FoonLudum Dare ExplorerUsers → Toby Pinder

Toby Pinder

Games

YearLDThemeGameDivisionRankOvFuInThGrAuHuMoCmCo
201532An Unconventional WeaponAPT: Advanced Persistent Threatcompo5043.222.853.443.543.102.503.5568
201429Beneath the SurfaceQuantum Tunnellingcompo4253.313.203.163.473.161.461.942.9886
20132710 SecondsAstronomical Oddscompo3063.323.002.672.903.1035
201326MinimalismGridRunner (Provisional Name)compo
201121EscapeMageRunnercompo4921.501.221.892.001.001.001.001.50

Performance over time

overall score (left axis) percentile (right axis)

Scatterplots

Fun vs Overall

Innovation vs Overall

Theme vs Overall

Graphics vs Overall

Audio vs Overall

Humor vs Overall

Mood vs Overall

Comments by Toby Pinder

LD21 — Escape

Prelude of the Chambered by Notch 2011-08-23T22:08:00

You inspired me to enter this one (I saw the metagun timelapse before I had heard of minecraft) and you just knocked it out of the park. It's "Nintendo Hard" but it adds to the charm. The 3d is amazing. I was too busy to watch the streams but I know I'll be searching for recordings and downloading source code!

I guess all I can really say is thanks for introducing me to the magic that is Ludum Dare!

MageRunner by Toby Pinder 2011-08-22T02:56:00

Please let me know what you think: if there's enough interest, I've plenty of scope for easily extending the core gameplay, adding more enemy/item variety (and therefore maze traversal strategy) and so on.

MageRunner by Toby Pinder 2011-08-22T22:32:00

Yeah I couldn't really figure out how to dump the captcha: it's tied to the authentication library I'm using. Enemies and content really do need a lot of work: the idea was that it would be a resource management thing where you have to try and aim for various goals (other than decending to the next floor) otherwise you'll die. Potions are a primitive form of this but there just wasn't time to implement my ideas! The mazes themselves are too big as well, in hindsight! Also the multiplayer component was going to be fleshed out a bit so it was beneficial to play in groups.

Thanks for the feedback, and if I work on it further I'll hopefully address some of this!

MageRunner by Toby Pinder 2011-08-23T16:44:00

Yeah that's my thinking as well. Bit off a bit more than I could chew really. I would have made it a Jam entry but I was completely mentally drained and as this was my first "go" I figured I'd just release it! It's more of a game engine than a game, really, but I'll probably end up abandoning it as I have other projects (that have much more codebase stability than this, which was bashed out without any thought to design patterns, commenting and maintenance!) Don't understand why the source link isn't visible, I'll fix that.

MageRunner by Toby Pinder 2011-08-23T21:56:00

@Daniel, Sorry there can't really be, although you can put any bogus email address in. It doesn't send any email, that and the silly Captcha are just part of TankAuth which is what I'm using for the login system. I can remove the email/captcha, but it would have cost precious dev time :D

Maze Escape by glcoder 2011-08-22T13:13:00

I'm sorry, I'm too busy being mesmerized by the title screen slowly generating the mazes then filling them with lava! Tell me you are turning that into a screensaver!

LD26 — Minimalism

GridRunner (Provisional Name) by Toby Pinder 2013-04-29T22:41:00

@SuperlevelSebastian I'm told Heroku (my host) has a few issues today. It might also struggle depending on your browser (I used Chrome but I expect Firefox will work well too)

GridRunner (Provisional Name) by Toby Pinder 2013-04-29T22:43:00

@mortus Agreed. My dev environment had 5 second turns for faster debugging and I didn't have time to balance this. I'd probably make turns 12 seconds or something in a more fleshed out implementation (and I'd prefer it if you could queue more actions: it was supposed to be a more strategic game than the tactical one it ended up being, where you'd queue up a load of actions and then check on it later)

LD27 — 10 Seconds

SUPER ULTRA REALISTIC BOMB DEFUSAL SIMULATOR: SEASON PASS GOTY DLC EDITION by tony.pe 2013-08-26T02:58:00

I LOVE the voice acting.

Does the GOTY DLC Edition come with the soundtrack?

Time Tunnels by Thinkofdeath 2013-08-26T03:05:00

Would be cooler with a draggable interface (rather than mashing different squares to go in straight lines) and obviously more levels, but the concept is very cool.

10SecTD by joekinglake 2013-08-26T02:48:00

If the aiming issues were fixed this'd be a pretty stylishly done TD. As is it has issues and is a little bit lacking in features but it's Ludum Dare, that's to be expected!

10 Second Maze by Bjeaurn 2013-08-26T02:53:00

I like the idea, once I figured out that the timer resets in the safe zones!

GIMP the Tapedeck-Operated Robot by Zuige 2013-08-26T03:31:00

Only real complaint is the lives system: I feel that a full game reset is too harsh a penalty for a game like that...

Save the forest! by everblind 2013-08-26T03:36:00

Made me laugh, the spurt physics are very well thought out!

Timeline by Lancey 2013-08-26T02:41:00

Very original idea. Just when you think all puzzle platformer concepts have been done new mechanics come along. Not really my genre but this is really well executed (seems difficult though)

Vampire The Buffet Slayer! by danhett 2013-08-26T02:44:00

Very stylishly done (and I love the name)

Astronomical Odds by Toby Pinder 2013-08-26T01:31:00

Please note that the source is embedded in my website's code. Hover the website is open source and it should be fairly trivial for any interested party to extract the LD27 stuff into a fresh Ruby on Rails install (or indeed standalone if you get rid of the Steamy Stuff[tm]).

Astronomical Odds by Toby Pinder 2013-08-26T03:09:00

Yeah the floatiness is a bit love it or hate it. Difficulty is skewed against you in that the planned persistancy / upgrades system isn't in there yet, and it was balanced (in so much as I had time) for that to be there!

Some of the lower tier upgrades would have given you better brakes at the cost of max speed, for instance. Or you could increase the friction effect on your ship if need be.

Thanks for playing!

Astronomical Odds by Toby Pinder 2013-08-26T03:42:00

Yes it's not really that survivable. I left it in without tweaking the drop rate because it's bloody hilarious seeing every single powerup devour your entire base and ship within seconds! If your munitions factory goes without too many around you *can* ninja-grab all the pickups though.

Astronomical Odds by Toby Pinder 2013-08-26T03:54:00

Laser's awesome. I'm very partial to the "shotgun" myself (needs a better name really). Something about that cone of death pleases me!

Astronomical Odds by Toby Pinder 2013-09-18T21:16:00

Thanks all for your feedback! Once I gather my thoughts, I may just expand the concept to something a bit more polished and featureful.

LD29 — Beneath the Surface

ScubaBear by _Rilem 2014-04-29T22:00:00

This oozes charm, great soundtrack (loved the dynamic playback when it comes to being underwater, always a fantastic sight!) Highly polished, lots of content... it's great :D

If you want something constructive, all I can offer is a minor UI niggle: the inventory showing up after each "item get" was a little unusual since you had to manually close it. I'd be cool if that only showed up for ~2 seconds and then went down by itself!

Really though, it's a non-issue. The game is great :D

Doomsday Bunker by ZYXer 2014-05-04T22:37:00

Very polished! Can't really add on much that others have said, other than to say there might be an exploit when starting the game - if you just grab as many crates as you can without creating a shelter you can basically start the game with tons of resources.

Duck by Jakub Koziol 2014-04-28T12:38:00

...well I'm not sure what I was expecting!

I like the sounds :)

A Glorious Escape for A Lich King by Benjamin 2014-05-05T18:17:00

This one is simply sublime. I can't say enough nice things about it! I love the art style, I love the gameplay and it's very polished.

The thing I particularly find impressive is the audio work you've done, to synchronize game events with "music". It gives the whole game a very low-fi rhythm that's truly awesome.

I did find the difficulty curve a bit easy - "Hard" was fairly trivial after my game on easy. Though I imagine it's difficulty curves are tuned for first time play (it is an LD entry after all) and that's absolutely to be expected!

Fantastic job!

Dig Hard by petey123567 2014-05-04T23:55:00

Sublime. I only wish it were longer. Vlambeer quality pixel art and feel, with broforce-esque humour and Excellent mechanics. Not much I can say, you heard me gushing over it on one of the rater streams I'm sure!

The cubes in the background were particularly a nice touch.

Beneath the Cave by feiss 2014-04-28T12:22:00

Very impressive presentation, there's definitely solid basis to take this further. Feels like I just watched an opening cutscene without being able to play the game though, but as I say it looks excellent and I like the characters :)

Beneath the surface with Sir Walter Wuffington by Larzan 2014-05-05T01:32:00

I have to echo what DarkMeatGames said: I liked the concept of raising land but I feel it was too punishing. Walljumping was a little finicky too.

REALLY enjoyed the top down -> side on mechanics of sea -> land though. That was excellent.

The Sea Has No Claim by dukope 2014-05-05T18:50:00

Very interesting mechanics. Loved the art style.

Ad Astra by Cosmologicon 2014-04-28T17:58:00

Interesting concept! I found it a bit fiddly but I think that's more my fault than the game's :)

Ground control to major Tomashevsky by drnick 2014-04-30T00:47:00

Liked the varied gameplay, and the level design was cool. Your use of forgiving checkpoints might be a minor detail to some but it's excellent here and keeps you engaged!

Dr. Brainwire by snooze82 2014-05-01T19:40:00

I like how you can modify the pathways while it's in mid "flight". Interesting concept!

Temple of Ra by Split82 2014-05-01T19:38:00

Outstanding mood, outstanding presentation, and the puzzles were solid. Can't really say much else!

Bombcano by bentog 2014-05-01T19:25:00

Like the ideas, it's just very difficult for me :)

DIG! DIG! DIG! by Harsay 2014-05-04T22:47:00

I feel that the digging should work while holding a key down rather than requiring "mashing". Other than that it's fun! Particularly like the death sound/partial spin animation!

FedIt! by zedutchgandalf 2014-05-06T19:18:00

I like the concept, I think it could use a bit of polishing though. It'd be nice if there were powerups or something. I'd prefer if the enemies were larger and tankier though, which would add incentive for weapon upgrades etc.

Anthill by gre 2014-05-05T00:56:00

Really like the AI pathfinding etc in this one - for an LD entry it's sophisticated! Crashed on Day 83 with a "Uncaught TypeError: Cannot set property '93' of undefined", but I had 3000 food at that point so I think I had played enough of it.

I think the UI needs a bit of work (clicks/hovers not always registering, simple black text of assignment stats etc.) and I'd have liked to have seen more roles, but there's definitely a solid game mechanic there!

Would like to see something like enemies that your guys must fight (through assigning to "warrior" type) and perhaps some sort of "sustainability" role that somehow increases the availability of food in the lategame.

Regardless, it's a very fun game as is!

Wriggle Worm by gikdew 2014-04-28T11:59:00

Very nice style, fluid gameplay! As mentioned by others the damage sound is jarring but it's meant to be - could maybe be a little quieter but I don't think it's a bad idea to use a "bad" sound like this :)

Yay, more squares! by lightsoda 2014-04-28T18:04:00

Really loved the music! Gameplay was too hard for me: maybe I'm missing something but you could only really shoot while taking damage in my experience. This would work great if you could shoot in a different direction from the one you're moving.

Great art outside the squares, but even they were fine :)

HTML5 version worked fine on Win7/Chrome

Infinite Dig Dug by jotson 2014-04-29T23:00:00

This is super crisp... definitely a fresh spin on the "digging" ideas I'm seeing (my own game included :))

Love the art style, love the way the difficulty/failure works. Lava flows interestingly to make it fun.

Kappa cat by cinnamonmelonpig 2014-04-28T02:57:00

Not a fan of the sound much but I expect that's a personal preference :) Very charming runner, not very innovative but it looks and feels excellent (plus the required bonus fizzy-water theme of course)

Above and Beyond by Yozz 2014-04-28T17:19:00

Nice idea but as others have said I'd like to see some differences between emotions/more strategic reasons to use different things.

Colony 31 by Crazi456 2014-05-04T22:51:00

Interesting mechanic for a puzzler, great sound/voiceover work (even if it's Bastion inspired) and there's some good puzzles in there. Well done!

Surface Runner by OniiRam 2014-05-05T01:13:00

Definitely needed a difficulty curve as others said.

Mine Story by donan 2014-05-05T00:14:00

I like the presentation, but you introduce new threats to the player without signalling them very well as threats... I died to both "holes" and the "bomb" merely because they looked like powerups, causing me to lose all my buffs. It's funny being so mean, but it then makes players nervous of the other mechanics like locked doors etc.

My Little Secret by Thein 2014-04-28T04:33:00

Web version requires a right click "go fullscreen" before it works. Not reviewed yet but it's very charming presentationally!

Order of the Mind by Crefossus 2014-05-04T21:59:00

Very interesting, it's been a while since I played a text adventure. Would be cool to take it from a real terminal to a web based one though :)

Under Riders by calvinsm 2014-05-05T00:25:00

As others have said the presentation and mood is there, but I just didn't find it too fun - the concept is there but it needs something to support it and make it interesting beyond the threat of time running out. If there was more for both characters to do, or more dynamic enemies than static obstacles, I think there'd be something there.

You might want to add lives as well - having a limited number of divers would be better than the insta-fail that I got after collecting 5 pieces :)

As I said though there is definitely something there, the low fi graphics and sound are very interesting, even in the LD space where "8 bit" and other lowrez styles are very common (out of neccessity ;)). The minimalist sounds complement this.

Orpheus by edemmester 2014-05-06T19:28:00

Yup, can't add anything new except more moaning about the permadeath :)

Frustration by parDal 2014-04-28T18:27:00

Have to agree in that this game kinda punishes players a bit much...

Beneath The Lab by Techblogogy 2014-05-01T19:16:00

Wasn't really digging the Voiceover stuff - was too like portal for me to enjoy it. The acting was fine but I'd have preferred you to put your own spin on it more. HOWEVER everything besides that this is truly amazing! Loved the art aesthetic, loved the mechanic (besides maybe wishing the stamina recharged a bit faster :))

SnakeFormer - Half Snake, Half Platformer by TobiasW 2014-04-29T22:42:00

This is a fascinating game with a REALLY deceptive level of difficulty! I love the "cellular autonomy" kind of angle you were going for! Music is great, sound effects are great (that level complete :D) I LOOVE the art style, you could have just left it at cubes but you made the lava look awesome.

Every level brings a lot new to the table, which is great but really ramps up the difficulty! If you take this further I think players might appreciate more "interim" levels to learn mechanics like barrel redirection, lava/"radiation" mechanics etc. Not a "criticism" of the game in it's current form - as it is now it's an exceedingly punishing puzzler which really does require some thought to get through (it took me forever to figure out the snake standing on it's head!)

Got as far as getting regularly to the green "radiation" on Level 4 and I just couldn't work out the exit path :/ But that's definitely my failing, not the game's!

Surface Come by Tanner 2014-04-28T17:30:00

Cool music! It's not made very obvious that there are upgrades hehe. Nice premise.

pod by TomCooper3D 2014-05-06T19:57:00

I didn't "get it" when I played but it was pleasant to play with!

Ogre's Gold by asotelo94 2014-05-01T19:46:00

Really like the concept, but I found it rather hard!

Sink or Swim by noom 2014-04-28T03:19:00

Really loved the music on this one! Solid implementation of the "fishy" concept, I liked the collidable reeds!

Could polish some of the art/menu text etc but for LD it's not like menus matter ;)

Mermaid Scientist Massacre by pancakecity 2014-04-29T22:52:00

Well you weren't lying about the rocking music! Love the artwork!

Giant Pumpkin by EpaceGames 2014-04-28T03:52:00

Truthfully not my kind of game but I can see the game there for people who enjoy these things! Great art style / polish. Found the fact that your leaves would randomly face downwards to be a little annoying, not sure if there's something I was missing there.

The Fields by ryangatts 2014-04-29T23:09:00

This game was beautiful, and then it wasn't :'(

Fantastic sound and art design, I really love it's theme in general!

Driller Rush by Serk 2014-04-28T12:31:00

Really enjoyed this one! The random generation can screw you over something rotten but that's part of the fun I guess.

Very satisfying gem sounds and great match to the theme. It just "feels" nice :)

A Miner's Life by Gap 2014-05-05T01:24:00

Not exactly "innovative", but it's charming, polished and it kept me coming back! The audio gives it a great non-serious vibe :) Smooth performance, too (not to be overlooked for HTML5)

Unknown by Pietro Ferrantelli 2014-04-30T00:05:00

Not too keen on the camera but everything else is rock solid, including the well-placed wilhelm!

Hopelessness by lantto 2014-04-29T23:28:00

Cool idea. No-one was online but I left my poorly pixelled mark on the world ;)

Daisy's dog is dead by alvarop 2014-05-01T19:49:00

Cool concept, I love indirect control games!

Baum by Waterman7 2014-05-06T19:59:00

Loved the aesthetic!

StrataGEM by ActionRemix 2014-05-06T22:23:00

Really like the theme and gameplay of this. I would have liked to have seen some rotation animation and also a "low score" mode: I'd have preferred if the game were about "completing" the pseudosphere vs the somewhat arbitrary seeming "game over, stop playing now". It would have been a more peaceful experience to suit all skill levels (read: my terrible one!)

Regardless of these though, I had a fun time with this. Reminds me of Hexic crossed with Tetrisphere, rich pedigree indeed :D

Under Our Feet by NicoM 2014-04-28T04:09:00

Very floaty, which is not necessarily bad! Solid platformer, although the first popup enemy seems VERY unfair compared to you carefully curated tutorial signs etc!

MINER ESCAPE!! by NickRock 2014-04-28T02:26:00

Still having Google Drive issues :(

Mole Position by Glint Games 2014-04-28T03:06:00

Clumsy controls/collision detection and a bit of a framerate drop in the second level. but I like what's there and the art style is fun!

IO - Reflection/Puzzler by oranebeast 2014-05-04T22:44:00

Pretty fun stuff! I like most of the art style, though I think the brick texture and the fire button look a little out of place. Great puzzler otherwise, lots of content!

HYPERHYDROSIS by Craig Smye 2014-05-05T15:39:00

I think I can only really comment on the mechanic since there isn't much content, but it's a solid mechanic!

Atomicle - LostAutumn.net by AutumnGuy 2014-05-01T19:30:00

Very polished, the difficulty curve was perfect! Agree with others on the effect though, it felt "bad" when you picked them up

Beneath The Surface by adamwoolridge 2014-04-28T19:13:00

Excellent! I really love the aesthetic, and it's fun to try and figure out where enemies are and intercept them as they rotate around the surface.

Supreme use of the theme!

Keep the Gem! by lukepilgrim 2014-04-29T21:48:00

Little bit "glitchy" but excellent idea and presentation makes up for it! Definitely worth a play as is, and it's an idea that could be developed upon with some physics/collision changes!

Adding bombs was a great workaround though.

Cave Money by SyBen 2014-05-05T01:03:00

The controls feel a bit floaty/delayed on chrome, but otherwise good job! Not really seeing much of the theme in there though...

Kill or Kill by GreatBigJerk 2014-04-28T12:15:00

Heh, I like it! Not great music, and very funny, though it needs "reset from checkpoint" not "restart game"

Mind Therapy by Detective Pixel 2014-04-28T18:21:00

Interesting weight mechanics :)

Sanctums by Galvus 2014-04-28T03:38:00

Obviously just a prototype for networking code and hand-drawn assets, but I certainly like your style and it plays smoothly, so no complaints about what's there!

Underworld Evolution by StudioWolfox 2014-05-04T23:17:00

Simply one of the best I've played this LD. Polished, unique concept, fantastic music, "balance" is perfect etc. etc. Completely agree on your design decisions when it comes to player discovery (which I didn't read before I played) - this game is about figuring out what those attributes mean not simply the "min-maxing" process.

I've been saying things like "this should be expanded into a full game" on particularly good LD games but this is *finished*, it's the complete package!

Don't really have much else to say. Release it on something where you get the ad revenue and exposure, at the very least :D

Would be good on mobile also due to the asynchronous play

Underworld Evolution by StudioWolfox 2014-05-04T23:21:00

As another person commented has said I've had to withdraw the audio portion of my vote due to the use of other people's music. That doesn't in any way detract from my enthusiasm for the game (or the other ratings!)

Geology Rocks by theengineers 2014-05-06T19:25:00

I found it rather confusing to traverse, to be honest. It'd be nice if you didn't feel like you were going the wrong way all the time.

Infection by InfectionTeam 2014-05-01T20:09:00

Great polish, and some interesting mechanics with turret placement etc. Feels a bit easy being able to pause and buy at any time though, it'd be cool if there were specific places you had to go to do this (possibly moving so you can't turtle up in one corner with turrets) :)

Excellent work though, really love the graphics, lighting in particular!

FoxyTank by matthias_zarzecki 2014-05-06T19:35:00

Very solid! Felt a bit easy, would have liked to have seen more content but these are minor gripes. Good job!

DRAANG by Magdev 2014-05-05T18:25:00

Didn't really "get" it, but I think that's the point! It's got a great style to it...

Earthen Terror by arkeus 2014-04-28T02:22:00

I absolutely LOVE this concept, and it's so well polished!

Dungeon Jelly by Detocroix 2014-05-06T20:24:00

A++++ So much jelly! I find those particle effects fantastic :D

Quantum Tunnelling by Toby Pinder 2014-04-28T04:04:00

Thanks Sim00n, I've updated the description a bit. Audio would have been nice, definitely on the feature list!

Quantum Tunnelling by Toby Pinder 2014-04-28T12:53:00

For those experiencing performance issues - There are two things at play:

1) The game was developed and tested with only Chrome. Firefox and IE may work, but it makes sense that they are suboptimal as I haven't played around with them yet :)

2) The game loads (not rendering but loads) the entire map, which is a good chunk of RAM. I've noticed a few slight pauses as the world loads in in this way, and I imagine that it's worse on lower performance machines. For me it stabilises after the first ~300ms spike

If I develop this further I'll make the world stream in "chunks" which should help alleviate this :)

Quantum Tunnelling by Toby Pinder 2014-04-28T12:54:00

@qntnm: I was going to add powerups so you could do that in a similar fashion :)

Quantum Tunnelling by Toby Pinder 2014-04-28T13:00:00

Oh and yeah the lack of fuel is a bit of a balance issue. A future revision would have a larger initial fuel tank and more seeded fuel portals :)

Quantum Tunnelling by Toby Pinder 2014-04-28T14:05:00

Apologies for the weird graphical artifacts that sometimes manifest when you dig. This was an issue that there simply wasn't time to look into and fix! (although for some reason I couldn't reproduce it in my VM...)

Quantum Tunnelling by Toby Pinder 2014-04-28T20:10:00

Tipyx: the world generation stuff was hastily thrown in at the end, I definitely need to revisit player progression etc beyond a few Math.random()s everywhere.

I would also slap together a sandbox mode for those who just want to get deeper and accumulate score without worrying about lose conditions ;)

It's interesting that people like the art - I realized pretty late on that I could roll with it as "minimalist" - apparently my programmer art seems to work for some people :)

Quantum Tunnelling by Toby Pinder 2014-04-29T22:08:00

@tobiasW dude, you made it to Ruby? That's amazing! Thanks for sharing your experience.

There is a finite "bedrock" at the bottom (1000 tiles deep!) but that wasn't the point, I should have added "depth" to the death screen really.

Fuel is a bit of a problem - realistically I should have seeded a bit more. Apparently people like my "programmer art" minimalism but I wanted to throw particles in there, and I agree on sounds/music.

More drill speed and engine speed would have helped you but that's luck of the draw I guess! If I develop it further the portals would be less frequent, but present multiple "choices" of upgrades, similar to an Item Shop in a "Roguelite" like Binding of Isaac or Paranautical Activity.

There also needs to be more failure states than just boring "your time runs out". I have ideas...

Thanks for the detailed review and helpful feedback, and I'm glad you enjoyed it!

Quantum Tunnelling by Toby Pinder 2014-04-29T22:13:00

@Roman_Kornev: Yeah the camera thing is an annoying detail that I'd overlooked while making it, thanks for spotting it!

Health was for fall damage. I had planned to add things like Lava and gas pockets but I ran out of time. I'm not sure what I'd do going forward if I take it further but I might try something other than these - they are pretty much similar to motherload and I'd rather do something interesting instead if I can.

FPS I'll look into. I know how I can make the game much more efficient, which may improve FPS, or it may be something else...

Quantum Tunnelling by Toby Pinder 2014-04-29T23:15:00

Agreed jeffz, people were supposed to get upgrades more often from the portals but last minute balancing kinda tanked it :/

Quantum Tunnelling by Toby Pinder 2014-05-06T20:28:00

The red lines is so frustrating, that never showed up in my dev environment! I'll be expanding on this concept after LD though :D

Deepweb by alect 2014-04-28T03:31:00

Surprisingly detailed when you get to later levels and unlock stuff... would have preferred that mission failure was "replay level" not "restart".

You had a lot of fun with the theme, nice job on taking the real twitter accs :)

Whale of a time by jeffz 2014-04-29T22:48:00

Interesting toy, and I like the sound/music!

From Beneath the Surface by malith 2014-04-28T19:55:00

Love the pixel art!

The Leeway Brothers' Bohemian Debut Of A Lifetime by Jwatt 2014-05-04T22:41:00

Love the art style! There's definitely something here, though I will admit it feels unfinished. A platform to build upon, though!

Basement by Halfbus 2014-05-06T19:52:00

Would be nice finished. The site you hosted it on tried to pop up some scummy facebook stuff though :/

The Quest for Unobtanium by Redream 2014-04-28T04:22:00

Looks like we both had a motherloadey inspiration :) Love the particles on your miner/block rewards, but the gameplay was slowed down a little bit by the forced text scrolley tutorials and the slow trip to the overworld (which you can of course upgrade but people may choose other powerups)

LD32 — An Unconventional Weapon

OPERATOR 42 by TravisChen 2015-04-26T00:10:00

Simply fantastic. There's not much more I can say, really. Maybe after the [INCOMING SPOILERS]





Panel fire is extingushed, you could close the conduit panel? I didn't realise I had met all the requirements, and was trying to mess with that system still. The minorest of issues for an experience that was simply great, regardless of it's 72 hour lifecycle.

Timelock by pixelballoon 2015-04-20T13:24:00

Like the time limited nature of it. I missed that the R key resets at first - I know it says it at the start of the level but it'd be nice if that came back once the gates "close" and you've failed!

Floppy Disk: Massacre by LeetLeaf 2015-04-20T02:52:00

Once I understood that there was a right click it got much easier! The shooting mechanics are VERY bizarre. Interesting concept, certainly matches the theme!

Saber Disk by Neonlare 2015-04-20T22:29:00

I absolutely adore the retrofuturistic aesthetic. Wish the webplayer version had a zoom option though - would be cool at 2x and 4x (though I like "low rez" as a design decision)

The soundtrack is amazing!

Head Sword Ninja by junt74 2015-04-20T03:22:00

Pretty interesting physics with a fun take on the theme, nice job! Scored 19 on my second go (once I'd actually read the controls :D)

Music loop is short but nice, good to see more people try sound in the aggressive compo timeframe!

(mental)fairy by 0x0961h 2015-04-20T21:26:00

Interesting isomorphic perspective, and great (if short and eventually quite repetitive) loops! Feels solid but a little simple, as though the only real player choice is switching between "left" and "right". Without getting the cones of fire upgrades so early you could do some interesting things with enemy placement... Great art assets though, especially the 3d voxel stuff.

Waffle Warrior by Super Hamster 2015-04-20T03:32:00

Matches theme, feels polished. Enemies can spawn directly above the player which feels a bit cheap, and some of the ledges don't work great with the player character's move mechanics.

Other than those fairly minor issues it's a fun little game, can see the kills feeding in to a high score mechanic etc.

Space Boy by Hyoga-3D 2015-04-23T21:30:00

I really like what I'm seeing here. I think for the next one you should try to make or find open source/CC licensable music though, much as I love the Battle theme from FF2 :D

Camera work can be a bit jarring at first with the dashing, but I can see how it's intentional. Enemies are fun, graphics interesting, and spherical game spaces are always cool.

It doesn't feel like it's integrated with the theme though.

Silence by Erkberg 2015-04-20T22:05:00

Clever implementation of the theme. Liked the music and enemy patterns - there are subtleties to movement and firing that are interesting. Felt like there was a spike in difficulty in the second room though - I really struggled as the enemy projectiles were a rather muted colour compared to my red and got lost in the lighting effects.

Snow story by chabuduo 2015-04-20T02:45:00

I like the mechanics of stunning etc, but I feel the big snowballs are too horizontal/slow. I like the premise, I just think that i should stop before "90 degrees, thrown 10 centimetres"! Some of the screens feel like a puzzle, which is cool.

Disco Icecave Laser Death Tag by Birke 2015-04-20T22:26:00

Difficult, but I love the style and procedural generation. As others have said having the ability to dodge easier would be cool.

Into The Fray by Naked_Samurai 2015-04-25T23:28:00

Really cool atmosphere, but has a little trouble conveying the basic strategies to the player (which is admittedly par for the course for an LD game). The fact that you have to close routes a "step ahead" of the dot itself is especially unclear at first. Once I grasped it though it's a pretty cool "door opening simulator", pretty satisfying and balanced.

Badass Inc by deepnight 2015-04-23T20:48:00

Beautiful and hilarious. Polished to an amazing degree. Fantastic job.

Unconventional Time by OccamsRazor 2015-04-20T03:03:00

Actually quite clever! Some great conceptual stuff in there. Felt a little bit padded because the trees took a bit too long to [interact with] but I can see this concept going further!

SLICK LICKER by KodingNights 2015-04-20T21:35:00

Interesting... There's a lot going on to process and still some bugs. I like the tongue idea but it never seemed to have enough power for me...

I can see what's there being turned into something cool with time to balance etc. Would be cool if there were tutorial levels to ease us in, but I appreciate that time constraints make such things difficult!

Mass-X by hexagore 2015-04-25T23:35:00

Simple idea, really well executed! These are the best kind of LD games. I agree with nicotuason when he suggests the cursor orb light up or something when a swap is possible.

Potat0wned by MaddeMichael 2015-04-20T12:51:00

Audio and visuals were excellent. Feels like being stun-locked while throwing limits ability to dodge/maneuver a bit. Got "stuck" in the map's ceiling at one point on the first level (climbed the largest building).

Feels like with a bit of a level design update (was a bit hard to navigate and avoid enemies on both levels) this is really something very cool indeed...

Extinction Explosion!! by sugarbyte 2015-04-21T21:19:00

Funny and stylistic!

Unconventional George by Jan Peter (jpdev) 2015-04-21T21:23:00

Nom nom nom nom nom!

It's a fun little thing, and poop is still inherently funny.

Robot Cat Loves Boxes by Dan Norder 2015-04-20T03:52:00

Bit slip-slidey, which adds difficulty. Hit detection on walls is a bit mean too! Love the concept of a "cyber-meow" though, and it's got polished tile art going on!

Mecha Cop 2875 by Tuism 2015-04-25T23:52:00

Really cool dynamic audio mixing - that's something I really notice and appreciate. I like the sense of progression, and the subtle sense of humour when it comes to collateral damage...

Would have been nicer if there was a bit more visual variety between bad guys and civilians though. Something like allies being grey and enemies being coloured?

Toilet War by SzRaPnEL 2015-04-20T12:55:00

Interesting puzzle mechanic... Would have preferred if it had keyboard controls, and if it didn't send me right back to Wave 1 after every death.

S-COM: Aftermath by chaosed0 2015-04-21T18:22:00

Really love the storytelling in this one. I'm hopeless at these sorts of games but it's an interesting, well put together piece. Its challenges are a lack of tutorial and audio/visual polish, but if you can work on those outside the jam timeframe I could see this being popular with a wider audience!

Lagman by reiknight 2015-04-23T21:04:00

This is amazing, I hate you so much.

Cake Wars! by dreadzilla 2015-04-23T21:40:00

It's not that innovative, but it's well put together! Gameplay feels smooth, and enemy movement patterns are interesting. It's a shame it gives so many powerups to render the enemies powerless after a while...

Would be cool if the level scaling gave the enemies multiple hitpoints so you can't just cheese them as they spawn onto the screen :)

Hippie Run by winmac32 2015-04-20T11:50:00

Great music, great voice acting! Few rendering issues as you move around the map (that as others have said is too large for the game type) but otherwise solid!

The War Dog by Xinelu 2015-04-20T21:15:00

I like the concept. Has modest goals to tell a story with some minimal gameplay, and executes on that well with a good atmosphere.

missls by Filip 2015-04-23T20:36:00

Visually pleasing!

Cat's Heaven by Lyxilion 2015-04-20T13:28:00

I feel like the "useless" shot doesn't really give the player a chance... It'd be cool to see this concept with some different weapons of equivalent overall quality so that it's not so RNG based.

BOOMerang! by BroCade 2015-04-23T20:17:00

I liked what I saw. I have no access to a player Two but I can see these mechanics being fun!

Vocal Power by JohnGalt 2015-04-20T21:49:00

Very clever mechanics. Unfortunately it let me do the levels out of order which confused me at first, but once I worked it out it was cool. Your use of ambient audio for the themed levels worked really well!

APT: Advanced Persistent Threat by Toby Pinder 2015-04-20T03:37:00

@Crawler Studios: Yeah there seemed to be no avoiding it... I tried to keep all the menus fairly self explanatory but until you understand the whole system by using the menus a bit I can imagine people get a bit lost!

APT: Advanced Persistent Threat by Toby Pinder 2015-04-20T10:24:00

@winmac32: Investigating now, thanks for the heads up!

APT: Advanced Persistent Threat by Toby Pinder 2015-04-20T10:25:00

@ManicMiner There are "Exploits" and "ZeroDay" powerups that can nude battles in your favour. In hindsight the game should have scripted events where this is introduced so people can play around with it!

APT: Advanced Persistent Threat by Toby Pinder 2015-04-20T10:25:00

nudge*

APT: Advanced Persistent Threat by Toby Pinder 2015-04-20T10:56:00

@winmac32 Fixed a conformed bug where the webfonts weren't being loaded properly. I'm going to add a message to the main submission about this, but it should be within the spirit of the rules! http://ludumdare.com/compo/rules/

Many apologies.

APT: Advanced Persistent Threat by Toby Pinder 2015-04-20T12:09:00

@ViliX64 Have to agree. The plan was to have all the "unscripted" things that are in now as random events, along with more central events that fire at static points with choices, branching paths etc. Those would have had a more major impact allowing the player more decisions. The systems are in place for this but I left the content generation time too short hehe

APT: Advanced Persistent Threat by Toby Pinder 2015-04-20T21:00:00

@SpoutingShite that's impressive!

@pixelballoon: That's valid: should have at the very least explained that, if not added a "reset terminal" command. Glad you enjoyed!

APT: Advanced Persistent Threat by Toby Pinder 2015-04-21T09:30:00

@Interface: unfortunately for me it didn't even load on IE. I'm not sure what the problem is: might look into it after the judging period!

APT: Advanced Persistent Threat by Toby Pinder 2015-04-23T21:48:00

@f7f5: Unfortunately I spoke to a colleague at work who experienced the same bugs - ZeroDays were supposed to provide instant wins in the fights and don't seem to be working correctly. The "crash" is because you were "too good" - having more than 50 approval (which was supposed to be the max it can get to) crashes the game. Think of it as though you won ;)

I'm going to document these bugs to the game's description but I think it's against the spirit of LD to patch them just yet :(

Lack of content is a major problem - I ran out of time to add interesting "plot" stuff, so right now it's just some sample random events.

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@Awpteamoose It seems enough people like the aesthetic that it might be worth doing! I have ideas for improving the combat system and adding lots more content, so if I get some time I may just do that.

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Thanks for the valuable feedback so far folks, your comments mean a lot!

Word Warriors by UKCoder 2015-04-25T18:32:00

I like the idea! Wish it gave more visual feedback when a word doesn't match though...

HOW TO DESTROY AN ISLAND by syncxzoz 2015-04-25T23:20:00

A little confusing... I can see the idea of what is happening after my first playthrough, but it's really unintuitive - if it gave feedback on the percentages that had changed each pick/month rather than relying on you to closely monitor the %s yourself, it'd be a great start towards that.

Like I say, it's a good idea, everyone likes to be destructive once in a while :D

Bribe Them by DouglasOliveira 2015-04-20T13:10:00

This is amazingly fun. Well balanced, and the simple fact that attacks "convert" enemies fundamentally changes everything about the way the "Defend the Castle" genre works: strategically it's better to convert units at certain points causing them to either form the "wall" or attack important targets.

Graphically it's a little modest but that's fine, my main slight issue was the font rendering. If you can fix the text so the fonts render as crisp pixel fonts I can definitely see this concept being expanded upon as a bigger game that my wrists will hate :D

Evil Cupido: Haters gonna hate by Pixel Heart 2015-04-25T23:09:00

Fun projectiles!

N/a by LadyEmaSkye 2015-04-23T21:32:00

Heh, I guess you can't delete it then?

Better luck in the next LD I guess :)