Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → danielilett
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | Co | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | 39 | Running out of Power | Power Surge | compo | 3.18 | 3.40 | 3.10 | 3.81 | 4.09 | 2.50 | 2.25 | 3.00 | |||
| 2016 | 37 | One room | Chemical Chaos | compo | 247 | 3.42 | 3.37 | 3.89 | 3.84 | 4.00 | 3.80 | 33 | |||
| 2016 | 35 | Shapeshift | Shifting Dungeons | compo | 397 | 3.29 | 3.24 | 2.95 | 2.81 | 3.76 | 2.75 | 3.18 | 39 | ||
| 2015 | 34 | Two Button Controls / Growing | Slower Than Sound | compo | |||||||||||
| 2015 | 33 | You are the Monster | Fuzzy Horde | compo | |||||||||||
| 2015 | 32 | An Unconventional Weapon | I Will Be Happy | compo | 121 | 3.74 | 4.16 | 3.37 | 3.89 | 3.95 | 2.89 | 3.89 | 3.41 | 33 | |
| 2014 | 31 | Entire Game on One Screen | Forever Falling | compo | 266 | 3.50 | 3.40 | 3.45 | 2.88 | 3.10 | 2.74 | 2.82 | 3.00 | 66 |
Um. Well, I don't really get it, but I guess it's got some mood to it, more than I've seen in most other games so far. It fits the theme, the pixel art graphics are fairly decent (but a little inconsistent, like the gravestone compared to the background), and there wasn't really enough to be fun, but I guess you said in the description that it's a 'non-game'. Good job though.
This is absolutely fantastic. I'm genuinely surprised you've managed to put this together in so little time, I won't be surprised if this wins any of the categories. It's very innovative, extremely addictive, and challenging, but not unfair. It's the perfect balance between giving the player a challenge, and not making them feel like an idiot. It's kind of the Portal philosophy to designing puzzles - make them difficult, but make sure the player feels they've accomplished something when they finally beat the challenge, and you nailed it. The music's top notch, and the whole graphical design works well. Brilliant work!
Very good. I liked the novel way of tackling the theme (on a screen, brilliant), and the gameplay was okay. I found it a little hard to maneuver the ship, but the controls weren't too bad. It was pretty fun (who doesn't like space pizza?), but like the pizza itself, the game got a little cold for me after a bit. Still, a very good entry. Good job!
First of all, since this is a Unity game, can I just say, it's really easy to bind WASD to movement in addition to the arrow keys, which would give the player much more choice of how to control movement. This game's really easy, as I can literally just stand still and press E every time a slug thing appears. I find the graphics pretty nice and they match the style of the game. But if you were to do this again, make it a bit more challenging, and please map both the arrow keys and WASD to movement, as I (along with a lot of other people) prefer using WASD.
I'm not sure what the aim is here. If you included a tutorial, then I feel this would be much better. As far as I can tell, it's not working properly though. Sure seems like a nice idea though, by the sounds of it, it's a little bit like Risk. Also, the entire game seems to be on the left-hand side of the screen, perhaps consider adding areas or make the current ones bigger?
Nice work, this was really fun! It took some getting used to, but once I'd figured out how to avoid the shots properly, it was fun to play. I managed to scrape 39 kills, and played it for longer than I'd intended to try and push up my high score. Perhaps a cool feature would be to display your high scores when you die? I found the graphics a bit simple, but the player moved pretty nicely, and the particles when enemies died were cool. In my opinion, I thought the enemies moved a bit too erratically, because it made them hard to hit, and I frequently died while trying to hit enemies and they shot me just as I hit them, but this is a really cool entry on the whole.
Really nice! The graphics were great (the character and its animations in particular) and the music was fairly good too, and worked with the theme of the game. It was pretty easy for a rage game, except level 6, which felt disproportionately difficult in terms of how perfect my jumps had to be (especially at the bottom). It's still a really cool entry, good job!
I found this pretty fun. The puzzles were really well constructed, and the different mechanics made it more varied than I originally expected, plus the controls had no problems at all. The music was alright too, but the graphics were a little too basic for my liking. Overall, I did find it enjoyable and it fits the theme well.
If you continue working on it, I'd definitely say change the graphics, but other than that, great job!
This was a nice idea, but I feel you tried to cram loads of mechanics into the game, and some of them didn't gel correctly with the rest. The 3D bits with the flipping gravity was a nice idea, but it felt confusing when I moved onto another wall for me - it's a similar reason why there was originally a mobility gel planned for Portal 2 that would allow players to walk on whatever sequence they wanted, but it gave players motion sickness, so it was scrapped. The idea of having two asynchronous games was quite welcome though, it just needs some refinement. The textures for the walls in the 3D game were very sickly (ugh, staring at that blue :p), but like you said, it's your first 3D game, and most of the mechanics were very well executed considering that fact. In the 2D game, you could break the whole snowball shooting mechanic by shooting over the spikes. However, overall, I felt you did a lot in the given time, and I certainly can't downvote you for the sheer amount of work clearly put into this, just needs a lot of refinement if you ever take this idea further. It was also an inventive way to bypass the theme's limitations. Really great work :)
All that happened when I tried to play is a static image that says 'Press space to survive' at the bottom? Nothing happened when I pressed anything.
Pretty nice. Occasionally when I fired, the bullets went behind me though, and I lost health this way a couple of times. There's a couple other complaints I have too - sometimes, the 'prepare for next wave' message appeared before I'd actually completed the current wave, and got in the way, plus the 'exit game' button doesn't exit the game. However, the controls were responsive and intuitive, and the basic concept was executed pretty well.
This really put me in the Christmas mood, thanks for this! It actually gets a bit difficult around the 100 present mark, but that's a good thing. Before then, it's very calm. The graphics gel together well and are quite minimalist, but effective, and the audio works well together with the graphics. Everything fits, well done!
Pretty nice entry, I liked the relatively fast pace and graphics. I would say that the music loop could have been made better, because you can definitely hear when it restarts, and the enemy starts with a few too many units, but it's still a nice game. Adding two-player would be fantastic, and maybe having a better AI and more varieties of turret would be cool. Great job.
Completely amazing. I can't believe this was made in 48 hours! The graphics and sound are beyond compare, and the tone of the entire game is amazing. I would say there's not much 'game' in this game though - it's rather short and there's not a whole lot to do. For those reasons, I rate this very highly in terms of graphics, audio and general presentation, but not quite so well in terms of gameplay mechanics. It does tell a charming story in a very short space of time, with the intro definitely setting the mood well. I didn't think it did much terribly innovative with the theme itself, although I do understand it was difficult to do so, given what the theme was. I'm still shocked by the level of presentation though. I won't be at all surprised if it wins anything, especially the audio, graphics or mood awards, or perhaps even overall. The parallax scrolling and the dragon animation were welcome small touches, although I encountered one small bug (it feels almost like I'm nit-picking by mentioning it, but it may help you out): when I reached about 7 points, the dragon's animation got stuck into its 'fast' animation where the wings are tucked in. Not sure why it happened, and nothing game-breaking, but I thought I'd mention it. Very good job.
This was pretty calming, thanks to the soft piano music. The notes seemed random, but turned out pretty calming, and kinda matched the slow pace of the game. This all gives it a calmed atmosphere, and made it enjoyable. It does feel like Tetris at my own pace, and the minimalist theme backed that. I noticed I could just get stuck then spam the down key and still get a win screen, so perhaps consider making a game over condition if you go too far into the black areas? Overall, a very strong entry. Great work.
I feel like a lot more could have been done, but there's definitely the beginnings of a trading game here. If you ever want to release another version of this in the future, then definitely have some random events here, and make it a little harder, because it seemed very easy to generate free money and never lose any. I'd also recommend having more than one screen resolution, and perhaps a full-screen mode, because part of the bottom was cut off on my screen. Good job with what's here so far, it just needs a little more work and it could grow into something pretty cool.
This is pretty nice, I found it pretty fun. At the start, I was pretty confused, but I got the hang of it eventually. Maybe a suggestion would be to put the tutorial bit in the game itself, rather than below the game, because it's obscured unless you scroll down. Other than that, it was great to play, and some of the severity levels are a bit funny (ebola symptoms = minor???). But good job!
It looks very pretty, but for me it's unplayable, because it lags so much from the start to about 1 fps.
This was a wonderful idea, but I found the execution a bit... off. Every time, I seemed to go up against a ship that was way overpowered, and my shots didn't seem to be hitting the enemy at all, no matter how many guns I had. That said, the decision to incorporate ship building and fighting into one was a great idea, and the voxel-based ships and attachments did look great. The FTL-inspired gameplay was nice too, but I'd like to see it a bit more balanced, and perhaps make it clearer to know what I'm supposed to be doing from the start. The camera wasn't too great either, but this is a good entry considering the time frame. Great work.
Something like this definitely has potential, but I felt some things about it were off. It took me a while to figure out that I had to click to place bombs, I feel like it should be mapped to a key on the keyboard too, like Space or Enter. On top of that, I couldn't figure out exactly when the bombs were exploding, maybe a particle effect or something visual to show they were exploding would work, rather than just disappearing. The sounds were very quiet too - I had to have my volume turned right up just to hear them, and even then, they sounded a bit weird. However, the character animation was very cute, it gave the blocky character some sense of personality almost with the way it walked. It has potential, with a bit of polish. (I'm of course rating the competition version, not the post-comp). I definitely saw the strong Bomberman influence from it though. A potentially cool entry, but a little off. Still, good work though.
What mate? I don't know what the hell is going on. But this is weirdly fantastic. Like, seriously not what I was expecting. It's hard to control but it's so hilarious that I don't even care that I suck at it. Great work :D
Wow, I was very surprised when the game expanded like that! This was very fun, and it handles the theme in a very creative way. The steady increase in the number of game mechanics was a neat addition too, the controls were absolutely spot-on, and I can't really think of anything really bad to say about it. I'd love for there to be a bit of music playing in the background, and the graphics are very basic, but apart from that, this is an amazing entry.
This is one of the best games I've played! It's a really neat way to approach the theme, the graphics are superb, and the audio is awesome. The sense of humor in this game is really cool too, and the whole thing just works. Great job!
Necromancers > everything else. This is so fun, enthralling people and killing enemies feels so satisfying, and the gameplay is smooth and responsive. My only real gripe is that it kinda doesn't match the theme as well as it could have, but I'll let that slide because it wasn't a great theme. The music on this is absolutely top-notch, and the graphics are really sweet. Nice job, I'd like to see more games like this!
This is really nice - the graphics are top-notch, and the levels feel polished. However, one of the controls is weird - middle mouse button to move the cubes? It would be better to map that to space, or enter. Overall, though, it's a very nice game. Good job.
This is pretty fun, I like the gameplay concept, and the Whatts themselves look pretty cool. When I got quite far, it did lag to an unplayable level (because the wave was so huge and there were so many Whatts), but it's still cool, and up until then, it was extremely smooth. I wish there was some audio, but the lack of sounds or music didn't ruin the game for me. Nice work.
This game is pretty cool, I liked the mechanics, and it felt quite complete for a Ludum Dare game. I would like to see some music in the game, but I understand the extreme limitations on time. It would also be cool to be able to shoot repetitively, as some people have already said, and be able to aim with the mouse. Good job though.
This was pretty fun. I loved the music, better than most of what I've seen so far, and the gameplay is pretty tight. The animations on the player were really cool, but I did find the art a tiny bit basic, not bad by any means, just basic. It fits the theme well too. Overall, very fun, good job!
I found this pretty fun, well done. As far as the tower defense genre goes, I didn't find it too innovative (I know it was made in only 48 hours, but it'd be cool to see something new). It fits the theme well, the graphics were pretty good (the animation on the enemies walking, while basic, was good too), and the music/sound effects were great (the satisfying gunshot sounds D:). Great work!
This was brilliant! The graphics on this are very well done (I know how hard it can be to achieve these kinds of effects with Unity, so well done!). It's much more fast-paced than I expected, as I have to quickly find the bad guy, aim for him AND shoot him, but that's why it's so fun. It does get a tad repetitive, but it's still really cool and fits the theme (as the main game is on one screen). I've scored the audio down, because I felt it doesn't really mesh well with the rest of the game (maybe something more tense and fast paced would've been better?), but other than that small detail, awesome work!
This was alright. It was just a Pac-Man clone with nice music in the background, and slightly shinier graphics, but it was pretty fun. One thing to mention is that it doesn't have a game over screen when you run out of lives, so I was still running around for a bit, and was confused why I wasn't picking anything up. Still pretty neat though.
This is pretty difficult, but it's not too bad. However, a few times while playing it, a whole load of waves spawned on top of each other and killed me pretty much instantly. I did like the difficulty level though, it took me by surprise at first, and the music and gameplay do sync up well. Good job.
This was alright, I found it quite floaty to control, and the viruses were moving across the screen a little too much in my opinion, so it made them annoyingly hard to dodge, but the concept is pretty neat, and the music wasn't bad either. I wasn't a great fan of the graphics, because they seemed really basic to me, but it fits the theme well. Good job.
Definitely needs more Sanic. But honestly, the double cube control mechanic could have been used for something better than this. Currently there's not much here, but it has potential. It doesn't even have much to do with Sanic apart from the music, which is disappointing. Gotta go faster next time :p
I feel the white dots move too slowly to be able to effectively dodge the red dots, but that adds a sense of tension to the game sorta. The graphical style is nice, and the mood was a little tense, but I felt like I didn't have as much effect on the white dots moving as I'd hoped. The concept as a whole is really cool though, I had fun playing it. Great job, a very strong entry!
This is pretty well made. The mechanics work well, and the voice acting is cool :p. The difficulty definitely ramps up quite quickly, which isn't bad, I just wish I had a larger window to be able to dodge out of the way of the squares. Good work though, it plays really well.
It has a nice atmosphere to it, but I'm not entirely sure what I'm doing. There doesn't seem to be much 'game' in this game, because it's not clear what the mechanics are entirely, but it's very calming. The minimalist audio and graphics work well with the general tone of the game, so it's not a bad entry by any means. Good work achieving this look and feel.
This was brilliant. I loved the sounds (they went very well with the screen shake), and the player moved well. It was very challenging, but that just made me play it more and more. The pace of the blocks moving is great too, and if you were to continue this again, I'd suggest adding a couple more variants of level, even if just a re-skin, because this one level is really awesome. Awesome job!
I really like this one. It's quite distinctive and different from most of what I've looked at so far, and it's pretty addictive trying to get as many points as possible. The timer/score didn't confuse me personally, but I can totally see why it would confuse people - maybe switching to a more conventional system would be better, so that players don't need to spend ages figuring out their score, when they could be using that time better to make more words. The graphics are awesome, it has a nice retro 'educational game' feel to it, but isn't boring. Nice work.
This isn't too bad, although I feel a lot more could have been done with it. For one, I notice it's a Unity game, but I'm forced to use the arrow keys to move - it's so easy to also map WASD to move. The gameplay isn't that bad, the controls are pretty responsive, but attacking enemies felt a little bit annoying - the sword didn't swing very far, so I always ended up swinging quite late to compensate, and frequently died that way. That said, the graphics were alright, if a little basic, and the audio was also pretty good. Overall, not that bad, good work.
This was fairly fun, although the controls were quite off for me, because it was difficult to control the ship and aim at enemies at the same time. The sounds were alright, and the graphics were pretty good too (the bullets looked top notch, good job on those). I think possibly, this could be an awesome 'twin-stick' shooter, where you use the mouse to aim the weapons, and still WASD to move. Overall, it was okay, just hurt a little bit by the controls. But good job, it was at least playable!
This is really cool. The graphical style and the audio work well together, although the music was a tad repetitive. Most of the time, when I died, the enemy robots would either explode immediately or warp outside the level into the top-left corner. The level transitions were really great though, and the controls were fairly responsive. Good job, this was enjoyable.
This is an extremely strong entry. While I feel the controls are a tad awkward sometimes, they also make the game sorta difficult, so I think these controls are perfect, as they reflect how difficult it would be for an actual cargo ship in space. The graphics and audio are superb, I'm not sure how you could get this level of both into a Ludum Dare game! There's a surprisingly large amount of polish too, such as the buttons in the menu moving into place rather than being static - it's small, but it really makes the game feel complete. It's really fun, I liked it. Great job!
The music made this feel pretty atmospheric, and the graphics are pretty cool too. I wasn't expecting this, but it was a pleasant surprise. I'd perhaps say add more things to do to make it slightly more challenging, but it's a very good entry nonetheless. Great work, I'd like to see more games in this style.
It wasn't really a game as such, more of a message you were trying to convey, but it worked pretty well. I think it's an interesting concept, but it would've been nice to be able to interact with more of the objects on the screen - I tried clicking on everything, but only clicking on the man did anything. That said, it conveyed its message very well.
It's quite a simple game, and there are a couple bugs (the player and enemy could spawn in walls for example), but the art and music was pretty cool, and the 'weapon' was pretty funny :)
I'd say a cooldown bar or something would be helpful, because it's hard for the player to tell when the next song is ready. Other than those (easily fixable) bugs, it's a pretty cool game.
This is a really nice game! I liked the approach to the theme, and the simple gameplay was easy to follow, yet addictive. The art was pretty decent, and went well with the simplicity of the game as a whole. I think the player and 'soldiers' are very cute! The sound effects also work really well with the game's general aesthetics. My only complaints are that sometimes while picking up a correct weapon, you also pick up an incorrect one, because the enemies are on top of each other. Also, sometimes it's a little difficult to move AND pick up weapons at the same time - perhaps mapping the mouse button to 'pickup' will help with that? Oh, and you should make the music loop too! Really good job, I liked it :)
A really relaxing game! I like the simple art style, the birds especially look really crisp flying across the screen. The colour changes were also nice. I'd say the music is pretty effective because it matches the simplicity of the graphics and gameplay, but it gets a bit repetitive rather quickly. There was a time bug at the end (01:102:40), but nothing major!
A really good entry, very calming!
Wow, this is very impressive! It's very fun and has a really good take on the theme, and the art is all absolutely sublime (those trees man!). The music is very well done, my only gripe being that the part where it loops is a bit sudden - at that point I'm just splitting hairs really, because the music is of such high quality! It felt very satisfying firing 20 guns at once, but I only reached the point where I had that many in later waves (maybe wave 5?), so I'd suggest possibly speeding up the difficulty increase. This is such a strong entry, well done!
I liked the idea, but I think a lot more could have been done with the execution. I didn't figure out how to drag items until I had about 80 seconds left, because the drag mechanic wasn't very clear or intuitive, so I wasn't sure what to do initially. It's a nice idea, and I think it'd be a good game if the mechanics were worked on just a little bit more.
I think it's a cool concept, but it needs a bit of refining. I like the lighting mechanic, but I feel like it'd work a lot better if the green enemies were a bit smarter - they seemed to love walking into walls a lot! At first, I didn't realise that throwing fire before the cooldown had reached zero would kill me - perhaps instead of killing the player, just don't let them throw fire during cooldown? As others have said, the cooldown's a bit long. I think if the enemies were dangerous, then the game would feel much more tense - not being able to see all enemies at once - and would boost the Mood score by a lot. That said, the artwork was very nice for the pedestals, fire and the text. Good job.
The artwork and soundtrack for this are beautiful, very well done for a Ludum Dare game. I'd say the combat is a little basic, and not really unconventional as such, plus it'd be nice for the enemies to do some kind of animation when they attack, but given the timeframe, it's still pretty decent. Really good job overall!
It was a pretty funny game with great art and pretty good music. I liked the tower defense idea, although I got a little confused initially how the animals interact, but I got the hang of it eventually. The animations were really swish too! Great job.
Thanks for all the feedback so far everyone, I'm thinking of doing a post-compo version, so I need all the feedback I can get! @randoman yep, you can regain friendship power - just past the broken fence (in the main screenshot on this page), there's an 'ammo' crate :) I'll make it clearer in my post-compo version :D
I liked it, it was a fun game! I'd say it is a bit of a strain when you have to click so much, especially as it gets very hectic very quickly, perhaps a rapid fire mode would have been better? I thought the enemy sprites were really cute, especially the king germ, but the difference in art style between the main menu, the player/enemies and the score counter were a little weird (but all individually high-quality). The music is a good fit, but surprisingly repetitive. A cool idea, very good take on the theme, but it could do with a little more expansion (more enemy types etc). Good work!
Yeah, I'm aware of a couple bugs and glitches, but I'm working on fixing them!
The Q button is supposed to switch between weapons (yours or you opponents) in order to attack or defend certain points, but it just happens that the first level only has one weapon for each ship and the game crashes on the second level. I was thinking of adding a note or something to explain this, but I ran out of time - again, I'll be doing a post-comp version soon if you'd like to try it out afterwards! I'll make sure different levels have more than one weapon per ship each, so that the Q button has a little more use. It's a damn shame later levels are all bugged out, because some later ones have multiple weapons per ship! I'll also add more weapon varieties, although the difference won't be huge.
Supporting different resolutions and aspect ratios is something I had a bit of trouble with - I'm working on a 1080p 16:9 screen, so during development, that's what it was easiest to test out in terms of UI. I really (really really really) need to work on the UI!
Thanks for playing though, and thanks for the feedback!
I liked the idea, but I agree with a lot of people here that the movement wasn't as smooth as it could be. However, good job on making a game with Java!
Also, I tried putting my crates on the truck, but I couldn't seem to (every time I used the action key, it just sawed the truck instead). At one point, I also got stuck inside the truck, so I presume that's a bug that needs fixing. I liked the robot's animations and sprites though. Good luck with a post-competition version if you make one!
ELEPHAAANT! I love the humour in this game! I liked the really simple art assets - they were consistent at least. The gameplay was fun, although there were a couple of times where nothing seemed to spawn after a while (or do I mean after a whale? :p )
It's very well made - especially for your first Ludum Dare - great job on the music too! A great entry.
I really like the graphics and animations especially! The controls need a bit more work - they're almost there, but sometimes movement is a bit unnatural - but apart from that, it's a really solid entry. The sound effects get a tiny bit repetitive, but the shapeshift mechanic fits the theme extremely well. Nice job.
I like the idea, but it's a shame there's no win or lose condition. That'd really help this game shine. The graphics are really cool though, as are the animations and the movements of both armies as they clash. A post-jam version would be great, if you have any plans for one!
I thought this was a really good submission! The hand-drawn art style works much better than I'd expect, and the general idea of growing a tree is really nice too. I think the music was repetitive, but good in its own right. With a bit of work, I think this could be really cool. Nice work!
As a Metal Gear Solid fan, I really liked it! It definitely needs some work, but the animations and graphical style could definitely work in a more fleshed-out game. I didn't find the shapeshifting all that useful - the RC car just alerted enemies straight away, for example - but I like the idea of using shapeshifting for stealth games. I'd love to see a post-comp version!
You probably just got unlucky, I didn't balance the item spawning very well at all. The chance of a room having an item in it was just a random formula I made up (it's 100 / ((difficulty^2 + 2.5) * 25). I might change it to guarantee a minimum number of items for an updated version.
Yeah, note 2 is the bug on the final floor, which is so enraging because it's a one-line fix I introduced shortly before the deadline without realising at the time, and fixed like right after 2am :p I guess the rules let me fix a bug like that, but I'm probably going to work on this game a bit anyway.
Thanks for playing, I'm glad you liked the gameplay and graphics! Although with regards to character customisation, it's possible for you to look identical to the enemies, so I should probably change that too...
Yeah I agree, I'm going to work on the time mechanic a bit and make sure it feels fun. A lot of the aesthetics of this game were based on my Ludum Dare 32 entry, but I don't think I quite made shooting as fun for this one. I'm gonna make rooms bigger, so that means more enemies and more bullets. I intended the bullet negation mechanic to be something players would feel skilful for pulling off, but that's clearly not the case because it's way too easy to just spam bullets.
And yeah, I didn't have any time to make music (not that it would've been any good anyway...), so I wasn't sure how loud the sound effects were because I had no music to use as a reference. It wouldn't take long to add an options menu with an option for sound effect volume.
I've encountered the second bug you mentioned (in the post-comp version) a couple of times, but it seemed really rare for me. I'll have to look into how that found its way in the game- it's likely down to the way enemies handle getting hit, but I'm going to re-write the enemy AI anyway.
I really missed the potential of the powerups, but once I figure out a better way of spawning them, it should be much better.
Thanks for playing and I'm glad people seem to be enjoying the art and the time mechanic!
I like the idea, and it fits the theme pretty well. It's a little difficult to control, but that keeps it from being too easy. Now the music is stuck in my head too...
The "aaahhh help me!" sound effect was pretty funny (I'm not sure if it was meant to be, but I mean that as a compliment). I think it might help if the civilians said different stuff, not just the same phrase over and over (same goes for the police too). The music track in the background was good and I liked the graphics - the dark tone set the mood well. It was also pretty fun running after people and mauling them! Good job.
What did I just play :p
I liked the idea - it's certainly different! I seemed to just get eradicated with a hailstorm of cheese with most combinations. Maybe one day I will find love.
Also, as someone else has said, the downloads page could do with a different colour scheme, but that's not part of the game so it's fine. I'd like to see how you could expand on this. Good job, especially if you haven't been programming for long!
I really like the idea! It's a clever interpretation of the theme and it's fun to play. I think you should try to add an AI to the single-player mode, which would make it a lot more fun to play, and perhaps have obstacles or different shaped stages that make it harder to get to all the tiny squares.
The sneaking mechanics could do with some refinement, as the monsters always found me (I didn't finish the game because of that), and the controls were a tiny bit awkward. However,the low-poly graphical style was very pretty and the sounds and music were really well-made. Good use of the theme too, as different areas required different shapeshift forms. It also has a great mood, better than all of the games I've played so far. I really like it - I hope you continue to develop it and flesh out some of the mechanics!
I like the concept. It could certainly use more work - I found myself just using circle most of the time, although square has its uses, but triangle seems the most underused. Triangle did seem to make me bob in the water when pointing down though, which was a nice touch. It's a simple but effective use of the theme though. Good job.
I really like the gameplay - it's simple, but it's just stripped to the bare essentials. It's a really well-executed, distilled gaming experience. Same with the graphics - simple, but nothing is wasted - none of the in-game elements or UI is irrelevant. In that sense, if you removed anything, it wouldn't be the same game. Great job! I would say to make the box spin a little faster so that you don't *only just* make it if a colour spawns that's on the opposite side on the cube, but apart from that, there are no problems (although even that one is just me nitpicking).
I loved the intro! A very serious story to set the tone :p
I liked the graphics too - the style fits the game really well. However, there were a few bugs - as you know - which is unfortunate, but understandable given the time constraint. Good work nonetheless, I wish more Ludum Dare games had an intro as good as this one!
This is a really strong entry! I think the selling point for this game was the music. It really helped to set the tone and was amazingly well-made. I liked that each section had its own music, it's impressive that you got so much music done in the time.
I also loved the graphics - the pixel art style was cute, and everything is consistently scaled based on its pixel density. There was also a variety because of the different stages of the game and it's great that there were bespoke graphics for some sections. However, as others have said, the player walk cycle is a little odd because it doesn't switch to the direction you're moving/facing immediately. But the actual cycles look pretty darn nice. The lighting effects also blended well with the pixel style.
As for the gameplay, it was basic but fairly engrossing; enough for me to want to complete the game, anyway. I had a few issues with aiming fireballs because of the controls though, I would have liked to aim using my mouse in a direction to fire the fireballs. Also, the colliders for the ghosts felt a tad large, as I got hit a few times when I thought I was relatively far from the ghost.
In all though, I really liked the entry and think it's one of the stronger entries I've played. Great job!
The controls were a bit fiddly, but apart from that this game was pretty fun. I'd suggest perhaps mapping aiming to mouse movement so that the controls are less fiddly on a mouse and keyboard? Although I suppose the tank's cannon would turn too fast.
I liked the different kinds of tank you had to fight - that helped make things feel different and fresh. As others have said, I do feel some sound effects would have helped the game feel better - it's currently a bit weird that there's no explosion sound when a bullet hits a tank or the wall.
I like the individual graphics for the arena and the tanks, but since they're in a pixel art style, I'd suggest changing things so everything has the same pixel scale. Currently one 'pixel' of the ground, walls and obstacles is larger than one 'pixel' of the tank.
If you continued making this game, I would start with some simple SFX and perhaps even background music, then I'd suggest having different sizes and layouts of arena. I think what you currently have is pretty fun though, great entry!
The first thing I noticed was that in the intro cutscene (great job getting one into an LD entry by the way), the text rendering broke a bit and the right-hand column of pixels just didn't show up on some letters, making it hard to read.
The animation on the ant was basic, but still great, and I liked the art style, even if it was a bit simplistic. The music was the same really - simple, but I liked it. As a whole package, the game is consistent and that's the best thing to get nailed straight away - artistic cohesion.
There's not much else to say really, but I did enjoy it and laughed when I got to the end and suddenly won - I wasn't expecting it to be over quite so quickly. If you decide to continue it though, add a bit more in terms of content. I think that's my only real complaint apart from the text thing. Good job overall!
I really liked it! The art style is pretty nice (I liked the character design and the tree that appears on the main menu and as a backdrop in the game), and there were some small graphical touches such as the leaves falling off the tree that made the level feel slightly more alive, but not energetic.
I would say that the mechanic where you jump and pull the lever at the same time is a bit tricky, as someone has already said, but apart from that (and a bug I had once where jumping as normal launched me in the air, I think I must have got caught on a box or something and the game might have got confused), the mechanics and controls seemed fine.
I would have loved it if you'd gotten the level transforming in the game, maybe if you have time to continue making this game you could add it? Also, I don't think the clock ticking is too out-of-place, for me having that instead of other background music, and combined with the footstep sounds, made the room feel relaxing and quiet, like the sort of room you could sit down in for and read a book or something. But since other people have said it feels like the sort of sound you'd get if there were a timer, I'd suggest another quiet ambient track. Something with very little energy, to keep the relaxing feeling.
I played to the end and enjoyed it. You should totally continue this a bit and add more levels :)
I'll say what everyone else is saying: what the heck is going on???
This is a really strange, um, game, but it was interesting enough for me to want to see what happens at the end. I took is as being some sort of metaphor for making games, the room you're in feels like it's getting smaller due to the pressure and there's so much background noise that's it's hard to distinguish what any of them are saying. I took the voices to symbolise the ideas you have for a Ludum Dare entry. Then, when you feel almost overwhelmed by the sounds of those ideas, the 48 hours is up, so you launch your game into the stratosphere for all to see. But then it glitches out! And you're back to square one, ready for the next Ludum Dare to loop around.
Or, maybe I'm just over-analysing it and it was just an experiment to make a really neat glitch effect. In which case, great work on the totally awesome glitch effect! Also, I liked the music once you launch and I particularly liked that the initial launch and breaking through the Earth's surface lined up perfectly with the music.
I would have liked something to interact with instead of just being able to walk around. None of my input made any difference even if I did walk and look around. Maybe that's what you were going for, but it would be interesting to explore this idea of feeling the pressure of game development by having a room to interact with. Again, unless I'm wide of the mark with what the game symbolises.
Oh, and on a technical note, I did notice one of the images of the galaxies was clipping when I looked at it. I see you used Unity, so try upping the far clip plane distance on the camera and that problem should disappear. That's the only technical problem I found, and it's a trivially-fixable one.
It's the strangest game I've played so far, so I'll give you a "what the hell is going on" out of ten.
I loved this game, the humour is leaps and bounds ahead of the other games I've played so far. Without the humour, the game wouldn't have really worked because the gameplay is so basic - but together they work like a charm.
I really liked the bleepy bloopy soundtrack too. The fact each area has its own tune is impressive in its own right, and the part of Los Diablos where the music stops was really funny because of the juxtaposition of a pseudo-serious tone and the game's ridiculous premise of furniture collection.
It's a shame the third level was so underdeveloped, but even then, instead of cutting it you weaved it into the existing humour of the game. It shouldn't work so well, but it just does. To be fair, God must have really let himself go if all he could manage in 48 hours was a few dinosaurs, a small town and an unfinished future city. I expect a working planet in the next 5 days or I'm demanding to see God's manager.
I think the art style is nice too, it's amazing how many Pico-8 games I see that use its limitations to their advantage. You even got nice little graphical touches in like the shining effect on the furniture when you collect them.
As for the gameplay, while it's really basic, I also feel it's polished and I didn't find any horrid bugs. I liked the part of the dinosaur level where you kill the largest dinosaur the same way you killed the others, by stomping on it. That was way funnier than if you'd made up some new mechanic for the boss dinosaur. I didn't realise at first you had to stomp on them, but I pretty quickly figured it out after dying once.
A great entry, one of the highlights of LD37 for me! Good job on getting such a polished and humour-rich game done in 48 hours.
I liked the idea behind this entry. It's a shame it was so short, I'd have loved more levels, but I understand that getting the mechanic to work and take into account collisions with future time states must have taken a while.
I appreciate what you were going for with the time-switching effect, but it's perhaps a little too much for me - it feels a tad too demanding on the eyes. Correct me if I'm wrong, but is the game just an alignment of the three time states in the z-direction, and to do the switching effect, you just move forward and back really quick? Because I think it's the part where the camera intersects the back wall of one of the rooms that's a bit jarring. Do keep the effect - I like it - but I think it needs a tiny bit of refinement.
I thought the music was a little strange but I liked it. Including music sure made the game feel a lot less empty, which is a common occurrence in Ludum Dare entries, including my own.
If you were to continue this game further, I'd suggest fleshing out the game with some more interesting scenery. If you pick a theme, like I dunno, a factory theme, you could change the walls so they're steel drums, machinery or other types of boxes, instead of just blank walls.
You could also introduce other mechanics, such as obstacles that also move through time. A suggestion would be something such as a conveyor belt which constantly moves, so it matters how long you spend in a timeframe. Say, if you spend too long with the box on a conveyor belt in the present, it will have missed its destination in the future because it would have moved too far. I don't think you would have to modify the switching through time or the obstacle-checking you've already implemented to do something like that.
I feel the scope for a puzzle game like this is pretty wide, but I'd like to see this continued because I love the base mechanic. A good entry, but it needs expanding a bit I think. You've got the core mechanic almost nailed though, so good job.
And that, qualia, is why you never use a physics-based character controller unless you make raycast checks everywhere :p
I like the idea a lot, and the game feels at least complete enough that I had fun playing it. It's a real shame you didn't get some of the desired features in, because they would've been great. You should continue developing this and try to get some of those features in, I'd love to see them.
I especially liked the character design. It's sorta goofy, but that's what I like about it so much. The animations really work together with the design of the character.
I also like the simplistic art style you chose. The bugs are just rectangles, but they don't need to be more detailed at all, and almost everything is mostly block-coloured but it gives the game a playful feel.
It would have been great to have some background music, but that's already on your list of possible features so I guess you already know that :p the sound effects of the buggers getting squished was cool, but I would suggest having a few different death sounds so it's not just one really loud version of the same sound when you kill 5 at once and instead each bugger has a randomised death sound.
As for the gameplay, I found it enjoyable, if a little basic. There's really not much I would change, so good job on the gameplay.
This is a nice entry, good work! I'd like to see you continue working on this.
I *almost* made it to the end of the non-post-comp version, but I think my brain broke and I couldn't quite make it, which is a shame. However, the puzzles are really well-designed and I found it very fun bashing my head against the table trying to figure out what the next move was.
The postcomp version is a lot less visually confusing I think, although I know it's difficult to get so much information into such tiny 5x5 tiles. I think making the floor grey made a world of difference though, as some colours (especially red) contrasted really strongly with the green floor. The multiple-colour tiles are much better in the post-comp version too - adding black in the negative space makes things much clearer.
I'm not actually sure what I'd improve on from the post-comp version. Without the theme limitation, my only real suggestion would be more levels I guess, possibly some easier ones beforehand to ease the player in.
Great puzzle game entry!
I really liked this one! An escape room game is a natural fit for One Room, and you pulled it off really well. As everyone else has pretty much said, the safe code was tricky, but I felt like a goddamn genius when I finally worked it out, instead of frustrated that I couldn't get it for so long. It's difficult to strike the correct balance between a challenging puzzle and a frustratingly hard one, so nice job getting it just about right.
I'm mostly impressed that you got a 3D game working so well within the time limit, and the puzzles were all complete with no bugs that I could find. The art style was well-executed and consistent (and somewhat similar to my own entry, actually!) and I liked the fact you got so much all packed into a tiny area.
My one complaint would be that I wish there was some music in it. Something simple just to play in the background, a soothing ambient track would have done the job, although I do understand how hard it can be to get music into an LD entry.
Again, the safe code part of the puzzle was very well devised and tripped me up for a good few minutes, but I eventually got it. A very nice entry.
I love how you've implemented the theme! I'm a bit jealous of those level transitions and the claw arms that move everything around, I wish I'd thought of that.
The art style is absolutely gorgeous and is an example of minimalism done right and I definitely feel the Zelda inspiration in the design of the rooms, enemies and obstacles. Even though the room was small, the space was put to good use in terms of the tiles and obstacles used in each... well, room.
I did feel it was a tad difficult to jump over spikes vertically and died a couple of times from attempting it, but I guess that's just part of the game's difficulty. I would suggest being slightly more lenient with jumping over spikes, but it's really just me being bad at the game more than anything :p
I'd have loved if there were some background music, it would've tied the game together really nicely. But as it is, the sound effects in the game are put to good use.
It's the best game I've rated this far, so great job!
The mechanics of this game are very simple, so it's easy to grasp. I tried all the modes, and I'm rather bad at Hard and Pro modes. I've never been that good at typing...
-I'll be honest, I'm not a fan of the music. It's a tad too loud, like others have said, but it's also just weird and high-pitched. Try that melody with a lower pitch and perhaps a different instrument and it might be a bit better!
-At higher speeds, it's a bit hard to read the characters on each tile as they're falling. It might be because of the texturing on the tiles, I'm not sure.
-Try adding different modes where the tiles fall much slower but there are several on screen at a time, similar to how Pro Mode works but more exaggerated, like maybe ten tiles on screen. It would feel more hectic, plus each tile would be more readable due to falling slower. So instead of increasing speed for each difficulty, increase the rate at which tiles spawn.
I didn't realise how fat my fingers were until I tried Pro Mode haha. A good entry that just needs a few tweaks, I think.
EDIT: If you really want to test people's skills, add punctuation and number tiles. Call it Hell Mode or something, because that would be truly evil.
I love this! I don't think I really have anything bad to say at all, so great job!
-I really like the blob effect. That, coupled with the basic colours and grey background, make for a striking visual style.
-The controls are very simple once you get used to them and the game is easy to play and intuitive. I don't mind the control setup, although a couple other users noted difficulty with them, so perhaps allowing customisation would be good.
-The music is great. It's very catchy, and the sound effects don't start to get annoying, which is common in LD games.
-It's very addictive. There's something so satisfying about taking over whole portions of the map and watching your opponents try in vain to take back the spawners you just stole from them.
The only thing to note really is that it's a bit easy, but that isn't really a problem. Although it might be cool to add a 'hard mode' with more advanced or aggressive AI. Great job with this game.
I very much like the idea - blending two genres like this can go either way, but you've managed to pull it off - and I like the graphical style.
-The controls for the platforming sections are far too floaty and slippery. A couple of times, I slipped off the side of (I think) the second jump because I kept the D key held when the character's head got caught on a platform and they floated further to the right than I anticipated.
-Continuing from that point, perhaps space out the platforms that are in a zig-zag pattern so that there is more headroom for the player to jump.
-I like the fact that the first puzzle is so simple - it works extremely well as a tutorial level for the puzzle sections. The mechanic is easy to grasp due to the inclusion of this introductory puzzle. Then, the next puzzle introduces different shapes in another safe and simple setting.
-I liked the music, but it's a tad quiet compared to the other sound effects.
-The coffee meter depletes so fast that if I made a single mistake on the platforming sections, I was already doomed. This isn't helped by the fact you have to start over. Or at least, I didn't get far enough to reach any checkpoint... I know I just praised the introduction level, but it gets annoying after the 6th time. :p
-While I do really like the idea of the visibility reducing as the coffee meter depletes (it reminds me of when your eyes start to shut themselves when you're REALLY tired), the effect is perhaps a little too extreme here. I think that's just my opinion, but it's one of the many things that make the platforming difficult.
-I do appreciate that the puzzle levels don't have a timer of any sort. I think the platformer sections ought to be a bit hectic (just toned down a little), with the puzzle levels acting as a well-needed cooldown period.
It's a solid idea - it just needs a bit of refinement for the platforming sections. Why not try tweaking things a bit and upload a post-competition version? Also, an idea that just popped into my head:
-When the coffee meter is low, you could try blurring the scene and adding snoring sounds or something? I think you'd have room to add something like that if the current eye-shutting effect was toned down slightly. It'd really feel like you're falling asleep then!
My bad! I swear I put in the links, apparently they didn't show up... They should be there now though.
Alright I've definitely put the links in twice now. Let me try again. This might be a bug?
@hilvon Yup, they're still refusing to show up in the Links section, but whatever. At least there are links somewhere. :p
@wevel Yeah, the gems are basically just a score system. If I continue the game, I'll maybe make them into currency of some sort that let you buy stuff to help you do each task more efficiently.
Thanks for the feedback!
@milano23 I need some sort of hook to make people keep wanting to go back to each minigame, you're right. The obvious thing to note is that there's no challenge in any of the games - two of them basically involve waving the mouse around as fast as possible, and the other involves clicking on up to eight things. But hey, game jam time constraints and all. ;)
@thesand The text telling you to rotate the turbine was accidentally left in from the Wind Turbine level, it's a silly mistake on my part! You're just supposed to click the sticks to activate them, then leave it. I'll change that text soon.
@loktor Glad you liked the sounds. I tried pushing Bfxr as hard as I could to get the best sound I could manage for the gems. I've gotta get more sounds in for the other minigames too.
I've been trying to get this art style nailed for a while, so really it's all down to practice! Trick is basically to take primitive shapes and deform them a bit so they look a tad more interesting. The coal is just subdivided, flattened cubes with the front face scaled down, for example.
I do need to work on the Wind Turbine and Nuclear Power minigames. They're the ones I wasn't sure about in terms of gameplay. But I'm glad you both liked the Coal Mining game - I got sidetracked often during development just mining as far as I could go! And @thesand I'll have to mention you can click+drag, that's true.
I do want to set up a shop for the gems, I'm just not sure what form it'll take yet. Time to brainstorm ideas I guess!
And once I've polished up all that, I might start to think about adding other minigames, but only when I think the existing three feel satisfying to play.
@maybelaterx I love the idea of audiovisual feedback when one power source is running out! I toyed with the idea of having a lose condition (say, fall below a certain power level), but ultimately decided against it. I do agree that a higher level of difficulty in some of the games would help.
The blurry texts were kinda just a quick hack. Unity'd built-in 3D Text objects render in front of everything so they weren't great for this, so I just made a bunch of textured quads. But I'm redoing it now with TextMesh Pro for a postcomp version!
The wind turbine really does need its gameplay refined a bit. I couldn't get it working quite as I wanted in time so I stuck with something that "worked". I do like that approach for the Nuclear Power minigame - I could make it a bit like those games where you have to guide a metal ring over a wire without them touching?
The transitions were also the first thing that "worked". I'd like them to be faster, but I did them using Unity's built-in UI elements and their speed is dependent on screen resolution. It's really silly, I know. :p
And yes, the method for entering other levels was the first quick thing I thought of. I'll refine that somehow. Also seeing as the whole game uses the mouse, I'd rather not have Esc to back out to the Generator Room.
I'd really love to put more sound in my games, but it's the Catch-22 that I don't work with sound because I don't know how, and I don't know how because I never work with sound...
@randomphantom I've been looking for a way to incorporate more challenge into each of the games. I like the idea of finding a mine in the mine haha.
I could do something silly like the turbine flying off into space if you spin it too fast. And for the Nuclear Power Plant, I suppose I could have a mechanic where the plant suffers a meltdown if you leave fuel rods in there too long.
Thanks for the feedback!
I liked the graphical style and the sound effects. However, I wasn't exactly sure what to do in the room with one skull and a homing rocket spawner. I figured out that hitting the rockets deflected them, but I couldn't make them hit the skull or anything so I got stuck in that room.
-The idea of one of your moves also acting as health is a really good idea.
-I found it fairly punishing that rockets killed you in one hit.
-The whole things reminds me a bit of n++.
In all, I like the idea, I just feel the level I mentioned probably needs clarifying a bit.
I do like this game. The graphical style is a little basic but works well, and with a little refinement I think this game could be made quite pretty.
-Once or twice, the game gave me a level that was already complete, or needed only one move to complete. To mirror what others have said, the level generator needs a little work.
-Every level I had was solvable by making a straight line between the start and end. I'd have liked more interesting puzzles where I was required to make a weaving line around the level.
-A great next step would be to implement 4x4, 5x5 etc levels. Having a larger grid gives you much more leeway with the level generation.
-As already noted, the controls are a little unresponsive. If I click on a tile quickly after clicking the last one, it won't move.
-An animation and sound effect when a tile moves into place would be cool, although as someone who doesn't make many sounds myself, I know how daunting that can be!
-If you do implement larger and more complex levels, maybe change the colour scheme a bit for each difficulty tier? Some variation in the visuals keeps things from getting a bit samey.
-Completely empty tiles with no "pipes" would allow for more interesting puzzles.
-Thankfully, I never came across an impossible puzzle.
It's a good entry and a solid idea, but the level generation algorithm needs a little more work. The rest of the game is constructed well and is highly accessible due to the simplicity of the mechanics.
A pretty simple entry, but it works pretty well. I like the interpretation of the theme. I have a few bits of feedback that might help improve the game:
-I like the sound effects, but they're a little quiet and relying on only audio feedback isn't the most reliable way of telling the player how long they have left. You could put a visual heart monitor along the bottom to go with the sound effect, then I think it'd be perfect.
-The text on the instruction page is a tad hard to read because of the background. It might help to make the font a little bolder perhaps?
Apart from that, it's pretty good. Your sprites are very cute and I didn't encounter any bugs.
I really like the visual effects in this game! The lighting around the ball at the beginning is a cool effect and the particles that spray out of defeated enemies are kinda cool.
-You can't jump while standing still and there is no air control on jumps, so you sorta go flying across the stage sometimes. I didn't jump because of these reasons, although jumping isn't necessarily required in this game.
-If you fix jumping a bit, then perhaps alternative levels with platforms or something more interesting to stand on might be cool.
-Since the red enemy drops are meant to increase the flame's size, why not make them glow with the nice effect from the start? It'd help to make them more noticeable.
-I'm a huge fan of the darkness aesthetic you've gone with. It's too easy to make a game feel too dark, but I think you've nailed it.
-I like the sound effects, but mostly because they sound like you made some of them with your own voice. :p
-The waves are a cool idea, and I managed to hold on through them, somehow. I did two Uber Waves and got to 200s, then I quit the game because it was mostly the same thing over and over.
-Do include some spooky atmospheric music if you can - it would tie the game together very well.
-My main tactic was to just spam shots, as you can imagine. I would appreciate an option to just hold the mouse button down to automatically shoot repeatedly - it helps reduce muscle strain for people's wrists.
-Your trees look nice.
-I'm not even sure what the enemies were supposed to be, but they look spooky so it works anyway.
A really strong entry and a very fun game. There's something satisfying about watching enemies fall down over and over again!
I really like the idea! I played the single-player mode because I don't have anyone to hand to try the multiplayer mode with, but checked the multiplayer mode for clarification on the game mechanics.
-I have to agree with @huvaakoodia that it would be greatly helpful to have a visual representation of the shadow's turn in single-player mode. I too wasn't entirely sure how my people died sometimes.
-Perhaps include instructions within the game? A tutorial mode that shows visually how each movement option operates for both teams would help. It wasn't immediately clear to me that level 1 shadows can move one space THEN they kill anything one space away from them including diagonals.
-I did unfortunately encounter a bug twice. Not sure what it means because I don't use Game Maker, but here it is:
Unable to find any instance for object index '100293' name '
Sorry that I can't remember the circumstances in which it occurred!
The graphics are great, especially the animations. The animation of a human being swallowed by the ground is cute, even if it's resulting in their untimely death. :p
The music is very catchy, and I'm impressed that there are multiple tracks for the title screen, the actual game and a little jingle when you lose (and I assume also when you win, but I didn't manage that haha).
Just a couple quality-of-life fixes are needed I think, so it's most of the way there!
I liked this, it's a pretty polished game. I did get to one wave where it threw tons of white ones at me and I couldn't handle it, but it was well-balanced until then. I have a couple points to make:
-It took me a while to decipher what the UI on the left was saying. There's a lot of densely-packed information, so if it were possible to drip-feed that to the player it may help.
-The laser sound is quite repetitive. If some of the upgrades changed the sounds made by turrets, that may help.
-I clicked on an empty tile and accidentally pressed Y instead of T, and it took some funds and applied the upgrade despite there being no turret there. The same didn't happen if picked an empty tile and clicked the UI buttons. It seems like a reeeeally minor bug.
I liked the graphics, such as the life and power indicators around objects and the turret models. In all, I think it's a solid entry. I think a variety of turret types to match the upgrades would make things look cooler, like adding a little solar panel on top of a turret when you use the solar panel upgrade.
EDIT: The game's mechanics are also simple to get to grips with and I like the application of the theme. If you can work on this a little longer, I think it would make a very competent tower defence game!
EDIT 2: Oh and making every upgrade also have a drawback is a very interesting mechanic, I love it.
This is a solid platformer and the controls are tight. The graphics are really simple and cute, but crucially they're coherent so for that you score highly on graphics! My general feedback on how to improve it would be:
-I didn't like the placement of the jump button. Personally, I would have switched the recharge and jump buttons, or better yet, allow the player to customise the button layout.
-It gets a bit hard, but mostly because of the above control issue. That's not an issue in and of itself, but having to do the easy start of the level each time I die gets a little grating. Adding checkpoints mid-level would help mitigate that.
-If you were to continue this, more enemy variety would be cool. Both the player and the enemies were only able to shoot sideways, but I would have found it useful to shoot in more directions. You seem to have been trying to make things a bit tricky, so a few other enemy types with their own quirks would achieve that and also be more interesting for the player.
-Make a bleepy-bloopy fanfare tune when you beat a level! :)
-One thing you may want to consider is making shooting bullets cost power. If you were to expand the game with more levels or whatever, you might want a scenario where you want to penalise the player for just spraying bullets to teach them to be conservative with them.
I didn't get past Level 2, but I watched your gameplay video and the rockets in Level 3 are kinda funny. Not even remotely fair, but there are plenty of games that pull off the "rage-inducing unfairness" thing pretty well. If you want to go for that angle, then go the whole hog! Add platforms that open under your feet, for example.
I also didn't encounter any bugs (or at least, nothing too noticeable), which is a huge bonus. This is a really good first Ludum Dare, great job.
This game is really hard. :O
I'd normally run five miles away from anything with "Flappy" in the name, but this is pretty good. I really liked the pixel art graphics and especially the music. Only a few other points to make:
-I found that the wrenches always spawned in extremely tight spots, which is obviously intended, but I could never get back out! I personally think that makes it a tad too hard.
-I also felt the hitboxes were a little fiddly, but maybe that's just me.
In all I think this is a solid entry. If you were to expand it, you could try adding different themes or different obstacles.
I thought this was a pretty cool game. The graphics are nice and I really like the music.
-I like the concept of one colour being good and the other being bad, representing + and -.
-It was hard to tell when the triangle enemies were going to change colour, so they hit me a few times.
-The fuzzy border around the electron also made it difficult to know which objects it would collide with.
-I liked the simple gameplay idea. Having only one button was a great idea, although my only criticism of it is that it wore my hand out clicking so fast.
A pretty solid jam entry.
I like the idea behind this game, but as others have mentioned, it's a little bit confusing. I managed to get everything on the list crossed off, although I wasn't sure how I actually managed to get Brainstorming done. It just sorta... happened. Definitely very meta though, and I loved the "game jam programmer" humour. The choice of graphics was absolutely correct, and while the music was strange, I still liked it.
-Someone else mentioned that it would be a good idea to have an 'interact' button so you don't accidentally use something you didn't mean to.
-Maybe make interactable objects glow when you're near them so you know what you're using (or able to use).
-I never did figure out how to make the progress bar fill up. I kept using the computer and it kept giving me the dialogue about writing if-statements. It also mentioned 4 hours passing in that dialogue, but that didn't actually happen - not sure if it's meant to. I was assuming using the computer a lot would increase your progress, but that didn't happen for me.
-I'm assuming that you go to sleep automatically when you don't have any coffee for a while? Maybe add a sleep meter or some other kind of feedback to let you know how long you have until you need to sleep.
I think you nailed the humour of the game jam experience though. I also spend a lot of time staring out the window at 3am during game jams. :p
For a first time jammer, this was a great entry!