Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → ftvs
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Mo | Co | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | 35 | Shapeshift | Blob Shaped Bob | jam | ||||||||
| 2015 | 32 | An Unconventional Weapon | Genesis | jam | 1019 | 2.46 | 2.36 | 1.84 | 1.71 | 2.48 | 48 |
Interesting idea. I thought the sounds offered useful feedback.
Rather laggy on my computer for some reason. First guy that shot yellow pellets got me confused because I thought the red enemy seeker line thing was a laser that would kill me. Then he shot and killed me with the yellow pellets.
Starting the entire game again was harsh enough for me to stop, but I assume checkpoints were omitted due to time.
Decent presentation. I am not sure if it was just my computer, but it appeared to be running slower than it should be. Aiming with the mouse felt a bit laggy.
Very impressive. Interesting idea and execution, solid level design. Difficulty was ok for me.
Congratulations on finishing the jam! The character design and animation is production quality. Outstanding. The satisfying mechanics and level design allows players to pull off some pretty cool moves that look even cooler thanks to the constant somersaulting. The visual effects were really effective, too.
I am not sure what you intended for the difficulty curve, but as it stands, it spikes on the level with three enemies to kill mid-air. If you want to flatten the curve more, I have some suggestions. I hope you are familiar with fighting game terminology. If not, message me somehow and I will explain the following points.
One way would be to have enemies that do not kill the player on touch to start with, to get players used to the jump arc, attack timing and double jump timing. If they had an infrequent attack instead, players would just have to wait till right after their attack to start chaining jumps.
Another would be to reduce the attack's startup frames and increase its hitbox size. This should make attacking with the correct timing and distance much easier. Right now, the attack has quite a few startup frames and a small hitbox. Players have to time their attacks quite early and place their attacks at just the right distance, which is rather hard without practice. This is why players kill themselves on the enemies so much: they are unfamiliar with the jump arc, attack timing and hitbox, or they expect something else from the arc, startup and hitbox. The hitbox right now is only when the cat is fully extended, and appears to be a straight line. Personally, I would have started active frames once the button is pressed, and would make the hitbox cover a large area in front of the character.
For double jumping, an impact freeze/hitstop would help with timing and feedback, especially if you allow jump input during the impact freeze. Timing the double jump is rather tricky as it stands, and the penalty for mistiming it in some levels is death by spinning saws.
Now for movement and jumping physics. Acceleration/decceleration is a bit low, resulting in the character sliding around a bit. The quirky run animation with his legs frantically shuffling around contributes to that illusion, heh. Perhaps you could experiment with higher acceleration/deceleration values, depending on what you want movement to feel like.
Jumping over an obstacle while directly next to it fails for some reason. I assume this is a bug, not expected behaviour.
Overall, I believe the core idea is really solid. The character design brims with personality, and the gameplay is promising. With some experimentation I truly believe this can be expanded to a full game.
Weapon upgrades were cool. I stopped after realising that I had been mashing space for three minutes, heh.
Interesting idea. Gave up at the gun shooting me though. Also I got through the first level without even slowing time down, heh.
Could not change colour on Web Player for some reason. OSX 10.9.5 Chrome 42.0.2311.90 (64-bit)
Congratulations on completing the Dare! I will be frank with comments because I think they would be more useful. Difficulty curve could be easier to start with. Penalty for missing jumps is rather high, especially in earlier levels. Double jump physics are a bit counterintuitive. Nuke kills too fast.
Incredible entry, one of the best I have played. Overall presentation and atmosphere was good. I could not completely understand what the context was, but I could tell something was going on in the game world, if that makes sense. I like the attempt at Super Metroid style of environmental storytelling.
An inherent problem with Metroidvanias is that they frequently allow infinite backtracking, which means searching for a missing piece of a puzzle requires traversing the entire game world. This is a rather daunting task which affects even greats like The Minish Cap and Super Metroid, if I remember correctly. The designers tried to limit puzzle solving to the immediate surrounding dungeon, but nothing prevented players from searching the entire world for something they thought they missed.
One potential solution is to make leaving impossible till players complete an area, perhaps by gaining a new ability at the end of the dungeon that allows players to leave. Super Metroid did this with the morph ball by forcing players to leave through a narrow opening that only the morph ball could fit in.
Platforms were not always distinguishable from noninteractive foreground elements eg the pipes.
FX, camera panning, shaking, shooting recoil, cutscenes were really cool.
Dashing onto a tiny platform is harsh because players do not have much practice to get used to dash distance.
Music kicking in when the sky elevator activated was hella cool.
Hiding the last yellow ore on the left of the sky elevator was clever. I have to admit I got that one by checking your playthrough. I would reserve that kind of thing for optional items, though.
Overall, really impressive entry.
The scope and design were a good fit for a 48 hour game.
Congratulations on completing the Dare! I will be frank with comments because I think they would be more useful. There was significant input lag for me. Level difficulty could start easier. Restarts take a bit more time than I would like.
I found the writing entertaining enough to go through the entire thing. I may not know who Dean Koontz is, but it was clear that it was a jab against the author, heh.
The minigame sections were presented with great humour and the jazz soundtrack accentuated the ridiculousness even more. The final minigame was confusing because I could not tell which the venus trap or the dog was. It could have been shorter and still got the joke across. Overall the minigames could have been a lot easier (especially since they seemed to be quick jokes anyway) and provided clearer instructions in-game, instead of being forced to refer to the description.
The fishing minigame was problematic on the web player because right clicking for the context menu was enabled.
It was unclear at first why I was getting game overs. Also was not sure what the goal was for the stages to pass them. I eventually figured it out. I stopped at the part where the little girl always just gives you game overs immediately.
Cool. Decent visual style. Runs ok on my computer's Intel HD 3000. Stopped at the level with two rocks blocking the exit with fire on top of them and a snowman near the spawn point.
Controls feel goood. Maybe variable jump height would be good. I stopped after restarting from the beginning a few times.
Let me clarify: the dashing felt good. The jumping and mid air control felt rather stiff.