Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → Haln
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | 59 | Signal | The Signal | compo | 279 | 2.63 | 2.57 | 2.50 | 3.26 | 2.65 | 2.31 | 2.52 | 2.70 |
A short and sweet game!
I really enjoyed that there were voice lines in the game.
At the end, I wish there was a restart button instead of the game just quitting.
Would have been pretty nice if the game was longer, and there were more voice lines.
The clicking of the lights turning on was pretty satisfying for some reason.
This was short, simple and sweet!
I really wish I didn't have to left-click for every bullet shot, press and hold would have been easier on my fingers.
There was an issue where a couple of the bugs got stuck on the walls. (see picture below)
Loved the atmosphere and how you made good use of simple geometry though.
ld59-static-bug.png
It took me a second to figure out how things worked, but once I got it the gameplay was fun trying to figure out how to match the signals.
Once I figured it out, it was fun for a bit. But then the constant backtracking started to interfere with the joy of solving the puzzles.
If you got the time between the player understanding the puzzle to them being able to complete it down, I really think you'd have a banger of a game.
It took a moment to understand how the knocks worked, but it was pretty neat! It was a little silly but fun, and I liked how Peter was both scared by and intrigued by the knocks that he moved towards them even when he was confused.
Neat mechanics, but the second level was pretty frustrating. I figured out what to do a long time before I managed to complete the level. Had to crash through a train to get a second train through to the goal, which was slow and didn't feel like a good solution. Maybe the gaps between trains were randomized, or they're pixel perfect, which feels like not ideal for a puzzle game.
I like how the trains crash and fall apart though, it made it feel better. Good introduction to the mechanics too, just showing us one at a time and then how they work together.
Nice game!
The player didn't control great, and the shooting took a second to get used to. When the first battle started, I got jump scared haha, I wasn't expecting that at all.
I love that you can see your bullets left on your gun, and the tension after I realized health was super limited was palpable.
Good job!
@william-corrin the jumping was kind of awkward, it didn't feel responsive enough and the jump motion itself didn't feel great. The walking was mostly fine, but I did sometimes feel like I got stuck unexpectedly on terrain and needed to jump over things. Otherwise, controls felt ok.
This game was a nice experience!
The lonely atmosphere really makes every sign of life feel exciting to find!
Exploring was fun, although trying to find the last person got a little trying because I had no idea where to go, feeling like I had checked everywhere already.
8-direction movement would have definitely made the character control a bit less weird.
Very creative, super neat idea, and the art style is great.
My main issue is the movement is pretty hard to control. It was really awkward trying to fly and switch echo types and avoid enemies and keep navigating at the same time. I also wish the echo would light up things a little longer.
Good job!
The controls were a bit rough, and jumping wasn't quite as responsive making it a bit hard to play. The character would get stuck on the edges of platforms sometimes. The teleport was kind of jarring.
Placing platforms to make my own path was fun though. The background art was nice.
Haha, love the theme! It was a little bit frustrating figuring out where the best signal spot was, but that was fine. I just wish it marked it after you found it so it was easier to remember afterwards.
The death sound was hilarious too!
It took a moment for me to figure out I was supposed to hold the signal at the right spot based on the level of the white noise sounds, but neat mechanic.
Got drawn into the story a bit, although it didn't take long to see where it was going. I wish there was a bit more to the story though.
Very neat concept, I think it's such a good idea to need a connection at all times. I love that the ship only has one wing, making maneuvering more interesting.
The main frustration I have is that it's so hard to control. It felt hard to have any fine control over the ship's movements.
The game's got a tension to it that was nice.
When I got confused on what to do after following the arrows and didn't really feel like playing more, I was tempted to bounce off.
Spent a little more time exploring without knowing what I was doing, and then I found the room with the computers to reset. Got killed after resetting a bunch of them because I didn't know what I was supposed to do and then decided I was done.
I really like the atmosphere, and I wanted to let the signal guide me, but I had no idea what the signal was. I didn't understand why I died.
Love the vibe of the game! Going deeper really feels like I'm sinking into the depths of the ocean.
I think it's super awesome how the music distorts as you get deeper, but I'm not enjoying the music in the first place so maybe that's not ideal.
The beginning feels pretty frustrating though, it takes more effort than I would like to get things going.
Haha, that was a fun, silly game.
The controls were a bit unintuitive, and I didn't get what to do at first. I wish you could control the camera, and that the mouse wasn't visible.
I thought for sure if I walked into the shark's mouth it would eat me, little disappointed it didn't, that would have been hilarious.
Still, loved the music and how silly the game felt. If it were longer though, I'm sure the music would have gotten annoying.
It was pretty neat to float about in space for a bit and read the messages.
I wish there were more messages to read. I went a couple weeks without any messages so I'm assuming just doing science and resting consistently doesn't have any ending?
It got a little annoying to go back and forth by the end, I think if this were a longer game you'd need to find a way to keep the player occupied and interested.
I really wish there was some kind of history that I could refer to in order to help me make better guesses. The response time between making a guess and knowing the results was a bit long as well.
The idea of having objectives that isn't to get a perfect match is awesome though, really fun goal to have. A legend for what colour equates to what level of "matchingness" would have been nice.
Got to level 8 and started to feel like I've had my fill though and I stopped.
Simple and enjoyable gameplay. Loved the beat, but I got huge motion sickness from playing this game. Maybe it was the way things moved combined with the flashing, but I don't typically get motion sickness from regular games or VR games. Also going fullscreen does something to break the visuals. It kind of flashes the game for a frame and then goes away to a full black or full white screen. Exiting fullscreen doesn't fix it, but going back in again seems to fix it, although exiting fullscreen once more breaks it.
Wow! Just overall, a really good game!
The art is charming and ties into the gameplay.
Music was a nice ambient touch.
Such a high level of polish, good job!
I love the concept!
The music and the beat was nice, but it didn't match the gameplay quite right, it always felt a little off.
Majority of the text was really hard to read.
It was pretty easy to mess up spells when I was thinking I was doing it to the beat. I also wished the spell legend was in the middle instead of in a corner.
Got to the boss, but couldn't get a single spell off and lost.
The game doesn't load for me unfortunately.
Very cute game! I love the level of polish, it feels like the whole package.
The timings for making sure the animals were safe felt pretty tight though, could have had a little more leeway.
I also didn't understand the yellow exclamation button. I sort of got the purpose, but didn't get how it should have been used.
Would have loved if this had a few more stages though, it was fun.
@tasakasama Thanks for letting me know. I couldn't get it working here, but I created an itch.io page and it seems to be working there.
@radekvrs Thanks for the detailed review!
I had randomized green/red times, but with (bad?) luck you could get the same duration. This could be better if I saved the last value so it doesn't get repeated.
Multiple areas and more tension from interesting obstacles was something I wanted to create, but it was a busy weekend for me so I couldn't dedicate much time to it unfortunately. Maybe I'll expand the game a bit after the game jam.
@bushfire Thanks for noticing them! I tried to make the environment a little more interesting since the gameplay was fairly simple.
@avhatar Haha, that would have been hilarious if the van drove off!
Really enjoying the puzzles!
The sound effects were neat, but slightly annoying for some reason. Some ambient noise and music would really tie it together.
The art was expressive, and the ambient noise was a nice touch.
I didn't really understand the second level. I couldn't figure it out.
That was a great small game!
The gameplay was on theme and it was pretty fun to try and figure out how to match the signals up. What really kept me drawn in was the story telling. The vagueness of it all kept me asking questions, but there were enough tidbits that kept me intrigued.
Good job!
On point with the theme, and pretty innovative in my books. I don't think I've seen anything else like it before. But I would say I don't get what I'm supposed to do at all. Kind of feels like I'm just guessing at what to do, and then when I figure it out it's not that exciting.