The Newspaper Deliver by jk5000 2023-05-07T06:03:15Z
I liked this a lot more than I expected to. The throw mechanic is pretty dang fun. Also lol at the voice clips
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → Firespike33
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | 53 | Delivery | Volcaninja | compo | 53 | 3.98 | 4.02 | 2.98 | 2.62 | 3.68 | 4.40 | 3.03 | 3.66 |
I liked this a lot more than I expected to. The throw mechanic is pretty dang fun. Also lol at the voice clips
The exe on the Windows version is just an empty file that is impossible to run.
EDIT: Didn't realize at the time but this was also a problem with the zip
Gameplay is a little fiddly for my taste but it's still fun because of the physics and visuals. I know you ran out of time but I can't help thinking about how much funnier it would be if it had sound.
Hilarious idea for a game. Not bad.
Very fun and satisfying puzzle mechanics. I'm just not sure about the structure. One session goes on for pretty long but poses relatively little threat of failure, unless you either don't know about the height limit (like I did on my first try) or get careless and make a mistake (which I also did, since there was no red glow or anything to warn me). If the game is about getting high scores then maybe an endless mode with quickly escalating difficulty would be more fitting here, though that's just off the top of my head.
Pretty short and a bit anticlimactic (fair enough since it's the compo). I really liked the music though. Despite the song loop being really short it adds so much to the atmosphere.
Minecraft if it was good
Difficulty escalation in the first few levels is kinda crazy. It took me a while to figure out that I could break blocks and place them in the second level since there was no explanation of it. The exploration required in the fourth level had me stumped for a while, but it felt really good to discover it. Overall I love the puzzles and the aesthetic/vibe of it.
Funny bug: whenever I alt-tab and move my mouse to the other monitor, the camera starts going completely crazy.
People are saying that there should be an arrow indicating the direction to throw it, but the fact that it only gives you a *number* is the most interesting thing about this game. Some indication of what direction is considered "0" might be good though, so there's less trial-and-error. I feel like getting the package inside the target at all should count as a victory because it's so freaking hard to throw it the right distance.
@xfinkteon You have been dethroned
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The huge lightning hitboxes and the boost not working were making me rage
The basic puzzle mechanics are solid enough. But it takes too long to do anything due to the large, open level layouts and slow grid-aligned movement. The puzzles themselves are incredibly easy to figure out (probably too easy), but it feels bad to screw something up, like pushing a box into a corner, and have to go through the level again. This was my most tragic mistake: firefox_dTpjNB8VAM.png
Good ideas. I definitely should have thought of having a timer on the switch.
@ruslan-kossak Thanks man. I knew making it difficult would be a controversial decision but it has its audience lol. (I like Dark Souls too, and I also like hard platformers like Celeste and 1001 Spikes so maybe my standard for difficulty is a little high.)
@veralos This is a fair criticism that I more or less agree with. If I expanded it into a full game I'd probably make bigger and more open levels.
@fupi Thanks, and good job on beating it in under 70 deaths. I feel like space bar is a pretty standard jump button, but if I update it I will also add jumping with W.
@esther128 How far did you make it if you remember?
BTW, if anyone had trouble realizing that wall-jumping was a mechanic, let me know. I realized that some people might miss it since it's only a tiny little parenthetical on the controls screen. The first 8 levels can be beaten without it, though they would be massively harder.
@alec-cunningham Did you enable controller mode with F6?
@cavedens I'm glad that spending the first 3 or 4 hours of development on just the controls and physics paid off. I was trying to use the Celeste philosophy of super smooth and forgiving controls combined with difficult levels.
@eyedromeda Thanks. I'm not much of a pixel artist honestly, and when it came to the graphics I was mostly going for "good enough." It's something I want to improve at though.
@jimbly I agree that using the bumpers is weird but I needed the player to have a free thumb to use the right stick. I'm not sure how you would use A while aiming.
@zungryware Thanks for the detailed critique. Regarding the wall-jumps, I'm not sure if you noticed but you have fixed momentum right after wall-jumping, so you don't have to worry about ruining it if you're still holding in the direction of the wall for a moment. It's like how the NSMB games do it. Regardless I think your suggestion about reducing air friction is probably a good one.
BTW @fupi congrats on getting such a low death count. Even when I playtested the game I usually had more deaths than that lol (although I can do it in 0 now).
Not bad. I like the level design and hunting for the postcards. The main issue for me is that due to the enemies never moving, they don't pose a threat and can largely be defeated by peeking around a corner and shooting them. Some kind of audiovisual feedback on hitting the enemy is missing. A way to adjust look sensitivity would have been good since it's a bit low by default.
Not bad. I like the colorful ASCII style.
Really cool music and atmosphere, and an impressive amount of content. The wonky controls are fine once you get used to them and add to the horror element of it. The most important trick for me to learn was using backstepping to aim better, so maybe include a tip about doing that (unless that's already in there and I missed it).
Some minor issues: The reload microgame can be cheesed by just mashing all the arrow keys. The camera was kinda annoying and I would have liked to be able to control it manually, but I did get used to it after a while. The weapon select thing in the UI was a bit confusing and I would have preferred if they all stayed in a consistent order, with the currently equipped weapon being highlighted in a more obvious way (like being green). The fullscreen scaling looks really rough on my 1080p monitor.
Starts out way too difficult, especially considering the very luck-based nature of it. I did manage to beat it, but it took me quite a few attempts. Building up to it with some easier fights would have been good, but I understand if you didn't have time to implement that.
The "negative damage doesn't apply" effect is a little unclear. I would probably change the wording to "prevents self-damage."
Pretty unique concept and feels good to play. I don't like how boxes of different colors can spawn on top of each other and end your game instantly though. Also the noise it makes when your boxes reach the portal is way too "negative" - I think a triumphant sounding sound effect or jingle would be better.
There doesn't seem to be an actual ending. Does the game just suddenly stop progressing after you beat a certain level? Anyway this was pretty fun, though a reload button and a way of regaining health would have been nice.
@coatline It's not that it's too long but the game just abruptly stopped giving me more levels. I didn't see an ending screen or anything so I was a little confused.
There's not much to this game in terms of content but the unique aesthetics count for a lot.
Impressive scope for a compo game. It was a little unintuitive to access the shop/gym, but I felt like jump upgrades were a bit OP since I was basically jumping over the entire level after a bit. Not sure if there was a win condition at all, but the delivery paths seemed to break when I got to the final castle.
Nice. I often go for NES-style stuff but making an ACTUAL NES game is a lot crazier. Pretty hard but fair and the visuals are amazing. It took me way too long to figure out that you could shoot upwards or diagonally though. Also some more audiovisual feedback on hitting the boss would be nice, since I was unsure if I was even damaging him at first.
Feels like landing safety should be based on your vertical speed rather than overall speed
Some info on the controls would be good. I have no idea how to even play this.
Actually a very unique and well-executed style of gameplay, and it was pretty funny. I just wish it was harder. I had to intentionally fail on my second run just to see any of the bad lines.
Pretty cool. I had a lot of fun sniping the souls from WAY farther than you're supposed to shoot them. Look sensitivity is too low IMO and needs a way to adjust it. I ended up just cranking up the sensitivity on my mouse.
The following series of jumps is way too precise and I initially thought that I couldn't get over there (yes I know the irony of me saying this considering what my entry is like, but in this particular game it feels weird):
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Oh man this was fun. The main points of criticism I have are that I would have liked to see a preview of the building's attack range before making it, I also would have liked to be able to cancel building something if I changed my mind, and I think there should be a preview of buildings that are being delivered so you can make a few at the same time without accidentally destroying one.
Game was pretty hard until I realized that with all ship upgrades I can spam the hell out of the laser attack and kill everything. I pulled myself back from the brink of destruction this way lol
I love this, and props for giving a proper tutorial, but the difficulty curve is crazy. I was going insane on level 4 (level 5 felt much easier honestly). Admittedly I tend to be bad at puzzle games though, and at least I was able to figure it out after wracking my brains for a bit.
Not bad. The art is actually really cute and is probably my favorite part. Also I love the dinosaur mission.
Fiddly at times, but very fun. The level with the vertical tunnel of spring boards was the only one I got stuck on for a minute.
I only managed to save 4 souls. Hard but pretty fun. I feel like the giant demon thing takes too long to catch up for most of the game, and when he finally does catch up you're basically screwed. Making him faster when he's far away but slow down a bit when he gets close to you could possibly lead to more tense moments while giving you a better chance to escape. Also his killbox is kinda unclear.
Couple of minor things: Not really a fan of down on D-pad doing the dive kick since it already has its own button and accidentally hitting down got me killed at one point. Music should be much louder by default.
I kinda like that it forces you to use the map to navigate. Map text is a problem though as others have said, and the lack of any long-term goals meant I wasn't motivated to keep playing for that long.
Is this a bug? LostAtSea_DKbpmp6mx0.png
I did enjoy this but some jumps are a bit too precise, especially for how early in the game they appear. As others have said, the wall stickiness and giant spike hitboxes are both an issue. Jumping is slightly unresponsive which got me killed a lot (I recorded video with an input display to make sure this wasn't a me problem) but I think that might partly be a HTML5/browser-related issue. Regardless, it would have really helped to have some coyote time on jumping, especially since you're going for a Celeste feel.
Actually feels like a nightmare, but weirdly satisfying. Well done.
Really like the premise of this and the visuals, especially the enemy designs. It's also good to see another retro-style platformer in the contest since there weren't as many as I expected (although there are over 2 thousand games so maybe I haven't gotten a big enough sample yet).
The sluggish camera and the lack of death penalty were my main dislikes. When I was playing as Molt I just killed myself after every delivery to get back to the caravan faster. Also something is pretty screwy with the jump physics, because you can do a little double jump right after short hopping.
Gotta agree with the above. I do like the aspect of finding the right person based on a picture, but the controls and movement were driving me crazy here. Even picking up packages at the start was hard. I know you want constant movement, but allowing the player to at least temporarily slow down would have helped. Maybe less penalty for lightly bumping into stuff too.
Delivering the packages is weirdly difficult too, as one time it looked like I hit the person (I know it was the right one) and it seemingly just bounced off.
Hilariously cool concept. I was using the exe version on Windows 10 and it seemed like the eatable dots stopped appearing after a while.
@sodoj The standard one, and it's 1080p.
Pretty cool. Feels like a classic flash game and is generally more polished and complete feeling than most compo games. I had some issues related to me not understanding the gear shift mechanic and how it affected ammo, but I guess that's down to me being an idiot and not reading the tutorial (I didn't look very closely at the map and just went straight into the first level lol). As other people have said, the font is pretty unreadable, especially considering how fast some of the messages go.
Cheese aside (I was also able to get to 32 by mashing all arrow keys lol) I think making the arrows more readable at a glance would be nice. Maybe color code them and give them a more distinctive outline.
Not bad. Having enemies that move from the background to the foreground was a nice way to make use of the 2.5D look, and I liked how terrifying the last level was. I felt like throwing glasses was an almost useless mechanic because of how hard it was to aim, and there was one enemy that was a bit too erratic in its movement pattern IMO.
I don't really like how you can reset by hitting space bar. Plus if you reset while moving, it keeps repeating the moving sound forever, which can build up into a hellish cacophony.
Otherwise, while this was a bit easy even as someone who is bad at puzzle games, the puzzles themselves were pretty cool. I like how the slimes look like weird seals too. Props for having decent music unlike most of the compo games I have played.
This is insanely good. I love the art style and especially the depressed looking sprites of the NPCs when you rain on them. Also really cool to hear a soundtrack from damifortune since I know him from Battle of the Bits.
I like the idea and structure of this, being focused on delivery at day and zombie survival at night. But the zombies just pose no threat at all. I was able to just camp out at the pizza place and shoot all of them before they could get to me.
Really solid puzzle game with a good difficulty curve
Gotta agree with the consensus here. I love the atmosphere but I've never been so lost and confused
I had kinda bad performance in general, and the boss crashed my game the first time I got to it and hit it with the spear a few times.
@technoporg IIRC I threw the spear at the boss and turned it around to hit it 3 times or so, and the game locked up during one of the hits. I hadn't hit the boss with anything else.
Really wished this had more levels or something because the core gameplay was exhilarating. Love the vaporwave style visuals too.
Given the arcade-y nature of the game I felt the lack of music more strongly than in most other entries that lacked it. Still, pretty compelling gameplay and I love having an online highscore feature. The difficulty curve is a bit odd. I feel like boosting the speed and aggressiveness of the bats rather than just the quantity might have been better. As others have said you end up not having enough ammo to kill all of them, but they remain manageable because of how slow they are. (At least as far as I played. I ended up getting 10,000 points.)
I think you're supposed to opt out of graphics since you used a stock image
Big box OP
The mechanic of "you can't carry the box through your line" was not really communicated as far as I could tell. A way to slow down would have been nice since it can be difficult to squeeze through tight spaces at the current walking speed. Still, this is really fun and probably the best puzzle game I have played in LD53.
Got a highscore of 26000 after a few attempts. I love recoil-based movement so this was fun.
I like this a lot. Feels tense and claustrophobic in a good way. Really nice music too, probably the best I have heard in the compo. firefox_29XlI4LJYa.png
The atmosphere is hellish. I love it.
While the execution is pretty rough (no feedback on upgrading crossbow, no in-game instructions, all carried items drop at the exact same place) I do really like the concept of dungeon crawling and tower defense combined. The exploration is my favorite part.
@mintbreak Same. It's even in the same key.
I couldn't beat the third level here. It felt like a pretty big difficulty spike, with the guards in the big room being very hard to predict and often catching me when they were barely on-screen. I didn't know where the exit was either. Being unable to "reuse" boxes after jumping off of them made it feel too punishing to try jumping onto something that didn't lead anywhere.