Glyph Valley by recursor 2015-04-21T00:25:00
Very cool! I love low-poly 3D. Interesting concept and well executed. One of the best I've played so far.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → Chadivision
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | Co | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | 39 | Running out of Power | You Can't Handle the Tentacles | jam | 497 | 3.25 | 3.17 | 3.85 | 3.22 | 2.84 | 2.41 | ||||
| 2015 | 33 | You are the Monster | Hero Stomp | compo | 482 | 3.11 | 2.89 | 2.52 | 3.67 | 2.93 | 3.19 | 3.69 | 2.76 | 49 | |
| 2015 | 32 | An Unconventional Weapon | Judge, Jury, and Executable | compo | 1023 | 2.56 | 2.65 | 2.35 | 3.78 | 2.52 | 46 |
Very cool! I love low-poly 3D. Interesting concept and well executed. One of the best I've played so far.
I like the interface and the overall look, but I didn't really find the gameplay very interesting. I may have misunderstood something about it (and I'll admit I'm not very good at resource management type games), but it seemed like I spent most of my time waiting for various numbers to tick up.
I love it!
At first I thought I was supposed to avoid hitting people, and I was doing very poorly. Then I remembered the theme and realized I was supposed to hit people...and I did poorly at that too. :)
Great production all around, and lots of fun to play!
Really fun game mechanics! I like how the movement works.
A couple of small suggestions. A couple of times I left my rubber band behind and forgot to hit spacebar to remove it. So it was off the screen but keeping me from forming a new one. Maybe when it reaches the edge of the screen you could have it dissolve, possibly with a sound effect, to indicate to the player that they're free to make a new one. Or if you're going to keep the ability to have a band off screen, then there should be some kind of level design that requires you to do this for a specific reason.
Also the audio sounded kind of cool, but the level was really low. I had it cranked and couldn't hear it very well.
Nice game though. I would definitely pay money for a fully developed version of this.
I like it, but I'm not nearly coordinated enough to play well.
The audio is awesome! Hats off to baby McFunkypants! ...or I guess pre-schooler McFunkypants now???
Very nice! I love the aesthetics. The subtle horizontal grain texture makes everything look really cool, and the sound effects really add the the overall feel.
Very cool! I like that the theme central to the game and not used in a superficial way ...like I did with my game :)
The movement is fun, and the graphics fit the feel really well. Nice job.
Nice game. I agree with the others that a little bit of audio would be a nice touch. I like the art style.
The music was great. I also really liked the feel of the controls, how it had some acceleration to it and some rotation, not just immediately flipping between left/right up/down.
I was kind of hoping that once I got into the tank I could start blasting stuff but...wait. Maybe I should have paid more attention to the moral lesson. :)
You really should warn people not to go in that cave. :)
Fun game. This is something that could really be expanded upon. I really like the graphics style, and the signs are funny (they kind of remind me of the Sign Painter from World of Goo).
I really like the music, and the overall mood including the low-poly 3D. Very cool look.
My biggest issue was that the controls were a bit too sensitive. The movement should be kind of abrupt because it's a bike, but it was a little too much.
Maybe also have the wider road at the beginning while you're getting used to the controls, then go to the more narrow road later. Nice job though, especially on the aesthetics.
Very cool! It was a fun game with an interesting style. Never thought I would use XP again. :)
Fun game. I like the fact that you can jump really high, and the graphics are very good. I was a little confused at first about where my character was (the reddish/orange pixel didn't jump out at me). Also the blue portal looking thing in the background looked cool, but since it stood out so much I expected it to do something.
One last thing...is it possible to control the direction that you shoot, or is it always to the right? (Sorry if I missed something). I really enjoyed the game.
Please make a commercial version and take my money. I love this!
Good balance of platforming and puzzles, nice art, and the perfect music. There's something very soothing about this game. The music is a big part of it, but it's also the way everything works together as a whole.
I agree that it doesn't really incorporate the theme, but it's good enough that I don't really care. :)
Very well done. I especially like the scrambled effect when you lose the game.
At first I was a little unsure of what to do, but even making choices semi-randomly was still fun. I get the feeling that if I put some more time into playing this one I would enjoy it even more.
I think I'll come back to it after I rate some more games!
Thanks. The writing was really the only part I focused on. It's kind of a one trick pony, but hopefully it will get a few laughs.
@scumbly There actually is some internal logic behind what answers the computer likes and doesn't like, and he has certain biases against certain crew members. Originally there were going to be some mechanics where you can do certain things to get more insight, and use that info to help you choose your answers more carefully.
I ended up being really sick the entire weekend, and this was all I had the energy for. I almost didn't participate at all, but instead I decided to do the smallest project I could think of.
Hopefully I can do something more ambitious for LD 33.
Nice job. I love the graphics and the overall feel of the game.
Wall jumping is a little bit tedious though. It might have a better feel if you could get a little more "traction". Like if I want to climb up a wall it shouldn't take quite as many hops. That's a really nit-picky thing though. I really like this game!
Now I'm hungry for a peanut butter with banana sandwich with two kinds of jelly (hold the poison please). :)
Nice job. It's an interesting puzzle game, and the art and music really tie it together.
I like the whole flashlight mechanic. The flashlight looks cool, but I think it would be even better if it had more of a falloff to the light, instead of just on/off for each square. So fully bright for squares near you and in the center, slightly lit for ones far away or off to the sides.
The audio was a little hard to hear, so maybe the level could be brought up some.
Nice job though. I enjoyed playing it.
This was fun to play, and good job picking up an entirely new toolset. That's not easy to do.
Just a couple of suggestions. I didn't really understand the difference between the various weapons. They all seemed to function about the same.
Also the sound effects were a bit harsh on the high end. A little bit of low-pass filtering would go a long way. Nice job.
Fun game. I like the graphics, and the concept is funny.
The main suggestion I have would be to give some kind of visual display that shows how much power will apply to your throw, like a "power meter" in a golf game, or something.
Nice job.
Here is my TPS report:
This is a really cool game. I love the humor and the look of it.
I love the music and the mood of this. The writing was also very good.
This game has a very cool mood to it. I especially like the music. The hiding is also fun
I had to play a few times to notice the connection between the footsteps and being caught. After I did, it seemed obvious, but the first couple times playing it I was experimenting with hiding so I didn't really pay attention to the sound effects.
Very nice job.
Love it! I like how you can not only reposition the heads, but also reposition whole branches. It gives you a ton of control and makes for some complex gameplay, since you can see the waves of knights and have to configure everything into the best possible shape.
Awesome!
Very nice graphics and animation. I would love to see this developed into a longer game, but the length of it is understandable given the time constraints and the time that you obviously put into the art.
I only had a couple of issues with it. The text on the screen was a little hard to read, not because of the text itself, but before the camera would jump around if I stopped to read it.
The other thing is is that even though the gun firing animation looked good, it didn't seem like the gun served much of a purpose in the game. Unless I missed something, you basically just run to the end of the level and then it's over.
But overall, very nice work. You're definitely very good at graphics.
I really liked the gameplay. It kind of reminded me of the old game "Oil's Well."
The intro was also very cool, but I kept wondering if I was supposed to be controlling something. I thought it was just an intro, but I wasn't sure. Also it would be nice to have a button that you could just hold to retract your arm, rather than having to repeatedly hit the arrow keys in the reverse order.
Very fun game. I definitely enjoyed it.
This game is very realistic. At least I assume so because I was bad at it, and bad at dating in real life. :)
Fun game. It had a cool mood to it and was written well.
Very compelling game. The content of the game combined with the music really set the tone. Very well done.
At first this looked like it might take too long to learn how to play, but the game was pretty intuitive and a lot of fun. It's pretty difficult (played a few times and only gut up to about 3 years) but it has a good feel to it. I also really like the music.
Wow, very cool! This was a pretty ambitious project considering the timeframe. I love the graphics, and it did run mine on my iPad. Looking forward to playing this more.
I thought about having some kind of powerups or something to give you a temporary sprint. I decided instead to make you really slow as a trade-off for being invincible. It probably could use some balancing though.
I was going to add some pathfinding, but to save time I actually just made about ten or twelve predefined paths, and then wrote a script to choose randomly. Also any path can be run forward or in reverse.
@inbetweengames I should have recorded a "you lost the game" audio clip, but by the time I realized I had forgotten it I had all the other audio recorded and put into the game. I was running very short on time so didn't go back and make another clip.
This game didn't seem to be working properly when I ran it. At first, I hit the spikes and for some reason it said "you won", which was kind of confusing. The second time I played it, somehow I got stuck in the wall to the right. The third time it worked for a little bit and then my controls just quit working.
Since I couldn't get it to work, I didn't rate it. Sorry if I'm missing anything. Maybe I didn't understand how to paly.
I didn't try this with a controller, but with the keyboard it had a pretty good feel. I like the black and white graphics, and the music fit really well. Nice job.
I really like the overall look, feel, and mood of this, but there were some control issues getting in the way.
It would be nice if the movement controls were a little less drastic. Unless you want to do full 90 degree turns, it's difficult to turn with any precision.
Also the "eat" control could be improved slightly. It seems that you have to left click on the cow to make him eat, but after clicking on him you can click anywhere on the screen and it works...until you move again, then to get "eat" to work again you have to click on the cow. After I figured that out I was ok, but at first it just seemed like it was randomly not working somethings.
One other picky thing...if you get up against a fence, sometimes the camera tries to look straight down and it sort of freaks out. You could fix that by limiting the max angle of the cam, for example to 85 or 90 degrees (with respect to the ground plane). That will keep your camera math from "getting all weird" <--highly technical math term. :)
Nice job though.
I played this for about ten minutes...obviously not enough time to fully get into it, but I like it. Most of the commands seem intuitive, and the dialogue is well written.
The only suggestion that I would have would be a few things to save on typing. For example, if you could type "e" instead of "east". Also it would be nice if there was a keyboard shortcut to clear out all of the text without having to backspace.
I plan to come back to this one once I get a chance to rate some more games.
I find that most games do not have NEARLY enough bloody sheep carcasses, but this game did not disappoint!
Seriously though, I really enjoyed this one. The music set the mood well, and the graphics are nice. I thought it was pretty well balanced also. The first couple tries took me almost exactly one day to get 10 sheep.
This only suggestion I would make is to make the river crossing graphics stand out a bit more. At first I was confused by why I could cross the water in one place and not in another.
Nice work.
I like this game. The graphics are really nice and the physics for the jump has a nice feel.
The only think that I didn't like was the control setup. Having to jump with the same hand felt awkward. I think it would have been more playable if the spacebar doubled as a jump button. But still, a very enjoyable game.
Fun game, and very nicely polished. Good job.
I love everything about this! The overall mood is awesome, the graphics are great, and I love how the story unfolds as you play. Just a great game all around. Very nicely done!
Very well written. The writing combined with the art set the scene very well.
The mood of this game was awesome, and the art is great. I think the gameplay would be good if I had a better idea of how to play. Here are a couple issues I had...
It seemed strange that once I fired my gun that I lost it. Also after using my gun, I couldn't find any more (I think the NPC's had grabbed them all by then). So I basically killed one person and then walked around until the Zephyr showed up and I lost. I'm probably missing something about the gameplay, but what that is isn't obvious.
The other issue was that while I was reading the lengthy text about how to play, the game was already running. So by the time I was ready to start, it was half over.
I think this is a great start. Just a little more clarity on how to play and I think this would be awesome. I still enjoyed it though. Nice job.
Great game! This is one of my favorites.
The movement was visually interesting and just made intuitive sense. The graphics also look very good. Nice job all around.
This was really fun. The graphics and overall mood of the game were very good. I also really liked the explosion sound.
Oh, yes!!! I love everything about this game. The retro TV look really grabbed my attention, but the gameplay is what really made this one. Very difficult, but it feels fair, and it's got a good mix of mechanics. This is one of my favorites so far.
This was a lot of fun! I like the mood, but what really struck me is how balanced the gameplay feels. It's not so difficult to be overwhelming for a new player in the first few minutes, but it's challenging enough that I think I could play it for a while.
It's nice to be so much faster than the enemies, but they have advantages in number. Plus they are faster than you when you're carrying things, and they see you in the dark. All of that balances out to a nice challenge level.
Not sure what you mean by that. The rules specifically say you can make a tabletop game, so we did. The pdf has the full rules, board, cards, and tokens.
This is a game.
It's a print-and-play single player tabletop game. The rules, board, etc....everything you need to play except for dice...are in the pdf file. I know tabletop games are not very common for LDJam, but I decided to do one as a change of pace.
I know it's not everyone's cup of tea, but I appreciate you taking a look at it anyway.
Thanks, @wmerges and @yuigoto. I wouldn't say anyone was really bashing us. I think it was more like confusion about why we did tabletop. Or maybe they didn't realize it had rules and thought it was pics only or something? I don't know.
Also, we were planning on making a video with everything set up, showing how the dice rolling monster works. We just ran out of time. We'll probably make and post a gameplay video over the weekend.
We are considering turning this into a video game. It was fun being able to spend an entire weekend on mechanics, rather than having to keep the gameplay simple enough to code in a weekend.
@earthexe Thanks for taking a look at it. I understand that it takes a while (and costs some money in paper and ink) to print it out and play it. I figured most people wouldn't, and that's fine, but I appreciate the feedback.
@phlip45 Thank you for taking the time to leave detailed comments, and it didn't come across as harsh at all. One of the main reasons I do game jams is to get feedback. Comments like these are far more helpful than having friends tell you it's perfect in every way.
I agree that the rules need a fair amount of tightening up. The turn phases especially are pretty unruly. I probably will do what you suggest and combine some of them. I'm planning on doing some more iterations of this and possibly making it into a video game once I get the mechanics working the way I want (and add a lot more content.)
@bmacintosh I'm considering doing away with the rule about not moving troops the first turn. Honestly, I think I included it as a reflex because of all the years of playing Magic the Gathering, with its "summoning sickness" mechanic. But not sure it really adds anything to this game. It would also eliminate a phase, allowing me to have the generate troops and deploy troops as a combined phase.
In my playtests, the left side does seem to be used less. I may make some adjustments there at some point, but first I want to flesh out the R&D deck more. Originally, I think it had eight cards, but I changed how the counter-attack phase worked, and half of the cards no longer made sense. I want R&D to be more expensive and kind of crazy experimental stuff with a risk/reward decision to make. But that's probably the part of the game that's most lacking right now.
As far as the phases go, I'm wondering if I should combine the two suggested approaches...keep them broken out into separate parts so you don't have to keep going back to the rules, but group related phases under a single heading.
@mrtroy I don't think you misread the rule about the monster getting a first turn boost. Sounds like you had a bad draw on the event deck...but yeah, I agree that's a problem. There should be some luck, but you shouldn't get hamstrung on the first turn. Maybe I'll look at making the event deck increase in difficulty as you go, sort of like Eldritch Horror does with it's Phase 1, Phase 2, and Phase 3 Mythos Deck construction.
Right now the battlefield troops are only used to allow you to sacrifice for rerolls, but I plan on expanding that. It would be cool to have weapons and vehicles that have additional abilities that allow you to power them with troops (with or without the sacrifice). Maybe it could tie in with some event cards also, like "At the end of the turn, if you have more than three troops on the battlefield, then [some kind of good effect]".
Some of the R&D cards are single use, but some of them stay on the battlefield...I think...was pretty tired when I finished up the cards, but I think I have some that work that way. If not, there will be in the next iteration.
Yes, we definitely plan to continue working on this in one form or another. For right now we're planning to do some more iterations as a print & play pdf game, but we're talking about possibly turning it into a video game.
To everybody else...I'm really sorry I haven't tried any of your games yet, but I plan to. My schedule has been pretty busy since the end of the jam and have only gotten to play a handful of games, but I haven't forgotten about you. Thanks for all of the feedback.
@rothens91 Thanks. Please let me know if you get a chance to play it.
@saithir We are probably going to do a video game, but first I want to take a few more passes at it on paper. Iterating and experimenting is obviously much faster on tabletop than in code.
@rubyleehs Ageed. The writing needs some major editing. I do plan to reword the card text especially, but I will probably hold off on that until I do some more work on the gameplay. Once it's fleshed out more it will be easier to make good decisions about what terms to use, etc.
The mood and art style are excellent! A little more direction on what to do in the game would be helpful, but it looks like maybe you're keeping it vague on purpose to try to avoid spoilers...so I see where that can be tricky. One very minor thing. A little more contrast on the phone's texting screen would make it easier to read. Well done.
I really enjoyed this one. It's got a pretty cool frantic kind of feel when you're getting swamped with a bunch of enemies at the same time. It looks really polished for a jam game. If I had to mention one super-picky thing...I'd suggest toning down the wobbling text on the title screen. It makes it hard to read and just kind of makes me dizzy. :) But a really solid game, overall.
My son and I played this game together and really enjoyed it. It looks really polished, especially considering the timeframe. I like the co-op mechanics. Everything was really well thought out. Nice job.
Screenshots look very cool! I'll try to remember to check back when you get your hosting issue sorted out.
This was a lot of fun! I like the idea of manually gathering the resources needed to power the train. If you were doing a post-jam version, I could even see expanding into some sort of crafting system to craft upgrades, etc.
One very picky suggestion for the UI. In addition to having buttons above, like "open door", etc., clicking the actual item itself should trigger the same effect. I kept clicking on the door and then remembering that I had to click the button. That is a really minor thing though. Very nice work.
I really liked the audio and the look and feel. The mini games were cool and could definitely be expanded upon if you do a post-jam version. Nice job.
For some reason it took me a little bit to notice the bars on each nation, so I was just doing the mini games randomly instead of in order of which one was most urgent. I'm not sure why, because the bars are pretty prominent, but something about them didn't jump out at me at first.
Also, I'm a little confused about the one that just says "get out of here" and has the guy killing the other guy. Is there a mini-game there that I missed? Or is it just that if you get that one it automatically recharges the bar for that country?
Very cool mood. I like the look and feel a lot, but I couldn't quite get a feel for the gameplay. I like the idea of getting charged up while in the light and draining while in the dark, but the dark was so dark that it felt random. I either hit walls or was destroyed (although I'm still not sure by what).
Maybe there could be some "breadcrumbs" of some type...like if I get close to certain objects they flicker briefly so I have some hint of what to do and where to go. Some gameplay hints of some kind for the player would go a long way and would really build on the cool ambiance you've got going on.
(Please forgive me if I missed anything in my playthough...maybe there were other gameplay elements I just didn't find.)
Nice work. I like the look of it, and they physics have a good feel. The only thing I'd suggest would be maybe find a way to make the enemies move in a little more lively way. Good job.
This was very cool. You've got a pretty good assortment of puzzles, especially for a jam game. At first it just looks like normal platforming, but then you realize you need to step back and think about your approach to each level.
I really like how losing your various capabilities opens up new puzzle possibilities. It's kind of like the NES game Blaster Master...except in reverse. The physics had a really good feel also.
I like the graphics and the overall look and feel of this.
I did have a little trouble playing it, but that could very well be because I have always been terrible at beat 'em up games, all the way back to my Double Dragon days. :)
The controls seemed to work as intended, but I kind of just descended into frantic button mashing, but again, that may be just my horrible lack of skills.
The audio was very good and the graphics really contributed well to the overall mood. (For some reason I was almost expecting those creepy guys from Albino Lullaby to sneak up on me.)
I didn't really figure out much...I get the impression there is a lot more to it than what I found. I plan on playing this one some more before looking at your hints section. Very nice job.
This was one of the coolest games I've played so far. I love the concept. It took me a few seconds to figure out what all the sensors did. Especially the audio one because the first couple times I turned it on I wasn't near anything, so it didn't make much of a difference.
I especially like the look of the "ping" sensor that makes the room appear. The one thing I would suggest would be a little low pass filtering on the ping sound. It's a little harsh, and I think it would give me a headache if I played for more than a couple of minutes.
Really cool game though!
I really like the look of this. I think it's a pretty good start to a racing game, so glad to hear that you're planning to continue working on it post jam.
One thing that could really help the gameplay would be some way to do a powerslide, or some kind of braking. The directional controls felt pretty good, but I kept feeling like there should be some other kind of control to combine with them.
Also...not sure if it was intended or not...but the guitar pick shaped raindrops are really cool!