Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → HoldMeImScared
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | Co | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | 53 | Delivery | Starlighter | compo | 339 | 3.05 | 3.01 | 3.11 | 3.01 | 3.39 | 3.17 | 2.50 | 3.35 | ||
| 2018 | 42 | Running out of space | Lien Acres | compo | 317 | 3.44 | 2.94 | 3.36 | 3.94 | 4.07 | 3.50 | 2.31 | 3.75 | ||
| 2017 | 39 | Running out of Power | Overcharged! | compo | 489 | 3.00 | 3.20 | 2.50 | 3.50 | 2.76 | 2.26 | 1.82 | 2.55 | ||
| 2016 | 35 | Shapeshift | Space Dock | compo | 606 | 3.05 | 3.14 | 2.55 | 2.68 | 2.66 | 2.26 | 3.08 | 2.69 | 86 |
Beautiful graphics (particularly liking the color palette), good sound, excellent concept and execution.
Could definitely do with being a bit faster, though.
This is leaderboard material. It has a ton of potential, I agree with those who suggest you keep working on it. I would buy a full game like this.
Just excellent work. Thanks for sharing it :)
Well, as you say, it really isn't a game. However, you did a lot of things here which you need for games and cutscenes, so I bet it was still a very valuable experience for you in that regard :) And I absolutely loved the chain link fence and bleak apartments look. Walking past the trees looked great, too.
Just one problem, though. When it ended and displayed the title again, I had to use the task manager to close it. Nothing else I attempted did anything.
Still, it's pretty, and a little creepy, so full marks for mood ;) Nice work.
I could not figure out how to read the sonar. It looked like it just always displayed the same image upon activation, which doesn't seem right. So losing Security didn't even seem to matter.
But I really liked the idea, and it was very atmospheric. I killed things/crew in the reactor room very early on and that made things a little difficult, and definitely heightened how atmospheric it was ;)
Nice work!
Wow, excellent tutorial. Quick to go through, introduces a lot of stuff, but in a way that it is easy to remember once you move onto the levels.
Very polished entry, too. The music is great. The levels past the tutorial are a lot of fun ^.^
Controls are nice and responsive!! But I always find X and Z and C to be incredibly awkward controls, both physically and as far as needing to take a moment to think about them. Keys like F and G and R feel more natural and are faster to strike and cause less hand strain. But again, they're very responsive, which is the most important thing.
High marks all around, this is very good.
Everything about this makes me happy.
I did get stuck on a level where there are 6 fruit in 1x1 gaps. I got large enough that I can't grab the last 2 fruit as my edge never contacts theirs when I roll over, I'm too large to leave the room, and I can't split. Ah well ;)
But I had a huge grin on my face the whole time. Very nice work!
Your music is very good.
I like the wall jump a lot - though it took me a shamefully long time to realize that the lizard could do it. It was very much an "oh, duh" moment when it happened.
Good set of powers.
Controls felt slightly squishy, but not bad.
Good entry :)
I also get a blank screen after the intro. Widnows 10, 64-bit. I tried a lot of graphic option combinations as well just in case. No go either windowed or fullscreen.
I'll write this down and check in on it again later to see if it's working :)
Oh, yay, it's working now! Thanks for fixing it ^.^
Cute game. Reminds me in some ways of Lemmings, which is never a bad thing ;) Nice work.
Getting 2 fires 2 turns before the last tile placement can really undo a lot of stuff, and there's not really any time to do anything or for the land to recover from that no matter how well surrounded it is by water.
But as you said, you only had a short time to work on it so bugs and balance issues are expected :) It's very impressive for 12 hours!
I love the concept, though! Very relaxing. Keep working on this, it's got potential! Nice work, thanks for sharing it. :)
Controls feel pretty good.
Gorgeous graphics, and I absolutely adore your background music.
It's beautiful, man.
Graphically pretty, nice animations and exciting, suitable music. Fast paced action and a simple goal.
I struggled a little with the controls on keyboard, using the shifts felt awkward with the other keys though I've got these tiny hands ;) I found myself wanting to bind the dash to A and D or something so I could control dashing entirely with the firing hand instead of dividing it between the firing hand and the movement/shielding hand.
However the controller controls feel great and aiming is a lot easier.
This is a very good entry, great work!
I've waited a long while and this just won't load for me. I get a blank screen forever. :( I hope it's just on my end and not something wrong.
I was rather looking forward to trying out the dino punching game after seeing the gif in your blog post, so I'll write this down so I can remember to check later if it's working.
It's loading now, but it won't take any input past the title screen. The Any key thing works to start the game, but then nothing. Tried clicking on it to force it to take focus, but it's just not working. The only thing I can manage to make it do is shift the game around in the window. WASD does nothing, IJKR does nothing, Arrow keys shift the game around in the window but the character just stands there in his idle animation. Space does nothing, Enter does nothing. L/R Shifts do nothing. Controller controls do nothing :( This applies both to the embedded window here, and the Web link.
Still planning to come back and take a look at it later, as it seems others have now been able to get it to play.
Yeah, your links are broken, man :(
I missed a key somewhere and got stuck, unable to go back and get it as there was no post on the original platform for the frog to move back over, and every other path was blocked.
But other than that (an understandable oversight with only 48 hours), the game is very functional, and the puzzles make sense.
The graphics are simple but cute, though could use a little animation (which I bet you just ran out of time for) - though the sliding bear was fairly amusing. The frog moving so slowly was both a little surprising and kind of frustrating, it meant I had to immediately shift back, not necessary with any other transform. Though it also seemed like the frog got caught up on things very easily - as though his collision box was much larger than his sprite, or as though some items had very large collision boxes relative to their sizes and this was only very apparent with the frog.
Music is decent, and I like the overall feel of the game :) I liked the controls UI in the upper left, too.
Thank you for sharing this! :)
Oh man, the art and animations are amazing. Combined with the excellent music it just makes the whole thing awesome!
Controls were a little confusing. Instructions kept saying to use "punch", but X did nothing and Z only progressed the instructions further - which kept telling me to punch, so I thought I was doing something wrong. Left with no other option I kept hitting Z...until finally the option to punch appeared, using...Z ;)
I like your concept a lot. Freezerburn made me giggle. Hotrod outright made me laugh. Behind the funny graphics is a well-made game. Nice entry!
Deceptively simple, and quite fun! I lost so many pieces on round 5, they're fast! Made it through 6 by parking on my last piece, but failed in 7 as they knocked me off of it. I recovered it once, but while trying to get back, it was finally stolen ;)
A nice simple game and very well done! Great entry, I had a lot of fun with it :)
High marks for humor! :) I like the sparse use of color (I giggled the first time I ran into a unicorn), and your character design for the main character.
The sad music playing as she worries about her kitten and blasts any who would threaten it amused me, too. Nice work :)
I always seem to lose at 30 seconds. That space junk is intense! I like the graphical style, background music is simple but appropriate. It's fast paced music for a fast paced game :) Nice work.
This is possibly the most creative application of theme I've seen yet ;) Pretty funny, too.
This is very cute! Cute music, cute graphics, cute concept :) Controls feel good.
It's very difficult to tell where orbs are over gaps, though, without the shadow that you get on platforms. We can learn through trial and error, but it's tough to gauge the jumps that way. I keep missing later orbs on the long sequence in the first level, which is a shame as I really like this and would love to continue. I just can't tell where anything is, at least on the web app.
Still, it is a very nice entry! Good work :)
Decent music and application of the theme :)
I died so many times just from trying to fire my weapon. It took me a while to even realize what was happening. One of the forms will kill itself VERY quickly this way and so is almost useless. Didn't seem to recover enough energy to really use the weapons from organic matter.
Still, looks nice, sounds nice. Controls are very smooth, movement is smooth, animation is smooth. There's a lot of good stuff in here. Nice work.
The creatures are adorable. And there is something quite satisfying about flinging my creature into the enemies.
Controls couldn't be simpler, and I grinned like an idiot when I realized I could just hold down the mouse to move quickly instead of clicking for every movement.
The indicator for floor transitions is a very nice feature in light of the random level generations. Though I got a little overexcited and engaged a boss toooooo sooooon. ;) Kept going and beat that boss. My creature ate like a king!
My own entry wouldn't exist without you and ShaunJS. Thank you :)
A little melty as far as loading the level after the cutscene or on restart (it'll even say it's stopped responding, but it eventually catches up and goes). But once it has loaded, it runs great, no performance issues actually running the game on my toaster of a computer ;)
A bit hard to see underwater, I definitely died to things just because I couldn't see them through the intense blue.
But otherwise, simple controls, graphically nice, and I like the relaxing background music.
I'm completely in love with doing the Animorphs thing, so very nice on the theme. Also, we can be a tree! Best transform!
It's a neat puzzle to figure out what to use where. I like it!
Wouldn't have made my own entry without you and Heartbeast, so thank you, and nice entry :)
I think the solid clue is in the UI feedback, in a way. Some actions are more difficult to take than others....
Yay, I win! I had some fun with this.
The programmer art was kind of charming. I found a spot where I could take an identity through a box if I stepped back from it just slightly. Not sure if that was intended, but I liked it.
I got caught in the floor a few times, but the R key was right there to save me ;)
Thanks for sharing this!
I like the monochrome and the lighting. The game has a very striking style. And it's very atmospheric, so full points for mood, too.
I decided to try crossing an anomaly.
I quite liked this. I hope more people see it :)
Very nice work :)
Neat. I liked the way what you did affected the sounds. Pretty fun to play.
However, those intense, contrasting colors caused me a lot of eyestrain, so I had to put it down sooner than I might have otherwise. I liked the graphics style, ignoring the colors, though.
The core concept and gameplay are solid and enjoyable. On the whole, this is a very good entry. I agree that it would make a decent mobile game. :)
Thanks for sharing it!
Ha ha, puzzle 6 is a trap ;)
The music is pretty awful, but the graphics are not at all what I expected after your blog post. It's likely that simpler, stylistic graphics would ultimately work better, but these are by no means awful. Just perhaps a bit noisy for your puzzles with the candy pictures. You weren't at all wrong to experiment with graphics, even if they don't ultimately fit this game as well as they might a different kind of game. :)
The puzzles themselves are very good! The mechanic of having some switch to squares works nicely. We have to work out if it's necessary, and if so, on what piece or pieces. Full marks for Fun :)
Thanks for sharing this! I enjoyed it quite a bit.
Er, at least, my level 6 was a trap ;) I didn't mess with the generation. But yeah, I had fun. Solid puzzles. Even more impressive if they're generated randomly, wow.
Very nice use of theme! Music was great, I loved the background graphics, and even the mutant forms of your player character were charmingly adorable :)
2905km. I love your concept, the shifting platform and trying to use it to drop the enemies. It really is a lot of fun.
I only dropped myself a few times ;)
I made it out! Loved it. Longer than I expected, which was quite nice.
Nice story-driven game! I like your art style :) Going to replay this a few times.
Ha ha! Scored 400. Was forced to jump on spikes...pantsless. Wasted so much fuel failing jumps on the spinning platforms ;)
I liked combining jumping with the jetpack, neat idea. The spinning platforms were a nice challenge, too.
And while you didn't use the final theme, you still made something quite nice which accomplished what you were going for.
Nice game, thank you for sharing it :)
I got 67 coins before I quit. A little glitchiness with movement, but on the whole pretty nice. I like your little planet :)
Ha ha, I made it, and now I feel like a jerk. Didn't use the walkthrough, but it took a while to figure some things out at times. What to do with the clean floor section was ~very~ much just trial and error, there's no good way to deduce it, though the solution past that point became clear once that was done.
Solid entry, thanks for sharing it :)
I like the idea of getting past the safety controls which are meant to prevent exactly this sort of thing. If only the scientist hadn't been such a jerk. ;)
Easy mode is pretty hard, it's tough to avoid enemies, particularly with the bouncy flight if you end up accidentally hitting a ghost. Took me a while to figure out that I could fly with the fat ghost by hitting space fast enough, I thought it just had a very low jump at first.
I did manage to get to the 2nd level once, but died pretty quickly and did not manage to finish the first level again.
That said, the intro was pretty cute. I liked the idea of having to deal with the abilities of the transforms rather than them being strictly voluntary, and it was an interesting health mechanic. You could even choose to sacrifice a "hitpoint" to get a particular ability if you wanted to, which is a neat idea.
I think my favorite little detail was the smaller/faded monsters in the background.
Nice entry! :)
I love the title drawn with a stylus, the writing is lovely. The whole thing is beautiful.
The main character model is cute. What animations that existed were smooth, movement felt good. Controls felt good.
The things I would suggest (feedback on hits primarily) is something you've already identified as something you'd intended to do but ran out of time for. That's good! You should continue to work on this and implement that feedback for the player and sounds. You seem to be aware of what elements make for a good experience for the player, which bodes very well as you learn.
Congratulations on your first game! There's a lot of stuff to be proud of here :) Keep learning, you're gonna do great in the next LD.
I won in 57 seconds.
Your subject is relevant to the interests of everyone here ;)
Simple game, well executed! Good entry.
Well this is certainly true to life. >.>
It didn't seem to recognize some answers which make sense, but it must be a pain to try to cover every base on those for your parser without a lot of time to think about it.
Creative and cute, I quite like it! Nice work!
Oops. On my first run the last polygon got stuck on the ball and despawned it. So I tried again. Again that last polygon really likes to get stuck on the ball. It didn't despawn this time, but I could not get unstuck from it, it just kept triggering hits. Eventually it triggered 20 hits and I turned into my home state, which made me laugh :)
You've got the basics of movement, and you've successfully changed the shape of the player object. Collision is mostly there, too.
Congratulations on making your first thing! I bet you learned a lot :) Keep going and keep learning, it's a lot of fun!
Movement feels satisfying with the little touch of the spinning animation getting faster.
Good use of theme. The spawning and despawning blocks to add randomness during the level is a neat touch.
Reminded me a lot of old Atari/Activision games, nice!
However, while I liked the graphics themselves all the pulsing/flashing hurt my eyes a bit, so I didn't play it as long as I'd have liked to.
Nice little puzzles, though. Good work!
Fun game! Cards look nice. The concept is pretty funny, and the take on the theme is different (and wonderfully gross, LoL). A lot of the card text is funny, I particularly liked "You're pretty sure this is how you get the good loot" and Boneitis.
I really liked the wound system for handling damage taken.
My only complaint is that some of the smaller text is very difficult to read on a 20" 1600x900 monitor - and the cards don't scale if the game is put fullscreen. But, I understand that this is a small monitor size, so it's a relatively minor complaint.
This is a very nice submission, and impressive for 48 hours. With the additions such as sound that you want to make, things like support for different resolutions (lol 48 hours), and a bit more work on the cards (again since you only had 48 hours) this could be a pretty sweet game for release!
I had a lot of fun playing it, thank you for sharing! :)
I liked your music choice a lot!
Congratulations on your first game :)
Oh, I wish we could edit these.
To add to what I said above, the game is complete, and a great first entry. Everything does what it's supposed to, and it feels pretty satisfying to move around and blow things up.
Nice work :)
I got as far as the puzzle with 4 shapes and just could not get more than 3 together at the same time.
This is nice, I like your game a lot. The puzzles are well-crafted, and the progression is good. I'm apparently just a little inept ;)
What a nice little toy. I decided to clear the sky, and though it took a little while, I did it ;)
The artwork is adorable, props to your daughter :)
I struggled to get past the moving enemies as they'd hit my tail and kill me, but it's okay because every instance of "Sugar Explosion" made me giggle.
Congrats on your first LD, and definitely keep doing this together :)
Used a controller.
Love the art style. Movement feels nice. The school is small enough (yet still surprisingly large) that I don't get lost even though the view is quite zoomed in.
Good work, thanks for sharing it :)
LoL that was hilarious and adorable. Thank you for sharing it. Good use of the theme.
Full marks for innovation and humor. :)
Oh, I think I played this before the voting period and forgot to come back and vote on it. Thought the title looked familiar on Rescue Chicken ;) So I will vote on it now!
I died pretty quickly just about every time on this. The enemies move ~so~ quickly so evasion is almost impossible. There's often no time at all to shapeshift.
I thought the simple graphics were a bit charming, for some reason reminding me a bit of SkiFree and its dinosaur boss. :)
I really liked how the keys/instructions were presented, however it went by too quickly and I ended up having to restart it to catch what text I missed the first time.
The view made it difficult to tell where you actually needed to be to avoid the black hearts or hit the red ones or even when you'd pass the shape, as depth perception is difficult. Often my own character blocked the view such that there was no time to respond to incoming threats - I know this is intended, and it is not a huge issue on its own as you can keep moving but combined with the lack of depth perception it can make things frustrating. I think finding a way to convey depth to the player would go a long way toward helping here. I think the depth issue, rather than that your character can block the view a bit, is the main problem.
Changing the color of the particles might help, too, so the black hearts stand out better - especially as they're the game's namesake.
I tried all the difficulties, and definitely the flashing is an issue, even for those without history/risk of siezures it'll cause eyestrain and headaches.
That said, I do like the core idea here. And flashing aside, the graphics style itself is quite nice - minimalist, stylish, and clean. :)
The shaking and hit sound both provide good feedback to the player to show that you've been hit, without being overdone. I liked the decision to provide a reasonably generous health bar as a complement to the high difficulty.
Excellent music and UI, too!
On the whole, this is a nice Compo entry! Good work, and thank you for sharing it :)
@El Cabaro:
Check this out
http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-35/?action=preview&uid=90375
http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-35/?action=preview&uid=91057
http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-35/?action=preview&uid=92629
http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-35/?action=preview&uid=92953
http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-35/?action=preview&uid=92954
http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-35/?action=preview&uid=92955
http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-35/?action=preview&uid=92956
http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-35/?action=preview&uid=93474
You can even find a cluster of 4 of them pretty close together near the bottom of the D on the Mosaic. All different names (user and entry), often different text and screenshots. Pretty sure some of those assets aren't kosher, either.
I got as far as the 2nd level where you can transform into rock. I died somewhere among the long sequence of grass jumps.
I like your concept, and the powers (though I did not get to experience ice). I also liked the floating instructions in relevant places when introducing new mechanics :)
The controls are a little tough, though. It's not easy to predict how far you'll move, which makes planning jumps and stops difficult, which can be an issue in a platformer.
It almost seems like it's based upon platform length, as I'd slide for days on long platforms, but could sometimes manage not to fall off a small one. I spent a lot of time on the first earth transformation level just trying to get down the 1 tile gap, even on later attempts.
I'd suggest toning down the amount of sliding, at least for grass and earth platforms, and see what can be done to make movement more consistent and predictable to the player
That said, congrats on your first LD! It's my first, too. Yours is a cute little game, with a good concept, and it feels very nice to finish something, doesn't it?
I got stuck for a long while at the tall box tower. The cat can't jump high enough to make the 4 tile jump (though she jumps high enough that it ~seems~ like she can, she just baaarely misses it) and there's no way to do it from the step right above. The dog can't push 2 boxes so it can seem that there's no way to pass here.
I did try jumping from the highest point I can get the dog to on that side, but I didn't get it quite right so I believed it didn't work. Eventually, after spending a long time with the tower, I tried the dive again and got it right. It's a good puzzle, just there was some feedback that didn't happen there which steered me away from the correct solution when I found it.
That said, I absolutely adore this. I did throw the cat in the water first, with a suspicion as to what would happen ;)
Your overall presentation is very good. I've enjoyed using the abilities and your graphics are so adorable. Everything about it feels so satisfying and made me smile.
A very good entry, just excellent work! One of my favorites :) High marks across the board.
That was...SO MUCH FUN!!! Thank you so much, I had a blast with this.
Looks great, sounds great, fun gameplay, neat application of theme. Quite funny, as well!
You've got a foundation you can build on, as the others have said. Even for children more mechanics than just the character swapping for walking would be good. Items, skills, things like that.
My biggest suggestion would be to change that rainbow text. It is very difficult to read, especially with multiple options right next to each other.
Your music selection is quite nice!
Oh dear, I'm getting Out of Memory errors trying to run it.
But from what I can see without playing this, I really love your concept. It looks like bouncing around among someone's bookshelves, tables, and chairs, which seems very satisfying to one's inner child ;)
Yay it's working now!
I quite like how it looks :) I've always been a fan of floor plans and such.
The playable start/restart screen is a very nice touch.
Looks nice and polished.
However, it's a bit inscrutable. I couldn't find instructions or a key map? There were the instructions to hit Space to set the molecule going, but that was it.
By hitting random keys I managed to find a level editor, which I think is maybe how the game is played? By setting up the level to guide the molecule?
But without instructions as to how the game works that was still a little confusing. I don't know which things do what. And I couldn't remember which key I hit to even take a stab at how to close out the editor and return to the level.
I know there isn't a lot of time left in the jam, so it may not be feasable to get instructions into the game itself, but adding it to your description could be a huge help in getting feedback on your game as it's meant to be played.
I'll hold off on rating, and check back on it later, it really looks very promising :)
Thanks SQ, that helped a ton :)
I like the molecule binding concept. And the game is a bit simpler than I first thought, which is cool. It's setting dominoes up and letting them fall, which is always fun!
The game looks and sounds very nice. And it's enjoyable to watch the molecule go.
Nice entry, guys!! :)
BTW, you can edit the description. Look at the top of this page, you'll see some blue links in the upper left. One of them is "Edit Entry". Click that, edit the description, and hit submit again :)
Oh, I'm sorry SQ. I missed that you weren't the team rep, Seth is. I meant that your team rep can edit it, but it seems he went to sleep.
But yeah, thank you very much for the instructions. Even in the comments that will be helpful to people :)
Hmmm, I had too many witnesses to my little bit of identity theft ;) I think you've got something to work with here :)
Small scope is hardly a bad thing for LD ;) I see no problem with it just being one boss in a room. I think it's worth expanding on as you plan to.
I had a huge grin when I saw the boss. It just made me so happy. What it did when I died made me happy. Everything about it made me happy. Placeholder/programmer art can be pretty charming ;)
Your titlescreen is a masterpiece.
Thank you for sharing this, and I hope you have fun continuing work on it :)
6296 :)
That was fun! A little limiting, seems like space needs to be just a little more abundant. But this would make a great mobile game.
I liked the little arrows showing what would be affected by placement, as well as the descriptions always showing the effect relationships. That helped a ton, as I wouldn't have remembered the chart.
This is excellent. High marks across the board :)
@Alphius: I added a small amount of drift as you suggested. This also revealed a minor bug, which I have also corrected. Thank you :)
@ajayajayaj: You know, that was something I did consider for this. I decided it was so short that it might be better to start over from the beginning on it, more like older arcade games - but it wasn't a very firm decision, really. But I can see where it could be a little frustrating, especially given that games don't generally work like that anymore, expectations have changed a bit. This feedback is something I'll keep in mind in the future, thank you! :)
Excellent, excellent work. Humor throughout.
And the soundtrack is superb.
I got a yacht >.>
Then I played through a 2nd time with the hint provided and got a different ending. 6 years of insubordination ;)
The music was excellent. And I enjoyed watching the company grow for the first path.
Quite good. I enjoyed that, a lot of fun. Looks good, sounds good, and great mood. High marks all around :)
Full points for audio. I loved the ball changing colors based upon who last hit it and therefore whose score it will be if it goes out of bounds. I like the concept, good use of theme!
Cute concept! There's something really satisfying about watching the ships fly about. It took me a little while to realize you could zoom out with the mousewheel (went to look something up in your description, realized the screenshots were zoomed out, had an epiphany), I got a little excited when that happened. I haven't yet figured out what determines when an item can be upgraded, though I did upgrade my portal gates :) I'll echo that it's a little counterintuitive to place objects by right-click and open context menus with left-click. Nice work! :)
The art is well-done and suitably soulless - appropriate for this game. You get points for just how much one of the player avatar choices creeps me out ;)
Realizing how realistic some of the statements I could make really were also creeped me out a fair bit, so full marks for mood. I got a good laugh out of my newspaper headlines, though!
Nice entry!
Full marks in all categories, and well deserved on all counts. This was amazing! You did fun things with the theme, mood and humor were both very strong, the minigames were fun and fast, without going so long that they became stale. Awesome job! Best game so far.
Hi there. I have not rated this, as it is not possible to run the game. It is missing files and folders which should have been provided alongside the executable. Can you try again? I think you need to provide the folder the executable is contained in, then you can just edit this page to update the link here.
You know, I kind of agree that it's not really a game. But that doesn't mean it's not a worthy LD entry :) It is a really simple, fun, and beautiful software toy - and shows off some of your dev (and music!) skills nicely. This could potentially serve as a good foundation for a game, but I mean, it doesn't necessarily need to. There's value in toys, too. Good work! Thank you so much for sharing this, I liked it a lot!
I love your concept, and your art is perfect. I had a zombie go in and start eating a corpse whose life support I never powered, he just ate that corpse over and over and never did anything else. I could not fire the shotgun in the room, nor into it from the hallway to get him out. I tried basically the whole game to clear him, between performing other tasks. Overall a solid entry, nice work :)
This is a really well designed puzzle game! The pieces are well explained by having the player progress through levels and see what each piece does. Using the batteries as conduits themselves as was required in a few levels was cool, as are the chips which function as switches once powered. :)
It took me a while to beat the level with the 3 different colored linked conduits, but I got it!
Sound is simple and appropriate. Graphics are also simple, appropriate, and rather nice looking. This is one of the best entries I've seen, and deserves a lot more attention. Great work!
Wow, I really like typing games, but I am utterly awful at hitting two keys simultaneously. Needing to do it 3x in a row is, well, I'm very proud of the one tea I managed to drink in my many attempts ;) A little more time to pull it off, as well as somewhat more lenient timing requirements for simultaneity might help a bit. I only suggest this because the hand movements required can be awkward, forcing you off of homerow and making true simultaneity of the presses difficult for some combinations. It might even be better to leave the timing as it is, but make sure that the simultaneous presses are always on opposite hands (though this might require support for both QWERTY and Dvorak modes at the very least), forcing us to still think quickly about which keys we're hitting, but removing some of the physical awkwardness.
Full points for mood and, well, humor though you appear to have opted out of rating on that. That table flip is absolutely epic. Great interpretation of theme. Minimal but appropriate sound, well-presented graphics. This is really nice work, I'm glad to have had the opportunity to play it! Awesome entry :)
Oh! Thanks for the reply, sn0uk. Ahhh, that makes sense, I didn't realize it didn't actually require simultaneous presses - I'm just way too slow then. Should have figured that ;)
I did like the game very much, and yeah, the table flip was a great exit.
I had a little difficulty figuring out what was going on at first, but I got it after a while. Agreed with other commenters that there's a bit of feedback to the player missing, about things like whether a space is valid to place a power station, though you do learn the rules after a bit of trial and error. Also, I'm not sure if anyone else experienced this, but I could not get the game to quit. I tried a few things (Esc, Q, etc...) and finally had to track it down in my task manager and end the task.
I like your use of the theme and your concept. There's room to expand from this foundation, which is great. Controls for the game itself are intuitive. While there's a bit more you could convey through the graphics, what is there is presented well. Full marks for audio, as your sounds and music are both appropriate. :)
Yay, I'm glad you got this playable! You're not the first, and you won't be the last to make that error, it's all good.
Cute graphics, cute concept (I like it a lot), nice interpretation of theme. I wouldn't mind being able to move with the keyboard, but that's a very minor thing :) Good work!
Thanks guys! Yeah, I originally planned to have another enemy type, but it was a low priority thing given the short nature of LD and just sort of got pushed off the table. I definitely agree with that suggestion!
The balance is indeed a little off, as many of you have noted.
There are two factors there. One is that I'm actually kind of terrible at this sort of game ;) In my own playtesting I never actually ran into an issue which was originally likely later in the game and may in fact still be possible after the spawnrate caps out. It was this happening in the protected spawn areas:
immune.jpg
In response to my brother informing me of that, at the very last minute I changed the spawn logic a little. So the second thing is that since it was the last minute I didn't really have time to fully test that - though my brother did at least not run into the issue again after the change - nor to attempt to check and adjust balance again.
I originally made it so that running over batteries or overcharged batteries during Overcharged would actually destroy them. I'm thinking I made a mistake in changing that, and should have left it that way so that while you have the benefits of Overcharged, you also have to think about your movement while Overcharged ticks down.
Again, thank you guys so much. This is my 2nd entry and it's a lot larger scope than my first, which I intentionally scoped as small as possible to focus on the overall process. I wanted to push a bit more here, and despite (heck, because of) the problems and failures I encountered, I'm really glad I did.
I've gotten really valuable experience and feedback from this. :)
My best score was about 2200. Cute graphics, nice audio, interesting take on the theme. I felt like I didn't always really have time to react to enemies, but that's a minor balancing issue (or very likely a skill issue on my part), the game itself is well-implemented :) Welcome to LD, and congratulations on your first game!
Played both players on my keyboard, which was a bit of a braintwister - especially as I kept trying to WASD for the left player and F to shoot, which is not at all what the controls are, no matter how many times I reminded myself of this. Also had to move my hand to access the special keys for the right player, LoL, but at least I was able to test this :) The control layout makes perfect sense for side-by-side multiplayer, so very well thought out on your part.
I absolutely LOVE the shared power PvP mechanic, nice idea! Everyone's doing such awesome things with this theme, I've loved seeing what people come up with.
I like your graphics a lot, and, I mean, I'm never going to say no to cute robots ;)
Solid entry, nice work!
Your controls are nice and responsive. A simple game, its small scope is very appropriate for your first LD, and it is well-executed. The only criticism I have is that one of the death sounds for your prisoners is a bit like vomiting, which is distracting, but that's a very minor thing on the whole. This is a solid entry, nice work and welcome to LD!
Oh, I see. I don't own a smartphone and my computer is neither a laptop nor tablet, so I had to use the debug version to test it on my PC. Thanks for providing that option! It's good both for those of us on desktops, and those on battery powered devices who need to test quickly.
I'm really impressed you guys did this in 72 hours. I've seen so many excellent uses of the theme this time around, and your team is no exception, well done. Full points for both theme and innovation.
Full points for mood, full points for humor (for the so bad they're amazing jokes from Patrick, and for Harry). Graphics look very nice, though the cars sometimes drive backward, which is both very minor (I still gave 5 points) and pretty funny ;) Music is nice and suitable to the tone of the game.
I correctly pegged the killer the first time! Then went through and looked at all the other options, which was neat. The characters were great.
This is one of the best entries I've seen so far, really excellent work, guys!
Guys, if you get the navigator.getBattery error, use the Debug version offered on their page under the "real" version for those on supported mobile devices. It'll allow you to manually progress time (press S to move time forward, A to move back in time). Then you can test the whole game in a reasonably short time. It's pretty engaging, so I really recommend taking the time to finish it.
To Vadinci's team, I highly recommend putting an explanation of the debug mode in your game description on this page so people are less likely to just see that error and move on. It took me a moment to realize it was an option. Vadinci should be able to edit this page to add it to the description.
Cute little city builder-puzzler! And, of course, very theme appropriate ;)
It took me a few attempts to really figure out what was going on (and my first map had pretty bad water and mountain placement), but once I got the hang of it this is a neat concept! Reasonably robust complexity for Compo game, too, despite the features you planned which did not make it.
Nice sim-city inspired retro look. Graphics are generally readable though I occasionally missed that a tile was water until the cannot-place indicator when trying to place a piece.
Music is appropriately sedate, I like it.
Contrary to one of your earlier reviewers, I actually found the map just a little small; such is the nature of feedback I suppose ;) Or perhaps I really found it a little crowded with blockers on some of my maps? A way to pay to build a bridge over water could be nice.
Edit: Ohhh, I'm a dink, I apologize. Apparently you do have a bridge, I just never accessed it.
Things did end up very road heavy.
I see why you shared this with me, it is indeed very much from the opposite perspective of mine. Must eat all the land!
I like this, nice entry!
So much fun! I like your visual design, down to the stylistic yet very readable font choice. Your sound effects and music are absolutely on point. Just all around an excellent level of polish in a compo game, especially given the depth otherwise - you struck a great balance there.
Your music is super, super loud. I had to knock my system volume to 20% to play comfortably. However, pretty much everything else here is great. Good, mysterious and energetic music, appropriate sound-effects. Difficulty ramps up well, though there's a point where it's really just an unnavigable wall of bullets.
Still, player health is pretty generous (and I like the on-fire health display, gets pretty funny when you're just barely holding on, too) so as long as you can respond quickly and prioritize the most dangerous targets you can get things down to a more manageable level on most stages. The tradeoff of being faster for dealing with the narrower space to work with felt good. I like the red assymetrical enemies with the mines, though the mines' projectiles could be just a bit tough to read against the background.
This is great, I had a lot of fun with it!
I like your take on the theme, this is cute. I managed to figure out and do the precise shots to get to where you could break out of the start menu to uninstall some programs and jump off the little text box...aaaand promptly used that jump to get myself actually physically stuck inside two level elements (the walls forming the gap to the lower-right of the goal).
So I tried again and while I did not trap myself inside walls this time, I still got stumped at basically the same place. I can't seem to uninstall Visual Studio 2018, nor can I get over the top of the fragmented level to get to the end. I'm pretty sure I need to uninstall VS18, but I'm just out of ideas.
Aaand then I got myself trapped again by mistake while attempting jumps off the text box. Oops. LoL
This was cool :)
I got past the first "checkpoint" but spent ages failing at the 2nd puzzle because I am bad at this, LoL. Never did figure out how to shoot the gun, either, X just never seemed to do anything. Maybe that comes later?
I used the Restart button a few times early on then realized the potential of the Undo button and really appreciated that! An Undo button is great for a game like this.
Charming, simple, easily readable artwork is a plus :)
I like the yellow-grass indicator of where the poison is spreading. It's helpful and lets me know I need to move quickly, and lets me plan areas where I may need to move through poison.
The little grumpy box with the twitching eye made me smile.
Does need a little more feedback for the player for combat damage on both sides, but I certainly understand that with Compo the time constraints are real.
I beat it on my 3rd attempt with an oh-so-impressive score of 2, LoL
Great graphics; everything is stylish yet simple and there's really no confusion aside from the small numbers on the boxes - mitigated by visually scanning for the size instead, though it may still be good to address that. Nothing is represented which doesn't need to be, everything has purpose, and that which is shown is done well.
Really excellent polish overall. I'm super impressed by this for a 72-hour time limit. Your team worked very well together!
It took a bit to get used to the controls, possibly because it was a little tough to tell what my reach was.
Finishing a shelf and sending it off was surprisingly satisfying.
You guys should consider continuing development on this, it's potentially a really solid prototype for a larger-scope project along the lines of Overcooked.
Thank you guys!
Yeah I had plans for a start screen and instructions and stuff but ran out of time.
I think one thing I will share here is that planting Corn with your starting money is a bit of a trap. The little wheats that are up aren't really producing enough at that point to sustain you until that corn grows, and by the time it does the wheat is dead and all you've got producing is a little corn. So right out the gate, spamming wheat is best. Just don't rely on it for the full playthrough ;)
Early you're building up and getting self-sustainable, later on it's about making enough gold to really spam the two Gold Sinks to attempt to delay the city :)
My own personal best during testing at the current numbers balance and timing was 50 years, 1 season.
@quicklyer: That is definitely a bug; at least 2, in fact. I didn't catch that at all during my own testing and thought I had accounted for a one-greenhouse limit, but I was pretty tired by the time I implemented that so who knows, it'll be fun to dig around and see what's going on there, ha ha.
Thank you! :)
Controller feels pretty good! I got used to the slight drift on player movement pretty quickly.
WASD and mouse-to-aim/shoot has been pretty successful for PC-based arcade shooters, so I think you're on the right track considering something like that for the future. But yeah, the controller felt great.
Sounds and music are appropriately arcadey. I didn't find the shooting effect annoying, but it did seem to drown out your other effects.
The zoom-in when getting too close to the Eyeball enemies was pretty disorienting, but that was probably intended - a unique special ability. And at least once I realized what was triggering that I could anticipate it. That said, the zooming on the title screen is a wee bit much ;)
The little green fellas don't move, so just have to be avoided and quickly cleared. It would have been interesting to see a few more enemies here, but compo time limits are what they are.
Nice, responsive little arcade shooter! Good work :)
Just a little light on the theme, but the theme is ultimately meant for inspiration anyway, so that's not a big deal. Heck I've gone a little light on the theme myself in the past, such as during the Shapeshift LD.
As for the game itself, I quite like this! I wouldn't mind being able to wasd as an alternate control scheme, but it's not really an issue since they're the only controls you need at all, and the good news is that the controls are really responsive! I very quickly knew exactly what my character was going to do when I hit one of those keys. That responsiveness and consistency make it feel really good to play.
On levels which have music, I enjoyed it.
The art for the player character and the goal ship itself are nice.
Overall execution is really solid, and this is a fun game. :)
And I laughed at the game over screen telling me that Spikes are not my friend. Indeed.
Humorous take on the theme! I like the music, and that run cycle is on-point :) The "level up" animation when you reach a new speed-threshold is pretty satisfying. There are some misspellings and minor grammar hiccups, but that is understandable if English is not someone's first language and with the Compo's 48-hour limit. It doesn't interfere with meaning, everything is understandable regardless.
I struggled a bit with timing the phasings. Just could not get the hang of it.
But I enjoyed this. Solid entry, congrats :)
Nice graphics! I love that you were able to include a proper tutorial. I also like that mistakes can't be undone, requires planning, which itself gets a bit harder as the objectives ramp up in difficulty. Pretty fun, nice entry :)
I love this! This take on the theme has been done a fair bit but this is a really great example of execution of that. Minimalist and humorous. I had a lot of fun wasting time reading the text files and the names of the folders and viruses were great. The result of attempting to delete folders was fun, too.
I kept double-clicking, which opened multiple instances of things. Oops, habits and such ;)
This is a really solid compo entry!
Nice music, reasonably responsive controls, good sound effects, amusing take on the theme. Dead Skeletons could stand to be moved a little faster. I agree with the suggestion of power-ups, but such is the nature of a 48-hour event ;) I liked this one a lot.
Congrats on your first jam!
I laughed just seeing the introductory screenshot up there.
Your use of the theme is great.
The visuals reminded me of Mario, which reminded me of Duck Hunt, which reminded me of the Dog from Duck Hunt, which just brought me back around to doggos.
I really wasn't clear on what the build cost of things was, so I resorted to just spam-clicking until something built. But tooltips are an understandable thing to miss when dealing with the Compo's tight time limits on an unfamiliar engine.
Cute, funny game, thanks for sharing it with us :)
Made it to round 43. Nice simple, readable graphics. Your music and sound are a bit loud, but your selections there are excellent, was quite happy jamming to that music. Randomized ship powers card selection was interesting. I particularly like the extra shot ship power. There's something really satisfying about having shots bounce off the reflective blocks, too. :)
I love the '90s feel this has. Speaking of feel, this game actually made me feel claustrophobic and just slightly panicky; seriously, well done there, guys! Your music was highly effective in reinforcing the atmosphere, as well. Nice work!
This is cute, and a fun interpretation of the theme. It's also every nightmare I've ever had about Tingle, lol. Your music fits perfectly. :)
Oh my gosh how am I so bad at this, and why is being so bad at it so much fun?
This is beautifully simple, and I enjoyed "press anything to move right". This game is exactly what it says on the tin. I agree with those saying this would be great on mobile - just tap the screen.
I wish real houses were set up this quickly and easily ;) I did eventually fail intentionally as there wasn't really anything new, but that's certainly not too unusual with the small scope of most Compo games. The music changing speed is definitely cool, and the gameboy style graphics are neat. Nice, simple game. Great work!
lol B is for bad indeed. 72. I enjoyed the Animal Crossing style speech, though I feel like it threw my rhythm off a little? The slow mo entry through the curtain was pretty funny.
Really great interpretation of theme.
Good music, entertaining VA, charming graphics. I like the upgrade system. I liked this one a lot. Did pretty well on my 3rd go.
Baxtrok 1 to 2 deliveries can pop a surprising distance from that system and ended 2 of my runs that way. I am a bit bad at not slamming into planets but that is very much a me problem ;)
I much appreciated the 2 control schemes.
This looks like it has potential!
@SoloAdventurerGames Thank you!
@Bad-B4DGuy Thank you! Yeah, I agree with you! I considered making these changes at the last minute (they became *much* more apparent as I filled out the level with buildings) but just didn't get to it before needing to prepare for submission, and ended up having some issues with that process so was glad to have started just a little early on it. But yes, you're quite right about the controls.
@kierogi I feel that on the clumsiness and the loose controls, ha ha. Sorry about that. Thank you!
@Nazorus Ohhh, thank you for mentioning a place where the game's communication could be a bit clearer. That's super valuable feedback.
@Papaya Thank you! Yeah, in the very earliest iterations you lit stars just by flying over them. Then I removed it 'cuz things were so barebones, then once the game got a little busier I didn't put it back to how it was as I guess it still felt to me like it doesn't have much going on. I should have.
@teadrinker Oh, yeah, there's a graphics bug in the web version which can be a little confusing that way. Basically too many stars are converted (so it gets darker) and then that's supposed to trigger the character to stop and fade and switch to one of the game-overs. But on the web version, that specific one sometimes lights things right up to full before moving to the game-over, which **really** confuses that communication in a game where I chose a visual representation rather than clear scoring. Sorry about that.
@ellaris Yep, you avoid the smoke. And if it gets ahead of you, it blocks off avenues for movement and also kills a lot of extra stars. There are 3 fail conditions, hitting buildings, hitting the smoke, and having the smoke darken too many of the stars without enough smoke being killed by lit stars. That last one isn't **nearly** as intuitive or well-communicated as I had hoped for - especially with the aforementioned visual bug on the web version. Thanks!
Successfully delivered all my pizzas! Nice little puzzles, and impressive for only using movement. I managed 9 far more easily than 8, successfully avoided the extra distraction snack. But man, 8 took me a while. Cute bouncy music.
A very enjoyable few minutes!
This is great. Nice color palette with cute, readable graphics. The music is great and I love that you were able to play a real instrument for it. I quit at puzzle 12, but these are really well designed and the first few levels do a great job introducing the mechanics. 48 hours well spent, very nice work!
Excellent use of the theme! Music is quite appropriate. Simple, funny game. Nice work!
The controls are reasonably responsive, it felt kinda nice to just fly for a bit, though yeah it helps to keep speed down some. Nice, chill music.
Ha, I won on my 2nd game - after I realized I could hold 3 sticks. This is great! Good art, good music, reasonably snappy controls. The story's fun and without spoilers the game reminds me of a particular comic, which made me smile. Very nice work you two.
On level 2 in particular I kept bonking myself with the box going over the peak, ha ha. Just slammed it right down on top of myself, turns out that's not good for drones. My most common cause of death was definitely hitting ceilings.
This is neat, good work!
Oh man. The graphics are stupid in the absolute best possible way - I love them, great style. I love his little courier hat. I laughed at the very first sound effect I heard. I love your music, great vibes.
I had a little trouble really getting the hang of the controls (on qwerty keyboard) so didn't go much beyond the first stage, but I had a smile on my face the whole way.
Major, major props to your team's artists. This is really beautiful and suitably atmospheric.
Solid work on the whole by your team.
Aw, the emotions meter. Cute game. I was having some trouble with the graphics jittering around a bit.
Ha, that was a lovely little nightmare. The music absolutely elevates the whole thing. Easy 5 for mood.
I kept trying to fly with an inverted Y axis and that did not go so well for me. Multiple times I'd forget and slam down when I meant to fly up, lol. Nevertheless, a payload was delivered.
I like the retro graphics! I got stuck on the level with the long spike wall on the right and the large pool of lava at the bottom with 1 tile island with the tip floating above it. If I got past the spike at the bottom of the left side drop, I fell into that lava pit, ha ha. If I avoided the lava, I hit that spike. Given the gap between them, this is on me I'm pretty sure lol.
Audio volume is a little inconsistent in a few places, mostly just really loud at the end of a few of the stages.
Congrats and good work!
Oh cool story! I like your use of the theme. Neat little visual novel game.
Man, I am a *terrible* pilot lol. I like the little space diner art, and the house in stage 2 was great, made me laugh.
That guitar riff hit me. Nice. I'm...pretty bad at this game, lol. Gave it a few goes, but never got too far. A me problem.
I agree with those who appreciated the box fort, that was fun. The whole aesthetic here really vibes!
Looks like your embed here on LD is broken, but the itch.io link works perfectly.
I like the painterly art style for the backgrounds, especially the first one with the big brush strokes! This is pretty chill, and the music suits the vibe perfectly.
Level checkpoints could be nice, so we don't have to start from the very beginning each time.
Cute graphics, I like the dog. Good color palette.
I was able to use the arrows to move left and right, but not up to climb the ladder. With what the other binds are, I agree with the above poster that full functionality on the arrow keys would be helpful.
Good work and congrats on your 2nd jam!
Hm, I feel like I couldn't switch floors as it calls for a side mouse button? My mouse has Left, Right, and Center/Scroll. No side button on this basic one, and none of the buttons I did have worked for it. So I didn't get to see what the other floors have to offer.
It would be good as @ellaris says to keep the last used object selected to allow another move, rather than needing to reselect it to move again, especially for items which can only move one tile at a time. Still getting the hang of swapping, but did make some deliveries of other items by moving the package next to the door and getting them swapped.
Congratulations on making and submitting your first compo game!
Gosh the zombies do get fast after a while, ha ha. I like the atmospheric lighting and music. I had a little trouble using WASD with shift - though to be fair this is due in part to a long-ago hand injury.
Congrats on completing your first jam game!
How could I not try a game with this premise? That is a **lot** of cute in a tiny package. The sprites are adorable and the little puppy's very sparse animations are still expressive, that little bounce. The game itself is a nice, short, self-contained story. I really loved this little game.
Thanks for adding the itch.io link as @slimefriend suggested!
Unfortunately your text/ui are pretty huge and don't really scale with the game. On fullscreen on a 1600x900 monitor (I know, I know) it's still a bit too large for the screen, and the scaled down version embedded in the browser has it even worse.
However, the game still played just fine. Cute, simple, and I like the play on the theme by preventing the deliveries. It's funny how after a while they'll get brave and attempt to deliver a pee-soaked box again if you fail to finish the, er, job. The faces on the little boxes actually made me laugh.
As a GMS2 user myself, I went ahead and downloaded the browser for you - and any other free GM users I'll encounter doing ratings.
Their policy since Opera bought them out to only allow free users to export to their bloated, proprietary, niche browser is pretty frustrating. It's terrible for hobbyists/jammers and newbies, and I think over time it's going to have a negative effect on the GM community and growth. It's not your fault.
If you need to remain free going forward, Godot's a good alternative. It's not **quite** as beginner friendly on the whole, but it's got a very solid tutorial and community ecosystem out there eager to help newbies out, and one of its big benefits is that implementing UI is just a breeze compared to GM.
Now as to your game!
It took me a little while to realize that I'm the truck! Then I realized what the indicators in the upper left meant, and I made Izzy and Norman dance. They're actually pretty good at dodging the attacks, so nice work on the enemy AI!
Definitely a patience game as you say ha ha.
Congratulations on your first Compo!
Aw, it won't load for me. Sorry. Often when an embedded version here won't load for me, a version hosted on itch.io works great. You might consider uploading it there and adding the link in your submission so it's an option for those who can't get it to load here so more people see your game.
The movement reminds me of a more responsive Solar Jetman! Suddenly I was a little kid again. The way the ship breaks and then "controls" afterward is pretty entertaining. It's a little weird to hit F5 to restart, but with a game jam's time limits sometimes things get sacrificed, I get it lol. The music's cool.