Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → Epicular
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | 46 | Keep it alive | 👥 | The Empty Cone | jam | 295 | 3.92 | 4.03 | 3.86 | 3.61 | 3.76 | 3.95 | 3.50 |
I really like this concept, but disagree with some of its execution - getting cornered by enemies and mauled to death was not fun.
The timed doors were especially entertaining. Sudden traps and other unforeseeable events were really well designed - they were never unfair to the player and made each level more interesting than the last.
Although the graphics/audio are pretty simplistic, the concept is interesting and some of the puzzles are really, really well designed. This game is easy to get into, simple enough to enjoy fully, and unique enough to bring real entertainment value to the table - two big thumbs up from me.
Loved the interesting, unique concept! Graphics and audio all worked together really nicely, and it was satisfying to build my own little island.
I'm still not sure what the different tiles do. I mostly just dropped a random assortment in the hopes that the adventurers wouldn't get bored. The text log on the side didn't do much for me - even with only one or two adventurers on screen it moved too fast for me to process.
In general this game is designed brilliantly - adventurers need new tiles to keep from boredom but they also need cities as checkpoints... but building cities adds new adventurers to entertain, thus creating a feedback loop that demands you to rapidly expand without neglecting any area of the map. Really great work.
Ooh, a new chess-like strategy game. I always find good and unique ideas for these to be nearly impossible to conceive, so kudos to you for giving it a shot.
Everyone else has already mentioned pacing and sound effects - I won't pile on to that.
If you're not going to animate the knight movements then I'd just have them jump straight to their target space. It was a bit annoying clicking on my target and getting no visual feedback for a moment that my click had registered.
Onto the game itself - I think this is a great little strategy game for a jam, as it's a fresh concept, it's easy to pick up, and the AI seems pretty well done given the time span. That being said, I don't see myself being able to play this more than once. The RNG component is part of what allows the gameplay to be both so simple and so playable - but is also unfortunately a really imposing ceiling on the entire game. RNG and chess, for example, are completely incompatible - what's the point of trying to execute grand strategies if it can all be undone by a few lucky rolls by my opponent?
You mentioned earlier that:
> I’m not sure I’d want markers to show where you can go because it might make the game too easy
I *strongly* disagree with this stance. Figuring out what their movement options are should be the easy part for the player - the game's challenge should come in with figuring out which of their options follow their ideal strategy, or if none of them are ideal and they should move a different piece. Plus this would aid new players in visualizing the rules of the game.
All in all I genuinely enjoyed my playthru, it's a unique concept, the dice rolling gives the game a more authentic charm, and the difficulty feels just about right for me.
The first five minutes were genuinely fun, fast-paced, and stressful. The last twenty five minutes were *brutally* slow and dull.
There was one particular pair of patients - in the top right corner - who had almost no health between them, thus was impossible to get either one back to health as it seemed that they could not recover faster than they would decline. After half an hour I threw in the towel and just let one of them die, which was really sad since the room was filled with other unused ventilators.
Overall it's a solid, complete entry - you managed to keep me playing for a long time which is an accomplishment in and of itself. The art was pretty good, but I would've liked a few different frames for the player facing each direction, and maybe a simple walking animation. The music was fitting, but I would've liked a bit more variation/complexity as it got really repetitive really fast.
Gonna have to agree with everyone else on the difficulty - this was unfortunately way too hard for me to fully enjoy. Aside from that I could see that there was a high level of polish put on the production - the main menu looked particularly nice, and the alien death sequence got a chuckle out of me.
@synoxgames I might replay it later if I have time.
Please make sure that you are being mindful of the [Jam rules](https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/rules), specifically the part about making changes to your game after the deadline.
@scott-steffes Every control is mentioned in-game at some point, there should be a couple simple messages popping up throughout the first few days. It sounds like this didn't happen for you, which seems odd as I haven't heard of this bug happening to anyone else. Out of curiosity - were you playing the web build or the Windows build?
The reasoning behind not putting the controls in the game's description is because we wanted to try and avoid information overload, as I never appreciate trying to read everything about how to play some game before I even start it. In hindsight we should probably have included them as a sort of safety valve. Thank you for your feedback, it is absolutely invaluable.
@hulien22 We haven't heard of any such crash before so we will look into it and try to reproduce it, thanks for telling us about it.
@emperor-eagle We haven't heard of that sort of thing happening to anyone yet. We'll try to reproduce it and see what could be causing that, thanks for letting us know.
@joemid We're glad you liked it so much! Thanks for the kind words, it really means a lot to us.
@lamossus I agree that all three of those things are weak points for the game. Thank you for the detailed feedback, it is invaluable!
@gonutz Day 17?! I don't think I've ever made it past 9 or 10. Also you are partially correct that enemy waves stop growing significantly around day 12 - they keep growing in a linear fashion, so eventually the law of diminishing returns kicks in and each wave starts to feel almost exactly the same as the last. We're really glad that you've enjoyed the game so thoroughly.
@gonutz Keep the feedback coming! We can never have too much of it.
We are toying with the idea of expanding the game and publishing it as a mobile game, or maybe as a cheap/free Steam release. Aside from the obvious bug fixes and balance improvements, this expansion would include more weapons/employees, training for the individual employees (plus the ability to hire more than just three), the ability to buy/move furniture in your parlor (including extra ice cream machines and topping stations, as well as aesthetic items to improve customer moods, and defensive installments like turrets and traps), refined combat with more enemies, and likely the ability to sell your parlor and buy larger buildings in new locations, in order to create a larger scheme of progression.
As for your individual points of feedback:
- We agree that the topping stations need more feedback - I haven't heard of this specific bug, although we've had a few people report randomly occurring crashes - Haven't heard of this one yet either, I'll have to look into it - This one's a known bug. We just never got around to fixing it, lol
@gonutz Thank you for the continued feedback.
I'd love to try and track down the crash that you're experiencing but I'm a little tied up at the moment, I may see what we can do in a week or two.
As for your concerns about expansion, I generally agree with that sentiment, but at the same time we absolutely need to introduce a broader arc of progression if this is to experience any amount of success outside of a jam context. Only 3 employees, 4 guns, 3 enemies, and zero variability in your parlor is generally not enough to keep most players entertained for any longer than an hour or two. Of course balancing could prove to be tricky but that's what testing and feedback is for :wink:
I have nothing against releasing on Steam, but we'd need some sort of financial incentive to continue to devote time to this. Maybe that means a paid release, or DLC, or something. But a completely free Steam release is off the table at the moment.
Unfortunately, for this same reason we're also not open to publishing the source code at this time.
This is definitely one of the most "complete" entries I've played thus far. Graphics and audio were well-polished, the interfaces were slick and fully utilized, and the progression in difficulty was perfect.
As a platformer this felt really awkward to play for a long time, until I finally got a good handle for the physics. There was also a bit of a learning curve to the rules of the mechanics themselves - for instance I had to learn through trial and error that the capsule didn't break when hitting the floor while carrying it, and it also didn't break when touching walls/ceilings, but it *did* break when enemies touched it, even when I *was* carrying it, but enemy bullets *didn't* break it, even if I *wasn't* carrying it, etc.
There also seemed to be some bugginess/inconsistency in the way the game handled collisions/physics in general, as if the game was trying to do some simple physics without fully embracing a physics engine, even though the physics engine may have been the better call. I say this particularly in regards to collisions between the player and enemies, and between the player and the capsule. It seemed like nothing ever preserved momentum, which created some interactions that felt unnatural - like, for example, giving the capsule a push through the air, only for it to drop straight down. Pushing an enemy into a wall and having them warp on top of the player was another one of these odd interactions.
At its core the concept is sound and well-executed, and there's little that could be improved with the presentation. Leaderboards are always a nice touch.
Simple, innovative, and entertaining. The music entering right when the first snow block is activated was a nice touch.
My only qualm is that the difficulty seems to ramp up really suddenly around 35 seconds, a smoother buildup would've made losing a little less frustrating.
There are generally a lot of potential pitfalls to these types of games but it seems you were well aware of them - great job overall!
I felt like fuel was particularly hard to come across, and I didn't realize that gold was completely non-renewable until it was too late. Otherwise I think you did a great job balancing the game out to create a sense of stress and desperation. I barely made it to the frozen mammoth - the fire was almost dead and pretty much everyone hated me, lol. The game took just about the right amount of time, the presentation was stellar, and the character writing was pretty great.
I don't have much else to be critical of. I guess probably my next biggest gameplay complaint is that it wasn't totally clear to me what the connection was between worker health/happiness and the rest of the game. I'm guessing it affecting mining speed or something, but I wasn't totally sure.
Definitely one of my favorite entries so far.
Hey there - I thought this was a funny game and there was a lot to like about it.
Like many other commenters here, I initially didn't know you could pick up and move the unicorn. I think I read earlier in this thread that the idea is for that to be a "hidden" mechanic. I cannot stress enough that **framing this as a hidden mechanic is a terrible, terrible idea**. It's basically the one core mechanic of the entire game - it's virtually unplayable if you don't know about it. The game should ensure that the player knows about it before the game even starts, by any means necessary.
Now, that aside - it seems that the game never really scales in difficulty, so I found it pretty trivial to stay alive virtually indefinitely. After about 15 minutes I just got bored and quit, as I didn't see an ending in sight.
I think you utilized the unicorn movement well, the 3x score area was a great idea as well as making the player move around for weapon upgrades. I found it somewhat strange that the camera only followed the unicorn, which limited the player's movement.
The next step should be creating some variations between the different enemies besides just sprites, and then maybe a few powerful/rarer weapons.
Great work!
Hey there - this seems like a really complete entry which I appreciate. It's rare to see a crafting system that's appropriately and entirely implemented for a jam game.
My biggest complaint here is that the pace of the game is far, far too slow. I don't see the point in having the shadow hover outside the player's fire for any amount of time longer than, say, 15-20 seconds. Any longer and you're just forcing the player to sit there and stare at the screen until they can actually play the game again. On top of that everything just felt too sluggish - from picking stuff up to chopping trees down to moving around the map. I understand why it was slow, and I actually think the slow pace would be a really, really great call... if the game wasn't a jam game. I just didn't have the patience to repeat the same cycle day after day until I made it to... wherever it was I was going.
The game mechanics overall are just well designed and complement each other well. I didn't finish the game because I didn't really know how to - pressing tab didn't do anything so I wonder if the compass was broken/incomplete or something, or maybe I simply didn't know how to use it properly.
The game successfully sets a really dark/tense mood when nighttime swings around. The music is pretty much perfect, and whatever shaders/effects you used to create the shadow were *awesome*. Controls were responsive and did what I expected them to, and the sound effects were appropriate and balanced. There were some clashing styles in the graphics - while the trees and the player had fantastic, smooth animations (minus the strange player south-walk animation), stuff like the fire's choppy animation stuck out of place, along with the land/water borders.
This feels like one of the most "complete" entries I've played so far. There are no serious weaknesses - the UI is great, the animations and the text on the notepad are high quality, the audio is very well implemented, and everything follows a very cohesive theme.
I will echo other commenters and say that the biggest weaknesses here are probably balance and decision-making. I played three times and won each time - the first playthru was interesting as I barely kept the fire alive, but the second one took only seven total turns and no enemy encounters (RNG was really nice to me and gave me all the radio parts, lol). The game overall just didn't feel particularly challenging - to that end there are a number of minor balance adjustments that you could make, and I'd probably start by reducing player ammo capacity as I never found myself needing to dip below three bullets, even while playing aggressively.
I actually found combat - where I had to manage my ammo supply, my health supply, and what amount of risk I was comfortable taking - to be more interesting than the main gameplay loop, decision-making wise. It seemed very hard to lose if you just picked the ? card whenever the flipped card was a monster. So that cycle got dull pretty quick - I'm not sure what sorts of options there are to spice that up, maybe you can make the fire die out at a much faster rate which puts pressure on the player to try and win faster/find more fuel instead of just taking every good card that they're presented with.
Overall a really solid entry, the presentation was one of my favorites in the jam so far.
Hey there - I think this is a solid entry overall. The biggest weakness, in my opinion, was communicating to the player what exactly they had to do. I couldn't figure out why my bucket wasn't filling up, until I realized that I had to go deeper into the ocean. I didn't realize that I had to manually push the turtle - I was just confused as to why it was sitting there after I finished digging out the sand.
While it's a cute little minigame (nothing wrong with creating a short experience for the jam), at its core it's a pretty basic time management game, and one that can only really punish the player for trying to beat the game a little too fast. Personally I would've made the bucket of water completely refill the turtle's health, as there's not much of a point in making them complete that same task multiple times in a row. You could also then make the sand path a bit longer in order to compensate for the quickened game pace.
Aside from that there's not much I'd change about the game outside of adding a bit of complexity to the core gameplay cycle, such as hazards to the player/turtle. The overall presentation was fantastic - probably one of my favorites so far. The controls were clearly explained to the player, the menus were very well designed and constructed (and fully functional!), and the graphics and audio were all well suited for the theme and looked/sounded great.
Seconding what @j-c-one-bit-studio said above - there seems to be some pretty serious scaling issues, I have a 1366x768 monitor and I couldn't see any of the UI whatsoever, which made the game pretty difficult to play/enjoy.
Aside from that the gameplay itself is pretty solid. Biggest weakness is probably the graphics - not that they were bad (in fact I really liked the style). Rather, they tend to negatively impact gameplay - there's no feedback to tell me that I hit an enemy, and the ground near the generator is so busy that it's hard to tell what's solid and what's not.
Hey there - this game was cute and had a great art style!
As a platformer, though, it felt inconsistent and buggy. There was especially bizarre behavior when jumping up slanted walls or around trees, and I got stuck in the ground more than once. It's a relatively minor issue but it still dings the experience.
I was stuck at the first area for like 5 minutes and had no idea that the mushroom on the tree was a button - it just looked like a background item. There's so much cool stuff about the game that you don't ever tell the player! Or, if you do, it's hidden in the "tips" section of the description. I didn't realize I could double-jump with the baby, I didn't understand how/when to right-click to grapple, and I still don't know what the black inner hearts meant in relation to the outer hearts.
There were a few areas that I cheesed through by leaving the baby behind, getting to a checkpoint, then hitting R to get the baby back. It was really refreshing to see a boss at the end of the game, but no matter what I did to the boss nothing happened.
Overall this is still a well-paced game with awesome graphics.
Hey there - I think this is a solid compo game.
You say that the game is "on the harder side" and "a challenge". Quite frankly I think that the game is more tedious than it is challenging. While having the player juggle between items is a nice and unique mechanic to have, making them haul the axe as an individual item to juggle is a step too far. I think my enjoyment of the game would've improved immensely if I simply had to drop the light in order to use the axe - it certainly would've at least made those first few minutes without enemies a lot more bearable. I also think there should've been some sort of navigation to help point me towards the orb and towards "home base", especially with such a large world consisting of such a repetitive terrain.
The game became much more entertaining towards the end when enemies started really pouring in. The graphic style looked nice and was consistent, and the enemy eyes lighting up in the darkness was a great touch (especially for gameplay's sake). It's a shame that there was no background music, it could've done wonders for the mood.
I also actually enjoyed the ending, I thought it was sufficiently satisfying. I was expecting a basic "congratz you win" screen just because of all the other jam games I've played thus far but was pleasantly surprised.
I'll second @hiisileiri by saying that one of the most frustrating things to have happen to you in a platformer is for you to die from falling onto something that you couldn't have possibly seen in advance. Widening the camera was a good step but it would also help to adjust the level design so you can't accidentally fall a mile to your death.
I think the art works well, and the brooding music in the background is a good touch. The jump noise got really hard to listen to after a while and it didn't really fit.
I'm not really sure how this fits into the theme to be perfectly honest.
Overall though it's a product that you ought to be proud of.
A resolution bug cropped off the whole top of the screen (even on the bugfix release) so I couldn't read the instructions or see the UI (if there was one).
Each area looked exactly the same as the last so I had a hard time telling where I was going - towards the end of my playthru I got lost and then... died suddenly? I'm guessing I ran out of time or something.
My weapon kept changing suddenly, seemingly without rhyme or reason. It didn't matter much though since enemies didn't really pose a threat anyways.
Most of the combat mechanics were well polished and felt really responsive.
This is so close to being a really solid game! It just seems underdeveloped. I don't think the Dark Lord ever got poisoned or burned or anything like that, I'm assuming those healing methods were just placeholders or something.
The alchemy menu was interesting, but since the crafting materials could all be easily purchased with gold, you might as well have just made potions directly purchasable.
There was a general lack of feedback on stuff like: did my fireball actually do anything? did my potion actually hit the Dark Lord?
Really interesting concept, I'd love to see a more developed version.
Saw that the viewport didn't resize correctly for my screen, then read that it only supports one single resolution. That's a damn shame.
Waluigi "waah" on top of a looping Mario Kart track. This is it folks, we've reached the physical peak of gaming. You literally cannot make a better game.
The true genius of this is that, underneath all of the shitposting, there's a genuinely fun and challenging game.
Sorry but I'm not gonna run an installer for this, I'd love to give it a play if you packaged it as a standalone .exe though.
Hey there - this entry was really intriguing, there was a lot that I really liked and I few things I didn't.
You handled this type of game appropriately by creating a lot of different spaces to explore, and directions to explore in, with varying features all around. I also really liked the concept of listening to the whispers to guide you. The game also strikes a nice pace by keeping the player moving fast and the timer tight (maybe a bit too tight? this game was really difficult!). I would've appreciated some sort of compass or arrow to guide me back to the basement because I had a tendency to get lost, which was a death sentence.
Some of the spaces - like the house and the well - never had any bloodbeasts. This felt mildly frustrating - perhaps I just didn't get far enough into the game for them to start spawning there?
The presentation overall is nice - the audio is pretty well done. Now, the graphics. I'm always a sucker for this style of graphics, and I especially liked the red accent to mark blood/bloodbeasts. The heart, as well as the blood that followed the player, looked especially nice. But there were a few issues with execution here. I had a really hard time telling apart solid objects from background objects, as well as what was an entrance/exit to a different area and what wasn't. This, to me, is worse than graphics that just look bad, because this actually detracts from my ability to play the core game.
It didn't seem like there was any real ending? If so I never made it - like I mentioned this game felt pretty hard. If not, then you really ought to have some way to show the player how well they did, and maybe maintain their best time/score. Otherwise I feel no motivation to continue playing.
Great work, this is fantastic for a first-finished game.
Hey there - I thought this was a pretty solid production in game mechanics, but I was disappointed to see that it effectively ended at the second level.
The game mechanics were tough to figure out at first. I still don't totally understand the body swapping stuff. The best way to play the game seemed to be by "shooting" everything on sight and then just walking over the blood, without ever body swapping or trying to be stealthy.
This is still pretty crafty as far as game mechanics go. It was unique and generally well-executed. I didn't love the graphics - some differentiation between solid walls and the edges of your range of sight would've made navigation feel much easier. Background music and a bit of extra SFX would've also added nicely to the feel of the mechanics.
Overall this game was a refreshing shake up in mechanics and I enjoyed playing it.
Wow, the production quality - graphics, audio, presentation, the whole bit - was way better than anything I expect from a jam game. Biggest immediate issue was the bug that stopped text from rolling after attempting to play the game a second time.
The concept was fantastic but the execution was questionable in some ways. It was frustrating having to cut through irrelevant filler text before getting to the important stuff. I particularly disagreed with the attempts at humor, which I found to both be in poor taste and to significantly detract from the epic mood that you had just worked so hard to set. Like, you successfully constructed one of the most somber and stressful moods of any game in the entire jam... and so you decided to suddenly weave in a joke about pornographic emails??
Overall I still loved the game, great presentation and an awesome unique concept.
Hey there - I thought this was a fundamentally sound platformer with a unique twist and generally good execution.
I couldn't see either of my own health bars for any of the game, which made it really hard to play as I would die seemingly randomly and without warning. I'm not sure I agree with including that mechanic in the game at all, it doesn't really complement any of the rest of the game mechanics and only really served as a source of frustration (at least for me).
The teleporter throwing physics were a bit tough to get the hang of, but they were smooth and consistent, and helped add to the aesthetic. I think it would've been interesting to see a few extra applications of teleportation outside of just platforming, like avoiding moving hazards or solving puzzles or something.
I disagree with the idea of "winding up" your throw with the mouse instead of just pointing in the direction that you want to throw in. It was frustrating not being able to throw with full strength because my mouse would hit the edge of the screen, this would've been resolved by simply removing the inversion on throw direction (and would've felt more intuitive IMO).
The graphics are a master class in creating a minimalist theme that still clearly communicates what's solid and what's not (which is usually a problem for other designers). All audio sounded nice and fit in with the graphics.
Hey there - this is a good start on what seems to be a pretty interesting and unique concept. As other commenters have noted, the biggest weakness of gameplay is that you can spam each of the buttons with no consequence so it's not really a true rock-paper-scissors game. Once I figured out that I could abuse this system, there was no real challenge to the gameplay anymore. Penalizing the player in some way for an incorrect match would do a lot to put the player under some pressure and create a more complete gameplay loop.
I didn't totally feel the connection between gameplay and the story - although my character's mouth moving whenever I clicked a button was a solid inclusion, I felt that there needed to be a more direct connection from customer service to rock-paper-scissors.
I liked the style of the graphics. A couple simple soundtracks could've helped ease the sharp sound of the beeps.