Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → essell
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | 39 | Running out of Power | Theresa Dreams of Wheat | jam | 304 | 3.53 | 3.53 | 3.34 | 3.42 | 3.03 | 4.22 | 3.84 |
Positives: - Nice job on the voice acting - Fun idea, I like the first-person driving and the setting - Enjoyed the slightly weird music and changing between radio stations :)
Opportunities for improvement: - Level design / gameplay is a little weak in comparison - not much to make the challenge interesting, skillful, want to go back and do better next time, etc
Overall though, nice :)
Nice :)
Positives: - Nice memories of both Spy Hunter and Chase HQ - Gameplay was deeper than i initially expected, and kept me interested for longer than most of the games i've tested
Suggestions:
- Either firing my weapons didn't work for me, or I didn't understand it (nothing happened when I clicked?) - Did start to feel a bit repetitive after a while because while the upgrades I bought allowed me to get further, they didn't change how I would play and approach any of the situations I got into
Overall though, good stuff!
Pros: - Nice smooth movement and animation. - Surprisingly catchy music :)
Cons: - Level design maaaybe a little too challenging too soon - Could have been cool to have a small amount of "power", to very briefly turn on lights or a flashlight, in order to see more of the level (then going back to jumping around it in the dark
Overall though, fun :)
Cool - playing this made me want to try making a simple RTS some day :)
- Cool if you did this all by yourself in the time limit. I suppose the main lesson is the classic issue of scope, and trying to figure out you could have prioritised over other things to have a more complete game quicker. - For example, if I were you I wouldn't have bothered spending the time animating your character until you had the core design more functional. I think it would have been fine if they just floated around, and remember that you're designing everything, so you can do sneaky things like simply make your characters floaty ghost style things that don't require animating ;) - More broadly, the visuals are nice but you could have gotten away with simpler, quicker stuff to give you more time on the game itself.
Still though, I don't want this to sound negative - it's cool and I bet it was interesting to work on :)
Not sure about the My Little Pony stuff but enjoyed the Ghosts N Goblins-ness!
Best bit: good job capturing the style well. Weaker bit: Game design wise it didn't feel quite there - lack of air control during the jump feels awkward in a platformer, some odd quirks with the enemies appearing and the portals, etc.
But overall, cool :)
Similar feedback to the others - the gameplay side of things feels a little unclear and underdeveloped, but it looks nice and the idea's good :)
- Nice job on the visuals and presentation - simple but quite atmospheric :) - Gameplay is a little shallow - Download size is really big!
Hi I tried to download this to rate and give feedback but I can't find a .exe in the zip file. Am I missing something?
Nice.
Good stuff: - Nice simple idea and gameplay, well executed (good scope for a jam game) - Visuals and sound all feel coherent - Simple level design and gameplay, but fun
Suggestions: - Some areas felt like they would be more fun and interesting if they weren't so narrow (giving the player a few more options and decisions to make) - Coming at the game with a metal gear solid mindset, I didn't understand why I was resetting a while after being spotted? Was I getting hit in a way I didn't see? Is it a direct but delayed fail after being spotted (I hope not because I'm not keen on insta-fail stealth)? Seems like it could be clearer how this works)
Overall though, good job :)
Nice, cute idea - genuinely had fun playing this one :)
- I think the main feedback I'd give in terms of suggestions to improve it would be about communicating what is happening to the player, and starting things off a little slower and easier to begin with. Slower enemies, a smaller map so that the player doesn't get lost or overwhelmed in their first try. - It was easy to feel like I wished you could click on the mini map to move, but then I think it would have been too tempting to play the whole game from the mini-map instead of the main screen. Maybe the mini-map could have been full-screen, and the player has to press a button to switch from the main view to the mini-map? Checking information on the map, then acting on it in the main view.
Overall though, good job :)
Positives: - Really interesting idea having one game that generates a level for another - definitely one of the most original I've seen in the games I've tested so far - I'd love to see this taken further (and it might have given me a few ideas ;)
Opportunities for improvement: - There was a lack of connection between the 2d mode and the 3d mode in terms of my motivation - it would have been cool if players are playing the 2D mode in a particular way to try and make the 3D level in a certain way, but they felt kind of random and disconnected - I didn't quite get the rules of the 2D mode or what was meant by trying not to trap the ball - the ball that was bouncing around didn't seem to have any effect on anything, and sometimes the level just started up? When it said I could press the fire button to start the level, I didn't really understand why the choice was given to me - It was an unintuitive start having to enter an address for an image with no Browse... window. Ended up alt-tabbing to copy paste something from a browser. Would have been good to include a bunch of images in the game to avoid the slow start.
Overall though - really interesting, good job :)
Really nice art, audio and mood - the nicest I've seen of all the ld39 games I've played so far :)
On the flipside, the gameplay itself seems a simple, and artificially difficult / fiddly, simply because it can be hard to see where you're standing. Making this clearer by tweaking the lighting or raising the camera position could be good.
But overall, definitely cool :) Nice work.
Hi there - cool game. Just a heads up that I really recommend putting your how to play instructions in the game itself for this kind of thing :)
Haha, really liked this :) Looks really nice, funny music, cute little idea and great execution. Good job!
Quite hard and confusing to control, but great idea - would be interested to see it developed and iterated on and streamlined, etc :)
Hehe very silly / cute idea, executed with charm. If I were to suggest something game design wise, I'd say that it might be better if the course / steering was design in a way that means bumping into walls rather than coming to a complete stop (e.g. like Wipeout). Just to keep the flow going, etc. But it's cool :)
Cool :)
- Nice idea driving around a spherical surface (having to explore to see things over the horizon / on the other side of the moon)! - Nice music - Game design suggestion: I found that after a while, finding the next rocket piece or fuel station felt pretty random and down to luck, because I had no information to help me. Maybe you could add 2 numbers at the top of the screen that show the distance to the closest rocket piece, and the closest fuel station. This would give the player more information to decide where to go, but leave them to figure things out themselves by exploring and experimenting a little. It would also create a natural progression from the closest fuel stations and rocket pieces, to those that are further away, later. - It would've been cool to clearly show which fuel stations have been used or not (big green lights on the active ones, red lights on the used one, etc)
Overall though - good stuff :)
Nice!
Pros: Looks good - good job with the "real" flashlight lighting, nice UI / fictional world Interesting, cute choice to make the firing sound a synth note :)
Cons: Movement is a little sluggish - would expect it all to be a bit snappier (quicker acceleration / deceleration)
Hehe, cute visuals and sound - it reminded me of Wolfenstein 3D.
Suggestions: - My mouse sensitivity was really low, to a point where it was hard to play. Another commenter says it was super fast for them, so maybe mouse sensitivity control is a must! - The rooms were pretty huge for the small number of enemies populating them - I'd recommend much smaller rooms so that there is more cover and a sense of exploration and seeing what's around the corner, etc.
Interesting!
Good bits: - Nice graphics - Interesting idea to use voice over
Suggestions: - Shows ambition at the cost of polish; I'd recommend aiming smaller next time so you can iterate more, and get the most you can out of the time you have.
Good stuff though - keep it up :)
Hey, good job on your first 3d game :)
The visuals are simple in terms of poly count etc, but are still nice and charming because it's well lit, with appealing colours and consistency.
For me the biggest opportunity to improve here is focusing on the game / level design in terms of how the gameplay choices could be made more challenging and interesting.
Regardless, it's good to hear you learned a lot - that's what the first go at anything is all about. Good stuff :)
Hehe, nice.
Good stuff: - Funny idea - Looks great, procedural animation is good and funny - Sounds good
Suggestions: - Not very clear what you're supposed to do, what you're doing right or wrong, etc. I was just clicking a constant 4/4 beat while pressing different directions the whole time, and it seemed to get me all the way to Level 13, at which point it started saying Finish Him but I had no idea what to do :/ I assume there's more to the game than i understood but I wasn't seeing any feedback on what I was missing, unfortunately.
Good effort overall though :)
- Looks great - slick and charming - Good music - Nice physics and skidding etc, but the acceleration / steering felt a little slow? Seems like it'd be great fun if everything was a little faster and more responsive - Overall, nice job :)
Hey - I checked out your game because I saw it mentioned in the blog and it has a similar take on the theme and tone to mine (although mine is like a UK version where you play as Theresa May) :)
- Nice idea; I like the idea of literally sitting at the desk and looking around and doing things from there - I like the twitter thing, to the point where i wish you did more with it! - Suggestion: it might have been cool to have the big pile of letters be letter that arrive periodically, to keep the player jumping between different things on the desk, and wonder what might come next, etc
But overall - good job :)
Nice little game - good quality art and animation, charming audio, etc! With more time / updates, it would be great to see more enemies as time goes on (to create a stronger sense of progression), and also enemies (probably without oil) attacking the sledge while you're away, etc. But good job :)
Dear @storm-force02: you can! Pressing F will hide your frying pan, allowing you to talk to people again. I'll add an on-screen prompt for this in an update :/ Thanks for your feedback!
@olowynd: Yeah it's crazy to me that they haven't integrated the fix into the engine yet - it is a shader fix, and i plan on doing it soon. Thanks for the nice words and glad you liked it :)
@simple-ghost @orionk @vovin - thanks :)
@mdacoffee: i had a feeling the performance would be bad for some people - sorry about that. Thanks for taking a look though :)
@ruba: thanks - great it hear it cheered you up :)
@flukeshot: thanks for the kind (and detailed) comments, and yeah you're not the first to mention weird mouse problems... they're on my list to investigate. Thanks!
@zirrrus Hehe 30 isn't even many - you can keep clicking on that screen to continue to whallop farmers (err... if you like)
@damoy hmm interesting - i've had that too. Will investigate. Thanks for playing, glad you liked it :)
@seannoonan: cheers, and good call on adding drop shadows to avoid white-on-white text - I thought of a quick hacky way to do it and it's in now :)
:) awesome, thanks peeps @sarrixx @vasco-rodrigues @omriysh