Air Delivery by pianoman373 2023-05-03T16:47:11Z
Great game overall, a bit short, and the pause when the screen moves was a bit annoying, especially when gliding, but otherwise I enjoyed it.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → Elementary
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | 53 | Delivery | Delivery Squares | compo | 389 | 2.58 | 2.65 | 2.94 | 3.15 | 1.81 | 1.18 | 1.85 | 2.00 |
Great game overall, a bit short, and the pause when the screen moves was a bit annoying, especially when gliding, but otherwise I enjoyed it.
Just wondering, but is there any way to see your current coins?
@xwilarg, yes I know, I had trouble balancing the player movement, but at the end I seem to have gotten used to it. The trick is to not hold down the direction key for too long, I did cap the max speed, but it might still be an issue. I'll upload a fixed version later reducing the max speed and increasing the friction, since it seems to be a major issue.
@defrag I'll add the skip option key to the description, sorry about that. I also hate the text, so I added the option.
The game balance was upset after fixing the speed problem, so it's relatively easy now and I didn't want to change the code too much to compensate, but even before the the fix, game balance wasn't perfect, so I moved the variables to the top of the script so that anyone can change it to make it harder or easier depending on preference. There are a few other things I can do to fix the game balance, for example the distance of the sources, but I'll leave it like it is for now and maybe add a fixed version to the downloads when I get time, if it's even possible to fix.
Now that I got some quality sleep the game seems pretty terrible in my opinion, but I haven't entirely given up yet. Besides I did get some pretty good ideas and base code for future projects from this.
@dishwand I was planning on adding an upgrade system and increasing difficulty, but getting everything to balance in time would have been impossible, I was already spending about half my time play testing to make sure I wasn't making it impossible, so I stuck to the basics, but at the end I still messed up the balance. I'm planning on fixing a few things and making it a bit more complete after the jam, but thanks for at least trying it.
@the-neon-shark A lot of ideas had to be left out due to time constraints and me trying to get the game balance right. I never thought trying to keep stuff balanced could be this hard, just changing one variable could mess up the entire game and then everything else would need changing, which was what happened with the speed fix.
The four different types were actually meant to be lives, with different rates. Rates changing depending on how much it's filled, which is kind of still left in the game in the form of the red bar limits. Having a bar fall to zero would lead to losing a life, but I couldn't really get everything to balance so I removed it. There was a lot of other things that also had to removed due to balance issues for example the four towers of the city were actually meant to represent the ink stores, which could break or be rebuilt and upgraded. I would really have liked to make it more coherent and fun, but I'll leave it for after the jam if I have time. I still think there's potential here, kind of reminds me of Leaf Blower Revolution in a sense, but I thought it would have been slightly too ambitious to make it an idle type game instead of a simple score based system, since it would require decent variation in content, but now that I had more time to think, it might have been the better approach to this style.
@vydra Sorry, sometimes the squares you have to collect spawn too far and after the speed fix it might be impossible to collect and return in time, another strategy you could try is only filling up around half of each and getting back, or do the nearest one first, since the score decline depends on the number of bars below the red.
If you have trouble with controls let me know what's wrong, is it the speed, slow down rate or acceleration, there's still a bug with the acceleration speed which is tied to the frame rate. I accidentally removed a delta multiply with the fix, but it shouldn't be significant enough to cause issues since the max speed is capped.
@hakro Thanks for trying at least, sorry about that, I was actually keeping it in mind while working, but I guess I didn't vary the hues enough to make the colors distinctive. I should have tried playing in black and white before uploading to make sure the colors were different enough. I was also considering adding shapes, but time constraints were a problem.
@lisyarus What browser did you use, since it was tested on Firefox and Chrome variants. Sometimes you have to click on the embedded window so that it can grab the input keys, otherwise I could disable arrow keys for page navigation, which should work on the download version, but I'm not sure how it would react to embedding.
I'll add an explanation of what to do to the description and I'm working on a post jam version so any feedback on bugs or mistakes are welcome, thanks for playing.
This was pretty fun, even if it was annoying at times. I especially liked the extra checkpoints if you failed too much. Dialogue was also pretty interesting and well done. I actually kind of liked the music and the spin on the classics. The moving background textures made it a bit hard for me to focus, especially the moving blocks, but otherwise I liked the style.
Controls are a bit odd and unintuitive, and the mailmen were coming a bit quick at the start to actually learn the mechanics, maybe have it ramp up a bit after the start and giving the player enough time to learn a new mechanic before giving them a new one. Otherwise pretty good idea and take on the theme.
Pretty fun game. I did have some stuttering and static with the audio on the web version of the game though.
Besides the fact this reminded me more about work than playing a game, it's pretty interesting. It didn't really help that I ended up trying to formulate these as optimization problems for solver and actually ended up spending way more time on this than anything else for the evening, so good job in the fun category for me. Otherwise this was pretty unique for a game and the implementation was interesting to go through.
Obstacles such as the clouds aren't very obvious at first, and sometimes the ship collides with empty space when near them. Otherwise pretty decent game.
Great idea, but winning seems slightly more dependent on RNG then I would have expected for a card game, but it might just be me. Otherwise a pretty good game.
Good game overall. Sound balance seems a bit off with the volume of the pulsing and goal sounds compared to the music.
Pretty solid game overall from what I could play, unfortunately for me it does seem to be performance heavy, so it ran pretty terrible on my hardware.
The drag and drop functionality is broken, packages get stuck and then they can't be moved within the time limit, would probably be a decent game if you can fix it. Only changing the icons on the chutes makes it difficult to keep track of when it changes, so maybe if this was a bit more obvious to players.
Simple and short, sprites were really well done.
Cool take on the theme and interesting mechanics, gameplay is smooth with very few bugs from what I could tell, the mail would sometimes miss the box if I release close to the road due to it moving out of the hit box, but otherwise pretty solid. I really liked having the difficulty options.
Pretty cool idea for combat, but having to go through all the dialogue every single time you die isn't fun. Combat doesn't feel very balanced, but it might just be me.
Pretty solid game, but it might be helpful to have a current level indicator. Level difficulty through levels is also pretty inconsistent, with some lower levels being harder than the higher levels.
I don't know if I'm missing something, but where should the cube be moved to? Otherwise pretty unique and interesting idea for a game.
Really unique idea, but it wasn't really much fun to actually play, the mechanics are a bit confusing and it isn't really clear how the energy and encrypted packets work. I also wasn't able to get to a game over or end, so not sure if that's intended or not. The use of audio was pretty good in my opinion.
The lives and symbol indicator is over the delivery locations on the web version on itch, so it makes it a bit hard to see what you're doing. The switching between color and symbol determining where to deliver was an interesting idea, but makes it hard to keep track of what you should be focusing on and the game ends rather quickly.
@fargred, I used firefox on Linux.
Pretty fun, interesting, and I really liked the building mechanic. I enjoyed building the ship and trying to keep it relatively stable while expanding. Iit did start feeling slightly too repetitive for my taste, but overall a pretty good game.
This was actually a lot of fun, nice and simple. I especially liked the guys swearing when you hit them, the sound effect was perfect and got a few chuckles out of me. Other sound effects were great too. At first I thought having some way to aim would have been nice, but once I started getting used to it, it didn't really bother me as much. Overall the game felt really satisfying. The end goal felt a bit redundant for some reason, and I didn't actually feel all that motivated to finish once I got started, but at least the mechanics were fun to play around with.
You really nailed the overall atmosphere. The tutorial could have been better explained, since it took me a while to figure out how to combine the cards. Maybe add an option to restart after finishing would be a good addition, since the game doesn't really take too long and you'd usually want to increase your score after finishing.
Interesting story, you could have used slightly more unique sprites for the dad and son. I kept mistaking the dad for the son near the end.
This was interesting, but the mechanics were a bit confusing to be honest, it wasn't really clear at first what causes damage and what heals, since it felt like almost everything decreased health until I understood what the images in the description actually meant. Audio and sounds were great and the simple design was nice, controls felt smooth and it was actually pretty fun once I got used to the mechanics, but they still feel a bit awkward at times, especially when having to shoot the black blocks in the middle without being able to heal since they keep blocking the way, so balance could be better in my opinion.
Took me 6 minutes and 138 falls, that was fun. Pretty good game, collisions were a bit off and the clouds disappearing didn't always appear as soon as you restarted, but otherwise I enjoyed it.
Pretty simple game, but good take on the theme. It would have been useful to have a better way to know when a package was delivered, since I had to keep picking up and dropping the packages near the chest until I reached the end screen.
I wasn't able to do anything in the first level, jumping can't reach the red block and it isn't really clear what to do, not sure if this is a bug or not on the HTML version.
@zephyr19 Thanks, I tried again, controls are really bad on the web version as you stated, but if you don't use the yellow bar before it expires, the game enters an impossible state where you can't finish the level, the only way to continue is to reload, which is annoying to say the least, but I could at least play the game since I knew what was wrong.
I'm not really a fan of puzzle games, but this was interesting. Game feels complete. I liked the pixelated rustic feel and rolling felt really satisfying. Narrative was a nice touch. You could have maybe added a simple puzzle at the beginning where it's clear how to rotate the legs. The first level was a bit unclear with what you should do, but otherwise great game.
@dishwand I just want to make sure it's not a bug, but the end is reached when you reach the white screen? It did feel a bit abrupt, but following the dialogue it feels like it should be the ending?
I was also wondering if this is an original idea or did you see the mechanics somewhere else, since now I want to play more games like this.
I actually ended up coming back to this game, so you definitely did something right. I don't know why, but I kept thinking about it after playing it.
@dishwand You could maybe have the player restart after finishing, after they press a key, since I really thought the first time through it might have been a bug, so I played it again just to be sure since it becomes completely unresponsive, but following the story it does make sense. I really liked optimizing the puzzles. The first time through I just kind of guessed it, but afterwards I tried doing the levels in as few moves as possible, which you can probably turn into a scoring system if you want. It felt really satisfying once I understood how the cube moves.
Delivery drone can go out of the screen bounds, which should probably be fixed. Box and truck collision is a bit off, so you can get the box in even though you actually missed the truck. Gameplay is rather basic and repetitive, maybe try adding something to make it more challenging for players.