NO MORE ROOM IN HELL by panurge 2018-08-14T13:24:19Z
Very nice atmosphere and smooth gameplay. The dialogues provide humor and double neatly as hint system.
Does the music change when one defeats the first big blue guy? Well done.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → halfmule
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | 44 | Your life is currency | Superhero Movie Universe Simulator | compo | 440 | 2.83 | 2.57 | 3.04 | 2.04 | 1.88 | 3.12 | 2.60 | ||
| 2018 | 42 | Running out of space | 👥 | Backpack Goblin | jam | 913 | 3.09 | 3.01 | 3.51 | 3.63 | 2.42 | 3.01 | 2.86 | 2.82 |
Very nice atmosphere and smooth gameplay. The dialogues provide humor and double neatly as hint system.
Does the music change when one defeats the first big blue guy? Well done.
It was fun to fly around. But I did not understand the goal of the game. With every run I flew more efficiently, eventually keeping top speed while dropping parts.
However when I had removed everything but part 5, the speed went back to 0. I had no idea where to go. Pressing "5" or "OK" would just result in game over. So I did not really get the game.
The only thing I miss is more visual feedback on the power-up. At first I thought I would keep it forever. Even now I wonder if it is limited by shots or by time. A simple bar showing how much power-up remains would be nice. Or to save the clean interface: The player character becomes huge when he gets the power-up and shrinks back to normal size as the power-up is being used up. I am sure you could find a neat way to tell the player what is going on.
But that's only a nitpack. Music, gameplay and graphics fit each other very well. I agree with the other commenters, it is a great entry!
I am loving the card-based battle system! As you have to choose based on the cards you have at your disposal, the choice does not get too overwhelming. Are there later items which manipulate the deck even more, or allow the player to keep one of the cards for the next turn?
Sadly, the UI left me puzzled sometimes. At first, I did not know where I was in the beginning. Diogenes is not on the island map ever, is he? I understand that later on.
Once I had a choice of picking up four items, and when I pressed one, it asked me if I wanted to pay the drop cost for a specific one of the four items. Always the same item, even if I pressed exactly that one. I did not really get how picking up something would result in paying the drop cost for something else, especially as the something else was not in my inventory and there was enough space in my inventory.
Otherwise, a very fun and intriguing game. It made me wonder how everything works in the game, and I wanted to explore it.
Interesting concept. If there were smart opponents and you could collide with them, the thinning track would really stir things up.
As it is now it is very hard. In my first run I steered off the road way too hard. In the second run it was better, but still the first flash was too early. It would have been nice to anticipate how much time (and track) is left.
Otherwise, it is fun to learn the controls: They can be surprisingly accurate.
One minor thing: when the player puts multiple boxes on the same space, and then moves to that spot again, it is hard to make out which box he picked up. There is a little (space) LED in the robot. Currently it is off or purple. It would be neat if it was in the color of the current box.
Otherwise, it is a nice little game! I actually felt like a part in a factory due to the unusual moving mechanic, and soon enough I came up with more and more strategies for placing and sorting.
I had to take a look, as we also made a frantic inventory management game.
This is neatly made, and the on-going story is a great touch. However you give us all these insights into getting more points, and then a level is solved no matter what you collect. I agree with the others that a given point barrier would have made the game more interesting.
"VCRUNTIME140d.dll not found", also "ucrtbased.dll not found". Therefore I could not play it.
The "ability shopping" is a very fun mechanic. I also enjoyed your complaints about running out of time :)
The "flip" mechanic was indeed a puzzle to understand at first. Maybe you could mention it in the tutorial?
The atmosphere, the graphics and the gameplay are great.
I made it to seven days on the first try. I can't wait to play again with my new knowledge. While the first few days are really captivating when it comes to stress, I think they will still be interesting as you plan better and better. Good balance!
Greetings from Germany.
It is fun to explore the scoring mechanism.
Great twist on Tron/Zatacka/Snake. The only thing I did not like was the explanation given by "jumping on data" - as there were many things which could have been denoted data. But once I got that I loved jumping around and trapping enemies.
Very clean game design.
Hello @rob-parker, thanks for the feedback!
For the longest time we considered a way to remove items. But eventually we decided that it suffices to move existing items around (and truly run out of space). In theory you should have been able to click/tap on the item blocking the entrance to move it somewhere else. There is an achievement made especially to highlight this possibility.
However I wish we had done more to show off this interaction, as everything else is controlled by visible soft keys and it is not obvious to click on existing items (and then lose focus when a new item is picked up).
@panurge: Yes, one could do so much to expand the game! Originally we wanted to have a character walk around in a full-fledged classic RPG map, and the backpack contents were supposed to subtly influence the character (e.g. open a lock if key was kept). The final goblin on the road is pretty much only a "choose next item" feature, but one always has to settle for what works good enough in these game jams.
Yes, holding down the key would be good, especially if you want to move things all the way up to a wall. The way it is now it costs more time to to put things deeper in the backpack which just feels inconvienent.
@Dumivid: Did you try the fullscreen option in the in-game menu? It does not use the whole screen, but I think it's good enough for a jam game with focus on mobile use. It would of course be nicer to have a horizontal version.
@Shozou: One can tap items to rearrange them freely. Someone else commented on this before, and it is a shame that we did not highlight this feature more.
Really cool, and quite polished for a LD game! The only thing I would add is a little dot symbolizing the top of the turnable arrows. This way I had to guess their orientation quite a bit :)
Great art direction and great mood!
I cannot say much more as my laptop appears to be too slow to run it
This game is great. It almost feels like it was released in the late 1980s, gameplaywise.
Great effort on the intro, sound and mood. Then a bit of a twist to the standard formula (pay with health to cast spells), and somewhat hard controls. The player then memorizes the game for the next life until he can beat it in minutes.
The staff attack is incredibly weak, thus tempting one to use the spell. I guess it fits the theme? I still think the staff should be longer.
Really fun, I just wish I could play without the right mouse button. This is slightly unlike the RTS controls I know. Otherwise, great use of the theme and many interesting choices.
With more spells this could be a hit. For example a spell that just does 1 damage to all enemies at once, regardless of weaknesses and where you aimed, would spice up the strategic spending a lot.
By the way: It works great on itch.io. Very fun, visually appealing, and easy to understand. I died at 130.
I was loving the *Hotline Miami* vibes, but the game lagged a lot after around a minute. I managed to survive till the end, yet the fps must have decreased to 1 and nothng worked. Very sad. Game looks great.
Same issue persists, at roughly 100 seconds remaining it gets too slow. I am using an outdated laptop, so it can definitely be on my end only.
Really innoative, making the speed-run the core component. Polish, graphics and content amount are top-notch.
However, some levels were a bit too boring to play them again with, say, the tenth alien. Maybe if you portrayed "lap times" for each alien color somewhere I would be more motivated to get faster and faster in the same level.
Great graphics, but the audio sounds like somebody eating stuff while on Skype. :laughing:
I could also only jump with the mouse. Fix the jump button and I will really like it.
Tweak this for mobile and you might have a hit.
Very easy to get into with small, but meaningful decisions.
I love the presentation of this game! Graphics, theme, music and mood are perfect.
Controlling the chicken via moving the camera is an interesting choice. Sadly, I could just force chicken to go wherever I want and the game pretty much turned into an Adventure without fun in moving. Is that intended?
Thanks for the kind words, @zondarg. Glad to hear you are a fan of Ferret Boy.
Dealing with too much comedy is actually the easiest one. It is to be solved by killing off characters - this is where the theme kicks in. Sadly, I did not spend much time on the GUI and thus it is easy to miss that one can tap "kill?" to kill off heroes and make the movie more dramatic.
Thanks @syrapt0r, it was quite insightful to watch someone play. If I had to revise it, I would make it clearer that there is a prognosis of upper bound/lower bound for happiness etc. The movie then puts you somewhere in between. So you can actually tell when a movie might end you.
Also the symbols should have tool tips. 💦 refers to exhaustion of the actor, for example. This is impossible to understand currently. This is not helped by having different emoji styles based on the OS and browser the player is using :sweat_smile:. Your emoji actually fit the comic book theme quite well!
I was banking on people learning through the achievements. I learned that people can play around them and check them out later, like you did. I actually do the same in, say, Steam games.
You had an extra hard time because you were not getting new heroes as you were not casting three support characters at once. While this feature is told in messages, it is not further highlit in the GUI. You merely stumbled upon this feature and did not think much of it.
Furthermore, Planetbane should be Planetsbane, I guess. :laughing:
All in all, I had fun watching you play and hope you enjoyed it.
@eyedromeda Indeed the zooming is a bit of a problem. The black and red font was a last ditch effort to let the clickable text look unlike the non-clickable text :)
@deformhhead @ixcon Yes, maybe I should have written that it is meant as a roguelite game. Each run you learn a bit more about the mechanics, the cast of heroes, the split between dramatic/happy etc. If I were to revise the game I would definitely add bonuses for properly introducing characters through cameos, and starting and finishing off character arcs. It could be a fun mobile game, but I will wait for the rating resonance.
@Raphiell Thank you!
This took me back to playing games in English back when I was a kid unable to understand it.
Really great art direction and graphics. Also nice polish with the overworld map.
Translate it and I would love to play it again. Without understanding the game I could not beat the dragon.
My favorite entry so far. Great mood, graphics, music and gameplay.
I could not progress further than level 16.
However, it is normal that very quickly you must not ever get hit or you pretty much lost?
Outstanding presentation! The graphics, music and the whole mood might be among the best in the jam. Congrats!
Regarding the gameplay: Everything is a bit slow. The first level was fun, however almost a tutorial. Then the second level was very convoluted already. A little map, or at least an arrow pointing to the goal door, would have gone a long way.
After I solved level 2 I felt like I finally understood the mechanics well enough. Sadly, the game was over already. I did not opt to hunt for the good ending due to the low walking speed of the character.
So, I think you invested your time quite well in the presentation, which left you short on level design time. If you add more levels in a post-jam version, please let me know.
Neat game. A few notes:
Having to redo the "tutorial" is a bit boring, but the secret ending promise was intriguing enough for me to keep going.
While you can wait out buying the 'save', you cannot wait out buying one of the two initial upgrades, that is a bit confusing.
I also tried to do 90 degree jumps, which are not possible. That's on me, I guess :)
I especially enjoy the mood of the game, combined with the soundtrack.
I love the concept and battles, but I do not get the progression between the levels. If that was fleshed out (and the GUI told us more about the units), it would be great.