Dog's Best Friend by MattWoelk 2020-04-25T04:05:21Z
What a heartwarming take on the theme! Great concept and tidy execution.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → Chris Hay
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 49 | Unstable | 👥 | The Markus Polo Hostage Situation | jam | 196 | 3.95 | 3.60 | 3.23 | 3.50 | 4.17 | 4.04 | 3.71 | 3.97 |
| 2021 | 48 | Deeper and deeper | 👥 | Descent of Anubis | jam | 1166 | 3.37 | 3.09 | 3.13 | 3.18 | 4.00 | 3.95 | 2.75 | 3.77 |
| 2020 | 47 | Stuck in a loop | 👥 | M4LL0's Journey | jam | 1290 | 3.14 | 2.60 | 2.81 | 3.93 | 3.70 | 3.64 | 2.90 | 3.08 |
| 2020 | 46 | Keep it alive | 👥 | FurBall | jam | 1927 | 3.18 | 3.10 | 3.04 | 3.50 | 3.71 | 3.22 | 3.54 | 3.35 |
What a heartwarming take on the theme! Great concept and tidy execution.
I think I just couldn't get the good ending! Now I want to try making sourdough starter IRL. This was actually kind of educational. The only thing I would change is a different colour scheme between text and background so it's easier on the eyes to read. Overall great job and creative take on the theme!
Strong art and music and overall "story"! I wasn't sure what the arrow colours meant (where does blue fit in the good to bad scale?) or what the contraption at the bottom was about, maybe adding some temporary pop up text or crowd cheers or boos or something would clarify. I wanted to get the right colours and hear more of the music but it seemed pretty tricky. I liked the band characters, very creative!
I enjoyed the atmosphere and message. The respawns/messages were too annoyingly slow, wouldn't been nice if they could be skipped, maybe after a certain point (or maybe that could be an ability that gets added part way?). I thought the game was broken at the beginning, but then felt smart when I figured it out lol. Overall great job! Edit: Should you omit "Audio" as a category? It sounded great but based on the credits sounds like it wasn't original/ made for the jam game.
It's really magical how I played along and felt like I was being so musical. I love the story, reminds me of The Legend of Zelda Majora's Mask for the little stories when you listen to someone reflect on their life and find peace. It's emotional but still really uplifting (literally, haha!). I appreciated how genders were left ambiguous, I think that's great so the game feels welcoming and fitting for anyone. Overall a lovely experience, congrats! Edit: Forgot to mention reminds me of Wandersong too, with the colourful music making (great!)
Great game, plays well! Very appealing aesthetic. Addicting to get a better score on that scoreboard. Pretty amazing for a game jam.
Kind of a dark dry humor in this, the lack of clarity about how and what to do was meant to be part of the fun I think. I don't drink coffee and have never worked in a place like that so I had no clue - sorry to the always displeased customers! =P
Really fun game concept, and good execution! Love how the music actually goes around to a lot of different instruments, including harpsichord, that's pretty impressive instead of one simple little loop. Had a chuckle about how this fit the theme. Great work!
I liked the scribbles for when the planets explode! It's pretty satisfying to fling the rocks. I found the planets' gravity pulls threw me off (there's the challenge). Thought it was a pretty creative loop concept too, and the inset corner map for an overview was a nice touch, very useful. Great job
Great aesthetic overall, and a unique idea for the theme. I like the choice to show people as shadows. Having a tutorial at the beginning is always a good choice! The music was good and speeding it up occasionally worked well. It's pretty violent & gory to me personally but overall a very well done game, especially for a jam!
I like the character and atmosphere. I wasn't able to get the code for door E though, in downloaded Windows or in browser, seems to be a bug. Too bad since it looked like there were more fun puzzles to come!
Love that you picked a simple palette - the game looks beautiful and unified. Being able to run increases the fun and the cape flying looks great. Glad there's a little something special at the end. Took me a while to get used to the controls, I think W for jump would be more intuitive (maybe something to add later). I liked how you worked with the stuck in a loop concept. Overall enjoyed the game, thanks!
Thanks for the comments, you've all got M4LL0 blushing! @johnsensei For your specific question: those are speed boosts! But the fact that you weren't sure means maybe that could have been clearer or better implemented. Adding tips may have been a nice touch, for now it's just basic memory while trying not to get too distracted by other things. Thanks for the feedback.
Thanks very much for the positive feedback and criticisms, and thanks for playing!
Creative take on the stuck in a loop idea. The gameplay was a bit too simple I think, and kind of slow. At first I thought I was bread, then a Nutty Putty character (like, the kids clay toy thing), then I figured out I was some kind of seed. So bonus points for good humor!
Thanks for making a post-jam version with up-arrow jump! Way easier to play with right hand on the arrows and left just to shoot, I found. It's really a fun addicting puzzle, so far I got about five levels in with the memory aspect but then gave up (it's a good challenge though). Yeah, the music and graphics are great, and the animations. Thought you used the "stuck in a loop" idea pretty cleverly too. Amazing job for a compo submission!
The cello (?) was a unique choice and added a special flavor, but was a bit plain. I enjoyed the (hand drawn?) art. The controls seemed a bit weird for what I thought would be a grippy, agile reptoid. I appreciated the dash to move a little faster. The html version had part of the dialogue cut off on the left, maybe some kind of window size issue. Overall I think you got the deep, dismal mood down pretty good.
I was DETERMINED to get the full pizza to Mr Natas. Finally I did it, but having a respawn at the third point would have been nice =) Great job getting this all together for a jam, it was all pretty cohesive and fun! The animations especially stood out to me as well done.
The game's best assets - Mood and Audio appear to have been opted out of for judging categories when the game was submitted?! It's really magical how the piano bubbles seem to line up with the chords perfectly. Well done overall, serving us a sad but beautiful little experience =)
It's really neat you made a DS game. Your instructions were clear and appreciated, for how to set up the emulator and load the game. As others (and you) mentioned, too bad there wasn't time to add more fish species, and the timer was a bit too generous - probably you'll edit those things if you make a post-LD version. Great job on the music and graphics!
This is really cute and fun, and well executed. The art and running animations are great. I'm glad the mini games are simple, since part of the challenge is getting there one time and remembering how it works! Is the music just an arrangement of Rule Brittania (public domain)? Very fitting.
This was a fun game. I enjoyed the wacky variety of characters and guns. Took me a minute to realize I was collecting cheese, not gold, I think! Definitely a little tricky to manage the changing weapons, but that's the challenge, and it's a neat idea given the theme.
Sorry your initial idea didn't work out, but good job putting something together in very limited time. The chill music fits well with the feather, I think! I found the gameplay too difficult though. Maybe you could start with just the feather and blower and no red things, for the player to get used to it - the challenge of keeping the feather on the screen is enough. Then gradually add more red things to avoid.
This is kind of how it feels to back up a truck with a trailer - you need to go in the opposite direction a bit first. I loved that the music lined up with the galloping! Double points for the "unstable" theme on this one.
I'm not much for puzzles, but it was mostly easy enough... then I really struggled with "There and Back Again". But everyone is different. Maybe post-jam you can add something that lets you know how far along you are. The music and sound effects were great, but like others commented I also found the implementation didn't totally work with so many fast switches. Nice work on the pixel art, especially the perspective on the surrounding frame. Good creativity on having a variety of levels to make use of the mechanic. And a neat concept to fit the "unstable" theme. Overall well done.
The best game I've played so far from this jam. What a creative idea! It's tricky but you gave us a lot of hearts so it helps to compensate. Cool to have a leader board. And I liked the fine details, like how the text shifts and goes kind of rainbow when you get a good word.
Wow, this game rocks! It's really kind of three games in one. Very fun and funny! And I thought the music, though simplistic, was fun and fit the game and moods really well.
Very addicting, very challenging. I think my highest score was 7 when I got lucky near the start, and I never did nearly as well later. I especially enjoyed the pentatonic music and inclusion of a cat instead of just being a boring spaceship! Felt very fitting for the unstable theme.
This is a neat entry, nice to get a break from platformers. The poem snippets add a level of class, and the music selections were great fits. Trying to think what could be improved... sometimes I wasn't sure who was talking (me, the person at the door, or the bartender), so maybe that could be made a little clearer somehow (different colour or font for the text?). I kind of just kept looping, wandering, until I found my way to the end, but the end was satisfying. Maybe you could add a final image to the ending, so it's a little more rewarding or enlightening to the story.
Thanks for all your comments so far - really nice to hear others have played the game and to get some feedback =) I agree it is fairly simple and linear - something realized in retrospect / not overcome in the limited time frame. May have over-compensated with the hand-holding, since text adventures can be challenging to general players not familiar with the genre (in non-choice-based sections).
I finished the game! The floaty ship lips seemed like a combo of Navi from LoZ and Hal from 2001 A Space Odyssey. Neat concept, and overall did feel very "unstable" for the theme! The music and sound effects were a highlight for me.
Great work! Seems like a simple idea with a twist and executed very well. Definitely "unstable". Actually after playing a bunch it felt like my screen was turning back and forth!
It seemed the best strategy was to try and keep things balanced - once I got a corner too heavy it kept flipping back and forth and I was done for. At first I couldn't make sense of the three dots in the top left - then I realized I was reading it backward.
Always cool when games use a smaller play space and the rest for general aesthetic - very cool! I especially liked the music & sound effects. Overall a solid game.
I really loved this, thanks for the relaxing take on this theme. My only wish was to get to keep the pixel photographs at the end! My best photo subject was a black bear that went running by.