it in your Let's Plays. The double jump becomes available after you beat one of the bosses.
The graphics are marvellous, especially what you are doing with lighting.
If only you had the time to add some music and sound effects.
The language might need some polish as there were some typos and some sentences did not make much sense.
Overall it is very playable though and I got some of the endings until I figured out the right one.
Great job!
Seriously cool entry. I love bullet hell shooters and the added collapse mechanics were a really neat idea. Graphics range from wicked cool (enemies, especially the boss) to a bit too much (high contrast textures, jarring colors).
Would you do me a favor? Watch "The Art of Screenshake", apply what you can agree on to your game, decrease the size of the player's hitbox in true Cave SHMUP style, add some sound effects and then upload the results on itch. I'll keep the game in my collection so I'll know when you update it. I would really like to play a more polished version of it.
One comment about deploying over itch.io: Make sure you mark your archive as Windows-compatible, otherwise the itch.io app won't install the game.
2300 points and certainly coming back for more.
It's immediately recognizable how much thought went into this game. From draining health to introduce a natural timing factor to the continue functionality that allows locking the difficulty. It has everything it needs, be it screenshake effects or even a highscore table to keep up the motivation. There are a lot of little touches, like the soft outer boundary and menu transitions. It's a very polished entry and I love it!
On the downside, I found the music to be kind of monotonous. I assume you wanted to go for a chilly atmospheric vibe, but it seems a bit repetitive. Maybe the base line is a bit too prominent.
Also I thought the controls were not quite tight enough, but that could be an "easy to learn, difficult to master" thing. Specifically since you can only thrust forwards, and the orbital cannons always fire at you head on, it's quite tricky to avoid them. Even if that is by choice, I think the momentum mechanics could use a little tweaking. I found myself struggling with picking up the extras because I had some sideways momentum left.
My biggest complaint however would be the lack of fullscreen, which to my mind, would not only have a positive visual effect, but might also help with the controls since a bigger screen allows for finer interaction.
Despite the complaints, I think it's a very fun game, and I'll keep it in my itch library for replay.
I truly marveled at the scope of your game. A neat intro sequence, then a fairly complex simulation and I thought man, that's quite a lot of content! And then you go and slap combat on it for good measure.
The mechanics of the sim and the combat felt really fresh and interesting. The graphics are pleasant and convey well what's going on. The intro sequence was cute and added a lot of character to your game.
That being said, I wasn't really able to figure out how to actually achieve something, so I went and built some stuff in different sectors and tried to keep them in the sunlight, but I didn't really feel I was working towards something, or trying to evade some pending doom. Then came a fight and I had totally forgotten details of the combat mechanics. I had to connect to a red node for attack and to a blue one for defense, and I could optionally pick up these other nodes on the way but didn't remember what they were good for.
I should note that I'm not really a simulation buff, so from my naive perspective it was all a bit tough to optimize both the sim and the combat.
Against the consensus here I actually enjoyed the tutorial, although I agree that it was a bit too long to keep all the aspects in my head. It may not be perfect, but you actually went through the trouble of making a tutorial, instead of slapping on a wall of text explaining what to do as many other games around here do.
I have to say that the music is a weak point for me. I don't know whether you composed it or used a tool like Wolfram, but it sounds like random notes without much of a musical structure. It kinda worked for [Carefulzilla](https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/carefulzilla/) because it's a wacky game, but if time as an issue, I think I may have preferred some spherical, drawn out notes using a pad instrument to create auditory atmosphere.
So although it's not my cup of tea genre-wise, I still appreciate all the effort that went into the game. Definitely an innovative concept that very well deserves to be expanded on. Impressive game!
Despite the game feeling pretty raw, it was a fun little experience. I think the music and dialog was quite nice and I love the sound effects the trolls make.
For the introduction, a wall of text is a sure-fire way to scare away players, I think it would better to introduce the mechanics bit by bit. You could have shown the key for mining or growing mushrooms whenever the player was on top of a square that allowed action. You had a dialog system already, which could have aided you in showing what the game was about bit by bit.
Although the game could use some more work I think you did very well in the audio and humor department, especially since many games rely on bfxr sounds, so yours stands out in that respect.
One option if you're short on time and can't manage to do a full tutorial: Convert your wall of text into an image. Just take a screenshot of the game or copy/paste some assets into a single picture and just draw some arrows and add a few words like "Press E here". That should only take a little longer than writing long texts and the brain can make the connection much faster than having to parse multiple paragraphs of text.
Great world-building skills! The intro and the music created a dense oppressive atmosphere. The graphics were simplistic but beautiful and very fitting considering you are a planner that is supposed to control peoples lives from in front of a screen.
It took me a while to figure out what the game wanted from me though. I thought I had to make the people meet at work or during off-times, but later realized that this was hard-locked in the game, so I figured out I had to make them meet by chance on the street.
I found that challenge a bit tough for my tastes, as the controls were a bit unwieldy. Since I could only change work during off-times and vice versa, the game felt like it was holding me back whenever I wanted to try something out, because it wasn't the right time. I managed to finish tasks 1-3 but gave up when all three rebels almost passed on the the street, but missed each other by a fraction of a second.
Overall it's an awesome set-up that could benefit from a little more refinement to give the player more control. That and maybe a few more mechanics, but of course time is always an issue.
Great job overall!
At first I considered giving up because the controls were really tough. The dash almost always slung me into the water. Then I realized there was some story to the game and I stuck with it. Good decision, because I found the game to be very likeable.
The graphics and music create a really nice atmosphere that works well with the story you are telling.
Let me go into a bit more detail about the mechanics. Purely gameplay-wise I think the game could use a bit more tweaking. The dash's acceleration was really strong which resulted in immediate death if you don't hit the opponent. Maybe reducing it a bit may work better.
About the water threshold, I think I would have preferred if you don't die right away once you touch the water. Allowing the player to enter shallow water and struggle their way back to land would probably alleviate a bit of the frustration caused by dashing just a little too far.
Conceptually, I found it a bit ironic that the best course of action was actually avoiding the enemies until they run into the water instead of attacking them, which sort of breaks the moral of the game. Also since they are quite aggressive from the get-go, the final message falls flat a bit. I think the game would have benefited greatly from a bit more consistence with the theme here, e.g. by making the enemies passive at first and appeal to the players gaming reflexes to attack, then moving on to a more aggressive stance.
All in all it was a game with more depth than anticipated. I really appreciate that you took the effort to tell a little story here. Great job!
This is awesome! I didn't expect much and came for the Game Boy graphics but the game is actually really great. It's rare to find an actually funny entry on LD. What I especially liked was how you kick off the game by having the player find the main character. That part gets you right into the game's world.
The graphics work pretty well, especially that nasty tweezers animation when you squash something. Character design is fitting, especially the boss. The weak point here is the car that looks kind of generic.
Sound effects are really nice, but the game definitely lacks some music.
Gameplay-wise I have three things I would like to address:
First I was able to kill the guards before getting the task to do so which lead to a hiccup when I actually got there. An easy way to solve this would be to hide parts of the game that are not accessible yet by a blank screen.
Second, I think the game crashed when I defeated the boss. I couldn't move my character and he wasn't saying anything. I was able to use the tweezers but couldn't figure out what to do with them. I'll probably replay the game with my daughter, so we can check whether it works a second time.
Third, the boss fight itself. It would have been so much cooler if you could have put the car down away from the boss and see it run him over. I had to try a few times to actually get the crash right, so I was confused for a bit. But it was still clear what to do, so it's not a big deal.
Overall I enjoyed the game very much.
Awesome visuals! I love the way the hexagons shake and drop. The choice of music really makes the game come to life. It was challenging and fun to play.
Some things could have been communicated better. I didn't get why you had two types of magic that did the same thing, but no life bar, until I found out the squares were supposed to be hearts. It didn't help that clicking the squares also activated your magic. Speaking about communication: I would assume that many players will find it a bit tedious to read a wall of text to understand the game, especially when a bullet list would have transported the same information. There are so many games to take in every LD that this carries an additional weight.
As for pacing, I really like how you will die within seconds if you don't react, so the game starts immediately as you hit Start. On the other end of the spectrum, I didn't really feel that the game became harder over time, although it probably does. Maybe a steeper difficulty curve may keep the skilled players interested for longer.
All in all it's a very polished, beautifully looking and sounding game, great job!
Devil Daggers! I suck at this type of game, although I love a good challenge. I got to 2700 points (probably not that good). Overall I am awed by the level of polish you offer. The graphics are outstanding and the shader you use make the game visually unique. The details on the models are awesome!
The music is pumping and giving the game the urgency this genre is begging for.
Gameplay wise there is not much to criticize, I like the general mechanics, especially the healing clouds as they create a point of attraction that is usually surrounded by danger, which creates a very good risk/reward balance.
The only minor nitpick would be that the game could have a slightly tighter difficulty curve. I feel that until right before the first spiders appear, the game could pick up its pace a tiny bit faster, which I think would improve the replay value and increase the already good "just one more round"-feeling.
All in all certainly one of the big greats of this LD!
I wouldn't worry too much about the similarity to DD though. There are so many clones of popular games at LD. Sure, it would have been nice if you had added some new twist to the game, maybe something more closely tied to the theme "A Small World", but for me, it's not a big problem. Your game is fun in its own right, and I'm pretty sure, Devil Daggers has not been made in three days.
I very much liked the concept of having to be careful with your bullets because every shot could come back to haunt you. That instantly clicked with me. Unfortunately you didn't expand on this idea and went in a different direction, keeping the revolving bullets as an afterthought instead of the central design idea.
What you created was fun to play anyway. I got to level 13 and appreciated that you added trophies. That hive on the pedestal really tested my patience until I had to give up. It felt unfair, because there was no indication about when there would be an enemy coming out of the hive, so it was more a matter of luck. What didn't help was that the keyboard layout wasn't at all pleasant to use. I prefer my keys next to each other, not all over the place. You could have gotten rid of the beam-me-up key, as that didn't add much to the game, but required the player to keep track of another key.
What I really liked was that the game reset you instantly (like Super Meat Boy and Hotline Miami do). For games where it's all about quick reflexes, that's great way of keeping the player motivated. Another are special effects like screenshake, which would have worked great with your entry.
All in all it's a solid entry with a very good premise, which I think deserves a second approach *revolving* (hurr hurr) around the theme of "don't shoot yourself in the foot".
That's a cute little game, I think it may be perfect for kids, as the difficulty is not too high, the concept is easy to grasp and the characters are amiable. Great job.
Minor nitpick: The side thrusters are switched they should activate on the opposite side to where the ship is turning.
I absolutely love the atmosphere you create, especially taking it slowly in the beginning when you only show the planet and then introduce the title screen. The music is really good at contributing to the mood and presentation-wise there is not much to criticize, great job!
The ending was pretty good. I suppose you were aiming at a creation myth background and I think you pulled it off quite nicely, although it took me a while to realize there is actually something happening here.
Gameplay wise, I liked the mechanics, and you spend some effort in introducing them in an organic way, but it took me a while to figure out you were supposed to call back the clouds and use them as spring boards.
The puzzles were well-conceived, but for the difficulty you chose, I think the controls should have been tighter. This is actually my only real complaint. Sometimes was dragged up through platforms, and that little jump at the end of landing was a bit annoying. So it became a bit frustrating towards the end.
Overall a very solid entry. I had fun.
Am I doing it right?
carefulzilla.png
No, but really, instant favorite, my first 5-star rating of LD38. Tremendous job making a game that is both fun to play, funny, challenging and addictive.
There are some graphics glitches if you move carelessly, especially if you try to kick the indestructible buildings (looks like I broke its toes). On the upside, kudos for getting the toe animation just right. The way Carefulzilla is tiptoing around obstacles and very carefully placing his foot is hilarious.
There we go:
carefulzilla2.png
I forgot to mention, the music is really great. It fits the game very well in its goofiness. I have no idea why you excluded it from rating. Procedurally generated sfx via bfxr is also valid for rating, I don't see why the music shouldn't.
Also the humor is spot on. "Carefulzilla, just be really careful this time". Perfect!
I think your working title was Toezilla, I think I spotted the old name somewhere in the summary.
Minor nitpick would be that when you restart, I think it should be possible to skip the intro, or maybe even skip it altogether on retry. That way the player can get back into the game immediately for another round.
I just watched the game on the TechValleyGameSpace stream and wanted to give it a spin myself.
The general idea is awesome and both music and graphics make the game really enjoyable. The sudden use of red together with the pixel burst when you are smashed are super effective.
If I was to suggest some tweaks it would be to the gameplay: I found myself just mashing space which worked out fairly well for most levels. The fact that the player has to wait half a second after landing before controls register again hinders the game flow a bit. I think I would have preferred instant reaction after landing together with the possibility to move mid-air a little. With tighter controls could have come more challenging levels, as currently the increasing difficulty mostly asks for luck instead of skill.
I could have done without the grappling hook, as I didn't use it at all. I think the reason for that was that it was controlled via mouse. Maybe you could try controlling it with the keyboard (A/D for targeting with an indicator that rotates around the spider when airborne). I think this would offer more consistent controls and might be more fun. In case you build a post-compo version that has this mechanic, drop me a line, I'd love to give it another spin.
Overall I enjoyed the game a lot, despite some minor issues with game flow. The idea was quite unique and well executed, good job!
I enjoyed your take on the world defender theme. It took me a while to figure out that I could lay eggs. the graphics were pretty cool, especially the bigger asteroids and the world eater. I couldn't find out how to defeat it but it certainly looked mysterious, the way it blended into the void of space.
There are a few areas that I would say could use a little work though. The music was fitting, but it's important to create a closed loop without breaks so that the player doesn't notice the repetition.
Gameplay-wise I think the difficulty ramp-up is too slow which decreases replay value. In the beginning there is just so much time where nothing happens. The pacing for laying eggs is also a bit off: In the beginning you can lay a lot of eggs because there is still time, but as the game progresses you barely have time to lay new ones. That is really a shame because I found the idea of laying eggs and using the chicks as ammunition really fresh and one of the strong points of your game.
Also there is no clear indication of when an egg is actually laid. As it is, laying an egg is a huge investment because it takes so long. If you let go a little too early that investment does not pay off, which is frustrating. I think, about half a second might be a good value here, as that would give you enough time to lay eggs later in the game. I think defining a separate key for picking up chicks is important, as it gives the player more control over resources. This is again about investment: If the eggs are precious because they take so long to lay, the player should not be forced to pick them up, as this sort of destroys the game's economy. But even with faster egg-laying, having more control is probably a good idea.
While I liked hitting the rocks with your head until they explode, I think the game may be more fun if you could destroy the smaller ones with a single hit. While at it, maybe increase the rotation speed of the planet a little for faster controls, and allow moving sideways while in the air.
Finally, I couldn't figure out why I would win or lose a round. My first play was a loss, because my planet's energy reached zero. My second play didn't throw me back to the start screen, so I assume I survived a round, but since the round ended with my planet being destroyed I didn't know whether I won or lost. Maybe this could have been communicated more clearly.
These points may sound like a lot, but most of them boil down to tweaking some game constants. That will likely change the character of your game, so please consider them only as ideas for trying alternatives.
Overall I liked your ideas despite some flaws and I think with a little more polish the game improve considerably.
Sorry to be that guy, but I don't think you're doing it right. Ludum Dare is supposed to be a game jam where people make a game in 48/72 hours. It seems your project has been going on for months now:
- http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-35/?action=preview&uid=92338 - http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-36/?action=preview&uid=92338
While it's okay to use pre-existing assets I don't think it's in the spirit of the Jam to keep developing the same game spanning multiple Jams. It's definitely a commendable effort for a single person but I think it would be better suited for Steam Early Access than Ludum Dare.
But on topic: The graphics are outstanding and the intro is quite effective. Other than that the game feels very raw in terms of control and objective. I like the story setup and atmosphere but without a handle on the action there is not much to actually do in the game.
Nice game, I managed to finish in on Normal difficulty after I found out that just spamming woodchucks and horses while not worrying too much about my own castle works fairly well.
There is a minor bug where the "insufficient money" message pops up after you buy something that reduces to your funds to a very low amount, I would guess the "money available" check might be below the spending code at the moment.
Wow that game is much harder than it looks. The graphics are absolutely adorable. I also liked the level design, sometimes dangling a checkpoint in front of the player's nose just out of reach.
The music was very good, but unfortunately it was so short that it outstayed its welcome a bit.
On the technical side, I think the hit animation should have been a bit faster and interruptible. I made the same mistake with my LD37 entry. I think for this sort of attack mechanic it is important that the player can push the buttons at a steady, fast beat and the game does not miss a single one. Otherwise the attack doesn't feel responsive enough.
I made it all the way through, but it was a challenge. Great job overall!
Edit: One more comment: I'm playing on a German keyboard, which has Z and Y exchanged. Maybe S and D for attack and jump would work better internationally.
Edit2: After reading @pkenney's comment, I may have been mistaken and the controls were done that way on purpose and I just wasn't getting into the spirit of the game. So if you were deliberate in your choice of controls, ignore what I wrote :)
Post LD comment here because the ending was just so awesome.
I played the game with my daughter last night and neither of us understood what was going on, especially in the part towards the end.
When I was in bed later I was mulling it over, half asleep when it hit me. Mind Blown! I actually woke up my wife to tell her and she hasn't even seen the game.
Great job! This remain with me as a personal favorite. Well deserved place, congratulations!
@evannex: Thanks for your input. Just in case you return, can you specify which OS you are using? I'll try the game on my other PC and look into it
**Update:** Hm, works on my Win10 notebook and my Win7 PC. From what I read the error you get should be solved by running it as admin, but you already tried that. Hm, I'm stumped. Anyone else has this problem?
**Update 2:** My guess is that either your virus scanner is too aggressive and blocks the file or Windows may have blocked it. Depending on your Windows version, could you try right-clicking the exe and then Properties --> General --> Unblock?
@iak I would have loved to have added more stuff, but I ran out of time. And space on the planet.
@hadik I uploaded a different version with better compatibility for virus scanners, maybe that was the reason it didn't run for you
@shiitman Thanks for the bug report. Fortunately it's not game breaking, but I'll try to fix it if I find the time.
@bram-ve I really appreciate that you like it. Music has always been a bit of a struggle for me. I switched from Miroslav Philharmonik to Bosca Ceoil because Orchestral music always clashed with retro graphics. I think it fits the game better but I think I still have quite a way to go. Thanks for your input.
@move127 Thanks a lot for the bug report. To fix this, I would have to touch multiple things in the code, so that would rather be something for a post-LD version.
@negativice I wish I had the time to add clouds and different types of grass, but these things fell to the wayside at the last moment. I wanted to add some more nice touches, like the spaceship crashing when you enter the area for the first time and the dungeon rising from the ground at night so you could only visit it in the dark. Thank you so much for the hint about packaging the game as a zip. I just now realized that the standalone exe is nothing more than a self-extracting zip which many antivirus tools find suspicious. The funny thing is that the itch.io client unpacks the game in either case (exe or zip) so only people downloading the game by hand should have this problem. Thanks again, I learned something valuable there.
@automatonvx Happy you liked the game. Yeah, I'm slowly getting the hang of graphics, which has always been a struggle for me. I still have quite a way to go in making things expressive.
@wildmusketeer Glad you liked the game! By the digging mechanics being awkward, I would guess you mean that it's a little annoying when you stick to a rock, which I realized as well but didn't have the time to create a proper way of digging around the rock smoothly.
@glimaleite I can totally understand that! I was really on the fence with the controls. Originally you had to select the shovel, then hold S and then down to initiate digging. I simplified that but maybe not enough. I definitely wanted to be able to switch off the torch by deselecting it, so for consistency I handled the shovel the same way. But I probably should have given the option of either pressing down or S with the shovel equipped.
@omiya-games I was wondering about whether the red cross would be problematic, which actually turned out that way. Also the metal sheet was not really recognizable as one ;). It's true, the day/night feature turned out to be more of a gimmick, although I originally wanted to have the dungeon only appear during the night. The character disappearing was more or less out of necessity. I didn't have time for proper repair/build animation, so I thought it would look better that the guy disappears than just standing there while making repair noises. But I agree, that should have been polished more.
@coleslaughter Glad you liked it! I agree on the insignificance of the night time. Originally the game was meant as something more of a "walking simulator" without challenge at all, but I couldn't just have the guy run into the monsters without effect, so I finally decided to add lives and the possibility to die. But it's still more about exploration and less of a challenge, I agree. About the artwork, yeah, slowly getting the hang of drawing, but still a long way to go ;). Now, about the monocle and the tree, I knew that wasn't clear enough. If I had enough time I would have had some visual indicator around "high noon" where the grass would wither a bit and the light would be brighter. That would have been the only time of day where you could use the monocle as a burning lens. Maybe with the option of singeing the grass to make it clearer how to use it.
@aeveis I wanted to have dig be either down or S but I simply forgot as time ran out. I realize that the metal sheets were not drawn well enough, you're not the first person to stumble over it. ;) The same goes for the crystal you retrieve from the dungeon, it doesn't really look like something that exudes energy. As I wrote above, I'm making baby steps towards visualizing better. Hopefully getting there some day.
@Linus: Thanks for letting me know about Wine. I thought about doing a proper Linux release but I currently have no Linux installed for testing so instead of pushing a broken build I skipped on the Linux version. Maybe I'll prepare better next time.
@Gurbx: My intention was to make it about exploration instead of pointing out everything, but I agree that some things could have been clearer.
@Nomaki: That's a pity. I wonder what I could have done to improve this. The inventory space was quite full with 5 nuggests, so I thought that would be enough, and the forge indicates that you need 5. Any idea on how to make it clearer? I removed all remaining nuggets from underground as soon as you pick up the 5th, so maybe I should have kept them and deactivate picking them up?
@themonsterfromthedeep That's a very helpful comment, thank you. I think I could have added a tooltip once you picked up the shovel which indicated you could use it to dig. I mentioned above that it may have been better to allow digging without the shovel selected.
@rongo-matane Yeah, I was on the fence with the tool tips. I wanted to make them small and cute-ish but not too obvious, but probably ended up with them being more confusing than helpful. The red cross for the spaceship could also have meant that I needed to rescue the pilot or something.
@hegemege You are totally right with the shovel. Initially the controls were even worse, so you had to push Use *and* down in order to dig. Simply pressing Use would have been much clearer. It helps if you know from the screenshots that there is digging involved, but with a blank slate I think it could be very confusing to find out how to do it.
@powerspark Man, I know exactly what you mean. I noticed this would be a problem but ran out of time. What I wanted to do was a fast-forward effect while you are in the house. You would be able to see Lord Tronson drinking tea through the window while the night whizzed by. Unfortunately I didn't make it in time.
@bunnery Wow, this means a lot! I always struggle with names for my games, and I didn't like this one too much because I thought it was too cumbersome and didn't transport the message well. You are the first person to notice the theme I was aiming for with the main character. I know that I have a long way to go to make it clearer for most players, but having someone notice really made my day. Thank you!
@erkberg Thanks for your kind words. I'm happy you liked the game so much.
I actually planned something like this. Time would run faster in the house while you could observe Lord Tronson drinking tea through the window. But in the end I barely finished the game on time, so I had to give up on that.
What's going on here? I was about to call it quits with my 50 rating and suddenly in a matter of hours I'm up to 80. You guys are awesome! Thanks so much for playing!
@drkr Sorry about the missing controller description, I could have added that to the game start overlay.
@pecolyte Come to think of it, that's really irresponsible! ;)
@chispalbc I totally agree, that was actually on my list. I wanted to change the movement dynamics so that they would guide the player around the stones, but did not make it in time.
@cosine Totally with you on the Shift-Tab. I originally had two keys for the inventory progression, but I was on the fence about which keys to use, so Tab seemed like a natural fit. Then I didn't find a good partner for the back key and sort of just left it out. Shift-Tab would have been a pretty good solution there. If you play with controller you can actually use both shoulder buttons to go back and forth in the menu.
About the difficulty, that was also something I was a bit unsure about. I didn't want people to get bored, especially since there are so many other games to play at LD, so I didn't want to make it too hard. Originally, you had to manually pick up the torch from the tree, which I skipped in favor of less confusion. I guess, reusing the existing areas would have been an effortless way of extending the game. I should keep that in mind for the future.
Well there are the ore nuggets underground, but nothing else. Originally I intended to have the player dig up the ship with the shovel, but didn't make it in time. Thanks a lot for your detailed thoughts!
@simplepotential That was actually simpler than it looks. While digging I am just drawing a lot of black circles behind the character. I keep those circles in a list along with their age which decreases over time. Once a circle's age reaches zero, it is removed from the list. I draw so many of them that you don't see the individual circles which gives the appearance of this black worm following you.
Thanks so much @jupiter-hadley, it was really enlightening to watch someone else playing the game!
I have to say, you are really talented when it comes to setting up a game and telling a story. The little comic in the beginning sets up the game tremendously well and the one at the end gives it proper closure. It was a very fun read.
The game's graphics are pretty good and fitting the comic vibe you set up in the beginning. The music is atmospheric and sets the mood well without becoming too repetitive. The sound effects are really cute. Did you record them yourself?
The game itself is a lot of fun and you managed to bring together a lot of different planet mechanics that keep the player entertained. Although there were frustrating bits, I never had the feeling that I wanted to quit the game before finishing it.
I very much appreciate that you can press Enter at any time to reset the level. It alleviates the frustration of failure by setting the player back into the game quickly (Hotline Miami and Super Meat Boy do this very well)
My biggest (and to be fair only) complaint would be the gravity mechanics. It took a while to figure out how the game works and it is playable, but it is not very intuitive. The gravity changes opposite to the direction you jump off to, which makes gravity relative to your position which feels very unnatural. Also there is absolutely no gravitational pull of the other planets, so you can almost touch the next planet, but are still dragged down to where you come from.
It may be a matter of choice here, but it may have been worth exploring real gravitational mechanics. It might competely turn over your design, but it would have been more accessible.
That complaint aside, I had a great time playing Space Hummus.
Lovely little game! I adore the graphics, and you pulled off a whole bunch of game mechanics very nicely. Great job on the level progression! The way the player learns that slide can knock out enemies or that you need to run in order to jump far are very well thought out. I also enjoyed how you built tension by first traveling to the anthill and then enter it for a change of atmosphere. Nice nod to Mario Bros on the boss, I also liked the way you introduced it with some heavy screenshake when the game was very toned down on the special effects before that. Gives the sudden shake all the more impact.
The music is good, albeit a bit repetitive, and for my taste you should really consider creating a closed loop. This very nice talk gives some insight on the matter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WoepccKGSI
The section about loops is at the 19:00 mark.
With respect to the controls, I think the wall-jump could have been a bit tighter, I kept sliding off a lot.
As for gameplay in general, not much to criticize, as I said above, but one thing put me off a bit, and that is your design choice of lives and checkpoints. So hitting an enemy reduces a life, but falling down a hole doesn't, that's a bit inconsistent but nothing I haven't seen before. Now falling into a hole resets you to the last checkpoint with the current amount of lives left, but losing the lives resets you to the start of the game? That was a bit confusing. The classic approach would have worked better I think: Fall in a hole and be reset in front of the hole with one life lost, hit by an enemy loses one life. All lives lost resets you to the last checkpoint.
All in all it was a very atmospheric little game that I enjoyed to play despite minor nitpicks.
Man, I love the idea a lot, although it is very similar to Windowframe.
The graphics are neat, although a purist might complain that pixel sprites need to be scaled manually in order keep them looking good (spoiler: I didn't do it either). There is one glitch for me that shows the parts of the windows that are outside the "screen".
The sound effects are appropriate, but music would have been nice.
The game has a lot of nice touches, with the realtime clock, "activate windows message" and pop up windows.
I would love to complete the game, but even the bugfixed version has me stuck on the breaker room, where the server in undergoing maintenance. I think the main problem with puzzle games is that they have to be absolutely bug-free. Once the player hits a snag, they will tend to think it's another bug instead of just a puzzle they can't solve and that ruins all the fun in solving the puzzles.
In case this isn't a bug, maybe someone can give me a hint how to solve the breaker puzzle. It must have something to do with changing the server time. I tried attaching www.thenight.com as I thought this may change the server time to night, but nothing happened. I even changed my system time so that the game time would be between 8 and 10 am, but it didn't work either.
Overall I love the idea and execution of your game and I would easily rate it higher if you could iron out some more bugs (or I find out how to solve that damn breaker puzzle).
The game looks really nice, props to you for going through all the pain of making a custom engine. It took me a while to figure out how to play it though. Unfortunately I ran into some trouble. For instance, the turrets wouldn't attack the monsters (I figured they were supposed to). I had no sound whatsoever, but I read in the comments that there was supposed to be sound, so there was something off.
It's a pity really that I wasn't able to defend myself properly, as I had the feeling that from the moment I grasped the concept of the game I would have loved to finish it, as I think the general idea of starting with only a little and building/expanding from there was very well executed which motivated me to stick with it. The inventory shows what you need in order to beat the game and it created some anticipation of reaching that goal. The eerie atmosphere contributed to that, pity that I didn't have sound. The crafting system was well-conceived and geared towards base building and exploration.
Now that being said, I see some areas for improvement that I would like to expand on.
First, the game starts with an info dump, which is quite off-putting, especially in a game jam where people are playing a lot of games in a short amount of time. It would probably have been better to chop up the info into smaller bites and present them to the player piece by piece. There, I would suggest handing out the backstory first, to create interest, then explain the controls.
Even better for explaining how the game works would be to create an overlay to show what to do inside the game world with arrows indicating points of interest, something like "place mine here". You can also explain things implicitly using the game mechanics, for instance, by allowing to place a building that needs energy only when there's a generator nearby and giving some information what is missing.
The inventory as major part of the game mechanics should have been explained more clearly, which also goes for how the mines just dump their produce into the inventory. Here I would have preferred to pick up the stuff, as it gives the player an additional activity to keep the game interesting.
I wasn't a big fan of the controls, I think WASD and mouse would have worked better and offered tighter control over the action. Also I think you need some indicator when something was hit, and probably knockback and invincibility frames for the player.
Finally, I found a bug where you could place a building on the player's position which made him get stuck.
Overall a very promising game that I could see myself replaying should you decide to keep working at it.
I came here because of the art, which is outstanding. A shame really that you didn't manage to put all assets in the game but at least you added them as a gallery. I love the idea of the cool ice planet.
Music is simple and effective, but the sound effects could use a little more oomph. Also you could add a lot to your game by adding some simple effects like screenshake, especially when you slam into the planet.
Overall, I found the game a bit on the easy side and what difficulty there was, was mainly due to some control flaws, which I would identify as the area that needs more work. First of all, I think the control scheme should be simplified. I didn't use the slow down function and I didn't miss it at all, since you can achieve the same effect by just pushing in the opposite direction you're moving in. Using mouse and keyboard in tandem can work in general, but I felt your keyboard responsiveness a bit lacking (I think you identified that as a bug already). After slamming into the planet, my asteroid is uncontrollable for a moment, which really takes away from the otherwise quite arcadey feel of your game. I think what might have worked better here would have been to invert the acceleration direction at the moment of impact, catapulting the players away from the planet. Definitely give them control over the character at all times.
In order to make the slam attack less cheap, you could have required a minimum speed for making damage and maybe deal damage to your asteroid if you are below that speed. What it boils down to game design wise is that there is little risk-reward balancing, so I can just carelessly throw myself at the planet without a second thought. I know these things are tough to tune, but I think your game will benefit a lot from some more work in that area.
Overall I think you are on the right path. I honestly wonder why you only have so few comments with graphics like those.
I love what you attempted to do and it looks really promising, but for me, the controls were not very approachable. Even after reading up on the different things you could do, it was tricky to get it right. Having to 'hold' the left mouse button to transport water was not mentioned anywhere and even after I figured it out, I had trouble getting the water infused. I managed to grow one mushroom but then gave up.
I think with complex controls like these, it is important to have an organic level design that introduces mechanics bit by bit. It's probably a lot to ask for in a game made in 48 hours, especially after you put a lot of effort into the mood.
The game looks and sounds fantastic and creates this very dense atmosphere. I have to ask: How did you produce the wind sound? Did you tune a synth until you got it right? It can't be a real recording. Very well done. I also loved the water effects.
I think if you polish the controls and level design, a post-jam version of the game could become really great.
I was immediately drawn to your game due to its outstanding graphics and cool idea. When I started it up, I was pleasantly surprised that the music is well up to par with the visuals. After some initial confusion as to what the goal was, I quickly got the hang of it.
Unfortunately there a single thing that really takes the wind out of the game's sails and that is the necessity to click each building type again after building. Adding to that, sometimes clicking on an empty tile did not register so I constantly had to click buildings on the menu which was really frustrating. It's such a shame because I can imagine the game being super-awesome, but this was really breaking it for me.
Some notes: I think you could have done without the icon to increase population, by simply adding population through clicking on a tile. It would be much faster to control, which is important for a game that can become quite hectic.
I enjoyed the fact that you made a tutorial, although I felt it could have been a bit more challenging, by only allowing the player to solve the tutorial level by showing that they mastered the skill you wanted to explain. That way you would have a more challenging early game which currently is a breeze to finish without actually learning anything.
Don't get me wrong: I really love every single thing about your game: The premise, presentation, music, mechanics, everything. But I feel that the few shortcomings it has have a severe impact on making it as much fun to play as it should be. Please consider making a post-LD version, I would definitely want to revisit it after you gave it a little more polish.
Definitely one of the coolest Compo entries I have played (of over 40 titles so far). Everything just works. The levels of challenge, the design of the terrain, the balancing of skill vs. luck, the way you have to make gravity work in your favor.
It even has a sort of implicit home run-like special move where you can make the ball orbit the planet and score 2-3 points without the robots having any chance to counter. The terrain, despite seeming arbitrary at first, plays a big role in the awesomeness of the game, having long shallow streaks as well as ridges that stop a freewheeling ball.
I managed to finish with two robots but got my butt handed to me with 4. The game kept me motivated throughout and I had a strong feeling of "just one more round" going when I lost against the 4 robots.
On the downside, there is no music (the only reason I'm not giving 5 stars) and I found the jetpack somewhat superfluous (or I didn't manage to use it well), probably because I didn't realize that it exists before I had a replay just now. A minor nitpick that is easy to figure out but could be explained a bit better is that when you start the game for the first time you don't clearly see from which direction you need to pass the line. So I gave away the first point to the robots.
So all in all there is really not much to not like, I'll definitely keep this one.
Wow, that was cool! You really have a knack for storytelling. My favorite part was where the old man deliberated pushing you off the cliff. You set this up masterfully by having him startle you seconds before in the room and then repeating the same motion later outside. You know exactly what he is thinking before he even mentions it. If the story was longer and I was more invested in the character, that scene might have given me goosebumps.
The missing music and sound effects are a shame though. The ambient sounds you added towards the end were quite effective due to the long silence that preceded them but I still think some music throughout the game would have been worked better. Even if not, the missing sound effects hurt your game the most.
Other than that, there were no bugs or unclear parts, you told the story very well, which I think was your main concern, so overall it was a very nice experience, thank you!
Very nice idea of a sandbox game. I followed your updates a bit so I had some insight in your frustration of building a sandbox that was not much of a game initially.
You got the core mechanics down and everything works nicely and is inviting to play around with in order to see what happens.
Since sandbox games are not really my best genre, I may not be the best person to say this, but personally I would have liked some sort of goal, even if it was just a simple one. Maybe some sort of resource you need in order to change things. Starting from that, you could set up different worlds with different goals, like terraforming a volcanic hellscape or colonizing a micro-island nation. You have all the pieces in place to make this a fun "classic" game beyond what is currently possible in the sandbox.
Overall it's a very unique game that dares to try something new. I would love to see where you can take this concept.
Adorable game with an awesome backdrop and fitting atmospheric music. The character moves a bit slowly but it's still fitting to the relaxed atmosphere. Game direction was pretty clear from the beginning so I knew what to do. I wasn't sure whether feeding your mate made any difference though, I assumed without food s/he stops fishing.
My only complaint would be that the game is pretty short. I would have loved to see more of that scenery.
One note: I was able to download the game via the itch.io app, so I assume you marked it as Windows-compatible. However it doesn't play from the app. It plays fine from the website, but I thought you might want to know.
Edit: I recalled one thing, though: Having different keys for pick up and drop didn't really serve a purpose as you can't drop when you don't have anything and can't pick up stuff if you have something, so I think one key would have been more practical. Also having WASD for movement and then having the action keys on the left side of the keyboard as well (for US keyboards) is a bit unwieldy.
A very good looking low-poly game. Unfortunately there was no music but the sound effects were pretty nice. I played it to the end. Are those levels randomly generated? Because I felt sometimes the boxes were a bit too close to the mountains to pick them up. All in all very solid entry.
Wow great job on the presentation! The graphics are stunning, and the ambient music contributes greatly to the atmosphere. You actually managed to create a believable world.
Unfortunately gameplay-wise there is not much meat. I couldn't figure out what the shooting was for and collecting the honeycombs was a bit frustrating as it was fairly easy to lose them by flying into something. You clearly geared the game towards controller input, and the keyboard controls are really a bit frustrating. I think it may have worked better with controls where you fly in the direction you look (mouse), rather than having motion and camera independent.
Overall a very relaxing experience, great job!
I really like minimalist graphics and I think you pulled off the visuals very well. I just wish the game was longer, with different environments. Music would have been nice to enhance the atmosphere. I reall liked the idea with the scaling text.
Matching the theme was a bit of a stretch, though. I think it would have worked better last LD.
Unfortunately I found the game to be a bit buggy, as I was able to pick up everything more than once even if the item wasn't on screen anymore. When I used the coin or ball with the washing machine it flew across the room and rolled on the floor, which was very confusing. But since I was able to pick up all the items again, I was able to solve on the second attempt.
Overall I think it's a solid idea with a somewhat shaky execution. At its core, I think you're on to something, so with some additional polish, some music and a more fleshed out story it could become quite great.
Edit: Despite what I wrote above, I would agree with @blacksheepza that the execution of the scaling text was indeed a bit jarring, but to me that was because of two things: First, the scaling was too strong, so the text changed from very large to very small quickly, which is straining on the eyes. Second, I think the scaling was not smooth enough. I assume you scaled based on length, with length being the number of letters. Since there are wider and narrower letters you get a jaggy transition. Adding some lerping might help. The effect itself was fine I think, but since text holds a lot of information, you have to make sure it's pleasant for the eyes to follow.
Hey, would you mind marking your game as a Windows download on itch.io? That way, people with the itch.io client can download it (it will be blocked otherwise).
Same for me, I just downloaded it manually, but can't get past the Start screen.
A masterful semi-interactive story you created. The expressiveness of the characters despite the simple graphics is awesome. I love how you told the story of impending doom and human fallacy in attributing guilt. I played it twice to get both endings.
I don't have anything bad to say really. It is short, but encapsulates everything it's trying to say so well that it wouldn't gain anything by being longer.
Full marks.
Pretty good, beautiful game. 42 was my max score, could probably be better.
Graphics and basic idea are the game's strong suit. Looking at a picture or video of the game wants me to try it out right away.
Some points for improvement: I felt the collision with the edge was a tiny bit too early, I often had the feeling that the drop was unfair measured at where I was on screen. I also found my ability to push a blob to a bit inconsistent. Sometimes I was able to shovel them across the room like a champ, other times they offered more resistance. But it wasn't clear to me why that was. It may be linked to different colors but I didn't get the difference. Maybe a clearer cue, like size or different sounds would help understand better what effects the player's actions have.
About the items: I didn't really feel the difference between the hammer and the shovel. I felt like the hammer should be more powerful, but it didn't feel that way in the game. Some risk/reward balancing might do wonders in that respect, like using a powerful weapon really slows you down or increases your inertia, thus increasing the danger of uncontrollably falling off a cliff. The potion and the feather didn't feel like valuable additions to the game. I didn't have the feeling the potion made me much harder to push, and the increased speed of the feather didn't help pushing enemies at all.
All in all I think you made a pretty good game that could be super fun and addictive with a few tweaks.
You made a cute simulation game that was fun to play. It reminded me a bit of Actraiser. Graphics and music came together as a coherent whole. After a few attempts in which I built myself in, I somewhat got the hang of it and finished level 1. After a few more tries on level 2 I managed to hold back the monsters from the west, but the ones from the east snuck up on me and destroyed my main building.
There are a few minor issues that I came across.
First, I didn't see you display the price of the buildings, e.g. in the form of a tool tip you already have in your game. That would help a lot with planning.
Second, I didn't find the placement of buildings very intuitive. Once you try and put something down, you get a message telling you why it didn't work. I think it may have been better to indicate this by using a red overlay over the building as that would allow for quick checking about where a building could be placed. The reason why it couldn't be placed in a certain spot would then be displayed next to the overlay.
Even so, I noticed that the position the building finally ends up being placed is a little different from the indicated position before placing it.
Another improvement in my mind would be to allow setting down buildings without being connected to roads. That would make organizing the city easier. If a building wasn't connected with a road, an icon would appear, marking it as inactive. That way you would retain the functionality you already have in place but the controls may be a bit more agreeable.
Overall you made a very charming simulation game that worked pretty well in my eyes and could be improved with a little tweaking.
The atmosphere you create is really special. It's a melancholy game about life and death portrayed through the eyes of a dog and its ability to be reborn to reach the heavens. Really good stuff. Graphics and music tie it all together really well. The short texts of the other dogs give the game even more character.
Unfortunately I didn't manage to finish the game. I reached the top after sacrificing two lives to get the maximum jump height, but then it told me I was too heavy to stay in heaven. Not sure what to do. I tried shedding more tears in order to maybe get lighter, but since I also lose jump height that way, I don't seem to be able to reach the sky like that. Also the plants on top die off faster than I can regrow them, which made me give up feeling frustrated a bit.
When it comes to room for improvement, I would say the watering, eating and withering mechanics could use some tweaking. Maybe I was just not good enough, but I felt that part was a bit unbalanced. Giving better visual indicators that help guide the player while at the same time integrating well with the aesthetics as not to break them is probably a tough nut to crack but I feel the game would benefit from a little more work in that direction.
All in all a very charming entry with some unique mechanics. Great job!
Your game looks and sounds fantastic. The music is really good, and presentation wise the game is top notch.
There were some minor problems though. Controller support did not work at all, and unfortunately the keyboard mappings were not really intuitive for me. A reaction based game should not use the space bar because it's harder to push. Also using J and space was only comfortable to reach if I used the thumb for pressing space which was a bit awkward. The other issue may be due to my 16:10 screen, and caused the help text to be cut off halfway so I had to guess what the buttons were.
I enjoyed the game mechanics in general but the execution was a bit lacking in some respects. The maggot prince often didn't go where he was supposed to and those damn chickens made the whole ordeal a bit frustrating. I gave up at the stage with two platforms on top of each other with a chicken right next to them. I generally like difficult games, and yours certainly is, but a tough game need to get its controls perfect.
In summary, the game is really pretty and the soundtrack among the strongest I have seen so far, unfortunately the mechanics could use a little polishing. All in all you did a great job!
I used a PS3 controller but never had any problems with games that were designed for XBox controllers. And I did switch to controller, but none of the controller's buttons worked. I even made double sure that Windows recognized the controller, but it didn't work.
I love the level in the ball idea, very cool! The graphics were very nice. If I had to change one thing in that department, that would be getting rid of the overzoom and instead zoom directly to the target size of the level. In general the level design was very good with a nice difficulty ramp-up to keep things interesting.
Unfortunately I lost patience in the first dark level because I found the collision detection to be a bit imprecise. Either that or I sucked too much. I think the game would have benefited from tighter definition of when the ball touched a forbidden surface or not. If it rolled slowly, I had the feeling that it counted as a hit before the ball made contact, but if it moved quickly it would pass halfway through the lava before registering as a hit. The physics were a bit frustrating at times as the ball would sometimes bounce back directly into an obstacle much more than I expected, but that could also be explained by me being bad at the game.
Overall a very likeable entry that would have been even better with some atmospheric music.
I love the idea of building your own level and using stepping stones to get to the goal. I like how your little character looks like he's going for some 2D-Counterstrike and then the game turns out to be more cerebral in nature.
The game itself could definitely benefit from some more polish, for instance, I got stuck in a block when I placed a room to save myself from falling. Also I would question whether you actually need mouse controls (maybe with the exception of placing rooms). The game's controls might feel tighter from keyboard-only controls when you steer the guy around the room.
I appreciate that you added music to the game, but I think it was a bit too playful for the general feeling of the game.
Overall a solid entry with a very unique idea that I could see outside of Ludum Dare if you gave it a few extra rounds of polish.
Wow, awesome game! I love chiptune music and yours is perfect, especially that boss theme. Did you use Fasttracker or something similar?
I found the graphics a bit inconsistent between awesome pixel art on the one hand and sketchy mixed resolutions on the other hand. The fact that the terrain sometimes was a single pixel off (not game resolution but screen resolution), is a huge no-go for me. That being said, I found the animations to be outstanding! The attack and dash animations were awesome, especially for a low-res two color game like yours.
The earth trailing you, rotating beautifully was another cool idea, although I wish there would have been more of a chemistry between the two characters with some snide remarks and quibbling. While I really enjoyed the unique and fresh backstory with its plot twist at the end, I didn't much care for the humor, which was a bit repetitive, except the very cool joke in the end which actually made me laugh out loud.
Control-wise my experience is that an arcady game like yours should never assign up to jump. If you didn't want attack, jump and dash tied to the left hand, I think down for dash would have been more acceptable than up for jump. Also down for continuing the text didn't work for me. Attack would have felt much more natural for that.
The difficulty ramp-up was very good, with some more challenges towards the end, like the elevator and the really tough and rewarding boss fight. I think the game could have done without perma-death enemies on continue, which took the challenge out too much. For the boss, I think it would have been a bit fairer if the bombs didn't sometimes appear behind it (black on black), which sometimes caused you to jump right into them when you attacked the boss. After learning the patterns it was a manageable fight that rewarded observation and perseverance. Did I say I loved the boss's soundtrack?
So all in all I found it to be an awesome experience with some minor flaws and overall one of the best games of all 45 games I have rated so far.
I like the concept of tying rockets to a planet in order to escape annihilation. I think you are on the right path with your game mechanics, especially the way you force the player to keep moving because they can't see the pentagram showing up if they stand still.
The graphics were nice, I especially liked the clouds on the planet, and the tentacle animation. Presentation-wise I think the game could be easily improved by adding some visual effects, most notably screenshake. I always hand out this video at times like this because it's great place to start learning to give your game a more visceral feeling: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJdEqssNZ-U
I think your game could use some tweaking of the difficulty ramp up. I played for about two minutes and did feel that the game became harder over time, and it has rudiments of the "just one more round" feeling that's important for your genre, but I think you need to make the experience a bit tighter. Visual effects can help with that, good crunchy sound effects are another way of achieving that goal. But the most important piece I think is to make each death feel self-inflicted instead of random.
I really appreciate you took the effort of making an intro. That's a nice way of easing the player into the game. A Trump joke is always good for a chuckle, but personally I prefer a bit more depth when it comes to humour.
Unfortunately the music did nothing for me. It just seemed like random notes.
Overall I think the game, while simple, was quite nice to play and could become really addictive if you keep polishing some more.
The visuals of your game are awesome! There are some minor graphics glitches that may come with the 3D world you designed. Sometimes I was stuck in a block, but it was easy to get out of, so nothing game breaking.
Sound effects are simple but appropriate for the visual style. They have a heft to them, which is good for arcady games. The music was very nice and also fit the atmosphere well. Level progression is good, with a nice difficulty curve leading up to a boss, which felt nice and gave the game proper closure. I would say it's a bit on the easy side, as I may have preferred a tougher experience where each level is a challenge and the game would reset you to the beginning of that level, but the version you made was very enjoyable too.
My main complaint would be the controls. I think a game like yours should split up movement and action between both hands (as with a controller), therefore Space/Enter for jump/shoot is not ideal in my opinion. A/D/Enter/Shift or Left/Right/A/D might have worked better.
Overall a very enjoyable, complete and beautiful game.
**Edit:** One comment: If you don't mark your game as Windows-compatible on itch.io, it's not possible to download it with the itch.io client.
I think this was the first ego-tower defense game I have ever played and overall it was pretty neat. Despite some flaws, it had some really beautiful moments.
So first of all, the graphics are a mixed bag in by book. On the one hand you have the beautiful backdrops, earth texture and lensflare effects, on the other hand you have very simplistic character and enemy models, especially the rockets, which are just elongated spheres.
The sound effects were okay, but obviously some spherical music would have made the game's mood much better.
Gameplay-wise there are a few snags. I don't think being blocked by your towers adds anything to your game and could be removed. The intro was unskippable and takes away from replay value that way. You should definitely add a way to skip the countdown: Especially in the beginning the wait times take the wind out of the game's sails.
I think you could have communicated better where the next waves would come from. I realized after a few tries that they came from the direction of the signs, but an arrow or a shiny line pointing away from the planet towards the impending attack would have avoided some confusion here.
I managed to finish Tiny Planet Defense with just Multi-shooters and rockets and couldn't really figure out how to set up the lasers properly. It was a bit tight defeating the normals with the multi-shot, which cost me a few lives on wave 2. The rest was a breeze though, so I think the game might benefit from some more work on pacing.
The game really started to shine as soon as I had some more towers. Seeing three rockets majestically amble towards a boss and detonating it into bits with a single strike felt very good. Also the amount of debris flying around from defeating enemies gave the game some sparkle and charm in the later game.
Despite a slow start I would have loved to continue playing to see a bit more of a challenge, as the game became very easy very fast.
Overall quite a solid entry that could greatly benefit from some polishing and gameplay tweaking. Great job!
Beautiful, both in sight and sound. I can't praise the graphics and the music enough.
From a gameplay perspective, I would have preferred to trade permanent skills, as the items felt pretty useless after I figured out that the raw materials do their job well enough, especially heal. I think having the traders upgrade speed, vitality and max shot count would have worked much in your favor. Grinding the traded items felt a bit like a grind in the end.
I didn't like the mixed mouse/keyboard controls. I guess this is primarily a mobile game, but still, keyboard only would probably have worked better, especially for a retro game. Navigating the menu would have been more relaxed if you paused the game.
Overall a beautiful game with a few gameplay flaws.
**Edit:** I'm sorry, but I have to take back my votes. You are not allowed to make significant changes to your game after the deadline and it looks like you changed quite a lot. Since you didn't mark your game as post-compo, I cannot tell which state the game was in when the Compo ended, so I cannot properly vote for you. Next time you want to make changes, please upload two versions of the game and mark them accordingly.
Overall the idea of the inverted world is awesome and would be a good starting point for a fantasy story.
I really love how you actually recorded narration for your game. That's something I always wanted to do in my projects but never got around to. I also appreciate how the camera has some inertia. This makes the game feel very smooth.
Now on the downside, I think you know this, but the game is really short and you cannot die. Also the jumping mechanics don't seem to have a real purpose.
It seems like you ran out of time, which is unfortunate because I can totally see how this game could have become a neat little experience with a bit more fleshed out story and actual things to accomplish.
Maybe you can spend some more time on a post-compo version with more narration and adventures. I would revisit it. Tag me if you do.
Yeah, maybe write a post mortem and be sure to include a section about "lessons learned". Read it before you participate next time and pick one or two things that you want to improve most. That seems to work pretty well for me.
Wow, a real Game Boy game, I'm impressed! It failed to load on Firefox, but I got it running in an emulator (would have tried that anyway to see if it would work - it did!).
I thought your game was a pretty cool idea that could use some polish. I am not sure if the fact that the game is a bit raw was deliberate because you wanted to keep a more realistic Game Boy feeling, but I'm going write this comment according to modern design standards, of course taking into account the platform's restrictions.
The graphics were really neat and the difficulty ramped up well, introducing new enemies piece by piece. The audio was good but the game was really missing music. The Game Boy had a such iconic sound that some cool chiptunes would have improved the game's mood immensely. The controls were appropriate but could use a little more fine-tuning to make them a bit smoother. I love that you added a menu and the transitions were also pretty cool.
The game design idea was solid, I liked your decision to make the main character invulnerable but let each death increase the number of enemies implicitly because the player couldn't fight them off during the cooldown period. I think however, that this mechanic could use a bit more work in order to make the game flow better. One option would be to reset the bee immediately but make it unable to shoot for a few seconds, which would give the player something to do while dead.
The healing mechanic seemed pretty unbalanced to me. If I got this right, you can heal all the hives by hovering over any single one which reduces your shield that cannot be regenerated. So the player doesn't have to take into account which hive was damaged at all. Also I assume that if your shield is empty, you cannot repair the hives at all anymore. I assume this was to give the game a limit on playtime, but you already have one in place by making the enemies come faster and faster, so I thought you could get rid of that without taking away from the game.
What I think would have been more fun would be to give each hive a separate health bar (even better an implicit damage indicator like changing the hive's sprite). Now the player would have to repair each hive which would force the player to keep in motion. Then I would consider getting rid of the shield and having the repair function assigned to the second button, which also would give the player more to actually do. With that setup you could play around with different ways to balance the game to make it most fun and get a "just one more round" feeling going. Some temporary weapon upgrade collectibles might introduce a risk-and-reward mechanic.
So overall I believe you are on the right track and I am thorougly impressed you pulled off the game in C as an actual Game Boy game, and I think with a few tweaks it could be a lot more fun.
That was certainly interesting. I found the concept of setting up the planets in a way that lets you solve the puzzle without their heads getting in the way quite unique.
The graphics and music choice was very amiable, overall a relaxing experience. I found it a bit difficult to estimate how I had to setup the planets and at what angle I could blast off safely. Not sure whether this was deliberate but I once managed to use the gravitational pull of the planet to slingshot myself around it. If it was deliberate I would have liked to see this feature more pronounced as such a move as pretty hard to pull off.
Overall a solid entry.
Pretty cool and fresh concept. I made it to 7,58m. Keeps you coming back for more and try out different strategies in order to get higher.
Graphics and music are adequate (nice Mega Man paintover) ;)
I would have preferred some more control though, maybe the option to slow down or speed up the rotation by pressing left and right might have helped a lot in making the game a bit tighter.
Also I think it may have been nice to use two different keys for jumping and dropping items, as often when I wanted to jump from a building to reach a higher place, the guy dropped another house.
I wonder why the game is 30 MB though. Did you pack some debug stuff into the exe?
Pretty neat that you made a post-jam Android version.
Wow, a rock solid puzzle game, great job! It's not really my favorite genre but even so I quite enjoyed it. Since it wasn't really much of a challenge for me, it may be a bit too easy for puzzle aficionados, though.
I don't really have any serious complaints. The music choice was nice, the graphics clean and self-explanatory, and as a big plus, you managed to explain the game mechanics with a few words and images instead of a wall of text.
The only improvement I could imagine would be to add an upper limit of pills that determines whether you get a bronze, silver or gold rating, as is quite common in this genre. This would increase replayability.
Other than that, great, polished game!
Solid tower defense game. Took me a bit to figure out a good strategy but then I made it to wave 26 with just Splashers and Fasts at 100 health and 32.000 leukocytes left. Unfortunately from that point on the game waits 60 seconds between stages so I decided to leave it at that. Not sure if that is a bug though, maybe because I use fast forward a lot and the timer is not affected by that.
I found a bug when you use 2x and 3x speed up, in that case the towers hit the opponents much less frequently. I assume this is because when you speed up the positions of the shots change by a greater step size, so they skip the opponents' position more frequently. So whenever I am in danger of being overrun, I turn down the speed to 1x and immediately back up to 3x, but yeah, you may want to fix that.
I don't know whether there is an end to the levels as I quit at 26, but I feel the game could be improved by having shorter rounds, maybe by increasing the difficulty ramp up, but you said you ran out of time towards the end, so this kind of balancing probably fell victim to that.
Control-wise I would have preferred the tower placement to be inverted, i.e. select the tower type and then select the position, because that would have allowed the player to place multiple towers of the same type more quickly.
All in all I enjoy tower defense, and yours is a decent example of the genre. With a bit of polishing and improved graphics it could become really great.
I read your post on the front page where you asked for input. I'm going to give you some feedback on the post-compo version. I'm not going to rate that version obviously. This is only to give you some ideas on where to improve
First of all, I think you had a very solid idea with your game, using the two modes as ghost and rock works fairly well as a puzzle mechanic and zooming the environment was a really neat idea.
The graphics are nice, however personally I prefer true pixel sizes over mixed-pixel sizes. What I mean by that is that you should choose a game resolution (e.g.640x480) and everything on screen must fit into that resolution. You can still scale up objects by integer factors (2x, 3x), but they cannot be smaller than your game resolution allows. As an example, look at the visual effects when the stone blows out air. The pixel size of that effect is really low, and much lower than your character's pixel size, which gives it an inconsistent design.
I really liked the ghost animation. You can give it some more personality by creating a 3-frame idle animation that keeps playing whenever the ghost doesn't move.
Your camera motion is quite nice. I noticed that you precede the motions of the ghost, which is cool. However you should fix the camera wiggle you get when hitting a wall and when you change direction. Try a more inert camera that can only move a maximum distance each frame. Also when you scale, the step size is too steep. Lerp the scaling between your current and the new size, that way it will feel much smoother. The sound you play while scaling was too long, it can't be longer than the scaling actually takes and should probably be much shorter than that. Definitely so short that it doesn't sound choppy when you scale multiple times quickly.
Your terrain collision detection needs some work. When in stone form, I was able to move through certain blocks and got stuck in others.
Background music is missing, so maybe play around with some spherical music, or maybe go with some ambient sounds. [Agaric Abyss](https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/agaric-abyss) created some nice wind sounds in bfxr for example. That could be an alternative if you don't feel confident composing. The music you do have isn't too bad but a bit too loud which can seem jarring.
When introducing your game mechanics, never ever confront the player with a wall of text. You could have achieved the same thing with under 30 words if you just clicked together an image containing your assets, some arrows and a few pieces of text. Players are not stupid and have likely played games before. The brain can pick up these image overviews very quickly, but reading a long instruction manual is really boring. I only skimmed the text and totally missed that the mouse wheel plays an important part in the game.
The thought bubbles were for the most part superfluous. Again, people are not stupid. When they see a red wall with something interesting behind it, they assume they have to get past the wall. When there's a red switch later on, they'll figure out how it works. Some of the fire monster had a thought bubble which appeared to indicate that you have to kill them and not the others. This is totally confusing. Get rid of the thought bubble and give the invincible monsters different graphics, best design a completely different monster/turret for that so the player can distinguish them from the soul-giving foes.
Personally I would have preferred to have lives in the game. That way you can make the experience more challenging without being too frustrating by getting insta-killed.
Finally I had trouble finishing the first level. I didn't figure out how to turn back into a ghost. I assume the stone form locks the scaling, so I didn't fit into narrow spaces afterwards and since I couldn't turn back into a ghost, I was stuck. The first level requires 3 souls, but I was only able to find 2 of them. Maybe this was due to the scaling, maybe they could have been more visible, maybe I was just frustrated.
So, I guess this is a lot to take in.
I would suggest you start with the most important stuff (collision, camera movement, improved intro screen). Maybe get some of the low-hanging fruits as well (music volume, thought bubbles). Once the game mechanics themselves feel more solid, I'd go on to the nice to have items (idle animation, background music)
If you have a new build with significant changes, you can drop me a line here and I can check back with you if you want.
Awesome graphics and atmosphere. You pulled off the English Aristocracy theme so well and it's really fun to read (I tried a similar theme in my game but it doesn't show too much). The graphics are amazing (although I'm not a big fan of stretching pixel art), I just wish there was some music and sound effects.
In my opinion it would help the game a lot if you just skipped the intro (and especially the pre-game explanations) after death, it sort of takes away the motivation to try again.
Gameplay wise, I found the action to be a little too short and at the same time not quite tight enough. Since you apparently can't shoot down the enemy shots, your success depends largely on how well you hit the aliens and I found that to be a bit twiddly. Still managed to barely finish the game on the second try.
One minor bug: If you rotate the cannon to the far left, it will shoot to the right (while still pointing left).
Post-LD comment:
Congratulations to a Top 20 spot!
This is what my daughter and I made:
bamboo.PNG
I'm with @mmason. I played Buteratos back in LD37. This looks too similar to the LD37 game to be in the spirit of Ludum Dare, unless you opt out of the categories in which you used existing assets. If you really drew all the art (background and characters), made the animation, the intro, and everything else in 3 days, hats off to your team!
Awesome hand-drawn art and very fitting background music. It's a pity the game is so short, but with that amount of craft, that's understandable. I think the overall concept is great to expand upon, as your ideas for this game are very interesting and I would like to see what else you could come up with. When it comes to Graphics Adventures, your design certainly stands apart from the masses with its huge sprites, but that's what makes the game interesting.
The puzzles were a bit too easy and straightforward for me, which was in part due to the fact that there were actually only two rooms. However, you placed all the necessary items in one room and then you only had to combine everything in the second room to finish the game. So I would love to see what you can do in terms of puzzle design when you can afford to put more time in it.
From a story perspective, the characters immediately pull you into their world, but I think they could use a little more depth. Fixing the hatch made me chuckle, but the fourth wall-breaking joke was a bit tired. Humor is really tough to pull off well and while I think you are on a very good track, you may use some additional polish in that respect.
Overall it was a short but very cool experience, great job!
Cool idea and nice design. I especially liked all the different character ideas, so visually there is not much to criticize.
Gameplay-wise I think I would have preferred a sidewalk that doesn't end by repeating the scenery. Hitting an invisible wall took a lot of momentum out of the game.
Cool stationary defense game. I liked what you did with the setting. Made it to wave 15.
I think your game could have benefited a lot from a more visceral feel. Everything was so tiny that it was hard to get the impression of a real battle, which is difficult to pull off I think. What could have helped may have been some additional balancing. Maybe make all your attackers stronger and spawn more weaker enemies from the beginning. Give the player the feeling they are creating a powerful army right from the start. Taking a cue from Tower Defense games, maybe allow the troops to get upgrades, possibly one upgrade that affects every single unit, e.g. by building a special building that can also be destroyed and thus needs to be protected at all costs, which would require repairable buildings and so on.
I love this video on game feel, I post it everywhere, and your game is a good candidate:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJdEqssNZ-U
Technically, one thing I found a bit strange was that there was no minimum distance between buildings so I put them all down at the same place until I wasn't able to find my barracks anymore :(
All in all a solid entry that deserves to be expanded upon.
Fantastic game! Full marks on mood. Even though you used a music generator, the audio fit really well to the game.
You really have a knack for level design, taking a few simple game mechanics and combining them in interesting ways. The setup is perfect and the game is really engaging throughout. There is one bug that soured the whole experience for me and that is apparently you cannot move up-left and jump at the same time which made some of the jumping puzzles really frustrating especially if you don't figure out why your guy is dropping into the water.
I would have loved to have a little outro similar to the intro, maybe with the whole catacombs collapsing and your guy escaping at the last moment, but there is only so much you can do in 48 hours.
A really lovely entry.
One remark though in case you didn't know: You can and should increase visibility of your game by rating other people. You receive a coolness score based on your ratings and comments, so if you receive lots of votes but don't vote/comment yourself, you will drop down in the game list which is a shame because I would consider your game a hidden gem in LD and I wish you all the best for getting the 20 votes necessary to end up in the ranking.
I just watched the game on the TechValleyGameSpace stream and had to play it.
I don't really have to say much: It's nearly perfect! The music and animation are especially lovely. The way you integrate the guitar riffs into the munch mode was perfect. Maybe the transitions could have been a tiny bit smoother, but that's not a real concern.
For my personal tastes, I think the difficulty ramp up could be a smidge steeper to increase the "just one more round" feeling, but that may just be my preference.
Played to 127.309 points. Will likely return. Great job!
That was a really weird experience for me. On the one hand the game feels very raw, with no audio whatsoever and a few game-breaking bugs. On the other hand I couldn't put it down although I failed to build the ship to completion for over half an hour (I got to twelve metal parts, how many do you need?). I think your game is a diamond in the rough.
I love what you did with the deformable terrain. It was a very clever trick building the planet from circles and removing each one on impact. The graphics were low-res, but very fitting in a retro way. The missing music is regrettable but missing sound effects is a crime for this genre. I liked the planet changing color each round. I also liked the core mechanics, balancing the need for stones against the planet's health. I feel that one could have been explored a bit more.
About the bugs: I was able to shoot my ship into space with a rock. Not only was that frustrating, but it also broke the game, because the guy didn't want to build a new one after that. The other bug occurs when the ship is hit by an asteroid while the guy is building it. If that happens, the poor guy never finishes his building animation and gets stuck. A minor issue was that I had to get really close to the ship in order to upgrade it. Also the clickable area for the menu items was shifted a bit, so it took me a bit to figure out where to press the buttons.
Now, I hope you don't mind if I shoot some possible improvements your way \*cracks knuckles\*.
First, I would suggest you head over to bfxr and create some cheap explosions for the asteroid impact, that should take about 30 seconds. Next, add some screenshake, and while at it take some more advice from this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJdEqssNZ-U.
With these two changes you will already notice a world of difference.
Now, personally I would tweak the mechanics a bit. Having the throwing stones interact with the ship doesn't add anything to the game so I'd get rid of it. I would increase gravity a little for the guy, the metal parts and the ship, so everything responds a bit faster when upset. I feel a round of the game is too long for dying in one hit, so maybe add some lives. Maybe make the guy a bit faster. While at it, why not make everything a bit faster, have more asteroids appear at the same time, while making the planet a bit more sturdy. Don't destroy the ship immediately but have the asteroids take away the last upgrade.
I know that the changes in the last paragraph will totally change the feel of the game, so please only understand it as a place to start exploring different mechanics and see what works and what doesn't. I would really be interested in replaying the game should you decide to keep working on it. So drop me a line in case you're doing a post-Compo version.
That's an innovative idea! I struggled with the controls though, as I am so used to having special keys for moving that it takes a lot of re-learning to understand which key belongs to what house. Maybe I sucked too bad, but maybe the game needs a little more polish especially when it comes to communicating to the player that they pushed an invalid key, maybe by quickly showing an overlay that indicates what key the current house belongs to.
A comment on deploying: You shouldn't export games to Installers in Game Maker, since most people on LD don't want to be bothered installing your game which could potentially leave some unwanted files behind after uninstalling it. In order to export the game properly, you have to pick File -> Create Application and then in the file dialog choose file type "single runtime executable" or "compressed application". The exe will be the least hassle for players but may cause problems with some virus scanners, so I would suggest picking the compressed application.
I love the basic premise of having a very small-scale strategy game. Then taking that idea and turning it into a working game in two days is an intimidating task. So first of all, I think you did a very good job pulling it off. From the start, it feels inviting to play and has a lot of charm.
Unfortunately the AI is really weak (as you mentioned yourself), I wasn't even able to lose on purpose. I think writing a good AI is not easy, especially on such a limited time budget, but if I had any major complaint, it would be this.
Some more specific things I noticed:
- I played the game twice to the end and afterwards it gets stuck in a weird bug that allows you to use the level up button on the menu screen but not start the game again. - When the Orc has his turn, you see its level up button, which I found a bit confusing as I thought it was my own. I think it would be better to hide that button on the opponent's turn
Overall I think it's a solid game that could have been really special with some little additional polish, especially the AI.
I'm very impressed, your design is really special. I came across your game during the Compo when you posted a picture of the map and since then I wanted to play the game, because I found the world really appealing just from the title and that single picture. When the game was finished I looked at a screenshot and was taken aback, because everything looked like a pixelated mess. Only when I actually played the game, was the initial interest renewed, as the world oozes charm and atmosphere, especially for such a low-res title. The mystery in not knowing what the game and world is all about, the choice of undecipherable gibberish added to that effect.
My only real complaint would be that it's so short, which is a damn shame because the map foreshadows more to see and to reveal. That and maybe some more music would have been nice. The ending fits a game with this unusual presentation very well.
I can only assume that the length of the game was due to a lack of time, since I didn't see too much of the ballpoint pen concept realized in the game itself, or maybe I'm just too dense to see the metaphore here. Is the black cloud following us the ink? Do we have to resucitate a failing pen? Is the character's death somewhat symbolic for the short-livedness of utensils like that? I don't know, but I would have loved to see this expanded.
All in all I think the idea and the art design would make it a perfect fit for a game offered on itch.io, possibly even a paid title. Just expand on the concept (if you do, drop me a line, I would play it). A problem with this concrete example of a game is that it's hard to present in a still image, since as I said, it looks like a mess unless you actually dive into the world. So if you should decide to expand and publish, it might be a good idea to present it in animated form.
Great job overall!
Nice Lunar Lander clone. I especially liked the amiable graphics and your choice of music. What stood out was your solid handling of the gravity between the different planets.
It may have been on purpose to make the game more relaxing, but since you cannot crash, the game was lacking a bit of a challenge for me. I noticed that you don't need to land upright but can just set down your rocket any way you like.
It was a fun experience.
Awesome entry! Everything looks very polished, and I love the pastel color palette.
I only found three coins, but felt motivated by the exploration setting to try and find the last one, but had to give up in the end because I couldn't find it.
When it comes to atmosphere, your game is spot on, with the exception of the "buddy"-tone of the statue's text which I found was clashing with the general soothing atmosphere of the game a bit.
Gameplay wise, I liked how you changed the speed of the player depending on its size, but I would have preferred to have the larger modes make bigger steps so they would get faster from A to B. Maybe a more pronounced ambling animation in the camera with a slight pause between two steps would have worked well here.
Overall a very impressive entry for 48 hours.
Technically I'll have to mention that you are not allowed to add anything to the game outside of the allotted time, even if you opt out of that category. If you want make changes afterwards, please create a separate post-compo version of the game in addition to the original version and mark both accordingly. If you haven't recorded the ambient music yourself, that is also not allowed for the Compo. However, in the Jam you are free to use any external assets and you also have an extra day for adding them. You can even switch from Compo to Jam in the middle of LD if you feel time is running out for you.
Just in case you wondered why you received only a few votes: You need to rate and comment more on other games to appear higher on the games list, which in turn will increase your chances of getting exposure and thus more votes for yourself.
What a nasty but cool game you made. I enjoyed it a lot! The graphics are very unique and unsettling, and the idea is brilliant and fresh.
There are some issues that could have improved the flow of the game. I would probably still be playing if it weren't for these constant pop-up messages that I had to click away, thus losing focus of what I was just looking at. The other thing (which may have been deliberate) was that I would have preferred to see the life bar of all my organs all the time. The color coding wasn't very clear, as in some cases black meant near death, while for others brown was already close to organ failure.
I think I would have been motivated to stick to it til the end if it weren't for these flaws, as I liked the idea a lot and it spoke to my inner optimizer to find a stable solution to my character's ailments.
Overall a great game that I would probably pick up again if you made a post-LD version.
Well, you already have something in place for the popups: You show icons of the current ailments. Now if you get rid of the popups, you will have the problem that the player will not notice new ailments popping up. Maybe you can try different additional cues, like visual (a big new icon popping up somewhere and scaling down to the final size and location, or auditive, by assigning each ailment a unique sound effect, maybe recorded voice. I think there are a number of ways to communicate these things without breaking game flow.
On the inverse difficulty, I don't think this necessarily has to be a bad thing. In your game particularly, I would love to have a challenge in the beginning and at one point realize that I'm in the clear with smooth sailing ahead, if the remaining game does not drag out too long. If you don't like that idea, an option would be to chop the game into age intervals (childhood, adolescence, midlife, old age), each with new and tougher problems coming up, like organs being less effective, psychological problems, a shrinking body, and so on.
Anyway, I'd love to see what you can come up with. Please drop me a line when you have a new iteration, I'd like to give it another go.
Awesome, looking forward to it!
I'll give the game a try later, just letting you know that you (probably by accident) put it in the Compo, but play by the Jam rules (multiple participants). Not sure whether you can switch at this point in time though.
Alright, I played it. It's a nice idea that could benefit from expanding more on the mechanics. More levels would be nice.
The music is really neat and keeps the atmosphere up, the sound effects underline the growing and shrinking of the box nicely.
Some comments:
- The controls are a bit wonky. You get slower the closer you are to the ground which feels a bit inconsistent. Also you can look through walls. - The choice of controls could be improved for my taste. Picking up the box with left click and moving up and down by keyboard keys would have been much more intuitive, I think. - I was able to finish the last level by pushing the box through the wall as I didn't realize there is a tunnel.
Alright, welcome to LD then.
Some of the rules are quite lenient, others are pretty strict, including the no collaboration one. But don't worry too much about it. It's not like the LD police will shut your game down or anything. Worst that can happen in your position is that you get a lower score.
It would probably bite you if you reached one of the top 100 places, but that's incredibly hard to accomplish, so no worries. Just make sure you work alone next time or join the Jam.
I liked the setup and once I realized what roles the different characters play, I had some fun. Playing blue, I thought it would have been unfair because as I understand they team up with green against red, but I didn't stand a chance. Every time the plants took over 90% of the land, the fire people would attack and the fire spread so fast that the balance tilted in no time.
I have to ask, has anyone ever won this game? Also what happens if nobody's joining? How are chances that I played against an AI?
Anyway, it was a fun experience, great job!
I love the idea of jumping among planets to play the different levels. There is a lot to like in your game, from the fitting pixel art to the outstanding soundtrack and the really cool game mechanics. I especially like the idea of double jumping out of your suit which takes away your ability to double jump until you get back into the suit.
Unfortunately there are a few flaws as well which make the game less fun that it could be.
First, I found the sound effects to be a bit grating, which is extremely weird, since you have such a talented audio guy. I can only assume that you ran out of time in the end.
While the graphics are really cool, I think that sometimes the mixed resolution drags down your visual style a bit, especially when jumping out of the suit. If you stand in front of the suit, there appear to be some pixel artifacts. It's pretty hard to pull off a mixed-resolution game and not alienate pixel-art lovers and Unity may be susceptible to that, although I remember I've seen a pixel tutorial around somewhere.
When it comes to gameplay, I think the gravity mechanics could use a little more work, as I think it's a bit too hard to actually aim at planets and hit them through skill and not luck. The platforming was a but frustrating for me, especially since the heroine does not seem to move with the platforms.
A part of that frustration may be due to the keyboard layout, which I think uses too many different keys. I wonder why you chose to use Space to jump outside of the planets and W in the levels. Why not use one key for both? The same goes for O/P, since I didn't find you could remove your suit in space, why not use the same key for entering planets and entering your suit? Also I think for jump 'n' run kind of games it has been an established standard not to use Up for jumping (W in your case), which should be assigned to the other hand, like on a controller. So if you would have used A/D for motion and O/P for jumping/action, I think the controls would have become much clearer.
About the game logic, I found the fact that exiting a planet without the suit sent your character back to the surface with the suit, reduced the otherwise awesome atmosphere you created. Here an additional sprite of a rack of suits next to the teleporter may have kept the game logic intact. Something else I found a bit irritating was that you were able to just skip worlds if you wanted. Not sure whether you had to finish all levels to complete the game (I only managed to get to level 3), but maybe some token that has to be collected to piece together some sort of McGuffin would have helped tie things together.
Overall I think you managed to create a neat game with a lot of cool ideas, and a number of minor flaws. Great job!
Your game looks nice, I will play and rate it later.
Just a comment: Please mark the game as Windows-compatible on itch.io, otherwise it won't be playable from the itch client.
Thanks for updating, I just played it and it's awesome!
I love minimalist graphics in general and you pulled it off very nicely. It's hard to make low-res, low-color graphics look expressive but it works well in your case, especially with the blinking indicators you added. I wish it had a fullscreen or zoom option, as it would be less straining for the eyes.
The music is really good and creates a dire, eerie atmosphere.
I would really suggest you added arrows at the bottom of the screen, since it is not really easy to figure how to advance. The arrows would solve another problem as well, which is that the mouse pointer indicator vanishes whenever you display text. Of course you want to prevent the player from advancing while an animation plays, but the way you do it is a bit confusing, since it is not clear why the indicator doesn't react. If you don't like arrows because they disrupt the mood, you could incorporate items in the graphics that need to be clicked to advance.
Also an ending screen would have really helped to make clear that the game is over. Once you leave via the boat, the game is over and just restarts. Since it restarts with a boat, I would think that you deliberately wanted it to be a cyclic experience, in which case I would have loved to have the second playthrough to be sort of different and the task would be to break the cycle somehow, but I guess one can only do so much in 48 hours.
So besides these comments, I really enjoyed your game and think you created a wonderful little experience.
Sorry, I messed up. I put the review to a different game here. I'll play yours in a minute.
Very nice project. Quite experimental, but I enjoyed playing around with the different notes and their interaction.
One minor complaint would be the missing explanation how you are supposed to draw lines. My initial guess was to draw lines away from the center which does not work and makes the game feel broken. This might have been remedied by showing an example line at the beginning of the game, maybe with a little animation.
Once I understood how it worked it was fun to play around with the mechanics. Unfortunately it is really hard to get a real melody going since the sounds are dependent on the distance to the planet and so it becomes an uncontrollable bunch of orbs and notes affected by gravity. It was beautiful to look at for sure, so musical coherence may not have been your goal.
Anyway, good job on an innovative idea.
I quite enjoyed your entry. The graphics are definitely your strong suit. The nuke animation was really great! I also liked the monster design, although I don't quite grasp why you chose snails and then made them the fastest monster of the game. Must the radiation I guess.
On the flipside, I think the game could do with quite a bit of balancing. I found that all weapons except the rocks (1) and the grenades (2) were basically useless since switching between the two worked so well and their reload times were really low. Speaking of which, I think the game would have benefited tremendously from having individual reload times for each weapon. The game would become a lot more fun instantly. As it is, the awesome nuke is not really usable because you are pretty much stuck for a few seconds after using it, which deadly towards the end when the nuke would have been its most effective.
I think fullscreen would have been important as it would have prevented the game from losing focus all the time when clicking outside the boundary of the window. That happened a lot, especially since I had to drop the grenades from the top of the screen and often found myself frantically dropping some rocks on approaching monsters at the very edges of the screen.
The difficulty ramp up worked quite nicely for me until the very end when it was a matter of luck to find the sweet spot of not fighting the monsters anymore but spamming grenades at the dome on a race to see who loses first. That part could have been improved.
Overall a very nice entry that could greatly benefit from a little polish. Great job!
Awesome presentation. The graphics and music are really pulling this one together. The sound and visual effects pack a punch which makes the game fun to play.
Unfortunately I feel that by choosing a hexa-layout for the game it becomes quite tough to control, since the direction of the shots changes dramatically whenever the player turns a corner, which creates a lot of blind spots where you can't hit the incoming tiles. It may be tricky to pull off, but I think hexes with rounded corners might boost the fun significantly as that would close the blind spots and would have added some measure of strategy (will I stay near the spots that give me more control or keep moving along the edge to hit more asteroids) and skill (fine-tuning the sweet spot on the rounded corner that will hit the asteroid).
Overall you made a beautiful game (sight and sound) that could have benefited from some more tuning of its gameplay mechanics.
**Edit:** After reading some of the comments, I decided to give the game another try and I have to say that after collecting a few powerups, it gets really easy. I got to 280200 points just by holding Left down until some random asteroids managed to get past me.
I absolutely love the notebook aesthetics complete with scribbles on the paper. The transition animation was really great as well. My version didn't have any audio, I would have loved to hear some rustling paper or scratching of a pen for sound effects, and also music as well.
My biggest complaint would have to be the controls themselves. First of all I think it's consensus that the up-key is never a good idea for jumping. Instead using one hand for motion and one for action is generally preferred. Controlling the character feels a bit twiddly, for instance since you have to wait for a second after landing to jump again which often caused me to run into spikes or miss jumps. The physics need a little tweaking as well, especially on the last level where the boulders drop down but hiccup on the diagonal and just stay there.
The level design was well thought out, but I fell there could have been a little more as the more interesting levels that require actual through only come up towards the end.
All in all I had fun and the graphics reminded me of drawing trap-filled dungeons on squared paper in my childhood days.
Man, a simple game like yours should have no right to keep me at it for an hour:
ants.png
And no, I wasn't running it on auto-pilot.
Even if it weren't for my strange affection towards watching numbers go up, I commend you for creating a unique little game that stands out from the rest. It's a real shame that you ran out of time for giving it a real objective, more things to do and most of all, a challenge.
Although the ants looked a bit scribbled, I overall really liked the aesthetic of the game. It's what drew me in initially. I also very much enjoyed your core mechanics that contained some biology research instead of "red ant", "blue ant".
Unfortunately there was no sound at all, which would have contributed nicely to the game.
I would love to see you continue from where you are now. You probably know that ants build intricate hives with special sections that are much more complicated than the little buggers let on, with a micro climate for optimal fungus growth and ventilation shafts. If you managed to pour this complicated dance into an algorithm that creates a realistic anthill from scratch, that would be a sight to see. A scrollable screen to see what you gatherers are up to, with the occasional trapped bug or discovered rodent cadaver to pick apart could keep things interesting. And of course fending off attackers, either as a minigame or just in simulation mode.
So much to do, so little time.
Anyway great job on your first Ludum Dare, keep it up and see you next time!
PS: While I wrote these lines, the anthill grew to 233 cm and has now over 10.000 inhabitants. I guess I'll just keep it running for a little longer.
That was delightfully weird. I don't know whether the boxes moved at a different speed to the terrain on purpose but it made for a pretty trippy effect. I loved how you made a world that is actually smaller than its contents.
Unfortunately the controls were a bit fiddly and sometimes it wasn't entirely clear what I was supposed to do. At one point I found a glitch that allowed me to push a box right through the outside wall, so I was able to skip all remaining puzzles and go straight to the end.
I chuckled at the flavor text in the beginning. Well done!
You created a pleasant and relaxing game with well-designed graphics a moody soundtrack and some cool game mechanics.
I got the feeling that you optimized the game for controllers, as I found the keyboard layout to be a bit fiddly. This could be due to the fact that German keyboards Z and Y are switched, so I had to hold my hand in an awkward position and often fell to my death because I hit the wrong key.
Control-wise I would say the jumping mechanics are the weakest part, as I found the jump arc to be too steep and the jumps a bit too short to feel comfortable. On the other hand, I loved the way you visualized the shovel action. The way that you move the platforms by wedging the shovel in the crack and leveraging the landmass to the next location worked really well vusally.
I think the game may have worked better with discrete movement patterns where you have to decide to which side you want to jump and you jump exactly one square without having to time the jumps. That would change the character of the game from a more skill-based to a more puzzle based game, but I think it may have worked better.
I stopped playing the game in the randomized level, as I found it hard to re-focus on the new configuration all the time instead of repeatedly trying to figure out the solution to a constant level. On the other hand, I generally enjoyed bits of randomness, like the placement of the crystals and the trees.
Overall I think you made a very atmospheric experience that for me was marred a bit by fiddly controls. Nevertheless a very good, graphically impressive game.
Man, I wish you'd had more time for polish.
I followed your game from your initial sketches and thought it was a very neat concept. Ultimately, I think the game would have benefited a lot from some way to zoom out to see the different planets, like in your sketches. The hive was a bit hard to find and the by minimizing the travel time between planets and hive, I think the game could be much more enjoyable.
I was very impressed by the pixel art. Seeing the hive for the first time was a really nice experience, which would have been perfect if you added some epic music on approach.
Finally, I wouldn't personally worry about changing the keys at this point. There is a certain leeway given about what constitutes a bug and what is the unallowed addition of features. Since the choice of keys significantly impacts the gameplay and it's really just a very minor change, I would assume that changing the keys should be no problem at this point. Maybe you can just add the W and S keys to the existing keys so it would be even less of a change.
All in all I think the game has a lot of potential. I would be interested in what you can do post-jam.
The Game Boy graphics drew me towards your game and I have to say, I really enjoyed playing despite some flaws. The difficulty was pretty brutal but still motivating. I think this is because you pulled off the pacing really well, resetting the player into the game immediately after death and not taking too long to increase the difficulty which would otherwise have created some problematic tedium towards the beginning.
My first thought was that the game was unfair because the hands were always destroying the houses faster than I could rebuild, so I thought I could cheat the game by collecting 30 blood and quickly building all the houses. This didn't work (good design), so I played around a bit more and noticed that the 2-story buildings actually served a purpose and I couldn't get around using them (again good design). Then I realized that the fleas were only killed when they were without shelter and a destroyed house didn't decrease your score if you rebuilt before the hands came again. At this point, the game came to life for me and I managed to finish it after a few more tries.
My biggest complaint would have to be the music which was quite jarring from the beginning, and didn't get any friendlier. I understand you may have wanted to go for a strange, insecty vibe and it might have worked better if the music wasn't so repetitive. Definitely could use some more polishing.
A minor issue was with the placement of the hands. I found no sense in going up and down since the hand would hit me whenever I was in the same x-coordinate. Going up and down didn't add any value in the building of houses, so I would have preferred if the hands came down at different y-coordinates, indicated by a shadow and then could only hit you when you were in the same position as the shadow. Also they shouldn't kill you when you run into them from the side, especially while they are going up again.
A tiny thing about the animation, which was pretty good, but I think it would have worked better if the hands didn't animate while reaching (or maybe just change one frame about halfway), but then they would scratch exactly once when they reached their destination. It seemed pretty random the way you did it and the other way may give it a more visceral, threatening feel instead of a comic one. I think this would give the game a lot more character without having to draw any additional frames.
When it comes to controls, I would strongly advise against using the Z-key for an international game because some folks have different key positions (Germany for instance). You can circumvent this by choosing keys that are the same for most players or set actions to more than one key (Z and Y for instance). Personally, I found the hiding mechanic a bit superfluous, as for me, the game didn't gain anything and I had to keep track of yet another key that I didn't end up using.
Overall I enjoyed playing the game, despite some flaws and I think its main strength is the fact that it made me come back for round after round long after a less well paced game would have had me quit. Great job!
Very fun little game. The screenshake is very important and works in favor of the game. It would really come to life more if it had some music.
I really like the idea of not protecting your ship but a small world. I will go into a bit more detail about this mechanic because I think there is room for improvement.
First of all, your ship is basically invincible, which was a bit confusing at first. I think it is a good idea to not have two things that could die, but I think it might have worked better if there was some way of being punished for getting hit, like being propelled across the screen or not being able to fire for a few seconds.
Next you chose to counterweight the power of the special weapons by allowing them to harm the planet. While I appreciate the thought, I think the weapons are not useful enough for such a big disadvantage, especially the laser which can decrease the planet's life quickly. The weapons feel great and it's fun to use them but they feel impractical after a while.
Finally, have you thought about getting rid of the energy bar and instead show the planet's life implicitly, e.g. by reducing its size or having chunks blasted off it when it's hit? I think it would avoid the initial confusion that it's not your life bar but the planet's.
From a replayability perspective, I think the game's difficulty should ramp up a bit faster to get that "one more round!" feeling. Maybe introduce the weapons bit by bit instead of all at the same time. Maybe play around with the idea of having rounds instead of a single continuous level.
Overall I think it's a very solid game with a few flaws. I really like minimalistic games like this and the feel of the game is spot-on. My suggestions for improvement would be to tweak the mechanics a bit more.
One of the few games that actually might work better without music because the ambient sounds worked so well. Graphics are outstanding, but since you opted out of that category I would assume that you used a fixed asset pack?
Generally there is a lot in this game: The graphics, wave physics, AI. It's quite impressive.
One minor issue would be that it took a little too long to get back into the action after dying which takes the wind out of the game's sails (hur hur) a bit. Another thing was that if felt the waves caught my shots too often, but maybe I just suck at this kind of game.
All in all a pretty impressive display of skill from a single person. Great job!
Oh man, this really pains me. I came to your game after seeing your cool trailer video and I have to say the idea of the shrinking world is executed so beautifully. It's technically very impressive. I absolutely love the way you pulled off the tumbling mountains, bridges and trees. You also managed to pull off very cool sound effects that underline what's happening to the world. The music is really relaxing and fits very well into the atmosphere you create. After enjoying all this, I was really curious what the gameplay mechanics would be like.
Unfortunately there is not much here. My units are totally overpowered and even a small handful are enough to defeat a large group of enemies. The pacing is really slow, so it takes ages for the world to shrink and consequently it doesn't really feel threatening. There is just not much *game* to your game. After reading the summary I somewhat figured out what the game mechanics are supposed to be but I didn't find them very interesting.
This is such a shame, because technically you created something really special. It's just that the game experience itself simply feels slapped on. I gave the game high marks in all the places that I enjoyed and consider it a very successful and well-executed tech demo. In case you revisit the basic game idea and try to go in a different direction, I would be interested in giving it another shot.
It a beautiful entry and I enjoyed playing it. I would give it a high score (I can't because I skipped this LD).
However, measured among your outstanding earlier entries it feels a bit less coherent gameplay-wise. The fact that you cannot die takes a lot of tension out of the game. On the other hand, if I were to judge a game targeted for younger kids (the graphics would fit perfectly), then this design decision would make a lot of sense. So take this comment with a grain of salt.
It's still an awesome, well polished game.
I love it! It was a tough game and sometimes it was tricky to see what's going on but I made it through. I wish there was an upward dash because sometimes there's a row of ships outside your reach and it can make you fail the game even if you catch all the ships you can get to. You managed to make a short music snippet blend so well into the game that it does not get repetitive. Overall a very polished experience.
Have you considered hosting on itch.io? It's super convenient to play games via the itch client, which does all the unzipping hullabaloo for you. Normally I like to keep special games in my itch account but unfortunately I can't add yours.
I adore pico8 games, and this one is an awesome example. Sometimes it's a bit hard to distinguish between stars and enemy shots, but I love how energy conservation changes the way the player is forced to play the game.
Your game doesn't work with the itch.io client. Have you checked whether you have set the "Windows-compatible" flag? If you do, tag me and I'll give your game a go.
A crazy achievement for sure. Vader was my favorite. I'm always amazed about your skills in getting game feel right even if the graphics are minimalistic.
My pet died right in the beginning and I can't even get it back to life by restarting the game :(
All in all a very unique take on the theme. I just wish the games were more than their parts. There could be something that binds them together, like an achievement you have to get in each of the subgames to finish the overall game. Or maybe I'm missing something.
I liked the visuals and the premise, but it was just too hard for me. Couldn't finish the boss although I gave it my best.
I usually like challenging games, but in this one, the challenge feels a bit unfair, especially on the boss level. In general I think you have the right amount of things the player has to keep track of. The droppers fire at a fixed interval that is predictable, and lasers have wind up frames. There are some aspects that make these elements a bit frustrating though.
First of all, the droppers will keep following you after they've seen you once, so that often an important jump is made unnecessarily hard because the dropper is still in its position but off screen so you can't predict the shot anymore.
Then there is the most problematic aspect to my mind. Would it take anything from the game if you got a full charge on landing? Keeping an eye on the charge meter while dodging the challenging enemy patterns is just too much to handle.
Finally, I couldn't find out much to do with the charge, except that one time where it's the only way to get a crystal. Usually I used up most of my energy getting up in the air that in most cases there was not enough left to do the charge, so I skipped that mechanic altogether.
On the upside, graphics and atmosphere are top notch. The fact that you even managed to put a boss fight in is awesome!
I like the concept of rescuing your resources from waves of attackers. The game plays fluidly and the difficulty ramp up is well-balanced. The graphics are clean and convey the idea of the game well.
The best quality of the game is how smooth and fast everything moves. This allows for some nice fast-paced action.
There some problems with the gameplay though. I played with controller and the thumbsticks only allowed shooting in 8 directions, which made the game unnecessarily hard to control. This is a big problem for games that require skill and reflexes. Also it wasn't clear at all times how the pickup of the food works. It seemed that you couldn't pick up the food from a live ant (fair enough), but apparently also if ants were nearby. On two occasions I couldn't pick up the food at all, maybe because it was too close to the screen?
There are some tricks I would recommend to improve the game feel. For a game with low-key graphics these tricks can make the experience feel more robust:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJdEqssNZ-U
Overall I would say it's a solid entry that could use a little polish.
If you want, you can publish a post-compo version already along with your original entry, just make sure you mark it clearly as such so that people know what they're playing/rating.
Awesome and atmospheric game with minimalist but very pretty graphics. I enjoyed playing it a lot, a very relaxing experience, thank you.
Some minor points of note: - It would have been nice to have a reload button. - The number of bullets influencing the enemy speed seems more like an afterthought and doesn't change the gameplay mechanics much, especially since you cannot control how many bullets you have (see previous point). - I think I would have preferred it if the music had some slight rhythm that would change throughout the game and the enemy speed adapted to the music. It wouldn't fit the theme, but the game might have benefited from it. - I wasn't able to play the game in the itch client (normally this works even for web builds)
The first genuinely funny game I've played so far. Looks inspired by Carefulzilla from LD38. I liked it a lot.
Not much to criticize. The graphics were a bit simplistic for a Jam game, but the character motion was very charming. Controls were nice and intuitive and allowed for fast and slow motion depending on your surroundings. I would have appreciated a slightly stronger camera shift to see upcoming obstacles sooner. That would have allowed to walk with fast strides more without fear that a house might appear out of nowhere.
The music is very nice, but the sound effects could have been chosen a bit more carefully to support the humor better.
All in all a very funny and fun entry.
Too buggy, zero stars.
No really, I appreciate what you did here and I did not stop until had all the coins. The graphics are beautiful and the glitch effect is wonderfully weird. The game seems frustrating at first but with proper planning it is absolutely doable.
For a game with your unique visuals, the controls need to be a bit tighter in my opinion. Using a concept like Coyote Time might alleviate some of the more frustrating points where you keep dying after slipping off the edge again and again before an important jump.
The music was a bit repetitive for my tastes.
Overall a very good game, especially considering that you made it in only three hours.
A smooth and colorful experience, nicely done! I love the sound effects, especially the bowling pin effect. the rabbits and foxes look very nice and the fading grass effect is awesome!
Thematically it's not clear why the fox would care about the green grass, so some short intro might have been nice. I wish the fox's attack was a bit wider as I found actually hitting the rabbits that I wanted to get was a bit fiddly. Some sort of targeting hint might have worked in your favor as well. The reload time could have been a smidge shorter to make the game even smoother.
Overall a fun entry, good job! I hope you are recovering well from your surgery and will reach the 20 votes.
My daugter loves your game! She says it's one of her favorites this LD.
This is her best:
hasempfeffer.PNG
I love it!
Being conservative with your shots goes against years of muscle memory so this took some time to get used to. However once I figured it out it wasn't too hard.
I absolutely love your graphics and I am super jealous of your chiptune soundtrack. I was aiming for something similar but struggled a lot and in the end I'm not really happy with the results. What tool did you use?
**Some areas for improvement:**
You provide little visual feedback when enemies are hit. A little screenshake can go a long way in my experience. I'd recommend watching *The Art of Screenshake* for inspiration.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJdEqssNZ-U
It's not a big issue as you are doing a lot right already, but a little bit more "crunch" might have been nice.
The heat meter takes up valuable space. I see that it's crucial in the game's design, but maybe a bit smaller and in the upper corner might have been possible. Making the screen wider might have been an option but from a purist standpoint I can understand why you didn't want to do that.
The boss fight was pretty awesome, but the laser went right through it, so I was confused whether I needed to hit a specific part. But when I saw the score go up, I realized that I was actually dishing out damage.
Oh and controller support would have been really neat.
All in all I very much enjoyed the game, thanks for making it.
@sidewalksleeper I'm really interested in what music tool you used. It sounded like some mod tracker, was that it or do you use something else?
@sidewalksleeper: Sorry to hear that you didn't actually write the music. It's flawless and I would have appreciated to know how it was created.
Just letting you know that per LD rules, technically you're not allowed to participate in the Compo if you didn't create all your assets yourself (with a few exceptions, like using audio generators for sound effects). That's what the Jam is for: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/rules
Ah, cool, I didn't know it was possible to switch. Anyway, it's still a very well made game, own composition or no.
@sirpumpy Thanks for playing. There is no health. The ice will grow when you're hit. You die when you touch the ice.
Thanks for playing everyone!
@ham-and-swiss Great job! I'm not telling you my secret strategy... yet.
@hizrok: Glad you like it. I think I should have communicated this better: Your character has no health. you only die when you crash into the ice. But when you get hit, the ice blocks grow. Having duplicates in the leaderboards is intentional, although having a lot of different people on the list would probably have been better. I'm going to write a note for the next time.
Thanks for all your kind feedback!
@shrekshao The two games use fundamentally different visual styles, but I agree that I could have put a little more time into visual effects. I had plans for doing better enemy animations, but didn't make it on time.
@gamepopper Huh, I never noticed the delay. Maybe because the shot gets fired on the button press but people are used to see an effect for mouse actions on the button release?
@chipmonkey Thanks for the detailed feedback and congratulations on getting first place. I'm super glad you liked the pacing, as this has been a weak point for me in previous LDs. Strangely enough, I didn't plan much time for playtesting and balancing. I was trying to get the core mechanics done on day 1 and do graphics, sound etc on day 2. That way I could find out early what is fun and what isn't and tune the game little by little in between coding sessions. It also gives me the chance to play the game from a fresh perspective after half a day of drawing and making audio. Hint: If you want to add a scoreboard, definitely get familiar with how to do it before attempting it in LD. I've never done this before and it took me 6 hours until I had it running in GameMaker. It was worth it, but next time, I'll be better prepared.
@jjjjason I'm happy that you liked the music, I struggled a lot with what tool to use and still think it's a weaker aspect of the game, so it makes me glad that other people think differently.
@pkenney Thanks for your extensive play report and congratulations on making it to the highscore list. I think you figured out all the nooks and crannies of the game. I'm super happy that you spent so much time with it.
Thanks everyone, this means a lot!
@jjjjason Thanks, I will. I'm a huge fan of modtracker music, but haven't spent too much effort learning it, so I fall back to Bosca Ceoil which is really easy to use.
@nenrei Did you play the web version? I've just seen the game played on Twitch in the web version and the exact same thing happened. Could you do me a favor and try again with the exe if you're on Windows? I would like to know whether the game is poorly optimized in general or it is problem of the web version for some people.
Edit: I tried to upload an improved web version. It still has some slowdown during the smartbomb shot but it should be a bit better. If possible, please consider playing the executable version
@pcmxms Glad you liked it.
The board has become pretty elite by now, so it's not that easy to get on it. There are some specific strategies required to break into the current list.
Some hints: Avoid the powerups most of the time. Sometimes the forward spread shot is helpful but know when to use it. The smartbomb is usually not useful at all. The machine gun has no real disadvantages though. If you collect a powerup that you don't want, it may pay off to wait until another one comes around even if you soak up a few bullets on the way. Don't feel obligated to shoot if it makes your life worse.
Then you have to find a balance between getting hit and not missing your targets too much. It's okay to wait a bit until multiple enemies accumulate and then start shooting them. Even if you miss one, you may just hit another one nearby.
The flies bring good points because there are so many. Here the forward spread shot is actually helpful. If a fly hits you, you won't get any points and the ice will grow.
This is a bit of a cheap trick but it's a viable strategy. If only one or two enemies are left in the current wave, you can simply wait and avoid their attacks (especially useful for the flies). That way, extras will spawn which will clear up the playing field. Just be sure you're skillful enough to avoid the attacks or the ice blocks will grow so large that a few missed shots will waste all your effort.
That's all the strategies that I was able to figure out. Let me know whether you discover any more.
@peachtreeoath Thank you for your kind words. Glad you liked the game.
@wafiqsha That shouldn't be the case, but it's something I wish I had communicated more clearly. Listen closely to a "ping" sound, that's when you are hit and that's when the ice grows.
@almost I realized that the shots can stick together and kill you instantly. I didn't think it would be such a great deal, but I agree that I should have found a better way to do this. Congrats on third place!
@phi Wow, thank you, i'm thrilled that you actually enjoyed the game so much. Graphics are one of my weaker skills, but then again, I rarely practice. Would you mind going into a bit more detail about inconsistent visuals? I'm always eager to learn and concrete examples are a great help. From my point of view, I should have improved shading in some places, especially on the character sprite, the planets and some of the background elements. I shaded the pipes close to the deadline and there just wasn't any time left for more.
@honest-dan You played the game on Twitch, right? Thank a lot for taking the time!
@phi Thanks for the detailed input. Indeed, most of the elements are flat because I didn't have time for additional shading. I also meant to add some small backdrop animations like moving dials and such. Color palette is something I'm very inexperienced at, so I usually try to stick to Dawnbringer's 32 palette. I thought about making a game with a very limited palette, like 16 or even 4 colors. The shadow was actually really cheap. I put the pipes on a separate layer, filled them with black and moved it a few pixels to the bottom and to the side. I made a timelapse video if you're interested (see the description above)
@tay Thanks for your feedback.
That's less of a bug and more of a game mechanic quirk. The problem is that if the ice blocks grow larger, then when firing a rapid succession of shots, they will be located so close together that they immediately form a chain of ice blocks that kills you instantly. Not sure how I could have prevented that. Maybe by making the ice blocks small on impact but they quickly grow to their final size.
I may try changing that for a post-compo version, but I think the problem may be that the ice on the wall does not accumulate as fast with this method.
Wow, @jupiter-hadley!
Still going even after the Jam finished. I am impressed. Thanks a lot for taking the time!
Great job!
As always your design is outstanding. You truly have a knack for visual humor. My favorites are the the increasing strain on the bunny icon and the way you keep holding more and more rabbits and can't possibly see anything anymore.
The music and sound effects created a soothing and serene atmosphere and were well-made. I assume you recorded the sfx yourself? You make a pretty good vulture impersonation ;)
My main point of criticism would be the controls. It is possible to place rabbits one by one or all at once, but you can only pick up the whole bunch. Also I found it a bit frustrating that I could not put down rabbits one by one at the same location. At some points I had to struggle to fit multiple rabbits on a narrow ledge and space them out enough so I could continue.
I think the following control scheme might have worked better: One button for picking up one rabbit, one button for dropping one. Want to drop off three rabbits? Press drop three times. Pick up two? Press pickup twice. It would make controlling much less tedious I think.
I love rhythm games and this one is near perfection.
Everything fits together so well to create a coherent whole. The art style and to music match greatly. I admire how you fuse the classic Japanese composition with authentic samples to a retro chiptune sound. May I ask what tool you used to compose it?
The gameplay is super tight and the visual and auditive cues are flawless, from the the guys bobbing to the beat to the game actually showing you the rhythm in advance without taking the player off the action for too long.
The humor is also spot on. The basic premise alone is hilarious, but the execution with the gushing blood, surprised faces and the funny audio effect makes this a masterfully crafted experience.
The difficulty ramps up nicely as well. In the beginning still very well manageable, it turns to off beats and triplets in the final level.
The only complaint I may have is that the theme feels a bit shoehorned, but that's really nitpicking for a great game as this.
Definitely one of my favorites of LD40. Great job!
@ddrkirbyisq Thanks a lot for sharing that youtube video. It truly was a revelation. Man, watching you navigate through FLStudio so effortless really makes me want to get into learning to compose that way. How long have you been working with FLStudio?
I'm definitely keeping the video for reference later. My next goal was to get learn modtracking software, something I've wanted to do for ages.
13 years. Man, that shows. You have awesome skills.
I didn't think much of your game at first, but it opened up a strange fascination once I figured that you can make huge leaps if you wedged the ball between two ledges and bounced back and forth for a while.
I think if you focused more on this aspect of the game and added some more polish to the controls (allowing the player more control over the ball, e.g. by adding more staggered ledges or slow motion at the press of a button), I think the core mechanics could have been quite addicting. I got to 1900 points and would have continued playing if I had the feeling that I could exploit these big jumps better.
I found your game very hard to control. Am I right that you can only change the snowman's path if you click very close to its feet? There was little indication that this was the case. Also it seems you added some sliding mechanic, which added to the confusion as sometimes even when I thought I clicked the right place, the snowman would not respond due to its inertia.
Maybe having some visual indication may have helped make things clearer, like a ring around the snowman's feet to indicate where the player can click. Also having some sort of visual or audio clue when the snowman is sliding may also help gain control over the situation.
On the upside, you create a very soothing atmosphere which is in great part due to the awesome, relaxing soundtrack.
Very cool innovative concept. I love the visual style, very appealing. This is a game that can do without music or sound effects and still be awesome (although maybe some soft clicking sound when pressing a button may have been nice).
It's fairly easy to exploit though, but I guess simulating a crypto market is pretty tough. Great job!
ldax2.PNG
Currently watching the Tim Beaudet stream. Game is looking very good and has an awesome soundtrack! I gameplay wise, I would like to recommend this video for you, it's about 2D games but the content still applies. I think your game would feel a lot better following some of the ideas in here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJdEqssNZ-U
I love the visuals and the music. It creates a very unique atmosphere.
Gameplay wise I am a bit torn. I found that standing on one side of the screen and spamming X and Z was a viable tactic as it prevented the glitches to come nearer, and only sometimes required to move to a lower or higher platform.
I had trouble finding out what the glitch boxed are for. Apparently they increase the amount of glitches, but what was the benefit in collecting them?
Some notes about the controls. Some control schemes mess with German or French keyboards, so using X/Z is may not be the best choice. I found that using A/S/D works for most people. If you want to stick with the X/Z scheme, you can make your German players happy by allowing to press either Y or Z for the same effect.
Personally I would have preferred to jump down with Down + Jump instead of just Down. Also I would have liked if the direction wasn't locked but instead returned to the horizontal shot after you let go of the direction key, but that could just be personal preference.
All in all I think you made a very unique game that stands out among the crowd. Great job!
But mom...
That was awesome. Nice ramp up in difficulty. I particularly like that you decided to not punish the player for crashing the helicopter (aside from making the characters sway more).
The graphics are sweet and that intro sets the mood very well. Those controls with the tiny hands and the worries faces of everyone involved are very cute.
Music would have been nice of course. I remember that Carefulzilla in LD38 used a random music generator to make the soundtrack, which turned out quite well. I could see something similar in your game.
The last level (before the dev test one) was a bit frustrating because one mistake could cost you the full score and you had to start over again. I think the dev test level might have been better suited as an extra to be selected from the start screen or placed after the end game screen as I felt it clashed a bit with the rest of the game.
Overall a very well made entry, congratulations!
The game is quite strong in the graphics and humor department (your choice of design notwithstanding). I enjoyed the fact that there is controller support.
Controls could be a bit tighter, look up "Coyote Time". Also, in jump and run games like this it is usually better to not use "up" for jumping. Assigning a jump key to the hand that is not running is generally more ergonomic. In one instance, I was able to get myself stuck in an area where I couldn't make two-block jumps because I still had my armor on and there were no rats left to get hit.
It's a shame really that you didn't get to finish the game. It's a pretty cool starting point to make something greater. Adding sound effects and music will do wonders to the game and with snappier controls I believe it could become quite popular on Newgrounds or a similar platform.
Made it with 211 deaths in half an hour. Took me a while to figure it out (I didn't read the instructions). The game's difficulty is brutal.
I love the graphics. Very impressive what you made out of three colors in that little resolution. It felt a bit frustrating at times because death often comes suddenly because of an unseen trampoline or missing floor.
The essences served three purposes which was a bit confusing at first but I was able to figure it out. I couldn't find out what the strawberries were for though.
I'm impressed how many levels you made in that short time. You even added a boss fight. I liked it overall!
Nice one. I dig the graphics, which add a lot of charm to the game. The buying/selling mechanic reminds me a bit of the classic Amiga game Ports of Call.
Unfortunately I had trouble playing the game properly. The crashing mechanic was a bit wonky and I sometimes ended up insta-dying when the boat was wedged between two rocks. When I first entered a town, I thought I might go all the way and filled the boat to the brim. Unfortunately the game was broken after that because I couldn't go forward anymore (the boat went backward instead). On my next attempt I bought only one barrel and successfully brought it to the next town only to realize that the price had gone down and I actually lost money on the trade.
I think the game is on the right path overall, but needs some tweaking to really make it fun. Being able to plan trading routes with different goods and figuring out where to buy low and sell high, with a challenging and fair gameplay that rewards risk but does not feel frustrating, and finally by not ending the game on a crash but allowing you to continue with financial loss instead might make this quite succesful on platforms like Kongregate.
I'd urge you to continue working on this.
Great entry! I love the visuals and sound effects, charming and humorous.
I wasn't able to figure out why I should choose the popularity powerups. I always chose the stat powerups and the only disadvantage was that I had to repeat the first level to raise my popularity enough to enter the final dungeon. Maybe some tuning might have helped here.
Also I feel that the fans, as cool as they were, could have been integrated into the concept more. From what I understand they are only a minor nuisance (except the autograph guy) and it not super necessary to save them because you are rewarded new fans when you beat the boss. I guess it's tough to make the fans more active in hindering the player's progress and at the same time not make the game frustrating.
Overall I enjoyed the game a lot, thanks!
Awesome idea! I especially enjoyed that after seeing the screenshot and clicking for the first time, it became immediately clear what this game is all about.
It was great fun to play and I can't wait to show this do my daughter, she will love it.
Some criticism:
For my taste the difficulty ramp up could be a bit steeper to have a more satisfying replay. I believe the longer the player has to wait for the game to reach core difficulty, the less likely they will restart the game.
Unfortunately the game is pretty much over after the first crash. I found the game appealing especially because the screenshot promised all this mayhem during gameplay, but when I actually played the game I realized that the really fun part only comes when the game is over.
This is all well and good (Super Meat Boy did something similar with their replay mechanic after the level was done), but I wished that the player got rewarded for playing well, so that the amount of traffic chaos after play was somehow tied to how long you played (maybe stop spawning new cars on a crash so that the crash only gets as large as the amount of cars which is directly tied to how long you have played). I get that you can let the game run and you can even interact with it after the first crash, but it is not really a reward, because it's always the same.
Maybe you can keep working on it a bit more and make the crash chaos more part of the actual gameplay instead of an afterthought because I think this mechanic makes the whole thing so attractive and fun.
Overall congratulations to an brilliant concept and a solid execution.
I love the trail animation and the backdrop. Did you draw the space background by hand or use some sort of generator software?
The gameplay is very solid and the controls are tight enough to play the game skillfully. I think the idea of having increasingly powerful weapons as a curse is quite nice. My favorite was the machine gun, afterwards it just becomes harder and harder. At the four-way gun my luck left me and the planets exploded.
One thing to note about presentation, the bottom enemy indicators may have better been off above the energy bars instead of below. Alternatively the energy bars could have been placed outside the game window, or even integrated into the game itself (e.g. circular energy bar around the planet). Often I overlooked the arrows and missed an enemy wave. Also I'm not sure if it's my lacking attention, but I had the feeling that for some waves there were no indicators, which felt a bit frustrating. Maybe having them blink for a few second as a new wave arrives may have shifted attention to this very important aspect more clearly.
For my taste, the sound effects were good, but I think having proper explosions except of blips may have been more fitting. Also a game like this begs for screenshake and excessive particle effects for explosions. Look at @terracottafrog's work for reference, he uses these two concepts in tandem masterfully.
All in all certainly one of the better games that I have played, great job!
An impressive result for a first game. I enjoyed it a lot.
apocorp.PNG
There are a number of things to like. Maybe it wasn't that strictly intended, but there is a socio-economic commentary in that the player gets the feeling that at one point all the money you earn is eaten up by countermeasures against the natural disasters you create.
On a less serious note, the game is quite fun to play. Using number hotkeys was a great idea which improved playability a lot.
**Some room for improvement:**
I don't think the Surgers were very useful. They automate your cash flow for sure, but you can never really get rid of the clicking because the Surger reload for the Heat Lasers was too slow. And when you have to click anyway, you can simply go without the Surgers, which I quite successfully did.
Instead of manually destroying the buildings, it should be possible to sell them to earn a bit of cash back (based on the damage of course).
It would be neat if there was a repair button, either as an on/off switch or as a second clicker. Either have each repair action cost money or add a repair building type (or both).
The most problematic issue though is that the Heat Lasers' range seems to be computed based on the center of the storm which not only makes little sense in the logic of the world, but it also makes the game unplayable later on because the storms get so large that you can't even hit them anymore.
Overall I think you can be proud of what you made and I would encourage you to continue working on the idea, maybe by adding more building types.
Should you keep working on the game to fix the range issue, let me know. I would like to test how far I can take the strategy I've come up with.
@jani-nykanen Look again, there's a tutorial :)
Nice mix-up between Breakout and Puzzle Bobble! Really addictive. I didn't get past 51 though.
The Graphics are very nice, the sound effects fit well. The extras are meaningful and fun to look at. The speed-up button is a very important feature.
The only gripe I have is that it's pretty much the opposite of the theme, because the more balls you have, the easier it gets.
Overall a very neat Pico-8 game. Great job!
Awesome game! Full marks on mood. I especially love the music and the writing. The tree of life animation was very well designed for a minimalist choice of graphisc.
Great job overall. Unfortunately the ending was a bit sudden.
Some minor issues: The text did not fit entirely on the screen sometimes. It was still readable, but it felt a bit weird. The outside movement could have been a tad faster to make exploring a bit snappier.
A note about the music: Maybe you could have created the music in a way that it loops better. As it is there is a short moment where the player notices that the track restarts. But that's a minor nitpick.
Overall I would say it's one of the most atmospheric games I have played so far, great job!
You have all the basic mechanics of a FPS down, congratulations. I especially liked the Doom-like end-of-level switches and that you actually added a boss. Using voice work was a nice touch. I also thought the level was neat, if a bit repetitive.
I would suggest you keep working on it to find out how to make it more fun to play. Of course enemy ai would be a huge improvement, but there are a lot minor things you can improve that are fairly easy to achieve.
First of all, I would recommend this video to you:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJdEqssNZ-U
I know, it's about 2D platformers but a lot of information applies to any action genre really.
Concretely, I would suggest you work on the flow of the game. Try increasing your fire rate and see if that makes your game more fun. Then of course do the same for your enemies to see if it forces the player to be on their toes more. Maybe make the player move faster as well. Make the moment of attack of your enemies more random and give a clearer indication when they fire (e.g. muzzle flash). Maybe have the tougher enemies take more than one hit and give an indication when they are hit. Maybe you can distinguish them besides the visuals, like giving them different weapons or attack patterns. Make the bullets travel much faster (make them hit almost instantaneously). I also think the player bullets may need some more accuracy, sometimes I had trouble hitting the already stationary enemies.
I didn't think I saw the theme incorporated in your game except for that there was an increasing amount of enemies.
Sound effects were nice, but the voice work could have used some balancing so all the sounds have a proper volume (steps a bit quieter, enemy voices/shots a bit louder, etc).
For a 48 hour game it was not bad, and I am sure with some practice you can create something so much better next time.
Simply brilliant.
The idea is great. The visuals, the music and implementation all feel super polished. I had a lot of fun although I wasn't very good at the game.
Not sure whether this was deliberate, or just tolerated but I noticed that it's possible to drink and eat at the same time. Didn't really help get a high score though :(
One of the strongest Jam entries I have played so far, great job!
Great job, the visuals are awesome! It's a fun and challenging game
I found a good strategy to be slowly approaching the core and spamming it with shots. Any ricocheting shots may also hurt the core, but it should be enough to avoid them half-heartedly. Don't collect any extras except health, and only if it doesn't fill your bar completely (otherwise save them for later).
The downside would be audio for me. Not sure if it was intentional, but I found it a bit too cacophonous. I understand that you probably wanted to capture the chaotic nature of the game, but maybe something more chill may have worked better. Also sound effects are a big deal for this kind of game. Bfxr should make it possible to add a few shot and ricochet effects in no time.
Overall a pretty solid entry, congratulations!
@flubz Music is something I always struggle with in the Compo as I feel that it normally lags behind the rest of the game. Depending on where you want to go musically, I would recommend you start playing around with synth pads. The benefit is that you don't have to worry about writing complex melodies. Just play long notes and find chords that sound good together, then try to blend them together to create some sort of soundscape. Obviously only works in games where an atmospheric soundtrack fits the mood.
I wanted to do something similar this time, but since I ended up making a retro arcade game, it would have been totally out of place.
This is an awesome synth with a lot of presets to play around with: https://tal-software.com/products/tal-noisemaker
@flubz And we have somewhat similar games, too. ;)
Played it with my 7-year old daughter. I think it's one of her favorite games so far.
I liked the concept of creating a misshapen ball that became harder to control as it grows.
I think the controls might have needed a tiny but more tuning, as sometimes I felt there was almost no chance to take a turn once the ball was in motion and to prevent it from dropping off the edge.
Apart from that it was a pretty fun entry.
A brilliant entry! This has to be one of the best Compo games I have played so far. Everything is so polished and works very well.
The concept is great and the execution flawless. I love your choice of sound effects, they tie everything together perfectly, especially that "smack" sound when you mark a box. Did you record that yourself, because the other sounds seem generated except of this one?
The music is simple and unintrusive so it provides a good auditive backdrop while letting the game speak for itself.
Gameplay-wise it took me a while to figure out you were able to stomp so my first round consisted of avoiding boxes until the skull boxes accumulated to the top. At this point the games gets stuck in an endless loop because it repeatedly creates skull boxes on that column. After I figured out how to properly play the game that wasn't a problem anymore though.
Overall the game offers the perfect balance between trying to get combos and trying not to play too risky to avoid getting squashed.
Flawless balancing and execution. No major criticism. Definitely a keeper.
*Edit:* Maybe a tiny thing, although that could be by design: I think the player would have more control over the game if you allowed to break the stomp chain because if a new block arrives at the current stomping column, the player has no chance to escape and this is an element of pure luck/risk and the rest of the game is firmly based on skill/risk.
Full marks on mood!
Unfortunately it looks you ran out of time. I would have loved to see more.
The visual effects and animation are very beautiful. I think some visual and auditive feedback would have given your attacks a little more heft, but I can see how that might have worked against the solemn atmosphere.
Am I doing this right?
tetris_tank.jpg
I think I broke something. It won't let me spawn any more blocks. On the upside, I have no problems with attackers anymore. ;)
This game is an outstanding achievement and I would strongly encourage you to continue working on it to make this a complete game. I'm sure there would be a lot of takers (careful though with commercialization though, I hear the Tetris Company is really restrictive about their game idea).
I had a lot of fun trying to get the tower as big as possible. The attackers seemed to be more like an afterthought to justify having weapons on the tower. Maybe if the guns took a more active role (engage the enemy directly) while the attackers more aggressively go for the tower instead of just passing by, this might have given the game a little more urgency. Maybe make the attackers come in waves, like in a Tower Defense game, only that you only have limited time to prepare your tower.
The physics may need a little more polish, although they are a lot of fun already. I found it difficult to predict which gun's effects would counteract my other construction. Maybe you could have each weapon fire at a fixed interval. You could mark them with numbers, so that all "1" guns fire at the same time, all "2" guns fire at a different time and so on.
That way, the player would be able to counter the guns' effects, e.g. by placing a "1" gun facing left and another one facing right so that both fire at the same time in opposite directions which would give balance to the tower. Same for the morning stars. All "1" morning stars would be in the "up" position at the same time, so having too many of them on one side might imbalance the construction etc.
Control-wise I felt that requesting the next block manually was unnecessary, since you could always just shove it out of the way if it didn't suit you. The drop speed of the block was alright but the manual motion was too slow for my taste.
Graphics are very adequate for this type of game and it became immediately clear what was asked of the player.
To sum it up, I believe this is a diamond with some rough edges that very well deserves a bit more polish. I enjoyed myself immensely and despite all the criticism I have to say this is one of the most fun and innovative games I have played so far.
@shrekshao Here, have a hi-res version if you need it for anything:
https://ibb.co/c0DWpb
I also made a gif in case nobody believed me, but it's 8MB and I don't feel like finding out how to resize animated gifs without problems.
Ah, but it's not a full gif, just a short section before the end.
https://files.fm/u/emuuxxff
However, I can tell you what I did.
I realized that if you start putting an L-Block on the left side of the car in the beginning (like in the picture), it will not imbalance the tower (on the right side it will). Then put another L-Block on the right (in the pic one element is missing because the car tipped and it lost one block. After that try to add S-Blocks to either side (first left, then right) if possible to grow in width. Keep the mass roughly in the center.
In the beginning I try to avoid morning stars and only add them later. And I prefer machine guns over cannons because they seem to destabilize less. Once you surpass a certain height you can add whatever you want, the tower should be fairly stable because all guns are firing in all directions which evens out the effects. Something like that.
Note that this technique sometimes causes the game to crash. When the car tips and the L-block hits the ground, sometimes the whole cart vanishes and I have to restart the game.
That was quite a unique experience.
The game's graphics are minimalist but coherent, the music gives it a lot of atmosphere. I just wish there was a clearer indication precisely where in the Halay my dancer would enter. It was a bit frustrating to aim for a spot only to realize that the dancer would enter the spot right next to the one I was aiming for.
I think it may have worked in the game's favor if there was a way to remove a dancer from the Halay, maybe by achieving a combo of 5 consecutive numbers or something like that. The way it is, an error remains an error until the end of the game which I feel lowers the motivation to keep playing.
You should prevent a player from leaving the screen. It was a bit fiddly sometimes to find the dancer again once it leaves the screen. Also it would have been a neat touch if the inactive dancers would wander around the periphery of the room, might make the game a little more lively.
Overall I think the game was quite innovative and fresh, but could have used a little more polish.
I saved 266 sheep.
I love how this turned out in the end. The sheep design and day/night cycle work very well. I'm impressed how robustly you implemented the flocking behavior. Controller support is appreciated.
Unfortunately there is no sound at all. Maybe you didn't have enough time but putting together some simple sound effects in bfxr or even recording some voices yourself would have improved the experience immensely.
Overall a short sweet game that feels very polished.
Glad you took my suggestions into account ;)
I also usually put off composing to the last possible moment as I always feel it's the weakest aspect of my games. Sound effects on the other hand are really easy to make using tools like bfxr or chiptone (http://sfbgames.com/chiptone/) Maybe head over there and play around with them to see whether you find something you like?
As for music. I guess even a simple ambient sound is better than silence. It adds so much atmosphere. I think in your case it might have been sufficient to load up any sound tool, get a vst that produces an atmospheric sound and just play really long notes without any real melody, then make the notes fade in and out.
I liked your game. The background is great and the rest of the graphics are cute.
I especially enjoyed the music, which gives the game a lot of character (the whistles you used are absolutely great and adds a lot of soviet cliche).
A game as unforgivingly hard as yours needs tighter controls though, especially since the player starts over from scratch when they fall. For my tastes the character slides too much at low speeds, which makes the game a bit frustrating to play. I finished the first level and didn't really feel much of a difference between carrying no coins and carrying all the coins. Some additional tuning may help.
If this was communicated clearer (very tight controls in the beginning, looser controls towards the end), the player might feel more motivation to plan out a path. I think https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/you-are-the-coin-master is a good inspiration for motivating the player to plan a route, although he used a completely different approach.
On the other hand I appreciate the elements you did implement to make it play well. The shadow under the player helps a lot with aiming and the jump distance is quite right so that making longer jumps feels less of a risk. The fact that you gave the player about 1 pixel on top of the visual platforms (at least that's what I thought) helps as well.
Overall I thought it was a charming experience and I felt motivated enough to finish the first level even though it was hard.
Wow, that was tough, I didn't make it past level 3.
The graphics are sweet and adequate for that type of game. The music also fits but is a bit repetitive.
I think I would have preferred if the game didn't have lives and you would immediately spawn back once you died.
Not sure whether this was by design, but I was not able to collect some of the blobs. I was able to finish the level without them though.
Hey, just a hint: You need to mark the game on itch.io as Windows compatible, otherwise it won't allow downloading it via the itch client.
It's a cool concept, having to balance income (from crime) against spending to prevent crime and still make a place for citizens to live in.
The gameplay itself is a bit tedious, there are some UI improvements that would help the game take great strides in playability:
- Don't reset the actions after each round. I wanted to try different settings and have them run for a while to get a feeling for the mechanics but having to click each sector in each round to change the settings takes a lot of patience - Give the player a chance to get all information on one screen: Current action of each sector, the full report etc. That way they won't have to keep track of all the info in their minds. - You can do a lot by color coding your cities. Income in the red? Add a red dollar sign next to the city. Crime rate critical? Draw a burglar's mask, color coded for severity. - If you want to keep your separate report cards, simplify them. Minimize mouse paths and click count. Don't force the player to move across the screen to find the exit button. Let them click anywhere on screen to close the window. It doesn't need to be that large to convey a little bit of information. Just have a small window pop up right next to the city or something.
Finally the music becomes a bit repetitive. Did you use a music generator? Nothing wrong with that, just make sure you spend enough time with it until you find a track that fits your game. Here, I think something with longer, more atmospheric notes might have been more appropriate.
These issues are mainly about ui and usability. I commend you to make a strategy game like that. I would never dare, because tuning it must be really hard. Kudos.
I love these kind of dungeon crawlers and you managed to pull of something very atmospheric. Your graphics are awesome and the game appears very inviting. Definitely an achievement in such a short amount of time.
I have some criticism though.
I think I would have preferred not having to double tap to move, for me it didn't give the game anything but was a minor annoyance when you wanted to move quickly.
The gameplay could have used an additional round of polish. I didn't feel the weight of the gold and didn't really understand how it was supposed to slow me down, but maybe I didn't get far enough. The cursed chests were more of a curse than a blessing because when I was low on health I couldn't afford to open them for fear of having less health afterwards or dying right away which happened once.
The flooding mechanics were a nice touch to give the game some urgency but I never felt it was a real threat.
All this is a bit unfortunate because I think if you had skipped the theme altogether and made a classic dungeon crawler, the game would have been outstanding and I would have kept playing for a long time.
I hope this critique doesn't sound too harsh. I enjoyed played your game and you create a great atmosphere. Doing all this in 48 hours is a great achievement, despite some aspects that were a bit rough.
Just letting you know that the game does not play on the itch.io client, likely because you haven't marked it as Windows-compatible. Tag me if you fix it and I'll give your game a shot.
Yep, that resolved it, thanks. If you don't tag it as Windows compatible, it won't install on the itch.io client (https://itch.io/app). Now it works. I'll try to give your game a shot before the deadline if there's time.
Neat little game you made there. I especially like the graphics.
I would like point out a few things that could be improved:
- My main criticism would be balancing the exp. The game makes very slow progress and feels very grindy. After a few attempts I wasn't able to get past level 2. Maybe level up the character faster and make the fights a bit more challenging/interesting.
- The upgrade in level 2 was a nice surprise, but it didn't really give any advantage over the monsters. The horizontal air slide looks cool for sure, but it requires airborne monsters to feel justified. Maybe there are more monster types later in the game but I didn't meet them.
- The jumping physics could be improved a bit. I noticed that you implemented dynamic jump height, which is very cool, but I think it may require some tweaking since short key presses already result in a pretty high jump.
- There probably wasn't enough time to introduce more monsters, but I think a larger game world with sections inhabited by different monsters would be a great extension. That way you could have the harder monsters in later sections which would require the player to level up in order to beat them. Also it would add to the feeling of adventure if the player was able to explore the game world more. Even if time was an issue, a cheap cop-out would have been to add differently colored monsters with different stats. I would assume increasing the world size is just a matter of adding more tiles, right?
Overall I think you laid some pretty good ground work so I would encourage you to continue working on this game and keep adding content.
I love the idea of swatting away pesky cooks that try to ruin your work, and the graphics fit the concept nicely.
The controls could use some work though. I played around with the game and I tried to prevent all chefs from adding stuff but some always came through no matter what I tried. This makes the game very tough to control later on when there is a lot going on. Also, color-coding the food may have helped, as sometimes it's tough to react quickly and figure out the flavor of each food at the same time.
When it comes to audio, I wish you would have opted for a more crunchy slapping sound and maybe a slight screenshake. Slapping the chefs is the core mechanic around which the whole game pivots and I think it may have become much more tangible by adding some more heft to the slaps.
Overall I liked the premise a lot and would return to give it another spin should decide to make a post-compo version.
Awesome idea! I also spent considerable time trying to perfect the corner-camp strategy, but it only got me to 990 points. Once the red spreaders got me it was basically game over.
I enjoyed the game a lot. I think some sound and visual effects would go a long way here and would probably be pretty simple to implement in unity (a quick bfxr session and some screenshake maybe). If you could have added a specific sound effect for each powerup that would have helped keep track of what you collected at each time.
The Graphics are very basic but do the trick, the main show belongs to your own shots as they start to fill up the screen.
From a difficulty ramp up it was okay, maybe a slightly faster early phase realized by slightly faster fire rate in the beginning. The enemy succession was pretty spot on with levels of escalation well sorted by threat. The red devils could do the most damage I think, so it was great that they came last.
Some thoughts on communicating game play mechanics. I am usually not a big fan of "how to play" or tutorials, but in this case it may have been warranted, because the game idea goes against the intuition of "avoid enemy shots to not die". If you do write a how to play, I would advise to use as few words as possible and if possible implement a "show, don't tell" approach, especially in game jams where everybody is playing a lot of games and probably prefers to get right into the action.
This video comes to mind, which discusses, among other things, how to show a player what they need to know about the game :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FpigqfcvlM
Truth be told, I kinda messed that up this LD myself, though.
I love a good SHMUP and you made a funny and fun variant on the genre, great job!
My favorite parts are the whimsical graphics and sound effects that add a lot of charm to your game. I wish the player character would move a bit faster and that the *frantic bar* wouldn't overlap with the character.
One bug I found was that the score does not reset when the game is restarted.
I enjoyed the concept very much. Great idea turning a classic game concept into a community thing.
Some good points have been raised by other people, so I may have a few suggestions for improvement:
- Provide a quick intro. It's not necessary to read the intro text for each round. Once upon loading the game is enough. Give a short one-liner summary for the player's effort after finishing a round and let them return to the action right away. The longer text was funny, but it doesn't add a lot if you have to read it each round.
- Ask for the player's name in the beginning and remember it
- Display the name of the player whose field you take over to allow recognizing someone's name without having to reading the intro.
- If someone starts with a clean field, let them choose a name for that field and display that name while playing. Give the player the choice to continue working on the same field or pick another one after play.
- Allow the player to select from a number of fields where you show a list of contributors and what they added/took away from the field. That way, some social construct could form where a bunch of people get together to try and clean up the messy play field of other people. Offer some reward/accomplishment if they do. Some chat lobby would work well together with that idea.
- It's much easier to wreck playing fields than to heal them. Erase the "contribution" of people who are merely spamming blocks, e.g. by comparing "removed_lines / added_blocks" against a threshold. That way a team of workers can actually finish cleaning a playing field.
@nietrich: This assumes that everyone is good at tetris. I think if you start out with randomly generated junk, it may become a contest between good tetris players and less skillful ones who still want to contribute but actually make it worse unintentionally. Probably requires some tuning of game parameters (e.g. drop speed) for finding a good balance that is neither too easy nor too hard.
Hey, just letting you know, the itch link is dead. Let me know when you fix it, I'll be back to play your game. Looks neat.
Nope, still nothing:
404.PNG
I visited https://nenrei.itch.io/time-for-downgrade
Dude, you haven't published your game yet. It's still set to draft (see DRAFT at the top). Only you can see it on itch.io.
It's working now on itch. Thanks for the fix!
For someone with little experience, the game is pretty good!
The visuals are very nice and you even added screenshake, which is cool.
A few ideas for improvement:
I think it's hard to pull off a game where the main character gets less powerful over time as it is easy to fall into the "less powerful == more boring" trap. An idea would be to offset the loss of power in some way. This could be humor (making your character level up visually by e.g. growing larger or more threatening, but at the same time dealing less damage, having a glass jaw, etc) It could also be a game mechanics twist (you level down, but you can collect weapons that make you stronger, unless your level gets too low and you can't use them anymore, this would give you something else to do besides kicking enemies' butts)
I thought the balancing was a little off. The enemies are a bit too easy to defeat and there is no real punishment in downgrading defense or speed, because you don't need either to progress. Then the difficulty could ramp up stronger so that after defeating a few enemies, the player will notice a significant challenge and will have a hard time getting past wave ten or so. For a game with little to explore, the challenge could be to replay it and see whether you can beat your previous best. But that would require faster, shorter sessions after which you could get right back into the game to try again.
You may want to re-think the controls. Using LMB to walk and RMB to strike would give the player some more control over the action. A defend skill paired with a little more aggressive opponents may make the game a bit more challenging.
Music is a challenge for a lot of people (or sometimes there's just not enough time to compose). There are music generators out there which are fair game in the Compo to use, although you need a good ear to determine whether a generated song sounds decent or dissonant. Even better would be to learn how to produce tapestries of sound using synth pads. They don't require a lot of skill but create a relaxed atmosphere. Probably not the best choice for an action-packed arcade game, but still better than silence.
Anyway you made a neat game that looks very polished but needs a little more work in the gameplay department. Good job overall!
That was much more fun than I anticipated, good job! I actually laughed out loud at the ORANGE level.
As it is, the game is pretty basic, but I could see this becoming more serious if it had community elements, where you keep all the images in a database and show the player a random image someone else did after they completed the level. Or make it a multiplayer game where two players compete and maybe a third player gets to vote on the drawing. Score given for time and quality.
The music was quite nice and didn't intrude on the experience. Some sound effects might have worked well here (maybe a soft scribble sound while you draw).
Short update: I showed your game to my 7-year old daughter and I think it has become her favorite game of all LD40 games so far.
It's really cute to see her start out with good intentions to actually draw the object but then there is so much color left in the pots and she adds all kinds of stuff to the scene and in the end it's just a mess of lines and squiggles. :D
Very short but beautiful game, I could easily see it on an app store, great job!
Cute sound effects like in Samorost would make this so much better.
Nice one, I especially liked the players' shot pattern. Unfortunately I was only able to play it alone, so I missed the effects of competition. The enemy shot patterns were neat and tough to avoid, as it should be in this genre.
There are a few things that I would suggest to improve the game:
- Offer higher resolution. In Gamemaker this is a one-liner (unless you want to be able to switch between resolutions, then it's a little more effort, but nothing serious). Full screen would have been nice
- In a bullet hell shmup, visual effects are king. Especially when it comes to registering enemy hits, which is completely missing in your game. Often I didn't realize whether I was damaging an enemy or not.
- I always recommend this presentation about game feel, a lot of the points discussed there would improve the fun factor of your game a lot.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkgkIXZ_13Y
I was looking forward to playing your game after seeing the noodle arm characters on your feed, such a pity that you didn't manage to finish it.
The artwork and the music are brilliant.
Can't say much about the gameplay itself as I had trouble controlling everything because the mouse was so fast and it was turning all the time. I think having the character move in the direction the mouse is facing would have helped playability a lot. Having all these narrow doorways didn't help either.
I didn't really figure out what to do. I was able to pick up stuff, but didn't know what really counted. The coat rack and fire extinguisher were displayed in the GUI but nothing special happened when I picked them up. Also I didn't quite get what the item with the number was supposed to be. Apparently I was supposed to find more than one of them, but I couldn't.
On my first run, the countdown went to 0 and it said that I had won, but I'd only collected the coat rack, so I was a bit confused about what the purpose was.
It's a shame really, because the visuals and audio are there and from looking at screenshots, it seemed to be a super polished and fun experience. Time is a harsh mistress I guess ;)
Good luck on your future endeavors, I think you have a very talented team.
Not bad for a first attempt! I like the charming graphics and the character animation.
Some thoughts:
As others have mentioned: The movement is a bit off. Normally you would expect your horizontal motion to remain in place when you jump. Depending on your programming language, you can fix this by querying all keys that are pressed down in the current frame. If the right key is down, move your character x pixels to the right, no matter whether a different key has been pressed. That way you can register a jump (jump key pressed + character standing on the floor) and keep moving at the same time.
When you land, there is this cute step animation. However this breaks the game flow a bit because the player has to wait until the animation ends. An improved version of this would be to keep the step animation, but allow the player to jump as soon as the character lands (even if the animation is still playing). You may need to stop playing the animation upon jumping if it looks weird.
Visually, I think the difference between the harmless water and the acid wasn't clear enough. It became obvious once I tried it, but these things should be communicated visually (I have trouble with this as well).
I thought the collision with the acid was a bit too harsh, as I died numerous times when I thought there was still enough space. Professional game designers use all kinds of tricks to make the game more fun even if it goes in favor of the player and against the game rules (see this awesome article: https://kotaku.com/game-developers-explain-some-of-their-favorite-ways-to-1798749279). Things like Coyote Time are a brilliant way to make a game more fun, even if the player doesn't actively notice it's there.
About audio, I would encourage you to look into bfxr to create some simple sound effects. That's basically what everyone is using. Sound effects give your game a lot of depth and are very easy to generate. If you want to get into writing music but have little experience I would recommend Bosca Ceoil. It's fairly simple to use and a good place to start.
Despite all the criticism, I think you are on a good path. Don't be discouraged when the ratings come in. Usually the comments are more positive than the numbers and many first-timers are surprised and frustrated when the two don't match.
Keep up the good work!
Very good execution of the theme and great concept.
I liked how the graphics and the gameplay tied everything together to a coherent whole. I wasn't very good at this game so I only played up to the end of the second level, so I may have missed content.
I think the one thing I would have preferred to make the game easier to pick up again after dying would have been to allow placing more than one bomb similar to Bomberman. That would allow me to clear less dangerous areas quicker.
One comment: usually the itch.io client allows me to download web games but in your case, I got an error message:
robo_error.PNG
It's probably not your target platform, but maybe you wanted to know.
Ah, but I wasn't talking about a specific Windows build. Usually the web builds download fine on the itch client, so it was a bit of a surprise that it didn't work for your game. Not sure whether it's worth fixing, as I said, I would guess that it's a very limited number of people that prefer the itch client over the web version.
Cute idea. I liked the graphics. The ending was a surprise.
The difficulty ramp-up might have needed a bit more tuning. The main part of the game was extremely easy, and on the last two days the game became more challenging.
I was able to rescue all rabbits without breaking much of a sweat (except the last two levels which required a bit more effort).
Good job overall.
The concept was well thought out, but could have used a few more mechanics to actually make this into a game.
I found the randomness of the crosshairs a bit too chaotic, maybe some swaying motion might have been better with the radius and speed determined by the amount of ammo you have. That way, aiming would still be hard, but more a matter of skill instead of luck.
Since there is no disadvantage in having low ammo, there is little incentive to actually conserve it. A simple modification would be to add score tally where you get a higher score when you hit a target with full ammo. You could award medals or stars according to the score achieved. That may increase replay value.
Loading levels from text files sounds like a cool concept to create a lot of levels fast. Shame that it didn't seem to work out for you.
That was weirdly fun.
I really like your visual style and the fact that you combined hand-drawn 2D graphics with an ego-3d engine. You can never have too many Cthulhus ;)
Unfortunately there wasn't much of a challenge, as I didn't think the Cthulhus were able to hurt me. I also got stuck in the level with the columns because the door wouldn't appear. There was one defeated enemy leaning on a column, maybe that did not trigger the door.
This is insanely beautiful. I haven't seen anything like this for a long time in the Compo. Absolutely great. The music is perfect as well. The controls are really smooth and the game feels great.
A tremendous achievement, congratulations.
There is some room for improvement though.
You don't have any clear visual or auditive indicators that you actually shot down an enemy. Took me a while to figure out that the enemies just drop into the sea. Changing the particle parameters and color, adding an explosion and playing a sound effect would do wonders here I think.
I didn't get the feeling that the game got progressively harder over time. I understand you implemented auto-heal which is fine, but should be counteracted by an increase in difficulty.
Should you keep working on this game, please let me know if there's a new version, I would definitely replay it.
Great job overall. Probably the most beautiful game I've seen so far.
It's not my place to suggest this, but why not keep it as it is for the Compo and use your further progress as a post-Compo game?
It's much more impressive as it is for a Compo game, but will look much less impressive as a Jam game because you have to contend with teams of developers and their results are usually much more polished.
Nice idea.
I love the graphics and atmosphere, I just wish there was some music to go with it.
The click zones could be bit larger as I found it hard to hit the lamps.
Also I didn't get the connection to the theme. I saw that the lava rises over time, but is that tied to the number of lamps you have collected? Also I didn't get the concept of the danger zone and how that would help me win the game.
Overall I would say the graphics are definitely your strongest suit, but the gameplay itself might need some polish, especially communicating better how to be good at the game.
I love your logo and character design.
The lore section was pretty funny and one of the rare cases I didn't mind reading an intro text (and it was obligatory as well!)
The music set the mood well. Did I hear correctly that you composed multiple soundtracks? Nice! The coin sound effect was a bit too generic for my taste, maybe some more time with bfxr might have netted you something a bit more unique.
Overall I enjoyed playing your game, I especially liked all the different approaches to the whole "harder to play if you carry more gold" theme: The "drop it to get past danger" mechanic, the choice you have of luring the gargoyles to the fire or simply shoving them in when you drop your gold, the path planning you have to do to get past the ghosts and so on.
The main problem I saw with your game was the fact that it feels a bit too buggy. Now and then my character would simply stop until I released and pressed the move buttons again. When I dropped coins the circle around me would move inconsistently, sometimes shrinking and sometimes growing after a coin drop. Not sure whether that was intentional, but I would have preferred "drop a coin and the circle shrinks, collect one and it grows". Also getting resurrected at a checkpoint would decrease the circle, but not the coin amount.
Also I was not sure whether that was some sort of glitch but I wasn't able to make it past the golems. I read the note that they die if they can't move anymore but I didn't get it. There was one golem that didn't move and didn't die (I think it died when I killed the gargoyles in the room). And the other golems moved. When I dropped all my gold I was able to push them in a position that trapped them in place, so they wouldn't move anymore, but still they wouldn't die. Maybe I'm dumb but I felt that could have been communicated better.
All in all a solid entry, especially considering the sheer content of the game. If it were a bit more stable I would have loved to finish it.
Cool idea!
Fun and chaotic variant of the foxes and rabbits simulation. I liked how everything escalates after you simply try to get rid of some gophers. I was genuinely surprised when the dogs were converted. Great job!
For my taste, I think motion of the characters could have had a bit more range. It seems you chose an RNG to make everyone move a step in either direction randomly. However, by using a velocity variable I think you can make the game more dynamic and prevent all characters from bunching up in a corner of the playfield.
Wow, an NSFW game at Ludum Dare, well I'll be.
It's quite impressive what you managed to put together in just a few days especially with the high quality artwork. The content is certainly there but unfortunately you didn't manage to add the necessary depth, so gameplay feels a bit prototype-ish, I would assume time to have become an issue in the end.
I think going into the castle to fight a boss that could only be beaten with leveling up the character (maybe finding some random treasure) might have rounded off the game some more even without designing a lot more monsters. This could have been achieved by keeping captured folk in the dungeon to auto-generate energy (maybe the secretary could have accomplished this during your absence) which in turn would have allowed leveling up the character (so no further assets required). Upgrading the cell might have allowed to keep more than one creature captured which again might have increased auto-generated energy and added a little more to accomplish. I know you accomplished a lot and you were likely burning at both ends towards the end, but I think some cheap coding tricks may have made the game feel a little more complete without too much effort (unless you added the boss fight of course).
Gameplay-wise the game could use a little more polish to make clicks register a bit more snappily. I tried to grind through the fights quickly but for this speedy play style it felt like I had to click twice for every action until it registered.
One specific technical issue: I am running on a 16:10 resolution and the mouse cursor does not fit the clickable menu entries, which is especially frustrating on the battle screen, since it forced me to click the option above the one I actually wanted.
Apart from that I think you are a on a very good way to make a good adult-oriented browser game that could find its audience easily. I would encourage you to keep working on it and make it a full length experience.
Cute flappy bird clone. I liked the eat/lose weight mechanics.
Unfortunately the top of the screen seems to push the bird back forcefully, sometimes right into the obstacles. Other than that the game played very smoothly.
I love the idea of subverting the coin collection trope and converting it so something darker. I wish you would have expanded on that premise. The levels don't differ very much and with the same story at the end it feels a bit repetitive. I think that with a more involved story and a bit more variety the game could gain a lot by a little bit of polish here and there.
The graphics are simple yet adequate. One remark about the animation: Two-frame walking animations are tough to get right. Adding a third frame helps trick the eye that the animation is smoother than just back and forth. For 2-frame animation, this tutorial explains how to pull it off well (archived): https://web.archive.org/web/20111128203610/http://www.manningkrull.com:80/pixel_art/tutorials/walking.asp
Audio-wise, I'm not sure how tight your time budget was but for a game like this, sound effects are very important. If you play around with bfxr, you will quickly find a few sounds that match the most important actions (jump, coin, squish enemy). Depending on your framework, it may not take more than an hour to select, save and add the sound effects and it will do wonders with your game feel.
The controls are good but may also benefit from a little tuning to make them tighter.
Overall a solid jump&run that shows promise but could use a little polish and variety.
I have problems getting it to run. The whole screen is shifted to the side so half the text is cut off. A pity, It looks very promising.
alien.PNG
I can't select the resolution that you recommend above. The highest I can go is 1680x1050.
Let me know if you find a fix, I'll be back to try again.
I love PICO-8 games, and yours looks amazing. I loved the final boss fight.
There are a few game mechanics issues I would like to point out.
I felt the game's economy is a bit out of whack. So you rarely take damage from enemy ships, and the only real danger of dying is to lose all your fighter ships. Since you get one fighter per rock and the number of fighters you have to expend on bosses is fixed, the core concept of the game is basically to collect enough rocks, which feels a bit out of place for a game that looks and feels like a straight SHMUP.
The sacrifice mechanic could have been probably balanced a bit better, it felt a little tacked on. For instance, if the player had more fighter ships but the bosses would recover if they are not killed with a fighter (and the fighter would be lost if the boss recovers in the middle of the sacrifice) may give the game more urgent pacing and force the player to strategize with their resources a bit more.
There are a few glitches. The hit boxes on the rocks are a bit off since some shots would pass right through them. You probably know this but there are no screen boundary checks so the main ship can fly anywhere outside of the screen.
I felt the power shot, while cool, wasn't really necessary as a quick succession of normal shots would do the job as well, but this could be remedied by making the power shot look cooler and be stronger so it gives the player some bang for their buck.
Generally it's not a good idea to use the x and y keys because the y tends to be in different places on international keyboards. Ctrl and Alt or WASD (unless you use them for motion) are a safer bet because these keys tend to be standardized internationally.
All in all it's a sweet little PICO-8 game that looks great, and would benefit from a little more polish.
Five stars for mood. The graphics are simple but very effective. I love how the comet comes closer and the planet starts to boil and shake. The atmosphere is amazing.
I have some comments on gameplay though. It may have been better to allow the player to move just a little faster. I know it's tough trading speed for atmosphere, but I feel some polish in that respect may have gone a long way. There was a very small delay between interacting with a house and being able to continue. That totally drained my motivation to save a lot of people. When I had around 10 I decided that's enough and escaped. I did play once more and tried waiting for the end of the world, that was very satisfying.
Overall I think the game sacrifices gameplay for atmosphere which makes it less of a game and more of an experience. Maybe that was intended, but I wonder whether you could have achieved both.
Anyway, easily one of the most atmospheric games I played so far. Great job!
I liked your game. It is a bit slow-paced but the idea is neat and the graphics are very nice. The ducking animation was a nice touch.
As always I try to recommend not writing a lenghty intro screen explaining the mechanics with a wall of text. Usually I prefer having game mechanics explained during the game, or, if there has to be in intro screen, fill it with screenshots and arrows to get your point across. Many players will skip the text anyway and then try to figure out how to play themselves.
I wonder, why did you opt out of the Audio category? I found the ambient music quite nice.
Overall I think it worth polishing a bit more and expanding on the premise. Having multiple enemy units, more spells, maybe different factions whose inhabitants wage war against neighboring cities which you can control by strategically converting regions, and so on may worthwhile extensions. I see a lot of room for growth.
I have to admit, when I first saw screenshots to your game I thought this was a Jam game in the wrong category, the graphics were just too great. Then I saw your time lapse video and realized you're just a modelling and texturing wizard. Kudos to you, for a Compo game the visuals are amazing.
The gameplay ties in nicely with the setting, although I didn't feel the difference between sacrificing a sheep and leaving it behind was really palpable. I understood the reference to the theme, but it felt a bit tacked on.
The apple mechanics I think may have worked a bit better if you used it to lure the sheep in instead of shooing them away, since it was tricky to get the herd to stick together. Maybe a free "shoo" command and a limited "lure" command (with collecting apples) may have been a better choice. Using the apple to lure would also be the more logical expectation, unless it's meant to replenish the herders' energy.
The music is nice, but unfortunately you chose "musical" step noises which created a second melody that grated a bit against the main song. Lowering the volume of the steps, randomizing their notes and using a more inconspicuous sound effects may have alleviated this a bit.
I managed to save one sheep but probably won't make it through the winter. :(
Nice game overall with outstanding visuals.
This is one of the most addictive games I have played so far.
The visual and audio effects play very well together and it's a joy to play.
I wasn't entirely sure when I die, I assume it's after three hits, so that could have been communicated better by adding a lives indicator. The rest of the game is communicated very well, though, so it is immediately clear what this is about, that you collect souls to enable the shot, how the hammer windup mechanics work and so on, great job!
I also love the upgrades and the decisions that go with them. This leaves a lot of experimentation to get a particularly good high score. The score board adds so much to the experience, it's such a pity that the score does not reset upon dying. I would have loved to try getting to the top, but it feels like cheating now, so I quit. I think fixing this minor bug is allowed as per LD rules and you could reset the scoreboard to make it fair again. Should you do that, shoot me a message and I'll definitely play the game again to see how far I can get.
It's a very good entry, and I had a lot of fun!
@snecko Glad you liked it! I was definitely planning on rearranging all the formations. I originally wanted to have a "shuffle" key for that, but unfortunately I ran out of time.
@loligxp @berkin @neon-glass @reimari @whoismawal @jeu-embouteillage @kornel Thanks a lot to all of you. I've always been hesitant to make a strategy game because I thought I couldn't pull it off. Your comments make me really happy.
@duuuude I've had a discussion with a friend you said the same thing, and I was totally confused why multiple people saw the parallel to Ender's Game. It is one of my favorite books but I haven't read it in ages, so apparently I totally forgot the aspect of sacrificing ships in a "simulation". Must be getting old...
@madjackmcmad Thanks a lot for streaming! Watching someone else play the game is really nail-biting. Glad you liked it!
@iluvatar I've been toying with the idea of expanding the game post-LD after getting a lot of reassuring feedback in that respect. Maybe I can get some prototyping done over the holidays.
@pkenney Wow, thanks so much for your super-detailed input!
It's funny how sometimes decisions appear so deliberate when actually they are mere coincidence. I decided to add the "final round" line so that it would explain why the boss was suddenly defeated in this round and not earlier. It was basically a cop-out to rationalize the ending because I didn't know how to communicate this visually as there are no walls in space to back up against.
I think you hit the nail on its head with the "decent voiceover" comment. Its ok for the time I spent on it, but I'm not 100% happy and should probably have spent a little more time to record second takes for the lines, but you know how it is, time pressure and such. Also I'm not 100% sure on the writing either, but for game jam quality I guess it's good enough.
About the smaller ships, you're right, I should have changed that, a single line of code would have fixed it, but frankly I hadn't noticed at the time. The original plan was to prevent the player from overlaying the smaller ships with the larger one, but the range checks of two circles were hard enough to solve as it were. Also I just didn't imagine players would move the ships that way, but to be true, it can be a pretty good strategy.
I also agree on the mouse wheel. Even if one keeps text to a minimum one should never assume the player reads the manual, and I am pretty sure some people will not realize you can rearrange the ship formations at all. I always like to suggest that having a visual instruction screen with a few arrows works much better than a wall of text, yet I never get around to implementing one myself. Communicating game mechanics is something I should work on, Boiler Room Defense also had many people confused as to the rules.
I also realized it wasn't the hardest game, which I guess is okay for a jam, where it's a good idea to include as many people as possible, but I love the idea of adding secondary goals to resolve this issue. Watching people play the game, there seems to be an intrinsic motivation to save as many ships as possible, so there should be some reward for playing that way. This is definitely something I should keep in mind if I decided to polish the game some more.
Thanks for noticing, I'm actually really proud of my hit prediction, as I knew it would be an important feature that would make or break the game. Losing a ship because the outcome differed from the prediction would be really demotivating. Getting the prediction for the spread shot right was a head-scratcher until the very end because my first implementation was super slow, and I kept that part of optimization open until the last few hours. I only fixed it after I found a specific Game Maker command by accident. I swear, this stuff nearly gave me an aneurism.
So thanks again for taking the time and giving such detailed feedback, much appreciated!
@ursagames Just found the time to watch your video. Thanks so much for streaming my game. It never occurred to me to make subtitles, thanks for that input. Should I ever make a game with voice overs I'll try to remember that.
@willoxs Wow, that's super cool! Could you send me your version to try it out? I'd love to see how it looks in motion. I think GameMaker games have become quite rare these days, but I still love it for allowing proper pixel-precision instead of mixed resolution that Unity usually produces.
@mr-chocolatesalmon Thanks for the input. I know that the ships should be better visible while on top of each other. I thought changing the z-value may have been enough, but a second tactical view may also be helpful.
@jupiter-hadley Thanks a lot for finding the time to play my game. It seems like the title screen that explains the controls has been skipped in your video, but I guess I should have added a description of the controls in the game itself. Mouse wheel allows you to change formation. Glad you liked it though!
Thanks everyone for playing and rating. I am planning to turn The Omicron Fleet into a full indie game: https://the-omicron-directive.manakeep.com.
I am planning to post weekly updates here and on [twitter](https://twitter.com/Cerno_B), so please follow me if you're interested.
@berkin @duuuude @daniel-grinshpon @derek-volker @iferit @iluvatar @justcamh @james-dunlap @jupiter-hadley @kornel @mr-chocolatesalmon @nelson-william @neon-glass @peachtreeoath @reimari @snecko @verbante @whoismawal @willoxs @wizard-exe @acaral @chauchau @hugonun @jeu-embouteillage @loligxp @manimal @madjackmcmad @morriss @pkenney @shieldgenerator7 @skettynmeebs @ursagames
Could you set your game to "Windows Download" on your itch page? I would like to play it via Itch client but it shows as "not available on Windows".
Thanks for updating the Itch settings, I just played the game from their client.
So first of all, I love the fog-of-war effect with the black circles: Simple, yet elegant, fits right in with the overall vector graphics style. The randomized characters are a nice touch as well. Also absolutely great job on the audio! I always wanted to make a game with custom-recorded sounds, and I imagine this can be a lot of work. You did a great job here. The sfx you created feel really great. Unfortunately, music was missing overall. I know you wanted to go for a dark and brooding atmosphere, but some faint ambiance in the background would been immensely satisfying, like some low humming sound or these cliché high-pitched strings from horror-movies or even some low-key clanking noises that give the impression that something, somewhere has gone horribly wrong.
It took me a while to get into what the game wants from me, and this would probably be my main point of criticism: You can play the game in multiple ways, with the extremes being to save nobody or to try saving everyone. Since the game does not give a preference you can play either way. I chose playing through without rescuing anyone and was quite frustrated when it turned out the game would one-shot kill me right away and I had to start over. Fortunately for me, there is a small visual glitch that allows you to see single pixels shine through the gaps of the shadow-circles, which indicate where the exit is. If you play the game without trying to rescue anyone, this glitch makes it a lot easier.
In the end I realized that there was a tally that rewarded the maximum number of people rescued. So I tried playing it again with the goal to save more people and realized the game became much easier that way. It may have helped to have the tally on screen while you play to find this out earlier, but I understand that having any form of stats on screen may have impacted the atmosphere.
Trying to save everyone proved to be very hard, but it made for a cool moment where I had a few guys standing on the elevator while my main guy was exploring the area, when a monster started chasing him which led it closer to the elevator, so I quickly switched back to one of the elevator guys and slammed the button, saving a few people but leaving main guy to die. It's nice to let these little events develop by themselves, although personally, I would have preferred to have clearer stakes while playing instead of looking at the numbers at the very end. Knowing how many pods you missed right after a level may have given a more immediate sense of failure than just seeing a global rundown of the number in the end, but again there's the danger of losing immersion that way.
Control-wise I appreciate that you allow both WASD and arrow control, although I probably would have preferred to activate the elevator with an action button. Once I pushed the button by accident and once I missed it completely while on a close chase with a monster which subsequently caught me as I tried to turn around.
Another issue I found was that the game gives no clear indication about its length. If I'm not mistaken, it seemed to be randomly generated (great job on that!), but the downside to that is that it is not totally clear whether there will be an end or not. I think it may have helped to introduce some new elements now and then to show the player that there is progress. Even minor things like changing textures, or maybe some lines of text at the beginning of the level, anything that shows progress, could have helped with orienting the player within the game's length.
Although all this seems like a lot of criticism, I was able to see how much thought went into the game overall. I guess it's a hard task to make a truly atmospheric game that clearly communicates its mechanics without filling the screen with meters and numbers. With that in mind, great job on your entry!
Wow, that was quite cryptic. I like the minimalist aesthetic and I think you made quite a bold move using runes for everything, especially where it counts (high-score and move explanation). This requires a very steady hand at explaining the basics to the player in a different, yet meaningful way, and I'm afraid you overreached a little there.
So I found out that I can't touch the wiggly lines and there are two types of enemies and there are blockers. I can shoot everything but most enemies take more than one shot. There are upgrades, but I couldn't figure out what they mean, I assume they increase life, shot amount and shot speed or something like that. After a while the four corners of the target area start to glow so I can finish the level. If I touch the target before that, a dialog appears and I guess depending on my answer I die? I couldn't find out whether I get a benefit from picking up the round gray things though. There are only life replenishing runes on the boss level, but I died there on my remaining life.
The game mechanics are solid, although the keyboard query seems to pick up on the keyboard repetition settings, so there is a slight lag at the beginning of holding a key. This can be remedied by reacting to "key down" and "key up" events. In between the down and up event you assume the key is held, and during the whole time, you perform the corresponding action at each nth frame. You will get much more consistent behavior.
The shooting could have used some polish. I would have liked to have faster, more responsive shots with higher range and I would have liked the shots to reload faster. All this possibly at the expense of tougher and faster enemies so that it would have more of a cat-and mouse thing.
I didn't get the sacrifice part at all though.
All in all I found the game interesting enough to understand its mechanics, but it would have helped if it were a bit more approachable. It's definitely a very unique entry. Good job!
That was fun. Nice and fresh concept. I enjoyed the combination of bloody violence and puzzle solving.
The whole thing was quite frantic, but I often felt I was not in control so much. I got stuck in the level with the three walls after I could not find out how to launch the guy again after he landed. So instead I made this :D
gif3.gif
Good times.
@goldranger Man, that's some dedication to your game! I'll try the post Compo version if I find the time. Thanks for the heads up
The game was really funny! The song fits the concept and despite feeling a bit simplistic, it works surprisingly well with the overall black humour. The game is very charming with all these little backstories.
I am not sure I understood the game well though. I played it twice and lost two times (once with with good and with bad karma). I suppose you can only lose the game because the taxes are crushing you eventually. Also I could only guess which corpses gave good karma, but I suppose it is like "more money = less karma". And I guessed that jobs with higher social standing gives you more money and therefore less karma.
I would have loved if the game was beatable, having the player manage a balance between money and karma, so that the graveyard is both sustainable but also affordable for people with less money. With some extensions this could be a quite addicting strategy game. Some idea:
- Communicate the economy clearer to the player, with permanent indicators instead of right-clicking - Extend the game through multiple levels and add lots to manage (introduce micro and macro economy) - Make the economy a bit more complex, like removing karma when someone is exhumed too soon - Add random events, like some star's fan who is outraged that their favorite celebrity isn't there anymore (public outrage = less money) or a family member who visits a loved one's grave that has been changed too soon with the opposite effect (less karma) - Some additional challenges, like two people who hated each other in life and may not be buried next to each other.
All in all I think it's very clever idea that fits the theme well, good job!
Don't worry too much, you did a great job!
Getting faster in game jams is something that comes with experience. I would suggest you write a post mortem (if you haven't already). Identify things that went well and things that didn't. Try to make a list of things that took most of your time and think about ways to improve. Before next LD, take a look at your post mortem to freshen the memory.
My first LD too way too much time, but switching from C++ to gamemaker made a huge difference. During my second LD I learned to be less ambitious and to not overdo it on graphics.
Just keep at it, you will notice a huge improvement over time if you analyse your work.
I liked the premise of having to juggle bodies and fighting enemies. Mechanically, I think it may have been better if there was a disadvantage to shooting and carrying humans. Like if you shoot a human the game gets harder (faster/more enemies) so you would have to strategize in which order you sacrifice the humans. If you carried a human, you could have added a disadvantage like slower reload or impossibility to shoot.
I was going to recommend the Vlambeer video, but that has been done already. Faster movement (unless it interferes with your atmosphere), faster shots, larger magazine, more weaker enemies, are all methods you could explore to make the game more fun (again, unless it interferes with your atmosphere). I wish there would have been more significant changes between the checkpoints (new enemy types, new traps, something to keep the player entertained). Look up how you can make objects slide along walls, that would help a lot for your enemy movement.
I think you made the right choice in having limited sight, and the bloodstains really helped to mark areas the player already visited. I also enjoyed that you put in a real ending, instead of leaving the game hanging.
All in all it's a respectable first entry and I would encourage you take all the valuable feedback you're getting and making your next game even better. Great job!
Could you please set your game to “Windows Download” on your itch page? I would like to play it via Itch client but it shows as “not available on Windows”.
Yes, works like a charm now! Thanks.
I played your game. I like the concept of losing an ability upon making a mistake, although I think it may have been better to not reset the level afterwards. Just punish the player and let them continue. The reset both pulls the player out of the game's flow and also resets any progress made only with more limitations to gameplay. It would be more appealing to be punished for a mistake but then allow the player to soldier on, maybe getting to the exit limping and without any skills left.
The graphics are very simple, using only geometric figures and default or no textures. The explosions were a really nice touch though, but be careful about Compo guidelines, you have to draw these things yourself.
If I judge you correctly, I would assume you are a beginner level game developer (no offense meant if I'm wrong), so there are lots and lots of things for you to explore going forward. If I may, I would suggest you pick one field of expertise you want to improve, and challenge yourself to do something better in that direction for your next LD.
You could start with drawing your own textures and put them on your geometric shapes. This should give fast results and make the game look much less generic. You could also try to model simple shapes in Blender to replace your cubes and spheres. As for wall and floor textures, why not try to take some photographs of actual floors or the view out your window. That should make your game look much more interesting than the prototype panels.
Since there was no music and almost no sound effects, maybe try playing around with tools like Bosca Ceoil, which is really beginner-friendly. Sound effects can be generated very easily using Chiptone or bfxr.
Finally, when it comes to game design itself, I found it helps immensely to study games that other people made and provide feedback about what can be improved. This puts you in a problem-solving state of mind that also helps learning what mechanics work, and what don't.
All in all it's a clever idea in the shape of an entry-level game. I wish you all the best going forward and improving your skills.
Happy to be of help.
I think the assets in unity that are allowed are limited to code fragments. Just be sure you mention any code that's not your own on your game page.
Using premade graphics in your Compo game is against the rules though (fonts are ok). No worries for your first LD, the rules can be a bit confusing sometimes. Just a heads up for next time.
Hope to see you around.
I finally got around to playing your game. Still very impressed what you pulled off at a little over 50k. I wasn't able to play the compressed version as my virus scanner immediately deleted it, which is likey due to the auto-extract executable, so I am reviewing the "large" version.
Visually, I like what you did with the limitations you had. The archways look very nice and the water effects are awesome! I also liked the music which added to the atmosphere. I had been hoping for a classic chiptune soundtrack, but your choice fit the genre better. Unfortunately there were no sound effects. I wonder if it would be possible to integrate the bfxr code into the game so you would be able use bfxr sounds without having to store them as samples. Having shooting sfx in an FPS plays an important part in the atmosphere, but I guess you must have run out of time.
Conceptionally, there are a few things I would like to mention.
Having a ballistic weapon in an FPS is quite commonplace (e.g. grenade launcher) but if it is the only weapon available, I think a direct line of fire weapon might have worked better, especially since the enemies use this weapon type and therefore have much greater range.
The enemy AI needs some tweaking. Most of the enemies don't fire at all, while some fire rapid shots that can insta-kill you if you are in the wrong spot at the wrong time. Maybe a second of invincibility after being hit may have been helpful there as well. I think if you had all enemies fire at a reasonable rate at the same time would have made the game very frantic in the beginning, but after the player survived the initial onslaught they would have been rewarded with the feeling of superiority as they could have started to pick off the remaining enemies one by one.
All in all one of the more impressive technical entries this LD, great job!
Man your game sounds awesome! Between the voice overs and the metal soundtrack, there nothing to criticize, full marks! Did you time the player's step length and the beat of the music or was that coincidence? If you did it on purpose, great job, that's a nice touch.
The graphics are well done, especially the animation. That must have been a lot of work! I love the blood animation. It's pretty over the top but fits the tone of the game well. there was great variety in the enemies for a game made in 48 hours. You recycled your assets well and did not stretch out the game unnecessarily.
All in all, the game was really fun and I made it to the boss, but was not able to beat it, unfortunately.
I do have a couple of remarks:
- I wish the hit animation would have been a bit faster, as that would have made the game a bit more responsive and controllable, it felt a bit laggy - Having an very short invincibility time out after being hit would help the game a lot. The way it is, if I get hit two times, then I get double the damage. I understand that it was probably so that fighting multiple enemies would become tougher, but I think the same could have been achieved by having them attack out of sync, so that the probability of being hit increases instead of the damage you get - The chicken drops were great, but the rng was a bit off. During one playthrough I drowned in chicken and was able to get to the boss, then the next attempt gave me a single one and I died during the first level. If I recall, most fighting games give you powerups at predefined places, either lying around or being dropped by specific enemies. That makes tuning the game easier and gives the player some more predictability. - It would have been cool to allow picking up enemy weapons but I understand that this would have taken a huge amount of work in the animation department. - The theme was a bit tacked on, but the game stands well on its own.
Overall a fun game that could have used a little bit of polish, but is a solid entry as it stands.
Could you set your game to “Windows Download” on your itch page? I would like to play it via Itch client but it shows as “not available on Windows”.
Amazing entry! I am absolutely taken aback by how much you achieved with seemingly so little. The expressiveness of this piece is incredible for a game made in such a short amount of time.
I love the way you start slow and stunted but then outgrow your initial state of being while leaving behind the things that slow you down. There's a lot of depth in this.
As it is less a game and more an experience I won't judge it too harshly on gameplay. It doesn't really make much of a difference whether you lose the white balls early on or later but I'll take it as a deliberate artistic decision. A visual queue that the end was reached would have been nice as you continue ascending into nothingness without knowledge that it's over.
Finally the music is great and completes the experience. No sfx needed here, although some very faint ambient noises may have helped underline the moment you lose a circle.
Overall a great achievement and the most impressive game I've seen so far.
Good job voicing the different characters. Sometimes it was a bit hard to distinguish between the boss and the protagonist. For the lines that repeat often it may be a good idea to record multiple variations and pick them randomly. Also for lines are played in quick succession, shorter clips may be helpful because otherwise the voices keep breaking off.
Gameplay-wise I enjoyed the idea of having to level down instead of leveling up. I kept losing at the third opponent until I realized that you can increase your skills if you lower others. I found that a good way to get through the game is to increase attack and defense at the expense of health. That way I way able to get to the boss without losing any life points.
I made the decision to fight and was unfortunately locked in an endless loop, since I always missed but the boss didn't hurt me. I'm not sure whether this was a deliberate thing to force the player to choose sacrifice but with my level choices I was stuck.
I would have tried again but the boss's monologue was pretty long and unskippable, so I decided to leave it at a draw.
Wow, this takes me back. Incredible to see a retro game made in old tech in just 48 hours. The graphics are good for the technology and the game concept is solid for its era.
The game overall is very hard since each step closer to the goal increases the game's complexity so this leads to a significant slowdown over time. Maybe a teleporter system could have alleviated this.
I had no sound, which was a pity because I was totally looking forward to hearing the good old SID chip again. Whether that was due to some technical issue or whether the game has no audio I cannot tell.
Overall it's a neat entry that took me back on memory lane. Thanks a lot!
Unbenannt.PNG
Could you please set your game to “Windows Download” on your itch page? I would like to play it via Itch client but it shows as “not available on Windows”.
Absolutely amazing game. The amount of polish is unbelievable.
The pixel graphics are wonderful, the music sets the atmosphere perfectly. I assume you took your sfx from a generator tool but the choices you made are amazing, it doesn't really show at all. The text popups of your minions are a nice touch.
The tech aspect is top notch as well, you tick all the boxes here: Camera motion, particle effects, following behavior, tiling, and everything plays very very smoothly.
I only have two very minor issues:
One is that the range of shots and the vision range of the enemies may have been tuned a smidge tighter. Specifically I think the archers fired at me when I couldn't see them yet, and the farmers could easily be picked off before they saw me. This could have been prevented by reducing archer sight and increasing farmer sight, at the same time reducing the mage's range a bit and adding a visual indicator, like stopping the crosshair if it moves out of bounds. I think that way you have a good indication about where you can hit, and you can see all enemies that can hit you, which would have made the game a little more fair to both the player and the enemies.
The other minor issue is that I would have loved to play this in hard mode. The game is very easy as it is (which is perfectly fine for a game jam for inclusion reasons), but another challenge or two definitely would have kept me playing for a while
As it is, short but very sweet entry, easily one of my favorites so far.
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Could you set your game to "Windows Download" on your itch page? I would like to play it via Itch client but it shows as "not available on Windows".
I love the bot design. It's part militaristic and part Wall-E charming. I like how the antennas wiggle, it's a nice touch.
The music is good, if a bit repetitive. A low-key rumbling engine noise would have worked wonders for the atmosphere, especially if it rose and fell in volume with the number of tanks and their speed.
I wish you could have pushed the premise a bit harder. There were only a few situations where I actually felt that I had to sacrifice my mini tanks, in the other cases it was just my lack of skills that led to their demise.
The camera was a little unsteady which made the game a somewhat hard to control. On the other hand, I enjoyed how you constantly set up walls to help align the bots in order to get them across a narrow passage. That was well thought out.
In the end I almost saved one bot, but I didn't manage to time the jumps right so they fell to their mechanical deaths right before the finish line. I think having higher jumps may have helped me here. If you had the time, a larger map with a few more button puzzles and obstacles, paired with checkpoints, would have given the game a bit more playability.
Overall I think it's a good game that could benefit from a little polish. It's worth continuing to work on it.
Interesting game. If I understand correctly, the more green target fields I have, the slower my shield regenerates, so I need so sacrifice offense for defense.
I like the idea, but I feel that it could use a little more polish. I made it quite far by having only two markers, one in the middle and one below that. For me that got rid of most enemies and only let enough shots through to regenerate the shield. Maybe making the placement of the target fields a bit more strategic, maybe with tower defense-ish elements may give a better reward for placing them well.
Graphics-wise I dig your pulsing background, but mixing pixel art resolutions is kind of a red flag for me, especially if they vary a lot, and in this case, there is a huge difference between your largest and your smallest pixels. Maybe a non-pixel art approach may have worked better, but that's just my personal taste. I do like the visual effects of the shots though.
The background music sounds a bit random and becomes a little grating after a while. If that effect was not intended, I would suggest you start off with a simple regular beat and add a simple melody without too many jumps between notes for starters and improve from there. Sometimes it's the hardest part to know when to stop adding stuff, that's something I usually struggle with.
I hope these points don't sound too harsh and that you find the criticism useful.
It's a solid Compo entry, good job!
Could you set your game to "Windows Download" on your itch page? I would like to play it via Itch client but it shows as "not available on Windows".
Thanks for the update.
I just played it. I like the premise a lot. It's a good mix of memory and dexterity and fits the theme well.
For a jam the graphics are good, but some animation might have given the game a bit more polish. The music helps create a dense atmosphere and text elements are a nice way to communicate the mood even better.
Main main issue was that the controls could have been a bit tighter, as sometimes I was stuck on a ledge that I wanted to jump up on but instead I fell and lost a precious hit point.
Other than that it's a very solid entry, good job!
**Edit:** I just realized that you can dash. With that I managed to finish the game. Nice ending! I think I may have preferred the dash as a keyboard command as there are no other mouse controls in the game.
I love your simple, yet effective visuals. I always found it hard to work with a green palette and you pulled if off really well. The blob is quite expressive, and I love the eye transition when turning from left to right. A few more animation phases, especially when jumping would have been a nice touch.
I've seen the premise in games like The Unfinished Swan, but you tied it very well into the Sacrifice theme. What I particularly enjoyed is how you folded a quasi-tutorial into the game without explaining too much. Just let the player die once and unintrusively explain why. This was really great! I found the length of the game to be perfect for the material you had. Any more levels would have required new mechanics and I enjoyed that you didn't outstay your welcome.
The controls are pretty tight, which is very important for a game like this. I would have enjoyed it even more if the wall-jump would have been polished a bit more, like for instance allowing the player to push away from the wall and then jumping so they wouldn't have to switch direction after the jump which I feel is always a bit clunky.
The sound effects, although sparse, were well picked, but unfortunately music was missing which might have added to the atmosphere more.
I like it. The graphics and atmosphere are top notch. Pulling the player into the story as you do is an achievement. Great job!
You made a very polished, and well-balanced game there.
The amount of well-designed graphical assets is amazing. I love the expressiveness of the characters and their little animations. Everything is visually coherent and communicates well what is happening. The cultists' faces play an important role here. Full marks on graphics!
It is generally very hard to get the player to understand a complex game like yours and although your tutorial is fairly wordy for a game jam, you set up an interesting atmosphere to get the player engaged and overcome that hurdle. The option to return to the tutorial was a very important decision that pays off nicely. The tutorial itself is great, using well-designed graphical elements to explain the game bit by bit. I half-read the tutorial, then jumped into the game and returned twice to clear some details but then it was a downhill ride as I got the game mechanics down.
The difficulty is not too hard which is fine for a jam where players tend to have limited attention spans, and finding out how to beat the game is rewarding when everything runs in a stable manner.
By the way, I love your sound effects. They don't seem to be made with an audio generator, did you record them yourself or did you find a clever bfxr setting? The soundtrack is also very good, remaining subdued in the background but setting the mood nicely.
I only have a minor nitpick, and that is that the cultists' faces are a bit hard to see behind the books in the library, but maybe that was done on purpose.
Overall a very enjoyable game with outstanding visuals
@arkinrev Wow, thanks for sharing some of your ingredients. I'll try to remember those for future reference.
This is absolutely amazing. I can't praise this enough: Graphics, game mechanics, overall design, pacing, music, humor and even a fulfilling ending. Everything is polished to perfection! My first almost fully 5-star rated game in this LD.
I did have to subtract half a star for fun because some of the keys do not play well with international keyboards. For me it was Z which is next to T instead of at next to X as for everyone else. Fortunately I was able to jump via the up key. I usually suggest allowing multiple input choices, e.g. Y or X for jumping, WASD or Arrow keys for movement, etc. This is not even about different input schemes to choose from, just bind more than one button to the same action. Controller support would have been awesome, but I don't know if Stencyl supports it.
Another minor thing: I noticed you uploaded your HTML version to Itch, but didn't for the Windows version. You can also upload your sources there. That may help keeping all your stuff in one place and avoid confusion in lazy people (aka me) ;)
Overall I think one of the best games I've seen so far. Kudos!
Hi! Congratulations again for making this a full game on Steam. We talked today at Gamescom. Thanks again for the plushie. Looking forward to playing Dome Keeper when we get back home.
All the best!
PS: I just found an old comment I wrote to your entry Membrum back in the day!
@frizuo The respawn time (and especially the invincibility frames) felt a little too short for me as well, but I kind of forgot about it in the rush of packing everything up. I wanted the game to be fast and responsive and that included getting back in the action really fast, but I probably overdid it a little ^^;
@leorid I was playing around with audio hit feedback but in all the chaos that's going on that didn't work out. Some visual feedback could have worked, but then again there's a lot going on on screen, so I'm not sure I could have pulled it off.
I thought about adding damage indicators for debugging and ended up not needing it. I found not knowing how long it would take to break a particular part was one of the charms of Warning Forever on which this game is based on. Although I didn't quite nail the feel of the original in the end.
I'm glad that you liked the balancing, that is something I often struggle with.
If you enjoyed the game, please give its inspiration a go. Warning Forever is abandonware and it is amazing!
@she-wrote Round 12 is pretty good, apparently you hold the record for now.
@flawed-gamer You can attack the main ship, it will just take longer to destroy. However, it is faster than destroying each individual part. More dangerous as well, though.
@notasiul Finally someone who knows Warning Forever :D It's a direct homage I've always wanted to make, and the theme seemed a good fit.
I have never tried to make a PICO-8 game but I have very fond memories of games made in that engine, I toyed with the idea of actually trying my hand at it, but I think there is still much to learn about Godot. It took me a bit to transition, and this LD was my first attempt at actually making a game with it, but I'm totally sold.
@chriiis88 Thank you. Music is a recurring struggle for me. I had my mind set on an orchestral soundtrack and that's even harder to make really fast, but I absolutely agree that a frantic chiptune track would have been more fitting.
I also agree on the font, probably yellow wasn't the best choice and maybe I should have made it a bit larger. It was one of the things at the edge of my brain and it simply got shoved away by more pressing matters.
The impossible situations are a problem of course and hard to prevent in an RNG-based game, but I think a skilled player might be able to survive the situation since the lasers are recognisable as such and they don't fire right away. Since they always move towards the player, the first thing to do is to move somewhere so that all lasers are on one side of the player instead of both sides, but that would probably take a lot of skill. Thank you for you feedback!
@vilmantas Thank you. I originally wanted to make it clearer that the boss in invincible while the timer is not running in the beginning, but didn't make it on time.
@emil-sunesson Thank you, especially for the HTML5 feedback. It's really nice how easy it was to set up. Glad it works. The whole layout of the boss and the choice of weapons attached to it is randomly generated. Was that your question?
@polymathld Glad you liked it.
@daniel-mak I think round 12 was the current record, so you stopped right before setting a new one :D.
I did not notice any slowdown here. Would you mind giving me some info about this effect?
Does this only happen in the later rounds or also in the beginning? Web build or exe? Could you give me some idea about what PC you are running?
If the game is more hardware-demanding than I thought I might have to read up on ways to optimize Godot games, but I think the game itself is not extremely complex or badly written, so it might be interesting to figure out what's going on on your side.
@cerno-b Thank you. Maybe there's too many particles involved. I had to use CPU particles for the web build so they are not GPU accelerated. Maybe that's the problem.
Maybe I'll try to get access to an older laptop and try to run the web build there to check on this issue myself. Sounds a bit weird to be honest. Maybe there is a specific slowdown pattern that helps me figure out the cause.
@jupiter-hadley Yay, thank you for featuring the game. It was great watching someone else play :)
@wuppos It's procedurally generated. You are the second person who commented on the missing effects of the impacts, so I'm starting to feel that I was wrong assuming that it would be too confusing. Maybe just a few small particles flying off a short distance at the impact point would have been a nice addition. Thanks for the idea.
@johnnysix I just looked up *Captain Forever: Remix* and it looks like a stupid amount of fun, thanks for the tip. It goes right on my shopping list!
@icxon Amazing, thank you for the effort of recording this. From what I saw in the comments and also my own experience, level 12 seems to be a somewhat hard limit to crack.
@pkenney Hey, thanks for that extensive review! I think you are spot on with your criticism, great eye for design!
I actually didn't do a lot to get this running in full screen. The standalone version also uses an unresizeable window because I don't want to skew the pixel art, but you can still go full screen at the push of a button. That seems to work just like that in the browser. Tbh, I was a bit surprised myself.
For audio I fully agree. I decided on writing an orchestral soundtrack before I actually decided on the game. When I came up with the melody it was a bit faster and pushier, but orchestra instruments are a bit sluggish (at least in my VST), so I ended up with a slower piece that clashed with the game a bit. Maybe next time I'll try to make a game that's more mellow and try to get the music to fit better.
Totally agree on the thrusters as well. I added them as a final touch and originally had them move like contrails (as with the rockets), but I realized that the unnatural motion of the ship would make that look very strange. Looking back, it would have been cool to have the engines of the ship rotate in the opposite direction of the ship's movement. That would have looked more realistic.
I would also agree that the balancing is a bit off, fairly easy to get to round 10, but very hard to beat round 12, so the progress ramps up too slowly and the true test of skill is too narrow.
Again, thank you for your very valuable feedback
@alex-mulkerrin Thanks for your positive feedback.
The procedural generation was a bit tricky to get my head around, but manageable in the end. I treated the boss as a tree from graph theory and implemented it as a nested list with letters representing the different piece types: line (`L`), split (`S`) and gun (`G`).
So an `L` piece would be defined as `[L, list]`, where `list` would be what's mounted on the other end of the piece. An `S` piece would be defined as `[S, list, list]`, because it has two children. The `G` piece would just be defined as `[G]` because it cannot have children.
So one of the three arms of the boss could be defined for instance as `[L, [S [G], [L [G]]]]`, which would be a line piece, followed by a split piece which has one node mounted with a gun node, the other node mounted with a line node with a gun node at the end.
I then wrote a recursive function that decided randomly for each node of the current piece whether it should have a `L`, `S` or `G` piece mounted on it. I controlled the depth of the recursion and by that the length of the arms.
The problem was that once you had a gun piece in place, the tree would not be able to continue, so if you wanted a difficult boss with lots of guns, you could end up with bad RNG and just get the core with three guns attached and that was it.
So the solution was to decide the number of guns I wanted (the value increases every level) and create a set of 100 bosses randomly. Then I would pick from that set the one that matched the required number of guns as closely as possible. Then I would create the boss from that definition.
I really wanted to make the boss grow like they did in Warning Forever. I loved the spider graph that told you in what direction you were evolving the boss, but unfortunately that proved too much to realize in the time I had.
@velvetlobster I have Nimbatus on my wishlist somewhere, so I might give it a spin if it's on sale some time. Looks a bit like Captain Forever that someone else recommended in the comments.
@willoxs You did indeed do well. You are the first person I know who broke the level 12 barrier, congratulations!
Thank you for your kind words as well.
The further away you move your attack up an arm towards the core, the more damage you have to deal to destroy that part. So attacking the core with everything attached will take longer than attacking a stripped down core.
To reward taking the risk, you will need to deal less damage to destroy a part with attachments than the sum of whittling down the attachments bit by bit.
I take that your suggestion goes in the direction that this bonus could be greater, and I think you are right, especially since attacking a core with a lot of guns attached is significantly harder than destroying the guns first.
I was only able to achieve Double Center and I think I must have sunk half an hour in your game. I liked how unconvential it was and how it started as a simple physics demo until I realized that there are numbers that appear in certain situations, which awoke my curiosity and made me want to figure out where this was going. By the time I had the first achievement I was hooked and wanted to get all of them.
Unfortunately I really had some trouble with the mouse, which caused me a lot of the hits I had aimed for. I have never really tried making a physics based game, so I am fairly ignorant about the difficulties in giving objects a proper weight, so I would assume that a more responsive mouse would have created too much of an impact on the pendulum which would have made the game much too easy, but if I had to change one thing in this game it would be the mouse speed.
The music was very fitting and I was impressed how much of it there was. Minimalist music for minimalist visuals are a great fit. It got me into a relaxed mood.
Speaking of which, the atmosphere was very smooth. The simple shapes and meditative music made this a very soothing experience.
Cute litte game. Classic PICO-8 charm, I enjoyed my two rounds, even though I think it did not record my high scores properly.
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My score is nothing compared to @conradoclark but I still thought I'd share. I had fun.
I love PICO-8 games, they are so whimsical and I'm always amazed how good people make them look given the small resolution. Yours is no exception. I really dig the graphics, especially the bomb animation.
Gameplay-wise I think the game needs a bit of tweaking. It starts fairly slow so in the beginning I was hoping for a little bit more juice. After I got the first weapon upgrade the game became fairly easy and by the time I upgraded all my stuff I could actually run it on auto:
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I also had no sound at all. It would have been nice to have at least some sound effects to go with the great visuals.
All in all a fun little pico-8 game that kept me motivated enough to max out all my stats.
Going into this LD, I couldn't bring myself to tell a story around the theme because it was way too depressing. Glad to see you leaned into it like that and produced something remarkably beautiful. The atmosphere and graphics are amazing and the music fits the atmosphere very well. For me it was one of the most beautiful games I have seen so far. A haunting experience.
As much as I loved the experience, I felt as a game it was a little lacking, and I couldn't figure out how to play it well, even though I really tried to get a grasp on it. So maybe there were some hidden mechanics I did not understand, but even though I tried multiple runs, I couldn't get to round 4, but getting to round 3 was fairly simple. So there was not really a difficulty ramp between the outcomes.
So what I thought happened was that I started out with three adults, one of which carried a baby. So the first day was pretty easy and everyone survived. In round two, the baby turned into a kid and there was a new baby. During the round, based on chance, one of the adults grew old before reaching the hut and had to be left behind, but the other survived. So round 2 was doable, but only if I sacrificed the kid, who was too slow to reach the hut. So when round 3 started, I only had one adult and a second kid because the baby grew up. But in order to survive that round, I had to sacrifice the kid, so round 4 would have been the last one, but I couldn't reach it because the adult turned into an elderly and did not make it. So the crucial point was that I could keep my lineage alive if the kid survived round 2, which I never accomplished, or to barely drag myself across the finish line in round 3, but that did not happen either. Maybe there is a way to get to round 4 with enough luck, as I saw there are some RNG elements to the game, but that did not happen to me.
Going into gameplay, I was wondering what the torch passing mechanic was supposed to do. From what I could see, there was no advantage or disadvantage in passing the torch. Handing it backwards would not change anything about the progress because the receiver would have to catch up to the former carrier. Despite the game being about the unavoidable death of the group, I think it would have been great if there was a little more control about how the game played out. Managing travel speed or torch longevity through some player decision might have made the game more intense, like maybe keeping closer to the torch would speed you up but made you age faster so you would have to balance your characters' position more. Some decision making during the rest period could have given the game some additional depth. Maybe you could decide to stay longer in order to fill up the torch more, but at the risk of your people getting too old.
Specifically I would have liked if the kid was able to turn into a teen while walking (just like the adult turns into an elderly), because that would have given me the last minute speed boost I needed to have my offspring survive.
Anyway, these shortcomings don't take away from the fact that you have an amazing grasp of atmosphere and created a haunting, wistful thing of beauty that truly stands out among what LD usually has to offer.
Great job!
That is a charming game. Weirdly enough I got to 73 years on my first try by just messing around and then on my second run when I thought I had the mechanics figured out, I wasn't able to exceed that score. I built some factories to afford some air scrubbers, but it's probably realistic that this is a stupid idea because I guess the factories pollute a lot and counteract the scrubbers' effects.
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I wish there was some music, or at least some ambient sound effects. Gusts of wind fit nicely to an island theme, so that could have added even more to the atmosphere that you set up nicely with the graphics.
Building a strategy game in 48 hours is no small feat, and I would probably have died trying to figure out a proper balance to all the mechanics.
That being said, I think a complex game deserves a good introduction. You tried to fit everything into a single screen, which felt very crowded in the beginning and I didn't want to go through all the buildings to get what all the resources do. I understand that a tutorial is probably out of the question in a game jam, but for complex games I always recommend an infographic using the assets your game already has, with some arrows to indicate dependencies and *as little text as barely possible* to keep things accessible. In this case, multiple infographics would probably have been necessary because there are just sooo many building types and interdependencies.
All in all a commendable effort and a fun game, nice job!
Nice minimalist game with simple but effective mechanics.
I enjoyed trying to crack my previous high score. I couldn't figure out whether the wind does anything or whether I would be able to prevent any effect it may have.
The only point of specific criticism that I have is that I think the success of the player is too much dependent on luck. If you have a run where the clouds do not form above the fire, you would likely score higher. Maybe an indicator that tells the player where the next cloud would appear might be helpful here.
Overall I had a good time.
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Amazing game, great concept and almost flawless execution. I love it.
It always amazes me how people can come up with games that feel coherent and fully resting in themselves. Great job.
Some minor points of criticism: The color scheme can sometimes make the objects a little hard to read, especially when the water rises. I also would have loved indicators at the left that tell me once I have a row completed, either by accidentally revealing the jellyfish or by placing the flags.
It went really well until RNG was not in my favor and I was presented with this:
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Either I didn't figure out how to solve this or I really had to push my luck, which was not on my side.
Anyway, a great game, had a lot of fun.
Nice and fun top down shooter.
First of all, the music was very impressive. It added a lot to the pacing of the game and gave it a sense of urgency. But since you did not want to be rated on it, was that an external composition? Would have been very impressive if it was yours.
A few thoughts about potential for improvement
You already thought about a few things to add some game feel, like the push-back on the assault rifle, but I think an action-focused game like this can use a lot more juice. In these situations I like to recommend this talk by Jan Willem Nijman of Vlambeer, it was an eye opener for me in terms of what to do to make a game feel impactful:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJdEqssNZ-U
Some specific things:
* Wall gliding could be improved so that the player does not slow down when moving along walls * Guns should not shoot much further than the camera visibilty. I was able to cheese myself through the third level without being hit a single time because I could just spray the enemies from off screen with the assault rifle * The camera should move towards the direction the player is facing or walking so that forward visibility is improved. I already know what's behind me, but I would like to see what's coming up so that the enemies do not jump me. It would be different in a horror game, but this is a classic shooter, so visibility should probably be a bit better. * Having to collect the gun right at the beginning of each level was a bit weird, especially after the intro guy handing over the first gun was an important event within the game. This broke continuity a bit. * I found the theme to be a bit underemployed. I understand that we are the inevitable and I liked that twist, but I didn't feel I did a lot to delay it, quite the opposite.
All in all it was an enjoyable game and I would encourage you to try juicing the crap out of it post jam just to see how far you can take it and see how that feels.
Good job!
@leorid Crap. I wrote a long paragraph on tips for music generation and then Firefox crashed and I don't feel like typing it all up again, sorry.
The gist without the wall of text (all the content of my original comment without the fluff):
* You can use sound generators (bfxr, sfxr, chiptone) in the Compo. They don't fit every game, but you get results really fast * Bosca Ceoil is a great sampler for beginner composers. The options are limited but the learning curve is really good * I recently learned of 1BITDRAGON which is tailored for people with limited music knowledge. It costs $20 but it looks really impressive. They have a demo video to check out if it is a good fit for your style.
Both these music tools produce a distinct 8-bit style, so it may not entirely fit a more modern looking game, but it's a great place to start before you graduate to other tools like FLStudio or other DAWs which can be overwhelming for beginners.
I like the graphics, they are very clean and create a coherent feel to the game. They are primarily what made me interested in playing.
I wasn't spectacularly good but I found out that enemies would freeze if I broke the ice in a complete row if the enemies were on the other side. This helped me crowd control a little because only half of the new enemies would be relevant for me. On the downside I lost a lot of space to move, but that was a good tradeoff because it turned out that I wasn't really good at strategizing what I could do in order to get rid of the monsters. The bishops were somewhat manageable because I could try and move straight towards them and then push them into a hole or off the map.
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Some bits where I see improvement potential: I thought it would have been nice if I could have moved without having to wait for the next monster to finish falling. I assume you did not want to break the game's turn system, but I maybe you could have delayed the monster's first move by one turn, which would have allowed the player to move during the drop. Might not have solved the problem but mitigated it. To me, that micro-pause was enough to break the flow a bit.
Then again, I should probably have thought more about my move instead of playing intuitively. Maybe having move indicators for the monsters would have helped me get into a more strategic mindset. Even if you didn't want to show the exact next move, I think adding some arrows that indicate all the different ways a monster could move, including what that meant for you, might have made the game a bit more predictable and strategic. The way it is, invited me to just move around willy-nilly I was often surprised when a monster killed me.
A shame you didn't add some music, that would have been a nice addition to the atmosphere. And if composition is not your thing, then maybe some audio generator ambient noises like wind would have fit the atmosphere of the game.
One minor quirk that I sometimes see with games published on itch: It is always recommendable to put just a single executable in your zip file, because otherwise the game cannot be downloaded via the itch client. I use the client a lot and often just drop games that don't download properly. Yours looked interesting enough to warrant the manual download. I get that it would be a decision between supporting the itch client or having multiple resolution exes in one directoy, but I wanted to mention that this was a thing.
Overall a nice entry, I had fun playing it.
I love typing games. Nicely done.
Graphics and music fit really well together. It feels like a coherent game.
The only thing that stands out a bit is the generated audio effects, because they clash a bit with the clean graphics, but other than using soundgens the only option would be to create the sounds yourself, which might have sounded a bit weird as well.
I really loved the UFO idea, it's a very easy word to type and saves you from a tight spot so you anticipate the next UFO's arrival. If only the rockets fired immediately... :D
A few technical thoughts:
* I think it would have been nice to have blanks and dashes optional which is pretty standard in typing games * Continuing the game after a loss does not seem to reset the word difficulty. My first playthrough had short words in the beginning, my second one started right with two-word concepts. After reloading the page, the first playthrough was easier again. * The rockets do not always hit, likely because one rocket can hit an asteroid that is in the way of its intended target and then the other rocket has no target anymore and shoots off. A solution would be to assign each asteroid its own "private" rocket and don't measure collision with any asteroid but only with the one the rocket was intended for. Or, maybe this was a design choice and the rockets are not meant to guarantee hitting their marks.
Overall very nice entry, I had a lot of fun and encountered words I never heard before.
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I love Bullet Hell shooters, unfortunately, I'm really bad at them. This one took me on a journey. First I was only evading, which is where the fun in BHS games usually lies. Then I found out about the slowdown, shoot and bomb mechanics and started to get better at the game. Finally I found a loophole and from then on there was no stopping me:
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One important thing to take into account for the future: Don't use Y or Z in your controls, this is always messy with different language keyboards. Generally A, S is preferable instead, since WASD is supported in most countries.
It's a great, minimalistic, but very stylish game and it's a joy to watch in motion. Great job!
@matthewrobo I know that feeling, man. Dang those players and their wily ways! :D
Fun little game. I only managed to get to 2:12, after that it became too much to handle. I like the ramp-up in difficulty and the firing speed of the guns is well balanced.
I would have loved to have a little clearer audio feedback when I got hit because I didn't have time to keep an eye on the health bar.
Also I think a game like this would benefit greatly from a little bit more juice. I always recommend this presentation. It is a bit old but still very relevant. Not everything may apply to every game's mood but it is definitely good to know the things as options:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJdEqssNZ-U
Very cute and well-thought out idea. The graphics are very nice and you set a very good atmosphere with the music and design.
The gameplay idea is very addicting, but unfortunately I had the feeling that the game needed some more tweaking. I played around with different strategies, but almost none of the available plants seemed to lead to success. I couldn't figure out what the light flower does, the soulcatcher was not worth the effort, since I was happy with my manual hit rate. The plants that increase soul count and speed seemed too much of a hassle to keep alive to offset the loss in funds I incurred when growing them.
So I basically adopted the strategy to exclusively grow sunflowers, one at a time. Since a grown sunflower only gives a price cut once they mature, I would simply let them die and plant a new one. This together with setting the soul speed to high was enough to carry me through the game.
It's a pity because with a little more balancing I think this could have been very addicting. It already was motivating enough to let me finish it though, so all in all, good job!
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If you're interested, I found three technical issues:
1) Whenever I pick a seed, there is a music hiccup. For some reason this does not happen with the other resources.
2) The symbols sometimes appear behind the plants which makes it very difficult to find out what they need. In some cases you can only see a single pixel poking out somewhere to assume that you need sunlight.
3) More a design choice really, but it might have been a bit more user friendly to allow changing items even if you have one in your hand, instead of going through the detour of putting it in the trash.
Your cover picture won me over and I wanted to know more. I was not disappointed :)
Nice game, I like the graphics and humour. The music kept in the background and fit the mood nicely without becoming annoying.
Gameplay-wise I think it would have been helpful to use icons instead of words since the game becomes frantic very fast and it takes too long to parse the actual text in a short amount of time. In the end I ended up randomly clicking any attack and hoping for the best.
I the same vein, it would be nice to have target indicators when hovering over the different attacks. Since this is a reaction game it is sometimes necessary to make a split second decision where to attack and having to remember where an attack would go in addition to what it does in that short amount of time was a little stressful.
Anyway, I enjoyed my run, good job!
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This was my second attempt after I discovered the dash and I don't think I can go much higher:
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Nice game. A tried and true action formula executed well. I liked the graphics and particularly the range indicators that gave a hint about areas with higher enemy density. I think that played an important role in the game and avoided people getting stuck in places where there are no enemies to defeat.
A minor graphical thing: I found it a bit weird and immersion-breaking to allow rotating the slash graphic after it was executed. I think a slash is something that happens in the moment and should be left behind, not move with the player.
Some thoughts about game feel since this is a very action oriented game: I like how you added screenshake, although I think it could have benefitted from a little bit more fine-tuning. I can't put my finger on it, but it felt slightly off. Maybe it would have helped to have directional shake that pushed the camera away from the enemy for a few frames?
I think the audio effects could also have been a little bit crunchier. The single point of interaction of the player with the game world is hitting an enemy, so I think this moment deserves a little bit more care to make it as impactful as possible (without going overboard on the special effects)
Anyway, you might know this video, but I like to post it under games that are action oriented and could use a little bit more juice. It helped me a lot when I first discovered it and I think you can find a few things that make your game even more impactful
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJdEqssNZ-U
Nice game, I had fun.
Wow, that escalated quickly. Started really slow but suddenly chaos everywhere.
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The graphics are simple but very effective and set the mood nicely.
I also like how you found a good size of the grab region. For sprites that small it could be really frustrating if the area is too small and not challenging if it is too large.
A game like this would really benefit from sound effects, even simple autogenerated ones, e.g. with https://sfbgames.itch.io/chiptone. It's not a lot of work but adds a lot of flavour.
I love how you add a little tutorial in the beginning and also the hold to continue idea is a nice touch.
Overall a cute minimalistic game that was satisfying to try out.
You absolutely nailed the graphics, the game really stands out in that regard. It's funny and has a lot of character. Everything is so wacky and frantic, very well done. From a technical side, this is just a pet-peeve of mine, but I'm not really into mixed resolution pixel art. It takes a lot of the charm out of the game for me personally when the resolutions clash. Of course, having pixel-perfect art means that scale effects often don't look that great, but it might be worth a shot to try what the game would look like on a fixed grid. I think if you do make a mixed-pixel art game it is necessary to make sure that it still mostly feels like a single resolution. It's a bit of a shame because the graphics are really front and center and a core part of the whole experience.
Another minor annoyance was that the cursor was so small. A custom pixel art cursor would have been great, because I had some trouble hitting the start banner every time a stage was completed.
Cool to see 1BitDragon to be put to good use. I just discovered it myself when I saw someone else talk about it on the main page. I have played around with it a bit and like it. Seems it aid you well in writing nice music for your game.
Gameplay-wise it took me a bit to understand that I should follow the owl and avoid the rainclouds, but then it was pretty smooth sailing until I forgot about the owl again and started off in the wrong direction which spelled my immediate doom.
Again, you made one of the best-looking games I have played so far with a lot of charm. I think it could have used a little more depth to the gameplay itself, but what you did offer looks and plays great. Definitely a memorable entry among the ones I have played so far. Great job!
Funny idea, I enjoyed the graphics, which attracted me to the game in the first place.
Some points of constructive criticism:
For a small screen game it would make sense to lock the mouse into your window if your engine allows that, especially since moving outside the image will stop any arm motion.
The player's hitbox felt a little too large so sometimes I couldn't get a clear indication of when I would be hit and when I was safe.
I couldn't figure out the charge attack, for me there was no difference between simply clicking and holding the mouse.
All in all I think it's a cute game with good pixel art based on a funny idea.
Congratulations on your first game jam. It's quite a challenge to make a first game with limited time and handing in something complete with music and everything. Great job!
The graphics were nice and reminded me of games of my childhood. I think the whole game including the premise felt very C64-ish, games like Oil Imperium come to mind. The music was interesting, it sounded a bit like a nod to The Godfather theme, was this intended?
I can't say all that much about the gameplay because to be honest, I found it a bit hard to grasp, but I would like to comment a little bit about accessibility.
The more complex a game's mechanics are, the more important it is to deliver an accessible explanation of those mechanics to ease the player into the game.
In this case, the introduction is done via a "wall of text", which can cause players to lose interest because they want to play instead of reading a manual, especially in a game jam.
For a game with complex rules, this can generally be achieved by different means:
* Introducing different parts of the game level by level * A tutorial (interactive manual) * An infographic that visually explains what to do and how to do it.
The third option is most suited for a game jam since it only requires a single image that is mostly made up of sprites you already have. The other two take more time to set up. And if you present the player with text, make sure to deliver is in digestible chunks.
When it comes to keyboard input, it is often advisable to pick keys that are next to each other. I think you used q, t and p for centering the corresponding letters, which is a good mnemonic, but players who want to use this feature more often would struggle accessing the keys fast because they are quite a bit spaced out.
Sometimes the simpler mechanic is the better one even though I imagine it is tempting to play around with all the features a game engine has to offer (and I fall into this trap quite often). So maybe instead of using "floaty" letters that run the danger of drifting off screen, it would have been a better choice to use normal objects that stay in place, which could have made the three centering keys obsolete which would have simplified the game's control scheme and helped the player focus more on the actual mechanics of how to avoid taxes.
Overall I think you realized a fresh concept and created something new. That in and of itself is very impressive, especially for a first entry. My criticism is mostly about the tools of the trade: What mechanics can I use to realize my idea in a way that makes the game fun to interact with? How can I make the player understand the game in an enjoyable manner? These things grow over time with each game you make. What is more important is to come up with clever ideas to create games that stand out among the crowd and I think you are on the right track there.
Nice one, keep up the great work!