Helevenium by alvivar 2014-04-30T18:25:00
Amazing style and polish and gameplay. Very hard but engaging enough to keep trying to win.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → foolmoron
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Category | Score | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 🥇 | 2021 | 48 | Deeper and deeper | Press Space To Jump The Gap | compo | Innovation | 4.70 | |
| 🥈 | 2015 | 32 | An Unconventional Weapon | keyTD | compo | Innovation | 4.60 |
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | Co | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | 59 | Signal | 👥 | Trail Signal | jam | 662 | 3.20 | 3.27 | 3.86 | 2.78 | 2.22 | 3.65 | 3.04 | 2.90 | |
| 2026 | 59 | Signal | Kani Kani Te | jam | 3.33 | 3.90 | 4.50 | 2.75 | 3.20 | 1.66 | 4.40 | 3.60 | |||
| 2024 | 55 | Summoning | Etsa Djavul | compo | 90 | 3.79 | 3.84 | 4.20 | 3.17 | 3.19 | 3.26 | 2.48 | 3.21 | ||
| 2023 | 53 | Delivery | Missive Defense | compo | 2.45 | 2.25 | 2.62 | 3.33 | 2.12 | 2.70 | 2.04 | ||||
| 2022 | 51 | Every 10 seconds | Type Traveler | compo | 201 | 3.50 | 3.64 | 3.22 | 3.30 | 3.46 | 3.32 | 2.63 | 3.04 | ||
| 2021 | 48 | Deeper and deeper | Press Space To Jump The Gap | compo | 37 | 4.15 | 3.88 | 4.70 | 4.58 | 3.21 | 3.22 | 4.36 | 3.88 | ||
| 2020 | 47 | Stuck in a loop | Round Out | compo | 157 | 3.72 | 3.66 | 3.36 | 3.70 | 3.86 | 3.10 | 3.21 | |||
| 2020 | 46 | Keep it alive | Sol Tender | compo | 1.61 | 1.57 | 2.06 | 1.56 | 2.72 | 2.06 | |||||
| 2019 | 44 | Your life is currency | Baby Benjamins | compo | 107 | 3.66 | 3.94 | 3.60 | 3.24 | 3.48 | 3.75 | 3.00 | |||
| 2018 | 43 | Sacrifices must be made | Chompymon | compo | 3.36 | 2.59 | 4.04 | 4.27 | 3.09 | 3.31 | 3.09 | ||||
| 2018 | 42 | Running out of space | The Consumer | compo | 218 | 3.59 | 2.95 | 4.40 | 3.08 | 3.14 | 3.30 | 2.76 | 3.75 | ||
| 2018 | 41 | Combine 2 Incompatible Genres | Zap Herder | compo | 313 | 3.44 | 3.15 | 3.67 | 3.38 | 3.82 | 3.50 | 2.53 | 3.21 | ||
| 2017 | 40 | The more you have, the worse it is | LDAX: Ludum Dare Asset Exchange | compo | 420 | 3.23 | 2.84 | 3.74 | 3.03 | 2.96 | 3.00 | 2.80 | |||
| 2017 | 39 | Running out of Power | The Phototroph | compo | 537 | 2.90 | 2.70 | 3.70 | 2.31 | 3.70 | 3.05 | 1.50 | 3.10 | ||
| 2017 | 38 | A Small World | The Tipping Point | compo | 102 | 3.76 | 3.20 | 4.30 | 4.34 | 3.85 | 4.25 | 3.68 | |||
| 2016 | 37 | One room | Interdimensional Chrono Janitor Service | compo | 371 | 3.17 | 3.17 | 3.50 | 4.00 | 3.00 | 3.14 | 2.74 | 45 | ||
| 2016 | 36 | Ancient Technology | Primitive Things | jam | |||||||||||
| 2016 | 35 | Shapeshift | Slime Tech | compo | 360 | 3.33 | 3.30 | 3.70 | 3.07 | 3.11 | 2.40 | 2.75 | 44 | ||
| 2015 | 34 | Two Button Controls / Growing | Sumo Twomo | compo | 716 | 2.96 | 3.09 | 3.17 | 3.87 | 2.78 | 2.94 | 2.94 | 39 | ||
| 2015 | 33 | You are the Monster | Clickacabra | compo | 347 | 3.26 | 3.11 | 2.85 | 3.43 | 2.46 | 3.15 | 3.12 | 50 | ||
| 2015 | 32 | An Unconventional Weapon | keyTD | compo | 94 | 3.81 | 3.88 | 4.60 | 4.33 | 3.02 | 3.12 | 2.88 | 2.94 | 51 | |
| 2014 | 31 | Entire Game on One Screen | Super Resizer | compo | 409 | 3.33 | 2.79 | 4.42 | 4.24 | 2.96 | 2.65 | 2.74 | 2.68 | 84 | |
| 2014 | 30 | Connected Worlds | interball | compo | 167 | 3.65 | 3.40 | 4.02 | 2.94 | 3.79 | 3.20 | 2.04 | 3.08 | 84 | |
| 2014 | 29 | Beneath the Surface | Honey Bundles | compo | 745 | 2.98 | 3.03 | 3.68 | 2.51 | 3.15 | 1.60 | 2.24 | 2.47 | 71 |
Amazing style and polish and gameplay. Very hard but engaging enough to keep trying to win.
Great graphics. Controls were a big clunky... jumping and moving and attacking was slow. I guess it ends after the elevator thing?
Controls weren't the best, but I loved the platforming tricks you could do by skillfully switching between light/dark. That kept me playing all the way to the end.
AMAZING use of the theme. Great graphics, sound, humor, everything. I couldn't ever manage to make a carbonara though... I could make the others fine.
Super polished!
Surprisingly sharp and responsive gameplay. I like the attempt at a reactive camera, but it definitely needs some tweaking.
Very nice controls... using acceleration to aim the bombs feels really good.
Really good art and controls. Bubbles are spaced out well, but I had no idea where to go at one point and died.
Puzzles are simple but non-obvious. Really got my brain going.
That was so dumb and hilarious in the best way. Love the combination of a trajectory-shooter game + RTS resource mechanics. Only thing is that it was hard to gauge the strength of your throw.
Awesome idea and atmosphere. Hard for me because I can't figure out tones at all.
Doom style controls are very fluid... fun to just run around
The game doesn't capture the mouse cursor, which makes taking pictures kinda difficult. But otherwise, enjoyable gameplay and nice atmosphere.
Really cool mix of short-term and long-term planning in the gameplay. Graphics, audio, presentation, everything is very polished.
Awesome graphical style and concept. Controls for eating goats seems kinda random, I'm just clicking as much as possible.
Cool idea for visualizing ionic bonds, but the music overlaps itself and becomes terrible
Really great concept, graphics, audio, presentation, but it was pretty boring just going around and digging randomly.
Everything is top notch. One criticism is that it's hard to remember whether left click makes you go in or out.
Web link crashes :/
Hard to get into the rhythm, but when you do, it feels really good
Really cool use of graphics and physics to make basic squares way more interesting
Great lighting and controls
REALLY good presentation and content for just 48 hours
Very cool puzzle design. I like how the whole look changes when you switch animals.
Literally the cutest game ever
Absurdly good game for 48 hours. Visuals are super juicy and clean, gameplay is unique and addictive. Even the audio and music is awesome. Surprisingly intelligent AI as well.
Suuuuper fun and addictive. It's like an RTS with cool orbital physics.
Cool idea. The voice is hilarious. Collision detection with the mouse felt a bit inaccurate though.
Very cool presentation. The camera especially feels very epic. I'm curious as to how to did the mobius strip physics as well.
Glitchy gameplay, but the graphics and animation and colors were super cool and unique. Very stylish.
Weird controls, but addictive. Cool art style and audio.
This is the dumbest funniest thing ever. The super low res graphics looks really good too. The chaos reminds me of Wiesi games.
That art is mesmerizing... love the guitar too
Love the simple but addictive mechanic. Art is really polished and cute. Nice game design overall.
Great concept. I basically love anything with different elements. Simple but effective graphics, awesome presentation with the rotation cube. I wish the powers were more unique, though, instead of mostly just being strong against the opposing element.
Cool idea. I like the pillars animating around you as you move. Fun to play, but I couldn't figure out how to leak any documents or whatever. Need more time to explore.
Really cool presentation and graphics. Didn't seem like you could do much of anything with the gameplay though.
Love the music
Very nice idea with good and simple presentation. GREAT tutorializing and level design, too.
I made it to Boston!
Very elaborate, and lots of content. I'm impressed.
Nice execution on a simple idea. Check out the game "Her" made in this same jam - it's kinda similar.
Surprisingly interesting gameplay, it kept me hooked for a few minutes. I wish the boxes weren't so physics based though, it makes the gameplay kinda frustrating.
Incredibly good concept. The way the colors change as the planet rotates is genius. I couldn't get multiplayer to work though...
Great graphics and animations! Love the voice over too.
Very interesting concept. Wish you could call the guard multiple times in a level though.
Really cool music
Not sure if there was a cursor or something, but it seemed like buildings were going up in random places for me
Really like the idea here. Shooting through the center to change the bullet color is awesome and unique. Wish the presentation was nicer though.
I love the idea and the mechanics and the narrative, but the imprecise accelerative controls were way too frustrating when a tiny movement can cause you to die
I'm so mad I didn't come up with this idea. Great idea and execution.
You really feel the struggle of the Dodo when there's a tornado of pigs and goats chasing you
I played a bunch of times to see all the paths. Nice writing!
Really great execution of a simple idea. Controls and visuals and sounds all come together to enhance the mechanic. Really fun overall!
Really liked the fire trail graphics and the snake-like gameplay
Smooth and fun controls despite being point and click. Really really like the battle music!
Really surprising design. When I saw the building stuff I figured I would just plop stuff down wherever, but it turns out I accidentally created a walled city with a bordering road system, because that's what was the most effective for defense and income. The design is very impressive to create order out of chaos like this.
This is REALLY awesome in a lot of ways. Visual style evokes retro game feel, but is still unique and interesting. Audio sets the tone perfectly. But the best part is the messages after you lose. I got bored of the pong game easily, but I still "played" and lost several times to see the messages. Very effective.
Oh my god whyyyyy askdbaslhxbahscn8329rtdyfX*^%#*O&cr
Ohhh another game that uses popup windows, love it!
Super cute graphics. Good audio. Good controls and level design (not mind blowing, but it was fun to the end).
Enemies need to be more varied. No challenge when they come from the same spot.
Super awesome teleport. Slashing feels really good too.
The old school screen effect is amazing. Definitely not a fan of waiting around for dialog though.
Audio is amazing. Really great pixel art too. Controls were alright, walls were way too sticky. Overall great!
Wowww the polish is excellent. Super satisfying to collect money and try to grab a new car after yours blows up. Physics and AI and everything is also perfect.
Really like the shadows on the asteroids
Wow did not expect a clicker for this one. Super cool. Love the controls, GREAT in-game tutorializing. I played for way too long (beat the game though).
Cool idea, good graphics. Guy should definitely move faster.
When the popup resizes, let go of the mouse and let it do its thing! It will stop animating at a certain size and then you can keep playing.
Gah, I was afraid some browsers wouldn't let you go shrink enough. Oh well, try Chrome if possible :)
I just pushed a fix that should make the game work with Safari's window size limitations. Let me know if there are more problems! Chrome is still the best to use though :P
@johnbrynte What's the other browser game? I knew other people must have used the browser windows but I haven't found any.
@Wertle You just keep going until you run out of "resize energy" (yellow border around screen). Thanks for playing!
@dunin Yes I've seen Hop Slide and I love everything Managore does and he's amazing and I hope I can be 1/10th as awesome as him one day .__.
Love the music for real!
Nice clone of This Is The Only Level! I would've liked the jump to feel better (it's hard to control) but otherwise it's fun.
Excellent graphics and audio. I like how you have the balls moving around between games to focus attention and make it slightly more manageable.
Wow... this is seriously incredible. Excellent use shadow and light and level design in general. The transitions were soooo good (some even better than Antichamber! but some were a bit rough too). Just SO much interesting content, really well executed, and even a cool narrative. All in 48 hours?? Insanely impressive.
Audio and graphics are simple but they set up a great atmosphere. Game is too slow/boring at time though.
Controls are a bit unwieldy, but it's fun and unique overall!
Voice overs are very effective. I legit cared when the characters died.
That first reveal is so good
Funniest thing I've ever seen
Oh my god this is exactly my kind of game. Flawless execution. Graphics were mediocre, sound was alright, music was awesome (but too loud), but let me just tell you how I played the game.
Started it up and started jumping around and swinging. At first I was really frustrated that the platforms were so random, but I was determined to get up to the eye and slash him to death. Got up to the eye and tried to hit him and I just bounced back like nothing. I must have done something wrong. Tried for a while to no avail. Then I wondered why this sword was an unconventional weapon at all, and noticed that it was transparent, which was really surprising (I also didn't really read the text at the beginning). That got me thinking about the meta stuff, so I tried moving the window around, but it didn't move, which make me realize that the border of the window wasn't an actual window border. Clicked the X and saw the highly satisfying animation. Good stuff.
Improvements (other than graphics) would be to add more layers of meta - like you close the window and something happens, but then you have to close the process in the task manager or something to REALLY kill it.
Graphics are suuuuuper cute, but also sinister, which makes for a great atmosphere. The music matches it perfectly, dark but with a cheery melody (Castlevania-ish), and the dark clouds behind the windows parallaxing adds to the feel as well. The characters and pillows are brighter, which makes them stand out really well for gameplay purposes.
I didn't really like the gameplay much at all, though. The 4-button controls feel awkward, even with a 360 controller, as I never really got used to the 3 different attack buttons. I ended up either mashing any random button to attack, or just sticking with the throw. The throw feels the best by far and seems to be the most effective, so sticking with just the throw worked for me. I think it might be a lot better with just a jump and attack button, but that might be my personal bias towards 2-button controls. Still, the quick attack was annoying to use because of its vertical canceling. It felt good to be able to float in mid-air while attacking (a faster attack rate would make this feel REALLY good), but it sucks when it totally cancels your jump. The charge attack is similar, but horizontally - canceling your entire forward momentum does not feel good either. The throw maintains both vertical and horizontal momentum, fires instantly, has range, AND gives you a point on hit, so it's both the most effective and the most fun to use.
Speaking of points, they don't make any sense. I've played the game on and off for weeks and I still don't really understand how they work. Quick hits don't do anything to the score... except sometimes? I'm reasonably sure throws and charge attacks give you a point when you connect, but I've had times where they didn't give a point. I dunno. In general, the point system is just there to drag the game on for a while, it doesn't really solve the core issues in the game - which is that it's way too easy to run to the edge of the screen after stunning the opponent. The level is too small, and the stun is way too long. In Nidhogg, if someone jumps over you and starts running to the edge, you have to time to chase them down and get them, while here, there's nothing you can do beyond a hail mary throw. It doesn't have that back-and-forth tension, because basically the first person to get a stun, wins.
Well, that was almost entirely negative stuff, but I think you already know pretty well how good the presentation! And RSBS had such brilliant gameplay, so blame yourself for setting the bar so high :P
The polish on this is RIDICULOUS. The menu and the graphics and the game over sequence and everything is so awesome and detailed. Pixel art and random generation of the levels looks really great. Crazy that you made this in 72 hours. The music is AWESOME and there's so much of it, which is great (and to be expected from an audio wizard such as yourself). The guitar weapon is simple, essentially just a sword, but it feels really great because of the guitar sounds when you swing. Really good use of the theme there I think.
Gameplay itself has a lot of potential, but the core combat ends up faltering. Movement and swinging feels nice, but actually hitting enemies feels terrible because the hit range is so small that it's basically random whether you hit and enemy or whether they hit you. It's made worse by the fact that only 1 enemy in range is hit with each swing, so fighting enemies grouped together (which is very common) is nearly impossible. This makes even the most basic combat really frustrating, which means that the great generated level design and RPG mechanics you put in aren't appreciated at all, since all I can think about is the annoying combat. Building up the bar to transform is super cool though, and was enough to keep me engaged even though I didn't like the combat. But not for too long - I quit after only a couple of levels
Everything about the sweat is great. The rainbow colors contrasted with the flat background/platform graphics is really satisfying. The awesome screenshake when spraying sweat feels good every single time you click. The wet sounds and the dripping physics really convey how this strange material feels.
Level design was great - the tutorialization was nice and simple with the popup messages, and it quickly escalated into more interesting levels using the sweat "jet" ability and such. Although some of the levels had too much basic climbing where you jump up and sweat down to create a new platform. I'm glad you're continuing the game because there's a lot of cool stuff you can do with it.
The music and sounds were really great. The weird chanting was amazing and surprising for an LD game. Added a lot to that weird somber dreamlike atmosphere. In general, I'm pretty sick of these platformers with vague, spooky messages popping up as you run around, but this was done well enough that I still enjoyed the narrative.
The one thing that really annoyed me was the run cycle. I wish it was more squishy and sloppy like the rest of the graphics instead of this snappy 2-frame South Park style thing.
The simple graphics are used sooooo well. Those light graphics are awesome and you used them well to highlight the objectives of the game. The camera trailing a few pixels behind the player felt AMAZING. I know it's a simple concept, but it especially good here in combination with the light graphics. The light flashing and camera focusing on the burglar when you spotted him was really satisfying, whether you were actually looking for him, or he sneaked up on you.
I liked the one-hit-kill aspect - it took me 3 tries to beat it (that death animation is hella gruesome)! But it was really annoying going through all the dialogue again after restarting, especially since there's like 1 second before you can advance dialogue.
Gameplay itself was interesting, but not very satisfying. The coolest thing was how you used the cabinets as a means to get the player to explore the area. But after you get toys, throwing them and luring the burglar into them was not particularly challenging or fun. The baby crying was a cool idea, but also didn't end up adding much to the game. I picked up the baby once when it cried, then put it back, then beat the game without worrying about it again. Maybe if there were multiple burglars or the baby cried more often, there would be more tension when exploring? I dunno. The scripting and flow of the game was really impressive though, even though it was short. Beginning, middle, end were presented clearly and strongly.
First of all the visuals are amazing. Very unique style... the combination of the vast space with dreamlike glow and that cyber green color ended up with a really nice and striking look. The sense of scale was great, especially when you fly out a bit and you see all the trails with the spiraling loops from the moons - great moment. Music was nice and calm and fit the space setting. Some sound effects for flying around and collecting orbs would've been nice.
I used the mouse controls which were decent. Wish the sensitivity was higher. rotating with Q and E was really cool, added to the sense of scale.
What I really liked it how you just dump the player in the game. I flew around for about a minute before I realized I could collect the orbs, and then that became my objective. Collected orbs for a while until I realized they didn't do anything, but then I realized how to shoot, so I ended up shooting planets for a bit. If you gave instructions for all that, I probably would've been bored in 1/10th the time, so that was pretty successful.
Beyond that, there wasn't much to do, so it got boring. But it was nice for a bit to play around in the world.
This game probably has the highest style to substance ratio of any game I've ever played. Awesome scanline filter and excellent screenshake and particles. Audio is flawless too. But there's no substance to the gameplay at all. Even if you're going for minimal time/clicks, it would basically just be an exercise in memorization. I want to feel more of your pixels and audio, but the gameplay is too lacking for me to want to replay it.
Oh my god this is such a great idea. I literally could not get past the rapid fire because I started laughing too much. I've never seen a mechanic convey laughter that well before.
The graphics are INCREDIBLE. That inversion shader with the lamp is so simple yet so effective, and the grainy darkness adds to the claustrophobia and fear in the game, which makes the gameplay connection with the lamp that much stronger. But I think by far the best decision you made is to add color to the edge of the lamp shader. That bold use of color in an otherwise black and white style is super striking, and it makes the chromatic aberration that's used everywhere feel a lot more subtle than it actually is. A really unique and interesting look despite using such overused techniques (b/w & chromatic aberration).
Audio was all very clean and appropriate for the atmosphere/story. Although I wish the atmosphere/story was more original - there are too many 2D platformers where text pops up and tells a sad story. There's a lot more interesting stories that can be told in this format I think!
The gameplay itself was eh. The controls were awkward for me. Having 3 buttons seemed excessive. I understand why you had to separate all the buttons (can't have jump be up, because then you can't climb up a wall and jump off it; can't have attack be the same as picking up and throwing because then you can't attack when near the lamp) but I feel like instead of adding extra buttons to satisfy all these mechanics, you should've just cut down the mechanics. Especially since the combat seems pretty extraneous and not very fun. The slash isn't very satisfying, and while a "knife of whispers" is a cool concept, it's just still a regular old knife.
Actually, the platforming seems kinda extraneous as well. There weren't many interesting puzzles or exploration of mechanics (which you are usually brilliant at). Instead all the challenge felt like fighting the controls more than anything. The horizontal movement is really fast, but there's like no vertical velocity at all. To climb vertically you have to glue to a wall and climb, which is like a slow and boring version of Meat Boy. Moving with the lamp is even worse, which makes sense, but isn't fun. Moving the lamp in general was my least favorite thing about the game. Throwing it makes it go crazy and it's so imprecise, which sucks when the levels demand some level of precision. In particular, the levels always have you throwing the lamp upwards, but there's so many holes that it can slide into to fall back down, which is super frustrating. I admit that I rage quit at level 10 because I was just spending my entire time failing to throw the lamp up, so maybe there's better stuff later.
Overall I am floored by the visual style of the game, but disappointed by the gameplay and level design compared to your previous brilliantly designed games.
Really had a ton of fun with this one!
I love the Japanese freeware kind of presentation that the game has. The waveform visualization and juicy flashes and such when you kill demons is great and is enough to make the game satisfying to play. I do wish the background was more interesting - like some stuff to show what's going on in the person's head (that goes along with the mental issues that the songs represent).
The music itself is AWESOME. It sounds good and it works really well with the mechanic - with the emphasized bass and melody notes. That moment when the bass comes in in level 2 is the BEST. So good. Level 2 is my favorite in general, I think, but it kinda make level 3 a bit disappointing because it seemed like a step down.
I took a lot of tries to beat level 2 though. The way the demons come in, it's really hard to tell whether your rhythm is too fast or too slow, so it's hard to correct yourself if you mess up. I wanted some sort of "perfect"/"great"/"bad" system, or some sort of score tracker. The bigger problem though was that it's just hard to tell the difference in timing between fast notes coming in on both sides. I can't tell at a glance if I play them in sequence or at the same time, so I end up having to memorize a lot of stuff about the note sequences to be able to beat the level. I do like the floaty sine wave that they come in on though, versus a boring straight line.
Also I'm pretty sure there were some framerate problems when I was playing. It felt pretty noticeable when I was playing, but maybe that was just an excuse, because I ended up beating the levels eventually anyways. I did a lot better when I switched from a 1-hand strategy to a 2-hand.
Overall really fun with great music, needs more visual effects, and the note timing needs to be a lot more readable and precise.
Aha I knew I couldn't have been the only one to think of an idea like this! I like your execution though, the theme is cool and makes you actually feel like a (fake) hacker and the little dialogue that pops up is fun. I think the difficult is nice, but the debugging mode is kind of a boring powerup (it's not fun to watch things frozen on the screen). Also it needs Dvorak support :P
For some reason, the game was really chugging in my browser. Still playable though. Pixel art is simple and does the job. The monsters and mice especially were cool. The dark corridors make the eyes closing gameplay interesting I like how you can "see" the sounds with your eyes closed too. The movement controls were slow, which wasn't very fun, but it definitely added to the fear when playing. But it also made me quit playing pretty quickly.
Finding the Gorgon seemed kinda random and aimless. I just walked around until I saw her and then reflexively right clicked and tried to kill her, and I think it worked? But then the game continued and eventually I was killed by a thing. I wasn't sure if there was more than 1 Gorgon or what exactly I was supposed to do after that.
This is a lot like my last LD game KeyTD (http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-32/?action=preview&uid=36186) but way prettier and nicer! Graphics and audio are great. It's too easy though, I went through many waves with no danger of losing a life.
Oh my god this is the best thing ever. When the camera started pulling back in the first level, that was enough to get me excited. But the way you escalated it was brilliant and hilarious. Funny and impressive!
The low poly look is excellent. The bright colors really work and the perspective makes it looks really nice.
Got 126. Great graphics and presentation, minigames really had that snappy Warioware feel!
Genius in every way. The real life photograph graphics especially.
Very awesome aesthetic! I love that it's a relaxing and passive experience, but the controls still feel really nice to play with. The way the trees grow and start to bloom colors is very mysterious and satisfying. Glad I played to the end. Very emotionally effective game.
I hope you realize how addictive this game is. You should totally polish it up and sell it!
The graphics are really simple but stylish and work perfectly with the gameplay. There's just enough juice in the grazing and scene transitions to make it super addictive and satisfying, but not distracting.
The worst thing is the music... it starts up too slow and ends up being annoying since you hear the same thing over and over. You should have really upbeat dance style music and have it continue on replay instead of restart.
I really wish I made this game though because it's so simple and good!
Realllyyyy beautiful. My favorite thing is how you created the aesthetic based on your memory of Downwell instead of the actual thing, which led to an interesting look where red is a really common color (whereas in Downwell it's actually pretty rare).
The turn-jump controls are really interesting. Makes each move a balance between control and speed and progress. It's kinda like a golf mini-game in each and every button press.
I wish there was some sort of escalation to the difficulty though because I can pretty easily just keep going forever with my combo climbing higher and higher.
First of all THOSE GRAPHICS. The non-clearing camera trick is SO GENIUS. It makes a simple square moving around look so awesome. The jumping gameplay is way more interesting than I thought too. Only being able to turn around with a wall jump is really cool. Shooting send you backwards is also fun and reminiscent of Divekick's controls. The audio seemed a bit out of place though... way too bleepy vs the dreamy smooth feel of the graphics and background music.
Graphics are really nice, audio and gameplay is all solid. A bit too easy though, you just load up on lasers and you're immune to aliens, and then you can build up to 10 people and just chill while collecting energy until you have enough for the rocket.
Adorrrrrrable animations oh my god. Best pig butt in gaming. The music fits great too. I wish it was more difficult though, or you could eat the chefs after a certain point!
Hilarious idea. There's not much beyond the initial humor of the alt and F4 buttons though.
I think this is definitely your best game so far. The graphical style is really cool and makes the low-polygon stuff look really good. The ominous music really fits the "beginning of the world thing". But the volcano animation and the particles and the moss growing and turning into land is the coolest thing for sure. I really like growing a bunch of volcanoes at once and getting a really loud sound effect...
Great idea and overall execution looked nice, but it's really unplayable without a restart button. I only played like 4 times due to that.
Love it. Reminds me a ton of classic arcadey flash games like Squares 2. You nailed the feel of the gameplay and the graphics and especially the funky background music. Gameplay was too shallow though and the level progression didn't add much, so it didn't keep me coming back.
I like the day night cycle! It's similar to my Clickacabra game from last jam and it provides a nice flow to the game. Animations are hilarious and it's really cool to see the different NPCs running around. It's not very satisfying to play for too long though since there's not much feedback to your actions (either visually or gameplay-wise).
I loooooove this concept! It's awesome seeing a game made by someone who actually knows how to use UE4. Graphics were super cool and fit that horror-game-show feel perfectly (same with the music). The actual gameplay of walking around and sneaking around the monsters is frustrating though since there's not enough information to avoid the monsters. But that risk/reward concept is so good that it's fun anyways.
I don't think it's possible for me to comprehend what I am experiencing but I can tell it's really incredible and polished. Actually thinking about it for a minute or so, I think I get it. It's cool when your mind is totally blown one minute and the next it all makes sense. Not sure if that was intentional but I really like this overall.
Those are awesome ideas Taro! I might actually try the gravity bending the background thing...
But yeah the physics are pretty random right now so it became more of an action game about finessing the slime around the board. The shapes start cooling down once there are no slime particles inside them though.
So delicious
This game is so adorable! I actually really wanted a control system like this for my game but I couldn't quite figure it out. I think it's a bit too rigid, though. It still feel like a bunch of individual mesh vertices that you are moving around, instead of a globby mess. So trying to drag a "limb" out to reach a flower is pretty when lots of the dots are overlapping.
I don't know why but I killed the entire nest
I love how a couple balloons will take out the jet
Man this is infuratingly good. Randomizing the shapes each time is really smart. But I think it's overly mean and mentally painful to have some shapes be "up" by default and some shapes be "left" - it's super mind bending. Animation and presentation and everything is great too.
Best graphics I've seen in LD for sure
Anti-games only work when it's clear that there is a lot of effort put into the joke/parody, so this works super well. The text is perfectly captivating and dumb, and little things like the movement being diagonal-only add to the humor. The graphics are great as usual and the music loop is super addictive. Even though it's designed to waste the player's time, it doesn't feel like a waste of time as a player.
Oh god that guy who just upgraded from unity 5.2, too real
THE most innovative idea I've ever seen. The graphics and colors work perfectly to identify the obstacles in the platformer too. Controls feel a bit float and imprecise though.
@caranha You can click the timeline slider Play button and it will auto-advance!
Wowww that is so effective. The graphics and the darkness and clicking the heart and everything. Best use of the theme I've seen so far.
Super adorable! The audio and graphics were great, really felt like an oppressive frozen environment. The controls were really interesting too. They have just the right balance of finesse and being out of your control.
At first I thought it was too simple, trying to be too much like Papers Please, but the burger stacking and change mechanics were really well done and made for interesting gameplay.
Amazing execution. The control and animation of the feet perfectly evoked the feeling of tip toeing and trying to avoid doing damage.
Realllyyyyyy cool idea. The day/night cycle is surprisingly detailed and makes the repetitive walking feel interesting and strangely productive. Especially the night sky with stars. I wish you could walk freely though instead of in set chunks, but I understand why you did it that way.
One of your best looking games ever. The fixed camera position makes it feel like a documentary kind of thing, and emphasizes the helplessness of the snails. Waves feel really intense and scary.
Acceleration on the ball feels really good. That weird frozen crystalline shader is awesome and looks really good from a top-down perspective. Definitely wish there was more to the gameplay, some platforming or something since the controls could definitely work for more complex stuff. The music is David Wise-esque to me which is cool.
Really fun. Reminds me of my LD30 game Interball, but actually fun! I think the rotation and gravity is a bit too slow given the frequency of the beats though - it was hard to get the balls moving when you needed to get them out of a red area. Also the waveform graphics on the outside of the square weren't working for me.
Brilliant water effect. Graphics remind me of Metamorphabet and Hyper Light Drifter. Really cool day/night loop that keeps you engaged in the environment. Wish it were longer!
One of the best level designs I've ever seen in LD, most people just make small things since they don't have time. But this feels real and natural and interesting. Awesome dreamlike visuals and clearly-effortful low-poly. Packed with surprises and secrets which is unique for LD also!
Suuuuper cute game. Great presentation overall. Really wish the mouse sensitivity was higher, or you just had a free-floating cursor that you could click around with for more responsive movement.
Excellent presentation. I actually liked the repetitive music and sounds, and the graphics were very cool. The tutorials were great, love the humor there. My main issue is that while there are 8 levels, there are only really like 3 truly unique levels that introduce a new concept. Most levels could be easily solved just by looking at the level for about 5 seconds, with only the last one taking me about 15 seconds of thinking. They were all variations of the same kind of concept. The mechanic is very simple and elegant - but that means you need to really explore more complex mechanics in the levels to make it interesting (multiple blocks, etc).
It's like a tongue twister for your fingers. Brilliant scrambling of player's attention and muscle memory to induce difficulty. I actually loved how as you went to the right, your keys would get less aligned. It went from a calm and easy game to a very intense one. Really wish there was a high score tracker.
I did have to close the game from the task manager though!
FUNNIEST GAME OF LUDUM DARE by far! Every joke landed. Great concept and execution. Graphics and controls were a bit simplistic which was holding it back, but it fully delivered on its premise in a short time, which is great.
Love the controls, love how a higher fall will kill the turrets instantly. Few-color outline graphics are awesome too. Retro yet unique. It's a simple game but movement is fun enough that it doesn't matter. Wish there was music and more sfx that didn't sound like default BFXR.
This was way better than I expected. The forgetting things mechanic is fun and makes the simple levels more interesting. But I really wish you added SOME graphics or at least changes the camera clear color or something so it didn't look so blatantly default Unity.
Reallyyyy cool look, especially the sonar. Really cool use of 3 senses. Walking felt too slow and the level design was kinda hard to figure out though.
Really good puzzle design, reminds me of a sokoban style game. Very difficult puzzles but they all felt reasonably doable.
Really good use of asymmetric co-op. The two characters are so different and orthogonal in their killing and survival ability that it makes the bits passing back and forth consistently interesting.
Different music for different areas and boss fights are quite impressive. I wish the controls and movement felt better since it was a bit of a pain to actually play, so I stopped, but I wanted to see more of the content.
Your best game imo. It's an insane concept but it's actually playable and fits the theme an order of magnitude better than anything else I've seen. Definitely needs more levels/gameplay and more difficulty (no bottom screen).
Also reminds me a bit of https://eeease.itch.io/marble-madness-2-crte
@SammyB That's not a glitch :P there's a reason I made the scales log10
To the moon!
@notpresident35 The idea is that the bigger your wealth gets, the harder it is to maintain as it slowly drips away, and also it gets more boring/pointless
@hypp I definitely wanted to add events and things that you could do to affect the price, but I ran out of time. Multiple currencies is a great idea though.
@Anonymous Yesss I was hoping for at least one response like that. I hope you at least went through my dialogue tree :P
@Anonymous Yeah I should have added an option for making money off an LD game, thanks for the suggestion. I guess my response would be like "in the unlikely event I make even a single cent off this, I swear I'll donate it all to charity if it makes you happy".
MIND BLOWING shader style. Looks super realistic even on a close inspection. Works very well with animated characters too. Gameplay was fun for a bit but I never really got into the strategy of it, I was just passing out gifts that seemed okay. I can see how there is a deeper strategy involved with winning with 12 people, but the game got too slow and repetitive to make me want to explore deeper.
INSANE amount of graphics and effects. It fit the theme really well, since it's all great art, but it's such a mess on the screen that you have trouble playing it as you advance in difficulty. Art style is really cool and doesn't feel like a standard pico8 game at all (even your other games). It feels like you unlocked some secret palette colors or something.
Graphics and physics works out pretty nice, but I found it was easiest to just avoid the snow altogether instead of trying to make it work
Oh god not only is it a brilliant concept, it's actually one of the best "mash buttons" games I've ever played. The fact that you need to click on the next window makes it legitimately annoying when there are tons of windows popping up, so it's not totally mindless. Really cool story too, didn't expect that much variety in the popups. Lo-fi presentation was perfect. Only issue was that mashing keys had this acceleration that you could abuse to essentially fill out panels instantly and just mash enter to clear a bunch of panels. It made the game really easy, but still fun to follow to story.
Super hilarious game and the graphics and music sell it perfectly. It's frustrating in the best way. Only issues might be how the ingredients list is a bit too random, so getting a high score doesn't meant much, and the tomato and pepperoni looks too equally red so it can be hard to distinguish them.
Great presentation and animations, wouldn't change a thing there. The idea is great and it's fun to mess with and try to create some nice gridlock patterns, but it does ultimately come down to stacking a big row of cars at a red light.
I love the moment when the counter switches to air. Also deer animation is the best.
Took a while to figure out how to "activate" cards like Marksman. Reallyyyy awesome design once I got a handle on that, lots of strategies started popping up in my head. Impressive for how few card types there are. Controls and animations and sound was all great too.
Got 60 with 14 colors. Nice balance between skipping colors and gaining points. Though it seemed like there wasn't TOO much strategy with placing blocks - you just used columns as much as possible and worked from outside in. Also, when you get put in a bad place, it's basically impossible to recover... feels a bit too random also (maybe if you knew the next 2 colors?)
...
Really nice visuals. Good use of motion blur and tilt shifty kinda effects. Love the building destroy animation. Movement controls were definitely a bit unwieldy.
Amazing idea. I laughed so hard when I saw the stack being built. Brilliant use of async multiplayer, since it's an LD game and very few people will simultaneously be playing the game (problem with pretty much every multiplayer LD game).
The ghost transparency was definitely confusing, and also pressing up to instantly drop a block was terrible. I kept dropping them by accident to the point that I totally took my finger away from the up button and never used it. If these things were intentional to make a messed up stack, I guess that's cool, but it was annoying.
Huge respect as someone who also made a window-moving game for a previous (Super Resizer). The motion is very smooth and the gameplay gimmick of jumping on santas is very simple but provides interesting difficulties. It took until around 4 screen for me to really feel the theme, but it definitely worked well to add to the confusion and difficulty. Only problem is I closed one of the windows and as far as I could tell, couldn't get it back.
Suuuuuuper cool game, as a fan of mafia. The fact that there's so much nuance from just the 1 simple rule is really impressive, and the presentation works to add nuance. I like that the characters are all pretty similar looking, so you really have to pay attention and use your markings to keep track of who is innocent or not. Definitely needs polish but the foundation is totally solid and effective.
Balance is good, if you get a tower early, but otherwise kinda difficult to catch up. Animations and feel are great though so it's fun to replay.
Pretty unique lo-fi aesthetic, works really well!
Gameplay was pretty addictive and tense. I beat the last 2 levels with 2 health left....
Really sweet game. Graphics were very cool and made it feel very claustrophobic. It was hard to read a lot of puzzles at first, but none were confusing or frustrating. I beat all the puzzles, and it was mildly difficult, but towards the end I feel like it leaned too much on throwing a ton of connections for you to untangle. It was always pretty easy to work backwards to figure out which gems needed to go where. The timing based ones with buttons and ones that required you to hold onto lots of gems and risk your life were the most interesting.
Finally got all 10 after a few tries. I love how all the pills have different effects and they are placed in varied locations there's actually a real strategy to routing so you can actually get them all (super rainbow pill needs to go last, the cursor-warping one also needs to be before the bathtub and other hard to reach ones). Excellent music and modeling and effects.
I thought movement was kinda slow and boring until I got to the purple world and lost a bunch of stamina and became godlike. That was pretty awesome actually. Really cool idea, even if the graphics were basic and it needed music.
Creepy/discordant music makes it sound cool and alien. Flat color aesthetic makes it look like a modern art painting or something. The way the turrets stack is really interesting and the number of them is daunting but also manageable. I like the recharging health, but you can kind of exploit it by leaving 1 turret alive while you recharge. The flow of attacking then dodging is pretty addictive for a long time even though the gameplay doesn't really change.
Art and concept is A+++. I really want you to make this concept into a big Metroid kinda game. Stacking abilities is always the most fun thing in those games, and the literalness of this makes it really interesting. Like instead of Morph Ball to go into tunnels being a separate ability, you could just remove your other powerups to be able to fit. The copter mod here is the worst though. The physics are so finnicky and heavy and slow, not nearly as fun as you would expect that ability to be.
@arthridas thanks, I nearly forgot!
@pennycook That's a really good idea. You do have some leeway when clicking on new words though, you only start losing lots of points when you make 3+ mistakes in quick succession. But I also want the player to have some feeling of skepticism and uncertainty, as you should when consuming any new media.
@aeveis Ah weird! I do know there are some other issues with text spawning after you restart a game too. The timers are messed up or something. I think I'll fix those things for the post-jam version.
You do have the high score for now though :P
@fluffy-kaeloky The theme is about running out of "mental" space, attention or awareness or something. And also screen space yeah. Thanks!
@crastinator Well for this game I specifically wanted to practice with AV Pro and TM Pro plugins, and I wanted it to be adaptive to different screen sizes using UGUI, so I tried thinking what I could do with those. I noticed I could put a bunch of videos up in a grid, and it reminded me of how we mindlessly consume so much media simultaneously nowadays, and how it steals our limited attention, etc
@mike-inprinciple You're not reading too much into it at all. I think the main thing is that none of the content in the game is mine. The videos are from a generic list of public domain videos online, and the words also come from a related-words API using the tags of those videos.
The moral that I am trying to instill is that we naturally consume a ton of random media nowadays, none of which is neutral at all, and it takes a concerted/serious/difficult/uncomfortable effort to sort out what you actually want to internalize and what is bad.
One of the videos you got was probably about racism (there's a few listed in the JSON) and it took a lot of your mental space (attention) which hurt your overall experience and ability to continue watching. That's the point when you should turn off the TV. But then you miss out on all the other info and you are deemed "ignorant" or "uninformed" or whatever. That's pretty much exactly how I wanted it to work.
pppsh screen resizing, so unoriginal. Though this resizing is super nice and smooth compared to the browser window resizing I did. The literal screenshake is very satisfying, especially when reviving from a small screen. Did you need to freeze the game when shrinking though? It sometimes interrupted the gameplay and didn't feel too good. But the freeze when reviving was great. The level design is cool and has a good layout with the powerups making you feel pretty powerful by the end. But the physics felt pretty weird, particularly the double jump gravity and any time you touched a platform (the final boss was really weird because of this). Art style and music is great, etc. Although there is a frame in the idle animation that has this one pixel that kept flashing...
Really interesting mechanic. It ends up being way deeper than you expect. I like how the early levels are very restricted but they still take some time to figure out. It really makes you understand your options better in the more open ended levels. But I do think around level 5 it became daunting, like you didn't know where to start. I also wish you could do multiple ice breaths at once, or at least it would move faster and get off screen so you could shoot another one.
Absolutely genius using the same mechanics for each minigame, but totally different art. Makes them feel totally different even though the code is probably the same. Super cute pixel art that has interesting color palettes so it doesn't look like every other game out there. The multi-frame hand animation is so cute for some reason. Music is also adorbs.
Crazy enigmatic game. The use of MS paint style art and ascii is sooo much better than it has any right to be. I love the control of the car and especially how you discourage going off road, but still allow it. The world is cool to discover, but once you get a handle on it, it definitely starts to feel more tedious/time-wasty. That's what sets apart the really nice metroid-style games, when backtracking stays interesting. The different genres of music are great but they still have the same creepy tone to then. I stopped after finishing the campfire person's quest (damn you for that btw).
Also I just played your Between Stations and it's so damn cool, wish I saw it before making my game.
REALLY cool atmosphere. I usually hate the pixely 3D effect but it fit perfectly here. The intro camera zoom was amazing. The muted colors made you understand the setting instantly. The wireframes in the sky were a really good touch too, evoking constellations. The music was perfect and set the mood so well, I wish you made it yourself so I could rate it. I like the concept of the writing but I think it could have delivered the message better. I think even among the few interactions here, there are still capitalist effects in play (for example, Croatan is still beholden to the refugees and social reputation, not exactly free). Exploring those conflicts would be interesting.
Incredibly fun game. The graphics make the simple 2D grid was more interesting than it should be, but they are not distracting. It's very easy to zone in and get into the game. The mechanics have just the right amount of confusion with the colored directions, so even if you're fast you still make a mistake here and there and slowly bleed out and lose. The end game when you just have a quarter of the level left gets really intense and fun too. You have to be perfect or else it all falls apart. I think the rules for going across colored blocks could be more telegraphed though. I couldn't really tell intuitively whether I could go across a block or not, even though the rule itself it pretty simple.
I thought it was both too easy and too hard. You could just wait for the wizard to charge up and then run straight at him and attack and it would be really easy. But if he spawned in an unlucky spot, you were basically screwed. So it was either super easy or impossible. Still, I got to level 4 a couple times. Overall it's addictive as hell and the lazer beam graphics are really cool, which is enough to make it enjoyable. Audio was a bit sharp/garrish. If you start at a lower pitch and arpeggio upwards, it can sound a lot better.
It's a lot like my KeyTD from a few years ago (although mine had AZERTY and other layouts :P)! Great graphical concept and pun though. I wish it was easier to see where the bugs were, and the keys mapped better to real space. Right now it was kinda tricky to hit a bug just by using your keyboard muscle memory. The cooldown for attacks made it feel less fun too, and still spammy, even though the idea was to limit spam. Sweet music too.
Absolutely brilliant shader. I want to play around with it forever... it actually wasn't too confusing to navigate and read the levels either despite it all being a mess of lines and constantly changing. But the controls were really weird. Super sticky, and I would keep moving and jumping long after releasing the button. I got stuck a few times too and had to restart, and I would've kept going to try to get out, but the controls were too annoying.
Amazing VFX, it feels really retro and Thumper inspired but still very unique and fresh. Music fits great. I like how it looks like a rhythm game but it's not really. The fact that you can't control how high/long you jump kinda ruins the gameplay though. The perspective makes it really hard to figure out when/where you're going to land too.
Graphics and narrative and the presentation in general with the cutscenes were amazing. I'm gonna try to just say things that others haven't yet, but overall it was suuuper nice.
First thing is that the music is awesome but I don't think it really fit the game or the areas too well. Area 3 fit really well actually, but 2 had a really magical/coroful kind of vibe that didn't fit the simple greenish environment.
The water in area 2 was hard to read which direction it was going. Also I think there were a couple that animated in the wrong direction to the force.
The levels were generally cool but most of the obstacles were just waiting/timing, which is usually dull when you succeed and frustrating when you don't. The timers not being reset on death added to that too. I don't want to say that the gameplay was too basic, with the dash and climb powerups being really standard platforming mechanics (Celeste uses the same ones for example)... but it didn't feel too new or interesting to get new powers. This also largely contributed to the lack of "sacrifice" feeling. You're not really losing much with the color, and you're not really gaining much with the mechanics. The narrative metaphors of the mechanics were cool but it wasn't really expressed in the gameplay, just the cutscenes.
I love when your games are exceedingly British and this one is definitely the most. All the voice acting was amazing and I truly hated Rad Boar Jr by the end, but Atmos' audio was definitely the standout. Probably the most impressive thing is how everything came together so seamlessly to become much more than the sum of its parts. The art and the cutscene/event system made the game feel really substantial and big. I did get the true ending first try though without any trouble so it feels too simple/easy. I wish there were more rooms or variety of events (vast majority was just answering no to answers). But I can imagine it would suck to replay it since almost all of it is waiting, so it's not like I would've replayed it anyways. I can tell there is some dialogue that you get when you answer yes to the events though, so I really want to see those. But not enough to replay the game X times.
Also I only just noticed the #1 Humour medal... too bad there's no medal with that spelling
Great concept and execution. Graphics and UI layout were perfect and didn't require any tutorial really. It was a little too easy to pick tasks to do vs sacrifice though. But it's a realistic lesson that a lot of devs need!
This is the 2nd height-based sokoban I've seen this jam (https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/omelettes) but I like the mechanics of this one a lot. The different ways that the box can be moved upwards leads to a lot of Stephen's Sausage Roll style epiphanies and discoveries. Same with the box blocking your movement. Pretty much every level in the first 8 or so (other than the obvious tutorials) felt impossible to me but then I figured it out. Really masterful design there. Atmosphere was great and calming too, and the game even looked good on my ultrawide!
Love the color in the graphics and the music is one of the best pico songs I've heard. The mechanic is cool but after about 8 levels it didn't feel really well utilized. The core of it is the positional calling of the cats, which was never much of a mystery what to do. The sacrificing of the cats was just an auxiliary to the calling. All you do is identify what spike needs to be a floor, and sacrifice the cats there. It's very straightforward and simple in a way that makes the sacrificing feel more gratuitous than an essential element of the game.
Must make number go up...
Running around the maze to get arms was pretty addictive but also pretty aimless. There were doors that required X arms to go through, but the first one I ran into, I already had enough arms, and there was a head right after it. There weren't really any decisions to make. But the run speed kept it fun. Audio was definitely effectively creepy too.
I love this take on the theme where the duck's life is currency. The minigames really felt like warioware, and the graphics and audio were super Yoshi's Island which I haven't seen in a jam game before. The best was the hammer game where you really get into a flow with the mouse and spacebar. I wish the game wasn't so scripted into 3 games and instead had an upgrade system where you tried round after round to get to the moon. It would've worked really well, being able to upgrade all 3 minigames separately and trying to balance them to optimize inflation. Still, the current presentation works really well.
Prob my favorite game that you've made
@caranha Yeah trying to get it to work but ECS keeps crashing
Thanks all!
I forgot to add to the controls that you can **SCROLL** to zoom in/out which you need to do as you grow!
Really awesome take on the theme and good implementation of the economy. The ears being useless gameplay wise but easy to collect made for a nice grinding loop. Although I found it pretty boring how in the beginning you're basically forced to grind for quite a while before you're able to advance, since the cost for being hit is so high and it takes so long to kill one enemy. But then once you start building up your weapons, it quickly becomes too trivial since you can kill enemies way faster which mean you gain way more parts which means getting hit is way less costly. By the time I went all the way to the pit on the right, I had so many parts I couldn't even keep track of them, and the only difficulty was fighting the physics of the elevator and getting pushed around by enemies spawning on top of you. That wasn't very fun. I think the game could've definitely benefited a lot from a tighter platforming and enemy spawning/AI system. But the core loop kept me playing for a long time though. The dialogue and presentation really sold the concept too.
Really impressive how much gameplay you got out of some simple rules. I got to level 10 with 4 gems. Your weapon = life system is very similar to Roguelight, and it works really well. I thought the most interesting part were the shops though. You were constantly making decisions to buy or not to buy upgrades depending on whether you wanted to save up or not, and also based on your maximum coin amount. It worked really well, up until around level 4 or 5. There, the scaling of the costs and reds felt like it ran away too far. I stopped buying upgrades since they were too expensive, and the majority of gameplay was just running away from reds trying to find the next staircase. Having a multiplier or something on the coin intake as you went deeper would help that a lot.
Really nice presentation that creates more questions than it answers, in a good way
So sick. I thought it was going to be a little demo of your effects but it turned out to be a fully choreographed music video. The mix between dynamic beat-based effects and the hand-placed effects was really good. It all seemed really intentional. The song itself was very well produced, but I do wish the lyrics were more clear so we could get a sense of the theme.
The presentation and simplified rules make it fun to try the game out, but the complexity of the game of life rules make it hard to predict the best place to play. It might be easier if you are very familiar with the game of life rules, but I think the main issue is the grid is very high resolution. So putting a stamp at position 20,30 vs 20,31 is hard to evaluate, but it can have massive implications. Overall it was fun to try to make the most active culture though, even if you didn't really know what you were doing.
I got to 3 mil :P
Very interesting perspective for a story. I think you handled the writing really well not to glorify or too greatly identify the player with the character, but still provide a clear motivation and goal to achieve. The disaffected casual writing was especially effective.
Love everything about it! The tiny resolution, the real life inspiration, the tutorial title screen (even though I got stuck trying to make the BABY part towards the right). Initially I didn't like the sharp/blatant pixel art as much as your other games either, but it does add to the cohesive feel of a little toy.
I also really like the actiony feel of it, where you can do a lot of interesting moves if you time things precisely. It feels a lot less like a puzzle in that sense. But that also makes the baby feel either too fast, when you're stressed, or too slow, when you just want them to crawl to the next block already. You can click off the game to pause it which can help make things less frustrating, so maybe having an official pause/slow/fast option would help.
Levels were lacking but that's understood based on what little time you had. I locked the game up trying to warp the baby inside the square though, so a restart button would've helped.
Also the most genius thing ever is being able to crawl over spikes. Total subversion of game literacy that makes total sense physically.
The crystal movement is really good, seems natural and also robotic in an interesting way. I like how there's no functional difference between the red and blue crystals other than you can control the blue a little bit - so the result ends up being basically the same whether you are touched or not. Like you as the player aren't really that important in this natural system, it's gonna go on or stop regardless.
@aeveis Thanks dood!
@ruthiepee I never really crystalized the gameplay but it was going to be about using your ship's gravity to pull asteroids into suns to keep them burning, and then maybe there's multiple suns you have to balance, and eventually you can "harvest" a sun to add to your other suns, or create 2 new suns
Ran into an impossible one at level 7 on 1.0! No issue on 1.1 though.
The trail is crucial - it lets you instantly identify whether you're retreading your steps, which eliminates the most frustrating thing about these puzzles. The time limit raises the pressure nicely, but there is a high cost to making the wrong move, so you don't end up frantically mashing and it keeps the tactical feel.
The biggest issue is that it felt like I could go on forever at my average pace, except every 10 or so there was an especially hard level which got me close to losing. So most of the time I felt like I was doing really well, but eventually I got a level that was a lot harder and lost, seemingly randomly. It didn't feel like doing well on previous levels helped at all.
SO CUTE. I liked how each one had a pretty unique "class" that described them (especially Veteran). The AI was really solid and made it feel like these are real creatures. The books definitely helped to make you explore around in the beginning, but towards the end you had to stick together to survive. There didn't end up being too much strategy overall though. When you're all together, you can overlap the shields and the different anibuns don't make too much of a difference. Would love to see a full adventure game where the different strengths could be used more.
Such a perfect concept and good realization. I really wish there were more options and ways to play around with the terminal, even if the ending was the same. As it is, you just get railroaded down the path instead of feeling like you took yourself there. The punchline is still so good though.
I thought it was gonna be too easy then the meteors really started coming down and it was really intense! The gun fires a bit too fast though so it almost acts like a laser, you can hold down the mouse and just run around the planet and kill most meteors. I loved how populous the planet was at the beginning and it eventually gets reduces to one little bunch that you are dedicated to protecting, but I wish there was a penalty for meteors hitting elsewhere on the planet, so you had to choose between your last little flower and the planet.
Awesome concept and great execution with the blueprint style colors. Controlling the circles is very smooth and the physics made a lot of sense. There was a bit too much trial and error in timing the rotations of the circles though, but it was zen-like enough to not be frustrating.
Awesome execution. Just a really good snake variation, not anything missing or anything I would change really. I like the animation on the grid tiles and the subtle effects on the red/green blocks. It's a great example of what juice should be, not super distracting. The 2 game modes are pretty interesting. A is more coherent, but I like the look and feel of B since it's more "loopy".
I got the end I think? The game ended! Nice atmosphere and colors. It was always clear yet mysterious where to go next. Sounds effects had a bit too much of that harsh/raw bfxr sound, and were repetitive, could have used some rounding out there.
The audio is awesome and the children's book style drawing fits really well. It captured the PT-style mystery and puzzle that you want to solve, but eventually I stopped since I had no real hint of how to proceed.
Great execution and style as always. The concept is simple but I think it's highly elevated by the input-based rewind which can desync. It leads to some frustrations but also some fun situations that wouldn't be possible otherwise, like the elevator puzzle.
Atmos music is a banger as usual and kept the energy level high. I did wish there was some other audio though for common things like jumping and restarting.
Controls were fi. I used a DS4 so all the buttons were very intuitive. A frustration was the corner collisions when jumping. Kept hitting my head. Softer corners would have added a lot to the agile feeling here imo. But the ease of restarting made everything feel really nice and fun. Little punishment for failure, but still a great feeling of accomplishment when you beat a level. (Really liked how the levels were all inter-connected too.)
Stopped at the elevator puzzle after trying like 5 times and getting within like 0.2s of making it. Too much highly precise setup required for that one, which negated the ease-of-restarting fun that the first few puzzles had. That's not necessarily bad though, since it's still feels pretty zen when you mess up. In general it did feel like the difficulty was less about figuring out a puzzle and more about quickly executing a series of precise steps. That's cool, but I would like more control over the platforming and resets (e.g. reset at specific time, erase a particular reset, etc) to avoid frustration as difficulty increases.
Really awesome VFX and mechanics, but I think it was missing some low-hanging fruit to make it really feel cohesive. Main thing is that you couldn't move while shooting, which means you were mostly acting like a turret in most levels. A big part of what makes Isaac fun is the frantic movement around, so I wish there was something more to that, maybe a dash or something that you could do in between shots. Also, there was no way to upgrade your gun as far as I could tell? Upgrades for damage, AOE, or fire rate would have made the loop a lot more addictive. The art was super stylish and efficiently used, impressive # of enemies and animations, and little touches like the green splotches and way the blood bounced around made it feel very polished. Great audio too, didn't really notice it much which is a good thing.
This is super fun! It's one of the best executed rhythm games I've seen here. The timing of the flashes and the two-tone rainbow colors was really nice. The audio loop is really energetic and driving and just the right length to be engaging but not too frustrating. What was frustrating though was the hitboxes on the spikes. It was just way too sensitive, and since you lose instantly when you touch one, the difficulty spike (pun intended) was just too high when they were introduced. I spent over 5 minutes on the first spike level, which is good since the game was addictive enough to keep me going, but I really didn't try much on the second spike level since I knew it would be too frustrating.
The dots on the path were really cool too, and I really like how it visually explained the on-beat and off-beat. But different parts of the track had different speeds, which made the controls even more frustrating. You couldn't really get a feel for the speed, and instead had to basically memorize the entire track and play it to the music (which is actually a cool feeling in itself).
Love the idea to make circular tracks (like a record is circular). It's really awesome how after you play for a while, you start to recognize patterns on the different tracks and can get a better feel for timing them.
Nice and responsive controls. I like the tension between getting higher points and the safety of finishing early.
Really good job for a 1st time! It's fully playable from beginning to end (and forever after that!) which is hard to do. The puzzles were easy but it was surprising seeing what the next puzzle was going to be. Main thing that was annoying was the audio switching positions when the screen changed. It would have worked nicer if the audio smoothly changed as you went around the loop.
The drowning felt super intense. I thought it kind of clashed with the cheery tone of the graphics and the diving animation (which is great)! I was pretty addicted to the diving flow so that worked well, but I think the items were too spread out and random for me to get that metroidvania enjoyment. I didn't end up finishing it. One thing that was strange was this air pocket under some dirt, not sure if that was intentional. I also didn't quite know what all the items did - not sure if it affected speed or oxygen or what.
All the gimmicks were really surprising! And they were all pretty stable too. I dropped the key in the portal which I'm guessing is the point, so it was fun to try to catch it.
This was so fun, I was soooo close to the end and ran out of strokes! I thought it was going to be a typical golf game but I love that it's more like an adventure platformer. The scarecrow targets were a really good way to guide the player's aim and give mini goals along the way. The physics of the ball were pretty interesting, due to the bumps. I wish the golf controls were a bit more diegetic instead of being UI buttons. The camera angle on the ball felt too close too - it made the prediction line hard to see.
Thanks for the feedback all! I ran out of time to really tweak the scrolling so it felt better, esp the audio. Feel free to mute it, you're not missing much!
@thesambassador Ah I meant to disable the collider zone on levels where the flag was missing. That's def confusing.
@omiya-games Thanks for the detailed feedback dude! That's a really good point about the consistent visual language. I wanted each level of zoom to have it's own feel and interface but it did become more confusing than I intended. I think each control needed some consistent feedback to understand the effects. For example the text editor toggles are supposed to be the CPU circuitry... it was going to be its own mini game but I ran out of time, so they became simple toggles. Most of the annoyances and confusions were intended tbh, to evoke debugging frustrations, but the unintended ones really hurt the overall experience.
Finally getting my rating in with 30 mins to spare!
This was super fun and I can't imagine anyone not playing to the end. The most obvious weirdness is that the rooms don't reset but that actually makes things easier for the player later on and ensure pretty much everyone can complete it. I think that's pretty cool. It also has a really great progression from impossible difficulty to something a bit easier where you have weapons and can stomp anything in your path. Normally games try to get harder towards but the end, but this way really sells the power fantasy in just a few minutes, which AAA games try to deliver in 20+ hours.
Biggest negative for me was how the double jump and dash were effectively the same thing, platforming wise. The double jump was a bit longer and had a weird up angle to it (which might be to catch a ledge like pressing triangle in Spyro? but more often than not it ran you into an enemy or spikes and killed you). So I stuck to the dash for most everything. The boss had really awesome design but was too trivial. You didn't have to jump anywhere to dodge the spikes or hit the eye, so you could just hang out at the bottom.
Doing the wobble effect in a circle is absolutely awesome. It makes the flat colors look 100x more interesting. The gameplay itself is overly frustrating to me, mostly because it's hard to estimate the jumping to me, but also there doesn't seem to be much progression, so I don't care too much whether I get 5 or 20 levels.
Love the concept and the visuals. It's very dark but with lots of tones so it's still colorful. Plus you really captured the iridescence with just a few pixels, especially in all the different diamond shapes. Makes it really addictive to just push things around.
Making a Roblox game in 48h is so badass! It's wild that it's networked and multiple people can play. I love how dark of a concept this is for a kids game, and how your art got censored by the mods. Plus I totally relate to this fear of under my stove/fridge.
omg I didn't realize it was spelled Anne Chovie, that's so good! I love the dynasty warriors kinda vibe, and the saucey gibs flying around is surprisingly addictive. The trail on the pizza cutter makes running around look so dramatic too.
Super great presentation, especially the font on the title screen. Something like that really sets the tone for the whole game. I thought you were being very efficient with your assets too, until I got to level 4 and saw there's whole different worlds. The difficulty in world 1 was already too hard and random though. I had a lot of trouble with level 1 then 2 and 3 were really easy. 4 was impossible. I thought the controls were too sensitive and slipper to avoid spikes, let alone 10 things flying at you. The in-air boost was really fun, but it seemed to kill me more than anything. The "best" way to play was to hide in the bucket. Music in world 1 was the best too imo!
Super difficult but I did get 4 over the course of a few minutes. I found I could really only make 1 guess in time. 30s would've felt a lot better prob. Maybe if each guess was 10s and so you had 60s to make 6 guesses. Yhe accomplishment when getting one is pretty great tho.
Hilarious writing! I played through to the end just to read all the messages. Other than that, the gameplay did become quite repetitive since there was only a small amount of tasks you could do, and the messages did not seem to come in TOO quickly. I always had plenty of time to respond, even with the bugs. Really fun overall.
Amazing idea and it was executed way better than I thought. The rules make a lot of sense and I could imagine playing a puzzle game that used it(maybe the imagination is better than the real thing?) and the charm was great.
I got 15/18 without any notes, but I was robbed with Sarah & Jessica! I said Plant, since they were on a grass field. Does grass not count as Plant?
The time swap effect is super good. And those colorful light flashes in the seams of the meshes are really cool even though they look like a mistake?
Super attractive presentation right off the bat. You have no idea wtf is going on in the first few rounds, and slowly you figure it out. Only after like 20 rounds did I realize a better strategy of using cannons to set up well-known paths. Feels really deep despite having so few items, and a random shot every time. I didn't really understand how to aim the cannons though, is it just a random direction?
@sheepolution Yaaa prob should've used more restraint there. Thanks!
@alexrose 100% agree, the mistakes were the most rushed part. I wanted to add a sort of streak where it would give you back a life if you got X tiles in a row. That would keep the per-tile perfectionist tension that I wanted.
Collab of the century! The presentation is pretty much flawless. The art is great and the anims add a lot of life to the static assets. The simple lighting with the day/night cycle turned out really sick, especially with the music. The customers are hilarious and surprisingly interesting since each one tends to order the same thing, so it's important to learn their orders. One of those customers was real rude too... and I'm not talking about butt-man!
The controls are kinda strange. I wish you could just teleport between each station like a menu, and it almost worked like that, but not quite. It was reliable enough to get into a good rhythm, but sometimes you had to tap multiple times to get to where you wanted to go. But I did appreciate being able to walk around the whole cafe. Didn't seem like much use though. Would've been cool to have to clear tables or close the shop down to avoid certain late night customers.
The best part for sure is the basic latte combo - really addictive to execute and you really get faster at it as you play. Great move to make it the base of most drinks. I do wish there was a way to batch some of the orders, to add a bit more depth. Maybe interacting with a cup 3x would stack 3 cups, then you could pull 3 shots, etc. When each order is independent it limits the skill ceiling a lot. I was able to serve everyone easily by day 2.
So cute! A lot of great frames of anim like when landing. The wing flap and feather wisps are really cool too. Makes you feel really powerful by the end. The courses seemed pretty balanced, I got 7 on my first try and I feel like some were just outside my grasp. Really fun overall.
Main thing I didn't like is the cooldown on several moves. You can only re-flap after you reach your apex, which felt unresponsive. Also when chain dashing, you could insta-dash in another direction, but in the same direction you had to wait for the cooldown, which made it feel randomly unresponsive. It also felt really heavy to change horizontal momentum in the air, especially with the ground-dash.
God even the start screen is so cool! The tiny RGJ logo T_T
The memory it has of how you died is really cool. I figured out the trick in the 2nd run - was kinda easy since you can get max education before needing to sleep/eat. But was fun to do the plate spinning to get to the end anyway! I never figured out how to buy a suit or play the lotto though.
Also where's that damn taxi??
Absolutely hilarious & fun! Music and graphics are really cool and unique, the simple animations make things feel very premium. And you totally killed it on the acapella, great moment!
The platforming puzzles were pretty fun. The movement was a bit sluggish but ok. The camera obviously makes things too hard though, when moving back towards the camera. There wasn't much punishment for failure so it was fine. The last 2 levels were really great though - it really forced you to read the full level before going ahead. I also found that you could jump then "peek" into the next time zone and then switch back, to safely figure out what color you had to go to.
This game is freakin COOL. Completely nailed the presentation with the dark but upbeat music and the fast movement speed and high fov. Really feels like a semi-lucid dream. The plain brutalist art made it easy to focus on your destination and not get distracted, which helped a lot. I got lost a few times but the fact that you only had 10 seconds, and so you had to see the yellow glow within about 5 seconds, made for a really tight exploration loop that wasn't frustrating at all. The sound build up to the reset every 10 seconds never got old. I wish it was more synchronized with the bg music actually.
Found 2 treasures! I like how you can sort of bisect the space using the hints. The closer you get, the finer movements you want to make between each hint, so it becomes a big waiting game. But it's still fun to get a treasure. Voices are amazing!
The free motion of the arm and head is awesome, didn't expect that. The challenges had a really funny rub-stomach-pat-head type of challenge to them, especially the video chat one. That was my fav.
This is surprisingly fun, reminds me of the old school skill flash games. I tried level 8 a ton of times (praise ctrl+shift+t) but never managed to get the Y
bruh
Love the concept! The feel of light and dark is nice in combination with the music. The shadow blending is especially cool. I felt like there weren't too many bullets around the map though, kinda hard to survive.
Really fun, played through the end. Nice color palette & effects, it never got old. The controls were pretty basic, would've been nice to feel a little lighter to make jumping more fun. The timing concept was pretty novel and you instantly understood it. There was some strange behavior in the later levels though, where the block was disabled at the time instead of enabled. Those blocks looked the same as the regular blocks, so it was hard to tell what was going on. It was also confusing to see ">3" get triggered at 3.99 - you would think it would get triggered at 2.99.
Love the metaphor here! Trying to figure out the symbols is strangely addictive. It was kind of a reward to see them blow up. The way they move around is really interesting too, could watch that for a while on its own.
Very smooth controls & cool effects, great first game! I like how the bosses were defending against your OHKO bullet more than you were defending against them
Love the ink on paper style! The game kept me engaged for about 7 rounds but it never escalated so it became samey very quickly
Love that it's genuinely educational! And that you shipped the sourcemaps so people can read in the dev tools.
I'm still wrapping my head around the invisible horse
Turned out really well!
I looove it! The mechanics was totally confusing but it had a QWOP feel to it so it was kinda fun
Love the name :D And the pizza tower esque graphics. Can't believe the amount of time you put into the cutscenes, that was awesome. Wipe transition!!! The mechanic is interesting, puzzles mostly simplistic and didn't require much thinking, but it was fun to manipulate and move around. I'm not sure what the value of the grenade thing was - seems like it added some control finickiness for no reason. Not being able to move the camera more than once was overly annoying too. You would do a whole puzzle then realize you were 10 pixels too far so you have to do it all over.
The boss fight was kinda more interesting than the puzzles, and super fun! It was frustrating and kinda random but it was quite interesting having to stay under him while hitting him.
SO FUN. I got 4500. Addictive once you get the hang of it. I wish there was a way to see the range of your grab since that was very unclear and slowed me down a lot. I didn't notice there were different rooms until like round 4 since you can easily spend the whole time in 1 room. The loop of seeing the right color in your periphery and then chasing it down was fun enough for 1 room imo. I also don't know if the letters were more points than the boxes, but they were certainly harder to deal with, so I'd like a bonus for this.
Graphics are next level compared to your other stuff - the style & compositions and everything all worked really well. Tech-wise I did have some screen tearing, and I think the outlines-through-walls thing would be an interesting and not-too-hard thing to try fixing. Audio is great and fun and I didn't even notice it since it felt so natural.
Flawless presentation. The art and audio fits perfectly. The dialogue was punchy and really hooked you. It was daunting to see how many symbols there were, which almost turned me off from the game entirely. The grid system is smart, much more reliable than my game's drawing system. There's not really a gameplay reason to draw symbols though since you're essentially just picking them from a list. It would've been nice to see the book while drawing, because I ended up having to go back and forth several times to draw one symbol.
I think the riddles can be too opaque or misleading. I spent 20 minutes on the first one. I didn't realize that each page was 1 level since you had multiple pages available to you at once. After that it got easier, but I still had to do a ton of guessing. For example, what does "shielding" and "flashes of death" mean? "flash" is really the only relevant word in that clue. Other ones I didn't get are "last taste" and "dare to embrace". Easy clues take 5 secs and are fun, but hard ones take 15 minutes of brute forcing. If you just don't get a clue, there's nothing you can do.
The game would tell you when you got 2 or 3 right, so I used that for guessing a bunch. If you methodically draw sloth over a symbol, the game will tell you if you were going in the right direction, so you can use that to figure out which exact symbols were right and wrong. Then you can brute force all the symbols. It's the best way to win but it ends up being super tedious. I guess Obra Dinn had a similar issue.
That said, I did beat it after almost 2 hours! (I have extra free time today otherwise I would've stopped earlier.) I did the last 5 puzzles in about 5 minutes since the search space got exponentially smaller and I memorized many of the drawings. I really wish you used Game and Give though. I thought "gold is all I wanted" was gonna be related to those, which would've been a great LD reference. I do think you'll end up getting that gold.
There's something stupidly addictive about trying to make the fire bigger and bigger
@mdotedot Yeah I rarely put instructions in the game, especially in my more esoteric games. In general you should read the instructions of all LD games. Thanks for playing!
@sheepolution The 3 word ones definitely stress the system too much. I should've skipped them but oh well. Thanks for trying!
@sonnybone Thanks dood!!! I think I'm getting better at minimal vector based visuals at least. Also hell yeah you did a voice in Alex's game? I'm about to try it out
@candlesan That's not a bug, that's the point of the game :D
@jeanbon @paul-maxime WOW very impressive! I like your different interpretations of YO. Paul got closer to my intention, but I actually prefer Jean's idea. Thanks for playing!
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@aeveis Stroke order doesn't matter, and straight lines also don't matter much, which is partly why I added the shake to the drawing. But relative proportions (aspect ratio) and angles matter a ton. I wasn't able to communicate that very well though.
@geckoo1337 Спасибо огромное! Я забыл много моево русского языка (я изучал 10 лет назад), но я ещё буду стараюсь читать твой коммент без переводить. Я согласен, что у не-каких уровни могли быть меньше процентов, главно которые с 3 символами. Но у меня было страх, что это будет слишком неточний. А конечно, не сталось время з музыка.
@atmospherium Yup I always try to add a save for that reason. Thanks for the feedback!
Stupidly good UX and polish, and a ridiculous amount of content! I wrote a VN for a week long jam once and spent a solid 40 hours writing. I can't imagine writing this much and also making the game. The art and music do so much, and it's all tied together with really intuitive gameplay. The music reminds me a lot of 999 which is perfect for a mystery thriller. The graphics are like old school scumm games which is fun. Really great character designs. And the VA!!! That's just not fair. Everyone was amazing. Tamsin in particular was great, very Slay The Princess esque, and Sonny also nailed it of course.
Gameplay is interesting and makes a lot of sense once you understand the colors and the evidence giving mechanics. The oujia input is very clever and novel, but it does end up being just a fancy way to select words from a menu. You do provide a menu, which is very convenient, but it only sidesteps the issue that the oujia board is not actually necessary. I would've liked to see some prompts that required typing answers that aren't on the notebook. Like some really easy non-puzzles like "hmm what direction did he go? not north or south..." where the goal is just to use the ouija. I thought the vehicle one was one of these but I guess it wasn't (see below).
The interruption dialogue was a bit confusing. Does it mean that the clue is meant to be used on a different line of this particular phase of dialogue, or a future phrase, or do past phrases also count? I used "thief" with Aria and it was the right answer, but when I used it again later she did the interruption dialogue. So I wasn't sure if I had to use "thief" again or if it just triggered the interruption dialogue because it was used in a previous line of hers.
That is the point where I got permanently stuck thought (after getting the cctv clue and using "thief") and could not progress at all. I spent probably over 20 minutes brute forcing all the clues with all the ghosts and could not get anywhere. I also tried manually typing in all kinds of creatures and literally every vehicle I could think of, but it didn't work. It seems like a bug but I can't really tell since it's a mystery game. I tried to reload the game but it doesn't remember progress so I'm quitting for now.
Very fun and pretty well balanced. Took me 3 tries to win. Once I got the Champion is was pretty much over, although Vikings were very strong too.
Some of the best walk & idle animations I've seen! I love that the forward idle bobs left and right instead of the typical up and down. Awesome expression. Movement and inventory controls seem pretty solid. Would've loved to see it with some real content! Music was def a bit discordant to listen to over and over too. Also, dat ORB.
olive is my waifu
Everything about this game is awesome. Great flow and escalation of difficulty. Only issue I had was that I didn't get any blue customers even though I had a blue host. Made me feel like I wasted money. Still, I was able to max out income pretty well.
Really fun! I got to level 9. The clicking loop and feedback is very addictive. Until you need to undo connections due to a mistake, then it breaks flow and becomes confusing and you end up losing. Would be nice if it auto-broke connections when making a new one.
Visual style is super clear and gets the idea across. The dots are easy to read and manipulate even under pressure.
The puzzle design is interesting. I think it's a bit too simple, which I guess is why you needed to have such a strict timer for later levels. But because you can't overlap any lines, you quickly realize that you need to just mindlessly connect all the highest # nodes together. So you end up having just a few #1 nodes to connect in the end. There was one level around 7-8 where there were just a bunch of #3 nodes. That was actually tricky and required some thinking, which was the most fun.
Agree with everyone's praises of the game, amazing overall. My main criticism is about the kickback when the spear comes back to you. It's a fun risky moment when you pull it back and it can push you off an edge and kill you, but I feel like that was 100% of the usages of that mechanic. In other words, it was only used in an annoying way. If it was subtler, or the platforms had more wiggle room, then it could be an interesting and tense mechanic without actually killing you every time. Similarly, the kickback when you jump and pull it back feels very random and often kills you.
Good story and the art fits pretty well. Reminds me of Pico's School. bmbzon made me lol
This works so surprisingly well. The visual feedback on the audio input helps a lot to encourage getting louder. Only thing I wish is that summoning had you just click a unit and then do the audio input, instead of having to click a type and then click the summon button.
Love the art and the desktop perspective. Smart idea to use the center for various minigames. I wish there was a bit more originality in the minigames (although I always loved a flappy clone).
Beat about 10 levels. Very interesting mechanic and there's a lot of potential here. The controls were a too finicky and sticky to want to play more. It would be nice if you found a way to make lengths more discrete and simple (1, 2, 3, 4, instead of 45, 50, 53, etc)
All the different parts are so fun, I liked imagining what kind of creature would be created by each combination of parts. The timing was tuned pretty nicely and made it addictive to keep going out and finding new parts. Grid movement wasn't super responsive which made movement feel worse than it needed to. Music really nailed the fun-but-spooky vibe!
Really fun actually. The escalation in abilities feels great and addictive. Main issue is that the attacks can do essentially infinite damage since they don't get "spent" on collision. Made things a bit too easy. I wish the graphics were a bit more colorful like VS too.
Took me a while to figure out what the baedar did but it's god damn brilliant. The in-game part was kinda weird though - really slow framerate on my computer. I wish the shooting and graphics had a bit more life to them too. The music is really cool but it doesn't really fit the monochrome style.
dat melody kept me playing for way too long
3D style is used really well by the constant 90 degree turning, but it is also disorienting (which would be a good thing if the game wasn't so hard already)
Absolutely sensational game. Doesn't need any "but it's just a jam game" qualifiers or anything. The art style is amazing and unique and contrasts really well with the horror aesthetic and the shaders. That distortion when the monster sneaks up on you is especially awesome since it emphasizes the outlines. Story is perfect and very effective. I figured it was some sort of metaphor at first, but the reveal was still great and left a lot to think about. The music was nice but strangely it was the least interesting part of the game I think. It felt pretty typical so it didn't stand up to the unique and powerful visuals and story. Sound effects were great though.
The changing level is super cool. Wish the ball had some more gravity towards the goals so there would be more action.
The exploration is weirdly compelling and the synthwavey graphics fit with the surreal concept (especially the short shadow rendering). I wish gravity was slightly higher so making big jumps felt more impressive.
@Anudin Yeah I agree it's balanced too randomly right now. If you know how the bonuses work and go for them strategically you can reliably get ~200k, but getting above that is pretty random.
@ectucker1 "risky" is if the path you're taking touches 1 dot that has already been touched before, death is when you hit 2 dots that have already been touched. It is definitely very random right now but that's kinda what I was going for.
Thanks for the feedback!
I was able to get the dpad left power right at the beginning which made me really confused. I figured out the correct path afterwards though. Really cool use of movement powerups, but I thought the different attacks weren't too useful. Regular attack seemed to work fine for most things. Couldn't figure out how to beat the final boss, wasn't sure if I was doing damage or hitting the right thing. The sketchy dancing aesthetic is amazing and gives so much energy, and the extremely british music fits well.
@alexrose nope a DS4 as intended, but it's because you are able to just walk all the way down from the start and to the right to get past the pits without any abilities
Really good balance of body and headshots, I didn't expect the difference to matter that much. Crates were also interesting from the beginning but introducing grenades made them really cool. The slowmo worked super well with the bloody pixel explosions. Graphics are sweet but I wish the foreground and background were better integrated instead of 2 clearly separate things. The driving deep beat of the music was super cool, but I think the main melody sounded a bit too "default instrument" and out of place. There was a point in wave 7 or something where all the boxes just exploded when they came down so I couldn't last much more than that :/
Really funny idea and the cutesy art really sells it, especially the expression on the kid when cleaning everything up. The animation on the crane and the tiny people are nice subtle extras too. I wish there was more of a physics kind of thing with the crane so you could play with it more. Or maybe some kind of puzzle to solve.
Insanely cool viz and awesome tracks. Surprising variety in genre and you nailed them all. The viz seemed to be dominated by bass though. It had really cool effects when the melody was there alone, but it didn't show any difference when there was a melody with bass.
Awesome idea. Graphics are striking and simple but don't feel lacking. Trancey music is sweet too. But the lack of air control plus the demand for precision made me quit pretty fast after the 2nd checkpoint.
Really cool concept with some nice puzzles. Really needed some checkpoints though, and a better way to get cards then to just sit there shuffling all the time...
Both weapons kinda worked the same way so there didn't seem to be a point to switching. Crosshair was hard to see too.
The contrast works sooo well. Especially jump scares of "monsters" who turn out to be friendly. It's actually pretty relatable from an introvert perspective. The deep foggy silhouettes in the background provide a really good mood, and the 2D pixels are used really well to highlight characters and interesting things. Sounds and music are really engrossing and bring everything together. I'm surprised at how compelling it stayed instead of getting stale quickly.
Same issue as incobalt! Also I wish the base speed was better, it's really tedious to start out with
I've never seen a game that developed so much stuff without any core gameplay, it turned out pretty hilarious
Didn't realize I could build sideways until I got pretty tall, but that was pretty cool. The mechanics encouraged you to build like an actual tree. The drill instantly got me... death screen was amazing though.
Gameplay combination worked really well. The random placement of barriers ended up being way too hard some times, way too easy other time. It definitely needed more graphics to know the range of the catcher's view and such.
I liked how you couldn't shoot back and you were just turtling inside your farm against inevitable death. The different plants were cool, although it was a bit too simple to just build a border of watermelons.
I wish turn speed and timer extension were powerups
Good use of very minimal assets to make a complete gameplay loop, from art to music to code. It even had some interesting conflict between paying attention to the rhythm bar vs the upper area of the screen. If you stick with this level of scope, but spend the entire jam polishing and juicing up the game, you will end up with a really awesome game.
The cooldown between being able to move makes this game was less fun than it could be. But the mashup of genres is great and the simple graphics and discordant music go well.
First clicker that I've seen. Works really well with the avoider gameplay, but I'm not sure that there's a reason to stop clicking. I'm also not sure if there's a secret health bar or what because I was getting hit a lot but never lost, and then the game just ended at some point at 54000 points.
It's crazy how well minesweeper on an arbitrarily shaped graph like this works. Graphics were nice and simple but could've been flashier given the simplicity of the gameplay. I noticed it was hard to tell when some countries were bordering each other. I wish the shit countries joke was integrated better too.
@rezonanc You control the crab using camera SIGNALS, obviously
@skytech6 @uvwar @val-ociraptor lmaooo
@ruthiepee 2 people have confirmed won it, but also the obstacles are random so it could easily be impossible for you