LUNAR DANGER by slimabob 2022-04-05T19:30:49Z
Waiting for a rocket to circumnavigate the moon to hit a skeleton. Perfection.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → HexyVexy
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | 59 | Signal | 👥 | IONOSPHERE | jam | 81 | 4.08 | 4.00 | 3.00 | 3.25 | 4.35 | 4.14 | 3.13 | 4.04 |
| 2025 | 58 | Collector | 👥 | LootRail - Scavenge, Survive, Profit | jam | 209 | 3.75 | 3.65 | 3.02 | 3.57 | 3.52 | 3.57 | 3.70 | |
| 2025 | 57 | Depths | 👥 | A Squire Acquires | jam | 467 | 3.50 | 3.38 | 3.05 | 3.05 | 3.64 | 3.38 | 3.52 | |
| 2024 | 56 | Tiny Creatures | 👥 | The Best Laid Plans | jam | 141 | 4.00 | 3.71 | 3.45 | 4.06 | 4.08 | 3.87 | 4.07 | |
| 2024 | 55 | Summoning | 👥 | The Warlock Mafia Owes Me Money! | jam | 790 | 3.39 | 3.37 | 3.22 | 3.58 | 3.10 | 3.02 | 2.80 | 3.26 |
| 2023 | 54 | Limited Space | 👥 | Waterskin | jam | 84 | 4.15 | 4.05 | 3.47 | 3.72 | 3.92 | 3.67 | 4.50 | |
| 2023 | 53 | Delivery | 👥 | Per My Last Bullet, | jam | 88 | 4.15 | 4.20 | 3.63 | 3.77 | 4.45 | 4.12 | 4.09 | 4.06 |
| 2023 | 52 | Harvest | 👥 | BEANSTALKERS | jam | 98 | 3.97 | 4.02 | 3.40 | 4.05 | 3.92 | 3.80 | 3.22 | 3.85 |
| 2022 | 51 | Every 10 seconds | 👥 | THE_MACHINE_KNOWS_HATE | jam | 151 | 3.96 | 3.92 | 3.85 | 4.24 | 3.67 | 4.08 | ||
| 2022 | 50 | Delay the inevitable | 👥 | Scuttling Is Painless | jam | 1200 | 3.06 | 2.84 | 2.90 | 3.16 | 2.74 | 2.64 | 2.82 | 3.22 |
Waiting for a rocket to circumnavigate the moon to hit a skeleton. Perfection.
Delightful, although the rocket model left it a little unclear on how to load the sheep.
Good use of the theme, but a couple of polish tweaks would have gone a long way. I was slightly dissapointed when --Spoiler-- ˙ʇɐǝu uǝǝq ǝʌɐɥ plnoʍ uoısoldxǝ/uoıʇdnɹɹǝ uɐ ˙ƃuıuʍoɹp oʇ pǝıp llıʇs ı 'ouɐɔɐloʌ ǝɥʇ ƃuıqɯılɔ ǝʇıdsǝp
Aesthetically nice and seems mechanically well considered, with the adjacency bonus and such. As others have noted, it seems a tad brutal.
Aesthetically lovely, lots of potential
@ditam Thank you for the kind words! There was definitely an intent to get across the terrible dark vastness of space, and the places where it encroaches on the broken hull of the ship definitely go to provide some visual contrast as well as showing how you're *just a little guy*. I'm not very confident in my visuals but this was really nice to see!
Also thank you everyone else for your feedback. I have not gone a day without regretting that we didn't unmap all the keyboard controls :sob:
@holyblackcat Thanks for the crit! Yeah, we tried something different with the jump and it didn't really work out in the end. We've since made a build with a traditional jump and it's, if nothing else, way easier! The collider was something I wasn't sure about, and which I'm going to do more reading on. The intent originally was to potentially have more non-flat surfaces but for what we ended up making a square (at least on the bottom) would have been better.
@ryusui All valid points! The hydroponics platforms, we figured out just before submission the falling platforms were reverting to the prefab defaults after falling for the first time and scrambled to make it possible. As it stands, it's actually pretty manageable if you clear the section on your first try, but after that it's significantly harder. A victim of the time limit unfortunately.
Aha, I also had "Planned Obsolesence" on our ideas list but we didn't end up going with it as much for our little robot. Good work!
Delightful, limited only by sensible scope!
Great looking art, interesting mechanics, it's a strong package. Only crit: -In combat it would have been nice to have a visible grid given the positioning requirements (no diagonal attacks) -The aforementioned onboarding issues/gem hunt and readability of the environments. -The overworld player movement had a bit of a jitter to it, but that's a polish issue rather than a flaw. Excited to see what's next from this team!
A neat concept, but the slow movement speed conmbined with the (seemingly) random movements of the nighttime enemies really slows the pace as you path around any potential crossings between bushes and trees. Perhaps a health system rather than an instakill might have been good.
An exceptional entry with fantastic production values and a soaking of sodden station names. No notes, fantastic execution of what you set out to make.
This unit is not wired for logical puzzle games. It's a fantastic concept executed very well. The only quirk really is the player not realising that they can accomplish their goals in stages instead of just the 10 allotted moves.
Windows Defender does not enjoy this entry one bit it would seem.
Fabulous entry with excellent production values. My only real criticism is with the implementation of the swapping mechanic. I had a really hard time dialing in when the swap would happen, and as the penalty for missing a jump was 20 seconds of waiting it was a little painful. Some visual indicator might have been more accesible to those who can't keep time :smiley:
Fab little game and a good concept, although the UI/UX issues curtail it's potential a little.
As you saw on stream I really adored the concept here and only encountered the classic adventure game issues ("Use gum on cat hair to make fake moustache" sort of things). Only change would be as mentioned-to make the scene changes pseudo-random so you don't encounter the same scene again until you've seen all of them.
Tight and cophesive little game with great use of the theme, although it took me a couple of rounds to parse the orb/weapon/health economy.
Impressive, but some aspects were a little confusing. A laser sight would have helped with the aiming in a 3d space. Love the teleporting conceit though.
Game feel and aesthetics are fantastic, love the changing colour palettes. Going back to the start of a stage is a real momentum killer for this kind of game though.
This is a neat Slay-The-Spire alike but there's nothing here or on itch to tell me that. Some screenshots would go a long way :D
Fantastic, the only crit I could offer: -Getting iron manually stays very risky throughout. Some sort of magnet or method for healing would have been neat. -The "Score" seems a little redundant, as it ticks up but not in seconds. A "survival time" or getting points for iron collection might make it more enticing. -Game becomes extremely easy as nothing can challenge a relatively early turret wall in to devastators, despite the wide variety of enemies. Something with turret resistance I have to manually hit, for example.
Personally I didn't get along well with the player controller/feel in this but that's not to say that there's any issues with it. A good concept very well executed. Love the use of shifting palettes for the blades.
A shame the assets do not load!
A cool concept and gorgeous art, but being beholden to the theme makes this rough. Also if there's sound, I didn't get any.
@vidim888 Glad you picked up on it, the level "Nanoangstrom" is an explicit reference!
We toyed with harder levels and no feedback on player location, but ultimately went with something more player friendly. Our LD50 game was very hard and we wanted to make something people could finish even if they weren't very proficient with platformers.
You can see where a more demanding structure might have gone in 4-4, for example.
@teddyreid Noooo, the ssssss-secretsssss!
@chriswiseman @doot Thank you both for the kind words!
@adam-gould Cheers Adam!
@bqq Ha, glad you appreciated them. Some of the references are pretty out there, mostly just to make me chuckle :sweat_smile: but yeah, I adore it when devs add little details like that. @legitamte We have plans! @mandytoh @macaroni-dev @resacagames @untitled-studios Thanks for the feedback, all!
Unforgiving is correct.
10 seconds is a long time, agreed.
Good concept, although some of the collision issues are a pace-killer. Nice work!
Fantastic concept and the production values are spot-on. A couple of polish tweaks: -Often lines would continue playing even though I had moved on to another suspect. -The aforementioned lack of a "played" indicator on the dialogue prompts led to some minor friction.
Nice, although enemies being able to spawn on the player is a shame. Some kind of background might also help the player understand that the stage is shrinking.
Rotating weapons is a cool idea, although they do seem to just...stop doing damage?
Good work with the shaders
A really neat concept well executed. It was tricky to build a working economy with how often the pathing updated, especially with the need to shift away from corn to the better plants.
Good work getting this done with kids!
A neat choice for locomotion but if I could get the game in to full screen it would feel much more natural.
Well executed little game with cute art and a neat mechanic, well done! Lots of potential with the format-I felt like the water mechanic could use a tweak-perhaps if water was in 1x2, 2x1, shapes, or if overwatering crops reduced their value?
A nice little thing, some notes: Packaging as a .7z will probably proclude some people from playing. Similarly having to dig through the bin folder to find the Exe. A shortcut in the root of your directory would go a long way.
A neat take on the theme but I wasn't willing to let the farmer till my field for too long.
A neat concept but I struggled to grok the hybrid mechanic fully, which I suppose is a success in and of itself. Good work.
Fantastic art, concept, execution etc. The only thing might have been some sound effects for the interface. Abilities unlocking and coming off cooldown etc.
A cute concept, and I love a pun, but I felt the implementation of the concept was a little lacking, in that the court scene could have been more dynamic and involved. That said I'm not a fan of CYOA/VN so that's probably personal bias.
Really neat and ambitous from a technical side, but toeing the line between grungy and unintentionally abrasive can be very tricky.
This is a fantastic entry, easily one of the most compelling jam games I've played. I'm almost a little sad it's not longer :smile: Screenshot 2023-01-10 201245.png
Delightful!
The black screen on boot was very concerning, and then going in to the plant design was also a little baffling. Most of the issues noted above are valid but I do want to highlight that the little animations were lovely, especially the ducks!
Quite the...experience
Nothing that hasn't been said before above. Ambitious concept and the art/music assets are good but the finished product feels unpolished and the game feel is very unpleasant/janky.
Were the orders random? I don't feel like I got the plants required to fulfil my orders?
An excellent first crack, although I'm unsure why it's formatted in portrait on a 16:9 screen. Lack of awareness kind of artifically increases the difficulty.
You succesfully represented the trudge of a commute.
What a deliciously janky experience, impressed the planetoid stuff works (I think?) "Good thing Australians don't take fall damage" got me.
Headtorch dogs will always garner points from me.
Short and sweet, some sound effects would have gone a long way I think.
An excellent idea but I felt like it was let down by the player controller (and the default keybinds). Movespeed and momentum-sliding were incompatible with the type of platforming being requested. The addition of a sprint button with a lower base speed would assist greatly.
@bo-dangles Ah, that does indeed fix the speed!
Very relaxing and pleasant, nice work.
Haptics tuned in an under-the-wire patch 😅
Thanks for the feedback @tyin The intention for Scarlet Fire is that it has full-screen range so you can use it to catch stragglers before they get to the bottom of the board. It does start very weak though! 🙂
@bigjam Absolutely something we've been discussing in the days since the jam finished, it's tricky to test economy with the limited time.
As in Harp Seal?
Good work on the theming and vibes. A mechanical tweak might have been to have the player only regenerate at the houses to encourage a chase/back and forth with the ghosts. SFX could use work, very jarring.
A neat idea, but as has been mentioned the steering was pretty stiff which doesn't lend itself well to the arcadey score attack nature of the project. Intro cutscene was an impressive inclusion though.
A neat idea, havesting the solar flares. The small playfield and lack of fullscreen support is disappointing for an arcade-style game. I'm not sure if the antialiasting artifacts on the pixel art are intentional but I'm not sure it works here. The basic feel and concept are nice though!
Adorable, but having the input highway larger on the screen would have been nice.
Neat, and the execution works well! I did feel like I'd trivialised things a little bit too early but it does ramp up over time. The interface for slotting the organs in to the forts was a little obscure to me.
Charming writing, and each fight required a little bit of consideration to get through. A delightful little experience.
A truly strange experience
Very cool idea, I will admit to reflexively going to A/D to steer, ha!
As 0x-void-x0 says, the key to receiving ratings in Ludum Dare is to rate other games. I gave this a shot but was unable to consistently grapple anything but the shelves, and as far as I can tell the bats result in a permanant failstate?
An interesting concept but I found the level design didn't do the pathing any favours. Good concept though!
Having to come to a stop kind of harmed the flow of getting up to speed, but certainly an impressive entry.
Dead link I'm afraid
Perhaps a little basic, but the mechanics you wanted to implement would have been a good addition by the sounds of it
Excellent work considering the assets are from scratch but the car feel is a little...off?
Pcheww.
Well made little stealth game that fits the theme. You should put a screenshot or two on your LD page, your Itch page looks nice.
A good little Sokoban/Sausage Roll-esque game, would have been satifying to hear the flesh...sizzle...when you cooked the...people...
Thanks for the feedback folks, yeah we had a variable that directly affected the difficulty (enemy reaction times/fire rate) and definitely tuned it too low.
Wave 1 never spawned enemies for me, which is a shame as I like the concept.
Making the player's hurtbox slightly smaller than the sprite can incentivise riskier play.
The web build doesn't seem to work which is a shame. The balancing on the game seems pretty unforgiving, which chafes when the intro cutscene cannot be skipped.
A tactical strike to the nostalgia-center of my mind, and you can see the bones of what it would have been with more time.
A delightful little game-as I mentioned on the stream my only suggestion would be clarity on what raises pop count.
Love your little sprites-the events and balancing could use some work though. They repeat often enough that I was learning each event's outcome. Also it didn't seem like I could succeed at any of the jobs I took even at the earliest stage.
The change in trading ratios towards the end bamboozled me, unfortunately.
The music and art here show promise, it's a shame it doesn't coalesce into something more.
Per the stream, I think with some tuning to the ramp-up this could really be something great. As is the balance is too aggressive for the player to parse their choices.
@ciaranw Thanks for the feedback- we did discuss weighting the outcomes both for foraging and events but it fell out of scope. The behind-the-scenes tag system was going to have a "thirsty", "hungry", "hurt", "depressed" addition. A shame you got what sounds like a bugged death screen on your second one-the rain stops when you win. The item-swapping is absolutely being added to our toolbox, this is our first inventory system so we want to build on it.
As mentioned on stream, excellent art and puzzle design (and some fun little quirks to exploit :smile: )
The idea has promise but the execution lets it down in my eyes-the player controller didn't need to have momentum-conserving sliding :smile:
An interesting concept, albeit letting the player try an event multiple times before triggering the "improvement" led to a little confusion.
As mentioned, the font is very difficult to make sense of. I was unable to spawn objects as described in the instructions. The art and concept are nice though.
The lack of some sfx on the inputs was a shame-some dubbed in clicky-clacks would have made it feel more tactile to punch in the commands.
While the arc on the fireball was a little annoying to work around, the moments where the fireball bounces across the heads of the enemies is something that could perhaps be expanded on. Having the waves stop instead of there being something of an attrition battle back and forth was perhaps a missed opportunity.
It's a novel concept with the mechanic, and the into cutscene was delightful. It's a shame the collision and art doesn't seem to quite come together. Random generation was a bold move, it may have been better to make bespoke levels with rounded colliders.
Gorgeous art but I'll admit the mechanic itself was a little underwhelming once I had figured out the rubrick for power. The lack of any audio is a little diappointing, some light clicks and thwacks can really improve the tactile feel of a card game. I also missed the "You win" message so thought it had locked up :D
The game's a visual treat and I very much enjoyed the boss designs combining 2 creatures. My qualms are largely with the gameplay. The attacks that involve tracking projectiles are very large and difficult to dodge. The gun and moltov don't lead to particularly dynamic interactions. If holding mouse 1 at all times is the optimal option then I should even have to click to fire. A semi-, automatic weapon and weak points might have been better. Delightful goblins, especially on the map.
As always the keyboard cowboys entry is a delight. A unique twist on the theme and a novel mechanic combined with strong visuals. As we said in the stream, a little more camera control would have really allowed the creation of more elaborate ant-based art.
Well executed on many levels, albeit I would have liked to see the visuals pushed further into the creepy or cute. The golf physics perhaps could have used a little tuning. The unique ball gimmicks were good but perhaps some iconography on the different balls to remind that player what each animal does would be good.
A delightful twist on the auto chess conceit. The UI and interactions work excellently and the graphical flourishes such as the expressions on the spider go a long way. Some tuning on the difficulty ramp up and this could really shine.
A delightful little romp and one of the most visually appealing Jam games I've seen. As mentioned on the stream, it might have been nice to see multiple smaller levels or a more elaborate open level. The grind to 1,000,000 is a little slow without a break in the action, but that's clearly a victim of scope.
An extremely strong showing, I love the beetle and the scenarios are a good balance for a jam game. The UI is very polished, but I was unaware that I could take upgrades outside of the linear order they appear to be in.
A neat concept but the balancing curve could be a little better. The early level requiring you to immediately gun it is a little unintuitive, for example.
Very polished implementation, and the PC is super cute.
Delightful presentation, my only real qualm was the colour switching controls. I would have preferred to toggle colours with right-click as an option-but I understand this would introduce problems for the mobile compatability.
Fantastic concept, perhaps more feedback when you take damage and lose pixels.
Some very strong guided level design at work here. Good placement allowed the large immobile bluberries to still build a sense of unease.
Delightfully goofy albeit I found the momentum on the planet spinning and the judging of the area affected by the different attacks a little hard to judge.
A great concept and technically impressive. I was a little disappointed with the performance despite this. Some visual polish to have the slime friends mesh better with the environment might have been good.
I love to grabl a grablin! Some clearer representations on what your units are trying to do might have made the strategic options a bit more cohesive feeling i.e. "Is this flank actually gonna work?"
The decision to have the plough levels not have checkpoints was a difficult one. In hindsight while the final level being a long execution and endurance test feels exciting if you're succeeding, it wasn't worth the wall it represents if you fail it, especially in the later sections.
Thank you all for your feedback so far!
We've seen that where on death in Plough 2 if you are near the end of the level for some reason it takes a long time to reset, but it's not easily reproducible.
@johnbrynte The hope was that the underground levels are dim but visible, but we've ran into issues with hitting that balance before. We should probably implement a gamma slider!
A lovely little concept, but I was chomping at the bit for more requests and immediate feedback instead of afterwards.
Delightfully polished little experience and some unique takes on the puzzle formula. I might have moved the "kill the bug" power to the less-prominent input.
Manic in a good way. Very succesful implementation of what you were going for.
A fun little game, but a visual clarity pass and some balance tweaking could make it really sing.
A neat little mechanic but unfortunately I repeatedly hit a bug where I couldn't disconnect from the green orbs. Nice style to it, good potential.
A bonnie wee sailing trip, no notes. Vibe achieved.
I was unable to discern how to gain fuel initially. The tether is maybe a little thin, I was unable to tell I was firing it initially.
A little inscrutable, and the inability to maximise the window to better read what is on screen hurts this quite a bit. I really like wha you're going for aesthetically but the gameplay polish lets it down a bit.
Exceptional work on the mood and aesthetics. An idea that could be expanded upon further. Very slick.
Hit a bug where the menu would repeatedly reappear, resetting the run.
Always fun to be able to do a little cartography. I would have leant further into that-more kinds of landmarks to take note of to make the dungeons feel a little more elaborate.
A neat twist on a classic, although the : representing a half is maybe not the most intuitive. Playing minesweeper with a directional goal is novel in itself. A strong entry and always fun to see Pico games.
@rascarcapackdev Fixed! Very sleepy :smile:
@neon Thank you, very kind!
Excellent work, albeit tooltips on the building buttons would have gone a long way.
Extraordinarily overwhelming, but clearly an involed project.
An interesting environment to poke around after only finding one pill bottle. The camera movement was nauseating, which may have been the intent.
A neat little puzzler, although completing the double date objectives at the same time did appear to softlock. Cute that the fish blush.
Very impressive entry, and appreciate the little logical consistencies ("don't interrupt me", punch a door down, "get out of my house" etc.)
Smart little entry, and I appreciate holding off on the audio glitch until the end.
Always fun to see another GB game. I'll confess to struggling with the first real level but I'm unsure if it was intended that the balls could move half-tiles as I could never correctly align the rightmost ball. Great pitch and pleasant art assets.
A charming little romp, and I always appreciate when a player is made to consider their hoarding tendencies.
Cute blitz of a game, although the colliders could use some work given the isometric perspective.
Wonderful art and a neat concept but as others have said, the physics interactions are quite janky and unintuitive.
Really neat little concept for an arcadey shooter. A little more work on feedback for taking damage (both player and mothership) would have gone a long way.
Matching the wavelengths is neat in concept but perhaps a little frustrating to execute on. The Time section also wasn't super intuitive. Looks great though, good work!
Handily the most I've laughed playing through a jam game, astounding work across all axes. I especially appreciate the ongoing mini-narrative in the radio announcements but every puzzle gag landed which is very impressive!
A solid conceit, but the audio is pretty abrasive and although the staff isn't meant to feel strong, it does feel pretty janky and unwieldy. More options for using the interesting hack prompt for combat instead of "apply debuff then shoot" would have been nice to see.
@mark-swinimer Thank you, it was my first time doing terrain in blender and all things considered it came out pretty good.
@kanity Thanks! Regarding the theme it's a loose play on "Signal to noise"-the "Tone" that grants you your abilities from the tower being the signal and the enemies coming out of the static being the Noise. I had grander ambitions to sprinkle more narrative in but that fell to the wayside as we leaned harder on the arcadey nature of the thing.
Definitely moody, I especially like the work done when the enemies quicken. Short and sweet, before the mazes can become frustrating.
Exceptional work, you've very effectively evoked claustrophobia and tension, and the dot-scatter ping method is super smart.
A neat concept but some things I might tweak such as making the points of interest on the map a bit tighter and perhaps swapping the dish for a directional antenna that's easier to read a direction from.