Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → chaosed0
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | Co | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | 45 | Start with nothing | 👥 | Alchemicraft | jam | 154 | 3.91 | 3.51 | 2.94 | 3.83 | 4.08 | 3.01 | 2.75 | 3.87 | |
| 2018 | 43 | Sacrifices must be made | 👥 | Rift Core | jam | 377 | 3.58 | 3.32 | 3.15 | 2.80 | 4.20 | 3.65 | |||
| 2015 | 32 | An Unconventional Weapon | S-COM: Aftermath | compo | 264 | 3.50 | 3.00 | 3.41 | 2.94 | 3.00 | 3.17 | 55 | |||
| 2014 | 31 | Entire Game on One Screen | Square Dance | compo | 189 | 3.62 | 3.87 | 3.36 | 3.69 | 2.51 | 3.35 | 2.94 | 66 |
Loved the text bubbles. Movement took a little getting used to. If you're planning more levels, you may want to make the escape sequence more exciting/shorter, as a lot of it was running around repairing or just waiting in a room.
I love the random sawing at the violin in the background.
Strange and weird. But in a good way.
I like the concept. The controls need a lot of tightening; it's very hard to tell when you're going to hit things, and movement feels very floaty. Audio could afford to be louder. I very much like the motif, though, especially with the leaves in the background.
Neat stuff. My one gripe is that I couldn't move the window while moving, but that's probably a limitation of java/your library. Could have used a checkpoint, but it was short enough that it didn't make too much of a difference.
Says I need libgcc_s_dw2-1.dll when starting on Windows. Maybe you forgot to include a mingw library?
For something so simple, the mechanics work pretty well!
Hilarious.
I'll admit, I couldn't put up with the lag and the screen flicker, but it's very cool.
Great looking game with a very good atmosphere - mysterious and oppressive, but not overly so. The overall pacing could be faster. Blocking is a little difficult because it seems you need to get the shield physically in the way of the attacks. Finally, it's very difficult to tell the monsters apart before they're hitting you with one attack or another. Other than those issues, quite a nice game.
Agree that the character moved too slow. The hitbox should have been smaller, and placed at the character's feet - from this perspective, the player's head and upper body should be able to overlay some obstacles. I did jump when the first skeleton game out, so nice sfx. Not bad first LD.
Works for me now.
Solid mechanic, but maybe a little too difficult. Also ran into a few TypeErrors.
The twist where you have to avoid the ground is a great mechanic. Nice use of powerups too. Just wish it had some music!
137.603. Nice idea, fair execution. Agree that the amount of clicking could have been less.
It's a neat tech demo, but as you say, not a game. I had the same bug as another commenter - score shows up at the top for some reason, and the screen goes black. This seems to happen if the window is resized beyond the gameplay area.
Your build system didn't seem to notify me that I needed to build the Tmx lib in ./lib, by the way. Cmake succeded and left me guessing as to which TMX loader library you were using. You should also make a note that your binary requires SFML 2 - specifically, not 2.1.
Almost more of a simulation than a game. I can't tell if I am having any effect on the fate of my particle.
Not too bad. The music is nice, and the mechanics are fair. I kept getting stuck on the trees and pagodas, though.
Should also note that the embedded game on this page is cut off at the top and bottom - most noticeable effect is that you can't see your health.
Simple fun. Could ramp up a little faster. More enemies would also be nice.
That is really neat. The mechanics are nearly spot-on - I only wished that I had more feedback on what exactly the repairmen did. What makes the game stand out incredibly well is the tone - it's exactly right, and done with so little. The voices, music, and graphics all give the game character.
Last note - looks like your "Web" link is down, dropbox gives me a 404.
Pretty good. Ramps up perhaps a bit too slowly, but I liked very much how the screen got smaller and smaller.
Interesting game, a little like VVVVV. However, a lot of small things made it less interesting than it could be: controls were wonky, hitting spikes didn't seem to do anything at all, hitting the finish didn't... finish. Not to mention the controls are never explained.
I also had trouble running the game. I had to remove all the library files other than libatuki.so in the lib directory, and then install libsfml, libsndfile, and libopenal. From there, running "make" produced an executable I could run.
If you're getting the X error, you need to make sure to link against SFML files for your system - not the ones included in the source tree. That is, remove the ones included in the distribution before building. I'm pretty sure the cause is that the SFML files included are expecting a different version of X or OpenGL than we have installed.
"Why are you doing this wizard?" BECAUSE YOU ARE SHOOTING AT ME >:(
Game ramps up a little too slowly, and movement/shooting are just a little too sluggish. Everything else is solid.
He has a face, it is just rather unsettling. Actually, all of the faces are pretty unsettling.
I think it needed more of a consistent tone, but otherwise a nice entry.
Very fun and very well executed. I actually laughed out loud when I saw that you could simply fart the execs in the boardroom to death. Small touches like transforming into a normal dude after going into a phone booth give this a special touch. The music is also excellent.
A couple of minor criticisms: it feels like there should be consequences when you're noticed farting in town. If there were more enemy variation, this would be a little more fun. Otherwise, this might not be the most innovative game, but it's simply great.
It's no mean feat to have made a tactics game in two days. However, damage is way too random, resulting in a very frustrating game.
It looks like your score doesn't reset when you lose the game. The audio seems to be biased toward the right side. Not bad for just 12 hours. I like how the wheels actually reverse their order, instead of reversing direction.
Too little going on in the gameplay department for my taste, but it's a very solidly made game. Excellent art and sound.
No links are working other than "Soundtrack", looks like your permissions on Google Drive are set incorrectly.
Nice graphics and audio. The idea is cool, but I think it's lacking in execution; the levels basically play out like they do in a normal platformer with only one or two exceptions.
Essentially what others said - good idea, good fun, finnicky controls. Well polished presentation.
Amazing. Near the end I was reduced to typing "ha" as fast as I could; made it to 79036. Only complaint is that there isn't any music.
Nice game. A little too hard; feels like you need to play it a couple of times and memorize the levels before you can beat it, since the time accumulates. The music is great.
Really great concept, decent execution. The jumping was very buggy, and this was the root of most of the problems I had; I simply couldn't control the character well. Ended up giving up on the "Leap of Faith level" because I simply couldn't remember where the door was. However, again, it's still very cool.
Took me a while to figure out that I needed to hit "up" to spawn the cheese. Once I got that, it seemed fairly clear that I needed to lure the mice to the cats/guy, but predicting where the cats/mice would go was difficult. The sound played when a mouse died needs to be toned down. Finally, it wasn't clear if I'd won or not; was the fourth level the last one? I couldn't progress further than that.
Cooldown between shots a little too long. A few AI issues - I had a good laugh when I saw that one of the enemies had fallen down and was wiggling on the floor. On the second level with water in it, I died to the water, where I didn't in the first. Still a pretty cool game; the lighting was neat, and the mood is great.
Controls need to be toned down. I know you say not to hold the keys down for too long, but the game is still way too hard to control. Other than that, nice job.
Interesting take on the theme. Decently fun, but the biggest weakness is that there's little feedback on when you're damaging enemy ships.
Too much time in the game is spent just cycling through the different weapons. However, it's well made - was surprised when you could actually get the aliens to shoot the zombies.
Controls could be better, but the game is cute and well made.
Neat game, especially like the visuals and the music. The gameplay's a bit lacking though; it's not clear how to avoid losing health. It almost doesn't seem worth it to even try to dodge the berries.
Not many new ideas here, but it's a solid game.
It wasn't clear exactly what was going on during training. Very cute game, though.
Suggestion: you might want to host the game externally on a site such as itch.io, so that when you click "Web", it links you straight to the game embedded in a webpage.
Neat concept. I especially appreciate how the main menu teaches you how to play. Two criticisms: (1) The smaller planets are a bit too hard to click on, and (2) it's difficult to tell exactly where the asteroids are headed. This results in the game being a little too hard. Really nice music. If the gameplay were polished a bit, I think it could be very fun.
Nice game! Reminds me of old flash games - especially the music. If there were a couple more enemy types and the difficulty curve were tweaked, I think this would be excellent.
I liked the difficulty curve. Wish the camera were zoomed further out.
If it were more obvious where your attack was, and if the enemies didn't jump around quite so much, this would be much better. Still decently playable.
I like the premise of the game. It's something I'm sure a lot of us can relate to. I think the characters could have used more distinctiveness - even something as simple as coloring each of them differently would have helped. The music was nice, really helped set the mood of the game.
I played the game for about twenty minutes, and still had no clue how to win the game or even much grasp of the mechanics beyond getting people to follow me around.
That being said! I absolutely love everything about the style, from the font, to the tiling textures, to the jagged lines of mountains. It reminds me of early 2000s hobbyist 3D games, before there were any real engines to work with. I had a ton of fun running around exploring, spamming the F key, just laughing at the sheer absurdity of the line of followers running through the wilderness.
Great game! I ended up quitting on level 3 at the snowball pushing puzzle. Even so, there's some smart puzzle design on display here. The sprites, music, and animations infuse the game a lot of charm and character.
I think the biggest criticism I can make is that it's quite cumbersome to switch between characters once you get more than two; assigning each of the characters to a key (e.g. 1 to Sam, 2 to Viking, 3 to Elf) would have helped immensely.
Extremely cool idea. I like how you tied together the two big systems; piloting performance directly impacts how much you can buy at a given planet. The piloting for me, while difficult, was interesting, and I could see the paths to improvement. Unfortunately, as someone said above, the metagame of the heat shield is quite simple - just make a very long, single-wide ship. Perhaps it would be more interesting if this was also tied to piloting (i.e. you need to control facing as you enter the planet).
The biggest issue for me was that, when there are several planets nearby, I couldn't tell which one I was going to land at. Furthermore, when I hit land, it chose the wrong planet and I had no option to back out. Other small issues I noticed, in no particular order:
- seeing what's in cargo when selling - more info about planet rotation - indication that cargo needs to be clicked after buy - indication that you need to click close to the ship to change burn direction
But, hey, every LD game needs polish. Overall this is a very cool game with some interesting systems, and I'm impressed at just how many of those systems you managed to implement!
Got a score of 431000. Very nice atmosphere and graphics! I think the player's shots could use a bit more weight - the shots just kind of disappear.
Exceptional puzzle design and great aesthetic. A few uneven difficulty spikes here and there (level 3), and a few frustratingly tedious puzzle setups (levels 8-12), but nonetheless, this is an incredibly well made jam game. I managed to make it all the way through to the end - took me about half an hour.
The sound effects and sprites add a lot of charm to the game. I think the biggest thing that should be fixed is the hitboxes (as noted above) - it's frustrating when the dogs start going into the walls and you hit walls while trying to get the dogs, sometimes pulling you right into the monster. I should clarify that I love that the gun doubles as both a grappling hook and dog-yanker! It just needs to be integrated into the game a bit better.
Quite well put together. A lot of interesting choices in the character selection and building. At first I didn't like that the characters didn't regen after each battle, but it started to grow on me as I realized the implications.
Great platformer. It took me a long time (10 minutes?) to figure out the trick after the fourth sheep; I'm not sure if it was intentional or a missing tutorial due to time constraints. Either way, the level design helps a lot in this respect, as there are only ever two places you can go. One other criticism: some of the jumps needed were a little too precise for me, seemingly pixel-perfect. Again, perhaps this was purposeful.
The sprites and animations for both the player and the objects in the game, I can definitely praise without reservation. Additionally, the character controls quite well - I like the fast-fall and the amount of height control.
The game is somewhat unclear; sometimes I would lose and not be sure why. I think level three might be impossible to finish because of a missing milk glass, though I may have missed it. The music sounds great, but unfortunately it seems to only play for a few seconds at the beginning of the game.
That being said - I really enjoy the way the graphics are presented. The way the player character moves is great, the bag jumping around is a nice touch, and the derpy-looking reindeer which float up and down are delightful.
Quite an engrossing mechanic on display here! I played for probably 30 minutes before giving up on the campaign. The furthest I got was round 15. Unfortunately, it did leave me feeling a bit like getting further was down to luck. It's interesting just how on-theme the design of the mechanic is - you *must* sacrifice to win. Although a bit bare, the graphics and audio set the tone just well enough, provide the necessary information, and give you enough story and context to be motivated. Overall, very well done!
Some criticism, hopefully constructive:
1. With all actions taking place in the UI, it's difficult to feel engaged. For example, when choosing characters, instead of picking from a list in the UI, it'd be nicer to pick from the character sprites themselves. Even simply moving the menu closer to where the action is happening may have helped. 3. The character art and randomly-generated names, while delightful, contrasted poorly with the music and the rest of the art and ended up detracting from the overall mood. 2. The game is a bit static. After understanding the mechanics, I felt that I knew exactly what I had to do - it was only a matter of time before I won.
The mechanics themselves, however, were very intuitive - I didn't have to read the help or the description once. I even intuited the win condition correctly. Additionally, the game functions well. I didn't notice any breaking bugs. Well done!
This is a solid foundation to build on. I especially like the animations of all the different characters, and the silliness of the menus sets a great tone (I enjoyed the audio control more than I should have). Unfortunately - as you probably know - the gameplay is merely functional, and isn't a lot of fun. These are the things I'd do:
1. Tighten up the gameplay. The jump feels very floaty. The enemies lack danger. Taking out the big guys is tedious. With some gameplay iteration, I think these could be solved. 2. Keep the game simple, but lean even harder into the tone. Make the hits more impactful with lots of silly effects, make the characters' voiceovers more audible and super cheesy - things like that.
As I said, I think you have a solid foundation. Interested to see what you do with it!
Finished in 3:09 :) Well executed. I do wish I could control the jump height depending on how long I held down the jump button (a la Mario Bros).
One more report of framerate dependence, though one additional thing to note - in windowed, everything seems to run correctly no matter the monitor.
Anyway: the game is very polished. The AI is superb; it hits *just* often enough that it is engaging but not frustrating, and seems to never get stuck in one place. The effects - ground-dim on hit, death explosion, etc - are excellently executed.
Some small criticisms: I was somewhat annoyed by how well you had to track the enemies to kill them. Additionally, the music is a bit too repetitive.
I'm very interested in how this might play in multiplayer with a few additions to the mechanics. Great entry!
Extremely well polished, incredibly well executed. Even as simple as the gameplay is, it managed to elicit a reaction from me - I ended up stopping the game after a few playthroughs. Sure, it means that I won't see the end, but... well, I shouldn't spoil it.
Puzzles are a little too simple for my taste, and I wish I could move a bit faster. Even so, this game really shines because of its style. The music is excellent - well done with the interactive soundtrack. In addition, the low-poly art style is executed quite well. I especially love the tile fall-down at the beginning.
The game is a little too punishing in restarting back to the beginning - especially as losses are so common. Still, quite an interesting idea. I really like the look of the chess pieces, and the music does a lot to set the mood.
Some random thoughts:
- I think the UI elements, such as the action bar and the target indicators, could benefit from being a bit larger. - I especially liked the story blurbs that appear upon receiving each ability - it helped with the tone a lot. - I'm impressed at how many abilities you managed to fit in!
Overall, good looking game with some interesting combat choices.
While I think the overall concept has a lot of potential, it seems that the moving spike enemies are the only real threat. Once you disable shooting, you can jump over everything. The visual design works well, I like the minimal aesthetic. Also, I like the "waaah" damage sound, it actually made me laugh out loud the first time I heard it!
My main criticism is that the levels feel a bit too busy; it didn't feel like there was much room to get better. Even so, the game did make me want to play through twice - I got a score of 20 on my first playthrough, then 22 on the second. The music was really great, though I do wish there were a few sound effects. The models were well done and I could easily tell what was what. Well done overall!
Very simple, but there's still some cool things going on. I like how you have to use your momentum a bit to throw things into the pit. The sheep's face and the music lend themselves well to a certain atmosphere, though the lighting and art could have contributed better with a few tweaks.
Really cool and original idea! To be honest, it's not really up my alley because I'm terrible at word games, but I managed to get to level 5 before running out of vowels. I really like the borders around the letter tiles - makes them feel very mystical. Well done!
I really like the atmosphere that the game puts forth, especially as there's not a lot of middle-eastern themed games! Unfortunately, while all the rudiments are there for interesting trade, the game ends up not being so fun. Since there aren't any constraints imposed on your trading, the only real constraint you have is how much time you're willing to put into the game. The very slow scrolling, combined with the fact that half of the screen was always occupied, meant that it was very difficult to see what was in supply and what was in demand at any given place. This, combined with the fact that it was unknown how much I was able to sell even when an item was in demand, meant that it was a chore to play the game.
As I said, I really dig the aesthetic of the game. I hope you continue polishing this up!
The concept is really interesting! The part where you need to go the other way first to obtain height, then go towards a platform, proves the concept well. The game becomes even more interesting when you get the pickaxe; even though you weren't able to implement resource scarcity, it's still somewhat challenging because of the gravity mechanics.
The game is obviously lacking quite a bit of polish, but I'm sure you know that :) I hope you expand on Private Universe, there's nuggets of interesting ideas here!
Quite compelling for how simple a concept it is! I had a lot of fun building up my squads to a point where they were unstoppable, and had a lot of fun trawling around the map for upgrades. You managed to fit in a lot of areas in not much time. That being said, I think there's a lot of polish that could be applied here:
- The introduction was very rough; I almost quit my first time after accidentally making a single squad which did only one damage. - The control scheme, while nice and simple, ended up getting in my way a lot of the time. Oftentimes when drawing lines, I'd accidentally move my squad backward into bombs because I have slightly shaky hands. - Along those lines, I also found myself wishing that I could move my squads together more often than not, as it seemed the dominant strategy to keep them together rather than splitting them. - I'm still not sure what some of the upgrades do. For instance, I'm guessing Accuracy adds critical chance, but I still have no idea about toughness vs. resistance.
However! Just know that, even with all the above, you really put together something wonderful. I ended up spending about 40 minutes, and enjoyed most of it. Great job with this entry!
Unfortunately I couldn't figure out how to begin; I fruitlessly clicked/pressed left & right at the black screen for 5 minutes. This might just be my problem since it seems like everyone else is enjoying the game, but perhaps a hint in the comments section could help me out?
Thanks for the hint, came back and played it :) Agree with others, very cool sensory experience. I really like that you didn't go for a traditional take on the theme and went for something quite different. I think it could be slightly stronger visually - the drop shadows on the moons & the font at the end could match the rest of the minimalist style better - but overall, it's well done.
Even as simple as the bosses are, it's awesome that each one is designed to be treated differently. Great spin on a simple platformer. I found myself wishing that there were more bosses, and it's an utter tragedy that you folks didn't get to finish the game because of something as simple as lost power. Great entry nonetheless!
The first moment when the camera zooms out and the calm music begins is excellent, as is the moment when you pick up the first wheel. Unfortunately I think it's a bit hampered by lack of polish; a few sound effects, for example, would have gone a long way in adding more grin-inducing moments. I really enjoyed the synthwave style. Great job!
I think there's a lot of potential in the idea! Having to grab parts before they're gone introduces a really cool dynamic where you want to find the best parts, but also want to start racing before anyone else does. I can tell you put a lot of work into the actual car building - all the parts mix together to form interesting shapes.
Unfortunately, the game controls a little harshly. In the worker phase, I expected to use normal third-person controls, but instead it ended up being tank controls. Then, in the car phase, I found it extremely difficult not to fall off the track, and when I did end up falling off, I couldn't figure out how to get back on the track.
Despite these difficulties and some lack of polish, I think you've got a cool idea here!
I like that the keys cycle through your controls, making it predictable which control is going to switch next. The left-right looping structure of the levels adds _just enough_ challenge to the already-hectic nature of the control switching that the game ends up challenging but still feels doable.
I do wish, however, that the game told me how much time was left until I lost a life. Also, once, the game switched the level on me mid-jump and I ended up stuck in the wall. Just a couple of small blemishes in an otherwise very solid entry.
@balance686 - there's a download at the bottom of the itch page :D
I really liked your incorporation of story elements into an otherwise normal puzzle game. Not a lot of Ludum games try to go for a narrative.
The puzzle aspects were a bit finnicky to figure out, but ultimately completable. However, I completed all the puzzles by running into a block using my lower half to slide the top block off onto a button. I'm really not sure if this was intentional; it seems like your screenshots show you throwing the block, rather than sliding it off.
Despite the lack of polish in some areas, I think this is a much more cohesive experience than a lot of the other entries I've played. Nice work!
I like the concept of the levels being themed after the alphabet, which is a use of the theme that most people wouldn't think of. I wish that getting a game over started you back at the level you were at, since the game simply takes a while to play. The moving and shooting feels good!
I definitely got the sense of being a small thing in a large world! I think getting used to traversing with the jetpack was a little finnicky but pretty cool. That being said, it took me a long time to find the jetpack; I ended up walking over to the bench and trying to clip through the bottom first, before I realized I was missing something.
Unfortunately, I was not able to see the ending, though I feel like I collected all the items. Look forward to seeing where it goes next!
I really like the upgrades! Each level-up feels weighty. However, I wish that I could save up an upgrade for later, instead of it appearing during battle, especially because space (jump) seems to also select an upgrade.
As others have mentioned, not being able to turn limits your engagement options in an unpleasant way. In addition, I wish that enemies would flinch or react somehow to being hit; sometimes, it's hard to tell if you've made contact with an enemy.
I love that you can deflect bullets with your shuriken, it's a nice touch and makes you feel like a ninja :D
I like the game concept! The areas feel interesting and are generally designed well around your limited movement set.
Unfortunately, I think the game is hampered by a couple of problems. The character's hitbox feels larger than the actual character sprite; I found myself dying a lot when I felt like I shouldn't. In addition, the areas at the start are quite difficult, making it a chore to traverse back to where I was.
I found the art very charming, especially the character sprite. Nice entry!
Quite impressive for a first unity game! I liked all the entities that you put in; their sprites, combined with their movement patterns, made them quite lively. I found the movement to be quite loose; it seemed like I could only change directions when on the ground, but I wasn't sure whether this was purposeful or not. Nice entry!