Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → Maschinen-Mensch
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | Co | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2014 | 29 | Beneath the Surface | Planet Corp. | jam | 20 | 4.10 | 3.96 | 4.09 | 4.18 | 4.12 | 3.41 | 3.81 | 3.59 | 78 |
Awesome funny graphics! Not the most complex game, but well worth a laugh.
This game is ridicously good! Already in its current state I see myself spending money to play this on my Ipad. Highly addictive ship customization. Easily the best game I've seen in the compo so far.
Really funny take on the theme, and very lovely graphics. I felt the walking distances were a bit tiresome, and some of the solutions felt really random (e.g. why can I only shake one of the trees?) Overall a funny and nice entry.
Grats on the game! Good job on tackling an experience that is not typical for games.
Super strong entry! Can I say it feels really good? I can really feel the desperateness of drowning. Sound effects are spot on. I did not understand the mechanic of the waves, however.
Obviously the theme is rather serious and it's interesting that you are tackling this within the frame of a game jam. I felt the initial loadout screen to be rather annoying and it distracted more from the idea than it added imho. A simple selection without the necessary diablo-esque inventory management could have been sufficient.
The gameplay about imperferct information is really interesting. Sounds would have helped tremendously to increate the mood. Also, the compo version is lacking feedback in some areas; for example in the tiny mission without any ships it would have been interesting to see what radius the submarine actually has.
Despite all the complaints this is one of the most daring and creative entries I have played to far.
Really cool game. The mood is super great, and it's overall very polished and coherent experience. I feel that you could have stripped some complexity from the games controls to make it more streamlined. For example, I don't really see any value in the reloading mechanic, this could have really been automatic.
Also, the layout of your buttons is unfriendly to keyboard layouts outside of the us; for my german keyboard, having the scan functionality so far away from the other two actions made it almost unplayable. You could offer an alternative control which just uses the number buttons 1-3 or something similar.
The funniest game I've seen so far in the compo. The animations and interactions are hilarious! Gameplay was a bit confusing. I wasn't sure where to go. Do I need to shoot all the farmers? Grats on the game!
Very beautiful visuals and a super strong mood. I had to restart a couple of times before a worm even showed up, and when it did it pretty much came out at the same spot all the time and I killed it really easily. So gameplay wise I'm not really convinced, but visuals, animation and audio is really high quality.
Nice graphics. I like the screen layout and general idea. I think it has potential. I would recommend working on the "jucyness". Some particle effects for the ship breaking into waves, air bubbles under water, enemies dropping dead instead of disappearing and so on would go a long way. Keep up the good work!
Oh that digging sound!
Overall quite nice in the way how it completely stresses me out (oh that sound!).
The difficulty just pretty unfair since there is nothing I can do to see where I am going. So if I end up in a dead end I really could not do anything about it. Still, nice little game.
Grats on the game. I would increase the size of the entities. They are quite tiny, making it hard to relate to them.
Had some problems manouvering the character when underground. Couldnt go back up the ladder. Maybe some in-game tutorial/help texts would help. I liked the funny shovel. Grats on the game!
The activities inside of the room where interesting, but there was no overall game objective as far as I could tell. Winning the bug race gave you a gold cup. Would be nice to be able to leave the room. I definetely liked the art style and the mood. Would have loved to see more of the creators ideas.
Interesting concept! Quite original puzzle mechanics for LD. Watched the Let's play to understand what is going on, but still didn't grasp why sometimes circles got hollow or unhollow and sometimes not. Improving the animations would go a long way for communicating what is going on. For example my brain has a hard time perceiving the swapping. Right now sometimes it feels like both pieces touch each other, but then move back to their original position while having changed shape/color instead of feeling like they exchanged positions. Also a hollow/unhollowing animation or something like a coin flip animation would help. Didn't manage to beat it so far, but I'll come back later and try again :)
Really liked the graphics and the clean look of it. The general perspective reminded me of our own game. :) Gameplay is easy to understand and pick up. Would be cool to add some variation, like being able to recharge your powers depending on if you hit planes for example. I think the idea has potential.
Very small but charming game. I liked mood and the controls worked very nicely with my trackball device. I wish you would have explored the theme a bit further. The problems of the second patient were really gross (in a good way)
On a sidenote:
I don't know how I feel about making me go through Game-Jolt to play and vote it for the Ludum Dare to be honest.
Ok now I'm not usually the toilet humor kind of person, but the farting really made my laugh. Even more did the dialogue between the alien from the ship and the "grandmother". Seriously Hilarious voice over.
However, after that scene there did not seem to be much gameplay left? All I could do was move back to the right, where I eventually fall into a pit? Love the french accent on the princess.
Liked the idea of having to control the surf board instead of the guy. Especially funny when the guy has fallen off and you still move around. :)
Extremely moody and very pretty game. Nice animations on the character.
Beeping sound was a bit annoying. Also, it would have been good to have an additional visual feedback for it.
Having no Battery left means your practically dead, no? Or is there anything you could do once Battery reaches 0?
Really beautiful graphics. Not sure if there was really gameplay. I just kep running to the right. Definetely would have been interested in knowing how the story continues. Some of the transitions were a bit too close to each other. Would be nice to have more time to appreciate each 'dimension' and explore a bit.
Liked the graphics and the sound. Production quality is pretty good. Gameplay was confusing. I died a lot without knowing exactly why. Have you considered adding some more screen prompts? A simple text on game over that explains what happened would already help me.
Short but interesting. Didn't realize I can go to next screen by going to window border. A text on exits would be useful. It was also unusual that there is no text on objects until you get fairly close to them. I liked the atmosphere. It reminded of Another World. Especially at the end. Would be interested in seeing where this goes.
Wow, I really liked playing your game. Music ans visuals are very well done and fitting, the mood is great and the theme is represented properly imho.
You should have really made the intro skippable in some way, it takes way too long.
While the core gameplay is fun and works nicely, I felt that it got very repetitive rather soon. Also the shooting feedback was weird, would have helped to have the lines in a stronger contrating color to the background. I'd even considered completely dropping the charge mechanic, would have been way more fun just to shoot away all the arrows you can while in air.
The graphics are nice and I like the general torch throwing mechanic, but I had some problems with seemingly random deaths. Reloading the game didn't help. Not sure if buggy or I didn't fully understand the mechanics.
Really interesting take on the snake idea. The amount of possible challenges really makes me think that this game can be extended easily into something bigger. The one real complaint I have is that I don't think the theme is very well represented.
I liked the art style and the genereal mistery of founding out what lies beneath! The gameplay is simple and fun (although its a bit repetitive). Maybe tuning down enemy health slightly and adding some fun physicalized death reactions would help. It reminded me a bit of Nuclear Throne.
Felt a bit lost in the open sea. I liked the underwater feel, but those coins. Why coins!?
Liked the funny graphics and smooth gameplay. Grats!
Can't say I have seen this setting before. ;) Pretty basic gameplay. I liked that you added humor though.
I saw both endings. The bad one is reaaaaally bad. Liked how you did three different mini games and tied them together with a nice narrative. Only thing I disliked were the buttons in text boxes. Why not just allow to click anywhere?
Very nice game. I really like the tight design, visuals are top notch (the crouching pose behind obstacles is a really nice detail). Been playing this now probably the longest from all entries so far.
Nice idea. First I thought this would just be a deathworm clone - so glad it isnt :-)
I think you could have improved the controls a lot by making them simpler.
Why not auto-pickup the stones? Or why pick them up at all, just give the player infinite stones. Also, I would have put the aiming on the mouse position, this would have felt much more natural. As a last thing, I like the feedback sound you have before a worm appears. Having a little particle effect on the earth where he will emere would have seriously helped players to feel more in control of the situation.
OVerall a nice idea and very true to the theme.
Very moody and pretty entry. The non skippable intro almost made me not play it.
While I kinda like the game in it's basics, I have a hard time seeing the theme represented. Also, the gameplay was very harsh and too punishing imho - some warning for incoming strikes (flashing etc) is necessary if you want to allow the player to meaningfully dodge or attack in this kind of 1-hit kill combat. Also, putting elements in the foreground just to mess up with the visibility and make the game artificially harder does not work for me.
Still, the mood is really nice and you did a good job on the sound effects.
Super nice entry! Love the idea and execution. Not much to complain about really, this is easily one of my favorite entries.
Gameplay a bit repetitive, but I liked the message. Grats on the game!
A really mesermizing game. Superb sound and mood, nice and simple gameplay. I really like this one.
Really really liked the main menu music and the overall style and mood. Smooth gameplay too.
Thanks everybody for the super nice comments! We're really happy with the game.
@tschery: The vine is here: https://vine.co/v/MrKZ6ApTOH0 . We also tweeted it from our game account @curiousexped :)
@TobiasW: Agree on all points. We just didn't manage to do more in the time given. Definitely something for the HD version :)
@Dooleus: Thanks, actually the whole point of the game is blowing up planets. If you didn't see the planet explode, you didn't beat the level. There are multiple levels and a small plot connecting them.
Interesting take. Maybe I did not understand the game, but I did not feel that there was any kind of challenge or that my decisions would have any serious consequences. I had so much money that I just kept spamming the little bots into the surface and the game just seems to trickle along.
I like some of the texts, the humor works for me.
It's a great premise, but gameplay really falls short to be honest.
Really fun game! Instantly reminded me of the old classic Space Taxi. Controls are tight and fun, there's enough juicyness to make it feel good, and the core loop is deep enough to get me hooked for quite a while. There are some little improvements I could suggest here and there, but in the light of the general quality of this entry I don't think those would be necessary. Good work!
Very nice approach! Much less similar in mechanics than in the basic approach to the theme compared to our game. I really like the strategic layer and the little spin on traditional tower defense gameplay. It's a bit hard to pick up initially, but once I understood what was going on it actually hooked me for quite a while. Personally I would have gone for slightly larger graphics for the contructions to make them more readable.
Very confuding at first, and pretty much stays confusing for the rest of the game :-D
The rats / mice looked pretty, and I liked the hint at swarm behavior in there - however my actions were, compared to mice randomly moving out of the screen, of such a little importance that I did not really feel any kind of responsibility as a player to what was going on on the screen.
Nice and simple game play very well executed. I liked it! It reminded me of Super Hexagon.
I like the idea and restriction to a limited space. I found having to slowly walk between the people and using the sub menus a bit cumbersome. I would recommend adding the option to manage the party completely via menus and even remove the option to walk around. The setting definetely has some potential.
I really like the cute backstory. Nice color palette too.
Solid entry, I liked the removing of layers, that they regrow and that enemy shots break the layers, hence give me feedback where to look for them.
What feels weird is in the later levels that the rotation of the sphere becomes stronger than my ability to rotate, so my input feels very hampered with. Some more feedback about the position of the enemies would have been nice.
Funny take on the theme, had the idea about some kind of mole game as well initially. Some juicyness to the movement would have helped, maybe a particle when your digging away earth. I really had some fun moments.
Holy cow this is the penguin shmup I never knew I wanted! Really nice idea with guiding the player along trough the different stages.
Obviously this entry lacks enough content/gameplay/structure to be rated properly. What you pu up is a small tech demo for lowfi clouds.
However, I really think that this could be the basis for a cool game. I can easily imagine how you could apply mechanics like forming clusters of larger clouds that will then do something, or avoid darker rain clouds, add movement controls like speed up or slow down, etc.
So yeah, it's not much of a gfame right now, but I see potential alone in this super simple tech demo.
Liked the graphics and that you spent so much effort to explain the game with a tutorial. Didn't like the gameplay too much, was rather boring. Some juicyness would have helped - larger buttons, sounds (!) and maybe some more effects.
Strange humor ;) Would be cool if buckets would announce themselves kinda. Sometimes they pop into view right before my piranha makes the jump.
Nothing happens when I click on start! Using latest Chrome build. I liked the title screen music though. Hope to play it at some point. :)
Neat idea. I like the instructions and the levitate pose. Gameplay feels very loose, I think you should have focused more on what makes the game tick within the short time you had. It's hard having a gamebreaker as obvious as yours in there (stand on levitating block) and expect people to "play around it". If you can't get it out by design means, then embrace it and make it a real mechanic!
Nice, moody entry overall, but lacks in sound, gameplay and representation of the theme.
Didn't understand the instructions but after one or two minutes of randomly connecting nodes it clicked for me and I beat the game. I found the time limit to be a bit annoying. Would be a cool to be able to just sit and enjoy. Not sure if is complex enough for that though. Its a bit of a stretch for theme. I liked the setting, but it wasn't really explored. Overall I liked it. Nice to see a puzzle game on here with a mechanic that I haven't seen before.
It runs in browser without any plugins, which is in general a really, really good thing imho. The mole looks nice and funny. Aside from that, there is not much in your game to really rate. I would have ditched the combat idea and went with platforming puzzles at least, then you may have managed to put some meaningful challenges in there.
Woulnd't call it a game, but definetely interesting. You made me read through all the answers and think about them.
Lovely visual style, together with the font it's extremely charming. I don't see a real connection to the theme though...did I miss anything?
Gameplay feels a bit mundane and there's nothing which really feels fresh or new to me. Overall I'd say this is mostly about the looks, gameplay is just too shallow for my taste.
Very appealing on first look, and the humor is quite funny I have to say. The gameplay is toom shallow for my taste, and after the first giggles are gone there is not much left to be honest. So lot's of production quality in sound and visuals, but lacking gameplay.
Nice game! I liked the combination of health and air depot and how air consumption forces you forward. I also liked that it was pretty challenging. Graphics are pretty sweet too.
The camera mode rectangle moves very slowly and therefore was not so much fun to use.