Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → DaveDobson
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | Co | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2013 | 26 | Minimalism | Composition with Yellow, Red, and Blue | compo | 201 | 3.57 | 3.24 | 3.88 | 4.15 | 2.93 | 3.11 | 2.95 | 3.14 | 100 | |
| 2012 | 24 | Evolution | Evo | compo | 44 | 3.75 | 3.58 | 3.83 | 3.10 | 3.34 | 2.77 | 3.15 | 3.11 | 100 | |
| 2012 | 23 | Tiny World | Teeming | compo | 265 | 3.25 | 3.00 | 3.38 | 3.82 | 2.95 | 2.43 | 2.18 | 2.71 | 100 |
Fun idea, and a bunch of complexity not apparent from first glance. Success or failure is very random, though, depending on the rain of comets. I tried for a long time to use the bombs to crack the core, but I found them very difficult to do anything with. I really liked the flowing lava and the comets and erosion - some interesting rules and concepts behind those.
Downloaded, but I don't have any idea how to run it.
Neat idea; I like the intro slides a lot to set the mood. The water was very nice. Control of my ship was difficult, and the firing in particular seemed very difficult to do effectively. The enemies seemed to come and go at random whether I hit them or not. I like the upgrade packs - they were fun. A very cool idea for a setting with some great parts - just needs some refining on the gameplay end.
Fun and clever - lots of gameplay for 48 hours. It was hard to see the whole screen to plan shots - maybe I missed instructions or something.
Neat idea; very abstract, and a little hard to understand at first. I got 3 of the points at the same time so I didn't understand why I got them.
Interesting concept, very funny/awesome opening. Gameplay was slightly disappointing for me- I was playing with a laptop trackpad, which is hard, but worse, the mouse was hidden, I could only seem to aim when the invisible mouse cursor happened to be over the window. So, to get aim back, I'd have to stop moving and swish the mouse around until aim was restored. So, I had trouble shooting stuff. But it was very smoothly animated and fun. I share others' concerns with a lack of direction and enemies - I spent the first five minutes wandering around picking up ammo, saw one bad guy who suicided on me, and then nothing. I had no real idea what to do; tried following the red path for a while, but he said that would lead to my doom, so I didn't really want to. But, very funny and well-made despite these minor criticisms - nice work.
Fun and interesting; I think it would be cool with two players but I only have me, and controlling both was hard. I like the control system and the directional arrow, and the panning in and out as needed. Some bigger graphics and sounds would help complete it.
Interesting idea, and fun to watch it play out. The gameplay is very hard to understand without reading the comments below, and even then, the motion of your guys isn't clearly connected to the mouse commands. But it's a cool idea, well-executed; would have to be a bit deeper to be really great.
Really cool; I wish it were longer. A little hard to control or adopt any real strategy. I like the art style. Good work!
I liked this setting and idea, and the graphics were neat. The gameplay was frustrating; the combat seemed way, way too hard, as it was very difficult to kill enemies without taking lots of damage. Even when I had success, it seemed random, and unresponsiveness of the controls was frustrating. But I think it could be very cool; changing the range of the attack to just slightly more would have been a good step for me. Nice work!
Nice game - really fun, and creative. I love how the blue guys split into such tiny things. I wasn't sure exactly how the terrain worked - it seemed to create terrain sometimes, once even on top of my blimp.
Took a while to get used to the controls - it might be more fun if they were a bit more responsive, although that might be harder to run. Fun to go around mining stuff, though, and the upgrade system is quite elaborate. Nice work!
Interesting start to a game - there didn't seem to be much to do other than flee the zombies, but maybe I was missing something. Movement was smooth; it was fun trying to escape the horde.
I liked this a lot! Very funny. The voice and the characterization are so much better than anything else I've seen here, and the 3D stuff works well - I was very surprised when the face turned 3D. I had the square mouse problem like the others - wouldn't work. Also couldn't click on Cylcusphere on the right, and had the softer sound after he backed away. Also, I think toslow should be tooslow, right? :-) Super-fun idea, and very cool, even if I couldn't get it all to work.
Neat game - very nice looking. As others have said, the gameplay is too simple to be engaging for long (although things like Temple Runner aren't much more complex), but it's really well-made and very polished. The music is cool, too.
Well-made and interesting; lots of clever puzzles from simple concepts. One of the best I've seen so far.
I only tested it extensively in Chrome under Windows - what are you using?
Thanks, Rex - I'm not new to game programming, but very new to doing it this fast.
Thanks for the very kind comments, feedback, and suggestions - I appreciate them very much. Once the judging is done I'll make an updated version that incorporates these suggestions.
Thanks for the feedback. There are new features (syms) added starting at level 5, and new level goals at level 7. I agree that 15 is probably too many - didn't have a lot of time for testing. If you noticed, the text mentions 20 (the original number) - I had already reduced it to 15 but forgot to change that. 15 is still high.
olav - was the 25/15 on one of the later levels? On the last couple, you have to shoot all the competitor cells before winning.
tripleVisionGames - thanks for the kind words! I'm glad you enjoyed it.
Thanks for the kind words. I think from the comments here I need to make the eating animation shorter; I kind of liked the feel of not being totally in control of yourself with dividing and eating and swimming, but it's obviously annoying people.
Thanks for the comments. Sorry about the bug, Coffee - if you read this, can you let me know what browser you were using? I can see that I need to make the gameplay a little more exciting for it to be a keeper, but I'm glad people enjoyed it.
Thanks, angelk - yeah there is a small bug where if you start eating a second bacteria while the animation for the first is operating, you only get credit for one. Didn't spot it in time to fix. The pace does need to be a bit more brisk, I think.
I couldn't pull the one block up a row, and I needed to do so to win. This could be pretty cool if it were solvable. I see you've got that fixed post-competition - I wish I could see more of it beyond what's here, because it seems pretty cool. I like the music, too, but it would benefit from a longer loop.
Neat game - but I had trouble figuring out what to do. Very whimsical; using the platformer format for an artsy fable-style story is a cool idea, and I like the way you used the planet theme.
This was fun, although only half-baked. The turret rotation issue was a little frustrating, as was the slow speed that the turret moved relative to the rocks. I missed the different shot types and the satellites completely until I read the Readme - there's a lot of well-hidden complexity there, and I think you'd get better ratings if that were more obvious. Your Readme was really funny, too. A fun one - good work. Could be great with more testing and revision.
Really fun, and nicely complete - tells a fun story. I like the visual style, too - very nice. There's not a ton to do other than fly around and keep an eye on fuel - it might be cool if there were more complexity. Very nice work! I lost once, then did better with fuel and won on my second run-through.
I liked it. The biggest problem for me is there's not a lot of game there, and there's not much feedback to your actions (except when the guys die). If you had some more complex actions (multiple attack types), and some indication of when you or the monsters were wounded, that would help a lot. Controls were very smooth and clear (I liked the directional indicator), and I really liked the graphic style - unusual and engaging.
Windows version is actually a Mac archive - couldn't play - sorry. Looks cool, though.
Just an excellent game - tons of complexity, engaging gameplay, smooth operation and logical controls, plus all the upgrading! Man. Nice work.
Fun game, with exciting though simple gameplay. It would be kind of fun to have some combo scoring or increasing levels or something to give it a little more complexity. I liked the soundtrack, and I don't know quite why I kept raising my arms, but that was cute too. Couldn't you just pursue nonviolence? There's no real pressure to set the bombs, is there?
Very cool - the art is wonderful, and the game is very slick. The concept is quite creative and fun, and the partnership between the guys is funny. My only two criticisms would be (1) that there isn't a big variety in stuff to do, and (2) combining all of those mouse functions makes it very easy to do the wrong thing - I dropped Timmy a number of times just because I held the mouse too long. It should maybe be easier to drop Timmy back on Bill's shoulder if you want. But those are nitpicks - a very cool game, and a very strong effort. I'm amazed you were able to get it all done in the time allotted with just two of you.
Well, I figured out what the heck a Love file was, and was then able to run the game. It functioned pretty well until it crashed (froze) about 30 moves in. I couldn't figure out what I was supposed to do. Seems like maybe a promising start to something, but not much there as of yet.
Interesting concept underlying it - I like the mystical pixelverse idea. I wish there were more to do than just play whack-a-mole once you got there though :-)
Cool game - felt a lot like Tapper, but the combo thing made it more complex. Took a while to figure out how it worked - maybe some more instructions would help. Nice work!
Really cool! I don't know how easy Unity makes something like this, but building the rooms and all the 3D models must have been really time consuming. The characters look great and animate well, and all the interactions between the various objects are really fun. The controls and camera were occasionally dodgy, but well within tolerances for a 72-hour game. I also didn't feel like I knew well when the human could see me or not. The soundtrack was cute but definitely began to grate after a while - it even moved my wife to comment. Great work - one of the best I've seen, and uses the theme very, very well.
Exciting and fun. Graphics and sounds are cool and appropriate for the theme. Subatomic scale was great for the theme. My issues: (1) I wasn't really sure of all the rules even after 4-5 plays. (2) There didn't seem to be any way to lose, (3) I kept getting my particle stuck off-screen, which didn't seem to have any particular cause or penalty other than having to hit ESC. I'm not sure if that was intended or part of the rules, but it felt like a bug or glitch to me. (4) I wasn't sure why I occasionally grew back into a bigger particle. But I enjoyed myself, and it was well-programmed and action-packed.
Cool idea; unique gameplay. I enjoyed it. It was hard to know how well I was doing during the game - the sound effects were the only clue, plus the cryptic message on the bottom. It would have been nicer to have some kind of progress bar or goal. Also, the random emission of the things was a little frustrating; it was very hard to direct more than one of the balls at a time, and the click-drag is naturally suited to picking multiple things, so maybe some more order in the ball groups would be more fun. But a fun idea, implemented well enough to be fun to play with!
Really neat 3D graphics - very impressive. Controls are hard to use; movement is very slow and slow to respond. Aiming is a little tricky, too; it might help to have a scaling crosshair depending on how far away you're aiming. It was also a bit tricky to distinguish the enemies from the background sometimes, and there was no real way to dodge their shots, which was frustrating - the damage I took seemed to be high or low mostly at random. It is always more fun in these things if your bullets kill instantly - add more enemies rather than requiring more hits to kill, especially if you can't really tell if you're scoring a hit. But a very impressive technical accomplishment, with 3D aiming, models, and graphics and cool sound and visuals.
I've played games like this and even written one, and they're fun, but it's hard to dive into a language like this without much tutorial. It might be cooler to have buttons for verbs that put in the right syntax rather than having to type the whole thing. The code screen is very neat and clean, and the arena part is easy to understand and cool-looking despite being a little low-rez.
A little hard to know what to do - I guess you just move around trying to dodge everything, while the world gets more crowded? Could be fun, but the guy was a little hard to control, and I wasn't sure that was the point. A bit of description would help a great deal. Good start, though.
A good, solid game - the powerups are cool, the enemies diverse, the pace frantic. Lots of stuff flying around all at once. My only suggestions would be that the gameplay is very hard to manage - when the mouse leaves the window, it's hard to control the shooting, and enemies often pop up right near you - it would be better if they showed up offscreen. It's also difficult for the multi-shot enemies (which is most of them) to know their status - it would be cool if there were some visual way to indicate how much life they had left, so you knew what progress you were making. But overall, very good - nice work.
I tried to install the game three times, but it did not show up in the directory it said it was going to go (weird). I speak a little German, and the installer didn't seem to report any errors. The stand-alone version worked; I'd avoid installers if possible for this competition. The 3D graphics are cool. The game was a little hard to play, and it wasn't at first clear that I'd killed anything, or what was hurting me. The options to move seemed very constrained by the square (I guess that was the theme, though). The music is very nice, and I like the powerups.
This one held me for longer than most. I couldn't figure out how to go to more planets than the two on Alpha, though, and I only found one machine part. I felt like I was definitely missing something there. It took me a while to figure out I could double-jump, too. I liked the feel of the game - it was fun jumping around and collecting stuff - but I didn't get a good sense of the game. It was also pretty easy to die, which undid lots of work. Fun one, though - I liked it.
Really neat concept, and the look is simple but stylish. I found the controls hard to operate, even with the mouse shooting update. I couldn't figure out how the dropped charges were useful - either I was drilling, and stuff was bonking me, or I was orbiting slowly, and the charges went off too fast to take out the 8-balls. But it was fun and engaging - a neat entry.
Fun to play; it got tricky when the red guys got close together. I never saw a point to the Reset laser. Once I didn't let enough red guys spawn before killing the generator and I got stuck; the red reset button in the upper right didn't seem to do anything to help - had to reload. Fun, functional, and complete - nice work.
Cool art and theme - a little slow to control. I moved Floaty all the way up to the right and found the red rectangle emitting other red squares, but I couldn't figure out what to do after that. Collision detection on Floaty was a little hard to suss, too. Parallax scrolling and the fuzzy background were very cool.
Cool, fun, and stylish, although not very deep. The art and name are neat. Gameplay is fun, but it would need to be more detailed to have staying power - maybe levels with different goals?
I can't run this - I get the error "The program can't start because d3dx9_43.dll is missing from your computer. Try reinstalling the program to fix this problem." I have DirectX 11, Windows 7.
My computer is only a month old and fully up-to-date - not sure what I'm missing - could it be you're looking for an older version somehow?
Interesting game - and a funny theme. It's pretty hard to know how your shove is going to do, and the sweeping also has unknowable effects. I'd love for there to be just a little more feedback - like a speed gauge or something - so that you could do something smart while your planet rolls along. Fun idea, well made - nice work.
Interesting game - haven't played a visual text adventure in quite a while. Fun, and cool animated 8-bit-style art. The story was a little hard to follow. Nice work, though - lots of pieces for 48 hours.
Interesting basis for a game - it seems like it would be easier to understand without the physics background, but it wouldn't be as cool then. More instructions might help - it wasn't obvious why certain moves were possible or what you were trying to do. Would be a neat puzzle game if more complete.
Interesting game - I tried for a bit, but it was way to hard to play with a trackpad rather than a regular mouse. Might want to ease people in a bit before throwing the three-spiky-star planet at them. A cool idea, good solid physics, and an interesting design. It was difficult for me to know how the bomb placement affected my bounces, though - clicking on the planet center for a big one seemed not-so-intuitive.
Really neat-looking, and it's mesmerizing watching the bees fly around - I like their pathfinding; very realistic-seeming. Not much to the game part, but it looks beautiful with the flowers and clouds dashing by.
Really cool mechanic, with the two person mazes affecting each other. Nice music, too. I played a number of times, but I had trouble figuring out what goal I was supposed to achieve, so I couldn't really solve anything - I kept getting "fail" messages that didn't seem to come from anywhere - were they running out of time, or had I locked the maze somehow that I couldn't get out of? Anyway, very cool idea, and implemented pretty well.
Don't got the phone, can't play the game, sorry - but it looks neat.
Innovative and fun - lost myself in it for a while trying to get that last letter. It took me a while to figure out how it worked and what I was supposed to be doing, and then a while longer to understand the controls and how the currents worked. But very interesting, original, and fun - nice work.
Like some others, I wasn't super sure how my actions were affecting the hive. I had fun grabbing ants and moving them onto food, and my number in the corner changed, my egg got laid, and eventually I'd win, but I wasn't clear on anything other than staying away from the danged bird (curse you, damned vertebrate!). The background art was nice, and the movement and interface was smooth and easy (could even play with one hand). I thought initially I'd be laying trails that my fellow ants would follow - that might be another mechanic to consider if you expand it. Nice work!
I like the magnifying glass mechanic - very cool. Otherwise, it's very much Missile Command with one city and unlimited rapid shots, but MC was fun, and this is a very solid implementation. One of the top 2-3 entries I've seen - nice work.
Really beautiful-looking with the 3D - I've got to learn Unity. Physics and flying around was fun; the stuff on the planet less engaging, since there was no strategy really other than to fire a lot until the robots went away. Very impressive overall - good work.
Fun and seems quite detailed for the time allotted. It was difficult to fight effectively at the start - maybe not quite so many enemies early on to let people get a feel for it. The beepy slow text looked cool initially and felt retro, but it got annoying pretty fast. Fun and polished - Nice work!
A fun simulation, with lots of complexity for such a short time window. I got stuck a few times and couldn't figure out how to move colonists to get resources, and it was difficult to figure out the income streams. Too small to see, and the scaling didn't help entirely. Also, clicking on the isometric interface didn't always put stuff where I intended. So, a steep learning curve, but fun to play, and impressive in such a short time. Nice work!
Simple but elegant; simple, intuitive controls and goals. I found myself wishing there were a little more to it, though. Nice work!
I like the idea here, and the shrinking ice platform is really cool. I didn't expect the whale to show up, either. It was really not fun until I realized you could hold the mouse down to fire continually, and then I wondered why you didn't just auto-fire all the time. Once I did that, it was more fun, and the upgrade system was cool (although with no penalty for dying, why buy health?). It was frustrating that I shot from somewhere left of my actual penguin, too - made it hard to aim sometimes. But a neat idea, with much more complexity than it initially seemed to have.
Very clean jumping and controls, very nice camera and terrain control, and I liked the scuttling noises and other effects. I got stuck early; I lured the pig to the spider, but I couldn't figure out anything else to do, despite running back and forth a lot, so my ability to explore it was limited.
Fun game, stylishly done. I agree with other commenters that the controls aren't specified very well - double jump makes no sense in terms of physics, so I don't usually expect it to be there unless explicitly told. Some teleporters work, others don't; I assume the switches turn them on, but it would be better if they had more distinct powered-on vs. powered-off images. Also, death takes you all the way back to the start, but that can be a real drag, since some of the double-jumps are very hard. Maybe go back to your last teleport, like a save point? Anyway, clever, fun, and well-done.
This is the most fun game I've played on here. I love the different challenges and enemies; it was as much fun figuring out what I was supposed to do as it was doing it. Some of them were REALLY hard, which was frustrating, but I was satisfied when I pushed through, and there was enough variety you could go try something else for a while. Great game - loved it.
I love the graphic style and music here. The game is exciting, but I found the controls and perspective hard to manage (maybe it would be easier with a game pad than with two hands on the keyboard). There didn't seem to be much more than shoot stuff, save girls, although I wasn't able to get too far into it without dying. I gather from the comments that there's a boss, which would be cool. Nice work - impressive for 72 hours.
Crashes after starting. Can't run. Even after installing XNA, which I already had installed. Heard the cymbals for a bit the first time, but now it just crashes out with no action at all. Win 7 64 bit
Tried again on another computer - even worse result as before - doesn't run at all.
Neat idea; I like the probabilistic delivery of planets, but it seems particularly unsuited to a matching game. It felt like drunk tetris or something. The program worked well and looked nice, and the probability thing was very nicely displayed.
Fun idea, plenty of nostalgia. And yes, very hard.
I like the 8-bit graphic style - reminds me of King's Quest. It's fun flying around, and the physics and collisions work well. Definitely artsy and intriguing, but it seems a little bit pointless, though - not too many endings, and hard to know when you're going to hit them or why one is better than another. But an interesting and innovative entry.
Very interesting idea, though it made me feel vaguely dirty. The puzzle aspect was interesting too, although for me it involved some guesswork (how many guys will it take to fill up a planet of this size?), which didn't add much to the puzzle part of it. The fact that you couldn't reset a level (or didn't seem to be able to - maybe I missed it) made this guesswork worse. But clever, well executed, and fun - I didn't have any problem with the interface or controls.
Couldn't run - it said VCOMP100.DLL is missing from my computer. Didn't want to go looking for it, sorry - looks cool, though....
Interesting idea, well executed. Very small, and the game seems quite hard at first. It wasn't clear what the + icons did when you picked them up.
Wow, that was weird. The game was very slow to start up - it took about 30 seconds before I could control anything. I wasn't sure of the point exactly, but I collected some whips and hands and stuff, and realized the brains were bad. I also found some nekkid ladies. Sounds and visuals were neat; it seemed like the game wasn't all there yet.
Fun game; a little repetitive. The sword seemed to be able to kill enemies an unrealistic distance away, and it would have been more fun had the spells done more damage or been more useful. The music was nice, and the storyline added a great deal. A very good effort.
Neat idea, and very ambitious to make an RTS in 48 hours. Very difficult to play - the pace is too fast, and it's over far too quickly. I think if the shooting range were just a little smaller, and the pace slower, and you could move into territories you'd conquered, it would be much more playable. I like the little aliens' commentary.
Nice looking, cute, and fun, though hard. I played the HTML5 version in Chrome, and it started to lag really hard after 8-10 games. Music was nice, some more sounds would have been neat.
It was fun to fly around and shoot, but I had no idea what the hell was going on. I think there was a cool mechanism under there, but I didn't get it - just watched my icons change from sun to water to moon, with no apparent effect. A mini-map showing the worlds' locations and the size of the play area would help navigate. Controls and shooting were very smooth and easy to use.
Fun game, with a neat mechanic, and awesome musical score. I really liked this one.
Very cool - controls worked well; the powerups were fun (once I read the instructions) and the game was challenging. It might have gotten hard a bit too slowly; I was able to play for a really long time. Fun, though!
Interesting and fun. I made something similar. The graphics are neat (although I didn't like the dark viewport window - brighter would be easier to see, I thought). Gameplay is a little hard to manage, what with using the mouse both to move and attack in different ways, but once I got used to it, it was fun. The boss was very hard, and I wasn't sure what to do. Music was great; sound effects also cool. Some visual indication of the HP of enemies would be helpful to understand combat. Nice work!
Neat idea, tying in with the theme, and cool puzzles. Very nice graphics and clear, easy-to-use interface. Some of the later ones got to be quite difficult; I won some of them just by setting my particle to neutral and letting it bounce around, which is probably not optimal. Nice work!
Can't play it - no Linux - sorry...
Carrocket was cool. The game was interesting and fun; I played for quite a while. The variety of weapons was neat. I felt like the turning radius on my dude was too wide - it was frustrating trying to aim and pick stuff up. Some variety of enemies, or maybe a "wave complete" or something might have added to the fun. I love the checkered tablecloth - nice touch.
Very cool game. It took me quite a while to figure out the basic rules of the universe, as some of them were non-intuitive (although still very neat). Once I did, I really appreciated all the different puzzle levels and the variety of techniques required. The boss battles would be more satisfying if you had some indication of how much health the boss had left as you fought. Definitely one of the best I've played here, especially in terms of completeness and variety.
I had a lot of trouble figuring out what I was supposed to be doing. There looks to be a lot of interesting complexity underlying the game, but it was hard to follow. The movement controls were difficult to use, and combat was bewildering - I couldn't tell if missiles were mine or my enemies, or where they came out of. I think the idea of hooking to other planets and flying between them is really neat; with some streamlined controls, that could be very fun. Once that's in place, the plane changing and other stuff would be great. It's impressive how much you added in such a short time.
Very hard to control the ship - made it a little frustrating. Otherwise, quite fun, and it looks very nice. More of a plot would help. I liked the shrinking and warping planet.
The voice-over was cool, but it wasn't clear exactly how that related to playing pong inside the world. Circle pong is fun, though. It would be cooler if there was stuff you had to try to hit, rather than (I assume) just protecting the buildings and stuff. It worked well, though, and was clean and responsive.
I tried to play, and set up the game, but then the screen went black for 5 seconds and "All Destroyed..." showed up. Then the game froze. This is Win 7. Ah, that's what happens when you don't pick the level file. After that, a fun game, but very hard to control the tanks. I died, and the AI proved unable to even get to where it was supposed to fight, so it stalemated. The free-for-all is fun and exciting. Very impressive for the time involved, with the AI, different weapon sets, and the apparently customizable terrain and team play.
Fun game, although I found it very hard. I guess I needed to use shift. I'm not sure what the point of moving farther from the hive is - maybe it's useful in later levels I didn't get to? The music was a little too loud (and the rhythm uneven) for me, but it was nice to have a musical score. Overall, very nice job.
Really interesting concept for gameplay, rolling around a contoured world. I found the ball hard to control, and I wasn't sure exactly what I was supposed to be doing (e.g. yellow blobs seem good, but is the blue tornado bad?) I'd reset seemingly randomly (I assume that was the oxygen running out). Music was nice, but got too repetitive. So, cool, but a bit frustrating. The contoured planet seemed to work quite well. Good match for the theme, and impressive for 48 hours.
Oops - that was the music for another entry still running in the background! Sorry :-)
Great game - it took me a while to figure out how to get more money by harvesting, but once I did, it was fun. Creative, clean-looking, cute, and fun.
Very cool! I like the 3D. Couldn't run the web or Windows versions (both crashed) on Windows 7 in Chrome, but WebGL version worked. Controls were responsive and mostly intuitive, and the rocking boats and water effects were very cool. Gameplay wasn't too deep (get it? get it?), but the rest of it was very impressive. Nice work.
Really neat concept, and beautiful graphics. Great implementation of the theme. The puzzles got very hard very fast, but I liked the mix of platform skillz and logic required. On one level, when I jumped near the top, I wrapped around to the bottom, which was weird.
Fun little game - I enjoyed moving around and jumping. Some of the controls were a little hard to figure out without trial and error, especially the sleigh, which I kept crashing over and over. Coupled with the short time limit for the sleigh and for the level, and the uncertain hit-box for the sleigh, it was really hard. Some sleigh practice before you have to do precision flying would be good. I liked the snowglobe motif - a good way to incorporate tiny world, and the Christmas tie-ins were good.
This was fun; I didn't realize at first that I was fighting, and it was hard to figure out what weapons were better or what did what. Ostrich leg seemed to work well. I couldn't really figure out if there was more to it than just exploring and fighting. I discovered the oil exploit mentioned above too. Looks like it could be the basis for a fun game, though, and it's cool to see one in 3D.
Really cool theme. The art was neat. A little hard to stand Tiny Tim for that long. I lost background artwork partway through - turned into white and gray patches - but otherwise it went well. Creative and interesting, if not adrenaline-pumping. Nice work!
This looks like it could be quite fun, and the characters are intriguing. I like that they all have different colors for dialogue, and that the possible interactions changed based on the responses I picked - very Bioware of you! :-) I'd rather have had a few more pixels for the art - it's 8-bit stylish, but not quite resolved enough for me to get that they're people. Neat idea and good execution - left me wanting to go further with it.
Fun entry to play. Not a lot of complexity, but it works. Some balance problems, as others have mentioned - you can end up with a ginormous green opponent pretty quickly, or you can grow yourself so big that it's not much of a challenge. There was something funky with right and bottom collisions for the non-player blocks. Fun, though! Good work.
Very fun, and quite elaborate for the time involved. The art style is very retro and fun, and I enjoyed all the different terrain types and interactions between the various kinds of beings and objects. Nice work!
Fun game; I liked the different looks you took on as you went up the castle. The 2-bit art was a little hard on the eyes, and I have heard that scream more times than I really want to, but I enjoyed the game and played it to the end. Nice work.
I get a "couldn't set up WebGL" error, even though I'm using recent Chrome and I've played other WebGL entries - I'm not sure what I should do next. Looks cool, though - a real-time networked game is really impressive.
Interesting and fun. It was hard to keep all the effects straight, but I eventually got the hang of it. I wasn't clear on when I mutated - that seemed to happen occasionally, but it wasn't related to my food rating, since I got above the max several times. Once, my speed and ability to turn got a lot worse, and I didn't know why. Also, I spent some time just wandering around a black screen - it might be cooler if there were guaranteed to be some other guys around. Fun music, and a nice simple look.
A really neat idea - I love the editable world, and you've got a really nice set of tiles to work with. I didn't really have the physics problems the other folks talked about; it seemed pretty straightforward. The tile menu confused me at first; the interface there could be a little clearer (or I could be a little smarter). I really wanted to know what was out there, what people had made, so I hope you provide a map. The only critiques I'd make is that there's not much game to it, only building, and the music got old pretty fast. The intro was really fun - I knew sort of where it was headed, but didn't expect the nose drippings, and the art was neat. The game is clever, sleek-looking, and based on a cool idea - good work.
This looks interesting and complex, but the controls were very difficult to understand - a lot of them, and not included in the game interface, and the art (though in a cool blackline style) was too abstract for me to know what the different buildings and resources were. I tried a couple of times, built some cubes, and wandered around the map, but eventually an ant I didn't see came and ate my robot, and I seemed to be done. I really like the ambition and the overhead view, and the coding seems pretty solid, but I think you might need to give users a little more onscreen help (and fewer options, like maybe a single build key) to help them out. Good luck with it if you decide to work more on it - I think there's some potential here.
Very cool-looking, especially the robot walking animation. Stylish and neato. There wasn't much to the game, although it was fun to walk around, and the camera controls were a little weird as others said, but it's neat to see 3D functioning well in a browser like that. Looks like a fun start to what could be a cool game.
Thanks for the nice comments, everybody. I think I've identified where the timing complaints are coming from - it's level 4, the first one with the unicorn guys. There's a very hard way to do this level and also a fairly easy one. If you think the timing is nearly impossible, you're probably trying to do it the very hard way. I've made a spoiler video which shows the easy way here: <a href="http://youtu.be/tTIcf_Z91p4">http://youtu.be/tTIcf_Z91p4</a>
That was messy. It's here:
http://youtu.be/tTIcf_Z91p4
Thanks for all the very nice and helpful comments. For people who had the sound problem in Firefox or Opera, I've posted a fix above (post-competition). I hadn't connected the .ogg files I made to the source so that they loaded. This was a 31-character-long one line addition - otherwise I've changed nothing. If you use Firefox or Opera and want to hear the sounds, please use the Post-Compo link above
Thanks to everybody for playing and rating and for all the good suggestions. I'm inspired to keep working on this; I hope I can get some better art and more levels.
Really no idea what is going on or what I'm supposed to do. I can move the cloud with the arrow keys. I couldn't figure out what the mutations did while playing - should that be obvious? I played for a while, and then my game was over, and I had a score, but I don't really know what I did or how. The game ran fast and smoothly and was interesting to watch.
Very impressive for a short time of work. Also very dark. Lots of complexity; I felt like sometimes if I didn't buy the right informant or technique there was no way to win. That was probably intentional, but a little frustrating. Nice work, though.
Interesting concept, but pretty confusing - I had trouble figuring out how to plan out moves for the tank, and the par time was pretty short at first as I was learning how to play. looks cool, though, and 3D is hard to get done in 48 hours.
This was old-school, to be sure. Like games I used to play (and write) on Commodore PETs and TRS-80's. It was fun to watch the population grow, and I liked the names. It would be more fun if the simulation was more interactive, and if you could do something positive, instead of only picking how to screw your dudes over. Fun, though, and obviously there's a good bit of math and code behind it.
Couldn't get it to work in Chrome, IE, or Opera on Win XP. Might be the Java thing you mentioned above, although it appeared to load the resources and then just stopped (blank window). I'll try again later on my other computer.
At home it runs, and I see a screen, but I still can't play. I get the exception:
org.newdawn.slick.SlickException: Game.update() failure - check the game code.
at org.newdawn.slick.GameContainer.updateAndRender(GameContainer.java:663)
at org.newdawn.slick.AppletGameContainer$Container.runloop(AppletGameContainer.java:514)
at org.newdawn.slick.AppletGameContainer$ContainerPanel.start(AppletGameContainer.java:218)
at org.newdawn.slick.AppletGameContainer$1.run(AppletGameContainer.java:92)
A very cool idea to show the evolution of video games. They all looked good (like their ancestors) and played pretty well, although sometimes the scale seemed too large (e.g. in the shooting ones, I felt very distant from my targets). The final level was too hard for me - I couldn't fire nearly as often as I needed to, and the moving with mouse aiming is always a hard mechanic for me. Nice job, though, and very creative.
Great story - compelling, well written, fun. The art style is simple but also really cool, and it's incorporated into how the game plays as well - I love how the terraforming items shift when nudged by the red Morbels. As far as game play, it seemed like sometimes the levels were a bit too long to hold interest, especially with the flying guys, where you had very little control over what was going on. I sometimes felt like I'd gotten, mastered, and grown tired of the concept, and was just waiting for the random number generator to cut me some slack. I also wished for a bit more complexity in the gameplay even as I was being blown away by the storyline, the sounds, and the artwork - very impressive. I really liked this one. Nice work.
Fun idea; really great artwork with a lot of shifting pictures depending on what traits are active. The game was a little hard to figure out at first, and there didn't seem to be a lot of variety in strategy, although maybe that would become apparent if I played more. It was fun having my duck grow fangs, though. Very cool; great art, good background music, and a creative, interesting idea. One of the best fits to the theme I've seen yet.
Stylish and funny - I really liked the art and the humor. The voiceover quotes were fun and well-done also. Really good work. Those nuns with the dirty looks are scary. Ironically, the Catholic church hasn't been as down on evolution as others, but I think that's not so relevant. I couldn't quite tell what the Logic powerup was doing for me - more powerful shots? Nice work.
Took me a bit to figure out that the interface was extremely simple - click and hold anywhere seems to make your ghost rise, and click the red things took keep from eating them. Interesting idea, but confusing at first. I liked the music a lot; the game was fun once I understood, and especially when the giant flood starts. Didn't hold my attention for too long though, and I wasn't sure what the connection to evolution was. But interesting and well-programmed. Good work, and a very concise, descriptive title.
Interesting game; crisp art. Not a lot of time to process and decide when you get to later levels, but fun, and a clever use of the theme.
An interesting idea, and a cool simulation of mutation. I had a little trouble understanding why animals grew and why they vanished, and which ones were mating and when. But it was fun to watch, and the mutations were also a good time. To be true evolution, it might be interesting to add food items, and restrict the animals to eat only colors of food resembling them - that might show natural selection and be kind of cool, especially if you could control the food color.
The art style is really cool - I like the 3D and the intro screens. Very well done. The game is a little frustrating; there's not a ton to do, and the little guys don't get out of the way when you need to charge a wolf. I spent a lot of time trying to find grass one time, and the wolves seemed to get a lot more frequent, so I was having trouble holding on. But it was fun, and worked well, and I had a good time. I think with another couple of days, you'd have a really fun game built on top of this strong foundation. I love the quirky humor, too - very fun.
This is really cool - I love the art and music, and the game concept is really neat. I wish I'd been able to play against someone; I think that would be a lot more fun than doing both sides. Great variety in cards and effects - I'm amazed you got so many done. The parallax scrolling and animations are awesome and varied as well. Very nice work.
Fun game with a neat feel. It took me a bit to figure out controls and plotline. I still don't know how to plant seeds - tried everything I could think of. But it was fun, and worked well. Funky art, and you evolve! Nice work.
Weird but fun. I had no idea what I was doing or trying to do, but I did smash lots of fruit flies. Graphics are crisp; controls responsive, but it was really hard to know what to do.
Fun game, with lots going on. I liked the various upgrades. Goo cannon seemed way, way better than slime trail, although it seemed like my HP suffered a lot once I got the goo cannon - was that because you don't recover life from goo-ed guys? The WWII analogy was a little weird, and the red-on-brown text was eye-watering. Gameplay was fun and exciting, though. The final battle went on a very long time, and it was difficult to do anything other than just fire and try not to die - I couldn't figure out a good strategy there, or what the little "no affect" [sic] machine guns were doing. Nice work!
Very cute, and a really funny idea. I like the artwork as well - totally cool and thematic, with a nice 8-bit flavor. Very fun. The game was a little hard to succeed with; I would have appreciated some indication of where my attack zone was, like a swoosh behind the cane, and I agree with others here that the jumping mechanism was a little unexpected. I also didn't like that monsters regenerated when you returned to a level, even if you'd killed them seconds before. The sounds, art, and monster variety are great, and I just love the theme - so funny. Great work.
I like it; it's neat that you had multiple sources and multiple pathways for enemies, and I like that the generations adapt to your weaponry - nice use of the theme. I found myself wishing my weaponry would also upgrade (or that I'd get more towers); it's kind of frustrating having so many guys get through, and then it just gets worse as they get stronger. Nice concept, cool, functional execution; could use a bit more polish in graphics, balance, interface and sound. Good work!
Although the game is extremely simple, this was sort of fun; the challenge was to figure out how to handle multiple attackers. The answer I found was to stand in front of the left cave and keep blocking, then punch right after the attackers (who crawled in from the right) punched at me. Anybody who came from the left didn't seem to attack, maybe because he emerged right on top of me. Anyway, that technique lets you attack without being attacked, and might be the only way to get to 25 without dying. Good start; more gameplay complexity might be good. I liked the art style; the gray guys and their animations were funny.
I'd play this, but I don't have an Android phone. If the HTML5 version comes out, I'll give it a whirl - looks cool.
Doesn't work for me either, Windows 7 Premium 64bit. Frozen non-responsive blank window. Sorry - looked like a cool project.
Great sound, fun art, a temple-run kind of feel. I found the controls a little too hard for me - too many do-or-die jumps, and I kept failing at them. I like the idea. I never got very far, even playing a number of times, but I enjoyed it - just wish it were a little easier.
Very beautiful look to it, and a variety of interactive objects. Hardly any game to it, though; a couple of simple things to do and then it's over. But a really neat start to something that could be awesome; I just think it's beyond the scope of what you can do in 48 hours. Definitely one of the most visually impressive entries I saw.
Looks neat, and I like the quirky humor. I had a hard time figuring out how to play; I tried to type everything indicated, but there wasn't much of a response. I ended up a vampire. Maybe a little more information or feedback would help. It sounds like a cool concept.
Interesting game. It was a little too simple to hold interest, although the unpredictable color changes made it fun. I'd have liked a little more permanence in the speed upgrades - that might have been cool. Fun and colorful, to be sure. Nice work.
Really funny, and well-made. I love the chat and choices for all the people. I did have to go get a regular mouse to catch the kitten - my trackpad wasn't up to the task. Also, the conspiracy guy glitched - he joined me even though I never did anything to help him - it just jumped to the bus trip. Very fun, great humor, and a good game.
I like the art style and all the various upgrades. It would have been interesting to know better what the various traits did in the battles. Like others, I found the slow pace of the battles a little frustrating; it would have been more exciting if there were 1-2 attacks per second and more health to play with, and have the whole thing last more like 10-15 seconds. I tried several times, and I always lost, so that was a little frustrating too - it would be nice to have the early battles a tad easier. I really like all the art, especially the picture when you lose with the four-legged hairy guy.
This was fun, although I didn't feel like I had much control over what was going on (maybe I did, but I couldn't really figure out how the spin direction did much - do I need to make sure to fully evolve a planet while it's close to the black hole?) I tried a few times, enjoyed some frantic key mashing, and lost, but I had fun. Graphics were cool; interface was straightforward (although including it in the game would be helpful rather than in a README). Nice work.
Fun game; I liked trying to puzzle it out. I couldn't quite grasp the rules the robot used to determine movement, but I was able to figure out enough to trap him. I wasn't sure what the evolution from man to robot meant, although I played until he stopped evolving. The black and white was stylish and minimalist - cool looking - and the music was nice without being too much.
Interesting take on the old robo-war scripted battle games. I found the scripting a little hard to do, although I appreciated the commands being given as buttons to click. Giving your guys commands one at a time is kind of a drag - I'd like to be able to script them once and apply to all. If there was a way to do that, I didn't find it. Also, I'd have liked the speed to be able to go faster than the maximum, even 5-10x the maximum that I got. So, cool idea, partway to really cool, with some things to work on. Good job!
Cute and fun; I really liked how the dead guys got pushed around by the living ones. It was a little hard to know the value of the different elements or special abilities, as they didn't show up in an obvious way on the screen (other than Nova, which was cool). Stats and a more detailed combat with more animations might help you know what was going on. Also, some explanation as to the difference between the elements and different abilities; I'm sure there are some good combos, but I didn't have enough information to figure that out. It would be cool if you could battle vs. AI players, too, so you didn't have to pick all the options yourself. Nice work!
Really fun - lots of progression of shots and weapons and graphics. Nice work. Lots of people do the move with one hand, shoot and aim with the mouse for these LD things, and I find that awkward, but your game worked that way (although aiming toward the end got hard). I also never seemed close to dying after the first few rounds - some difficulty tweaking might be good for future versions. Nice sounds, solid programming - very nice work.
A fun idea, with progression/evolution for the monster. It did feel pretty passive; I was trying to figure out which improvements would help more, but with only one real goal (blood flow) to maximize, there wasn't a lot to do, although it was fun watching the gauges fill up. The idea is pretty creepy, though - I wonder why all those people decide to stay in the town and not run away? But that's always true of horror movies too...
I played in Chrome several times. I was unable to use any of the weapons or what I assume were health boxes - when I pressed the Use key, I just got an exclamation point icon rising above whatever I was using. I tried a lot of times and a lot of ways. Otherwise, the game was fun; good simple graphics, fast-paced, good sounds. I wish there were better ways to avoid bullets, but maybe the answer is being able to use the health boxes. No apparent connection to the theme, but well-made and cool.
The game seemed neat - action-packed, with good graphics for the ship and explosions. It's nice to see another CraftyJS project. The game slowed down a bit for me when a lot of stuff was going on (oldish computer with Windows XP, running in Chrome). I liked the combos and bonuses (the face-to-face bonus was fun), but I'd have liked if there were some more variety in enemies or action. Good sounds and music. Nice work!
Fun concept (dinosaurs and templars). The game was interesting, although it seemed a little easy - I never lost a church, and my knights stayed mostly healthy. I couldn't discern a difference between when I clicked on the bow and when I clicked on the sword - were those supposed to be different units? They seemed to behave the same. Anyway, it was fun; I'd have liked to see separate levels or some more challenge, or maybe plot elements or something - it feels like a good but unfinished idea.
Interesting idea. I found the pace a little too slow for my liking - it might have been cooler to have it real-time with pausing rather than turn-based. The combat was kind of hard to manage - just random shots back and forth - but it would be pretty cool to build up a big army of dudes and go attack. It seems like it might be hard to beat the strategy of just reproducing as much as possible and letting the other guy come to you, but that would be pretty boring. The AI was quite competent (far better at the game than I was). The menus and art were appealing, and the sounds good. Nice work.
The art is beautiful, for sure. The gameplay is a little limited - you aren't even required to aim, just dodge stuff until that's impossible, and then hit bomb. There was a ton of text to get through - interesting, but more like reading a graphic novel than playing a game. Really great art, though, and the controls were solid. I did get one crash error that seemed like a variable out of bounds when I used a bomb the first time I played - not the second. But overall, nice job - just needs some more gameplay.
I liked this a lot - searching for the combinations was fun, and the art was really charming. For the later levels, I started having to do systematic trial-and-error to get the last couple of things; there was no way for me to find them by logic. Some hints might have helped here - it got a little frustrating. The music was OK, but I wish there was a way to turn it off - it got very repetitive over the course of the game. But a fun idea, an original game concept, and fits the theme extremely well. Easily the best of the 5-6 I've rated so far.
Interesting game. The gameplay was fun, although I think needlessly complex - there wasn't really a need to jump, and the targeted aiming wasn't as useful as just shooting in the direction you were facing would be, so you could have left those out. I found it pretty hard to aim using a trackpad mouse, where left and right clicking are tough to do for a game. The graphics and upgrades were interesting, though lo-fi; I liked the background spinning squares a lot. I couldn't really figure out what I was meant to do, but I gathered after a while that I was supposed to defend the blue thing on the left. Nice work; felt like it was on the road to being something pretty cool.
I was a little disturbed to see an 8/30 creation date for the game executable, but I guess that's the OpenAL bug fix? I'm not sure that's kosher with the competition (i.e. there are bugs in mine that I'd like to fix too but didn't). The game is a really cool idea though a little bit hard to figure out, since the impacts of the buildings aren't all obvious, and the effects of distance between them weren't clear to me. It may well be I didn't read deeply enough - the tips on the buildings referenced statistics I didn't really understand and didn't know the value of. I did really like how the screen looked, and how your buildings grew with more use. The interface worked well after I got used to it - I just didn't totally understand what I was doing or what would be valuable to accomplish. But a neat idea and well-executed. Nice work.
Couldn't get it to run - the batch file just sat there, and when I ran it under a CMD window it said it couldn't find java, even though I have that installed. Too bad - looked like a cool idea.
Can't run this - it looks cool, but I don't have a Linux machine.
An interesting start; I liked the personality of the guiding textbot or whatever it was. The puzzles weren't too intricate yet, but with more time you might be able to do that. I liked the sounds and the clean appearance.
Really nice job with the pinball physics - that's a very hard thing to pull off. It was a little hard to do anything useful, though, because multiball pinball is hard to control, and you were always dealing with multiple balls. I had a hard time intuiting what the relationship between the colored balls and the circles was, although you did explain it in the rules - I just didn't get it until after I played for a while. Fun, though; just very hard to feel like you weren't just clicking the flippers at random. The evolution theme seems not very present here, too, but the programming is very solid. Nice work.
Really great animation, graphics, sounds, and gameplay. Among the best I've seen in 60+ games rated. The only drawback is that there doesn't seem to be much of a point to it all that I could find, although it was fun running around picking up different shot types. Some of the shot collisions didn't seem to make much sense; I think that was probably the isometric perspective in what was otherwise a maze environment. But very impressive - nice work.
Cool idea, with the increasing art complexity - I really like the text level. The gameplay works well; the puzzles aren't particularly hard, but it's fun and rewarding. Good music, graphics and sound. Nice work!
Neat game; I liked the dual shooting and moving controls, and you implemented them well. Lots of stuff on the screen. I felt like when I bought my first upgrade, I actually got more than one, since I suddenly had blue, purple, and green shots all at once, and I thought I was only buying one thing. Once I had those, the game got a lot easier. Fun one, and good work.
Not much to this, but fun nonetheless. I had a good time running around and growing. The collision detection seemed somewhat insensitive - you had to really go all the way through a guy, sometimes a couple times, to register a hit. Definitely the best Objective description in all of LD24 ("Get a huge, fat stick.").
Beautiful, fun, and well made. The 3D looks great and is easy to control. The platforming in the 3rd room is a bit annoying; I also gave up trying to do the jump between moving platforms after several tries getting up there - just not worth all the work to make it back up to try a low-percentage jump. I wish I could finish a little more easily. But I'm very impressed; really great work.
Interesting game; reminds me of the old Daleks game for early computers. The art is really great. The interface confused me for a while until I got into it; I should have read the info page more closely, but it was not immediately obvious how it worked. Music track is neat-o; nice work!
The first time I played, I got totally destroyed as the people above indicate. The second time, I bought some upgraded weapons before starting, and I was pretty much unstoppable - I lived through 8+ waves with no problems, barely taking a hit, and adding more and more stuff in the store. So, there may be some difficulty balance issues there. But I had a lot of fun; tons of bullets, cool upgrades (but not so many of them- I maxed out fairly quickly), and a really cool look with the vector-style graphics. The sounds were good too. I really didn't see much impact from the shuffling of the enemy types - the only ones that gave me trouble were the ones with all the cannons, and those weren't bad unless they lived long enough to start shooting, which they seldom did when I was upgraded. Really fun, action packed even for a small screen, but I think it's a bit too easy, and after a few levels, the enemy AI becomes pretty obvious. Totally great for a 48-hour project, though - I'm just making suggestions for further work.
Looks cool, but I couldn't play without a Mac or Linux, sorry...
A fun entry - brought me back to my early days of playing text adventures. Well-written and interesting, with lots of stuff to try out. I enjoyed it - nice work.
This was a fun one- I was confused at first by starting as an invisible guy, but I figured out eventually where I was, and I like the metaphor that lack of wealth makes you invisible. The gameplay was pretty basic, and there seemed to be competitors for me on the first level but none on the later ones, so I wasn't really certain what the point was. But it was fun scooting around picking up coins. I liked the background music, but I wish it were a little bit quieter. A complete, working game with unexpected biting social commentary - nice work!
Very nice game - I liked the non-traditional style of play, where you decide who wins to gain powerups for other battles. Very fun, and very well executed.
Very cool; I enjoyed it a lot. Difficult to play on a trackpad, but I got the hang of it. Some in-game instructions would be useful, and the progress bars weren't totally clear (just numbers).
Fun game, well crafted, and funny. The only complaint I have is that it was really fun to discover the mutation effects, but it was so slow to do so. One modification might be that the longer you last, the more mutations you can discover? I think that would be fun. Nice work.
I love the herding mechanism - really fun. I couldn't really figure out of there was a point other than breeding the black bunnies, but I did get a couple of them out. Cool controls, fun soundtrack. Nice work!
I like the isometric graphics - very nice. The interface is a little hard to use - I wasn't initially sure what all the stats and buttons were and how to use them, although I figured them out. There isn't a lot to play here - obviously some goals or an AI would help. Looks like a great start, though, and visually very nice.
This was a fun game, and the graphics were very sharp, particularly the 3D guy. I had a little trouble with the interface at first until I realized I could drag the letters around and add them to the word (reading the README also helped). Not being able to add letters unless you made an intermediate word is a little frustrating but makes the game a lot harder. Well done!
Seemed fun, although I got pretty far ahead of the curve pretty early on, and was just killing all those evil B's. I couldn't see much of a difference between the upgraded weapons and the basic one; I eventually just stuck with basic because it was doing the job. Also, the surge thing never seemed to do much either, but maybe I was missing something. It worked well, though, and looks like the basis for something fun. Nice work!
Cool game, with interesting challenges to figure out. The controls were pretty frustrating - the jump height seemed inconsistent (it took me about 30 tries to make the double jump you need to do right after getting that power), and jumping off platforms took weirdly accurate timing - I often slid off as I pressed the jump button, which is frustrating when there are no save points. It would have been better if you got bumped back just to the last mutation, not to the start. Simple 3D graphics are cool; the animation and camera work are great. Nice job.
This is a fun idea - I like the humor angle of Darwin fiddling with the paleontological evidence. The gameplay was pretty simple; it might have been fun to require the player to reassemble the fossils in the right orientations, not just to have them get to the appropriate level. The pulling of tiles is a bit unusual, and I think it makes it a little harder to control - pushing might feel more natural. I like it, though - nice idea, nice graphics, good work!
Very basic gameplay, but kind of fun. The most interesting part of it was the color shifting boss at the end who killed certain platforms. It looked like you had planned a lot more game (e.g. I bought a stun gun which never even seemed to be an option) - that might have been cool to see, but it's tough to get everything done in the 48 hours. Nice work.
Fun idea, with evolving graphics and stuff. The later graphics are really beautiful, especially the mothership. I got no sounds - not sure if I was supposed to. Gameplay was rather simplistic, but still engaging. I liked seeing the boss health and player health indicator - very useful, and something most LD games don't do. Nice work.
Cool music and an interesting concept. The circles seemed very difficult to select properly to me (I had to have them nearly perfectly circled) and I didn't have a good visual clue as to which one I'd paired with the first, because only my first one got the dark rim. I could have used some more feedback. I felt like the magnifying glass got in the way some rather than being a feature; I'd have preferred just playing without it. The graphics and the zooming were really cool, and I dug the background music. Nice work.
Very cool look and fast and fun gameplay. The evolution and combat don't make a ton of sense at first blush, but it's still a good time. It would be a bit more fun if there were some more strategy to it. It seems like you can evolve any ability at any time once you die, so there's little reason to hold back in this case. But fun and sharp looking; I really liked the modular nature of the enemies - very cool and very clever.
This is fun - reminds me of my entry for Tiny World in LD 23 ( http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-23/?action=preview&uid=10977 ). I love your daughter's art - really fun, and I'm sure she enjoyed working on it with you. Sound effects and music are fun and cute, and gameplay is smooth. I wish there were a little more variety to it, although I enjoyed playing (got to level 12). The evolution aspect was fun; the speed was really the most noticeable improvement. Nice work!
Very nice - great looking, very complete, awesome soundtrack. The gameplay was a little mysterious; I discovered my first species without feeling like I was doing anything - I just jetted around scanning, occasionally being attacked, trying to move to what I'd scanned, but that seemed to have no bearing on finding the species. I would have liked some clearer feedback on what I was supposed to do and when I was doing it right. Being told I needed to hold down the spacebar instead of just pressing it would have helped a lot. It looks great - nice work.
I like the game - cute, and the old-CRT-video look is cool. There wasn't too much to the game, although it was still fun to run around, and the upgrades were funny. It was hard to read all the stuff as I was playing, but was "Married" a positive? That seems hard to believe. But great sense of humor, and a fun take on the theme this time. Great art, too. Nice work.
I liked flying around, and the animated butterfly at the end is really neat. Linking the evolution of the bug to changes in the music is fun as well. There didn't seem to be much of a game here, but that probably comes next. Everything functioned pretty smoothly in my browser. Nice work...
I appreciated the simple art style with cool vector/particle graphics on top to give it class. The mood was very neat; abstract and unusual. The game part was mixed for me - it was interesting to have the different challenges, but the biggest difficulty for me was figuring out what my abilities actually were (re: the unusual jump/fly mechanic) and how the invisible forces of the red things would affect me, and from how far away. The last couple of levels I must have died 15-20 times each, and that just got frustrating - I'd rather be fighting monsters or plot than just my misperception of the controls and the size of the enemies. But it was fun, complete, mysterious, and cool, and I enjoyed it. Sounds were very cool too, and I liked the changing volume as you approached things. Nice work!
The first stage took forever to get up to 35 DNA. It was fun swimming around avoiding red guys for a bit, but it just took too long. When I finally got to the snake stage, it took me a while again to figure out what to do. When I ate my first DNA, my snake became huge. By accident, I backtracked over myself and lost all three lives at once. I couldn't face doing the first level again, so I quit. I think you've got a neat idea here, going through various stages of evolution, and there are some interesting touches, like the unpredictable effect of moving across the shifting tendrils on the first level. I really like the idea of having different minigames for each level. But for me, the result just wasn't enough fun to keep going with. With a little tweaking, some more forgiving levels, and maybe some instructions, I think you could have a great game here.
A fun game; nice, simple art, and a lot of it. The simple attacks got a little routine after a while; I'd have appreciated some more exciting combat (bow and sword, e.g.). I also have a hard time seeing this as a good fit to the theme, although I appreciate the hero-to-villain thing - that helps justify it. Anyway, a solid game, well made, good sounds, works very well. I appreciate the save points being gentle - a lot of games in LD don't do that, and I often get frustrated. Good work!
The graphics are very sharp here. I found the game a little hard to play - lots of stuff shooting at me from offscreen, and I was apparently unable to shoot back at it effectively until it was onscreen, at which point it was hard to dodge all the bullets. I got the first gun and went around shooting stuff, but I kept dying (tried probably 10-11 lives) before finding anything else interesting. I like what you've described doing with the theme and the base pairs, although it's a little bit behind-the-scenes. Nice art, nice graphics (the lighting/glowing effects are cool, and the particle stuff, even for bullets, is really great). Good work.
I enjoyed making a tree. The controls were a little tricky to pick up, and the collision detection with the mouse didn't always seem to work with me. Also, it was more of a demo/cool idea than a game, since there wasn't really an object. The look is very cool - quirky and fun - and I like the fractal nature of the tree drawing - that's a non-trivial bit of programming.
Very nice looking, 8bit feel. I found it hard to feel like I was controlling the combat very well - attacks seemed to work or not work at random, and jumping didn't seem to provide any significant advantage or disadvantage until the stage where I got legs, at which point I couldn't seem to hit at all with a ground attack. I think with some more work this could be really cool, but it's impressive for 48 hours.
Interesting game. My first mutation was the long pieces, which was really bad - made the game near-impossible! Well programmed, looks sharp, music good. I don't really think this is an improvement over regular Tetris, but it's an interesting idea, and fits the theme in a way. Nice work.
Good game - nice graphics, good mechanics, interesting varied levels (though very Mario style). I got stuck on the monkey level - it was frustrating trying to jump from platform to platform across the tree trunks, and I couldn't figure out how to get to the bananas that I couldn't jump to. Good sounds, good programming, good art - nice work.
Worked for me with Win64. Fun game with a familiar theme. The evolution theme isn't super strong, although you do grow and thus change some. The controls and object are fun; I liked navigating the green and yellow tide, although it was a bit hard with a trackpad mouse. The gameplay I think needs a little balance work; I often had nothing to eat at the start, while other times I had a lot of options and grew fast. The fact that your growth is so quick and unpredictable when you eat a larger guy, and that all the yellow guys are toxic, means that the game always ended very fast for me just when I was having a little success. But it was fun; obviously that level of polish (and maybe some additional complexity, like waves to survive) could come with more time to work. The word "shit" is pretty vulgar in American society, so I was surprised to see that featured so prominently, although I wasn't personally offended. I really liked the prophecy and intro part, too - very stylish. My best was about 15 seconds; I think I could have survived longer by eating more infrequently and then just dodging, but I didn't have a good feel for how long it took to starve. Nice job!
Uh, this was weird. Not really sure what the point was, and not enough time to figure it out. If it's a critique of religion, it didn't really come across that way - just kind of confusing and sort of offensive, and I'm not even religious. Worked well, simple intuitive controls, and graphics were fine (8bit style).
Great to see another Crafty game on here. I really like the art style and the theme of the game. I had a little trouble figuring out how to control anything; I tried the three modes at the top and clicked all over, but I never seemed to be having much effect. Eventually my guys starved or were eaten, and the only achievement I got in six games was the speed one. Maybe I'm doing it wrong. Anyway, looks very slick, and I think I'd really enjoy it if I could figure out how to play better.
Ah, I couldn't drop any food even with clicks as you describe. Maybe it was my old computer. I'll try again.
Sanojian - it was Chrome; when I played it on my newer computer (same version of Chrome, though) it worked much better and I could play for longer.
I like the look and the idea a lot - I typically enjoy this kind of puzzle thing a good deal. This time, though, the gameplay was pretty frustrating for me. I died a lot, sometimes to stuff I couldn't see before sliding off a ledge (so that my death was actually mandatory to learn how to play). The traps with the moving pegs were difficult enough that you had to have pretty terrific timing, and that required me to navigate all the way down to them about six times to make it through. I found that too much and quit shortly after - sorry. I did really like the graphics, and the controls seemed responsive, and I totally appreciate that you want the game to be non-trivial, but for me it ended up not working in this form. Having three lives or something before being sent back to the checkpoint might help me out.
This was fun! I like the gameplay; the world seemed huge. I wish there were a more convenient way to heal than running back to the cave, or that you didn't lose all your XP when dying, because that got a little frustrating. It was fun to run around and kill stuff, though. Nice work!
This was a fun little simulation. It wasn't always obvious what the customers wanted from their words and the description, but I liked that talking to them was part of it. The interface wasn't always completely obvious, but you could get the job done, so it worked. I liked the kitten pictures. The first time I played, the game crashed without warning when I clicked on the Sell button, but I had no trouble the second time. Nice work!
I liked this; the idea of breaking out of the modern world to rainbow-land is very appealing, and the paper horse is neat. I couldn't initially figure out much to do once I made it to the alternate reality; it took me a while to realize I could switch back. That's a clever thing. Nice work!
Very sharp, well-coded, good interface, and quite polished. The graphics are simple but the fuzzy edges and transparency make it look neat and kind of amoeba-ey. The music is really cool, but there are only 1-2 other sound effects that I heard. There's not much to the game - three powerups and some other effects, only really swimming around to do, and not much strategy - but what's there works well and is fun. Great to have one that runs in a browser - so much easier. Nice job!
Funny idea, and good execution; I really liked the background music and Darwin as a main character. I think the game would be vastly improved for me with just a teeny bit higher jumps; there's nothing more frustrating in a platformer than barely missing jumps, and the two-space jumps in here take a lot of focus. I agree with the waypoint idea; it was very disheartening to lose a bunch of progress for one bad jump or one stray bullet. Fun, though, and very well done.
Funny idea, and good execution; I really liked the background music and Darwin as a main character. I think the game would be vastly improved for me with just a teeny bit higher jumps; there's nothing more frustrating in a platformer than barely missing jumps, and the two-space jumps in here take a lot of focus. I agree with the waypoint idea; it was very disheartening to lose a bunch of progress for one bad jump or one stray bullet. Fun, though, and very well done.
I didn't see this when rating games (I quit after 100 rated), but I saw your comment on the low rating on audio - I think the music was quite good, but it was subtle, and the rest of the game doesn't have much audio in it. The overall experience was pretty slow and dull - lots of wandering around without much happening - so the quality of the audio (which is high for music but not so much for effects) doesn't really feel in-your-face the way it would if more was going on. The game is ambitious and looks good - just not that much happening to pump up the excitement, and the low audio rating is probably related to that.
Neat start; I really like the artwork, and the theme is mysterious and engaging. You might want to make the green color more obviously hostile (red, purple, brown, icky); I didn't know it was hurting me until I died, and then the message was that I'd lost color, even though it seemed like I was accumulating it. I found myself having difficulty clicking when it said click, and in distinguishing the different items; the white stuff gave me XP, and some of it reduced my color level, but I didn't really know what the flowers did. So, cool stuff, but not so much of a game yet.
Very cool game - controls are fluid and intuitive, artwork is cute and the 1-bit part is a really fun touch. Not much to it other than shooting stuff, but there doesn't really need to be.
Thanks for the great feedback and kind comments. Sorry about the sound problems - there are a lot of sound effects (13 of them, I think), but they're not playing properly in the current version of Firefox on Windows. Not sure why that is - I'm looking into it with the Crafty development community.
EDIT: 5/1/2013 - I figured out what was making sound not play in Firefox and some other browsers, so I made a typo fix as permitted in the rules (needed two square brackets to work).
TehSkull - that's awesome :-)
@Everybody - thanks for the kind words and useful suggestions.
@Whilefun - I'm glad you liked it - if you see this, can you tell me what browser you were using? I have played it a ton since the compo ended, and haven't had any issues in Chrome for Windows, but I haven't tested extensively on other browsers. Was it stuck on a vertical wall, or a horizontal wall, and was it resting on the wall or through it? Thanks!
@f7f5 - thanks for the very kind words. Re: Mondrian - Yeah, I know - I thought other people would use it too, but I didn't realize just how many.
Cool game; I loved the simple color rules you set up and the puzzles you built from them. I found the control/collision part of the blocks a little tough - I kept moving farther than I meant to, or hitting things I thought I was clear of. But it was fun, stylish, minimalist, neat! The music and the Still Life with Potato at the end were both cool.
Definitely minimal! Kind of hypnotic, but not much of a game here. I like the sounds and music - satisfying and moody. Nice work.
Didn't hear audio on the web version, so I didn't rate it. Game is fun - kind of missile command with guided shots that move randomly. The difficulty seemed to ramp up slowly at first and then very fast - by the end (I got to 80) there was no way to keep up. I liked the lightning traces left on screen - that and the wiggly paths gave it a cool look, although the wiggling was a little frustrating. It might benefit from simpler controls if you didn't have to click to shoot a bolt, since that really didn't do much. Autofire would have been more fun, I think. Nice job!
Really stylish and cool. I liked the colors, music, symbols, and icons you used, and the game was pretty fun, too. I couldn't really tell except through trial and error what the various towers did, and that was a little frustrating, but the drag-to-reposition made it a different kind of tower defense thing. Very fun, and very well-done.
Interesting game! You do a lot with a little here. It is crazy difficult - sometimes just impossible. I think it might be better if you started out without rocks and then progressed to harder and harder jumps. Two-player implementation is impressive and cool.
Interesting idea - I had a hard time getting my guys to do what I wanted. The game crashed (all players vanished) on my second game, leaving only a yellow line. Fun, though, and fits the theme.
Cool game! Simple, but a lot of complexity. I tend to think in primary and secondary colors better than in RGB, so that would have been a little easier for me, but it was still fun to try to work out how to do it. It might have been cool to have an undo or savepoint feature so you could backtrack to a certain point where you screwed up. Neat idea, simple but well executed.
Really interesting concept. It would be cooler with more of a stereo effect, if that's possible. Very neat implementation for this theme.
Neat idea, and fun to create little Mondrian paintings. I had a little bit of trouble with the rectangles using the Web version - they covered up all my lines, which I don't think was supposed to happen. But the line part worked great - I loved being able to separate my crossing lines and make cool images.
Cool geometric puzzles, but they were pretty hard. I like to simple colors and appealing look. I agree with the suggestion that it be possible to move pieces rather than having to place them from scratch.
Interesting little maze game - I found the controls a little difficult at first (didn't realize I was steering rather than just moving). I also wasn't sure why my player icon changed - it seemed to happen in the red rooms, but there wasn't any more feedback, so I couldn't figure that out. The relatively frequent death made it a bit of a challenge, but the look was great, and I love the Mondrian in the theme.
Hey, I really liked this one. I made it to level 39 before dying - the later levels with the scattered blocks are very tricky. I tried to do it intuitively without doing any math, and that was fun - I could have figured out each one, but then it feels more like doing homework. I wonder if it a different variation would be fun - where you're given where the center of mass and have to place one or two blocks to force it there. Anyway, I really enjoyed this - abstract, well made, fun.
Hey, I really liked this one. I made it to level 39 before dying - the later levels with the scattered blocks are very tricky. I tried to do it intuitively without doing any math, and that was fun - I could have figured out each one, but then it feels more like doing homework. I wonder if it a different variation would be fun - where you're given where the center of mass and have to place one or two blocks to force it there. Anyway, I really enjoyed this - abstract, well made, fun. I agree with the others that some kind of interface would help - a next level button or something.
Voice of Fire was cool to shoot; I couldn't hit the Mondrian one at all (gun didn't shoot). I also heard no sounds. I liked the physics and graphics a lot.
Cool game collage - neat to see how many things you packed in there. I didn't understand the negative scoring at first, especially when my score didn't display initially on the double tetris - I thought that building rows was wrong, so I then built up a tower to the top of the screen, and at that point the game started acting very strange - I didn't die; instead blocks started disappearing. The rest of the levels worked well, although the breakout game took forever to clear, and pong I won instantly because of the trajectory the ball was on. Really neat, though, and the red-white-black color scheme and minimalist graphics lent it a great feel, as did the soundtrack and sound effects.
Very complex, but fun. I didn't really get the hang of it (kept dying to the red stuff) but I figured more of it out. I think it might be nicer to have fewer variables and tools and a little more visual cues for what you're doing that helps. A little hard to follow along with all the tiny numbers. Nice work, though - a cool, complex idea, expressed in a simple way.
This is funny, and the ragdoll physics part was cool. The game hung on my 7th attempt when I landed on the other guy - we both lay there twitching and gradually moving left a pixel at a time. It doesn't make a lot of sense, and there isn't a lot to it, but it was funny and looked sharp. Nice work!
Wow, super hard. But also fun - an interesting concept, and well-executed. Sometimes it gave you impossible moves, but I guess the idea there is to hide out offscreen and wait for a better situation. Very interesting, well-implemented.
Is it possible to win? Doesn't seem like it. I got his hat down to nothing, and it seemed like it just made a new row each time. Hard to see where you're placing pieces when you get to the bottom (and the shape of the pieces didn't seem to matter too much, although I think it was cool to be working with that as a variable). Fun, simple, and visually appealing.
This seems to be a duplicate entry - I already rated the other one (see http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=5127), so I won't rate this one, but it was cool. I used Mondrian as well, but in a very different way.
Very pretty to look at, and the potato mode was quite funny. There's not too much to the game, unless I am missing something - I knocked a bunch of marbles/potatos out of the ring and kept getting more. But it was fun, well-animated, and really pretty to look at.
Nice idea, cute graphics. I got stuck (as others appear to have) when the pink character sings a fourth - I only had ASD, and I needed F at that point to copy her. So, I didn't get very far. Given your hint above, I tried and eventually got it, but it was pretty counterintuitive. I tried the Notes as Offsets puzzle next, but I was completely incapable of figuring out what you meant me to do. A bit bewildering. Some more visual cues or help might be warranted. But it looked neat, and was fun.
Cool! I think the balloon moves a little too fast (it was hard to set up shots) and the collision between the balloon and bullet is maybe a little too generous (I popped the balloon when my bullet didn't even get within a duck-width of the balloon). The semi-crude cartoony art style actually works for me - fits the subject material well. Music is neat.
Very smooth and fluid gameplay and animation, with some nice touches. I like the art style, and coupling the aiming mechanism with moving is neat and works well. Very fun; I wish it were more complex/finished, but I really like what's here.
Beautiful looking scene, especially the water effect. Game part was confusing - I got the runes to show up, and I think I created a tiny white cube, but I couldn't do anything with it. Really terrific graphics, though.
Interesting game - the block physics is really cool, and I like all the changing colors. I wasn't really sure what to do - I reached the lower platform with the collapsible wall, and that seemed to be it. Smooth motion, fun shooting, not a ton to do, although it was fun to just play around. I entered an infinite fall at one point, and there was no way out of it. Fun to play with - nice work...
Interesting idea. I wasn't clear on what I could drain and what I couldn't at first, so that was tricky - maybe I'm just stupid. Also, my bullets didn't seem to affect the red squares at all, which made me wonder what was going on. I tried it a few times but never managed to kill anything. I did suck up some power, though. Nice visuals and shapes.
Interesting look to it. I liked the characters and art. The walking and other animations looked a little weird, and the high attack was almost worthless - it was better actually just to walk into the other guy, because at least your sword was forward. I think more vigorous attacks (and maybe a defense key) would help make it a cooler fighting game. Also AI enemies. But cool, and interesting visually.
Really interesting idea, to give up powers, and lots of variety in levels. I like the instant restart with a changed level - means that you can't get stuck on one thing for long. I made the mistake of giving up far sight early on, and that made the game muuuuch harder. Good backstory with the text, and cool sounds. Game physics was a little wonky, but once you got used to it, it was cool. There were some obstacles it was just impossible to jump over or avoid, which was a little frustrating.
Interesting game. It is a little bit easy, which makes it not sustain interest. I like the path taken by the enemies. I think the regenerative shield thing you can do would be neater if you had a better idea of how much energy you had - a gauge or something would help. Nice work.
Neat look and cool idea, but not much game there. Very appealing concept and graphic style.
Wow, that was hard. Fun game, and definitely minimalist; you tried hard to establish the mood at the start, and it works, although getting overly romantic about squares is hard (I know, I tried in my entry too). The music and sounds are very cool, and the art has a clean, sharp look. I had some trouble with the controls at times - sometimes keypresses wouldn't work, or they'd register for a bit and then stop moving - it was almost like the key repeat was throwing something off, or cancelling motion, but it didn't always happen.
Wow, that was hard. Fun game, and definitely minimalist; you tried hard to establish the mood at the start, and it works, although getting overly romantic about squares is hard (I know, I tried in my entry too). The music and sounds are very cool, and the art has a clean, sharp look. I had some trouble with the controls at times - sometimes keypresses wouldn't work, or they'd register for a bit and then stop moving - it was almost like the key repeat was throwing something off, or cancelling motion, but it didn't always happen. The victory final scene was very mysterious and cool, but it happened too slowly, I think. Nice work!
Very cool - neat concept, perfect for the theme. Some of the levels were very hard - I had to give up after about 25 tries on Challenge 14. Free play mode is fun too. Very nice work.
Great look and feel. Fairly difficult - I'd have preferred a more gentle difficulty ramp so I could figure out the combat. Also didn't know if stars or sword did more damage - it would have been nice to know that, or to have some visual representation of damage to enemies (even just changing color or something). But very neat; I liked the audio track and animations very much.
Interesting and very minimalist idea. I found the game ran rather too long - I felt like I'd mastered any particular challenge a level offered by about 120 in, and yet I had to get to 240 or so. It would be more challenging to have the balls at different heights, and it might be cool to be able to see where they were coming from on a radar or something, so you could plan better. Very cool minimalist look, and rockin' music. Nice job!
This is very cool. I had a lot of trouble controlling the guy, but I think that's the point (I did an attraction-based physics model for mine too). I like how the tasks you had to accomplish grew in complexity and used different parts of the physics without adding harder controls or new types of objects. The story was fun, and the background music and sound effects were really neat. Great game.
Both games are interesting - I think Switchy is the better one. Sinky was very difficult to figure out at first, but then it was too easy. I think I could have played it indefinitely. I really liked the combos and sequence moves you had to do sometimes in Clicky, and Game B was a much bigger challenge than Game A. Pretty neat.
Neat idea; I liked the quotes. The minigames were a cool feature. I sometimes had trouble moving diagonally. Fun game - the ending was a little abrupt. Nice background music!
This is cool, but very hard. Nice graphics; it seemed like you just got screwed by the arrangement eventually and had to die, but it was fun to play. Nice feel, great (and minimalist) art, cool sounds.
I think this would be fun to play with others from the description, but there's nobody here, so I can't really try it out. I opened up another window and played with myself to see how it works. Looks cool, and kudos on the multplayer implementation - very hard to do in 48 hours.
Fun little game - I had fun running around shooting guys. I completed a level, but the next level seemed like the same thing, so I gave up. It would have been cooler if you could have seen the shots better - I only saw them as white or red flashes, nothing traveling. I think that simple thing would have made it a lot more engaging. Sounds were fine, and the 3D world is pretty (and minimalist).
Very neat entry. Simple, cool physics leads to complex (but not very hard) levels. I think you could develop this into a more complex game with some really clever level designs, even with the few types of squares you've got now. I like the grungy Modern-art look.
Interesting idea; I like the artwork and the Mondrian framework (my game was set in a Mondrian as well). I didn't seem to be able to fire fast enough to kill all the guardian guys around the other bases, which meant I had to choose between semi-boring hiding out behind walls and shooting into the battle, or going for broke and usually dying (although there's no indication of your health that I could see). It would be nice to be able to get back to the instructions screen somehow - I accidentally fast-forwarded through it the first time, and then I couldn't get back there. Really great look, complex gameplay, nice sounds.
The mood is great here, but the gameplay is frustrating, like walking around an unfamiliar room in the dark. I like the uncertainty and fear, but after a couple of blind falls, it got to be not so fun - you were asked to make potentially fatal decisions with no knowledge or real clues, which is more random and stressful than fun. You say the light can show the way - maybe my monitor gamma was too low, but lots of places got totally black before I could detect the edge of a platform. Great graphics, mood, and sound, though.
Fun and very clean - the graphics are simple but appealing, and the gameplay works well. Not a lot to do other than bounce balls around, but a solid entry and fun to play (even on my trackpad, which increased the degree of difficulty significantly). I liked the background music a lot.
Neat concept game with an unconventional structure. I was confused as to how to succeed; I kept running out of "energy" while having no idea how much I had or how much I was consuming. Eventually I figured it out (RTFMing helped) and got to Victory Condition. Really cool take on the theme - definitely minimalist while still being kinda fun/funky. Nice job.
Interesting game - pretty fun, and neat retro look. It would have benefited by being harder, by having more kinds of enemies (including maybe flying ones) and by having a little more to do. I couldn't ever buy the first upgrade for some reason. Cool project, everything works well, nicely done!
Really cool, sharp looking, well-made. I enjoyed discovering how it worked, although I never really felt in danger despite the persistent guided enemy bullets. It does kind of break down after you get a big enough posse following you around - you can barely eat anymore, because your guys narf it all, and if you hang out by the LD26 you spawn so many homeys that nobody can even get close to you. But a cool game, very visually appealing. I actually did a game kind of like this for LD 23 called Teeming - weird how different themes can produce similar results. Nice job!
Very attractive look and fun game. One thing that threw me was I tried the "How to Play" level first, and within about 20 seconds, I somehow added a whole string of walls and got launched impossibly high into the air, where I sat spinning for a long time, confused, until I came back to the ground. Every move I made after that launched me again. This never happened on the later levels, but it was pretty dumbfounding to have happen on the first one. Very fun dynamics; the controls got a little hard to use once you got big, but it was still fun to flail around adding stuff. I really like how you turned the simple components and rules into a complex, fun game.
Interesting idea - I didn't really figure it out until my second go-round, but then I won, and I think I always would, because it's easy to win on the diagonals. I like the gray-on-gray look and the layout - very cool and intuitive.
Fun idea, well executed. I think I'd have preferred having recipes for the various objects, so I could tell how close I was getting, but I guess learning as you go can be fun too. Nice work!
Very cool game, with smooth play, great 3D graphics, and an interesting concept. I got down to about 700,000 - no idea how good that is. I couldn't figure out if shooting anything at all was worth it, or if just hot dogging around trying not to die was a better strategy. I got so many points for shooting it seemed like just being careful was better. Nice work - really good.
The setup and feel here are awesome - I love the VT100 style interface. I kept getting pong as my first game, and it was nearly impossible to keep pong going while running whatever the second game was. Also, for the color match one, which I got a couple times, the instructions were truncated, so all I got was "Press spacebar when" - this was with the web version. Music, sounds, visuals are awesome, although the dark faded colors made it harder to do pong for me. I ended up dying rapidly all the times I tried it, only once surviving to the third game (pong really killed me) - sometimes the launched pong ball was really, really fast and right at me, so I'd die three times in a row or something. So, some minor frustrations, but a really cool underlying idea, and the concept of playing two games at once just completely folds up my brain (in a good way).
I got the lag thing that others mentioned, at about 5 minutes. It was fun before that - I don't know that there's any strategy other than killing all the white guys first and then sweeping out the black, which takes a while. I found that I didn't have great control over my guy, but it was fun to play. Definitely minimalist!
Really interesting patterns, and I understood (eventually) what you were trying to do with biological succession. I kind of wish it ran a little faster so I could see them grow in real time. Nice work!
My best was 72. Interesting game concept, but not too complex, and not much to it - would love to see some more features/options.
Wow, a 30-meg web app. :-) Interesting concept idea and good implementation. The guy moves pretty slowly, as others have said. Most of the puzzles are timing rather than logic, which is fine, but it might be good to have a mix. More levels would help build it into more of a game. I really like the Mondrian-ish art, and the game is definitely minimalist. Anything where you can set up complex shots is fun in my book. Nice work!
My best was 2:23, 53 kills. A lot of fun using only one key. The movement was the hardest - my finger got tired. Very cool concept; well executed.
I enjoyed playing, but it got a little frustrating - if you miss the first jump, which I see other people made but which I never could, it's kind of random as to whether you'll live through landing on the circle below. I made it through there and wandered around for a bit, but then I fell into a hole I couldn't jump out of, which was frustrating. I don't really get how it's supposed to work, but it didn't seem to be working right for me.
Neat concept, and surprisingly robust physics for the controls. I did get the arm separated from the base and from the claw at a couple of points, but it reconnected once I toyed around some ore. The goals assigned were harder than I had patience to do, but it was a terrific idea, well-implemented.
Very clever - I got to level 5 then had to stop - too hard. It was extremely hard until I figured out how my commands applied (at the cycle or half-cycle boundaries of the sine waves). Then it became a much simpler thing to figure out, more a matter of guessing which combinations would work and getting the timing right. Very interesting game. The "Bad luck" thing could be shorter - I just wanted to try again quickly when I lost.
Very clever idea to make a DOS game for the minimalism competition. Total style points. I think the game is a little too hard - I played several times and only barely got to the part where my fellow stickmen turned into at signs. Great concept, though. I love the audio track :-).
Spudstep. Klas. Awesome. This is weird, but really clever and fun. I kept getting my arms crossed, but I didn't care. Very funny.
I enjoyed the game and the idea. I seemed to keep hitting invisible enemies, which made the whole concept not work so well. But it was cool otherwise. Nice sounds, too.
Controls are difficult, and knowing what you can stand on is hard. Some of the jumps were super-difficult and triggered a complete level reset, which was frustrating. The game didn't really work for me (stopped after my 10th death on level 2) but I loved the art and the background music.
Frantic and fun - very cool. The levels with the barriers are just much easier than the others, but you can develop strategies after a while. I finished the game with 718 hits - didn't seem very good, but I have no context. A bunch of it seemed random as to where guys would spawn. Fun, slick program with lots of variety from a few variables.
Really neat idea, fun to play. Took me a while to get used to it, but I enjoyed it, and it was a challenge to figure out how to use the rays correctly. It seemed kind of random when you'd get more white or black incoming blobs, but you could usually make a karma profit overall. Neat idea, good match to the theme.
Neat; I beat medium on my first go, so it's possible. Very nice graphics; the gameplay is fun. I wasn't sure of exactly what the strategy should be, other than to try to hold the other guy's bases where possible and then flood all the channels. Fun, and very nice looking.
Very clean and neat looking. I didn't realize at first that I had to catch my own bullets! Man, really cool feature, and hard. Nice sounds; the bouncing bullets and particle effects were very cool too. Nice work.
Really cool concept with the words - I love the shapes you got them into. The variety of different words, forms, and enemies was great. I found the game a little bit hard and frustrating at times - I may be getting to old to have patience for difficult platform games, so that might just be my problem. I love the dialog between the characters - perfect fit to the theme.
Interesting morphing behavior, but that seems to be it. I made a yellow shape morph and hop - couldn't see any other commands or things to do. Cool look to the morphing, though.
Very funny take on Minimalism. I died of anemia, but I'd gotten down near the target weight. It seemed like it was hard to win without knowing the nutritional values of some of the foods. Nice work!
Very nice - fun platform game that works well. I liked how you could crawl up the edges of things. Cool idea, well executed.
Fun game! I played several times. Never got to the cake - my mouse finger got tired. I like the gameplay - very frenetic. I thought for a while a winning strategy might just be clicking over and over in one column, but then you get areas where you need to click the weaker blocks to keep up, and that was some cool strategic depth. Nice work!
Interesting game; I liked the teleport thing too but I had trouble using it effectively. So many spiders! I got 400 points before dying. Nice work!
This is my favorite game I've played so far (out of 115 or so). Really great, in all respects. Totally atmospheric while being completely minimal; great sounds, innovative gameplay - I was actually scared of clusters of red lines. I love this game.
I could not find the potato. I did get bonus mode, though. I couldn't figure out what it did - I won again after winning the first time and it didn't seem any different. Fun idea, good execution, not much game (but I guess that's the minimalism). Surprisingly fun.
Very neat take on the theme; I liked it a lot, the look, feel, and 13-square rule. I also really liked how you could jump higher with each successive coin - made for a puzzle aspect too. It was a little hard to know where you were, and sometimes I found that crucial squares just didn't show, but overall, a very fun, very creative entry.
It's an interesting idea, but a little hard to get into. Very much a high-concept game with the fading text. I got stuck in a couple spots with no apparent exits and had to back-button to get out. The writing is interesting, and the fading mechanic is definitely artsy.
Really interesting, but the rules were too complicated for me to grasp easily (too many variables at once), and it was more fun just to click and listen. I think if you wanted it to be a successful game, there would have to be more direct control, and fewer rules, if that makes any sense. But it's really cool as is.
Interesting idea, well-executed. I found it hard to use all the keys, and it would have been cool to have more of a game object/score thing that had more of a goal rather than just accumulating points gradually. I had fun messing around with it - nice work.
Interesting math rules; seemed like there was a bit of luck with the numbers that came up. I didn't have another person to play with, so I ran through it solo, which limit enjoyment some. An interesting idea, well executed; good match to the theme.
Neat game, and some fun puzzle stuff. It did seem longer than I could invest while playing, but I think I got the idea. Very neat. I had some texture/color issues with the red disks on the ground - they got all moire-y - but otherwise, it was very smooth, except for I kept slipping off cubes while pushing them - maybe a little friction factor there would help.
Nice game, well-executed. I liked the multiple variables (color, shape, number) I had to keep in mind - I wasn't very good at it, but it was fun. Sounds were cool, and the art was very crisp and clear. At the end, I got to a point where I had numbers without shapes, and I thought I made a couple of moves that seemed legal but got penalized. And when I did make an illegal move, most of the pieces changed color and/or shape - I wasn't sure if that was a feature or a bug. Fun, though - nice work.
Really interesting story constructed from one or two-word pieces. I love the concept. Nice work.
This is a great, fun game. I don't think it has much to do with minimalism, but it's a really neat concept, and it looks clean and sharp. Very nice work; I like the subtle sliding sound.
Very simple game, but fun. Really cool feel and music. I couldn't always click when I wanted - I wasn't sure how or why that was limited, or whether I was messing up the crosshairs somehow. I got 17 in my game - no idea if that's good or not. Fits the minimalism theme well.
Very cool take on Qix with a Mondrian twist. Great sounds and music, very crisp-looking graphics; easy interface. I wish there were more varieties of levels or difficulties to try. Nice work.
Really interesting idea. I found the bottom (perspective view) pretty hard to use, and I had trouble meeting up with companion particles and widening my field of view. I did enjoy wandering around, although many of my deaths seemed random (although a few times I saw what killed me and tried to run away). For the areas that are bigger than the main screen, it's pretty hard to get your bearings as far as where you are in the world. The backstory/legal disclaimer and your drawings are very fun.
Interesting game; I wish there were more levels; I was just getting into it. Fun simple idea, executed well.
Very cool music and graphic design. The game got a little frustrating having to repeat such long sequences of jumps - maybe I just suck at it. Very cool idea; I love his flowing sash.
Cool idea; I like puzzle games. I wasn't sure what I was doing on the Entropy level - my power gauge seemed to fluctuate semi-randomly, although the mouse seemed to do something. Would be better with more to do, but fun as it is, and a clean look.
Very cool look - the blocky graphics are great, especially the fallen bullets and blood cubes. It took me a few tries to win - eventually, I realized the bad guys only come from one way if you're near a corner, and they can get confused by terrain. Neat, clean, very cool.
Nice sounds, and cool controls, both in-game and with the icon menus. The puzzles were generally very simple, which isn't bad, but it might be cool to have some levels that were harder. There was a mix of logic and mouse skills, which was neat. I like that the game had internal savepoints so you didn't have to do the whole level over if you messed up. The timed black blocks were kind of irrelevant, because you could just put them down and pick them up again, and level 11 has a trivial solution in addition to the one I think you intended. It would also be cool if the objects that behaved differently from the norm (e.g. timed blocks, timed switches) looked different initially from the others. Fun game - nice work.
Really interesting idea, and an elaborate game for only 72 hours. I had a lot of trouble figuring out what I was supposed to be doing; I added some stuff to my cities and made some money, but it seemed to move pretty slowly, and sometimes my progress was erased. I didn't fully understand how time was supposed to be going backward, either - maybe that's why my upgrades were removed? Or was it because I was attacked? Anyway, interesting and quite detailed, but for me, not quite enough help in figuring out the goal.
Very cool - it took me a while to get a hang of the controls -- er, control. I did like that there was some tolerance for missing. Very clever gameplay - I haven't seen anything like this before. The art critic is hilarious.
Interesting idea; very minimalist and fun. The difficulty ramps up VERY fast between level 1 and 2. Fun, and good work.