Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → DevMerlin
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 48 | Deeper and deeper | WordGeddon | jam | 1687 | 2.93 | 2.83 | 2.41 | 2.47 | 2.68 | 2.25 | 2.64 |
Fairly fun overall. The game feels a lot like Sid Meier's Pirates mixed with a text adventure, in combat terms. However, the sound was a... little annoying. I also noticed that the AI has absolute precision - they can fire at you from the edge of the targeting arc and then dodge away. Don't worry a whole lot about over-scoping, I do it all the time. This jam, I had to ditch my first idea!
VERY nice work! The atmosphere heavily reminds me of Blackthorne... combat was a little easy until getting to the demon, and then it suddenly felt like Dark Souls 2D.
Bookmarked this for later. I ended up replaying way too many times - and often, treating Purplebeard more like Spider-Man! Honestly, I would suggest a last-stage "safety net" rail as the lowest level. Maybe have it shatter every few paces so it isn't totally safe.
Well done! I have one small question - are things procedurally placed within the space available? I ran into the ambush worms, and got killed because there were two of them right on top of each other, and then another not far below that.
The art and animation of for 48 hours is fantastic.
Took me a little while to figure out how gentle you need to be with the controls - but after that, it became fairly easy. The scrambled "defeat" music at the end is... eh, and I noticed a few hitboxes felt like they could be tightened, but other then that, it was fun!
Great job on this one! The controls are a little baffling - I expected the digger to act like a treadmill vehicle - tank, but it felt a bit more like... I'm not quite sure - an eight-direction car? For the amount of time in the weekend, the voice overs and music are fantastic but there do seem to be a couple of possible audio bugs.
There's a constant hiss in the background that's louder then everything else, and doesn't seem to go away.
How do the upgrades work? They seem to be granted almost at random on picking up the boxes... but I can't quite tell.
Out of curiosity, is the control style meant to simulate ocean currents pulling/pushing along?
Interesting piece, I found I had to lure the correct colored memories over to expand the areas I could move to next. There were a few times where I was partially trapped, and had to wait more then thirty seconds for something to come close enough - either a black memory to clear the way, or something of my color.
I also found that you can "dive" down between tight spaces - the acceleration flings you forward.
@lelek-hunor-kadosa Thanks for the feedback! I've got a lot more I want to add to it, and as @steve-dragon said the dictionary can be... weird, sometimes. It's thrown me for a loop more then once.
@fribolin Thanks for the comments on audio - that was one thing I didn't really have time to do, but will be added in. Some in-game instructions too eventually. These will be in another version I'll post links to.
@corbeng Thanks! I'm planning on making updates with some of the above mentions, including the ability to click to erase. Those'll be in the "published" version off Ludum Dare, so there should be some quality of life changes in the big version.
@leorid Yeah, I need to go through and prune the list some - it's a direct reference copy of a number of dictionaries.
Great art style and design overall! It took me a couple of attempts to figure it out, but after that..I was hoping there'd be a lot more! I noticed one problem - the Big Boss just.... stops moving. It'll chase you for a bit, and then sit there and let itself be destroyed.
Very interesting premise. I would say that the controls need to be closer or the player moves faster, but using the ship itself as the health bar is something I haven't seen before. My one major complaint would be that at any size, the UI and buttons are too small.
Some rounded corners could help with the cave design for the edges. I would suggest some different placement for the attack keys - A/X or similar left-side combos when using spacebar for jumping would feel more natural.
Out of curiosity, is there a way to shrink the gameplay window in the browser?
For some reason, this reminds me heavily of Homestar Runner's Snake Boxer. But with Sharks.
Nice! Great production here - especially in the design of the progression. You've got a good sense of design, and I kept pushing forward with it slowly.