Soul Jar by farmergnome 2012-08-27T22:55:00
Beautiful look to it, a very interesting game.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → codesavage
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | Co | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2012 | 24 | Evolution | Survival of the Fittest | compo | 641 | 2.41 | 2.45 | 1.95 | 1.51 | 3.80 | 3.33 | 1.92 | 2.82 | 82 |
Beautiful look to it, a very interesting game.
Finished it as requested! ;) Cool idea, it was fun using the various blocks to get past the obstacles.
This game is really hard... and that's coming from a die hard Super Meat Boy player. :) It's fun though. I really like the particle effects you use to show where the player died, and the humor in the game. I do wish that you could control your jump height, I think the controls would feel a lot more natural that way.
I like how chaotic the first wave is, it was a lot of fun seeing all those kitties burn. :D
A couple suggestions that I kind of felt were missing: health bars for individual units, and some sort of wave progress bar. And maybe some kind of tower description... for the life of me I can't figure out what the green one does!
I also had issues with A and D not scrolling. It made it impossible to progress very far, as I couldn't see much of the map.
Pretty cool concept with the capturing of enemies. I like the look, and the player movement feels smooth. The first wave feels a bit too chaotic, as it about half of my health before I figured out the difference between enemies and enemy bullets. Also, the slimes are really hard to hit. I guess that encourages capturing them though, so not a bad mechanic.
Quite fun, nice look, and the humor is great. The only suggestion I would make is to give the player a period of brief invulnerability when you get hurt, as it's very sad when you get trapped in a large mob and go from full health to dead in 3 seconds. Great game though, really has that Sos feel to it.
Good physics, and I like the idea of having the level continue to evolve. Unfortunately it did get a bit repetitive, as there's a lot of jumping and maneuvering early on that has to be repeated every level.
Like Geti mentioned, it's nice to see a roguelike pop up on here. Great job for not being familiar with the genre and only having 48 hours to do it... it's quite fun to play, there's a good selection of classes, and the monster variations are pretty interesting. With the size of the floors and the way they branch out, I do feel like the game could really benefit from an auto-explore function like DCSS has.
@midgard Thanks for the comment! I'll definitely be continuing work on this project. The game itself was written in javascript using the ImpactJS engine. The rest of the tools that I used can be found in my post mortem writeup if you're interested.
@axcho The slow-feeling movement is most likely due to the gravity being set a bit lower than normal. It's almost something you wouldn't notice without looking for it. I do have mixed feelings about it, so I may raise it a bit due to your comment.
@samoojamies The camera positioning is actually entirely intentional. :) What about it didn't you like? The way it doesn't quite catch up when you fall?
@Josh Thanks for the kind words. I dislike the way slopes are treated as well, I will definitely be working on them a bit well.
@csanyk I haven't heard of Redder, but I will definitely seek it out and play it!
@thewiseguy99 Contacted you on twitter about the source. :)
I saw this game's title and knew I had to immediately play it. Clicked it and was very disappointed to find that it's android only. Looks like a really interesting game, I would love to see a web version.
Loving the crazy particle effects going on here. ;) Also a nice idea having the towers upgrade by themselves. I went about 20 waves in before calling it quits... I'd really like to see you add to this game with additional/evolving enemies, and maybe even a feature where towers end up evolving into other towers... anyway, nice work!
Pretty impressed by the impressive number of mutations you threw in in such a short time!
Quite a fun game! I do have one complaint about the way game works though... if you build an attack tower first, and then just upgrade it a couple times, you effectively cripple the other player right from the start, as they can't build anything without it being destroyed. I'm not sure what you would do to counter this, but for the moment once you figure that out it makes the game less about strategy and more about who clicks first.
For some reason I became obsessed with playing this game until I set the high score on the server. ;) Nothing too crazy, 883 I believe. Anyway, great job, very fun game... wish there were other people playing so I could have seen the competitive side of it.
This game almost feels like a more violent version of Pacman. :D It's nice that you can use turrets strategically to your advantage... although having several turrets can make the screen shake almost too badly to play when you are all firing at the same time. Certainly one of the most visually interesting games I've seen in this compo so far!
Fun artwork in this one. It sucks dying, but the game over screen is really cool as well. Overall pretty easy to pick up on, nice job.
Interesting game, pretty fun! I like how you use the facial expressions to convey damage/health, it works great. The random evolutions also add to the replay value. I did run into one bug where it would claim I evolved the spike ball, but wouldn't actually get the evolution. >_<
Despite the simplicity I like the look of the game; you have some nice details on the player model, such as the uncentered position of the hands, having the head and feet be larger than the body, etc. Not being able to jump while moving was pretty frustrating, but I see you fixed that in the post-compo version.
I was a little surprised the levels didn't change as I moved forward through time.
I'm pretty bad at this game... I really want to see the later levels, but I can never make it to the top. :P Interesting idea, good execution too. Maybe add a difficult setting for people like me, haha.
Very enjoyable game, I like the art style quite a bit on this one. Played the whole way through, no regrets. :)
The only part that got a bit frustrating was when I had to sprint-jump onto several small one-block platforms. I fell many times, was quite happy when I finally got to that flag on the other side. ;)
Nice work, the game had a definite classic feel to it. I'd love to play a game with a base like this that had a variety of levels to it!
Very linear, but an engrossing environment and story!
I too was confused by the instructions to this game. When I noticed that the majority of comments here were about people not understanding either, I took some time playing to figure out the rules. Now that I understand, let me say that this is a pretty good strategy game you have here... I can see that it would be very interesting giving it to 2 strategically minded people and watching them battle it out. The breeding aspect really strengthens the variety of moves available to the player.
I did find the controls to be a bit irritating. I think you would be better served to do away with the menu and allow all control to be done through clicking on the units themselves. For example, if I want to move I would click my unit and then a blank space. If I want to breed, I click my unit and then another of my units. If I want to fight, click my unit and then the enemy unit. Skip, right click. I think it would make for a smoother experience if I didn't have to move my mouse to the top corner of the screen between every unit's turn.
Also, I'm a bit confused by color. You said that color is one of 3 factors that indicate strength, but didn't explain which colors are stronger than others.
@foxor Perhaps when you click your monster, and then click another of your monsters, you could have a contextual menu come up where the mouse is with the option to fight or breed. However you do it, I think keeping people from having to move the mouse so far for every action would really help the flow. :)
Pretty short (played the compo version) but I like the direction you're going, it definitely shows promise. I really like the visual style you've got going on here too.
This game is quite enjoyable and has bits of polish everywhere. I love the visual grass effects, the audio ambiance, and the music. Jumping up walls after getting the second power was a very gratifying feeling, as was pushing blocks off of ledges. The level design seems well-thought out too, great job all around guys.
Unfortunately I was not able to complete it as it bugged after I got the second key and refused to respawn me after death. Very disappointing, but I'll probably pick it back up from the beginning later just so I can see the end.