Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → Fritzendugan
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | Co | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 58 | Collector | 👥 | TeamSquirrel LD58 | jam | 708 | 2.94 | 2.57 | 2.95 | 3.45 | 2.82 | 2.96 | 2.72 | 3.10 | |
| 2014 | 29 | Beneath the Surface | Subterranean Extermination | jam | 435 | 3.11 | 3.09 | 2.49 | 3.48 | 3.26 | 3.47 | 3.09 | 3.00 | 55 | |
| 2013 | 28 | You Only Get One | Lost in the Snow | jam | 20 | ||||||||||
| 2013 | 27 | 10 Seconds | Title Unknown | ||||||||||||
| 2013 | 26 | Minimalism | Pale Brown Dot | jam | 236 | 3.24 | 2.86 | 3.41 | 3.17 | 2.97 | 3.39 | 2.00 | 3.56 | 50 | |
| 2012 | 24 | Evolution | T.R.E.E. | compo | 526 | 2.70 | 2.32 | 2.91 | 2.81 | 1.74 | 2.45 | 1.68 | 2.11 | 45 |
Poor level design, and i don't just mean difficult. There's no "scaling" of difficulty, and often the levels depend on really cheap tactics to make a level really hard. I'm also pretty upset because I forced myself to play through this game just so I could give a rating only to get stuck on the last boss because of a glitch: http://imgur.com/Ytm0n can't move. :(
Game had great mood, the laser sound was SUPER annoying though! I liked the music. Run of the mill gameplay, but solid, enjoyable. Too short! I'd like a survival mode
Cool concept, had sort of a "minesweepeer meets minecraft" feel to it. Only complaint I have is, like others, it gets kinda monotonous after a while, and if you run out before you can get everything, there's really no desire to want to play through the earlier section again. Got to about 53% complete and then ran out (just found where I think the third key was, but didn't have enough to get it). Collision detection with the trees was annoying.
What would've been nice would've been an ability to pull the evo gems toward you. There were a bunch that I couldn't even get to.
Overall, nice entry.
Cool idea. I like the physics, the particles do interesting things at times (almost look like they're dancing or something). The "evolution/mutation" idea is an interesting one. No real game mechanics or goals, though. This has potential in that regard
sound effects were a little on the annoying side. Music was decent. Gameplay mechanics were great, simple, but fun. Could maybe have used a little more depth, but it is just a 48 hour competition
thanks for the feedback guys!
@panzermancer, I agree with everything you said. Most of this was a result of time constraints, and me kind of developing the idea of the game as I went along. I never had a full concept of what the game would be, so the different color currencies were a result of an earlier vision. I had thought of converting it all to one currency, but it was too late to have time to test it. Thanks for the great feedback, and thanks for playing!
rows : Could you open up the javascript console and tell me what errors you're getting? Also what graphics card do you have and do you have the latest drivers from the manufacturer?
rwos : I think I know what's up. It has to do with how Firefox handles events a little differently. Thank you for taking the time and leading me toward the problem, but unfortunately I won't be able to fix it as it's not a game-breaking bug.
gnx : I completely agree :) I'm no artist and didn't give myself enough time to create graphics, nor give the game the polish it needed. Thanks for playing!
Josh : you're probably getting the mouse controls bug. Try using the newest version of chrome, sorry.
Minism : It's a little confusing, didn't get time to refine the controls. Try looking at the website, it details the process.
read the postmortem, very nice read
Kinda cool. I like that you used pure browser technologies (like me!). There were too many people relying on plugins or downloads for this compo. Audio would've definitely helped.
Mouse controls would've been much better for breakout. Also, got breakout to bug out where the ball bounces straight up and down and you can't win. Should've made the bounce angle dependent upon where it hits the paddle.
Asteroids was way too easy, you could just spin in a circle and fire bullets as fast as you could. A limit on the number of bullets on screen at once or something like that would probably have fixed that.
Pacman controls were really buggy, I couldn't turn around. No indication of when "invulnerability" was gonna run out was frustrating.
Collision detection on mario was weird, and jumping controls left something to be desired.
point and click wasn't bad. Maybe add more rooms and a little bit more of a plot?
The ray-caster was cool. Without sounds it was tough to tell what was going on. Health pickups would've been nice, and an increase on the turning speed (or use the mouse). I'm sure the ray-caster was fun to code, I like software renderers :)
Overall, like you said, it was a game that could've greatly benefited from more polish. Looking forward for more work from you in the future
Game was really bland as far as tower defenses go. No real differentiation between towers (where were the slow, AoE, stun, etc.). Different levels would've been nice. Would've liked a refund to sell back towers, or at least an "undo" in case you accidentally placed a tower.
Music was nice, sound effects were effective without being in your face.
there is a destroy button, but you lose all that money, thereby usually making you have to restart
Gameplay has been done many times in other games, but I do like how accessible the game is (uses only browser technologies, and is easy to play). Sometimes when you spawn you instantly die. No clear indication of when power-ups are gonna fail is annoying. When you're tiny, the camera movement isn't "tight" enough, it's hard to tell when you're going to run into things. The music fits the atmosphere, but gets very repetitive.
The tutorial was nice. Endless mode is a good addition to any game, but with the "level-based" gameplay, I have to ask myself why are there no other modes with different types of challenges? Another thing about the level-based choice, why levels? There seems to be no clear goal between any level other than sucking up a certain number of dust particles. I feel like a more seamless growth between phases would've more rewarding. You could encounter massive entities early on, but after a while you'd be the one eating them up.
Overall, it's a tried and true game type, one that's fairly fun and was implemented well, there are just a lot of minor things that bug me about the game. The graphics are nice, and you can tell you paid attention to detail, but gameplay is just too lacking to keep me really involved.
not really interested in having to create an account to play, so just letting you know I avoided this entry for that reason
no real gameplay, like you said :/
Hmmmm....this is a tough one to score. As others have said, wasn't exactly "fun," but was probably the most unique entry I've come across this LD. Audio and graphics did wonders for thematics (mission accomplished), but I'm struggling to come up with your interpretation of the actual theme without stretching it very, very thin. Loved the pixel art.
The controls definitely left a lot to be desired. I kinda wished instead of having to move to an object to get the "tooltip" at the bottom, it just appeared when I moused over, and I could then click the object and the bubble would move there then on his own. You can say it's nitpicky, but I almost stopped playing just because I got tired of watching him bobble around only to move to something unimportant. It would've been a real shame not to complete the game, because I actually liked this entry.
Overall, awesome job. You went off on a limb and did something you weren't sure if people would like or not, and for that I respect you. Not sure that I think an entry like this deserves to win, but it was a powerful experience for something made in 48 hours. The ending was great.
The bad: music got repetitive. Coins seemed kinda pointless (unless I missed what they're used for). Took me a while to tell that the game even loaded or what was going on at first. Enemies got boring, fast. Boss battle felt a little anti-climactic.
The good: game was fun. Pacing was done fairly well for a compo game, length was about right (could've been longer, but it was fine). The changing environments was a cool effect. This is probably one of the better executed games I've played this Ludum Dare. Well done.
what a con
just in case anyone is wondering: http://i.imgur.com/2iO9A.png
;)
Game isn't really finished at all. I'm sure you had a lot of interesting systems in mind, shame you didn't get them in. Better luck next time man!
Kinda easy since you can just constantly spam evolve. Perhaps something a little more round-based (and evolve/clone between rounds) with some kind of resource to limit the cloning (or just set a max per round. First round you have 2 guys, then 3, and so on. And you can kill/clone in between rounds).
An even simpler solution would've been to just include difficulties. If you find it too easy, just ramp up the difficulty which would increase something like enemy strength, or number of enemies.
Lack of music was a bummer, but the sound effects were effective. A group select or tab through units would've been nice.
Nice job on theme, fits a little more nicely than some of the other entries. All in all, nice entry.
Not a bad platformer/puzzle. Monsters evolving were very annoying/random. Would've been nice for a little animation to play right before they evolve or something.
I like that you used webgl, wish I'd see more projects using pure browser technologies instead of relying on plugins.
Lighting was cool, but game really lacked polish. Health bar missing was very annoying. Pickup detection seemed a little buggy. Audio was alright.
It's a shame, because I'm sure with just a little more work this could've been a really great entry, but it really just felt so unfinished. In a competition with a short time window like this one, though, it's totally understandable, especially since you didn't use a plugin like unity.
Just wanted to let you know tested the webgl version in firefox
I'm on Windows 7 Ultimate x64, Nvidia GeForce GTX 580, Firefox 14.0.1
couldn't figure out what to do really :/
Couldn't figure out anyway to restart a level if I didn't get all the sandwiches, which was really frustrating because I would just have to wait for the timer to go out and then restart. This made stop playing a game a really would've liked to have finished.
The concept is cool. Something to switch up the levels a little more, like bouncy platforms, or power-ups, something simple would've been cool. Clever use of the theme, and I liked the main menu a lot. Music would've been a nice addition. Also, I hate the fact that I have to install a bunch of stuff just to play the game, a stand-alone zip would've been better or better yet some kind of web application. Overall, if it would've been more clear how I can just restart a level, this would've been a good entry.
Fits the theme fairly well, both in the sense that the graphics are minimal, but also in a deeper sense where you're creating the most amount of gameplay you can with a simple mechanic. Unfortunately, the color mixing wasn't intuitive enough for me and I found myself struggling to get just the right shade of what I need to get through the door, especially when I have to manage about 10 different color objects that I'm carrying around, and trying to pick them up in just the right order in a cramped space....it was tedious and not very fun. Which is a shame because the game had a decent amount of atmosphere and the level design seems pretty well done. You were just one or two steps short of making the color mixing mechanic what it needed to be, but unfortunately that made me not want to continue playing the game.
Interesting concept. At first I was like "well I'll just spam the echo" then quickly realized there's a limit (which makes sense to make it challenging). The game's only sound effect quickly grew tiresom. I think you could've easily incorporated sound into your game a lot more. Maybe everytime you sent out a ping, when it reached the exit, the exit would "resonate" with an intensity of how close you were. This would give you something a little more to go on rather than wandering around in a void. Also, maybe leaving what you've already explored colored in dimly with the black/white wireframe, but color things hit by the pulse in with a little more detail that fades as the pulse fades. Music would've been cool, too. Of course, I realize all of this is a little unreasonable for a 48hr compo, but it's just stuff to think about.
Other than that, pretty cool for what it is. I've often though of similar concepts for games, but you actually pulled it off. Well done.
Overall pretty fun, online features made it competitive and interesting. Managed to get in the top 10, guess I can live with that for now ;)
Some criticisms: the sounds didn't always intuitively match up with the arrow keys. I would almost prefer it was something like if the pitch goes down, press left, if it went up, press right, not sure if that would make the game too easy. Or maybe in higher difficulties use all four arrow keys. Sometimes the screen would become really clustered and it would be hard to predict when the shapes were going to be in the zone to press the keys. Maybe some different sounds other than the current ones to switch it up sometimes.
Interesting take on the theme, I think it worked out pretty well. And you even mentioned to get a leaderboard up and running, all in 48 hours. Well done.
Very well done, awesome concept. I wish that rather than place the kitten randomly, the game just required you to listen to all of the sounds and put the kitten in the last one, because I'm sure there are some gems I missed out on (and, sorry, but I don't feel like replaying haha).
I don't know if you recorded all the sounds yourself or not, but they are very well done. Like others have said, I rocked out to the chiptune track for a bit. Only complaint is that sometimes the squares were too close together and it made the sounds merge into each other which was kind of annoying. I felt like it detracted a lot from the quieter sound.
you're cheating, you're just a picture. Haha nice use of them, clever gameplay. I like it, although I do feel like you're kind of cheating this whole game development thing :P
@DaanVanYperen : check out the "hints" section in the description. Unless you're reporting a bug? Thanks for playing :)
switchbreak: yes I certainly agree. Level 2 was sort of rushed in order that I could try to polish some of the other aspects of the game. There are actually some tricks that make the level easier that I assumed players would realize, but they didn't. It's a failure of level design on my part. In retrospect, it could have been much better. Thanks for playing, though :)
shawn42 : the shifting up is actually intentional. It was meant to try and force the player to only be able to use the life drain at certain points, but, again, this was just a failure in level design. If I wanted the players not to be able to use that ability, then I should've introduced some other mechanic that limited it, not modify the player's hitbox (which, as you noticed, is pretty annoying and not-intuitive). Thanks a lot for playing and for the feedback. I'm glad you enjoyed it :)
Jorjon: thank you very much for the awesome feedback. I agree with basically everything you said EXCEPT the comment about the lo-fi graphics. The graphics choice was made not really because of the theme, but because I simply like the lo-fi aesthetic. I kind of stretched the theme here, and won't be pretentious enough to say what I was going for, but admittedly my tie to the theme was pretty week. Thanks a lot for playing. I probably will continue work on this game and hopefully address some of your feedback in future versions.
joe40001: Thanks for playing! Can you be a little more clear about what you mean about the rabbit blocking your path? Was this after you grabbed the power-up? Did you grab enough souls to activate the portal (and have everything die)? Was the rabbit already dead?
Tom 7 : sorry about that! Like others have said, the level design needs some work for sure.
mrexcessive : can you be a little more specific about the "rejumping?" If you mean you can walk off a platform but still jump, that's intentional. If that's not what you're describing, can you give me some steps to reproduce it? Where exactly and on what level were you able to double jump?
Thanks for playing guys :)
Hard as balls! I will beat this if my life depends on it. It's working for me on windows.
works for me on win7-64. Might be an issue where the game is using the wrong version of Java for some people. I have both a 64-bit version and a 32-bit version of Java, not sure if that matters, or if it matters which version is installed in the Path.
Crashed on level C-3 right after I had beaten it. Very cool concept, you managed to cram in a lot of gameplay for only working for 8 hours. It's a shame that it lacks the polish you could've given it if you used more time: sounds, music, more play-testing, etc. because I think the game would've really benefitted.
The gameplay sort of reminds me of a twist on the "wario ware" titles and similar titles. Quick, rapid levels, where you have to read the description quickly and then react. The descriptions themselves had their own humor which added to the aesthetic. Well done, but maybe plan to use a little more time next round? haha
Very cool use of the 12-tone technique, but I think you may have made the (all-too-common in game development) mistake of assuming your player base knows as much about the game and the mechanics as you do. There is a lot to be said about letting a player experiment and learn how to do things, but in this case what you expected them to do was simply too complicated, or at least not well enforced. I tried getting to level 2 a bunch of times before I gave up and then read your explanation of what to do, but by that point I was too sick of the game to even bother trying. Which is a real shame because I was pretty excited when I started playing and first beat the starting level, which was pretty fun.
I'm not sure that you necessarily needed a tutorial or anything like that to make this work, just more feedback to the player when they did the right thing. And maybe without making them start completely over every time. Maybe something like when they hit a wrong note it simply plays an "ugly" sound, and flashes or something, and the player is left to continue from there. Then at the end of each round, it should be made clear exactly what they did to make it that far, say, play all the notes in that order again. If you're worried this would make the game too easy, you can do something like have a "combo" system where they earn more points for consecutive right answers. This would still enforce the competitive nature of the game. Maybe after level 9 you can no longer mess up or you have to start completely over.
Anyway, overall, nice use of the theme, and cool general ideas, but I think your execution left a lot to be desired. Not necessarily such a bad thing considering everything you have to accomplish in a 48 hour period to make this work.
got to a little over a thousand score. I rationed my bullets pretty carefully, but eventually it becomes impossible to get more bullets. Perhaps you should make bullet spawns randomly appear after a while. While bullets should be an important resource, the more important one should be your hp. I often had lots of hp but no bullets. Even something like a very short-range melee attack where I could get more bullets if I needed when I desperate would've greatly added to this game. Background music was effective, sound effects were gratifying without being annoying. Gameplay was actually pretty engaging, if it only had more polish, like you say, would've been a pretty enjoyable entry. As it is, after playing two rounds, there's really no more enjoyment to be had.
what an evil, cheap, horrible teaser of an ending. You should be ashamed. :P
In all seriousness, you were building up something pretty awesome here and it's a really a shame that it's so horribly short, conscious decision or not, if it was anything other than you didn't have enough time to add anything more, you made the wrong decision. Hopefully you finish this.
Also, nice music and sound effects. The gameplay fits the theme in a very real and deep sense, moreso than many other games who simply took minimalism to mean "an excuse for cruddy art."
Music is extremely repetitive and annoying. Wish I could just walk into the exits to leave a room rather than pressing shift (which, when combined with awsd only for movement, are terrible hotkeys). It wasn't clear at all if I was damaging the second boss, or even what the wand did at all. Eventually I guessed that it must be a beam attack, and sure enough eventually I beat the second boss, but still. It seemed like there was some kind of cooldown, but I couldn't really tell. It really just seemed like sometimes I would press it and it would do nothing, and other times if I mashed it a beam would fire upward. Not that I knew what the beam did. The same pretty much goes for the enemies. Once you figured out how to basically get them all on the same vertical level, you just kinda stood in one placed and mashed spacebar (even on the first boss). There really wasn't all that much content, but for 48 hours it certainly wasn't bad. Gotta say it's kinda lame that you just ignored the theme though :P
Enough criticisms, I actually enjoyed the game quite a bit. Even though the last boss fight was kind of confusing, it was still pretty damn fun. Once I accepted that the beam must be dealing damage, it became a fairly intense battle of fending off the hordes of zombies while aiming and timing my blast of light correctly. I think if you took the quirky component of the music and simply extended it, say, 1 minute loops rather than the 5 or 10 seconds or whatever they are, the soundtrack would actually be pretty sweet. The "mspaint" style graphics are actually appealing to a lot of people, I just wish they had animations, even crappy ones. A flash of red and a sound effect when you hurt something and when you get hurt, slight "doodads" and variations in the environment, little animations here and there, these things go a long way to polish the game and make it "feel" more responsive and alive. The game honestly reminds me a lot of a game I used to love to play when I was younger called "Well of Souls" by Synthetic Reality (link below if you don't know it). I mean this as a great compliment.
With quite a bit of polish and more content and some more mechanics, this could actually be a really sweet game. You should definitely continue working on it. Lots of people (myself included) actually really crave these kinds of quirky games. Overall, well done.
woops realized I never gave you that link haha http://www.synthetic-reality.com/wosHome.htm
very nice, cool mechanic. Levels were probably right about the difficulty they should be, but christ was level 6 annoying. The final level was actually pretty awesome once you mastered it, I felt like I was doing some kind of crazy kung fu training. "Be like the wind." It felt like dancing or something. Interesting how such a simple mechanic can express so much, minimalism to a T.
Beat all 7 levels, I know you have a "high score" table, but I'm not sure how much replay value there really is. Maybe if there were time-trials/challenge mode, I dunno http://imgur.com/Rfsa8SJ But I can't really complain for 48 hours. Well done, sir.
website is down
not played/rated, just wanted to say you should just use something like dropbox. I'm not going to sign up with some website just to download an unfinished game. Dropbox is free and you can share downloads without people having to make an account. There are plenty of other good hosting services out there that are free as well.
Collision is a little off, if I'm running into a wall I can't jump. A lot of the puzzle solving was more pinpoint timing rather than actual puzzle solving. This was fun for a little bit but quickly grew old as I had to keep retrying levels over and over again even though I had figured out the puzzle aspect. That combined with the glitchy collision and what felt like an oversized collision box definitely detracted from the game. My only other criticism is that some music would've been nice.
Other than that though, this game was actually a lot of fun. Kind of reminded me of a platforming version of "chip's challenge" from the win95 entertainment pack, if you've ever played that. The levels are pretty well designed (except for my previous criticisms). What at first seems like a really obvious way to clear the level isn't always how you have to do it. This is especially true with the level that had the guy trapped in the red box in the upper right. I hope you make more levels for this :)
The instructions are pretty poor and I have literally no idea how to play the game (yes, I know it's a card game that you have to print out, I mean that the instructions in the pdf aren't very descriptive). Maybe I'm missing a page? I can only see one page of instructions.
Very annoying the amount I had to download just to get this app to run. I don't really like to install things onto my computer that I feel like I don't need (.NET frameworks). It wasn't a small or short download, and it required me to restart my computer. I'm sure I'm not alone in this. Also depending on those technologies limits your available audience and who can play your game. Might want to consider these things in the future. We work within the toolsets we're familiar with, of course, but perhaps you want to learn some more tools ;P
Anyway, not trying to be harsh, just being honest. As for the gameplay itself, it was an interesting concept. The visuals were enticing. However, I felt as though the player was too far away from the front of the screen, and this made it confusing when I tried to grab the rectangles as I couldn't tell which I had already passed and which were in front of me. Combine that with the fact that the triangles move at variable screens, and I had almost no hope of doing anything other than randomly moving around and hoping I hit green triangles and not red ones. Had you moved the player back to almost on the same level as the "viewing window", I think that would've helped a lot.
Music was very fitting, and the sound effects were effective without hurting my ears, so good job on sound.
Cool music, like others have said, it was main thing that kept me going through the actual gameplay. If you made this music yourself, well done. Interesting message, I suppose. I wouldn't call it a "non-game," as the term "game" has many connotations and meanings. I would call this a game. Others who are kind of scorning it and refuse to play it bug me as elitist.
That's not to say I don't have criticisms. The graphic kind of got to me and gave me a headache. Even just the slightest increase in complexity in the game mechanic probably would've been enjoyable. Hell, even other labyrinths to explore. Of course, that said, you've kind of taken minimalism to an extreme, and while I might not have enjoyed the entry as much as I could have, I can offer a certain kind of respect for doing that.
Something that just hit me that would've been cool: have the music synced up with the movement of the dot. What I mean is, the music only continues playing while the dot is moving, when it stops, the music stops. This would give the player a feeling of "what they're working toward" in a way, and create heavier synergy with the music.
Anyway, thanks for taking the time to contribute to the awesomeness that is Ludum Dare.
I think perhaps you should've had some opening dialogue to explain what was going on. Make it clear that this guy is standing at the edge of a cliff, about to jump to his own demise. I assume many players, like myself, at first assumed this was going to be some strange platformer adventure, so we press space to see what happens, but the game just ends. This leaves us to believe that you were just having some fun with us like many LD entries do. However, upon reading that there were two endings, it became immediately clear to me how much more depth there was to this game. The dialogue that you eventually experience may have been a bit cheesy, but it was effective. I feel like I was entering the mind of someone standing at the edge of a cliff and introspectively examining his life and the choices he has made, and after this introspective journey I was able to walk away from the cliff and resume my life. It's a shame that many who play this might not get to experience that simply because you failed to make it clear what the gameplay mechanic actually is. Maybe if instead of "press space to move right" you had said "press space to jump off the cliff, do nothing to wait a while more" Many more players would've had a more meaningful experience, without you having to hold their hand and explain "There is another ending that you guys are missing." I think you had you made some small change like that, you would've created quite a meaningful interactive narrative. As it stands, you're just a bit short of that, in my oppinion.
Some other thoughts: I wish the game had music as well, but I understand you didn't have time for that. The text seemed to take a bit too long, especially in the beginning, but maybe I'm just a fast reader. Interesting concept, I look forward to your future LDs.
Hit mood right on the head. First level took a bit, I think mostly just because the jumping mechanic felt almost too tight. The level that introduces the smashing blocks and talks about stress had me SO FREAKING STRESSED OUT. It was perfect. The level where you ask "why don't you look around you?" I was such a hurry to escape the crusher chasing me, that I did notice there were other path ways, but I was too worried about escaping that I didn't think they were worth my time to examine. Turns out they were the only way to escape. Very effective, and heavily symbollic.
A few criticisms: like I said, the jumping mechanic felt just a little too tight, especially for being in first-person where it's not always easy to time your jumps quite right. The visual effect on the platforms, while really cool, was a little too distracting and made it tough to tell where the platform boundaries were. Perhaps instead of the surface being 100% reflective, it should have some slight discolartion/lighting of its own so that you can clearly see the platform boundary. Other than that, the game is basically extremely well done. More levels maybe? :D
very fun little game. I have a few criticisms. I wish I could change gravity in the middle of a change, so that I could kind of float in the middle. Also, it seemed like after a while the same tiles just kind of repeat, and the game doesn't speed up or anything, so it never really got any more difficult once you learned how to deal with those tiles. Not really sure what the point of having hearts are because it seemed like everything killed me instantly haha
Music was nice, just long enough not to be too repetitive and annoying, and fit the mood pretty well. The character animation was cute, I liked it. Pretty good use of the theme, and although the concept isn't super original, it was still a lot of fun. Overall, enjoyed this entry a lot. Good job.
Music was nice, looped well. Wished I could "paint" the dots (just click and hold and paint all over) rather than drawing lines. Also seemed a little sluggish or delayed or something.
As for theme, pretty fitting in many ways, although I'm sure many would question if this even qualifies as a "game." I would argue it does, especially in a minimalistic sense.
Overall, enjoyable for a few minutes or so, but I was definitely craving for a little more. Even if the theme was minimalism. Good job, though.
Controls left a lot to improve upon. A hot key to switch between my army and my bases would've been nice. Also a command to make the army "stay here" or something like that would've went a long way. As well as some way to set a rally point or something. It was so frustrating to be only able to either attack with your army (and then you'd have to wait until EVERYTHING died before you had a way of getting back to your base) or sitting in your base and building up your force. Also that steep hill made it really difficult to get the tanks up over the hill. Not sure if that was intentional or not.
Wish I had more unit types, and the astronauts seemed basically useless unless I'm missing something, since the tanks and rockets were so much better at combat. The game was fun though. It was really gratifying to finally roll out on the enemy base with a massive force of tanks and rockets. Take that you bastards.
Music was appropriate and fairly well done, sound effects were effective without being annoying. Overall pretty well done for 72 hours, although I did wish there was some kind of victory screen or something at the end besides just showing me my victory time :P
Sorry to see you guys are having lots of issues, but you've kind of signed up for that by making a multi-player game like this :P
I'm trying to get some friends to give a shot with me tomorrow and hopefully all works well and I can get you guys some feedback. I'm definitely intrigued by the concept so far though.
controls were basically impossible to figure out, I managed to place a bunch of roads and some mines and stuff, but then when I clicked one of the buildings I couldn't seem to be able to deselect it. Game felt overall kinda buggy. City builder concept is a cool one though. It's a shame the game lacked just a little bit more polish and some more exploration/tutorial because it seems like a lot of fun. Wished the game had some music or sound effects. Lighting effects were cool, and the "plain/simple" graphics makes for an interesting aesthetic.
Best music of any LD I've played yet. Seriously. Awesome.
As for the game, I love the graphics. The mechanics seem a bit buggy though. Sometimes bullets would go in weird places, the collision would push me out of weird stuff. The spells and stuff are cool though. I felt like a legit wizard. Moderately fun to try and beat high scores and such.
overall, graphics and audio were superb, but the game mechanics itself definitely needed more polish.
also, is there some where I can download the soundtrack?
little rough around the edges, I'll note a couple of the little things. mouse-look was kinda buggy in the browser, and right-clicking when not in full-screen mode causes a context menu to pop-up. I know you have the option to skip the intro, but would've been nice if I could click or hit a key to skip any of the dialogue, and a dedicated button to reset at any point.
I like the themes being explored here, and very good use of the LD theme itself. Only got to experience 3 endings, as I couldn't figure out any others, but the stories told were very good. I understand you don't want to hold the player's hand, which would defeat the purpose of exploration and figuring things out on your own, but some additional direction to give me some clues on things that are possible to do would probably have helped me (and other players) discover more of the endings. Subtle things like using lighting cleverly to nudge players in a certain direction, or audio clues, things like that. Granted, it's not always easy to do this during a game jam like this. Those things take time, something people are always short on in a game jam :)
overall, pretty cool entry
hilarious.
Fixed some of the complaints in the post-jam version. Obviously you have to judge me based on the Jam version, but I encourage you to try the post-jam one for a better playing experience.
Thanks for all the great feedback so far, please keep it coming :)
Incredibly frustrating to have to restart (and sit through the unskippable intro screens) every time. A countdown (3,2,1) before the ball drops would be nice so I can have a little bit of time to place my platforms.
efficiency made up the overwhelming majority of my score, not sure if that's intentional. Also, elves would only pick up if I clicked on their square, and not if I was simply passing over them (again not sure if intentional).
Other than that, pretty damn fun rts/resource-management game. I loved how the mechanics interacted, the punching bag, the elves, the tree, the "elf spawner." Once I got my system down it felt very satisfy to take advantage of that efficiency. Unfortunately, once I did manage to get that system down there wasn't a whole lot of replayability offered. That might be asking a little much from a 48 hour game, I know, but just thought I'd mention it.
Overall, pretty fun. There are several areas you could've improved which would've made for a much better game overall.
Balance. 10HP doesn't give me much, but it gives me way more than 10 atk, which doesn't do anything for me. It doesn't help me kill things faster, it doesn't help me stay alive. I'd need at least, what, 20 or 30 more atk before it makes a difference? And since the rounds don't last very long, this never happens.
I think probes should give you a little more view of the surrounding rooms, or you should start with more probes.
You should have multiple floors, exiting once and then it's over meant I never wanted to exit.
Maybe a "ball of smoke" object that lets you exit a room without killing things. Alternatively, you could just make the probe do this.
Might I suggest using left/right to select enemies since you can't exit a room until they're all dead anyway?
Other than that, sound was effective, music would've been nice. Graphics were good.
Overall nice iteration on common mechanics. There were just a few things holding you back from a really fun game.
so, every time I hit the house 4 times, everything disappears. Not sure what entering the door does, just finishes the game. It's annoying that holding two direction keys causes no movement (no diagonal movement).
Cute graphics, though. I couldn't hear any music?
Solid platforming mechanics, wish I could've used a controller, but other than that the jumping felt very tight and the collision worked as expected. Some of the jumps were borderline challenging enough to make me quit, but a couple persistent attempts later and the feeling of accomplishment more than made up for the difficulty. So, I'd say the level design was pretty good in that regard.
At first it was very disorienting when you don't have enough sprites, but the mechanic of "managing" your sprites as though they were resources was actually pretty neat. Some secrets that only get revealed when you activate certain sprites would've been pretty neat.
Now, for some nit-picky things. I wish I could've stretched the window and/or full-screened the game. I kind of wish there were at least a few more levels, or that playing through the game again had some purpose other than experimenting with sprites (which, don't get me wrong, was still a pretty gratifying reward for completion). Multiple ending paths at the last level that reveal different sprites or something?
Not sure what you're going with as far as theme here. I guess something along the lines of at first the game looks very barren until you attach sprites to things? Or is it something about "looking beneath the code?" Kind of a stretch, but that's fine, at least it was something different from all of the "underground" skinned games.
Overall, very cute, fun little game. Absolutely loved the music, brought back fond memories of gameboy and nintendo games. Well done.
Pretty sweet game, doing tricks was fun.
It was really frustrating at the end, I couldn't seem to beat it. No matter how many times I smacked the surf ace with the wrench he never seemed to get knocked off, and his score was always just slightly better than mine (even if I had 20k points or 40k) so it was obviously coded that I had to do something else to beat him, or it was impossible. It was really, really frustrating.
Other than that the game was totally gnarly, dude. Well done.
What a fantastic game. The music was great, the sounds were good, the art style worked well, the graphics brought back fond memories of bullet-hell shooters on the SNES, and the mechanics did, too.
While I like that the game lets you choose whether to play the harder level next or an easier one, I absolutely love that the game then taunts you when you die. Sure, you don't get a gameover, but the game is basically calling you out saying that you couldn't handle how hard it was. Some things are worse than death indeed. Also, it serves the dual purpose of making me not want to die (since I want to keep my dignity) but I don't have to go through the tedious process of playing content I already did just to try and see the ending (something all too annoying about some Ludum Dare entries). I ended up playing through it multiple times just to see all the levels anyway.
I'm not sure if I just wasn't paying attention or what, but it wasn't until my second playthrough that I realized you could hold down right click to charge up. I'm not sure if there's a way to make that more obvious? Also, the sword spell goes through walls, which was basically the only way I made it through certain parts of the harder levels, so maybe that's intentional.
The level design was also really good. Some of the levels were somewhat non-linear, or allowed you to attack enemies that you won't encounter until later on, making them more interesting than just "beat this group, then this group, then kill these guys, then you're done."
Honestly, if this were given more time and polish I could see this turning into a commercially viable game. Throw in a ton more levels, more weapons, more enemies, co-op play, some unlockable stuff, (and maybe a few secret areas) and I would totally pay a few bucks for this on steam or something. Seriously, go get this green-lighted :)
First off let me just get this out of my system: ohhhh myyyy gawdddddddddd is this tedious. I wanted so badly to beat your game, but after several hundred rounds I managed to eliminate one player and I just can't bring myself to sit and watch any more coinflips until I finally win. From what I can tell the computer's actions are totally random, so maybe my (what I think is) better than random strategy would eventually prevail, but it would take forever. Let me attack with more units or attack until my keep runs out or fortify my position or SOMETHING!
Ok, phew, sorry, after spending close to an hour trying to beat it I had to get that out. Now onto some (hopefully) constructive comments.
The music and sound were both very well done and probably the only thing that kept me sane during my attempts to win (see above). The theme especially captured the essence of some medieval fantasy war and the battle drums made those stick-figure battles that much more exciting.
The graphics were clearly "programmer art" so that's fine. As far as it goes, they were actually pretty good. Some people actually like that aesthetic, and I didn't it mind it myself. I found myself cracking up at first to the thought of Dragons, Unicorns, and Narwhals all fighting each other. How silly :D
Now onto the mechanics. I understand time constraints always separate original vision from realization, so these aren't so much criticisms as where you might take the game from here. Firstly, I'd like to see fortifications at the end of the round. My camps would occasionally be stuck with only one guy whilst I had the maximum of 15 in my main base. Let me spread them around! Also, I don't think it makes much sense that any base can attack any other base. A simple radius check would've been heaps better, and something like roads/paths to different territories even better.
A simple "rock/paper/scissors" kind of unit-type choices would've been cool. Archers are effective against spearmen, spearmen are better against knights, and knights beat archers, and so on. Maybe each gets a +1 dice roll against the other or something. Let you diversify your army and defenses a little. Or, if that's not the route you want to go, let players expend some of their extra units sitting in the base to build walls on bases (+1 to dice rolls) or burn the hypothetical roads I mentioned above (units can't attack through that path for a few turns). Stuff like that, more tactical choices which affect the game map.
I wouldn't mess with the mechanic of the "AI" (or dice rolls) affecting the actual outcome of the combat. You make all your choices before hand (fortifications, where to attack, what units to use, etc.) and from there, it's all up to the dice. Has that real Risk board game feel to it in a good way. Of course, anything you can do to minimize randomness and make it more about player choices ultimately will be an improvement on that popular board game, in my opinion.
All in all, the game definitely has potential to be pretty darn fun. I mean, considering I spent nearly an hour playing it as it is, and there's really not that much yet, it can only get better from here. I'll keep checking back for updates, so if you do a post-jam version or something be sure to mention it here.
nice pixel art. The music worked pretty well, looped well anyway, but it drowned out the other sounds. Which brings me to the detector mechanic.
I actually really like the mechanic, I think it's really cool, but it could've been implemented better. What I mean is, it's really hard to tell when I'm close to stuff. I think there's a little ticking sound, but it's too hard to hear with all the other sounds (should've been like a beep?) And the visual cue could've been better as well.
Also, I wish the upgrades would equip automatically if you didn't have anything equipped in that slot yet. I rarely found upgrades, most playthroughs I was lucky if I got even 3 upgrades, it was just too hard to find a good place to dig before the enemies swarmed you. I'm not saying the game needs to be easier, I'm just saying the detection should be more obvious and the upgrades should auto-equip (maybe a little on-screen summary of what you just picked up).
I have absolutely no idea what the purple gems do. I tried to figure it out but couldn't. I've made it as far as round 12 but couldn't figure out what the gems do.
I wish I could use my mouse to aim instead of just the keyboard. Gamepad support would've been awesome.
Some diversity in the environments would've been cool (trees, more enemies, rocks, stuff like that, things that provide barriers to hide behind and such). The squid things worked well though, I like the little charge they do and how if you run far enough away they leave you alone. Solid enemy AI in that regard.
All in all, I liked it, though. Procedurally generated content, randomized loot, upgrades, endless slaughter, what's not to love? It just needed a little more content and polish and this would've been a really fun game.
Looked at the source to try and compile on windows, but it looks very incomplete. Where's all your hgutils stuff? Would be nice also if you included the libraries needed and such
Debating about the genre of a game is kind of asinine, but to those calling this a roguelike I couldn't resist but say it hardly qualifies as one. The term is over-used anyway.
But anyway! Onto the game itself. Moving around feels very tedious, especially to start over again, partly because the content is all the same (so I'm not exploring anything new), but mostly because I don't know why there's that delay when I try to move. Basically, as soon as I tap the key I should move instantly, and if I hit it again I should move as soon as I hit it. If I hold in a move key, then you can introduce a small delay, but it should be smaller than it is.
Lots of areas to explore and a fair amount of text to read, which is fun. I like exploring and reading all the little messages and such. Combat however was severely lacking. There are basically no choices to make, I'm kind of just sitting watching a random number generator. The hp or damage mechanic is hardly interesting, because I basically just hold onto energy until my HP is low, and rinse-repeat, but it's a start. Even something as simple as choosing what equipment to wear at least gives me the opportunity to game the stats. Or if I could spend the power on different types of damage and different kinds of defenses (dodge-rate, armor, attack accuracy, minimum damage, maximum damage, crit chance, etc.)
Graphics were cool, reminded me of "Realm of the Mad God." Has that pseudo-retro feel. Really wish there were some music or sounds though. Not really seeing how the theme fits here? I guess because at some points you go underground, but it's not the strongest entry in terms of theme.
Parting words I'll just say that in order for this to really be fun there's definitely something missing, you need more interesting character development at the least. As it stands, it's pretty impressive in terms of content for 72-hours but the mechanics are simply lacking. Something to think about for next LD, I suppose.
Oh, and btw, if you're gonna plug your game on my page, the least you could do is give me a little more meaningful feedback than "interesting and fun mechanic." What that said to me was "yeah, I kinda played your game for a bit, but really I just want you to come back and play mine." Doesn't exactly give me a whole lot to work with in terms of trying to improve, ya know? ;) Anyway, thanks for playing
sink_t : Thanks so much for playing! Could you be a little more specific about what the glitches are? The only one I'm aware of is a small graphical glitch with the link between your character and the projectile. I plan to fix this in the morning (fixing graphical bugs is allowed, as far as I know). Is this what you were referring to?
thanks for all the good feedback guys. I have lots to improve on, clearly. keep it coming :)
@HeroesGrave : I was mostly yanking your chain in my comment, but I realize satire isn't always so clear on the internet ;) Thanks for taking the time to come back and give more in-depth feedback, though. I appreciate it. I think "Dig-Dug" is likely the game you're thinking of from your youth? I (obviously) took heavy inspiration from it. There are quite a few more features that were in-development to expand upon the game, but of course there's never enough time. I hope to find the time to finish them and combine them with all the great feedback you and everyone else has given me. Thanks again.
Nice bullet hell shooter, plays a lot like geometry wars with ascii graphics, which is fine by me. Really like the visual style and the graphics were executed very well. Music was good, too. Not really seeing the theme in any of this though.
Got pretty repetitive after a while. No power-ups or anything, and seems like there's only 2 types of enemies. Background probably changed colors a little too often.
Solid entry, though! Good job
Love the return of Patty ;)
Lack of music kinda killed the mood for me. I miss your catchy little tune from the previous PPP.
Kind of sucks that there comes a point where it's basically impossible to beat a level, but I guess that's part of the "race against the clock." Perhaps some kind of hard-coded level count-down timer might help prevent gamers from wasting their time on a level that can no longer be beaten (unless I'm missing something).
I feel like the pink snakes should have a "wake up radius" where they only start charging at you if you get near them, then if you get too far away they give up. Again, might make it too easy, but you could adjust for that in other ways.
I really dig the whole feeling of patty wandering around above but, meanwhile, "beneath the surface" all of his minions are trying as hard as they can to get deeper and deeper and underground. Very good interpretation and use of the theme.
Got to level 3 before dying. Gonna play some more later. I WILL BEAT THIS GAME (assuming it's beatable)
404
(I played both. I rated according to the jam version, but this feedback applies to the post-jam, which was the first version I played)
A little description at the top of the screen like "try to organize your life so that you can 'get a job,' 'be happy,' and 'start a family'" Then put little tips that pop up as the player exhausts various possiblities like "It can be hard to manage family life with work, leaving you feeling stressed out" and "A life pursuing your dreams left you feeling pretty fulfilled, but a part of you longed to create the family you never had." Stuff like that. Kind of shoves the message into the player's face a little more (ruining some of the subtlety), but it makes a little clearer to the player what's going on. I was confused for a little what I was supposed to be doing exactly before I figured out what you were going for.
As others have said, music would've been nice. Even something very ambient and subtle.
Overall, it's nice to play something a little different from the other entries. Not that this kind of game hasn't been explored before (it's practically impossible to be 100% original, so who cares), but it's a refreshing slice of contrast from the heaps of shooters and "upgrade" games (those are fun, too, though!). So, kudos to you for trying to think outside the box. Made me reflect on my own life a little.
On the final level, my character didn't appear until I hit the reset button, small bug. Also, by making the mistake of pressing up on the last portal, I had to completely replay that whole last level, even though I had practically beaten it (in order to save the other personality that is, there are a bunch of ways to skip most of the level and not save him, obviously), which made it that much more tedious without really adding any more challenge or fun.
The levels generally just felt kinda tedious, too. I think it's mostly just because of the movement speed of the character (I would prefer whole tile movement so I could rapidly press the arrow keys and move a lot more quickly). I enjoyed it enough to complete it twice, but it was definitely getting tedious and by the end I was forcing myself to play just to say I had beaten it.
I really enjoyed the dual endings and the story being told there, but I'm not really sure how it fits the theme other than some really abstract interpretation. I like the dual-worlds thing going on and the feeling of trying to help someone else just as lost as you (although in much more danger). There's some realy desperation and engagement going on there, I genuinely wanted to save him, and I felt really bad on the final level when I left him behind.
I would've loved to see some more puzzle mechanics besides the simple block-pushing thing going on here, but understandable with the time-constraints. Some simple key-grabbing, or ice-sliding or something. Think "Chips Challenge" if you've never played it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chip%27s_Challenge
Overall, solid entry, good story telling, but it's a little lacking in the fun department as described above. Nonetheless, good job guys.
@hbocao: It's all good. I kinda figured that's what was going on with the theme, makes sense. Sometimes I'd rather see the theme stretched too thin than see the same repeated interpretations over and over so nbd
I couldn't hear any sound if there was any. Some sounds and music would've been a nice edition.
Cool mechanics. Felt kinda like snake with a twist. The dual-view was cool. I kind of wish the top part were larger and easier to see. Overall, fun game. I have a feeling I'm gonna find myself playing this on my phone.
Cool animations, but they sometimes get in the way of play. It made it difficult to fall past certain 1tile wide gaps because it kept thinking I wanted to climb up or something.
Also, my walking animation glitched at one point, it looked like it kept alternating between the falling animation or something.
Took a while to figure out to hold up the light to make the dark disappear, and never figured out how to open the chests (unless that animation with the bright light was opening the chests? it looked like she got on the ground and opened it, but the chest didn't look any different so it was confusing).
I really wish there was some music and sounds. Would've added a lot to the ambiance.
So, I explored and scared away the darkness but couldn't really figure out what to do from there. Felt unfinished, but had an interesting ambiance so I'm a little disappointed that I didn't get to experience more of the story and levels.
Never use age as a measure of expected success ;)
That said, this is a pretty ambitious game for anyone to attempt on their own in 48 hours. However, I think you did pretty well with the time you had.
Like others, I had issues with the digging mechanic. Seemed off-by-one a lot, yet not at other times. I also couldn't get mating to work, even when they're on top of each other. Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but the controls aren't exactly intuitive.
I didn't really hear much sound or music, something ambient while underground would've been cool. Little digging sounds. Stuff like that. I liked the pixel art.
A couple of suggestions/ideas/things I noticed:
I'd like to switch actions with the mouse-wheel, cycle through them. I'd like to press a key and zoom way out to the whole map, like the image you have posted in the screen shots, then click on an area to zoom over to there (shift+awsd just isn't fast enough when I'm trying to micro-manage).
Also, a key I could press to deselect everything I currently have selected. It was also really hard to pick out individual ants sometimes. When I click and drag, a unit selection box would've been nicer than just instantly selecting/deselecting units that I mouse-down on.
I'd like to see this play more like a traditional RTS. What I mean is, issue commands to my ants like "you ants: dig over to here. You soldier ants, attack anything in your way to here. Queen, keep mating with the ants in your vicinity." etc. and not have to click and manually control each ant. Hell, if you wanted to get really creative and out there, you could even do something where the only thing the player can really do is draw pheremones all over the place that influence the behavior of the ants, but have no direct control over them. I think that would be really cool.
In summary, very ambitious game for 48 hours, and I don't think you quite achieved what you were going for. Nonetheless, it was still entertaining and an interesting concept. I see no reason that you couldn't continue work on this game and experiment with it. Best case scenario you make a really cool game that people enjoy playing, worst case scenario you learn a ton about game design. Win-win :)
I would make a standalone program in the future instead of one that has to install to your system. I didn't rate or play this game for that reason, sorry.
I like to think of the fish you can't catch as the government putting regulations on fishing boats. It's against the law to fish at certain depths, thereby protecting the fish population. Genius!
In all seriousness, not bad for working within the time constraints. Hopefully next time you will use more time and make a more feature-filled game! It seems like you understand the basics of what kind of mechanics work well in games, now you just need to find the motivation to dedicate more time :) No excuses!
Oh, and one small nit-picky criticism. Not a huge deal, but you might want to re-think automatically going full-screen in the future. Some people (like me) don't like it when games do that without asking first. It messes all my windows up and such.
Not exactly sure how the score is calculated, but I like the mechanics. I could see this growing into some kind of level-based "bloons" kind of game where you have X amount of bombs and you need to destroy X percent of all the bases to move onto the next level. I'd like to see that :)
I know all too well the frustration of running out of time and not getting to finish, so I fully sympathize :( That in mind, some feedback:
It felt wayyy too zoomed in. I guess you were trying to keep players from being able to see the "maze," but there are better ways to handle that. Even just zoomed out a little would be nice, I could barely see the enemies I was shooting at. You might want to look into something like "line of sight" algorithms for blacking out parts of the level and whatnot.
I like the comic-book feel of the story telling. It kind of feels like I'm playing through a web-comic or something, which is cool. I wish there were more levels/story and sounds/music, but I understand time was an issue.
I wish you best of luck in the future! Kudos to you for building up the motivation and actually working on a game this weekend. Many of my friends always say they're gonna participate but then back down at the last minute. At least you stuck through it, so good for you.
Agree that the dubstep version was unnecessary, the music was fine, and, like said before, if people don't like it they'll turn it off.
I also would like to see a level editor, like others.
Levels were pretty easy, as others have stated, I beat a lot of the levels without using all the pieces, but that's kinda cool as well.
Graphics were nice, agree that the mirrors should rotate strictly clockwise and not flip. Would like if when I failed a level it saved my previous set-up so I didn't have to start from scratch.
Overall, I enjoyed the pace, the level curve was good, it slowly taught me the things I needed to know and got progressively harder. However, it stopped too abruptly. Make more levels with more difficult puzzles :P Could probably use a few more mechanics, too. Had a good time, though, well done.
I didn't really like that the bullets went faster the farther away my mouse cursor was. Felt unnecessary. I wish they would just go max speed all the time. Also, holding down left-click would've been much better than holding space to shoot.
Some music would've been nice, even just something ambient and moody. Sound effects were ok.
Graphics are probably where this game performed best, the red-blood cells were a nice touch.
The controls are simply out of this world. It was extremely difficult to control the white blood cell and sometimes it felt like they were purely random forces knocking it around. The playable area felt just a little too confining, but I guess that adds to the difficulty and is probably intentional.
Overall, interesting concept, cool take on the theme. I was hoping to see a few "under the skin" or inside the human body games, but this is the first I've encountered so far.
If you get behind the enemies it seems like they don't render, likely because you're doing ccw vertex culling or something. If the idea is you don't want people shooting the zombies from behind, then I feel like you should've just locked the player position to the wall and only given them left-right freedom of movement (but still let them look in any direction).
The sound effects were cool, I like the pitch changes. not sure why some people are telling you to use sfxr, don't see how that's relevant at all. Some music would've been nice though. Particle effects were neat.
Nice frantic little shoot 'em up. It was fun for a couple rounds, so not bad given what you had to work with. Good job
I really liked the graphics and the music, which set me up thinking this was gonna be a really awesome game. Unfortunately, as others have said (and you acknowledge yourself) there just isn't enough feedback between my actions and what happens. So, there really isn't much of a "game" which is a shame because this is an awesome take on the theme and has a lot of potential.
Hopefully you continue work on this and make it into a more full of a game, because I'd like to play this finished game.
No real strategy, no correlation between buttons and actions, totally nonsensical controls.......
....and yet, a smile to my face, laughter, and genuine fun. Congratulations, you managed to make the weirdest game I've played so far and yet probably one of the most fun. I genuinely feel like some idiot mashing controls for a mechanical zoo fooling other idiots into giving me their cash.
So, yeah, not exactly your typical game by any means, but I guess that's kind of the point, right? I had fun. Cool game, guys.
As others have stated, some things are very unclear. Rather than harp and reiterate those, I'd like to offer a couple of possible "fixes"
Firstly, it would likely be more clear what "score" is if you chose a different word. 'Energy', 'Progress', even just 'Points' might've been better. Basically, just make it clear that it means more than what traditional "score" does in arcade-style games.
Secondly, the score should probably shake or turn red when it's draining, like when you take damage or when you're slowing down time. Small visual cues like that go a long way.
And, actually, the more I think about it, it should probably be a meter and not a number anyway. Have a bar that fills up as you destroy enemies, and it drains when you use abilities or take 'damage.' I think that makes a lot more sense. When the bar fills up all the way, you progress to the next stage.
Also, I kind of wish the enemies had a slightly better visual cue that they're being damaged. Maybe a color change, or flashing or something.
Other than that, a few bugs I noticed: In the last level I got placed into solid blocks and couldn't move. Not sure if that's intentional. Also, the text in the bottom right was cut off on the bottom, so I couldn't read the whole thing, which is somewhat disappointing.
Ok, enough with that stuff, onto the rest! As others have said, the music was pretty good. I like the subtle changes in the level music as you progress--I would've liked to see more of that. The ending piano piece was good as well, sat and listened to the whole thing. I'm not sure if this was intentional as an effect or not, but the music sounded like it had that crappy flash audio compression of yester-year. While it brought back fond nostalgia of playing flash games on newgrounds back in the day, the music actually sounds cool and I'd like to hear it in hi-fidelity. To each their own, of course.
I like that there's no real death in this game, or not from failing to play correctly anyway. The only death is the inevitable doom you face as an android heading head-first into destruction. I like the self-exploring/identity themes being explored here. You should try to do more with that in the story telling. Other than the criticisms above, I dig the score system. You have to micro-manage a resource that you're trying to use to progress to the next stage, but you also use that same resource to protect your character. It becomes a battle of multi-tasking: killing enemies, keeping track of your character, managing your resource.
Overall, solid entry. I think some more pre-release user testing by people who hadn't played the game before would've helped you guys realize some of these things. One can never stress the importance enough of getting people not directly involved in the game to test early and often :) Of course, such things are not always easy to do in the time constraints of Ludum Dare. Nonetheless, well done guys.
Oh, sorry, I didn't mention anything about theme. I loved it! I think you guys managed to do a non-underground/non-underwater interpretation and have it really work. It only becomes clear if you pay attention to the character sprite and the story that's trying to be told. Good job.
Norman12 : you can rename the categories. It's not that web is required, it's that you're required to have at least one platform. Rename web to windows :)
I know level 5 is possible, since ONE time (out of like 200) I managed to get above the first two things, but it's just too damn irritating for me to continue past that point. I like hard games. I like it when games are maddening frustrating and difficult. If a game has a "hardcore" mode, I play on that--but level 5 just felt like some really arbitrary level of difficulty where this this one pixel-perfect way to make it that's likely highly dependent upon framerate and what milliseconds your update ticks end up on. You might want to reconsider the balance/level-design for that reason.
There also seemed to be a small bug where occasionally my character would be on the ground, but unable to jump. Also another time I was unable to move left. This only happened once or twice, but something you guys might want to look into.
But other than that this was a pretty fun game. The music was good, looped well, worked well as background music. Graphics were minimal but effective. Jumping mechanics were out of this world, and took some getting used to, but I assume that's intentional because it made for a somewhat novel platforming experience.
Cool little game. Gonna go over some bugs first then some general feedback.
First, I was able to get "negative" damage by collecting multiple stars at once. This allowed me to take even more hits before dying. Kinda cool in a "pro tip" sort of way, but felt very glitchy and I assume unintentional.
After the score reaches a certain point it overwrites the text beside it and becomes difficult to read (especially when it hits triple digits).
After around score 140 or so, the backdrop seemed to glitch out and I could see like a faint trapezoid shape.
Also, after about score 150 the game basically played it self. As long as I stayed toward the right in one spot, I didn't move at all and watched my score accumulate up to about 250 before I decided I would actually TRY to die and see if it worked, which I succeeded in doing by moving to the left side of the screen. Basically, if I took damage stars would appear fast enough to heal me before I could take fatal damage. I'd recommend instead of making the stars spawn when you take damage, make them spawn at more regular intervals and more sparingly. Also, you need to do a damage bounds check before healing the player.
Toward the end it felt kind of like later rounds of the original tetris where the enemies come flying at you but you still move extremely slowly. The player should probably speed up, too. You could have speed upgrades fly at the player as another shape (triangle maybe) kinda like the stars do.
Also, not sure if it's intentional or not, but all the sprites seem to zoom way out as you accumulate more score. It was kind of a neat effect I guess, just not sure if it was intentional.
Other than that stuff, it was pretty fun for a while dodging the shapes and collecting the green squares. The music was nice, but quickly grew very repetitive and tedious and it didn't loop very well (audible pause before starting over). Sound effects were so-so. Also, I wish I had a "game over" screen where it showed my score, and maybe some stats like "time alive," "damage taken," etc..
As it stands, it's just so-so. A couple bug fixes, minor tweaks, and a speed upgrade and this would've been a really cool entry. Not really sure where the theme is in this, either. Nonetheless, I still had fun playing so good job.
Basically just mashed space and Z over and over again until my fingers bled. It was kind of exciting/fun at first in that "yeah! button mashing!" sense, but the novelty rapidly expired and quickly grew tiresome. Needed some kind of variation in the attacks/enemies. Maybe bombs and the like. And varied enemy spawns, they just kind of kept flowing in an endless slaughter, which in turn kept me mashing buttons.
could probably be modified into a decently fun mobile game.
Nonetheless, kudos to you for making a game this past weekend and seeing it to completion, not everyone always makes it through, and most people don't even try.
Love that you included the apple rejection notice haha
Controls felt a little wonky, but I guess that's part of the challenge is learning how to effectively control him. Mechanics felt pretty solid for the most part other than that. Game was pretty hard, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.
I was confused about the plane itself losing oxygen. Am i supposed to take the O2 to the plane, or use it to put a bubble around survivors, or both? It was a little confusing.
Overall though, I had fun messing around with it, definitely not bad at all for one person in 72 hours. If you're gonna continue working on it, though, I would recommend maybe adding some mechanics eventually, like sharks that come to attack that you have to fend off as well and such. Anything that adds to the total mayhem of the game and challenges you to spread your attention even more thin is likely to add to the excitement/fun. Will say that I'm absolutely so sick of this doge meme though :P
I think you can host html and static web files directly from dropbox, just provide a link to the files themselves. I've seen people do it before, but never done it myself.
The first "click" seems to make the game lag a bit, likely loading something big, so might want to look into pre-loading that stuff to avoid the big "freeze" myself and others experienced. Also, it would be nice if the mouse cursor were captured by the game, so I don't keep clicking around on random stuff.
I couldn't really figure out what to do really, either. Spent some time killing some floating balls and explored, but didn't find anything to really do. Some instructive text or a tutorial or something would've went a long way. Even just some signs pointing where to go, or anything really.
48 hours is a short amount of time, so it's understandable not all games get realized to completion. Nonetheless, solid entry, and kudos to you for finding the motivation to actually sit down and make a game this past weekend. I look forward to seeing more from you in the future.
Music was very thematic and added to the overall mood of the game. The graphics were well done. Subtle little things like the bubbles, the day/night cycle, the level getting darker the deeper you go, etc. all really added to the mood. The game had a very eco the dolphin feel to it, in a good way. At first, I thought getting a negative score in the first level was a commentary on the impossibility of people to afford medical bills, but then I learned it actually is possible to progress through the levels.
The levels were somewhat challenging, which definitely isn't a bad thing in itself, but combined with how slowly your character moved and the fact that you get stuck on walls made it very tedious to start over. After three attempts I didn't feel much motivation to try again, which is a shame because I'd like to see the future levels.
Look into something called the "Seperating Axis Theorem" or SAT. It's very useful for game collision, and there are several very well documented tutorials and implementations. It makes it easy to make entities "slide" along the boundaries of others, which would've made navigating the levels much less tedious.
The story is a heart-breaking one, but very effectively told with the help of the graphics, music, and general ambiance. I assume there might be a happy ending if you beat the game, so maybe I will come back and try again.
Overall, this was a pretty interesting entry. Good job guys.
Interesting take on the theme. The music and sounds, while comical at first, were definitely not my cup of tea and quickly grew annoying. Staring at that face was pretty unsettling (no offense to whoever's face it was!), but I did like that the expression changed the more damage you took. I also really enjoyed the remarks the frowny faces made, really added to the whole feeling of trying to destroy those little nagging thoughts in the back of your mind, or "under the surface," if you will.
Really wish I could've used my mouse to aim instead of awsd. Also, in chrome the music didn't start again after I died (although I didn't mind :P)
Overall, it was pretty fun, although I didn't really have any desire to try again from the beginning after I died. I think you accomplished what you set out to do in terms of theme, so good job.
Cool game, played to completion ("spoilers" : http://puu.sh/ds9pe/cfa2bdc503.png)
I know you mentioned on facebook about the movement being linked to each frames, made it pretty tedious to play on my mac (I don't think I was lagging, I think it has to do with triple buffering and vsync). So, I'm sure you learned your lesson on that :P
Other than that, had a very "chip's challenge" feel to it, in a good way. I will say that each "item" you got, was just a variation on a key, would be cool to see items that enabled different puzzle mechanics like pushing boulders or sliding on ice (I'm sure time constraints played into this, but food for thought).
Lack of sound/music was a disappointment, but most people are probably listening to music already anyway so whatever.
There were times when the edge of the levels lined up with the edge of the screen, and I was confused as to if I could walk off the screen or not. Intended mechanic hiding easter eggs I didn't find or confusing UI glitch, you tell me lol
Pretty solid for 48 hours, congratulations for actually crossing the finish line.
oh, btw, worked perfectly fine on OSX 10.9.5
<3
@xlores-liang I'm sorry to hear that Dx Is this on the "offline" mode? The "offline" mode unfortunately has some weird behavior we didn't get the time to quite fix all the issues and would like to do a post-jam version. Sometimes even in the online mode this can happen after respawning. And thank you so much for playing!
@rol thanks so much for playing!! I’m really sorry to hear that you encountered that. If you don’t mind, can you help me debug? What time did this happen and were you playing in the browser? And were there any logs in the console? If you want, you can join our discord and we can try to diagnose in real time. But yeah understandable if you don’t feel up to it thanks for notifying us I will investigate this
@rol If you meant to share a screenshot I don't see it Dx
Thanks for verifying though! You should be able to open the game in another browser tab, or launch the standalone, or on your phone or similar device. So you can create a room and another client can join. You do need to click the "refresh rooms" button (We should probably put this on a timer thanks for bringing this to our attention).
Note, there is currently a bug that's non-trivial for us to solve where if a browser client is the host and they alt+tab away or lose focus on the game, everyone will lag and status will not update (no RPCs will complete until the game window gains focus again). So if you notice weird behavior try making sure the browser game tab is the current window, or try cycling focus through all the clients.
Again thanks a lot for playing the game and helping us test this!
Vibes are immaculate! Really felt like a disheveled android slowly regaining all of my faculties. Sounds are really good too! It was pretty frustrating running around dying and not knowing what's going on, maybe a skill issue. I was having a lot of fun exploring though, and the visual fx are really good. Impressive work!
Slowly learning faster and faster ways to clear the most amount of stuff in the minimum time was really fun. The jump was a little frustrating sometimes to try and slip through some of the tight holes once you really got your jump upgraded, maybe somehow making the collision a little more forgiving would've been nice. I loved how by the end I was basically clearing the whole map out each time! And the patterns I dug looked cool. Very good game feel. Kudos for an actual ending! Very polished for a jam entry 10/10 love digging games <3
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The joke about "are you really sure you wanna use this potion?" had me laughing my ass off at first, but after a while it was really tedious to have to click that everytime. Combined with the fixed speed battles you can't skip the toast text. This game has a lot of humor though! I like how your companion kinda talks shit on you lol. I died on the third guy, feel like I did eveyrhing I could i threw every potion but it still wasn't enough.
Music was really nice. Interesting concept! Well done getting a working game submitted!!
Ahhh, I see so I did see my companion saying stuff but it was a little hard to make sense of the first time. Maybe a combat log instead of toast text would've made it easier to make sense of? I see that they turned red, but I kinda expected them to turn back to normal color when they werent enraged anymore. Either way, interesting twist on the normal jrpg combat system! I was able to beat the game, I tried to beat the final boss without using the panacaea and I was soooo close!!! xD But I guess that's the whole point, to teach the player that you should just use your good potions as soon as you can. Well played !
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Heyyy I think I recognize this crt shader xD Looks awesome though really convincing vibe, menus are smooth as well. Music slaps, I was immediately bobbing up and down in my chair :D OMG DID I STRUGGLE at that first level lol (I honestly thought that was the end of the game when I finally beat him but was pleasantly surprised you managed 3 levels!!). By the third I felt like I had true mastery (even though I'm probably still really bad). Awesome job!Screenshot 2025-10-10 at 01.24.31.png
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I was having fun digging stuff up, just got the jewelery scanner and then I got some bug where I couldn't dig anything up anymore no matter how long I held dig. It seemed to happen when I found something that seemed like it was inside the fence, but after I started digging it would never let me get the item. then after that anywhere I dug never gave the item. So I refreshed the browser and lost all my progress ;_;
I love the mspaint style graphics <3 The sounds were cool, loved the ambiance. I love digging games xD
the scream had me laughing
Had a good time vibing and drawing funny patterns with the Pur air tier 3, I liked that they were a single pixel. Was a lot of fun to zoom out and just look around. Impressive for only 20 hours!! Also I think I managed to the get the absolute lowest spot in the rankings LMAO Screenshot 2025-10-10 at 01.48.05.png
This is such a fun vibe!! But dear god am I realizing how bad I am at bullet hells xD Still had a blast blitz dating these cuties. Fun concept! Choosing from one of three based on a handful of descriptive traits was really funny to me, I found myself getting quite invested in the choices and then inevitably always chose the hardest one and then get sad I lost Dx The music is very catchy and playful, and the art is really good!!
**10/10 would make a dragon cry again!**
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Hey, neat idea! Kudos for at least trying to make something and making a cool room to explore. I see someone creepin' at me from beyond the door hehe Screenshot 2025-10-17 at 14.12.43.png
It's hard to make a game! And you took the first steps I think that's pretty cool. Hope to see more from you in the future!
So much fun! Love the western game on a sega master system vibes lol. Seriously got a lot of charm.
I did think it's a little weird that I could just take my time and wait for the perfect enemy to show up and only then fire to save bullets, maybe having a time limit on each round would make it a little more intense/challenging. Or perhaps you get a streak bonus for getting many in a row without letting any escape. Also, I don't think the round should end when you're at zero bullets because this means I will never get to actually use my last bullet to collect an egg, since the round just ends immediately (so effectively your second from last bullet was your last real chance at getting an egg).
I really liked having the upgrades, gave me something to look forward to each round. I got 53 eggs at the end and i think I got all the upgrades. Screenshot 2025-10-09 at 13.02.47.png
**Overall this is really impressive for a single person team! You got sound, gameplay, upgrades, everything, all in one weekend! Awesome work**
Screenshot 2025-10-07 at 13.13.12.pngThis is an incredibly polished and streamlined experience for a LD game, I actually really like that the game just drops you in without much exposition. I was a little confused by the apexion monster at first, I thought I could catch it but eventually it clicked that I was supposed to walk in the grass. I don't think you necessarily need more tutorial or anything, but I'm also the kind of player that likes that kind of "whoa wtf is that moment" when you encounter something too hard for your level so I dunno
I love all the little sound effects and screen transitions. That transition to night, with the downtempo music, such chill vibes. And the pixel art is soo cute!! I'm a sucker for a good merge your things into more powerful things gimmick, this was a very fun proof of concept! And I love that you added a shiny mechanic xD
Not sure if ya'll plan to continue working on it and these are maybe obvious suggestions but the main thing I would like to see as a player would be more world to explore, some secrets to find, maybe some quests, etc (maybe there already are these things and I wasn't skilled enough to find them!!) Oh and maybe offer an auto battle mode or something? My wrist hurts from clicking too fast and I didn't want to make an auto clicker because it felt like cheating ;_;
but yeah, awesome submission! Your team should be super proud this feels very polished overall. Great game feel
p.s. I tried forever to get a shiny Apexian ;_;
I tried playing the mac version it just says failed to open. And the web version didn't load in the browser just took me to a download link?Screenshot 2025-10-09 at 12.39.32.png
Vibes are immaculate. The music and art work really well together. The sprite work is very cute! I loved the squishy slime animations, I'm not even sure how you did that but it looks really good and convincingly squishy. Gosh am I awful at bullet hells! I used my leet haxxor skills to discover if you die while in slow motion mode, it carries over and lasts forever. And it still took me a few tries! But then I got stuck at this screen and couldn't progress, but I guess that's just how it ends? I really liked the platforming section too, even though it was short it had some interesting moments in the level design. The potion making one oddly enough I might've struggled the most with but I might've hit some kind of ui bug and had to reset I dunno.
Either way, awesome job! Had a lot of fun playing the three mini games and collecting those last few achievements lol! Screenshot 2025-10-08 at 00.16.24.png