Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → Fre
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | Co | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 49 | Unstable | 👥 | Moody Hero | jam | 475 | 3.71 | 3.78 | 4.20 | 3.77 | 3.53 | 3.38 | 3.66 | 3.58 | |
| 2019 | 45 | Start with nothing | 👥 | Fairytiles | jam | 33 | 4.22 | 4.11 | 4.31 | 4.03 | 3.52 | 4.05 | 3.68 | ||
| 2018 | 43 | Sacrifices must be made | 👥 | Welcome to the North Pole! | jam | 25 | 4.20 | 4.16 | 4.21 | 3.83 | 4.21 | 4.05 | 3.53 | 4.18 | |
| 2014 | 30 | Connected Worlds | Growing star | jam | 168 | 3.55 | 2.90 | 3.65 | 3.61 | 3.61 | 3.61 | 1.95 | 3.74 | 55 |
Cool game! Game mechanics are not very clear at first, but work pretty well once on get it (keep line of sight between the two existing satellites). Satellites are a bit hard to see when they don't link. Good job!
Thanks for the feedback!
I am working on a revised version with some UI tweaks, balance changes and little details that were cut from the original plan.
Current progress:
http://florentdhalluin.fr/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/LD30_GrowingStar_Web_1.1.html
Looks nice! Upgrade/Demolish are not working for me either (web on chrome).
This is super fun and cute!
I especially liked how you made the mechanics very clear and the key combinations just the right difficulty. It felt like muscle memory started to kick in by the end and I could start planning what move to do rather than trying everything in a random order.
One quick suggestion would be to pause the game and introduce the sacrifice mechanic more clearly when it first appears. It was hard to tell when it was active, maybe the soundtrack could change to something faster paced.
Overall, this was nicely packaged and polished, well done!
Nice game, I really liked the lore events and small details like the wind in the trees :) Looks like a lot of work went into this, it's impressive you got all the mechanics working bug-free.
A small issue for gamepad: there seems to be no deadzone on the stick, so it tends to bounce and aim at the opposite direction when I tried to move one step (but then again I have a beaten up gamepad).
Gameplay-wise, I like the mechanic of having to sacrifice something or bad stuff will happen. Perhaps you could have made the stakes higher by disrupting the gameplay loop more, e.g. having the bear god ask for a specific tool to be left at the altar each day. Ask it was, I always had one crop to spare so it didn't feel like a hard decision.
Overall, I found the game enjoyable and well made!
Love the small packaged dose of humor in this. Great tiny scope, amazing voice acting :)
Nice game!
The diversity of skills and enemies is great, gameplay feels pretty deep. I like the sacrifice/tradeoff mechanic, there seemed to be lots of combinations but giving just three choices was perfect.
As a push for next time, I'd work on making the world/story more coherent. There are already good elements there (the map gets more complex each time). One way to do more could be to implement a progression through e.g. forest > village > city > castle, and adjust the art/enemies accordingly and with more contrast (e.g. animals > farmers > soldiers > elite guards).
Well done!
Nice work, looks like a lot of thought went into the content and progression system!
I like the game premise about stealing and breaking gifts and especially the dancing goblin :)
I stopped playing before I had explored all the content because it felt like everything was on cooldown and I had nothing to do other than waiting. I'd suggest speeding up all the timers by maybe 4x to make it possible to discovered more of the content (I'd aim for 5-10min of gameplay).
Well done!
This game is great and especially impressive given the compo constraints!
I liked the small animated details and use of multiple point lights. The tilt shift effect is a bit strong for my taste, but hey, gotta make use of the post-processing stack :)
Thanks also for sharing the making-of guide, I found it very interesting!
Great polish, I especially liked how the minigun spread increases and how the main character and bullets emit a faint light :)
Looks like this game is pretty popular, if you feel like giving back, consider leaving constructive feedback on people's entries, there's a lot of insight in this you could pass on to others. Well done!
What a nice and relaxing game!
I love the mood and consistency of the world and the polished little details (falling leaves, sleepy stump, the variations in sound effects).
Looks like we had a pretty similar interpretation of the theme, just in different worlds :)
I gave up after ~20 tries in the area where you have to make a series of precise low jumps to and go through a 1-wise gap without hitting spikes.
Here are some details/suggestions I picked up on: * Love the checkpoint mechanic, it's very clear. * Agreed that tile maps are awesome, you seem to have a lot of content. Because the theme and world are so nice, I'd consider spacing out the challenges a bit to give players some breathing room (e.g. add a fairly easy area with a bit of text for lore around the items to find). * It looks like the character should fit in one-high gaps, but it doesn't. I'd shrink the collider to make it possible or make the model slightly bigger to make it clear that it shouldn't (to make the platformer mechanics more intuitively predictable). * Especially for jam games, consider giving alternate paths to make sure people can see all content without too much trouble (thinking of where I got stuck). Keep the main path fairly easy but give a couple optional challenges (I like to be able to finish the game in 5-10min then go back to look at details). You could make items the optional goal and tease them by giving the first one and leaving the rest in visible, but hard to access locations.
Great work overall, this was awesome to play!
Nice game, very cute! It was hard to tell how big the trigger areas were; I kept dying on the same mine.
Awesome game, I loved the minimalist look and attention to detail with the particle effects, camera shake, audio feedback...
I played it until the end and lost just enough oxygen to make sacrificing crew members meaningful.
One way to push the sacrifice dynamic might be to lose oxygen over time based on the number of crew members on board and take out one crew member per hit instead of oxygen. You'd have to let yourself be hit to regulate the use of oxygen and last long enough.
@call-me-nutty Makes sense, having a time limit is stressful. Here's another take: * Start with 5 lives (oxygen) and 5 crew. * Gain 5 oxygen each round, minus 1 per crew alive. * Keep the effect of crew fire rate, gain 2-3 oxygen per ally ship sacrificed. * (optionally) Increase consumption of oxygen by 1 each round so you have to actually sacrifice something even if you're good.
(Imo, keeping numbers small makes it easier to reason about the game design and for players to strategize)
Nice meta theme :)
I love the high level of polish, especially how the scene changes as time passes.
Perhaps the game mechanics could be tweaked a little to make the decisions feel more important.
For example: * Sleeping/eating/gaming refills the whole bar, can't be interrupted, clears progress on the current feature. * The success rate % is visible and decreases with the 3 other stats (player decides whether to stop or keep going until the feature is done). * Building a feature takes less time (seeing feature cubes drop is rewarding, I'd give the chance for more).
Overall, well done!
The atmosphere and look came together nicely! Props for going full 3D :)
Perhaps the gameplay could be faster/tighter: * I ran out of creatures and died 3 times without killing a single enemy (maybe make it easier to kill the first wave?) * Rebuilding took a while (maybe make creatures hatch faster so you can collect them all at once?) * It was hard to tell what each creature did (perhaps add a basic description panel in the world?) * Consider adding juicy feedback to actions (particle effects, sounds).
I really like the mechanic of customizing your team.
Well done overall, this looks like it took a lot of effort!
Hey, I can't find a download link, on itch.io, maybe you could add a direct link?
Very polished and well-executed game! It's great to see good writing and personality in the characters.
For next time, a push for consistency in the car scene (with regards to who died) would be awesome to see, but I realize this is already a ton of work. Well done!
What's your process like for prototyping a story-driven game? Are there tools that make it easier?
Nicely packaged game!
I love how the atmosphere came together and feels consistent between the theme, graphics, audio and gameplay. I especially liked the music and overall audio balance.
I found myself struggling with recovering after landing straight vertically after missing a ledge (I had to move away again, but small movements were hard to execute).
Perhaps a small amount of bounce on the character could help the player recover from these cases? It might also help get rid of the sliding effect that happens when landing almost horizontally (it tends to push you against a ledge as well).
Well done overall, good polish!
The game doesn't run for me :(
It worked when I tried again! (might have been my antivirus software being careful)
I like the bloody demon theme and creepy trance music, reminds me of Quake 3.
Overall it's a nice little game, it's interesting that you can kill yourself by shooting too much. If you had more time to polish I'd recommend adding more feedback to the players actions, like blood splatter or something that would fit the mood :)
Congrats on the submission!
Nice card mechanics, reminds me of Cultist Simulator :)
I like the risque theme and the level of polish in the gameplay!
One small visual tweak would be to add margins around the play areas so that the decks don't touch the edge of the screen (see [beware of tangents](https://schweizercomics.tumblr.com/post/11966164633/the-schweizer-guide-to-spotting-tangents)).
Tag me if you end fixing the event deck (seems allowed as per the rules) and I'll give it another shot!
Great work :)
What a nice, creepy game :D
I love the atmosphere details (intro scene, parallax background, falling snow, props, flickering lights) and how you can trick monsters into running into a trap (:
What was this made with?
If it's Unity, you could enable "prewarm" on particle effects to start with snow already falling.
I found the checkpoint mechanic very useful, although a couple times I killed myself before realizing where I was because the camera restarted from the beginning.
Because the lore is so nicely developed at the start, I'd consider giving some breathing room between challenges and adding bits of story during quiet sections (like finding a drawing or piece of cloth, something to set the mood).
Overall, really well done!
Awesome game, sets a great atmosphere!
The cute graphics are awesome and the mechanics interesting. I found some puzzles quite hard since you had to react quickly and not all the elements were visible at first.
+1 for having the ability to respawn a unicorn without losing all progress.
You could also attach the camera to the unicorn and slow down time by holding space to give time to tweak traps.
Another tweak that could help would be to make the click area for the elements bigger than the graphics themselves (a lot of times I failed to grab what I was trying to click on because the target was so small).
Very cool, well done on the packaging/polish and audio mixing/foley. I like how you kept the gameplay scope simple and added lots of cool details.
Good job on putting a 3D world together!
It looks great and feels appropriately creepy :). I didn't realize that __you can interact with E__ so I fumbled a bit at first, but I dig the atmosphere.
One way to set the mood even more might be to add sound effects for imaginary events happening off-screen (maybe creaks in the dungeon, shuffling bushes in the forest, a moan from downstairs when you walk back after picking up the knife,...).
Well done overall!
Having to type "You're not in control" type of things was a bit triggering to me, so I put this down shortly after entering the house. Props for the creepy vibes there :)
I've left out most of the rating categories because it looks like this was just the intro and I missed the main content.
As a suggestion for next time, I felt that the mood was appropriately set after repeating 2-3 sentences, so I'd move on to the core loop at that point and perhaps bring back the mechanic later. As it is, I had no idea how much more I'd have to repeat stuff and it got a bit too dark already. If that's what you were going for, well done ;)
Overall, this looks like it took a lot of effort, congrats!
Nice, creative game!
I like how the ship was built in multiple layers.
One way to get more out of the main mechanic would be to list some possible interactions with the environment and make levels around that.
Some possible uses for ship pieces of various shapes/properties: * Long, thin piece used as a platform. * Round, heavy piece used as a weight to trigger a switch. * Armored piece blocks projectiles.
Well done overall!
Yay, a cute animal game where you don't have to kill them!
I liked the game mechanics and how you figured out how to make all combinations of powers work. The intro is also nice and makes it easy to understand.
Next version could have fun kitty sound effects (running through grass, meowing...) to maximize cuteness :)
Nice game!
I like the presentation and in depth exploration of the theme, especially how different gun shapes work better or worse depending on what tiles are enabled for aiming. I also like the attention to detail, projectile effects, little speech bubbles :).
Here's my take on what could be more effective: * Pause while assigning power (to give people time to understand the options and the trade-off mechanics). * Make the graphic style more consistent, especially in scale (go full low-res pixel art, add thickness to enemies, switch between reactor and power assignment views rather than zooming in a sprite). * Introduce the mechanics/enemies one at a time (show a few examples of what is best in a given situation, for example disable shields if enemies don't shoot, choose elemental that enemies are sensitive to). As it is, I found it hard to tell what would be a good strategy.
Overall, well done!
Nice game! I like the setting and the randomness in ship design.
The time pressure worked well for me, it seemed fitting with the escape pod theme to have to decide quickly who to vent into space :)
Some couple of tweaks I would suggest for next time: * Make the click hitbox for plates larger than their 3D model (I missed a lot of clicks with the time pressure). * Add more contrast between the alive and dead state of the cubes (the eyes change colors, but because losing a cube is quite significant, this could have much stronger feedback).
Other than that, everything felt very polished and readable to me, well done!
Hey, this was really cool!
You set the mood really well with the viking theme. The pixel art was amazing and worked really well. I reached the third level before I got frustrated with waiting for platforms and restarting from far away.
Here are some thoughts for next time: * A slight parallax effect in the background could make the playable plane pop out nicely. * UI elements (hearts & skulls) could be larger (I played with a gamepad, far away from the screen). * There is no gamepad mapping for picking up/dropping creatures. * I liked the (E) prompt on animal pickup. Consider making it even more obvious (e.g. colored, animated or larger). * Spikes look like fences :). I'd make them more messy, e.g. set diagonally. * Adding even more visual feedback for pickups (hearts, skull), e.g. animate them to the UI corner, particle effects,... * The level and puzzle design was great, but maybe a bit dense. The lore is really nice, so you could add breathing room between challenges and add tiny bits of lore in the middle (just short text notes would do). * Short transitions between levels would be nice (or a "Level complete" text). It felt like we were teleported randomly and was a bit disorienting.
Overall, this was super awesome and fun, well done!
Congrats on getting something out there!
I like the gory details when your arm flies off :) I managed to get some distance into the cave, but I kept getting caught by the tentacle without seeing it fly in or when I failed to shoot it.
For the next one I would suggest playtesting the game as early as possible and toning down the difficulty to make sure that the first steps are pretty easy. One tweak you could do is make the tentacle move 1/4th the speed so you only get caught if you stop moving forward for a while.
Nice intro/UI and gameplay feedback (sounds, camera shake, effects). I like that everything feels well-packaged and finished!
I like the theme and swiping mechanic. What was your process for coming up with the story and gameplay?
Some ideas to make the world feel more consistent: * Buildings blocks appear on existing stacks (rather than flying up). * Swipe construction workers to halt progress on that building. * Use the bomb to clear the stage (or remove 80% of the existing buildings).
Well done overall!
Well done for a first game in Unity!
There was a lot to figure out (animation, particle effects, sounds, physics,...), so props for that!
As you get more used to the tool, I'd suggest prototyping and polishing the gameplay as early as possible (before worrying about art style).
Some examples of gameplay tweaks you could make: * Limit the sword swing speed to maybe 2x per second. * Add more gravity to the jump, but let the character hang on the the colossus. * Push the player away after a few successful hits (in order to repeat the climbing section a few times).
Overall, I enjoyed this, I can see that it took a lot of work, keep it up!
Well-made and very polished game, great work!
I liked how you introduced one new turret type per level and kept the mechanics pretty straightforward. Valid strategies seem to emerge organically from the unpredictability of the enemy physics and you did a great job balancing that.
Art is great, gameplay is too dark for 3AM and no sleep :P.
I'm gonna go cry now...
Good concept and visual style!
I struggled with positioning bouncy slimes to make the large jump and it took quite a while to restart each time. To make it easier, perhaps the slimes could stay in place between rounds so you could adjust more easily?
Another option would be to introduce concepts one at a time and reward the player more for finding the right combination rather than being perfect in slime placement.
Anyways, well done, this looks nice!
Thanks for the positive reception :)
@justwall-games Do you happen to remember what door this was? Some presents require you to sacrifice yourself afterwards, but I was hoping you could never get stuck. Thanks for the feedback!
Thanks for the feedback!
@haneton @jk5000 There are 3 sizes of snowball, I think that door requires the largest size to open. Now that you mention it, it's totally not obvious :). I'm adding a note in the description, thanks for playing!
@miltonnh25 @honey Thanks for playing! The door opening mechanic really is underexplained... I added a short sentence in the tips section, but it would really be better to have this in-game... something to learn for next time, thanks for calling it out!
@tiar Is it the lack of failure state that makes it feel like it's not a challenge? Fair point :)
The way I think about game jam games is that I'd like players to experience a full run through the main content in about 5-10 min without getting frustrated. There are a couple points where this didn't quite work (e.g. people got stuck on doors or frustrated after taking the hardest path by accident), but overall, toning down the difficulty of the main path seemed well-received during our playtests.
I like putting respawn points close to the challenging sections because in my mind, solving the new challenge is more fun than spending time repeating a section you already understand. We put presents on the map with the idea that this would appeal to more completionist players, but maybe that didn't quite appeal to you?
Thanks for the feedback everyone!
@pkenney, thanks for the note about sound effects, we're pretty proud of the chuff-chuff :). We'll share a couple tips on sound design in the coming days. The spike jump can be done by just tapping jump, but the difficulty does feel a bit harsh at that point of the level (we watched people repeatedly fail that exact jump).
@justinmullin Any suggestions for the snowball switch? I really liked the concept of having multiple heads active at once and having them sacrifice each other organically, but there are spots where the camera doesn't focus on the one you'd expect. Maybe you have ideas how to solve this? I'll give more details in a blog post.
@goldranger I'm glad the peaceful aspect resonated with you :). We like positive games, even though it's not always that simple.
@vlandemart, @zicboy, @kleinzach, I'm working on a slightly-revised post-LD version with a better intro for doors, will probably post it on itch.io before Christmas.
@franfox The game should be in full color, are you using anything specific to play in black and white?
In the past, I've used the [High Contrast](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/high-contrast/djcfdncoelnlbldjfhinnjlhdjlikmph/related) chrome extension to test for accessibility, maybe something like that is still active for you?
Here's a [windows build](http://kodobolt.com/games/2018_LD43_Snowcrifice/Welcome%20to%20the%20North%20Pole%21_Data.zip) if the WebGL version gives you trouble.
Way to set a high bar!
I love the attention to detail and production value, especially the creepy walking sound effect :D. The trade-offs are nice, at some point I traded swapped controls for what seemed like bigger projectiles twice, resulting in nicely overpowered shots :).
One way to put more emphasis on the theme of sacrifice might be to offer 2 or 3 of the trade-offs as part of the initial storyline, so you can experience the gameplay variations even when you're not that great at dodging projectiles.
I really liked this overall, well done!
Superb amount of polish for a game jam game :star:
I like the attention to details for the effects (e.g shake, glow). In the next iteration, I'd suggest to tighten up the pacing and ramp up to a challenge within a minute or two (maybe shrink the playable area to a screen or two, spawn powers on a timer, make the monster spawn much faster). As-is, it took me a while to find the spells and feel challenged and I stopped playing before I was in any danger of dying.
Very cool, happy to see another word game :a:
I love the effects for special objects and high degree of polish (calm visuals + sounds). I got stuck after finding three things, wish there would be a way to get hints since I'd love to discover all the content, but I ran out of ideas. I like that objects are also useful, but it's not always clear what letter they represent... I got to 26 and decided that was the perfect stopping point :smile:
Nice, love the details & polish :grin: (tile animation, googley eyes, automatic tile selection, breathing)
Puzzles were interesting, I like how they build up from previously acquired tiles. To amp up the next one and make it look super professional, my suggestion would be to spend time on art direction: polishing up the universe a bit (backstory, why are they here, why do they need to escape) and giving a stronger sense of visual identity (e.g. more consistent color palette, reserve a color for interactive elements, add lighting -- strong shadows, clear light direction).
Well-done overall!
Well done! It took me a few tries :smile:
I like the art style and animations. Props for completing a core gameplay loop, complete with an ending screen. A small tweak for next time could be to give instant feedback to all valid actions -- it took me a while to figure out how to pick-up the branches because very little moved when I pressed the key (at first I thought it was broken).
Well done, it takes some effort to build a crafting system :smile:
I like the diversity of options and effort put into a dialog system + inventory + goals. One thing I would tweak for next time is to simplify the inputs needed for the crafting loop. Right now, it takes 4 interactions to put something in the cauldron (tab + click + space + e). You could make the inventory open automatically when near a cauldron/NPC and swap the item with one click, making it much easier to combine many things.
Cool game, love the wholesome vibe and text fading effect!
The pacing is good, so even if there isn't much content, I feel like I've had a mini-vacation :smile:
I really love clean and accessible games, very happy to have seen this one!
A small tweak for next time could be to adjust the framing so that the important elements stay visible and you direct the eye more clearly. There is some of that (I like the feel of the camera animation), but in the default web screen size, some of the content is cut off or spawns out of view. Maybe just zooming the camera out a little could be a quick fix (I'd probably trigger the transition when Bob is ~70% through the screen, as opposed to the current ~85%).
Well done overall!
@bubble-boy Thanks!
@rubyleehs Thanks for the detailed feedback! We actually have a dictionary under the hood + scrabble-style point tracking (working as you described), but we cut it out because it felt like it added unnecessary complexity and cluttered the UI. You can see the remnants of it at the bottom of the help menu. I did like the scrabble point tally, so maybe we could bring that back :smile:.
I love the amount of polish and little details! :heart: (walking animation, location transitions, building fade,...)
I'd be curious to hear about your process for designing and keeping track of all the trades and location, seems like it would be easy to underestimate.
Overall, your game came together as a really wonderful package for me, glad I got to play it! :mouse:
I wouldn't really change anything, but just as food for thought, you could consider speeding up the animations slightly (e.g. text, gates) and shrinking the game world a tiny bit in order to make the core game loop of trading items a bit quicker to explore. I only got to three endings in ~20mins, would have liked to discover more since the game appears to have tons of content.
The game was nice! I won in 10s... once I realized there was a win condition :sweat_smile:
Clearly it's not your first go at this, so I don't have much to say about the design choices and execution, but as food for thought:
- The lightning ball character looks quite unique, but the platformer mechanics are fairly standard. Perhaps for the next one you could give yourself a bit more space for experimenting and stumbling onto happy accidents? In my mind, it could lead to more unique mechanics and more bold design choices. For example, what would a lightning ball tend to do? Find the shortest path to the ground? Spread out across everything it touches? Maybe then some tiles conduct electricity and some don't, leading to interesting explosion patterns? Maybe the ball just zaps to the closest object once you get in range? - A second angle you may want to consider is making it feel like a emotional journey of some sort. Once you have a toy, perhaps think about how to take players from the start of the experience to the end? Maybe it starts as a short-circuit in a calculator, then eventually the whole city is blowing up as you're trying to escape through the telephone wires?
Overall, it's fun and well-executed, so my main suggestion would be to keep exploring the design space further and further!
To disable compression, see this: https://imgur.com/a/9mOg5ZK
The game was excellent and the soundtrack just right! Congrats, I have no suggestions to make, this was really cool :smile:
This was super fun, well done! I struggle to find anything I would suggest doing differently on this one. The couple of minor points I could find:
- Add a small note about what "fortify defenses" does. - Add "conflict history" lines between nations that attacked each other so that I can learn over time who tends to attack who.
Fighter jets though :laughing:
I really liked the visual identity in this one! It's working very well. I managed to clear the first 10 levels before running out of time, it was nice to be able to have a peek at the rest!
On the audio side, it's working quite well, although I see what you mean about the soundtrack. My suggestion here would be to do less in the background track and let the melody come from hitting the blocks. Maybe have some soft drums to give it a bit of rhythm, and pads with low attack if you want a bit of harmony (as opposed to having a lot of sharp sounds already in the background track).
Short notes on the visuals:
- I find your in-game font a bit too small and the contrast a bit too low over the background. - The background changing color is a nice touch, maybe transitions could be a bit slower, or mapped to player actions in some way? (e.g. take the color of the block you hit or just change after a hit) In my mind, this might add a feeling of responsiveness to the environment.
Overall, this was quite fun and challenging, it felt like the idea was clear and fully executed. Well done!
Ah, this was fun, thanks for making it! @eldogg what did you use for TTS? Would love to try it out as well :robot:
Cool game! I'm impressed by the concept and how you managed to implement it in a short time! I had no major issues and scored 47 :smile:
My only suggestion for the next one would be to give more contrast to the text. Right now it's purple on purple and I didn't notice the tutorial text until the second play through. Overall, well done!
Nice idea and well executed!
I played a couple rounds, hopefully swaying the balance back towards the human side :sweat_smile: I could not finish a round with the spore, even after infecting everything I could, the map would not end. Maybe I missed something.
I agree that the combat mechanics could use refinement, but maybe to keep the scope small and focused on the persistence idea, simply shrinking the map by ~half or ending the level as soon as the opposing side is eliminated could help make rounds faster and let people get to the end state, assuming there is one :smile:
Hi! I'd love to play this if you managed to get something done!
If not, no worries, things don't always work out as planned, but there's always the next game jam! :smile:
Fun game! The length was great and puzzles were nice, it felt like a complete experience. It was fun to figure things out, personally I liked that had to think outside the box for a solution instead of having a tutorial :smiley:
My suggestions for the next one would be:
- Keep an outline on the selected mech so it's clear who you are controlling - Make the different stages of ice slightly more visible. As it is now, it was sometimes hard to understand the board state at a glance.
What I would keep:
- Short length and simple controls. - Cool look of the mechs.
Cool game! I liked that the power up effects were quite strong, so it's very clear what you picked up. I played a run until the boss then died, at first I could pick up weapons, but after a while it seems I could not anymore, so I died fighting with my basic sword :sweat_smile:
My suggestions for the next jam would be:
- Graphics: increase contrast to make the game more readable (for example, make the background a dark brown so that the player is more clearly visible. - Audio: use sfxr to generate basic sound effects and trigger them after every meaningful interaction, it's quick to do and adds more to the immersion than a soundtrack (imo).
Overall, a nice and fun entry!
Hey, well done, this is a super polished entry!
Same as others have commented before, I feel like the platformer difficulty took something away from the experience. I stopped playing after a couple minutes trying to execute the same jump over and over again after pressing a lever, trying to get past a hill. I have nothing against hard games, but with so many games to play and rate, I'd like be able to experience the core idea fully within a few minutes, and it felt like I missed out a bit.
My suggestion for fixing the jump accuracy:
- Keep track of a "last ground collision time" - Allow jumps up to 0.1s or 0.25s after the last ground collision, even if you started falling off a platform.
This helps perceive jump timing as more fair.
Tiny suggestion for audio: the mood was perfect, but with little particle effects under the character's feet, I feel like I would have loved to hear tiny footsteps.
Overall, really high quality with this one, just wished I had managed to see all of it.
Hey @theviraldragon @indiemoose @dekajoo @gibss :smile:
Thanks a lot for playing this! :pray:
I found some time to revisit levels before the jam deadline and take your feedback into account!
Feel free to have a go at it again, discover a whole new level, and see if you can save the puppy :dog:
Or just leave it be, it's a tough game :sweat_smile:
Thanks everyone for playing and leaving comments!
@koolruz yep, there is some missed opportunity with slopes and movement physics, I just now realize the potential, might give it a shot for a post-LD version, thanks for mentioning it!
@foursay I confirm that the warning is harmless (updated the description to mention that), I just don't know how to set up my webserver correctly :upside_down: The calculator is a Pocket Operator from Teenage Engineering. I bought it especially for this jam, it was excellent and super easy to use, I very much recommend it. The model I used is PO-12 Rhythm. I made 4 tracks of the same length, played them all at the same time, and just crossfaded between them based on the current mood.
@peco good point about the tighter feel, I think it also relates to the suggestion of slopes above, I'm making a note of it. We made a few more intro levels but I took them out of the final build, seems like it was a bit too much to cut... :sweat_smile:
@maxathon thanks for the feedback, I wish we had more time to make use of the various ways moods propagate. Originally we wanted to model real human responses such as fight or flight, empathy, but the levels had to be thrown together a bit quickly :smile: If you have concrete suggestions for fleshing this out, feel free to make them, I'll be reading this thread!
@juanlu The puppy is on scene 3, you just have to find a way to get to it! Should happen naturally as you play, but feel free to focus on the last level.
@fractale The first puppy (your puppy) makes you sad because it's locked inside. The next puppy makes you sad because it's not your puppy. Others puppies later make you happy though! It's not an american game, we're French, Ukrainian and Swiss :smile: but yes, puppies are great, don't hurt them! I'm glad this made you laugh!
@neputevshina @kr4ft3r I'm happy you enjoyed this :smile:
It's hard to balance your own game, and I thought that the secret lab level couldn't possibly be so hard, so I figured I'd record a 100% playthrough...
So, if you want to laugh at/with me, take a look at this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hf11scBpNbA
It's 6 minutes of going through the first 10 levels, then 18 minutes struggling to get a full clear of the lab :sweat_smile:
So yeah, lesson learned on this one, thanks for your feedback!
*for anyone who wants closure about the puppy, skip to 9:00 then to 24:00*
This was *shhhhh* and well *shhhhh*! I leaked just a few *shhhhh* *shhhhh* and found the *shhhhh* ending. Voice *shhhhh* was excellent! Would you briefly explain how you *shhhhh* the *shhhhh* with the text? Is it mapped by *shhhhh* for every *shhhhh* or did you do something smarter?
In any case, excellent job and I loved how the *shhhhh* loop was kept short and *shhhhh*, and fit under *shhhhh* minutes. Congrats!
Nice game! I died a few times, managed to reach 100 crystals, then died again and ran out of time and had to stop.
My suggestions for the next one would be:
- Level design: For game jam games, make the lose condition less punitive than restarting from the beginning. There are a lot of games to play and rate, and I would like to see as much of the game as I can, but after 10 minutes I have to move on. Here, I played the same intro sequence 5-10 times because I kept missing a jump, so I felt like I only saw part of the game content. Once thing you could do would be to add checkpoints, or cut the game into smaller sequences (e.g. restart from last portal). - Graphics: Consider increasing the contrast between gameplay elements and the background, especially gems, for example by making them brighter. Here it felt like bits of purple blending with more purple :smile:
I really like the 3D death transition, that was a super nice effect! Overall, well done!
It worked for me! Congrats on submitting a game and making it work, and thanks for sharing with us!!
I managed to get 258, then the falling rods brought the fire to 100 and even though there was no game over triggered, I stopped out of fairness :smile:
I was a bit confused why the oven hatch kept opening again and the timer kept going up, so I didn't know when the game would end. One suggestion for the next game would be to make the world logic more coherent, for example if you replace the falling logs with a wind indicator, and when there is wind, the fire is hotter but burns fuel faster, it might be easier to understand the game mechanics intuitively.
Good job overall!
Interesting choice of engine! I had never heard of Panda3D before, it's nice to see something different!
I think you did well considering the self-imposed constraints, and thanks for sharing the source code, I had a quick look!
I can see how lacking an editor makes it hard to generate and tweak the scene. Did you consider using a scene representation format and editing the scene in a different tool? I imagine it's a bit overkill to write a custom parser, but maybe something like that already exists?
It's a nice idea to be using Open Source software and work with what you have. It reminds me a bit of tinkering with Processing (see https://openprocessing.org/browse/#). Thanks for doing this and sharing :smile:
Where you missing other elements compared to using a special purpose game engine such as Unity? I imagine that the gameplay programming layer (camera, controls, behaviors, AI) is pretty barebones? I'll keep an eye on Ursina to see how it develops!
I managed to discover three nodes, but I'm also stuck with the language barrier :sweat_smile:
It worked for me!
- Press space at the start, then quickly select a difficulty level - The game announces "The rebels approach" - Game then works as described.
Attempting to start the tutorial or waiting until the narrator is done talking makes the game unable to start for me. If you are sighted, I recommend leaving the readme open to understand what's going on.
I managed to win once on difficulty 1.
My feedback:
- It's super nice to make an audio-only game and get it to work!! Massive props for that :clap: - The controls to select regions and units are limited and intuitive, I like that you kept it simple - I found no way to get my resource count announced, nor my unit count on regions other than farms, so there was a lot of guessing what the current state of the game is. - There seems to be audio cues about enemy attacks, but with the background audio, it was hard to follow. Consider muting the track when something happens. - I perceived the game as going very fast. Having things happen slower would give more time to process what happened (consider e.g. pre-invasion announcements, e.g. "enemy is targeting GOLD with 3 archers", then "3 archers arrived at GOLD").
Overall, I was very happy to see this! I work on accessibility and screenreader support for web and it's nice to see games going in that direction. Congrats and thanks!
Hey cool game, I love the intensity and vibe! :laughing:
I played until I died a few times, it was nicely executed and I liked having green borders around walls for readability. My suggestion for the next one would be to take the "out of control" theme even further and make the lightning ball bounce around almost uncontrollably, so the gameplay is not simply to go and find the purple thing, but to actually hit it once you've find it (maybe making levels more open so you don't need to be precise).
As it is, it was nice to play this, I just felt that the gameplay didn't quite match the energy level of the game presentation! :zap:
No trojan for me (checked with Avast).
I managed to go through 2 levels then I got stuck on a platform where it seems I needed double jump but I was not in the right shape (and I couldn't drop down and reach the lower level either).
Overall, it's really cool that you got something submitted on your first attempt!
Here are some suggestions for the next jam:
- Level design: Make the first levels very easy and introduce one element at a time (first the platforms, then the enemies, then changing powers). Write the controls as text in the background directly in-game. Having mid-level checkpoints was really nice, keep that :) - Graphics: The elements are really cool, but everything is the same brightness so it's a bit hard to see what's going on. Make the foreground elements stand out more, either light on dark or dark on light.
Thanks for making this :)