Rim of Zitra by Listonos 2020-10-08T20:14:22Z
Nice way of turning branching storytelling into 'looping storytelling'!
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → Ghuyajil
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 51 | Every 10 seconds | Rhythm of the World | jam | 3.00 | 3.50 | 4.50 | 5.00 | 3.50 | 4.00 | 3.50 | |||
| 2021 | 49 | Unstable | 👥 | Frosty Wobble | jam | 992 | 3.33 | 3.37 | 2.63 | 2.53 | 3.48 | 3.57 | ||
| 2021 | 48 | Deeper and deeper | DICE - Demolition Into the Core of the Earth | compo | 789 | 2.90 | 2.64 | 2.92 | 3.66 | 3.45 | 3.25 | 2.34 | 2.50 | |
| 2020 | 47 | Stuck in a loop | League of Ultranormal Detectives | compo | 61 | 3.93 | 3.61 | 3.76 | 3.54 | 3.66 | 4.19 | 4.30 |
Nice way of turning branching storytelling into 'looping storytelling'!
I love the way you used the tapes as keys, just curious if there is actually a way to break the loop, cause I could only open those 4 doors... should I keep looking, or is that the end? (Kind of tricky to judge for a lot of entries when they end, because of the theme :shrug:)
Damn that was something... I was just going through my list of to play games and didn't really stop to think about the meaning of the title and the colors being gone, so I didn't see the bit with the grave coming: made me cry a little. Well done!
(By the way, my first try I was looking around and then went backwards instead of forward, which lead to me falling off the edge of the world. Maybe just putting up an invisible wall at the start so that you go in the right direction would be good enough.)
@ayxs Nope, the world pieces literally didn't replicate/move any further, I walked off a very much visible final edge... I wasn't able to replicate it though, weird.
I took a peek at your project, and I think it may have something to do with using OnTriggerExit; That's always a much harder thing to get the reasoning right for then OnTriggerEnter...
And now that I'm looking more, I also notice that the colliders are not all on the same height, and you teleport the player by setting transform.position, only changing the z position. You should move objects that have rigidbodies using rigidbody.MovePosition. People sometimes falling through may well be fixed by those two things.
@ayxs No problem, I was just curious after you said it should have gone both ways. Also, I think the most easy solution would just be one big collider for the floor level, as you have no height differences anyway (and even if you would, you'd have a base ground level you could never fall through ;)
Nicely done, the puzzles are well thought out and it's well polished! Did feel like it made a bit of a jump in difficulty in 5, but that might just be me ;)
Very nice idea and level of polish! I agree that it becomes repetitive, but I also think that is the whole idea of this being a nightmare so it fits fine! Too bad there's no audio, that could have set the mood...
Very nicely done! Great graphics, good enough soundtrack, very decent puzzles.
Nicely done, too bad there weren't more missions or targets in between the start and finish... But it looks very nice!
Nicely done, well animated and no issues, except that the last level uses what feels like an exploit to me, being able to double jump because you hit the ceiling...? Other than that, very decent entry!
Just two words for you: Nice trip :laughing:
I agree with what people have said above. Nice job for Compo, looks good, but the camera actually made me a bit dizzy. Theme is in there as well, I don't mind using it as a brainstorm tool more than it perfectly fitting into every core aspect of the game...
Very nice job! All fits together nicely and seems like a decent design. Just enough humor for an LD game as well.
Nice job! But... Why can't I shoot the guitar played with the tranquilizer gun? The scene seems to be set up that way... Oh and I didn't really find a loop... Lots of 'interesting' interactions though. Nudge me in the right direction?
Nicely done! But... 42758? Sure there's no cheat code?
@ausstein Aha, alright, it seemed more linear, I hadn't noticed that the multipliers went up more and more. Well done!
So fun to see how many people mention the 'enemy AI' and apparently don't notice that they're following your previous path... Entertaining!
Nicely done; could have benefited from a few more rules and objectives, but it looks great!
Interesting concept, the music fits well. It felt like you could have gone a bit more into puzzles by adding a few more items - you'd immediately have a much longer experience from everything you already have now. The dots were confusing to me as well; I didn't have an issue with the hold buttons controls, but it seems like a good idea to look into that for accessibility indeed.
Nice idea, feels like the movement could be a bit more polished by simply going all the way up to the cursor. A little bit more story would have also been nice, I don't really know why I'm doing this or what those enemies are. But it works without issues, and the challenge feels balanced enough.
@josh-roby It should work now, had a major outage at my internet provider.
@rossmoff @indiequest @listonos @allas @probeprob Thanks very much! I actually just uploaded a bugfixed version, as the Q indeed didn't work @listonos, and the hint showing you should venture into the forest to find the UE also wasn't triggering @indiequest - you could have finished it if you were more persistent :v:
As to how I managed this in two days: I'm a bit surprised myself that I totally finished it :scream: I guess it's knowing your tools and engine well, knowing coding very well, and making all first versions already as polished as they're going to get.
Tomorrow I'll get to reviewing at other games...
@testuser Did you run around the forest? The UE meter is not very likely to fail, the 5th clue is in a pretty far off corner (maybe a bit too far then, I guess :sweat_smile:)
@snowinn @robinerd Thanks a lot, glad you enjoyed it, I'm still recovering haha
Thanks @blue-pin-studio and @ansoneh, glad you enjoyed it! I could have fixed those issues in my bugfix update, but I think I'm not supposed to by the LD rules ;)
@testuser if you still want to see the rest, you can skip the YouTube playthrough I made to 7:38 (see updated description)
@indiequest the comment I sent to @testuser just now goes for you as well; if you still want to see the rest, start at 7:38 in the YouTube video above.
@garys @cesargary @flying-basement-studios @michael-feldman @vlad-mgc Thanks, glad you enjoyed it!
@garys Thanks for letting me know, the requirement in the kitchen room is a bit too harsh, you have to really have both people fully on a photo. But I'll fix the unable to nap bug :smirk:. I didn't mention Shift to sprint anywhere, guess it's so common I forgot :sweat_smile: maybe in a bugfix version too...
@flying-basement-studios and anyone else reading this: I've received many comments asking how I managed to pull this off alone in 48 hours; so I've decided to do a stream some time soon, showing how I did it. It will be on https://twitch.tv/virtualplaynl - so if you follow that or https://twitter.com/virtualplaynl or follow me here on the site, you'll get notified.
@michael-feldman I used to love working with actual film, didn't do that for a long time... Happy to share resources!
@vlad-mgc No problem, nice to see you playing it! I've seen your video and it helped me notice some explanation issue at the start (no playtesting time during LD jam haha)
@chickencastle Thanks for the kind words, glad you enjoyed it! Did you memorize what you saw in the 'real' world? And did you use the Z key to zoom in on the photos? If I had more time, I could have made it more clear per clue... Maybe we'll expand this into a full game with my company, then I'm thinking you're going to have more ways to study the photos and more mechanics where you actually have to remember what you saw in the 'real' world and point out the difference with what you see in the photo.
@indigo Thanks, glad you enjoyed it!
The clues are intentionally a bit vague - tried to do "show, don't tell" as much as I could, it makes sense that you didn't fully get it, no time to playtest them with people haha.
And yeah, I didn't have time to do a lot of performance testing... I did make two LODs for the trees though, but I think it's probably rendering settings and postprocessing as well, could you try running it once on a lower setting for me? When you're holding the camera up, it's actually rendering everything twice, so at that point it makes sense that performance is not very good...
@indigo Thanks for trying and getting back to me, much appreciated!
@walpolea Thanks very much, glad you liked it - so you got the clues a bit better than Elysia did... ;) Or do you think that was because you'd already seen how it worked?
@tricky-fat-cat Thanks! And yeah I know by now, the start it could have benefited from some playtesting ;)
Hey @syafire thanks again for playing - not sure if you were aware when you started rating that this was a compo game; I did all the models, trees, music, sound, writing and programming by myself and from scratch, and only had 48 hours.. so not sure how much more I could have added to the atmosphere in that time 😅
@ayxs Thanks, glad you liked it! Will play+rate your game (I usually that for anyone who leaves feedback here) I've put it on my list! Groetjes!
@hakro Thanks very much, glad you enjoyed it! It was quite the effort indeed - I was in a hyper focus :) If you want to see how I did it, come check out my stream on November 1st!
@elysiagriffin Thanks for playing, glad you were impressed :)
@namidasai Thanks, glad you enjoyed it! I have tons of ideas for more interactions and puzzle elements and types of clues, to make the core loop way more varying, indeed. For these 48 hours, this was it ;)
@amirrajan Oh, didn't you follow the meter? You've missed out on most of the game then - I'd hope you'll give it another look and really go to where the UE meter goes up (or look at the playthrough video), there's a lot more story and content to discover!
@dmitry-mozgin Thanks, I'm glad you enjoyed it! (It's not only a one man entry but also compo, 48 hours and everything made from scratch) Like I said to someone else too, I have tons of ideas for more interactions and puzzle elements and types of clues, to make the core loop way more varying, indeed. For these 48 hours, this was it ;) The theme was actually also more hidden in the loops that the Ultranormal Energy creates in time, both forward and back...
@apfel Thanks, glad you enjoyed it! Don't know if you realized this is compo?
There was only so much testing I could do, alone in 48 hours...
By know I know about the bug with not getting good photos and then not being able to take a nap, might do a little bugfix. But could you explain what you mean with the 'Display change' thing?
@notime4games Thanks, I'm glad you enjoyed it! And yeah, I'm still very much surprised that I managed to finish it...
I will definitely talk about my planning process in the postmortem stream on November 1st, hope to see you there then! (link is at the very start of the page)
@noah-kuhn @pedrocoden and @sakura-magika Thank you very much, I'm glad you enjoyed it! Maybe you can join me on stream next Sunday :slight_smile: (see description) Noah you probably didn't get a photo with everything that needed to be in there, after that there's a little bug that can prevent you from taking a nap. If you want to see how the story ends, there's a playthrough in the description!
That was nice, the gravity shift thing done in a proper way that allows for interesting puzzles; you could take this way further by working on it more. If I have to give some feedback to improve/continue with this, the music was indeed too short, therefore repetitive. Also some more sound would help as well. But well done.
Nice little idea, I didn't find a cactus and something unexpectable though... Should I have kept playing? (I had seen the same things 5 times already so tried going left but that whas it.
@ellladee ooooh, how did I miss that haha - nice, I've adjusted my rating accordingly :sweat_smile:
Would like to have seen more as well indeed, but a great spin on tower defense given the theme. Interesting to think what you could build out from this with some more types and balancing!
Interesting idea, I like the way the sound gets hypnotic very quickly. I think the most important issue here is that the player lacks agency: there is not much you have influence over, and because the enemies don't really chase you there also isn't a lot of skill involved. You could definitely change or add a few things and it would be a very nice game to play as well - I feel some more puzzle elements could also help. But all in all a neat job for compo.
Nicely worked out, a bit literal on the theme but that's probably everywhere ;) Could have done with a hint on how to change the time, but other than that solid.
Made it! Level 9 was really hard... Got 20 points.
I actually didn't have trouble understanding what to do (rtfm haha) - nice mechanics, very original - I love it when simple mechanics turn out to be so emergent :smile: Pacing was the main issue, maybe changing the train speed faster would be a nice improvement. Or upping the rate of new materials (or adding more as the track grows).
Whoa that was hard... Is there a finish, or does it just keep going forever?
Indeed a lot of levels! Good puzzling time :) I did play this game before though - or something very very similar.
Nice writing, not sure if I was supposed to see more artwork but I only stayed at the train tracks after the intro. Also had the 4K problem: little tip, you might want to set the Canvas Scaler to Scale with Screen Size > Expand next time.
I agree with many comments above, it works nicely, looks nice, good fun!
This is very well done! Would be even nicer if you would have saved the state of the game to PlayerPrefs and make it impossible to play again unless you removed them - but that might be a bit too bold/risky I guess ;)
Nice little game, too bad there was no music... and hard to see where exactly the pickups were indeed. Good entry, especially for your first jam!
It looks promising, definitely not perfect but I don't need to repeat what others have said above. Good that you're getting into gamedev this way; you do indeed get a lot of good testers who actually give feedback here. I hope it encourages you to keep improving!
By the way, if the ratings will not very high, you should see that as a challenge to get better and keep going, and improve them in 6 months ;)
Nice little game! The jam version worked fine at my end, no issues. Well done!
Nice work! Too bad the Bandots dont really seem to scale along (enough?), I could one shot them at a certain point...
It works! Once you see the holes, the trance really gets you! Very nice! Screen Shot 2021-04-26 at 10.19.00.png
Agree with the people before, I need a purpose... But it is a nice start to something.
Great stuff! I hope you get that one more rating that you need! Loved the vibe, the music and the shader.
Can't play, there's a javascript error loading the Unity framework... I'll come back if you let me know when it's fixed!
Totally agree with LRVStudios up here. Nice to read its a family project!
Nicely done! I dont know what to say that has not been said already... Looks good, I personally think the small voxels are a nice style!
@youthfulidealism Yes to both, but it's quite hard - the TNT should instantly blow up the walls though, are you sure it didn't work? Also, the slimes shouldn't spawn directly where you're starting... I could personally get much deeper, but then again I've practised quite a bit. I'll check if there's something wrong with the damage or the spawning!
This jam was mostly about the graphics and the juice (VFX, screen shake, shaders, procedural cave generation), so I made it extra hard, but maybe a bit too much ;)
@fabighindaru @david-horning @jeremia @verygenuinecraze Thanks! I have found that they do indeed spawn around the player immediately which they shouldn't... Will make an update when I have time... :innocent:
@jupiter-hadley Thanks, I appreciate it!
@elsombrero Thanks for that! Can you explain what you meant with strange light?
@qyouk Thanks for the compliments :)
I finally got around to uploading the bugfixed version, you are absolutely correct that it was too hard. Maybe you can see how far you can get now ;) By the way, the cave is procedurally generated, so it will be infinite...
@youthfulidealism @fabighindaru @david-horning @jeremia @verygenuinecraze In case you want to check out the bugfixed version, it is now online (the difficulty is way better now, and the music also changes with the game as it should).
@brice-mahier You are absolutely right, I wrote the music before I even made anything, to test the adaptive system; did not have time in the end to make something more fitting ;)
@elsombrero Ah, gotcha. I should add a warning ;)
@meritcoding @desertmawtobi @vsi @dans17 @bmacintosh @viperux thanks all for playing and rating, and thanks for the feedback, I will play and rate your games in the morning! My main goal for this jam was VFX: the explosions feeling nice and creating the screen shake effects and the correct forces throwing you off.
I personally also get frustrated by the controls, but that was indeed intentional, to make it kind of hard to control a kind of hovering craft; it wants to right itself all the time... If I would continue with this I would likely make that a bit less annoying indeed ;)
@tek @meep Thanks for the feedback! I did not have more time to create a more open area to start in, as the rocks are procedurally generated I just found a kind of clear spot, but I would definitely tweak that if I would continue... Right now I am already working on 3 bigger game projects with my studio so this one will not see much love in the near future - but it is a nice start so maybe later...
Nice little game, I do not think I have more feedback to add to what others have already said ;)
Nicely done! Is there an end, though? I just stopped at a certain point because it also didn't seem to be getting harder over time.
There's nothing I can play in the output.zip - and if I try running the html in the export folder from Github, it needs a web server (cross origin requests). Maybe you can put it on itch.io? Otherwise please put a Windows (and possibly Mac) build in there. I'll come back if you reply to let me know it's fixed!
Yup, I figured it out too, but they are too hard ;)
It was fun, I just would have loved to have more smooth movement. Good job all by yourself!
The download link isn't working right now... - Ah, your domain is blacklisted by my antimalware protection. I'll bypass it for this but might be good to know (NETGEAR Armor denied access to this potentially harmful website)
Fun stuff, a bit hard at times - you can sometimes get caught in a corner with no way out... Nice music and great to hav such a finished game!
It worked fine, but I would have liked a bit more feel of logic why shots sometimes fired and sometimes they would not. And I don't want to repeat too much but I missed a lot of audio indeed. Other than that, well done all by yourself of course!
Agree with the others before me that the start was a bit slow, especially level 3 took forever; I think a gradual increase in the speed of the carts might feel better; also maybe just leave the speed up in level 5, it's a lot but the slowness feels like a step back. Hard to balance, but nicely executed - only thing is I don't really feel the theme in there but that's minor.
I couldn't really get through the tutorial with the jar version, the window scales really weirdly, so I had to go off the video mostly. A bit repetitive, and it's not completely clear what the win condition was. Other than that, great job and a complete game!
Thanks @erukolindo, @yamzho, @polymathld and @jibberwocky! Good points made, those are exactly the issues we still have with it. The Esc button should have worked so we're going to put up an update with that fixed; as well as the creatures: apparently they bugged out in the game build so that they don't move and also don't hurt you :sweat_smile: will be fixed in the bug fix version as well.
Thanks a lot @chesschaser @shade2810 @devundead @0x-void-x0 and @barrier !
@devundead It's Unity's Input System that handles the keys, you'd expect it to know azerty etc... But good to know - and if we'd publish it we'd make the keys configurable of course.
@barrier did you not see the snowflake counter in the top left corner, like in the screenshots? Oh, maybe I have the anchors set incorrectly for that \*oops\*
Thanks very much @jane-wei ! Yes, it was a very quick fix that messed up the camera smoothness on respawn; I took that loss for now as the main camera movement now does work much better and I had to work rn, will probably do another bug fix over this one ;)
@barrier thanks, yes that is the only way it would go off-screen haha... I have fixed the anchor point so this will be fixed in the next bug fix version; thanks for letting us know :)
Thanks you @pixelydian! There are definitely a few issues to iron out with the physics-based movement approach... glad you liked it!
Thanks @giulychu! Yeah we should have taken the turtle out, it does not actualy do anything right now ;)
@bgdc Thanks, you should get a message on screen for the keys you need to use at the start and any time you unlock a new skill... did you not get those?
Thanks @chillertyp and @yikescloud!
Thans so much @animalx @jk5000 and @robbietaco! We're aware of the not jumping bug (as well as the likely cause), and the camera movement definitely needs some polish indeed, but thanks for the feedback.
Thanks so much @wassim @echo-gameworks and @britt-henderson!
Valid points of feedback as well; the camera was a bit smoother before but had a huge deadzone, but I didn't want to really change it anymore after the jam since that's not fair ;)
The 'dying' transition was planned to be falling into the water and the penguin setting off to swim back to the last point where he could reach a shore, the jump out of the water - so that you feel that he's not actually dying. But, not enough time ;)
And also agreed that the physics definitely need a few more iterations to be snappy and feel great.
Nicely done, too bad the robot doesn't rotate going on ramps but other than that nice polish as well.
Funny take on modern times, too bad there isn't a high score; or maybe that's the whole point, that you can't see the actual number? ;)
Hey, the Mac version doesn't work for me... with or without giving permission to open, It tells me it's damaged.
Good work for your first jam, though some indication of where the checkpoints are would be nice; it's a bit difficult ;) Btw @martin183 you can fire bullets with Ctrl.
Nice job, but indeed confusing; I didn't really get what I was doing and how the conversation related to the cards played most of the time... Maybe I should try again? Anyway, decent for Compo!