Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → circle
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 50 | Delay the inevitable | Whoa! It's like a space game or something! | compo | 477 | 3.12 | 3.12 | 2.95 | 2.60 | 3.28 | 2.62 | 3.03 | |
| 2021 | 49 | Unstable | The Land Of The Hungry God | jam | 1045 | 3.29 | 3.14 | 3.04 | 2.93 | 3.29 | 2.45 | 3.00 |
I most certainly did feel relaxed while playing!
Overall, I wish there was more to do while waiting for scrap metal. Like maybe if it were a clicker game as well, that way I could be clicking away trying to generate a little resource, but need to still keep my eye out for scraps. The art was good though, and I enjoyed the cows.
There's a lot of really cool ideas here, and they're all working together in surprising harmony. There's just a lot of interesting parts to the mechanics, and it creates a fun experience. It helps that the art is funny and the music is easy to listen to. I was also very surprised at the comprehensive tutorial. I didn't have the time or energy to implement a tutorial in my own game, and is one of the major problems people have had with it. It's very impressive to have so much game done. Super cool folks.
Okay, I love this. I was absolutely losing it while playing this game. What's great is that it's both a joke and a really solid puzzle game. It's so funny. I love this so much. I can't stop laughing about "The Damn horses ate jimmy" and "The horses have seized the means of production"
I love this so much. Directly up my alley.
Very high quality! I found it to be an extremely well polished experience. I really enjoyed my little adventure, the art especially was great. The pixel art lends itself really well to the glitchy theme. I love the atmosphere and the music too. Just really good stuff here.
Very weird, very interesting. The idea is honestly really novel. It felt very immersive which is nice.
One of humanities greatest works. If I could give future generations one thing, it would be this. I don't have any children, but if I did I wouldn't allow them to go to school. They would just spend all day studying this holy internet scripture. There is no greater truth than this one truth.
Apart from that though, good solid game. Had it's ups and downs. Felt a strong Legend of Zelda influence.
I got shocked by my own tesla coil. . . Feels bad.
Art is really good. I love the animations and effects. They're really high quality for the time you had. I'm usually a lot more skeptical about forgoing outlines on pixel art, but you've really made it work. As for the actual gameplay, I always felt like I had a lot to do, which is important. Hack and slash combat is well explored, but when paired with giant tesla coil threatening to kill me it becomes much more high stakes. Overall I really enjoyed this experience.
@marbles Oops. haha. The gameplay is really solid for what it's worth. I should have realized since there was no Graphics Category for the voting. mb.
Once you get used to the controls it's actually not too har-Ah. . . It wants me to go vertical?
I got up there once but died before getting to the checkpoint. Most of my fifty deaths were right there. As for the game itself, I really like it. The gameplay is really solid and the level is designed rather well. The jumping mechanic is simple and introduced to the player very naturally. The checkpoints are a wonderful addition as well, each time I reached one I breathed a sigh of relief. Overall really good game, love the concept.
Everything about this is just really high quality. I remember reading your post the other day while you were still working on this, and thinking "man that's a really good idea", and it was. The game just came out really well. Very good job.
Edit-Also yea it's very difficult.
Do not eat at Violet's house. . .
The art is really pretty. It's really stylistic and I found it extremely appealing. I also found the gameplay to be smooth, and the game's writing was really funny too. The music was subtle, but very nice as well. Overall though, the biggest thing for me in this game is the art. It's one of the prettiest games I've played so far. Just solid stuff.
Horses! Oh god the horses! This was really interesting. I found it to be delightfully weird. Veeeery unstable.
Very fun! I actually felt like I was playing a rhythm game. I wonder if that was intentional or not? The art was amazing as well. I absolutely loved the atmosphere. The color scheme was delightful as well. Like the palett was really good. Concept was fun too, I'm glad I found the horseman's head.
Each day we stray further from God's light.
Edit-I didn't originally say too much, because I thought my original comment was funny, but I have some thoughts on this game. First of all though don_fouts, thanks for checking out my own game. It means a lot to me. Honestly I can't help but feel a little sheepish, Buggy The Bunny is a really polished and wonderfully creepy experience. Anyways, Buggy The Bunny is delightful. When I first started, I really wanted to find some way to get across the first gap without cheating. It's great design that I can't. The game's mechanic is immediately addictive and the atmosphere is really strong. I had a lot of fun messing with the variables. Also, I'm not 100% sure if it was Buggy, but uhh. Did you open a youtube video of dancing skeletons while I was playing? I really hope it was you and not that my computer is cursed now. . .
I hate to see that 19 ratings. Better fix that. Anyways, the game itself is very cool and interesting. I love the decision to go with procedural generation for your game map, it lends itself well to game jams. The art also looks beautiful, I suppose it must have taken a long time to get it looking the way it does? I do wonder about the decision to leave out any story. I think this kind of game would have benefited from one. The mood is really strong with a good decision to leave the color pallet mostly gray. I think a story could fit in well here. As for the theme, very unstable, very nice. Overall fun game, I really enjoyed it.
Innovative doesn't even begin to describe this game. I honestly don't think I'll ever bother to play minecraft again, or any other game for that matter. All I need in my life from here on out is cloudlands. My life from now on could just be cloudlands. That's all I do now. I just play cloudlands forever. Possibly not just the greatest game ever made but one of the greatest pieces of art ever created by the human race.
Each day, another battle against my own nose. Overall really fun game. The design is good, and easy to get the hang of. The art style is delightfully silly, and really lets the player suspend disbelief about having a gun for a nose. I wonder about the decision to make turning left a relatively free action to take. Completing the game was easy once I became patient, there could be some kind of bar that goes down when you turn left to give the game a more dynamic feel. That might be a little outside the scope of a game jam game though, as the game isn't supposed to be too difficult, in that way your game may actually be hitting a sweet spot in challenge. The game itself though is very funny and cute, which is clearly the intention. I, like everyone else, also really love the confused sun. The whole game is just really fun to look at, which in my opinion is it's biggest strength. Absolutely loved it, fun times were had.
Very interesting game. It's an extremely unique take on tetris. The art is good as well, very consistent and very visually appealing. There probably aren't many people who represented the theme as well as you either. Very cool.
This was delightful. I love the theme. Really captures the idea of being unstable. The mood is also quite good here, the graphic go a long way for that, as well as the ever decreasing number of steps I can take. I wonder about the decision to require a button press for each movement. I'm not sure if there's a better alternative for a game like this though, each movement has to be very deliberate. Overall I'd say it was fun and rather novel. I enjoyed it.
Excellent choice for mood. I really felt like I had become an artist trying to make it through the next day. The color pallet goes a long way here to establish this. The theme of unstable was very well captured in this piece, overall I'd say it was a very engaging experience. The experience overall is very good. I wish I could come up with some way to critique it, but all I can come up with is that you could add more polish which isn't really constructive or helpful. Instead I'll just say congratulations on making something high quality.
@lesinvisible I dunno, I actually thought the interface was really good. I think you should be proud of it, super stylistic and pretty as well as very usable at the same time. It's a difficult balance to strike. I was more just saying in general, as something that can always be improved no matter the project. I mean, my project has extremely low polish, almost embarrassingly so. I'm not in any position to criticize another persons ui.
As for whether HTML lends itself well to static interfaces, it depends on how heavily you rely on css or html, which is 100% a personal decision.
But no your interface is not rusty by any means, you easily provide enough feedback to the player. Also thanks for replying to me, I really liked your game. It's always nice to be acknowledged.
WHO DECIDED IT WAS A GOOD IDEA TO LOCK THE BATHROOM DOOR!?!?! WHO WAS IT!?! WHO!?
Anyways, great game. Very funny. Good, solid, gameplay as well. Really enjoyed it.
This is just such a good idea. I love that you force the player to keep clicking or they lose. But there's also a desire to click as little as possible to decrease the size of your hitbox. The mechanics are simple, but really fun.
I love the mood of this game so much. I've known many people who struggled with alcoholism and this was an interesting window.
I really do like the concept. Little puzzle games like this are always interesting. I really sympathize with your technical difficulties. When you're in a rush, little problems start to feel like disasters. Overall interesting concept.
AHHHHHHHHHH I FELL.
Really good, loads of fun. Everything from the gameplay to the art to the music. It was all perfect. I felt so much pain just now when I fell. At first I was relieved, as I thought it was like Getting Over It where I'd keep falling until I caught myself. Then, I felt relief when I just lost a heart. Than I lost another heart. And another. And then I was back at the beginning. Absolutely delightful. Just really fun stuff.
Honestly for a text game, this is pretty cool. I really do quite like the gameplay actually, it's basically just a typing challenge sort of thing.
That being said, I think the game would be a lot better with more story. I can see that the story is intentionally left out as part of the whole idea for the game, but I still feel like there could have been more there. Like, still start with "There's a vampire chasing you", but then transition to a short explanation for why. I wonder if you just didn't have the time though. Making a game for compo is really difficult, so I suppose that probably contributed.
You should have made the ending screen literally the moon!!! Anyways, very fun game. I love the atmosphere it creates. The music and art contribute a lot to really bring me into the world. I had lot of fun with dystopian tetris.
Oh god, the things I have done. I forgot to wash my adapters. Honestly a delightful little game, very cute, in a creepy kind of way.
My cauldron blew up. I think there's a reason my apprenticeship ended early. . .
Cool concept, I like the game loop a lot. It's got a lot of mechanics and they work well together. I also really liked the music, it was easy to listen to and added some mood to the game. I also feel like you've really captured the theme of instability well. Even though it's just a bar going up, I really feel the tension of trying to make my potions reach the quest requirements.
okay so first of all the concept of drunk cowboys shooting at each other is awesome. I love everything about that. Second of all your art is really really pretty. The animations are all super smooth and the game just looks really good. As for the actual gameplay, I thought it was interesting. I think in the future, if you decide to develop this game further, you should seriously consider multiplayer. I could really see this game as a popular game people play with their friends. I can easily imagine a couple people playing this together and talking in cowboy voices going "Ima shoot ya" and "Nahh, yer as lousy a shot as I am" and laughing like crazy. Overall, really enjoyable experience.
Existence is pain.
Your team made a full text based game in just three days. The game is actually really quirky and cute. I liked the ending I got, having a perfectly mowed lawn with puppies frolicking doesn't sound that bad to me. I'm not a mildly evil overlord though, so maybe that has something to do with it.
I really do like the concept a lot though, and the execution of that concept is quite decent as well. The art really brought a lot of life to the already solid writing. Overall very good game.
I feel like I've been taken back in time to old flash games on newground. The unstable theme is strong in this one.
The gameplay is really fun and intuitive. I know which things I should walk towards and which I should not. One thing I really liked, which is small but important, was that the player character properly turned around depending on what direction you moved. You could have just as easily left it as a static image, but that extra bit of polish goes a long way. I also really like that the art style is so consistent. It's got a really strong mood.
I enjoyed the art style a lot. The game is very fun and feels very well put together. I really enjoy the concept as well. I'm also a fan of your take on the theme. I think you captured the idea of being unstable rather well. Very funny and very enjoyable game overall.
Overall just a really interesting game. I love the idea for the mechanic where you collect and place blocks for a true platformer. It reminds me of playing terraria and trying to place the block at just the right time to get somewhere. Tweaking the collisions to feel good with the block placement must have been a nightmare. There's so many different cases to take into account, based on player position relative to everything else.
Just a really solid game.
Step 1: Build military power Step 2: raise taxes to 100% Step 3: Revel in your vast wealth.
Also I'm a hero.
Somehow.
I guess running a militant dictatorship to 1m people does kind of count as stabilizing a country? Fun times.
Anyways, really cool game. I also made a city builder type of thing, but mine isn't nearly as polished. I loved the event system. I wanted to add one in mine as well, but I ended up only being able to add a very basic one. I just didn't have enough time or energy. . .
This is really cool though, the only thing I'd want is more actually which is really good. Harder scenarios, more land to build on, more and more dangerous events. Overall really awesome game.
I wonder if it would ruin the game balance to just let players choose their animals? Like maybe some currency system that's used to obtain animals, and you try and manage it to solve the puzzles? Overall though really cool concept. Super original too, I'm not sure if I've ever seen anything like this before. The arts amazing too, I love the kinda 3d effect you have. Really cool idea, I think a lot could be done with this in the future with a little more time spent.
This is really cool! I love how unstable everything feels. It's really difficult, but I feel like I could master this game given enough time. The graphics as well are really nice. I love the retro look you've captured.
Definitely interesting. My favorite part is probably the art. The style isn't consistent, but it still looks very good and high quality. I also really like the stealth elements, they work quite well here. The whistle is very fun to use which is good. The sound effects are also well used, I know what all the sounds mean and where they're coming from. The jumping could use some work, I feel like it could benefit a lot from some more fine tuning. It would also probably help the platforming a lot if there was another piece of movement tech, maybe something that makes a lot of sound to make it very risky to use. The game in general though was very fun and cool, I really liked it as a whole. The theme is also spot on, I felt very unstable.
So hard!!! Is there a trick to it!? Haha. I really love this though. It looks so polished and well made. The pixel art graphics look beautiful as well. Probably my favorite part.
I also really like how you took the theme of Unstable. I felt very unstable while playing this.
@dob wow wow! Yea your game made my day. haha. I'm still really tired, but honestly it did a lot to uplift me out of that. The voice lines were just so funny. I wasn't expecting it. Thanks for playing all the way through my game. It means a lot to me. I'm sorry your people were devoured. Always sad to hear about.
@don-fouts Oh hey, you're on the team that made Buggy the Bunny! That game was super cool. I left a comment there that I thought was funny, but I didn't really give too much feedback. I'll go edit it and add a bit more, cause I actually had a lot to say about that game.
@chillertyp This is actually a really good suggestion. Maybe if I update this game I'll add in a feature to let the player zoom in or out. It wouldn't even be that hard too, only problem would be optimization which is just time.
@fractale Actually all the locations will generate different resources based on what's around them. Even if you don't have a magic crystal mine for example you can still generate them by placing cabins near the crystals. The same goes for forests, though it is still far more efficient to place lumber mills on all of your forests. That's not the same for food production though as most of log cabins production is locked into the surrounding tiles. This remains true until you unlock farms which have high base food production, though too many farms will cause your population to grow out of control.
@sli Wow wow you actually made it to the 400th year? Thanks for playing so much, it means a lot to me. Also yea, the wizards aren't well balanced. Their numbers don't work. On the subject of roads, I thought about that a lot too. Maybe if I add in a system to paint the roads a certain distance away from a nearby settlement, like five tiles or something? And yea, my scope was definitely wrong. Even cutting half the features I originally came up with, I had to work like crazy the whole weekend to finish. And by finish I mean skip on providing any tutorial or feedback on ui or adding music or sfx. My next Ludum Dare, I think I'll have a better idea of how much I can actually get done in a weekend. Maybe I'll also partner up with an artist, creating art assets is really hard for me and takes a long time.
@emaigualmc2-art Yea, I'm working on a new version currently, I redrew almost all the assets at a higher resolution and put a little more time into them. I'm also working on making it so the player will be able to zoom in and out to see more or less of the world. Here's an example of the first level capital building before and after:
before:
capitalLevel1.png
after:
newcapital.png
@papabirb Thank you so much for the follow on itch, that's so cool. I didn't even know that was a thing that existed that people could do. You mentioned roads, there's actually been a lot of confusion regarding their function and what they are. I'm polishing the game up and adding new content, but I think I'm just gonna remove the roadBuilding from the game. I wasn't 100% sure, but reading your comment here was the last nail in the coffin for them. Also, yea lack of tutorial is unacceptable for a game like this. To be honest, I've never tried making a game in three days before and had no idea how much I could do in that time. I got a lot of content in, but I didn't have hardly any time for polishing. I was still fixing game breaking bugs like two or three hours before the jam ended.
Anyways, to everyone who gave me feedback, thank you so much. It's super helpful and means a lot to me. And, if you go see your own game page and see that I didn't leave feedback for you, it's generally because I couldn't play your game due to my dinosaur computer's graphics card not having the drivers for a lot of modern software. To those people, both of which are the two people mentioned in this comment, I am truly sorry. If there's something else I can do for you, let me know.
@papabirb Haha, when you put it like that it sounds so negative! Ima go check your game out on my phone, I hadn't thought of that. . . Maybe I'm actually really dumb?! Big surprise. Anyways, thanks so much for the help. Deep appreciation.
Hey, so like I can't access your page. Have you set your itch from private to public?
This looks so cool. It's like a mini light show. On one hand I wish it had more bright lights and animation, but I also think that it would fry my computer. You could totally expand something like this in all kinds of directions. It's just really interesting to look at. I wonder what how long it took to tweak the algorithm that makes the orbs circulate like that. It must be pretty complicated right? I dunno, I'm really curious now. I kinda want to go prototype some particle physics. I'm not going to obviously cause my brain is broken from all the caffeine and sugar I've consumed over the past couple of days, but still it's a very inspiring piece of art.
Yea I really feel the same about cutting features in favor of a more polished and complete game. There's a lot of stuff you really want to put in, but sometimes you have to ask yourself if they're "needs" or "wants", and usually they're just wants. It hurts, but you do what you have to.
Impressive game to put together with only two people. 3d can be unwieldy to work with, especially when you're delivering to a web platform. On the subject of mouse sensitivity, I found the controls a little hard to get used to, but that's also kinda the charm of a space game isn't it? Maybe I'm biased, as I too made a game where you control a spaceship, though mine is 2d pixel art.
As for ways you could improve this game, if you continue updating the sky is probably the limit. You seem to have a lot of really good groundwork done, you could probably add a lot of cool features on top of this and make something really impressive. Overall, I really liked this game, I had a lot of fun and I think it's very ambitious for a jam game.
Okay. This game is actually terrifying. I don't know how you did that with just blocky graphics and relatively simple gameplay, but wow. I was losing it trying to pin the colors together and keep my light up before the big scary guy got to me. And then, as I'm starting to get the hang of it, what happens? What's worse than one big scary dude chasing you in the dark? TWO BIG SCARY DUDES. Honestly a really great game with an amazing atmosphere. Really like everything happening here. Quality game.
Okay, first of all, you fighting with Unity & vscode to make intellisense work taking two hours was hilarious. I feel that pain so much. On the subject of the actual game, my first reaction was, "Oh neat!", and then I was all like, "Oh god it'll ALWAYS guess my number" after playing a few times. Very cool concept, and I really like the graphic and sound design as well. The whole thing lends itself very to this super retro/old flash browser game sorta feel that I found really charming. I also think it's a great take on the theme, as you're actively trying to outsmart the ai, only for it to inevitably catch up to you. Overall quality game, I found it to be a rather novel and interesting experience. Fun times.
Really solid and well polished game! I found it both challenging but also felt like I was improving as I played. The retro style graphics work well for this, I felt like I was in an arcade. I also quite liked the audio, as I felt it, along with the dark atmosphere set a nice tone. Overall I'd say this was very fun.
You really managed to pack in a good number of features, I was surprised with each wave.
As for improvements, I honestly can't think of any. The game stands very well on it's own. Very good job!
Okay, so first off, I love the controls. Very innovative and interesting. The art is also great, very good use of the theme as well. Things to improve on would probably be to make the game a little more forgiving early on. Overall, really great entry, I'm a fan.
Very well thought out, and I love the in depth tutorial! Also excellent take on the theme. Overall, really good game, though I wasn't very good at it. I thought making it to 2 minutes was hard, but it looks like other people really mastered this. Fun times.
Ahhh MY TIME. WHERE DID IT ALL GO!?!?! No it's really funny when the clock suddenly starts going faster, maybe you shouldn't have opted out of humor? Game is pretty interesting, despite it's simple design. I really like the movement of your little ship, at the end I was going "no no, turn sharper! SHARPER I NEED THE CLOCKS" It was overall a very fun experience. Just a good little time, and easy to get started with, a very solid entry in my opinion.
Oh god! So hard! Or maybe I'm just bad at puzzle games. I'm gonna keep at it though and try to win!
Overall really cool game, it works really well and is very fun to play. It probably took quite a bit of tinkering to get the whole system working correctly. I really like having to juggle all these little orbs without being able to directly interact with them. And I suppose the theme is being made to good use as well, what with the orbs destroying platforms each time they bounce, they'll eventually fall unless you complete the level. Overall it's a very innovative little puzzle game, I liked it a lot.
My ending score was 37.
Wow this game is an absolute delight. There's so much going on here with the art and the atmosphere. I feel like I really got dragged into this world. Big points to the theme. The graphics and audio though, now those are where this game really shines through. It's pretty to look at, and the music is really amazing. It feels like it could have been an actual track from an old snes game. I love it. As for the gameplay, I like it well enough, I think it makes good use of the theme. What adds to it is the runic moon looming over you, creating a sense of urgency that a number or energy bar can't hold a candle to. Overall really cool game. I wonder if maybe either of you have any plans to update this in the future?
Okay, so first of all this game is adorable. Like, it's just really cute. I actually feel like I stepped into the shoes (shoes? slimes don't wear shoes) of a little slime. It's overall just a wonderful experience. As for improvements, I agree with @iwilliams, I want to just grab the sword immediately, maybe when you die instead of resetting, the game instead just says you barely manage to escape? I wonder if that might break your ending system though? As for the game itself, I do really love it. Are you perhaps considering updating it in the future? It'd be really cool to play a more polished and larger scope version of this game. Despite the relatively simple idea, I feel like underdog gameplay is really under utilized, at least from what I see. Overall really fun game, I had a great time, even if I can't seem to beat the hero no matter how hard I try.
Okay, so first off I love the music for this game. It's got a great sound to it, and I like the choice of instruments. Second, the innovation on this is great. It's really funny to play as a pellet trying to escape the snakes. It's a wonderful spin on an old concept, very cool. One thing I think would have been cool to include would be some way to kill the snakes, though I wonder if that would draw away from the theme of escaping the inevitable death? I dunno, I just really wanted to show those snakes up, what with their slithering and all. Overall really cool and fun game, I like it a lot.
Hey, so since @austin-sierra was so helpful with my game, I figured I'd share some tips regarding enemy ai here. So, first off, these tips are for quickly building an enemy's pathfinding, for an advanced system, there's other stuff you need to do. I'm gonna give some tips to make it SEEM like you wrote a decent ai.
1. Don't keep checking the path. I assume you're using A* or something like that to find your paths? You need to set a timer for each entity, and update the path when it hits zero. Otherwise, just let your enemies go in the "wrong" direction for a while.
2. Not all enemies need to be pathfinding during gameplay, you can just set some of the enemies to be moving in mostly random directions and the players won't notice because they're being chased by the "smart" enemies.
3. You can, and should, consider having shifting behavior based on proximity to the player. It's way cheaper to have your game check distance then to go through full pathfinding algorithm. You can either count the number of tiles if you're using a grid system, or use a distance formula, I like Euclidean - sqrt((x1-x2)^2+(y1-2)^2).
4. Don't be afraid to use a less complex algorithm for enemies if you're strapped for time. Your player doesn't know what's going on under the hood, and so long as the illusion of enemies thinking and trying to reach you is there, it doesn't really matter how you did it.
This is just some easy changes that can be made to enhance your ai performance with limited time. Most of these changes take very little time to do and can impact performance quite a bit. Also, a disclaimer, I'm not an expert on this. These are just tips from personal experience over the years, maybe some of them aren't 100% good advice. This is just advice to help you with making things quickly. Also, I'm not looking at your code, so I don't even know if you're already implementing some of this stuff. I just figured since @austin-sierra was so nice, even going so far as offering to share some of their code with me, I may as well share some knowledge myself. Take care, and once more, I do really like this game. It's very innovative and the music is wonderful. Okay. Bye now.
@austin-sierra yea I figured you probably already implemented some of this stuff. Maybe someone else will read it and benefit. shrugs. It just takes up time to implement things though, throwing it all together. I guess jams like this hone that skill. Anyways, cheers.
My guy made it to be 39! Which I'm looking at the comments and seeing is not very long! Hahaha. Very cool game, love the art style and sound design. Also really solid and innovative gameplay. The inclusion of this kind of collection crafting element is really cool. Huge fan, overall quality game.
Okay, so first things first, I love the naming. Very funny. Also don't feel bad about not having much time, this game is a solid entry. I enjoyed it a lot, and I feel that the combination of the art/sound with the fast paced dodge gameplay works well. I can't seem to complete the game though I did make it to when there were a bunch of rocks around the inevitable, died right after though. So sad. The theme is made to good use here as well, with the story being about delaying a ship. Overall, very cool, I found my blood pumping a surprising amount while playing.
Okay so first of all, super classy game, the art, sound design, and gameplay is all quite polished. Second, I really enjoy being told to either murder the civilians or watch them die from over population. That's just a good time. The game also clearly has a lot of depth to it, there's a surprising amount going on. It's kinda a macabre take on a zen garden sort of game. Overall it's very innovative and very fun, I like it a lot. Quality game.
I love the little corpses that are left when enemies die. It's all very macabre, what with playing this evil looking lich thing. The graphics overall are very strong, the game looks really good, and they add a lot to the mood. Clear areas to add to would be more levels are more types of enemies. You could also include an upgrade system to your player character. I'm unsure if adding more tower defense elements to the game would increase fun though, for example I think being able to place turrets in a game like this would remove from the innovative approach of the player character being the primary defense. This advice is all, obviously, only if you choose to continue updating the game. For other critiques, perhaps the player character could have had another method to defeat enemies than just being near them? Something to make the player a little more actively engaged in defending, or to act as a trump card. On that note, the ability to heal your towers is a great addition and I'm a huge fan. On my overall opinion of the game, this is a very impressive entry, and I quite like it. Quality game. My ending score was 1900. Not sure if that's low or high, probably low, I lost some towers at the end.
Ended with a 239. First off, really cool graphics. They're really unique and very visually appealing. The gameplay as well is quite nice. I found myself getting into a flow very easily. I really enjoyed playing. I also think it makes good use of the theme, the ever ticking health bar, that can only be replenished by combat. It's just very nice and well polished. Overall really fun game. Good experience.
Well this sure is interesting. Honestly making a game without code, art, or music, and still managing to come up with something this fun and engaging is quite a feat! Not only that, it's also single player. Very good job on this. I'm honestly super impressed. I wonder if you're considering updating this with more rules one day, maybe multiplayer? That'd be really cool, I have a lot of friends who are super in to board games and they'd love something like this. Anyways, good stuff.
The message at the end was really touching. I can't imagine what you're going through right now. That being said, I agree, during times like these having fun games to make and play together make a huge difference.
With that being said, on the subject of the game itself, I found it absolutely delightful. The retro cutesy graphics, combined with the hollow and depressing concept made for a good combination. The sound choice combined with the walking based gameplay also worked well together. One problem I had though was issues with text coming off the screen, which to be fair is a very common issue and my game likely does that on some computers as well. Just figured I'd mention that just in case. As for the fun of the game, I found stomping on reporters very entertaining, and the the occasional decision helped me feel invested in the gameplay. Overall I'd say it was a very entertaining experience, which is all a game really is supposed to be. Quality stuff.
@caudatecoder Sorry I don't have a life boat for you! Haha. Good luck though!
@jesusnoseq Oh man I knew I was forgetting something! Haha, I completely forgot to bind a key for the map! And yea, it doesn't work in firefox, they don't use the same rendering system as chrome, I really appreciate you taking the time to switch browsers to try it. Thanks for that! Also, your game NumberCatch is super interesting, especially with the little leaderboard.
@david-york Hey have you tried closing the tab and reopening? That works for some people, don't know why though. If I had more time I could have fixed this issue, I guess that's what I get for focusing so much on stuffing as many features in as possible.
To answer your question, I used an ai music generation program, aiva, as well as the sfx generator sfxr for the sound, so it didn't really feel right to me, taking the easy way out, to be judged for audio.
@asmadigames Yea I threw out a lot of ideas for things to do with all your money. All of them felt kind of, forgive my pun, cheap. I instead opted to just let the game be more open, than to add something in that didn't add anything to the overall feeling of the game, and just felt like it broke away from the gameplay.
@ekeller217 You either die a hero in a flaming explosion fighting space pirates, or live long enough to run out of money paying for gas. . . It's a metaphor for something I swear.
@eboatwright Wait is it!?!?! Okay I'm gonna try and see what's up.
@eboatwright Hey so I just checked it on another computer and it worked fine, are you using google chrome? I don't believe it works on any other browsers. Should probably say that in description actually. Gonna go change that. And yea imageSmoothingEnabled requires a modern version of google chrome as well. Thanks for the heads up.
@pke1029 You could be a little harsher if you want actually! You gave some really solid advice! Yea, my opinion on mouse over providing a description is the same. Honestly, I've played games without going through the tutorial and just using the mouseover text for info on how to play. I think that would have been a greatly beneficial addition. Lessons learned I suppose.
And yea, that's a good point about the enter key as well. Space is probably more natural.
And also, by the way, thanks for taking the time to play! I really liked Runic Moon, it's got some of the most appealing art and music I've seen so far in this jam. Really good work on that one.
@austin-sierra Whoa! Way to be asking the big important questions! Why is your grandpa talking to you at the beginning? Is it because I'd already drawn his portrait before scrapping the story? Maybe! There's a little sentence you missed in the title screen that says your grandpa left you some post it notes through out the ship. Really though I just felt stupid for spending time drawing this cool science fiction old dude only to realize that "oh god I'll need to draw at least two more portraits and then I still have to finish the enemy ai" but I still wanted to put him in the game regardless.
And yea, lessons learned I suppose. I put in more information about what everything is and why here than my last game jam game, but it looks like I still have a long way to go. Your grandpa does mention, very briefly, what all the resources are.
I think just adding mouse over text would make a huge difference. I'm going to start including that in all my games.
Also. Thank you so much for playing a lot and for leaving a big comment!!! So cool of you! You said such nice things to me. Me! I'm just some random piece of garbage! Jokes aside, really appreciate your comment.
@austin-sierra Whoa! That's so cool of you! That being said, I already have done a mouse over system in another game I've been working on, I just didn't want to start with anything but the absolute essentials for this jam. Thus I would have had to program it again, and it does take about twenty minutes or so. Of course, if I hadn't bothered to draw grandpa, maybe I would have had that time and energy! haha.
Also, I do appreciate the unity tutorial, but I actually make my games in javascipt, using the 2d context canvas element and the webgl context canvas element, with a little help from PIXI js. While its not too different from working in Unity, there are a number of quirks that make tutorials less interchangeable. Still really appreciate you taking the time to share, as well as linking a video. That's like super cool of you.
Since you went through the trouble, I figure I may as well share a little advice regarding enemy ai and pathfinding. I'll go into the Pellets page and share that there.
@inert-aesthetic Yea that's actually a really good point about the fuel and money. Should totally be visible there. Do you remember anything else about the old black and white space trading game? I'd love to check it out, maybe learn a thing or three.
@emberushi Haha, no that's intentional. The thing is, the game doesn't really have anything for you to spend money on except for fuel. Extra money does only one thing, and that's increase the difficulty. You'll notice that if you go through the warp gate as well, there's a new type of enemy that spawns, it's much stronger and if you have a lot of money more will spawn. If you try and go to this area early on, before your stats have increased much, it's easy to get killed off.
Also, I believe you're one of the only people to actually bother with going to the other area! Thanks! That made me really happy!
Also also, yes the game needs a lot of polish. Lessons learned, next jam I'm going to focus more on creating a good experience, and less on packing in features.
Also also also, wowowwowwowow. Your game looks so good! The arts incredibly pretty! I'm gonna go rate it now, but wow. Really impressive stuff. You should definitely update it more! It's so cool!
@zantze Hahaha, you've got so much money and max stats too. Maybe retire? And yea, the ui could obviously use more work, but I've always been a fan of super low saturation for the user interface. On inspiration, I probably am influenced most by old snes era jrpgs.
On that subject as well, normally these days I'd probably add lots of animation to the ui as well, I simply lacked time. My favorite thing to do for ui is to give it a kind of liquid/solid look, like this test button I just made. testButton.gif
@welliton Wow, thank you so much for bothering to visit everything. That's really cool of you. And no you're not missing anything, I couldn't find the time to add in a proper goal or objective to the game, so instead the main objective is to just continue existing. I, of course, did manage to come up with and implement some ideas, and if you look in the game code you may find some artifacts of that, such as when I implemented a system to spend money on buying things like a house or castle, all of which provided flavor text. I removed this feature because I felt it cheapened the overall experience.
The reason it works on edge and not fire fox is because edge is built on chromium, which is kinda like a bare bones version of google chrome. The game only works on browsers running chromium for a lot of reasons that I can't really go into here.
On the subject of engine, well I guess you could say I built a custom engine for it when the jam started? I programmed everything in javascript, and used the canvas element to render everything. I also included the open source PIXI js library, as it gives easy access to the webgl context, but a graphics library is not a game engine. I also used the regular 2d context where it was easier to do so, for example the planets are running on their own separate offscreen canvases, with a cycling image being rendered onto a circular gradient only where the gradient is already rendered. The game also employs DOM manipulation to efficiently render most of the text.
Finally, thank you very much for the congratulations! I really appreciate you taking the time to play so much of my game, and then further taking time to post such an in depth comment. It's really nice of you, and I appreciate it.
@mekuri Hey, I'm really happy you enjoyed it so much! It's really nice to hear such high praise! And yea, the balancing is rather easy, I suppose I was afraid of making it too hard, no one but my testers beat my previous ludum dare game, and it took them about an hour and half of playing to figure things out. As for the games future, I have some big plans for it. My number one priority is to make the changes suggested here, mostly towards fixing the user interface and quality of life improvements. After that, I'd like to make graphical updates to everything, increase detail and variety of planets, stars, enemy ships, and what have you. Next I'll focus on increasing the scale of the game, adding more solar systems to explore and more things to do. After that I'll refine the economy system, I love complex economics simulators in games. There's also a few nice to have features I may include, such as modular ship design and a branching side quest system. I've done similar stuff before, it's not actually too much work, maybe a day or two for the systems, plus a few hours here and there for content. I'm starting to ramble I think. . . I'll cut this short. Anyways, after all that's done, then I'll add in a story. I suppose I went the long way around to explain all that? Oh well.
@coderaurus Yea, I was wondering about that as well, the sound feedback that is. Now that it's post jam and I'm thinking more clearly, you're completely right. I should have had some kind of click sound or something for everything.
That's really good advice about the tutorial. I'm thinking an opt out button as well some way to more deeply engage the player would be nice changes to the current system. It tries to explain everything in the game all at once, it's a bit much.
Thanks for playing! I really appreciate your feedback!
@caudatecoder Wowowwowow! Thank you so much for streaming yourself playing! It was so cool to see another human in real time playing! Also, yea you found a new bug! The game does in fact stop letting you put input when you press tab! That's going on the list! Another bug that no one seemed to find yet? If you press the planetconfirmbutton-defualt-e while not near a planet, it'll still bring up a harvestable planet interface! You can't get any resources from it, cause it's blank, but kinda funny.
And yea, that's a really good point at the end there, about a downloadable version. Any future version I were to make would probably get packaged with electron js or something anyway, it wouldn't be too hard. Lessons learned.
Yea the tutorial is a bit long, especially after you've already seen it.
Thank you so much for taking the time to play, I saw you had some trouble getting started, seeing you continue to get it working made me really happy. I really appreciate you going through the trouble. And not only that, you even recorded yourself! This is incredible and it means so much to me. By the way, I just wanted to say one more time that your game Keep The Power is an absolute delight and still sitting in my mind. It's that surprise at the end that really hits you, I loved it.
Thank you so much though. Seeing someone play like this really does make a huge difference.
Okay, so first of all, really great game to make, with bullet time being the default. Clear superhot inspiration I assume? I like the graphics a lot, they're very minimalist, especially with the enemies just being the player character with inverted color. Very fun. There's also a surprising amount of gameplay. Overall really fun.
As for areas of improvement, I wonder if just adding more polish would make a big difference? I think if the gameplay difficulty was better tuned, as well as more carefully defined collisions and a more reactive user interface, such as more indication for when you're dashing would probably make a huge difference. This is, of course, only if you intend on updating the game more. I really liked it though. Fun stuff.
Okay, so this game is really pretty, before anything else. I suppose this has been said already, but the incredible art is definitely it's biggest strength. There's also a lot of actual gameplay here as well, between the simulation aspects and going scavenge outside. It's a lot to pack into a game, and all the art is still looking good and consistent throughout. As for the theme, I loved rapidly running out of resources near your crash site, and freezing to death. I find this theme has lent itself incredibly well to such solemn and dark games. Overall, this is easily one of my favorites I've seen so far. Really quality work, you should be proud of yourself.
Hey! Hey! This game is awesome! You should totally update it post jam!
Also, easy 5/5 on mood. The aesthetic is absolutely delightful! Whole thing is super classy too, really well polished with POW and BOP images! I'd normally provide some critique or something, but I'm pulling a blank! I just really like everything about this game. It's really satisfying to hit mash hitting the vending machine, and then seeing all the colorful characters as it flies into the distance is so fun! Each of the characters clearly has a lot of personality, and the whole thing just feels really good! Amazing job on this one! Overall it's really quality stuff, especially considering this is a compo entry.
Come along little Timmy, let's get in the street. You too little Sally. Everyone just come with me and stand in the street. Yes just like that. No, I don't care if you're hungry. All these cookies are for me.
Ahhh, I actually had a lot of fun playing this. Very cool concept of playing as a robotic arm, it's actually pretty sad when you finally, inevitably, lose. I'd rate this especially high for it's use of the theme. As for the actual gameplay, I found it quite fun. It took me a minute to get the hang of it, but after that I was hastily pressing keys to make the robot hand go where I needed it. Good times. Good game.
@inert-aesthetic Okay, that video is just super cool. Thanks for sharing.
Wouldn't it be great if the fake entry won a category? This really cracked me up though, you should have had it opted in to humor.