Down to the Wire by Mieeh 2022-04-05T00:32:44Z
Super nice game! The mechanics are well implemented, it's a fun concept, and I love the audio! I managed to get to level 25.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → Cosmo8
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | 55 | Summoning | Infernal Ascension | compo | 16 | 4.26 | 4.27 | 4.17 | 4.38 | 4.21 | 3.82 | 3.00 | 4.00 | |
| 2023 | 53 | Delivery | Apocalypse Express | compo | 28 | 4.13 | 4.36 | 3.63 | 4.20 | 3.77 | 3.79 | 3.79 | 3.65 | |
| 2022 | 50 | Delay the inevitable | 👥 | Lone Bastion | jam | 190 | 3.95 | 3.70 | 3.80 | 3.86 | 4.16 | 3.88 | 3.86 |
Super nice game! The mechanics are well implemented, it's a fun concept, and I love the audio! I managed to get to level 25.
Though there's not much to the gameplay, it's absolutely visually stunning! Super impressive!
Really fun and polished little game! The movement is satisfying, and I really like the visual effects! Really feels like a frantic run for your life! My only critique is that it's a little hard to see the player sometimes.
Really fun and polished little game! The movement is satisfying, and I really like the visual effects! Really feels like a frantic run for your life!
This is a really fun little game! I love the dynamic soundtrack, and the water looks really nice! I got a time of 4:51!
Really fun game! It feels super satisfying to type out the prompts! Definitely tests your typing abilities!
Very accurate depiction of participating in a game jam.
Fun, polished lil game! I enjoyed it!
Really awesome game! The graphics are super slick, the animations are satisfying, the sounds are crunchy, and I love the little start comic. I've seen a lot of games using this same general gameplay loop concept, but the theming of the game really fits the whole theme of "delaying the inevitable".
I wouldn't be surprised if I saw this win the jam!
I got to floor 10 :)
This game concept is amazing. I love the different termination messages. And the music is incredible. Really fun game!
Really enjoyed this one! It definitely felt like there were never enough asteroids to challenge my defences, but still a lot of fun! I think with some better difficulty balancing, maybe more structures you can unlock between runs, a delete/sell button, and a bit more polish, this would be something I'd spend a lot of hours on!
I did notice a slight issue, where sometimes the turrets don't seem to shoot at asteroids, even when they're clearly in range:sc1.png
I had a lot of fun though! Here's what I ended up doing before I left off: sc2.png
Really fun game! I love the concept!
All the items are really cool, and the soundscape is incredible!
Clever idea! The bomb is really cute!
The animations are super smooth, and I love the multi-functional mechanic! Super fun game! I got to 109!
The controls are really unwieldy, and the point at which you're too small feels arbitrary, but other than that, it's got some fun mechanics.
It's a neat concept, though there's not much to it.
Loved this! Really really cool game! Solid voice acting, good mechanics, really good balancing! Barely beat the game on my first try! Never felt easy, but was always just *barely* doable!
Had a lot of fun! The colorswitching is really fun, and the whole thing is very oddly addicting! My best score was 67!
This game is mildly terrifying, lmao. Really love the muted, eerie sound design. Really solid submission, even if there's not too much gameplay-wise.
Really liked this one! I love the parallax background, and the music is really good! Plus, giving the player more mobility options as they progress is a really clever way to help the game from getting too stale!
Like this a lot! Very flash-esque!
Really nice! Got a time of about 1:20! Solid entry!
Liked it a lot, so I did my best to speedrun it! Took me an hour and a half, but I got a sub-minute run! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okX5DcB08EQ
Wow! This is definitely my favorite entry I've played!
Beat the whole thing, was a whole lot of fun!
Sound, art, animations, everything was so good!
Intro/tutorial was really good, straight to the point!
I can't believe I got left behind :,(
Really cool idea! The artstyle could use a little more clarity, as it was pretty tough to tell what was going on, but overall, really neat game!
Really nice entry! Rope can be a bit spazzy, but other than that, I really enjoyed it!
Really nice little game! I got 21k points!
Love the punny take on the theme! Pretty solid!
Nice lil game!
Not bad! Very chaotic, if a little confusing!
The difficulty curve seemed pretty incredibly steep, like it went from "Huh, how could I ever possibly lose this?" to "Holy shit, what am I even supposed to do?" in a matter of seconds, but other than that, really fun lil game!
Artstyle is nice, and unique interpretation of the theme!
I got 10,059 points! Had a whole lot of fun! Soundscape is really good, music is lovely, love the dynamic pixel artstyle! Probably my only feedback would be to zoom the camera out a liiittle bit, but overall, really solid entry!
Pretty cool game! My only point of feedback would be that the machine gun shouldn't be so RNG dependent. I had a few levels where I tried a solution, and it didn't work, so I'd move on to trying other things, only to re-input the exact same solution multiple more times, and it'd eventually work.
Either make the machine gun have a maximum range, or make it always hit. Especially with the setup reverting after every attempt, there shouldn't be any RNG there.
With that aside, it was a lot of fun! Pretty unique, and I had a fun time solving the puzzles!
Pretty nice game! I never really felt threatened by the enemies, maybe some enemies that shoot projectiles could force the player to stay a bit more on their toes, but other than than, pretty solid submission! Good work! ^^
Really solid game, had a lot of fun; The only thing holding it back for me is how little it felt like it had to do with the theme to be honest.
This is incredible. I feel like it's an amazing example that a jam game doesn't need to be hard to be fun.
I honestly ended up playing for waaay longer than I probably should have, it's just super engaging! I love my cute lil demon guys and giving them their lil oranges! <3
I think if there were more upgrades, and a couple different base demons you could summon, I could honestly put hours into this. Super fun game with a lot of potential! Incredible job! This is my first game of the jam that I'm putting all 5s across the board! ^^
Ended up making it to wave 24, then died immediately after I wasn't allowed to buy anything xD
Had a really fun time with it though! I do feel like all the units except for the light units kind of sucked, they were just all pretty undertuned, and it felt like picking any units but the basic ones would always end up screwing me over.
I really enjoyed it though! I'm surprised with how much fun I had considering how simple it was, definitely one of my highlights of the jam! Nice work! ^^
Fun game concept! I wish I had to think a little more, it feels like just spamming random elements really carried me as far as I needed to go. Really enjoyed my time with it though!
I enjoyed playing it! It was pretty tricky, but the characters were pretty cute, and it was a unique concept! My only real gripe was how the controls felt, since it seemed suuper odd. Solid entry, good work! ^^
Really fun little game! I love all the different animations for the spells, had a pretty fun time with it. The music is pretty repetitive, and it was kinda hard to tell if there were any other elemental combinations but ice, but it's a super clever concept, and executed pretty well for three days! Nice work! ^^
I'm not entirely sure how this game follows the theme, but I liked the sound design, and the physics were entertaining!
This game is super cool; However, it also reminds me that I dropped out of middle school xD
Pretty fun game; Wish that there was more strategy around the summoning element! It felt like summoning spiders didn't really amount to much, since I could always output a lot more damage than they could. But the gameplay loop of tracking down the summoning circles by following the trails of spiders was really neat, and ended up being a good bit of fun.
Small piece of advice; Look into turning off compression/filtering on the pixel art assets in unity, since that'll get rid of the weird blurriness around some of the sprites.
Overall, really nice work! You should be proud! ^^
Can't hear myself think over all the voicelines. 12/10.
demonswarm.png
Honestly, super fun game! Definitely really easy, but I'd say too easy is much better than too hard in a game jam. I had a really fun time playing with all the upgrades. The rituals are deefinitely very overpowered; The idea of trading off immediate defensive units for more defense over a longer time is really cool, but once you have a handful of demons up, there's not much need for immediate defense, since nothing can really catch you off guard.
Also; Sound design is amazing, I love it xD
Enjoyed it a lot though! Really fun entry! ^^
I had a lot of fun with this! Super simple game, but honestly executed super well!
Super polished, and while there's not a whole lot of replay value or challenge to it, it doesn't fall into the pitfall that I constantly see turn-based jam games falling into of being *waaaay* too complicated to get into.
I really enjoyed it! High ratings all around from me!
Pretty neat game! Had a little trouble at first grasping how it worked, and it didn't feel like there was honestly all that much strategy involved towards, winning, but I had a fun time with it! Really fun concept!
Really fun simple little game! Enjoyed the cheat mode after beating the boss, really fun time!
Played the game, had a fun time with it!
Online multiplayer will never cease to amaze me in game jam entries, so nicely done! ^^
The sprites and animations are adorable, and it reminds me of those old roblox tycoon games I played when I was a kid, so taps into the nostalgia factor for me!
I did have a handful of issues; The web build didn't really seem to work for me, audio didn't really work and the summoning/mana generation seemed to break a couple minutes every time I played. So I played the downloadable build, buut.. That build has a million of every type of mana xD
I also couldn't use the book on the second floor, and the second floor itself seemed invisible, which was odd.
The music was also really nice, and I liked it a lot, even though it didn't seem to loop?
Overall, I had a fun time! Some issues, of course, as you'd expect from a jam game, but a really nice little game! Good work! ^^
@kepsert Really glad you liked it! Definitely wish I spent a little more time with the platformer controls; The character is definitely floatier than I'd like, and no coyote time or input buffering. Definitely something I'd do different if I could do it again.
@crocidb Thanks so much! Yeah, it was definitely a mistake on my part to never explain the connection between the demon and the mouse cursor; I assumed players would understand, which was a silly assumption to make, considering it was never explained once xD And while it is a little awkward to have enter be the key to close the tutorial card, that was sort of the point, to a degree. I'm incredibly used to players skipping tutorials before they've actually internalized or read the information needed, and I didn't really want to commit to making a more proper, robust tutorial system, since there's only so much time, so making it an inconvenient button was just my band-aid fix.
@owtuvammo Like I said before, definitely a screw-up to never mention the mouse control, might be a liittle important to explain xD While I can see how the old abilities could feel obsoleted in terms of mobility, I feel like their use in combat (Hellblast as a quick way to do damage to all enemies in an area, Sling as a way to quickly launch around and do damage to enemies, and Blink as a getaway tool) feels pretty varied, not to mention their cooldowns meaning you don't always have one up. That's just the design I tried to go for though, in practice, I can totally see why you'd feel that way, and the feedback's really appreciated! ^^
@tomi-vahamaki Keeping track of where your player/demon are is definitely the biggest skill involved, it could definitely make sense to try to make them stand out from the background and eachother more, just to make it quicker to tell where they're at. And, uhh.. Apologies about the boss xD I only made the final bossfight in the last 2-3 hours of the jam, so I didn't really have time for all that much playtesting, I just tuned it to a level that felt generally tough enough, and shipped it. If I'd had time to have a couple people play it, I definitely would have made it a lot easier. But eh, 48 hours, am i right? xD
@rakowu Glad you enjoyed it! Thanks for playing! ^^
@pres2300 Happy you liked it! The whole mouse thing is definitely one of my biggest blunders of the jam, if I'd just added a little part of the first tutorial that explains it follows your mouse, everything would probably be a lot more intuitive; But ah well, we all screw up sometimes, right? xD
@commanderstitch Nice job beating it! The final boss was definitely way overtuned, didn't start on it until the last 2-3 hours of the jam, so didn't do all that much playtesting xD Glad you enjoyed it! ^^
@fusionnist Really glad you liked it! ^^
@thoastbot Glad you enjoyed it! Worked hard on the silly little book graphics that pop up when you get a new spell xD
@look-for-happiness Thanks for the feedback! Happy you enjoyed it ^^
@sayurinyooko Glad you liked it! ^^
@neowhoru Yeah, some info about using the mouse was definitely needed xD Glad you liked it though! ^^
@zubspace Glad you had fun! Really just threw the main menu together from a bunch of random assets from the project, so I'm glad you liked it xD And yeah, the abilities are all pretty squished together time-wise, since the whole game is pretty short. If I had a bit more time, I'd definitely like to give them all a little more exploration, give them all at least a handful of checkpoints exploring different ways of using them, but.. Eh, jam, what are ya gonna do? Glad you liked the boss intro, spent a good bit of time working on it! xD Sorry you couldn't beat it, I know it ended up being a bit too hard; Lack of playtesting will do that I suppose xD
@rumiaobsessed Platforming was definitely pretty floaty, and didn't have any coyote time or input buffering. I definitely could have spent a bit more time making the character feel nice to control. Also, the idea of letting the player store their summon meter is actually a pretty neat idea I didn't consider that'd totally make it a lot more interesting to summon during combat, instead of just being practically forced to eat a hit. Thanks for the feedback! ^^
@bo-dangles Glad you enjoyed it! Worked really hard! ^^
@adam-gould Controls were definitely much too floaty, agreed. If I was to do this game over again, I'd definitely fine-tune the character's movement a lot more, but ah well, what are ya gonna do? xD
@rakowu That really makes me happy to hear! Thanks for helping out! ^^
@pandalk Glad you liked it! Definitely thought the blue spell was my favorite too! ^^
@shanzhai Definitely wish I'd made a non-standard cursor design, for polish if nothing else. And explaining the demon's relation to the cursor is definitely something I should have done; Just never occurred to me while I was working on it xD The text is definitely a bit of a mess, but it was my first time working with pixel perfect rendering in unity (which is actually downscaling the entire viewport to the size of the pixel art and re-scaling it back up) and I didn't quite know the "right" way to do text. I'm sure with a little more research, I could have made it pencil, but hey, always something to improve on next time, right? ^^ And I'm also honestly not a massive fan of the music either; I'm not a musician by any means, and I really tend to struggle with making any kind of dark, more intense music. It's definitely something I need to improve at as a swiss-army-knife developer, but I pretty much just had to decide at some point that it was gonna be good enough, since if I was trying to make something I was actually happy with, I probably would have done nothing but make a soundtrack xD Definitely something I need to improve on though! And yep, movement definitely felt floaty in a lot of ways; I do wish I spent more time tuning it. Unity web builds always tend to not work well for me; Not sure if it's a lack of understanding, or poor optimization, but I tend to try, and end up removing the web build because it sacrifices so much of the fun of the game by barely running, barely functioning, clipping audio, all that. It's also something I've gotta get better at, but eh, did my best for the jam! Thanks so much for all the feedback, it's really appreciated! Means a lot to me! ^^
@andriybyelikov Ralph is definitely pretty floaty to control, all the controls in general could have been quite a bit tighter. I think removing i-frames from the enemies would also help for sure; They exist because I copy-pasted the same health management script from the player and ralph for the enemies, so they get half a second or so of invulnerability after you damage them, which in retrospect, really doesn't add anything positive to the game. Definitely wish I'd modified the health management to remove the i-frames there. And yeah, boss is waay overtuned xD Definitely to give myself a lot more time to work on the boss than the last 3 hours of the jam, but hey, learning these things is what jams are all about, right? ^^ I agree about the music though; I'm not a very experienced composer at all to be honest, and I definitely tend to struggle with more moody and dark music. As it stands, that's probably my weakest skill when it comes to game development. Thanks for the feedback, it's really helpful! ^^
@ategon Thanks for playing it, and thanks for the vod! I'd be totally fine if you used gameplay footage from my game! ^^
@itsboats The secrets don't make you any stronger, you get one more max hp for each checkpoint you get; I figured any players that can actually find the secrets probably don't need any help xD My original plan was to make it so getting all three secrets would trigger a final secret third phase when you kill the boss, doing some kind of cool animation with the three cards, and give you some kind of "true" ending for killing that overcharged version of the boss, since players that find all three secrets would probably find more enjoyment in a higher challenge than making the game easier; But, obviously, 48 hours is not a lot of time, so that didn't end up happening xD Glad you liked it though! ^^
@conduit Glad you liked it! Definitely didn't think about the cursor blending into the background; I play a lot of tower defense games, so I've gotten good at knowing where my cursor is despite not being able to see it, hence why I didn't catch that it was an issue xD Definitely wish I'd made some kind of little red cursor, maybe with the ability cooldowns actually incorporated into it in some way; That'd also fix the issue of people not assuming the cursor is important. But, ah well, lessons learned for next time ^^
@flyingkaida So happy you loved it so much! ^^ Particles are one of my favorite things to add to bring life to games, and working with the pixel perfect rendering, I was just obsessed with how they looked, so I used them a lot.. Maybe a little too much xD And I'm glad you appreciated the volume sliders; I feel like not enough people realize how much of a pain they actually are xD Thanks for all the nice words, it means a lot ^^
@justcamh Sorry about the boss, haha. Like I said while you were streaming it, I only made it in the last few hours of the jam, and didn't have any time at all to playtest it; When you've been building a game for the last 45 hours straight, you kind of entirely lose track of an intuitive grasp of difficulty xD And I'm really glad you enjoyed the secrets! Most people didn't end up finding them at all (maybe it was silly to spend time implementing something that most people won't ever interact with xD) but I'm glad you appreciated them! ^^ I wish I'd had the time to make them do more than make a funny noise, but 48 hours, whatcha gonna do? xD
@stanov I definitely wish the mechanics were a bit more spread out, so the player wouldn't get overwhelmed, and I could do more playing with the mechanics and exploring them in different ways. A slower buildup of complexity would definitely help, I think. And the boss was definitely a blunder on my part xD I tried to make everything a fairly easy difficulty, but when you've been awake and working on a game for 45 hours straight, and you're feeling the time crunch, it's pretty tough to get difficulty right; Hopefully a mistake I'll learn from for next time ^^
@denilseven Really happy you liked it! Thanks for the kind words ^^
I was able to get up to 500 balls before my computer entirely died xD Fun little submission! Had a good time! ^^
Pretty neat! Felt like I had success by just moving my mouse generally where enemies were coming and spamming all the summon keys, but it was a fun concept for sure!
I had a lot of fun with this one! Took me a bit to figure out exactly what was going on, but once I understood, it was a lot of fun! The casting delay on spells felt a bit excessively long, making it tough to use them strategically, but the meta progression is quick and satisfying, and unlocking new spells is a lot of fun! Really enjoyed this one, definitely gonna come back to it a couple times! ^^
Really love this entry, it's so cool! Lots of really fun game design in this, really enjoyed it!
This is super cool! Really had a lot of fun with it for sure!
My one issue I had with it is that it's not really explained what all your constructs do? I had to experiment a bit to figure it out, and I couldn't figure out all of them. Had a little bugginess with the upgrade pads too.
Overall, incredibly unique take on the theme, and super satisfying! Nice job, you should be proud! ^^
I hope you guys do something further with this concept, it'd be super cool to see this expanded more after the jam! It's waay too much fun of a prototype to stay as just a jam game! Probably my current favorite of the jam! ^^
This is super clever! Really fun little prototype, had a lot of fun!
This is incredibly cool! However; I have a single brain cell, and it is not working today xD Super cool entry! Way too hard for me!
Incredibly good puzzles, good vibes, love the music, and the humor is on point! I don't tend to see puzzle games done well for jams, really really impressed!
Really good work! My first time giving all 5 stars across the board this jam! ^^
I really like the concept! I think it's a little annoying needing to spam the movement keys, and it'd be really nice if keys/pressure plates and gates were color coordinated, so you could easily tell what gates connect where, but other than those little nitpicks, it's pretty fun!
I kinda just spammed units and killed everything for something like 8 rounds until I got steamrolled.. Didn't really understand exactly what was going on, but the graphics are nice, and the idea is pretty cool.