Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → Hruhf
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 48 | Deeper and deeper | Spin On | compo | 404 | 3.51 | 3.46 | 3.44 | 3.10 | 3.75 | 3.13 | 2.50 | 2.94 |
Ahaha this was a good experience. The sound was top notch and I liked the bits of 'fun' you threw in there, (i.e. dancing in the helicopter when told the controls) Like the person above said, the spacebar mash was a bit painfully long, but overall I enjoyed my time.
Firstly I'll say, yes the music made up for it, I had left the game loading in the background when it started playing, I then proceeded to leave it playing. (It's still playing while I write this) Now for the actual game, I quite enjoyed the concept of the multiple depths linking together so that you had to go up and down between the depths. Big fan of the subtle music changes too. While it wasn't very long, learning a new engine in the 2 days and staying healthy is a good achievement so you should feel accomplished.
Fun little game, the art direction was quite nice and the characters had charm to them. It seemed to run fine for me but, of course, don't take that as a reason to put aside the comments saying the opposite. Combat seemed pretty enjoyable to me, might have been better without the forward movement while attacking though, and some hit feedback of some kind would be nice. I think the light on the sword should be removed, I thought my game was glitching out because my screen was flickering until I noticed it was the light on the sword effectively flashing due to the animations making the sword fly about. I may have been dashing a bit too much. It also seems the VR plugin was left enabled (Unreal likes to enable it by default) so the game tried to connect to a VR headset on launch. Overall good fun little game. Nice work!
The art style was very nice, big props for that. Simple but satisfying gameplay, it was a nice touch to have the blobs colour coded to make it easier to discern your relative size. The audio felt kind of busy for me to fit with the aesthetics though, seems to just be me though. I.e. the sound effects were nice and so was the music but when both are going at the same time it was kinda distracting. It would have been nice to have some sort of indicator for the mouse as I kept losing track of it until I got used to the controls.
Nice, I really liked the atmosphere you made with the art style and music. It was very intuitive to play and I like how the lower health you got the harder you were to get hit. Took me a bit to realize it was my own bullets which were hurting me after bouncing around a few times, so I then tried to use the enemy's bullets against them but it didn't seem to work unfortunately. Managed to get to the end screen, but it felt like the big bad at the end was less difficult than another red I accidentally stumbled across which had a bunch of enemies around it in a relatively small area. Overall nice pleasant experience.
Lovely art, the edges seemed to jarringly jump up occasionally though. Gameplay was straight-forward, although there wasn't a goal other than a number.
As already mentioned, it's pretty difficult to progress at the start. Slow movement with fast draining air and the relatively sparse air pockets felt very difficult. If there was just one of those three I feel it could be a lot better, even slow movement and fast air drain could work if there were enough air pockets to sustain us underwater, or something like air columns so you're not forced to swim all the way back up. Like the guy above, I grinded out the air tanks but I didn't notice much of an improvement and then proceeded to die.
Everything else tho is pretty good. Everything underwater is obvious at a glance, the ship looks amazing, and the music fits perfectly.
I'm a sucker for complex games so this caught my eye. Once I got the hang of it it made a good background task while watching something. I liked the messages from 1 (cept the last), it gave it some nice character in the otherwise empty void. Love it. For things that could be changed, speed up being the down button got me a few times, might have been better the other way around (also rotating the probe graphic to match), and having some visual change would be nice, e.g. having the probe face your heading.
Very impressive rope physics, challenging game and not in an unfair way. This is just personal preference, but I would have liked a little bit more control on rope swinging without going all the way to the bottom. Some more obvious indication that the rope is about to break would be nice too, I saw that it changes very slightly but it's hardly noticeable. Overall very solid, I was very satisfied when I reach the chest.
This is a cool puzzle game, I will admit that I read the first line of your post on how to beat the last level and it immediately clicked, and yeah I think having an extra tutorial level would have been worth it, as the only thing that really caught me out was equilibrium. Not sure if I beat it though as when I returned to the start nothing happened.
Nice and simple fun. I'm not sure if you're supposed to be able to jump over some of the spikes. But I just assumed not, which forces you to pre-plan where you're going to land on the next floor which is a nice concept. I experienced a blank screen on the web version upon clicking options, but I managed to close by blindly pressing esc so no big deal.
This has a very nice design to it, both aesthetic and level design (i.e. the danger trench). Other than the previously mentioned things such as loud explosion and controls, I have a couple of nitpicks. - The VR plugins in unreal should have been disabled, as it tried to connect to my headset when I launched the game - It's silly how unreal enables them by default. - The chromatic aberration (color separation) in the main menu is a bit strong. - It's fine in game though, I think it's just the text making it stand out.
Neither of these detracted from the game itself though so good work.
Hahaha, this was good fun to play. Day 2 was very hectic, you really nailed that chaotic feel. Managed to beat it after a few attempts though, the reward was good.
Wow the polish on this feels very nice. Everything from how it looks to the way the menus animate.
Very nice solid game. I really liked the very evident progression via upgrading and the peaceful gameplay. A couple of things that would be nice would be: - A warning of some kind for over depth and air low. - Some sort of indicators for your storage. I frequently didn't realize I was full. - Some floating particles or something in the water so there's something to show you're moving when it's all just blue.
The controls felt a bit awkward for me (Why not the usual wasd?) I was only able to find a single sun fragment in the many minutes I spent aimlessly wandering. Not sure if I was doing something wrong, perhaps it could have been made more obvious to where they were for those directionally challenged such as myself. A pillar of light or something perhaps, something visible from a distance.
But the fact you made the engine yourself deserves commendation, keep it up man.
Very nicely made, huge probs on making your own engine. It was a very relaxing time, made even more relaxing by the semi auto aim and the pet collecting things for you. Sometimes I came across enemies that I couldn't 'kill' and I'm not sure if I was missing something since other ones died to mining. I had the maximum upgrade mining tool as well. I ended up just going around and avoiding them, managed to get the fabled "you win" trophy with a single heart remaining.
I do like the general look and feel, but as above, while unrealistic, I think having the player lit up might have improved the feel a little bit. Also this was a bit silly on my end, but I started playing using the mouse to shoot and felt it was strange that it didn't control your aiming. I then scrolled down and saw that you intended for us to use space to shoot which made it feel better, though it may have been better to be able to aim up and down in some way. Perhaps also aiming your flashlight.
Very nicely made and polished, once I found out you were supposed to leave the drill it was a lot of fun running off and coming back to the big hole left by your drill. I liked to just throw my fuel down and then jump into the hole after it. Just a few small things like it took me a while to find the "press E to pickup" sign as it somehow blended in, or how it wasn't immediately apparent you were supposed to leave the drill. Very minor in the grand scheme of things.
It was very nice flying around taking in the scenery and blowing up asteroids until the space police attacked. I'm not sure if I was missing something but I couldn't seem to get many resources? I think I do occasionally see something fly towards my ship and a number go up but I can't reliably spot them.
Nice short little game. The controls are a bit strange but I got used to them mostly. Perhaps having the sword swing using the mouse would be more intuitive, either by movement or straight up it points where you aim. The camera seems a little bit too close, I couldn't see enemies that were attacking me from below. Good job though! It was entertaining while it lasted.
It would be nice to have a bit more information, i.e. the goals and how things worked. For example it took me a while to work out you needed to use forage on the top row of tiles for it to work. I think a different appearance for the queen would have been nice, if even a pallet swap. I accidentally sent her out to forage but luckily she returned. Not sure about the goal, I just kinda dug straight down and nothing much happened. I'm guessing you ran out of time before you could implement much more? A good start though.
Neat little mini-game. Can't tell if I suck or if the hit range is slightly offset from the nail though. Probably the former.
It was good fun! I don't know if it's cheese but I basically covered my (albeit zoomed in) screen in marines and a few APCs and it seemed to work a bit too well. When the BioBomb detonated the only button that worked took me back to the main menu, so I don't know if there's more than one 'level', but I enjoyed what I played. Overall, experienced a couple of bugs (hehe) but overall good job!
Nice take on the theme. It was good fun, but maybe not challenging enough? I'm not sure if there's an 'end' as I made it through to 10:30 before I stopped trying. Perhaps it could have been better to split the game-play into "nights" which pass by quicker but give a distinct itemized point of progress, and then you can make the difficulty sharply increase between each night. Sound and art were on point though, the ringtone put a smile on my face.
This is very nicely made. My stupid brain keeps seeing the trolley as a house though which has an even funnier connotation. Some of the clues didn't really make sense to me though, I only really linked them to the person by dying a number of times and working it out that way. Not sure if that was intended? I had fun trying to memorize which clue went with which person though so there's that. Good job!
Thanks all for your comments! I'm glad everyone likes the movement, I'm pretty happy with it. @erik-bermudez - Thank-you! I felt everyone would go the dig deeper route so I went the opposite. @lorwon - Hopefully it was still playable, I didn't have time to add a settings menu. It's possible to change the graphics settings in the ini files, but it's pretty hidden away. @nigeynige - Yeeeeah it's pretty hard, I'm sure you managed to kill a few, it's just not shown particularly well. I've updated the post with some tips for playing to try and make it easier for everyone.
@verygenuinecraze @digitaldude555 Thank-you for the feedback, the missiles are indeed one aspect I wasn't happy with, the enemy missiles are re-coloured player missiles so it was difficult to balance. In hindsight I should have just sucked it up and made them two distinct objects, as well as making it more gratifying when you destroyed an enemy, instead of the slow delayed death animation.
@mehul @maximbegunov Hahaha, thank you, I was wondering how long it would take for someone to mention the show.
I agree that it's pretty easy to be overwhelmed and be stuck in a losing spiral, and there's no real way of getting out. It probably would have been better to unlock the drill earlier as it's a very effective way of clearing large groups, and at the moment, it's very hard to get to the depth where you unlock it.
@matterlinx @jose-bonilla Thank-you for your wonderful feedback. @robowarrior1982 Wow, I don't know how I didn't even consider adding weaker enemies ahaha, thank you! Yeah, the enemy death explosion is pretty pathetic and miss-able. @copito That's a great idea! This along with making the enemy deaths more obvious could be interesting. Thank-you!
Hey guys, I've uploaded a few fixes to a couple of the more major issues, this should make the game much easier. Also there's a Linux build available now.
Changes: - Player missile drills will never miss, and travel much faster. - Antis now explode immediately when killed, instead of after the death animation. - Made anti death explosions more noticeable. - Antis now decrement their counter immediately when killed, instead of after the death animation. - Added basic pause menu.
@dragonzbw Thanks for giving it a shot! In order to fire, were you holding the button or repeatedly clicking it? I didn't put any indication for fire rate as you fire as quickly as you can click, with holding intended to be a backup. You do need to be looking roughly at an enemy to lock on though. Though for ergonomics sake, maybe I should up the depth 0 hold fire rate to be faster. The + and - indicators are for objects larger and smaller than you, but that system didn't get fleshed out.