Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → Deepfreeze
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | 56 | Tiny Creatures | Gossamer Glade | compo | 3.10 | 2.40 | 2.87 | 3.50 | 4.20 | 3.60 | 2.00 | 3.25 | ||
| 2023 | 52 | Harvest | Inter-dimensional Asteroid Harvester | compo | 260 | 3.15 | 3.18 | 2.30 | 2.89 | 3.39 | 3.15 | 2.94 | ||
| 2022 | 51 | Every 10 seconds | The Ariadaeus Run | compo | 371 | 3.13 | 3.06 | 2.67 | 2.86 | 3.47 | 3.25 | 1.84 | 2.90 |
Yeah, the auto lock is great. The stat system is a bit confusing, so I just kept to the singularity gun, which carried me to round 20, until I got the health debuff, and ran into a dog by accident. Overall pretty solid, though as others have mentioned, the camera panning takes a bit too far to the edge to activate, and the speed debuff is brutal. Graphics are great, and the gameplay pretty solid. It's fun.
Yeah, Antivirus flag is clickteam exe's being clickteam exe's; It's safe as far as I can tell. Im not great at these kinda games, so the magnifying glass actually helped me out a lot. Graphics are fun and charming. Music's actually pretty solid; was not expecting multiple tracks. Sound effects are fine. Neat use of the theme. I enjoyed it.
Mood and concept are great, though I also had the same problem of not realising how to deal with Lily's mom, but the other comments helped. Glad there's checkpoints, otherwise I'd have probably ended up dropping it. I think I beat it though. Got to the point where I was stuck in the red dimension.
Yeah, this is pretty neat. I can see how a speedrun community's already developed around it. Interesting and unique use of the theme too.
Fun concept, though the new laws every 10 seconds was a bit confusing, and made the game pretty difficult. That said, I enjoyed it, had fun, and quite a few good chuckles. Worth beating.
Concept, graphics, and audio are great, but there simply isn't enough screen real estate for the mechanics, which leads to a lot of blind jumps. I almost gave up on the spider section, which felt extremely frustrating.. Not enough light to deal with that sort of mechanics at all. Also don't put in fake lamps, unless you make them even more different, it felt really cheap. Also a dedicated jump button rather than up to jump would be appreciated. Overall the game's really neat, but is a bit of a victim of the 10 second theme, as 10 seconds are far too long in-between lightning strikes for the screen real estate you have.
Yeah, I have to agree; it's a bit difficult to get the barrels, and a bit hard to see the helicopters and their bullets. The Powerups having green text at the top, and power downs having red text at the top is good, and helps a lot with that. Audio feedback for getting hit, hitting, destroying, and barrel-getting would also be nice. The Art is nice and charming.
Took me a moment to realise explosions weren't going to hurt me, but after that things were neat. The explosion chains and cascades were super satisfying. Graphics are pretty solid too. Would play again.
Yeah, I had camera jerking issues as well, and had to run it on Itch in firefox. Concept is great. Reminds me of an old game 'Factory: The Industrial Devolution', and I haven't seen a game remotely like it until now. Excellent concept, and with some refinements, it could really shine.
I love the shark and other fish models. Water animation is really good too. But I agree with the controls being a bit too sensitive; it's very hard to aim. Also some sort of visual or audio indication on how close you are to overheating your gun would be a nice addition.
Solid game, I agree with the others that the green orb things could probably be a bit more forgiving. Music and art are really solid. Platforming physics seem solid enough. Overall, a pretty solid entry. It's nice seeing someone else use GMS2.
Can't say I was expecting a game based off of Project Orion, but it absolutely needs a manual. Took me a while to figure out what I could press, but I still veered off course, and could not figure out how to get back on course. The game also doesn't run very smoothly for me for some reason. Awesome concept, but absolutely needs instructions. If the red levels are supposed to work; they don't.
Game concept is really great, though it feels a bit buggy: If you get the diamond, and then die afterwards, it still counts as a fail. Dont know if this is a bug or not. But it does say get the diamond, not get the diamond and live. Pin failed for me despite getting a pin through the hole and poking the skull. Boop the Snoot can sometimes be near impossible or actually impossible, and isn't entirely clear if smaller, more zoomed out snoots count or not. The Avoid the asteroid one can sometimes give legitimately impossible or near-impossible patterns. Screen is also a bit small for some of the minigames. The only minigame I couldn't beat at all was the diamond and the pin one. Would be fun to try multiplayer though.
This is pretty good. Graphics and music are great. Sound effects are good, gameplay is solid, and I appreciate the shift button for landing, rather than having to slow down to proper speed. My only complaints are that the little fellows walk kinda slow, and I did run into a bug where my screen went black after one of the levels, but I was able to get back there with pressing n. Otherwise, great work! This is pretty crazy for a compo entry.
AIGalleryPainting-2022-10-05_03-11-44.png Ok this is pretty fun and silly. I'll definitely come back and play this again. Edit: Came back and played it again. My only complaints which could be remedied in a future, post-jam version would be an option to have more than 10 seconds, and have some more prompts; as I've had quite a few repeats. Given the restrictions due to the jam, this is still really good.
THIS GAME DOES NOT RUN IN HTML 5. I accidentally uploaded the zip and it would not let me remove it. If you want to play it, please download TheAriadaeusRun_v0.7a.zip
Update: It seems to have let me remove the non-functional HTML5 version.
Yeah, the difficulty curve absolutely needs work. Glad you liked the music. I was worried the guitar might have been a bit much.
Yeah, Spy Hunter was definitely one of the inspirations for this. And yeah, If I were to remake the game it'd probably swap it to a stage-based format, with checkpoints every stage and infinite continues. rather than just one long run.
I love the background art, the character art is pretty good too, but I do wish it was a consistent resolution. It's really easy to get stuck in walls or stairs though. I legit lose 85%+ of my runs getting stuck in walls, floors, or stairs. The guy on the top right also takes too many hits to kill; Though I just realised clicking him rapidly does the trick a lot quicker. The attacks and mouse clicks aren't quite sync'd. Movement also feels really slippery and hard to have much precision. Having multiple levels with a difficulty curve might also be a good idea to ease you into the controls. All in all, not bad for a first game.
I actually really love the movement controls. They're a bit weird, and take some getting used to, but it's responsive and snappy, and most importantly: Consistent. On the final level, I had some weird issues with invisible platforms that let me sort of cheese the level a tad. Art is great and really cute. There's a few gripes I had with the level design in some parts though: There are some areas where it's easy to mess up and then have to wait out the timer for a reset; adding in a room reset button would fix this. There's also a couple spots where you just kinda feel like you're just waiting for a while. Also making it more clear the boss was popping out. All in all, I think it's pretty good, just needs some minor tweaks. Also a quit button.
Concept is really interesting and cool, but I ran into a glitch on one of my attempts, where I could no longer move, despite nothing being in the way. Also \ith the obstacles being the same color as the background, it's really hard to see where the obstacles are at a close glance.
Made it to 259m. Controls feel a bit slippery, as others have mentioned, and the lava starts out a bit fast, leading to a bit of a hard start. Having the a dedicated jump button rather than up would also be nice, though with Arrow keys + W I was able to do a bit better though. Solid concept though, and the usage of the theme was pretty solid. Overall, not bad; Had fun.
Really cool idea, took me a bit to figure out I could by the abilities at the sign though. The color palette and art style work really well with it. Sound design is really solid too; makes it quite clear when a train is coming.
Overall this is pretty good! I do have a few suggestions though. The crates feel kinda useless, as it felt, or at least for me, there was never anything in them. The rock enemies can be kind of annoying, though its mainly in the room with a bunch of rocks and the spikes. Their locations make it extremely difficult to dodge. Also there's a bug? Where the skeleton can kill you after you've killed it. I dont know if it spawned the bone after it died, or a couple of frames before it died, but I was near it, killed it, the ladder spawned, I blinked and died. Here's the screenshot: https://pasteboard.co/iNlkdcVFnkmD.png
Ok there's a really solid concept in here, though it needs a bit of polish. I enjoyed it enough to beat it to completion, and ended up with a final gold of 31,241. Not quite sure how I manaegd to get ~31,000 points in a single go, but I did. The shop is a bit awkward to use, and its not always clear what the items do. The ability to see your current multiplier and bonuses would be greatly appreciated. Graphics are alright. Witch at the top with her eyes tracking the ball is a cute touch. As others have mentioned the time in-between balls is a bit long. I overall think its a fun game, though a bit arcane, and lacking explanation of what's happening. I hope you spend some time after the jam polishing it up a bit.
Ok yeah, this is a way better implementation of the theme than my game. Music's great. Graphics are simple, yet cohesive, cohesive, and look pretty good. I do have 2 complaints though. The rotation feels very slippery. I'd find myself trying to make small adjustments, and end up running into asteroids pretty frequently, and then when I hit them, my facing direction gets reversed (not just my momentum), and I end up crashing again. The other is that my money doesn't seem to carry over from one sector to the next, so if I need repairs, I lose all the minerals I gained, even if I were say like 500 away from an upgrade, that's all gone. Other than those two gripes, it's pretty solid. I look forward to seeing it more polished. This is pretty impressive for a Compo entry.
Its fun, though the movement feels a bit slow for my tastes, but that's personal preference. Graphics are charming, music's cute, though its a bit of a short loop. My main gripe is the UI really limits your view of the two top rows when not in fullscreen, and still partially obscures the top row in full screen, though far more tolerably. Concept's great, and overall its a solid entry. Definitely one of my favorites I've reviewed so far.
I like fairies, and hate mice, so this game was up my alley. That said, some hit feedback (both given and received), both visual and audio would be nice. Also there's a bug where teeth can fly out of bounds, especially if an enemy dies near a wall.
Probably one of the weirdest games I've played in a long while, but it gave me a good few chuckles, and played fairly well. There were a few spots where the people were really hard to see, as mentioned above, and there's a few spots on edges that are really hard to reach, but other than those fairly minor issues, it was really good. One of the best I've played in this jam!
The music and graphics are really nice, though there's a high-pitch clicking sound near the sound with some of the swings that drives me nuts. Physics are a bit weird, and its fairly easy to get stuck in the floor; sometimes only for brief seconds, other times until you find some spikes to die on. Otherwise, this is a really solid entry!
Yeah, I 100% agree on Asteroid crashing feedback, @spiritbeard I had spent a bit of time trying to make it more obvious at one point, with the asteroids having some knockback, but wasn't able to implement it in time. Theres a few other things missing proper sound effects too, that I didnt notice until the last second and couldn't fix.
@rockford Yeah, I removed the HTML5 version from here as it was unplayable and would crash. A functional one has been uploaded to itch.io @falkreon Thanks for letting me know. I forgot how often I had it read from the ini file. Took your suggestion and moved it to itch.io. Had to make some mild adjustments, as a couple lines weren't HTML5 friendly, and there was a error that should have caused the windows version to crash, or at least give me a warning but didn't, which completely crashed the HTML5 version.
@streq Yeah, there's a bug where only the first collision with a specific asteroid does damage. It was the unfortunate temporary solution to fixing a crash where if you hit the same asteroid too many times the game would just crash, and didnt have time to fix it. @xaviarrob123 Yeah, I wanted to have it where the faster the collision the more damage/slower the less damage, but ran out of time and didnt quite have the knowledge to implement it quickly.
Thank you. Yeah, the collisions with the minerals and the edge of the screen gets stuck a lot, and each bounce makes a ting, and on occasion that occurs off-screen due to jank. There was originally going to be a shop which leaned a bit more into the harvest theme, but was cut due to time restraints.
@falkreon Yeah, Ill need to do some optimization then. Thanks. I wasnt sure on the rules of that, as it's not very clear.
@celtican Yeah, I completely agree on the more minerals from the asteroids. I had other asteroid types and mineral types, but ran out of time. And the reason it doesnt have a sound effect on damage is because I removed it as I realised I was still using my placeholder audio in the last 30 minutes of the Jam for that sound, and didnt have time to give it a proper replacement. Post-Jam thats probably the #1 priority fix, as everyone's complaining about it and for good reason.
@enducube @bowen Try it now, I just uploaded version e2, onto itch, which should have some optimizations. Though it does come at the cost of the asteroid hitboxes being a bit jank. FPS is improved on my desktop to the point of having very few issues, but is still utterly terrible on my laptop (which I admittedly hadn't thought of checking until today), and I am not familiar enough with GMS2's HTML5 implementations to fix this further, unfortunately. Ill put a warning tag on the HTML5 version.
@juanrod707 That's a good point actually. I hadn't realised I messed up the physics there. I'll have to fix that post-jam.
Audio is very crunchy and hurts my ears. Art's really solid though, but I couldn't play it for too long due to the audio crunchiness.
Very cute puzzle game! I had a few chuckles.
I managed to raise 4 and then ran out of time. I was frequently plagued by having my jumps interrupted by messages, which cost me a good chunk of time.
The city building aspects were admittedly super rushed in the last moments of the jam, so I made the requirements for the tree upgrade just require a boss kill. The initial plan was to need various items, as well as population requirements to upgrade the tree (But Unfortunately, building houses had to get cut due to time constraints), with the final upgrade needing the nectar, but time ran out, so I had to simplify the tree. The boss only having a singular attack was also a victim of time. I'm still getting used to HTML5 exports and I struggle with debugging them. The windows version should be much more stable.
Yeah, I plan on fixing it up a bit post-compo. The main plan is to implement the city building a bit more as intended, with the UI actually telling you what's going on, as well as making the boss challenging, as the top priorities besides bug fixes.
@bitluderrb7804fr @ellaris Ok the HTML5 armor upgrade crash should be fixed. (Crash was due to a typo, but only affected the HTML5 version, which is why I missed it.) @tuism Yeah, time got the better of me; I tried to chase two hares and caught neither, and it shows. Xevious-style ground attacks might be a good idea for a future, post-jam build, as well as some much-needed variation.
After giving it a lot of thought, I've chosen to halt development of this game after the next patch (which will make the boss actually not be exceedingly boring). I absolutely overscoped, combined with a slow first day, lead me to make some poor game design decisions, which cannot be easily rectified by minor tweaks, and it needs a whole rebuild from the ground up. I am currently working on other projects at this time, which I should put more focus on. Thus it will likely be a few years before I come back to this concept. I earnestly believe there is a good concept in here, but I executed it quite poorly.