Smoke: it's ok to feel by Lumpy 2018-08-14T14:36:32Z
In a word, poetic. In two words, very poetic.
10/10 - Bigfoot Believer Monthly
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → foxwater
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 50 | Delay the inevitable | Ludare OS | compo | 98 | 3.84 | 3.44 | 4.14 | 3.79 | 4.26 | 3.76 | 3.09 | 3.64 |
In a word, poetic. In two words, very poetic.
10/10 - Bigfoot Believer Monthly
Holy smokes you managed to make a functional roguelike in 48 hours, very impressive! Sound effects had me laughing, especially when opening the chest. The additive nature of the chest upgrades immediately pairs well with making your character more sustainable between rounds...very simple formula that works super well. Awesome job!
What a zen little experience that was! Loved the acoustic music paired with the pencil drawings.
The feel of moving the balloon was very airy and reminded me of trying to keep a balloon bouncing when I was kid...granted there were far less buzz saws involved then.
Very simple but very fun concept! Never played anything quite like it and I think if you decide to expand on this a bit you'd have a really addicting game, awesome job!
I was at your GDC talk recently and wondered if you'd be doing LD this year. Excellent Compo entry! The writing for the buddy was really enjoyable, I found myself doing a Morty-adjacent voice for him in my head the whole time. Gets big points for originality and this is one of the few games that made me "feel" the theme in an interesting way, well done!
Awesome job! The tutorial was really clever and the core mechanic is super satisfying. Trying to tell some form of story through a simple mechanic is always a really cool thing and I could see how you could expand on this formula in lots of really cool ways.
A lot of really cool stylistic choices here! I especially liked the little ASCI hub on the bottom, it was super cool and had a lot of fun details. The map interacting with your mouse was a super cool effect that didn't get old. The level design was pretty solid and difficulty ramped nicely. Well done!
Very cool! A surprising amount of activity and crafting options and I like the rogue-like nature of it.
Wow super impressive PICO-8 game, well done!
Great work! This was one of those games where as soon as I hit the first couple of colors I said to myself "uh oh..." as the inevitability of my demise immediately became apparent. I played quite a few runs trying to beat my previous best score, so it definitely has the hook. Very clean presentation as well! I think it would have really benefited from some sound effects and music but totally understand how the time constraints could have kept those out. Great job!
Wow really amazing gameplay mechanics for a compo game! The time warping was especially impressive and the fact that it slowed or sped up the music was a really nice touch. I had a lot of fun manipulating my past self to stay out of my current self's way!
I agree there is something to this idea! I had trouble tracking the combinations but kind of figured out movement patterns and strategies that worked along the way. Good job!
Wow great job! I'm thoroughly embarrassed how long level 7 took me to figure out, but your puzzle design and how you introduced mechanics to the player was great! Once I slowed down (and noticed that my movement efficiency mattered) I started getting into the right headspace and really enjoyed it!
Very polished entry! The art style and music were super cohesive and it required a lot of thought to do well. The randomness gives it some good replayability as well.
Like others have mentioned I leaned pretty heavily on the rock, and there were a couple of instances were I sped up the water to see the next area only to have my button for the spikes get sunk. Overall very solid and fun though, well done!
Wow, great work! Very clean and very fun. I did run into an occasional issue where it wouldn't let me place letters...but I was always able to work around it. The rabbit with the long legs will haunt my dreams, but the overall look was super pleasing and satisfying to interact with. The twists were a super cool way to mix things up and keep the game alive. The music and sounds also fit very nicely, put this whole thing in an app and ship it!
Really liked the concept on this one! I've never really played a clicker, but this made me want to try and make one of my own with the clever APP-style design you have here. I didn't even have to read the "HOW TO" section and sort of just intuitively figured it out. Loved the increasing levels of desperation (and the "womp womp womp" music accompanying them) to stay young. I played with a mouse, so by the time I lived about 50 years I think carpal tunnel was setting in trying to max my clicks per sec lol. Great work!
Really liked this! The idols looked great and I liked the effect of the slightly fuzzy filter you used. Agreed that music would have been nice, but I don't think I've played a strategy game quite like this and found it really refreshing!
Nice work! Really enjoyed the noire styling and had an absurd amount of content for a jam game. Voice acting was excellent and really added a lot of production value to the whole thing and the simple art style made the game feel super cohesive.
Great pixel art, especially the cat and the color selection! The music fit nicely and the gameplay (while simple) was super fun!
No matter how hard I shit my pants I'll ALWAYS stop to tell a man he's holding cereal and not eggs.
I thought this was super silly, very charming, and really got a kick out of it. The mini-games changing slightly depending on the person you're talking to (and their specific issue) was a nice touch. The art and music came together nicely, really well done!
Really liked the audio and the art style and this is a super impressive game!
My feedback would be to have the lute music notes vertically oriented (travelling from top of screen to bottom maybe) to match the orientation of the HJKL keys. I think my brain really broke trying to do the 90 degree turn in my head while playing...which was made worse by the difficulty ramp being quite high! Also the strumming of the strings doesn't quite match the notes as they come in (or maybe that was just on my end?).
I think if you tightened it up a bit it would be a really fun game and I would love playing it!
Wow great job making a deckbuilder card game in 48 hours! Love the painterly art style (very cohesive), the boppin' music, and the smooth gameplay...overall very polished. First time through I was yeetin cards out like they were nothing...which basically taught me the game and some strategy for my second (decidedly more conservative) playthrough. Seriously well done!
One note: I did encounter an issue where some of my cards seem to lock in place and couldn't be dropped?
Very meta interpretation of the theme lol. I had fun playing it and protecting those hours at all cost.
Really solid Compo entry! You have a lot of the core mechanics there and they work really well. Outside of having the strategy element be a bit deeper, I think it would really benefit from some character art and basic attack animations just to give it that extra bit of personality. Awesome job though!
Hey! So if you're specifically looking for notes on what you do have done I'm happy to provide some: - Music is good and has a nice sense of urgency, though I do get some weird crackling on my end occasionally - Art isn't bad, but it's not super cohesive and the base ground tiles aren't very seamless (you can see the checkerboard pattern) - Moving the dude around with the mouse clicks actually feels pretty good, but item placement should also be via mouse click once you have an item selected (maybe this bit just wasn't finished) - The UI could use some separation and clean up, from what I can tell you have 3 basic groups 1)your radiation, food, and sleep meters 2)your build options and 3)some numbers in the middle (not clear on what those do). Right now they're all kind of packed in the bottom middle.
Hope you get around to finishing your initial vision for the game, it's never too late for that!
@pizzasgood Wow! Thanks for adding such great instructions to the comments, I'm sure other people will find this useful as well. @david-york sorry things weren't made clear enough on my end! That limited game boy resolution may have bit me on that.
Thanks everybody for the kind comments!
Bonus points to anybody who manages to find the secret ending (There IS one way around the inevitable...though I worry it may be a little to obfuscated).
@guardaro Hey! Sorry you got stuck! I haven't encountered this myself, and it might be worth just reloading the page and trying again if you're up for it. Typically after you decrypt a number a message will pop up saying whether or not you succeeded, at which point you press "X" on the keyboard to continue and it will provide you with a new input to decrypt. Thanks for playing regardless!
@bozarre Thanks! If you want to give my GB Studio project a look I included it in the downloads (though it was super rushed...so it's super messy). You don't actually need to know how to program to use GB Studio...just need to understand some of the core logic concepts. I'm a programmer by trade...which is exactly why I choose GB Studio (didn't want to do my day job in my free time and would rather focus on art/gameplay/music).
@jasper-hansen Thanks! Yeah, I think you're right...ideally I would have had a simple tutorial level to start things off instead of the manual.
@kurrik Thanks for the feedback! I agree completely, I think rearranging the map and including another gameplay element would have really helped speed it up a bit.
Thanks for playing!
@mikoziq Thanks for the outstanding feedback! I originally wanted to add a simple tutorial level but just flat out didn't have time to get it in there. I think I will do another pass at the game and add multiple maps and a small tutorial.
@zombiebust3r Thank you! The ROM plays great on the original Game Boy, I actually have my highest score on it!
@vhalenn Thanks! I updated the image on the itch.io page to hopefully help with this a bit...but I think adding a small and optional tutorial at the start will be the real solution, thanks for the feedback!
@zoohair Thank you!
@marcenat Thanks for playing! I was planning on adding a tutorial level and improving the music but the compo time crunch left those things on the cutting room floor
@stefan-laimer Thank you!
@alexthehuman2 Thanks again for playing and really enjoyed watching you piece it all together and kick some math ass!
Like @badcop said, I got hooked on trying to find an optimal and sustainable route in what is at surface level a very simple game mechanic. The crib -> couch -> single swing on chandelier (so it doesn't drop) -> couch -> crib loop was kind of my goto...but very difficult to execute repeatedly. The placement of the items and how they interact with the player is super well done...it feels as though it was tested and tweaked a lot. Well done!
Nice job! This scores big points for originality and innovation. I absolutely love Tetris, and this game sort of flexes those same spatial brain muscles. It's very intuitive to pick up the basics but there is a surprising amount of depth in the strategy. Like others have mentioned, rotating the pieces and perhaps being able to bank 1 piece would only add to that depth of strategy. Really solid Compo game, well done!
Really great puzzle design! I was stumped on a few of the levels for longer than I care to admit. The floating boxes made for very interesting puzzles. The little passages for each level and the music really tied it all together and reminded me of Braid in a way. Great job!
Wow great work! I think the early game is really well balanced and enjoyed achieving sustainability on my little floating island. I think the art and music is great and the whole thing came together amazingly well within 48 hours! My only feedback for future iterations would be a tougher difficulty ramp later game and maybe some more upgrades as well. Really well done though!
HOW DARE THAT STAR TAKE AWAY MY FUN ZONE
Very witty dialogue, had me grinning the entire time, also clicked an extra thousand or so times to see if there would be more.
I swear that blue cyclist is juicing and would like to request a drug test.
Really fun little collection of mini games! I played until my hands were totally shot because I wanted a decent score and it was very much a "okay just one more" situation.
Very complete compo entry and a fun take on the theme, well done! It did a good job captivating my attention and was very easy to pick up quickly and learn the more subtle mechanics. The music, models, and dialogue also felt very silly/whacky which only enhanced the core gameplay (though to be honest I was so focused on slapping those hands that I probably missed a lot of the dialogue).
Nice work! The tutorial did a great job teaching the mechanics of the game and the computer character was fun. I'm not a stellar typist so I struggled a bit, but really original concept and executed quite well!
Really solid approach to the theme! I was a bit overwhelmed initially and didn't really know what to do, but the help UI explained things well enough. It's a fun concept, very well done!
Nice work! Keyboard controls were a little challenging but still had a fun trying to find the optimal path for picking up the coins. The neon visuals look great and everything worked well together!
Nice work! Controls well and the power-ups are fun!
Nice work! The vegetable combos are really fun to mix together and see what works best in which spots. The art is pleasing and the gameplay is very straightforward but has a good amount of depth!
Good gob! I think it does a decent job of introducing game mechanics through gameplay and level design. A couple of the levels I thought started to introduce interesting puzzle elements (ex. make sure you stop at a position and wait for enemies to get to a certain point). The particle effects were a nice touch and the graphics (while simple) were cohesive enough.
Well done! The controls are super smooth and the added ability to change camera preferences was nice. Very polished game all around!
Excellent ship design and the models looked great and created a cohesive environment. Loved the mood shift that took place and the trippy ending...I think you really nailed an eerie sci-fi vibe there.
Super pleasant sounds, very satisfying click and drags and overall aesthetic. The difficulty ramp of additional nodes per cell is super cool, well done!
I think it's a solid theme idea! I would have liked some additional gameplay mechanics and some music/sound, but I hope you expand on this!
Really great compo entry! The jumps were really well placed which made for fun/challenging exploration and the art and music were super pleasant!
Solid little PICO-8 game! The music is excellent and you did a great job visualizing a LOT of detail with very few pixels.
I both trashed and panicked. A surprising amount of game mechanics packed (no pun intended) into a single screen. You really have to make on the fly decisions around how you sort things and you end up strategizing more than you would think. The mouth sounds are excellent and made me smile, great job!
I really got a kick out of this game! I played until I was certain that I had seen each mini game because they were all so well done. The opening sequence reminded me of the giant heads episode from Rick and Morty but with a twist. I was most impressed by the smooth transition between games that kept the whole experience so fluid. The audio was also super playful and fit the excellent art style. Really really well done!
Wow super cool game and very impressive compo entry! Really liked the simple styling of it and the randomness of the inhabitant placement added a degree of difficulty and replayability.
That red shoe is a real wildcard, straight up punted a knife to the moon. Great job with the game! I had fun stacking things and it certainly lived up to the name!
I had to turn down my mouse sensitivity just a bit but once I did movement was not an issue. I had fun looking for the hidden things and managed to sort of get my brain wrapped around the maze as a whole. Good job!
Very polished game! So many times I just about had things lined up and a wrecking ball square came out of nowhere to ruin it all. Well done!
Really fun little game! I enjoyed the feel of moving the bird around the maps. The whole package was oddly very satisfying...I think the colorful art style combined with the thick lines and fluid animation really worked well together.
Nice job! You really nailed a fun and intuitive sheet throwing feel (which something I never thought I would say to anybody).
Holy smokes, just when I thought to myself that I must've seen all of the mini-games a new one would appear. Absolutely love the art, especially the characters (reminded me of something Double Fine would make). Music was great and didn't get annoying or feel especially looped while I was playing (super hard to do). Each game was very quick to pick up and played for the correct amount of time (always left me wanting more). Really shocked at how polished this whole thing is...amazed you managed to do something like this in 48 hours.
Nice work! The sprites for the honey really cracked me up and the art style in general just reminded me of Paul Robertson's stuff (which is very much meant as a complement!). Animation is great as well with the bees swarming around the hive and the expressiveness of all of the sprites.
Really enjoyed this! I was initially playing on keyboard and struggled a bit, but with the xbox controller I cruised to level 169 and found the power ups to be really fun. It looks and plays super clean and feels very polished all around for a LD game. Great work!
Really liked the trippy mix of 2D and 3D, it made the hectic running around feel super lively! Great job!
Really enjoyed this! I've not seen this sort of typing game before and found it to be a really fun test of my coordination. The art and music pair really well together to create a proper mood and the NPC/enemy design and dialogue only enhanced that.
WELL THAT WAS AN EMOTIONAL JOURNEY
Nice work! Really liked the art and how big the game feels with all of the upgrade possibilities. Given the size of the game via all of the dialog and possibilities it's understandable you didn't have time for some theme music, but it would have really helped lend to the atmosphere you created with the art and color palette. The haunting quotes each night was a really nice touch as well.
Nice job! Very fun color palette and the characters are have a cool style! I think there was about 400m or so there where I just watched it bounce without having to do anything and it was still entertaining. I didn't fully understand the controls but it didn't stop me from enjoying it.
Carl needs his PhD revoked and I suspect Sarah is having an affair.
Excellent job! Lots of content here and I think if you polished up the art a bit and made another edit pass to tighten up the dialogue a bit it would be a really engaging play! (It was engaging as is, just saying the art took me out of it a tad!) Great job getting all of the content in there though, very impressive!
Nice work! My clickin' finger is worn out from trying to find the optimal upgrade path. UI was very clear, music and SFX was good, and overall a very strategy clicker!
Hey I really liked this one! The movement is really fluid, the secondary color choices were great, when the music kicked in it felt like it belonged, and the UI elements were very intuitive. I've also never played anything quite like this so big points for originality, well done!
Had a weird issue where it wouldn't let me enter my username for awhile, but backing out to the itch.io page and returning seemed to fix it. Took me a minute to figure out exactly how not to kill the users and we lost a few good people along the way but it's a very cool concept! Great job!
Nice work! I just spaced out for like 20 minutes tapping along. Really like the symbols and lore you built around it along with the 1.5 bit look (great start screen as well).
Well done! I've not played Papers Please yet, but I have screwed up my taxes...so yeeting some numbers onto forms and hoping for the best is my wheelhouse. Like mentioned previously, it could use some difficulty tuning...but I like the atmosphere you created and it's a very fun take on the theme. Super charming!
I really got a kick out of this! I can't think of a game that requires you to actually make manual repairs to your ship while still flying it in combat, so big points for originality for sure. I will say it really gets away from you quickly if you do get hit, though I did eventually start to realize that I needed to prioritize the up/down connections and just focus on dodging and fully repair when safe after that...so it's almost an added strategy element that works for it. Nice work!
Great job! Add cosmetics and achievements to anything and I'll be a sucker for it...let alone something that actually has fun/challenging gameplay. The art/music/SFX are very cohesive and overall a very polished game for a game jam.
Really good use of the theme pairing it with the inevitability associated with life always finding a way. At first I found it a bit too challenging, but then I realized optimizing tool placement is key. The art is really pleasing and cohesive, and the music fits the theme nicely. I did run into a bit of a soft lock when I dropped a tool over a tutorial message that popped up (I assume the timing was just right) and it wouldn't let me continue. Not a big deal at all, just thought I would mention that it's possible.
Very cool idea for a control scheme, I've never seen anything quite like it! It was a fun game and would make for a great mobile app, well done!
Makes me think there is actually potential for a stealth rhythm game, awesome job!