Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → cincodenada
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | 41 | Combine 2 Incompatible Genres | Frogs vs. Cats | compo | 643 | 2.75 | 2.60 | 2.78 | 3.32 | 3.36 | 2.24 | 2.93 | 2.75 |
Great on-theme game! It was hard to aim cause I couldn't seem to move the camera without swinging my club, and it got easier once I realized I could dodge the zombies instead of trying to grenade them. I did manage to hit one though!
Love seeing some mobile-compatible games! This is a quick fun game, and I love pickles as the currency for upgrades. Well done!
Wow, this game is really impressive! I loved it, I of course jumped right in on a large map and couldn't stop until I got it cleaned up. I was a little sad when there was no celebration when I finally made got those last few squares seeded :smile: The slidey puzzles are different from the kind I've seen before, and were a neat twist. They really made me carefully consider placement, especially on the bigger ones, because they slowed things down, which is a nice challenge.
Art is top-notch, music is well-selected, and I love the positive theme of cleaning up the environment, in a very engaging way. This was relaxing and a little addicting. The constraints weren't resources prety quickly, but just time and swooping around managing everything, deconstructing and reconstructing things as they finished their jobs. I also would have appreciated rotation for the recycling centers especially, but it wasn't a huge drawback.
Very polished, good theme, great art. This is probably my favorite game so far, I think this with some fleshing out it could be a really solid game out there!
The visuals are delightful! So clean and lovely, and what a cute little koala. As someone who has played a *lot* of Guitar Hero/Rock Band/Frets on Fire, I agree that the rhythm wasn't terribly connected to the music, but the music and guitar were nice and went with the theme.
Ha, music is great, and the "Options" button cracked me up! Love the super short rounds, makes it very bite-size.
Okay, so I love this game! Probably not surprising since I'm a developer and all and count TIS-100 among my favorites, but I think it's very well done!
The graphics and audio are really great, their little faces, the explosions, delightful. The intro is excellent, exactly the amount of hand-holding needed, with good pointers and examples and such. The level of polish on this game is really impressive. And the mechanic is great - I know my trees well, and this got my brain thinking in a different way (okay, *everything* after this has to be greater...) that was really neat.
My first run I did with something like 20 mistakes in 22:59, the second run was 6 mistakes in 10:49, yay! And all but one mistake was in the slider bits (in the level with the two blocks up high, after the stars, I forgot to avoid them the first time, oops!)
Which brings me to the slider bits: I do like them, and I agree with @atmospherium that it is close to being a good mechanic. I think a couple things could improve the experience there. A few ideas: - It's annoying to have to re-solve the first part of the puzzle just cause you misjudged the sliders - it would be nice if those two bits were separate for at least the slider levels - a retry loads the blocks that you started with. - The continuous slider makes it harder to guess - I think with the existing game you might be able to just swap in a discrete slider with five evenly-distributed positions and have things still solvable. That would take some of the guessing out - there are only so many values to try, and makes it easier to visualize. - As others have said, it's unclear when the slider is gonna apply to which block - some indication there would be helpful - Some sort of grid/ghost block mechanic would be useful for the whole game (I had a hard time visualizing where they would go sometimes), but the sliders add an extra complication because the grid isn't fixed any more. Maybe show a ghost block pair for the next block to come that changes as you slide? - Perhaps for sliders, have it be more turn-based - set the slider, release the block, set the slider...maybe combine or not with the ghost blocks? I'm not sure on this one, because part of the challenge is the timing bits.
Like I said, I do like it - it adds (almost literally) another dimension to the game, and is a good addition to shake things up a bit once you get comfortable with the regular mechanics. I think just not having to re-solve the first bit each time would go a long way towards making it more fun, and a discrete slider would make it less guess-y.
I'd also second it being a great mobile game, albeit as you mentioned pretty short. Might be a great candidate for [Google Play Instant](https://developer.android.com/topic/instant-apps/) - I'm not sure if Unity supports that, but seems great for quick games like this. No install needed, while still giving a native experience.
One bug I noticed that's *not* recoverable: if you grab a block right after hitting the reset button (before the blocks fully load), it'll only load a few blocks, and those you can then just grab and position anywhere...and then after hiting play, it loads the rest of the blocks but then you can't interact with anything any more, or reset.
I made a video of the bug, which was too large to upload as a gif here, so I put it [on Giphy](https://gph.is/2HvjMlu).
Like the other mentioned, kind of a monkeying-around bug that most people probably won't hit, but...I'm good at breaking things! Oh, and one other minor thing: hitting Esc to get back to the menu dumps you right into the first level, but if you beat the game (or restart it) it re-runs the tutorial - probably not a huge issue as it's not like it's a huge replay-value type game.
Oh, and I did find the secret Dead Blocks game! Loved the alternate ending copy. Thanks for a delightful little game, definitely one that stands out for me.
Ha, took a second to figure out what was going on, I anticipated switching back and forth...both at once is challenging and awesome! Also loved the spirits transporting between dimensions. Very clever, well-implemented, and difficult. I loved the "WIN WIN WIN WIN" flurry when I finally accomplished it :)
Ha, I definitely feel the running out of time vibe! I like the Simon Says + Street Fighter dynamic, plus some friendship thrown in there.
Haha oh my goodness that panicked dino running is cracking me up! Gosh I love it so much. A+ animations! I also love the cheery music and the time-crunch of the world falling around you!
Love the style, the graphics are amazing! Reminds me of Jamestown, one of my favorites :) Great choices on the audio and music, it fits in really well with the theme and ambiance. Gameplay was pretty straightforward, I liked that the bombing did damage but also took you away from things and only went in a straight line, made it more challenging.
It took me a second to figure out that the radar didn't update until you were in range - I lost some cities down south while camping one of the enemy spawn points! Overall, love it :smile:
This was neat, and tightly implemented! I sometimes wished I could just fast-forward through my turn because I was waiting for things to align correctly, but otherwise enjoyed it - I think my favorite mechanic was jumping towards an slime right at the end of the turn, so that you ended mid-air and by the time the next turn started the slime was out of the way. Saved my bacon towards the end! And I did beat it, which was challenging but doable, yay!
Also, the first time a slime jumped at me I was so surprised I yelped! Sneaky little devils!
This is a truly absurd complement, implemented wonderfully, I love it. In a field of all kinds of flappy bird variants, this one stands out as inpsired and clever, and it's very polished - the graphics, controls, and music are spot-on. The explodey bits are a great balance element too, to give a fighting chance. Very impressive!
Definitely a lot of potential here! I have sympathy for the not having time to finish everything :) Love all the animals and the graphic style!
The music and sounds were great! And what a fun idea, very challenging, I did a lot of jumping failed blocks off the edge. I just love the little blocks wandering around, it's very endearing.
Ha, this was great! The typing speed makes it a challenge, the levels are nice and puzzley - it took me a bit to figure them out. The music and graphics are spot on. Fun to see an opposite take on the text-advenutre platformer than I did! I got 4970 ater discovering the LOAD/SAVE finally - makes it much less frustrating. The end animation is so cute, this is definitely one of my favorite jam games so far! I'm impressed with how polished it is in such a short time, the puzzles are really great!
Working great on my Linux machine over here, thanks! Love the art style, clever little execution. I kinda wish the blood outside the lines didn't fade out, or maybe faded a little bit and stuck around - feels like I'm cheating otherwise.
But I guess it is a magic coloring book, like those "can't color outside the lines" books they have these days.
Having gone with a text adventure mashup myself, I've been hunting for others, and this is definitely a favorite! Very well done, the tutorial was top-notch, and the radio beep-bop noises are perfect! Count me in as wanting a VR version, it'd be ridiculous and delightful to play this in my Vive. This may be my impetus to try out one of those VR adapting programs, even.
Game itself was very smooth, and the controls were surprisingly usable while staying true to the text adventure theme! It became very natural very quickly. A small issue I noticed: although the plane stops moving in the 3D world when paused, the distance and fuel keep ticking down in the background - I noticed because I had it paused to type this review, and suddenly heard my plane sputter and die! :laughing:
Very nicely done, a solid entry. Definitely going in my favorites file :)
Edit: Found another bug - if you're out of fuel you can't use up/down, which makes sense, but you *can* use level - meaning my plane is currently at 9700 feet and holding with no fuel :sunglasses:
I think the colors are fine as-is, and I like sticking to red/black.
Once I figured out the controls, this was a neat little game - the letters are a nice mechanic, and it's definitely quite hard! I think some feedback about how close I am to getting "caught" would help make things less mysterious. I expected to jump "over" the red checkers when I picked them up, like in actual checkers - but that would have made picking up double checkers more complicating. You could make it so those are unpassable, but it's challenging enough already, so maybe not :stuck_out_tongue:
I felt a little bit frustrated by the fact that the jump speed was limited - I hit the jump button a lot faster than the checker could jump. That's actually a thing people have found annoying in the game I made too, so thanks for giving me a taste of my own medicine :laughing:
Btw, since it looks like this is your first jam: the more games from other people you rate and comment on, the higher up your game will show in the lists, and the more rankings you will get. You're not too far from the 20 threshold, so you might want to rate a few more games!
This game is hard but it's fun, and it's a great take on the theme! I think my favorite detail was that your lives are tuition dollars...too real!
And I actually kind of like how you have to read the question while trying to not pick up the letters, it's an extra challenge. And after a few tries you get to know the questions, so you can figure out pretty quick which one it was. My highest score so far is 160.
I love this! Simple, easy enough to get started with, but to keep going with the waves you have to figure out all the moves - the sneaky backstab, the low sweep, the blocking. The sounds are simple and perfect.
This would make a great mobile game - I tried playing it on my phone, got a bunch of warnings and it initially loaded, but none of the buttons seemed to work.
The cats were supposed to damage, but I didn't get around to that, so they're just...intimidating? :wink: I'll be working on it post-dare, to flesh out the later areas. And X is for hopping vertically, Z is to inspect/enter. You should be able to finish the game, although it's too easy, I forgot to make the grate need a key. Lessons learned for next time on planning and priorities :stuck_out_tongue:
Thanks for the feedback - I'll make it more obvious that the joke door is special, that's a good tip! And I added a hint to the description above. The goal is, as tradition would have it, to find and open a ches...but it's locked, of course!
@antti-haavikko Thanks for the detailed review! I appreciate you taking the time to try it out and write this up :smiley:
After playing a bit more with your comments in mind, I agree with you on the controls - there's no need for a separate forward hop and up-one-block hop, it could just automatically hop up the block when you run into them. It's definitely on my list!
The through-platforms thing is a callback to the old games where that was prevalent (the Keen games were a big influence on me!), but it's not as prevalent these days. I think I'll add a little intro screen demonstrating the moves/controls to make that clear.
Definitely could use more sounds! I actually disabled the collision sound in my latest version, cause it was far too prevalent. It should be just to indicate you've hit the edge of the world, basically (which it doesn't even do now, so :shrug_tone1: )
The repeating text is also high on my list - I just need to keep track of which texts I've shown already and not duplicate them. The text is intended to be "part of the sky", but your screenshot is a bad combination of that and another bug, where you spawn off-screen, it renders the text at the edge, and then it scrolls to you, which scrolls the text away.
I wanted to keep the items in the tradition of the old text adventures, where you pretty much just got a mention of a thing (stream, weeds, etc) existing and had to examine them. The weeds are a stand-in, and I might add an NPC so that if you're stumped you can ask and they can give you some clues. I *don't* intend for it to be the every-pixel frustration of the point-and-clicks!
I've linked an updated post-compo version that addresses some things, and I'll keep updating that link as I go, you've given me some great todo items!
@cowa @TomekS @croewens Glad the artwork won you over...the dorky frog turned out better than I had hoped, I'm not a very artsy person, and it makes me smile watching him flop around :)
@Zinkler Glad you persisted, and that you noticed the details! I tried to include some silly jokes.
This was great! I really love how the modification of making it card-based totally turns the original game on its head. Match-3 games are typically about idly/frantically trying swaps all over the place until something works, but the cards and limitations here make it very deliberate. I especially like how the "active block" part adds a moving-around-the-board component.
The sounds were a little "sharp" sometimes (bleeps and bloops), but the animations and graphics are great. Overall I really liked what you did with this game - a very good execution of the jam theme, which I love seeing. And the play was super solid - didn't notice any quirks or bugs in playing through it!
And I'm glad to see a native Android game show up, too! Good work :thumbsup:
I loved getting the ones that got through as paintings at the end, that's a fun little element. I made it to wave 11, almost made it!