dennyrocketdev

Routine by Breno_M 2017-05-07T06:22:09Z

Wow, this game is great. It really suprised me when I saw that this was a compo entry. Really impressive for 48 hours. I love the visuals and the audio. I also love the unique spin on the theme. The puzzle mechanics were really interesting and together with the theme, the music and the visuals it made for a great game.

The UX is lacking a bit. I simply didn't know what to do for a solid 5minutes. I watched them walk around, hovered over their houses and it didn't feel like there was anything I could do. I tried drag and drop, double clicking, right-clicking... nothing worked. The biggest issue was that the buttons (Assign Visitation and Assign Workplace) simply don't have any hover effect and don't look like buttons at all.

Another thing is the actual time mechanic. It think the game would work alot better if it was faster or even turn-based, where you plan your routes and can just check them. Having to wait a whole week to tweak something wasn't really fun, especially when trying to make all 3 of them meet.

All in all, a great 5 star game though. I was really impressed with this one.

Falling ground by Mr. Chelnoque 2017-05-01T13:12:52Z

Graphics, audio, mood - all that is great, but I don't know what to do. I collected about 30+ heart things I still have no clue what the goal is.

Abaddon by Geckoo1337 2017-05-05T15:14:20Z

I am torn here. The game is obviously good for 72 hours. It's fun, it's polished, the effects are nice, the sound is decent, the leaderboard is a nice touch - pretty much everything is good.

The downside is that it is an obvious Devil Daggers clone and Devil Daggers is far better by every objective comparison you can make. Devil Daggers is faster, feels better, has better feedback for actions, has better audio design, the game design has waaay more depth and clarity and, in general, it is just a far better game.

Of course I understand that you made this in 72 hours and Devil Daggers had far more time, but if you make a clone, you have to at least make a better game - regardless of the time you spent on it.

So I guess I can give you high ratings for some categories like graphics and mood, which are fantastic, and have to lower the score for those where Devil Dagger just outperforms your game.

Little House of Horrors by Archimagus 2017-05-05T19:14:18Z

The atmosphere was certainly something. You actually managed to create a spooky mood with perfect use of audio and visuals.

The gamplay felt a bit too open and a bit complex to just get thrown in there, I feel. None of the stats were explained, you have no clue what the rooms do before you enter. It just felt like a huge "wtf is going on".

Overall a very solid game, and 5 star mood for sure.

Llama's World by fancy89 2017-05-01T19:04:57Z

This game is awesome all around.

One little thing that was a bit annoying is the arrows. I think they aim in the wrong direction, got me killed a few too many times because I thought it would shift in the other direction.

Age of Utan by Yetikatt 2017-05-01T14:24:37Z

Nice concept, good graphics - a fun little game.

One thing that was off though was the pace, it is a game that makes you retry a couple of times and experiment, when you die it takes a long time to reach the same state that you failed in last time - making you not want to try again after a while.

All in all, I had fun with it.

Icarus Isolation by King Kujito 2017-05-04T15:03:19Z

Well, I just played 1.0.0 and I just couldn't enjoy the game. The controls were simply not anything that seemed to bring fun to the game in any way, shape or form. It's a shame, since the graphics, audio and mood are suberb.

Echoes by ghostbomb 2017-05-02T16:00:17Z

Hey, I really liked the game. It was short and fun. There were some things that were kinda off though: - I think there is no reason not to spam 'X'. I think there should be a downside to using it, maybe cooldown or only a certain amount of charges per level. - the beginning felt a bit empty, I know you wanted to introduce mechanics, but because of the things mentioned above, there wasn't much but flying and spamming 'X'. I think the game got a lot stronger with the puzzles introduced later - also I think all the puzzles would have worked without the darkness thing. I think you reduced your main feature to a gimmick and left quite a bit of potential untapped because of that.

Overall a nice game, the puzzles were fun and the ending was really nice.

Fast & Faeries by andyman404 2017-05-03T21:34:43Z

Well, congrats on making a great Ludum Dare game! :D

The art, music and pretty much everything works nicely together to create a nice atmosphere. The whole things feels well polished and most importantly - it's fun.

Blackhole Escape INC by teekeks 2017-05-01T18:45:18Z

Sadly, it instantly crashes when I try to run it. I am on Windows 10.

Little Infinity by Kevin Barrios 2017-05-03T20:27:41Z

Great atmosphere. Graphics and audio were also superb. I really liked the feedback for every action - pretty much a great game.

One downside though, you milked the main mechanic to the extreme. I felt the main mechanic on it's own got old pretty quick and it lacked a supporting cast of supplementing mechanics. Once I got the hang of it I just repeated what I already learned and it quickly felt like a grind because it wasn't that much of puzzle anymore. You probably ran out of time to implement more mechanics (in that case, welcome to the club).

All in all, a great game though and something you could build on if you choose to do so.

Rocket Roller Space Polo by pkenney 2017-05-01T13:21:39Z

It is incredibly fun to just bounce around - get multiplayer up and you have a real good game at your hands.

Astromike by mikea 2017-05-05T01:01:55Z

Damn, this game was impressive! Audio and the sound scape, visuals, game design, the effects - everything was just fantastic.

There was one thing with the last level. Dying felt unfair because the projectiles were fired from off-screen locations. I had no chance to react and dying a few times actually didn't feel good. The last level in particular felt like it was too long and unfair because of it.

That is pretty much the only negative point I have. Game design, as mentioned already, was great. You introduced game mechanics in the right pace and order, everything was clear and it never got boring and was fun - well, until the last level.

The only reason I can't give overall 5 stars is because I usually play and judge the first jam/compo versions only. You are already on version 1.2.1 and didn't keep the original version up, so I simply don't know what is different and how much fun the original version was. Anyway, a great entry nonetheless.

NekomimiAtsume by parkdraws 2017-05-01T13:46:15Z

Not sure what this... game... is about, but it sure feels like a cat-person petting simulator. Like a kawaii tamagotchi.

Path of the Rabbit by managore 2017-05-01T14:18:40Z

It's so darn good. I couldn't reach the boss in a few tries though. Once thing that bothers me is the amount of tiles that you need to place before the boss arrives, makes the beginning of the game a bit grindy when you have to try over and over.

But still a great entry and a lot of fun to play.

Hamsterscape! by Dzik 2017-05-03T21:37:50Z

I only tested it alone, but as far as I can tell, it is a darn good entry.

The art is great, the physics are spot on and the whole game seems to be fun. The menu is a bit fiddly though.

PogoPogo by obvious-san 2017-05-01T23:03:17Z

Well the worst things first, there isn't much game. You crowdsurf and you pogo around to animate the crowd. The good thing, you crowdsurf and pogo around to animate the crowd. It actually feels awesome and it makes me want to go to a concert right now.

Core Breakdown! by Firstdream 2017-05-01T19:22:38Z

I finished it. You could have mentioned anywhere that Q is used to trigger conversations, I pressed ALL the buttons :D Also the game shouldn't have pooped out an endless stream of sheep. Putting one set of sheep into the red zone was already enough. All in all a solid entry, given that you used java and not a game engine.

Your game lacks a bit of juice though, so I am dropping my favorite video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fy0aCDmgnxg

Core Breakdown! by Firstdream 2017-05-02T11:12:56Z

@firstdream erm, I might have missed it then :D Like most people, I don't like to read anymore these days.

Flerth by parahunter 2017-05-06T11:42:46Z

Wow, this game surprised me in best way possible. Everything was so polished, cute, professional and awesome. Smashing those poor flat earthers feels super satisfying.

Tau Zero by sharpcoder 2017-05-01T22:58:37Z

Charging feels really nice, animations and sounds are spot on. Having to refresh the page seems kinda odd, a retry button is obviously better, but you probably ran out of time (like most of us).

Gameplay is lacking a bit, you can't see how far you have to go before you actually leave the planet so you can basically only charge the thing and try to hit the arrow.

All in all, it's a good entry.

DownHere by flix 2017-05-06T11:55:51Z

I really dig the game design here. You sequentially and organically teach me everything I need to know to beat the game. The art and mood are great too. The actual platforming movement is a bit weak and imprecise, but that's okay for 72 hours. Also the theme connection seems to be, well... weak, to say the least.

The game in general is awesome though, great art, great game design. Top game.

Tiny Colonies by PhyscoKillerMonkey 2017-05-01T18:56:14Z

Neat little game, I really like the art and the mood.

Go Home by IndieAlchemist 2017-05-01T14:04:54Z

I couldn't play this game, the camera gave me motion sickness after only a few seconds.

A World In Her Eye by OrbitalBlueprint 2017-05-01T12:51:11Z

Mood, music and art is fantastic, but I had no clue what to do, no sense of direction and everything resorted to trial and error. I feel like you should communicate the goal better.

The Land We Must Take (La Terre qu'il nous faut conquérir) by kavehes 2017-05-01T18:23:48Z

I am not really sure if I figured out what to do. I was playing alone, so that might not have helped, but I was just building cities, based and exploit ing tiles for 15 minutes and I still don't know how to win.

It seems solid though, you really got a lot done for compo.

The Epic Quest For The Mighty Croissant by 0x0 2017-05-04T14:31:22Z

The visuals are soo good. The game looks simply fantastic. The color, the blocky art style, the lighting and effects - everything looks great. The walking animation was also very neat and moving felt great.

The actual gameplay is a bit fiddly though. The controls with only mouse don't make for a very fun game. The combat didn't feel like it had much depth to it. It is basically walking or slashing. The feedback when getting hit is not always clear, same goes for how you communicate the goal.

All in all though, it is a top notch game for a 72hr entry. 5* graphics for sure.

A Small Hell by psychead 2017-05-01T13:05:48Z

I really liked the mood but quit because I did not know what to do. I gave it another try after reading that you have to talk to satan - it was actually pretty good after I found that out. Neat little puzzle.

A Bombtastic World by dennyrocketdev 2017-05-01T16:04:13Z

Thank you to everyone that played so far. I know the game has only 7 levels, but I didn't have time to make more during the jam. On the plus side, people want more levels, which is a good thing, I think.

I didn't want to put up a version with more levels after the jam though, it felt like cheating, I only added some missing effects that didn't alter the original version too much. I am definitely going to put out more levels later.

A Bombtastic World by dennyrocketdev 2017-05-02T19:46:07Z

@wildmusketeer - Thanks man! That's high praise. I totally agree with the camera issue. I already programmed a shitty camera pan during the jam, I wasn't happy with it though and just replaced it with a simple LookAt to get a more visually pleasing angle - with the downside of excatly this issue. Not really sure what the best solution is, but I will try around a bit more with the camera.

Thanks again to everyone for playing and taking the time to leave a comment, I really wanna apologize for the performance issues. I packaged the game using the highest rendering settings with no optimization and no time for an options menu.

**A quick fix for performance issues** (not very user-friendly):

- Open console (Using `^` or `INSERT`) - type: `r.ScreenPercentage 65` - the `65` stands for the percentage of the window resolution - you can go even lower if you need to. - If that isn't enough, you can also type in `sg.PostProcessQuality 1`.

Those two values have very high impact on the gpu performance, that should help to make it playable on low end notebooks.

A Bombtastic World by dennyrocketdev 2017-05-06T09:14:03Z

@fpwong Hey, thanks for giving it a go! :D As stated above, I ran out of time for new levels and decided not make new ones until after the judging period is over. I didn't want to alter the actual game too much before that - it felt like cheating

@issac Thanks for playing and taking the time to comment. Regarding the game levels looping: I simply didn't have time to set up a menu or an end game screen. I decided to make it loop because it was easiest and just worked bug free out of the box. I know it is confusing. Regarding the theme: my original idea was to start with a small world and the goal was to destroy all of it while being able to reach the starting point after that. The design on that didn't really work out, so I transitioned to the crystal thing.

A Bombtastic World by dennyrocketdev 2017-05-07T10:00:42Z

@jason-kennedy Hey, I can't build for Mac, since I don't own one. I can look into building for Linux though. Maybe I have some time today and can make it happen. No promises though :)

Miniverse by sebasrez 2017-05-05T17:55:07Z

Hey, first off, a very solid entry. Sounds, music, art, the effects, programming. Everything was solid, I'd even say very good to great. Nothing bad to say about that.

However, game design felt off. The game just wasn't fun for me. - I feel that the traveling is very emtpy. It felt like was waay too much downtime. A system like FTL for example would be a lot better, where you just get to places and skip all the emptiness. - the battle system is underexplained and feels super overwhelming and even random. I think you need to introduce the battle mechanics step by step in a neat way that let's me figure out what everything means. - All in all, the game felt like I was floating in space for way to long to collect things I didn't understand what they were for and they fought enemies for no reason with an opaque battle system.

In conclusion, you are a talented bunch of people, that was obvious from the beginning. I feel like if you work on your game design, you have a potential 5 star game here.

[BOXAVERSE] by Fran Segura 2017-05-07T06:51:27Z

I think the UX is the only thing that doesn't live up to the rest of the game. I took me a while to get into it and UX was a bit of downer all the way through. But once I figured it out, it actually was a pretty good game. Lot's of stuff to discover and just fun to play around with. I finished it just to see what was happening next with my little boxaverse. Art, music and sound effects were really great.

If you tweak UX a bit and maybe introduce introduce a few more interesting mechanics (like the magnifying glass thing), this could easily be expanded into a full game. Good job!

Set Sails by Erik Brunnstrom 2017-05-05T20:03:44Z

I really liked it, it is my type of genre. The style was very good, the mood, the sound effects, it was just a good game.

I was very hard to get into though. I think it could use several UX improvements to make it easier to get into. Also I think fast forward mode faster game speed in general could have helped the game a bit.

Overall a great entry though!

Stupid Humans by Virtual Window 2017-05-01T19:52:55Z

The art was fantastic. The gameplay was very overwhelming though, it was hard to figure out what was going on, what the goal really is. I think part of the issue is the lack of input feedback and what the disasters are doing isn't really clear.

Overall a solid entry though. I played 0.0.1

SmallWorld by arg410 2017-05-01T12:37:44Z

Hey, I gave it a few minutes but I couldn't even figure out what the goal of the game was. I think you should take some time introducing the mechanics and establish the goal in the beginning of the game and then go from there.

Also it entirely lacks juice and feedback for actions. Did you watch Juice it or Lose it yet?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fy0aCDmgnxg

Song of Fungus by DGSpitzer 2017-05-03T22:52:55Z

Damn this game is good! I mean the visuals are absolutely stunning. You effortlessly bring art, sounds and the effects together, it is just beautiful. The game design is solid as well, it took me a while to get the what the game was about and the combo things, but it was fun. There were two things that take away from an otherwise great game. The mechanics were a bit lackluster and felt repetitive after a while, I think you needed to introduce some more mechanics to keep it fresh. Also the effects were so blown out that it actually took away some of the clarity needed to see what is actually going on.

BUT, overall, one of the best LD38 games!

This Plague of Mine by Mega Munch 2017-05-01T13:55:00Z

This can only be described as weird. Weird with good graphics.

KeyPuppers by AntaresValdemar 2017-05-01T14:02:50Z

I had to come back and read what the shift-key did to actually play this game. I think the game would have been better off without the shift key. I like that the game brings stress and flow at the same time. Much like a typing version of audio surf or something.

Incidental Dimension by wildmusketeer 2017-05-02T20:15:25Z

Wow this was quite something. I really dig how you wrapped the level onto the globe (or the sphere?). Neat trick regardless. My brain and my eyes started complaining after a bit though, I actually got headache from it.

I liked the puzzles and all, but I think the boxes could have moved a bit smoother, I had to restart twice because the boxes wouldn't come of the walls, which is probably intentional, but they got stuck ther in the first place because they became attached to my dude, it seemed a bit buggy.

Also I kinda speed-ran it, I think

https://i.gyazo.com/068ef7caa220061e5cab4bc2add574f0.png

I don' think that is how you are supposed to beat it, I got off-track and then by accident found the end.

Crowded: The Suits by Toone 2017-05-01T23:08:40Z

I actually like the concept, the execution lacks a bit though. It is not clear what to do and what the game wants from me, I feel like I am losing too quickly and I am color blind, that doesn't help.

Sounds, the physics animation and art is really neat. Definitely feels unique.

Den by La mecanique du plastique 2017-05-01T13:42:32Z

Just finished it and damn - this thing is great. The atmosphere is top notch, so is the art.

Masked by fpwong 2017-05-01T20:31:27Z

very reminiscent of the original Doom. Mood is dark and claustrophobic. There is actually quite a bit of content to play through, I liked it.

Floraison by Iwa 2017-05-01T18:06:57Z

I love the mood and the flow of the game. Really reminded me of Flower (old PS3 game). The music and sound effects really helped selling the mood. I think it needs a challenge or more things to interact with though.

eiland by rubna 2017-05-01T12:33:34Z

I really liked the mood and the actual gameplay. One downside for me was that the tide is not really explained (is it random?). Another thing is that the game is really slow. The pacing just isn't right. The part where you just drift towards the island in the beginning takes far too long for my liking, it should at least be skippable - maybe it is just not my type of game.

I really loved the interaction and the animation squash and squeeze, thhe art in general and that it wanted me to figure stuff out my own.