Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → chrisp
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Category | Score | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 🥈 | 2008 | 11 | Minimalist | Things on Top of Other Things | compo | Fun | 3.96 |
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Po | Cm | Te | Jo | Co | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2011 | 21 | Escape | Flight of the Teddy Bear | jam | 56 | 2.48 | 1.95 | 2.55 | 2.65 | 2.90 | 1.00 | 1.80 | 1.55 | |||||
| 2011 | 20 | It's Dangerous to Go Alone! Take This! | Solo Adventurers' Hospital | compo | 213 | 2.48 | 2.24 | 3.33 | 2.26 | 1.85 | 2.06 | 2.17 | 2.25 | 4 | ||||
| 2010 | 17 | Islands | Island Repair Man | compo | 73 | 3.08 | 3.12 | 3.96 | 2.60 | 2.65 | 2.00 | 3.11 | ||||||
| 2008 | 11 | Minimalist | Things on Top of Other Things | compo | 7 | 3.89 | 3.96 | 2.93 | 4.19 | 3.29 | 2.81 | 2.54 | 3.64 | 2.65 | 3.00 |
Very pretty! Would have liked some gameplay but I guess one can't have everything. Theme interpretation was good, in that the statement "it's dangerous to go alone" was actually true for once! (You COULD alone, but if you did, it WAS dangerous... unlike many other entries I've seen which have just tacked it on.)
I wrote this without looking at the existing comments (doing this with everything to avoid judging bias), so apologies for the repetition and harping on about things you've already addressed:
Fun little atmospheric game. You had lots of nice graphical touches and particle effects which was nice to see. Good music too.
The shading on the sub could have used a bit of work, but other than that my only real crit is that the penalty for hitting a wall was a bit steep; the enforced delay felt like the game suddenly didn't want to me play. I would have preferred being able to recover almost immediately, and just have a penalty artificially added to my score. That would have allowed to me to just cruise along enjoying the ambience, which was what I liked about this game; not so much competing to get the fastest time.
I aborted my first run because I got in a bit of a rut (kept hitting walls over and over). On my second run I finished in 3:37, and on my third run in 3:35.
After reading the comments: Good to hear. Instadeath and restart would have ruined the experience so I'm really glad you changed it! :)
Interesting idea! The controls definitely need some work, and I think the game could be slowed down. Also I wasn't able to look at the research while the game was paused, though apparently I should have been able to, so I really didn't have time to use that feature at all.
I think making the game entirely controllable with the mouse would help; e.g. click-and-drag to point the weapons. This would allow an arbitrarily high turning speed, but I think that's fine given that the game is about management; the challenge isn't in the slow turning speed, it's in selecting and prioritising actions to perform under time pressure.
Designing a game without any points of reference means it can take longer to figure out the best way to do it, which is obviously problematic for a time-limited compo, but is excellent practice. IMO the best thing to do would have been to skip the extra features (like abilities) for the compo and just really focus on iterating and polishing the core gameplay (aiming management). Hindsight is 20/20 of course!
Anyway, well done on completing it to this point, and good luck with future LDs.
Congrats on finishing!
Crits: Unresponsive scrolling brings the sadness. Also the music didn't really seem to fit, and the theme wasn't used very well.
Some decent platformer action in there though, once I read how to control the screen scrolling, and the graphics are fine. I look forward to seeing what you can do when you're not having to learn new tech. :)
Made me chuckle, and I like the backgrounds. The sprites could be improved though, they look pretty rushed and don't really fit in. The use of the theme was also pretty awkward, as others have mentioned.
The sand-stacking mechanic was a really neat idea, just underdeveloped. I'd like to see what would happen if it was taken further!
Awesome. Very funny setting and narrative, good use of theme, very solid platformer gameplay - most fun game I've played from this LD so far. So much character, even in the AI behaviours - dumb escort lady! Stop being so dumb! Sigh, Heroic Cat to the rescue *again*... :D
Thank you for the instant level restart, which made failure painless!
The music was cringeworthy though. I had to turn it off about halfway through so it didn't drive me mad. Would have been better if there hadn't been any. :(
Was also a pain to get running (needed to download and install .NET 4.0 and XNA, and my first XNA download was corrupted *shakes fist at Microsoft*), but the game more than made up for that and it didn't affect my score. :)
Well done! I just read that this is your first LD. And not your last, I hope, because this was a quality entry!
Hehehe. Nice twist, nice theme subversion, and I had fun dodging zombies for a while. The jokes totally make this. The controls are a little twitchy but it still manages to be fun. Good work.
Neat game! My only real criticism is that some of the coordination required was a bit much (particularly on the "you are f*****" level, which was definitely the low point of the game - thank goodness you added a skip feature, because otherwise that would have been the point of inevitable ragequit). Also the use of theme was pretty cursory. But overall this is very impressive for a 48-hour game, especially considering this is your first LD! Well done!
Great idea to mix Minesweeper with digging/exploration. Haven't seen that before, and it turns out that it works well! It does seem that digging any "1" tile leads to death though, which is unfortunate. I would have liked to see some more use of the actual Minesweeper mechanic - i.e. make it so that digging a tile adjacent to a monster doesn't kill you, but digging the monster does. And have more monsters. You'd then actually have to use Minesweeper logic to get the best score, which would have been neat. I'm not so sure that the ability to kill monsters would have been the right direction, as it would dilute the Minesweeper feel and turn it into more of an action game, which is less unique and IMO less interesting.
Excellent use of audio, graphics were quite decent. Use of theme was not so strong, unfortunately. Also it would have been great if you'd had time for procedural levels - I was kind of expecting them and was a little surprised when there was only one, pre-made level. Still, neat entry, good job!
Neat. Short and to the point. Graphics and audio were nice and solid. Would have been good to see more interesting applications of the temporal mechanic. Also doors would have been appreciated in place of deadly lasers, or at least checkpoints - I died and was forced to repeat the intro sequence more times than I care to admit! :) A solid showing overall.
Oops - I really should document the respawn key, shouldn't I? :) Pure oversight on my part. (It's spacebar when dead, or R at any time.)
Yeah, ran out of time to add audio unfortunately. I also wanted to add tutorial text, and effects to provide better feedback on enemy state. And the AI logic could use some tweaking. Still, I'm happy with what I managed to get done in the extra-constrained time I had available (fitting around work).
Thanks both!