Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → dreamcastgh0st
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | 55 | Summoning | 👥 | Fidget's Familiaria | jam | 333 | 3.80 | 3.43 | 3.66 | 3.93 | 4.21 | 4.10 | 3.68 | 4.07 | |
| 2020 | 46 | Keep it alive | 👥 | Feed the Chinga | jam | 1412 | 3.41 | 3.32 | 3.42 | 3.66 | 3.36 | 3.13 | 3.68 | 3.13 |
dreamcastgh0st leaves an average of 19.5 feedback comments each event.
This was. A journey. Nice job overall! It's... a little frustrating, but I get the feeling it's supposed to be that way, haha. First game in the jam I've played that I have no complaints about, have a gold star. (Part of me feels bad that I don't have more to say since it was so good but hey! Maybe thats all I need to tell ya)
This is really cool! I already liked the game before I realized it was coded entirely in HTML, seriously, nice job. I'm not gonna go on about the technical marvel of it, though, let's talk about the game itself. The controls are simple, but they feel nice and snappy. It's actually super satisfying, how you move entirely snapped to a gigantic pixel grid. It gives the character a physical weight in a way I wouldn't usually expect. Obviously, the game is pretty graphically light, I wish there was more of an indicator that I was feeding myself to a spider. It was hard to tell the theme. I also liked how each level built on the previous one. Every death I had felt fair, and maneuvering wasn't a problem. I just wish the game were longer with more polished graphics. Otherwise, _very_ nice job!
Simple game, but I really liked the concept. Trying to protect a bouncing ball is a really fun idea. I wish the ball had more... agency of its own? More mechanics that effected it, really. Like more bouncy surfaces, or gravity. As it is now, the controls are a little bit finnicky, and it can be frustrating that the ball moves before you get a chance to react at the start of the level. I would love to see this concept expanded on a little! It can be hard to do so much in a short weekend time limit, and I think you could make something extra cool with a little more time.
Nice job! The mechanics are simple, unique, and allow for complexity, and the story is a very nice little feel-good plotline. That being said, I can't see the gameplay holding its own if I was playing without the story. It looks great, and is extremely polished mechanically, but I do wish there were one or two more mechanics I would have to consider just to spice up the gameplay experience. It could be something simple, like worrying about the number of connections I use, or scrambling the board if I make _too_ many mistakes. Either way, I can't expect a ton of content from a jam game, and what content is here is incredibly well made and polished, so nice job!
Definitely a nice take on a sokoban-style game. I appreciate that you didn't use puzzlescript, it gives your game a unique charm of its own along with lots of quirks that make it feel more fully featured than just a simple puzzlescript game. That being said, an undo button would have been nice, even if it only let you undo 1-3 moves. The mechanics were all pretty intuitive, and put together allowed for some interesting puzzles. However, the game was a little on the easy side. I would have liked to see more of the possible combinations of the mechanics. Overall, nice job, and good luck!
I liked it! A lot of these games where you have to protect a creature feel sloppy, since you don't understand how the creature works and you don't have full control of it. In this game, though, it is clearly lined out _how_ the chicken moves, and you are in control of it completely, albeit indirectly. The animation and sound of the clicking is snappy, which makes it feel good too. A little short and simple, but the execution is very good!
This is really good. Unique concept, very fun. The mechanics are simple and well explained, and the gameplay is snappy and easy to jump back into very quickly. Normally I write up a long paragraph in response to these games, but I don't have much to say here cause I think you pretty much completely nailed your concept.
Cute game, I like the graphics! It is a little simple, I would like a little bit more complexity to it, in an ideal world. Maybe a few types of garbage, which float differently? Right now, although it is a fun and cute experience, it doesn't require a lot of thought. Overall, pretty good! (My favorite part was the spiderweb on the empty food bar :P)
Very cute, and the picture in the background scares me, haha. Im surprised more people didn't make virtual pet games, but this is fun! I really like the designs of the little creatures, and this is a good simple virtual pet game. My one complaint would be that it's a little too needy? Tamagotchi are best when you can have them in the background while youre doing something else, unless you really dialed everything up to 100 in order to make it more compelling, gameplay wise. I really like the cute little creatures you've got so far, I just want to see you help bring them to their full potential! Nice job, I'll definitely be checking back on this one later to see what kinds of creatures I can evolve.
This game turned out being not the kind of game I thought it would be, and I have a lot of respect for that. The graphics are simple, but look nice, and grew on me over time (unlike the music, which became a little grating after a while. It was fine, but the loop was too short.) near the end (level 15-16) the levels dropped off in quality a little bit, but not enough to take away from this game being overall pretty good. Nice job, and keep up the good work in future jams!
Haha, this is a very unique interpretation of the theme, keep the romance alive! I like it a lot. The text is a little small, and sometimes the face renders wrong, but I appreciate the design decision of adding a timer bar. It would also be nice if there were more diverse options to choose. Nice job, though.
I'm still getting a grey screen. I'll stick around on the page for a little bit, keep me updated?
I like the graphics a lot, the presentation is nice here. The physics are a little slidy and awkward at times, though. The little creature does a good job of making you want to protect it. Overall, it's a good game, although it's too easy to get lost (and I managed to fall out of the world at a part of level 1)
A little slow for my taste, and a lot of the puzzles seem the same. But the presentation is pretty much spot on, nice job!
Very good! Reminds me of early Russell Honor games with the very intense nature of it, and that's high praise. The concept is simple, and just a game of Simon Says, but it's executed in a funny and compelling way. The sound effects and extreme animations really make every action you do (except for pressing a key, but that's a small nitpick) feel like a BIG action, which just makes this fun to play with. The stunted, third person presentation, the fact that you made me press quit... it leads to a memorable experience. It might be a repackaged version of a classic game without much changed, but the fact that I played it as long as I did despite that fact is a testament to the quality of the work. Nice job.
I really like your dialogue, it has a lot of personality. I was also able to open up the game, despite issues early on, and I really like the visuals of it (although they are incredibly simple, they remind me of games like vertex dispenser.) The dialogue is fun and unique, and I would _LOVE_ to play through this game fully! However, in the first area, it randomly reset itself TWICE, and at that point my patience was running thin and I stopped. I would really like it if you made a fixed version of this, after the jam, so I could play through the whole thing!
I like the idea a lot! The controls seem a little unintuitive at first, but you can learn them quickly, and the way it uses clockwise/counterclockwise is very unique and allows for some fun and creative maneuvers. One of the most unique interpretations of the theme I've seen so far as well, with good art on top of that. I really appreciate the bus's butt. I think some really interesting strategic play could be around the corner here if you better explained to the player how the police's movement works: For example, they prioritize going straight, then going right, then lelft. However, none of these are things _wrong_ with your game, just ways to make a good game better.
My two biggest gripes, though, are that the default speed is a little slow (although this is a nitpick considering you can speed it up), and that the background is very bland. Even if it's just 2-3 building/tree tiles, or some dirt thrown in with the grass, you could really improve the visual quality of your game by spicing up the background a bit. Otherwise, very nice job!
Honestly, nice overall job all around. Not exactly my usual type of game, but very well executed, and there's some good fun to be had here. Must be what I imagine taking care of a real baby is like, haha. Although the last level is a little unusual, I've always liked games that force you to break their own mechanics. It's really rewarding to the clever players who already discovered such a bug (sadly, not including me this time :P) and a good way to make it feel less like a game and more like an actual challenge you are facing with a solution not crafted by someone on the other side of the screen (even though it was.) My biggest complaint is that the title screen intro which shows you the mechanics is actually tougher than most of the levels, just because so many of the levels are pretty easy to mostly circumvent. Great job, and I hope to see more good games in the future!
Fun game, as per usual, the physics and gameplay are very unique, polished and fun. I have a soft spot for those mouth-made sound effects in the end too, and the sound of your plant growing is wonderful. It's not often you see a game where you get less colorful, less powerful, etc as the game progresses, but it facilitates the difficulty curve and does a decent job communicating the theme. I do wish the theme was more evident in the moment-to-moment gameplay, as opposed to the overall structure, but I have very little to complain about with this game! Nice job.
The game is nice, but could do for a little bit of explanation to guide the player along. Try to imagine being someone who has no idea what your game is about.
The concept is nice, and has a good balance to the different modes of play, between when you're inside the ship and outside of it. The art is simple, but in a professional and clean way, and the explosions look VERY nice. The controls also feel good and intuitive, with the dodges feeling snappy and satisfying to pull off. Other than the confusing start, nice job!
Nice game! The basic platforming mechanics feel nice and smooth, and sliding is a joy. Artistically, although the art is a little bit basic, it's cute and unique, and you make good use of squash and stretch/particle effects. The pyro slime is very cute, and the way you have to pick up logs to "refuel" is fun. My biggest complaint is that the arrow-shooters blend in a little bit with the rest of the background, and I wish there was a little more feedback to the player when you do get damaged. Otherwise, a very solid platformer with good presentation, nice job! Oh, and it's a little short, but it's a jam game so I'll give you a pass. Maybe make a full version with more levels?
I really like this game! The expressive artwork is nice, and I think it's really funny how the supervisor walks exactly like my high school teachers would when they were patrolling a room, haha. The gameplay is relatively tense, which is nice, because that feels like the intent, and I _really_ like how when someone gets caught, you can't pass through their spot anymore. It really incentivizes you to play well.
Overall, the only _real_ complaint I have about the game is that there's no way to speed up or skip the text when it comes up. Although it's funny and adds to the overall game experience, it is a little bit slow. Also, depending on the intent, it might be nice to let the player see the supervisor's vision radius, at least at the beginning. Otherwise, great job!
I like the concept of the game, and the presentation (art and music) were very nice! However, the controls are a little bit confusing, and at times, prohibitive to my enjoyment of the game. Make sure you clearly communicate to the player how the movement works. It is also important to give feedback to the player when they do an action: For example, when I swing my torch at an enemy, it can be hard to tell if I was successful, because there was no feedback (such as a sound effect) indicating if it worked.
Otherwise, nice game, and I am excited to see what kinds of things you can make in the future!
I really liked the 3d models and art in general, but the game felt rough around the edges. My mouse cursor was visible on the screen, the goal of the game was never explained, and there is no indicator as the ship's health. A lot of people would be likely to open up this game, and close it out before they end up finding out what they have to do. Make sure the player understands what the goal is if you want to keep them engaged! Otherwise, fun concept, nice art.
10/10. Thank you.
I like the unique movement system you've given your game, it helps sets it apart from the rest of the crowd. The darkness mechanic is also interesting, in that the more your health decreases, the harder it is to see. The fire and rain sound effects are quite nice and relaxing.
Since your health is always decreasing, it really helps to solidify the idea of the theme through gameplay. You are always struggling to keep the flame alive in the rain, which is a nice touch. However, because of this survival-style gameplay, it is very important that you are able to find and collect the checkpoints. But between the darkly-colored fireplaces, and your limited field of vision, sometimes I can't even see far enough to where I'm going to land, let alone to see the next checkpoint.
The movement also feels a little bit sluggish. You should indicate to the player that they can jump after hitting a wall, I only realized that accidentally. Also, this type of game almost always feels better with higher gravity. If you did implement that as a change, though, you would have to increase the jump strength as well. The music is nice, but by default it's just a little bit too quiet for me to comfortably hear. The art is also nice, but again, hard to see because of the strict and small light circle.
For a first jam game, very nice job on the release. And good luck on any future games!
LD55 — Summoning (13)
the eye by José Bonilla 2024-05-02T21:28:29Z ♥ 1
Great mood on this one! It's definitely a little cryptic, but I think that people tend to have low patience for jam games, since they don't know if it'll end up being 'worth it' in the end. That being said, it does explain a lot, and you can definitely figure the rest out with a little thought. I think the crypticness adds the the atmosphere and experience, personally. The only thing is I didn't see "vocare" as a valid word on the chant list... Is it somewhere else?
ColorMon by FloweryAndy 2024-05-02T10:04:49Z ♥ 1
Quite fun! I like the style to it. Definitely could use a bit of a faster walking speed, and I'd love to see this game remade with the mixing mechanic!
Summon Shuffleboard by thyoi 2024-05-02T09:23:41Z ♥ 1
This is really great! It's very well polished, and despite being short, holds up really well on its own!
There's really no need for you to beat yourself up over not finishing in time. You did a lot, and it's very high quality work! The art is cute, the visual/audio feedback is great, and it's pretty fun to play and experiment with. I'd love to see a more complete post-jam version!
Cat Summoner by Tod Semple 2024-05-02T09:14:11Z ♥ 2
My best is 1221! It's surprisingly addicting.
I wish that your character moved a little faster by default. If you spend too many upgrades on movement, the game quickly gets too hard, but if you don't, it's a little sluggish.
Tiny Summons by Jeremy Ryan 2024-05-02T08:51:02Z ♥ 1
Extremely cool, ambitious, and unique! I can imagine it being lots of fun if I had my friends online, I'll be pestering them to try this soon.
From the little I played around with it, I feel like it could maybe benefit from just a little more content-- something like more unit types, or ways to make them more 'situational?' Even little things like having multiple 'stages' with obstacles, so maybe different circumstances benefit certain units more.
Honestly, I'd like to see where you take it, if you decided to make a post-jam release with more content.
Death Beckons by Empyreans 2024-05-02T08:41:46Z ♥ 2
I enjoyed it a lot, and I REALLY like the art style. It did feel a little slow, from time to time, just travelling everywhere.
Alien Crab in the Extamaze by jebouin 2024-05-02T03:56:02Z ♥ 1
This one is great! It's got some good depth to it, without funnelling the player into doing the 'one right thing.' There's a lot of depth, and a lot of content given the time constraints, and that content manages to be of exceptionally high quality. The player has a lot of personality too, I like his little smiling resting sprite.
Really, the only complaint (and it is a reach) that I have would be that the enemies don't feel as varied as they could be. Admittedly, I didn't get insanely far, so maybe I just haven't seen it yet, but much in the same way the slime has the passive slippery trail, it could be fun to see more enemies who have passive abilities or other interesting behaviour.
I'll definitely be coming back to finish this one!
Circle Tracer Cookie Defense by pkenney 2024-05-02T03:36:38Z ♥ 1
I was pleasantly surprised at how fun and well made this one is! The visuals and audio provide great feedback, and make it feel great to play. The gameplay is unique, and doesn't fall into the common jam pitfall of making everything too easy out of fear of scaring people away. I feel like anyone could pick up and play this, but it would take a while to get good at it! I'd definitely appreciate more types of enemies, or maybe even stage hazards of some sort, but the game doesn't suffer for lack of them. It stands well on its own, but something else to spice it up could definitely help prolong its playtime. Overall, nice work! I'd love to see an expansion.
Butler! Summon the Imps! by jummbus 2024-05-02T03:32:25Z ♥ 1
Loved this one! It's hard to make complaints about it, but if I tried really hard:
Some of the imps you're popping look a little crunchy since they're so small. Maybe redraw them with thicker borders?
There's a good difficulty curve, and the mechanics build off of an established idea in a unique way. I like the exploding imps taking out everything around them, but maybe there could be a more impactful explosion to get that idea across better.
I'd love to see a post-jam version with more content! Good luck!
CephaloClash by tetrapteryx 2024-05-02T03:23:26Z ♥ 1
I really liked this! It felt like a fair challenge, though I personally would have appreciated some harder levels as well. The idea of using abilities from the previous areas was cool.
My biggest complaint would be that it's short and that there isn't that much content, but given that it is a jam game, that's not really a big complaint. I'd be interested to see you build on this idea!
There's also a few places where you could give the player better feedback-- namely, with the charge meter being all the way in the bottom left corner, it's hard to keep an eye on it. It is good that there's an audio indicator, but I honestly feel like there could be a pop-up or something in a more central area of the screen. This would be especially important if you did expand on the game, and there were more abilities that hit full charge at numbers other than 10 (or the one 15).
MEOWTERSPACE by Tetracold 2024-05-02T03:10:19Z ♥ 2
It's got a lot of personality, and I love the presentation. It's very silly how you can drag a cat out and it will just fly out into space if it doesn't have a UFO.
That being said, it feels like it's really hard to keep track of everything that's going on onscreen, and in order to compensate that, the game is pretty easy, so it's okay if you can't keep track of everything. I'd rather have it so that there's a bit more challenge, and that the screen is more readable overall. Maybe if there were flashier indicators for when a cat is low on battery (i.e. a sound and it shakes) so that it's easier to manage, and also having more clearly distinct enemies/pickups/etc (i.e. all the bells are yellow, and all the enemies have some other unified color scheme.
It's definitely fun, and very unique. It does the theme well! Really, my only complaint is that it is just kinda cluttered, and I think that could be fixed.
Summito by RoughSkin 2024-05-02T01:53:40Z ♥ 1
Overall, great game! Presentation is good, concept is fun and well executed. There's some good depth to it, but I feel like it could maybe benefit from just having like... 1-2 more basic actions you could perform, beyond just selling/keeping/recycling? Maybe, for example, you could fuse two cards in your hand, so they take up fewer slots, but it costs something, and isn't as strong as having the two originals. Stuff like that, so you're making more choices over time.
Also, the quota wasn't IMMEDIATELY obvious to me, though it did become obvious quickly. I don't think it needs like... serious tutorialization, but maybe a popup or counter counting down to show when your money is being taken away in a more 'flashy' way since it's so important to the gameplay loop.
Legend of Lady by Spice Cabinet 2024-05-02T01:44:05Z ♥ 3
The art style on this is very cute! Though, the camera is very zoomed out, and it makes it hard to read the details on the player character. It makes it look out of place-- for a sprite that size, the outlines should have probably been thicker, or there should have been some other way to make it easier to read from a distance.
As for the gameplay, it's a fun idea! It's cool to look for the gems and bones underground. It seems like the digging is supposed to be the main mechanic, but a lot of the other features don't mesh with that. Like, I'd prefer if the combat had something to do with the digging, instead of a completely seperate mechanic, or if the enemies were effected by gravity, and you could sort of corral them where you wanted to go by digging out pathways. I get that you needed to fit the summoning in somewhere, but you could have made that work with the digging as well-- imagine you have to dig pathways to get as many enemies to one area as possible, so that you can summon and kill them all at once, getting a big combo.
I conceptually like how picking up gems slows you down, and the idea of it being easy to go down and get them, but slower and harder to bring them back up. In execution, though, it ends up slowing down the gameplay too much. You might want to change it up to do something else, like... rebalancing it so that you just don't get digging on the way back up, since the slow movement can be frustrating. I also worry you can softlock yourself by just digging everything out.
The presentation is very nice, and I like the ideas! The biggest thing I'd focus on for improvement would just be making all the mechanics mesh together and feel like cohesive parts of a whole.