Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → doomshmuck
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 50 | Delay the inevitable | The Dimmest Dungeon | compo | 456 | 3.19 | 2.97 | 3.32 | 2.84 | 2.71 | 2.97 | 2.50 | 3.18 | ||
| 2021 | 49 | Unstable | Burning Down the House | compo | 488 | 2.95 | 2.97 | 2.74 | 2.50 | 2.40 | 2.95 | 2.64 | 2.21 | ||
| 2020 | 47 | Stuck in a loop | ๐ฅ | Ragtime Loop | jam | 1559 | 2.76 | 2.80 | 2.89 | 2.54 | 2.36 | 2.85 | 2.72 | 2.50 | |
| 2020 | 46 | Keep it alive | ๐ฅ | Shark Storm - Nom Nom Nom | jam | 2126 | 3.05 | 3.41 | 3.00 | 3.43 | 2.27 | 3.36 | 3.64 | 2.69 | |
| 2018 | 43 | Sacrifices must be made | ๐ฅ | Don't Panic | jam | 907 | 2.91 | 3.17 | 2.64 | 3.33 | 2.86 | 2.95 | 3.60 | 2.98 | |
| 2018 | 42 | Running out of space | The TV Install Man | compo | 469 | 3.20 | 3.18 | 3.13 | 3.05 | 2.55 | 3.00 | 3.00 | |||
| 2017 | 40 | The more you have, the worse it is | The Exploding Factory | compo | 557 | 2.93 | 3.02 | 2.73 | 3.52 | 2.13 | 2.71 | 2.91 | 2.43 | ||
| 2017 | 39 | Running out of Power | The World's Worst Segway | compo | 489 | 3.00 | 2.79 | 2.56 | 3.54 | 2.56 | 3.00 | 2.91 | 2.46 | ||
| 2017 | 38 | A Small World | Ninja-Vu | compo | 513 | 2.56 | 2.65 | 2.12 | 1.96 | 1.92 | 3.00 | 2.92 | 2.40 |
doomshmuck leaves an average of 21.2 feedback comments each event.
I like the idea, the level twists were an interesting take. While the PC OS thing was interesting, I am not sure it really added all that much to the game as a whole. I think the level themes should have been made more apparent than the small text e-mail like thing that shows up, as the text was pretty small (at least on my screen), and you had to get through a wall of text to see what the actual objectives were.
Interesting concept, although I think the mechanics could have been explained a bit better. I assumed the number above my head was a "you can make this many steps before you lose", but that's not the case... but once I figured that part out, it made sense.
I couldn't really figure out how to get past the first level... I went all the way to the right and couldn't progress any further, and then tried going all the way to the left, and was able to go past the screen boundary and died... I loved the sprites, and the backgrounds were nice too. The mechanics themselves were OK, I just couldn't really tell how to progress.
The idea is super cool. It was pretty difficult to navigate around with the changing walls, and having the different mechanics based on the theme was cool too. However, on the fun factor, the fact that getting touched by an enemy makes you restart the entire level kind of killed it for me.
I played it on PC, although it seems like it was really designed for mobile? The controls were really hard to get around, which perhaps is a side-effect of playing on PC (and for what its worth, that's going to be primarily what people are playing on). My biggest gripe I think is when attempting to adjust the positions of the blocks, it overlapped with the complete box, which caused me to end prematurely... it also looked like there was no real way to de-select a shape, which seems like an odd thing there. Oh, looking at the screenshots, I guess the black bars were borders? I was thinking that I was supposed to balance things on the bar. That probably needed better explaining as well.
I couldn't really tell exactly what to do at first, I was clicking but nothing was happening... it should be made more obvious that you have to click the actual ball / object for the clicks to work... I think maybe even better would be to make it so that clicking anywhere causes you to do the action. The camera was also really sensitive. I liked the concept, but the controls made it really hard to play.
It seemed complicated at first, but I caught on pretty fast. It moved pretty slowly though, and I felt like I was sitting there not really being able to do much while I waited for the money to tick up. I think this could have used more interactions to keep things rolling.
Nice concept, easy to understand, visually looks great, nice and fast paced. As a game jam game, though, I didn't really have patience to play through all of those levels... I'd suggest making something a little shorter for this kind of context (I know, strange criticism). It also wasn't obvious that I needed to collect those things on the ground for the upgrades, so maybe that should have been made more apparent.
Hah very clever, I like it :) I would have liked the stables to come a little more frequently, and maybe have a timer on the indicator so you know which one is closer? But yeah, fun little game. Nice job!
It was a bit frustrating trying to move the platforms, it wasn't really all that obvious what the best way to move them was. It seemed like the way to do it was to stand on the edge and jump, but doing so made you fall in the water. Maybe have the player move with the platform so they don't fall off all the time? Other than that, it was a fun game. I really liked the graphics.
It wasn't immediately obvious to me what the goal was... I see it was in the description underneath, but that should have been highlighted in-game better. Maybe have the sections you need to fill be highlighted or something?
The graphics were good. The gameplay I think could have used some more attention... it wasn't clear what to do at first, although I was able to figure it out... but it definitely could have used more feedback, a tutorial, or something along those lines to explain what was happening. The UI elements were also very intrusive (they took up half the screen) and made it harder to see what was going on. I also noticed that the game world was still interactable when the mouse was over a UI element.
That got pretty frantic at the end there. Some of the controls were a little tricky to actually click, but that's a minor gripe. Nice job!
That was really fun, nice job! I think maybe the physics got a bit floaty at times (like I was sliding backwards like mad at one point and I'm not really sure why). I tried it a few times (got a score of like 125 or something). Nice job!
I assume here that the physics part is to cover the unstable part of the theme, however it made the game really frustrating to play. I felt like I was fighting the physics more than anything. It also took a bit to figure out how the miner worked, but the info pop-ups helped. It maybe would have helped for some more feedback on the miner being disconnected though. Otherwise, it's a unique idea and I like where it was going.
Overall it was a fun and well executed game! The shots could have been maybe a little larger (visually at least), as it was hard to tell where the shots were going. I purposely got killed by the c'thulu monster thing, and I noticed that the player health bar kind of got hidden by the monster, so it was hard to tell how much HP I had left. It also seemed like it was impossible to kill the monster as it changed forms and reset HP before I could kill it, even with every shot hitting. The other thing that felt off was that it claims to be a "fast paced" game, but the movement speed and shot speed felt really slow... so that should have probably been sped up to line up with the tag line a bit better.
I loved the graphics, and the gameplay was pretty solid. I didn't really follow how to tell what attack I was going to do... I saw that the middle bar on the top was supposed to indicate that, but I couldn't really tell what it was trying to say. It also felt like I was taking unfair damage (I feel that way a lot with action games like this where you take contact damage). But it was a fun game, nice job!
I made it to the box stage, and kind of gave up at that point... dealing with the physics and trying to get the boxes to light on fire was trying my patience too much. I definitely liked the concept, and what I played was a good time, but I think the physics kind of killed it for me at the end there. It's a great concept though, and the graphics were great.
This was fun! the stage right before the boss I think could have used one more checkpoint (that last section was pretty tricky and long), but I was able to get through it. And I feel ya on not getting everything done that you would want, I think we all feel that way... That being said, this felt pretty complete for a game jam game, so nice work!
It seemed really hard to keep the shots on the platform, as they tended to roll off even if it was a good shot. It also wasn't clear at first (I didn't read the text at the start though) on what the goal was... I saw that there were waves, but it wasn't until I tried shooting it at the dude until I realized what was going on. Maybe some barriers on the enemy platform would have helped with the rolling off problem? It's especially punishing due to it reappearing on your platform after it unavoidably rolls off.
I liked it! It took me a bit to get started... I thought at first the build was broken, not realizing that the camera was controlled with the mouse. I saw the first little light briefly and then it disappeared to the bottom-right, and I was really confused, until I moved the mouse around. It's especially bad with the web build, as the light is only there for a brief moment, so it looks like there's just a black screen. May could have used a little message or something saying that the camera is controlled with the mouse? Besides that, it was a pretty solid hidden object type game. Nice job!
I like the concept, the presentation was really solid too. I couldn't really get past the controls though... I assume the clunkiness of the movement was intentional, but it made it really hard to actually play the game and I lost interest before finishing the first level due to getting constantly stuck on the level geometry and stuff. I think if turning was made to feel more natural, that would go a long way in improving the feel of the game. There were times where I just straight up couldn't turn (getting up the ramp at the start was really annoying), and other times where the turning was extremely sensitive, which lead to it feeling inconsistent.
Nice, well executed platformer. The mechanics here were pretty interesting and I think you could make a more complete game out of this if you chose to. The movement I think needed a bit of work though, as it felt a little off... I think mainly because there was a delay on stopping movement after releasing the key. It also felt like I could cheese some of the platforms by repeatedly jumping... maybe the grounded check isn't working quite as intended, as I could jump off of walls which made some jumps pretty easy.
I kinda liked it, honestly. Music / sound effects definitely would have helped. I also noticed that hitting shift made me go super fast... was that intentional? I didn't see that in your controls list.
I think the idea itself is pretty solid, but the way it was implemented did more to frustrate then to entertain, at least for me. Maybe the movement of the player was too fast, or the time window you have to do actions was too limited, but the game felt unfairly unforgiving. I think I would have enjoyed this more if the movement was turn based... or maybe slowed down at critical points (so like right before a gap, have it slow down or stop so the player can make an action). It should also be explained better about why the blocks fall after placing them, as that seems like a pretty central mechanic to the game that isn't explained. That mechanic also makes the game less of a puzzle game and more of a time-based physics game, basically.
I really liked the art and music, and the atmosphere was done very well. The actual game itself though was honestly kind of boring, although I suspect that might have been part of the intent?
I liked it! One of the few games I've actually played through the end of. A few points to note... After getting something wrong, there should probably be a slight delay on when the loop replays, since it makes it hard to hear what the first one or two notes are as it overlaps with the wrong note you played. It would also be nice to be able to repeat the goal on demand instead of having to get a note wrong... maybe just have a failure sound play instead of repeating the loop, and add a "repeat" button? The other thing is on the medium difficulty levels, it was disorienting when the sound that is played is in a different octave then what is being played. It makes it hard to know what note to hit, since it sounds so off from what you are trying to do. Maybe have the pitch match the current note being asked for or something like that?
I'm impressed with how far this got in the jam, nice job. I would have really liked some sound effects or something though, would have added quite a bit to the atmosphere. The controls felt pretty clunky, I think partly due to only accepting one movement input at a time, and having motion completely stop when attacking. It made it entirely too easy to just get killed by the enemies, while feeling like the controls were to blame. I think if the controls were improved, this would be a really cool base for a full game.
The game definitely could have used some music / sound effects. I let it run for a bit, but it honestly got pretty repetitive and didn't hold my interest for very long. The randomness involved makes it especially hard to figure out what is going on in the game. I think some UI elements or something along those lines would have helped describe what was happening, and maybe help with making the game more interesting to play.
Nice job, I really liked it. Definitely one of the better games I've played in the jam so far. The "blind" effect maybe could have been a bit more powerful, as it didn't really make too much of a difference to me unless it got all the way down. It took me one failure to figure out what was going on, but after that I managed to finish it. The main stumbling block I had on the first round was how to submit the numeric entry item... I didn't see the bottom-right button for a bit. I imagine this game would probably cause quite a bit of issues for someone that is colorblind though.
I liked the music and graphics, but I honestly have no clue what was going on. I clicked tutorial, and the tutorial was... not very helpful. Then it just kept going, so I assume it entered the main game? But after that, I had no idea why I was getting certain resources when I clicked things, there was no indicator that I could tell. The icons next to each place seemed to have nothing to do with what resource was gathered when you clicked there. I understood the general premise... you want to have a resource in your inventory when the train passes a site needing that resource... but because I had no idea what I was going to get when I clicked somewhere, it was basically just.. fill up the inventory, and wait while the train loops. And with no failure state, it got pretty boring pretty quickly. I think this game would definitely benefit from better communication, both in terms of the given tutorial, and feedback on what resource is about to be collected. I think something that could make the game more fun is if I could try and never miss a resource delivery, and maybe have a score chain happen where each successive successful delivery without a missed one makes each delivery worth more points, or something like that. But that would only work if I knew what clicking on something would give me. I might have missed that indication, to be fair, but even so, it needs to be better communicated by the game.
Overall I liked it! The sound effects got a little grating after awhile though... I don't know if it was too loud, or too sharp or something. It also got pretty repetitive, even after just the first level. Maybe the levels should have been a little shorter, and introduce new mechanics a bit faster? I think it also would have been good to highlight the chain system a bit more, as at first I didn't really see a point in going faster. Maybe have something more towards the middle of the screen, or a more obvious animation when the chain increases or is about to be broken?
It seems like a lot of games in this jam follow this theme of having to get through via trial and error... unless I'm missing something with this one, that seems to be the case here too. In my opinion, that type of game play is just not fun to me, and makes it so that I can't really justify proceeding. The atmosphere was well done, but I just didn't really care for the gameplay.
I agree with what the others have posted here. The game was very repetitive and didn't really keep my attention for very long... it felt like a clicker game, basically. The graphics were pretty good, the music was good the first few loops but it got pretty grating after awhile. The mechanic itself was decently well implemented, but I don't think it was enough to be interesting. It needed something else to really help it along. Maybe having some control over the player's position in the level would help, which would allow to have obstacles that have to be avoided, rather than just clicked on. As for the theme, I think the connection to the theme is pretty loose, especially given that the robot itself doesn't appear to move at all (agreed with what others said about that).
I agree with what people are saying here... I would add to it though that this game really could have used sound effects (not even music, just sound effects). Things like hinting at whether you are close to a survivor, alerts on running out of gas, pew-pew noises from the enemies, that sort of stuff I think would have gone a long way in making this more accessible.
Nice job, I liked the direction this was going in. I was a bit confused on certain rooms not opening, although I think that's just because I missed the button prompt for interacting... maybe the interactable elements need to be better highlighted or something so that it is more obvious? I also hit a soft-lock on the mini game in the security room area where I locked a cube on a tile that raised another tile, and then I couldn't reset it, so probably should have a reset button in there or something.
For only doing this in 24 hours, I'd say you did a pretty solid job. I think the game was maybe a bit too hard though? I couldn't get past the first little area, and without any real direction on what to do, it was a bit hard to figure out how to get past... I assume you end up playing through the same section over and over though?
I liked it! The levels got pretty repetitive after awhile though. It seemed like there wasn't really any downside to running all the time, so I just held that down... Which also made it easy to just run past the zombie instead of hitting it with the pellet (which is always given right in front of the zombie, which doesn't give any challenge). Maybe have situations where you have to save a shot for a tricky zombie to get past, like narrowing the path or something, and then having you run past a zombie that is easier to get around? It also seems like the running mechanic should either have a stamina bar or something, or just have it always on instead of needing to hold a key down. I would also say that the animations at the beginning and end were cool to start with, but after a few levels, it would have been nice to be able to skip those animations, as they were pretty long. Overall though, this was a really good entry. Nice job!
The presentation was really good, really liked the art and animations, music was good, sfx were good. The gameplay was a little janky though, it felt like, and the difficulty was definitely way high (or maybe I'm just bad). One thing in the tutorial level, I kept getting stuck into a state where I couldn't move when trying to jump on the trashcans... I had to reset several times until I jumped in just the right way to get past them.
I liked the graphics in this game a lot, it looked really quite good. I think there may have been some issues with the colliders and stuff, as it felt really awkward to try and pick up the various items, and I kept getting stuck on doors and things that didn't really feel like I should have. Mechanically, I was very confused overall with what the point of the game was... I was able to get past the first car, but that was mainly by mashing F on the colored tiles until something happened, and less actually figuring out what I was supposed to do. I got a little ways through the second car, but wasn't able to figure out where to place any of the things I grabbed. I think some feedback to the user would have helped out a lot here, like indicating what is going to be interacted with as a UI element, or giving some sort of direction on what to do. I think the hit boxes may have also contributed to this confusion, as it felt like where my mouse cursor was pointing was not always what ended up getting interacted with. It also would have helped to increase the mouse sensitivity, as the mouse movement felt really sluggish.
The game didn't really seem to follow the theme very well... I guess the repeated deaths loops you back to the start of the level, but that's not really being stuck in a loop I would say. I am also not a fan of mechanics where you basically have to get past by brute force and trial and error, which seems to be the design here. Besides that though, the game itself was well implemented and had quite a bit going on in it for a game jam game, so nice work there!
I'm not a big fan of games where you just have to get past with perseverance and just memorizing something, which seems to be the case here. I think the concept overall is pretty well executed, the graphics and presentation are really solid, and for a game jam game, this is really impressive. I'm just not a big fan of the mechanics.
Kind of reminds me a bit of the Skyrim potion crafting mechanic. Interesting concept, but I wish it was explained a bit more on what the actual goal was. I made potions for a bit, but then it got kind of repetitive... and I think I probably stopped before seeing some of the other mechanics. It was also really difficult to know exactly what a potion did, since there was no information after drinking it, and the effects weren't always obvious (although some were).
The connection to the theme here was pretty light... beyond the initial scene of falling, that was pretty much it. And it didn't really seem so much a loop as it was just a deep pit. Also replaying that whole intro scene if you fall is more of an annoyance rather than adding anything, I would say. Besides that, the mechanics were well implemented for the most part. It was a little strange that I lost all control after getting in range of a character, usually in mid-air... I think this could lead to a failure state outside of the player's control as a result of this.
I'm not really sure what the "take over your enemies" thing does... it looked like it just spazzed the camera out. It also felt like there wasn't really enough items to throw when entering a new room, so I was getting swarmed by enemies really quickly and didn't really know where to go to find things to throw.
Yeah, I'll parrot what the others have said. It took me awhile to understand that I actually needed to avoid things, rather than go towards things. If I didn't catch that I was resetting to the middle of the screen, I probably wouldn't have realized that at all.
I think I got to the point where I couldn't buy any more buildings, and was making so much money that I couldn't spend even close to all of it before the next wave started lol. It seemed to hold up decently with all those ships on screen, although it did get a little laggy. Overall pretty good game, could have used more variety though, like maybe toss in buying turrets, or have the enemies attack the buildings sometimes instead of the ships, or have like bigger enemies come in that can throw you for a loop, or something?
With this type of a game, it is really important that the graphics match the gameplay. For some of the items, I think you did well on that, like the chicken, for instance, I knew what it was. However there were a lot of the items that I really didn't know what it was, and since it was instant failure if you click the wrong thing, I ended up losing a lot just because I didn't know what it was that I was clicking. I think either having a label on the food item or an image next to each of the ones in the list would have helped communicate this better.
When I saw in the description "Save your friends", I assumed there would be like friendly characters you had to defend, but ah well. As a top-down twin stick, it's pretty solid gameplay wise. It seems like you die SUPER easy once an enemy gets near you, and that health amount is a bit misleading. Like maybe instead of "100", it could be like hearts or something, since it seemed like I was dying in 2 hits or something. I think you have a good base here, but it needed some variety.
I was confused on the controls... I didn't really read the description before playing, I'll be honest, but the large buttons on the screen kind of led me to think that I had to control it by clicking on the buttons. I think if you are going to support distinct platforms like mobile AND PC, you would need to have the UI change to match to avoid confusion.
Visually, the game looks awesome. I think it needed work mechanically though. I didn't really know what I was doing at the start, and I was already taking quite a bit of damage before I even realized there were people floating above that I needed to drag in (like, I thought it was part of the right-click menu to do that). I also didn't even really know how to get all of the resource types (or even what the resource types are).
I think maybe if you don't have the ship immediately attacked until you get a little bit of stuff going would help, so that fumbling over what you are doing doesn't result in just losing immediately. And then having a more guided first few steps so that the player knows what is happening. Like maybe limit what can be built in the first module, and then have the camera pan to the humans after building it, or something like that?
I think the mood of this was very well done, and it fits the theme pretty nicely. I think the first few levels were pretty good. The level where you have to basically time a jump to get through was where it started to lose some of the charm for me on the level design. I also don't know if I like the concept of letting the player continue after a lose state is hit (i.e. killing an enemy). In particular, the level where you have to push the block down to stop the enemy from killing itself... if the enemy dies off-screen, it may be difficult to know why the door closed... the only indicator really is a sound effect, and if your sound is off, then you would have no idea.
I liked it! I don't know if I quite understood how the mechanics worked though, like, the stats didn't really make too much sense in context to how the fight ended up. It also seemed like there was a bug with the shop, where I could just buy infinite amounts of whatever I wanted, and my total money never went down? So I just spammed the all stats up item (I got it up to like +15 or something)... but then the part that the stats didn't make sense was that I picked a dude that had far less stats than I did, and still ended up getting destroyed, so idk.
Interesting concept. I've played Persona before, so I more or less knew what was going on, but I think if I hadn't, I would have been super confused (and I still was a bit). Some extra details on the abilities would have helped, I think... like what the ability actually does. I was also confused at first on the targeted abilities as it looked like it locked up at first, until I realized I needed to click on a target. For a weekend though, this is super impressive.
I would say you guys nailed it on the polish, you definitely fit a lot of stuff in there in a weekend, and it looked good to boot! It seemed like there were situations where you could get into an un-winnable state.. like on the second level, it seemed like there were enough bad food items in a row where his hunger bar depleted before anything came. It was also somewhat difficult to tell whether an item was good or not, but that may have just been me. Still, very nicely done!
Nice game overall! I thought the music was a bit over-bearing though, and the lack of sound effects was pretty noticable, I think that would have given the game a better feel. It also would have been nice to be able to just hold down click to fire, rather than having to click constantly. Just as a test, I sat there and let the enemies beat up on the tree (I was at level 3), and it took them forever to actually kill the tree... so the difficulty level was pretty low (not necessarily a bad thing, but just something to note).
Very simple concept, executed nicely. It seemed somewhat tricky to actually click on the flowers, but not so much that it was a problem. Nice job!
Nicely done! Very original with good graphics and sound, I loved it. One of the better ones I've played this time around. The questions in the second round were pretty tough! And some of those post-fire stories hit the feels.
I liked the humor, and the gameplay was pretty good. I think I hit a bug for a little bit where I could only move right, but I'm not sure how it happened. It seems like I was moving faster after sacrificing someone?
Nice game, I liked it! I would have liked a bit more information on what my goal was though, I had to do a second run to get through the end as I didn't realize how the game worked until a second try.. It also might have been good for some flavor text or something for the last form to let you know you shouldn't go after the candy things any more...
The mood, graphics, and audio were awesome, but as a game, it was boring to play. The dark section definitely was WAY too long (I didn't even make it through that whole section due to how dull it was). Like, maybe 1 minute of that would have been about right, but I think I was going for like 3 or 4 minutes before I killed it.
I ran into a game breaking bug after round 2 (screenshot below). The game itself was pretty fun, although I had a lot of difficulties with hit boxes on throwing the elves (it would tend to hit random obstacles when I felt like it shouldn't). I also couldn't really tell what was going on with assigning the elves to the workshop.
The game worked pretty well, but it would have been nice to have more feedback on what was going on. I had no idea what the presents did, and I would have liked to know how much "hp" I had left. It seems like you are heavily encouraged to avoid enemies rather than kill them, and the bullets from the enemies just destroys you. Maybe adding an "invulnerability" period would have been good, so that you don't get instantly killed if you get caught by an enemy?
Agreed with the above... I would add though that I probably would have preferred that the sound effects maybe get toned down a bit.
I do see what you mean in the description about the gameplay falling behind a bit, but yeah, the sacrifice system was interesting. Unfortunately I couldn't really appreciate it as much as I would want as the gameplay didn't really do it for me. The controls were pretty awkward (at least for me), and using the sword was really just suicide as the movement was so fast it was basically impossible to deal damage without also taking a hit.
Really nice job on this... great visuals, really funny, entertaining, nice ๐ It seemed like there were points where I only hit the key once but it still failed... maybe my keyboard was too sensitive though, idk. Anyways, very fun game!
It took me a bit to figure it out, but I did get through the whole thing. I could sense the emotion (I guess) that was present throughout, and made me push through the whole game. I wouldn't say the "fun" factor was very high though... I think the one I had the most fun with was the 3rd part. The second part was just frustrating, and the first part was super confusing but I eventually got there. But yeah, nice work, lots of different stuff here and all implemented pretty well, and the homage was moving for sure. Nice job!
Nicely done, very good game. The one thing is that a lot of the levels felt like they had a good amount of trial and error and only one real solution, which doesn't feel great in regards to game design.
I agree with the other posters here, the controls were really hard to get around, and I couldn't really figure out what was going on :(
Nice job! It took me a couple of rounds to actually figure out what the objective was, so maybe a small description to start the game off would have been good, but I was able to figure it out pretty quickly. I'm not sure if it was intentional or not, but the times where the arrow was pointing the same direction on both blocks threw me a few times, in that since they both got hit with one key press, I instinctively hit the key again and ended up messing up. I guess I would have expected to have to hit the key for each block rather than have it register both.
I liked the visuals and the general controls and such, but as everyone else is saying, I wasn't quite sure what to do.
I liked it, very original take on the theme. Everything seemed to work pretty well... I did find that the mechanic where typing matched multiple sheets was a little strange, but your explanation makes sense. It really ramps up in difficulty really fast, I think I only made it like 40ish seconds :)
I liked the game idea, pretty innovative. I followed the mechanics more or less... although if I understand it correctly, then I believe a rather game breaking bug exists in it where some of the mission goals are actually impossible given the space and the stock of trees that are given. It is pretty ambitious to do random generation like that, which I applaud you for, but I think it would have been better to maybe do a static mission for the jam to ensure that it was complete-able, and work out a better random generation algorithm as a follow on, where it always creates beatable scenarios.
I really liked the graphics and sound assets here, really nicely put together. It looked like the gun was tracking the mouse, but the bullets weren't, which was a little funky, but I was still able to kill things, so it all worked out there. If I were to give a suggestion here, I would say that the difficulty level was pretty static the whole time. The enemies weren't really coming fast enough to be a threat, and although that is fine at first, it also means I probably could have played indefinitely. Maybe adding a health system so that taking contact damage was a thing? Or steadily increasing the number of enemies? Or reducing the amount of space you gain after killing each enemy as time goes on? Something along those lines to make it ramp up in difficulty over time, basically.
I was half-expecting to need to shoot manually at the start, lol. Good game though, it really ramps up in difficulty real fast. It would have been nice for some better indication of the power-ups, like I kept switching the shot type even though I may not have necessarily wanted to (the one that shoots slowly but destroys everything was OP). I also didn't really know what the explanation mark was until I got whacked by a car. So I think a little explanation up front would have been helpful. But I was able to understand everything without it, so maybe not? Sign of good design though for sure.
I didn't really have a clue what was going on, and I'm OK with this lol. I did notice that the screen shake effect didn't seem to reset completely each time, so after a little bit, the floor sort of went off camera. Also not sure if it was intentional or not, but I could shoot through the little blocks that fell from the sky. But yeah, fun little game. Nice job!
I agree with those above here, nicely written, works well, great art, funny humor! I would have liked to have control over the dialog though, as it went pretty slow for my tastes.
I liked the concept, and the graphics were well done on it too. Maybe I just missed it, but it wasn't obvious to me that the game would end when presents fell off the table, so I think that could have been made more clear.
The game was very good! I enjoyed playing it for sure. I'm not quite sure what the moving platforms did to benefit the game play, so I probably would have done without that mechanic personally. I also would have liked to have more feedback on things like shooting, taking damage, and enemies taking damage... I found myself pretty low on health without really knowing it (even just like a little sound effect that plays when those events happen would have been enough I think). But yeah, nicely done!
Nice work, very solid entry here. I do agree on the hit boxes, my first couple tries I ended up dieing when it looked like I wasn't over a hole, but yeah, nice job!
Unfortunately with the game in the state it is in, I don't think it is actually playable... If you click on "Story", then you just get a dialog box that can't be dismissed (unless I missed a button somewhere?) From what little I could actually play of the game, I can say that the movement control scheme of this style can be very finicky to do... I personally much prefer a control scheme where the movement and aiming are separate.
The mechanics in this are pretty innovative, and it worked well. I had a lot of fun playing it, nice job! I do feel like if you get grouped up on, then you die REALLY fast, making it maybe a little difficulty spike-y. But besides that, this was a really good entry.
I have to agree with the others on the difficulty. Maybe one way around it would be to provide a difficulty option? Where the easier difficulty doesn't change the key buttons, or something. But yes, definitely an innovative control scheme, but one that was maybe overly difficult.
I liked the art you did, looks pretty good. The game was also pretty funny! I would have liked to have been able to hold down the move key instead of tapping (as others have said).
I'm quite amazed by what all you accomplished with this entry. There were a lot of levels out of the box, I appreciate the fact that you included a level editor (although I didn't use it), and the mechanics were original and solid. Very impressive! Best one I've played so far, by quite a bit.
This game was pretty fun! There was a pretty good amount of content and all of it was pretty well executed. I think I see where you were going with the theme, being that Steam is kind of a mess. The music was also really catchy.
If I were to have a complaint, however, it would be the ice physics. It wasn't entirely fun to try and lightly tap the arrow key so that I didn't slide off the small, slippery block, and have to do the full level again (especially on the 4th level... I ended up just stopping half-way through because of that). The 3rd level was also somewhat confusing since it introduced a new mechanic without explaining it (I didn't realize I had to click until I thought to move my mouse).
I agree with what people are saying here too. Graphics and music were both well done, and the core mechanic of moving from level to level avoiding things worked pretty well. Especially on the forest maze level though, the enemies tended to group up and form an impenetrable wall (leading to my imminent death). I also noticed a graphical bug where if I died, exited to the main menu, then started a new game, the main character sprite didn't load.
I loved the take on the theme here, getting weaker as you fight each boss is a cool design. The bosses were simple enough (although the fire dude was pretty tough) to beat even with the downgrades, which is good. The atmosphere and such were really solid. I didn't really feel like the music suited the mood entirely well, but the music itself was nice. I do agree with the others on the effects after battles, especially the one where the menus were tilted. It made it really hard to actually click on something. I didn't really find a use for the melee attack, as the ranged attack felt much stronger. But this was really good. Nice job!
The controls felt a bit "floaty" but it was still pretty easy to control. I made it into the second stage for the second time before I tested the game over state :) It would have been cool to get a cool like summary screen on game over. But overall, this game was really well done. The game play kept me going, the music wasn't over-bearing. The bosses were well designed, and there was good enemy variety. Very nicely done!
Pretty fun game! I really liked the visual aesthetic and animations. It was really high quality stuff there! The hit boxes on the food items were a little tricky though, which made it somewhat tricky to actually click on things. Cute little game!
I like the concept, but the implementation made me not have fun. The mechanics for catching anything was so clunky that in the few games I played, I barely hooked much, not to mention actually get it on the ship. It felt like the place I clicked was not reflected properly by where the line ended up going. Like I would click directly on a fish, and the line would be well above the fish when it finished (admittedly it was also behind the fish, but the point here is the vertical positioning). There were a number of times where my only option was to go directly up through the ship, but I couldn't do that either. I think once I got the fish to balance on the ship, but it still didn't count, and I guess I didn't realize that the boots and boxes are used to power the ship?
The graphics are nice looking, but the game itself is pretty un-approachable. The battery drains so fast that I didn't even have time to get my bearings before I lost. I finally figured out the first level, got to the second level and I don't even think I could move to the charge station in time, not to mention hook up the admittedly fiddly controls for connecting the wires. Maybe I wasn't playing the game quite right, though, I'm not sure.
The game was pretty nicely put together, but I think had some pretty serious balancing issues. The waves ramped up very fast in terms of difficulty, I think it would have felt a little better had it ramped up slower, maybe throw more enemies at the player rather than a small amount with large amounts of HP (I'm not a big fan of bullet-sponge type stuff). The movement felt very floaty, almost making it feel somewhat awkward and difficult to control. Finally, I'm not sure if I was taking a lot of damage throughout, or if I just got one shot by something, but losing felt pretty anti-climatic. I didn't know I was about to lose if I was losing HP consistently, and if I wasn't, it is pretty bad design to have a player get one shot. I think having visual (and preferably also audio) feedback on when a player gets hit is a necessity for this type of game.
The start of this game is WAAAAAAAY too slow. I spent a good like, 5 or so minutes? just moving forward picking up batteries. By the point I reached the enemies, I had twice the power they had. When the first battle started, it wasn't apparent how to enter in a power... I didn't realize it was an input field. That definitely needed more feedback, like a blinking cursor when the field is empty or something. Finally, the game just crashed on me after a battle... not sure why, though. And I wasn't about to go through that start-up process again.
I like the concept... I was thinking about doing a zelda like game too, but decided not to due to the scope required. The base you have here is pretty solid, but there were a number of problems I had that made this not so fun for me. * The game difficulty is WAY too high. The only screen I could ever really clear was the one to the immediate right. The other screens basically killed me instantly. Maybe I'm just bad at these old-school action RPGs, but it felt really punishing. * Combine that with the constant need to go back to the base to recharge the generator, it felt very micro-managy, and that mechanic, although lining up with the theme, didn't feel fun for me. * It also seemed like the power meter shrinks over time? That kind of just added salt to that wound, as decreasing that makes it MORE micro-managy.
What I did like about the game is the upgrade system seemed pretty good (I didn't make it very far in, but what I saw it seemed pretty solid). The UI and visual feedback was also nicely done. I especially liked the text animation when the values reached critical. It could have really used some sound effects and some sort of ambient music, but I understand why that wasn't included.
Anyways, sorry for being so harsh, but hey, that's how we get better right? Like I said, it's a really good base, and I think it could be made into a solid game, but it needs work to get there.
It's an interesting design... it felt like the hunger meter dropped really fast and felt pretty unforgiving. I think it could have used some more tutorials or something to help with explaining more of the mechanics. I didn't really see any way to start a fire. I also felt like my inventory was always full, to the point of where it felt a little off. I also noticed that if I tried to place a trap and my inventory was full, it didn't let me place the trap.
I really enjoyed this game, nice job! I was a little lost at the start, and didn't realize that I had to destroy the battery to disable the shields (I didn't even realize there was a shield). Once I figured it out though, I got through to the end and it was very well done.
This gave me super meatboy flashbacks... Nicely executed, maybe a little tough for a game jam as I gave up in the second level.
I think the collision detection was a little off and the controls were pretty bad, but otherwise it was a pretty fun game.
Interesting mechanic. It took me a while to figure out what was going on though, I think it needed some more UI clues to help or something.
Pretty fun game. The visuals were really solid in this and I felt like that was definitely the strength here. The music loop was also good, but would have liked some sound effects. On the gameplay though, I felt like the spin speed was so slow that even if I started turning as soon as something popped in, I still couldn't get out of the way. There was also no feedback besides the power decreasing or increasing (I had to intentionally run into something and stare at the battery indicator to tell what was going on). I think a sound effect or something would have helped in that regard.
The issue I have here is that there was a whole lot of text on the screen, which I think was trying to explain the game, but the text didn't really sit with me or something and I had absolutely no idea what was going on. I think this game might have been a little too complex or abstract or something for a setting like this, where someone is just going through a bunch of these games.
I think something that would have helped would be less "block of text" type descriptions, and more in the form of contextual tooltips and such. For instance, knowing what my percentage is for accomplishing a mission would have helped.
I got really quickly bored of the game... I didn't really know what the objective to it was, and things didn't really seem to happen when I would give power. I think I gave power to the same person like 3 or 4 times in a row but nothing happened really at all during it. The slow pace of the game didn't help much either.
I think it needs to start up a bit faster, and have it be a little faster paced to keep things engaging. It also would have helped to have a more clear direction on the objective of the game.
I couldn't really get past the graphics on this. The fluctuating squares were off-putting, and the level transition was really obnoxious. I understood the objective of the game without reading the readme, but I still had to read it to understand that it was indeed the objective, mainly because the UI was hard to understand.
I think there is a good base to a puzzle game here, as things can get pretty complicated and fun to figure out with this concept. But the graphics and UI made me stop after a couple of levels, unfortunately :(
The game was well executed and clearly gave me all the info I needed to play it, which is good for a puzzle game. It was a little on the easy side, but that's OK for a LD game (probably better to be on the easy side than to be too hard). I would have liked to see some sort of scoring system or something to encourage finding the optimal solution.
This game was really innovative and mostly well executed. The fun factor of the game wasn't all that high for me, and I didn't see how this related to the theme in any way, shape, or form.
On the fun part, it felt like I was just slightly adjusting the angle that I was launching at, and hoping for the best, which isn't really very good puzzle design. I'm not really sure how you could fix it, perhaps have a ghost line that shows where your last launch took you? I think my main complaint with this was the second to last level (the two magnetic pieces that make a sine wave).
The last level's solution was pretty cool to watch though.
Hehe, ludicrous power... Space Balls. I love it.
Great game, it was a lot of fun. The VO was a little strange... I am not entirely sure if I liked it or not, but it definitely added to the atmosphere of the game. I had several times where the power pickup would overlap with an asteroid right at where my ship would be, and this happened several times in a row, effectively putting me into a corner. I would have liked to have at least a little forward / backward mobility to help combat that and add a little more strategy to it.
Can't really say much beyond what everyone else is saying. I did notice the wonky stairs though, although the last time I climbed up them, they actually worked :) So it looks like it works sometimes, at least. I would have liked to have a power meter appear while piloting the ship (or maybe I just missed it?) But yeah, super relaxing, great visuals, fun mechanic. Nice job!
There is a good base for a platformer here. I especially liked the level design in regards to introducing new mechanics... that is a good way to introduce things (slowly, but quick enough to not have it be too stale). However the player movement felt sluggish. In particular, the spikes were implemented in such a way that it felt more frustrating than fun. The hitboxes on the spikes felt like they were too big and that I got hit by them when I wasn't actually touching it. Also restarting the level in that situation, especially the longer ones, felt unnecessarily punishing.
The music was also way too loud, but I did like the sound effects.
I am running Win 10 64 bit, and when I started it up, I just got a black screen.
The graphics were pretty nice looking, and the base of the game is pretty good. I also was not able to get past the first ring of asteroids... I upgraded energy twice, but still ran out of energy before reaching the second ring. Overall that mechanic doesn't feel very fun to me, the energy drain was so fast that it felt like it clashed with the soothing background track, as it felt really urgent to get out, mine, and get back before the energy drain got you. The music track also felt like it needed to be a lot longer, or something, as it got very repetitive very fast.
I think to combat the issue with the left-facing attack... if you were worried about that, it would have been better to just have them all spawn on the right. Not having the ability to attack left, but having robots on your left, didn't feel like a very good mechanic, even if the alternative may have been worse.
I also felt like the randomness of the robots despawning led to an end state that was out of my control. I had 5 or 6 robots in a row that just blew up, and I just drained all the way out with no possible way of recovering. Maybe the randomness should have been curved a bit, where if you were below a certain amount of energy, the chance went back to 100%, or something? Either way, in a survival game like this, having the game end without feeling like it was your fault isn't a good feeling on that front.
Besides that, I liked the art style, and the attack / vampire mechanics were solid and entertaining. I would have liked the background music to maybe be a little quieter though.
I think I understood it mostly... I think there was a bug in the game that prevented the win condition from triggering though. I was on the level where the map was like this: OOOOO OxOxO OOOOO OxOxO
Which ever level that was, and I got it to 61/61 (I think it was?) and the level didn't complete. Unless I was missing something, it seems like the game didn't register that as a win condition.
I agree that there needed to be some visual feedback on the wire selected, and the wires not aligning was pretty off-putting.
Overall though, I had fun with it and the concept was really solid.
As others are saying, the movement felt overall too fast to control properly, and the enemy hit boxes felt very strange. I also would have liked more feedback from the enemies on when I got hit, and a more prominent indication of energy level and health. Since those were so small, I had to take my eyes off the action to see where my stats were at, which could be problematic.
Fun game, and I loved the humor. The introduction to this was especially good. The game play I think could have used some more polish... for instance, having shoot by left & right mouse, and dropping the cow just left mouse, I found myself consistently dropping a cow on accident. I think in general you probably shouldn't double-bind a key as this sort of thing can happen. I also noticed that even if I got a cow in the tractor beam, if I didn't position the cow right underneath the UFO, the cow still exploded... it should probably be set up that if you get the cow up there, you get it, and not have to worry about potential wonky movements killing you because it didn't register the cow.
This was super cute, and as others have said, the art, VO, and writing were all really good. The "plan the birthday" option felt a little out of place (although I don't have a kid, so maybe not?). I know you were doing the fade out and falling asleep thing to suit the theme, but it felt a little annoying more than anything towards the end. I think maybe making it a little quicker, or varying it with yawns or other things, would have made it less so.
The first wave was pretty good, had some challenge to it, but wasn't too bad. The second wave, I got instantly killed about 3 times before I just stopped. The difficulty on this is just way too high. I don't really see anywhere during that second wave where I could move and not get hit, not to mention actually kill the enemies. Also, the power pickups were moving fast enough that if I missed one, it would just go zooming off the screen and I couldn't catch it, which feels pretty bad when the only way to survive longer is to pick those energy drops up.
I guess I would say that the player model needs to be smaller and make it more obvious on how to avoid the bullets, and the number of bullets, especially on the 2nd wave, need to be toned down considerably. Also the power pickups should be slowed down a little so that the player can back track to pick them up if they miss it.
Fun game! I echo the comment above about the difficulty spikes... I didn't realize that you could shoot down for awhile once the snakes appeared, and it felt like I died really fast once those guys and the rocket dudes appeared.
On the controls, although I get why you used space bar to pick up the batteries, I found myself constantly pressing space to jump. It felt pretty awkward pressing x to jump. I think I would have preferred space to be jump and x to be picking up the battery.
I loved the aesthetic you achieved here, it looks really good and sounds really atmospheric as well. It took me a little bit to get used to the movement, and it felt like sometimes I should have hit one of the blobs but didn't. It also felt like there wasn't much incentive at all to get the red ones, since I think the penalty of picking one up outweighed the benefit. Perhaps those should have been worth more points or something?
The mood and graphics, as others are saying, are really good. The music really helps a lot too. However, it felt a lot like trial and error, and ultimately the fun factor for me was pretty low on this. It felt more annoying to go through each loop trying to piece together what the objective was... especially if I activated a sword and it blocked my path, then I had to wait out the whole 45 seconds before retrying. A retry button would have been really nice.
The game play was pretty fun and the controls felt nice and tight. The game was overall pretty easy in terms of the waves of enemies... even if I got hit a bunch I could recharge to full without an issue.
I see comments here saying the story was great and what-not, but I honestly didn't have the patience to sit through the really slow scrolling text on the intro screen, and didn't realize that was a backstory for the game. I think that needed faster text or something to make me not want to instantly skip it. Also, I thought the game was a score attack game, so I purposely died and was disappointed when there was no score there. Perhaps the story hinted that there was a boss? The game itself didn't really give any hint of that, and I think that was needed.
I think this game needs some sound effects pretty badly, I think it would have felt a lot better with shooting / hitting sound effects. The screen shake was also pretty crazy and may have been served to be toned down a little bit.
Overall I had fun with the game, it is a pretty good shmup. The effects and such that were done here were really nice looking and gave satisfaction on defeating enemies (but would have been even better with sound effects ๐). I am slightly confused about the shield mechanic, I think I would have preferred lives or something rather than that, as holding down x while running through fire was a little awkward, and not holding x resulted in having to restart. I didn't actually beat the first boss, so take that for what it is. I think the difficulty may be a bit high.
The whole time I was racing, I never once saw the other racers, and I didn't really get any clear indication that I was losing until I lost... I assume it was coincidence that I lost at the same time as hitting a wall, and that the lose condition was that someone else finished the 5 laps? I didn't hit anything until the end and still lost, so maybe the difficulty was a little high. There also wasn't any sort of start / restart button, which would have been nice.
Besides that, it's a pretty solid base to a racing game, the controls were pretty responsive and the pickups worked nicely.
The core engine of this game seems pretty solid. You have a servicable turn-based grid movement system, and some servicable AI, which I give you props for. The graphics and music loop were also pretty well done, although the music was pretty loud, and probably should have been made quieter or have a volume slider for.
However, there are a number of issues I see in this game. There were no sound effects, which made the game play get pretty dull pretty fast. The one, and only one, ability (bumping into an enemy) can also make things pretty dull. I had no indication of what my HP was, so I have no idea if I was close to dying or even if I could die. I also stopped after about 10 floors or so, as I had no idea when the end was and I was already pretty bored at that point. Also the camera being static was a little weird, especially considering enemies and myself could move outside the bounds of the camera.
Nice game, it was pretty fun. There were times in the game though that felt like the controls became very unresponsive... like I would try and move but nothing happened, or clicking didn't shoot. This usually came at times when there were a lot of enemies on screen, so possibly may have been related to that? The overall difficulty was pretty low, but that's OK. The graphics were perfectly fine, in my opinion. But yeah, it was pretty fun. Nice job!
Hah, when I saw what it was, I was like... what...? But actually playing it was pretty fun. It got really intense really fast though, I gotta say. But nice job!
Ah yeah, alt+tab worked for me too. You guys should probably look into resolving that if you can, it's pretty obnoxious and potentially seizure inducing if someone sensitive plays that.
On the game though, it was a lot of fun. There were some parts of the music that got pretty repetitive, but overall the music was nice. The graphics were also well done, and the game play was enjoyable.
The movement felt pretty floaty and unnatural, so I think that probably could have used a bit more work. Also after a wave, I lost my location and ended up spending the first few seconds searching for the character to start the next wave.
I am a little confused on what is going on in this game. I think some more instructions would have helped... I eventually figured out that the energy boost gave me one use of a double jump, but for the life of me, I couldn't figure out how to use that to actually get further in the game. It also felt like there was a disconnect between the red from the core melt-down to when you actually get a game over.
It would have been nice to have the energy meter more prevalent, as it took me awhile to realize what was causing a game over (I assumed it was getting in the red area, but it was actually just running out of energy.
I think the game may have been tuned to be too difficult.
Fun game. There was a lot of polish in the tutorial and the setup, which I liked a lot. Really helped with figuring out how to play the game. There was some clipping issues I noticed with walls and such, and could cause the camera to get a little weird. It also would have been good to have more visual feedback when the player gets hit, like a screen shake or a prominent red border or sound effect or something. There were times where I would get melted from the back without even realizing it. It also felt like the special attacks weren't really worth using, as the power drain felt more punishing to use than to just punch a bunch.
I loved the graphics on this. The gameplay wasn't doing it for me though. The punch hitbox and the enemy hitbox didn't seem to mesh well together, combined with the exceedingly big knockback and stun made this game way too difficult. It felt like that aspect needed to be tuned more to make it more fair to the player.
The graphics and audio were really good. I didn't really know what was going on though, I didn't really know how I was getting points (or at least I think that is what the points were, top left corner?) Controls were pretty good too. It would be nice to have a restart button after you die though, or if it was there, it wasn't obvious that there was.
I liked it! It was simple and fun, and was very clear on how to play it, and what the objective was. It also got pretty hard... I found myself in situations where there was basically no way out without getting hit. To make it a little more balanced, maybe adding invincibility frames after getting hit would help with not getting instantly killed by getting an unlucky grouping. But besides that, it was very enjoyable. Nice job!
I definitely liked the concept of this game, and the capabilities in the game are pretty impressive for a game jam game. The thing that stopped me from really enjoying this game were the controls. Having mouse controls, and using arrow keys for movement, is very awkward to do. The different contexts and such also had unintuitive controls (to me), like opening the map, why is that not "M"? Jumping, why is that not space? I found myself fumbling with the controls and that unfortunately impeded my enjoyment somewhat.
The game mechanics though were very solid and there is a really good base of a game here, and could go somewhere if extended further. I'm very impressed!
I think this game really could have used a retry button... refreshing the page was a decent work-around for that, but that would be a good touch. The game itself was a lot of fun. I didn't know right away which things I could collect (I avoided the first squid because I thought it was an enemy), so it would have helped to have an indicator of that. You had quite a bit of whitespace on the screen, so maybe could have put a key in there to help? Otherwise, very well done!
Fun game! The sound effects got pretty grating after awhile, it may be nostalgic, but there is only so much 8-bit walking sounds I can take, especially with as much content as you managed to put into this in such a short time. Not sure if it was intentional or not, but after fighting the boss, if you kill him with his little attack sprites still up, they just stop and stay on the screen. It would have been nice to have some sort of health or lose condition too. Overall though, I really enjoyed this game.
The graphics were really good, I loved the voxel aesthetic, felt really cohesive. A few criticisms though... I didn't seem to take any damage from the beetles, at one point I tried to intentionally take damage but nothing happened. Also, it took me a little while to figure out the controls (J to shrink? That isn't really intuitive). I had to basically press every button on my keyboard before I figured out the controls. It would be nice to include controls either on your page or in game to help with that.
Also, since you don't have music or sound, you should probably opt out of that category.
Nice job though!
I like the concept of this, and the amount of content is really impressive for this time frame. I couldn't really get into the game though. The time it takes to build the rooms was WAY too long, especially for the amount of time that I had to look into games. It also didn't feel like much was going on while playing the actual game. One other note... on the UI, the "cancel" option was not very intuitive... having a close button or something would make more sense than a "replace with the same room" option. This was very ambitious, and I don't think it benefited much from it as a result :(
I liked the concept of this. The first few levels were pretty interesting. When I got stuck on a puzzle though, I quickly lost interest... I don't think the mechanic was fun enough for me to stay engaged. It would have been nice for the level resets to be faster, as it felt like a good chunk of wasted time waiting for the animation / level to reload.
I noticed a few bugs... The game should pause while the tutorial is up, I basically lost the first round straight away because I was reading the tutorial. I also couldn't click on the mines? Overall, the game was pretty fun.
I enjoyed this a lot. Fun mayhem, funny, and I liked the aesthetic of the game. I assume that the fart clouds were what drained the energy so fast? Also, the music / sound effects really helped with making the game fun. Nice job!
The graphics and music were the highlights for me on this one. I am not sure I would necessarily call this a game though... The movement and such worked pretty well, but there didn't really seem to be a goal. One thing is that if you go directly downwards, you can go forever with nothing showing up, should probably make it so you can't do that.. I had to refresh the page to get things back.
There were a number of bugs that made this game difficult to play... the hit boxes were really off for me, and entering the first room was very un-intuitive as to how to progress. If i went to the right edge, it reset the room again, seems like that could have been done better there. The gameplay itself was pretty unresponsive, and felt un-necessarily difficult. In particular, the frequency of bullets and the fact that the movement was pretty stiff made it very difficult to make it anywhere.
I did like the graphics, and the music was pretty good too. I think there is promise here, but it needs a lot more polish.
I won 4 times, and I have no idea why... there wasn't really any feedback that I could tell, and after just firing randomly, I just won? I wasn't really sure what was going on.
I liked the music, and the graphics were also really good. I am not sure this is the best kind of game to make for a LD game, though. It was pretty long. I liked the premise and the detail that was put into it in such a short amount of time.
I felt like the controls were too floaty and I didn't really feel like I had good control over the character... and for a platformer, that can be a big problem. The checkpoints felt pretty unforgiving, and I got stuck on the first cold part... it felt like I had to wait for the temperature to drop before I could move forward? That part didn't feel all that fun to me, and with the checkpoints, if I got hit, I had to start over the waiting game.
Uhh, yeah. I had a lot of fun with this game. Nice job. The power ups were rewarding (especially the rapid fire one), and the gameplay got super hectic. I got like 65k points I think? Not sure how that compares. But it was really satisfying and a lot of fun to play.
I loved the pacing of the game, the way the mechanics get introduced was very well done. And also the depth of this is much deeper than I expected. It was a lot of fun! Not really sure how this relates to the theme though.
The game was pretty intuitive to play, so props to that. A lot of the games I've seen have been difficult to figure out, but this explained things well. The graphics and attention to detail were spot on, and the bg music was relaxing and fit well. I would have liked to have some sound effects to complement the music, but it wasn't that big a deal. Gameplay wise, it was pretty bare. What is there was implemented well, but to make this a full game, some more mechanics would need to be added in for it to have more of a long lasting fun factor.
I really enjoyed this game. The controls felt difficult, but it also felt that it was intentional and wasn't too difficult. I ended up racking up a fair amount of survivors, but I got the feeling that it was just infinite, so I intentionally killed myself there to see what would happen. It does feel like there needs to be more feedback on the game over screen, or a target goal, to improve the overall objective of the game... as it stands now, it just feels more like a score-attack, and the gameplay isn't varied enough for that to be interesting for very long. Otherwise, it was very fun for what I played. The music was pretty good, but would have liked more sound effects (like a crash noise or thruster noise), and the graphics were good too.
I liked the graphics quite a bit. The mouse sensitivity was a little much though, it felt difficult to control as I was turning way too fast to actually control reasonably. There also seemed to be no indication of how much time I had left, which felt odd. I got the impression initiallly that I had as long as I wanted to move around, but then seemingly randomly got timed out. Also, on a game over, the controls should probably be locked and what-not and properly reset... I thought it broke initially when the game over screen came up. Otherwise, pretty well executed collect-em-up game.
The intro, though interesting, was pretty long and I don't really know what it had to do with the actual game. The game itself really needed more visual feedback on how to play it. There was nothing in the UI or the intro or anything to even hint at how to play it, and I think a good number of people won't have the patience to figure that out when going through the games.
I felt like there was a little too much waiting I had to do in order to complete the game, especially for the last step. The time in between each action also felt pretty long. It felt like a bare-bones mobile sort of game, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but isn't really my cup of tea. I would have liked some ambient sound or any sound at all, may have helped. I also liked the chat addition to help fill in the time waiting for things, although I only found 1 phrase (I don't even remember what it was). It would be nice if you gave a list of chat messages that worked in your description if you want people to get your full set of features.
I wasn't a big fan of the music, it got very repetitive very fast. As others said, the hit boxes were pretty hard to get used to. I also didn't realize I had to go backwards to get the weapon... reading the sign seemed to indicate that I could just attack straight away, so it took awhile before I noticed that. The boss battle featured some things I am also not a big fan of, namely guessing paths. That isn't necessarily a fun mechanic, IMO, but I'm happy that the checkpoint was pretty generous.
The game itself was a lot of fun though. You got a lot of content in there, and the graphics were really solid. I also liked the world you set up. Overall, really nice job!
I ended up playing 3 rounds. The first round, I had no idea what was happening, like I didn't know I had to match the planet colors. That part could have used a tutorial to explain, as it wasn't immediately obvious. The second round, I got a B, although I think I got mostly lucky. The 3rd round, I started to run into a lot of issues figuring out how the gravity worked. I ended up doing even worse that time, as all of my shots didn't work the way I thought they would.
Overall though, it was a fun game, and I liked the idea, although the execution hindered it. I think the gravity effects need to be made so that the ships track to the planets easier... it was far too easy to miss a planet even though it looks like it should hit. Also, the two red-ish planets were very similar in color and were hard to distinguish between the two.
There were parts of the music that sounded off to me, and after the 3rd or so loop, I wanted to turn it off, but maybe that's just me, not sure. Otherwise, the game was pretty fun and worked nicely. There was a good selection of levels and a nice difficulty curve, and the mechanics and controls were intuitive, although sometimes it seemed like clicking on a microbe didn't give me the line, although that was pretty rare when that happened.
This is a fun little game. The planet transitions were really well done, and I liked the puzzle mechanic. It did feel a little tedious to traverse the whole system though. I forget which planet it was, but one of em was moving so fast that I actually swapped planets a couple of times before I got out of the trigger fast enough. Minor things though, overall it was really good.
Loved it, nice job! The puzzle took me a bit to figure out, but once I saw it, I was like... Nice! Few things I noticed, the intro seemed long, and the 8 bit speech indicator noise was a little grating towards the end of it. It would be nice to have a way of fast forwarding it or something. It would also be nice to have a way to get back to the center room quicker, as some of the spots took a while to travel back and forth. Besides that, felt really good and well implemented!
As people are saying, the controls were not doing it for me, it felt very unresponsive and was difficult to control. Once I got to the planet with the flat part, the game seemed to basically glitch out and flicker back and forth, seems to be a common bug people are reporting.
I found myself fighting the controls a little bit too much with stretching, but otherwise it was a very solid game. The music and visuals played well with each other and really helped with the mood. I ended up losing on the attempt I did, but I'm not entirely sure why... there didn't seem to be an indicator as to when I was about to lose / win, which would have helped regarding the game aspect.
I enjoyed this a lot. I also got stuck on the flicker stage, that one was a brain twister for sure. Felt like kind of a big difficulty spike from the others though. The introduction of the new mechanics was well done, although I think introducing the rock color change stuff on a simpler level would have been good. The sound effects got a little annoying towards the end, and having a background beat may have added to the atmosphere. But really well done!
As others are saying, the concept of the game is pretty interesting, but it was difficult to understand and felt pretty slow. I went for about 5 minutes before I ended up stopping. The presentation, graphics, and all that were really good, and the execution was solid, it just felt slow paced and didn't grip me for very long.
This was a fun experience for sure. A few critiques I have on it though - It felt like the UI was lacking and was basically impossible to figure out without viewing the tutorial. Once I figured out how to add parts, I got past the first level fairly easily. On the second level, though, I tried a few various configurations and just got absolutely destroyed every time... like not even getting remotely close. It felt like the difficulty curve between the first level and the second level was just massive. Overall though, it was really fun, and was well executed. If you plan to enhance this further, perhaps adding something interact-able during the combat phase would be a fun thing to add to give some interaction during that?
I didn't even realize this was a tower defense game initially, and got completely destroyed. There was no indication that you need to break the crystals around to get materials, and it felt like the difficulty was way too over-tuned. As for the sound, I immediately turned the music way down, as it was a little overbearing. It was a good track. However, the complete lack of sound effects (I didn't hear any, perhaps because I was playing the web version>) made the combat and mechanics feel pretty non-impactful. The visuals were really good and definitely the highlight of this. Perhaps my general dislike for tower defense is contributing to my opinion here too, so I guess take that with a grain of salt.
This was a really solid game, for sure. The theme, humor, and mood of it was definitely the strong point of it, and the music was also really good. I do have to say, though, that although the waiting for money to accumulate thing may have been done to emphasize the mood, it actually made it really hard to sit through. Given the nature of how the audience will be looking through these entries, people aren't going to want to sit and wait for a minute while they watch a number tick up, regardless of how it may or may not enhance the message being supplied. I understand the intent, and given a different environment, I may see it differently, but it felt more like an artificial, and un-engaging aspect of the game. Overall though, this was really good.
I was confused at first because the first screen that shows up looks like it is the end of a tutorial or something... it threw me off a bit as a result. It doesn't seem to add much to the setting or what-not. As for the game itself, it seemed like it boils down to a guessing game as to what stats get affected by what action. The game I played I ended up losing because of... something? I couldn't really figure it out based on the ending text (maybe I just read it too fast). But I also have no idea what that option did and why I lost, which isn't necessarily a good thing. There were also cases where I felt like I should have lost, but didn't (such as getting the violence value all the way maxed, but didn't lose). Maybe showing info on a selection on what it may do as a benefit and a determent, and add a random factor to it to make the results a little less deterministic?
Overall though, I did like the game. The concepts that were there were well done and the writing was pretty good!
It took me a bit to figure out what to do, I didn't realize, at least not at first, that the objective was to move around to the different faces. It would have probably helped to have some indicators or something to serve as a "tutorial" to get things going. The controls were strange, as people were saying, but were serviceable once I figured it out, but again could have used some sort of explanation. There is something to be said for figuring things out on your own, but I think in this case it probably was needed to help get started. Besides that, the concept was pretty cool... I'm terrible at that kind of puzzle, but the actual puzzle was well executed and it was obvious what the end goal was as soon as I started moving around.
LD50 — Delay the inevitable (22)
GameJam Tycoon by Dobryn 2022-04-14T14:37:03Z ♥ 0
Definitely a different approach than most games out there... I would have really liked to have more options though. It also seemed like some of the text was at odds with the "I'm doing a jam game every week", like the one on the Y2K thing.
The big ADIOS by Tobias Kiehnlein 2022-04-12T20:38:30Z ♥ 3
I concur that I was confused on how to play... I think having more feedback on the effects of the 3 abilities would have helped in understanding what was happening... like the wall I saw the animation (which was neat) but it seemed to immediately disappear again, which made me think I didn't place it, and I couldn't really tell what its effect was. And the totems didn't seem to do anything. Some more visual feedback on what was happening I think would have helped clear up that confusion.
Childhood by Paulsams 2022-04-12T17:50:22Z ♥ 0
Overall very nicely implemented game here. I'm probably not the target audience for it, but I appreciate the stuff you put in here, especially in such a short time. I was going to say it needed music, but then I read the comments... I think maybe the music was too quiet or something? I had to turn it all the way up to be able to hear it. I am not entirely sure how this relates to the theme, but that's OK.
Shootzilla by Bernhard 2022-04-12T17:18:54Z ♥ 1
This was pretty fun. I really like some of the enemy designs too lol. It seemed really easy to cheese at first by just standing on the wall, so that's maybe something that could be balanced a bit early on. That strategy does end up losing due to the flying enemies though, which is good.
Unproduced game (delete entry) by BrainwaveCreations 2022-04-12T16:33:49Z ♥ 1
Really nice work on the graphics, and the bg track was pretty nice. I would have liked to hear some sound effects though.
Penguin Snoir by Sarah Alexa 2022-04-12T16:18:45Z ♥ 2
Nice game overall. The controls felt really strange to me, as I thought I had to click to fire (I don't know why...) but I realized that if I tried to use WASD to move, but also held the click down, it preferred the click movement. The click movement felt really... floaty I guess would be the word I would use? It definitely didn't feel precise. Gameplay wise, I think maybe adding a health bar on the enemies might be a good addition, or some form of feedback there, since I couldn't really tell how many hits an enemy had remaining.
The Endgame by Daniel Dewaswala 2022-04-12T15:53:34Z ♥ 1
The graphics looked good, and the game play was pretty good, but it did take me a bit to figure out how to actually shoot down anything. I'm not entirely sure what the 3D aspect of this game added, it honestly just felt more clunky than I think it would have as a 2D game. Overall though, I thought it was pretty good.
Tyranny Defense Simulator 2984 by WFMG 2022-04-12T15:21:57Z ♥ 1
That was pretty fun! Nice job. It got crazy at the end there. I will say though, the voice overlaps at the end made it kind of ear splitting, so probably should tone that down so there aren't so many voice overlaps. I also couldn't really read what the messages said due to how the game plays, which I'm sure means I missed out on some silly jokes.
Trauma Center (futile medical care edition) by LoicLeGrosFrere 2022-04-12T15:01:01Z ♥ 0
The art is definitely nice, and the music was pretty soothing... I didn't really know what I was doing, so some direction / tutorial would have been nice. I was playing the web gl build, for what its worth, but the controls felt really off to me... the camera kept resetting, dragging the mouse to the edge of the screen stopped me from looking around any more (versus should letting me rotate in 360). Sometimes it did work, but other times it didn't, so it may have just been a weird webgl quirk?
EUUH by Caerind 2022-04-11T19:07:56Z ♥ 1
I honestly really didn't have a clue what was going on... I did eventually discover the console or whatever it was and activated it, but I was very confused for most of the time playing. I think having some tutorials or some amount of guidance would really help. Otherwise, I think the gameplay was pretty good. I would say maybe tone down the footstep sound effect a bit, as it got kind of grating pretty quickly.
A Ship Out of Time by deighta 2022-04-11T17:44:20Z ♥ 0
Moving with the mouse in a top-down shooter like this is super awkward... I think using the standard WASD movement, or arrow keys, would have served a lot better here. It is good that the ship auto-shoots, since there's no reason to not be shooting. The difficulty definitely felt unfair, in part due to enemies spawning on the left and can instantly kill you, and the boss just spawning and instantly killing.
Let's Do Alien Taxes! by BurnsDesigns 2022-04-11T17:19:51Z ♥ 1
Lol that was funny, nice job. I would have loved to see what shenanigans would happen with filling the form out wrong, but the jokes and humor in this was on point. Nice work.
Delay the dancing fire by squirrelsoft 2022-04-11T16:27:11Z ♥ 1
I more or less understood what was happening... but it would have been nice to have tooltips or descriptions on what each ability does... It came to trial and error otherwise. It also wasn't immediately apparent whether I was doing the right thing (like chopping the trees, it didn't look like it was doing much and I didn't really know what its effect on the fire really was).
Space Escape by Feraligatr 2022-04-11T16:14:43Z ♥ 0
It took a bit for me to figure out what was going on, but once I got a grasp on it, it was pretty fun. I did notice that the star field kind of goes away if you go too far to the left (and probably right, too). I would have liked more feedback on getting hit, picking things up, etc, especially when at times I would just completely stop and get killed (which I assume happens due to running out of fuel? but that wasn't obvious).
Winter strikes back! by Biba-sama 2022-04-11T15:58:42Z ♥ 1
Interesting mechanics, reminds me a bit of getting over it? I did get stuck at the house for awhile since it seemed like I was supposed to jump over it, but apparently I could just move through it. But once I got past that, it felt pretty fun to play.
You will become a vampire. by digitaldude555 2022-04-11T15:51:28Z ♥ 1
I really didn't know what I was doing... I think I needed to loot towns, but I only saw 2? And if I went to the right, I kept moving but I couldn't see anything. I guess with the fights the point of that was to force you to have to rest? I think there needed to be more with the fights to justify including them here, it didn't add anything to the fun factor of the game. I think if the technical issues were fixed, and some tutorials or something were added to explain what is happening, you would have something here.
Glub-Glubmarine by Frocto 2022-04-11T15:40:51Z ♥ 1
All of the issues I noticed I think were covered under your list in the description... that being said, those issues did seriously detract from the game. Overall, it was pretty good... The audio was generally OK if it wasn't for how loud it was... It also wasn't exactly clear on how to progress, and the flickering valves didn't help that. I did manage to get through it though.
The 13th Colony by kristinamay 2022-04-07T22:57:00Z ♥ 0
The amount of content here is definitely impressive. I think it may have been too much for a jam game though. I really would have liked more HUD indicators for status, such as health, remaining energy, whether I've picked up everything while exploring, etc. I didn't play it for too long as I don't really have a lot of time to play these games (which is partly why I think this may have been too much for a jam game). What I did play was cool, and definitely impressed me on the amount of different mechanics the game has.
just drive. by Str0nkyK0ng 2022-04-07T22:48:01Z ♥ 0
Yeah, agreeing with the rest of the comments here... This can't really be considered a game, but it's definitely an interesting take on the theme, and the visuals and audio set the mood up very well.
Keep It Warm by Fifut 2022-04-07T22:43:34Z ♥ 1
This was well executed and a nice idea! Fit pretty well with the theme too. I think it did drag a little bit though. It would be cool to have some additional mechanics to spice things up, like maybe movement power ups or something like that?
Meteor Rain by Rinko 2022-04-05T13:57:42Z ♥ 1
Yeah, this is definitely solid for a first game (and even like a 5th game, to be honest). Sound effects would definitely help. I did notice a strange like acceleration thing going on with the lasers... are you using addForce or something on the lasers to move them? That can cause that effect and feels a bit awkward for a laser. I would recommend using either just the standard move function, or setting the velocity (if you are using the unity physics to do the movement).
Since you have this submitted as a compo game, remember to post a link to your source code.
MacBooler by kromeboy 2022-04-05T13:51:58Z ♥ 1
Perhaps my early morning brain is too smooth to understand how to do this, but I definitely struggled with understanding how the game is supposed to play (I do know how boolean math works, normally, but I just couldn't figure this one out). The sounds and music were definitely a highlight on this though.