criticalmammal

Year	LD	Theme		Game	Division	Rank	Ov	Fu	In	Th	Gr	Au	Hu	Mo	Co
2015	32	An Unconventional Weapon		Crowd Control	jam	595	3.12	2.54	3.82	3.85	3.12	3.00	2.16	3.26	78

RELIC by CptDustmite 2015-04-24T03:49:00

The overall experience was enjoyable for the narrative and art/audio work. Though it was fairly disappointing in regard to its interactivity.

The parts where you do assume some control over what's happening generally feels like filler to try and meet the requirements for what a game should be, rather than serving any true purpose other than to break up the story progression a bit. I don't mind experimental games that focus more on a specific narrative, but in this case it feels like it would have almost been better executed as a short animated film than as an interactive thing.

The jumping/collision bug with the astronaut platforming doesn't help the problem either. The platforming portions already were a bit bland, but that bug just makes that whole section frustrating. Btw, I think the bug seems to be something to do with the switching or keeping track of the astronaut's "jump" status improperly. It seems like it keeps getting toggled to him being in a "jumping" state, then hitting the collision, toggling off, and somehow him getting toggled back to a jumping state again afterwards every frame. If you slide around on a platform it eventually sorts itself out somehow.

The narrative was well done and humorous. The main character being a "I'm just a guy doing a job" template made him less interesting character-wise, but the robot ironically enough compensated for his lack of personality. It was written pretty well otherwise and actually having the robot voiced was a big surprise (and a very nice touch).

The visuals were fantastic, and the audio as well was very fitting. The polish in these areas help maintain an air of mystery to the whole experience. References (and I'd assume inspiration) from 2001: A Space Odyssey were abundant and were pulled off well.

If you can figure out how to mesh some interesting interaction with your storytelling/art/audio you'll have something superb. As this currently stands however, it feels rather hollow. I think even small changes like having dialogue play while doing the platforming would at least give those sections a tiny nugget of cohesion with the gameplay. It feels too separated, I would recommend trying to find ways to intermingle things together so that the elements of the interaction compliment everything else you're trying to achieve.

Ice Princess by pinkmonkeyhead 2015-04-22T07:07:00

I went into this game thinking that I would only really find the visuals impressive. Well the visuals ARE very impressive, but it turns out the rest of the game is also very appealing.

The writing you did for the dialogue was surprisingly witty and clever. Sure it's sort of silly, and it's mostly just demands to go do stuff, but it really adds to the game where I wasn't expecting it.

Speaking of things I wasn't expecting... turns out the game mechanics are also refreshing and just as clever as the dialogue. Sending your kids to go self destruct for the common good of the family? Pure gold.

And of course the visuals... oooh the visuals are a treat. I just adore moving the super realistic tiny objects around. Seriously it's incredibly impressive looking. It reminded me a little bit of Pikmin to be honest, what with moving tiny little random objects around.

It's not without a couple of issues however. Trying to go backwards is a buggy mess. The camera view turns but the character just... yeah, it doesn't work very well. I think you probably should have just prevented the ability of going backwards rather than keeping that in.

I downloaded the game for windows and was initially sort of perplexed as to why you chose to go with such a tiny resolution. I got accustomed to it after a while though. Also even though I like the tilt-shift edge blurring effect, I think you may overdone it just a bit.

I did have have problems with the bear soldier, I just couldn't get past him. I did stun him once, but didn't take advantage of it and run away. I tried to keep bombing him and well... "woke up" again. Which, btw, the difficulty of that portion is emphasized even greater because you can't skip dialogue and you have to make the little trek back. I probably died almost ten times and just started to not enjoy playing after that.

I also did Alt+Enter and it messed up the files or something permanently. I even went so far as to re-download the files and it still didn't work properly afterwards. Do you save other files somewhere or something? I thought that was extremely strange and I literally just can't play the game on my computer anymore, locally anyway. I can still run it from Firefox.

Get'em Princess! by Boberro 2015-04-26T09:37:00

Played it for just a little bit. The infinitely spawning mobs sort of discouraged me from playing to be honest, as they generally seem like a cheap way to ramp up difficulty over time until the odds are ridiculously unfair.

I have to admit, the silent green "balloons" (they really don't seem like balloons to me) were actually pretty creepy. I think it's just the fact that they move towards you at a constant not too fast but not slow either rate... and they just make no noise. They're completely ominous and void of any... anything! Running up a stairway and seeing them pour up onto the rooftop with you actually evoked a bit of tension for me haha. And jumping off to escape felt pretty cool.

The level structure reminds me of a mario kart 64 stage, though it's such an old game I think my memory is just a tad fuzzy haha. Here's a reference in case you were curious of what I'm talking about:
http://mariokart.wikia.com/wiki/Block_Fort

Running up the stairs was sometimes problematic. It seemed sort of easy to get hung up on their geometry and I needed to jump in order to continue up them properly.

It's somewhat similar but slightly more complex and intertwined.

The visuals were fairly nice and did the job. The grass in particular has a nice effect when light hits it a certain way.

I think overall you got the basics down pretty well (aside from the stairs). The movement and general motion seems normal. The footstep sounds give a sense of weight to walking around. Good move adding those in, they give a lot to the feel of the game (consider adding in more audio, it really rounds out the experience).

I think the main thing that discouraged me was just the endless factor. Some people may not have as much of an issue with that aspect, but for me it's kind of an instant turn off in a game where I know the enemies will spawn forever without limit no matter what I do. Or, at least I'm pretty sure how it works. There sure were a lot of them.

Ring Retorter by zatyka 2015-04-22T07:51:00

Really nice overall. Very clever usage of good ole' fighting with words. The sounds and art used all tie in nicely together too.

The background music stopped at one point though, perhaps it wasn't looping? I was fiddling with my phone while playing the game, so I'm not sure how long I was sitting there. (I liked that you didn't add additional pressure with time limits btw) felt appropriate given how many options were present.

I also liked the decision to keep all the potential responses in a list and just have you choose from them. Since there weren't a ridiculous amount of them, it was manageable to choose from, and I also found it interesting how certain lines were re-usable.

I also loved how smoothly the narrative transitioned when I lost my second fight. It all felt very natural moving along to the next fight (winning btw) and then getting the final results.

I honestly don't have much to gripe about with this game. It's very well executed overall and literally the only problem I noticed was the background music cutting out after sitting there for who knows how many minutes.

If you were to expand on this concept and add more content THEN you might need to consider pairing down the selection list of options to a handful for each retort, randomizing the "wrong" options.

I also just realized this was a Compo entry, jeez man great job. Very clean execution for such a tight deadline.

Lord of Spiders by echa 2015-04-25T07:59:00

Being able to hold the mouse to move would be a nice tweak to make.

After playing for a little bit I found that hit and run tactics were very effective. The stamina in the game really does add an extra layer of strategy that was really fun to learn to exploit. At first I would just go up and attack as much as possible standing still. But if you attack in a barrage at first, get them to "shield up", then run away and let your stamina to regain while they chase you for another burst... it works really well. I was sort of bummed at first that they chase you so intensely, but after playing it actually makes that hit and run strategy more entertaining and intense when they start pursuing.

I was really disappointed there was no sound for this. The game is actually surprisingly enjoyable to play. Having audio for all the little interactions would have really just taken it the extra mile. Non-intrusive sounds for crawling, attacking, a sort of garden ambiance. I mean, it would really do the game wonders. I'd highly recommend working on a post-jam version that includes audio. If you contact me I would gladly play it again and leave feedback on an updated version.

https://www.freesound.org/ is good place to find sound resources. I normally find what I need and edit/layer sounds with Audacity. Works out pretty well.

Quiver of Claws by Bensonance 2015-04-22T22:56:00

Slowing time mid-air and firing was the most empowering feeling I got throughout this game. That moment in particular, and the contrast it gives to the standard running around sort of defines everything I liked about the game. It's sleek, works pretty well, looks and feels great due to the additional screen effects happening.

I think the main area I was craving some more of that tightness and polish was in the non-standard arrows. The game sort of felt like it was designed mostly around the standard arrows, and the other two (in my opinion) just weren't used enough to feel like they were really necessary. They felt like a sort of frivolous add-on to a nice base arrow-shooting mechanic. I'm not sure if it's because they were rare-ish to find or because the level designs mostly didn't require them... but I feel like there's something missing in that department.

That's all very disappointing to type out because the gif of the rhino arrow is what drew me into playing the game in the first place. I normally dislike infinite usage bow and arrow mechanics, but I feel for some reason that always having the option to use the other arrow types and not being limited to X amount of shots would have improved on my admiration for them mechanically. But as is, I really didn't feel like I could experiment with them because of how few you get.

In sort of a weird counter recommendation to what I just said above, I think most of the difficulty and tension comes from the limited arrows. It was pretty much the only thing that was there that would have been able to set me back. I never felt like I took enough damage to feel any pressure about health.

So I'd say that in order to increase tension and give a better overall balance between danger/feeling strong, increase the damage done to the player. It's sort of crazy how many hits you can sponge (I counted, it's 10!). It's probably likely that most people wouldn't be hit 10 times over the course of the whole game, much less by the time they hit a health up item. It would require playtesting of course, but I'd say 2-3 hits would have been sufficient in giving a sense of thrill to taking on the other archers and surviving.

Overall this was really well done, though I felt it would have (in its current state) almost just been more well rounded focusing entirely on the conventional arrows. Obviously you had the theme to think about, but I just didn't feel that the unconventional ones added anything terribly significant with how they were used. Which is a bit of a shame to be honest considering how nicely polished everything else is.

WORDMINES by Symmeteer 2015-04-27T02:34:00

Ehh... it's an interesting concept but I'm not entirely sure how to avoid certain words once you "initiate" them. Sometimes I can just "walk away" from them as they change, and other times the words keep changing until they finally are Death. Maybe you're not supposed to, once you hit a word that's deemed "bad" it will eventually kill you. And as far as I can tell nearly all the words will end the game. Except sunshine, but nothing seems to happen after Life appears, which is fairly disappointing.

But sometimes the collisions with the words seem really odd. I'll be moving in an empty space and die suddenly. I'll hit a positive word, get "Life" to pop up on-screen, then death will pop up elsewhere and the game ends. I'm not sure, but it's not a terribly enjoyable experience when my actions seem to be either ignored, or a largely futile. It just ends up where it's not terribly interesting to interact with, considering the limited scope of reactions to my input.

Cheeseburger (in Paradise) by Just_delete_it 2015-04-25T06:25:00

Eh... it really didn't do anything for me to be honest. I understand a lot of work went into the music and presentation. But everything else felt... weak interactively.

Being flashed around with the different abstract cheeseburger imagery felt a bit underwhelming, just being an observer for the most part. I want to hold the cheeseburgers, toss them around, tear them apart, throw them in a pile and jump in.

Okay, I admit, it sounds a little odd... but I want to DO stuff with them. I want to be a part of this weird abstract cheeseburger world, not just an observer.

There's also not a great deal of variation in what is there. The single cheeseburger model is reused pretty heavily and looks a bit plain without tomato/lettuce. The landscapes were also pretty barren feeling.

The focus was obviously on the music, and it does excel and have a high quality parody feel to it. It's impressive considering the time constraints.

The overall presentation (cheeseburger models aside) was also pretty well done. The intro bit was polished and the colors scheme felt appropriate.

A Knight and A Line by Squeka 2015-04-24T18:51:00

Like most other people, I've never thought of pdf files as a potential avenue for making a game. It's intriguing, that's for sure.

The actual game itself ends up feeling somewhat bland. This is probably mostly just a limitation of the toolset though. It boils down to being presented with an obstacle, and one of the 4 or so options being correct, the others leading to death and a "page flip" back to the choices. Very choose your own adventure-y, though there aren't many "grey" choices. Ones that keep you progressing in some direction, but sort of take you off the "main" path briefly. All of the choices seem to either push you forward or kill you instantly.

*Spoilers for those who haven't played*

The actual story was the standard "knight goes slay beasts" narrative. Some of the choices had interesting results though. I think my personal favorite was the playing dead option with the bear. It makes you think that it worked for a second and then kind of pulls the rug out from under you haha. The mustache option for the demon also was surprisingly effective (it was my first pick).

The art also was nice, especially considering the abundance of slides that need to be done. It had a style that fit well with the tone of the story.

Overall, the main pull for this entry is that it was made as a pdf file. It's a bit of an eye-opener that reminds us a game can be made as long as the user can provide ANY kind of input. The actual game content, however, is a little weak and not terribly intriguing.

Lost Fame by joe40001 2015-04-25T07:29:00

I really was impressed with the "point to go to" effect. It seemed like it would only teleport me when it determined that there was a place for me to land, which was surprisingly effective. It felt like it had a certain freedom to it... it actually kind of reminds me of how a lot of devs (when showing off fancy open world games now) will say something like "see those mountains back there? You can go to those". Your game kind of takes that and says... you can go there... right now... ziiiiip *standing on mountain*.

I have to say though that I kind of wish you included more areas you could explore locally. Sometimes while exploring the city/tower areas I would jump from the top of one tower down to another, then spot a good teleport location... jump of the current place, and while mid-air use my teleporter to zip off somewhere else not to far off. There isn't really a sense of gravity or intensity to the falling portion though, so it felt a bit less... cool. I think you really missed an opportunity relying so heavily on the teleporter to move around. Some local platforms to jump around to and find things would have really helped break up some of the monotony that comes with having to precisely line up each "shot" from a distance.

So yeah, so windy "falling sound" fading in, a bit of screen wobble increase as you fall would have really helped with the immersive quality of falling. Then constructing areas that were designed to be teleported to and navigated by jumping mostly without the device would have helped break up the pacing a bit.

I also found the overall objective to be pretty uninteresting, and there were a lot of things I felt were added to just kind of extend gameplay in uninteresting ways. Collecting things just felt like a chore, and I grew tired of that design very quickly. After that decided I just wanted to use the teleport gun until I felt I explored its uses enough. This is where I started experimenting with jumping around the city's geometry, and it was somewhat entertaining for a little bit but also grew dull fairly quickly. Basically, by the time I was anywhere near any collectibles, I had already started to grow tired of the normal "point to go to" mechanic. Everything felt incredibly stretched out, even things like the intro staircase were absurdly long and tedious. It seemed like at some point you felt you didn't have enough content, so in order to remedy that the idea was to duplicate stuff and stretch it out further. That may not have been how the process actually went, but it's how it felt as a player. The whole thing felt a bit "samey" after a while.

I'd recommend putting things a bit further together, removing some of the content that feels unnecessary, and make the parts that are there interesting to explore. The city structures for instance, while interesting at first, felt completely hollow. They were massive but the had little of interest to actually explore or to take interest in. That's kind of how the whole game felt after a while, massive, awe inspiring... but ultimately hollow.

You've got a very solid mechanic here that's incredibly intriguing and very different in terms of navigating a space. The main thing is making that space interesting. After I jumped to a couple of those purple cube platforms and never found anything of interest at them I stopped teleporting to them when I could. They weren't interesting to visit. The same thing happened with the city areas.

Aside from the gameplay becoming tedious for me, I found the audio and general mood to be pleasing. Seeing the cities off in the distance and the yearning to see them up close had a sense of scale and intrigue that's hard to achieve for most games. It's all the things in between that were missing. The journey was completely lackluster, and the payoff for making it was a disappointment.

Also, I think you've got some sort of bug with the npc movement. They all seem to move as if they are reacting to the player input for moving forward. That was a bit odd, unless it's symbolic or something...

I don't want to come across like I didn't like it. I just found it sort of frustrating that such an interesting mechanic because so bogged down with tedium. In order to improve it, I'd recommend taking what you enjoy about the experience and refining and improving those aspects while removing things that come across as being unnecessary.

For me personally, that would mean removing half the platforms. Creating medium-sized areas that are enjoyable to traverse with a mixture of player jumping and the gun usage... and polishing that up until it was purely enjoyable just to navigate different spaces. No collectables, perhaps leave an ambiguous narrative but keep it mysterious... and also personally an emphasis on sound design. Footsteps, sounds for jumping, falling, additional ambient sounds for areas you're around, wind for open places, muffled interior sounds for... interiors. You get the picture.

https://www.freesound.org/ is a good resource for sounds.

Lost Fame by joe40001 2015-04-25T07:34:00

Wow I typed a lot, yesh. I mean, I normally leave a lot of feedback for each game I play but that's A LOT haha. I also wanted to chip in again real quick to say that my suggestions shouldn't be followed as a fact for what others (or you) want or should want from the game.

I just got the impression that a lot of stuff was added in order to make sure it would meet the requirements of being a "good game". Adding in things to collect, and a lot of content. But the game is yours, and you should have things you genuinely feel will add to the experience. Regardless of my opinion on them.

Adventures in Spacetime! by TheFuntastic 2015-04-26T10:04:00

Hm, seems like other people also had a bit of trouble with the movement also. It felt really... stiff, like rather than slowly coming to a halt, it would continue to move at the normal movement speed a split second after you stop. I understand the effect is to try and get a little bit of a feel like you can't stop on a dime, but it ends up being rather annoying. I was constantly falling off platforms at first, the movement just really threw me off quite a bit. I seemed to always overshoot where I was actually trying to move to.

Visually this game is a stunner. It really goes to show what some good lighting, a nice color scheme, and simple geometry can do. The gun (and puzzle gameplay) was obviously inspired by Portal, but it was pulled off well and the gun's curvy aesthetic gives nice contrast to the rectangular world.

The audio of course is also a standout, both the background music and the footstep/jump sound effects really help give the game weight and round the experience up some. Having appropriate sounds for the gun/bubbles and whatnot would have been a nice touch.

It took me a little bit of time to understand the mechanics of the puzzle. I saw that I could grow/shrink the orb but was confused at first what property was causing the example cube to stick to the wall. A little while later I noticed the white lines (thank goodness for those) pointing in the direction of the gravity pull and it clicked. From there the puzzles were generally pretty easy to get through. Actually they became a bit lackluster all considering, but I understand how hard it is to make the puzzles (much less everything else) in such a tight timeframe.

Panash & Plume by tikilittle 2015-04-26T06:36:00

You nailed the overall atmosphere and while the visuals and animations aren't always completely polished or pleasant in a traditional way... they really have a sort of unrefined quality that does something magical for the whole experience.

The music reminded me quite a bit of certain vocal elements from Ghost in the Shell. I actually went back to look it up, it's the first song in this video: https://youtu.be/ZtzMskOJgHA?t=5s

The music just really pushes the mood waaaaaay out there. It adds so much that I'd say it's one of those things that just defines a large part of the experience.

I didn't really play the game a great deal for the hunting aspect of it, even though I normally like that part of games with it included. It just didn't do anything for me personally. Controlling the eagle with that kind of precision became difficult, and it ended up with me gaining velocity... overshooting a great deal... sliding along the ground, and repeating until I caught a fox (I just caught that one fox). After that I sort of decided that aspect of the game wasn't really polished enough and lost interest in it. I did quite enjoy initially flying around as the bird with the music just giving me chills. And the animations for the person character were very well done... but I wasn't inclined to do much with them due to their slow mobility and general lack of use in comparison with the eagle.

I will note though, that in the building area at the start the character speed feels a bit fast. There needs to be some balance there with the movement. Everything felt slippery and stiff, and not much of the motion felt very natural. To me, that's the main thing I'd like to see improved. The eagle ended up feeling like controlling a piece of plastic with a rocket booster on the back. There wasn't a sense of natural gliding in the air or landing ability. The only games that I can refer to for that kind of flight model would be games that feature airplanes, ideally realistically modeled. Where gaining/losing altitude costs/gains speed... and of course wing flapping would need to be worked into that somehow for takeoff/landing. Complex stuff... but important for rounding out this kind of thing.

Great job overall establishing the mood. I'd love being notified if you update this at all.

Sepulcher of the Unicorn by Jon Fischer 2015-04-22T04:29:00

Gah this is absolutely amazing in both the visual and sound department. You really nailed the whole atmosphere, and I mean NAILED it. This may be one of the more impressive Ludum Dare entries I've seen, ever. But definitely most impressive I've run across for this one. It really carries a Myst-like quality overall to the feel in general.

Obviously the visuals are really nice, but I really love that you did such a great job including appropriate sounds also. I'm not sure how much of the assets were done during the jam though, but the fact that it all went so well together is just great.

The puzzles weren't amazing or anything, but the final door puzzle was engaging enough to keep me at it for a bit.

(Spoilers for those who haven't played it)

It took me a while to figure out I needed to go to the area where you flip the water wheel switch. By that time I had seen the light bulb sequence on the other machine and could figure out the door sequence pretty easily.

I noticed someone mentioned the door puzzle was just trial and error, but it's sort of funny because that door puzzle is only guesswork if you don't look for the clues haha. Good job with that part, though I guess ideally you'd want puzzles people wouldn't be able to brute force figure out without the clues.

As for the ending, well... I suppose it's an alright justification of the theme... but let's put it this way... I can see why you'd opt out of the rating in that department.

Great job overall, seriously impressive atmosphere.

Sepulcher of the Unicorn by Jon Fischer 2015-04-23T06:25:00

@Jon Fisch No problem, that's very impressive that you were able to pump out so much polished content in such a short amount of time. Finding and editing proper sounds normally takes me about half a day alone. They also didn't feel overused or anything, which is surprising.

As for the water wheel issue... I dunno. I kind of like that it's this thing you pass by at first oblivious to its importance. The pipe-work that leads you around to the parts of the puzzle are good subtle hints. The main problem is that there wasn't much in the way of a small piece of information hinting that I may have missed something (aside from the door puzzle not working). After I was pretty sure I was doing it right I started backtracking and found it. But that process was a tad lengthier than I would have liked personally.

Perhaps have some sort of indication when the player correctly has the levers pulled? Like turning on the little light in the elevator (though it's hard to see if you aren't inside it). That way they could know they need to start looking elsewhere?

Speechless by MonoS 2015-04-25T09:26:00

I'm not terribly accustomed to entirely text-based games, I've played a couple and I don't mind some of the older rogue-like games, but I generally lose interest somewhat quickly. I really really like the idea of stripping away graphics to focus purely on the logic content of the game though. This is a bit of a different beast from others, but it does remind me of both the good and bad bits of what I've played before.

It's got mystery and intrigue. It immediately sucks me in because I'm challenged to learn and come to understand these foreign words in order to survive. It's an amazing concept, really. This is your game at its best for me. Getting the initial three or so words, puzzling over what word I should choose to take with me next. "Rikala... that one killed me last round... it seemed powerful" I say, I'll learn more about it through using and hearing it I expect.

This is where things start to go downhill for me a bit. I go challenge another enemy, more words are available. I notice the three words I was expecting to learn more about have run out of uses, and now I have a new pile of obscure words to choose from. "But... I really wanted to learn those other ones first" I say. I take the new words and head out... again defeated quickly, and to discover that those words too have run out of uses... and now I've got an even larger list of obscure words to choose from. The words start to lose all meaning as I slowly figure out that I won't become attached to any of them really. I won't slowly learn individual words because the list will continue to grow and my word uses will run out shortly after gaining them.

This is also generally how I start to feel with other text based games. There is a point where there is so much content that feels randomly generated that everything starts to lose meaning to me. I'm already somewhat detached due to the graphical nature of the game, but I become more-so as I realize that the game will become a series of checking the stats of item A vs. B vs. C vs. D. Oh, I've got another one... A vs. B, C, D, E.... oh..... another one....

I understand that in the description it's supposed to emulate learning a new language with learning disabilities... but it also destroys my ability to become attached to the game in a meaningful way.

I would have vastly preferred having more pacing with introducing a single basic enemy at first that only has 1 or two words to use (and doesn't insta-kill me while I'm trying to learn how the game works). I want to touch on that briefly. Say... words restore or something. If the monsters kill me on their turn, I'm not really able to observe and think about the effects of the words I'm using on them. By that time I'm dead... with more words! Perhaps you wanted to really evoke the danger around every corner aspect, but I feel it only does a disservice to learning the world mechanics to their fullest.

And of course as I was going on before, introducing the words at a lower rate would have been much less overwhelming. I understand now that it's up to the game to keep track of the stats of the words as I throw my body at any monster I see until I can start to see stats... but that's honestly not how I wanted to play it. I wanted to memorize the words and their effects myself. To really learn them, and become comfortable with them... attached to them. And to learn to let go of my precious words and learn new ones when the challenges grow greater. None of that pacing was present for me, but I really... really wish it could have done that for me.

If you ever decide to update this and think I'd like to check it out again feel free to contact me and send stuff my way.

I'm on twitter at: https://twitter.com/CriticalMammal
my email is: gallardodylan42@gmail.com

Kodama - frail echoes by geekdrums 2015-04-26T08:45:00

Both the audio and visual aspects were fantastic. Absolutely superb job all around crafting the whole atmosphere for the game. Everything works together well and compliments each piece. Your team did an excellent job fitting everything together cohesively into one little package.

I can't find a lot of faults with the game. I suppose the interactivity was a little weak, but I did enjoy the concept of echoing voices... and it all wraps up into a sort of beautiful experience by the end when you feel like you're communicating with the partner that joins you on-screen. And in retrospect, it felt compact and simple out of design decisions rather than because things didn't get in on time. All considering it feels complete, and is one of the few Ludum Dare games that I've run into this time around that has that well rounded feel to it.

I do think there was a bug where the letters for one sound actually got stuck on-screen... gah, I wish I took a screenshot to show. But all considering it wasn't actually that intrusive to the experience.

I'm not quite sure why you call it "insane art" in the description. I thought it had a beautifully drawn look, both the handrawn background and the character and other effects.

Very nice job all around, pat yourselves on the back for this one! And please play and rate other games so you receive more feedback for this! This game really deserves more attention than it has gotten so far. Also consider posting something about the game on the Ludum Dare main page so that this doesn't fly under the radar.

Crowd Control by CriticalMammal 2015-04-21T21:01:00

Hi all, thank you very much for the feedback so far! The game seems to be sort of confusing people in some ways, so I'll briefly answer some questions without spoiling how it all works.

1. The crowd doesn't grow or happen in waves. What you see at the start is what there is. They run off-screen though, which might give the impression more are being added when they come back

2. The emotional effects can be fairly subtle, I'm sorry they aren't a bit easier to distinguish. In general, rage makes them more/less aggressive, sorrow increases affect their long-term interest in rioting, and fear causes panic quickly at the cost of more rage later.

3. The goals are very loose and I don't force you to take any certain approach. This means there are easier and harder ways to "win", it's sort of up to you to decide what approach is appropriate or most rewarding.

- Dylan

Crowd Control by CriticalMammal 2015-04-22T07:23:00

@jmborden Thank you very much for the feedback. There are ways to control and manage them so that you don't kill anyone, though it is very difficult (probably much more than I think). I agree that it doesn't always feel like you have very good control over individuals. I think I'll work on creating a tweaked post-jam version that fixes some of those problems and emphasizes individual reactions. I have a couple of things in mind that would probably drastically improve on it.

It's interesting though, being threaten by the crowd in-game and resorting to violence. There's a certain point where you sort of take a "them or me" approach and decide you just can't handle them and have to take them out.

I haven't read Elias Canetti's "Crowds and Power", though I'm tempted to now as research for this since it seems so relevant.

Crowd Control by CriticalMammal 2015-04-26T19:18:00

@TheScopelessOne, there aren't waves of people. It's one persistent crowd, they just run off-screen sometimes and return back later. Though I do agree sometimes it's hard to get a feel for how many people there are left... I'll look into that and think of a non-intrusive way to represent the people off-screen.

Thanks a lot for the additional comments everyone, there have been a lot and I may respond individually to some more of them later today.

I'm very aware of the original submission's lack of feedback regarding the crowd's response. The post jam version improves that pretty well I think, but feel free to tell me if there are still some confusing aspects.

Garden State by cbear_wallis 2015-04-23T13:59:00

Awe I really liked this. It's very serene and peaceful, and I really enjoyed playing around with it to kind of figure out how certain things worked.

The whole atmosphere of the game is superb. The animations for the art assets blended very nicely with calming music and just give the whole thing a flow that feels great.

It took me probably two or so rounds (maybe 3?) to start to figure out why exactly the rounds ended. But I liked the overall presentation of the mechanics and how everything is learned by interacting with it and observing behaviors. I read your post-mortem post and I think you were really able to recover and make something engaging and different by cutting out the notion of specific player goals. For a small scale game like this it's wonderful to just be able to unwind and enjoy the mechanics with no other clutter getting in the way. It feels... pure, I suppose is a good way to phrase it.

The talking plants were a nice touch too, though I found they tended to talk a bit too much. Often times their dialogue would overlap over each other and sometimes with multiple speech bubbles present it would detract from the rest of the experience. So I think maybe spacing them out a bit more would have been nice.

Oh this is nit-picky, but I also noticed what you call the "brambles", the darker squares... when they act on their turn I noticed their animations could have been slightly smoother when they seem to "exit" and move to another square. They disappear instantly, and it could have been nice to have them shrink out in the same way the "grow" in to their final position.

Also I found sometimes when dragging a plant over to a specific tile it wouldn't register as I expected sometimes. It wasn't a huge deal, but sometimes I would have to re-drag the plant of my choice over a tile more than once to get it to go to the tile I expected.

Fantastic entry overall though, it's a little bite-sized bit of relaxing joy. These peaceful zen-like games can be interesting to see because of how tense game jams typically are. Interesting how, from so much stress things that are so calming can be created.

Daunting Disorientation by Ronin748 2015-04-21T22:46:00

Hmm, I had some trouble progressing in the game because of how quickly time seems to pass and how brutal the nights are on your resources. I found that one night generally takes almost a full lantern to fully survive. So that means you pretty much would have to find one cabin per nightfall I'm guessing. The day cycle lasts about 30 seconds (nights are the same), which is pretty short all considering since finding the cabin sort of relies purely on the time+luck from what I could tell.

That made it fairly difficult to pick up and understand at first since you had essentially 30 seconds to learn how to play the game before you essentially die. I played it about 3-4 times before going back and reading the description to understand how to do stuff (regarding the lantern and dog controls). I then probably continued to play another handful of times with this new-found knowledge only to still consistently fail at finding more than one cabin per run.

I mean, but at its heart I really liked the core stuff you do with the game. It's got a really nice general ambiance to it and the art and mood is fantastic for the timeframe. I just wish it let me enjoy and admire some of that a bit while introducing the survival aspect. There was always this nagging pressure to constantly keep moving and looking for the next cabin. This also put a damper on all of the interesting dog mechanics because I almost always needed to spend my time looking for the cabin.

Some things that would have improved this for me would be:
- adding in control prompts for the lantern and dog leash. The lantern specifically could have just had an "F" under the oil bar and I could have figured it out without having to refer to the description.

- Better balance for the pacing of the day night cycle with learning the mechanics for the game. Slower days, shorter nights or less oil consumption per night, would have tremendously helped ease into understanding the game before ramping up the difficulty later on. Right now I felt like it was constantly punishing.

- Something needs to be done about the cabin random gen I think. If the cabin wasn't around the local area it felt impossible to find. Two main ways I could think of would be to allow the dog to lead you to the cabin when you take his leash off (a bit too direct imo), or to have some sort of landmarks to spawn near the cabin so you know when you're getting close. I know the game is supposed to give you the feeling of being lost, but with the additional pressure of time added it just makes it a bit more frustrating and easy to blame the game for revolving around luck.

You've got some really nice atmosphere here and it's a great start to something that can be tweaked and rebalanced to allow for a better learning experience. In its current state though it felt too punishing to me.

Feel free to contact me if you upload a post-jam version that you've tweaked or just want to discuss any criticisms I had.

GAMUBòRU GUMBALL!! by Robber 2015-04-22T01:52:00

I really love this, it's just incredibly amusing and an enjoyable experience. I think it stems from the fact that the truck physics and motion were really nicely implemented. It's enjoyable to see how it reacts to different turns and whatnot.

The music fit perfectly, and I mean perfectly. It's one of the main things I liked about the whole thing to be honest, and probably kept me around longer because I just wanted to hear the whole thing. It's captivating.

I mean, the whole game is sort of just aimless... but it's great exploring it for a bit. My best moment I think... was going really really fast, and pretty much clearing one of the holes in the ground, tossing, turning, and the truck somehow landed upright haha. Great stuff.

Also, interesting note: the cannon doesn't shoot out with truck velocity + cannon velocity. So if you go fast speeds with the truck you can essentially outrun the shots you're firing haha.

I probably only played it for a 3-4 minutes or so but I thoroughly enjoyed my time with it. Very polished mechanics.

You Are a Skunk by LTPATS 2015-04-23T06:06:00

Played through it all they way to the final screen, and felt sort of satisfied with my time spent. There's a lot of work done here for a compo entry, but the game sort of makes me question if I actually liked it and why. I'm not entirely sure I can accurately answer it properly.

It sits in a sort of strange odor-filled dreamish middle-ground. There are a lot of different aspects that come together, like the audio and the 90's style rough models that make it somewhat appealing. It embraces the dirty, nasty little things and puts them on the spotlight. But for all the things that make it special for rolling in its own filth, I can't help but feel like the abnormal content isn't being matched by the gameplay mechanics.

Generally speaking, the gameplay consists of a giant to-do list. A bucket list only appropriate for the life of a skunk. I didn't find this aspect terribly interesting to carry out because rather than the actions being genuinely nice to interact with and just letting people run around... it kind of feels a bit stale.

For instance, what happens when you mark territory? Well, the tree gets a visual effect and the number on my to-do list goes up. It doesn't feel like I'm playing and learning how a little system works, like say if I sprayed trees to keep predators away or even something strange like growing skunk babies like little fruits that would follow me around. The reward for doing things are based around that checklist, rather than doing things because doing them is interesting.

Perhaps that's a bit harsh, doing things is interesting but only for a very small amount of time personally... and I think that's mostly due to there not being much of a dynamic to the world created. Everything feels... well everything essentially is fairly static, frozen, sometimes they rotate, but the world feels a bit dead you know?

I know this sort of thing requires a lot of work for the short deadline though, so perhaps asking for a dynamic living world is somewhat extreme... but I just wish that it was a bit more engaging than it is currently.

The visuals and audio really provide an atmosphere that feels kind of unique to your work. I think if the internal systems for the game had been as unsettling and... well... strange as the content... then it would have felt much more cohesive in general.

Either way, you've done a very nice job on this entry and I hope you enjoyed making the game! And of course I hope others can find things they like about it as well.

You Can Shave the Baby by chikun Dev Team 2015-04-23T07:16:00

I found the concoct a disguise mini-game to be one of the harder ones I saw. Don't spook the bird was one of my favorites, I can't help but smile during those 5-10 seconds of silent tension. The bird really breaks all the other commotion up, very nice little sprinkle of contrast there.

My best run was 20 interfaces before running out of hearts. By that point I was starting to notice some pretty heavy repetition anyway though so I think I had pretty much seen mostly what the game had to offer.

I enjoyed this more than I though I would. Though I've never played them extensively, I don't mind Warioware-style games every once in a while. It's completely random but doesn't feel immature to me, just sort of like little snapshots of bizarre requests. And I like the surprising nature of the mini-games you've assembled. Lots of nice variation between keyboard and different kinds of mouse interaction.

Pretty nice job on this, it was fairly entertaining and it was a really nice deviation from the other entries I've seen so far. It doesn't really match with the theme very well in my opinion, but that aside I thoroughly enjoyed the time with your game.

QTST by DeltaF1 2015-04-22T03:51:00

I couldn't play the Web version in Chrome, the loading bar would reach the end but it wouldn't start. I assumed it was the Unity Player issues, so I just downloaded the Windows version. I played it fullscreened, but for some reason the mouse cursor wasn't hidden while playing. I ignored it and played anyway since I was just happy it was up and running. It also seemed to not have an entirely consistent frame-rate, but I understand it was rushed.

Visually pretty nice for the time-frame, basic of course but it does the job and has a nice voxel-ish aesthetic.

The atmosphere the game had was nice, which I think the audio helped a great deal with. I'm not quite sure about the weapon or what exactly was special about it as I gathered parts. It seemed to function the same throughout? (read the description, stat boosts are vague but that's a good enough answer). I couldn't notice those effects in-game though.

The enemies were fine, fairly sluggish but they still ended up hitting me because their attack range seemed to be the same as mine. It seemed like they would sort of insta-attack when you're in range, but it wasn't really an issue because you tend to have enough health to sponge it.

Some of the enemy positioning was kind of nice. I found some of them were kind of hidden behind walls. So you could enter an area and be surprised by them behind you, which was nice.

The game ended after the part in the screenshot of the game, which was very sudden and I'm not sure if I reached a defined point or just cleared all the enemies or something. Very unclear how I finished the game exactly.

I'm not exactly sure what else to say about it. Your team notes that the game was heavily rushed last minute, and well... it sort of feels that way playing it. I could tell certain things weren't in or developed long enough, so it does come across as being very pieced together.

I'm sorry if all that's very discouraging to hear. But it IS a game and you guys stuck with it to get it submitted rather than giving up, so that's admirable. Congrats on getting it in, I'm sure it was stressful.

The Ties That Bind by mantisda 2015-04-22T01:15:00

Response as I played:

Wow, that loading screen... nice start.

(looked at controls)
(looked at story)
(play game)

My first impression was that I really liked the "flipping" animation when you switched directions. I also liked the sounds used for running and jumping, also maybe the attack. They have a nice feel to them. The pot breaking sound though I wasn't a fan of, and it feels like the balance between certain sounds needs to be tweaked. (the attacking sound is a tad loud, and the pot break sound is far too loud)

Some background ambiance would have been nice, as an example:
http://www.freesound.org/people/ecodios/sounds/119962/
could give it a little extra something.

I like the swapping around idea, it took me a while to actually remember to do it though. Playing as the tall one attacking with the shorter guy seems more effective in general (I think it does more damage with just a marginally slower speed).

Sometimes you can get flipped around for some reason while attacking. Might have something to do with colliding with enemies. It feels sort of odd and kind of like a bug.

Beat the game after a couple tries! You know, the funny thing was for some reason I didn't understand the whole game was about the Chinese finger trap thing. I thought it was some sort of no same gender hand-holding thing from the story outline. And just thought the chinese theme was more of a political thing about gay rights. Kind of funny looking back at it and realizing what it actually was about haha.

NEG [controller req] by JoshDBB 2015-04-22T22:16:00

I checked it out solo to get a feel for the game, couldn't find anyone willing to play atm so I'll just go over what I thought about the mechanics in general.

There's a fair amount of polish to everything, and most actions come across very smoothly without any sort of graphical/mechanical issues. I was mostly surprised by how well the grapple hook mechanic worked, specifically that it would wrap around the corner of an object if it was attached on top.

I think it was also pretty impressive after learning the controls a bit to find how nicely the potential actions play with each other. Like grappling to an object and doing a dash to hurl yourself up on top of it.

I did find the controls somewhat awkward to learn however. They didn't feel very natural to pick up in some aspects. For instance, when I'm grappled to something, I think I may have found it more intuitive to push up on the thumbstick in order to reel myself in (since climbing walls works in kind of a similar way), rather than having to learn another button to do that functionality. It's really more of a thing that comes with lots of playtesting and feedback I'd imagine though, which obviously for a game jam you get little of while working on the game.

Also I found the movement to be somewhat floaty and difficult to maneuver precisely. Even just doing it solo I had a hard time trying to hit the non-moving 2nd player, so I can imagine two players trying to hit each other could be... time consuming unless both are somewhat experienced with the game.

There are lots of good ideas here, and plenty of solid executions of some of the things I've mentioned... but even though the majority of the game is very sleek and polished feeling... I can't help but think that the drawbacks mentioned above hold it back a great deal.

Also, as a side note: I'm not entirely sure why everyone seems to be so put off that the game requires controllers to play. I think that decision allowed extra time to get that control method working really well. If a controller + mouse and keyboard option were added it'd be great for added accessibility... but I don't like all the extra pressure put on the devs to add in mouse+keyboard support when the game isn't really designed to be played that way. We do Ludum Dare to experiment with game creation (and control methods), not to harass people who don't follow those norms.

DarkCoding by TwixtorTitan 2015-04-23T07:49:00

This was really interesting, though for some reason it took me multiple tries at first to get the correct syntax without blowing myself up haha.

I kind of wish the spellcode carried over after failure (since it's so easy to mistype/misunderstand syntax) or worse, die and lose that beautiful code. Though I understand the story point is that it's dangerous to be fiddling with spellcode... I dunno, seems a bit extreme. It really makes me not want to experiment more with the coding part of the game after getting something working. It's kind of like "write code for the adventure and then don't touch it", it's simply too risky to modify the code on the fly. I would have rather just had it sputter and fail, leaving me helpless to mobs for a moment than completely kicking away any progress I make.

I enjoyed the sounds, specifically hearing the typing sounds that shadowed my real typing. It's a sort of neat effect getting that "hacker" feel like you see in movies, just hearing the keystrokes as you work on a new spell.

I mean, the idea itself is very inventive. I just think it could use some modifications so that it's not so punishing to experiment with the game. I wasn't sure what you expected for the loop syntax for instance, and since I knew it would restart the whole thing over I just never bothered with learning it. Perhaps some bits of example code leftover by a dead spell hacker you stumble on for instance, could be pretty useful and also provide a nice narrative backdrop to an area.

Actually, now that I think about it... finding the documentation scattered about the level could have been a really nice way to gradually give the player more and more control over their code. Rewarding them for overcoming challenges and introducing things at a decent pace.

Flail Rider by jushii 2015-04-22T08:35:00

Tricky to learn at first, but it's a really polished feeling game. Controller support was a plus, felt very good playing that way too.

I downloaded it and played it at 1600x900 resolution, and everything went well. The shadows were pretty jaggy, but aside from that it honestly didn't bother me at all and was more immersive (considering it's being scaled up so much).

The main feeling I felt after having to restart a couple of times was that I wish the car could take like 2 or 3 hits before you're forced to restart. Though having that tension of hitting anything with the car is pretty... intense, especially when the time is closing it, and it may have not had that as much otherwise.

(I just played it again after reading the description) I didn't even know about the power-ups in the game and it kind of addresses what I said above in some ways. I saw the boost meter while playing earlier but kind of thought it may have not been implemented or something. I was definitely wrong haha, very nice little powerup effect.

It has a great arcadey feel to it overall. Short little sessions, easy to understand but hard to master. I think the main thing I would recommend doing if you continue work on this is just setting up higher resolution graphics, unless the jaggy look is what you're going for... and in that case emphasize it more so that it feels like more of a style rather than feeling like it needs a bit of anti-aliasing.

Slug Fest by jmborden 2015-04-22T01:34:00

It's fairly basic to be honest. Though I did go in without reading the description and in my efforts to figure out the controls I found that you can rotate/move the flat plane by clicking and dragging the mouse haha. Not sure if that's the hidden feature you were mentioning before or just something you forgot to remove.

It's a tough little game at first. After a while I got the hang of it but there was one aspect that bothered me a bit. When you switch sides (ex: moving from right to left), the salt pourer's hitbox is also altered. This really threw me off to be honest and I wasn't a fan of it because it made it harder to determine the spot where you'd be able to hit the slugs.

I understand you were working in somewhat unfamiliar territory tool-wise, so I can understand the simplicity.

The game is fairly compact, but I like that you didn't resort to having endless waves of enemies or anything like that to extend the gameplay further. So in a way, even though it's short, I think that length matches the content you have and feels like a good move. It never felt tedious to me, by the time grew tired of playing it I had won already.

There's a lot of additional work that could be done art/animation wise to improve though of course. Movement animations for the character/slugs. Different animations for the mushroom/slugs being destroyed rather than just fading out.

I also wish there were some sounds to go along with it all... feels sort of empty without any. Some general garden ambiance, non-intrusive sounds for the salt pourer, mushrooms being damaged, and slug deaths.

http://www.freesound.org/ is a good resource.

GLOV3.1 by flummox3d 2015-04-22T11:06:00

Ah, I thought it was a puzzlescript game when I first started playing :) very, very nice.

The visuals and sound are very basic of course, but you worked on the game where it counts... the interaction. Some very clever puzzles here and I can tell the sacrifice to the visuals and whatnot really allowed you to experiment a lot with the gameplay. You kept surprising me introducing new mechanics! And polished smart ones at that. One of the main ones that tripped me up at first was the blue horizontal line blocks semi-early on. Took me a while to get it and I didn't even understand what I did that worked until I thought about it for a second haha. Weirdly I don't remember that mechanic reappearing after that level now that I think about it...

I didn't beat the game, because honestly I'm exhausted and just keep promising myself I'll just rate/review one more game... but Ludum Dare continues to keep my sleep schedule screwed up haha.

Here's a screenshot of the level I made it to, I'm not sure how far in it is: http://imgur.com/zmRNLVp

Very nice entry, puzzles take time and a lot of thought to craft. You didn't have much time but you sure had your thought process down haha.

Oh, and I liked the text and instructions that pop up. Sometimes they can catch you off guard while mid-game, but they're smartly written, short and sweet, and were generally refreshing to see when they appeared.

The ONLY real negative thing I have to say about this game regarding the competition is that the tie-in to the theme was pretty weak. It's basically a justification for creating a clever re-imagining of Sokoban, but it is a bit of a stretch to be honest. A stretch I'm okay with though because the gameplay works so well haha.

Dr. U and the bottomless PIT by farwyler 2015-04-23T22:51:00

My best score was 113, I thought the game was pretty polished and was a pretty clever concept... but I didn't stay interested in it very long after feeling like it was endless.

The umbrella mechanic seemed pretty unique. I liked that you sometimes have to balance the choice between an aggressive attack at the cost of your safety. Quick little note though, it took me a second to realize I could press up to open the umbrella back up. I'm not sure if that instruction was on the phone, but for some reason I missed it the first time around. Thankfully, it was intuitive enough to figure out and it wasn't frustrating or anything.

The art was really very well done, it has a great style to it. The music and sound generally compliments it.

A couple of things could have improved it I think. Having a proper death animation would have been nice. When he dies you just lose control over him and it feels kind of disconnected. Being able to see that he's "dead" would be a good visual indicator for that loss of control, and connect the two together a bit easier.

Also I noticed that when you first fall off the tree, if you just move in the right direction instantly it sort of appears like he should be able to safely land of the side. That could have been a neat kind of easter egg to have been able to actually land over there safely haha.

I grew tired of it fairly quickly after playing for a bit, but what you have in is solid. The endless pit impression turned me off from it a bit, as I really don't care much about getting high scores. And I got a grasp of the mechanics quickly so the pure reward of learning the game was over fast.

Overall pretty good. It's a nice little game that has an interesting mechanic, but the overall gameplay ends up feeling a bit "by the book"... because the same structure has been seen before in many many other games. So while good, it doesn't feel like it's doing anything terribly new.

Starbinder by HunterAugust 2015-04-23T00:19:00

Ah, I really wish I could have gotten into a groove with this game since it reminds me a bit of my own entry (in terms of controlling a population with by modifying their properties). But as attractive as it is in the visual and sound department, I just felt like the changes being made gameplay-wise were rather hard to observe.

Again, that's doubly disappointing for me to say because it reminds me of my own game's shortcomings for the Jam submission. Showing those reactions that the population is going through is incredibly important for this kind of game. Without it the person playing can't fully understand what they are affecting, (or fully appreciate it), and a sort of futile feeling becomes really intense. I had this growing urge to just stop playing because... well... I didn't understand fully what I was doing, and I think because of that I couldn't appreciated the open-ended nature of the game.

I'd highly recommend adding in some sort of animations or transitions to the movement/growing of the population you're affecting. I think instantly popping things around made it very difficult for me to determine what specific elements were being altered.

I also couldn't seem to get a grasp on what the requirements were for creating stable constellations. When I drag them near each other they end up just fizzling out and breaking their connections.

I really liked the overall concept though, and the idea of populations being influenced by the stars. It's very poetic really. And obviously your team has a stellar handling on the visuals, sound design, and "feel" and polish to the camera/star movement. Great job with this entry overall, and best of luck in future jams! If you continue work on this I'd love it if you contacted me to let me know.

I'm on twitter @CriticalMammal
email: gallardodylan42@gmail.com

Den Boss by hexidine 2015-04-25T08:24:00

I agree with the comment from 43iscoding above. the programming job of the game can be a large weight on someone's shoulders. I've been there, not being experienced with tools and struggling to put together a functional game for my teammate. It's hard enough bearing that failure internally, but to also have your team publicly shame you just makes it much, much worse I can imagine.

I've also filled the artist/sound/other junk role and I know how frustrating it can be waiting around on the programmer to get features in while your mostly concerned with them getting your art in so it at least looks good.

Even though your programmer failed to make some awesome polished arena brawler game... it was the team's failure coming up with a concept that would be manageable for the team to accomplish (assuming everyone knew the programmer was inexperienced). Looking at all the assets I can't imagine all the different sort of gameplay you guys had in mind. It looks complex even for an experienced programmer to crank out in that time limit.

So guys, take the hit as a team. Next time (assuming the team remains somewhat the same), remember this and conceptualize very simple things. If there are a lot of artists and one programmer, keep in mind that the amount of work you can produce is far greater than the stuff the programmer can get working. Half of your assets you might be able to produce probably won't make it into the game because of time unless it's completely static. Come to terms with that and think about how to take advantage of these aspects of your team.

IRS: International Rejection Services by Z 2015-04-25T10:10:00

Hmm, just to let you know the download size might put people off. People are already less inclined to want to download a file, but to also have it take a minute or two (or more depending on connection speeds)... well, you know.

Anyway, about the game. I'm not sure if I'm playing the same build as jk5000 did above me, but I understood how the hand moved pretty well. Now... actually using the keys to do it was another story at times haha ;)

I found the overall concept and implementation done really well. It was somewhat educational and an interesting little game to learn some things with. I noticed some fairly heavy inspiration from Papers Please's structure and tone, which went well to a certain extent. It reminded me of a bit of a cross between something like Surgeon Simulator and Paper's Please actually, where there's a general lack of control over the main mechanic (or actually too much control haha) but you've also got the time limit and things to memorize to deal with all at the same time. It's a little much all at once to be honest, and the only reason I made it as far as I did (you apparently added in Chinese and Japanese that round) was because of the way you spawned in people and how you're trying to deny everyone.

I'm not sure if the spawning was trying to be accurate or anything, but there were a LOT of spanish speakers that came through. So much that generally, once I made the hand gesture offensive to them they just kept pouring through and getting offended (at least 4 in a row). Winning me the round. It happened at least twice, maybe three times, and I found it really really strange.

Aside from the above issue, I said earlier I found it difficult to juggle everything at once. I think you should have had a couple of rounds that don't introduce many new hand gestures, or few, so the pacing doesn't ramp up as quickly as it does. It's hard enough making the hand signs, but learning them and trying to execute them under time pressure is very intense. Also the slower learning pacing would also allow more practice improving your muscle memory for moving each finger of the hand.

Visually I can tell there was a lot of work done art-wise. I found the photo-altered people to not fit in quite properly with the rest of the art, but all considering they work pretty well given the time constraints. The player's hand of course is the star, and appropriately it looks and moves very nicely given how quickly it needed to be done.

The sound is sort of meeting the bare minimum. It's only the text sounds, and while they are fitting and aren't normally annoying (they are excessive during the first introduction)... I kind of wish there was more work in that department. Just a general office ambiance, and certain other sounds associated with people coming in and out would have been nice touches.

So overall this was a pretty excellent entry. It took a little while to download and get running, but it's rather nice when it's up. I'm not entirely sure what's causing the game files to be so large... it's definitely not audio files bloating it. So I'm guessing it's the art. I'd probably recommend trying to get that file size down so that people are more inclined to not stop the download. That and rating other games (try to rate at least 20-30) will give you guys the feedback you need (and deserve for all the work put into this).

IRS: International Rejection Services by Z 2015-04-25T10:13:00

I'm also curious why there isn't a OSX or Linux download. It's made in Unity, so you can build for those platforms even if you can't necessarily test them yourselves. Just put a fair warning in the description those platforms were untested.

You could also build and put up a web version if you get that file size down some so loading won't take too long (and have people leave).

News Flash by Sunsheen 2015-04-22T23:12:00

Apparently I only got one usable photo, and it really wasn't the one I expected to be the "correct" one either. I could have swore the one I took where the mayor was holding scissors like a maniac would have made the CUT... hehehe... *ahem*. But it didn't, it was labeled as bringing laughter to the crowd. What!? No one in the crowd was even smiling. Okay, fine, fine. I got a quick shot of the hot-dog suit guy fiasco, but apparently not at the right time. That one I was okay with... but I took a picture of the baby one and it was like "stealing candy from a baby". Now, that one I could have swore wouldn't have been classified like that because everyone was smiling, the baby didn't cry, etc. It just felt like what the game was telling me were "good" photos could be interpreted otherwise in reality.

Aside from the gameplay criticisms though the visuals and overall feel for how the camera reacts to the mouse cursor felt great. Very smooth overall and polished feeling. The audio was also appropriate and helped establish the overall mood.

Magnetic Fields by oparisy 2015-04-25T08:43:00

The sound effects could have been a bit more subtle. They were a little bit too... blunt I suppose? Some background ambiance would have also helped balance things a bit. With the visual style I'd imagine something sort of soothing. And the sound effects being very subtle.

The effects felt a little less like magnetic attraction and more like standard velocity and speed. It sort of just tries to move towards you as fast as it can, no matter how close or far away you are. Of course it doesn't have very good "brakes" haha, so it normally overshoots your positions. I'd imagine this is what's going on behind the scenes, which is why it feels like it does. It would have been interesting if it were more like a magnet, and you have to move towards it to pull, but there's the danger of it getting too close and... well, you know, you've probably played with magnets before.

Semantics aside, the gameplay is straightforward and generally works well. I was slightly confused at first as to what was going on but I picked up soon enough how the game worked and what I needed to avoid and lure around. Played one round successfully and felt like I had enough.

It gets a bit tedious attracting the thing around into the wrenches. You pick up pretty quickly how easily the thing overshoots you and it's pretty simple to get it to go where you want it to go. So the challenge and learning how to lure it around was a bit bland.

Art wise the game is kind of pleasing all considering. The colors chosen were nice, though I don't think the wrenches fit with the rest of the game's geometry. They felt pretty out of place to be honest and I think substituting them for something more abstract and basic would have gone along with the other pieces well.

LIGHT by MSiddeek 2015-04-26T22:23:00

Got to the level with the text "When it isn't simple, I may go back and fourth" after a while I started to lose interest in the puzzles. My approach to them remained the same throughout and I was surprisingly never punished for it.

The approach being a very brute force tactics of jumping on the buttons and flipping the lights on, and rotating things as much as possible until I could squeeze my way to the exit. When jumping on everything failed I could normally resort to just mashing one button enough until things worked.

I mean, I'm not bad a puzzle games or anything. I just found that method actually worked... so even though I know I should have sat and thought about it... just jumping on things until it worked was such an easier method of progression haha.

So the puzzles are a little weak in the challenge department (I know how hard it can be to make good puzzles). But I really enjoyed the overall atmosphere and mood you had going on. Visually it's all rather simple but it works really well. The ambient music playing in the background helps add quite a bit to it. Did you make the music or did you find it somewhere?

I also noticed the jumping felt like it had a bit of a delay to it or something. I see that you say in update 9 that it's more responsive, but it still seems to hang for a second before performing the action.

Looking at it more... it only happens when moving the character and jumping at the same time. And I don't perceive the delay when I'm walking against a wall and jumping. I think you may be accidentally moving the character back one frame or something when doing the jumping animation. Like, saving the character's position pre-jump, moving the character a bit, then reverting it to the old position and doing the jump.

Anyway, nice job with the atmosphere and whatnot. And you've got some nice standard puzzle mechanics here with the mirrors and light thing going on. I think in the future try to take some time out to make the puzzles less susceptible to brute force methods.

Oh, and there was a puzzlescript game that had a mirror mechanic I enjoyed a while ago you might be interested in:
http://www.draknek.org/games/puzzlescript/mirrors.php

The Pen is Mightier... by Jellyman305 2015-04-26T10:21:00

Yeah, some odd things going on when I try to play it from the embedded window above. The mouse movement seemed to work, though I couldn't use WASD to move when it wasn't full-screened. When it was full-screened the camera movement would sometimes stop when the mouse cursor hit the edge of the screen.

Nice first shot, building a proper 3d game under tight deadlines can be difficult. Try to work out the kinks with the mouse/keyboard movement through browsers. After that work on polishing the speed and velocity of movement and whatnot (including mouse movement). Better yet, figure out how to implement a little menu with a mouse sensitivity slider.

I'm sure you'll come to learn quite a lot about all that stuff in the near future. Bugs aside, it's really not that far off from being able to be called a "finished" game. You were nearly there! See you next time, and best of luck learning along the way!

As a short term goal... you've got a solid start here, see it through and try to get a post jam (working) version up before judging ends. Upload that version under a separate link, keep the original around so people know what was for the jam and what's been worked on afterwards. Doesn't have to be extremely polished, just fix the bugs and get the basic mechanics working like you want.

Paper Cut by F1tZy 2015-04-22T04:51:00

The visuals are really interesting, very effective I'd say. I was glad to see that the paper airplane even appeared to get more damaged after... taking damage. I noticed that after sort of suicide-running into things after "beating" one round. I beat that round at around 80 something health.

Sound effects weren't bad but the game lacked an overall atmosphere. Some sort of abstract office space sounds could have been appropriate. Something like this?

http://freesound.org/people/FunnyMan374/sounds/108695/

If you had an audio guy/gal a sort of abstracted, delayed and "spacey" version of that atmosphere could have been really cool.

It's an asteroid clone so the gameplay itself isn't really innovative or terribly different but I think your group did a great job overall putting together a complete game. The main thing that sort of put me off a bit was that after clearing the initial paper asteroids, they just spawn in again all over instantly haha.

Also the difficulty is perhaps too easy to remain engaging. That and it felt really repetitive hitting spacebar to shoot. A constant hold-to shoot (with a like 0.5 second delay) and the option to tap-to-shoot rapidly I think would have been a good route to take from the current version.

Nice job getting a pretty well rounded game done for the jam everyone! It's not easy but you did it!

Curiosity by poohshoes 2015-04-23T06:57:00

I played and got about 32 parts before losing steam and feeling like I had played enough. I did enjoy the idea though, and I like how you incorporated rewarding with new mechanics rather than it all being entirely just about collecting for the sake of collecting (I would have lost interest much sooner if it were like that). The inclusion of the rover in particular caught me off guard and actually made me excited to see what kind of places I'd be able to go to with it.

Graphically it was alright, the ship itself had a very nice sprite but the tile based environment sort of clashed with it I thought. I would have liked to have seen some additional animations for the thrusters and whatnot, but that's just detail work. The sky color transitioning while you gain altitude was a very nice touch! Also, it could have been interesting if, when you eject from the rocket, it doesn't disappear and instead maintains its original course. I think that would have made that process seem a bit sleeker and fluid. Perhaps also collisions for the rocket if it ran into stuff? I found there was no real tension or much reason to eject before the rocket ran out of fuel for the most part. Flying off through the narrow right side tunnel could have felt much more engaging if I could lose that run due to misjudging the flight/eject timing.

The audio was pretty nice, and though I liked the idea of it ramping up the music for the launch sequence... it happens so often that the glamour of it becomes pretty tedious after just a couple of runs.

Oh and I also liked that progress carries over from each run. I'm a fan of that approach rather than completely resetting progress each run. Nice design choice, sets it apart from a lot of the other games that follow arcade approaches to gameplay.

CriticalMammal

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LD32 — An Unconventional Weapon