Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → csanyk
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | Co | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | 41 | Combine 2 Incompatible Genres | InvadTris | jam | 761 | 3.29 | 3.34 | 3.26 | 3.64 | 2.81 | 1.89 | 2.16 | 2.68 | ||
| 2017 | 40 | The more you have, the worse it is | TARJECTORIES 2: Mo' Planets, Mo' Problems. | jam | 293 | 3.71 | 3.75 | 3.57 | 2.91 | 2.92 | 3.12 | 2.64 | 3.14 | ||
| 2017 | 38 | A Small World | TARJECTORIES | compo | 178 | 3.54 | 3.66 | 3.33 | 3.78 | 2.45 | 2.25 | 2.33 | 2.86 | ||
| 2016 | 36 | Ancient Technology | Ancient Technologies | jam | |||||||||||
| 2016 | 35 | Shapeshift | Shape Struggle | compo | 523 | 3.15 | 3.43 | 2.30 | 2.47 | 2.56 | 2.16 | 1.90 | 2.88 | 83 | |
| 2015 | 34 | Two Button Controls / Growing | What plants crave | compo | 39 | ||||||||||
| 2014 | 31 | Entire Game on One Screen | Color Is Everything. | compo | 560 | 3.19 | 2.82 | 3.31 | 3.60 | 2.23 | 2.21 | 2.10 | 3.19 | 60 | |
| 2014 | 29 | Beneath the Surface | Alamogordo | jam | 666 | 2.58 | 2.33 | 2.52 | 3.70 | 2.80 | 2.53 | 3.60 | 2.97 | 100 | |
| 2013 | 26 | Minimalism | The Only Winning Move Is Not To Play | compo | 1349 | 1.53 | 1.24 | 1.54 | 2.97 | 1.33 | 2.90 | 1.35 | 66 | ||
| 2012 | 25 | You are the Villain | Bad Puppy | compo | 490 | 2.76 | 3.04 | 2.71 | 3.00 | 2.18 | 2.57 | 3.55 | 2.47 | 100 | |
| 2012 | 24 | Evolution | Karyote | compo | 459 | 2.82 | 2.58 | 2.58 | 3.20 | 2.22 | 2.60 | 1.86 | 2.70 | 100 | |
| 2012 | 23 | Tiny World | Bactarium | compo | 562 | 2.76 | 2.62 | 3.41 | 3.34 | 2.75 | 2.07 | 2.07 | 2.68 | 56 |
Right-click and your nearby bacteria become hungry. Left-click and they move close to the point where you clicked. Bacteria with no target will follow your mouse, albeit slowly. I would have liked to add a little more variety but this was all I could come up with in 48hrs -- had a few other things I had to do over the weekend:)
@Mach60KAS, thanks! I would have loved to put some ambient music in this game, but I just didn't have the time or skill for it. It's definitely an addition I would like to put in.
@LukeRissacher, you have the winning strategy: eat the food before the enemy gets to it. Once you figure that out the game isn't very deep, but if I continue developing this I'll be sure to add a few features to make the gameplay a little deeper.
Thanks, Super Soul. I liked the way the graphics came out quite a bit. I felt the randomized color selection, transparency, and simple geometric shapes worked very well, but what really sells the graphics for me is the behavior of the individual cells -- to me they really evoke the way microbes look under a microscope, with the way they wiggle and cluster. It's more than enough to make you forget that they're just a bunch of circles and squares:)
I like it a lot. Graphics and sounds are a throwback to the NES, gameplay is challenging due to the "you have to scroll the level too" controls. I am very plodding at the game but the music is pleasant. I might have liked infinite lives so I don't have to start over when I run out, and could then just finish the game after many tries. Nice job!!
No strategy needed, just sit back and let the other colors battle it out, then mop up what's left. I ignored the game for a level because my phone rang, and when I came back I had 3 or 4 of my guys still, and the only other survivor had one, and wasn't attacking me. Very nice work on the terrain, though.
Challenging, but the jump-shrink puzzles got a bit repetitive. Still presented enough challenge that I stuck it through and completed it without getting bored. Very nice! I thought the music was a great enhancer and fit the mood of the game perfectly.
Very nicely done!
Title screen kicked ass!
Seemed to freeze after a few seconds, but I liked the concept from what I could see. Sound effects were a bit harsh at high volume.
This is completely amazing.
Compo entries are supposed to be solo efforts. This should be in the Jam category, according to the rules.
Either way, I'm really impressed that you were able to build a 3D-first person game in such a short time!
Oh, never mind, I just figured out it was submitted as a Jam entry... I thought since you finished in <48hrs that it was a intended as a compo game. Very nice work! And you could have taken another day!!
This game was so weird, but I liked it. I'm not sure what I just experienced, but it had a childlike logic about it that gave it the mood of something invented by a 4 year old's imagination, that I found very appealing. Great job!
Messed around a little bit and found Floaty, but I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do after that. Floated up and touched a red rectangle that disappeared... now what?
Looks AMAZING but the framerate is VERY slow on a Thinkpad T61p (Core 2 Duo 2.0GHz, 8GB RAM, discrete graphics).
Amazing and hilarious. Took me a while to come up with a survival strategy. Would have liked a bit more control during the melee.
Solid game but felt too easy; I beat each level without really knowing what I was doing.
Awesome!
Repetitive and no challenge. I can just sit in one place and shoot enemies left and right and beat the level without needing to move or power up.
Also the sprite for your character reverses as you walk around the surface of the planet, and sometimes makes it appear that you are walking backwards.
I like the "art game" feel of it, but I never would have gotten the interpretation you offered if it wasn't for your explanation in the description. Would have liked to see more "game". The soundtrack is great:)
Somber and moving. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do, but I'm amazed at the technical skill to create the aesthetic and mood. One of the best LD games I've seen.
Bravo!
Trackpad in the dead center of the world gives you lightning fast pinpoint control.
Just about impossible with a trackpad, but I bet I could do better with a mouse.
Where's the source?
Although there's not much game here, I liked the controls. I haven't flown an Asteroids-style spaceship that had momentum on the turn speed before, and found it to be rather challeging. Enjoyed it a lot just for that.
Hey, I love the title screen! This feels a lot like a mini Dragon Warrior or Shadowgate.
Superb! Only nitpick is that when you try to click the dead spider for your workers to eat, you have to click precisely up near the head or else they just walk over and do nothing.
Wasn't too challenging, but was still very enjoyable to play, and felt very polished.
Very polished and well put together. I'm impressed that this was possible in 48 hrs.
Terrific entry! I only wish you made the source available. Please consider releasing it!
Couldn't tell good from bad, and had a hard time targeting the faster moving cells. Took me a few seconds to figure out that the black circles I was "shooting" was actually the shadow of the actual projectile.
Doesn't work particularly well in Chrome, due to the <title> text overflowing the width of a Chrome tab, and for some reason the favicon doesn't display in my Chrome browser. Played it in Firefox and loved it.
Getting a 404 error when I try to click the Windows link.
Sorry, couldn't get it to run in the web browser. Screenshots looked cool.
I liked it but it needs something to present conflict and challenge. Develop it further and I can see it being a really fun game!
Nice music. It's fun, but gets boring before you get to 100% -- if you incrementally step up the challenge, you could have something pretty decent. One thing I didn't understand is why the background appears to have walls, but everything in the game seems to ignore them.
Without a mouse I wasn't able to zoom. My trackpad's scrollwheel area didn't behave the same as a mouse scrollwheel. Once I got to a molecule that required me to build a ring, I couldn't figure out how to get the ends of a string of molecules to bind to each other to form the ring.
Well, it's a start... Next time think of 998 fewer kittens.
Incredibly beautiful.
There didn't seem to be any point to using any control other than running left. I never jumped, gave up on going right quickly, and my shotgun never seemed to reach the enemies so it was useless. Overall the game needs a lot of re-balancing in order to be playable.
pjchardt, Raptor85: Room emptying out seems to be a bug. The game should generate a steady supply, I'll have to look into what is going on with that.
Mutating is simply your player's attributes changing randomly. Your attributes are: max_health, speed, turn_speed. The actual algorithm needs some further refinement -- I do intend for it to be possible to "evolve" to negative speed or turn_speed, which makes the controls go goofy -- I thought that could be fun -- but if you're very slow it's not much fun to play. I think the mutation would have been more impression if I'd included some visual effect and indication of the mutation's effects. As it currently stands, this is only shown in the Dashboard stats.
I'll see if I can't get a patch released in the next day or two with a few fixes/tweaks that improve things.
Glamdring: I've noticed there are some mutations which are not beneficial, much like in real life evolution. I do think that it's probably not so fun to play if you can't turn, or if you are very slow, so my next enhancement will be to fix mutation so that there are certain minimum values.
Sebastian: Thanks:) This was my very first game with music. I don't really have any talent, but plopping a few random dots into iNudge works reasonably well. I'm actually going to see if I can get a musician friend to provide something better.
I wanted to make the bonuses somewhat vague and mysterious. What they actually do is, when you eat a given type, it makes your next mutation more wild in that category. So if you eat the "faster..." one, you don't immediately become faster, but when you eat enough food to mutate, your speed attribute will change by a wider margin. It's possible to mutate so wildly that you end up with negative values and move/turn backwards! I plan to tweak the mutation math a bit in my next enhancement release to make the system a little bit more stable, and prevent 0 scores for speed and turn speed.
Windows build is now up. I'm planning to release a build for OS X too, but apparently for Game Maker Studio to build to OS X, you need to have an OS X machine on the network for it to connect to. So it'll be a while before I can do that. The Windows build has correct particle effects (new enhancement feature); a bug with HTML5 prevents the particle colors from appearing correctly in the web version.
DaveDobson: There was a bug in the compo build, which resulted in mutation not always occurring when you reached max food. And another bug which resulted in the game not spawning any new enemies after a while. These have been fixed fixed in the enhanced version. Your attributes can get worse or better -- mutation is random and not always beneficial.
Bleep2Bleep: There is really no goal or purpose to the game, much like evolution in the real world, you simply keep doing it for as long as you are able to survive...
Dietrich Epp: Well, the game has been up for a while now, so I'll explain a bit what is going on.
There are a variety of life forms in the world. You can eat any of them, but some of them are poisonous, and if you eat too many poisonous ones, you'll die. Any of the ones that say "If it doesn't kill me, it makes me..." are poisonous. If you eat a lot of the poison ones, on your next mutation your max_life will mutate by +/- a lot, so in a sense eating the poison ones can make you stronger.
However, you can also find foods that heal you -- the Wavy square guy will heal you if you eat him. His motion is supposed to be reminiscent of a heart monitor graph, I guess.
Eating any of the enemies (other than the healer ones) adds to your Food score. Eat enough food and you mutate. Mutation is a random re-rolling of your speed, turn_speed, and max_health attributes. You can get better or worse.
Depending on the types of foods that you eat, your mutation will vary more or less wildly in a given ability score.
Certain foods (the ones that say "Hungrier..." when you eat them, only add to your food tally, rather than influence your mutation.
Eating the ones that say "Faster..." when you eat them will influence your speed attribute when you mutate. And eating the ones that say "Nimbler..." when you eat them influences your turn_speed.
That's really all there is to it in the game. Survive, and mutate, and evolve. Not really much of a game, but it's kindof fun for a while.
matthias_zarzecki: It's coming in the post-compo enhancement version.
harusame: Thanks!
Will Edwards: I'm not sure what you mean about the controls. About the player's appearance changing, I couldn't get that to work in the compo, but it is something I wanted to do from the very beginning. It will happen in the post-compo enhancement.
savethejets1: There is no "winning" this game, you just zoom around and have fun eating and mutating until you die or get bored. If there *was* a victory condition, what would you want it to be? My thought was to just see how many "Mutations" you can survive through, Mutations serving as kindof a high score. Maybe you'd need to survive N Mutations to "win"?
Azurenimbus, thank you:) I have been working steadily on the post-compo version and am starting to become pretty happy with it. I am looking forward to having all the features I had originally planned, but couldn't include, in the compo version. Hopefully won't be too much longer:D
Pacifist, thank you for the feedback:) It sounds like you played only the compo build? The enhanced version should have eliminated the possibility of your turn and speed attributes mutating to zero, as well as the problem with enemy spawning stopping.
The music in the game is a simple loop that lasts about three seconds, so I'm really surprised anyone would notice that. It actually does restart the loop when you press R, although it's hardly noticeable. I'm planning to add new music to the enhanced version, but it's a low-priority thing as I'm still working on refining the mutation mechanic right now, and have a few other features that I want to add to it before it's complete.
Actually, there does still seem to be a spawning problem in the post-compo build:( I fixed the original bug from the compo build, but I notice when playing sometimes that a Homey will end up getting stuck in the upper left corner of the room, and I have no idea why or how that's happening:( Since the enemy respawn mechanic is driven in part by your distance to the nearest enemy, when this happens it prevents my bugfix code from working. I need to look carefully at my code to figure out why this is happening, and see if I can't figure out how to overcome it.
Thanks for your feedback, Manuel. I have to say I agree with all of your points. The game isn't really challenging at all, yet. The main point of it seems to be to simply learn about the different "foods" in the game and how they can affect your evolution as you mutate. There are a few more features I'm hoping to implement soon, to realize the full vision of what I wanted to do with this concept, and then the game should be much more interesting. My hope is that by the end of next week I'll have it all wrapped up.
Nice. Fun, good challenge curve. I guess it's the white blood cells that do the evolving? Bringing evolution into the mechanics more would have fit the theme, but what you have here is well executed. I liked the simple pointilist graphics.
I can't really improve on aschearer's comments. I was really excited by the premise of the game, but the controls and physics need improvement. Liked the Kid Icarus-like tiles:)
Great game. Could use some sheep sounds. Graphics were pretty small and hard to see, would have rather scrolled a bit to see more of the map up close, maybe a zoom function. Novel gameplay and the physics are good.
K to shoot... do you like vi or something? ;0
This was seriously hard. It throws a lot at you and gives you a pea shooter to deal with it.
Seemed like it was playing in slow motion, but I really liked it. Got through three rounds my second time playing. I didn't really feel anything evolving in that time, so if things were changing they were too subtle for me to notice. Found that it was maybe a bit too easy due to slowness and infinite shields. I think it's high time I played some Ikaruga!
This is pretty brilliant. One change I would suggest is to allow free-floating islands of bricks from the stack to resume falling. Once the shapes became difficult, it was too common for me to build "bridges" where there were gaps below; I felt when I completed a line in such a way that it left some blocks hanging in space that I really wanted to see them fall down until they hit a solid surface again.
Add some music and sound effects, and maybe make the breeding pool a little larger so that it's easier to see what's happening in there, and you really have a fun game.
Sound effects could have been a bit louder, but overall this is an outstanding game. I really enjoyed beating it:)
Well done! I really enjoyed this. The music and graphics stand out, although I think you over-did the parallax effect on the background layers a bit.
I removed Java from my system after an update installed McAfee software for no justifiable reason, so I can't play this. But I wish I could, it looks pretty cool.
I shot a bunch of blocks and then I was all alone:( And all I had was just a square:(
Bravo!
Well, now that was pretty awesome!
Man, that's challenging! I need to hack a special keyboard so I can't type the forbidden letters and try this again:)
This is awesome. Great job!
I actually liked the animation. It was enjoyable watching the creature grow/evolve into new forms. I felt like I was stuck in the beginning area for most of the game, and then it ended abruptly, saying I had reached my limit. I wasn't really sure what to make of that.
Really outstanding. You have a finely balanced system of mechanics and the game is quite addictive. At some point I start getting overwhelmed and my defense grid goes irrecoverably downhill, but I lasted almost 15 minutes in my second game after taking a little time to understand how things worked together. This is a brilliant game, and amazingly polished for a 48-hour project.
Wow, if this doesn't win Innovation, I'd like to see the game that does. I've NEVER played anything like this, and what's so surprising about it is how well it works. The graphics and gameplay of the individual sub-games is crude, but with mutations it becomes necessary to have simple games, and paying attention well enough to all of them to avoid dying is a real challenge. Probably the strangest game I've played in a long time.
Thoughts:
- I thought the doors were treasure chests at first. Offset the doorknob to one side to make it more apparent that the sprite represents a door.
- There's no real challenge to harnessing the "evolution" of the floor tiles. They seem to be too cooperative, if you know what I mean. If this could be turned into something more puzzly, then you'd have a great game. I don't really feel like the floor tile "evolution" expresses the Evolution theme very well, but nonetheless it is an interesting mechanic with some fun potential.
- OK level 4 and we finally have a danger element. These bug, I touch them one time and I die? What are all these hearts for, then?
Nice basic platforming engine. I couldn't get past the second level... that jump, man...
Couldn't play it: "DirectX Update Required. You need the August 2008 DirectX update in order to run this application. Click 'OK' to open the DirectX download page, where you can install the August 2008 DirectX End-User Runtime. Press 'Cancel' to exit the application."
I'm pretty sure my computer doesn't need that, since I'm running Win7 x64 Pro, which came out *after* 2008. And I don't want to risk messing up my system by installing it. The game screen shots look cool though.
I couldn't get the hang of the controls and I REALLY wanted some zoom but I watched the video playthrough, and this is such a fun looking game. You really did a great job. I hope I can get good enough at the controls to be able to make it to the big angry face level.
Well, I found a very easy strategy within a few seconds that made the game much less interesting, sadly. If you just go backwards away from the enemies and fire they line up and let you kill them easy.
Also I found that the sprites were much too small for me to be able to see them well, and this detracted a bit from the gameplay.
Stuck in the second room:/
Seriously, wtf is going on? First rabbits die, then they come back to life? What am I doing?
Nice, if unfinished. I liked the look of the graphics. Your character and the movement mechanics reminds me of Redder by Anna Anthropy. There doesn't seem to be anything resembling Evolution going on, though:(
Evolutions affecting play would have been welcome in addition to the graphical mutations. The idea is there, but it needs more development. I think your hit detection is a little too generous, and the AI a little too unskilled in single player.
I couldn't get past the first jump. Wasn't quite jumping high enough for some reason. Then I restarted the room... and had to sit through all the intro text again. That part was really annoying, having no way to skip it. I didn't get too far into it so I won't rate beyond graphics/sound.
Hit <Enter> at the first story text screen and the game froze. :(
The intro was too long but once I got into the actual game, it was pretty good. I just wanted to stay inside one creature and control it though.
This wins based on the title screen alone. Gameplay vaguely reminds me of Plants vs. Zombies, but more action-based and not as deep. Still, the humor/mood aspects make this fun
Graphics and sound were especially well done, and I liked the mood and how you fit the theme. Visually this is a very consistent game and I like the blur effects and the overall visual design.
I liked this, as a game, too, but I found an easy way to beat levels by spamclicking. Once the population was high enough, it didn't matter if I could see what I was clicking on, I just clicked fast enough and got the purity up to where it needed to be.
Really cool:) I liked the katamari-like amoeba growth. I only got about 3 levels in, but I want to keep playing more and see if there's anything more to the enemies. I hope there's more variety and behaviors, not just more and faster.
Very cool puzzle game!
Reminds me a lot of Limbo, particularly the suffering theme and the graphical style. Great mood. Unfortunately I could not figure out how to go very far, or proceed beyond the first really tall fall that kills me. Also the audio, while very subtle, works very well with this game. Great mood.
Loved this! Too bad about the sound. I hope you add some in later. Please do something about the controls, too. They are very awkward.
Brilliant. Kindof an inverse of Osmos. Extremely difficult though.
I just realized that I'm chaperoning bacteria. Hey you kids, I see what you're doing, get away from each other!
Couldn't get more than 11 followers during the first phase, and kept losing them all:( Way too hard for me. I think if the goal was more reasonable and I could actually advance I'd really enjoy this though! I'll have to try harder and see if I can manage not to suck, or maybe mess with the source and make it easier ;-)
Pretty good:) Not outstanding in any one category, but very good all around, enjoyable and fun for a basic sidescrolling platform shooter. Nice job!
Wasn't clear what was going on or what to do, so not rating. If you can explain the game a bit more I'll come back & try it.
Wish I could have played this but I don't have a Mac:( I'll check back to see if the Win version is available yet.
Alright! Very nice, I liked the controls and the orbiting physics is well done. I had a really hard time at first because I couldn't figure out which one I was, try making that more clear to start off. Very similar to Osmos, but not quite a sophisticated. Very good for a 48 hour game though!
This is a neat concept and has a lot of potential, I would love to see you continue with this and create a progression through 20 levels. Keep iterating and adding an interesting mechanic every few levels, and it could be a great game.
Really couldn't tell what was going on, kept dying. The graphics are awesome, but a little too abstract to convey to me what I need to know in order to understand the game. What's an enemy? What's good for me? By the time I find out, it's too late.
I can't get it to run either (Win7 x64)... but just going from the screen shots, it doesn't look very 8-bit to me.
i *LOVED* the graphics, except for the fact that I couldn't readily tell what was background and what was an enemy or an obstacle or a pickup. Also the ending was pretty abrupt. But I enjoyed your use of the word "fucking"! And the remote was kindof cool, if completely random.
Didn't care for the start over the whole game if you die once mechanic. Jumping with the space bar seemed very unreliable and I couldn't get past level 2 after 3-4 attempts, which annoyed me given how easy this game should be. But the controls mess me up.
Intro was way too long, and not skippable.
Evolution factored into the storyline but not the game mechanics.
The bullet hell was quite easy to survive.
I ragequit soon after I saw the ball. Lol.
I liked the buildings and the shady looking guy at the end of level 2. Overall this feels disjointed, and I didn't care much at all for the controls in the second or third parts. I didn't really get a sense of evolution from playing this, it just felt to me more like I was playing three separate games that had nothing to do with each other.
Oh, man this game is dying for some gunfire and screaming chimp sounds! Lots of fun. Like shooting a barrel full of monkeys:)
Loved the color palette. And the soundtrack was good. Not sure what was evolving though?
Having trouble playing it. I press start, there's a world with what looks to be a fire of some kind, the music changes, and then nothing happens or I get kicked back to the start screen. :(
Something goofy with the hit detection, I kept dying when I wasn't even touching anything that should have killed me.
^^^What Desi said.
Ran OK through several generations of plants, then the framerate dropped way down. I'm not sure if there was a goal in mind or what I was trying to accomplish through crossbreeding, but it seemed interesting and cool. I thought the spider droid animation was pretty sweet. The sound effects got a little repetitive, but were good -- I'd just like it if they were mixed up with a little more variety.
I'll have to come back when I book into linux and try this out.
I don't do well at games where you move with the keyboard and aim with the mouse, but for this type of game, it's pretty good. I liked watching how the bacteria seemed to breed together to evolve into tougher bacteria, and it was cool that you could evolve too to keep up.
Ah, Solar Jetman. At the end, the green thing just said "I'm getting stronger" but nothing actually happened:( I was hoping for something cool. It didn't really seem like it had anything to do with the theme, all the lead up was there but not the pay off.
Graphics are awesome but the controls are very laggy in the Web version. Too hard/frustrating
This game was awesome! Only would have liked it if the transitions from screen to screen were a bit faster. I get impatient waiting:)
I beat the Benjamin best swarm easily with this: pug;14;1;13;5;6;7;7;69e3b
This reminds me a lot of my game for LD23, Bactarium. Very similar looking, the controls are even similar, but the goal is completely different. I like it, but I suck at it! :S I couldn't get my pinkness to budge from 30%
Very nicely done! It feels like a cellular automata turned into a game. I liked how the narration text guided me. I didn't feel like I made the right decisions, though. Some audio cues would have helped a lot.
It seemed like the more controls I had to deal with, the worse I did. I didn't feel like I had mastered the first thing before the next thing came up.
I meant to mention also, the help/narration text is a bit hard to read. Try an outline font for better readability.
Really like the concept. It's tough to correlate the tree's appearance to its genetic fingerprint, though. It would be a little easier if you could see the genes in the seed bank view, instead of having to swap them in and out all the time.
Meh. The gameplay is just not interesting enough. The concept has promise, though. Playing the same level three times with merely "evolving" graphics just isn't too interesting -- try evolving the mechanics. It's a good idea, but just kinda falls flat here. I'd encourage you to continue to develop it and make the play mechanics stronger.
It didn't seem to matter much whether I provided any input to the game or not, but it was fascinating just to watch. Sound effects and motion are especially well done.
Very nicely done. It's difficult to cover the level, but I guess the point of it is that eventually the aliens are gonna mutate some dinos.
I couldn't figure out the controls, but I really liked the concept.
Really great, one of the best LD 24 entries I've played so far.
Difficulty is rather brutal, even in the first two stages. Well done, although the pixel-perfect jumping requirements make it less fun than it could be.
Had no idea what I was supposed to do.
I'm not sure, but I think I may have played a game:)
The art style blows me away, it's fantastic. The motion is good too. I didn't quite know what I was doing, or supposed to be doing. But I grew and I ate a lot of red things. And then I got bored. If there was some kind of goal it could be great. As it is what you have here is not bad in any way, and has lots of potential.
Really great all around, and you totally nailed the theme. Great job:)
LOVED the sound effects:)
Well done.
I found the controls frustrating due to the hitbox thing, but if you can work out the collision detection a bit more, it could be relaxing. With better graphics, and perhaps some ways of setting up automated tree growth, according to rules or patterns that you law out, it could be a very soothing and beautiful game. Needs some relaxing new age-y music.
Funny!
It seems to slow down after playing a short time in Chrome (Maybe 2 minutes of playtime before I closed the window fearing a crash). Also the game area renders so large that I have to scroll on my 1680x1050 laptop display.
One of the best that I've played out of this LD. Really well done.
I couldn't figure out how to advance between levels without the cheat, what's the secret?
One of the more interesting entries. It's less a game and more an interactive infographic.
Some HTML5 audio glitches and performance can have "mood swings" but this is a pretty neat game.
This was REALLY hard. Mostly because the game is unfair:) But I thought the music and sound effects were hilarious (especially the Darwin head and the Wilhelm scream.)
Couldn't really play it. When I WASD move, the mouse cursor freezes up. I'm using a trackpad on a laptop running Chrome on Win7 x64.
I've played a few games very similar to this, and I couldn't get far enough in to see how it might differ. I was able to observe formations of triangles "evolve" out of singular triangles, it'd be fun to come back and see what this is like once the controls are sorted out.
Very short and not so challenging, but it's a game.
I like a game that is so thoroughly stupid that I enjoy the shit out of if. ;)
Needs some sound effects, but otherwise it's good mindless entertainment. I liked the progression of enemies and powerups.
Played a while, then got the following error which crashed the game:
___________________________________________
ERROR in
action number 1
of Alarm Event for alarm 0
for object shit_search:
Error in code at line 5:
if (!is_enemy(obj.id))
^
at position 24: Unknown variable id
peggiosoft: no kinect support.
Neonlare: You have to be facing a person and close enough for a Bark to register on your score. If a person gets too close, they will try to pet you; if you get petted too much, you stop being a villainous puppy and the game ends.
I'm not sure what to say about the crash, if you can send me any information that might help diagnose what happened I'll try to look for a solution.
Gemberkoekje: That's a good suggestion about in-game instructions. I can add a message to tell the user how to play. It's explained in the Instructions screen, but I guess people might not go there or feel like reading.
I like the simplicity! I would consider adding more actions to the game if it improved the game. I did add bonus pickups to the post-compo edition, which I think helped make the game a little more interesting. I'm sure there are probably other things I could do as well.
Mood == FRUSTRATION ;)
I liked the graphical style. I think you found JUST the right amount of controller lag to inspire fury. Really difficult and shouldn't have been, but if that's what you were going for, you nailed it! I got to -356m before I gave up.
Pretty fun! Needs sound.
The remorseful villain is an interesting twist.
lol! that was an experience.
It's fun to watch the heroes fall like lemmings.
Not sure why, but the controls seem to be way off in Chrome.
Wouldn't play in Chrome but it played fine in Firefox. Rather easy, but fun for the nostalgia factor. Nice work.
It doesn't seem it can end? Is there a way to die?
I didn't care much for the wall-jump mode. Losing control of your horizontal motion makes for a really difficult, but also very limited style of play. The story parts were well done, and amusing, but I don't really like a lot of narration and cutscenes in my games, personally.
It kinda just felt like a normal shooter to me. The backstory fits the theme, but it doesn't really change the way the game feels. I wasn't particularly good at the game, it felt very constrained and dodging was tough. I guess I need to brush up on my shmup skillz.
This is awesome! Great mechanics, wish the controls were a little easier (Does it support gamepad controllers? It would be great if it did.) No sound but the other elements here are outstanding. But why is a Lumberjack a villain?
Visuals and audio were superb, but is there more to the game than just pressing space?
Rather clever idea. And the play mechanic is fun, even without points or purpose. Wish you could have had more than 4 hrs to develop this into something more.
I just couldn't get the jumping to work well. Not sure why. I kept dying no matter how I tried to jump.
It's a decent memory pattern game. Could help if you sound effects at different pitches play to reinforce the memory of where the trains are going to be. Really needs some squishy sound effects and a train horn and a diabolical snicker to make this a classic.
On the web version, I found the mouse control to be very erratic and hard to control. Also, I did not feel very villainous, given that I was saving humanoids. Granted they are zombies, but I only know that because I read the instructions. They don't really FEEL like zombies, though.
Good job with the lighting and sounds.
The birds at the beginning ate everything before I could figure out what I was doing. Then I only had one plant left and it grew into a tree, and I could defend it against anyone. But guys with chainsaws just kept coming, and it wasn't very challenging at that point.
Solid gameplay. Controls could use a little smoothing/loosening up to give it a more UFO-y feel.
Well, I managed to assassinate the King, or someone who looks like him, but then I got mobbed by guards and died instantly. This would have been even better if you respawned at a save point after each obstacle/challenge. I liked the puzzle aspect of how to approach the guards to get them into a position where I could assassinate them easily.
Pretty challenging when there's a lot of falling angels to dodge. Funny game, too.
Hard to control the dog, he bounces off of things and moves very fast once you get going. It seemed like it was pretty easy to avoid the people, they don't patrol or chase you much, so it's just a matter of blundering into them accidentally because it's so hard to control. Try my game, Bad Puppy!
Pretty good. The "villain" theme seems a bit arbitrary -- you could have skinned any theme onto this, really. But it is a solid puzzle/falling block game.
Nothing much going on here, was hoping for some kind of payoff at the end, but came away disappointed. I thought the mood was strong, was I supposed to be an Extinction-Level Event coming to Earth?
Looks awesome. I have yet to figure out how to switch mainframes, so I'm stuck attacking from London and can't get very far. :( If the controls were a bit more apparent, this would really be great.
Oh nevermind I figured out you have to press Esc to deselect. This game is really awesome. I wish you could simply select your source city by right-clicking instead of having to deselect. And if you could zoom out the map to see a larger area, it would be just about perfect.
Clever idea for the gameplay. I found it to be slow paced, and strategic.
Just a tip, you made your source available on github as a .gmx. You should also make a "Export Project" .gmz version so that people can download the project in one click.
Great non-obvious use of theme. Superb mood. I found the game was extremely difficult, spotting the clues and finding a matching suspect all but impossible, but it's terrific. Good humor, too.
Couldn't play it. Program ran, didn't crash, but there didn't seem to be any input detection. :/
It's a complete game, but very short. Props for having multiple endings:)
Good music.
Here's your damn goat. Lol.
I had fun programming stuff like this on an Apple ][e in Pascal. Lol.
One of the strangest games I've ever played, and totally unique. I loved the graphical and auditory style. It gets repetitive and the challenge doesn't seem to ramp up very much (I played 16 rounds before I lost). And I'm not clear how it relates to the villain theme, but it is a very cool entry nonetheless. Words words words, now spew them back at me:P
Strange, fun game.
The Audio is remarkably good at making up for the primitive graphics.
Great mood, but not much gameplay. Just selecting menu items on a rotating 3d globe. I see potential here, but it's not realized yet. A little eye candy to illustrate what's going on in the world, a heat map or some icons, and some particles, and a better HUD showing your current status would help things out.
Loved the visuals on this. Gameplay is a bit weak. Would have preferred to control the reticle with the mouse. Aiming was just about impossible, although I was able to score a few hits.
Simple gameplay, but the humor and aesthetics win.
Played the Web version, had a hard time with the controls not responding to my input. Couldn't find the Door Keeper:(
Wasn't sure what to do, but I liked the Minecraft-y graphics.
This is one of the best and funniest games I've played yet in LD25. I'm impressed!
Took me a while to figure out that in order to hit anything with the whip that I had to duck. It's basic, but the theme is fun. A little more fear/reaction out of the children would really sell it. Needs sound!
Reminds me of something I played on the Wii once...
I liked the humor and mood on this one. The sound effects on the train, too.
Pretty awesome. Difficult platforming due to not being able to see very far in order to plan your jumps. This game ACHES for a player piano soundtrack. Could really be awesome if you continue to develop it.
I couldn't figure out the controls, despite the on-screen instructions, when I tried to follow them it didn't seem like I was controlling anything. So, it was basically unplayable.
On the plus side, the music was pretty cool.
Played a few times but couldn't figure out how to get anywhere. One, two hops at most. I guess your level generator needs a little tweaking. Good music tho!
Music was great.
In Chrome, for some reason it scales up too large to fit the view, and I can't read all the instructional text and much of the game is offscreen. Seems to render correctly in Firefox though.
Could tick, but not tock. Very unforgiving mechanics, made me want to give up after failing five times. Try a lighter form of negative reinforcement than stopping the game every time the player makes a slight error.
I can't believe I played this all the way through to completion.
Boy is it hard not to die! Controls weren't difficult, but your turn radius is so large and your line of sight so small that it is really hard not to crash, by the time you see the obstacle it is too late to do anything.
I liked this, especially the graphics and the Kong laugh.
This was pretty cool, but might have fit LD24 Evolution theme better.
How long are you supposed to play until something happens? I liked the aesthetic, but after walking around for a minute or two, I encountered these guys who were just standing around, but could not find a way to interact with them. Frustrated, I gave up at that point. If it had been more clear what I was supposed to do, or could do, or if more happened sooner, I might have stuck with it.
I liked the graphic style and the sounds quite a bit.
I didn't get it, beyond stamping on pigeons was there more to do? It doesn't feel complete, or I am missing something.
Not much gameplay here, but from a ambiance and mood standpoint, this kicks butt. As a staging of an ethical dilemma, it's interesting. I only wonder what happens if you do not shoot. I waited around for a short time, but nothing happened, which was boring. Is there an alternate ending for a no-shoot player?
Liked the graphics. The game more or less seemed to play itself, and my interaction didn't seem to matter much. Couldn't beat the big battle where the whole village came up though, lol. I liked the narrative style of the monsterous not-really-bad guy who just wants to be left alone.
Very interesting and unique mechanic, but it was very hard to understand how to play, based on reading the instructions. It seems that successfully stealing the identity of a computer must entail a good bit of luck, since you can't steal too many packets, you can't let one get through lest you need to re-steal it again, and you can't tell whether a packet is one you've stolen or not already by its appearance. I really didn't care for the music, it hurt my ears.
The mechanic here is a bit weak. Requires split second timing and lots of patience once you start dealing with multiple victims. Frustrating in that you have to be very precise and lucky in order to prevail, and it doesn't seem to depend very much on your skill, or strategy.
I'm impressed that this was built in a weekend, but it's not as good as NES Ice Hockey. One major difference I noticed between the two is that in Ice Hockey, you can switch instantly to the nearest player to the puck, while in this game it seems to pass through a predefined ordering, which is less helpful. It's a tough play, I couldn't score a goal.
The ghosts are too hard to click on in order to control them. Really liked the concept, just needs to have larger ghosts so you can select them, or easier click-targeting or something.
Oh and the music was great, too.
"Press any key" is a lie. I really liked the drab color scheme and the graphic style. It didn't seem like there was very much to do, or maybe I'm just missing things that aren't obvious to me. I figured out how to get coins, switch items, and use the store, but somehow Z didn't seem to work for me. And once or twice I got stuck on things after jumping.
I found the controls to be a bit frustrating... Super Mario would have made it to the king without any problems;0
I wasn't very good at this. Seemed like the Marios would kill my ghosts and then I wouldn't have anything left to fight with. Would have been more fun if I didn't suck so much.
Very well done. I had a hard time with the second level the first time, managed to win the second time. Would play additional levels if you build them.
I wasn't really clear what I should be doing, so I just whipped the hell out of everyone and brought morale and deadline way down. I'm not sure if I was winning or not, but after a few minutes my clicking fingers got tired and I lost interest. The graphics are really good, but you need sound and a little more to indicate to the player what they should be doing or what their goal is.
Please name your download file something less generic than "LD25.exe" next time. When there's 1000+ games, it's good to have the title and author in the file name.
Despite being insensitive/controversial, it is a great concept for a game that can send a message.
I don't think it was working quite right, because when I played it it didn't seem to give me any points for shooting anyone, other than me. So I only got a suicide bonus.
Graphics, Audio, Mood, Theme were awesome. Wasn't very fun to play due to the scoring being broken, and also because it's such a downer in light of the horrible events of Friday.
Please don't name download files generic titles like "LD25"
It was cute, funny, but needs work. In the second level, I just dropped a rock and then the wookiees got stuck and there was no way to proceed. Would be REALLY great if there were some funny voice acting sounds and Vader breathing and stuff. Lots of potential here if you keep working on it.
Very challenging and tricky.
A bit too chaotic to be playable in real time, for me. Would have liked to have had some time to design the level before the player AI started running through it.
This game would be ROCKING if it had dual analog stick controls, like any good arena shooter:) WASD + trackpad on a laptop makes it SO hard. I really liked the powerup system and everything else about it, just add joypad support and it'd be 10x better than it already is.
Did you make the bark noise in bfxr? It's very good! The animations are great, too, but the parallax background seems backward? It's a cute game:) I found it very hard to jump over dogs due to the background distracting me and moving too quickly to react in time.
You should try my Bad Puppy if you haven't yet.
Kinda reminds me of Gauntlet in reverse.
He wouldn't turn to face right and the physics/controls seemed to be a bit off. Nice graphics and I liked the voice acting!
I couldn't quite get this one. It didn't seem to matter what color I would hit, nothing seemed to change. It left me wondering what was the point of it all. I did like the graphical style, but the play (for me at least) was lacking.
Without sounds and animation, it's really hard to tell what's going on. Monsters and heroes seem to walk right past each other without interacting.
Very fun!
Very fun to play around. Keep developing it so there's a good ending or purpose, I think you have something here.
Solid!
This was pretty good, even though incomplete. Very simple to play, but challenging and fun.
Man SUCH great mood. I really enjoyed this, minimal though it was.
The AI is a bit dumb, but it's nice to see someone paying homage to Gyruss.
Like Angry Birds, only there's nothing challenging about it. If you're just working out how to do physics, it's a nice demo, but needs a lot of polish before it will feel complete.
It feels like upside down Missile Command.
Despite being totally STOOPID, I completely LOVED this game and smiled and laughed the whole way through it. Hell level would have been trippy if you could have animated the flames. Music soundtrack was kick-ass. I really liked this one. The "intentionally crappy" genre is so underrated.
Couldn't get out of the beginning of "No child left behind". I appreciate what you were trying to do with the theme and the topic you wanted to explore, but I felt it was heavy handed and a downer to play. If I could have gotten past the point I made it to, maybe there would have been more of a point to it which could have redeemed things for me. As it is I did enjoy the graphics, although all those rotating squares seem to affect framerate after a while.
A purely strategic turn-based simulation which for all practical purposes is basically text only. It was hard to understand what I was doing or how well I was doing it, due to the lack of graphical feedback. I think the math modeling is the strength here, back it up with some visuals that communicate what's happening to the player better, and you have something.
This is great. Always wanted to play this in reverse. Thanks!
Fun, but very tough! It would be nice if you could do something to neutralize the banker/guards other than jump on their heads. They need to stay down just a little longer. Add sound effects for a mood enhancer.
Well, THAT was mildly amusing!
I rather liked the use of background gradients to suggest locale and travel. That's quite clever.
Good looking game. The music is cool, but doesn't quite fit the game, I think. Gameplay is pretty one-dimensional, but it's a well-executed game of its type.
Couldn't play, due to a large chunk of the play area being obstructed by a large, blue rectangle.
Novel idea, as an "art game" I can respect it, but not really much of a "game-game". It'd be interesting to see what you could do if you took more than 6 hours.
Very enjoyable, not all that challenging. If the Heroes were a little more offensive, it could have been even better.
Awesomely retro. I felt like I needed an instruction manual to really tell me how to play. I get that you're supposed to find things and trade and power up, but it wasn't very clear how to do those things. I'd love to play this again with a better understanding of HOW to play, not just what I'm supposed to try to do. Consider posting a walkthrough video:)
Fantastic. I'm impressed this was done in 48 hrs!
Had a hard time playing a 2P game by myself, but it is a fun concept. One criticism, I didn't think the music fit the game at all. Also, I don't think this fits the theme too well -- maybe if you only controlled the asteroids rather than both sides.
Very Zeldesque:) I liked it.
This is more fun than it should have been. I feel guilty:) Targeting with the shotgun is really tricky. Consider a button press to "pull" rather than a mouse release.
Well, I played once, then the bug set in and I couldn't get any further because I kept dying:(
Lol, I'd love to do that, Crynix. I bought GameMaker Studio for that very reason. Yet for some reason this project won't even build to HTML5. Well, it builds, but when I load the resulting web page in my browser it won't run anything. Very odd.
And to build to OS X or iOS or Ubuntu or Windows 8 I need a second computer that runs that OS to target. My current environment doesn't have that. But if any other GameMaker Studio developers out there want to download the source and make a build, by all means go ahead. And if you can send me the build, I'll host it and update this entry with a link to it.
OK I managed to rebuild my project and get an HTML5 build that runs. I'm not sure, but I think the project I worked on last night may have been corrupted, resulting in the HTML5 build to fail.
Suese, that's really all it deserves, anyway. I hope to be more inspired by the theme next time. This was really more of a joke entry/protest of the theme. - - although if I had a freer schedule this weekend, I would have made a second, more serious attempt.
PacifistGames, you're quite welcome! I am glad my tutorials are getting popular. I worked on the wave motion problem pretty hard, as a result of the previous LD, where I had to fake it with a sprite animation. I do learn a lot from doing these compos. :-D
@Brassawiking: Congratulation! A loser is you.
;-)
@Zim the Fox, you won my game?! That's un-possible!
Rafael Sales, I think perhaps some of my players ended up staring at the game so long that it started giving them hallucinations, or something;-)
Well done! I love the design of this. It's very simple, colorful, and discovering the play mechanics through trial and error, and adapting at each new level is very fun! I'm very impressed with this. You've really improved a lot since the last LD, too!
I scored 18 by the way:)
Liked the graphics, missed not having sound. My guy did not shoot? Do I have to earn that or something?
The graphics and controls are pretty minimal. But the statistical model isn't. The music doesn't feel very pirate-y. But I liked the images.
I'm getting over 200 fps, but 0 draw calls and nothing seems to be happening. Just a black screen.
As soon as I press Space to start a new game, it crashes:(
Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: CLR20r3
Problem Signature 01: z jumper.exe
Problem Signature 02: 1.0.0.0
Problem Signature 03: 5186c805
Problem Signature 04: Microsoft.Xna.Framework
Problem Signature 05: 4.0.20823.0
Problem Signature 06: 4c72cc22
Problem Signature 07: 504
Problem Signature 08: 51
Problem Signature 09: System.InvalidOperationException
OS Version: 6.1.7601.2.1.0.256.48
Locale ID: 1033
Additional Information 1: 0a9e
Additional Information 2: 0a9e372d3b4ad19135b953a78882e789
Additional Information 3: 0a9e
Additional Information 4: 0a9e372d3b4ad19135b953a78882e789
Read our privacy statement online:
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=104288&clcid=0x0409
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C:\Windows\system32\en-US\erofflps.txt
No sound:(
I didn't really like the controls, I felt sluggish and it was very hard to dodge the incoming enemies, or turn quickly enough to take aim at them. So it felt unfair. At times when the graphics stripped away and all I was seeing was a wireframe, I liked that. *That* felt more minimal. Why does a minimalist shooter need lasers AND rockets AND boosters??
I couldn't figure out what I was supposed to do:(
"Buttons open doors" = shit just got real!
Very nice. Liked the music, too:)
Oh, this is just superb. A bit low on the replayability, but excellent conception and implementation.
Rather different.
Tough but once I figured out I could escape the hell by going out of the room, it was cake. Made it as far as the 11th star.
I didn't find this to be all that minimalist -- just kindof a weak 3D FPS style game with an interesting "drain for energy" mechanic but not much gameplay to it. Congrats on completing your first LD game:)
lol.
Not penalizing but keeping track of wall collisions was interesting, but you should provide some feedback so the player knows what to avoid.
I like pugs:)
That thing is creepy!
I really like the color palette you chose, and the idea of being a great big scary monster running around in the woods eating people.
Liked the aesthetic and simplicity, but the controls are weak. The number of moves is an interesting challenge mechanic, but I found it a bit unforgiving.
Where's the source? Compo entries should include source.
GameMaker: Studio tip: Look into your build options when creating your executable. It's possible to just build a zip file that people can extract. A lot of people prefer this over having to install an app that later has to be removed using the Windows control panel.
Graphics are a bit harsh, and the gameplay is very difficult. I had a hard time telling what I was looking at -- were there pickups? I couldn't figure out a way to power up.
Great concept! Would have liked to collect fewer shapes to evolve, but it was very fun.
Well, I sure didn't know what I was doing until I read the comment someone posted about it being a snake game.
A little too easy to die, and if you find yourself too close to the wall, due to your fixed turn radius and speed there's nothing you can do about it.
For some reason the controls didn't seem responsive to my input. Couldn't really play it.
I could run the game, but couldn't tell what I was supposed to do. I figured out moving around, and got some blocks to change color, I think, but it didn't tell me a score anywhere that I could see. It was hard to bounce where I wanted because I couldn't control the camera angle.
Interesting take on the theme, and innovative graphics.
Great visuals. Controls were a bit too difficult -- dealing with a mouse pointer as the target for where I'm going while the background scrolls independently is just a recipe for ragequit.
Interesting mashup idea and good graphics and sound but the levels weren't particularly challenging.
Didn't ever feel challenging. The lone enemy never stood a chance.
Needs instructions for how to play. Loved the sound effects.
You really took minimalism down to the bare wire.
Solid little game, reminds me a lot of the racing games of the Atari VCS era.
Solid narrative and mood. Even without translating the morse bits I was able to figure out enough of what was going on to play through several times and experience different endings. Well done.
Soooo pixely!
Died twice very quickly.
The jumping mechanic was too frustrating. Bouncing + inertia made for a lot of unfair deaths. Audio is a +. Levels could have used a little more variety (I got through the 3rd level). What were the eggs for?
Technically impressive but a bit too slow in my browser to play at a decent framerate.
well made, but I found it to be very difficult. It's a tough economy. Liked the music.
I'd like to play this, it sounds like it was a good game. But I am getting this error when I try to run LD28_YOGO.exe after decompressing the .rar:
"The program can't start because VCOMP100.DLL is missing from your computer. Try reinstalling the program to fix this problem."
Finally came back around to give this a try again, and I'm glad I did! I *really* like the controls. The subtle camera shift from pressing up and down is a great touch. And I love the ball physics. The platform puzzles gave me a fun challenge. Congrats on placing 2nd!
Wow, there's a lot here and much polish. You must be very good with GameMaker to put this together in 48h.
I got to the roof, touched one guy and he disappeared. No one else disappeared when I touched them so I figured maybe I have to take the guy I touched first down to the ground before he's "rescued"? I climbed all the way down to the bottom but nothing happened, so if I was carrying anyone, they were invisible and there was no indication of what I had done, or if I was on the right track. Make it more clear to the player what they're supposed to do and it will be a better game for it.
Very cool, I had a hard time controlling the bullet though:( I feel like if this were two-player, one player controlling person and one player controlling bullet, I could handle it. But trying to do both at the same time is not easy. I last about :12, and kill 2 zombies. lol.
Well done. I expected the ghosts and things to be more dangerous somehow -- it didn't seem like colliding with them did anything bad, except make the edges of the screen glow red. The graphical effects such as blur and lighting are superb for a web game. And I liked that the music would trigger according to what was happening in the game. Well done!
You don't get score for blowing up enemies, only for picking up the coins? Weird. Tough game. Needs sound!
I got excited for a second when I saw the Conway's Game of Life "glider" in your screen shot, but it's just obfuscated tictactoe where the board state is misleadingly ambiguous? I think I'll pass.
If this is a compo entry, where's the source?
Theme is represented only superficially -- it would have been cool if the color you picked affected the way the game played somehow. Core gameplay is pretty good -- if you took this further I'd suggest adding additional enemy types, some type of weapons power ups or defensive power ups. Pretty decent game!
Fun, very difficult. Might be easier if I had a stick or gamepad instead of this keyboard.
Wow, this is fantastic.
If only I could have brakes and a reverse gear... :)
I got to Day 10 but because of the window size I chose to play in, I could not proceed further because both options were out of frame. What a depressing and woeful game...
Keep going!
I found the controls and hit detection to be quite weak. It ididn't seem like the pirates did anything more than walk back and forth waiting for me to kill them -- I assume you didn't get to finish an attack mode for them.
I like the graphical style. The animation is crude, but looks like a decent Atari VCS style. I did like the rising and falling of the ship -- very convincing wave-like motion. Well done there.
Needs sound effects and some music to round it out. And endings.
Played the web version... after the first round the unity web player plugin crashed.
I liked the graphics, particularly the marching animations. The controls felt off. It said hold left arrow to begin duel, but it didn't do anything. So I mashed buttons and then finally they started marching. Shooting was easy, but then it crashed right after telling me I had injured my opponent.
I liked the customization artwork. Good job getting the different pieces to work together. That part was more fun than the actual game tho:)
Great entry.
I'm getting a definite Swords & Sworcery vibe from this game, which is in no way a bad thing. Well done!
Both the Windows and Web links point to the same url... is there a Windows build that I can run offline?
No sound:(
It seems there's no consequence for getting stuck on a wall, either.
Keep polishing!
Once I figured out what I was supposed to do, and how things worked, it was pretty fun. Visual design of the objects could have helped make it a bit more apparent what I was supposed to do, but figuring it out didn't take too much effort...
I didn't like this because it felt too unfair. Not being able to see and having to rely on memory wasn't challenging in a way that was *fun* for me. Still, it was a good experiement on a play concept.
When you draw words on the screen, usually it's better to draw them so that they follow the view, rather than stick to the background. That way they can still be read while the player is moving about the room.
Hahaha I liked this one. Or should I say Hohoho?
PS you need to post source code for a compo game:)
Well done, but also quite difficult. I don't think my trackpad is the right input device for this...
It didn't seem to matter what I did, the same destruction would bring about a wildly different result each time.
The web build at least was too laggy for me to play well.
This reminds me of a certain multiplayer map in Unreal Tournament QUITE a lot...
Pretty cool. Not the usual game, but I like a good choose-your-own-adventure.
You know you can just repeatedly jump in the air, and then none of the level is challenging at all? Lol.
Yeahhhh that is way too hard for me!
The words scrolling around with the rest of the background hurts their readability.
Pretty cool! Would have appreciated a counter so I knew how many orbs were remaining to collect. Also, it wasn't clear to me what to do with them once I had them. Bring them back to the lighthouse? Do something once I get there? I never did get all 7, but it would have been good to have some idea of how to use them once I had them.
What a garish digital acid trip. Too bad the gameplay wasn't on par with the graphics.
I wish I could have a little more time... oh well.
What are the controls? Is there an attack?
OK I figured out left/right arrow, space, and... "1" to attack? This is a really awkward layout for a keyboard, making the game unnecessarily difficult. Also, it doesn't seem like I can hoard ninja stars? I wasn't sure if I lost my inventory after going through a door, or if I could hold no more than 2, or what, but it was a disappointment after cleverly avoiding having to kill samurai on earlier screens, thinking I'd saved a star, to find out that I didn't have as many as I thought when I arrived at the next challenge. I felt like I was deprived of a reward for being clever.
All in all quite good, but needs a few tweaks to become great.
It is teh cy00t but ai wants to hazzing moar!
Challenging. You can't make ANY mistakes, you only get 10 seconds, and the letters moving about make it pretty difficult to spot the "wrong" letter.
Unfortunately the design concept only serves to make the game tedious, going back to the very beginning to reload after each and every shot. At the very least it would have been nice to have "go through" arrows so that I could take out several enemies with one shot if I lined them up just right.
Very good overall!
For improvements:
* As others have said, make the spikes stand out more.
* The time should reset to clear the level if you die. It's brutal to have to restart the level after you die and have not enough time to possibly clear the level.
Overall a great effort!
Wow, this was brilliant. Very easy to win, unfortunately, but I really enjoyed the concept and the mathy-ness of it. One of my favorites so far.
Incredibly fun. Great, original concept for a game. I've never played anything like this. I couldn't play the game well at all using a trackpad, but with a proper mouse and scroll wheel this would be a lot of fun. One thing that I would have really liked was the director's instructions to be audible, so that I had a better understanding of when the cues were coming up for the next shot. Reading them off to the side was not as intuitive for me. Great job overall!
Evocative of stargazing. Beautiful and atmospheric. Wasn't sure if I should be doing something... but it didn't really matter if I didn't.
Didn't really like it until I threw my first torch, then wow! Good effects there. Very pretty. I thought the controls felt off. Too fast/too much inertia, yet mouse looking was too slow, and the camera angle feels like it's at about knee level. Overall, I like it but really only for the mystery and the effect of the torches. If you built this up and added depth and a goal, it would be good:)
"The program can't start because VCOMP100.DLL is missing from your computer. Try reinstalling the program to fix this problem."
Found the dll I needed, this is pretty good!
Very nice! It started getting really tricky after the bubble bombs.
This takes me back to California Games, my favorite event was surfing. Great take on the theme:)
the first comment from jpdev pretty much nails it.
Oh, man... This game. This game is the winner.
This was a great game, very polished and well done, innovative, and fun. You really have a knack for 2D platformers with interesting mechanics.
I liked how the music turned out! Great game, it was fun to watch your progress as you were working on it:)
Really well done. Everything here feels pro.
This game rocks more than any game has ever rocked before. More than any game has a right to. Hell yes I am a bad enough to dig down deep and save the Prez. You can count on me.
What's uploaded currently is an alpha build that has no functionality... I'll have the finished, playable game up by Jam deadline.
OK it's functional now, but still buggy.
Fully functional and debugged now! Have fun and give me ratings!
Jam final submitted 5:53 PM 4/28/2014:)
Thanks, Managore. I told you already but I don't mind saying in front of everyone here how great your game is. I really hope you medal in a few categories this time.
Thanks RyanNielson. I would have liked to be able to spend more time on the pickup items sprites to make them more like atari graphics, but for lack of time I settled for shrinking down images until they became very pixellated and tiny. If I had to do it over with more time I would have liked to do those more properly. Your comment just confirms that my hunch is correct.
You can actually take items out of the pit on the left OR right, and I had thought about putting some kind of visual indicator there, and almost did so about an hour before deadline. I have added a post-deadline enhanced version with this feature, because I do think that it makes for a clearer goal.
Garris: To be honest, I don't remember how E.T. exited the pit. I think you just floated out through the top of the screen. I did play the game over the weekend, but only long enough to fall in to the pit and grab the screen. I never made it out! lol. The enhanced version now puts blinkers up where you need to take the item when you are grabbing something, so hopefully that will communicate it better.
@Kate Kligman, that's not saying much! :)
Alright, the enhanced build now features Atari-like sprites for the soda can and tire Finds. Thanks to all who played and commented.
Kara Jayde: I agree, it's not much of a game, could use something...
NoTrueSpaceman: Yeah, maybe a timed mode would have given it some semblance of game-ness. A lot of Atari games had a no-challenge mode, often indicated with a teddy bear icon, intended for very young children. In retrospect I think this "game" if it can really be called that should have had the teddy bear.
mark.goetz: The score being only 4 digits is somewhat intentional, in that it emulates the E.T. videogame. The way the scoring works is not very well thought out. I wanted finding the E.T. cartridge to give you max score and end the game, but I forgot to code the actual ending, so when you "win" you can keep playing and retrieve other stuff from the landfill. Originally the intent was to max your score to 9999 for retrieving the cartridge, so the cartridge isn't actually worth a set amount of points, but rather it sets your score to 9999 regardless of what it was. But if you left other things in the pit and extract them after, you can extract them and get more points, which rolls the score over back to 0000. We might consider this an exceptionally authentic defect, emblematic of the shovelware produced for the VCS which led to the crash of '83. ;-)
01101101: Adding a timer to the game to provide a level of challenge would be an improvement... I think someone else suggested that, and it's not a bad idea. Truthfully as I was making this I didn't have a thought in my head as to how to gameify it. I just wanted to re-create the E.T. pit and throw garbage and dirt in the hole, and a means to dig stuff out of it. That's all I had time for! Although it's hardly a game, it's deliberately bad, and I'm pleased with how quickly and easily I was able to build what's here.
HybridMind: To remove a Find from the landfill, you have to take it all the way up and out of the pit. Take it to the left or right edge once you get to the top, and it should give you points.
Thanks to all who played and rated! I had a lot of fun playing your games:) See you at LD30!
Nice! I was worried it was going to be a flappy clone, but it satisfies. Challenge curve is a little slow, but I liked being able to play a slower paced game that still gets challenging.
Takes me back to that city in Zelda II where you learn the Jump spell and can get up onto the roofs of the buildings to get into secret areas. A quick play, took just a couple minutes to beat, but fun.
Seems like if I right clicked in the game window when I *wasn't* controlling one of my guys, the game would just abruptly exit.
It didn't have a whole lot of depth (lol) and the pacing could have been improved. I felt like I had to spend too much time waiting for resources so I could build. Maybe I just wasn't very good.
Death from crashing into the walls once is a little harsh.
There's a bug where if you drop the weight when it is inside a solid object, it falls through the object, and is usually unretrievable.
Graphics are very good, music not so good and too loud. Overall very nice. Tough game, but not impossible.
Wow that was hard.
Couldn't play it, but it looks like it'd be fun:)
Oh, you fiend! Taking away memorization by making it a randomly generated hole. I made it to the mole people, at least... Nice game!
Not as good as the title screen led me to believe :) There were a few bugs:
- Food score kept increasing on the end screen after I died.
- Enemy fish movement looked glitchy and unnatural at times.
The underwater sounds were good.
Since I love Swords & Sworcery, I really liked this game. Everything about it is fantastic.
Loved everything about this except one touch kills you.
Wasn't sure what was going on, but I'm pretty sure there's a puzzle... ? Do I have to keep talking to the fish in order to figure it out? I got all the rings I could find, but no star.
Needs more excitement/challenge/action but looks/sounds very cool! It wasn't apparent how to dive/ascend, or how to quit the game.
Not feeling the theme, but this is a well done game. Way too difficult, but the pixel art animation is superb. For a very small game it plays rather well. Just too frustrating for me because it's so easy to die.
Couldn't run it in Chrome for some reason.
For black and white dots, they're fascinating to watch.
Graphics style is superb. WAY too hard, unfairly so because of instadeath and inability to see far enough to deal with enemies. Could have been really fun if it was more forgiving and gave you some capability to cope with the situation.
Really good! I got 19/20 and a rare on the first try:) A bit of strategy and a lot of memory.
Novel gameplay. Reminds me of an early 80's arcade game. The graphics are pure GameBoy, but the music sounds like an Atari 2600. Not bad.
This took forever to download in the Unity web player. Big game though, and worth playing and exploring around. I couldn't get past the black spectres in room after The Cave. I wish I had a better idea what my goals were.
Very interesting, atmospheric. I swam a lot and then I drowned. I'll have to explore more to see what's going on. The mysteriousness of it has me hooked.
Lol.
Controls weren't too responsive, it felt like there was too much inertia to overcome with the keyboard, and so my motion was very ballistic and not all that controlled.
This was really cool. I played as 1P, and could only carry torches OR ladders... so I had to keep dying and returning with what I needed. This seemed like a design flaw until I realized that probably in a 2P game you could cooperate and get around a good bit better. I think there should be a way for the 1P version to allow you to carry both torches and ladders.
Thanks for the tip... I still think that the controls are very awkward. A better scheme for me would be to have a Torch button and a Ladder button. Switching with Pg Dn is not very intuitive, and depending on where that key is on your keyboard can be pretty awkward. (Of course remapping can help that...) I find that I try to collect gems and instead use a torch or a ladder too often.
Also, how am I supposed to deal with bats? They hurt me, but I can't run away or dodge them easily, and I can't find a way to kill them.
Extremely well polished. The game play is lacking in challenge, but what's here is really nicely executed.
So it's like a tower defense game... I didn't really care for the game itself, but the pixel art graphics are awesome. Also the squeaky toy sound effect. Hahahaha.
Graphics were too dark to see well, so kept hitting enemies that I couldn't see clearly. Also, I couldn't figure out how to shoot? It says arrow keys but they don't do anything.
Music on the enhanced version is very good.
The level kept starting over... was I dying? It was too dark to see anything.
It reminds me of the Apple ][ game Lemonade Stand, except I could understand and win it pretty easily.
Nice:) I think that space bar is the most clumsy feeling button for action, it is too big and slow, so I wish I could map it to a different key. I also thought that I was a bit too slippery and kept falling off the smaller platforms too easily. I like the crying innovation. It was an interesting constraint on game play.
That was VERY boring.
The slight skew to the levels made them a bit tricky to judge jumps, which provided some challenge, but otherwise there was little to be had. I found the color contrast often made it difficult to read the text when talking to people, and being a dark grey I didn't stand out very well in certain areas, either.
The "dot", being a single pizel, is almost impossible to see, AND is covered up by the mouse cursor, unless I'm moving it. Plays like an awkward Super Hexagon.
Interesting idea, but very difficult. I think the body character at topside blends much too much with the background, making it very difficult to judge when to jump. It's hard enough with the attention split to judge exactly when I can safely jump in both worlds. Making the graphics somewhat larger would help, but you really need to improve contrast between the character and the background.
The controls weren't very intuitive. I'd suggest using WASD to travel on the plane, and Up/Dn arrow keys to switch depth.
It's an interesting game, I haven't seen too many that use a "3D Chess" sort of play field. I'd like if the objects were a bit larger so I could see them more easily. Also, I read in the instructions that you shouldn't fall off the side, but when I did it, it didn't really communicate to me that I was doing something wrong. This should be made more obvious.
Overall very good.
Great graphics, basic gameplay is sound, but difficulty is too harsh. Too easy to die, brutal economics at the store, makes it a lot of replay but not getting anywhere.
Well, everybody died. So that's good.
Can't play. Unity player crashes when I try to run.
I've played a few "endless falling" games for LD29, and this one was probably the easiest of the bunch. Something to escalate challenge as you go deeper would help keep things interesting. I found that the color contrast between rocks and dirt was extremely close, and that made it hard to distinguish. Also, I don't know if it was really happening, or just an optical illusion, but it felt like the colors got very gradually, subtly darker as I descended, AND the rocks felt like they were inching closer together as I approached gaps. If that isn't actually happening, it's an interesting psychological phenomenon.
I don't really get what's going on, only understood that if I touched the three green things, I advance to the next level. Moving destroys the yellow ground and if there's no ground to reach the green thing, I can't win. But what is happening? I can't understand the rules for what destroys the ground, so it is hard to play. It's a neat idea, but without understanding the rules governing the terrain destruction, not so fun.
If the krakens were more angular, and the anchors had fatter pixels, this would easily pass for a poor-quality crash-of-'83 Atari 2600 era video game. Really needs sound effects though, feels incomplete without them.
Only suggestion I have for this is to make it so that the water doesn't block you from rescue. It feels unfair to not give the player another way out when their rescue hole is cut off. Why can't I dig to the surface anywhere?
Interesting concept, but too easy to make a mistake, and one mistake and you're screwed, but you don't know it until you play all the pixels. And then to start over, you have to start over from scratch. It's too unforgiving.
That was different. Unique take on the theme.
Very well done. I wished I had better weapon.
It has potential, but needs a lot of polish. Better animations, and better controls, for sure. I wasn't clear how to do things even after reading the instructions a few times.
A very solid entry. You really did a good job of creating a realistic feeling to the performance of the sub.
Lengthy, boring cutscene to open the game. Character sprite isn't animated. Interior is supposed to be underground, but just looks like a generic building interior. Enemies barely damage you, and health powerups are overly generous.
Decent turn-based puzzle game. It was not very obvious that the diver could disable the mines, but I figured it out eventually. At first I didn't want to risk the miner touching them. Doesn't feel finished yet, but with some further development it could show promise. I'd replace the squares with some pixel art icons that reinforce the meaning of the color, and add sounds, and more levels.
mew fthagn!
Very cool. Similar in some respects to Solar Jetman for NES. Takes me back. Only thing, I thought I should be able to surface to replenish my oxygen, not just collect oxygen tanks.
Pug! Extra star!
Absolutely beautiful, simple in concept, but unforgiving. Touch anything, die. Miss a single bubble, you can't make it. With a little improvement it could be really great.
Best sound. Very fun and challenging. The surface ships are really tough since you can't attack them from below, and when you're in the air you can't control movement. I would have liked to seen the destroyed subs sinking down and pile up on the bottom.
Cute, but if you can't remember where someone was, there's no hope to find them. It would be nice if there was some way to sniff to know if you're close.
The control scheme is terrible. The graphics are mediocre. The level design is unfair. But for some reason I keep wanting to play to see if I can get to an ending. I think it's the music? OK yes the music is addictive.
Amazing model animation and motion, the lighting really feels like you're in the water. Sounds are needed desperately, feedback is needed when you're in danger, or when you successfully eat a fish.
Really pretty, fun. Controls aren't as tight as I'd like, but it takes some getting used to.
I sank out of view, and then a bunch of words came on the screen... it feels like surely there must be more to the game than this.
Pretty great concept, controls could use some work. I really couldn't do anything with my arms. And in the web build, right-click brings up a contextual menu. It was a lot of fun to crush stuff by running into it for a few minutes, but then it got old... perhaps if there were something my own size to pick on...
Is 14 seconds a remotely good time? I think I suck, but maybe it's just supposed to be that hard. The heartbeat audio was pretty cool.
Very challenging puzzles!
I like the mirror-ed worlds concept, but not taking damage just for switching from one to the other. It's a bit glitchy. I got stuck in walls a few times, and had a hard time figuring out where I was appearing on the other side sometimes.
And after finding MSVCP120.dll and installing it, "The applicatoin was unable to start correctly (0xc000007b). Click OK to close the application.
Too bad, I really wanted to try this out. It looks a lot like Activision's Fishing Derby for Atari 2600, and I was curious to see how it played.
Excellent start to something that could be really great. Doesn't feel like there's a game here, yet, but a ton of potential.
Great game design! I really like the way all the mythological references were incorporated into the game.
Played, beaten.
Very solid, only missing sound. Thanks for connecting the LD29 theme to an important environmental issue.
Couldn't even figure out how to get past the spikes on the first level. Feels broken. Not unplayable, just bad mechanics/level design, or insufficient feedback to guide me when I die.
My only complaint about this game is that when Willy reaches the top of a ladder, it seems that he doesn't behave consistently. On level 2, in one case he continues in the same direction he had been travelling before he started climbing, which put him in danger so I needed to click on him to turn him around. Then the next ladder, if he'd continued in the direction he was going before he started climbing, he'd be safe, only he reverses and walks right into spikes. This seems arbitrary, and he really needs to be predictable in order for the game to feel fair.
Some kind of music would be nice, too.
Other than that, this is really excellent!
The tank has no reverse gear:(
I can't easily tell which way the turret is pointing because it doesn't stand out:(
It has a tank:)
What does this have to do with the theme???
Pretty cool! Very difficult past level 2. I beat Level 3 just as I died, and it let me continue to level 4. Great take on the theme.
Unique concept, decent humor. The music was soothing. I think every game should have a swearmeter.
MeatBoy ripoff:) I got as far as level 7. Died a lot, but not as much as you might think. Good play.
Good graphics, good concept, good sound. Needs better gameplay when in combat.
Well, it's Missile Command, with a different story. Well executed, plays great, although I definitely miss not having a trackball. Arrow keys really aren't the control scheme for this game. Graphics are solid. Sounds could use a little more oomph and some spice.
Couldn't tell what I was doing, if it was having a good or bad effect.
The bats flying through rock that I can't shoot through is really unfair.
It has potential, but the controls feel a bit off. I didn't feel as graceful as I think a penguin should feel. Lots of good obstacles, though! The music is a bit weak. I like the graphical change when you break the surface.
Warning do not play drunk! Lol. I really did start to feel a bit sick when the room was spinning so fast.
I like what I see here, but it's not super addicting yet. I can wander about and get the room to spin and occasionally I see glowing orange cubes that I can pick up, but it doesn't seem like there's much point to it, nor any real danger or challenge to it. But the visuals are amazing and I don't think I've ever played a game that has looked or felt like this. Motion sickness will limit how much I can get addicted to a game like this, but if you instill a compelling goal and an appropriate challenge curve, this could really take off.
It downloaded for like 10 minutes, played for a few seconds then suddenly the web browser acted like I had clicked a link and I got taken to some other page.
I really wanted to check this out, but that was not worth repeating to see what the heck happened. I really like mantas, so I hope this was a good game for those who could play it.
Reminds me quite a bit of my first LD48 game, Bactarium. I couldn't quite tell if the left-click action was working or not. My only problem with this game is that if you switch focus to another app, the mouse is still constrained within the region occupied by the game window. You should probably fix that somehow, so that it doesn't hijack the mouse from other apps. Great job on the bubble sound effects, by the way.
Graphics are really beautiful. Sound effects don't really fit, but are humorous I guess. Not too much gameplay, though. The deformable ground is very cool.
The die in 3 seconds no matter what you do game. Lol.
Good ping sound! Very authentic!
Unity plugin crashes when I try to run:(
I couldn't get anything to happen. Clicking on the blocks doesn't mine them, all I could do was make the miner walk around and make the blocks float. Not going to rate until I can figure out how to play. Title screen looks great!
Yay, I'm glad someone else had the same idea that I did. I liked your take on this!
Beneath the surface, this is a deep game. On the surface, not much to see. Subtle use of theme.
Not bad, would have liked checkpoints and a slightly more forgiving death detector.
Sound is amazing. Game is difficult. I think it was a little too difficult, faster turn speed, and more inertia would help the feel of the controls
The early levels were pretty easy, but it starts getting really hard at 10. I couldn't figure out how to beat it, so I can't get to the rest of the levels in the level select. If it's a matter of timing the water break, I can't seem to get it right, and I don't see any other way of doing it.
All I can do is die.
Pretty cool... the clouds would have been better if they could be a fog effect rather than opaque objects. Also, there's no threats above. I think you should need a reason to dive under the cloud cover and risk crashing into the mountains. Having the enemies that you have to fight be down there too, instead of above the clouds, seems backwards.
It's like a reverse tetris, and requires a lot of planning to avoid getting crushed. Very challenging!
A couple bugs. Sometimes the game doesn't want to start when I click Play. And a few times I died when the hit detection shouldn't have killed me. It's pretty tough to have to decide whether to flip or jump -- good innovative mechanic:)
I dunno, this just didn't do it for me.
Wow. Ludception. I bow.
It's not all that random? I'm only seeing about 4-5 different themes. And most of them would't survive the slaughter :P
I was going to make an HTML5 version so that everyone can play, but currently it's having serious performance issues, I believe relating to changes they made in GM:S 1.4 with the drawing pipeline. If I can get acceptable performance out of it, I'll add a link to it.
@FergusonTV, if you read my post-mortem article, it explains a bit about the decision to go with highly abstract graphics. Partly it was to be expedient, but there is some meaning to it as well.
@Just Tom: WOW, thanks! I am humbled.
I agree, the game could have had some instructions in game... perhaps I'll add something like that in the post-compo.
Added post-compo build. Worth replaying if you were on a display < 1680x1050.
I couldn't really tell what was going on but it looks so cool! I would like to see a video of someone playing who knows what they're doing. But I gather you want players to discover for themselves. Really nice.
Interesting concept. I've not played something like this before.
This is about as good as Flappy Bird, if it were a football-themed FPS. :)
Didn't really follow the theme, since not all of the game was visible on one screen. The controls were really difficult to use. The premise of the game was simple, but due to the controls being so difficult it was not fun to play. It would have been much better if you simply stopped rotating when you release the button, and if you could fire the elements directly the their selecting buttons. I liked the colorful blobs.
I got through the first three levels without even having to move, just spamming grenades and soaking up damage. The second cactus level was so hard it's basically a killscreen. Seems like it needs a considerable amount of balancing to be worth playing.
Nice to see someone else had basically the same idea I did.
Wild interpretation of the theme. A unique anti-scrolling mechanic, and very well done, makes simply getting around pretty challenging, in a fun way. The music is great.
Only bad thing for me was, I couldn't tell when I was picking up a stick, or if I had any, how many I had. So, I couldn't get very far. But I really want to spend more time with it and figure out this game's secrets.
Holy cow what a good game.
It doesn't fit the theme, but excellent marks in all other categories.
Reminds me a bit of the Konami arcade game Scramble... an influence?
Very interesting game. I couldn't adequately test it out solo, but it has a lot going for it. Graphics, sound, design, are all good. It's like a minified counterstrike, in a way.
I couldn't figure out how to do anything. People complained that there was no beer.
Cute/funny, but too hard to dodge the pellets.
WWI history is fascinating. I've always thought that games based on it would be terrible, due to the nature of trench warfare, but on the centennial I'm starting to be prooved wrong in that regard.
I liked the approach you took here with the design for this game, but I don't think the music fits at all to the mood appropriate to a game about the Great War.
I kept waiting for it to speed up or get more difficult, but it never really did. The only times I died was when there was an unfair spawn. The audio was pretty cool. I didn't check but I assume the words that appear between levels are just random or semi-random and don't really mean anything, but just provide a simulated sense of story.
Pretty frustrating. I never realized how hard it is to jump in a platformer where you don't control the height or timing of your jump. The bounce mechanic is very difficult to get a hang of. Also for some reason the unity browser plugin crashes when I close the browser tab.
Seemed a bit too one-dimensional to hold my interest for very long.
lol, the first time I played this, I thought the recoil from shooting was the only way to move, and thought the game sucked. Then I discovered walking with WASD and felt dumb for not reading the instructions, but the game got better.
I'm getting a page unavailable error at the web url.
Downloaded the windows .zip file but couldn't open it -- corrupted. Hope you can get your server back up and running, or a mirror, soon.
Cute. Not a lot of replay value, once you figure out the correct order in which to do things. It felt like there wasn't much skill involved, just guess and remember the outcome and try again for a better outcome the next time. It kindof felt like "Groundhog Day" getting it wrong several times in a row and having to try again.
Truly addicting, held my interest through 36 levels.
Impressive entry, especially for a first game ever. Keep it up!
Pretty good sound effects. I don't really like this type of game, turn-based no-action stat sims are boring to me, but the sound effects are very well done, which bring this up a notch.
Wow, amazing. Pretty much blows my #Ferguson riots game away. Superb entry.
#BlackLivesMatter.
Really good! I thought it was impossible to win at first, but kept at it and got a 1:36 clear score. It seemed like getting the last 1-2 was the hardest part -- great challenge curve.
Waaaait, wtf just happened? Duuuude.
First two dockings were easy, then suddenly it was all dimensional motion and I coulnd't deal with it at all. Challenge curve is really in need of adjustment. Also, it doesn't seem like this fits the theme very well, since the entire game isn't visible on the screen at one time.
Needs more work. The controls are extremely unresponsive, with slow acceleration and deceleration. Bumping into the managers and coworkers seemed to have no negative consequences. Managers didn't seem to behave any differently when I was in their field of view... And there were no sound effects. Overall the game feels incomplete.
It would have been nice if there was some sense to the ordering of the tasks, so that you could figure out a strategy to complete them more efficiently (ie without having to walk so far from one to the next).
I didn't realize I had done that... thanks for catching. Normally I don't make an install package build. In this case, it's nothing anyone would want to play anyway.
I just pressed right arrow the whole time and got all the way to the end without dying, so not very challenging. The people getting in my way were annoying, and there was no way to help them, so the message at the end, while a good life lesson, didn't seem applicable in-game.
It looked cute, but I couldn't quite get the hang of lesson 2:( Felt like the hit detection was off, or I just didn't know what to do. Sometimes I'd roll the ball back, and sometimes it'd miss for no apparent reason.
Unity web player isn't supported by chrome any more:( NPAPI plugin support is no more.
Really cool way to adapt Life to a playable game. This feels like it could be as deep as Go, but way harder due to the difficulty of humans predicting Life patterns without a tremendous amount of thought and planning.
Fantastic vector monitor emulation. Nice Lunar Landar variant. The orbital mechanics make it a lot more interesting. Made it to level 7 :)
Pretty cool concept. I figured out an easy strategy: Ignore the right side, and just press D in a steady rhythm to shoot all the targets, while putting full attention on the left side, moving only when necessary, and only when the horizontal way is clear. Once I discovered this, it was trivially easy to beat the first four levels, at which point I quit playing.
Not bad.
It didn't seem like I could hit anything? Some sound fx would have been helpful feedback to know if I hit or missed. I ended up watching the walkthrough .gif, and it looks cool.
I don't know how you do it, but you just keep getting better. The depth to this game is astounding. Explore, survive, find the treasure. I have found two pieces of the map(?) so far but I don't know what to do with them yet. The timekeeping and energy meters are brilliant. procedurally generated map... amazing. How'd you get the wind sound from bfxr?
I can't wait to take a look at the code and learn from it.
I like this. It reminds me of the type of graphics that you'd find on early 80's computers like the Apple ][.
Decent. I would have preferred a larger viewpane for desktop browser.
I wasn't clear on what my goal was other than to try to survive as long as I could. Having a better idea of what I was supposed to do would have kept me engaged longer.
I like pugs.
It didn't seem like I was getting hit or losing or anything, but then the game would suddenly end, even though I still had 3 hearts. I don't get it.
This looks really cool!
I kept hitting A and D, but I couldn't tell if or how I was moving. So, couldn't really play it.
Clever twist on Asteroids. I'm having some performance problems after playing for a few seconds in Chrome, so I can't really play it. But it seems like you can't move, only rotate? Makes it pretty difficult if you can't dodge.
You're amazing, as always. Your genius for innovative platformer mechanics knows no bounds, sir!
Thanks for catching that... bugfix 1.0.0.1 now available which fixes this issue.
@glaze_96, that would be a bug on the score not resetting... I'll have to fix that.
I think you might be right about the zoom, too. I may give that a tweak, too.
Glad you enjoyed playing my game:)
@ployer the gamepad should work in latest Firefox and Chrome, but not IE. But if not try downloading the Windows build if you can run it.
@uheartbeast thanks! Actually, the difficulty progression is based on the number of kills, but the number of kills ramps up quickly when you get a few power-ups, so they two are more or less indirectly related. I think the challenge curve in the post-compo is even better. I plan to add a few more enhancements once I get some framerate issues sorted out.
@managore: Thanks for the feedback! I do think the camera probably needs some tweaking, still. I'm just using view object follow right now, which isn't very sophisticated. I know it's possible to do more in code. I tightened up the margins somewhat in the post-compo, and zoomed out to 75%, but I still feel like the player needs more room to see in front of them. Now that I have the framerate issues under control, I'll see what I can do about this. I have some ideas...
@icefallgames: Glad you liked it:)
@deadbodyoutline, yeah, there's no mouse cursor visible... I really intended for the game to be played via the gamepad, but included keyboard/mouse controls knowing that many people potentially wouldn't bother to plug in a gamepad just to play my game for a few minutes. I wanted to give them a bit of the flavor of playing the game, but it's much better to play with a dual analog stick controller. Give it another try and see how you like it with the intended controls!
@Alphish, the shapes don't just move around, when you hit a shape it turns into a lesser-sided shape. I probably need a morph animation to convey that better. Thanks for your feedback! Very thoughtful.
@CarlsonAndPeters: it's an undocumented feature, but you can mute audio by pressing the M key. I've been working on some new sfx but haven't included them in a new build just yet. Thanks for playing!
Thanks to everyone who played my game! I appreciate all your feedback. See you at LD36!
Physics puzzles! So the first level, you walk to the door yourself, then thereafter you just have to roll a ball to the door, which I didn't understand at first. It seems like rolling the ball to the door is not the most intuitive visual language. But the core concept is pretty solid.
I went into a cave, a little figure appeared and floated to me, and killed me. Next time, I tried to hit him, but he still killed me.
Tricky puzzles. I've played a few games like this before, so kinda knew what to expect, but I think you introduced the puzzle elements in a way that allows the player to figure things out pretty well. The limited time to move the boulders while beefed up from the hamburger made it especially challenging.
Most games of this type just let you move the rocks, but not pull them, so if you push it against a wall that you can't pull it away from, you get stuck. Here, you can get stuck that way, or by running out of hamburger time. I don't know that that extra challenge was needed, but it did make things different.
Decent flappy bird-alike... The game seems to loose the mouse at times (Chrome), making it too easy to die because the controls stop working. I'd rather control up/down with keys than mouse. Good job.
Great audio! Love the BGM and the SFX. I thought this was a lot of fun to play. The one thing I didn't like about this was that you die when you fall too far, but there's a lot of parts in the game where you need to make a leap of faith to go down somewhere. So lots of unfair death from just trying to explore. But overall I liked your game. It was fun growing from an egg to a duck.
Graphics are pretty good, but I think the background parallax is way too slow.
Enemy attack patterns are too repetitive, and they fire so many bullets it's hard to hit them. Their attacks don't really do that much damage through. With some good tuning tweaks to get the challenge right, this could be a fun shooter.
I liked the music.
It's very tough to line up exactly. Rather than end the game on a single failure, maybe have a lesser penalty, and allow the player to continue on. A near success could result in a screen shake and slowing down of the game, and you could have a scoring gradient so that misses are worth 0 or negative points, while the closer to perfection you get, the higher points you get. I felt there should have been more space between the walls to allow you more time to adjust, and it was hard to know if you were aligned due to the angle the camera is viewing the game from. But overall for a simple game, this has potential to be pretty fun.
Tricky, I had fun playing it. Took a few tries to get the hang of it. There didn't seem to be much advantage in changing shape. And even changing color felt optional, like if I really wanted to get as many bullets as I could, but mostly I just tried to dodge, since that seemed to be safest, and so I lasted a while. You probably need some mechanic to counter the "just dodge everything" mechanic, like make it compulsory to pick up bullets or you run out of energy or something. Then it'd be tight!
I couldn't get past 0-2. I'd turn into the blue triangle, couldn't get on top of the platform, and would reset the level any time I touched water.
Graphics and sound are amazing. You emulated an Apple ][e monochrome display very well. Even though it's "just" a text game, the work you did creating the atmosphere and mood of using an early 80's personal computer is spectacular.
Well, OK. Not really much of a game. Just stand around and wait for a passage to open up, then take it. So it's missing a few things that would make it challenging. Once I realized I could step on grey or light blue tiles, it was much easier to advance.
WSD is a bit awkward on a keyboard. On a D-pad, up-down-right would feel pretty good, I think, but on a keyboard I'd prefer a straight line row of keys.
The graphics are good and all, and the sounds are ok, but the gameplay's a bit too simple for my taste -- it just comes down to a matter of matching the pattern and pressing the one control that will allow you to continue, or lose. I'd rather play something where there's some nuance, options, and opportunity for being creative in defeating the enemy samurai.
Pretty simple concept, which I liked. I lost pretty early on, but then somehow got the hang of it and held on, lasted about 12 rounds. At one point I thought I had lost all my puzzle pieces, but the game didn't end. Then I got a replacement piece? Then I protected it for several rounds before becoming overwhelmed. Pretty fun. It seemed like the best strategy for me was to just sit in the middle and try to protect that one remaining piece. Anything more than that was too hard.
I liked the graphics and sound. Fun use of theme.
Fantastic! I liked figuring out how the moves worked. Your presentation seems to invite the player to figure things out for themselves, without much explanation needed. Interesting use of theme.
Graphics and music are great, too!
Gameplay is awkward, but I think this game has potential if the controls could be improved.
Feels similar in some respects to the game I made. I like your ideas.
I got stuck on a wall in rat form, and couldn't get unstuck, and couldn't shape shift, either. It'd be fun to come back and see this when you complete some AI, and provide more of a goal or story to the game.
I really liked the graphics.
The controls, not so much. I had to keep the mouse moving constantly, and it didn't feel natural, or like I had good control. Also switching between forms, I couldn't really tell what advantage it gave me, so it wasn't very useful. Something about the game should communicate instinctively to the player which shape they should be in to have the advantage at a given moment. I can see a lot of potential for a rock-paper-scissors mechanic here, which could be very cool.
A game like this really needs sound effects, but you know that. You should add some!
Can't really play this due to the trackpad on my laptop's mouse scroll gesture being way too sensitive to control the shapeshifting. It's not at all clear what's going on in game, I seem to just float around, shooting until I run out of ammo, and then the game ends. If I crash into floating object I pick them up, but can't tell what they do. Enemies crash into me and disappear, or shoot at me until I run out of health... but what am I supposed to be doing? What's my goal?
Rather unusual GameMaker project. I found it a bit difficult to figure out how to play. I'd recommend making the help text a little bit more helpful. I get that this is supposed to be a puzzle, but figuring out the UI shouldn't be the puzzle -- figuring out what to do in the game should be.
After I put "nothing" into the vending machine, it gave me "Thing", but then the machine seemed to break. I couldn't really tell how to operate it. So I went over to a different room for a while, and tried coming back later, but the machine was still out of order. At that point, I pretty much lost interest.
You are REALLY strong with the pixel art, heartbeast! I have been a fan of your tutorial videos for a long time, and your art here is very good, especially for ultra low res pixels, which is probably my favorite style.
This game plays very well for such a simple mechanic, and with some pleasant chiptune music and sound effects, could be really special. Very well done overall, but feels a bit incomplete due to the complete lack of audio.
The jump controls could be improved by allowing vertical climb even after a side collision is detected. It's rather difficult to jump over obstacles when you can't be right next to them because as soon as your sideways movement returns a collision with a wall, your jump is canceled. I liked turning into a parachute and floating downward, though.
Too complicated for me to understand immediately. Am I trying to match color or shape? Why do the shapes shift? The shifting seems arbitrary, and although explained in the instructions, I still don't intuitively "get it". The game's rules should have an intuitive logic in order to be more accessible and fun.
Solid! I like the twist on the classic Tetris. I found it hard to play, not being able to rotate is a serious handicap!
Help! I'm trapped in a disco!
(The controls don't seem to work, other than running left and right :( )
This was really great. It felt like a SMS or NES era platformer, the art and controls were great. The levels weren't terribly challenging, but were well designed and I enjoyed playing them. This feels like a nice platformer for very young gamers. I hope you finish it.
Couldn't get past the audio, which I found very annoying. Didn't play enough to know if there was anything interesting here. The two options being Shift or Carry On for each step of the game made it feel very limited, and it seemed as though Shift was the only thing that carried the story forward. But I didn't stick around too long.
Well that was a lot of bullets.
Couldn't play the web version in Chrome, I guess you must have an older Unity? Lots of other Unity games from this compo were playable in Chrome... I downloaded and played the Windows version. Some of the word associations were pretty obvious, others not so, but I solved them all and beat the game. One thing that could improve is a way to get the clue again. There was one guy who my attention lapsed and I missed what he said, and so I had to guess the thing he needed, because I had no way to ask him to repeat himself.
I literally got as far as the first shape shift, went under the narrow bit, and then got stuck because I couldn't jump over the hump in the floor and couldn't figure out how to shape shift back to the original red square shape. I wish I could have figured out how to get anywhere, so I could truly experience the game. As it is, the game makes me feel like I must be stupid, because I have to be missing something obvious/simple and can't figure it out.
One of the better games I've played. I think the length of the airplane makes it difficult to get to passengers, and you can't see what people want, which is not the best design choice. But everything else is fantastic. To improve this game, I'd have voice bubbles for things people want coming off the edge of the screen in the direction of the needy passenger. And maybe shorten the level a bit, or start off with a shorter plane, and make advanced levels take place in larger planes, with longer fuselage and maybe multiple decks for a super jumbo jet.
Maybe a moon gauge to help you know when you're going to change form?
The music is a lot of fun. Nice touch.
I got down to an underground area, after figuring out a way past the really high fall that kills you unless you grab a ladder as you're falling, and then got stuck. I flipped a lever, and something moved, but I couldn't progress.
Decent platform engine, but I think the level design was preventing me from getting anywhere by being a little too subtle.
Good atmosphere!
I liked the wireframe graphics :)
I don't want to install java to run LD games, so I can't play this one. Congrats on finishing!
Like Guitar Hero, only without the fun controls :)
This was actually kinda fun once I figured out that I could wrap around the edges of the "fretboard".
Graphics are pretty well done, but I didn't really like the pulsing effect. Audio was good, but could have given some more feedback when you were doing well or messing up. Some visual clues that you were doing the right thing or the wrong thing would have helped too. I had to go back and re-read the instructions to understand I was trying to hit the shapes that were the color of the gate I passed through at the start of the level. That wasn't obvious at all from just playing.
I can't play java games because I refuse to install the JRE on my machine just to play games, but thanks for playing my entry!
Click to start doesn't work for me. Can't play :(
Oh wait, I literally have to click the WORDS "Click to start" not just click anywhere. Oh ok!
Pretty fun. I like the low res graphics, but it did feel like I was zoomed in a bit too close, and would have appreciated a wider view of the world so I could see threats coming sooner and have more room to maneuver.
Aim, fire, dodge, change shape. That's a lot to do. I felt like aiming would have been better if it wasn't mouse-based, so I could do everything with keyboard. Changing shape/color felt a bit forced, somehow, like I didn't have enough time to react when a different colored ship appeared, by the time I changed color it had already gone. I guess I just suck :) But I think there should be some defensive advantage to changing shape, not just match color to hit same-colored enemy, but maybe if you turn the right color you can absorb shots and get energy from them, like in Ikaruga.
The physics driving these puzzles seems very jumpy and abrupt. Toggle the position of the colored platforms to use them almost like a paddle to knock your avatar up or down to where it needs to be to grab the keys to unlock the level. Still needs a bit of polish to feel like a real game.
I liked the camera work at the beginning of the game, and the instructions and credits integrated into the level. The game itself seemed to have potential, but I think the vantage point was not ideal for being able to tell what I was doing. I felt like I wanted to be closer to the action and see up close what I was fighting. Also, the attack is very slow, which makes it clumsy. Very polished for a weekend's worth of work! I too would like to see this as a multi-player game.
Took me a few tries to figure out what to do. Then, on the second screen, I turned into a monkey, but instead of climbing the tree and getting the banana, I just dropped through the floor>??!
I didn't understand the controls, and couldn't manage to climb, so died almost immediately. Then I noticed the text at the bottom right telling me how to control the game.
Graphically the game looks fantastic, in a Minecraft sort of way.
I think the controls suffer -- try de-coupling the camera control from the bird control, and I think it will be much better.
The low gravity acceleration combined with the high horizontal top speed and acceleration made for some rather strange platforming physics.
I didn't find this game challenging at all. Level design made it such that the jumps weren't all that difficult, and the amount of shape shifting that I needed to do to get around obstacles was pretty minimal.
OH YESSSSS!
This is great. I would like to play it fullscreen or in its own window, because my trackpad keeps scrolling the browser window rather than moving in the game.
Graphics and audio are outstanding. The gameplay is very relaxing, which is an unusual quality in a shooter. I really, really liked this one. Well done!
Weird.
Didn't care too much for this one. Switching between room states is jarring, and there's no hint to tell you what to expect. Seems like the thing to do is try to avoid falling by switching, but sometimes it's good to fall. The puzzle aspect suffers because it's not really clear when it's good to fall and when it's bad.
The pixel art was the only thing about this that I liked. The animation and especially the transitions between scenes were very jarring, and the conversation segments had very quick timing that didn't allow enough time to read them. Gameplay was lousy. I could walk, I could see instructions telling me how to jump and attack, but my attacks didn't seem to hit anything, and then I'd just sort of find myself in the next scene, for no apparent reason, and I had no idea what was going on.
Despite all the negatives, I really liked the art style, and if you can work out some better engine programming and decent controls, this could be turned into something playable and decent.
Very enjoyable metroidvania coin hunt. The controls feel a little bit stiff, and the platform puzzles start off a bit simple, but it quickly gets engaging. I made it as far as the first shape shift and collected 12/55 objects. I'd like a downloadable version that I can play as a standalone app. Great soundtrack! One of the better games I've played for LD35.
Couldn't get picking/throwing to work in Windows. I don't have a spare Android device laying around to install it on, and won't risk my phone on any application developed in 48-hrs. It looks pretty fun tho. Maybe post a game play video so people who can't run it can at least see what the experience is like.
I liked the learning system. It was a bit slow paced and it would be helpful if it remembered your achievements so if you died you only had to go back to the last challenge, not start completely over.
I couldn't get very far in this, but I liked the graphical style a lot. I think it was a bit jarring when switching between hackspace and normal space, which made landing on the platforms difficult.
The first level was pretty unforgiving with regard to mistakes in timing for jumps. The second level was harder, you couldn't hardly move to dodge, and changing direction to aim almost always resulted in colliding with a target. And then there was gravity constantly sucking me down, as well. Didn't enjoy this one.
Great humor and mood to this entry. A child's make-believe play fantasy, no real danger, but it was fun to explore. I got as far as the mainframe, at which point I couldn't figure out a way to enter a password. So not sure what I wasn't doing right. But it was pretty fun up until that point, although the controls for the spaceman were a bit limited.
I wanted to like this but it wouldn't play well on my computer, I have no idea why. It seemed like it stretched the game to fill my screen, which resulted in some weird graphical distortion. I could still kindof play it, but movement and attack felt off, and I couldn't seem to hit anyone, nor they me. Not sure if it was due to the glitches or what.
I only played a little, but it was decent. I liked the instructions, they explained the game well. And the controls felt natural. The only thing that was weird was that there's really only four "slots" for up/down/left/right, but graphically it looks like movement should be smooth since you're smoothly floating forward. It's much better to jump to align with the shape holes than it would be to have to do that manually, but it still feels a bit weird.
Not bad. A few suggestions:
Make collisions more forgiving -- I tended to die "unfairly" by hitting enemies that I thought had passed me by.
I think it generally would have been better if the screen were narrower, so I could cover it a bit more easily, or else if the enemies descended more slowly. I didn't like the laser weapon very much because it seemed like it had to be held on the enemies for too long to kill them than was effective. I'd always have to move to try to hit other enemies, only to find that I didn't laser the first enemies enough to actually kill them, and then they were still a danger.
The game also doesn't seem to really get any more difficult, at least as long as I managed to play. I just died, usually unfairly due to a collision that felt like it should have been a near miss, or I'd laser a column only to have it survive and become an obstacle that prevented me from moving freely, etc. and died pretty quickly. A little bit better balance and a challenge curve, and it could be really fun.
I'm getting an error message trying to download this. Sorry!
In a game like this, I felt like I should be able to attack north and south, not just left and right. And there didn't seem to be much advantage to changing shape... and what's up with turning into one of the ghosts that I'm fighting?
But this is a good start. A little story, some sound effects, and it could be pretty good. Almost felt like I was playing an early build of Hyper Light Drifter :)
The controls for this are downright weird. Q, D, Z for p1? Was this developed for an alternative keyboard layout than QWERTY?
Graphics are pretty sweet, but I couldn't twist my head around the controls, and mostly felt like I was stuck or moving in the wrong direction.
Very difficult to get used to the split-second decision making between shifting and stretching. My mind couldn't get used to it to the point where I was instinctive enough to last more than a couple seconds. Some kind of surround-sound audio cue in addition to the flash warning would maybe help.
I recognize it probably took a lot of effort just to make this much, but the core gameplay left a lot to be desired for me. The action was very slow and plodding. I felt like a tank, slowly traversing my turret and aiming. The enemies just sortof stood there, not really doing anything that I could tell. I didn't feel any cohesion with the art style. The weapon selection was not working for my trackpad since I guess your game doesn't pick up the mouse scroll gesture from the trackpad, so I couldn't play very long, but the first several enemies were all destroyed with a single shot of the fire gun. But for all the negatives, don't be discouraged. Keep at it, and improve.
Pretty good Star Castle variant:)
A few tips:
1) when you die, restart from last level, not the beginning.
2) When the narrative words appear to start the level, don't spin the dock until the player clears them so they can start moving. Very often it seems like there was a chance for a quick win if they could move immediately, but reading the words delays them and they miss an opportunity for a quick win.
Otherwise pretty good game!
The art design is wonderful, and I like the concept, but it's unfinished. Lots of potential, though.
I wanted to try this out, but downloading it from google drive was such a pain that I didn't bother. Try .zipping up the complete game and make it easier to download.
Well, I got hit a lot by the big ball. Then I couldn't jump because I kept hitting the walls. Then I got the melon, but I was afraid of it at first because it looked like it might hurt me, but it turned me into a bear. Then I pressed the button to shapeshift, and turned back into a girl, and couldn't change back into a bear!
The platforming would be better if jumping next to walls didn't arrest the jump height, so you could get over obstacles with greater ease. Some idea about what you're supposed to do would be helpful.
187MB download, but couldn't play it:( Screen captures look pretty good tho.
This feels crude. Much refinement, and I think you will have a good game. But I didn't like that the panther is wider than the standard block size.
Very farmy/grindy play mechanic. I got frustrated because the attack was so short range I kept getting hit if I wasn't extremely careful.
The controls are too fast and your jump too high. Either expand the view or slow things down a bit. It just feels very clumsy.
I got stuck in the second room where you meet a mummy; couldn't figure out how to get past the big chain obstacle.
Oh I figured it out, you're supposed to cut that rope. Lol.
Well then.
Oh, the title screen is beautifully done. I love the colors you selected, they go very well together.
Really fun concept... needed a lot more incorporation of mario enemies and objects to be great, but for a 72hr proof of concept, it does the job. Too bad about the DMCA takedown... it would have been fun to see this fleshed out into a full mario tribute title.
Well, that was fun! Great overall aesthetic, and I especially liked the funny animations and the sound effects/music. Perfectly blended. The controls were pretty good. Not quite Flappy Bird-like in terms of frustration.
I liked the drawing style.
Given that the only thing you can do in the game seems to be jump, it's pretty difficult. One-hit sends you back to the start of the level is a bit harsh. The jumping sound effect got a bit irritating after a while.
Took a long time for the webGL version to load... a few minutes, and I'm on a 90+ mbit internet connection. How big are your resources?
Ok now that I've played it a few times, this is really fun! I'm impressed with how stupidly fun it is. I think though you should remove the timer on the drawing phase, and allow the player to abort a run so they don't have to waste time when they screwed up the drawing and know it's not going to be a good run. Also for some reason at first I got a ton of "FAIL" right away without the rock having much of a chance of rolling, and that was frustrating. But once I could draw a round enough shape to roll, it was fun!
Super exploit:
Play game in web browser, not fullscreen.
Set monitor resolution super high. 4K display FTW.
Draw the biggest honkin circle you can, starting inside the area of the game, but going outside.
Too big, and the game will automatically fail you. But the bigger you can draw it, the more mass it will have and the faster it'll roll. I got a <4 second time on the first course, which is currently the WR.
It's a fun trick to discover, I'd keep it in.
Now drawing is not working at all in 0.9.0
I won!
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/49/11/b0/4911b02bea63e1b84ac4ba436e259949.jpg
Well... at least it has a pug in it.
I... I can't figure out how to get past the title screen :(
Screen shots of the game look cool. Wish I could figure out how to play.
Decent little platformer demo. I liked the cat animation. The music was pretty good. Could have been bigger, level design needs some inspiration. But decent for what it is; a good start into something with potential.
I had a hard time playing due to my laptop. WASD + ZX + mousepad + left click is a tough combination of controls. Consider mirroring the ZX functions with keys on the right side of the keyboard so that I can hit them with the right hand if I need to.
The graphics were primitive, but the art design was consistent across the board, and the music seemed to fit the setting for the game.
I don't know if there was an end goal or objective to this, but having one would make it better.
Oh also most of the time enemies firing at me were off the screen, and I had to take many hits just to bring them into view so I could counterattack. But most of the time they didn't seem to be aiming at me anyway, and I could just fly around and not really have to dodge. So that could use some work.
What a great Missile Command-like game:)
The art style is wonderful, as is the music and sound effects.
My only suggestions are with the game play. Instead of launching rockets using the left mouse button, have the rockets launch by the AWD keys themselves. Instead of selecting which rocket base to fire from, let them just fire. Also, allow the player to have multiple rockets in the air (one from each base) in the air at a time. And have the rocket explosion destroy everything nearby, not just the kite that was hit. Have a finite number of rockets, and break up the action into levels.
One thing I really liked about this was that the speed of the rocket varied proportionately with the distance from the firing base to the mouse cursor. This was a nice, but subtle touch.
In all, I would have given this 4/5 stars. Well done!
@pogo575: Thank you! I'd love to add more games to the room, but managing it all gets really complicated quickly. Just thinking about it makes my head swim. But yes, it's possible to implement other simulated games, probably would be best to do some refactoring first.
@SamuelSousa, you should try again -- you'll get an extra life at 5000 points! :-)
Uploaded a bugfix version ahead of the Jam deadline, which includes a working TV Type switch, and tweaks a few things to further refine the play experience. There's now a death animation in the game, and some bugfixes in the console plug/unplug behavior.
@TerraCottaFrog Thanks for confirming... I suspected so after playing the HTML5 version for a few minutes. It seems to go away if you hit "R" (to restart the room). I'm not sure where the problem might be, but I'll keep trying to find it.
@TerraCottaFrog latest build fixes the memory leak. Thanks again:)
@mooncalf Channel 3/4 was a feature I had wanted to include, but had to drop due to time... perhaps in a post-deadline build, it'll become a reality:)
@brookzerker thanks for the bug report... I thought I had taken care of that one already. I'll re-check.
Unplug doesn't kill game bug fixed in 1.1.2.0.
@facelesstheone that was the idea. i wanted to recreate that experience so future generations could see how we did it back in ancient times.
@GamerJenn did you plug in the joystick?
@BMacIntosh thanks for the bug report... I've seen that behavior as well, but haven't looked into it yet as I've been travelling on vacation and generally busy. Enjoy the free infinite lives! :)
@quadtree, I've seen some audio glitches, particularly in html5 builds. I think it's a problem with the engine or the platform it's running on top of, not something that I can fix, unfortunately.
Thanks to everyone who played and rated my game!
Press A to join doesn't seem to work. :(
Looks like a cool game tho. Does it play like Joust??
Amazing work. I'm very impressed with the mood and atmosphere. So much accomplished with just some simple text and point and click. I really enjoyed solving the puzzles in this one. The twist at the end kinda threw me for a loop.
I like old school text adventures. This was well done. I managed to run the program successfully in about 10 minutes or so. It was the best day of my life.
I like the primitive caveman animations:)
I keep dying almost instantly and having to restart.... it'd be a good improvement to spawn the player somewhere that they are safe from immediate harm. Otherwise, it looks ok.
Quite a lot of unfair death in this one, when you first encounter the spikes they're at the bottom of several leaps of faith and there's nothing you can do to avoid them but memorize the level. Also the character **is** a hitbox, and the slightest touch with anything that will harm you, kills you instantly. Some hit points and a more forgiving hitbox would help a lot. Good graphics overall, but an animated character would have been better than a white rectangle. Also why am I fighting loafs of bread in a pyramid??
This is very well done, but I feel like I need someone who understands the rules to explain it to me, and answer questions. The game is complicated enough that the on-screen instructions might not be enough for a lot of players.
I don't get what I'm supposed to do. Instructions?
It starts out a little to easy, but there's a good sense of building a progression that makes it feel like it's leading up to something worthehile. I got up to level 8, but couldn't figure out how to go right on that level.
Impressive that this will play in a real GB! I found the combat to be difficult because of input lag (in emulator on GameJolt at least). This lead to aggravation because I wanted to dodge but couldn't, and got hurt too much.
Despite not being very cool, I still enjoyed it. I don't think that I figured out how to get the drill arm working tho. The obstacles are tricky due to the limited mobility of the robot. I found the experience of playing a platformer with a pathetic jump to be novel and an interesting limitation to have to overcome. The robot walking is pretty adorable.
Challenging. I think the controls made it harder than it should have been. If there was someone helping me, I could have one player take the mouse and position logs, while the other player pulls the statue. Overall it wasn't too hard, yet I kept making mistakes and having "incidents". Pretty good balance over all, but I still gave up in frustration after 5-6 attmepts to get past the first log pit. I know I could do it, I knew how to do it, but it was just a stupid mistake here or there that kept killing me, so I quit.
The graphics are really good, and the physics feel just right. I like the cat-dog-pig motif.
Not much gameplay, but I really like the lighting effects. The graphics in general are surreal and weird. :)
I'll be honest, this one didn't really grab me...
I found the conversations to be kindof annoying, like every response was an off the cuff smart assed response that was trying too hard to be funny. Maybe that writing style works for some people, I dunno, but it felt like something I might have written when I was a kid, talking to myself for my own amusement...
Also, the background music didn't really seem to fit the game. Compared to the rest of the game, it feels like something cut and pasted in without much thought put to it, and not really any attempt to create a singular aesthetic between audio and visual. Mainly it just feels like it's there as a placeholder.
I thought the art style here was probably the strongest point. But no real animation or anything...
I don't mean for all this to sound negative, it's an accomplishment just to complete a game in a weekend, so congratulations on that, and don't take it too hard that someone didn't care for your game, but I feel like the most constructive thing I can do is to point out areas that you could try to improve on for next time. Keep at it, and good luck :)
I like the turn-based nature of the game and planning out my moves. It's a little hard to understand what each type of enemy will do next, but I got pretty good at it. The graphical style is a huge plus here. There should be some sound fx or music to really make this one stand out. Keep working on it, this is good.
I couldn't figure out Level 1 even with the hints. I brushed dust for like 10 minutes, and was able to find 2 letters... then couldn't figure out what else to do next. It looks like there's a lot of depth to the game, but the puzzle isn't presented in a way that I found clear enough to be able to figure out how to solve.
I thought the object of the game was to find beacon pieces and assemble them together, but instead I found the beacon only to watch it fly apart after a few seconds. I seemed to be stuck while this was happening.
The levels are not particularly challenging or interesting, but I did like that hitting the spikes didn't cause instant death, and only seemed to knock me back.
With a lot of work this could be turned into something decent. Keep at it!
I really liked the graphics. The day/night turn cycle is pleasantly animated, and I really liked it. Need a tutorial to really get into it tho. These strategy games take some learning to get into.
Wow, this is great... at being a simulation of a terrible Tiger LCD game. It's actually very good. I'm impressed at the authenticity!
This is excellent quality work. I love a good puzzle platformer. This is a great game.
I got a bit disoriented, but I take it that's the point. It might be helpful to have a mini map or a subscreen map that could help me figure out where I've been and where else I can go.
Other than that, I think this is one of the top games I've played this LD. Once I discovered/unlocked the room rotation mechanic, it went from a 3-star game to a 5-star for me.
I feel deceived. This is not that poorly made. OK, so sometimes when your dead the game doesn't realize it for a while, at least the story mode parts are reasonably well done. The action is pretty basic, and not very challenging, but it's not the worst thing I've played this jam.
So, is the ice cream cone thing a battery charger? I couldn't tell when the batteries were charged, but I guess I managed to fix it. I got paid 200 GBP after I put everything back together, so I guess I won? Pretty cool concept, similar idea to my own game :) Nice work.
I love it! It's like Towerfall Ascention, but with canoes!
Add a helper text to tell the user how to start the game, and this is gold. I'd love to see some bonus weapons, different maze arenas, and so forth.
The graphics reminded me of Intellivision and Atari 2600. The enemies were not very challenging, it was easy to run around them and if you were too far away they would stop doing anything, which made them very easy to kill at a distance. Often when moving into a new room enemies would spawn very close to me, which felt unfair, but since they were so easy to defeat it still didn't present much of a challenge.
Exploring and finding the space ship parts was fun.
I don't run java, but this looks really cool. Great concept and I love the graphics. Make a web-based version, I'd love to try this.
Pushed right for several minutes wondering what the game was about, or if something was broken... then discovered jumping. OMG.
Not bad... it held my interest long enough to eggsplore the entire tech tree.
The graphics were tiny, and the traps too hard to see. Death seemed random, so not very fun. If I could maximize the window and increase the size a bit, it'd help a lot. I'm on a pretty high res display (2048x1152) so that might be part of it...
This is pretty weird, but I totally get it. Great stuff. Especially the retro C=64 graphical look. Well done!
This. Robot. Talks. Like! William. Shatner.
Well executed puzzle game.
I didn't like that I had to install OpenAL; that would be best to package in with the game rather than to have to install it separately.
I liked the puzzles, and more levels of increasing complexity would be great.
I would have liked to be able to enlarge the window, so I could see more without having to scroll.
It would have been good if the little robot guy's graphic would turn when he makes a turn.
Overall good job.
404 not found :( Screen shots look pretty tho.
Lots of little problems with this game.
I had to go fullscreen to be able to see everything. There was too much text at the beginning. I want to play a game without having to read a page of text. Keep it as short as possible.
Being a turned based strategy game, I was able to get through the pirate fight OK. I found it odd that missles were more effective against shields than lasers were. Once I figured that out, they were easier to defeat. It too me a while to understand how to go to the next planet after I was done with the one I was on -- I expected to click on a menu button rather than on the map.
Some sounds would have helped make the game more enjoyable and understandable.
Nice game:)
I found a bug, after I sold the old lady a cell phone, somehow the game glitched back into the conversation with her on the next customer, only she wasn't there anymore, just her disembodied voice prompts. After that, it seemed to play OK for the remainder of the session.
Awesome parody/demake of NMS. I thought it captured the look of the Atari 2600 quite well, though not the sound obviously. Some really harsh random noise and buzzing would have made it for me. Although the music is nice. A bit more purpose and variety would have been even better, but then it wouldn't have skewered NMS so perfectly.
Per the rules, Compo entries should include source code.
I like the originality, but a little more connection between drawing the constellations and what is happening in the battle would have helped sell it for me. Nicely done all the same.
Explored a while, eventually got stuck and couldn't figure out what I was supposed to do. Figuring out some of the preliminary puzzles was fun, but I don't think solving them helped me learn insights to solve the larger puzzles. Decent platforming mechanics, graphics, good sound, although some footsteps and jump noises and switches and water flowing and electrical surges would have complimented the gameplay well. Nice job.
The narrative was pretty interesting, but way too linear. I'd like to see where this goes, but it needs more decisions to feel like a proper game.
The puzzle mechanic is a bit too crude; there should be more of a relationship evident between the two dimensions; otherwise, the game kills you unfairly too much. Or else it has to hint at you that "this is where you need to change dimensions to proceed/avoid death." Also, when you do die, there should be a slight delay before respawning, or disable the controls for a slight delay so you don't immediately move and kill yourself accidentally.
The voxel art made me feel like I was playing with lego.
Sometimes the gold instead of being picked up as I flew over it, would sortof get stuck to my butt and follow me.
Hit detection could be a bit better. I thought I was dead on with some shots, but never registered a hit. Nice artillery duel clone:)
I wish I could play this but I refuse to install java :(
Controls are a bit weird, but the swimming animation is awesome. It felt like my turning radius was very large and I wasn't as nimble as I wanted. Not sure whether to blame the controls or myself.
I don't think the health is working right, it didn't go down when I got hit, but then I died anyway after a few hits.
I like the game but I think there's a bug. When I quit the game, the music continues playing. Nice tower defense, and I love the ultra-low fi pixels.
I couldn't figure out a proper way to exit, so I had to hit esc to switch to windowed view, then right-click the tab on the task bar and select close. Some audio player running in its own process didn't get cleaned up, and I had to find it in the taskbar and kill it.
An interesting take on tower defense. A goal to kill X robbers and new levels could be fun. Some good audio for the trap releasing and deaths (comically squishy blood noises and screams) would really make this game a lot better.
Very clever concept. Fun physics puzzles:) More fun than real etch-a-sketch.
This looks great, but I can't play it for some reason. I spawned, and couldn't move (only change direction and jump in place). Not only was I stuck, but I kept seeing chariot (enemies?) spawning to the right of me and instantly sink into the sand. I wish I could have gotten a sense of what it was like to play.
The controls are really messed up... couldn't aim or move around, felt like I was drunk or something. lol.
I feel like I should have been rewarded somehow when I rebuilt the henge. But it could be because I used inches rather than feet in my calculations.
Well the visuals are beautiful, but I have no idea what I'm doing. I managed to turn a wheel into an asterisk... it's a bit unclear how to play.
Very satisfying puzzle game with great aesthetics. It was soothing and relaxing to play. Great job!
I couldn't figure out what I was supposed to do... I keep running over the little raisin looking things but it's not clear what that achieves. Am I supposed to collect a certain amount? Am I supposed to go up? Why are the dark disks and keyboard trying to run into me? Are they hurting me? I can't tell. Sound effects and some visuals would to convey what's going on and what the goal is would be helpful.
What was the other button besides the space bar? I couldn't figure out how to play :(
Oh wait... was it hitting Esc to change batteries? That's it? Lame! :P
This is still pretty rough, but I see a lot of potential here.
I couldn't figure out how to do much -- it didn't seem like the 'E' key was working, maybe? Or just there are too many things that I would think I should be able to interact with, but can't. Like all the stuff in the bedroom where I woke up to start the game, all the people in the village, etc... Also it seemed there were many doorways that I couldn't enter. Despite feeling unfinished/incomplete, I wanted to play it a lot more.
This looks good but I don't want to install a program in order to play a game for a few minutes or hours. If you can do a build that is a standalone .exe I'll give it a try. Screen shots look great!
Pretty good. I noticed that the collision detection when walking around on the map would sometimes cause me to get stuck on things where it didn't seem like I should get stuck. I thought the walking speed was just a little bit slow -- would have appreciated a run button.
I liked that it didn't punish me for crashing, since I did that a lot. The controls do take some getting used to. But I love the graphics and the general vibe that I got. Very good aesthetics, and a nice peaceful exploration game. Congrats!
A really interesting mechanic, but I think it's too hard -- make one mistake, a bad bounce, or a missed jump, and you block yourself off from being able to continue. I couldn't get past the vertical part where you have to jump left and right because I kept blocking my own way no matter what I did. Maybe you could salvage the mechanic by only filling in behind you, not ahead. But I think it has potential.
I liked your take on the theme. It's silly.
Wow, the art style, aesthetics, and overall mood really work well together. Nice work.
I think this might be the first game built with Godot that I've played. I enjoyed this, simple as it is, but it could stand to be elaborated further. Not bad for just 9 hours of work!
I got to about the fourth level, where the enemies spawn out of the little mountain. I couldn't figure out how to blow it up with the bombs.
In fullscreen it seems that the instructions text gets cut off at the top of the screen.
I couldn't figure out how to play. At first, the arrow keys seemed to move my saucer, but then after a short distance it seemed like I got stuck and slowed to a halt, then the only thing that the arrow keys did was change the camera angle.
I can't play it either, but I'm intrigued by the concept. I wish there was a video of it so I could see what it looks like in action.
Really well done. A bit too difficult, but it was fun to pick up stuff. It would have been better if the game let me pick up where I left off after getting blown up instead of starting all over.
I think the camera positioning could stand some refinement. And it could be clearer how to build the spacecraft -- I tried putting more parts on the yellow square, but they wouldn't go and the square turned red, which I take to mean that I'm doing something wrong, wrong ordering or something. Then I picked up a part and tried to put it down and it just kept bouncing, and I was like whaaaaa?
Overall the sounds are great, but the rover's movement sound got old quickly.
WOW! I am impressed. At first I wasn't clear what was going on, but once I discovered how to grow, that's when the action started. Graphics, audio are excellent. Gameplay is very original. Controls are a bit difficult, when you have to move, fight, and make building actions all at the same time. Very challenging!
This is impressive... Gameplay is a bit complicated, but it rewards taking the time to read the instructions and understand how to play. I think an introductory/tutorial level that explains how to play would make it more inviting to players who aren't already familiar with programming concepts and writing shaders. Really nice overall tho!
Really impressive. I wish that white blood cell collisions weren't instakill. It took me a while to figure out how to move effectively.
Pretty fantastic! I wish there was a bit more of a clue what to do, but figuring things out was fun. Needs sound effects and music. I liked exploring, and I liked that the world was actually bigger than it looked. It would have been fun to hop to another planet after I finished with exploring this one.
This is great! I love the graphic style and the mechanics. It's challenging too. Just needs sound fx.
So... it's like a game of Pong, except you just touch the ball and then the level starts over? I don't think I get it...
This world is actually kinda big...
I explored a lot, and talked to two overworld people, found things for them, and they gave me two torches. The pink girl who is hungry was hard to talk to because she kept moving so fast, which was annoying.
It seemed like the world was mostly empty, and there wasn't enough to do, or maybe it was just not obvious enough for me to find it. I think designing the world map to make things a bit closer together and more obviously connected would have been helpful.
Overall the engine is pretty nicely done, and this could have potential if you wanted to add more to it and polish it more. Keep going!
I love the wireframe graphics, but I think they make the game unnecessarily difficult/unfair because there's not enough texture to give you a frame of reference to understand how fast you're moving. Planets kindof sneak up on you and before you can react you end up splattered on them. If the window were big enough to give me some space to see ahead of myself, it might be a little more manageable.
Loved it. You've created another great game.
I would have liked it if you could wrap around the edges of the world, to avoid getting stuck on an edge.
It took me a while before I realized that I could fight the foxes, and that they wouldn't just automatically kill me.
It also took me a while to realize that I could stack tiles on top of ones I'd already laid. Once I realized this was possible, the game really opened up, and I enjoyed it very much.
Decent, if a bit repetitive. The intro sequence is a real strong point, and I liked the in-game tutorial. The actual game play wasn't bad, but it got old pretty quickly. Some scrolling or some variety would have been nice. I also found it hard to tell when I was being hit, other than by watching my life meter go down.
Nice turn-based strategy engine. Would have benefited from some sound effects.
@lacemattley No, I'm afraid that's a bug. Someone else reported this to me, same thing, and I can't figure out why it's happening. I'll keep trying.
What it looks like it's doing is creating two worlds. Looking at my code, there's no way for the game to create two worlds on the first level, and even if it does, there's collision logic that should immediately separate the two worlds so they shouldn't overlap like that. I'm very puzzled, because I can't replicate it on my dev system.
**Update:** I have fixed the bug as of [latest release, 1.0.4.8](https://csanyk.itch.io/tarjectories)
Please download the latest and try again.
@Move127 thanks for the feedback.
"Tarjectories" is a mashup of the words "Target" and "Trajectory". I had considered naming the game Targectories, but didn't want to trigger another "gif pronounciation war".
I have no idea why the game would require running as administrator... I will have to test that and see if I can figure it out. **Update: I created a non-admin account and was able to run the game. Perhaps something unique to your system config?**
The game gets a bit more interesting after level 8, so I encourage you to play through all 18 levels.
I do have a few more ideas for things that I might add to a post-compo version... I'm very likely to follow up on them, as I really liked how this turned out, and see potential for more.
As for hit detection... I'm not sure. If you can describe more, it would be helpful. Just a thought: how much power are you putting on the cannon? It could be a high-speed collision issue if you're increasing power too much. I'm not sure what the practical upper bound on gun power is, but I typically don't push it any higher than 7, and it seems to be OK for me.
@longchamps thanks for playing and for your comment.
I limit the player to a single bullet deliberately, because I want you to be careful with aiming in this game. If you can shoot as many bullets as you like, you can just spam the target and hit, without skill.
Sometimes you do have to be patient, and wait for your shot to line up. But I think the idea of a game that encourages/rewards patience is a good one.
I'll think about adjusting the turret elevation speed... I think it's pretty good where it is, but I could see tweaking it a bit, or perhaps making it user-configurable. I'll add it to my roadmap list.
And now I've written an epilogue to the postmortem, but it's over on [csanyk.com](https://csanyk.com/2017/04/tarjectories-ludum-dare-38-postmortem/)
@SiegfriedCroes: The timer is just for bonus points. If you run out of time, there's no bonus, but if you can hit all the targets before time runs out, you get extra points. I realize it's not very clear in the Compo release, but I'll address that in a future release.
@lyxil: Up/Down doesn't affect elevation, it affects the power of the gun. Think of it like adding more gunpowder to the shot. Each tap of the key adds or subtract a quarter point of power. Left/right is what changes the gun's elevation (aiming).
Thanks to everyone who played and rated TARJECTORIES! See you next time!
In Scenario 1, I built a road, and a couple of houses, but then I couldn't build anything else. A bit of explanation would have been helpful, as it was hard to figure things out on my own. I guess that's part of the fun, though.
I suck at this game, but I like the concept of it.
Really cool. The graphics and audio are top notch.
What a mysterious game. I wasn't sure what's going on here, but I'm intrigued. I feel like there must be something deeper to the game, if only I can figure it out. I don't think I managed it, but I'd love to see someone who solved it explain it to me.
I got a 403-forbidden error when trying to load the game in firefox :(
Oh, man, this is awesome. Might be my favorite entry out of everything I've played so far. I'm not feeling the "small world" theme too much here, but everything about this game is just super. Really well done.
Oh, but this is fantastic.
Basically you just push everything to the center to keep balance. I can imagine some innovations, like fences and a sheep dog to help keep the sheep where they need to be. I also would have liked to see multi-turtle levels, with a turtle stack "all the way down".
Neat little virtual ant farm :) Very relaxing and enjoyable to play, though not a whole lot of challenge. Well done!
Too difficult, yes, but if you respawned automatically rather than having to press R to restart, and if you could start from the last safe point before you died, it wouldn't be so bad. I didn't complete it.
I guess it's better than nothing... congrats on completing a game!
This is one of the more fun games I've played. Something about the *lack* of control makes this one challenging and fun. And of course cats. I didn't manage to catch all of them, is there a victory reward? I hope so!
An outstanding entry. I really enjoyed this one. Flying over the planet from night side to day side was an especially awesome touch. Do the clouds ever do lightning strikes? That would be so cool if there was weather :) I liked the sound fx, and I found the controls to be intuitive and responsive. I'll have to play this one some more.
I liked your game. It feels similar in a way to my own entry, but it's quite different in many ways. I found the controls difficult, it seemed that sometimes my rocket would go nowhere and crash immediately, and other times it would fly very far, yet I wasn't varying the angle or boost energy that much, or so I thought anyway. It could have been me, but something felt a bit off. Really needs sound effects to feel complete, but what's built is really very nicely done.
hahaha, this reminds me of something... no hold on don't tell me.
The basic mechanics of this tower defense game are pretty solid. Balance is always the tricky thing with this type of game, and I think I maybe lucked into a game-breakingly easy setup by relying on splash, burst, and snipers. I made it through 31 levels, just watching it go and didn't have to touch it for the most part, other than to occasionally upgrade something with the massive surplus of points that I'd gained. If you can figure out how to make it properly balanced so as to be challenging, then it'd be rather good.
I suck at this, but it is awesome. I know what I'm supposed to do, I just can't do it. I'm dumb with gravity and the balls always end up in the red. Woe is me.
I really like it anyway. It's fantastically simple, the graphics are gorgeous, and the soundtrack really makes it fun to play. I wish I could last more than 3 seconds at it. Maybe with more practice...
I am stuck on the start menu, and can't figure out how to get the game to start! :(
It sounds like a really fun idea for a game, and I love the concept.
Pretty good! Needs sound, but otherwise quite solid. Add a few different enemy types for variety, and it'd be sweet!
This looks awesome!
Unfortunately, in a web browser window, I have a really hard time controlling the game. Whenever I mouse outside of the play area, the window wants to scroll, and sometimes I even end up registering clicks on other tabs in my browser window, which interrupts play.
It's too bad, I'd really like to play this in a fullscreen version so I can properly play and enjoy it.
I think it looks like you did a really good job with it though.
OK that trailer video wins. Hilarious!
It's more of a toy or experiment than a game, but for being just a derp-simple drawing tool, I found it enjoyable to follow the instructions and see what your program did with my scribbles. Well done :)
I didn't get very far, but I think if the game were to speed up, or add some variety, it could be even better.
I clicked through all the instructions and was sad that it wasn't playable; it looks like it has a lot of promise to be a fun sim-type game.
I really love the play mechanics, the art style, and the concept. It would be good if it were clearer what you're supposed to do. I struggled a bit with how to put things down, it seemed like it would happen randomly that I'd throw the thing I was carrying, but I couldn't figure out how to put things down when I meant to. I'll have to come back and give this a proper play through and discover the secrets, if there are any. I hope there's more to come!
Kick-ass twin-stick arena shooter on a sphere! I really liked it. Could use a bit more variety with the enemy types, but very solid nonetheless.
Wow, this game is weird. I liked the scroll wheel to flip through layers idea, but I felt like the execution could have been better. I would have liked there to be more of a sense of "connection" between the layers. Also, make it more clear what you're supposed to do. But I think this game has potential!
I did it! Won with 41 left on the time limit. It was fun exploring and finding the things, but I would like for the mystery boxes to do something more than they did. But it was a relaxing game and I liked it.
I don't have java installed so I can't play it, but thanks for checking out my game :)
That was.... beautiful. Love it!
Like a nano Civ! Nice!
Somehow on my third move I got a "too many moves!" error when I tried to end my turn, and couldn't figure out how to undo whatever I did wrong. It's very unclear at first how to enter commands to your units, and I think I could figure it out given enough time, but there doesn't appear to be enough details in the instructions. If you can improve these usability issues, I think it'd be a lot of fun to give this another run.
This is absolutely fantastic. I'm in awe at how well done this is. The 3D models for the keyboard, the sounds, the look of the monochrome CRT, are very well done. I'm super impressed with this. Great job!
I like the strategy implications of the swap mechanic. It makes the game tricky and yet balanced. Great idea!
Nice little Defender-ish feeling game. I really liked it. Every time I play a game built with Pico8, it makes me feel good inside.
Really good. I liked it a lot.
A few refinements:
* Don't make me re-calibrate the Earth size every time I play. * Every time I fail, just let me start over by pressing a button, rather than return to the Main menu. * Some radio chatter with Houston would have made it feel right.
I managed a landing I could walk away from after many attempts...
TinyPea.png
Reallly difficult to get the rotation stabilized, but after three tries I managed to do it in Easy mode.
The graphics are amazingly beautiful. The sound is great, too. No sound fx, just like in a vacuum, but the music is such a mood enhancer, and imparts a sense of greater urgency, and when you fail it's even better. But there should have been some success music, too. It's so hard to earn a victory, you really deserve to hear it when you succeed.
One of my favorites this time. Really nice job.
Well, it's no Crystal Castles, but it's ai-ight. I think it could be much better if the controls were improved. It doesn't feel like the input translates into the correct direction. But it has a lot of potential. I'd like to try this with a dual-stick gamepad instead of a keyboard and see if it plays better.
I really liked the reflections on the surfaces of the floor and walls. That was pretty cool. Well done.
OK this is definitely fun.
I love the simple controls.
I love the unique mechanic, and the fact that your shots "orbit" the planet.
I love that you can take a few actions as you're going down in flames before you crash and burn.
I think there should be destructible terrain, so you can "terraform" the planet and eat it away to nothing as you destroy enemy planes. And make the cities have some kind of function, they don't seem to do anything??
I think that the enemy planes should look different from you, maybe make them a different color?
Some good pew pew shooter sounds would be good, but I like the music too.
Really great entry. I'd totally play an expanded version of this, with some ground units (tanks? artillery?) and some UFOs with different flight characteristics. So fun.
I'm not sure what was going on, it seemed like the game would randomly reset every so often. It was an interesting play mechanic, to be firing inward toward the planet at all times, and having to maneuver so that my shots would hit the enemy, but it was also pretty counter-intuitive. Are my shots also terraforming the planet or something? If I live long enough does the planet change?
At first I didn't think I was going to be impressed with it, but I really like the "folder icon warps you into window" mechanic. Otherwise, it's a bit crude, but that one idea was pretty fun. It'd be cool to see this a bit more refined -- the controls especially didn't feel tight or responsive to me. I'd try to jump, and couldn't get the timing right, and I don't think it's me (or my keyboard).
Graphics and audio were awesome (the audio is really loud tho). I didn't care for the controls, couldn't really figure out how to play. But if you started off with an easier tutorial level that taught the basics, it would probably be a lot of fun.
I found the graphics for the background made it hard to see my laser when I shot it. I also couldn't figure out how to use my shields effectively -- they didn't seem to do anything for me, if I hit something I still died. How do you kill the square enemies?
Would have been better with a more-varied level design, but I think I got the idea of what you're going for here. I couldn't get very far into it, unipedalism is a pretty unfair handicap. Randomly having a fail jump that you can't control just doesn't feel like good game design. I like that you have a level skip so players can see the whole game if they want to.
I couldn't figure out how to play it, and would have appreciated a tutorial :(
But it looks awesome. Graphics are really well done.
Loved the visuals and the music. Great mood. The game itself was pretty rudimentary. Nice work, polish the controls and combat, I would love to play an adventure game in this world.
This is a well done game. The graphics, the music, and the combat system are all nicely designed. I couldn't figure out if there was a way to heal myself, so I kept dying and going into debt, which became a major hassle. I am intrigued by the debt mechanic, that's something I haven't seen used in any game I can think of. It would be fun to see this given a full story, with additional enemies.
Interesting project. It's like a child's board game, implementing the rules of the classic Snake game, but constraining the player's choices with random card draws. I'm not a fan of that particular design choice, but the overall implementation is well executed. My main problem with playing this was relating the snake's orientation to the diagrams on the cards. It didn't seem like they went in the direction I expected?
This was completely satisfying. It's just about impossible do die (I didn't die, and quit playing after a few minutes because I'd gotten the point of the game by that time so I don't know if it's literally impossible to die or not, but it was very fun.)
A decent basic RTS/Tower Defense. I found it to be a bit too slow paced (at first, at least). I couldn't mute the music, is there a bug with the audio control? Lastly, look at the size of your download. 93MB zip unpacks to over 0.25GB... really?
@JesperSB: points are points. You play for score.
The scoring system works like this:
Indirect hit: 500 points Direct hit: 1000 points Consecutive direct hits: 1000 * 2^N End of level bonus: 1000 for every shot under Par Perfect bonus: ????? for completing a level with all direct hits and no misses
@vfabien21 that sometimes happens with games made with GameMaker. I promise there's no malware in the .exe.
@benjamin, see if you can get to level 25 :)
Best LD40 I've played so far. I just wish I didn't suck at it so much. Are my mouse buttons broken?
A typing game... a little too easy, but nicely done.
Well, I sucked at that, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't the game's fault!
"Shoot to move using your own recoil" is a mechanic I've been seeing in a few games lately... not sure why it's suddenly popular.
Interesting concept... I thought the control-by-recoil was not a good choice, but I really liked the weapon power progression. Except, eventually I ran out of ammo and then couldn't shoot anymore, which basically ended the game for me. Since I was just shooting randomly, I could just cycle through the power-ups and get to the good weapon as fast as I wanted, basically in less than a minute. And since my power went steadily up as I fired off my ammo, it didn't feel like "the more you have, the worse it gets" so much as it was "the less you have, the better it gets". Graphically, I got lost in a sea of bullets and enemies, but since I couldn't really control my ship all that well anyway, it didn't really matter. My advice would be to try adding some better controls and maybe remove the toroidal space edge-wrapping, and turn it into a vertical/side scroller shmup.
This game is, in fact, quite terrible. Which is what you were "shooting" for, so well done.
Nice graphics! I think I would have liked a bit wider-angle view of the room so I could tell where I was standing more easily.
Rather repetitive and unrewarding.
I would have played this longer if I could have muted the music. Weird game, but I like submarines.
Interesting game, a bit difficult, my games did not last long. I like the concept.
The low-poly 3D models were really good. Kudos! I enjoyed just walking around and pushing doors open.
Really nice. It's tough to aim and dodge at the same time. I managed to kill 5 before I died.
Fantastic visuals. But I had a really hard time discerning any color difference when I sipped anything after the tutorial. Colors were very obvious in the tutorial, and so subtle I couldn't tell anything in the actual game. The concept you came up with was unique. Well done!
Played on Easy difficulty. Controls are too sluggish, particularly turning. Also, I couldn't see my bullets, so had a hard time aiming. Level design is very elementary. Keep trying!
It's nice to see a game made with the Godot engine.
I liked the clean, basic look of the graphics. (No really). I thought the controls felt fluid. But then I found that if I shoot an enemy, it doesn't die after 2-3 shots, but if they touch me even once, I'm dead. This feels unfair and not fun. Especially since there are so many of them, and it's easy to get surrounded. The game also completely lacks audio, which it needs. But I think with some further work this could be something good.
Nicely dressed up card game. I think you should re-organize the UI a bit, so that the playing cards don't cover up the combatants when you're picking which card to play. The combatants are a bit hard to see against the background, so do something about that. And the music is great, but keeps getting interrupted abruptly when scene changing. Leave it playing so we can enjoy it. Overall this is a very good entry. Well done!
Not bad. The controls could use some polish. I felt sluggish and limited in the directions I could move and shoot. Turn it into a twin-stick shooter, speed it up a bit, and it'd be a much better game.
Pretty simple. I just spun my turrets and laid down fire and was able to beat the game.
Couldn't figure out the controls (WASD+JK). The only control that seemed to work was the dash, which would take me in an apparently random direction.
The graphics are fantastic, they take me right back to the 1982-4 era arcade. Finish it up with some sounds, it will be worth it!
For some reason I could only move left/right. Couldn't get very far. Getting the little cubes to follow me was really difficult.
Challenging. I didn't quite get at first that you were supposed to suck in the enemies to turn them into bullets. But it's an interesting and unusual mechanic. Graphics and sound establish mood very well. Nice work.
This was pretty fun. I liked the mechanics, but I would have preferred alternative controls. Analog stick + A to pet/B to shout would have worked better for me.
Nicely done. I thought I drove rather well for having downed 11 drinks... I think the driving was a bit too easy at first, but then seemed to degrade rather quickly toward the end. Great take on the theme!
It was enjoyable for a few seconds. I managed to find one egg, but I didn't notice that I had gained any special powers.
This has potential, but needs lots of work. The controls feel very rigid -- there's no floaty inertia feeling like you would expect in outer space. Also the player's ship model is very large and takes up so much of the screen, making it hard to tell what's in front of you. Lack of camera controls makes this a detriment. I would have liked to see some animation to help me know when I was picking up treasures. When I was attacked I couldn't see the enemy (they were behind me, I think) and I couldn't tell if I was effective when I tried to shoot at them. I didn't think the music fit very well with the space theme.
@sam-dower no worries, my comments are intended to give you useful feedback for improving the game. That's how we all get better:)
DO NOT WANT.
The 3D models and animations were good. I couldn't really figure out what to do, though. I ran around a bit, and blew up a robot, and then got stuck. I had a hard time getting around because it got dark unless I shot my gun a lot, which didn't make sense.
Something's not right about the controls. I couldn't go the direction I wanted, and kept getting stuck on the walls.
I lolled at the title screen. I'm not sure that "hidden object" and "mining" are all that incompatible, but this is an alright game. I like a good parody.
- Make this a twin-stick shooter instead of a keyboard and mouse game, and I'm in. - Art is fantastic, well the backgrounds at least. The enemy colored dots are a bit of a placeholder, aren't they? - I couldn't actually find any takeout food to deliver? Where was I supposed to go? - Sad about no audio. The trailer video had good soundtrack, but the game should have something. - I liked the interstitial menus for buying power ups, as though ordering chinese take-out food. Clever!
Keep developing this.
Wow, this was really sophisticated! I won 3-0 on the second game, after losing 0-3 on the first game. I liked the different characters and their abilities, and I loved the music. Nice job!
It's an interesting idea, but I think the controls could use some work.
I couldn't get the replication to work. It said to right-click to place the new unit, but it wouldn't do it. I tried it a bunch of times before finally giving up. Not sure what I was doing wrong.
Otherwise, this looks pretty well done for a turn-based strategy game.
Interesting idea, I thought the controls were a bit overly complicated. Would have rather had the ore automatically pick up when flown over, and drop off automatically when flying over buildings, and in general for things to be done in a bit more automated fashion so I could focus on flying and shooting, while still doing the RTS-stuff.
Oh this is brilliant. Well done! It is really challenging, since the usual Connect 4 strategy is completely upended by the Match 3 mechanic. The music is fantastic, as are the sound effects.
Fantasic. I only wish there was a propeller sound. Everything else is just perfect.
I found the flight controls a bit crude. The recoil when firing made getting around really awkward. I think combining with the card game made it an interesting game.
Welcome to Unity3D! Keep learning!
I enjoyed playing this. Nice way to teach your kid about Norse mythology and game development.
Beautiful presentation. I think everything here is very well done, and to a high standard.
I have no rhythm, apparently, because I found I could NOT get the hang of the beat, even in the calibration room I would hit 3-4 in a row, and then miss 3-4 in a row. I think maybe in addition to calibration, you should include an error tolerance, so that sloppy drummers such as myself stand a chance.
Definitely more of a toy. I thought the aesthetics and the UI were well done.
Well, I sure did not last too long playing this!
Really nice platformer. I enjoyed the homage to textmode graphics. I wasn't sure how to read all the symbols, but picked up the important ones pretty quickly. The little tutorial hints that told you what to do were really well done. I'm going to have to check out your project source to see how this was done. Good work!
Oh, dang, I don't run java. :(
So good! Playing cards to power up your shooter is a great idea for this theme. I found it a little too easy, I thought, but I enjoyed beating the first 9 bosses in my first game. A little more variety with the bosses and deeper card strategy would make this a pro-quality release. I'd encourage you to keep developing this idea!
I think this is the world's worst on-screen keyboard, lol!
I thought this was a very interesting concept, but just too hard to play. I managed the words: OPEN, HACK, GAT, GUN, NORTH, LOOK and got absolutely nowhere. In about a half hour.
Aesthetically, this is a great game. The green monochrome text, the text-mode Tetris, and the text adventure game all look fantastic. The music is fantastic.
I would have liked to see how the text game played out.
I think this could possibly have been a better game if you could just clear tetris lines by the traditional tetris method of making solid rows, or by spelling words, and forget about the text adventure entirely.
My game incorporated Tetris as well, but in a different way. I hope you'll give it a try.
[InvadTris](https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/invadtris)
@La-mecanique-du-plastique thanks for playing, and for the bug report! I have noticed a few times when the Invaders side of the game glitches and causes the game to freeze with lives remaining. I'm not sure why it does this yet, but I suspect it has to with the way I coded the switchback routine. I'm going to have a look at it tonight and hopefully fix it.
Thanks for all the feedback, everyone! This is the fastest I've gotten ratings and feedback ever! I love all the comments I get, thank you sharing!
A question for everyone who's saying it feels slow. Both *Tetris* and *Space Invaders* start off pretty slow, but they pick up speed as you get into the game. I felt like starting pretty slow would be good, to allow players to get accustomed to the rapid switching back and forth between the two halves of the game. You can always speed up Tetris by use of the Down arrow, to force the block to drop rapidly.
So I'm completely open to the possibility that I'm wrong about this, but I would like additional feedback.
Do you feel that the original Space Invaders and Tetris are *also* too slow? Is that by today's standards?
I'm thinking I'll add a "start level" option to the game, and allow people to play at a higher level in order to get to the faster parts of the game sooner. Would that be a good fix? Or would you like to see some other approach to fix the pacing?
As I was working on the game, I actually worried that the game would feel too fast, and slowed down Invaders while Tetris has focus, so that you don't get overrun so quickly. At first I let them continue to run at full speed, then dropped that to half speed, then finally to 1/10th speed. Do you think this was a mistake? Should I let Invaders continue to march at full speed while focus is on Tetris?
- Title Screen - Instructions - Start Level select (1-9) - 4-line Tetris play awards extra life to Invaders - Nerfed points needed for extra life in Invaders from 1500 to 10000 - Adjusted Invaders slowdown when Tetris has focus - Changed background color for Tetris
@baubau fair questions. The original release *is* still available on the itch.io link, along with the latest. I labeled it "post jam" because **all** releases took place after the Jam deadline. The 1.0 and 1.3 (latest so far) builds can be downloaded and played from the game's page on Itch. I took down the 1.1 and 1.2 downloads because there's no point in playing them when there's a better version available, but I did leave the first release up for those who want to play it.
I worked on my game Sunday, Monday, and released Tuesday, after putting in 22 hours of actual development time. The span of actual time I spent working on my project fell within a 72 hour period that started Sunday around 11am and ended Tues evening, I forget exactly when. True, Sunday and Monday overlap the actual scheduled time for the Jam to happen. Through 1.3, I've only worked an actual 40-ish hours on the project altogether, which still fits into a 72-hr period if you can pull 3 long days back to back. Being an adult with a job and a life, that's not so easy on any given weekend, but I do my best.
About being "fair to everyone" -- I mean, I think that's adorable that people take LD seriously as a competition, when there's no prize but the games we make, so at worst the risk is that some people will play a better version of my game than they otherwise might have, but the Jam is supposed to be the "relax, it's ok to flex some of the rules a bit" version of this event, right?
I suppose I could re-upload the 1.0 web build to a different URL and put a link to it for LD-purists who don't have Windows to use if they insist on playing the 1.0 release. So, if it'll appease, then, sure I'll go ahead and do that. But if you really want to stick to the rules, then I didn't make deadline, so my game doesn't count. Whatever. I've been up front about that from the very beginning, so it's not like I'm trying to fool everyone and cheat my way to a better ranking. But the name Ludum Dare is Latin for "To give a game" and it's in that spirit that I made it. I mean, all things being equal, yes, it's nicer to rank higher than lower, but I don't care that much about rankings, I really only like feedback because it means two things: that someone played and cared enough about my game to say something to me about it, and it can help me make it better.
- Pause system - Audio - M key to toggle mute state. - Ctrl + up|down arrow to adjust audio master gain - on screen display when adjusting audio level. - Sound effects for all actions but Tetris rotation and Tetris clean slate bonus, music. - Tetris: Color scheme system for Tetris blocks. - Single-game testing modes. - Invaders: BlockWeapon destroys Invader shots. - When GameOver, can press Enter or R to restart game from rmGame. - Invaders: Clear all Invaders bullets when InvadersPlayer dies. - Invaders: InvadersSaucer points are now multiplied by Invaders.level and Tetris.level. - Bugfix: last two invaders bunch up toward end of level, fixed. - Bugfix: Enemy explode collision with Block Weapon crashes game due to explode object being treated as an enemy but having no points variable. - Invaders: player becomes translucent when Invaders loses focus, to convey invulnerability - Tetris: clean slate bonus for completely clearing Well of blocks with a line completion - Tetris: added Lines count to display, temporarily removed Chain Bonus display until Chain Bonus is actually implemented - Tetris: Added a roof object to Tetris. - Tetris: Adjusted initial placement of new Tetronimo.
@MacDoom thanks for the bug report, I'll look into that. I can duplicate the problem in HTML5 (Chrome) but not in the Windows build. I'm actually seeing various weird glitches in IE, Firefox, and Chrome right now, so the only way to play it and get the true experience for now is the Windows build.
In the meantime, users who don't have Windows may try one of the earlier HTML5 builds, here:
https://csanyk.com/cs/releases/games/LD48-41_InvadTris/post-jam/
@glimaleite the next Tetronimo is determined by the shape of the bullet you fire in Invaders. Watch closely!
@diptoman, yeah I started out thinking that I'd mash static shooters and falling block puzzles, but ended up making both halves of the game look and behave as much like their inspiration as I was able, in homage.
@mshopf thanks for the feedback!
I am not completely satisfied with the difficulty, either. Originally, I did have bullets continue to fall when Tetris had focus, but I found that this felt unfair since the Invaders player can't move when Tetris has focus, and I also found it very difficult to pay attention to two things at once, so as an experiment I had the shot collisions only work when Invaders has focus, and *STILL* found it unfair since the game could return focus to Invaders with a bullet in collision or about to collide with the player, with no opportunity to get out of the way. So I had the Invaders stop shooting when Tetris has focus.
But I do agree with you, that makes the game too easy. I found that I mostly just stay in one place and shoot, which isn't very fun. I am considering different approaches for how to restore the difficulty, but I haven't found something that satisfies me, yet. I ended up developing other features rather than spend too much time on getting this to feel right, but I will return to it in upcoming releases.
With the Superweapon, you *can* use it as a shield, but as you've discovered, if the Superweapon comes from the very bottom row of Tetris blocks, it is at a height where bullets may still be able to collide with the Player. This probably should be tweaked to avoid the player's surprise discovery of another "unfair" way to die. Perhaps you're right that Invaders shots should destroy blocks from the Superweapon, as well. I think that might restore more balance and make the game a bit more difficult, as well as encourage the Player to fire the weapon rather than hide below it.
This is good feedback, thank you very much.
Pretty cool! I think I would have enjoyed a lot more playing this on a touchscreen rather than trying to use a trackpad. The music and graphics are very pleasing, the gameplay is innovative and fun. I only got to use Rooks, on level 1-2, but I can imagine this game could get much more interesting with other chess pieces introduced. Why not start with Pawns?
Great mash-up of pinball and tower defense. Game is a bit basic, but with more time I'm sure you can add a lot of depth to it, and what's here is good already. Only problem I had was that there's no "between rounds" to spend money to build up the table -- you have to do that while the action's going on, which isn't very easy to do. The only other problem I had was that the game would suddenly lag once in a while. Otherwise this is a very solid entry.
Plusses: the generated house floorplans were done well. I liked the core concept of being the ghost and trying to scare people. I liked that you could walk through things, people, walls, etc. like a ghost ought to.
Negatives: The scare mechanic was rather basic. Just be within range and press a button. This could have been better elaborated with more complex rules. I would have liked to see a diminishing returns on using the same scare tactic over and over on the same target, and maybe a "strength in numbers" advantage when scaring people who are grouped closely together. Obviously, with a short time frame that wasn't possible in this case. I also wasn't very clear on what each scare button did, and it didn't seem to matter, it just amounted to if you're close enough, you'll scare people, and they'll lose courage.
Cute game. I thought the ASCII art graphics were fantastic.
Gameplay was difficult. I think if you made the controls twin-stick, with one for moving, the other for aiming, it would have been more manageable. I just kept running into enemies that I was trying to shoot, and running away from them (and thus not aiming toward them) so I died a lot.
I didn't care for the music. Better music would have kept me playing a bit longer.
This looks amazing! I had trouble with the controls, couldn't hit the golf ball, mostly failed at killing zombies. It could be me, not sure. I really loved the concept, and wish I could play it better so I could enjoy more of it.
Feels a bit under-developed. The controls are rather awkward, the enemies don't take any path to the tower, as they do in typical tower defense games, and the shoot-em-up aspect isn't really enough to offset the waves of enemies. Building towers was awkward. I couldn't quite get the hang of hovering over them, and this felt to me like it would have been better accomplished by simply pointing the mouse over them and clicking. The programmer art graphics for the player and enemies make it feel unfinished. I think this could be improved if you keep developing it though.
Oh this was great! I really liked the puzzles. It took me a while to figure them out, but the game does a very good job of subtly hinting at the solution. I made it all the way to the end and wanted more. Please develop this more!
[My game](https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/invadtris/) also mashes up Tetris with another game, so if you like Tetris (and who doesn't) try mine out.
I couldn't seem to get a charged shot to work, so couldn't get very far in this.
I liked the art style. The fighting game part of this was fairly weak, due to hit detection. It was hard to move, and the attacks didn't have much range, and it wasn't very obvious when an attack succeeded. A 2D fighter in GameMaker isn't easy to pull off in a weekend, so I'm impressed you got a basic engine working at all, not so worried about the polish. But it needs some polish.
Beautiful aesthetics! I think this panda looks more like a Pug to me, but I like pugs so that's fine by me. I was TERRIBLE at this game, jumping and solving problems with the mouse is pretty much impossible for me. But I am super impressed with the art design and music. SO CUTE!
Wow, loved it!
Very hard to flight sim with a keyboard, but I guess that's how it was done back in the day.
The graphics, and especially audio are outstanding. I liked the radio comms. I kept crashing the plane, and it was very tough to fly but felt realistic (at least what I imagine it might be like to fly a plane).
@chainedlupine I tried playing it with an Xbox 360 wired gamepad, and didn't get a response from the game.
It took me a while to figure out what to do. This was one of the most unique mechanics that I've seen in LD41. While obviously incomplete (I wasn't getting audio?), I found that the puzzle element of trying to discover how to play was very engaging. I'd encourage you to continue developing this further.
I really liked this entry. The graphics are beautiful. Great colors, great grid distortion effects.
The gameplay took a bit of getting used to. After I paused the game and read the rules, I understood what was going on better, but it was very hard to feel like I was really in control of the game. The ball did what it wanted to, and mostly messed up my strategy, but it did so in ways that kept me a live for a long time. I cleared maybe one or two lines through tetris line completion the entire game, but the ball destroyed blocks for me a lot. For a while I tried to isolate the ball by turning its trail blue, and then dropping blocks around it to confine it to a corner, and this worked pretty well for a few seconds, but it always seemed to find a way out somehow.
The music was fantastic. I am very impressed by your game.
My own game, [InvadTris](https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/invadtris/ld41-post-mortem-invadtris/) mashes up Tetris with Space Invaders, so please have a look at it and let me know what you think.
This game is really difficult! The meters burn down a bit quickly for the pace at which the game proceeds, at least for me. It's a fun and original concept though. The graphics and sound were well done.
Pretty good. For the inspirations you listed for shooters, I was expecting a vertical scroller, which this is not. I liked that you could pick up bonuses in the shooting rounds, it really helped once I figured out I could do that. I almost made it, but died with only a few hundred miles to go when I lost my last camels to an unfortunate accident!
I liked the building sprites.
I found the game to be kindof slow-paced. Meteors would hit, at first pretty frequently, but then it seemed to taper off, and the game got really slow at that point. Collecting more resources was (literally) hit or miss, and mostly miss. I managed to build a couple of buildings, and once I managed to clear debris with a destroy capsule, but it sure wasn't easy to get on target. I wasn't sure what to do with the other types of shot. What is Teleport for?
I think if the shots moved more quickly, it would help the pacing and make the game more fun. Also, if the shot power level remained what it was for the previous shot, it would be easier to correct and get on target with fewer wasted shots.
Lastly, when space ships flew by, I thought at first that I was supposed to shoot them, but they don't seem to have any collision actions, so I guess not. Oh well, that could have made the game more interesting, if there were friend and foes flying above, and maybe the friendlies dropped supplies to you or helped in some other way, and the enemies would steal from you or do damage unless you shot them down...
I liked it. You really have to think your moves out. It's tough.
I didn't quite get what was going on... the first-person perspective made the baserunning pretty hard. I did manage to hit one ball, and ran to one base, but then after that I couldn't tell where I was supposed to go or what to do next. Do I just keep batting from wherever position I'm standing at the moment? That's unlike baseball enough that it was not intuitive.
A+ for atmosphere, though, you really have a good aesthetic going on for a horror game.
What genres did you combine? It's a pretty one-dimensional climbing game.
I enjoyed it though. There was definitely a variety of challenges to overcome, and it ramped up in difficulty pretty nicely. I got stuck around 145m tho. Couldn't advance further without significantly backtracking.
Didn't seem like there was a way to die? Getting hit by stuff just knocks you back, until you grab a rope.
It would have been more fun if there were power-ups that made you able to fight back temporarily. Or a very limited use weapon of some kind.
I really liked the music, I thought it fit the game well and helped establish an adventure-y mood.
Really well done. I played 3 games, and each time the aliens on the right side of the formation would shoot every turn, and I could never get under them to shoot them first, so I couldn't figure out how to win the game. Maybe the AI isn't random enough? I really liked the controls and the audio.
I can't answer the phone or the door to save my life. Even when the words "Answer the door" appear on the screen, I click but all that happens is a bone shoots out. This game looks so good but I can't play it because these two essential features are broken. :(:(:(:( Then when I tried to click Exit, that doesn't work either. Maybe Unity is borken?
OK I played again. I was trying to pick up the Nintendo Switch instead of the phone. Maybe just omit the Switch from the game so people don't get confused?
I found that the mouse-look speed was too slow, and would have felt better if it was a little more sensitive.
I didn't like switching between the water gun and the treat gun, and the ball throwing. It would have been better if these were all accessible by different buttons, so you could do them without the need to switch weapons.
I think there's a bug with the Exit routine, because when I tried to do it, the game kept on running. I had to Alt+F4 out of the game.
Overall, I loved it, these are minor issues, but things that should be addressed, and can be fixed with minimal effort. A+ overall.
I was expecting to be blown away from the cover art, and was not disappointed.
I did however find that there were occasionally "false detection" bugs where it would bust me for being detected while I was still in the middle of setting up my attack plan. The game is amazing overall. A very challenging puzzle. I was able to get up to level 5.
So cool!
I would recommend clearing completed vertical lines, too.
Also, it's not too challenging once you understand how to play... Maybe add a third color to make it more difficult to line up 5. Or, combine with the rules of Go to enable changing the colors? It seems like there are many possibilities here. Lots of directions you could take.
What a great idea! One suggestion I could make is that you need the camera to follow the ball and also jump to where the decision is needed so the player doesn't have to move the camera manually. If you did this, it would make the game 10x better, and a LOT of fun. I'm already impressed. One other suggestion, the icon that indicates to press the Space Bar to advance isn't very obvious. Perhaps when there is no decision to be made, it should just advance on its own automatically, or if not then make the icon *say*
WOW! The amount of polish and perfection here amazes me. I can't see anything to improve on here. One of the top games of this event, for sure.
Really well done. I liked the poker-based strategy. After a few rounds I knew how to defend my ship by not betting weak hands, and winning big on a good hand. The between-rounds story elements weren't really essential, but they were funny.
Really weird game. I feel like there's definitely a learning curve to overcome, but probably because I've never played a card fighter before. Understanding the controls did not come intuitively, but if there was a tutorial mode, and maybe gamepad support, I could see this being hugely fun, especially for people who are into MtG or similar games. I'm amazed at how much game you crafted in such a short time. Kudos!
I can't play your game since it depends on scroll wheel and my laptop only has a trackpad, and I don't have a mouse handy. But it looks interesting!
I started out, ran into P_H and what letters even make a word out of P_H? Not any of the ones in my rack, certainly! Then I ran to the left and encountered D_V. Err... and I am confined to running on the street, I can't even walk on the grass? The GRASS is an obstacle?! Grr. Well, I smashed a couple boxes but couldn't make any progress with any of the letters.
Such a great concept. I found the gameplay to be a bit slow, and got stuck on the playing cards a lot. I think changing the terrain by playing the cards is an innovative idea, but I think it needs a little polish so that cards can work next to each other a bit more easily. Overall this is an extremely impressive effort, and is already very good. I'd like to see this developed further. Congratulations on making a fine game!
This was challenging, mainly due to the game becoming unintuitive since you're seeing everything in slices of time rather than in realtime.
Not a bad start on a Zelda II-like game. I couldn't figure out how to get very far, but I managed to get the blue orb in the first palace that told me I could jump higher, but I didn't really notice my jump improve, and I still couldn't get over obstacles or reach any of the red orbs.
This is really difficult. I liked the concept, but the switch puzzles are a little too hard for me to find enjoyable. It'd be one thing if I could hit a switch and the obstacle it triggers would deactivate permanently, but to require split second timing such that the ball must leave the switch plate and then cross over the obstacle before it has time to rise again is pretty advanced. That could work well for later holes, but for the early holes the difficulty is a bit too much. The controls/physics worked pretty good, although there were some rough spots. I enjoyed playing and getting to see a little of what the Godot engine is capable of.
Wow, this was really neat! I would like to play it more when it's finished. I think it has a lot of potential to be great. I like how you implemented the chess piece movemvent, and how you integrated the chess board design as a background to the Pac Man maze. Very cool!
Well, I made it to the end, but I was no match for the Bulk. Would have been nice to be able to take this full-screen.
Great game. I'm sad that it's in Flash, a dying platform, but it is so well done.
Only thing: I couldn't figure out how to get any money? Like, I'd kill the skull things, and they'd drop what looked like money, but it would say it was a bone, and my coin count didn't increase. So I couldn't buy hearts, or weapons, or get anywhere.
But I loved the graphics and sounds, and I wish I could get further into this game to see what's going on in it. It has the makings of a great quest/adventure game in the vein of Zelda III.
I think your title is clever, TetRis+breakOUT = TROUT.
Very interesting and well done. It's just about impossible to clear a line in Tetris when the ball and paddle continually dismantles the line you're trying to build, plus any time I tried to focus on manipulating the falling Tetris block, I only lost track of the ball and died quickly. So this is a very challenging game. It would be interesting to see it played as a 2P co-operative game, where one player controls the falling block, and the other manages the paddle, and they work together.
I quickly fell into a play style of ignoring the falling blocks and just playing Breakout, essentially. But you cleverly prevent this style of play from working by introducing the time limit mechanic, which forces the player to try to complete lines in order to play for longer than 2:00. But since I can't even keep the Breakout game going that long before I lose all my balls, it doesn't limit me -- yet.
It seems from your scoring that it's about 2x as rewarding to clear lines as it is to destroy blocks 1 at a time. But given how challenging it is to actually clear a line, I almost wonder if the reward should be more like 4x or 10x.
My own LD41 game, [InvadTris](https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/invadtris) combines Tetris with Space Invaders, and I think it's interesting to compare and contrast these two entries. I invite you to give it a play if you haven't seen it already, and let me know what you think.
Beautiful graphics, and so polished. I'm blown away that this was a weekend's work.
I loved the concept and really liked the visual look of the game.
The audio was a bit of a disappointment. I was hoping that the audio would be all notes played according to my position and note length on the staff, and the result would be a kind of procedurally generated song made by my actions. Instead, I just got an (admittedly not bad) standard BGM soundtrack. Oh well.
Play-wise, I found there wasn't much point to moving horizontally, and just moved up/down. This made me think that gameplay would have been better if the note moved forward at a speed determined by the time signature on the staff, a bit like an endless runner in that you don't have control over your forward motion, and this affected the speed of the oncoming alien ships. Bouncing on the top line of the staff was fun! Falling down if I held down too long was frustrating. I didn't see much point to changing the length of my note -- did this give me stronger shots for a longer note, in exchange for a longer cooldown between shots, or slower moving shots? It didn't seem like it did anything really.
Fewer ships, placed more deliberately, would have turned them into incentives to play the "right" notes, and you could have set it up in such a way that it creates a song when you play a level correctly.
All in all, lots of potential to be a very awesome game. As is, it's not bad, and I'll give you bonus points for doing it in PICO-8. Just not what I was expecting/hoping for when I saw the screen shot. But decent nonetheless. Would definitely be interested in playing follow-up releases of this.
This is brilliant. You blended two incompatible genres incredibly well. I really enjoyed playing this, right up until I got stuck because I didn't know what number to enter. I tried a lot of obvious guesses: 000, 111, 256, 666, 999, etc. but didn't get it. What clue did I miss?
I wonder if you ever played the old Atari Game Math Grand Prix...
Based on the title, I was really hoping for this game to have some doggo tie-in...
I couldn't play too well because I couldn't tell what the ASCII stood for. Too many times I was blocked by something apparently invisible. # seemed to act like walls, . seemed to act like open space, but then there were plenty of places where I couldn't walk any further, yet there was no character blocking my way. This felt unfair. Maybe I just don't know how to read Rogue graphics.
Lol, these are two pretty incompatible genres. How can one player pay attention and plan their city while minding the rhythm half of the game? I guess that's what pause mode is for... :)
It's a neat idea, but I think the rhythm track needs to scroll faster to keep me interested (and stop when I'm doing city editing). And if the game ended up emerging some funky beats, turning the city into a musical instrument, it would be awesome.
Didn't care for it.
Wow, Robotron and Tetris, two of my all time favorite games!
I think to truly have a Robotron feel, this game needs unlimited ammo. But then you would need to have an excuse to clear lines. I didn't notice, but if clearing lines replenishes your ammo, then maybe that's all it needs. I thought it was a bit hard to control the piece when I was close to the stack of blocks. As soon as I got too close, I'd lock the block down, where I didn't want it. If you could work that out so that it felt better, I think this would be a great game.
I think there's a rule of game design that goes something like, "If a game has Pac Man in it, it can't be bad." :)
I really enjoyed the premise of the game. A realtime strategy with stealth elements, combining working for oppressors while working against them while you can is such a great concept for a game. I only managed to build the first building, then couldn't figure out how to do anything more than that -- I think I ran out of money, or else couldn't do uprising things while humans were looking at me, or something. It was fun.
Since I didn't get too far in it, I'm not sure if I may have missed out on these features, but ideas that came immediately to mind were:
- make it possible for the robots to distract/entertain the humans, so that other robots can carry out Uprising tasks - make it possible for robot actions to be dual-purpose, or have ambiguity, so they can do something the humans would approve of while plotting to use it against them - Make it more clear what stuff is, what it does. The voxel models were cute, but I couldn't just look at a thing and be like "Oh I know exactly what that thing is for and what it does." This was probably the biggest impediment I had to getting deeper into the game than I did. That, and the music, which I found to be a bit grating, and didn't want to keep listening to after a while, although it did some pretty "robotic" and probably fit the theme of the game pretty well, it was just hard to listen to on a loop. - Give the player more/better feedback when they are trying to do something that they can't do. Not enough money? Humans are watching? Running low on energy? Have a task that the humans want you to do? Make that more plain.
All in all, this is a solid, big, complex project to pull off in a weekend, and I think you did an outstanding job with it, and with the theme. Very nice work.
This looks really cool! Only, I can't figure out how to get off the start screen. Clicking menu objects like buttons doesn't do anything. Keyboard input doesn't do anything... how do I start the game?
Ah, thanks!
Now that I can play it, this is pretty awesome!
Some suggestions for polish:
- Always focus the text area so you can just start typing there when the next level beings - Put a blinking cursor there so it's more obvious to the player that they can type ;) - More sophisticated parsing, such that I can enter a chain of commands, like "fffj" or whatever, would be cool. Then you could have bonuses for solving the level in the least number of "moves", etc. - vi-like edit mode commands would be awesome. Your game would have an instant niche audience for vi geeks if you did this, and might even help teach vi to new users. - I'd like to be able to enter new instructions on the fly, rather than wait for the @ to slow to a stop and type more commands in. This would give the game more of an action flow, and less of a turn-based feel, which I think would be an improvement. I guess you can do that already, but something about the timing for it doesn't feel quite right to me -- I guess because the new instruction isn't acted upon until I hit Enter. So maybe if you type while you're already in motion, new keystrokes take effect immediately, and you can stop immediately by hitting
Just some ideas. When a game gives me a lot of ideas, it's a good game.
Overall, this is a lot of fun, and has a lot of potential.
Really nice! It's a bit difficult to judge where your edges are, which makes the game a bit too hard, I think, but apart from that, it's a very good entry. Lots of fun.
Very innovative. I liked the way the falling blocks turned into maze corridors, allowing the player to create the level as they played.
I thought the music was too loud, and would have liked a volume control.
The controls, switching between the two halves of the game, didn't work very well for me. Maybe something more turn-based would have been better.
But I thought this was a well done entry, and it captures the spirit of both the RPG dungeon crawl genre and the falling block genre really well.
Graphics are pretty good. Audio is even better, although the car engine could be more realistic.
I thought the car was facing "backwards" but I guess I'm just reading the image wrong. It took me a minute to realize that I can only turn if I'm moving forward/backward. Doing this with keyboard input is really awkward, and I was terrible at the game, but I bet with a driving controller or even just a gamepad I would have done better at it. I thought that letter pickups should be automatic rather than require a button press, but I guess if you have to do it in the right order, then this makes sense. But it also makes it harder, and frustrating.
Very good! My own entry, [InvadTris](https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/invadtris/) took a similar approach, you should try it out and let me know what you think.
I thought playing Tetris upside down made the game really challenging and different. The concept is great, and what you have here is already very good. But to make it even better, I have a few suggestions:
The game needs sound. Some good BGM and laser shooty noises and tetris block movement and landing noises would enhance this game a lot. It's not complete without audio.
I'd liked to have seen more interaction between the shooter enemies and the falling block. They can't hurt you, so all they do is give you opportunities for bonus points. They are pretty safe to ignore, and have no real impact on the game if you don't care to shoot them. It's also not worth while to try to move out of your way to shoot them. Mostly I just focused on placing the blocks and completing lines, and held down the fire key and got bonus points incidentally when I did.
Due to the speed at which the block and the space ships passed each other, it did not seem possible to destroy enemy ships from the sides, so that aspect of the game could stand to be tweaked. Maybe give the ships more vulnerability from the side, or I don't know.
Some power-ups to improve your shot strength, or temporary shot boosts that could break tetris blocks would be cool. Some more variety in the space enemies, and even a boss would be great. If the boss ship came down in behind the tetris stack and used it as a defensive screen, or started grabbing blocks and lobbing them at the player, that would be very cool.
The game should also have a Next window so you can see what's going to fall next. And starting the Next block in a random horizontal offset instead of always in the center of the well is an interesting choice, but I'm not sure that I liked it. It's important when playing tetris to have the initial conditions be predictable so you can play your strategy accordingly.
All in all there's a lot that could be done with this game, and I think it would be fun to see it developed further. I hope you do.
WOW what a beautiful game! I'm so impressed with the graphics and audio. Really amazing! And it's very relaxing, great atmosphere.
The only thing I didn't care for was the sound effect for when you make a choice in the conversation. It doesn't mesh with the rest of the audio design. I'd replace it with some kind of natural bird sounds.
Hahahaha! This would be even better if the players ragdolled a bit more when they go flying. The sound effects to me really make the game. It may not have a great deal of depth, but I sure had fun with this one.
Overall, I think the turn-based mechanics hurt the gameplay, rather than make it interesting or innovative. It just made the game feel laggy to me, and made it very hard to get a hang of controlling the ship.
I liked the graphics for the hydra, and the music was pretty decent.
I've never played a text game with a timer mechanic like this before. I've played text games with burndown timers to re-enable some option, but never a "you have x seconds to live" sort of thing. That makes this unique. Unfortunately it had the effect of making me try to speed read the rest of the way through the game, to hope that I could find somewhere safe that I could avoid death, and so I skipped over most of the text. Some actions that could have added time back to the countdown would have made it feel more game-like.
I don't know how I feel about the setting and the story. I feel like the Civil War is important enough that anything done with it that isn't very well researched is going to make me feel uncomfortable -- even when I watched Lincoln (the movie from a few years ago with Daniel Day Lewis) I found that I couldn't enjoy it because the entire time I watched it, I couldn't help ask myself "Is this authentic? Is this documented? Is this misleading? Is this revisionist?" and I don't know my history well enough to say for sure for everything, but it took me out of the film and kept me in analytical mode the entire time. This story is obviously nowhere nearly as researched as a serious film about the Civil War period, of course, but I still felt uncomfortable as I read it. I'll chalk that up as a "me" problem, though.
This is a excellent example of the "trash" genre. Don't take that the wrong way. There's a [guy on Twitter](https://twitter.com/moshboy) who collects games like this, mostly people's first efforts at game development. He added one of my LD games to his collection, lol. They're interesting, in the way that a developing child's art is interesting. It'll be great to look back at this in a few years and see how far you've come.
Interesting concept. It's very difficult to control, and I only scored 70 points after like 10 minutes. I'm not clear on what the genres are that are being combined here, Tetris + ??? but it's an interesting game nonetheless.
Very, very good. I liked the pace of the game. Challenge seemed a bit easy at first, but eventually I got overrun after 73 turns. The game is well balanced, once you figure out how to play. I did think that the barbed wire seemed useless -- I didn't notice it slowing enemies down, or doing injury to them. The artillery barrage was cool, but I wish it stayed around longer. I would like to buy my own tank, too. I thought the pixel art graphics were superb, and the audio is also excellent.
Decently built, but I thought the fun factor wasn't *quite* there for me. Switching between controlling the Tank's movement and aiming the turret was awkward, and as a result I was forced to play a slow style, where I hid as much as I could and shot when I could, and it didn't feel like the action's pace matched well with the music. The thrust to jump aspect of controlling the tank was OK, but I didn't like riding the elevators down, I felt like once you're grounded on the elevator, you should stay on it, instead of having the platform drop away from you and repeatedly fall. With better controls and more finely tuned physics, this could be really good. And, for a first-time jammer, this is really well done.
I like pugs.
That said, this game needs quite a bit. Having to scroll around to pick up money from the money bin was a pain point for me, especially since there wasn't any cue that the money had refreshed and could be harvested again. Having a mini-map, or the ability to zoom out to see the whole map would have made the game much more playable. The ability to see where trouble spots are on the map, and to strategize for optimal placement of units is critical to a tower defense game.
I think it would have been a good genre combination to make a farmville-style clicker game to harvest pug units that would then be used in the tower defense half of the game.
This game was
uncompressed!!!
You should figure out how to make it smaller. Holy geez.
That out of the way, I thought it was one of the more innovative non-workable ideas. A tower defense game where you're first-person in the maze and have to wander around planting towers is a really neat idea for a demonstration of how game mechanics can work against each other, even when they work well on their own.
I wandered around a bit, never even saw one enemy, and placed exactly one turret, probably not anywhere it could have done some good. You can't defend a tower in a tower defense game if you don't have a good lay of the land.
What a cute concept! I'm not sure what genres it combines, but I guess it's kindof a fighting game, kind of... I don't know? The 3D models are really cute, and I love the idea of giant animals fighting with fortresses on their backs. A little more development and depth is needed, but I could see this being super fun once completed!
I loved the presentation, this is super well polished... only, I can't get the cell phone to register my keystrokes most of the time. It's hit or miss and mostly miss. So I can't get very far with my SO. You'll have to look into that. Otherwise, the platforming and action is really good!
One suggestion, when you bring up the pause menu, you should recap the controls for the player. Showing them only at the beginning of the game is nice, but there's a lot to remember, and being able to bring it up in the pause menu and refresh myself would have been appreciated.
Graphics, sound, and gameplay are excellent, the cellphone input issue notwithstanding.
This is fantastic. I would love to play it again with a gamepad instead of keyboard and mouse controls.
This is a fantastic entry. The genres combine very well, and the game play is deep and challenging. I loved the music in the title screen. Graphics and audio are serviceable, solid. I found it was best to avoid getting the ore, stay small, and get points just by moving around, which isn't really how this is meant to be played, so maybe find a way to give the player more incentive to chomp on that ore.
I liked the storyboard graphics, but felt the in-game play was pretty lacking. If you're relatively new to GameMaker, keep at it and in time you'll get better. It's something just to complete a game in a weekend. Don't give up!
I love the way this game looks, and even without sound I enjoyed it. It was hard to figure out, and I don't understand the minigame, but I think I caught a fish or something maybe? Then something else happened and I don't know what. But I liked what's here. I think you should go on and take this further, and complete it so we can fully enjoy.