Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → Dylan Fries
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 48 | Deeper and deeper | Tomb of the Old Gods | compo | 824 | 2.77 | 2.45 | 2.47 | 3.09 | 3.79 | 3.02 | 2.03 | 3.88 | |
| 2020 | 47 | Stuck in a loop | 👥 | Rock Wrangler | jam | 3.30 | 2.90 | 3.70 | 2.90 | 3.10 | 4.09 | 3.00 | 3.75 | |
| 2020 | 46 | Keep it alive | Ghost Ship (Jam Edition) | jam | 1799 | 3.24 | 2.88 | 2.93 | 3.28 | 3.32 | 3.11 | 3.61 | ||
| 2018 | 41 | Combine 2 Incompatible Genres | Stupid Monkeys | jam | 2.66 | 2.33 | 2.00 | 2.16 | 3.00 | 3.00 |
I thought this was a really strong start. It took me a minute to figure out the weight mechanic but it really is well designed. A little more progression and variety and you will really be on to something. Good job!
Very fun little game. Art was great, Scythe throw was really awesome. Jumping was a little inconsistent ( I guess reading other comments there was a wall jump I didn't notice) and sometimes seemed to do nothing and other times launched me to the moon. Left handed control setup felt a little funny, maybe include arrow keys to move as well. Needs a bit of polish on the controls but an excellent start. Maybe include the input buttons within the game as well (L isn't exactly a standard key to use). I agree with some of the other comments that it was hard to tell what to do with the portal as it doesn't seems like you are damaging them. Perhaps a flash to red for one frame old school style would be a simple fix. A tiny detail but it still said "take soul" when I had already taken it right at the beginning. Also I didn't notice that the doors in the buildings had opened at first, maybe just a short SFX would help draw attention to the change (or an animation). Great job, I hope you keep at it.
I opened this up and heard "I hear cute noises" from my girlfriend in the other room. 20 minutes later she had 200 cookies. Very cool ambient game idea. Very great start to a game. Art was very cute and impressive you did it without a tablet. You should definitely try to expand on this. I really didn't like the camera motion and perhaps an option to pan with arrow keys or otherwise smooth out the motion would help. It also seemed to be a little sluggish on the browser so you may want to look into some optimization. Extra lighting, too many textures etc. Make sure you are using prefabs and batching assets. Another minor detail is the blueberry bushes don't have berries on them to start. Some rocks or something in the prairies might help as well. We assumed it was the edge of the map the first time and stopped. The next time we traveled for a long time into the void at the edge of the map just in case. Obviously all not problems to work on for LD but maybe a good place to start. Also, I'm not sure what monitor resolution you are working on but I found the font extremely small and hard to read on both the browser and in game. I hope you keep on it, it is a great start.
Cool start! I really liked how tough your ship was and the emphasis on long term strategy. Repairing your shields was insanely expensive and might be something you want to lower the cost on as it will help newbies survive much longer. I really liked how everything got damaged over time and you really had to allocate funds to repair it. Reminds me of the old classic arcade game Raptor: Call of the Shadows, which if you have never played you should go play right now for an hour or two.
I dug the floaty physics movement and thought you could play that up even more. I also liked the slow speed of the rail gun (more like a torpedo really, rail guns are usually insanely fast, maybe a new feature?) however the length of the cool down really reduced its usefulness.
One suggestion around the pausing feature is rather then actually pausing the game, just give people a break (10 seconds, 20 seconds) between waves to build the ship or vary the intensity. This way you are still putting passive time pressure on them but are able to remove both a full button and an UI from the interface. I also found after 5 minutes it was getting exhausting and could use a break. Just a thought.
Also, you could consider asteroids coming in from different angles as well. This would let you greatly reduce the speed required (for the asteroids) and the total number as they could come in from different angles and that would be much harder to avoid. Be careful with this though, it could easily become over difficult. That would reinforce the strategic elements you already have in place.
I also agree with some of the others that it was hard to tell scrap from the asteroids, although that could be a feature in some ways. You might want to have some more obvious scrap and then some which looks like asteroids but is higher value. You might also want to consider high risk, high reward trade-offs such as an asteroid that you could destroy with a rail gun to gain a big boost of metal . This would give players as skill shot to work on and would greatly increase the depth. It sounds like you are already working on variable difficulty too.
Other people have mentioned sfx, vfx etc and I think those would also really help.
I can see you are managing many uploads. You may want to consider Itch.io for hosting (also allows for long term updates) and especially Butler, which is a command line uploader for Itch that is very cool. Google it and you will find the docs. That is all you need.
Good job! Keep at it!
Very fun little game. Great concept but took me a few minutes to figure out the RMB mechanic. I found it quite hard at times, especially the first funnel since the walls were so bouncy. It might be interesting to vary the "weight" or drag of the bubble in its two forms. You could slow the "bubble" down a bit when it is in its floating form but have it drag less when it was in its "marble" form. Cool puzzles and enjoyable music. I also found the walls being very bouncy made it hard to get the "marble" into its slots. I'm sure you could come up with a ton of puzzles with this mechanic tho. Great start!
Try using a bit of momentum when flying for smoother controls. The spelling and grammatical mistakes put me off but perhaps you were going for ironic. I thought the concept was funny enough and liked the awesome grandpa and ship art. I thought the mechanic was really cool once I figured it out. A good effort with a lot of potential. I hope you keep working on it.
Really interesting take on MMO mechanics and dealing with toxic gamer culture. Very cool idea and a great start. I loved the boss art and the general idea of dealing with your teammates while boss fighting. Some suggestions: -several of the narrative buttons didn't really accurately reflect the narrative option text when selected - I liked balancing between healing and the chat. Rather then switching between the boss doing nothing and then dishing out tons of damage, perhaps you could make the boss damage slower but do both narrative and healing at the same time. - having to follow the text added a lot of pressure and made it really interesting - I liked having to play the healer, it felt like a good fit for the narrative role. - the middle section of fighting the boss with no narrative felt really long. A really interesting look at gamer culture and toxicity. Great start! I hope you keep working on this.
@red-ash Its all good. Just suggestions. If you continue development past the jam it is something to look at. Good work!
@pilarius Thanks for the tip! I did Itch but forgot to upload it here!
Definitely didn't add a super secret portal to another world so you goal seekers would have something to strive for. That is for sure not a thing that was included in build 0008.
@maxathon Try waiting for a few seconds when it first starts then the cam zooms in. Down climbs up vertically so if you are just holding the up button you will immediately crash into the ground.
Hi @tom-stroll Thanks for the feedback. I'll check the colliders on the buildings they might not be generating properly. You are welcome. You should link it in your bio so I know which game yours is.
I'm working with my brother who did the audio. He just gave me a bunch of random sounds he made and I dropped then in so we could definitely hit it with some more specific audio. I would like an ambient engine sound as well.
I hear your input on the camera controls. I could probably disable input on the ship until you are closer or even just start you higher up but to be honest I sort of like that it punishes you early for the sense of danger it gives on the second run. I was going for that learn by hard experience sort of thing with a fast reset. I could probably find a middle ground so people don't crash immediately but I will probably not mess with it too much for the LD version. It might be enough to start you up higher off the ground. I do like that it feels unsafe tho. There is actually very little danger other then running out of fuel so I am having fun playing around with losing yourself in the shadows. I have a dust effect as you get closer to the ground in mind so you can tell how high you are and I think that would help as well.
Refueling is the biggest complaint to date and although I like the subtlety of it but the effect when you collect could be more obvious. It is sort of the only thing in the world so I would hope people experiment it. The engine already lights up a bit but I could put in a larger effect. I beefed it up a bit in my bug fixes but it needs to be more obvious I think.
Thanks for the feedback, I appreciate you taking the time to leave detailed notes.
@sibi Thanks for the feedback. I have some ideas for adding ground feedback for just that purpose but unfortunately they fell outside of the scope for this LD. You can reach the sky particles but it is tricky. The key is both collecting more fuel (blue particles) and that you burn much more fuel when you are using the booster jet or turning so you really have to drive slow and carefully rather then rushing to the goal.
@kfischer-okarin Thanks! Do you know what resolution you were running it at? I might need to fix for different sizes. They are very dumb so flying them into things or each other. They are just there to put some fuel pressure on you.
@tom-stroll You actually burn fuel by turning as well as boosting and there is a threshold on it so turning less should burn less fuel then turning more. I think what you are describing is already in there. The trick to reaching the exit is coasting and conserving fuel as much as possible. It is really intentionally going against most design ideas which are punch it fast and hard. They are very dumb right now but that would actually not be a hard feature to add since I could just raycast from the sun to the ship to see if it is visible. Thanks for the feedback.
@drprettypatty Thanks for the feedback. Yes, the camera has been most peoples main beef and part of it is I am still figuring out the best way to use Cinemachine. I am adding some effects to be able to detect the ground easier and will work on getting a balance for the starting camera that shows you what is going on while maintaining the cinematic aspects. Thanks for playing and taking the time to post!
Fun little game with a nice environmental angle. Very cute and accessible gameplay. I thought the powerups were not that helpful, high jumps were hard to judge a landing. Nice art and great music. Would be interesting to see where you took it from here!
Really nicely done. Great UI and graphics work. Fun, puzzle, speedrunning gameplay. Smooth operation overall.
The UI menu ordering is a little strange as you sign in for leader boards then select play. Also you could probably easily cache the leaderboard name.
I loved the fire effects. Was that a custom shader? Burning things was really fun. I liked the ambient atmosphere as well and I thought the piles of garbage everywhere were really funny. Skill sometimes jumped around a little bit.
Mostly it was really slick, really well done and fun to play.
***Spoilers***
I found the introduction of the torch holder mechanic in LVL 2 to be a a little misleading as I didn't need it to solve the immediate problem.
When I reached the second torch holder in lvl 2 I threw it and thought I was done. Lol oops. I found the second half of L2 a little confusing and kept looping back to the beginning as well.
Beaver art is hilarious. Tree falling is chaotic to control. I am torn because I liked having to reverse constantly and look behind me to see where the tree was falling but I also found the controls a little clunky and trying to hit a moving target (even with the stun) was quite hard. Very fun and funny though, just needs some polish. I was trying to think of alternate strategies such as blocking the road with a tree, blocking walking paths with a tree to funnel movement etc. Also strafe keys would have helped perhaps let you get into position and E + RMB was sort of an odd input choice. I think if you can make it mechanically more easy to hit the dudes with the trees you will be able to make it more strategic in the long run. Very funny and fun though, we had a good laugh at the cute beaver! Good job!
It did crash once upon loading, maybe I was trying to click too fast? Reloading fixed it though.
Also, you are hosting with random web host and might want to look into Itch.io and Butler to help manage builds if you intend to continue with it.
Graphics and music were great 5/5. I found the input really confusing however some feedback on what direction you are floating would help (like a world space particle trail). Another trick is to make a particle field that is very sparse and covers the whole flight area (like just tiny particles that hang in the air) as it helps give the motion a reference point. Really fun but hard to fly. I did the best when I ignored all the input keys except w and just aimed with the mouse only so perhaps you could simplify your input.
I kept dying every time I tried to get ammo bc I couldn't slow down or turn fast enough and crashed into buildings. I suck tho so don't take it as gospel. Another suggestion for the flight model would be increasing both the drag and force slightly, as the extra drag would make it slow down a little faster when you reduce new forces coming in while the increased force would balance out the drag. It should give you a bit more of a burst feel and also come to a stop faster, which makes it easier to control. I liked the floatiness but found the keyboard layout hard to get my head around. An alternative might be asdw - strafe qe vertical but obviously that is up to you. I usually just aimed with my mouse so you really just need a 6 dimensional strafe.
Also I noticed you have multiple builds and might find it useful to look into using Butler on Itch.io as it will patch your versions for you. It looks complex but is simple once you read the manual page.
The browser version didn't load but desktop ran ok. Might want to look at reducing realtime lighting or the number of textures in the build, I suspect the browser is running out of ram.
Super fun procedural exploding goodness. Fireball shader effects and explosions were also super tasty. Could use some additional SFX to round things out. What tools did you use to generate the world? It looks like Houdini maybe? Did you use Unreal or Unity?
Great job, I hope you continue working on this.
Looks cool. I found my browser locked up. You may want to try reducing the build size or turning down the lighting quality (more based on other peoples comments). You could also try putting out a desktop build and see if that helps. I froze up after showing unity loading and then about 10 seconds later received this: (attached image). Could be you have a bug or are using too much ram for chrome.
Let me know if you fix it and I will have another look. Looks fun! CrashBug_SpiritStone.PNG
Very nice graphics. I agree with some of the advice above about introducing too many mechanics at once. Also you might want to start without spikes initially just so people could get used to it. I got stuck on the second screen. Couldn't go right, couldn't go up so jumped down and died. Not really sure how to get past that. I also agree it is a slow turnaround time (the intro, the fade to black and the end credits) and especially for a hard game where you die instantly you might want to allow people to speed that loop up. Good effort tho!
Great concept and execution. I was totally drawn into this and found it hard to put down. A few minor things you might want to look at: - The SFX get repetitive and a little harsh after a while. Perhaps a less sharp sound or reducing the volume could help. Some SFX on hit not only death might also help (although it could be hard to not overwhelm with them). Perhaps putting the sfx on the towers instead of the enemies would help. - Some ambient background music would also be nice. - Maybe a tutorial page or something. I didn't know what the towers did until I placed them so perhaps something that gives you a heads up. - I couldn't figure out if there were differences between the different gems so maybe some differences (eg different speed, health, etc) - I didn't understand the level selection at first and perhaps putting the levels in terms of difficulty would be helpful (eg 1 = easy, 2 = harder etc)
These are all things that are low priority in a jam game so totally understandable. Really great job though. I loved the graphics. Great gameplay, really fun and additive. Would love to see where it goes! Hit me up on itch when you get an update I'd be happy to playtest it.
An image would help. Someone reminded me so I am playing it forward. You also might want to rename your downloadable from LudumDareGame to your own name since once I download it, it becomes one of many LD games and will be hard to find later.
Cool start. I think possibly my favorite feature in any jam game so far that I have seen was how your eyes followed the mouse. Great effect that adds a lot of feedback and characterization.
Art was nice. I found the fire burned out really quick especially with only 3 wood slots. I'm sure you have lots of ideas for things you can do next.
Good start!
Super vibing and loved the colors. Lots of atmosphere. Great feel. I also habitually wanted to mash jump but it was also sort of relaxing to not be able to. Catching the bird was harder then I thought it would be (even though it is kind of simple). Good job stretching a lot of game experience out of a small amount of gameplay!
Cool little game! I personally found the controls a little too twitchy for my taste but I'm sure people are into it. I also found the combination of the background, tiny projectiles and scrolling made me almost cross-eyed and I couldn't play for more then a couple of minutes without getting dizzy. Having the camera smoothly follow the player might help with this, as would increasing the contrast (especially value contrast) between the background and the projectiles. Even though it is blue on pink (high color contrast) they are the same value basically (put a black and white filter over to see) so it is hard to distinguish. Obviously there was a lot going on that I didn't experience and it looked like a really cool game so I don't mean to sound so negative, I actually thought it was really cool and ambitious. Audio would also help a lot but its a jam game so I understand. Good job!
Good cool start. I liked the art (the drawings) style. Some audio would have gone a long way towards helping it feel completed. Also, I would suggest you make the players hit box a little smaller as I tended to bounce between floor and ceiling if it was tight and it was hard to get through small openings. Good entry and I hope you keep working on it!
Nice graphics and audio, really enjoyed the little greetings. Could have used a little more variety and it wasn't totally clear the relationship between the stats from scanning and interaction (I didn't really think about it that hard but it wasn't the most clear). Cool little FTL style game tho! Great job!
Thanks everyone! The movement is using a rigidbody so it is a little "soft" feeling and could be improved. The music is actually a violin brought down to 1/4 speed to give it the depth. The art was hand drawn in Aseprite and thanks for the kind words about it, it was my main focus over the weekend (to the detriment of most other features). I would love to expand on this so thanks for all the feedback. I will look into the HTML version bugs, it probably is a UI window issue. I'm curious if anyone was able to run the Mac or Linux versions successfully? I know there was an earlier bug but I'm not sure if it is corrected now or not.
I would like to add more things to interact with however my goal for the weekend was to focus on art so most of that got cut and it turned into more of a narrative adventure. I appreciate all the feedback though!
*** Update build 12b** I have hopefully fixed the HTML text issue, so please let me know if there is still trouble! (you can also try full screen, which should help) (* I do seem to see a bit of a weird border issue, I will look into).
I definitely agree with a lot of the feedback on the movement and will tighten that up and release a post ld48 version. Thanks everyone for posting and the feedback!
Cool start, echoing some of the other folks, starting a little simpler or with fewer mechanics would have helped. I liked the music and tone of the game though. Also, some simple things like having the buttons and UI elements stand out from the background a little better (a frame, higher contrast, etc) and or having visual icons for the numbers (a little human) would have helped. A game that does this really well is Offworld Trading Company, which you would probably like if this is the game you made. Good effort though and keep at it!
Interesting and spooky with great atmosphere. I'll be honest I didn't totally figure it out and seemed to be stuck after about 30 words but you did a really good job of making the player come up with a story in their heads just through simple word association. Very interesting concept, loved the art and tone. I could use a larger font though! The intro did a great job of setting up a spooky encounter using very simple effects. Good job!
Really good atmosphere and audio. The use of 2d/3d character art was pretty interesting. I did find the perspective hard to tell where the player was. Perhaps moving the light source to either be offset from the player in the Z plane or using stationary torches for lighting instead would give a more obvious shadow and help orient the depth correctly. Very cool effort though with lots of atmosphere and style!
Great mood, audio and music. I also really liked the art style. I was a little confused about the gameplay, I got to an exit and then it restarted. Perhaps something a little quicker then falling again would be useful the second time around (or fall quicker?). One little nit picky thing was there was a bit of a fuzzy background tone to the audio voice recordings I found distracting. Very fun and interesting game overall tho! Good job!
Echoing what a lot of other people are saying, cool start, could use a little refinement. I didn't seem to be able to move horizontally? Not sure what I was missing. If you cut 1/2 the features and focused your effort on refining what you had left it would probably be stronger but that is pretty typical of a jam game (or many shipped games). I enjoyed the atmosphere and the art and thought it was a cool and ambitious entry. FYI, if you want to post an updated version people can check out, just leave the old LD entry version listed separately for people to rate the compo version but you obviously had some interest based on the amount of comments here. Good effect! Keep at it!
Looks, cool! Really funny item names and I like the concept of getting into debt for them. I also had the black squares in that same instance and also Pandaboy snip bug2.PNG
It might be an issue with your image import settings or compression settings for html? Just guessing. Also the HTML performance was kind of laggy so some image optimization wouldn't hurt. Very cool and a great start!
Pretty impressive just making a DS game in a compo! The emulator was easy to run on Windows. Enjoyed the audio and great tone to the world. Could be a little longer with more fish but a good effort!
Surprised myself how much I liked this. Great mix of tetris /snake. One suggestion is to make the idea that you can scroll down deeper more obvious as I didn't realize that at first. Maybe start with a "floor" that is visible for the first level so the player can see it get deeper. Cool idea and very creative though!
Graphics are super nice, I liked the character and environment art. I thought the music was very class NES and enjoyed it. The combat was a bit finicky, it felt like you had playtested it only yourself and were used to the exact measures needed ;) Perhaps a knockback effect would help as well. Tightening up the jumping and movement would also help this a lot. It feels like a unity rigidbody, so you might want to try increasing both the drag and the jump/movement force, which will make it feel a little more explosive and less floaty. Between those two variables and the mass you can get a lot of different gameplay feels. A font for the title is also a quick and easy touch that adds a lot to a game. I thought the idea of losing control of the player was really cool and you should explore that in more detail. Good effort for a Jam and I hope you keep at it!
Very fun little game, well done! My only suggestion would be to have the bass notes maybe destruct when hitting the guitar players rather then continue though as it would make it harder (would need some rebalancing though). Either way, very good job!