Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → recursive frog
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Category | Score | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 🥇 | 2012 | 25 | You are the Villain | Agents | jam | Innovation | 4.74 | ||
| 🥉 | 2012 | 24 | Evolution | One Last Chance | jam | Innovation | 4.16 |
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | Cm | Co | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2013 | 26 | Minimalism | City-States | jam | 367 | 2.88 | 2.64 | 3.23 | 2.73 | 2.82 | 1.64 | 1.71 | 2.72 | 100 | |||
| 2012 | 25 | You are the Villain | Agents | jam | 30 | 3.76 | 3.26 | 4.74 | 3.79 | 2.16 | 4.17 | 3.42 | 3.91 | 100 | |||
| 2012 | 24 | Evolution | One Last Chance | jam | 96 | 3.25 | 2.68 | 4.16 | 2.30 | 3.73 | 2.00 | 2.48 | 3.13 | 79 | |||
| 2012 | 23 | Tiny World | Burning Platform | compo | 477 | 2.89 | 2.63 | 3.48 | 2.47 | 2.40 | 3.00 | 1.96 | 2.30 | 100 | |||
| 2011 | 22 | Alone | HUG MONSTER | compo | 296 | 2.79 | 3.02 | 2.62 | 2.53 | 2.32 | 1.22 | 3.02 | 1.78 | 3.61 | 100 |
recursive frog leaves an average of 91.0 feedback comments each event.
Very nice entry! I think the positives have been pointed out well by now. :) If I had to pick a point of improvement here it would be that the color scheme is so dark that I actually could not see the deadly lights until I fiddled with my monitor settings. I likewise tried and tried to get out of shadow mode to avoid the lights but could not find a way to do this until near the very end with the shadow teleport.
The game refuses to run for me. After the very long load screen hung at 97%, I refreshed. It started up, but then refused to actually do anything. It showed the credits, stalled for 15 seconds, then showed the title screen and became completely unresponsive.
I have no idea what was going on. Was I intentionally choosing items to lay down? What was I laying down? Why? What was the goal? Why were there millions of little kids running around?
The special effects were neat, the random monsters were funny, and I wanted to play it a few times just to see if I could figure any of this out, but I still found it really confusing.
Great use of the corruption of the trope about the corruption of the land as a game mechanic. Reminds me of the storyline of the old Final Fantasy where the earth was dying from the influence of the Lich.
I don't know if this was just me but sometimes I found that I could not place graveyards where I thought I should have been able to. Caverns seemed fine.
I like your graphic style here. I felt like the enemies patterns were a bit difficult to learn though, because of how seldom you see them.
The end screen was clever. :)
I liked the running narrative along the side, as well.
I didn't see the connection with the theme, though.
While I didn't really see a connection with the theme, I definitely saw a connection with the fun. This was just plain goofy. Nice use of particles!
I very much enjoyed the presentation here, and the mechanic was nice as well. It's hard to come up with many areas for improvement, but if I had to pick one it's that I feel the pit trap detracts from the game a bit.
I see a lot of potential here, and I really hope you can flesh this idea out some more. The spell crafting reminds me of the oooooold game "Magician" in a way, and I really enjoy that you have this mechanic.
Unfortunately, with only one spell and one type of enemy it feels like unecessary work to have to keep refilling your spell slots.
Perhaps your spell slots could instead represent a bundle of effects that you want a "limitless" pool of projectiles to have, and those elements have different effectiveness against different monster types?
I really like what you've done with the flashlights, and how the walls occlude the light. It's great! I do wish the guards could see when you shine your light on them though.
Really nice tune, and bonus points for HaXe.
The fall takes a bit too long, but it's a really funny game. I like the voice acting, and while the controls were initially tough to get, I found myself getting the hang of it soon enough.
I think it's a little buggy right now, as the space ships can destroy your little graphic without depleting your mass completely, which makes the game unplayble without a restart.
I was a bit confused when it said the wrong man was in the Sail Co building since that's the company the target founded. Anyhow, aside from that it was not bad at all.
I don't think I ever got the hang of these controls, which is a shame because the graphics, sounds, and visual style are all top-notch. It's funny and cute, but I never felt like I could intentionally do anything I wanted to.
I tried for a whlie, but I wasn't ever sure what I was supposed to be doing. I never made it past level 1, unfortunately. The fact that I had to refresh the browser on every replay really made it difficult to keep trying, as well. If I'd suggest anything, it's to give the user a way to restart without refreshing the page.
Even though the game itself is nothing new, you get lots of innovation points for your creative reading of the word "villain" and running with this theme. I also somehow felt the child voice for the orders barking at you was oddly appropriate as well, as though it were a spoiled noble child ordering you around.
Really inspired entry!
Definitely needs more attack options and a faster pace. It's cute, and the weapon choices are nice (particularly the little magic wand). Really slick title screen music, as well.
This was a neat idea, but I feel like it really needed some sound effects to sell it, and also perhaps to be a bit faster paced. The game seemed to last a very long time, and I was beginning to want it to end so I could see my score and try again.
I love that you have a banner with actual cloth physics that bounces when you shoot at it.
It told me to find the king, but I had no idea where he was. I proceeded to wander into the lake, then fall off the side of the world. When I looked up, I could see a lone survivor through the culled backfaces of the ground. No idea how I would reach him though. :)
This is utterly, ridiculously brilliant. The only thing I can say was less than fun was the positiioning of the buttons and the difficulty of controling the two hands. As a concept, it's really marvelous.
The graphics are surprisingly good. I wasn't expecting that they'd "click" so well as they do. I wasn't sure what I was supposed to do really, but I liked the visuals quite a bit.
It's a bit difficult to control the bat, but the sound effects work nicely.
My only criticism is that I really started to panic when I could not find my mouse pointer, especially when I wanted to close my browser tab.
Surprisingly addictive and fun!
Cute game. I don't think it was a problem that English isn't your native language.
The background gradients were a very nice touch to establish scene. I liked that a lot.
Nice treatment with the little safari-hat in the Safari stage. :)
Also, nice easter egg when you click the "x" button on the score view!
The fact that you're playing as one of the most reviled browsers in the history of the web really makes this much more thematically appropriate than I would have thought possible for such a simple game.
Not a bad entry. I played this after seeing your post mortem, and while you're right about the graphics and the strategy, it still works as a fun little game. The city names are charming, and it's got a theme song that's pleasant yet not too infectious.
Your web link gives me a 404
Not too bad as a concept, though I found that there's a nasty leak somewhere that causes the game to slow down drastically as I play. It took about 30 seconds for the sounds to stop after I closed by browser tab.
It is pretty addictive, though! I spread hunger through the land, and beat back disease into a corner. :)
It's hard to rate this fairly when there aren't any other players, which at the moment I don't have any of. I'll check back later!
I think the only criticism I have here is that I wish there were a way to enforce the player to alternate between feet. Honestly, I think the game would be just as much fun without the mayhem, because there's something inherently awesome about a giant stomping robot.
You win at mood. Or if you don't, you're in a really close tie with fishbrain's "snap".
From a technical standpoint, it's little more than a Unity tech demo, and it shows. You did say it was your first project after all. Where this differs completely from other Unity tech demos I've seen is the polish on the graphics and the execution on the concept. I *love* the way you guide the player through the story. I love the dramatic timing. It was all masterful.
This is very much making the most out of a very little.
Wow, that was very well played. At (almost) every point I had the option not to do something terrible, but because the game is what it is of course the sense of exploration demanded that I do.
Eventually I decided to stop being a jerk and back out of every opportunity to be hurtful. Though the ending was completely anticlimactic, it was possibly the best ending to a game I've seen in the competition so far.
I kidnapped all the princesses! I'm so evil!
The art style here was magnificent, and the game had just the right blend of action and strategy elements to hook in a player and keep their attention long enough to see it all the way to the end. The music was jazzy, and the sound effects totally appropriate.
This is probably one of the best entries I've played yet.
Hah, this reminds me a little of pierrec's entry about the League of Mildly Annoying supervillains. I enjoy that you managed to stay true to the theme without resorting to shock value, and that you took a non-obvious route to get there (much like the lovers have to!)
Really quality entry. Not much I can offer in the way of improvements on this concept.
I'm glad this was posted up on the blog, as it's one of the neatest entries I've seen. I played a second time just to see intentionally what would happen when the boom reaches the villain's head. :)
Great entry! I think the only improvement I can come up with for this is more explanation of what the power levels mean and what mobs do precisely. I managed to win by making a circular, spiral shaped path to the center, which I think is probably the best way to lay the most traps in front of the heroes so that they never make it to you.
I feel like the attacks have a bit too much of a recovery time, but other than that the game is pretty solid and fun!
Even if this isn't finished, it's still as much fun (or more) than other games that were finished. Really neat idea, and a lot of potential. I'd love to see real chain physics on the hands, or some powerups, or different hero types.
Cute game and a simple mechanic. It's brief, but a nice little experience. Simple audio, but high marks anyway. :)
This was pretty fun, though I felt it was a bit easy. Was there any reason that the knife was a worse weapon than anything else? I know it left a blood splatter, but that didn't seem to make it better or worse than anything else.
Yeah, the timing of this game is really bad given what's happened in the world lately. On the other hand, the mood and theme are incredible, and the graphics and sound add to the disturbing experience.
This has to be one of the few games I've played where the "Overall" score is higher than the "Fun" because it's really not fun at all, but it *is* powerful.
The textures are beautiful, though I would turn the specular highlighting down a bit on the walls.
The up and down motion while walking for some reason gives me a headache when coupled with the moving sky and pulsating textures, but this really is a small and easily solved problem.
You really should do something more with this, because the art style has a lot of potential!
The .jar file and the .bat file both do nothing for me, so I can't play the game.
Very nicely done! I never quite managed to keep a steady supply of workers coming in, and I felt like the little people should be able to "forget" about you if you evade them for long enough, since they are really eager to kill not just you but your minions too.
Very nice little entry!
I think it would be nicer with a few more seconds on the clock, so that you can really enjoy the nice graphics and get a better feel for the house. It would be fair to also increase the target $ amount as well, but also maybe make his walk speed just a touch faster.
Not bad overall!
The arrow keys didn't do anything for me. The ghost just kept wandering off the edge of the world and screaming. :(
Why was this fun?
Seriously, this was really ridiculously fun. I think your game show setting really pushed this over the top. You had a great concept and executed it really well in a short time. Great job!
My only complaint is that I did not realize early on that you could drag items onto each other, though I did figure that out by about round 3.
The minigame in the credits was fun too!
The game didn't load at all for me. I waited for quite a while, just to make sure.
Indeed, I wasn't sure what I was supposed to do either. I gathered that the evil ship would fire bullets at a set interval, and that it could be maneuvered with the keys, but that's really about it.
Could not play this, unfortunately.
Could not get it to run, unfortunately.
I sadly get a pyglet.gl.lib.GLException: invalid operation when I run python main.py from the command line.
Indeed, those policemen are fast. I noticed that they lose interest if they can't spot you "in time" but they move so fast that time window is too narrow for Santa to fit through most times. ;)
That's a lot of bugs, for sure. On the other hand, congratulations on completing your first LD! Completing the game at all does count for something, and you learned a lot about game maker as well.
Amazingly, I did manage to win. It's difficult considering that the player cannot walk across a dead body. o_O
It crashed on launch for me, unfortunately.
Not sure why, but the jar file won't open / execute for me.
Wow, I wish you *had* finished this, because it's a really neat twist on the old butler trope. Charming little graphics and UI system, too.
This game is charming, but it does have some control issues. The jumps feel a bit too abrupt, and the controls a bit slidey. I enjoy the story / theme here too, though I could see the users being just as villainous with their nasty logic errors. :p
This is some good fun. I wasn't sure at all how I was supposed to play just by reading the instructions but I figured it out really quickly once in the game.
Like lucas, I also found it easier once I had only one tank to worry about. Was there a special bonus or incentive to keeping more than one alive by the end of a stage?
This was really great fun while it lasted. Unfortunately my browser choked and died after five lasers. I noticed it was kind of slow and stuttery to start with, though.
Really, aside from that I have to give this some credit for having a great presentation.
Did you update the .apk when you published the Jam version? I just put it on my tablet and the game doesn't really appear to do anything.
The windows versions would not run when I tried to open the .exe
At times it was a little difficult to escape the light once I found myself "falling" into it, but aside from that it wasn't bad at all. Very nice shadow trail graphics, and a good sense of mood.
I see the simulation favors chasing high margin clientele over servicing the lower margin, more numerous areas.
Nice bit of work went into this. The sound effects really bring it to life.
That one was fun. I had to replay and see if I could manage my laser power better, and I did.
It didn't occur to me the first time that I could aim with the mouse, so it helped once I realized that.
The ending was humorous. :)
The click detection was a little shaky at times, and I felt like I couldn't drop my minions on the field despite having enough money. When I *did* get them on the field though, it was a fun little defense game. The little battle sounds were satisfying, and it was neat to watch the money counter rise.
The game feels a bit hard, with the hero having five lives. That said, it's a very nice take on the shooter theme, and a great table-flip in terms of controls and goal. Great work!
This was pretty fun on my Transformer Prime. :) It did crash at about wave 8, and it started losing track of who I had touched, but it was still a fun game.
I killed the player!
At least I think that's what I was supposed to do. So I guess I win. :)
Maybe?
It's not really clear what you are supposed to do or how. Why does the player lose sanity sometimes and not others? Am I supposed to kill the player?
Wasn't sure whether I was supposed to have a weapon or not, I just flew up and down, trying to avoid things.
Was the control supposed to be reversed? When I would move my thumb downwards the ship would rise, an vice versa.
Transformer Prime TF201 running Jellybean 4.1.1
As a human pawn, I enjoy this game quite a lot.
My one suggestion would be that you should change the victory window such that the +1 buttons aren't lying directly underneath the attacking buttons. Some of us like to spam click all over buttons, and once the battle is over we end up selecting a skill we didn't mean to.
I also liked the Earthbound-esque battle backgrounds. :)
Your source code is fun. Looking at the keywords you have reveals a few ideas you didn't seem to get around to (or that I didn't quite find in the game.)
And now *I* am on the receiving end of an open ended game where the controller is everything you can think to input. :)
Neat soundtrack, I just wish it played on repeat instead of dying after one play.
The core is solid here, but it really does need some more. I'm not sure about a breath weapon, but maybe more sides from which enemies can swarm? Maybe some telegraphing of when the arrows will start to fly?
Less is more. That's what this entry makes me think of. You've got a really solid mechanic and a really solid concept with a really solid execution.
I was really happy with the way you make the player both manage the light, and decide to strategically abort lock picking to avoid guards. Great stuff!
I had a hard time with the UI at first, not being at all sure what I was supposed to do. After sticking it out though, I found it to be a really fun little game. Up to the end I really wasn't quite sure just how to gauge the effectiveness of the traps but I guess I was correct since I won. :)
What a lovely game! This is well polished, thematic, funny... just beautiful!
I'm hard pressed to suggest anything to improve, other than perhaps the difficulty curve, which starts a little too easy and gets a little too hard a little too quickly.
You know, I am surprised by how much fun this little game is. The graphics and the lack of sounds hide a really good mechanic that just deserves a little extra care and attention. Good job!
Never thought vomiting would be so much fun as a game mechanic!
I was enjoying myself right up to level 3 when the heart pit trap threw me underground and prevented me from moving or jumping away.
I kind of wanted to see things like time attack modes, or special objectives while I played. Maybe those were in later levels after the one in which I became stuck.
Great concept!
Good art style and music. I think a bit of instruction might help, as I did not realize until very late that my clicks were triggering both bridges at once.
Also, it might be a good idea to make the bridges and gaps a bit more obvious, as it was not apparent at first what I was to do. Other than that, a decent entry if a bit incomplete!
I like what you've done with the cameras here. This reminds me a little bit of Tecmo's Deception, but only in the sense that you're laying out traps for heroes. Nice job!
Agreed with the others on this one, the music is unexpectedly incredible. :)
I love this entry. I think the only thing that "annoyed" me here was the back seat kicker's stage. It wasn't quite clear what I had to do, and his intro animation was a bit long to have to watch repeatedly.
Otherwise, this was great! They epicly failed to annoy me.
Unfortunately, the exe would not run.
Those kitty cats are sneaky! Cute game. :)
I feel like the troll should either be able to fall off both sides of the bridge, or neither side.
This is the most charming entry I've seen yet.
The only complaint I have is that when I enter the laboratory building the game puts me right in front of the door, and both entering and exiting are done by moving "upwards", so you just flip in and out of the building over and over until you time your motion just right.
The humor is through the roof. :)
I don't know why, but I really like this game. The sense of humor is really fun, and the graphics add to that. I feel that the hero needs to start with a little bit of an advantage because it's easy to just click the first item that fills up and then immediately "crush him" for the win.
Wow, I didn't expect that this particular take on an old classic would be so much fun, but it is! I sort of wish you had an occasional UFO helper fly by like in the original, but other than that it's solid!
I feel like it would be more fair if I had two players on hand, so all I can do is play one hand against the other. Would be great if the only thing you controlled were the asteroids, I think.
I think if your castle were positioned a little differently, your minions were just a tiny bit stronger, or the gold collection just a tiny bit larger, this would be *excellent*. It's still not a bad game as it is by any means! Good job!
Was the saw actually implemented? Nothing happened when I tried to use it.
Fun game regardless, with a neat sensibility and style. :)
Deepnight, you always manage to pull off some amazing games for these jams. Kudos!
Argh! Why is Dracula so slippery?!
The game really is cute and addictive. I actually got all the treasure and then died on my way out. I'm not sure I have it in me to get that far again.
Those priests sure do look sinister, I must say.
Explosive Diarrhea is a lot more fun than it has any right to be, I think.
I felt like I wanted to be able to control the camera, though it's possible that you can and I just didn't realize how.
The creativity was nice. How many different kill methods did you come up with that you had to cut due to time constraints?
While the graphics were above average, everything else about this was beautiful. The concept and the contortions you took on this theme were really wonderful! I like how I had to stop and consider whether my trap patterns would be too deadly for me to ever make it back out of the dungeon on subsequent playthroughs.
This idea really speaks to me, being a recursive frog and all. ;)
Malwarebytes forbids me access to your website so I couldn't play it.
Mine too, SanctuaryInteractive. Mine too.
I feel almost as though I've just played the last episode of the Evangelion TV series.
What did I just play?
You guys did a great job building up that sense of dread about the mundane workaday world, and as I progressed further and further into the game it became more and more apparent what some of the really abstract, early stages were.
It sure was difficult to keep the arrow keys straight in my head, though.
Man, it's a shame to see what Ness grew up to become.
I don't know what I just played, but I know it was really brilliant. :)
Wow. This has to be one of my favorites thusfar. I love the double-entendre you've got going on here that becomes apparent when you finger the correct culprit.
Personally I was surprised at how I was sad that at least 2 people have to die before you have enough information to find the killer.
There's a lot right here, and I really like the fact that you took your discomfort with the theme and turned it into something abstract and wonderful.
Like other said, I wish there were some sort of difficulty curve in this game, as it feels like the only way to die is to become bored of your own blowhardiness.
This was strangely intriguing, and while the controls for the spaceship were a bit awkward it felt like a really nice simulation, and struck me as... well... "real-ish" in a satisfying way. Like, "this is hard, but it really *would* be hard!"
It felt like baby steps, trying to figure everything out a piece at a time. It's funny, I could feel my mind grow a bit as each new item that did something "worked."
The mood was great as well. I felt sad for both the player and the robot.
The mouse motion controlling the position of the main camera was incredibly confusing. I played an entire round of the game looking side-on at the devil, feeling like I had no way to aim or shoot, because I didn't know the mouse would move the camera.
Once I played the second round things got quite a bit easier. Not sure if it's just my computer but the performance chugged really hardcore.
All that said, the music was really good, and the models and animations were stellar! It brought forth a great atmosphere.
Hey there, I played the game and I got the axe throwing to work, but for some reason the lumberjack wouldn't "Jump+Cut" with the LMB. The best he ever could do was to just plain jump.
Was there something I'm missing?
For a villainous octopus, she sure is cute. It took me a while to really get the gameplay, but once I did I found it kind of galvanizing to try to make the octopus move where I wanted her to go.
Great music, too! It would have been nice if I'd been able to find more than just the one fish enemy, however.
This did take quite a while to get into, and I didn't understand it at first... but after I finally figured out how to place objects, it picked up quite a bit.
I think it could use some refinement in the fire rate of the character's ship and also in some of the time types, but it is overall very solid and an admirable effort for the jam!
This was a very cute entry, given the reference to a certain popular kid's cartoon. Even without sound this was kind of neat, and I too wish you'd had the opportunity to make more traps for the kids.
I did not find it apparent that there were any floor traps, and only found this out after reading your description. I think there might have been a way to make them more obvious.
What a great entry! It was really neat to see the sort of disjointed rise and fall of the action, and also the subtle little indicators everywhere. I really liked "LATE FOR NOTHING!"
Plays great on a Transformer Prime :) I really dig the physics you have going on here.
I played the Android version and when your controls said to "shake" I literally shook the tablet. ;p It took me a minute to realise I had to scrub my finger around to simulate a mouse shake. :)
I agree with the others. Tophat and moustache make this really kind of charming. :)
Poor kitties :(
But on the other hand, kudos on the Android version! I played it on my Transformer Prime tablet, and it was really neat to see it in 10 inches. The color scheme really works.
Cheers to another Android developer!
Is this all done with simply Paint/Canvas rendering or are you using OpenGLES on a SurfaceView?
Agree with the rest on the soundtrack here. It's weird, I have played a *lot* of games with a really nice soundtrack this time, when I'm not used to really hearing much at all from LD entries.
It does sometimes feel unresponsive when I press keys however, and sometimes it feels like it's still processing my last command long after I stop pressing a button.
By the way, I perfectly understand the desire to keep the theme light. I struggled with the theme myself because I had a flood of inspiration but as I played out all the ideas they just felt darker than I wanted to explore.
I think this is probably one of your best LD entries so far. You kept the scope a lot tighter in this entry than in past ones where the scope of the world stood in the way of your progress.
Sure, the AI here is a little wierd, but it's still pretty good.
My only suggestion from a mechanics perspective is that in the arcade game each ghost had a different behavior profile and speed. I kept expecting to be able to move faster as blinky, or for Pinky to do his whole "cut him off at the corner" behavior.
I really liked the concept and the graphics! My one problem with the game is that because your attack launches you forward it can be very hard to actually attack the enemies, and since you can't attack while you're in the cuddle zone defending your castle is very difficult.
It was a bit hard to control the dragon for some reason. I think it's because I wanted there to be a separate jump button besides "up". The picking up and dropping mechanic was hard to wrap my head around for some reason as well, and I found myself just wanting to blow fire all over the place... 'cause fire is cool! And this dragon's fire is awesome!
I think if you dropped the stamina, or at least made it drain less quickly, or recover more quickly the game might feel a bit tighter.
You've done it again, this is a great entry. I love the mood here, and was contemplating making a game that included this choice myself.
I did feel that the controls were a bit hard to wrestle with though. The hybrid between being fixed to the cardinal directions while only being allowed a small amount of rotation made it difficult to really know where I was oriented as I turned around. This was more a problem in the sewage drain than elsewhere since it was so dark
I would really have liked to see more of a storyline in this one. It feels like you had a lot of big ideas that you didn't have the time to implement, but I think I can see where you were going with it.
Sadly I don't think I survived a single night. :)
This is the second game tonight that I've seen with a really neat soundtrack. Great job on that! I think the falling ceilings are a bit unfair since they fall too fast to dodge and don't seem to have much of a pattern that I could discern.
It's funny though how fast the game goes from manageable to completely insane. :)
Most of the humor wasn't my thing, but the ending was most definitely a giant LOL. Good job on busting that all out with the tools at hand in three days!
main.ogg is one of the neatest songs I've heard in a while! I would put it in my regular rotation!
main.ogg is one of the neatest songs I've heard in a while! I would put it in my regular rotation!
This was a genuinely fun game, with a calming and contemplative mood and soundtrack. It was just the antidote to a long week.
The tutorial was a bit long winded. I think the game itself is much simpler than it's made out to be by the instructions.
Doesn't run for me either. Vista 64. Missing dll
Link remains dead
No Mac here to run this on.
Yeah, the link is broken.
The idea was pretty neat, though I'm not sure what the wings were supposed to do. I also felt like gaining the laser made the game harder because I could no longer line up my ramming. The laser would knock the enemies to the side.
This is simultaneously frustrating and yet galvanizing. I'm really surprised at how much I actually ended up liking this, for as simple a concept as it it! If this is your first game, then congratulations on coming up with a new concept and executing it well.
My only complaint is that I wish the bubbles *always* spawned at the top or bottom of the screen, and never just out of thin air in the middle.
It's been a week now... will you be able to upload this?
I enjoyed the premise behind the game, though I did feel that the Mincertrons were really bizarrely ignoring their food, or get stuck near the ramps. They would literally be starving to death in a sea of plenty, and I wasn't sure how best to help them. Things only got a little better when I evolved the "jump" ability and they had a bit more freedom of movement.
This is both thematically appropriate *and* fun! Great job on the idea! I like the AI, and even though your interaction is limited so simply betting on the winner it's still really entertaining to just watch the fights go down.
I'm not sure I understood what was supposed to be happening. I wandered around, bumping into things, collecting other things, and evolving the little red guy, but it didn't seem to do anything in the end.
The controls were very frustrating. I found that when I wanted to simply walk in a cardinal direction the button combination to press was never intuitively what I thought it should be and so I ended up running around in random directions frequently.
Me too. White screen of death.
This game is particularly fun. I did sometimes wish that the evolutions were more averages of the two parents as I sometimes found myself just inheriting all the crappy stats of my main character over and over. Without gains in speed you really are doomed.
I once got to level 8 and kissed a girl... but then the baby spawned halfway in a wall and was stuck forever. :(
Cannot play it as I don't have osx handy.
Some of the most fun voice acting I've seen in the competition so far! The music is pretty nice too. I really like the color schemes, even if the graphics are rather simple.
I'm not a fan of the way the difficulty scales though. The way you have the game currently, becoming larger or faster both make your life harder, which hardly feels "right" for the theme, and is a somewhat frustrating mechanic in its own right.
I like the mechanic of trying to drop tears onto the egg while battling oncoming enemies, but I found the laser to be really useless once I discovered that the tears were harmful to the enemies as well. At that point I just cried all over everything because it's a lot easier to maneuver above the enemies and keep the direction of your shots consistent rather than having the angle of the attack change every time you reposition either yourself or the mouse.
Neat music, by the way.
Double Dragon all over again. Quite a nostalgia trip with really solid gameplay and a funny premise!
This game seemed pretty interesting, but I couldn't figure out which trolls were mine and which were not.
I played it on my Nexus 7 tablet, and found that performance degrades rapidly. Not sure if it's an issue on the other platforms or not.
App did not run
Good to meet you tonight at PaxDev!
This game is really awesome on many levels. I think you did an excellent job on what is probably the first multiplayer single player game I've seen.
Nice job for six hours! It really started to click for me after I realized that you could loop back around from the bottom to the top in one move.
The only problem I see is that the game moves so quickly you don't have time to really look at the status photo as you start to evolve.
Surprisingly difficult little game, but with a very fun set of artwork. The part where you must stand still while firing is problematic, but mostly because of the inertia effect that causes your little guy to get off to a very slow, ponderous start whenever he starts to walk.
I think if you dialed down that inertia somewhat it would be less crazy difficult.
Hooray, more Android games!
I really like that you didn't have any visible onscreen buttons overlaying the action, but even with the large touch regions it still felt somewhat awkward to control. It's good to see people experimenting with the tilt controls, and with a time-travel theme on top of it all.
I... Won?! That was surprisingly hard, yet achievable.
It sometimes feels like you get caught in no-win situations where you're stuck between two oncoming pits and you have no way to jump to avoid them. I would like to have had some way to avoid imminent doom.
Was the shark ever actually dangerous? The only times it touched me were when I was stunned, but nothing bad seemed to happen as a result.
Pretty difficult, but it was also a fun little game. I admit that I never made it past level 2, though.
I LOVE the "Not Play" screen. :)
A statement on the sad state of affairs in human life, and yet kind of humorous as well. There's not much to say about the controls or the gameplay. My only comment would be that it wasn't always clear to me when I should click to advance the story and I sometimes just sat staring at the screen.
This is probably one of the best, most funny takes on the theme I've seen so far. The gameplay feels nice, the controls are responsive, and the characters are just really lively.
Poor kitty :(
I would have liked some sort of tooltip to display when you have your mouse pointer over an animal so you can see what they are. Also it might have been nice to see the root levels of the evolution tree... eg: are you screwed if you kill all the amoeba, fish, and proto fish yet don't have any mamals? It seemed that might be the case but I had no way in-game to know.
Hey there, I didn't want to rate it just yet because it seems that the space bar doesn't work. The toothpick never jumped when I pressed it. I think you'd be fine submitting a patch if it really is broken. Has anyone else seen this problem yet?
Interesting concept, and very claustrophobic as well. I admit it, I ended up getting haunted right as my back was to a wall and I couldn't dig myself away fast enough.
I think the game could do with being a bit larger in dimensions, and possibly with a little bit more field of view (but not much)
Well, you know already that the game is rather difficult for people to pick up after you had your user testing. I think the mechanics themselves are fine, and the game itself isn't bad at all, but it's the UI that could use work.
Though I do have to say I was very sad when I clicked the happy looking outdoors button and it threw the little kitten into the river. On day 0. Not just because I love little kittens but because nothing about that button said "I'll reduce your inventory" or "I'll kill a kitten". It's just things like those, really.
I really love the music in this entry and the way it blends with the art style. It makes this a very special piece, even though the gameplay is very minimal.
Blub blub blub.
I also feel like this game needs more in the way of instructions. You don't have the ability to make really rapid iteration cycles, and you spend a lot of time getting hammered by the other opponents.
On the other hand, this is a nice take on resource management, and having done native Android for a game in LD23 I can really appreciate the work that went into this.
Runs nicely on the Nexus 7, but you probably knew it would. :)
Android developers represent! How did you like working with Corona? Was this your first time with it?
Wow, I think all the flying bobs gave me a bit of a headache. I really love the way you incorporated the audio in this game. It was magical and beautiful. The graphics were smooth and slick, even if the swarming minions nearly caused me to fall over.
I found the gameplay harder to get into though, because as beautiful as they are the graphics were also rather disorienting and it was difficult to really know what I was doing.
The game was possibly a bit easy, as gathering all the little blobs on the screen wasn't a problem. I think what might have made it more challenging is if your expulsions seeped out over time. As it stands there's no reason not to eat everything in sight becuase you can just blast it all out of your character instantly.
Really nice music you've got going on here, and I like the fuzzy screen effects. I wasn't sure there was much going on or anything to do until I hit the "No Escape Tentacle Rape" room. o_O
Those are some really snazzy graphics and some excellent UI work. The audio is really great too, and helps sell the mood. I found the controls a bit twitchy though, as the girl was a bit stiff while the screen a bit too fast to overcompensate for your mouse's position.
Bleak.
This was a great take on the theme, though I wish there weren't a finite end to the game. It gives less reason to replay somehow, and lacks a skill element.
As a narrative though, it's excellent.
could not run the game. immediate crash when opening the exe.
The graphics are nice, and I made it to the "end" but I can't say as I ever really figured out what I was doing. I think just adding clarity to what the user is supposed to do would help tremendously.
The game's friend/foe sensor is very slow, so much so that it's really more fun to just blow everything away. Even once I managed to start scanning correctly I found that everyone was hostile anyway so there was no point in trying to discern the difference any longer.
Neat start on a game! I can think of a few possible additions or constraints
1. Only allow users to change direction once they hit a wall
2. Allow only a limited number of visits to each side
3. Add an enemy to chase you around
I have no idea what just happened but it sure was pretty.
Very nice effort here, with some good puzzles and a nice gameplay sensibility. I only wish the game had a "save" feature that let you pick up where you left off if you leave or refresh the page.
Definitely a neat idea to have the game take place around the planet. I only feel like the bombs fall a little too fast and the man has a little too much inertia.
This game was cute and funny, though I found that I was just bouncing off the heads of a constant stream of aliens, shooting them out from under my feet. I felt I could go on forever with just that strategy alone.
I got to 10000 points before letting myself fall.
Really nice soundtrack you have here. The game is pretty fun as well, with only a little bit of an issue with the "cannon" circling a little too fast for my taste. Otherwise a solid game.
You have some very nice artwork in this game. I did find the layout a bit difficult to work with though, as the more commands I piled up the farther down the screen the help menu would appear until it was running off.
I suppose my main criticism is that I felt like I had to rely too heavily on the help menu to simply show me what was around. It seems as though that should be more readily apparent without a special input command.
Surprisingly rich game for such a small concept, but at the same time the levels get hard very quickly. Perhaps it would help if there were powerups, or strategically placed targets such as explosives to help you out?
Is it just me or does it seem like the circuit board pattern should act as walls? Simply running your mouse around the screen to avoid the randomly moving enemies while picking up files with no collision detection on what appear to be walls just feels odd.
The music is particularly nice though, and the graphics are cute.
The only thing I can think to add is that it didn't even occur to me that the core was collectable. All I saw was firey death waiting to come after me. I still like the idea in principle, however.
I can't remark on Shogi as a game so I can't say how true you were to it. The game was nice up until I won a round and then my computer died in a ball of molten agony. I can't know if it was this game that caused it but I think I'll skip the rematch.
Those are some sweet models. The board and game pieces have very nice textures as well.
Finally my knowledge of additive color mixing comes in handy.
I have to say I like the idea behind this game. I only wish there had been a reset button when I got stuck. I was sure I'd discerned the rules by which the blobs accept or reject new additions but I totally failed in that regard.
Played in Chrome, but none of the towers actually did anything even though I gave them all kinds of shoot commands.
Music died after the first wave as well.
I'm playing the web version and I get a "Game Over" immediately without even any interaction.
This was a great mechanic and a great take on the theme. I have to say though that I totally missed that I could press the R button while on a city. I didn't even know you could research until I came to the comment thread.
What a wonderful entry! There's not much to the gameplay on this entry, which is a shame, but everything else about it is simply breathtaking.
Honestly, even though the gameplay is minimal I really can't think of anything you could add that would make it a better experience. You've somehow managed to make me give you a 5 overall without giving you 5 in "fun" which baffles me.
This is officially one of my favorite entries.
This is a really nice start for something that could grow into a truly great game. You've got a great design and sound sensibility here, but you could go much further with the gameplay.
Tighten up the controls a little.
Workd with multiple partners?
Maybe have the game be timed?
Offer a level editor?
Like many of the others I was baffled on what I was supposed to do, how to clear a level, how to fulfill a request. It's a shame there are such usability concerns here, because the graphics, sound, mood, and humor are all excellent.
It does have a very pretty presentation, but really this feels more like a tech demo than a game. I'd really like to have seen a finished version.
I liked the way you force people to explore, and simultaneously trick them into thinking that they've seen it all.
I was a bit perplexed by the endless squirrel spawning area near the end. Ultimately I found that all I could really do was just make a run for it. In fact I would guess that's a valid strategy for the entire game.
Quite a concept you have here. I like it a lot!
If I had only one suggestion to make it would be that I wish the camera movements didn't require repeated keypresses. I felt like I was going to wear out my WASD on this game.
The graphics really let your imagination take over. I think you did a great job with very minimal assets. The lack of sound *added to* rather than detracted from the experience.
I remember your last LD "The End" and decided to look you up this time to see if you'd submitted a game. I'm happy I did! This game is really fun, though the difficulty is a bit unforgiving at times.
I wish there were a small window of invincibility for you after you've been hit like in many other such games. The current setup makes it easy for an enemy to corner you and tear away your health in an instant.
The uberspells were a nice touch, but the tab button to change hats in the middle of a tense fight is always tough for me to reach when I'm already using WASD for my motion controls.
Another nice touch would have been a target reticle that follows / replaces your mouse pointer.
Great entry!
Wow! For such a small game, and such a small proof of concept, this is a really big idea. I would love to see this expand into something much larger!
This is getting saved as one of my LD 23 favorites.
The graphics are beautiful in this game. Really a sight to behold. Unfortunately the performance was such that the game was virtually unplayable for me. Mouse and keyboard input started to lag by several seconds as I continued to play. At last, I struck a wall and was knocked with such force away from it that I broke through the opposite wall and was ejected from the play area.
The windows exe was a little more responsive, but still a bit sluggish on the response time.
It seems like there's not much to this game, though I wish there were. The graphics are really charming, and it feels like there's a real story developing. We're just starting to get a sense for who this little guy is, and all of a sudden it's over.
Great dialogue, just wish there were more of it!
Source?
This game is definitely an exercise in frustration. I did manage to make it to the second screen, but once I discovered that the game forced me to start all the way from the beginning after I died, I had to just close the browser tab.
On the other hand, the graphics are charming in their resemblance to a very old-school version of Indiana Jones.
Nice GameBoy-esque feel to this one. I have to say I too felt bad about blowing up all those planets.
Everything I could say about the control scheme has already been mentioned, so I'll just leave by saying it was a neat little game!
I like the snail's textures, and the modeling work on the various characters. The graphics were overall good.
On the other hand, I found the camera following mechanism to be a bit awkward. I never really could get the angles I wanted to see. The controls for the laser firing felt a bit picky too, as the lasers only last a split second.
Can you target and kill the bees at all? Eventually I found I had destroyed most of the buildings and all the land-based enemies, but there was nothing left to do other than be killed by bees.
My score was : 108518.0
I could have kept going forever though, as the game is simple with limited strategy. I feel like it needs some more variety. Perhaps some added reward for staying big beyond just a high score. Maybe there should be some powerups that you want to grab by expanding to meet them?
Brilliant concept.
I've not been able to get pygame running so I can't rate it.
Zorlax is the epitome of game villainy. He needs to be revived in another game, in another universe, in another compo.
I managed to jump myself clear off the planet! At that point, the bullets I shot went off into random directions, and the game slowed to a crawl. Frame rate and responsiveness just fell off a cliff and I had to use task manager to quit.
I think the game felt like you really needed to jump in order to move with any speed, which seemed strange to me.
The graphics and sound were pretty neat, but the controls really were difficult to get used to, and the consequences of acutally defying gravity and levatating into the stratosphere are really too hefty.
The camera motion is a bit disorienting, and the explosions when you hit an enemy really make it hard to keep track of everything else on the screen.
On the other hand, it's a really neat idea to make your own shots deadly to yourself by way of the falling mechanic. It leads to a more strategic way of thinking rather than simply firing mindlessly.
How delightfully goofy!
I don't know what to say that hasn't been said by others at this point. I think their feedback is pretty accurate.
the game runs for me, but I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing. The game is completely inexplicable.
On the other hand, the title screen is really funny. :)
I remember when you announced the creation of Pixelizer after the last LD compo. I'm excited to see that it's in a state that's usable! How are you finding it as a tool? Do you feel like it's working out well without the kind of editor support that a dedicated Entity framework tool provides?
Oh yeah, the game itself! This was a really neat idea and a funny take on the theme. I'm not sure what to add that others haven't at this point, but mostly wanted to congratulate you on Pixelizer.
Nice take on the balancing mechanic. I would love to have seen this as a mobile phone game with accelerometer controls.
I felt like the sloping of the world was a bit unforgiving at times, and that it wasn't readily apparent that you needed to scare the people into moving to the center or that the world's tilt was in response to the position of the little people. I thought at first that my boulder could keep the world more level by running to the opposite side of the board but it apparently lacks any weight against the world?
Anyhow, the game is fun. I made it up to the one where you need to save 18 people.
You definitely need to have the main character start a little higher, or else have the game wait a second for the screen to begin scrolling. The random levels often make it such that you cannot make even the first jump.
If it weren't for these two things this game would have been relatively compelling... in fact it kind of is already. I replayed this more times than I thought I might as it stands.
On my first playthrough I died against the boss and wanted to play again, but I found that I could not restart without a page refresh. This causes LWJGL to search for updates every time I want to replay. This unfortunately killed my enthusiasm to give it a replay. Just this one feature would make a world of difference, I think.
The enemies look soulless and creepy. That's a good thing.
The jumps feel like you're on the moon. That's not as great, but the controls are otherwise quite responsive and that's a very good thing.
I've thusfar been unable to run pygame, so cannot rate this.
I'll get my only complaint out of the way upfront : I wish your game hadn't resized my monitor resolution, even if it gave my old one back.
That said, everything else in this game was wonderful, from the beats to the graphics, to the idea. It's hard to know what to suggest as an improvement from a gameplay standpoint, though I felt like the final room relied a bit much on explotation of the controls and just randomly spamming the jump button until you reach the first of those three diagonal steps that lead from lower left to upper right in that room. Reaching the first step felt impossible without just jumping straight up and hoping I got caught "in" the block so that I could spam my way out of it. If I managed to land between beats, I was able to keep time once again.
I felt like the game's spawning algorithm could use some work. It seemed like there were long periods where I wouldn't run into an enemy at all, then hit 3 of them at once. You really don't have a chance against those odds.
The music was really good, but it was a bit too nice when paired with the rudimentary graphics. It felt a little out of place.
The upgrades were a nice touch, but again, when you run into a clump of 3 planet enemies, not much will save you.
I was really getting into the game and trying to find a way to get all the keys, but the game crashed on me on screen 4. I'm also having a really hard time with the wall jumps that you seem to have to make to get up to that key.
Really my one criticism right now is that the wall jumping mechanic seems to make the game harder than it needs to be. On screen 2 I frequently found myself ricocheting back to the left on my dash, while grabbing that key, because of the wall hanging, and because once the player wall hangs he cannot change his facing.
I don't really have the wherewithal to keep going with this steep a difficulty curve, but I have to give you credit for making these some ingeniously difficult puzzles.
Not a bad initial stab at a puzzle game. I see a lot of potential for this idea through the roughness of the presentation.
One thing I'd change about the control scheme is allowing the user to hold an arrow down in order to continue moving in a direction. Maybe give it a .25 second delay before the diety starts auto-walking just to make it easier to move one block at a time as needed.
On the final level I was very confused. I did not realize that I needed every key in order to open the gates, and none of the previous levels made it explicitly clear that the gray doors only open when all keys are collected. Since every other door is color coded to a key, and because the white key was always the final one collected in previous stages, I was quite surprised to find that collecting all the white keys did not open the door.
Not much to add beyond what's already been said. I appreciated the humor and the ending. :)
Tried to play your game but the exe immediately crashed.
The lava world really was the highlight for me here. That was a catchy tune and a nice puzzle too.
I would have liked to see more "things" to do in the worlds besides the very small challenges, but then I'm guessing you were going for a kind of old-school Atari feel for the objectives.
When I saw the explanation and the screenshot I thought that certainly this would be a strategy game of some sort. I was totally taken off guard to the fact that it was real-time.
I felt like I didn't really know what I was doing at first despite reading the instructions. They made sense in my head but in practice not so much, at least at first. I think I eventually got the hang of things, but I never really understood why I would "die."
You've got some really nice dialogue for some of these characters. I especially like what they say when you win. :)
The graphics and sound are pretty good, but I found the controls to be really hard to work with. Fortunately the game did not require any really fancy jumps or maneuvers in order to succeed.
This game by far wins my innovation vote. It's just absolutely brilliant and beautiful. I did have a little bit of difficulty understanding the narration at times due to the accent, but in the end I managed to complete the game.
As far as gameplay goes it might be nice to repeat the hints if people just aren't getting it.
In addition to what caranha said, there are a few other things you could do:
Variable velocity for the asteroids
Variable trajectory for them rather than just straight down
Not a bad shooter. I like the idea of catching the enemies weapons to throw them back, but I felt like the enemies were a little too predictable. Also... were we just throwing space toast at each other?
I feel like there might also be some merit in penalizing the player for hoarding shots, or perhaps limiting the number of orbiting bodies you can have.
Such an inventive concept you've got here. This gameplay mechanic is both maddening and fun. Ultimately the stakes are low enough that there's no real harm in losing track of where you are or where you've been, but there's a good bit of mindless "hunt and peck" searching for things like the town that sells the scuba gear, or the one spot on the map where you find the amulet. Maybe if there were some sort of strategy to let the user navigate it would be a bit better?
Regardless, it gets high marks from me.
There's not much I can add that hasn't been already covered by the other comments. You did an amazing job with the graphics and sound, but there's not much of a game here.
It took me a while to figure out just what was going on in this game. I'm still not entirely sure I get what the various items are for. Is the empty hand useless? Does it do something?
I did enjoy the digging mechanic though it took me a while to realize that I was able to rebuild steps for myself. Once I figured out that I could materialize steps underneath me in the middle of a jump, the world felt like it opened up... but without that knowledge I felt like I was just digging myself into traps that I couldn't possibly escape from. I think the problems with the game are more a matter of discoverability of your powers than anything else.
Nice game!
Could not play because the .jar file did not execute.
Here are a few pointers that might help you on your next game:
Think carefully about how you lay out the control scheme. It's generally a bad idea to make people remove their hand/finger from their movement keys in order to attack. Also, if attacks are so weak and combat so difficult that you must warn the player that it is an option of total last resort, it's probably best to remove the ability to attack at all.
Likewise, jump as space bar works well when the *arrow* keys are the movement keys, but not so much when "a" and "d" are.
I'm afraid the gradient colors in the background of the 2nd room were so harsh that I literally couldn't look at the background without experiencing actual physical pain. When combined with the incredibly unforgiving inertia and the awkward control layout on the keyboard I simply could not continue once I passed that doorway.
It's funny, as I was playing this game I felt like the wing flapping mechanic was completely innovative, but then I realized that ninja games have used double-jumps for ages now... it's just that they aren't little birds flapping their wings, four times per jump only. The fact that it's used more as a way to simulate flight than as supernatural martial prowess is, I think, where this game has its real innovation.
The art style and music are wonderful. The mechanics are addictive. I can't see any relation to the theme, unfortunately.
I was a big fan of the lighting effects you have in this game, and of the cutscenes and sound effects. A lot of polish there! Unfortunately it did come at the cost of an actual game. I was mystified by the ants, and was frustrated by the fact that you and the enemies simply pass through each other. It makes them deadlier than they probably should be.
I'd say you could drop the concept of separate sentient enemies and simply have the game be nothing but avoiding the hazards in the giant's body as is.
Mediafire will not let me download this game.
You know, I'm reasonably sure the use of the SNES tunes would have disqualified this entry from the compo anyway. This is a really neat interactive story concept, though.
I have Java 6 as well, and unfortunately I was unable to play the game. Blank white screen on launch.
The game itself is wonderfuly charming. The art, music, and story are lovely. My criticisms really are more down to control and usability than anything else, so here we go.
When you run out of energy and the help text appears overtop the planet, the fact that it's black text on black background means that it cannot be read. Perhaps a white-colored drop shadow effect would help make the text more legible in this case?
Because I kept dying where the text would be illegible, I died several times before ever getting the clue about where weather comes from.
Years of Flash games have taught me never to click the right mouse button, so even though this is not a Flash game I still am conditioned to ignore its existence. If you're going to have the right mouse button do something critical it's best to call that out.
There's a solid base here for a more fleshed-out tank combat game. Your motion and controls are absolutely on-point. The only thing that's missing really is a mission beyond just shooting down the randomly spawning enemy tanks.
You know, maybe you should make this a more open-world type game where you take your tank around and try to find / rescue / destroy targets? Maybe add some extra considerations like barrel overheating, fuel, terrain?
I found it very difficult to control the character. I have a very hard time when the direction keys are letters and the jump is a space bar.
Poor Pluto! :(
Simple as it is there's not much to say about it other than the fact that for an 8 hour game it's pretty nice. I think you've got all the basics even if you don't have much polish (though the particle effect on the shield is nice).
This is both an incredibly fun mechanic and yet also possibly flawed, but it's difficult to tell just how flawed because my computer seems to be experiencing severe performance problems while running your game.
The premise of the game, a small and nimble person riding around on a giant protector, isn't completely new. What is new is the setting and design of the characters. They're quite charming, and they help to make up for some of the shortcomings of the game mechanics.
The mechanics themselves are inspired. It's nice that the mouse and the keyboard are each separate control mechanisms that each control the different heroes. You could concievably play this as a 2 player game given this control layout! As a single player though, I found it somewhat difficult to coordinate two characters, each in one hand. This was not made easier by the awfully chuggy performance problems that plagued me every time I tried to move Bill's arm. It felt like his animations were jerking and twitching, skipping almost 90 degrees of motion at a time. It was hard to punch anything because his arm would suddenly be in one frame straight below him and in another straight in front with no inbetween frames shown. Apparently the collision detection doesn't account for this.
On the other hand, performance aside, I love the kinematic arm mechanic. I wonder if the game would be more enjoyable on a different machine?
I played the Android version. Here are some notes about it:
The performance seems reasonably solid on my phone, so good on you for that! The graphics read reasonably well though the text is a bit small on my screen at times. That is relatively minor though.
Unfortunately I was not a fan of the control scheme. The onscreen buttons were too small and I frequently failed to press them, or I pressed and jumped simultaneously. Screen buttons in general are problematic in mobile games, paricularly action style games. Perhaps making the entire height of the screen, and the entire width out to the edge a hotspot for touches would help matters, but then you have the fact that it is awkward to keep switching thumbs to jump depending on the direction I move, which is a direct result of the button positions. That was the hardest part to get used to.
I did not yet play it on my tablet. I predict that it would be more difficult to play there because i would have to stretch my thumbs more to reach "off the buttons" to jump.
Indeed the level of polish here makes it hard to believe that this is really a 48 hour entry but I'll still give you the benefit of the doubt and rate it accordingly. While simple, the game was oddly compelling and addictive. I wasn't sure what relation it had to the theme, though.
I felt like the other spells, being so close to the movement keys, were a hinderance more than a help. The game's strategy doesn't seem to require them, and even though they're powerful they are hard to use on the run which makes them less useful than the basic fireball.
Otherwise, quite solid!
Like most others have already said, this the presentation is fantastic. From the gameplay elements, I think the wall climbing was the most interesting and successful.
What I wished for with the light was that it simply stayed on at all times. Having to constantly spam the Ctrl button just to get around the world was tiring on my hand, and there's no compelling reason to "conserve" your light bursts as they don't diminish unless you hit an enemy and they don't appear to be weapons that ward off the enemies either.
Congragulations on keeping up the pace with a post-compo build!
I also was unable to play the game due to the same missing .dll as jwolf. Sad. :(
I really like the screenshots, and just from that alone I think it looks really interesting.
What a fun little defense game!
My only criticism is that I wish the "locked" items had been more obviously unavailable from the beginning. Maybe a big red strike, or an alpha transparency would have helped. I felt like I spent too much time just clicking those items because I coveted the power without seeing the tiny lock icon.
A couple of more sound effect would go a long way too. A confirmation that you successfuly purchased a defense system would be most beneficial.
This is a nice idea with a great exploratory mechanic. One thing I think might have added something is the possibility of finding pickup items that help you out, or adding traps for enemies.
Being forced to kill the enemies for more bits resulted in me sometimes having to just wait around for them to spawn before I could continue exploring, so I wish there were some other way to generate bits on top of just killing enemies.
I like how this entry really took "minimal" to heart for the whole theme of Tiny World. I also appreciate the idea that the protagonist makes its own world smaller intentionally.
This puzzle elemants are very well designed and fun. I approve.
I think level 6 might have deteated me tonight.
The light and dark mechanic is quite inventive, and I have to give you a lot of credit for it. likewise I think you did an excellent job on the soundtrack.
On the other hand, like you say in your post mortem the controls just don't feel quite right. Furthermore I think I found a really nasty bug in that when I fell down a dark tunnel that "killed" me, so I pushed a light down into it... then when I followed the light I found that the entire screen was nothing but an infinite pit of darkness.
Even still, I'm glad I stopped in to play this one and I think you have correctly identified the major issues.
It's a bit difficult to discover which bacteria produce which other colors of bacteria at first and it isn't quite clear just what the goal is at first either. That said, once I got the idea I got more into the game.
I found the bomb of little to no use. The needle and the medicine were all I needed. Perhaps though it would be better to call the "medicine" tool something else as I felt it was a little confusing.
Otherwise, not bad!
I really don't know what to say that hasn't already been said. I think that if anything I would have liked the ability to type at enemies farther back in the ranks. It seemed like I wasn't able to target some enemies that were in the rear ranks when I tried to do so.
You could sell this song and make MILLIONS! It literally makes this game. In other respects the game is rather generic, but the song absolutely pushes it up a notch by all measures.
From a technical perspective, I feel like the controls are generally solid though the jumps feel a bit floaty. The fact that the ants don't telegraph their attacks make them more dangerous than they might otherwise be. The stealth aspect is interesting but not explored to its fullest here.
The various NPC characters are wonderful.
Congratulations!
Like all the others I really enjoy your graphical treatment in this game, and how the man blends into the signs. The loop isn't bad either.
The controls on the other hand felt very floaty and twitchy. It was very hard to make the little guy jump precisely when I wanted him to, or land where I thought he was going to. It's one of the things you learn to deal with over time in Unity I suppose, as I ran into things like that during development in LD22.
Very creative idea overall!
I like your audio loop, and am impressed with the graphical effects you have for the explosions. Very nice!
I think the game would benefit if the levels were just a little shorter, and if the user could carry over their powerups from level to level. I was sad when I realized that I was starting over from scratch once I reached level 2.
The steering mechanic is interesting, but makes it such that you really can't make large motions across the screen in the horizontal direction without completely ruining your aim. Other shooters let you strafe dead on, which helps you. This one makes strafing impossible.
I too fell through the world when the one room turned sideways. I was really enjoying the game too! I did decide to go back and try that room again and I'm glad I made it through... though I almost fell through the floor a second time.
I really enjoy the text treatment you've got here, and the way it fades in and out as you travel. It's very evocative of the mood.
As far as criticisms go, I think that Unity's ice physics make the crates feel a little too "slidey".
This is a really inventive mechanic, and like your LD22 entry does a whole lot with minimal graphics. The sound is excellent too, adding to the atmosphere tremendously.
On the other hand I found the gameplay to be very difficult and frustrating. I wasn't able to adapt to the art of keeping one eye on an anchor and another on my character, and frequently ended up crashing into walls.
This is a very fun entry if a bit incomplete. I can't add much more than what the others have said so far. I do like the way you tried to balance vaporize by making it take a lot of time and disabling your ability to attack while it occurs.
I feel that perhaps there should be some other extra terrestrial objects or entities out there either as targets or as competitors.
I only wish that when I respawn after dying that I didn't have to lift my finger from the fire button in order to press it again to keep firing. The game is really nice as space shooters go, with an awesome soundtrack and detailed graphics. I appreciate the effort!
The difficulty is a bit much for me, though. I can't seem to make it past the 3rd stage tonight. That probably means you're doing it right, though.
She never blinks... I find this somewhat more disturbing than even the idea that you're wandering around on her eye in the first place. The iris texture was interesting but getting up there on the cornea to see it requires you to know to jump with the space bar.
Same as Daz. I got the "Blob is too big" error as well.
You did a great job with the graphics and music. I particularly enjoy the way they all come together to make a very peaceful feeling as you create a new world. It would be nice if the icons had an "off" state for when they are no longer clickable. This might help guide the player as to what options they have available to them.
Unfortunately the game refused to run. I do have Python, and I installed PyGame. When I used idlelib.PyShell to execute the main file and hit f5 to run the game, Idle complained at me that I don't have PyGame.
I like the whole circuit board minigame. It might be helpful to the players to have a slight introduction on what the various parts of the panels and boards are actually for, and also to more prominently call out the waveform graph.
Nice squeaks!
Echoing the kudos on the art style. You guys did a great job on that, as well as on sound design. Splendid presentation! I felt that in terms of gameplay that the main game was a bit too easy while the boss was a bit brutal in comparison.
I distinctly remember the art style from your last entry, and thought it was really neat. I think you've done even better this time. The game is pretty good but at the same time I felt like I didn't know how to make the fighter and the thief actually attack when I was controlling them. Yes, I had the space bar but that depleted their "mana" power quickly.
I'm afraid it didn't run on my machine.
Windows Vista 64
I really enjoyed this entry overall. The music and narration were far more than I expected from a Ludum Dare entry, and the gameplay wasn't bad either.
I share the observations of others though in that the game is a bit slow paced. I made it to wave 3, fell off on my way to my last piece of starshine, and just couldn't bring myself to do it all over again. I still give it high marks in spite of that, though.
I found it ridiculously fun to shake the ape's fists back and forth in time with the music.
I found its lack of arms ghastly and distressing.
I found the premise to be funny! Not bad overall!
Not sure what was going on but I was unable to shoot anything with Mechania. The fire button simply made a weird sound but no laser appeared. I instead spent a lot of time crashing myself into asteroids and trying to deflect them.
Fun concept anyway, though. :)
What a fun little game. I remember really liking the title and concept from your blog postings and now playing the game is just as much fun as it sounded.
I'm also having the same web issue with the game not advancing past level 1, but the exe works fine.
One thing I wished was that the explosions applied an impulse to the surrounding blocks, but I can imagine how that would make your level design harder to do.
Nice concept! I had a similar one for my own game in regards to the gradually vanishing world space and friends that fall to their deaths, but you went in a much different direction than I did in other respects by making it a defense game. Kudos!
Short and sweet, this game is simple yet ridiculously gratifying and fun. The scaling, the animations, and the sound loop all make this a neat little gem in the rough.
Nice ending. :)
These graphics are splendid. I really like your style and your music composition sense.
The game's controls though feel a bit too "outer space". I wished that the frog's jumps took less than 1/3 the time they actually do, and I found that you can get "trapped" on the mushrooms and just bounce up and down endlessly. It also would have been ideal to let the user pass through the bottoms of those leaves when they jump upwards and then land on descent.
Not bad, though I agree with Pixelulsar. The game does seem to lack involvement after you've placed all your turrets.
I like the little blasty sound effects!
Could not run. ADB returned this error :
[INSTALL_FAILED_OLDER_SDK]
Droid 3, Gingerbread
I played the Android version. Really nice! The one issue I seemed to have was that the congratulation screen's dark fade seems off-center on my Droid 3.
Mind returning the favor for my own Android game? http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-23/?action=preview&uid=8342
Indeed, source please!
But... yay, another Android app! I don't feel so lonely now.
This is wonderful. I really enjoyed the prototype you posted on your blog and this version really delivers. I did find the final boss a bit easy to cheat though. That weapon is just too powerful given the properties of the enemies when they are hit.
The experimentation aspect is kind of fun, though hampered a little by the control scheme. I wish it weren't quite so oblique what might be going on, though.
I do have one usability gripe though, and that is that your restart button really should have a confirmation popup. I accidentally pressed it a couple of times errantly while I was trying to manipulate the inventory.
You know, I found this charming. I particularly like the zoom pixel button effect, and feel like there's really something here that could be uncovered with proper probing and work.
I notice a theme developing in your games. This is the second one in a row I've seen where avoiding starvation is the goal. I can't tell if it's just me though, but this game seems incredibly difficult. The queen's food stores drop precipitously and the only foods I found, garbage and roots, don't restore enough to make them worth the effort to collect... and that effort is *copious* because the controls are a bit overresponsive.
On the other hand, I'm impressed with how far along this path you managed to make it. This was a really ambitious concept and a nice take on the theme to boot.
I really enjoyed the attention to detail in things like the swaying of the grass that the enemies stand on, and the idea of spawning on the ant. I feel like the Ant could have been used to even better effect though if you had more opportunity to use it as a shield. I saw some of this early on but once you are halfway through you lose this.
Not bad on the whole!
I wish I'd found this while ratings were still ongoing. I'd have happily rated this highly!
I think it would be better if the audio listener were attached to something other than the robot, and that is always oriented in the same direction such that if the cat is to the "right" of the player's position the meow always hits your right ear and if the cat is the the "left" of the player's posiiton the meow always hits your left ear. As it stands the meows are projected to the right and left ear based on the rotation of the robot which is incredibly disorienting.
Also, a cast shadow would go a long way to helping people know where they are when they're jumping.
Is it a known bug that the cat will refuse to follow you? I'm sitting here trying to make the cat follow me but nothing happens.
This is a delightful concept! I do wish you'd succeeded in getting sound put together for this entry, but even without sound it is really nice! I did see some bugs here and there, mostly relating to the subjects mysteriously teleporting around, but I also found on in which the wizard decided to move from his room to the left. forever. He passed through walls on his way out of the world.
I love almost everything about this entry except the jumping controls. I wasted sooooo much of my time just trying to get up that first set of platforms while watching the poor kitty feel sad. I know it isn't impossible, but it felt that way at times given how twitchy everything felt. It made me feel quite helpless.
But the art style and the music combined were just cute beyond all reason. If you were to clean up the jumping a bit and rethink the level design it would be solid gold.
BOOOOOOOOOM!
Not only was the game itself fun, but so was the game over screen. Kruth Diamondbeard met Kruth Carpslayer indeed!
I agree with a lot of the previous comments and have little to add. I'm glad I stuck with the game through the quest to find the flashlight, as that was a very frustrating "quest" that was opaque and that forced the player not just to stumble around blindly but also it removed your biggest asset, the lo-fi textures and reinforces the lack of sound or music.
The collision is kind of weird too. I was unable to pick up a lot of the items in the garage. Then when I went out to experiment with the ones I did have, simply standing too close to the front door seemed to kill me?
Your art style is pretty fun. I really like the jumping poses and (I can't believe I'm saying this) the lens flare was a nice touch. The "life bar" was fun as well.
In terms of controls I think Jim feels a little too "floaty". Also I'd like to have seen more frames of animation for the movements.
Your game over screen is kind of strange though, in that it appears that the women clearly aren't colliding with each other's visible pixels. On the other hand, it reminds me of my own game's "YOU WON" screen. ;)
Thanks for pointing me over here. I have to agree with marudziik. Very believable.
As to the game itself I feel like it could have used a bit more detail in what your actions are for / what you're doing. (What was I studying? Was I getting tired? How was I doing in my classes?) Just some randomized flavor text for each of the options would be nice, and maybe an ascii representation of a wall clock or something would have helped keep straight what time it was.
This entire game was just over the top. The end sequence was completely unexpected and yet completely in-character. Because it had nothing to do with the theme I really can't give it an overall 5 as much as I would love to otherwise. On the other hand, this is one of the most fun entries I've played yet!
This is definitely an overlooked gem of a game in this competition. The gameplay is solid, and while the difficulty does take a steep incline after several stages it's nice that you've made it so challenging. I feel though that controlling the little helper sometimes feels twitchy and I never really got the swing of just exactly how far it moves compared to your moves and why.
This was a really nice take on the theme.
This was a really well-done concept. I like the effects on the consoles, and if I didn't know better I'd say there was a white noise filter overlaying the player's view at times.
Based on the screen shots, I did not expect to like this nearly as much as I did! You have a great combination going on here with the music and the gritty imagery, along with the fascinatingly bizarre scenery. I only wish I had more time to wander the desert and map it out.
Very creative use of background coloring to illustrate the player's location!
If eld hadn't mentioned it I was going to. You really need to implement tile-by-tile motion and not pixel-by-pixel for the pushing mechanics. The art style and theme were really nice, but the pixel level motion caused you (judging by your blog entries) and the player needless headaches.
It's a very minor point but I too would like it if the flowers revived more quickly.
Your spinning the world mechanic fits nicely with the lovecraftian theme you have for the game. I am particularly impressed with the quality of the music track, but I feel like something without vocals and without an identifiable rhythm or harmony might have better served the setting... maybe something with shifting time signatures?
I did not finish either, but I did quite enjoy the game regardless.
I think you're right that having some sound effects would really sell the game a bit harder. I think the idea is fairly solid, but the one thing I would change about it is that I would definitely disambiguate between jumping and climbing a ladder. I died several times because I tried or wanted to jump but could not because I was standing in front of a ladder and the game interpreted my desire to jump as a command to climb.
Sadly this did not run. No worries, I didn't leave a rating.
This is a surprisingly fun little game even with the various pathfinding oddities. Unfortunately I can't really give it high marks for the theme as there are three of you in all stages.
My only real criticism of the gameplay is that it seems just too easy as it stands. I have to either be incredibly careless, or intentionally trying to die in order to lose. Maybe you should have permanent death for characters who get devoured by the mutants? That way you really have an incentive not to let anyone get splattered, and it would help stick to the the theme as well.
I love the art style, and the sfx are really evocative of the 16 bit era, but the controls are very frustrating. It's all down to the pixel-by-pixel movement speeds, and the fact that enemies will hang on corners in a way that they cannot be stabbed, but also cannot be walked past without hurting you. Even once you discover diagonal stabbing, you still move while getting into the diagonal position and thus still run the risk of being hurt.
I would say that changing the movement scheme to be tile based, and being a little more generous on the collision detection for the sword would make this an excellent title and a fine first chapter to a bigger story.
I agree with your post mortem that the placeholder graphics were strong enough on their own to convey what you wanted. Really all of it was strong enough. Nice job!
I think I would have liked this entry better if it didn't have performance issues. I played it on my Windows Vista desktop and found that as I uncovered more and more of the maze that the mouse became less and less responsive. Once the maze was almost fully uncovered I could hardly move anywhere, which made it difficult to win fights that should have been easy.
I like the idea, but as it stands, the game punishes you for progress in a way it really wasn't intended to.
So you made a game about notch? ;) Really nice backstory, and such charming graphics. I liked it!
Ouch, that sound is incredibly loud! I like the funny intro, and I really like the particle-lasers and the way they spray out. I always have a hard time with controls that require you to aim with the mouse in a top-down environment, though.
Unfortunately I could not run this game on Windows Vista. :(
I'm really happy to see that you stuck with this and got as far as you did. If you've never tried to make a game before, it can seem like an insurmountable challenge to even get started. Hopefully you've learned a lot from the 3rd party code you have been working with, and will be in a better position the next time you decide to enter a contest.
Like you say in your own journal, it's about sticking to the task and not giving up just because things get difficult.
This is delightfully meta! I don't recall spending quite that much time on the toilet or the fridge, but I think if I had I too might have failed at the 98% mark. Great show!
You did a really great job on this one. You really had a good handle on how to balance the difficulty and to progressively make the game more challenging as it went while still being playable. Tight controls and really nice art style too. Congratulations on a job well done!
I really like the premise of this game, but the mechanics behind block drawing make it difficult to get into in the long term.
I think the big issue I had was with the scrolling camera mucking up my attempts to draw blocks as I bounce or fall. It also felt like there was a bug in the drawing algorithm in that the preview would show the block I thought I was drawing but then when I release the mouse button the resulting rectangle was a completely different dimension (I drew wide, but ended up with long).
I'd like to see a future version of this, perhaps with a slightly easier learning curve and a refined block drawing scheme.
I like how you approached the graphics, and it was an admirable shot from someone who says that graphics and animation aren't his forte. Nice job on that count.
I agree with the others though, that the cutscenes are too slow. Also, the weird wall jumping mechanic wasn't very intuitive, and there seemed to be a lot of "leaps of faith" where you had to jump without knowing what's under you, which didn't work so well for me (I never died, but felt frustrated that things were hidden in that way).
Nice concept for this game, and I really like what you were able to pull together in the time given. You did a very good job of pacing the action and letting people know the rules of the game world one step at a time.
Yeah, no build, no can play.
You get some extra points for being so inventive while staying on theme. Some might say you're stretching it, but I think it's perfect.
There isn't much to the gameplay as it stands, but the concept is strong enough to make it worth playing. This feels like a smaller scale and more R-rated version of one of the Jam entries, "The Love Letter".
My ears!!!!! D:
But in the end, I LOL'ed. Nice job!
Very nice entry! Somehow the fact that this is a roguelike makes it feel as though the designer is somehow trying to shield the player from the horrors of the cosmos... or perhaps is all too aware that the horrors of the cosmos cannot be represented in a form comprehensible to the human mind and thus a red C must suffice.
Nice musical score too!
Unfortunately none of the buttons or mouse did anything except click the reset button
I love the art style, and I wanted to like the game more than I ended up liking it. It's all because of the bug that olav_st points out where moving obstacles only move while they're visible on the screen, and the fact that they blink out of existence much too easily. This caused me to always be crushed by the 2nd can, with no seeming way to escape it.
That cupcake has some incredible personality and I hope you'll keep it up. If you enjoyed the coding aspect you can probably get the physics and garbage collection aspects ironed out eventually. Otherwise, a developer looking for a team can probably help make this idea shine.
Simply beautiful! I like how you were able to devote so much time to engaging puzzles levels in your 48 hours due to your artistic choices.
Oof, that's just too much sad for one night. Once I saw where it was heading I just couldn't finish. Funny enough though, I got a bug wherein peach was calling for sheep before finding the flowers, and wondering where sheep was... but sheep was still hanging out at the house.
Indeed, the graphics are really nice, and the music matches and enhances everything about the scene, but the gameplay and the length really hurt the package. I think you should keep hammering away at this because it's got great potential if you can work through the mechanical oddities.
No source code? All I see is the EXE.
I liked the basic idea for this one, but the "stuck" mechanic seems a bit unfair at times, as it doesn't really allow you to explore the maze freely. It seems like you have to explore on your own for as far as you can until you die so that you can have a mental map of the maze. This isn't necessarily bad, but at the same time I feel like it's a bit too unforgiving right now.
Oh, and "Nom nom nom!" :)
What an inventive concept! I don't think I ever managed to fill up the left bar, though I came insanely close a couple of times. Still, I played this far longer than I would have expected.
That was quite a well-done game, but I almost gave up before the action started because like Hazard I too was completely baffled by the down + x combination. I'm glad I read the comments before giving up on this one!
I also think this is one of the most inventive takes on the theme for this contest. You guys did a great job overall, but I was quite confused that I couldn't seem to finish the game no matter where or how hard I looked.
This game seems somewhat similar to mine, but with about 5x the budget for graphics, and 1 additional item. I really like this!
The fact that left and right in the 3D space seem to map opposite to left and right in the giant map gave me an incredible case of crossed-eyes.
Nice Soundtrack, too!
And I liked the ending, even! I almost didn't get the ending though, as I wandered out of the entire maze through that hole in the corner near the top.
I can't believe you created all this in just 48 hours! I would have kept playing for a lot longer but I found a bug where I left one room and entered another... inside a wall! I was stuck permenantly. :(
Is something amiss here? I follow the link for "web" and get a perpetual "Flod" page that is stuck forever
I think you came to the same conclusions as I did judging by your journal entries. I have to say that I really love the ghostliness of the other characters and the desolation of the setting.
Also, this is possibly my favorite music track I've heard yet in the competition.
That's an inventive use of GUI scripting you've got going on with your terminal hacking mechanic (or rather, I'm assuming it's an OnGUI script based on its appearance).
I had a good feeling about this one based on the models and textures, and that if you could just come up with a good solid mechanic that you'd do well. It's pretty amazing what you can do with Unity just scratching the surface, and well-crafted art really helps with that.
Hey there TehWut, good to see you have a complete game to submit!
I agree with ncannasse's thoughts. I like the design of the main character and the overall atmosphere a lot. I *did* make it out of the first room, but it took a while to figure out what to do. Mainly this is because I didn't know what the controls were.
I feel like I might have gotten stuck "forever" in one of the rooms and had to quit out of it. It was the room with several dripping faucets along the back walls. Is it possible to get stuck? Maybe you could give a reset button in case the user is stuck?
Feels like you're using a fixed timescale update, as there's a lot of random slowdown.
I really like your animation style and illustrations.
The idea of having mindless followers is really neat, but I would have liked to have seen a use for them, such as bait for monsters, fodder for traps, or perhaps to take over as the main character if you die yourself.
You have some incredibly high levels of polish on this game. I really like the visual white noise overlay, and the soundtrack is just awesome.
It says good things that you laid out the text such that it leads the player to naturally take the correct path through the poem. I didn't even realize there was a possibility of falling to your death, though I did wonder what would happen if I went the "other way" from the one that the layout leads towards.
Definitely make this into more of an actual game. As of now it feels like "just" an intro (albeit a really slick one)
Nothing happens when I try to run it either. Windows Vista 64.
I double click the executable Jar file and nothing happens. Same thing when I right click and choose "Open" from the context menu.
That is interesting that you've used Haxe for this. Are you able to make use of its multiple target capabilities to export it to different platforms successfuly?
Your sprite art is really beautiful. I think the knight visually looks too much like he's in a track-and-field competition when he's jumping, but that's the only thing out of place in the art style.
I agree that the physics make it harder than it feels like it should be, but at the same time I see how you incorporated the physics properties into level design as well.
I'm not sure I quite understood what I was supposed to do. I saw no items to pick up, so I beat down as many of the black phantom heads as possible, but still nothing happened?
I like the style you've gone for here.
This is such a large concept to be an entry in a 48 hour competition. I'm impressed by how far you managed to take this in such a short time, but as you say yourself, the only way this concept really shines is via feature creep.
There's a lot of fun and interesting things you can do, and yet ultimately they seem to "mean" nothing. It's very existentialist. I found myself getting hungry and almost dead, after screwing around and having fun, and I asked myself "what did I just do with my life?"
Keep the hunger, but maybe find new ways you can stave it off? Otherwise, just keep adding the strange and wonderful.
This is a fun concept with a really neat graphic style. Were the ghosts that harm you and then disappear a reference to Gauntlet?
Not bad for a first game! The only bug I ran into on my first playthrough was that when I died on level 5 and restarted, I immediately died again. Otherwise it all works as expected!
I really enjoy the music and scenery. I think you nailed the theme head on. I only wish the player weren't allowed to fall off the edge of the world by walking back north. :)
This has some awesome level design and a great art style. I find the control layout hard to manage, though. It's like my left hand has to splay everywhere to jump and move at the same time while my other hand is required to operate the mouse so it can't take over the jump duties.
LD26 — Minimalism (85)
Spellflinger by bigbadwofl 2013-05-14T06:27:00
The game is really neat, though when I downloaded the source all I saw was the .cs files, not the Unity Project, nor the art assets, nor the audio. My understanding is that all of these are required for a 48 hour entry.
The audio is really awesome here, and the gameplay is simple but compelling. Great entry!
Who cares minimalism? by bukt 2013-05-12T23:39:00
I don't get it at all. The game really needs a legend of what symbols stand for what elements, and it's not clear to me how flipping the cubes actually relates to attacks and defense, even with the tutorial, and even after playing the game.
Zero. by frankbsad 2013-05-12T23:34:00
Unfortunately I can't rate this one since it's Windows only.
Secret Power by CollabGames 2013-05-12T23:33:00
Unfortunately I can't rate this one since it's Windows only.
Mini danmaku by CogComp 2013-05-12T23:33:00
I feel like it's a little too easy to cheat since you can just hide offscreen, but it's still a neat game. I like it! You definitely found the essence of a genre and did it well.
TetraVampire by Wulo 2013-05-12T23:15:00
Unfortunately I can't rate this one since it's a Windows-only entry.
Platformer '81 by foyosoft 2013-05-12T23:14:00
Unfortunately I can't rate the game since it's a Windows entry.
The March by TeeDoubleU 2013-05-12T23:13:00
Unfortunately I can't rate the game since it's a windows entry.
Go To Work (a Point and Click game) by TheColorMan 2013-05-12T23:13:00
Unfortunately I can't rate this game since it's a Windows entry.
Kriok by someone 2013-05-10T06:49:00
Level 6 really ruined the game for me, unfortunately. I was really into it up until that point. The design honestly just feels like you got sloppy and that the game is bugged.
The remarkable thing here is that I wouldn't have this strong a reaction if the game weren't actually really fun and cool otherwise. The music is perfect, and the pacing and puzzling is great. Just not Level 6.
RPG Retro Program Graphics by HeyZeus 2013-05-10T06:06:00
I should point out that the music is totally not compo-legal since you didn't actually create it yourself. The game itself is funny, though.
Cubique Noire by Detocroix 2013-05-09T09:00:00
One of the unexpected things I really liked about this was how the rolling action of the box makes it feel like your little character is walking, or sneaking. That subtle up and down motion really lends a certain charm to the whole thing. The level design is just beautiful, and the mood is amazing.
This might be a new favorite of mine from the competition!
Unfortunately, pulling your sounds from freesound.org would disqualify your entry, so I can't give it full marks on audio :(
Special client by ColdBrain 2013-05-09T08:39:00
Wow.
That was incredible.
I really don't have many other words to describe this one, other than it's ridiculously funny.
From a gameplay perspective, I think the fact that the elements "glue" onto the page if they sit for too long isn't very obvious. I didn't realize that was happening until very late in the game. Some sort of visual cue that the item is "fixed" would go a long way.
Vast by FunByJohn 2013-05-09T08:31:00
I'm a big fan of the atmosphere and the animation. I don't think I truly finished the game as I still had one bit of dissatisfaction on at least one of the little guys, and I couldn't find anything to cure it.
I like that it is somewhat zen, almost... except for the part where you're giving people items.
I think the biggest criticism is really that I never figured out what the icons actually meant. I just luggged everything around to everyone just to be sure.
Serendipity by AnnaGavaldaKedavra 2013-05-09T08:16:00
Well, I collected the colors, and I made the world white.
Then I steered allllll the way over to the left as the blackness approached, and for some reason the little box started jittering uncontrollably. It drifted back to the right, endlessly.
I... Um...
I liked the audio, actually.
Tic Toc Tac Toe by delfino 2013-05-09T08:06:00
Wow, once I won it very nearly broke my brain. I somehow didn't expect that I was supposed to form a line of victorious boards to win completely.
Like others mentioned the game AI is very easy to beat, which is probably for the best given how TicTacToe almost certainly ends in a draw with two contestants who know what they're doing.
28 Pixels by TobiasL 2013-05-09T08:02:00
That's some neat presentation you have here, with the photos. Good thinking there. :)
While it was initially confusing, I did actually figure out the gameplay pretty quickly. The mechanic was simple but fun.
rainwalkers by nuprahtor 2013-05-09T07:55:00
I'm guessing that there really aren't any Rainwalkers at all, and the player is just crazy. :) I scribbled quite a lot and never found anything, and that was after just wandering around trying to find already existing scribbles.
I kept thinking that vague mist-like formations in the distance had to be Rainwalkers, but then had to conclude it was just fog effects.
Really great mood though, with wonderful graphics and a great take on the theme. :)
Gods Will Be Watching by GreyShock 2013-05-09T07:35:00
I did escape the planet! The engineer got mad and left after 37 days, but everyone else stayed alive.
Another Day In The Life by QXD-me 2013-05-09T06:19:00
Man, someone needs to go to the grocery store. :)
Epic Green Cube by Robrock55 2013-05-09T06:01:00
On Mac and could not run the game. Got this error.
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: graphics/Main
Caused by: java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: graphics.Main
at java.net.URLClassLoader$1.run(URLClassLoader.java:202)
at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
at java.net.URLClassLoader.findClass(URLClassLoader.java:190)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:306)
at sun.misc.Launcher$AppClassLoader.loadClass(Launcher.java:301)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:247)
That's it! ...I'm out! by Bloodrushgames 2013-05-09T05:58:00
While I really like that you have a kinect option, I don't have a Windows machine so I can't rate this one.
The Prospector by Steven Colling 2013-05-08T14:48:00
Unfortunately I can't rate this one since I don't have Windows
You Can Only Move by sellsword 2013-05-08T14:47:00
Unfortunately I can't rate this one since it's Windows only.
NINE by RedPandaWasTaken 2013-05-08T14:46:00
Unfortunately I can't rate this one as it's windows only
Black Square by Parappa 2013-05-08T14:22:00
Big fan of the music and the art style, but I got quite stuck in that one room where the radio asks if the pixel is "in here" but nothing I did seemed to uncover it.
Pato Loco by fermcg 2013-05-08T14:12:00
The OS/X version threw an exception when I tried to run it, so I could not play the game.
Darkness by Liikeaturtle 2013-05-08T06:11:00
I can't leave a rating on this one since I don't have Windows.
Walk Softly, Bronson by Tobye 2013-05-08T06:10:00
Unfortunately the graphics seemed like they were really buggy on the OS/X version. Some graphics would render properly while others were black squares, while others yet were white squares. It was really difficult to play because of that.
The music track is great, and the mood is awesome too. I wished this one were in a more playable state because I loved the direction you were going.
PENTA by aleczandah 2013-05-08T05:58:00
Unfortunately I can't rate the game since I do not have a Windows machine
Ethical Spud by wrongcoder 2013-05-06T04:34:00
Clearly the world is not ready for Tofu Spuds. I wish there'd been a way to specify a set of menu options such that you could charge a different price for Spuds vs Tofu Spuds, which would be a logical way to approach the problem.
Great game regardless!
Folding by raincole 2013-05-05T16:37:00
On the one hand I think I really like the concept, but on the other I can't quite figure out the rules for what causes some lines to stick and form a structure while others keep rotating. The game feels like it should be simple but I just found that I was getting really unexpected results on every level.
Milton by ZYXer 2013-05-05T16:27:00
I do wish there weren't a time limit for placing the torches. That's my only point of criticism. The game is really neat otherwise. :)
Rpg Combat Bananaramatime by Gilvado 2013-05-05T16:16:00
Couldn't rate this once since I'm not on Windows.
Timining 1D by GodsBoss 2013-05-05T16:15:00
That was more addictive than I thought it would be. :) I wasn't sure what happened when I reached a part of the screen that I finally could not hack through, and eventually gave up. Is there a bit of Minecraft lore that I'd have needed in order to know what to do?
The item usage wasn't very clear to me either. I had no idea what I was making or why, or how.
Minimal Race by daniel2357 2013-05-05T16:01:00
Could not rate the game since I don't have Windows.
The Killer by AlvaroH 2013-05-05T15:02:00
Thanks for posting the gameplay video. I couldn't play the entry since I'm not on Windows.
Escape From _____ Mansion by Cosine 2013-05-05T15:00:00
Wow, really claustrophobic. I like the exploration aspect of the game, and trying to remember where I've been so as not to backtrack too much.
I think I might have gotten a bit lucky on the first 4 floors as I mostly found the stairs quickly.
Kill The King by Myyyvothrr 2013-05-05T14:53:00
I like the usage of chess as a base for a new game here. I think that the board is a bit empty though, and there aren't quite enough game pieces to justify the full chess board. I also felt like the fact that knights can't move backwards meant that their usefulness was terribly compromised considering that they don't have the special power of a chess pawn to graduate to a Queen.
Don't Hit The Core by TheSarcastic 2013-05-05T14:40:00
Was anything supposed to happen when you click a green block? Nothing was happening at all for me. White blocks turned blue, and the core would turn red, if I clicked on those... but nothing happened with the green ones.
Chit by Jordan_Ludum 2013-05-05T14:37:00
Nice art style that really fits with the theme and the mechanics. My only complaint is that there's a game-breaking bug that happens in which the guy just stops moving. I'm guessing he's not considered "colliding" with anything for the purposes of acceleration but is still hanging just off the corner of a step?
What is Dark? by Those 30 Ninjas 2013-05-04T05:37:00
Can't leave a rating, as I don't have a Windows machine.
Cubert J. Boxworth's Wild Stride by MatClassic 2013-05-03T05:34:00
Can't leave a rating since I don't have a Windows machine.
Chez Angelo by EdoMiyamoto 2013-05-02T07:33:00
I really wish I could figure out what I'm supposed to do here. I love the music and graphics... and I'm pretty sure I caught a "Catherine" reference in the barman asking if you know where a Cuba Libre comes from.
But really I was just totally lost after a certain point.
The One Road by Dietrich Epp 2013-05-02T07:23:00
Best use of Potato in the competition. :)
Paint It Black by SnoringFrog 2013-05-02T07:11:00
Can't leave a rating on this one since I'm not on a windows machine.
Bouncell by visy 2013-05-02T06:42:00
Like the others, I found the presentation to be excellent but the premise completely unclear. The music was great, and the lights and effects were pretty stellar, but I had no clue what I was doing or why.
Son of a Witch by outerheaven182 2013-05-02T06:28:00
@FaBrito : Depending on how one makes an Android app, you can use various tools for it. I've used Cocos2D-x, a C++ version of Cocos2D, which will create binaries that can run on both iOS and Android. It's easier to debug and test such builds on the iOS simulator than in Eclipse / Android Emulator because the tooling for such things is pretty well integrated into XCode while it isn't really well supported in the Eclipse + Android Emulator scenario.
Fjoxel by Pixelsalt 2013-05-02T06:23:00
Can't rate this one since I'm on a mac, but I really liked the descriptions people were giving. I sure do miss Smash TV.
Ludum Amare by Jaime von Schwarzburg 2013-05-02T06:22:00
Can't leave a rating on this one because I don't have a windows machine.
Astray during Tea Time by djdduty 2013-05-02T06:21:00
Unfortunately I could not get the game to run. The machine is Mac OSX, and the app just didn't launch anything.
Littleballs by littleball 2013-05-02T06:16:00
Indeed, this game has a neat personality with its music, sounds, and exploding balls. I think the win condition is not very clear, but it's still fun just to play with the little explosions.
The Shadows by KevinWorkman 2013-05-02T05:43:00
My one suggestion would be that it would have been even better if the room had some decorations, nooks, or crannies such that the shadow creatures could be plausibly interpreted by a mind in dream-state from the arrangement of objects.
Continuus by Jase 2013-05-02T05:24:00
No windows machine available for me, so I can't leave a rating on this one.
Fear of the Snoo Snoo by Egan 2013-05-01T14:48:00
Not able to play a Windows based entry, so I can't rate this one.
Peacemaker by Jod 2013-05-01T14:46:00
I was not expecting to play this game as many times as I did. I found myself wanting to try all the combinations I could to see how far in I could get. The fact that the game is relatively short made it easy to do that, though I wish there had been a good way to save your progress so as not to have to replay from the start every time.
The slow revelation that it wasn't just your character that was crazy but the whole world was a nice addition.
The phototgraphs were a nice touch too!
[My little game][+ or -] by Toinane 2013-05-01T14:12:00
No Windows machine available, so I cannot rate this one.
Euphoria by IceCliff 2013-05-01T14:10:00
Not able to play a Windows build, so I can't rate this one.
Minirena by Sh1rogane 2013-05-01T11:10:00
Machine tells me that the Jar could not be launched (On mac OSX) unfortunately.
m by yangamedev 2013-05-01T11:07:00
On a mac, so unfortunately I can't try it out. (No worries, I didn't leave a rating)
Labs Lab II by HeXoT 2013-05-01T11:06:00
On a mac, so unfortunately I can't play the game. (No worries, no rating given).
Potato Dungeon by _Rilem 2013-05-01T10:36:00
You know, when I first saw the gifs of this posted on the blog I had a feeling it was going to be pretty special. This entry really shines, I think. It's got a great style, great music, and an invincible horse to do your bidding.
You really packed a lot of gameplay into such a small package. Hats off to you.
Something Has Changed by nixeldev 2013-05-01T10:11:00
I love seeing ambitious new concepts for mobile games. :)
That said, I had a difficult time with this one because of these issues:
1. The colored boxes are smaller than my thumbs, so I never can tell just which thumb is which color
2. Moving my thumb to the very edge of the screen counts as stopping a touch. It might be best if objects don't spawn there.
3. My thumbs obscure the path of the flying objects, so I can't really see what I'm doing or where I need to move which fingers.
On the other hand, the game's use of audio was stellar and it did a great job of setting a mood. Those qualities give it a certain character and with a different set of gameplay considerations could be a strong idea.
a.void by Ty Taylor 2013-05-01T10:01:00
I love the whole idea behind playing with timing and sound, and the execution on the concept has a charming personality. Strangely enough, my highest score came when I still didn't know what I was doing. Afterwards, it became too easy to fall into my own traps while trying to keep the new trap spots spawning in the smallest area possible.
Controlled Diet by euske 2013-05-01T09:51:00
EL EM GEE! Great puzzle concept behind this one. I think that it might do with a bit "freer" feeling controls. The platforming feels very stiff right now, to the game's detriment.
I do like the aspect of building out your path a lot. I think the enemies have potential, but more often they feel like an annoyance rather than a valuable part of the experience.
Miximal by Cheshyr 2013-05-01T07:31:00
I figured out how to make all the lights over that first door green, but I never got the door to open and overall was very confused as to what I was supposed to do.
I did however spend a lot of time just listening to and experimenting with various track combinations. I kind of just wanted to get into the groove, you know? The beats were fairly entertaining all on their own.
The world is in your hand by jacklehamster 2013-05-01T07:21:00
I really enjoyed the presentation and the mood in this entry, but honestly I was completely lost with the gameplay. I managed to pick up one of the people and put them on the chair with me but I was completely at a loss as to what I should do with this person.
Minimalismism by tayl1r 2013-04-30T23:28:00
Yeah, I'm on a mac so I can't play this. I did see your gameplay video though, and it was beautiful!
I've seen the whole morphing room concept done before, but the explosions and particle effects really bring flair to the proposition.
Newborn by Lowlet 2013-04-30T15:17:00
This entry was really creepy, and with some great aesthetics. I found that I really couldn't deal with the constant falling, though. With no idea where I was going and no clue as to what to do other than the proximity to terrible noises, I was left with no alternative but to just fall.
Silly Jumpin' Pixel [Working link] by Tanius 2013-04-30T15:07:00
Agreed that it's really challenging, mostly because there's no way to know what's coming up ahead of you so you're destined to slam into the danger zones. Perhaps if the objects were farther apart from each other depending on how fast you travel it would be a bit easier? Also if you stayed closer to the bottom of the viewport it could give you some advantage as well?
Schrodinger by myachin 2013-04-30T15:02:00
That's a beautiful entry, and I enjoyed it quite a lot. There's such a great use of audio here, it's unbelievable. The effect the black hole has on the graphics is also just amazing.
My one difficulty was that I kept wanting to press up and down to switch lines rather than to adjust my waveform, and I got really confused over time.
Rapid Tunnel Future by syre 2013-04-30T08:39:00
I don't quite get how scoring works for some reason. One time I got a score of 1, and the rest I got 0.
It's a surprisingly fun lane changer game, and really compelled me to play on for longer than I'd have suspected.
For Victory! by poga 2013-04-30T08:32:00
I played this for longer than I expected I would after I realized what was going on. I kept waiting to "die" but realized it probably wasn't going to happen. Funny how something so simple can make a person set up and actually pay attention.
What Would You Do? by Psytew 2013-04-30T08:23:00
I no longer am on windows so I can't play the batch file. That said, I remember hacking together an actual full-on application in .bat decades ago. Just seeing this really took me back in time.
Kudos on you. Maybe one of my friends has a windows machine to run this on?
Drug Hunt by kill0u 2013-04-30T08:12:00
Nice take on the Wario Ware concept, but you know... drugging it up. The music and sound effects were really neat, which helped.
I think the thing that surprised me most about this entry was just how quickly I started to "get it." The little mini games are so lacking in any kind of context, and there's so little to go on that it's kind of miraculous that the human brain can pick anything out of that mess at all.
Great job!
simpLify by SonnyBone 2013-04-30T08:12:00
Ack! I realize that for the first time I can't play a game of yours because I'm on a mac now!
Sorry, man :(
PRISMA by Dark Acre Jack 2013-04-30T08:00:00
Love it. Unequivocally. This seems like less of a game and more of an experience, and it's a really amazing one. Everything from the eyes to the colors to the trails was mesmerizing.
I think this game *might* have more levels in it somewhere, but honestly I think the best parts about it aren't solving the puzzles at all. It's just the crazy atmosphere. Just let me play all day with the beats and the lights. I hardly even care about the synthesis.
Stomp Space by dark_hunter 2013-04-30T08:00:00
On a mac, so can't play this one.
The Fair King by caranha 2013-04-30T07:38:00
Yeah, it's a bit wonky on a mac in that the game just mysteriously loses track of the fact that I have the mouse pressed, but the game itself beyond that is GREAT. I'm really impressed by the strength of the concept, and by the music.
I had a similar experience on Android as regards the game losing my finger, but on top of that it's nearly impossible to split things in half when your finger is over the screen. It's definitely best played with a mouse.
Sonnyb0ne is right, you've come a long way since those first LDs.
Staring Contest by timtimtimtim 2013-04-30T07:17:00
That was pretty epic, and probably one of the most fitting entries.
BASHLAND - Breakout Mario Mashup by McFunkypants 2013-04-30T07:12:00
The level designs in this game really sell the experience! It would be one thing to just have a game about bashing blocks, but the designs really are clever and unique.
The graphics are a lot of fun, and the sounds give it that extra oomph to top it off. Great job!
Balls Balls Balls by matthias_zarzecki 2013-04-30T07:02:00
I don't know if it was a technical error on my end but I couldn't pass stage 5 or 6. Both balls ended up in their holes but the continue button did not appear. Not sure if I was just not getting it or if there was an error of some sort.
Otherwise this game had a fairly relaxing vibe which was really welcome after a long day.
simple by emmelineprufrock 2013-04-30T06:30:00
I too made a card game. I'll be sure to check this one out with other people soon.
Million Dollar Manbaby by Lianne Booton 2013-04-30T06:29:00
Definitely a fun entry, though it's a bit difficult to play with a trackpad. Some days I miss the mouse.
From a gameplay perspective, I liked collecting the body parts and sticking them to my character but I wasn't sure how it really was intended to give him power-ups. It was *useful* that time slowed down when an item was stuck to my cursor, but I really felt like I wanted to still be able to attack while I was trying to get an item. Because the "sticking" mechanic feels very exacting, it was a bit difficult to actually get those parts on!
Not really minimalist, but you probably knew that. :)
Nirvana Quest by dremelofdeath 2013-04-30T06:18:00
I really liked the music, and I really missed it when it stopped playing. Then I realized that I'd grown an attachment to the music and that it was standing in the way of my ascendence.
I never completed my quest to Nirvana. I never managed to pass the spot with the rocks falling to knock you off the clouds. In the end, I think the game-over screen says it well.
Good job!