Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → ha1fBit
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 51 | Every 10 seconds | Planetary Asteroid Defense System | compo | 129 | 3.68 | 3.52 | 3.78 | 3.86 | 3.78 | 3.86 | 2.55 | 3.73 |
Really neat game. I love games where you get to "program" by putting actions on a ticker tape. Really impressive that you got this to the current state in time for the compo. It took me a little bit to get used to what each movement card actually did as it wasn't always exactly what I expected, but I had a lot of fun running around, dodging arrows, and chaining together attacks.
Neat concept with cute graphics.
Stuff I really liked: * Cute pixel art graphics * Movement felt good, I never got stuck on a corner * Simple but straight-forward instructions * The variety in abilities often with trade-offs in the ability selection screen
I do feel a few small improvements would go a long way in making the game feel better to play, some of which @mossieur-patate has already mentioned: * Wait to start the 10 second level timer until the player starts moving * Make it more clear what some abilities do (e.g. the read-only ability, I guess what it did correctly but wasn't sure and was worried my gamble would result in a loss) * Make the ability section not purely random. I got two options exactly the same where neither would've let me beat the level or even get to the next data item (both were strength up, speed down) * More levels like everyone else has said :smile:
Fun game with a surprising amount of depth and content. The graphics fit well (aside from maybe the fuel looking a bit out of place), failure wasn't punished too strictly (keeping your inventory and launching from the last visited planet), and the chat and other little blurbs on the planets were hilarious. "Every 10 seconds... they change the side of the road on which they drive," had me dying. One small problem was that I couldn't find a way to obtain money other than trading using existing money. So, once I had upgraded my rocket immediately when I reached exactly 1000 currency, I was soft-locked. I liked how the ship went faster when upgraded instead of just holding more fuel though; fit the theme better.
I agree with the others about the physics being wonky at times, but things generally went better when I tried to just drag things straight from the conveyer into the box. Once they'd touched the surface under the box, it was hard to get them back in, even with lifting them higher. Another side note is that the timers could be a bit difficult to read at times with the blur around the edges.
Overall, this game was a hilarious and unique take on the theme, and I thoroughly enjoyed playing it. It felt very polished and like something I'd see on Steam or as a VR game.
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Awesome game. The art style was super cute, and the core timer mechanic was simple but used to great effect. I love that all the characters were just like, "Oh, you didn't know about this fundamental movement mechanic? What have you been doing, WALKING?" Also, Timmy and Jimmy. Why. WHYYYY.
The only critique I have, and it's not even really a critique, is the collision with the air in front of the trees could be a bit closer to the actual tree line.
Great job, esp. for 48 hours.
I think this is my favorite game I've played for the jam so far. As everyone has said, it definitely has Papers Please vibes, and that's a great thing. I love the simple story and vibe that goes along with everything. It's so satisfying seeing a card pop through the hole, seeing something wrong with it before even picking it up, and just rejecting it straight away. Bonus points for having the tutorial and a cheat-sheet included within the game.
I'm a sucker for both alchemy/potion mixing games and store management games, and I really enjoyed this one for that reason. The story intro was nice, the mini-games were fun, looking up recipes made me feel like a real apothecary, and the art style was fitting. I'm not sure it entirely fit the theme as the customers appearing every 10 seconds didn't really have an effect on the actual gameplay. They never got tired and left or anything. I'm glad they didn't though. I feel like this game works better as a relaxing, thoughtful game rather than a frantic, mini-game blitz.
However, while this game is very charming, it really needs a UX makeover. At the beginning, I was just pressing all the different arrow keys and was always surprised at what the screen did. I had read to press down to open the recipe book in the tutorial, but I had no idea there was even a cauldron until coming back and looking at the screenshots. The relationship between the shop screen, mini-game screen, cauldron screen, and recipe book screen was just not clear. Even something as small as adding arrows at the sides or maybe transitions would have helped immensely.
Regardless, once I figured out how the UI worked, I really enjoyed the game.
This could be a full game. It already basically is if it just lasted longer. I agree with the others on the 10 seconds being a bit too long, but of course that's the theme, and it sure doesn't hurt anything.
Overall, there was just so much polish and juice. The screen shake. The attack animations. The recoil. The sentry legs. The timer going down faster after you've cleared the round. The tutorial. The sound design. Bravo.
Also, I started furiously clicking during the tutorial playing with the recoil just for the next prompt to read, "You can also hold down left-click." Perfect timing.
Awesome vibe, special effects, and music. The screen rotating was especially cool, but did make the controls a bit finicky. It wasn't super clear that the special effects and weakening was related to a 10 second timer though. In addition, the platforming itself was okay but could be improved.
Love how you incorporated the theme with ammo and then how you rendered the ammo amount as light (really liked the whole lighting effect tbh). At the beginning, I was just firing a shot off at anything that appeared on screen. Near the middle, I was trying to line up my shots to conserve ammo for when chompers appeared and again firing recklessly just before the timer elapsed. And, at the end, I was just shooting wildly again trying to keep the chompers away from me. Got a final score of 87.
This was a lot of fun to play. I see others in the comments talking about it being hard, but I thought it was pretty manageable once you've played a round to get a feel for the controls. Digging around was a lot of fun, and I liked that you had to go back to the ladder to ascend. The music, sound, and art were also superb. I also liked that I could see what was going on up at the surface while I was down in the mines. I could easily see myself playing this for longer if it had random ore generation and more resource/cannon types.
When I first started the game, I was just confused. There was so much text on this page, the itch.io page, and then the additional readme that I just ignored everything and pressed play. Had no idea what I was doing, saw pac-men and ghosts, tried to move with WASD, tried to move with the mouse, and then gave up and came back to this page for another read.
Once I'd actually had a read and tried the game again, I found it to be a lot of fun. The core concept of swapping between knowing where the ghosts should go and actually being able to move them there was pleasantly challenging. It was also a great take on the "every 10 seconds" theme that I hadn't seen before. While the two games weren't particularly innovative on their own, mixing them together had a great result.
The only criticism I have with the game itself is that moving the claw is unintuitive. I understand that moving down a row puts you at the same index in that new row, but I could just not get used to it. When I press down, I want to go down, not down and left.
I've been trying to find a game about Morse Code for a while now, and I did *not* expect to find it in a game jam. This is awesome. Everything about it. The beautiful pixel art, the satisfying sound design, the perfect background music that exists without overly drawing my attention, the gradual addition of mechanics, and gentle but persistent rise in difficulty, the frantic flipping through pages that change with the day. I don't have the words to describe just how much I love this.
Three small nit-picks: 1. I didn't know I had to stamp the papers until the stamp had already existed for a day. I thought it was just some button with an unknown function. Once I realized, I really appreciated that the stamp actually rendered where I had stamped on the paper and not just in the center of the template spot. 2. I don't know what the bar at the top-right is for. I got it up to 99 expecting to win the game or something, but I couldn't discern any effect it had on the game. 3. It took me a while to get used to the rhythm of tapping out the code (I don't know Morse Code despite having been looking for a game about it). It would've been nice if we heard incoming Morse code at some point so we could get a feel for just how long a dash was supposed to be.
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