Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → Cosmologicon
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | Cm | Co | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | 35 | Shapeshift | Wake Up Shaple | compo | 41 | 3.96 | 3.95 | 3.35 | 3.48 | 3.52 | 3.38 | 3.11 | 3.63 | 46 | |||
| 2015 | 33 | You are the Monster | Monster Apparel | compo | 502 | 3.09 | 3.04 | 3.57 | 2.96 | 3.13 | 3.43 | 3.27 | 39 | ||||
| 2015 | 32 | An Unconventional Weapon | Negotiation Tactics | compo | 570 | 3.16 | 2.79 | 3.89 | 4.16 | 3.00 | 2.50 | 32 | |||||
| 2014 | 31 | Entire Game on One Screen | All the World | compo | 289 | 3.47 | 2.97 | 3.03 | 3.90 | 3.14 | 2.81 | 2.60 | 3.00 | 47 | |||
| 2014 | 30 | Connected Worlds | Spanner | compo | 204 | 3.58 | 3.09 | 3.24 | 3.91 | 3.21 | 2.94 | 1.94 | 3.14 | 56 | |||
| 2014 | 29 | Beneath the Surface | Ad Astra | compo | 640 | 3.10 | 2.86 | 2.90 | 3.31 | 2.54 | 2.89 | 2.08 | 3.05 | 69 | |||
| 2013 | 27 | 10 Seconds | Flajora's Flask | compo | 112 | 3.63 | 3.49 | 3.34 | 4.26 | 3.34 | 3.24 | 3.96 | 3.55 | 59 | |||
| 2013 | 26 | Minimalism | 0 | compo | 94 | 3.80 | 3.48 | 3.90 | 4.43 | 3.57 | 2.87 | 1.46 | 3.13 | 73 | |||
| 2012 | 25 | You are the Villain | The Devil's Handiwork | compo | 55 | 3.70 | 3.35 | 3.95 | 4.03 | 3.78 | 3.38 | 3.54 | 3.22 | 73 | |||
| 2012 | 24 | Evolution | Rise of the Morbels | compo | 54 | 3.71 | 2.43 | 3.62 | 3.71 | 3.24 | 3.50 | 2.53 | 3.85 | 40 | |||
| 2012 | 23 | Tiny World | Tondie and Zupe | compo | 30 | 3.94 | 3.96 | 3.71 | 4.10 | 3.47 | 1.78 | 2.85 | 3.54 | 100 | |||
| 2011 | 22 | Alone | The Last Adventurer | compo | 59 | 3.48 | 3.43 | 3.33 | 2.14 | 3.14 | 2.95 | 2.26 | 2.21 | 2.57 | 58 | ||
| 2011 | 21 | Escape | Abigail's Descent | compo | 48 | 3.62 | 3.62 | 3.41 | 3.62 | 3.48 | 3.35 | 3.83 | 3.13 | 10 | |||
| 2010 | 19 | Discovery | Good Ship Exploration | compo | 59 | 3.30 | 3.40 | 3.00 | 4.10 | 3.10 | 3.00 | 5 | |||||
| 2009 | 15 | Caverns | Deep Escape | compo | 123 | 2.25 | 1.67 | 2.42 | 2.75 | 2.38 | 2.20 | 2.56 | 21 |
| Year | MiniLD | Theme | Game | Rank | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2012 | 34 | Aspect | Big Space |
Cosmologicon leaves an average of 21.6 feedback comments each event.
Nice, I'd never seen an interactive fiction game with a tutorial before. Tons of different paths, though the style got a bit inconsistent because of it. I recommend Ren'Py if you want to keep making IF in Python. It's pretty popular and I hear it's easy to use.
Hey not sure what's wrong, but it's not working for me. I get to the start screen with four color bars, and it says press Y, but I do and nothing happens. I don't have a controller, otherwise I would try that. I'm on Ubuntu.
Well, I'm able to run the source version on Linux. It doesn't look quite like your screenshot - I think the font is missing. Are there any controls? Nothing I press or click seems to do anything. If it's just a simulation with no interactivity, that's fine. That's still something. I just want to make sure I'm running it properly. As it is, the population and budget grow rapidly upward until it crashes with an overflow after about 45 seconds.
Fun little action game that's well balanced with a good difficulty curve. My finger got tired long before it got really challenging, though. I stopped around 30,000.
I tried the source version on Ubuntu and it works great. That's a huge download. It's not a huge deal, but that 13MB png of the Earth could probably be cut down quite a bit if you saved it as jpg, plus you only actually see the corner of it in the game.
Anyway, the game is not bad but way too short and easy, I would say. Not a ton of replay value. Music was a good choice.
I tried the source version on Linux. Works good, but I had to rename the files like Diver.png -> diver.png because it's case sensitive. I like the concept, but it all happens so fast, I felt like my lasers weren't having any effect.
I tried the source version on Linux and it works great. Just chiming in to agree with everyone else. Overall quite good, fun shooting, I like the time slowing ability, too easy to lose control and go flying off, cool story but really obvious twist.
I agree with the rest of the comments. The floaty controls could use some work. I like the idea of an escaping monster and people trying to subdue it. I think it could make for some good pandemonium, and the music helped with that feel. But there needs to be more than 1 or 2 enemies on the screen at a time, I think.
Really creative idea for a platformer! I love the graphics, they fit very well. I do think that the thematic pieces - "monster", street harassment, and ancient Rome - never really came together, but I like what you were going for. It would have been good if the harassment actually impacted gameplay instead of just being annoying.
A lot of thought and ideas clearly went into this, which I like, but all together it's a bit disconnected to really get into. The three-page intro definitely made it a bit difficult to jump into, but once I got the hang of it, it wasn't that bad.
Pretty solid overall. The gameplay is pretty luck-based. I died three times on the first stage, then I was able to beat all three stages in a row. I like that you can move to any location within the grid square. That's a nice touch. At one point I had zombies on top of me and the interface made it difficult or impossible to shoot them.
Cool idea, but unfortunately I think there's a framerate issue with the physics. I keep falling through the platform on the second level. My computer is pretty slow, so I think the timestep is too large. I may try to tweak it myself at some point. Overall the controls feel a bit stiff, but it's hard to really nail platforming during LD.
Worked great for me on Ubuntu. I like the music, it's catchy. The art's not bad too. Gameplay is pretty simple, though. I tried looking at your code to figure out why it's flashing like that. That main game loop is... something else haha. But that's to be expected during Ludum Dare. :)
Ubuntu instructions:
sudo apt-get install git python-pygame
git clone https://bitbucket.org/frnknstn/ld32_an_unconventional_weapon.git
cd ld32_an_unconventional_weapon
python game.py
Despite the simple graphics, this game did a great job setting the mood with the story and audio. It's a lot more atmospheric than I expected from the screenshot. The gameplay is pretty simple and slow, and it doesn't seem like there's really any strategy. I played to about 1.9 million souls, but Oblivion had over 4 million so there didn't seem like much of a point anymore.
FYI, anyone on Ubuntu can run it like this:
sudo apt-get install git python-pygame
git clone https://github.com/michaeltopping/LD32.git
cd LD32
python main.py
Not a bad idea, but I feel like I've seen similar things before. I found it was easier to just go on the other side of the sun and pull planet toward the sun from the other side, rather than trying to fling them into the sun. I think it would be funner if players were encouraged to fling them somehow. I got 279.
I think it could have used more unconventional weapons. Usually room escape games involve using objects in strange ways anyway, so that part of it didn't even really stand out for me. It seems like there are some plot holes, like there was a closet in the room the whole time with an axe that I could have used, but instead I'm trying ridiculous things to escape? I may have misread some parts, though. Anyway, I liked the multiple endings and achievements.
Great tutorial. The mechanics are complicated, but they're introduced well. I never really found a great strategy, though, and I died after 51 years.
Excellent all around. I love the style. The background is a nice touch. Great music. I really like how you reused elements in different levels. The controls are really my only complaint. It's just so sluggish. I know you're going for a difficult feel, but this is ideally done with really tight, responsive controls and a difficult environment. Twitch platformers usually want you to feel in control of your character. So I came close to quitting a couple of times, but I held out because the style was just so great. I finally managed to finish it. Took me a lot longer than 9 minutes, though, that's for sure.
A lot of neat touches with a lot of content. I think it would make a good incremental-type game with a bit of balancing. Not having everything unlocked at the beginning would be a good way to keep it interesting throughout.
Sorry I'm on Linux so I can't try it out. I'm just commenting to get it off my queue for when I search for "HTML5". Good luck!
Really rough around the edges with those controls and a bunch of effects, like how the blood splatter just doesn't stop. But it has a cute style, and I had fun making it to the switch and turning on the lights. I never got past the first disappearing platform, though, but I sure tried.
I think it's cool that you included a good variety of weapons to choose from. It was fun trying them all out. The speed was a big issue for me. I would have liked the action to be a bit more fast paced. Enough so that my best weapon wound up being the candy cane, just because it made it possible to dodge and come up around behind to attack.
Awesome mood, awesome sound, awesome pacing. I would have loved requiring even a tiny bit of strategy or skill or thought. But I had a good time even so.
I like the three colors mechanic. None of the balls is good or bad per se: you can gain or lose a point if you take the wrong action for any of them. I would have liked a bit tighter controls. I felt like it took so long to change directions I didn't have any hope of making some of the more closely-timed incoming balls.
Pretty funny and random. Not a ton of replay value. I like how they pile up, though. That made it kind of interesting.
A bit intimidating, but if you keep your cool it's not that hard to get through. Nice work!
Cool design. Well balanced and challenging for such a simple concept. I had trouble just staying alive for 99 seconds, much less worrying about claiming territory. I wound up with 63% when I finally managed it. Pretty satisfying.
Very innovative. Well executed. I have to admit it was not as hard as I expected. I made it through 16 straight levels on Expert without making any mistakes. It's just a matter of figuring out which board shows the clearest path most of the way or all the way to the flag. Some tweaking of the maze generation could increase the difficulty a bit.
Great concept, pretty well executed for the most part. Just needs overall balancing and progression of difficulty.
This would have been really good with a little balancing. If only the ship was about 5-10x faster, and there were more police and pirates.
Plays pretty well. I would have liked "buy max" and "sell all" buttons for quicker transacting. But I like the combination of economy and spaceflight.
On Chrome the "buy" button doesn't appear for me, so I got stuck like someone else did above. Firefox worked fine, though.
I like the clean design. The interface is a little cumbersome. This combining thing is easier to do with a mouse.
If you don't already know about it, let me also recommend PyWeek, a python-only game contest coming up. You'll get a lot more feedback if you enter there.
Not the most original game in the world, but it's got a few nice touches. I liked the way the score worked, and how you shoot the menu buttons to select them.
Really like the artwork, story, and music choice. The platforming action is a little slow, but it wasn't too bad. Those bosses are pretty hard. I never made it past the second chapter.
Unfortunately I couldn't get the Linux version to run on Ubuntu, probably because I'm not too familiar with Java. I tried "java -jar FireBugLinux.sh" and got:
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.UnsupportedClassVersionError: framework/LD30 : Unsupported major.minor version 51.0
The pacing is a little slow, but the storyline is good enough to keep me engaged. I was really looking forward to the ending, too bad it has to end with tha cliffhanger.
Took me a while to figure out how it worked. I came pretty close to quitting, but I'm glad I didn't. The ages pass pretty fast, though, and I never got more than 4 bridges or so at a time. Very creative.
I feel like this concept has been done but you pulled it off well. Good level design. It took me a while to get used to the double-jump mechanic. That part where you have to jump after teleporting was hard but I finally got it and finished the game. FYI I think there's some bad collision detection bugs when the framerate drops. I started in Firefox and I was falling through floors and jumping through walls. Worked great in Chrome, though.
The controls are so simple I expected it to be repetitive, but there's a good progression and difficulty curve here.
Creative and simple, I had fun. Good job. I would definitely have liked an indicator of where the new world is. Sometimes I would lose half my timer looking for it if it was a tiny one that appeared on the other side of the screen.
Works for me in Firefox but not in Chrome. (Looks like it might be an issue with the engine.) Not bad, but really hard! I played several times and never made it that far. Keeping track of two ships at once is killer. Tip: you can do pretty well by just leaving both ships in the center.
It's got several nice touches. I like that the worlds move in the viewport. I like the music. It's pretty incomplete with only one type of resource, but I get where you were going. The interface is a little clunky - it shouldn't take 30 clicks to begin transferring 10 resources.
Some kind of challenge or skill progression would have gone a long way to making this game feel complete. But the artwork was so imaginative that I kept playing through to the end, just to see what was next. Cool!
I loved the mood, it was good and compelling, but eventually I gave up after 30 minutes of not figuring it out. I wish the intro text were not so long, it makes me feel like I have to reread the whole thing to make sure I didn't miss anything.
Can anyone tell me how to run the Linux version? It unzips to Diving.sln, Diving.userprefs, and a Diving directory full of .cs files. Nothing is executable except Diving/bin/Debug/Diving.exe, and I'm pretty sure that's not it.
I got pretty far once I figured out the strategy. Don't try to knock them into the lava. Instead knock them away and stand behind a lava pit and let them run into it.
This game has a lot of really awesome features, marred by some nightmarish controls.
Is there a way to reset my game? I got it into an unwinnable/unplayable state after about 30 seconds. I guess I spent all my money on extractors so I have lots of ore but no way to do anything with it. Now what?
Got a high score of 281 and the difficulty ramp is pretty good but overall I felt like it was a bit slow.
The mood is set well but it could really use more gameplay. The SCUBA diver and the old-timey sailing ship are a little incongrous together, but that's pretty minor!
Great job setting the mood, I love the soundtrack. What it needs now is some progression of difficulty. The zombies don't seem to be hard, but I guess you could add a timer.
Cool. The graphics and the music set the mood effectively, and it's very easy to play. My main suggestion is for there to be more difference between the levels besides different maps. Maybe upgrades to your air or speed, or different kinds of treasures.
This game has a lot going for it. Cool sound, cool graphics, cool atmosphere. That said, you really need to tighten up those controls. When it comes to platformers, tight vs clunky controls makes all the difference in the world. I shouldn't keep sliding off platforms I'm trying to land on. Spend a little more time on that and you've got yourself a really solid (if short) entry!
I had to fix a few issues to keep it from crashing on me (mostly because I'm on Linux) but I'm not going to rate it because I couldn't fix everything and I can't tell if it's a platform issue or just a bug. Right now when I get to the exit I get an IndexError on line 20 of TileManager.py.
But from what I played, it's kind of cool. I like the graphics. The controls are slightly clunky, and you can sort of overlap the walls, but I didn't have any trouble getting around. But the fact that it's impossible to die kind of takes away from the challenge, I might have a different takeaway if that had been implemented.
Cool idea. I think a couple minor changes would really help this stand out. The drill could be a little more responsive, so I could make minor adjustments and not rely on luck to line things up. Also the screen should scroll to the right more when I advance. But it's a pretty neat idea, I had fun.
Thanks for including dependency install instructions for Ubuntu! I also had to run: sudo pip install pytmx
I found the mechanics of the game to be a bit overwhelming. A few things about the interface made it easy to lose track of what was going on, particularly the tiny pixel art and the lack of highlighting as to which gnome was currently selected. I was barely able to coordinate myself enough to dig down a couple squares and harvest a mushroom before my gnomes starved. I can't even imagine getting enough supplies to craft. So, I'm lost but at the same time I'm impressed at everything you were able to work in. I tried recording some actions just to see if it worked and it does. That's pretty cool!
Ha, that is some quirky gameplay. I don't think I've ever seen anything like it. I was not as good at it as I expected to be, my high score is only 61.
First of all, let me invite you to PyWeek, which is a python-only game jam happening in a few weeks. You'll probably get a lot more people trying your game if you participate there, and help debugging if you need it.
Now, I spent some time debugging your code. The changes I made are at http://pastebin.com/Z72TjWW1 and the final version is at http://pastebin.com/Z8dc6ZMv. The issue that's causing your crash is that you're using the input function rather than raw_input. Also on my system you need to declare an encoding for this ASCII art, but that might not be true on every system. Beyond that, you have several functions where you try to set global variables but you don't declare them as global, so the game state never gets properly updated. Finally, there was one simple text formatting bug.
The game I wound up with is playable, but I think there are still some issues, such as the instructions seem to confuse up and down for the lift, and left and right for the platform. However, it seems pretty clear to me that it's impossible to win, since it takes one more step to get to the device and back than it takes the lift to go all the way up. Maybe I'm missing something, or there's some other bug I didn't find.
I guess it's pretty impressive that you managed to code up all the logic for a game that wouldn't run. If you want some programming tips, get used to arrays (called lists in python) and for loops. Your text definitely gets a high humor score from me. I'm glad you submitted something, and I'm looking forward to seeing what you make in the future!
Not bad. Great music and easy to control. The dungeon generation was not terrible but I think it could use a little more work. A few times I spawned in a pretty small section with just a few (or zero) worms, and once I spawned outside with no apparent way to get in.
Cool, a creative and fun take on Snake! I like the level designs that required some strategic thinking. That last level was hard but I felt like I had to beat it.
Took me 3 times to beat, which makes it a good balance. A little progression would give it replay value.
Cool. The gameplay is pretty familiar and there's not a lot of variety, but the challenge level and pacing are spot on, so I wanted to replay it a few times. My best score is 133. I thought the music and graphics set a nice creepy mood, and I thought the names that pop up when you press Tab are pretty funny. My main suggestion would be to make it clearer whether I actually eat another microbe.
This is a really great idea. The interface can be a little difficult, but overall it's pretty well executed. I made it as far as the first Lv.13. There is a trial-and-error feel to it, but you still have to think and think hard to even guess what's a plausible move in a lot of situations. Well done!
Followers is a perfectly reasonable interpretation of "seconds". I hate that people think this is a poor use of theme just because you did something different. Way to discourage innovation, guys! I'm giving 5 stars in innovation and theme to try to counterbalance that. The gameplay definitely a bit different than I was expecting, but kind of cool. There wasn't that much strategy when it came to deciding which followers to focus on.
Great idea but it seems kind of buggy to me. I pick to continue a game and it says there are none available. I look at the list of completed games and there are dozens with only 1 or 2 turns completed. I can start New Games but that's not very fun. I'm going to hold off on rating.
Pretty well executed. It was definitely worth sticking with it for the first couple levels. Once you get a feel for where all the items are, it really picks up. I got really frustrated when I would successfully get 8 items and then get stuck on the corner just in front of the cash register, unable to move either forward or back. I know that's part of the challenge, but geez.
plz nerf Smith Thompson and Andrew Jackson. Seriously, awesome story, and it's really admirable that you have 10 different characters programmed. I think there could have been a bit more variety, eg in their speed and health. Maybe even an underpowered one that regains health or something. And different levels where their different strengths come into play would be awesome.
Cool concept but really complicated. It would have done well with a couple trivial levels as a tutorial. I'm stuck on level 2. I don't start with any green peeps and I see no way to get them. What gives?
Great job! The controls are so responsive, I didn't feel like I was fighting them at all. I brought Dave all the way to the last chamber and I was so low on oxygen at that point I knew it was me or him, so I had to cut him loose. It was tough. 5 stars on Mood from me. A checkpoint or two would have been really nice. Having to redo the whole thing was a bit of a chore.
These puzzles are really well designed. Whatever technique you used turned out quality results. I beat them all but I had to bust out the pen and paper a couple of times. I don't know how to recognize that in your ratings, so I'm putting it in Innovation. Other than that the game lacked a bit of polish, but it was quite playble.
I found the gameplay really hard to get a handle on at first. (One issue is that the instructions for what keys to use for each object are currently wrong.) The mechanics is not very intuitive, and a tutorial would do great here. But once I got into it, it was kind of a fun little tower defense. I got to around 300 points. It was helpful that I spawned so close to the edge. I think it would have been much harder in the center.
Cute little twitch platformer. It was kind of thrilling even. I thought the challenge level was just right. I also died about 50 times on the last level.
Wow, really fun! I like the creative idea. Even the mechanics is pretty well done, I felt pretty skilled pulling off a few of those midair shots in the last level.
Great design. 3 of the 5 minigames were just challenging enough to make me want to play them until I beat them. The breakout level was too easy, and the boulder level is impossible for me.
A bit random because it's too fast to know what's coming up, but once I got the hang of it I got to 43,000.
Agreed, it's really unforgiving and hard to control....
Really fun with great music and lots of replay value. I got 111. The trick is to stay near the edges.
Cool idea but not a lot of content. You know Puzzle Three is extremely easy, right? :P
Sorry I can't play, I don't have a Windows machine. I'm just commenting because this game shows up when I search for HTML5 and I need to get it off my queue.
I had troubles clicking Restart and Next. Finally figured out you have to wait for the guy to move for it to register.
Cool idea but really hard, for a lot of reasons. The controls are so unforgiving, you have to hit it just right. And if you miss your opportunity it's a long time before the piece you need comes around again. I got to level 3 but I just can't get past it.
Really creative idea. Fortunately I read the README so I knew to press R, I can easily see that being a problem. My main suggestion would be to change the countdown bar. Instead of having it wrap around to 0 at each level, just have one long bar with markers where you transition between the levels... if that makes sense.
Fun. I think the puzzles could have benefited from some more restrictions, eg you only have X incs and Y muls or whatever. I feel like I cheated on the last level, since you can turn 0 into anything with a few incs and lsls.
I like the basic idea and I appreciated what thinking it made me do. I even liked the music and the harsh colors. But any fun I would have had was lost by the really slow pacing. My least favorite was the screen right before "NO", whose solution is apparently "hold left for 40 seconds, then up for 40 seconds, then right for 40 seconds".
I tried downloading your source but the two links just go to the File Dropper front page. Can you re-upload them? (Preferably zip them together into a single download, too.)
Neat idea but the performance is really bad for me. I timed it and it took 39 seconds to make a full rotation. My computer is pretty slow, but it should be able to handle the likes of this game.
FYI your source version has a line "import pattern" that fails because there's pattern module. I ran the Linux version fine, though. Kind of a cool idea but the pacing is a bit slow to really be fun.
Fun figuring out the mechanics but pretty easy once I got the hang of it. Just build a spiral around the center, then a snaking hallway leading to the left base, then 3 blocks around each of the other 3 bases. You have to know when the bases are coming and start building before they show up, though.
Really creative mechanics and puzzles, that was fun, thanks! I couldn't get your Linux version to run so I ran from source. It worked great, but did you really have to call your directory "fix 02 --final sourcecode"? :P
Man, how many guys does a guy have to shoot to win?
Awesome use of the theme! Cool but it seems like I have an enormous amount of HP. The game got much easier once I decided to be bold and just go straight for the towers.
Ha, I loved getting to the end and seeing what the "mission" was.
An AI would have gone a long way here. I don't have any friends....
I tried it about 10 times and I can't even come close to getting to the floor 2 exit....
Pretty cool, I had a good time. I like the minimalist mechanic. It feels a little bit unbalanced. Around link 10 it goes from walk-in-the-park to nightmare minefield and I always miss one around 12 or 13. It's a bit unforgiving the way missing one ring effectively resets the whole game. If instead it just reduced your link by 3 or so, that would keep you in the challenging part of the game without having to replay the first 10 links over and over. Just an idea!
Clever mechanic, it really made me hate how big my ship was. It was fun getting the hang of shrinking down and maneuvering around obstacles. I wish it were a bit faster, is all. It took a long time for it to really get going, I felt.
Kind of a cool idea. I'm really not very good at this. I made it as far as the screen in your main screenshot, and it's a miracle I made it that far.
Just so yo know, I used your Linux package, and I would recommend tgz instead of rar. Also the .sh was not set to executable, and it didn't run because it has Windows line endings.
Pretty clever idea, I was pleased when I finally got it, would have liked more levels.
I like that there are a variety of enemies whose attacks you learn. I never got very far, though. My best time after 20 tries was 72 seconds. I think if the ball had a little less inertia I would have been able to handle it better.
Nice puzzles, but I've been stuck at the place with 7 switches for like 10 minutes. Some kind of hint would be great, there are just so many possibilities to randomly try.
I had a lot of fun with this, but yeah it's going to be extremely difficult for people with no hacking background. I got to try my first-ever SQL injection attack! (It didn't work, but oh well.) The terminal interface could have used a bit of work. A few times I found my cursor in a weird place overwriting previous attempts. It made it hard to work with. I would also have liked to have the terminal and the code view side-by-side.
Not bad. If you're not aware of it, you should consider entering the next PyWeek. It's a python-only contest, so everyone should be able to run your entries.
Hilarious idea, too bad it's not finished.
Really creative idea for a tower defense. Hilarious storyline. This has got to be one of the best games I've ever played that's dedicated to traffic inspectors in Omsk, if not THE best.
It does seem a bit unbalanced. Why would I ever want a lieutenant when I can get two sergeants for the same price? And upgrading doesn't seem worth it - upgraded lieutenants cost 50% more an only make you 28% more money.
Unfortunately it locks up for me after just a couple seconds. I got the same error about Sound click.
Definitely some good ideas here, but the graphical bug is pretty devastating for the gameplay.
Really great idea with a lot of good points, but the execution fell flat in a couple of ways. I don't know if it was just me, but clicking to dig area was very inconsistent. It would take me several clicks to place a square, and then a couple more clicks to break down the wall. I didn't realize I had to do that, and my first time I just had tons of 1-square rooms with no way to pass between them.
I think the balance is a bit off. It's pretty easy to kill tons of adventurers fast. Just place all your treasures out in the dirt so nobody can get them, put one trap in the front room to kill the first guy who comes by, and every time someone dies raise them into a zombie. Soon you'll have a single small room full of zombies, and tons of treasure in the middle of nowhere to lure them in. (I realize placing treasures out of bounds is probably a bug, but it would still work without that.)
Nice! I really like the defiling mechanic, it was fun to see what secrets were hidden within the dirt and what I could transform plants into. I just it affected the gameplay more, like maybe you could transform spikes into something safe for you. The platforming physics was a little buggy, but nothing show-stopping.
Creative idea for being villainous, the gameplay needs to be a bit more fluid, though. Like if you've clicked on a house, maybe its price should appear on the map so you don't need to click on it again. It seems like the ideal strategy would be to match customers with as expensive a house as possible for them, but I didn't get a good sense of whether I was executing this strategy well.
Interesting idea but it seemed really buggy to me. The framerate was really inconsistent - the action would speed up randomly at times. I was a bit confused about when I was raging and when I was vulnerable too.
Wow, this is so polished, especially those sweet vector graphics! The only thing I would say was missing would be a tutorial, since the mechanics are fairly abstruse. Once I understood them, though, it was pretty fun to strategize!
Funny idea, I like the descriptions. I felt clever when I realized I could leave decoy chickens by the entries. I only wish the difficulty curve were a bit better balanced.
Is there a trick to getting past the third pit? I've tried like 10 times now.
At first I thought it was a bit unbalanced but it turned out okay. The "cleanup" of the first few levels is kind of boring, but it gets really epic around level 10. Even when I got to where I could take out the entire city and make $3,000,000 with one bomb, I played a few more levels just for fun. :)
I'm on Linux and I downloaded the source but I don't know how to go about compiling it (not too familiar with Java). Do you think you could include either a Makefile or a jar?
Outstanding humor, and it's just as much fun to watch as it is to play :P
Sorry, it crashes for me on Ubuntu with the following traceback: http://pastebin.com/vT9PACac
Crashes on startup for me on Ubuntu. Could be an issue with how I have things set up; I'm not familiar with Love. Here's the traceback: http://pastebin.com/pijz4zMT
Not bad, but as you note it's pretty incomplete. Even some very simple movements from the civilians would have made it a bit more challenging. I didn't seem to be able to go through horizontal doors, not sure if it's a bug or I wasn't doing it right. Vertical ones worked fine.
Charming and hilarious!
Awesome theme, awesome graphics, great audio. Gameplay is pretty iffy. I felt like I was just spending all my time waiting for progress bars.
Really amazing graphics. You obviously put a whole lot of work into them. But I think it would have been better to invest some of that time into tweaking the gameplay. There's a really steep difficulty curve, and there doesn't seem to be a lot of gameplay variety (although I was never able to survive very long to see). The camera could also be a lot more responsive - I shouldn't be able to run off the screen.
Hey the instructions say Z to jump, I think it should say Up instead.
I can't figure out the controls for the life of me. Whenever I press left or right I go wandering in some random direction. You say you can get the hang of it, but I've played about 15 times and my high score is 4. Is there anything you can say that would help explain the controls? Does it have anything to do with the background colors? I'm stumped!
Really great job. I thought the level design was excellent. The puzzles were challenging enough to be satisfying without being frustrating. I really like exploration, and that's hard to pull off in Ludum Dare. And of course the dialogue was excellent! The only downsides is the controls weren't very tight, and the selection mechanism was a little cumbersome. Overall a lot of fun to play!
Creative idea, but the mechanics of the zombie-fighting part leave a bit to be desired. Having an option to run away doesn't help at all and just slows things down. I accidentally ran away from the last zombie on floor 1 and then I got stuck!
Well, I don't think I ever got the hang of this game. I lost once, then I think I won once, because all the bleeps and bloops stopped, and everything looked roughly the same color. But even if I don't fully understand it, I can tell it's pretty creative. It would be really nice for us Dvorak users if you made arrow keys work too: the keyboard switcher doesn't always work for Love. :)
Well, I'm up to 64 deaths in Level 2, I have to give up, sorry. The screenshot for the boss looks cool, wish I could have seen it. The jump physics is pretty buggy and the difficulty is way too hard, but otherwise a great game! I thought leaving the death markers was kind of annoying at first, but after I'd died 10 times it was kind of cool to look back and see where.
The gameplay is about as unoriginal as can be, but you did a great job with the audio and graphics. The characters look really professional, well done! Even though the captions were really badly placed, I liked the jokes. They remind me of email forwards from the old dial-up days. :)
Cool idea, but add me to the confused list. I don't know if someone has mentioned this, but it seemed to say wrong building even when it was the right building? Also the progress bars would jump back and forth, and the white text at the bottom overlapped.
This is my favorite puzzle game of this Ludum Dare. Really really clever and rich puzzle idea. Great work. The first board with a 4 was really tough. I think in general more open boards are harder because there are more possibilities. Finished the whole thing, and glad I did!
Neato. I felt pretty pleased when I figured out a strategy that worked for level 2, but I couldn't get anything to work for level 4.
I'm sorry, I really like the feel of the game, but I can't figure it out. Maybe I'm an idiot or something. I've played 10 times and I haven't managed to jump once. There are four numbers along the top but I have no idea what any of them mean, or how they relate to what's happening in the gameplay area. Sorry, looks like I'm the only one, but I'm really at a loss here.
Maybe I'm just not very good at this kind of game, but I found it pretty hard to keep track of my ship if it was going anywhere near full speed. I did win by sweeping the surface, but I don't think I would have been able to if I was actually trying to avoid shots or something. Cool mechanics, though.
Neat job with the procedurally-generated sound effects! I'll have to check out that library for next time.
Cool idea, but unfortunately the character doesn't even show up for me. I get nothing after the intro text. Looking at the source, though, it doesn't look like there's that much else. I'm on Chrome btw.
I really appreciate the work you put into the level design, particular on getting the string. A little more feedback would have been nice, maybe color coding the switches to match the walls they controlled. I found it easiest to just kill the monsters guarding the pump. Looking at the solution in the walkthrough, I don't think I would have ever figured it out. Maybe if you didn't restart the whole game when you died, players would be more willing to take risks to figure out puzzles like that. Oh, and I don't know if it's intentional, but you can bypass most of the maze by whacking the big button through the wall.
Nice, I like the music, and the tradeoff between exploration and production. I only played the original version, so maybe you already changed this, but it takes way too long to place 80 bacteria, which is what I was doing each turn at the end. I think you should have it so that you click on a bacteria type and then can click on empty squares to keep placing them.
I agree with everyone else, it was hard to tell what was going on. I like the idea, though!
Not too bad, I liked the graphics. I feel like the gameplay is very similar to several other games I've seen. There needs to be something to give it variety. It ran really choppy for me, about 2fps from the look of it. My computer is really slow, granted, but for what the game is, I would have expected better performance. I found it far too easy, maybe the difficulty depends on the framerate?
This is quite cool, I like the particle effects and the mechanic. Of course more of a gameplay challenge would be nice. For me it went into fullscreen mode and I couldn't exit out of it. I had to kill the process, and then it left my resolution all wonky. I don't know if it would be possible to start in windowed mode, that would be nice.
Not bad, I just feel like I've seen this exact game several times before. Something, anything, to mix it up would be nice.
Sorry I can't run this, I'm on Linux! I'm only commenting because this game comes up when I search for Linux and I need to clear it from my queue.
I think you have a framerate issue. My computer is pretty slow and it runs choppy, and I wasn't able to land on any platforms. I'm able to jetpack okay, but since I can't land I quickly run out of fuel and continue all the way to the bottom and off the bottom of the screen. The map looks kind of cool, is that supposed to be a digestive tract? Also count me among the people who think X is a bad choice for menu selection unless you say so. :)
Pretty cool. There's not much point to the enemy factories, since I basically just let them produce the desired number and then killed them before even starting to capture aliens. Once I understood that you can click and drag it became pretty easy, but it was still interesting and challenging in its way.
I liked the mechanic a lot. I'm really glad you didn't make the controls like a regular platformer. That would defeat the whole purpose. I would, however, have liked more control over my horizontal motion. One way is to make it reverse whenever you jump, or you could give the character less or more horizontal motion when jumping. The levels were frustratingly hard. Being hard itself is not a problem, but whether I got past them had more to do with luck than skill. It was all about whether the critters happened to be in the right place at the right time. Thanks, and good luck!
I like the physics of the planet breaking apart. I would have liked it to be clearer which ore I was actually getting and which I wasn't, and why that was.
Sorry, but if the music's really by Kevin MacLeod, I'm not sure it should be included, according to the rules. Anyway, I thought this was kind of cute, and I like the terrain. I like the idea of charging your spells, but I'm not sure the mouse control really added anything, I probably would have gone with keyboard control. Maybe that's just because I'm using a trackpad, though! I got just fine performance out of it on Chrome.
Great job overall. I liked the dialogue, the graphics, the music, and the controls. The only thing really missing is variety or progression of gameplay.
Hey sorry I can't play, I'm on Linux. I'm only commenting because your game shows up when I search for HTML5 and I need to clear it from my queue. Good luck! :)
Having a bunch of minigames is very ambitious for a short-timescale competition, so good job pulling that off. I agree with everyone that the viewport and lack of scrollbar makes it very difficult to play, but I did finish it. Cute story.
Works well for me in Chrome. It really drops you into bullet hell quickly without much of a chance to get used to things. I found the Ctrl mechanic to be neat and quite useful once I got the hang of things.
I agree with the others, the rules are impossible to figure out on your own, so they should be given. Once I figured out that capturing pieces is not necessarily a good thing, the game seemed really easy. I just tried to connect to the middle somehow and the AI didn't really try to stop me. Interesting idea and the particle effects are neat.
Looks cool, unfortunately I can't play it, as I'm on Linux. I'm only posting because your game shows up on my queue when I search for "HTML5" so I need to clear it out. Looking forward to your entry next time! :)
This game is great in a lot of ways! I like the fast pacing and the humor. Definitely Earth's least likely protector. The controls are so responsive, I didn't figure out that there was gravity and you landed on the planets for a while. I think the mechanics of having to aim jumps from one planet to another would have been interesting. It turned out to be disappointingly effective to just stand in the center of Earth and hold down space, so a little balance there would be cool. Overall a lot of fun!
Creative idea. I think the fact that hitting even a corner of a world in sunlight on your way to another world kills you means that keyboard controls would be preferable to mouse. Not bad!
Really cool, my biggest issue is that scrolling felt really slow. I had two fronts going on on opposite ends of my territory, and it was really hard to maintain them both, simply because it took so long to scroll back and forth. I tried strategizing a little with the different shapes, but usually I was too busy rounding up waves for it to make much sense.
Good job on the pathfinding!
I'm able to switch between robots and move about, but I don't hear any sound at all. I'm on Ubuntu. Is sound essential to figuring out the game? If so I may not be able to do this. Here's the error I get:
Exception in thread "Thread-1" java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Line unsupported: interface SourceDataLine supporting format PCM_SIGNED 44100.0 Hz, 16 bit, stereo, 4 bytes/frame, big-endian
at com.sun.media.sound.DirectAudioDevice.getLine(DirectAudioDevice.java:157)
at beads.JavaSoundAudioIO.setupOutputJavaSound(Unknown Source)
at beads.JavaSoundAudioIO.access$100(Unknown Source)
at beads.JavaSoundAudioIO$1.run(Unknown Source)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:662)
I really really like the puzzles. They're interesting and creative. I just wish the mechanics had been much more forgiving. Having to time a mouse click with a jump, and having to restart when missing one jump, made it feel really tedious. I recommend eliminating the mouse entirely. Say you have to stand on a block to pick it up, and when you drop it, it goes where you're standing, and you go on top of it. Then you can do the whole box mechanic with a key press. If you redesigned the puzzles with this in mind, I would love this game, because there's a lot to love!
Wow yeah this reminds me a lot of Starcon 2, especially the hyperspace map, which I recently posted on Mapstalgia. :) I'm impressed that you have four different modes implemented. That must have taken a lot of work. The planets look good, and I like your procedural generation. If you put even a few secrets in that map, I would definitely have fun playing the game.
My biggest issue is the controls in flight mode. There's way too much inertia on that thing. A video game spaceship needs to go from 0 to max speed in a couple seconds at most.
I have to admit I got kind of excited about the game at first. I really like exploration. Unfortunately it was rather too short to get any good exploration in, but the feeling was there. Good start!
Unfortunately it crashed on startup for me on Ubuntu and I'm afraid I'm not very handy with Java. Here's the output I got: http://pastebin.com/URFvPXPE
Hey sorry I can't get it to work on Linux. When I try ./runGame.sh I get:
bash: ./runGame.sh: /bin/sh^M: bad interpreter: No such file or directory
I tried opening the file, but I have no idea what I'm looking at. It sure doesn't look like an invocation script to me. When I try java -jar infectionLinux.jar I get http://pastebin.com/XsZxCA81
Thanks for uploading a Linux version, anyway!
Great job! Overall really well executed. Graphics and sound are top notch. My biggest complaint is that which humans died when I fired the laser seemed completely unrelated to which humans were actually in the path of said laser. This may be the collision issue with Chrome you mentioned, but I saw it in Firefox too. I would have liked *some* kind of powerup or different kind of enemy - with nine levels it can feel pretty repetitive. And I wish you had worked the theme into the gameplay more than just calling it "MiniMars".
Hey I got it running on Linux. Thanks very much for putting instructions for getting it working. I had to copy the .so into the src directory, since your compile command assumes it's there. I wouldn't have minded a make file, but since it was only one line it wasn't a big deal.
Anyway, this game has a lot going for it to like. It seems like you made a legit spherical world and not a half-assed sphere-looking torus like in a lot of games. You gotta get the motion right, though. I also noticed the "quaternion hell" and arcing paths. Anyway, the maze is actually fun to explore, and the way you have the walls and craters set up, the fact that I could see the pink ledge without being able to reach it was really enticing. The red guys could have been just slightly more intimidating if only they moved back and forth. Thanks for making this!
I get a BSOD when I hit the first enemy. It says: rendersystem.lua:172: attempt to call method 'setSizes' (a nil value).... I'm on Ubuntu.
It seems to lock up for me after getting it in the landing zone. The action freezes, anyway, but the shot meter is still blinking.... I'm on Firefox.
Sorry I can't play your friend's game, I'm on Linux! :)
Excellent game! Good idea, of about the right complexity, and well executed.
I found selecting the ships rather difficult, since the box I had to draw was about as big as the screen sometimes. I would have liked either a zoom-out ability, or maybe double-click a planet to select all its ships? As for balance, it seems kind of heavily slanted toward the defender. So the AI tended to get into stalemates, where I wasn't strong enough to take any of its planets, and it wasn't strong enough to take any of mine. That made it tough to advance. Maybe I just need more practice.
Brilliant control scheme!
That was quite cool. But yeah, that first mission is a pain. I feel like it needs to be easier to move through partially-destroyed material. It takes the planets a while to load when you reach them, but once you do, the physics is really responsive.
Sorry I can't play, I'm on Linux. Looks great, though! I'm only posting because your entry shows up when I search for Linux (for some reason) and I want to get it off my queue. :)
Sorry, I'm on Linux. I'm only posting because your entry shows up when I search for Linux and I want to get it off my queue. :) Screenshot looks great though!
I also have the screen being cut off in the Linux version. And I have no idea what the controls are. Maybe they're on the bottom half of the screen?
Really great artwork and concept! I'm very impressed. A bit unforgiving, since you can die so quickly and have to start all the way over....
Very interesting concept, but without an explanation of the movement of creeps and bombs, I couldn't figure out how to strategize. I mostly won by luck until I got stuck on the level with the isolated L-tetromino. No matter where I went I couldn't get the creep to make a bridge to it. I found the isometric display difficult, because one wrong step meant you had to start the level over. Why not simply disallow wrong steps?
It's good that you had different enemies. Would have been nice to be able to shoot in different directions, not just up. Here's a tip. Use pygame.key.get_pressed rather than key events for motion, so's I don't have to keep hitting the direction I want to go.
Neat idea, you could really do something with switching between worlds to reach different areas. It's too bad it's not very complete. I have to admit, I'm not crazy about the controls....
Ha, that was such an interesting concept once I got the hang of it. There needs to be more strategy or skill involved, but it's a good idea.
That is a hilarious suicide note.
I finished the game, but I have to admit, it was far from obvious like the readme says. I checked the source to make sure it wasn't a bug. It's kind of an interesting story, but very short and not really any puzzles or anything to keep me interested. If your whole game is text-based, might as well give us something like "up" to get the previous command.
Doesn't run for me on Ubuntu (32 bit). No idea why. When I run python tinyboxes.py it just hangs. No traceback or anything. I have to kill -9 it. Sorry! :-/
I couldn't run it on Linux. I have pyglet installed, but I'm not too familiar with it. Here's the traceback I get: http://pastebin.com/chsExKdz
Let me know if you know how to fix it and I'll try again!
This is pretty cool, with a few more features it could be a lot of fun. I had a lot of trouble attacking the enemy without also dying.
Why don't you upload the source code? Your link labeled "source" is, bizarrely, some sort of Traceback.
I'm on Linux, and there's a couple things I had to do to get your game to run. I had to disable the music. Why not consider using pygame's built-in music module rather than mp3play? Also, I had to rename some of the files because capitalization matters on Linux systems. The music was well chosen. Kevin Macleod's stuff is great.
This game felt really complicated for the interface. As it happens I got lucky and managed to win each of my first two matches in 2 plays, but if I had to strategize I think the setup would have gotten in the way. If you're looking for specific suggestions, I would get remove any mention of unimplemented features, not let you enter names for the cards, and get rid of the compound actions like "3-4 1:opp discard". I'm not even sure what the 1 means in that case.
On the third match it crashed with this Traceback:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "menu.py", line 160, in <module>
odeck=[gendoublecard() for i in xrange(DECKSIZE)]
NameError: name 'gendoublecard' is not defined
PS: if you want to join a game competition where everyone uses python so everyone will be able to run your game, consider PyWeek! :)
As someone who sometimes designs puzzles, I have to say, that is a *brilliant* idea for a maze. It's elegant in its simplicity. I wish I'd thought of it first, and I wonder why I've never seen it before. I agree that the implementation leaves a lot to be desired, but that was an excellent idea.
I may just be an idiot, but an explanation of what the heck's going on with this game would not be unwelcome.... I keep clicking on the orange stuff on the blocks to get rid of it, but I have no idea if that's what I'm supposed to be doing.
It works fine for me on Chrome, but yeah the sound is broken. It sounds like a sound effect is playing over and over again, over itself. It gets cacophonous really quickly.
But I actually thought the gameplay was kind of cute. The challenge level is just about right, and it wasn't very frustrating to die. I would have been happy to play a few more screens if you'd put them in. Not bad.
This I like. It reminds me of the game Grow. It's a bit mystifying how to go about finding the achievements (I've only got 5 so far), but I guess this kind of game is more about exploration than strategy.
Ha, I love your interpretation of the theme. Take a popular genre of game (roguelike) and make it as small as possible. Creative and funny!
Great! I thought the two weapons were a nice touch. They felt balanced. I only got 6/12 checkpoints my first time, then I had fun playing again and getting all 12. I did appreciate the surprise at the end. That was clever.
Awesome graphics! The physics is really glitchy for me. I can't jump without going way off the top of the screen, and when I land, I get stuck in a block and I have to jump to get back out. It was very difficult to run, but I got to the house by jumping past a screen and a half at a time. :)
If you haven't heard of it, there's another game competition called Pyweek that might be right up your alley. You should check it out!
I found the controls and physics kind of frustrating, as well as the 10 second delay between turns. But I have to admit, blowing the other guy off the planet into the moon was a really awesome moment. I think you've got a great idea here.
Wow, I am really bad at not killing my allies.
It works fine for me running python2.7+pygame on Linux. I like games where you explore, but this needs something to make it possible to do that. Maybe even just "warmer... warmer.... colder..." or something.
Kind of fun. I felt like there wasn't a ton of strategy when there was only one receptor site at a time. I felt like it was close to being a puzzle game but not quite. And yeah, that's some great music!
Ah cool, I remember your Pyweek game that used this library. You're really showing its versatility. If someone told me that they were making a tower defense without graphics or mouse control, I would say they're crazy, but you seem to have pulled it off. :)
It ran great in Linux. I just had remove line 2 "import pygame._view" from Fort.py.
Not bad once I got the hang of it. When I got to where I was building an infantry and an archer every week (around week 12) it was pretty easy to build up a powerful army.
Cool, it ran smooth even on my slow computer. Did you consider having a progression of difficulty? I got to 2000 points and the game didn't seem to be any harder. Maybe just more bubbles as your score increases, keep things challenging, you know?
Interesting mechanics, really creative. I found the engine really hard to control, since it kept rotating after you let up on the keys. I think I wound up in deep space with no way to figure out how to get back. It would have been nice to have some indication of where all the unconquered planets are.
Is there a problem? I can't jump far enough to reach the first platform :-/
It took me a while to figure out the goal. I think I was thrown by the fact that the sound effect when you land on a flower sounds like you're getting hurt, but I suppose it's a happy buzz.
Good job on the music. The terminal graphics were a funny touch. Just so you know, I found a dungeon generator bug. At one point I got into an unbeatable screen. The items I had to collect were on the other side of the door and I couldn't reach them. http://imgur.com/It2nO
It's quite challenging, especially with the controls being swapped on the bottom, and how all my stray shots would eventually fall back to the planet and kill someone. I'm afraid I didn't make it very far!
I think it's cool that you went with procedural generation for the level design. It's always difficult for procedurally-generated dungeons to hit the right challenge level, and you can see that here too. Sometimes the goal was just a couple of flaps away, and sometimes it seemed like I needed to pass a dense group of red guys to find it. Thanks, it was interesting!
Great job with the music! The first time through I found it really hard to find where I'd left the planet I was working on. The second time I just left it at the sun and it was much easier. :)
Not bad. I like how you don't have to explain the gameplay mechanics, a player can just figure them out. I got as far as, I'm estimating, 30 atoms. There's really not much of a point to having more than 5 or so, though, since all but a few get knocked off in the first few seconds. Instead of adding more atoms for level progression, something else might make it more challenging. Craftier or faster AI, perhaps?
Agreed, great job! I love how the entire rest of the game is on the screen at all times, but you don't how long it's going to go.
Cute dialogue! Why did you put the hardest set of mines first? It took me 10 tries to get past them and I almost gave up. I got to the stars and I walked for like 3 minutes and nothing's happening. You say the game's not over, but I'm giving up.
The link's 404 for me. Is it still up?
Love the scenery! Unfortunately it's unplayably laggy for me (Linux 32-bit). I managed to find an enemy and I couldn't keep it on my screen for more than two frames at a time, forget aiming at it. The mouse looking seemed really unresponsive. I felt like I had to drag my mouse all the way across my desk to turn the mech by 30 degrees.
I got through the "stranger in a strange land" puzzle with a web search, but I got stuck on the puzzle that says "Only one can open me alone." I think you should post a walkthrough if you want anyone at all to finish the game....
Cute, I like the graphics a lot. But is there any way to accomplish anything? I did the three tricks over and over but nothing ever seemed to happen....
Could just be my slow computer, but this felt about 3 times slower than it should have been to me. The lag got especially bad when there were a lot of bullets on the screen, which makes me wonder if your collision detection isn't pretty inefficient.
Cool, given that it's basically a playable opening cutscene for an actual game. I would be very interested to know what sort of gameplay you had in mind beyond walking and jumping. Were the multiple universes going to tie into the gameplay somehow?
Works fine in Chrome for me! I like that the gameplay is somewhat nonlinear and you have to explore and find your way around. I missed a lot of messages because I kept pressing arrow keys. And why's it so small?
I think the gameplay is a clever idea, it just gets monotonous pretty fast, when I realized I could just keep moving around the points in order and easily hit any zone that wasn't right in the middle. I only died when I messed up and hit a key out of order. I don't think the graphics need to change, but I would like more of a progression, have it get harder as you go along, you know?
Amazing artwork, really well done! I like the parallaxing background and the subtle horizontal lines. Controls are smooth and simple on Chrome. You've got some great HTML5 skills there!
I was fairly disappointed when the followers turned out to be completely irrelevant to the gameplay. I think I would have liked less graphics in favor of having them do SOMETHING, even if it's just stand on switches while you pass through a door.
Great! I didn't understand why my guy got spotted sometimes when he was clearly outside the guard's radius, but I feel like the mechanics for the most part were intuitive. I ran into an issue on Level 6 when I saved 1 prisoner and the other three got hauled back to the beginning. I wanted to make another run for it, but the window never scrolled back to the left, so I couldn't see my guys anymore. If there was a way to control the scrolling, I missed it.
I gave you bonus Community points for supporting so many keyboard layouts!
Hey it's definitely difficult. Still, I didn't think the difficulty was *too* bad, though I did run into another bug. A few times when I came off the rope I would randomly not stop going up, so I just floated off the top of the screen and there was nothing I could do except reload the game. That was unfortunate, especially when it happened after I was close to winning. If it weren't for this bugs I would consider it playable.
I think you did a good job implementing it, but I feel like this mechanic is overdone in LD. I feel like I've played this game before. Sorry, that's just how I feel!
I got to level 8. There were a couple of tense times where I made it out of the level with less than 2 seconds to spare. That was kind of cool. I think the challenge level was just about right, though I imagine the replay isn't so great once you've seen all the mazes.
I had no clue what was going on most of the time, but I liked the idea enough that I played through it twice to see if I could figure out what was happening. I still had no clue what was going on, though. :(
That's a heck of a lot of monologue there, Raymond Chandler. It was cool that it was different, but maybe a little too much.
I didn't beat any of the games. They seem extremely hard, although I feel like I came close on the second one. I played through the game three times and the first and third games always lasted a couple seconds for me.
I like a lot of the choices you made, like the implementation of the "health bar". The enemies looking just like the walls was a very cool choice. I felt like the mazes went on for too long with not enough variety to make it interesting. I wish I had gotten to jump on more heads.
Good and interesting but sooooo slooooow. Fortunately I can play other games while waiting for the next event to happen in this game and not miss anything. :)
Yeah, I have to say, unfortunately, the hard part of this game is not figuring out the strategy, it's figuring out what the heck is going on. I knew that I was supposed to be using the mousewheel to assign workers and I still had lots of trouble with that. It's not clear that the suggestions coming from the bridge crew are not meant for me. I didn't know that clicking on Overdrive toggled it rather than activated it each time I clicked, especially since I couldn't see what was happening since my sensors were shot.
Having said that, I like the idea of balancing the workers between the various ship departments. Maybe ease into things with a couple levels with fewer departments or something.
Where's that makefile you promised?
Great job! I think the challenge level and level design were pretty good. I also had some trouble with the tight spaces, but it wasn't *that* bad. The checkpoints are probably about right for a regular Flash game, but it doesn't surprise me that some people wanted more. Not sure what I would suggest. Maybe have an easy mode for people like that?
I didn't mind that the items were an optional challenge. Once I realized that I wasn't going to keep them after I died, I decided not to worry about them. That gives it replay value, which I appreciate.
There was one weird, inconsistent bug that randomly teleported me back twice, but fortunately it wasn't *too* far back.
Sorry, this is unplayably slow for me. It looks like around 1 fps, and the collision detection completely fails, so it jumps between inside and outside of the maze.
Based on the appearance of the graphics, there's no reason it should be anywhere near that choppy. I haven't looked at your source, but I don't think you should have separate threads for moving and drawing. I think pyOpenGL might be overkill for this. Maybe a regular old pygame game would be good for next time, if you decide to use pygame again.
Anyway, I'm not frustrated. This is Ludum Dare after all. :)
Hey not bad. The controls did take some getting used to, but once I did I thought they were fine. I think it would work well on a touch screen. Contrary to another rater, I found that the game encouraged me to go as slow as possible; this could be changed by having the planets or humans move. Once I figured out to click repeatedly rather than hold down the mouse, the game became fairly easy and tedious. I would have liked more progression of difficulty. I quit after finishing like 6 levels in a row without dying.
Oh, one thing I like is that sometimes the best way from point A to point B is off the edge of the screen.
Wow, great job getting all those graphics together! I think I liked your timelapse best of all, because of the heavy graphical content. I would have liked fewer clicks. I think there was very little reason for the hallways to be there, unless I missed something.
PS: sorry I made a semi-3D platforming game! :)
Not bad. I like "the frames are cramping your style, bro". It was also pretty funny the way you explained the missing levels. I have to say that minigames with different mechanics are always ambitious. Even if they're not hard to write, they take so much time. You might be better served just sticking with a single mechanic. It would have given you more time for polish, anyway. Agreed that the solar system level was obviously the best.
Good job! Sliding block puzzles are nothing new, but the dynamite added some new layers to the classic formula. I'm kind of big on puzzle design, and I would have liked to see puzzles with fewer blocks. 6 blocks is plenty to make a very challenging sliding block puzzle requiring 30-40 moves, and the number of blocks are small enough for the player to wrap their head around, so they come away with a better appreciation of the solution. With 15 or 20 blocks, there's no way, there are so many billions of possible permutations of those blocks. But like I said, good job!
I just get the following with the Linux version. Any ideas?
bash: ./Cosmic Heist: cannot execute binary file
I have to say, I hate the controls. The game would have been about 10 times funner (and shorter) if I could have just clicked on a door to unlock it rather than typing "connect D0317", "unlock", "disconnect". Other than that I like the idea and the dialogue. :)
I agree you should have spent less time on room design and graphics and more time on gameplay. If it was half as long and only had one type of enemy, but that enemy pursued you or at least moved, or you had to collect keys or something, I could have rated you higher. I think the graphics and room design are really quite good, they just don't stand on their own. Congratulations on your first "real" game! :)
I also found the part with the water you have to go through impossible. I'm not sure what I'm missing. I thought the mechanics were not a bad idea, but maybe you could have eased into it by just having 1 or 2 kinds of shields on the first few levels. Actually I use a Dvorak keyboard and the keyboard switcher didn't work when I ran your game, so the shields were almost impossible for me to activate in time. Why not let us use 1/2/3/4 as well? Fortunately you can beat the levels I beat with almost no shields, only by jumping!
Really brilliant game mechanic! It's very simple and yet there are lots of different goals that you give in the different levels. The story was also quite nice. I liked how you tied Urth's existential struggle into the goal for each level. The various modifiers on the planets felt a bit superfluous: I didn't use them very much, and I feel like the gameplay would have been about the same without them.
My record in escape mode is 3047!
A pretty simple idea, but quite well done, especially for your first time! The graphics and text worked quite well. I like that you could use either the mouse or the keyboard, that was a nice touch. I just would have liked a little more depth to the gameplay. I also like that you used HTML5+JS. I'd really like to see that emerge as a serious competitor to Flash.
I feel like the "freedoom" you get at the end could have a double meaning, although I realize it was probably just a typo. :)
I'm actually really liking the level names here (I think I'm up to level 5), but the game is just too monotonous for me to keep at it.
Really creative mechanic, well done on the stage design!
Nice. It took me an embarrassingly long time to realize that this was basically Snake. I kept trying to get the paparazzi hit by cars until that point. I like the music! Flight of the Bumblebee makes everything better!
Great! Nothing I haven't seen before, but it was still pretty fun. The graphics and sound (apart from the missing sprites) are quite well done! As is common with procedural map generation, the challenge level can be inconsistent. Sometimes I made it through the first level easily, and sometimes not.
Cool game! The asymmetrical multiplayer aspect is pretty interesting. But it seems really imbalanced when there's only one Mage. It's way too easy for the Ice Queen to keep up. I think the Ice Queen's powers should depend on the number of Mages. Or something.
It had a good challenge level despite the simple mechanics. The controls worked well and it was easy to tell what was going on. I would have liked slightly more variety of gameplay. Maybe let you collect clocks to increase your time as well as health. Overall good job!
There was more to the game than I expected from the first couple of levels. The invisible wrenches, while a good use of the theme, were really annoying. I liked the invisible walls much better. No way am I going to spend much time on Level 10, though.
You should definitely try to fix the flickering graphics, too.
Wow, that is some great level design. You took the simplest mechanic possible and really explored it. Good learning curve too. I can't tell you how many times I got to a level, though, "No, forget it. That's impossible", and then 100 lives later I beat it! I thought I was *never* going to get past the second level with the moving jacks. It's a fun feeling to finally beat what seemed impossible. :)
Anyway, I've been playing for hours. I'm quitting on the level where you have to leap left and then right over the five jacks. This one doesn't seem impossible, just way hard.
The Linux download link isn't working for me. The mediafire page comes up but the download fails. I'm going to try the Windows version under Wine....
I liked the game mechanic once I figured out the "rules". At first I was spam-hitting the spacebar, until I realized that's not the best strategy at all. I liked the writing on the walls. Nice touch. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get past the level called "The walls have ears". The passageways were too narrow to slip past, no matter how stealthy I was being. Maybe there was some trick I was missing.
Why would you package a Linux version in a RAR file? :( I think you should use tar/gz or at least ZIP.
Anyway, you should try to draw inspiration from the theme. Don't just call your game "Discovery", especially when it has nothing at all to do with discovery.
It's over too fast. There needs to be more challenges or something. Maybe you collect objects that give you time, or that let you go through a wall, or give you temporary invulnerability? You know, those are just off the top of my head.
Wow, this was about the easiest game I've ever played. At least the first level. When I tried to exit out the lower-left of the screen, the game froze on me. I'm running the Windows version under Wine.
That was kind of cool, although once you get the rules down, it's basically the luck of the board layout. If you have enough places to expand before encountering red, it's easy to win.
I enjoyed this! I would not even flash the solutions on the screen to begin with. It makes people think you need to see them in order to complete the puzzles, and you don't. I think you should not have the progress bar pulse like that. It's essential for making deductions in the later levels, and if you happen to glance at it when it's "off", you can really wind up going down the wrong path.
Yay, I actually beat it! I'm glad I stuck at it until the end. Nice job.
Some feedback: I normally don't mind platforming without weapons, but I feel like if I'm a purple metallic pterodactyl/greyhound with spiky wings, I should be able to kill a slime in fewer than four hits. Definitely agree about needing invulnerability after being hit. The first enemy that got a good hit in would always kill me to death. The platforms ran way too slow. I was waiting for one for 30 seconds. The arrows were deceptive. Better to have no arrows than ones that only sometimes point the way to go first.
Nice, I had fun once I figured out the depth of the strategy. I played several times after that, but I never saw one of these "very easy" levels. Once I had 1225 points, but it still didn't tell me to get to the surface. What's a guy got to do?!
Is there supposed to be a Readme? I checked the Windows and Source downloads, and I couldn't find one. An explanation of the controls would be nice; I couldn't figure it out. I'm running it in Wine so I may be running into issues.
It's got a great atmosphere; the music adds a lot. Many of the jumps are very hard to make since you can't see the player character, and if you miss them you fall all the way down the screen or worse. I explored as much as I could (15 screens), but at one point I kept falling through a wall and ending up in a pit with no escape.
LD35 — Shapeshift (14)
Gallery by ToadieTechnika 2016-04-26T17:46:00
The main gameplay is not anything new, but it's still well done and I liked the idea of the gallery, even if I didn't see any particularly awesome shapes. :)
Another Dimension by pikmin4000 2016-04-26T17:38:00
I managed to beat it after following your advice for phasing. It's not a bad idea for a mechanic, but it very non-intuitive. It seems like a game glitch and if you hadn't specifically said that that's what you're supposed to do, I would have assumed it was "cheating". Maybe if the glass shattered when you went through it instead. Overall not bad. I liked the mood.
Morphing Maria by Frozen Fractal 2016-04-21T03:03:00
Awesome! Really good looking. Good use of creative mechanics. The puzzles are a bit easy for anyone who's done Sokoban, but there's nothing wrong with that per se. :)
Chaos by ezombort 2016-04-21T02:52:00
I was pretty good at this game when I was 2, but not so much anymore it seems. I like how it naturally gets more challenging as the screen fills.
Blockfall by xandy 2016-04-21T02:49:00
The controls could use some tightening up. Whenever I had to step off the edge of my platform I felt really out of control. It wasn't too bad when I could change and fall through, though.
PuzzleShift by KunoNoOni 2016-04-21T02:33:00
Linux build works well, but on the first level with the arrows I jumped down from a great height and fell through the floor. I didn't die, though, and there was no way to restart so I had to kill the game. :/ It wasn't bad. I liked some of the level design, but it was a bit too forgiving toward the end, if you hit the wrong button. Not bad overall, though.
The Shinobi Trial by Foxtacy 2016-04-21T02:12:00
Hey sorry I'm on Linux and this shows up on my queue because you said the word "Linux". I'm just commenting to clear it off. Good luck! :)
The Elemental Shapeshifter by Crazy046 2016-04-20T03:42:00
Creative idea, how you don't have weapons per se, but using the elements to transform yourself can attack enemies. I like it! The difficulty curve is pretty good. I was able to last for a few rounds before finally succumbing. I like the fast pace and the upgrade mechanic. Introducing the elements one at a time would have been helpful. It's pretty much impossible to know what you should upgrade first when the screen first appears. But I still had fun. Oh and thanks for the Linux version! :)
Project - O by Blister 2016-04-20T02:45:00
Awesome graphics and music! Good job implementing so many different mechanics. It would have been nice if there was more than one room, of course, but I still had fun with what was there. :)
Hasardeux by Llucile 2016-04-20T02:19:00
Creative idea. It seemed like an action game at first, but once I got the hang of it I appreciated the strategy element of it. My record was around 12,000ms.
polyAgonY by raffitz 2016-04-19T04:16:00
Yeah it's a pretty hard concept in general, but also it's difficult to distinguish between some of the shapes and color. Green and cyan I had trouble with, as well as hexagon and heptagon. I think it would be more fun limited to just 2 or 3 of each. Or maybe it could ramp up in difficulty over time. Still, creative and simple idea.
Public Opinion by Finn Stokes 2016-04-19T04:08:00
Cute. I think it's a little too fast-paced for there to be any real strategy. You just go after the dots that aren't your color and hope for the best. It's fun chasing them down, though. The two-player mode seems like it would be fun. An AI would have been great, but of course that's easier said than done.
Shape Shift by paradxil 2016-04-19T03:59:00
Maybe I'm weird but I didn't have any trouble figuring out the menu. I think it's a great idea for a game, but ideally it would have a well-balanced progression of difficulty that ramps up steadily over time, rather than having the player select it. You're right that this is a hard thing to do well, though. I found Sizes, even on easy, to be just beyond my ability. I got in the 50s a few times but never quite finished it.
I like the chill mood - not sure why you didn't want to be rated on mood but I would have given it 4 or 5 stars. The explosions are a nice touch.
A Pickle of a Mystery by senabryer 2016-04-19T03:43:00
Creative idea and an interesting cast of characters. I wouldn't mind seeing it edited down a lot, particularly all the "uh..." and "...". It was tedious because the text scrolled so slowly I had to click twice for every line.