Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → diomont
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | 56 | Tiny Creatures | 👥 | Mobile Group [Ballbam]: Together We're Strong | jam | 632 | 3.45 | 3.54 | 3.79 | 3.38 | 2.88 | 3.10 |
Very nice looking game, there I suppose there isn't much to do as the game mostly plays itself. But it's a good vibe, and it's interesting to see the little fellas develop.
P.S. being able to move the camera with WASD would be nice!
Very cute and comfy game, the art is lovely, the sound effects are nice, and it fits well with the theme. The gameplay loop is simple but satisfying. Great work!
Very good usage of the theme, some puzzles could be a bit more tightly designed but I do like how you can have some variance on solutions. It does suffer from some repetition due to the fact that most solutions just involve making a staircase and/or a wall. I can definitely see this concept being expanded to have more ways to change the creatures other than freezing them, or making the unfreezing a required part of the puzzle sometimes. Good job!
The mood in this game is really nice, and the balancing act of properly spraying people and or meeting the time limit at the cost of making mistakes is good. Very reminiscent of Papers Please.
I may have "rejected" one too many people to make quota...
Phenomenal concept, in a very charming and humorous package. Love how you can just mess with your previous performances by placing new objects in their paths, making a chaotic unplanned show, or how you can instead meticulously plan each flea's performance so that they never interfere with each other. Big fan of the overall vibe of the game, great job!
Great game! I like how the movement is momentum based, while it can be tricky to get used to at first, it feels really nice when you get a hang of it to dodge enemies, grab food and make turns while keeping your speed up.
Another cool aspect is how having a small swarm also makes it harder to hit, so when you're down to few krill you can dodge more easily and make a comeback.
I really like the split mechanic conceptually, but found it really situational to use as most enemies chase you from behind rather than coming at you from the front.
I was expecting this to an endless game, where you see how long you can survive or how much score you can get before you die, I was surprised to see a "You Win!" message.
The music and visuals are also a vibe.
Finally, playing the game at a higher resolution messes with the vignette effect, and I'm guessing might reveal more of the play area than was intended (going by the size of the effect), which makes the game easier.Untitled.png
What an amazing game concept, this could definitely be a real tabletop game! A multiplayer version of this would be fantastic, or perhaps a single player campaign with roguelike elements. Would love to see an expanded version of this in the future.
Very fun gameplay loop, a nice roguelike take on the theme. The controls are pretty weird, I did get used to them but still not sure if I liked them. I'm guessing the intention was to make it hard to quickly go from place to place, so you would commit to a path? The difficulty curve is also a little strange, some rounds felt much easier than the last, then the enemies would ramp up very suddenly. Nevertheless, this is a fantastic entry! Great work!
Cool aesthetic, I like all the different doodles and stuff like graphs, equations, music notes, etc. I don't really see the jam theme being applied however, other than the player character being a little fella in a notebook I suppose.
The sigil drawing mechanic is neat, though a bit underutilized. Most sigils are drawn just once to unlock an ability, rather than being something you use in puzzle solving. The platform sigil is something that could be cool, but I didn't understand how its placement worked at all. If you could freely place it on the screen then I could see myself using it more often.
Being able to draw the sigils using the mouse rather the QWEASD keys would be nice as well, and some QOL features I would appreciate are some visual representation of the dash ability cooldown, and an album of all the sigils you've found.
Overall there's an appealing concept here that I could see being further developed by using different sigils in platforming puzzles, instead of relying on standard platformer abilities like double jumping and dashing.
Shame about the overscoping thing, but I think the outcome is cool nonetheless. I quite like the general visual style and post-processing effects, and the meta-narrative is an interesting take. If you managed to incorporate the little creatures theme better as you had planned, I'm sure you would have something really nice here.
Also, I do share some of the sentiment echoed in the dialogue, it's always a challenge in those first few hours trying to brainstorm something cool and on-theme, while also being fun and interesting. Our own team was also hoping for another one of the themes in the list, we were surprised to see Little Creatures. So it made for an appealing hook when that came up in your game.
You really got the foundation for something amazing here, the gameplay loop is addicting and the fusion of 2 game styles breaks the monotony of either one. It can certainly use a lot more polishing, mu suggestions would be:
- Improved tutorial and UI: I didn't even realize my ants were being lost between turns due to lack of rooms until a few turns in, since there was no tutorial about that. They do have a little icon that says so next to their name, but hovering over it to get the description was very finnicky.
- More actions to be taken each turn: being limited to only 2 actions, sometimes 1 or 0 depending on how you spend your ants, makes the management phase very short compared to the action phase. Maybe being able to build extra research labs to expand the number of actions? Or more buildings that allow you to consume ants.
- Some general QOL stuff would be appreciated, like being able to permanently give an ant a bedroom instead of having to do it every turn, a take all button at the end of the action phase, larger windows and more readable fonts sizes, etc.
- I didn't quite understand the ammo system, does the ammo I research only work for one action segment? If so, I don't disagree with the system, but it does make the action sections a bit more tedious if I have to give up on expanding the colony to get ammo, which slows down the pace of the management section. If making ammo was relegated to another building instead of the research lab, then that would alleviate the issue.
All that being said, don't mistake this review for a diss on the game. I really like what you've made here, and this has the potential to be even better!
Pretty cool game! Using the bees to scout enemies, gather honey, and shield the queen from enemies via sacrifice is a very nice dynamic and makes you think carefully about how to move each bee. As others mentioned, the green movement range is hard to see on the grass tiles, and it wasn't immediately obvious that water tiles were impassable. The bee names were quite charming too.
Incredibly wacky premise (in a good way), nothing like tossing dudes into soup while dealing with a zombie outbreak as godzilla. At some point I was so busy squashing zombies that I could barely focus on the main objective lol. Also, the idea of squashing buildings just to get more people out on the street is brilliant. 10/10 would soup again.
@vlad-pinzaru It sounds like you encountered a bug, the only way you're supposed to get another jump in the air is to shoot downwards, which costs you a creature. I haven't been able to replicate this. Can you share any more details?
@lsdlx Glad you enjoyed it! I believe space *is* a valid jump button, at least it works on my end. Maybe it has something to do with your keyboard layout or something like that?
Pretty nice, considering all the assets are original this is very impressive. The concept is entertaining and shooting the doors open is kinda funny.
I do wish the weapons were more varied, like a grenade launcher or a laser, or some sort of melee weapon. It also feels strange that bullets are shared among weapons, so when you run out of ammo with one weapon, you can't switch to another. Having no jump also feels very strange, I kept instinctually pressing space to jump only for nothing to happen.
Very neat game, I can really see the concept being expanded a lot, and I like the that you can use the little guys to push objects around while the big guy acts as a wall. Not sure if it was intentional, but switching control to a little guy while he's flying will completely stop him, which can give another layer to puzzle solving by stopping him from overshooting a platform or something. A puzzle that required more than one little guy would have been cool, since you never needed more than one. Maybe some buttons and moving platforms would be useful to design something like that.
Very cute game, the visual style is lovely, the sound effects are well done, and the quack-music is certainly amusing. The gameplay itself is pretty simple, I think there could probably be some more variation on how the ducklings are distracted, since the majority of distractions are a stationary object (though I do appreciate how those objects themselves are visually varied like snacks and TV!). Also, the duck counter seemed buggy at times, displaying low numbers when all my ducklings were following (that didn't influence my rating though, I always expect some bugs in game jams). Besides that, you've made a great game, good job!
Good atmosphere, I like the dynamic of the flashlight keeping the insects away, which would often have me walking backwards to keep them at bay, at the cost of not seeing where I was heading. Balancing those two aspects - seeing my surroundings, and keeping the insects away - was interesting. The sound design is nice too, hearing the insects approach. The level design is a bit obtuse, having no clue where to go after pulling a lever, but I suppose that raises the tension.
The game is pretty punishing in regards to damage, you take it very quickly and without feedback, so you can go from full health to dead in a second.
Also, here's a heads-up: the embedded doesn't work on this site, you can check the Ludum Dare resources page to see a fix for that. And I would suggest crediting your sources for any assets you used, since you mentioned that the SFX are not original.
Love the aesthetic, I especially like how the car paper gets more crumbled as you crash, great stuff. Appreciate how you committed to the visuals by making every single thing paper, not a single element deviates. Boy the handling is very harsh, even the first car which is supposed to have good handling will barely let you make corners without coming to a full stop. As CodeRaus said, the text legibility is a little bad, their markers suggestion is a good one. Also, I wouldn't say this game fits the theme that much. I can sort of imagine that the tracks and cars are small and the driver is therefore a small creature, but that's about it. The sounds effects and music are nice and simple, they're a good vibe. For a solo dev, great job! Despite the gameplay suffering a little, the overall game is pretty cool.
Great character art! The concept is pretty simple, and somewhat janky, but it's a fun little game jam game.
I like the idea of your health being also your light source, though it does make the game harder the less health you have. Also, the bee attacks were nearly impossible to avoid, as they shoot so quickly and precisely the moment they enter your view range.