Yojimbrawl! (2 Player Fighting Game) by Black Ships Fill the Sky 2014-05-04T20:00:00
Really fun to play this! I wish I had some people to give it a whirl with, but it was great in so many ways!
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → foodzilla
Really fun to play this! I wish I had some people to give it a whirl with, but it was great in so many ways!
Interesting game... I got stuck too much at the first lift and the big bat 'boss', but other than that it was moody and interesting. Just the mechanics need some improvement
Really hard... but kind of fun.
Fun and creepy idea. Could use something a bit extra, but a fun start
Good feel of the game. Pretty simple and decent overall :)
Interesting, but it feels weird (the controls, maybe, or the style of how you are supposed to interact with the world)
Not bad for a compo game! :) Controls are just... slick and clunky, mostly
I found the sidescrolling portions the most interesting. There definitely needs to be 'something more' to make this fun.
Well... beyond a couple bugs and the debugging numbers being left in... and the rather mess of the last area, it's not that bad? :D It does interesting things to you depending on how you play it...
It's a real dumb mistake on my part, I meant to remove those when I submitted and ran out of time to change it...
Great, inventive, and a strange amount of fun. :) Very silly and humorous.
Really cute game.
Doesn't feel right... the controls don't feel fun, I think is the basic problem. But interesting nonetheless. Like the theme!
Overall pretty fun game. Short and simple, but fun to play.
Interesting! Kinda fun in a simple way
Awesome game, great music! There's some bugs you have to work out, but overall a great puzzler with a lot of potential!
Looks like it could be a lot of fun, and you made a lot for such a short time.
pht49x >> I was meaning to this time around, but the compo happened two months earlier than I was ready for. The thing is, raw JavaScript doesn't get me past a lot of the limitations I've experienced with rapidly designing display effects as well as putting in music/sound.
Even pre-building and submitting a framework doesn't get me enough resources to make games that feel more 'complete' to me. :/ At the least, I'm looking to make 'small and polished'... so:
1) I need better graphical tools even just for feedback/display,
2) Better ability to handle music/sounds
3) More options in development direction (letting me pivot better or design more variety of games)
A good enough explanation for you? :D
Could use a bit of work to be really fun, has potential
As I noted in the description, I was only able to get it half done. I guess I should have just posted this on the forum? But I was interested in sharing what I did get done, since if someone had questions about the mess of vector math... I can actually answer those Q's! :D
(P.S. if I had more time, I would have had the police cars flash lights and drive towards you. if you hit it, that would have been a fail state. but since I have no working 'gameover/startgame' screens... eh)
Graphics are great, audio's good. Very cool game.
Brilliant idea!
Pretty cool atmosphere :)
The music and art is very good. Reward feedback (or at least a clearer idea that we have to 'launch' the ship) would be good.
Fun idea! Need some readability tweaks but otherwise.
I gotta make it easier :) I had to leaving the laying of note lanes til near the end, and didn't have enough time to balance/lay it out as good as I could have. But I've managed to do every sequence I think! Just not all at once x_x
Good job! Fun game.
Hell of an ambitious project! I really want to take a look at your programming framework in Github, I have a feeling I'll learn a lot about doing JS games in it! :)
I love the strange and laid-back walk animation that somehow makes and meshes with the mood of the art and music. The humor, mood, and feel meshes well. Game is simple, but definitely makes me feel right in leaning back on the couch, keyboard in hand, and moseying about (just like the character)!
Didn't even realize this was a DDRKirby release until I read the comments! It's good to see long-time people still participating in Ludum Dare, it encourages me to keep on joining these (especially after the last string of failures I had). Keep at it!
Thanks for your feedback on my game (especially the bit about the credits). That was definitely a problem I've addressed! On my game description page, plus multiple points of credits now. First time I put the game together, I forgot to put ~any~ credits at all X_x
Good luck with your latest release! It was a fun little adventure game to play. Just downright chill in the right ways to me.
Never played the reference, but interesting! Zorp!
This is a hella-ambitious game. Kudos to you guys for making this for the compo!
Really cool use of the theme. The slow loss of power makes this really urgent rush and amplifies the whole 'lost' atmosphere. The dialogue is fun and cheeky.
Thank you for the reviews so far! The tutorial was definitely lacking, and there were gameplay features that absolutely needed to be enhanced for visual/audio feedback. If I redid things, I might take the advice of people to require manual steps for the game instead of a 'push along / jump across' style of gameplay. T'was a great experiment! Being made in hellish conditions, no less.
Lastly, DRRKirbyISQ. That's a very good point on the credits. I originally put the game together and realized afterwords I didn't include any credits at all. I fixed that, but I didn't do anything on the page here! But yes, we were a team of two. He has done the music for the LD34-36 games as well :)
I really wanted a free-flowing game in this concept, and I worked with what I had. We only had time for a single song... making songs for a video game is hard. O_o The off-beat of the song he produced was a good point to establish the 'press window'/'step window'. I'm still playing around with how to make them both occur on the step beat and feel right.
I'm going to try and produce a version that tries out these suggestions (this weekend if I can?). If people find it much more fun, I'm going to put more effort into this project.
I've taken your comments and put up a slightly tweaked version! I would have liked more time, at least to split the last level in two, but I barely got this together as it was.
This is quite a lark, and very fun! Love the music, feel, and mechanics.
Whenever you get near the edge, you seem to get 'trapped' on the border and you have to actually move up into it (away from the area) to 'free' yourself.
I really love the look and mood of this game. I have a bit of trouble with the controls, but I'm not used to flipped axis verts. I just adore the look and story of this! It just feels good to watch.
Well done and well polished! I feel like the visuals could be improved, but the game feels almost perfect. Instantly fun to play.
I damn well loved this game. The design and puzzles in it are smart as hell. You really made a perfect puzzler with one simple mechanic, and did great in how you used each one and added new ones as you went.
The mouth sfx I found kind of funny myself. But having to circle around the four 'balls' is rather weird, and it doesn't mesh well with the mouse-fired directions and absolute wasd movement.
I love this little game. It's hard as baaaaaa-ad hair. But the music is so catchy and the art is so good. How did you manage to throw this together so fast? O_o
The music is interesting and I like the graphical feedback when you click on the menu items and sheep. Impressive that you made this and the other one so quickly! The music on some of the later levels feels weird, but it's just a mood thing I think.
This game! This game creates a hell of a mood! :)
I absolutely love what you've done with the theme in this game. I love the look and feel of the world, and became intensely curious to how it would transition and look throughout. You did not disappoint with how the world changed, and each phase looked stellar!
The music is extremely good, my favorite LD game theme I've heard in some time. The first one in particular is really good!
Challenging as well. The last area took me a few tries.
I've been caught in wanting to design games with more exploration in mind... at first, I wanted to look at upwards/tilebased games for exploration/adventure themes... but lately I've been wondering if platformers have a better advantage there? Something to do with the challenge of moving around, and having spaces you inherently won't go into... as opposed to top-down, where you inherently "can go NESW"...
Loved the feel and mood of this... it was an excellent change of pace on my LD exploration.
It's so cute! This is a really charming game. But I got pretty far, I was happy with that.
Thanks! :) I had pushed a single 'final' level before I realized I was slightly over time (by about 20 minutes), but it had been already 'almost there' by the time the submission hour ended and I just spent too much time tweaking it.
I'll be putting additional levels on a separate URL I'll include in the description, so people can enjoy the additional content but still see where the status of the game was at the end of the compo!
Jeremy's music added an incredible amount to the mood of the game. :) It was highly motivating in helping me design more puzzles, too.
@legavroche I was going to involve a lot more choices in levels that involve things like a) trapping your character by surprise b) requiring you to kill your character to advance or c) having to put yourself in an unfavorable position in order to complete a puzzle (like a harder, more deliberate version of ENCLOSURE :) )
Of course, these ideas might appear in a kind of expansion pack!
I'm glad you like it. I had to ramp up the difficulty a lot because of the limited amount of levels I could make. Would you believe WITHIN was actually harder originally? 0:)
Five new levels so far, not uploaded yet... but two of them are hard enough that I'm wondering about making them "secret levels". In either case, I need one more done and then I'll upload and release them as a tiny "Post Jam" release of some bonus levels :3
They aren't all that amazing compared to the original five, but I wanted to see just how far I could go...
@trusty
To those interested, I've added an additional link for 'post jam' content. Just a few more levels (most easier than ache), and a couple of secret levels that are... challenging.
The link is above, but also here: http://gwbloom.com/dev/games/ludum/ludum43.1/
You can skip the initial six levels with the '5' key... :( but I recommend trying to complete at least most of them first!
@matank I didn't write the Music, that was Jeremy/Nitacku. He was using my computer though :)
@ddrkirbyisq I wholeheartedly agree! First, on the sound effects. That's great advice (on the types of instruments)! I knew ahead of time I couldn't include sound effects for time concerns, I wanted to finish the code early enough to properly design levels. Even then, I kept on tweaking and polishing more than I should have.
I tried to design the 'sacrifice' level to finish off the theme... the last three you see in the 'post jam' version would have been there in place of ACHE, but I couldn't come up with anything for the theme in time. In the end, I really like my solution for the level SACRIFICE.
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I've had a lot of suggestion for more of an introduction to the elements (particularly I was struggling to telegraph the 'laser fields', you can tell that was a mechanic introduced late in the dev cycle). That was actually the single thing on my "wish list" when I was finishing up HURT and ACHE; 'if I had time for two more levels, I'd put one before and one after BARRIER'. I didn't even notice any of the other flaws (like the poor health telegraphing or the spacebar mechanic) until I was right at the finish line. In the end, I started using a different trick for a similar function to the laser fields in later levels.
For the post-jam content, I didn't want to adjust the original game flow, so I never added those better introductory levels (just tacked new extras on as 'bonus levels').
I will probably do a POST MORTEM in a week or so discussing these bits below. If I was going to completely redo it, I would probably do the following (just for flow!):
i) lasers - change the lasers to draw 1 through 4 lines for 'laser strength'. 4 lines being bigger and uglier and hopefully obviously fatal. I tried to telegraph it in BARRIER, but in the end I functionally only use lasers at 1 and at 4. It was too difficult to introduce the 'strengths', so I'd have to do more to work around this or alter this element entirely.
ii) health - change health to be four direct line circles of your color, instead of just thinning the body. Knock one off for each. Also properly telegraphs the laser-count damage above.
iii) ENCLOSURE - restructure this to properly force the player to confront the 'risers', and to see that they can sit on both empty and color-fill tiles.
iv) BARRIER - introduce the lasers in a previous level (3a? vs 3b BARRIER, and 3c), likely through a level where you have to grab different available color spheres in a 'common area' to change color. Introduce the pits in a subsequent level (a 3c?), with a requirement of having to grab a color that will fade. No push blocks/filling of pits on that level.
v) HURT - with the above level (3c) and laser/health suggestions(i and ii), the speed elements and damage elements in this one fit.
vi) ACHE - I couldn't come up with the design I wanted for the "SACRIFICE" level at the time, so I made one challenging level to top it off (just like with COLORSHIFT). I moved levels that were even more difficult than ACHE onto a "secret" path, and controlling the difficulty was a tricky one for this project. I actually had to redesign ACHE at the last minute as my partner had finally jumped on and tried it, and found a couple of bugs (and sent me some feedback).
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Actually, something I'll have to do is include some POST MORTEM thoughts on puzzle design in a jam. In short, it's hard! But I'd like to start a discussion on what people do for that. :) I'll talk about what I did in the POST MORTEM to come.
That's another thought... if I were to remake this in something else, I wouldn't want to do it in JavaScript the second time around. What should I use?
I want to use Unreal, but I may use Unity.
The problem is, most of the game elements are free-drawn for a reason; it's easier to work with visual tricks like "the circle gets thinner", or "the lasers combine colors". It's also easier to add more dynamic elements (such as variable size/shaped objects).
Are there any tools anyone knows of to freely draw or combine shapes/colors in Unreal or Unity? What would you use to accomplish something in the same visual style as this game? Is avoiding sprites even possible?
Pretty cool. I had been thinking about doing a text adventure some time, too! :D
yeah! Glad you were able to jump in after all.
Have been considering a 'text style adventure' from a bit ago. Might be something I'll try some time!
Been thinking about that very thing! I had never heard of Twine, so I'm curious. I'll mess around with it to see what it can do.
I love the innovation of this game! The look of this game is awesome too.
I had some trouble exiting out of this game, though that may be my computer's fault. Insofar as the game goes, it's interesting but it doesn't control very fluidly for the platformer segments.
I'd definitely suggest playtesting it and giving a feel for how quickly you can move through the battles and game.
Amusing game! I stopped receiving cards, but also noticed the "Summon Greater Demon" card just didn't work...
This is pretty cool, I have to play it again. For now, I'm pretty satisfied, it's a generally solid game :)
Love the concept of this. Besides the 'continuing' bug people have mentioned, my main wish is to know what the activities on the cards do. :) It's really cool idea and I like the concept of handling your life's choices through the accepting (and dropping) of a card.
Had a lot of issues with moving around and 'sliding' and losing control. The game itself was put together pretty wholly, but definitely look for building game control and polish! :)
I love so many things about this game! I love the music especially, the look and feel of the game is also great. I like how you've managed to implement the body double/switching in a way that feels completely original and different from what I've seen in this competition so far!
It's damn fun and I'll have to give a try at completing it later.
So cute! I found the controls a little annoying with their bodies blocking me, but other than that I had a good old time! XD
I love how perfectly this game fits both the theme, mood, and the visual style you went for. It's a fun little game and was a delight to play!
Ditto, as silkworm_sweatshop says ;) charming little game!
Congrats on the rapid work for this! Mine this time didn't turn out, so I cleaned up bugs and left it up as a tech demo.
I'm guessing Unity really is the way to go for these jams!
I really like how this game went. It was fun and cool, and shockingly impressive to get this done on your own. I can barely get the debugging of the basic mechanics done before the end of a Jam, let alone a Compo. Let alone level design and content. Great job!
This was really cool. I wanted to do a 'different' card game for an LD some time, and this hit exactly on the style of thing I was looking for. You did a great job.
You guys are finishing up too? :) I no longer feel quite as bad.
I have all the game architecture working, but I'm still filling my levels. Had a -hell- of a bad day today, constant pain.
I've finally given in to pushing post jam attempts of my work... so now I had a chance to try this! I love how creepy it is... and the "eye" things really give a clue as to how to get by them.
I might give up on JavaScript and make myself try Unity soon.
Thanks very much @csanyk! I wish I had the time to do a proper tutorial, but some of the aspects are hard to express simply... I spent a lot of time coding that teleport-enemy, for example, but never got a good place to use it to show the workings of the game
Also, the audio bug is a recent change that Chrome made in the last couple of weeks. It has effed everyone doing a JavaScript game. Maybe FireFox will work?