Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → gredgie
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | 44 | Your life is currency | 👥 | Blutgeld | jam | 373 | 3.61 | 3.50 | 2.84 | 3.42 | 3.68 | 3.34 | 3.21 | ||
| 2018 | 43 | Sacrifices must be made | 👥 | Sacrilicious | jam | 50 | 4.11 | 4.12 | 3.27 | 4.41 | 4.21 | 4.40 | 4.05 | 4.21 | |
| 2017 | 38 | A Small World | 👥 | Cathode Way | jam | 8 | 4.36 | 4.00 | 4.42 | 4.02 | 4.40 | 4.02 | 2.77 | 3.86 |
gredgie leaves an average of 4.6 feedback comments each event.
A nice, simple, retro feeling game. My only critique would be that energy is so plentiful that the gimmick of sacrificing it to power doors and such (which is nice!) becomes redundant. Ultimately, you almost want a survival horror level of energy/ammo sparsity but you don't want to let the player get so low on energy that they can't progress.
Whilst writing relatively sophisticated line of sight detection would be a tall order for a jam, the golem does seem to go for you within a certain range, which makes things sometimes tricky. I'd open the levels up a little more to improve the fact you can out run the golem if you know where you're going/heading for.
This does make me want to dust off Front Mission 3. I'm gonna echo what others have said, I do like the idea of cooldowns on abilities and different mechs having different abilities, I think some icons by the mechs themselves would allow you to quickly scope out which mech has which ability and when it's due off cooldown.
The difficulty curve after you acquire the rift is pretty steep, given 6 or 7 enemies are firing at 3 units. Mitigating damage by keeping units (or trying to keep them) out of harm's way eventually feels like spinning too many plates. But I enjoyed it nevertheless!
This was a nice little puzzle game. Level 2 gave me some problems until I realised I can only push a cube if I'm not standing on a red tile. Beyond that it handled nicely, the levels could likely do with a few swap arounds here and there so difficulty scales a little better but you've got a solid foundation if you wanted to expand it post-LD!
I actually played it again when I realised that I could just repair the ship and leave, which does make me wonder what the purpose of the money/repairing everything is. As others have said, it's nice to have an intro/outro to a game. I'd recommend tying the fixing of the machine to the launching of the ship. Say, you have to get pressure levels up because reasons, so you fix leaks in the machine. As you do that you gather parts and fix the ship, then when you're ready to launch you make sure the machine is operational so a pressure gauge reaches launch level and viola!
Not every LD you see a game with a message behind it, but you sure put in the effort to tell that message. From a mechanics point of view, having so many mini-games does burden you with extra testing and tweaking to ensure they all work as intended, the taking a picture of the bear one for example, showed me the bear once as I read the instructions and refused to pop it up again. The organising chicks one seemingly bugged as I couldn't put down the chick I'd selected. Regardless, you got a lot done and raised awareness in the process!
Overall, it's a very nice, polished game. What lets it down are the physics and platform layout in my opinion, it was all too easy to fall off if a jump across a gap didn't work out too well. I dare say that's something you'd tighten up if you had more time. It also meant that generally, to shoot birds I had to shoot upwards rather than strategic jumps and horizontal shots. Nevertheless it was a lovely game!
It took a few rounds for me to get truly into it, the missiles are seemingly rather "spray and pray" but I like the idea of adding extra mechanics to the Pong foundation where not only can you affect the speed and trajectory of your planet/ball but getting it past your opponent isn't the only way to win. I dare say you could have utilised WASD and the arrow keys for a more comfortable/uniform control setup. Where you have A and D to rotate the planet, W and S for Missiles and Fuel leaving the Up/Down arrow keys for paddle movement.
The concept is great, though as brutal as some riddles were I was hoping the platformer elements would be slightly more varied than the same standard set (unless I just suck and didn't get overly far, I was a sport and didn't look at the hints!). To prevent being unable to reach the exit after the walls have closed some, I'd imagine you could instead gradually close the exit itself rather than box the player in. Almost perhaps add a time limit to figure the riddle out, though that might crank the difficulty up too much. There's definitely something to work from here though!
The idea is simple enough and after a swift death in my first attempt I quickly worked out what the aim was. I kind of feel that either the player should be given the ability to control the character or the hitbox for the target should be slightly more forgiving, given that you need to be really precise with your aim and you realistically only get 2 chances before you're squished. Though you do have a solid foundation to build upon if you wanted to expand the game.
I love that you took the concept of snake, made it inter-planetary but then added elements of Galaxian on top, which I think adds a lot to the fun of the game. I feel the laser beam enemies could have had slightly lazier targeting, as if you were anything longer than say 3 segments then it's almost assured to do some damage to you. Unless they're simply there to purposely cut your size down to encourage further play!
From when the theme was first announced, there was always going to be a lot of games that revolved around a literal planet. But what I love about RRSP is that the idea is so simple that it's a joy to play. In fact, a lot of the popular LD games are popular just because it's so easy to load them up and get into the meat of the game. I like how you seemingly avoided having to do complex A.I. too, which is always a plus in LD situations. But yeah, great game, I felt like the Rocket Roller Space Polo equivalent of John Virgo.
I rather enjoyed the style, it made it seem like an interactive art piece in a way. We attempted a point and click style game during the last LD, so I know how hard it is to get a nice amount of content done for such a game so that there's some playability whilst still making the deadline. Hopefully with the post-jam version you can invest time in fine tuning the aesthetic so everything comes nicely together as you expand the game further.
Are you on a Mac perchance? I recall us having some teething issues with the Mac web player, since the Windows one seems to be working fine in Firefox.
We usually throw in a pause when a game loses focus but this LD we ran out of time to implement it.
As for the imprisoned-ness, use bombs to blow apart the inner walls! Show them no mercy!
Bombs will explode even if you're not in the same room as them too.
LD44 — Your life is currency (5)
LD Force by Jason Lothamer 2019-05-02T22:54:08Z ♥ 0
This game is a nice reminder that the ol' space shmups existed, I too was confused by the whole money thing. It seems if you have money but don't spend it, you lose the money?
Digital Gray by fusionnist 2019-05-02T22:28:39Z ♥ 2
This was a solid game, really hectic but it's done so well. The minimalistic sprites are excellent, the narrative, enemy types, upgrade choices... I loved it all.
My Sweet Money Shooter by Lex Randea 2019-05-02T22:00:04Z ♥ 2
This was great, it did feel rather risky at the start, but then you gang up on some unsuspecting banker and things start getting interesting. Picking up coins is oddly addictive, which can only mean I was fully immersed in this coin hurling world.
Blood of My Enemies by Gargantus 2019-05-02T21:46:51Z ♥ 0
I didn't realise you controlled how much blood to donate with the mouse since it's not listed in the controls, which meant I started to talk to the doctor again whilst he was already talking. It's a nice little game, the hitboxes seem a little ruthless but then maybe I'm just bad at it :D
shoot out your life by puppetmaster 2019-05-02T21:33:39Z ♥ 1
I do like the gameplay despite its simplistic nature, finding yourself figuring out how many spaces along to quickly move to stop the rapidly descending hearts made the game a lot more fun.