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David Yates

Games

YearLDThemeGameDivisionRankOvFuInThHuMoCo
201533You are the MonsterI Hungercompo6072.972.783.373.602.233.3467

Performance over time

overall score (left axis) percentile (right axis)

Scatterplots

Fun vs Overall

Innovation vs Overall

Theme vs Overall

Humor vs Overall

Mood vs Overall

Comments by David Yates

LD33 — You are the Monster

Terror-piesed by cacciatc 2015-08-24T18:55:00

This game is very cute. I love the graphics, and the idea is fairly amusing.

The gameplay, however, I found quite frustrating. First I thought the pies were jumping away from me when I ran into them, and so I spent a bit of time chasing my own tail with that before I figured out that actually they were latching onto me and would follow me around.

After that it was smooth sailing for a bit, but then I started running into lots of niggly little collision glitches. It got to the point where I couldn't reach any of the pies in the level because fences and villagers were all standing in my way with their massive invisible forcefields (overlarge bounding boxes). And then my pies would scatter about with little apparent rhyme or reason. Maybe the collision element is supposed to be part of the game and you have to be extra careful about how you herd villagers here and there, and you're supposed to lead your pies along a careful trail (like a pied piper, hah!), but you can't herd fences, and moreover it /felt/ like the game was just buggy.

This game would otherwise be quite a pleasant little diversion, but the collision stuff really ruined it for me I'm afraid.

Monophobic Menace by defacid 2015-08-24T18:32:00

It's very pretty, and like many others I'm eager to take a look at the source code and see how the engine runs. As a programming exercise, I'm sure this was fun to make, but to be honest I don't think much of the actual game. I'm going to be pretty tactless in the coming paragraphs, but this is my unvarnished opinion, and I invite all to do the same to my entry should they feel so inclined.

This is very Scott Adams. Which is to say, it contains everything I dislike about retro text adventure games. The prose is perfunctory in the extreme (despite being written in the Year of Our Lord Two Thousand and Fifteen, when gigabytes grow on trees and the poor cast out their excess harddrives), most of the rooms are empty, there are hunger and sleep meters you have to administrate by tediously sleeping and eating, and the only slightly interesting action you can take (at the outset at least) is to defecate on the ground. I was expecting at least some variation in the act when visiting the restroom.

Most annoyingly, you have to explicitly click "look around" in every single room. And not for flavour text or any sort of imagery, but rather just to see where the exits are. In every other game like this I've played, the room description is printed in full on entry, because obviously you're going to need to look at your surroundings.

I get the feeling your game wants me to draw a map of the house in order to figure out where to go and how to unlock the locked door I found somewhere. I'm afraid I don't think it's earned that effort from me. Not when I'm 87% sure it's going to reward me with "The door is now unlocked" instead of actual writing.

A Long Night by guoboism 2015-09-11T05:22:00

I really like the style you've got going on with that opening cinematic. It works really well. Clever gameplay too.

taikun by zillix 2015-09-05T17:59:00

Innovative gameplay, great graphics and music. I was a bit surprised that there was no armed resistance to my dragon's attack -- I feel like a small amount of that at least could have made the game a bit more exciting. Nonetheless, it was fun figuring out how to fly the fake dragon.

Free Me, You Idiots! by GBGames 2015-08-28T18:14:00

Really fantastic idea for a game. Loved the humour as well. The gameplay was novel, but a little lacking in areas, though that's understandable for a Ludum Dare game. You've got a solid core though, and that's what's important.

Still, it would have been a lot more engaging with a few more elements to it. I never really understood the point of "Cause Fear" after I got that upgrade and just spent the whole game spamming "Cause Doubt" and "Call". And it got a lot less fun once I'd converted about ten villagers -- after that point, the game turned from frantic clicking into idling and waiting for new villagers to slowly pop up one at a time.

I think the game would greatly benefit from some way to lose followers after you've gained them. Maybe the good townspeople could reconvert them, or they could just lose faith in you over time.

DAMNED by NickZangus 2015-09-11T05:01:00

Great work on the graphics and atmosphere. Gameplay could use a bit more variety, and the voiceover could use (optional) subtitles (but then I have a thing about subtitles in games).

Help! It's a hero! by cvaneseltine 2015-08-25T20:04:00

My favourite thing about this game: the way everything was "a little bit" and "a noticeable amount", from the monster's stats to the time until the hero's arrival. I found that really lent a great amount of personality to the game when it would have been very easy for you to just go with boring old numbers like 90% of games would.

The text in general was great. The idea I also liked. The game mechanics didn't do much for me though. Fundamentally, you decide on a strategy: "I'm going to be cute/scary/stealthy" and then you focus on that, using what contributes to that goal and discarding what does not. I figured that out on my first playthrough, and so that and subsequent playthroughs were a case of just going with the one very obvious winning strategy. Furthermore, in all cases I got a "yup" with plenty of time to spare, which really took the air out of the sails of any tension that was supposed to build on the hero's arrival.

Another thing: scary/stealthy/cute were pretty much just cosmetic modifiers. There was no gameplay reason in any context to pick one over another, just as long as you decided on one. Your text, once again, came to the rescue somewhat as a differentiating factor, but again it kinda left me cold.

Vague thoughts that on improvement:

1. Have a gameplay difference for cute/stealthy/strong. I'm not sure what exactly... maybe being strong lets you wear more disguise elements or something.
2. Find a way of preserving the tension on the hero's arrival. Maybe it would be a good idea to find some reasonable way of leaving the player in suspense about whether their disguise is good enough -- although it might be tricky to balance that with giving the player proper feedback to keep the game playable and fair.
3. Show the hero coming into the dungeon. I'm sure it was just as a result of the time limit, but I really felt that that was sorely missing from the game.

The Monster Files by Literal Games 2015-08-31T19:26:00

First of all, really nice polish and effort on display here. Loved the art and the quirky little stories.

The gameplay I wasn't totally happy with. The adventure part kind of has that all-too-typical adventure game story/puzzle disconnect where your character is a detective who solves mysteries but all you actually do is complete errands for people and rub objects on each other until something happens. But the stories were all pretty silly, so in that way it didn't really matter as much.

The boss fights kinda came outta nowhere with no fore-warning and I found them more irritating than fun. A boss battle is to a game level as a final exam is to the term's coursework, so this was like if I spent a term studying underwater basket weaving and then got to the exam and it asked me to write an essay on Shakespeare.

But I had fun with it nonetheless. :)

Monster in the House by Jani Nykänen 2015-08-24T18:38:00

Maybe it says something about the society we live in that this is a silly, humorous game because it's about a wife beating her husband, but would be an edgy shock-value art piece if you'd switched the gender roles.

Overall a neat little game. The graphics are distinctive: very cute grotesque. It's maybe a bit on the easy side: I only ever killed my children when I specifically aimed to.

Mobs, Inc. by Pietro Ferrantelli 2015-08-31T18:58:00

This is incredibly well done. Best game I've played all LD. Great job guys!

GH4ST by Shaun LeBron 2015-09-05T14:38:00

Really cool idea, and I love that you used the original Pacman AI. This seems like such a simple idea and obvious in retrospect, but I've never seen it done before: it's brilliant and contains deep possibilities.

Terabyte by Knighty 2015-09-03T04:59:00

Graphics are nice, too bad about the monster sprites.

The gameplay is intriguing, but I think it would have been more exciting if you'd made it so there was a penalty for absorbing enemy bullets after your energy was full.

Nice work overall.

A Heart between Parts by LeafThief 2015-09-11T05:17:00

Cool to see an AGS game! Nice work with this one. I like the rhyming dialogue, even though some of the rhymes where a bit of a stretch.

Meet the Monsta by Schrodinger Games 2015-09-11T05:26:00

Love the cardboard graphics style and the voiced music. This just oozes personality, and it's a fun arcade game as well!

Anxiety : Last Night by Maxi and The Gang 2015-09-12T12:52:00

Very stylish stuff, though I think the story might have been a bit too obtuse and subtly told for most people to get it (myself included -- I only have a vague idea about what happened in the end). You've definitely got the atmosphere down -- having been in a couple of similar dicey situations with a car at night myself recently, this was definitely evocative of that.

The voice acting wasn't always easy to hear or understand, but a decent enough performance for the most part, though the main character did have a bit of an odd accent.

My other annoyance was that I kept accidentally mousing over to my other screen and then clicking the game minimised while playing. Not sure of the technical details behind this with regards to Unity, but maybe there is a way you can restrict the mouse to one screen during play?

Free Hugs Kraken by crucknuk 2015-08-30T19:02:00

All-around fantastic job. The graphics, the sound, the design, all great! I really love how quirky the story is. No idea how you came up with this.

I just think it could do with a difficulty tweak: the ships were so easy to love at first that I got a bit bored with it, and even the submarines only managed to get me down to about half my love power.

Monstr (a dating website, but for monsters) by plusultra 2015-08-26T18:52:00

That was pretty funny. About halfway through the first playthrough I was starting to think that I wouldn't find the person I was looking for because online dating is a depressing mess of awful people/monsters, but then I did. So that was a happy ending.

Smartly put together, well-scoped for a jam like this and overall a very nice effort. If I have anything to complain about it's that the randomness of the pictures was a bit jarring and took me out of the game when, for example, there was a picture of Cthulhu next to "hotwhitecentaur" or something, but I do think they needed to be there, and I know it would have been next to impossible to get enough appropriate pictures in such a short space of time.

Nice work.

Me by jofra 2015-09-12T13:01:00

Undoubtedly the biggest game I've played so far in terms of filesize. Graphics are fantastic, in a style I'd love to see more of. You've definitely got mood and style down.

Gameplay was a bit one note, though, and the theme seemed to be tied in with story rather than gameplay, which was a bit disappointing.

Host by Ferret 2015-08-24T18:08:00

This is clever. A simple system with simple rules, and very tricky to figure out, but also very fair, so you don't get too frustrated.

An easier level or two just to start the player off and ease into the mechanics would be a good addition post compo. Right now it kinda feels like you're thrown right into the deep end, and it took me quite a few goes to figure everything out, even with the instructions.

The random names are a nice touch. I got Kevin Bacon one time. :)

Crossed Paths by Karuji 2015-09-12T16:03:00

That was amusing. Very nice artwork. There was quite a bit going on in the story, and it had some nice humour. The text of the choices were a bit wordy at points, but great job overall!

Chivalry is Dead by Porcus_Pie 2015-08-27T19:25:00

I'm surprised this is only the second GM game I've played. Anyway, good effort. The idea was pretty neat and original, but as others have said the ghost was a little too difficult to control. I also didn't really like the weird minimap at the top of the screen, and the ladies moved so slowly that I almost never had to open doors for them.

A little thing: I would have preferred a plain game executable to an installer for a game this small. If you haven't done this before, GMS will create one from the "Create application" popup if you change the "Save as type" option in the file save window to "Standalone executable".

Greetings, Human by boardtobits 2015-08-25T20:24:00

That's a really cool take on the theme. I'm also very impressed by the simplicity and elegance of this game, as others have said. It's perfectly sized and perfectly executed for this kind of event.

I managed to get the council to vote in favour on hard mode, but it was quite stressful. The main challenge of the game was finding the name of the species in the giant, non-alphabetical codex: once I'd got that I had no trouble remembering and executing the greetings even for both male and female. The one time I upset a diplomat it was only because I'd clicked on a similar but wrong name and tried the greetings for that.

This game could also very easily be extended in many interesting ways. You could have longer conversations with each diplomat, you could have alien species with six genders like in an Ursula Le Guin story, and you could even make part of the challenge identifying whether the diplomat was male or female or whatever by their appearance.

Campaign Trail OF BODIES by inurashii 2015-08-26T19:13:00

That was pretty in-depth and featured for a comp game, well done! I'm probably going to have to play this one through a couple more times at least, and not just because I lost the election first time round. Reminded me of "Long Live the Queen", but with fewer horrible deaths. The prose was excellent, full of personality and not a word out of place.

If I can make one recommendation, it would be nice to see the poll stats on the main page instead of having to check it separately all the time.

Melody Muncher by DDRKirby(ISQ) 2015-09-05T15:49:00

I love this kind of music! Great job, really polished game!