Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → Everbrave
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | 39 | Running out of Power | Evelyn | jam | 121 | 3.85 | 3.26 | 3.88 | 3.38 | 4.34 | 3.46 | 1.80 | 3.76 | |
| 2017 | 38 | A Small World | 👥 | In Good Hands | jam | 217 | 3.65 | 3.36 | 3.52 | 4.20 | 4.31 | 3.60 | 3.23 | 3.70 |
Verified that there is only an EXE in the download, so no Mac support. Not sure about Linux, but I don't think so. Was hoping to test and rate. Maybe I'll jump on my PC next weekend and test it as I'm out of town with only my Macbook right now. Looks hectic
Pretty decent overall. I appreciate that you made a bullet hell game that somehow involved teddy bears. But to be frank, I would have expected a bit more from two developers.
First of all, thank you for the Mac version, that's pretty rare. Awesome game though. The art is nice and clean, though a bit simple. The mechanics are pretty clear and tight. I like that you kind of have to get seen in order to stop the movement of the robots in order to do what you need to do. Interesting dynamic. The sound is nice as well. Overall a pretty solid entry. Good work!
Hey there! This was actually really fun. I was REALLY hoping for a second level, actually. At first I didn't realize that it was a puzzle, but once I did I was so much more excited about it. Really cool way to take such a generic mechanic and make it interesting.
Also! You tried to play Evelyn, my game, but my link was broken! It's fixed and up now, if you wouldn't mind taking a second look. Hoping you won't be disappointed! Thanks for pointing that out for me!
Pretty interesting twist on the theme. I mean, it's not the theme, but I gave you points for being creative. The art is decent, but the photo of the ring was very jarring. It would have been much better to just throw one together in your art program, in my opinion. I can't stand photographs in games though, being an artist. Good work overall. Mechanically, i have no idea how to actually stop the guys from catching you. I kept trying to get them hung up on stuff, but it seemed to only work some of the time. The hitboxes felt kind of sloppy too, like I was getting stuck on holes I didn't actually touch. Not a bad entry overall though. Good job.
Love the artstyle! Nifty little entry. Definitely hard though.
The Mac version didn't want to open for me. Hoping to see this fixed because I want to try it.
Craig Killbane's one weakness.... Stairs. But obviously he skipped leg day, so it's no wonder he can't get up those stairs. Lol Awesome game. Probably the most fun I've had out of all the games I've played today. Thanks! Loved the story, the ninja bears that fell randomly from the sky, the fact that I was still moving and killing bears after my death. Just awesome. lol Sometimes the lack of polish is the best part of LD games. Good work here. Honestly, with such a big team I expected a bit more polish and maybe some better art, but I think it added to the charm, so no points taken off for that. Hope to see you next time around!
Well skimming the other reviews, apparently the game isn't broken, just my brain. Lol. I'm an artist, not a scientist, so I had no idea what I was doing, plus the trackpad on my laptop is stuck, so dragging dials isn't exactly easy. Pretty original as far as the science goes, but the theme could have been used a bit more creatively in my opinion. Either way, nice entry. The art is pretty nice for such a simple game. I would have expected some basic vector art for something like this. Nice touch.
Pretty cool entry. I played it for a while, and ran into a couple issues with inputs. But I think it was because my trackpad is a bit finicky. Really fun though. The art could have had a bit more pizazz, but you covered up the lack of art using an interesting artstyle and silhouettes. Not to mention the darkness. Good work. I enjoyed it.
This was really fun! And very thought out. One of the best scores I've given so far. I loved the stapler and that he had voice lines. Really great job there. This is a really relevant game and worked surprisingly well. Good work on this one!
This was pretty awesome for an LD game. The art was fantastic. I was really surprised to see so much detail in the gym itself. I half expected it to be a white room. The button mashing was kind of meh to me. I mainly did the crunches and presses because I could manage them lol. Good game! Definitely nice and refreshing. Creative use of the theme.
Way too hard for my old reflexes. I've noticed that if I can beat my own games with only a slight challenge, then that means that other players will find it very challenging. I always make my games easier than I think they need to be. When you program the mechanics yourself, they're always easier to understand, not to mention a few hours of playing while developing. Overall a pretty neat little twitch platformer. Fun idea. Maybe I'd get further with a controller. lol Or WASD movement... I can't do the right handed platformer thing.
Wow, thank you everyone for the comments. I especially appreciate the more critical feedback.
I ran into quite a few issues with the one way platforms with the engine I used, pretty much forcing me to scrap it. This was the biggest problem with the stairs on the ship as well.
As far as the jump mechanic, It has very little use, I agree. Originally it was intended to be used more and you were supposed to feel pretty helpless off your ship, but the game evolved as I went and the helpless jump ended up being simply vestigial, essentially.
I'm really surprised no one complained about the stairs on the ship yet. Or the long tutorial. But I suppose that kind of became the best and most challenging part of the game.
On the bright side, I'm digging into Unity finally to remake the game and expand upon it, because I fell in love with it over the process and want to see what I can do with it over another month or two with a better engine and some much needed feedback.
Thanks, Felix! Yeah, so the voiceovers were a last minute "Oh, I have time" feature and then it turned out I didn't have time and when I realized how hard to understand they were, it was a bit too late to add subtitles or to redo them. Ha ha. I'm definitely going to keep working on the game though, so that's near the top of my fixes list. And yeah, there's nothing left to do after 100 crystals. I need to make that more clear... Sorry about that. And man, that mining bug is still plaguing me! I've "fixed" it like 4 times now and it still keeps cropping up.
I'm planning on rewriting this in Unity (and learning to code as I do. lol) so I'll be fixing all of this stuff as I go about it as well as updating the assets, adding more variations, better animations, etc. Not to mention adding in all those feature creep ideas I had throughout the weekend.
Thanks for the feedback!
Thanks, Richard! I just graduated college for game art (primarily 3d stuff though, lol) and I didn't really know what my plan was, but I think all these reviews is evidence enough that I need to go further with the game concept. So that's the plan as of now. And yeah, I had so many other ideas that I just simply didn't have time to implement. I chose to do a tutorial instead of enemies, and that might have been a bad choice, but I felt like it will give me a chance to really polish combat better now so it didn't leave a bad taste in anyone's mouth in case it turned out bad.
Wow all these fantastic reviews! Thanks everyone! I'm really looking forward to expanding on this game. I'm already rewriting a lot of it to be more efficient and fixing the two way platform issue, which will fix the stairs on the ship and getting stuck when leaving the ship
In case you haven't heard so far and you're reading this, there really isn't much of a goal other than to collect 100 crystals, which in itself is very lame. I had enemies and NPC's and upgrades in mind as well as some very light survival aspects as well, but like any game jam project, I didn't have the time.
I've also started a project page on Gamejolt and I'll be setting one up on Itch.io as well to start releasing updates on.
Thanks for all the encouragement, everyone! I wish I could fix some of those bugs right now.....
Oh no! I am SO sorry about the 404! Earlier I set up a Gamejolt page for this and I needed to update my game files to fit their upload conventions. Well I didn't even think about fixing the links here as well, so I removed most of those links and combined them together for that page.
I've now updated the links here to go straight to that gamejolt page. So sorry about that good chunk of time with no game to download.
Gelisam, that's simply because the engine I'm using doesn't account for different screen sizes. There's not really a way around that either. I made the mistake of building the game in 1080 and I should have done something smaller that could be scaled up in full screen.
This is being fixed for the next version, but I don't believe in fixing anything but game breaking bugs in LD games, and I didn't realize how serious the size issue was until after I'd fixed a lot of other things.
So sorry about this, Gelisam. Hope you stick around and test the next update after judging is over.
@Mickey,
First off thanks for the top notch feedback, man!
Most everything you listed are things I've considered or already have planned and am working on for the full release. A world map of some sort and a minimap is definitely on the radar. I've nearly tripled the jump height and even added a second, double jump feature which really makes getting around feel more convenient and allows me to hide the telepod behind a crafting menu or something later on since it's not a necessity anymore.
While I'd love to add the ship turn animation, I'm just not seeing it in the cards. I've already started work on creating modular ship parts that can be randomized and spawned in so players can discover new ship types at all times and run into hostile pirates aboard them as well. Because of this, adding a big fancy, complex turn animation probably just isn't going to happen. Instead, I plan on building more clever sails that rotate and tilt based on the direction you're flying to give the ships a unique bidirectional function to them that just makes sense in the world.
I think the file size is so large due to how Gamejolt wants me to pack both Mac and Windows builds together and of course all the art (png's) and the audio. I have two nearly full length tracks in the game already and plan on doing a lot more for the full release. I was a little worried about the file size, and maybe I'm alone in this, but I never look at the file sizes when downloading at least LD games because I just know that they're going to be tiny. And I think once someone's already clicked download, they're probably not going to cancel it after that. Though they might leave it to download and forget while they play another game or two.
But thanks again for the great review. I'm hoping you follow the game on Game Jolt and get to play the full thing in a few months when it's ready.
@gelisam
I sincerely appreciate you going through all that trouble just to test my game! I definitely didn't expect it!
I actually just implemented a hunger and farming system last night and today I'm polishing it up along with starting work on an equipment bar. I have a feeling there's going to be plenty of stuff to keep the player busy once the game's closer to release in a few months. : )
But where is this invisible island you're talking about? Right of the crate the teleporter comes in? I haven't come across this yet so I'll go look into it. What I think you're referring to is actually a layering issue where one of the island platforms ended up behind a larger island, but the collisions are still effective, so it looks like an invisible island. If that's the case, yeah, more of a bug. But I've been thinking about turning something like that into a feature eventually if I get that far. Maybe some Indiana Jones style temple traps/puzzles eventually.
Thanks again for the review! You went through a lot of trouble to give it, and that's really kind of you.
While I seriously appreciate the Mac build, it says the zip is corrupt for me. I'll check back in an hour to see if you fixed it and I'll try again. : )
Just realized that the "Source Code" link is actually a web link. Played it. The character animation is super amusing. Not sure if it's intentionally bad or not, but I loved it. The camera not showing below the player at all is very frustrating. Also the tree branches were misleading and one was unreachable, but it turned out I could just jump through the tree, which there was no indication of. But after a dozen tries trying to get over the tree I fell straight down between two enemies and had no chance to get out. The art is cute. The music is good, but it reminds me of an old Goosebumps movie for some reason. lol. I have a feeling you didn't make it, but maybe I'm wrong and in that case, good work. It feels nice. Though a bit more upbeat and friendly tune would have maybe gave me more inspiration to play again. Good attempt. Hope to see another entry for the next jam!
Fun game; longer than I expected.
Oh man, this is awesome! Great work on this. The visuals are really great. At first I thought there weren't going to be enough options to make any gameplay feel meaningful but you pulled it off. Couldn't outrun that laser tank thing, but I'm kind of glad because it was awesome! lol Sound is great. Loved the music. Felt pretty tight and polished. Nice entry!
Really not bad. The date convention isn't the same as I'm used to, so it took me nearly 4 minutes to figure that out. And finally when I did somehow I moved the chair even FURTHER to the left and couldn't move it back, so I couldn't get access to the plant there. Pretty dark game. lol. I feel the mood was nice, but if my daughter's heart stopped, I wouldn't be just meandering around the office reminiscing about the past. Kind of fell short there.
Oh... that intro. And the skip button doesn't work. Beyond that the game's decent. Tight mechanics, for the most part. Art is nice. Good entry!
I think I see what you were trying to accomplish and it's cool. Better luck next time! Now you know one more way how NOT to finish a game.
Wow. This is awesome! I love the way you used the theme and I really love how you did the walls coming from the ground. Very unexpected. It felt a little sluggish when the paths starting getting more narrow because you kind of had to push stuff out of the way, but really great otherwise. I loved the ink draining from the well. I didn't realize the red mist things were enemies until I was nearly out of ink and it was too late though. Good work overall. Really nice feeling game.
Awesome game! I love the simple art and the story driven approach. It also took me a bit to figure out the whole computer thing. Really neat idea. The only issue is that it made me think too much, and now all these Ludum Dare games seem so pointless. XD Thanks for the deep thoughts! lol
Well the WASD controls were fine for level one then I had to go hunting for the arrow keys. Maybe just tossing the controls on screen would have been nice. To be honest, I always forget controls when I read them in the description, if I read them at all. Mechanic is really interestig and fun, but it got old fast only because of the very annoying sound effects. Even my two year old came in and told me "Daddy, stop making that BWOOOOO sound!" Lol Fun game! Hope to see your next one!
This was pretty neat. I like the art, but I wanted more. I loved the enemy ship designs and the thruster effects really sold the artstyle for me. Mechanically I felt kind of helpless. I couldn't turn my ships, or at least I couldn't figure out how, so I kind of just had to get them far enough away from the enemies so they were facing them when they got there or they would get killed pretty fast. Not too shabby for a jam though. Good work overall.