Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → genluck
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | 36 | Ancient Technology | Grow | jam |
I really like the pacing, each level transitions very smoothly(mechanically and balance-wise), just wish there was a level reset for the later levels. P.S. glad to see someone else using the superpower packs
I really like the narrative/atmospheric aspects of the game! The ending needs a good lead-in, and definitely fill out the game when you get around to that. It's already juicy but it needs more, especially connecting the boring life of a desert gas station to going insane and killing people. But what's going on with the world? Why do so many people think they're gonna die? Is it because you're going to kill them, or is something horrible happening in the background? I don't understand the gameplay, but I'm not sure I need to. However, the guitar made me think I was running the radio station, and what's the circular thing on the left? The bird said the same thing whether you killed anyone or not which is a bit immersion-breaking. The gun made me wonder whether I was blowing out the customer's brains or mine, which at first I thought was a mistake, but later realized it's a strength. Finally, the art and music, especially at the end, really brought it together and, for a brief moment, made me feel like I was that gas-station owner, losing my mind in the desert heat.
I love this game! It has great gameplay/pacing. However, the moveable blocks need to stand out more, and there were some blocks that were background that I thought were solid, causing me to think at first that the level was unbeatable. You should be able to move and telekinesis at the same time. The squid has a semi-outline around it. You should be able to get rid of that by turning off interpolate colors between pixels in global game settings, if you don't like it or have later issues. Despite all this, the tone was great, and the ending is definitely hilarious!
I'm not totally sure what these controls were supposed to do, but I'm fairly confident that the "A", "Z", and "E" controls did nothing. I like the art style, it all fits together, but I think the rocks were a bit of a mistake, because they weren't square like everything else and kinda hard to navigate.
This is a really aesthetic game. I really enjoyed the art(especially Mr. Glutenburg), and the music. A few little things I liked was the different floor patterns between zones, the angry customer, and the belly meter. The floor patterns help with tutorialization. The tutorial was a bit long winded to do in text and pictures though. The customer's just funny. But the belly meter surprised me, I was like, "why is that a rainbow?", and then I realized that when you have only red left on the bar, you know you have little time left. Good Indicator there. Despite all this it felt repetitive, picking up ink after ink. And the blackboard/chart weren't particularly helpful in determining how many inks I needed to pick up before plating and printing. However, it's definitely one of the most conceptually interesting games I've seen so far, and it held my attention for a good while.
Really enjoyed the game, it put me in a very zen-like mood. At this point though, surviving is doing some simple calculations, which is not quite satisfying, perhaps there should be a reward other than score for successful felting. However, as you said, I understand the need to find the core before you add all the polish. Great entry!
@AODQ I noticed there is a way to get more felt each season up to a point, w/o sacrificing all your sheep. Each sheep eats 1 hay per day, People eat 1 fish/meat per day. so it's best to fish almost to the max(24) and then use the rest of your clicks for hay, sacrifice a few sheep each year. Get fat felt, become viking god.
Additionally, it would be nice if you could keep food/hay season after season. This would really help so that you don't cap out at 22 sheep each year. Also, unless there will be more to it, such as a kind of trade game or something beyond the farm, the whole, "A farm without sheeps is doomed" thing seems arbitrary, and you could otherwise subsist off of fish alone. A thought for the future, perhaps either, a successfully survived winter, or having excess food at the end of winter, could result in a population increase, adding both mouths to feed, and hands to work. Totally extrapolating at this point, but I'm really into the idea of this game. It would be so cool if the game was about not just surviving nature, but other people as well, perhaps raiders? You could grow your farm to the point where you start investing, such as in guards to defend from attackers, and extra land to make more felts. I could see a Kingdom-esque game coming out of this. I love this game, please keep up the hard work!
I love the wackyness of the whole thing, it just throws the story on you in a hilarious way. Also, the gameplay is fun, racing around the city trying to find the destination, crashing into stuff, getting your wagon stuck. :)
My one suggestion is maybe have a penalty for crashing to counter the pressure of the time limit, such as, perhaps if you crash too hard, you lose a passenger, possibly right before reaching the goal, or maybe less money for each hit.
Nice take on a hangman-style game, but w/o a penalty. Really neat implementation of the glyphs, I made a sweet eagle
Great visuals! I really like the parallax layers and the stopwatch. However, the pit jumping in the second level was a bit awkward and I couldn't get past the 2nd pit in the part where there's 2 pits next to each other. Despite that, This game fits the theme like a glove. I really like the overall concept.
I was confused at first by the houses, as I was immediately drawn to the city, found nothing, and then went back to the pyramid. I placed the venatori, but then even after clicking on it and trying different buttons nothing happened, so I went back outside, and had to wait through the text wall. I looked around the pyramid for signs that anything had changed, but nothing, so I went back inside.This time I clicked on the venatori and got to the riddle, but I put the wrong answer in, and had to wait through the text wall again. After that I couldn't figure out what to do next. I recommend making the text not take up the entire screen as this makes it daunting to read. Also, every time you fail, or go outside, you have to look at the intro text, you should make the text go away on a button press, not a timer. The waiting just kills the game.
However I love the way you incorporated the theme :)