Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → digitaliliad
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | 55 | Summoning | A Following Wind | compo | 117 | 3.68 | 3.39 | 3.85 | 3.64 | 3.85 | 3.77 | 3.84 |
I never really got my factory up and running, but I LOVED flickin' those gems around! It also looks and sounds REALLY good! A lot of interesting ideas definitely, and I understand how hard it must be to bring them all together in a cohesive whole. I think there's great potential here, but just needs additional tuning and tutorialization. Great job on this though, team!
This is possibly the first *perfect* game that I've played so far in this compo. I'm seriously impressed!
I know what my hands need to do to play this game, but just balancing those three actions is intense, great job!
This is one of those games for whom the word "Fun" just doesn't do justice. Is it fun? I don't know, but it's compelling as hell! The mood is intense and gives me a sense of mild claustrophobia. Certainly a great jam entry!
Short, sweet, and to the point. Just what you want from a compo game. Nice job, my compo compatriot <3
I love a game that tells me I took too long so now the world is over, hah! I thought this was quite funny, thanks!
I GOT FIRED!? How could this happen? Loved the vocalizations of the characters, and also the dialogue. Great job!
I'll be back to reach my demon quote. Thank you @mechanicallife for sharing this with me onstream. It was gross, but really good. Great job, team!
Really amazing sokoban game, Jon Blow would be proud! ;) The art was awesome, and the tutorialization was good.
Idle game with strong RTS vibes (especially the unit voice lines). The VO overall was such a devious treat. Thank you!
Such a wonderful little game! I really enjoyed playing it this morning. Thanks again for playing mine yesterday!
What an undertaking for compo - to get a whole game with twitch integration up in 48-hours is incredible. And you still had to make everything else as well, like the art, music, etc. This feels like a huge achievement, great job <3
5/5 game here! Wish I'd had more time to play this onstream. Def going back and stomping that creepy stranger-danger hooded blue character. Loved every single aspect of this game, great job team! <3
The summoned fiends had unique personalities and distinguished this from other survivor-like games. Awesome!
I find puzzles... puzzling, but I feel compelled to come back to this. The mechanic is innovative and the level designs are very well thought out. The overall mood, as a combination of all the features, is quite good. Love it
Loved this game! Great first attempt in Godot. The little creatures had so much character for their sprite size <3
I'm really glad I pushed through and beat this! I didn't start to understand until the final spell. The character design is both disturbing and delightful, same for the sound effects. A super impressive compo submission, thanks for sharing <3
If only my recipe book wasn't so treacherous, I feel like I could've made a delicious, devious stew ;) Really LOVED the music, and the art was super cute and characterful for the sprite size, great job team!
Heavy metal! Or, I guess, molten rock and burning humans. Incredible entry, so much fun. Thanks for sharing! <3
You really pulled my strings with that sweet dog companion. That was a short but intense rollercoaster of emotion <3
I think maybe you really wanted to make a digging game, but you made it work, and you kept it on theme. The art is incredible (the wizard hat drill!) and the music is so crispy and crunchy good, and it works on mobile! Amazing.
Great jam entry! The level design made such good use of the mechanics. I loved the art/music aesthetic. I broke the game on lvl 7 (R stopped working when I died on my bug demon from spikes), but I will be back to complete that 8th lvl! Great job, team <3
Very fun! And I am very bad at this, but I felt compelled to continue. I will someday get through all 20 levels!
Such a great little game! The art was PRISTINE! Got great Nightmare Before Christmas vibes from the little ghosts, and the wizards were so well drawn & animated! The mechanics felt good, and the ai was competent. I enjoyed learning the dynamic of the interactions while formulating the optimal strategy. Great job, team <3
Longest word I could think of was 7, but thanks for backseating and letting me know how much better I could do next game. Congrats to you and your family on a great jam game!
I'm not sure I've ever played anything like this! The audio has a good suburban vibe to me, and I like the rough sketches of the characters - almost like it's reflective of the approximate nature of your memories! Very cool
Only made it to the 4th enemy, but I think I'll be back to defend the forest at least once more. The character designs were adorable, and the music fit it so well. Loved this, thanks for sharing!
Took a while to even start figuring out what was going on. The character designs and sound effects are great!
Mind-bending! Got some very strong M.C. Escher vibes. You really leaned into the perspective mind-f aspect of what is normally a serious problem with isometric games. Very creative solution, great job!
So sick! I experienced a bug where my turrets kept disappearing when I placed a new turret, but it looks like that isn't always the case. However, I enjoyed chasing the score here and will def check back and try again. This was heavy metal af <3
Screenshot 2024-04-21 090916.png
I survived a whole minute, and it felt like such an accomplishment! What an intense experience. Loved that art!
Thank you for sharing this! It took me three tries, but I finally got to that electric guitar shred <3
Maybe the most inspired and complete compo game I've played so far tonight. Great job! Infinity/infinity difficulty though, haha!
Well, after about an hour I managed to snag top 5. Hopefully, you see me back on the leaderboard soon with an even higher score! Great job on every aspect of this, team. The art, the music, everything! Special thanks to @JRevel for sharing onstream with me!
So good! I'm coming for a spot in the top 20. Watchout Pomo, Kepsert, et. al. Really enjoyed this, thanks for submitting <3
I came back and got my spot in (as of this writing) 3rd place! I got to round 9... but can I go further?
A bag of scrabble pieces, or a bag of holding? Love the combination of classic questing with puzzling wordplay. The art and audio were pretty sweet, too. I especially liked the little side profiles of the partymembers going into combat (looked almost like classic mortal combat characters).
Sweet little game you got here! I enjoyed playing it onstream. I hope you can sort out the lag bug in the web build. Thank you for sharing <3
Cute little game! Reminded me of the smallscreen "art games" of old. Thank you for sharing <3
So cool! Loved the music and the mood and the character design. The mechanics of the summoning were well-timed to be challenging but not frantic. I can definitely imaged some more complex combinations if you continue to develop a second part. Thank you for sharing @forik <3 I really enjoyed this!
I dunno how you got both the cutest demons and the hordest music, but great job! Really amazing work <3
Hilarious! Nothing like punting a rolling sumo into an inflating sumo to really feel like you're alive. A few more optimizations and this would be a household name, in my opinion. Great job, team <3
A little hard to manage the summoners and electrons, but the vibes of this game are spot on. Great job on this!
This was amazing... I am not an action platformer kinda guy, but the mechanics were so compelling that I just had to push through to the end! Thank you @skransow for sharing, what an incredible game... great job, team <3
Really fun game! Great mix of strategic thinking and idle enjoyment. Loved the little characters, and crunchy sfx.
Thank you for coming onstream and sharing this with me! It was amazing. Definitely keep working on this <3
I enjoyed playing your game, team! I found it through some very nice feedback @amberfall92 left on my game. I really loved your art by the way, and the music was quite thrilling as well. Great job! <3
Thank you for sharing! Will def try the rebalanced downloadable version offstream. Great job, team!
This was great, be proud! The core mechanic is complex yet robust. The narrator character is a very cute design. I think that this has great potential, but even just as-is, it's a very enjoyable experience <3
Really glad I got a 2nd chance to play this onstream! If only I'd had more time. Great job team!
133 miles here, but I feel like I can go farther! Cool game, loved the audio especially. Great job, team!
An amazing game! The audio alone is incredible. With just 72-hrs, what an accomplishment!
Great little game with what feels like immense potential! Would love to see this out in the wild postjam. Incredible job for a solo jam game <3
Really hard to figure out what's going on, but I summoned the hand and got the door open at least. I really do like the art of this. Isaac's design is especially cute. I'm sure you wanted the player to figure things out on their own, but a little more hand-holding may have been warranted. Still, it's a real accomplishment to put all of this together in just 48-hours!
Absolutely LOVED the monster character designs. The music was subtle but groovy. The draw mechanic was so smooth. Good job team!
Really cool summoning little guys to summon bigger guys mechanic! Don't think I've ever seen that before. The sfx was crunchy, but would've loved for the moody music to be a bit more in the foreground. It was very quiet and mixed a little too far into the background. Awesome experience, I died at wave 20... will be back to fight through the end I'm sure <3
As an officeworker myself, I feel both seen and targeted. I felt like I was right back in the 9-5 trenches, fighting the good fight. Congrats to you both on a great jam game <3
I am bad at rhythm games, even as a musician, but I really enjoyed this one. Loved the frog designs. Great job, team! Keep it up <3
No notes! The mechanics are tight, the difficulty ramp is intense, and the music is one my favs so far. Amazing!
Thrilling! I know you opted out of audio, but the drum & bass was a great choice. Gonna try with stylus later!
I was way more engrossed in this than I thought I would be, especially since I'm not a cat-person ;) thank you for sharing @aivaxela! I had a lot of fun playing
Reminded of my old Where's Waldos as a kid. Very fun matching system here. The humor really shown through. Great accomplishment in just 48-hours, well done <3
Cute! Tough to pick up until you get in the groove, but then it's smooth sailing. A drumtrack would've helped.
This was cool! Coming up with the right combination of cards while in the middle of solving a level was an interesting mental challenge (especially 9 hours into a stream...) great job, team!
Awesome game! I had no idea making demonic pizza could be so grueling and yet so much fun! Great job, team <3
Loved playing this onstream! Saving the third level for myself as a little treat. INCREDIBLE ART. Great job, team!
Wow! This was hard, but I couldn't stop, and I'm glad I didn't! The ending was hilarious... I enjoyed the music, but what really blew me away more than anything else was the main character. I have never seen such a tiny sprite animated so fluidly and with so much character! Amazing game, great job!
My lord has risen! Thank you for summoning an incredible game into the jam. I felt both seen and triggered. Great job, team <3
If I wasn't short on time, I feel like I could have just kept playing this forever! Congrats to the team, well done!
Some difficult combos required, but I feel compelled to see it through when I have a little more time. Loved the 1bit graphics and the subtle, but crucial music. An amazingly complete compo entry, thank you for submitting!
I need to regroup and reformulate my strategy, but I'm tempted to come back and try to get through more than 6 waves, haha ;) great job on this, team! Thank you @zyntist for sharing this with me <3
Amazing! To make an Ace Attorney-like in just three days is an incredible achievement. Congrats to the team on a job well done! Thank you @koryucomic for sharing onstream <3
BERG! <3 Thank you for sharing, I LOVED the Bergs
I feel both targeted and seen, as a streamer. Love the background music and sfx. The cute character design was quite nice. I found this game engaging and intense, yet also weirdly zen. I think you did a great job, team. Thanks for sharing, Porchorr!
I'm terrible at card games, but I really enjoyed the interplay between myself and the ai. The crunchy audio and crisp dialogue was quite enjoyable as well. Great compo!
Short but sweet! I absolutely ADORED the music. You did some great work all by yourself in one weekend <3
Appreciate the feedback! I've pushed a bug fix for some unintended wind behavior that might be causing the confusion. <3
There was an issue with the spawn timer not ramping the difficulty correctly. I fixed this and added a web build!
Fixed one last bug that was causing an issue with ships crashing offscreen immediately after spawn.
Thanks for the tip! I thought I'd fixed that issue, but it seems to still be affecting some players...
Thank you @nazorus the wind sprites are all just the same animating ancient greek-style curly shape
@argensis definitely! I think just tuning the faith changes could do that. I'm hesitant to go too crazy with the spawn rate though. Thank you all so much for playing and for the thoughtful feedback!
@dovodx thank you for the thorough feedback! Unfortunately, I just didn't have time for balance tuning in the compo. Honestly, I never even played the game all the way through until submission had already ended... Pro tip though, you can handle this issue by overcorrecting (i.e., hitting a ship head-on with a gust of wind will turn it 90 degrees), but I do agree that it's a huge issue with the game, as is. Thanks again for playing!
If only there was more time, @magalix ! I am def tempted to keep working to improve this in the future.
@amberfall92 thank you so much for playing, and for the kind words and encouragement. Appreciate you!
@crylica thank you for the thoughtful feedback! The wind is definitely intended to be unwieldy (ships don't turn on a dime) but I agree that some visual feedback could go a long way to explaining that. I like the idea of experimenting with controlling wind strength and even lifetime with the drag. I'm also tempted to show what the new heading of a ship will be if you summon a gust of wind right on top of it. I think a lack of tutorialization is making the game feel unresponsive when it's really just unintuitive. I'm not sure if there's room for a skull (the sails are like 6-7 pixels across) but I'll try to sketch one up and report back. Thanks again for playing! I really enjoyed your game as well.
@two1san definitely noted! If I do continue working on this game, I will be working hard on providing better feedback to the play on what is going on when gusts of wind hit ships. Thanks again for playing! Loved your game
@andidebob I appreciate you! I also really like the whole-screen wind travel, but maybe half-screen or variable lifetime might be good too. If I develop this further, I will be sure to tighten up the collisions. I didn't manage my time well and had no time leftover for balance, which I'm regretting. Thank you for sharing your game earlier, I enjoyed it!
@badpiggy thank you for the lengthy feedback! The fact that the ship only partly turns to meet the wind is causing a lot of confusion. I'm thinking that if I separate the sail sprite from the ship and have it turn to meet the wind more quickly than the body of the ship, that might help with the *feeling* of unresponsiveness at least. Indicators for wind direction on mouse down could help as well. Audio indicators could definitely be differentiated better. I think maybe I could add a shipwreck sprite, so that you could look and see if it was a pirate or pilgrim that crashed. Thanks again for playing, I had a LOT of fun playing your game this morning, and will definitely revisit it.
@0x-void-x0 I really admire foley artists, so I def wanted to make my own sfx, and I did record the music on my mandolin! It's a handful of traditional Irish tunes I've learned over the years.
@timo654 the lack of tutorialization is my biggest regret. I'll def try to make more time for in-game tutorialization during the next LD - I'm hooked on LD, btw.
@mortith that is the highest score I've heard of so far, congrats! I did realize that the difficulty curves out and you can just kind of get in an endless grove, but most don't get there, so I'm impressed you did!
@wendel-scardua I appreciate the touchpad feedback, and I'm heartened by your appreciation of the balance between chill-game and challenging one. I def have more work to do to refine it though.
@koolruz thank you! Yeah, locking the ship directions to whole-integer vectors had a lot of unintended side-effects in terms of usability, but we can fix that. I think that I may move away from endless score-chaser (and scrap score altogether) and instead have multiple levels with different faith thresholds required to advance...
@sozey @oblivioncreator and @funnypumpkin thank you for the kind words! I'm very encouraged to continue with it.
Thank you all for playing, and thanks again for those of you who shared your games with me onstream this morning! I might keep doing this until rating ends if the demand for it doesn't fall off too fast!
Would love that, thank you @ategon ! And thanks for taking the time to play the game!
@burchyn WOW @_@ look at that high score! That's amazing... You know the game's difficulty curves out after like 5 minutes right? I wonder how long it must have taken to reach that score...
I went back to your VOD to check what day you played it, and it was two days ago (4/16 PDT). I made some bug fixes the previous day (4/15 PDT), but that's it, and it was certainly well before you played.
I want to reassure you that I haven't changed it other than the posted bugfixes. Perhaps it felt different to you considering the sleep deprivation, and possibly gaining a better understanding of the mechanics?
However, there are so few ships on your game over screen, I am a little concerned about that... was that indicative of your experience the whole playthrough, or just a lucky screenshot timing?
Anyway, I'm definitely impressed by your score, but I'm even more encouraged that you felt like playing it for so long! I'm torn between leaning further into chill game or challenging...
@meranolean thank you for playing! I really appreciate your feedback, and I definitely agree that the balance is all wrong. I did not have time to address that during the compo. Thank you for the suggestions on how I might improve it post-jam. I am excited to see what you make in the future <3
For those curious, after talking further with @burchyn and her partner, and comparing VODs of playthroughs of various streamers, we have discovered that there appears to be an issue that is causing either the game or ship speed to vary for players on different machines. I do not feel like I can address this (mainly because I can't find the issue) within the scope of post-jam bugfixes. I am simply adding a known issues section before the changelog. If anyone is wondering why their experience varies, hopefully they find the above warning along with this comment.
@fabula-rasa I'm glad you liked it! You're very right in that the difficulty curves out too low and you can just go infinite. I ran out of time to really balance the experience, unfortunately, but now I know for next time that I need to reserve more time for balance tuning and tutorialization. Thank you for playing, your game was great!
@zimny11 thank you! You make excellent points of course. I was told most people would only play my game once, so I opted for a slow ramp-up in difficulty, but that has problems. You make me curious about how it might feel if the ships had more of a mind of their own, and steered as best they could into/against the wind... Having special objectives (like gold-sailed ships) is an interesting idea! I'll definitely work hard on tuning any postjam releases I make for this game. Thanks again for taking the time to play and leave feedback <3
@nbumgardner thank you for your thoughts! These are great ideas on how to improve player feedback, which is definitely lacking. I do have ideas for making different levels, and randomization could certainly augment that. I'm really glad you like the pixel art / analog music pairing. I wasn't sure it would work, but I'm glad that it resonates with people! I never even thought of testing the values with a black-and-white filter! I should do that next time, in case I don't luck into good values, haha!
@andriybyelikov thank you for the feedback! I will begin postjam dev this week, and will take all of this into account. I'm still trying to understand why, but yes, that is definitely the problem. I've already fixed it in the postjam version, but since people have asked for a more difficult game, I'm just telling them to play at high FPS right now, haha!
@fractal thank you for playing! I presume this audio issue was with the web build. I will try to reproduce it. Are you on a Mac perchance?
Great for a first jam submission! Loved the character designs and the sfx. Projectiles going through walls is maybe the only obvious bug I found. Otherwise, amazing game team! Good job
Wave timing is pretty long, but I see the depth of the mechanic, and will def try to dig into this further. Good job!
Very clever! You had me doubting my own memory so much. Such subtle differences. Such an insidious game...
It took a while to click, but when it did, it was fun! The character designs are delightful & the audio rocks!
Very cool concept! If only I wasn't such a dullard. I am coming back, and I am summoning that demon!