Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → Gawain Doell
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | 55 | Summoning | 👥 | Kobold Pet Shop | jam | 798 | 3.39 | 3.19 | 2.98 | 2.83 | 3.23 | 3.77 | 3.77 | 3.59 | |
| 2023 | 54 | Limited Space | 👥 | Kobold Delivery Service (KDS) | jam | 762 | 3.37 | 3.72 | 3.16 | 2.64 | 3.04 | 3.91 | 3.49 | ||
| 2023 | 52 | Harvest | 👥 | Kobold Fishing | jam | 308 | 3.62 | 3.70 | 3.54 | 3.85 | 2.89 | 3.88 | 4.17 | 3.82 |
Gawain Doell leaves an average of 9.3 feedback comments each event.
I love this one! It was really fun trying to figure out some of the puzzles. I got stuck on one and wandered around a bit but eventually it clicked. Nice touch with saving the photos after the game ends, that was cool. I also appreciate that the game does not jump scare or do anything creepy, just great atmosphere of exploring an abandoned place and getting some nice photos. Thank you for this, it was a great time!
This is pretty cool, I like the idea. I would have loved to hear sounds for each item as they go in the bag, and sounds for them falling out. I think that would add a lot to the fun factor of the game. I'm also not sure the timer does anything, as it seems like it would always be a better score just to sit there forever picking select items. Which feels weird given the presentation of this being like a shopping minigame thing.
Was not expecting zombies, nice surprise. I enjoyed the game, it was frustrating the first run because I saw how bathrooms became more expensive and so tried to manage with robots alone. I figured out the balance of new bathrooms and robots the second time around and the game turned much more enjoyable!
Minor gripes, the web version is a little too tall for the screen, I had to zoom the browser out a bit to see the civil unrest bar. Probably looks great on a phone though!
I also kept aiming by clicking on the zombies path directly, but doing so often resulted in leaving gun mode and grabbing a robot instead. This second one might be more of a "me" thing.
An improvement might be to make the aiming visual, with a barrel from the gun, and auto select gun mode if the mouse is around the bottom area. As even with full bathrooms to manage the bottom area is otherwise unused. Then the gun could just "not work" if we move upwards.
Or you could even make gun mode toggled, so we click the gun a second time to "go back to bathroom mode".
I loved this one though, it's very fun!
Well, this was something.
It's not my kind of humor, but the gameplay is solid. It takes strategy and a bit of luck, which is a great mix. I like the risk/reward of saving up ammo for bigger attacks, but also potentially shooting yourself. I can appreciate the gameplay design here, even if I am left questioning your sanity and sense of humor, lol!
This needs some work. I think most of the others covered the bugs, and it's hard to play with sound bugs and such going on. The graphics are cool, and when it's not stacking the sounds the audio work does match very well with the visuals. I wish there was a bit more help or feedback for hits/damage (was there any player damage?) or goal completion. A guiding arrow or better enemy logic would help greatly if you expand it. I'd love to see the enemies placed to lead the player down intended paths instead of just scattered about and collecting into a mob. I still don't know if my goal was to clear all the enemies or just wander through the portals.
I do hope your team updates this post jam, I liked what little of the idea made the jam cut.
This is pretty cool. I had a bit of trouble understanding what to do for puzzle 4, not sure what it is trying to teach. The exit seems out of reach even with the techniques taught in 2 and 3, so I assume there is some new trick I am just not understanding. Thankfully you let us skip and do other ones too. I liked how different the puzzles become once two robots are on the field. I'm usually really bad at these "minimal programming" games, but you kept me around with the sound effects, cute robots, and the speed of trying out a new solve. Nice one!
One minor critique I had was that I often forgot which robot was which name. Having the robot displayed by it's programming track would help if you wanted to improve things. It was also a little weird how we can drag and drop the arrows but cannot drag and drop to rearrange them in the program line itself. Both of these were really minor and I still had fun! Thanks for making this!
I love the concept here, it's a brilliant way to turn a racing game into a puzzle game. I didn't make much progress because the learning curve is pretty steep, but for a racing game that is quite fine! My favorite aha moment tracks was the figure 8 track, and the free roam track was pretty cool as well. I feel you really explored a lot of uses of different mechanics despite the simplicity of the concept. Thanks for a rolling good time, it was really fun!
Beautiful art, gameplay is ok, but sometimes I felt the controls were not built for how fast we need to act/react to some of the screens. I did not make it as I got stuck in one of the later rooms because the controls for double jump don't work off walls. I kept expecting to refresh my double jump off the walls, and instead the cat just falls down.
To be honest I never figured out how to climb the walls reliably without rapidly jumping and inching my way up, so this might be a "me" thing. The cat felt really sticky when grabbing the walls. Perhaps if the double jump refreshed when hanging, or "jumping" off a wall gave more kick upwards to help climb, it would feel a lot better.
I liked the theme, and the art, music, lighting effects, even the sudden grabbing all were fantastic at setting the mood. I smiled at the bucket once I realized what to do, it felt very cat like and clever to solve those rooms. 😺
I have to confess I did not find the exit, kept getting lost. 😅 This seems very intended in the case of this game. Everything works, you were not kidding about it being a hard maze though! Nice take on the theme, I really felt "limited" in "space" with this kind of maze game!
I love the concept here! It is fun to see what the delivery man is doing next and react. I like that he telegraphs his moves, so the player has time to scramble around to safety.
It's a little too easy, but I think that might be because of the random nature of the layout. The graphics are cute and I liked the little music loops as well. Nice game!
It feels like an older education software that fell into a time portal. You nailed the aesthetic, including the lack of playability without the paper manual. I felt like I had gone back in time, and despite the modern color use the graphics did take me back to staring at old CRT TVs trying to comprehend what was on the screen.
Sadly, the gameplay, much like the source "education entertainment" it is emulating, just wasn't very fun for me. It's funny, yes, and definitely a mood! But the controls feel a bit terrible to use, I couldn't just hold down a key when needing to go across the entire screen for example.
Or when stacked it was not clear which number would move when I pushed them. (Maybe they are not supposed to be stacking up inside each other in the first place?)
There also does not seem to be a way to recover if you push a block into a corner/edge. Not sure what would help here, perhaps if the field wrapped the boxes around and movement looped as well to remove the edges completely. I think adding sound might have gone a long way to making it feel better to play.
A great improvement would be to make a little "ok" sound when the correct digit was pushed onto a target. The game would be technically able to stand up without the manual as well if that was added.
I loved the style of the game, the graphics nailed that retro low memory aesthetic! Nice work making an entry!
Lol, this is such a funny take on the theme, left me with a big smile!
This was pretty cool!
Thank you for not including any jump scares, it was great to have a purely puzzle-logic escape room!
I liked the mood + added challenge of having to use the flashlight. The puzzles were very simple but did not overstay their welcome. I liked the change in puzzle entry/interaction controls for each one!
If I had to nitpick, there are a few minor bugs: The phone gets an i key input when viewed, and the code entry for the digits is not clear on how many numbers can be entered. But a little fiddling got me past both pretty easily. For an LD Compo entry this is quite fine!
You even added sound effects for everything. I also appreciated that the objects stop allowing interacting to "eliminate themselves from the puzzle space" once they are "used". It's a very nice touch that let me focus on what I hadn't used yet.
It felt good to click the clues + puzzle entry methods together. Thanks for the little escape room! 😸
I loved the little comic presentation, it was adorable! I got stuck around puzzle 5, but in fairness I've never been great at this kind of puzzle. I still enjoyed my play, and the game has a lot of charm!
I would have liked to see the outlines of the piece shapes when hovering over them in the bin. I had some trouble learning what veggies where what shapes, and I feel that wasn't helping me when I was stuck. Another improvement would be to put some kind of hint button that shows a single piece of the intended solution. There are a lot of "logic traps" and after several attempts at building the grid I really wanted to know a fresh way to start or just get a nudge in the right direction.
I think the warp would work better if it also stunned the farmers. I kept warping when in trouble, but the farmers just are faster at catching up to me before I could teleport again. I felt like the teleport would be more useful if there was a mini-map or some way it reached further, or maybe if the camera view was wider.
The other annoying thing is the shooting cooldown, as clicking fast seems to not shoot all the time, but there isn't an indication when I can shoot again. So I often lost because my shooting was not fast enough due to not finding the ideal rhythm of clicking. I think in general just providing feedback for the cooldowns would go a long way to making the game feel better to play. I think if we charged up a bunch of bullets in an ammo pool over time, then held down fire to release them, that would feel better with the teleporting and kiting strategies.
The game is a cool concept, and I hadn't expected to play AS the wheat, so that was a funny touch. I liked it despite the flaws. It just needs a little bit more polish to feel fun to play.
This was pretty cool. I like how you built on the concept of those famous survivor games, but the harvesting enemy types makes the game stand out from them. It was also interesting how the player has to decide between shooting and moving, makes it very strategic to manage enemy mobs despite the simple setup. Also, the slime is awesome looking!
This one is pretty cool, I loved the music, sound, and graphics! The physics of crashing were a little frustrating, with the vehicle constantly getting stuck on walls due to the accurate shape of the front. I liked the meta of having to use alternate approaches to the turns. I think the corn could have used a little more delay to fully grow to really bring that aspect of strategy out. The cows are also a little frustrating because there isn't any way to see them coming up once the player is fast, but I suppose that is part of the challenge.
Nice one! 😄
I liked the upgrade system, it's a good start to a puzzle way of fighting enemies! I can certainly see expanding this into a bigger game with different powers, combos, and then enemies to match. This is a great start and fun as is. I'd love to play a bigger game that really digs into the puzzle/shooting/actions system, it was addicting to "grow" my weapon output this way and even trap myself with a string of harvest commands out of greed. This is a great concept, and I want more!
It's really rough to start out, but the writing really helps make up for it. I thought the conversations for investigating things were pretty funny. The custom graphics are great, loved the full graphic intro!
The gameplay is a little boring though, it takes way too long to get going and the farming seems to be very painful and repetitive. Though given the theme of the storyline it does make sense, I still feel more could have been done to help the player smooth out the repetition. The dialog at first is funny but having it come up every time you manage a crop gets old really fast.
I had the game menu break on me and locked up with the pause menu open, it's probably an RPG maker bug though, so I didn't lower the score for it. Sadly, I never saved, so my whole farm went poof. I think having the game pull up the save menu when sleeping would be a good idea to prevent this.
Still, I had a lot of fun, and loved the ideas and character designs. Nice one! 😄
This was a fun one! I liked the extra controls touch of being able to recall the boomerang, it really opened up lots of ways to strategize.
I had an issue playing in the browser, because the resolution in web is a bit too large for my monitor. But I managed with it set to full screen. The animations and artwork are awesome!
This was definitely a strange experience.
I wish there was a click needed to confirm adding poo to the barn. There were several times I was running by to defend it and deposited all my ammo instead.
It needs an indicator for the nearest goblin, or at least better feedback for where they are. The last part of a wave becomes a matter of finding the last few on the map. The problem is doing so floods the map with ammo/poo and makes the game too easy from then on. I eventually was able to collect a bunch of poo and just stockpile forever.
I think in general the threat level of the goblins is a bit weak. The unicorn poo is also overpowered.
The later guns cost way too much ammo to fire. I had my best survival just using the shotgun since it spreads a few shots, or just tossing poo normally to conserve ammo. Most of the other guns just emptied my ammo and left me defenseless. I constantly wanted a way to upgrade how much poo I could hold to be able to use the better guns. With how low that pool is I often would instantly turn around just to cash in a trip.
With all those issues, I had a hard time understanding how to play, or having much fun with this version. However, I do think there is a very fun game loop waiting in here, if you tweak a few things and improve it further. It's not that fun yet, but the groundwork is there. 😄
Once the interface clicked, the game was quite fun!
I loved the little graphics for the wilted plants, it was cute!
The game is very hard, I'm still quite bad at it. It's all a bit overwhelming at first, but I kept wanting to try again, and had a good time!
If you expand it to a bigger game, some audio feedback when plants go bad/need water/etc. would go a long way to helping the player keep up. 😄
LD55 — Summoning (6)
Glyphwalker by Papaver 2024-04-19T21:49:01Z ♥ 2
That was very cool. I like that you teach us how it works through the puzzle progression. I had a great time. I'm glad that the move counts are optional, my brain works better playing around in the level, and you made this very nice for that kind of player. I appreciate that nothing in the game is "one chance", we can always walk away and try again from a different approach. Very nice puzzle game concept, I encourage you to expand on this!
Hentoad by Nazorus 2024-04-19T06:59:31Z ♥ 1
It took me some frustration at the beginning to learn when to swap and all the rules for when the other form could still jump, but in the end this was a surprisingly good platforming experience! I like the variety of puzzles you made with the ability to swap everywhere. It felt really good when a solution clicked. Controls felt great on my PS5 Duelshock, very intuitive feel and great responsiveness!
I'm not sure I solved a couple of them "correctly". There was one I cheesed using a clipping bug with the frog when climbing in a corner between two objects(the frog will glitch infinite climb, probably not intended).
I tried for about 10 minutes trying to solve that one normally, but I couldn't see a solution. Since the frog leaving the wall consumes the bird's first jump, and it would take two frog climbs at least to reach the top.
There was an earlier one where two flaps got up the glass. I'm sure given the other path solutions, I was just missing another way to use/abuse them.
I still loved playing this despite that problem. I can see this being expanded, with more levels to teach the tricks, and more visuals to que the player into which technique to use. The flow between the "slow frog wall climbing" and "fast bird glide/air jump" is incredibly addicting. Amazing game! 😺
Necrunmancer by Adam Martin 2024-04-19T05:59:54Z ♥ 2
This was surprisingly pretty deep for a jam game! I really liked the twists, first that some enemies would deal direct damage. The second big twist was that magic score carries from battle to battle, so it became more about long term management. These were really refreshing for this kind of game, and made for some fun strategies chaining the combats together.
My biggest complaint is the card text size is way too small, often unfortunately unreadable. (I played the web build and there does not seem to be a way to make the game full screen?) I have played enough other games of this style to pick up what everything did, but I strongly recommend going bigger on the font sizes!
I have a minor gripe with how it is balanced. There is this sweet spot where the player is just barely getting by or has to not go full overpowered to conserve between combats. I thought that part of the power curve was very fun, as I had to really think about taking blows vs having mana next turn/combat, and what might come next in my deck build. In the jam version this lasts only about 2 or 3 combats max before the enemy creeps over the power level and stomps the player flat (or a bad shuffle kills the run). If this expands, I would love to see the game get rebalanced so those "tight but fair" situations happen more often.
Overall, great job to your team! I had fun with my couple of runs, the sound, music, and graphics all come together to make me feel like a summoner, so this is right on target. You got a great start to something here. 😸
They Ran Out Of Flying Spells So Now I Summon Platforms by Gaverion 2024-04-17T18:49:08Z ♥ 1
Overall, this game is pretty cool! The concept is executed well and felt very original!
I wish the movement was just at run speed all the time, there was very little reason for the walk speed at all.
I appreciated the notches on the timing UI. Once I figured out what they meant the game became a lot easier to get around. From a UI standpoint, I suggest moving the meter closer to the player model. Maybe float it to one of the sides? I found my eyes constantly darting from the meter to the player a lot because it can be hard to watch both for timing.
The timer length felt just a tad bit too long for me. I wish the movement was about 1/3 faster, there is a lot of "waiting" and patience/pacing needed when moving. This, combined with the respawn being at the start of a level, removed a lot of the excitement.
Too much of the playtime is just waiting for the timer so the next jump works. If there was something else cognitive to do during these pauses, such as planning the next move, or blocking an attack, it wouldn't be so bad. I get that you need the gap in time to allow the threat of falling but having it this slow between platforms takes away some of the fun.
Walking off a platform to safely move down also felt too tricky. I think if you add an input to "destroy" the platform below, vertical drops would become much easier to navigate. With the current speed of the movement and the transparency of the platforms it can be tricky to time walking off the edge to get a required height.
One of my favorite features is that some previous platforms stick around behind instead of only having one active at a time. This allowed some cool stacking or positioning tricks. I actually wish there was more left behind, but I understand this is a huge ask because of performance and possibly trapping oneself in their own platforms.
I loved the little touches like the intro ghosts apologizing about their inventory. I like how open the game is about solving the levels too. Cheesing some of the levels was really fun!
The game has a lot of charm and invites the player to experiment with something new. That's a big win!
Salmoning by kuviman 2024-04-17T01:45:05Z ♥ 7
Screenshot 2024-04-16 213042.png
We had lots of fun chasing the dots together! It's a really cool little city layout, the art, the music radio, the driving, all of it is amazing!
I love how the cars just bump the players around. It's just annoying enough to incentivize trying to avoid them while keeping the multiplayer space friendly and happy without stress. I also love the inclusion of little features like the high score table, the selection of social hats/bikes, and the ability to ring a bell to greet other players. You even have a team mode that is kind of cool, because we had to learn to wait for the other players to make sure everyone gets paid without any communication besides ringing bells or emoting (bouncing, really).
If I had to be super picky: The meta of a high score and clothing selections only go so far before they get dull. It would be cool to get actual performance upgrades, or perhaps harder but better paying mission offers. But honestly, what is there is great and rather relaxing.
This is insanely impressive for a jam project. I can only imagine how much coordination it took to both develop and troubleshoot/try out the multiplayer stuff on a jam deadline. We didn't want to leave, even with the limited gameplay. It was such a welcoming, peaceful world in which we could just hang out and ride all over the city. Big two thumbs up for this one! 👍 👍 😺
Orbitals by pvg 2024-04-16T18:25:27Z ♥ 2
This concept is brilliant!
I kind of wish I started with more charged orbs, as about half my plays are just that first struggle to get the game loop going, and those runs feel terrible.
The controls, oh boy. Most of my deaths were from either trying to move between enemies to a pickup, which gets me crushed unexpectedly because their route changed. Or from steering around a pickup till they caught up to me, because I have no sense of how fast my orb is moving. The lack of reference for momentum really kills the controls, because as I play I do not know if a light tap or a full hold is needed to twitch out of the way or line up an orb collision. I see what you were going for, and I think with some points of reference for the momentum it could work better. A simple way to fix it might be to add a small particle trail to the orb and make the background just a bit more contrast.
I think if you just tweak the movement to something a bit more "bullet hell dodge" friendly, you could even keep the homing enemies and get really crazy with the spawns/pickups.
You've got a really fun concept, and it did feel really awesome when I get a run going! I can easily see this becoming super addicting with some minor tweaks to the control feel and some homing pickup behaviors.
I love the cycle of gameplay between having a full "armada" of orbs and then feeling super vulnerable by smashing them to invest in more pickups. For a compo 2 day entry this is fantastic, you even have sounds and music! 😄 👍