Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → Haastregt
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Hu | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 50 | Delay the inevitable | Mages and Essay Pages | jam | 873 | 3.40 | 3.18 | 3.76 | 4.01 | 3.58 | 3.55 |
Great job! The levels are nicely designed and the complexity ramps up very well, leaving me really puzzling at the last couple of levels! Besides the great level design, the game looks and feels very polished, so overall a great job!
Good job! It is in quite a polished state where the controls feel fluent, it looks good, and there is enough variety to add some depth into the gameplay compared to just pointing and clicking. I think the main strength of this game was strategic manouvering, trying to make sure to always have an escape route. I enjoyed playing a lot! High score: 5070
I have one small point of feedback: After just a couple levels it already feels like the shooting is not really doing anything helpful anymore, as there are just so many enemies. Of course, the theme 'it is inevitable' kind fits this, but gameplay wise it would be a bit more fun if there were certain options to wipe out a tonne of virusses every once in a while.
Great job on the game!
Just amazing. The artwork is very clean and super cute, the first level is a great introduction, and the difficulty ramps up nicely! Great job!
Cool backstory!
The art was nice and the game felt fluent. I would say that the mood of the game is definitely set well.
A point of constructive criticism is that it seemed very hard to choose which enemy to attack (the mouse button direction didnt seem to influence it, I am not sure if there was some other mechanic that let you aim but I couldnt figure it out). I think being able to aim could add some more depth to the gameplay with creating exit paths from certain situations etcetera, now at times it felt a bit more like just holding the mouse button while flying around.
Good job on your entry!
Amazing scene and artwork! This actually made me feel relaxed, even though there is almost nothing to do (well I guess that is kinda the point), just looking at the water, hearing the birds and occasionally catching a fish made me satisfied. Bravo!
I want to start of by saying that I think the concept is very interesting and could make for a very good game, as there is a lot of factors to manage for that add many layers of depth to the gameplay. There is also a big variety in the plants and animals which is really cool.
That said, I think there is currently something missing that makes it hard for the gameplay to live up to its potential (because once again, I really see the potential!), and that is that there is no feedback about anything that the player is doing. It could all seem to be going right, and suddenly it goes wrong without knowing what is causing it to go wrong. We don't know:
- Is a population to big or to small? - Which populations affect which other populations? - How fast does the photosynthesis effect get applied? - How fast can certain population types grow? - ..
Of course this can be figured out by many runs and experience, but having some feedback on this while playing might make it more enjoyable. For example: a quick fix would be a target value for each population, or an alert when a population is growing/shrinking.
Nonetheless I think you did a great job, the pixel art looks nice as well :). Let me know if you ever decide to reiterate on this!
This is a really nice game! It was actually fun to play, the corrupting game idea and execution where very well executed, the art was beautiful
Some minor points I found: - Escape closes the game, this is very unintuitive and it made me close the game halfway through a run when trying to close the crafting menu multiple times - It is very difficult to see when you get hit, and especially what gives you damage (so sometimes I felt I died very suddenly because I didnt feel like I got hit at all but suddenly my health was down a lot). - When using the restart button, I am not able to move and need to restart the application.
All in all a very solid entry! Great job!
The controls feel fluent, and I really like the background art and soundtrack! Also, I really liked how the player got introduced to the controls.
I have to admit that I did not manage to get to the bullet hell part, maybe I was going the wrong way but there seemed to be an impossible jump.. (or maybe I am just kinda bad haha)
A small bit of constructive criticism would be to reduce the time to respawn, especially given how often you die haha
First and foremost: How did you get 64 hits on one comet?! That is impressive hahaha
Okay now for real, you said that you mostly focussed on polished? Well, you very much succeeded at that! I LOVED the button animations, the combo counters were super fluent, the comets were a pleasure to handle, and there was a leaderboard that synchronised with everyone that has played this? Get out of here! It all looked gorgeous and it is very impressive to me, so I think you should be proud of yourself!
Bravo, this is one of the most fun entries I have played so far! Very cool idea, and well executed! There is room for quite some different strategies, and it is kinda addiction to try and get ridiculous stuff like people shared above already haha.
I guess the only point of feedback is that the temples are a bit overpowered, maybe if the prayer cards were a bit less often drawn, the player wouldn't be able to rely just on prayers and actually be needing to build hills.
Great job!
'Tip: Try to get better at the game'.
This says it all. I find this game very humorous hahaha. I agree with what was said above; this is a great take on the theme!
Wow that was great! I actually enjoyed playing this and I see a lot of potential in it, it is quite literally a puzzle to see how you can use the pieces to survive as long as possible and that is really cool.
One thing that would make the game better, I think, is that not all played puzzle pieces should get damaged each step, instead just the latest one placed or something. Otherwise the player is encouraged to only play one piece at a time to survive for as long as possible, while the fun is in trying to make combinations. This could also potentially lead to thinking about how to protect certain good puzzle pieces with other pieces.
Great job!
Really nice graphics and I especially like the voice acting! I see potential for this to be an amazing way to learn to type, if I would have had this during my childhood that would have been great haha. Good job!
This was a really good mood! The art was amazing, the sound as well! Great job! I am also impressed how seamless everything seemed to connect together, with that I mean that if it was not said that it was made by 9 different people, I would not have suspected it in the slightest, so a good vision and great teamwork there!
I think that the typing mechanic was really nice, although I felt like the J+L for keeping the eyes open was sometimes a bit annoying when needing to type something. I can see how it was maybe meant as a challenge, but instead e.g. having to type 'awake' on less frequent intervals would maybe be more fun.
That's just a minor point though, overall a really great job from the team!
Very solid game! It is really fun to stack all the upgrades and wipe out a swarm of flies. The set-up is quite hilarious and I love the soundtrack and sound effect. Definitely fun to play!
I do agree with the other comments that at some point you basically become invincible as long as you press into a certain direction. Maybe it could be helpful to put the chameleon in the middle of the screen and have flies come from all directions, or to introduce a mechanic that distinguishes between the actual fly that you hit and the additional flies you get with the upgrades, so that it is still rewarding to try and get specific flies.
Great job!
I agree with all comments how amazing this game is, and that indeed the endgame is a bit lackluster; maybe a bit less batteries would make it a bit more of a challenge and make the gameplay feel like it has a bit more impact.
What I havent seen in the comments though, except for the one above, is that I think that some kind of sound could really add to the ambiance. It doesnt even need a full soundtrack, maybe some empty noise to add to the feeling of being dying alone at a cold planet already does the job.
Anyways I think this is one of the best games I have played so far and definitely the most polished one, amazing job!
I saw some updates on the discord and I have to say I was a bit sceptical at first how the mechanic would be actually fun to play, but you have absolutely proven me wrong! This is so well executed! The cute art, the vibe that the colors and music gave, just goofing around with the ball and the lamas made me so relaxed, so a great job on your entry!
Thanks everyone for the kind words!
@brachistosauro Thanks for letting me know! I just realised at the end of the jam that I hadn't considered different resolutions, so I just hoped it scaled good enough, but it seems that all UI elements are evaluated in the amount of pixels, so unfortunately it only works on 1920x1080, I am sorry that it is unplayable for you! But it is definitely a good learning outcome for my future projects to take this into account.
@midblue Also thank you for letting me know about this! Could you let me know what resolution your screen is? Then I know if it is a resolution problem or that it is platform related.
@agent-p I was thinking about the healing as well, I decided to add cards that have a healing bonus with the idea to add an extra layer of strategy, but obviously it is quite RNG dependent now (it happens quite often that there are no healing cards dropped at all). Other ideas I had were to either have another enemy type that dropped health instead of cards, or to have the option to trade in cards for health. This way there is still some strategy involved but then it is hopefully more of a gameplay decision than an RNG outcome. I would love to hear your thoughts on this!
@mopifish That is actually a really good point I hadn't thought about yet! Thank you for the insight, this definitely will help for the next version!
@bottled-up-dark-peace Awesome! Thank you for recording, seeing someone else play it will definitely be a great source of feedback! I will message you on discord :). And I really like the idea of controlling the randomness, I was also considering to buff the cards you get in general when low on health, to have some risk-reward trade-offs to make. Thank you for the feedback!
@kastaff I am sorry that it was not playable for you, nonetheless thanks for your interest! I will let you know when the next version is ready which will be playable in all resolutions!
The art style was really nice. The animations of the character were very fluent and the style gave a bit of an ancient atmosphere so that really added to the vibe.
However I had a bit of trouble advancing. I kept getting hit by the meteors and it felt like I couldnt really control wheter I got hit or not, but that it was a bit more of a random outcome. Maybe I was missing something or maybe I am just bad, that could also be of course.
Anyways good job!
I really like the concept! It gives a good type of stress-dopamine trying to fix up your ship, and rerouting the controls like crazy, so good job on that.
Some constructive criticism would be that I feel like except for the first 30 ish seconds, you very easily spiral out of control once you get hit and lose one control, since the screen is basically filled with bullets at that point. Losing one button thus easily makes you lose a lot of buttons, maybe there could be some sort of invincibility frames to not lose all your buttons instantly?
Overall great job!
Wow this is a solid game, especially for just one weekend! It is very fun to play, it looks great, and it also feels fluent.
I think that the main thing to improve would be to add an UI element showing the order of turns, because most often I had no clue whether I could attack before a certain enemy, so that makes strategy a bit hard.
Great job!
The graphics were really nice, great job on the animations! The controls also felt fluent. Like said above, it was really difficult but I personally dont see that as a necessarily bad thing, a good challenge can be really nice!
What I think helps with difficult games though, is if it is super super clear what is happening! It is already good that attacks were telegraphed, but even better would be to have bright flashing alarm signals that an attack is coming your way! The same goes for being hit, if it is super clear what caused the damage, it is easier to learn from it and it makes it feel more 'fair'.
Of course this is a bit nitpicking especially for a 48/72 hour game jam, I think you did a really great job and I enjoyed playing it!
This was really fun to play, and it looked beautiful! I think there are especially points scored with the accessibility, the tutorial is very well put together, and the difficulty settings make it fun for everyone! I loved how it got more chaotic and difficult to manage over time, my highest score on sicko mode was 192 days.
Great job on this entry!
Very nice concept! I see you opted out of art, is this because you used assets? Because I think the vibe is really solid, even if you did use assets you brought them together in a very good way.
It was also very fun to play!
I do agree with the other comments regarding that the rotation feels a bit weird sometimes when somehow the earth gets flipped upside down and your controls are basically inverted.