chaotikza

The Last Wisp by Mordokay 2017-08-02T19:08:38Z

Wow - really nice entry!! Reminded me an awful lot of http://store.steampowered.com/app/349100/Notrium/...

I was very flustered the first time it started to turn dark and then about the 2nd try started realising that the light level is tied to my health / power - having just the one resource was quite an interesting choice.

I found it quite easy to survive for 3 minutes or more - mostly by running away - didn't use the items much, they were a bit too clunky to activate while running away and the short durations made them not feel worth the effort... Likewise with the light particles from killed enemies - it wasn't worth running into the mobs of ranged enemies to fetch the particles, nor was it clear if killing and harvesting was a net gain of energy.

The biggest issue I have is that the game is all tension all the time... some form of pacing would've been nice, like escalating waves with breaks in between or perhaps some higher level objectives like kill all the monsters; kill all the monster generators; or have a certain amount of rocks turn glowy.

Really promising entry though - lots more you could do with this one...

Final Flight by chaotikza 2017-08-03T20:45:19Z

Thanks to all for the feedback!

@stefvanschie & @gecuit: Will definitely look at text + voice over - my wife had the same comment. We were planning to ramp up the difficulty gradually over much more time to a greater climax, but ran out of time to add more levels.

@mcjammydodger: Thanks for the mining button idea! Such a good idea and simple to build, but we didn't think of it even though we were flying in circles all the time to test mining...

A Night at Grandpa's by Kingethaniel 2017-08-06T18:21:34Z

This is an amazing little horror game - very well done! Art and sound combined to set the mood perfectly and the controls were great!

I just lost the last half-hour of my life trying over and over to get a better ending to no avail... is there one or am I mistaken that the key room is the key? If it is, maybe that room is a little too hard - feels like a need another second of battery power to make it possible...

Orcs in Space by atridas 2017-08-06T19:22:53Z

Great job!

The micro-management was a bit rough, but you did capture that old-style RTS feel perfectly! As others said the big wave attacks were perhaps a bit heavy - I couldn't summon the patience to finish it after dying at 10 minutes for the 3rd time...

Gave you 1 / 5 for humour - just for having a game called __Orcs In Space__ that doesn't seem to contain any orcs...

Night Light by arch-a-type 2017-08-07T20:49:47Z

The two of you take the award for the toughest review I've had to write yet this jam! :sweat_smile:

My cousin @Cyberwiz told me to play this as one of the best entries he's played so far, so I went in with my expectations pretty high... I only have about 1 hour a night to review games at the moment, so I went straight to the _"Normal"_ difficulty setting...

Let's start with the __good__: - The art is great! Emma is super cute; the dungeon, darkness and monsters are all nice and scary. - The music is a good fit and the effect of fading it in as the light runs out was brilliant at setting the mood and creating tension. - I liked the story, it kinda reminds me of a Hayao Miyazaki movie, in the sense that it takes you back to the dimly remembered bits of your childhood when monsters and magic were still real. - The platforming controls were quite tight. I didn't like them at first, but the speed with which I got through the 1st level on _Hard_ on a second play confirmed that they allow for quite skillful control of the character and that I had in fact improved at the game in the hour I was playing. - This is your first / second / 1.5th game jam?! Well done - great job! I've participated in many more jams and my games are still probably quite terrible in comparison... - The pacing and introduction of new mechanics was quite good.

Sounds great so far right? So why the Good, The Bad & The Ugly format? Well I thought there were a few things that were __bad__ from a gameplay perspective: - Those one block platforms! Sometimes under time pressure and in nearly complete darkness... Tight as your controls were, if I have to do 6 tricky jumps in a row I'm bound to screw one up sooner or later. - Failure to let me fail fast... By which I mean that when I do screw up in the above scenario I now have less time and less light making me much less likely to succeed on a 2nd attempt... so now I have to waste my time on a doomed 2nd attempt?! Better to kill me immediately on failure so I can try again with the same chance of success (better chance if I learned anything from the last attempt). - A difficult sequence of darkness clouds to dodge followed by 5 moving one block platforms that each catapult me so high into the air that I can't see the next platform that I need to land on?! :sob:

Which brings me to the __ugly__: - There's a save point just after the the moving one block platforms of doom, but I somehow missed it on my first 2 successful attempts at crossing the moving catapult platforms of doom area... So I probably spent about 20 minutes trying to get through a 3rd time, because I had started on what looked like an interesting end-game puzzle, but failed to finish it the first 2 times.

Sorry if this review is a bit negative, but I feel like your game had all the ingredients of greatness, but then difficulty for difficulty's sake dragged it down into mediocrity... your ending was heart warming, but by the time I reached it I was raging too hard to appreciate it. You clearly did a lot right to hook me into playing for more than an hour, but what was intended as difficulty often seemed more like punishment and I think that undermined the story you were trying to tell.

I'm about 2.5 hours into the 1 hour I had to review games tonight and I'm not sure if I've done a good job of articulating the feelings your game awoke in me, so I'm calling it quits now to go sleep - I hope there is at least some constructive criticism that you can take from this review... if not I leave you with a few videos I ran across while trying to understand what I wanted to say (as well as a link to another entry that was thematically similar, but a bit which I found less punishing).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ea6UuRTjkKs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94Y6y1MOoEo

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/a-night-at-grandpas

Project Sunspot by AntaresValdemar 2017-08-02T19:32:39Z

Graphics and audio were both great, setting the mood very well! Respect for trying to do an adventure game on a jam timescale - it's very hard to get the difficulty right for those...

Your game has nailed that 90s adventure game feel, but it's just way too hard without a mechanic to let the player resume after dying... In those 90s puzzle games I could at least save at the hard parts and try again without having to replay the game from the start. Saving or a restore point mechanic would've helped a lot.

I found the 2nd jump extremely difficult - there was no hint whatsoever that holding space longer would make me jump further - it just escalated straight from an easy jump to a hard jump that requires maximum distance and timing an obstacle! A gentler escalation of the difficulty with a bit more hand-holding to teach mechanics would've made the game much more playable.

Thanks for the walk-through - I can see there's much more that I didn't get to before getting frustrated, which is a pity...

Sparkman Adventures by Lamm 2017-08-06T17:56:00Z

Great job for your first jam entry! This is miles better than my first entry...

The music and art worked quite well together even if the art was a bit inconsistent. I assume from the fact that you're not asking to be rated in __Graphics__ and __Audio__ that you were using assets off the internet, in which case the inconsistency is understandable - I only really started creating my own assets since LD37 so I know finding consistent assets online can be very difficult.

Only issue I had with the running out of power theme is that I was never in any danger of running out of power... most enemies could be avoided instead of fighting them.

ULTIMATE PROSELYTISM & MIRACLES SIMULATOR 2017: THE MOVIE THE GAME by Reuh 2017-08-03T20:38:45Z

Very nice! I was having quite a lot of fun spamming random miracles - even though I was uncertain whether I'm gaining more followers than I'm killing! Nice juice!

Crashed out in the 2nd desert level when using a miracle to get to the next one... specific error message was: source/lib/sti/plugins/bump.lua: 149: Layer not found: power2_way

Delivery.boy by gecuit 2017-08-02T19:47:44Z

Good effort! Just a bit too hard - I couldn't finish it... I got stuck on that jump for the very tall wall just before the 3rd tesla coil.

Liked the art.

Didn't like the jump mechanic... something felt off... I got stuck on corners a lot and jump height did not seem consistent, so I sometimes failed what looked like easy jumps and got tesla-coiled. I also often got extra jumps when it seemed I was still in the air, which I'm guessing is a mismatch between your player model and the bounding box - I'm guessing the bottom of box is actually below where the character ends visually? Got around some of that by using a capsule bounding box and having it's bottom slightly inside the character sprite last time we tried to make a platformer (by capsule I mean box with half-circles on the top & bottom end).

Battery was a bit of a brutal timer - might've been nice to have lower or no power consumption while idle and then increased drain when jumping or running.

Monster Girl Chaos: Hollow Apple by FireSlash 2018-08-16T10:45:10Z

I love turn-based strategy games, but I find making them extremely challenging - you've created tonne of TBS game play in a very short time and the story was quite interesting - so well done!

My main criticisms are just that the theme connection is a bit tenuous and that there were a few too many rough edges for my taste: - No explosion animation for the bunker busters. - Unclear how much damage is being done to your characters. - Webs don't seem to do anything. - Friendly characters couldn't path over the crossroad on the 2nd last level. - Sometimes vine pull wouldn't work and it wasn't clear why. - No lasting consequences to losing a character. - Lack of animations were already mentioned by others.

I think half the levels with twice the polish would be better as turn-based strategy games are completely reliant on all those tiny little polish details to sell the action and keep the player informed of what's going on.

CRAMMM: Totally Accurate Studying Simulator by tuism 2018-08-14T08:14:48Z

A very well executed 48 hour prototype!

I beat it on my first try without knowing much about Trumpology - went back to play again and couldn't get past the Trumpology level in 3 tries - so the randomness might need a bit of tuning.

A post-jam version with either progression that skips unknown topics or single-use power-ups like "show me the wrong words" or "cooldown my brain" should make this an awesome little time-waster for mobile. I'm guessing you could churn out hundreds of levels fairly easily just by coming up with word lists?

Don't Fall In Love by chaotikza 2018-08-15T08:05:14Z

Hi @ente thanks for the feedback - glad you liked the idea!

There is indeed no win condition - it's just survive for as long as you can - falling in love was intentionally made an inevitability.

I know of the bug with enemies not doing damage, but haven't figured out exactly why it's happening yet - using the physics system for collision detection in something that's more like a board game was probably the fundamental mistake.

I agree that the respawn in the middle is a bit weird, I wanted to add some cooldown abilities like a flying kick and a roundhouse kick to give the player some mobility and crowd control, but ran out of time to build the necessary UI for it, so I settled on the simpler health mechanic instead. In it's current state the game could've worked for **Death Is Useful** as well.

Don't Fall In Love by chaotikza 2018-08-17T06:22:32Z

@seannewman22 Thanks for the feedback! The health mechanic was definitely a fail it seems - should rather have tried to get the flying kick mechanic in I suspect.

@alex-lutay Sorry about that - I think I screwed up somehow while uploading the new version. I just rebuilt and re-uploaded and the controls are working now.

Don't Fall In Love by chaotikza 2018-08-25T07:33:09Z

@andrey-ugolnik : Are you referring to the browser version of the game? If so you may just need to click inside the game area to give the game focus to grab key inputs.

The Windows version can go down do 1280x720 resolution - if that's not low enough let me know and I'll upload a build that includes 4:3 aspect ratios, which can go all the way down to 640x480.

Rude Bear Resolution by alexrose 2018-08-16T09:52:46Z

Very well done!

The only two problems I experienced were the slight lag when the window resized and that I had no idea what to do to the boss (had to come search on here while Mr Bear stood quietly in the corner of the boss level).

Comfort Zone by radow 2018-08-16T09:24:11Z

Very nicely done! Captured the feeling of anxiety at a party perfectly.

Only issues I had were that I couldn't figure out the surprise and that letting the cat out of the house was broken (got an achievement, but the cat didn't leave and the dialog didn't go away unless I chose the other option).

The Sand Will Bury Me by anacat 2018-08-16T12:07:00Z

Very atmospheric game! The art, music and sound of the hourglass sliding all worked together perfectly!

A way to see what SPACEBAR would do to the level would've been nice - that would make it a bit more puzzly and less trial-and-error.

Space Farts by iBalls 2018-08-16T11:32:38Z

Loved the idea! Got frustrated with the execution very fast... It took a lot of patience retrying to finish the game.

Graphics are reasonably good and the fart rocket is fairly satisfying from a control point of view (if a bit overpowered as someone else noted).

I really thought the first box should be pushed onto the alien's head so I could get to the bright-red valve thing against the wall... imagine my surprise when I do what seemed like the obvious thing and get a game over?! Maybe consider using the bright colours for the intractable elements next time and rather have background elements be in the background.

Once I figured out the boxes and buttons my next pain point was just running out of farts repeatedly leading to a game over - I understand that you did it, because likely the player was now in a situation now where they couldn't finish, but sometimes I was just going to fetch more food and would've been fine, so it felt a bit punishing... Having to manually skip the tutorial each time didn't help.

Save points or a more forgiving fart mechanic could maybe help with this. Maybe a continuous fart bar that runs out the longer you press it, that charges up to a minimum point automatically (for small jumps), but that needs food to be fully charged.

Ball of Duty: Special Drops by LandoSystems 2019-10-14T20:37:27Z

Excellent use of the theme! Perfectly executed! There is really nothing to criticize... :two_hearts:

Fool's Gold by chaotikza 2019-10-12T20:41:00Z

@mrerdalural Thank you for playing and your kind words! I think that's some of the nicest feedback I've ever received for a game I've worked on.

@drgrognak I am strongly considering working on a post-compo version - I especially would like to add pathfinding as I had originally planned, so that the chests will chase you. Also Cadence of Hyrule looks interesting!

@chocolat-endive Thanks for the bug report - I'll look into it.

@phoenix-fireflower Thanks! :smile: Ja, ons praat Afrikaans.

Fool's Gold by chaotikza 2019-10-14T18:11:47Z

Thanks @ashashza! Glad you liked it - I was quite proud of the cloak animation, so I actually tweaked the costs a bit in the bugfix patch to make it a natural first buy, because I suspect most people just went for the sword and skipped it.

Fool's Gold by chaotikza 2019-10-14T22:09:01Z

Thanks @cg-fred! We had a few more ideas for monsters and traps, but had to cut them because we both had to work on the Monday... but I might do a post-jam version if I don't get sucked into GitHub GameOff too badly.

@hyperscope Thank you, that's useful feedback. I think it should be possible to add a tween to get a smoother follow.

Fool's Gold by chaotikza 2019-10-23T07:19:58Z

@colin-stone I was working on a post-competition version the last few nights - mainly adding path-finding... turns out there's a bug in the enemy movement code that makes them consider the player's position not an open square, so they would never have moved into you! :face_palm: The version I'm testing now is considerably harder...

World Not Found by TheGamer1123211 2019-10-12T20:30:14Z

A very good effort! I was stuck on the power wires for the longest time... a hint that I should select the next colour would've been nice.

Felt a bit sad at the end that I couldn't actually build a world, but enjoyed the experience of figuring that out.

Some sound and music could really have elevated the mood in this game to the next level (it was quite good even without any).

Love Letter by MoonAgent 2019-10-14T22:01:25Z

Very nicely put together!

Too hard for me though - I raged out at level 6... The killer tiles could definitely be a bit more forgiving, surely the edges shouldn't be deadly?

The music annoyed me at first, but then it grew on me... :leaves:

...and to Nothingness Return by philomory 2019-10-12T18:17:08Z

Hey, wanted to try this - looks very good from a thematic point of view, but unfortunately the game crashes on start for me on Windows.

See the stacktrace below:

cmd_fQVsWFhB08.png

...and to Nothingness Return by philomory 2019-10-14T17:51:34Z

Thanks @philomory - it works now!

Great little puzzle game! Loved the poem at the start and played all the way to level 16 (which seems to me to be unsolvable). Very addictive, I kept trying just one more time...

Very atmospheric and although your character sound is pretty bad, it wasn't so loud that I found it problematic... I did try to adjust the volume pro-actively and crashed it again :see_no_evil: - just shout if you want a stack trace.

Song of Creation by anttiviljami 2019-10-12T21:24:03Z

I love this - this is a piece of art! Well done on graphics, audio and gameplay!

I think making achievements get a bit more in your face would move this more towards being a game, for an example of I what mean: you just sung a murderer into being, hey you can try to get the murder achievement by singing a victim into being... and then once he's done murder you can bring justice by getting rid of the murderer with your Zeus powers.

Antexander The Great by Jedd 2019-10-13T19:43:49Z

"We're the ants... sent by king ANTony! We're coming to help... King Graham!" Sorry! King's Quest V reference...

Antexander - great name!

Really enjoyed the game, although it was a bit tricky - I almost gave up after my first two failed attempts. The somewhat indirect control was interesting. Having the camera move ahead in the direction you're going might've been nice as you can't really disengange in time unless you very carefully move, stop, wait for the camera and then move again.

The music was very nice!

Virus Jones by Bernardex 2019-10-13T20:12:11Z

Managed a score of 750 on my 5th or 6th try.

Is it based on missile command? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nokIGklnBGY

That game seems to have had many ideas for dealing with the excessive that you have discarded, for example only having one base that can fire, so effectively only one life... That combined with using one quarter of the vertical space on the screen for the units you're defending and fast moving enemies makes for requiring very quick reaction times!

Still, this may have some potential - it's very nicely polished! Good entry.

Don't see much of a connection to the theme unfortunately...

To The Depths by BatJak03 2019-10-12T21:44:06Z

Liked it overall. I thought there's a lot of potential here - the balancing is just not very jam-friendly.

I was very annoyed when I died for the first time after saving up for $400 worth of upgrades - not doing that again... for an arcade game like this permadeath should probably be an option the player chooses, especially with such a long grind for upgrades.

Good attempt! Keep up the good work.

Scrappy MC Spaceface VS the terrible tentacoolos by PatteDeCanaard 2019-10-14T18:08:09Z

Very cool little shooter! Enjoyable and with a nice twist on the genre.

I kept trying to click the scrap at first (in spite of reading the instructions - maybe I'm tired) - anyway, figured it out eventually... :sweat_smile:

Monolith by Kalucifer 2019-10-12T20:10:31Z

I went through about 4 or 5 puzzles (it was time to awake), then when I restarted I accidentally clicked New Game instead of continue... :sob:

Very pretty and sounds great!

I don't really like the real-time deflect things with your sword gameplay for a puzzle game - plus the tutorial telling me to attack and the attack animation made it feel like this wanted to be a fighting game rather than a puzzle game?

I have no idea how this game ties into the theme?

Forgot to say, the restart to resume seems like an interesting and innovative idea for a mechanic, it's just not terribly clear to the player what's going one - looks like a crash.

P.O.S.E.V.Y - [CROPS] by Banana090 2019-10-12T22:04:00Z

Seems completely broken to me... no ammo, no seeds, no idea how to get either...

P.O.S.E.V.Y - [CROPS] by Banana090 2019-10-13T21:50:41Z

@thevideogamester After you told me to punch some, it still took me 5 minutes to figure out how! A simple hands icon in the empty slots might have made it obvious... :rage:

Will give this a proper test now and update my review. :sweat_smile:

P.O.S.E.V.Y - [CROPS] by Banana090 2019-10-13T22:21:03Z

OK, here goes.... Really love the graphics and animation - good work on that!

No sound? Please remove the audio category on submission in that case.

I got far enough that I think I have a good idea of how things work now:

chrome_gm4kwoulap.png

Most of the problems I see with the game come down to either balance or usability.

On the balance side: - The pistol and SMG seem useless when there is plentiful ammo for the gatling gun. I'm guessing there's a missing upgrade system where you spend coins to buy better weapons? Still, adding some weapon variety might be nice. - Once I had about 4 tower plants it seemed like I didn't really need to help fighting enemies, so the game was very easy.

On the usability side: - Make it obvious that I can punch. Make it the first weapon slot, with an icon. - Gathering stuff from plants is tedious and awkward, because E is right next to WASD - maybe punching plants to make them drop stuff would be a nicer experience. An upgrade that gives that an area-of-effect would be nice too to speed up harvesting later in the game.

As the Videogamester said, this is a very promising entry - I just got very frustrated trying to figure out how to play it.

Stray by NikolaiM 2019-10-12T18:10:58Z

I think this is a the first text-adventure I've ever played while reviewing LD jam entries - well done for trying something different! The basic find and exchange items mechanic that forms the staple of the genre is strangely compelling, making your entry fairly fun, even though very few of the exchanges actually made sense to me. For example: an eel? Why?!

Your game would've been much better if the world exhibited more internal logical consistency and gave some more motivation for doing things... why am I escaping? Why is the man in the warehouse destitute? What is he going to do with the trap? Who was the merchant and why did he like books so much? So many questions - none of them answered...

Also, the theme was start with nothing: I find pants in the first scene... I was convinced I should equip them somehow before I go anywhere, but turns out I must've had some already because my only option was to give them away... :rofl:

Evolution of Civilization by BeaverGames 2019-10-12T19:06:27Z

Now I have trees, carpal tunnel syndrome and 16 more games to review... :sob:

I agree with commenters that said we need an indication of progress - it takes extremely long and clicking is not an inherently fun mechanic. Some juice like sound or sparkles would also have made the process a bit more enjoyable - even just a recommendation for good auto-clicker would've gone a long way to improving the experience for those of us who don't play the genre.

Looks interesting but did not finish, already a half-hour spent, need to move on...

Spew by ashashza 2019-10-14T19:10:33Z

Loved it! This is so great - the sound along with people curling up into a foetal position really sells it!

I'm feeling a little bit nauseous after playing it - so good! :joy:

In The Flesh by LandoSystems 2020-05-09T16:35:40Z

Great idea.

Boss fight was cool!

Only complaint: as some people already, noted the jump felt a bit off, but the punch was great and very satisfying.

Grove Guardian by chaotikza 2020-05-09T15:58:02Z

Hey everyone, thanks for the great feedback!

@samboyer276 Good idea, I've added a hints section to the description above, maybe that will help people figure out what to do.

Farm Life by jomoho 2020-05-09T16:23:55Z

Great job!

I couldn't keep up with the poo in the compo version, but in the jam version the addition of the wheelbarrow makes it just barely manageable to keep the whole thing going. I also invented poo-soccer as a way of trying to deal with two pieces of poo at once.

Keep the GameBoy alive. (on GameBoy Advance) by Timo Strating 2020-05-09T14:11:16Z

Wow very interesting! I can get to about level 5 or 6, but then stuff happens too fast for me to follow, so didn't get beyond that. Level select rather than playing through the previous level again would've been nice for seeing more of the levels.

Leif Kellenberger's Tazing Challenge by pudding 2020-05-09T14:45:13Z

That was indeed hilarious!

Loved it in spite of everything that's wrong with it in terms of controls. It might also be a bit long at 15 points to win and it's unfair that eliminating the enemy team doesn't give an instant win to the player as well.

Great effort!

Lumina Vitreus by lilkrit 2020-05-11T15:45:10Z

Very bloomy indeed! Agree that the spinning platform was slightly tricky, but it didn't take too long to figure out.

The last moment right at the end where I had to pick up the item and insert it into the reactor vividly reminded me of ALIEN-8 - after seeing your entry I would definitely do loads of bloom if I ever tried to remake that!

[Alien-8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDhSH-GJDqE)

For Ducks' Sake by GaryS 2020-05-09T14:06:09Z

Great work - very nicely polished. Loved the gnomes and the ducks - the gnomes look so happy when they manage to grab a little duckling!

Some more gameplay would've been nice, but nevertheless very good for the tight deadline.

Lightest Dungeon by gagouman 2020-05-09T15:15:16Z

I got 890 in 65 weeks!

Felt a bit grindy and lacking in variety, but nice to see something a bit more strategic or with RPG elements.

Seemed to be more saving the princess than keeping the princess alive - maybe you could use the princess's health to drive the player to risk more dangerous missions, would also be nice if you had a bit more variation than just pass / fail - maybe get the reward but lose a hero or something like that.

Plantsitter by FloYams 2020-05-09T15:38:05Z

Didn't find this peaceful at all - it was hectic from the start with more people demanding me to take more plants when I already struggle to keep one alive!

Perhaps the game's pacing could benefit from being slower paced, maybe even turn-based? Let the player do whatever they want at their own pace and choose when to go to the next day.

Great job on the polish though!

Passing Flame by FallingFlatStudios 2020-05-09T14:21:02Z

Nice little game! Loved the fact that the light radius got reduced as you ran out of flame. Music was very atmospheric.

Felt at times either too easy or too hard (once they are too close to you there's nothing you can do).

Guardian Duty by robotabc773 2020-05-09T15:52:56Z

Great entry - I quite enjoyed that!

Perhaps a bit too easy for those that read about how to get mana back, but I'm not going to complain too much about that - many more games to go play...

Some sound effects would've been great, but other than that, great job!

Lifeline by mlkvr 2020-05-10T10:06:02Z

Cool idea! Nicely captures the late-90s adventure game feel.

Space Jam by ReallyQbert 2020-05-10T09:43:57Z

Much better than my first LD attempt - heck probably thank my first three LD attempts! So great job!

Did find it a little bit too easy: once I stopped dodging and taking potshots to just spam shots at large clusters of enemies I could generally still easily find enough energy to keep myself comfortably alive. Also discovered that colliding with aliens often recharged energy as they still drop energy on death.

Something extra to shoot for like a number of kills or high score would've been nice to motivate players to keep going a bit longer.