MEDIUM by SaintHeiser 2015-04-21T18:01:00
This is fantastic, favorite game I've reviewed.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → huminaboz
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | Co | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | 42 | Running out of space | 👥 | Proto Dash | jam | 34 | 4.13 | 3.88 | 3.79 | 3.48 | 4.57 | 4.08 | 2.88 | 3.85 | |
| 2018 | 41 | Combine 2 Incompatible Genres | 👥 | Someone Is Wrong On The Internet | jam | 151 | 3.92 | 4.01 | 3.60 | 3.53 | 4.26 | 4.19 | 4.18 | 3.93 | |
| 2017 | 40 | The more you have, the worse it is | 👥 | Deckest Dungeon | jam | 325 | 3.68 | 3.43 | 3.24 | 2.84 | 4.70 | 3.37 | 2.94 | 3.62 | |
| 2017 | 38 | A Small World | 👥 | Skylands | jam | 126 | 3.84 | 3.56 | 3.53 | 3.35 | 4.30 | 3.78 | 2.58 | 3.48 | |
| 2016 | 35 | Shapeshift | Ro Sham Bot | jam | 199 | 3.64 | 3.27 | 3.03 | 3.95 | 4.29 | 3.00 | 2.52 | 3.10 | 65 | |
| 2015 | 34 | Two Button Controls / Growing | Reach | jam | 508 | 3.33 | 2.92 | 3.50 | 3.11 | 3.75 | 3.74 | 3.32 | 71 | ||
| 2015 | 32 | An Unconventional Weapon | Killing Time | compo | 884 | 2.80 | 2.61 | 3.14 | 3.77 | 2.94 | 2.45 | 64 |
This is fantastic, favorite game I've reviewed.
Nice art and gameplay feels pretty fluid for a gamejam game. Love the Birdman inspired soundtrack.
Cool mechanic and fun to play/solve puzzles.
Haha, that was fun.
Fun to play and good pacing to introduce mechanics. Not sure about theme alignment.
Fun to play, the trail meets the theme. Could be expanded into further gameplay features that depend on the trail for navigation.
"Ooooohhh :D "
While the weapon is pretty conventional, the enemy certainly is not. Top notch graphics. You gave me the giggles.
This is a really fun mechanic
That mug catch and combo is surprisingly awesome.
Spot on with the theme. Nice graphics too.
Very impressive. Double nailed the theme. Cute fun art. Audio and art fit together well. Feel good. Feel real good.
Love the amount of level design you were able to produce in the given time period. The little story bits were a little off-track, extraneous. Five star for innovation.
Love the art, reminds me of Ogre Battle just a tad. Lots of detail to the tutorial. I'm still a little confused on the gameplay though.
Grabbing aliens made me smile big time. Great use of two button mechanics. Reminds me of that NES game where you're a cool dude in a sports car avoiding cops and picking up babes. (name escapes me)
Loved the sense of mystery and evilness.
First try first prize, amirite?
Love the graphics.
Great tongue-in-cheek commentary on the side quest/main quest dichotomy of RPGs
Those cut scenes and voice actings are adorable. Good mechanics. (Beatable too)
Love it. Great use of the two button controls. Fantastic idea, you could turn this into a larger production.
Haha, this is great. QWOP 3D. The sound is great too, really goes with the atmosphere.
Fun, matches the theme, and innovates!
Love the minimalism. The look and feel are pleasing and I love the behavior of the circle that slams into the wall. Would love an increasing difficulty version!
@heliosStudio I didn't expect anyone to really play it that long, so I'm glad you got that far, haha! That's a good point though, I wonder what it'd be like if there was a timer too.
The narration at the end was a pleasant surprise, great idea!
Love the level of variety that you had time to put into this game. Tons of satisfying booms!
This is a fun, innovative game and matches the theme well, great job!
Love the concept of four different modes. Had an "aha" moment when I realized it!
Really big learning curve, but once the flowstate kicks in, it's a lot of fun. With a little elbow grease, this prototype could be turned into a really interesting game.
This game is cute as a button. I wore the rainbow beanie. Then it made me wet my pants.
Very relaxing and fun - good audio sync with the mood too.
Great use of story!
Love the story aspect, I was just chomping at the bit for the next piece. Art is great too.
Feels like you tried to accomplish too much in a small period of time. It's hard to figure out what to do or what I'm supposed to be doing - might pull back on the features and put more effort into helping the player understand what's going on next time.
I like getting different items as gifts for higher scores.
Love the graphics!
Help screen was a bit too much and didn't tell me how to control the game. Might try just putting the controls and then telling me what the powerup does when I get it. The bigger version of the powerup in the help screen is great. It'd be cool if the powerups lasted longer or had more of a permanent effect.
This is a very interesting take on the whole match the same colored blocks game. One major thing though, the time limit doesn't encourage a sense of strategy, so you're more likely to just spam click to get to the sugar rather than use the adjacent colored blocks mechanic. Maybe it could cost sugar to clear blocks instead to make the game more puzzle-like?
This game hits the small world theme for sure, but there's a missed opportunity here to do more storytelling about that small world rather than feel like I'm sitting and waiting. Or perhaps that's the point!
I was uncertain of the goal because I could hold down spacebar to launch the rocket. It's funny to launch it a little and see it crash back into the planet. I thought maybe I could try to hit the satelites but the spinning camera and rocket control are way too difficult.
Perfect score, loved it! The only thing I really wanted was a way to go back through an exit after I accidentally stepped into it. Get's really interesting towards the end, can tell you were just having fun with it.
The music ties this together well. Would have been neat to have stuff inside the globe to rustle up.
The intro is fantastic where you see the depth of art of the small world as you zoom in. The layered handdrawn art is a fantastic touch. The walking speed starts to grate on the nerves after awhile when you've passed the same thing several times and you just want to go faster, maybe a simple speedup button. Really impressed with the amount of content you were able to implement in the time period. The music doesn't match the feel of the planet and starts to get really competitive because the background piano never changes - maybe something more fantasy oriented instead of light-hearted?
Definitely liked the minimal cubic style. The difficulty ramped up waaay too quickly to be humanly possible to defend, however.
Nice and cheeky. Could use a little more forecasting and not have the game speed up so quickly.
Sort of like a mysterious diorama builder. Or like a Sim City world tile randomizer. I guess Sim Earth would be more appropriate. Were there plans to have more of a gamey layer? Like help people living on the planet?
Very cool. The concept of the achievements made this much more fun to explore, as well as teaching and giving direction. Had issues with the interface overlaying things I wanted to see and trying to look around but could only ever seem to zoom in on one tile. Basically I always felt restricted from seeing what was going on.
Super cute but also super confusing to understand!
Very amazing. Great art, and funny. Was a little too forgiving, but I'm not complaining!
Love the idea of the four different styles of overcoming challenges, but the control style could use some work. Pressing the same key to have different effects, especially while trying to use WASD to control your character can feel like a game of finger twister. You may consider using the keys as a toggle and the other hand as activate, like enter or a mouse click.
Funny, especially the lyrics in the intro. Might be cool to add a system to win levels or something to that effect.
Fantastic music and sound effects. Great art. Fun gameplay and amazing how much content you fit into this. My biggest issue was the zoom in/zoom out thing and trying to right click on the resources. I felt like I spent too much time standing around waiting for production barrels to float by and missing them when I click on them. I also mostly just want to stay zoomed in because that's how the game looks the best and feels like you know most about what's going on. The interface could use a little more design and UX, but definitely good within the confines of a gamejam. It feels like you have a really good game here, would love to see more polish.
That was fun. It actually seemed more fun to try and cheese the level than to figure out how the baby heads wanted to be rotated. Would have been nice to keep the baby heads to a minimum and have an alternative piece for the inbetweens. That last level was infuriating - too many baby heads! Good job overall!
Very awesome! The only problem I encountered was running into a rock the moment carrot mode ended. Maybe a heads up system of some sort?
I played on Mac and there were a lot of issues with the game freezing or not updating mouse position. Especially in between waves. That said, it's fun to try to get your score higher to see what the new weapon upgrade is going to be and what new types of enemies there will be.
Clever mystery game. I could sort of guess my way through the answers, so maybe a system to prevent that, but that sounds too complex for a game jam. Enjoyed the triangle world.
This music is AWESOME! At first I thought the cards were arbitrary because they looked like the design of a back of a card. Would love to see more options to strategize with your cards.
That was super fun for such a small game! The feedback was great as well and really helped me know what was going on. Maybe put in a leaderboard!
The zooming in to see to aim and zooming out to find missiles was cool, but there were a lot of times where it felt impossible to shoot one missile and get to the next one on the opposite side of the planet. Being able to add towers is a cool features. On Mac the controls sometimes wouldn't work for a period of time.
Game design-wise, the gameplay mostly encourages running around and random clicking until something happens, but the sense of intrigue makes you do it anyway. Might consider something like a second mechanic to curb the random clicking and add a little more thoughtful random clicking :D
Need to know the controls - could put them at the beginning or in the description text. Might try making the player look more obviously different from the other shrimp so that when you first start you immediately identify who you are controlling. Also could give feedback on the food you collect so you know you're eating it. The music changing near the predators is great.
Great intro, great art, and the music is spot on with the direction of the game. Everything is set up super well. The problem is that the gameplay with the shooting is sort of weird and took me forever to figure out - I started just hitting random keys until something good happened and then tried to figure out what I did. Also, I was stuck in the store for a really long time hitting keys trying to find the exit until I realized I could scroll down. The round planet is great, but I'm unsure what I'm protecting - the door or the mural and why would I leave one for the other? You've got a great setup here, just needs more experimentation and work on the gameplay!
Should mention which platform your game is for.
Love MUDs and so I automatically love this. The exploration is fun as well as the sense of "Ohh, I should go find something to solve this". There's a lot of hidden commands, however, like "Light Lantern/Candle" and "Wait" and "Press". It is sort of weird that it says it's too late to turn back but you can immediately leave.
You might want to turn graphics/audio off on your ratings.
I did't realize there was a timer until I lost - could put that up on the screen. And maybe a way to know how many flowers I need to win. Maybe you could expand this game idea by studying how bees find pollen and how they see and make some cool visual effects to help guide you to your victory.
Hey, that's sort of fun to jump around. It feels like you have a good starting movement mechanic for a game - now just need to wrap a game layer around it.
This is the start of a really good idea, you should expand on this.
Should mention what platform your game is for in the description.
Get out of my way stranger, I have boredom to alleviate! The movement sound effect is way too strong.
Could use a quick key to see the city view and maybe have it transparent so I can see how it aligns with the underground. Definitely didn't need to let them out of the new underground city. Interesting concept - would like to see this more fleshed out.
Awesome concept, love it. Definitely took some time to figure out what to do. Maybe start with more pixels to play with while you're trying to figure out what's going on. Or introduce new build options as you get to certain numbers of pixels. I know I wanted more information on things over time, so maybe introduce help text as you go.
Took me awhile to realize that I couldn't shoot from the front but I think you made it to where you start looking from the side to hint at that.
The world getting smaller is a great, simple mechanic. The controls are a little difficult and it's sort of confusing how the player gets stuck in some areas. Would definitely work on the controls a bit more.
I sort of felt like I was being held hostage to get the gun, but I did. Lots of waiting. Maybe if the game didn't require you to click "okay" to keep it going it'd be great. Maybe more multitasking than sitting and staring at phone while playing. Super cute and funny, but now I don't have a yard anymore.
I dig the objectives giving me some direction. But I wasn't exactly sure what I was doing. The speed/slow down button was super confusing until I clicked it enough times to see a difference - maybe better button feedback. Still something fun to it but after awhile I was just hitting random buttons and clicking hoping I was winning.
When I first started I thought I was moving the ship in the opposite direction of the cursor and tried to dodge bullets like that. Then I realized I was dumb, but the tutorial level had the leeway to succeed once I figured out what was going on. Good game feel over all!
Love how the space bar ties into the mechanic!
I dig this game a lot. Would have liked some better instructions in the beginning, however. Once I got a hang of things the hooks started to dig in.
@minibobbo This is excellent feedback, thank you! I'll have to investigate the mouse position issue. As for the depth issues, I somehow only noticed a small problem once during the jam and my sleep deprived brain thought it was endearing and didn't investigate. Turns out, I had depth completely inverted for everything.
@rob-cigna Whoa, I didn't know you could charge while the title card was up. You found a speedrunning hack! Thanks!
Cute graphics, great music. Good feel when playing. The mashup might have felt a little lacking in the Dark Souls department if it wasn't for the roll. Switching between plants mode and fight mode is neat.
Well... of course it's badass flying around as a skeleton in a chariot powered by a unicorn hunting throwing electric spears at sky whales.
That A and D system for running is great. The moment it sunk in that the sound effect was for a foot landing I got the metaphor. I sucked at identifying birds, however.
Loved the graphics music and polish per usual. But it sort of felt like compared to a Sim City type game it was less about building and more about fetch quests. There's a beautiful concept inside here, though.
This is a really fun game. The controls feel polished and the metroidvania aspect is great. The theme is slightly lacking, but still fun to kick the ball around. There's some areas where the difficulty spikes randomly. But overall a good time.
That dive made it all worth it.
I love the characters. I did feel like I needed more to do to have control over my success. I spent the first couple of days clicking around trying to see if I could do more, might add an instructions thing up front.
That dialogue cracked me up.
Very interesting. Did seem a bit random at times if I was going to spell out the right word. Got a little behind at first because I was thinking it might be a letter matching game or something until I realized it was straight up Tetris. There's a lot of potential here.
Oh, I forgot to mention that I love the music!
I felt like I was being punished at first, but then speedrunning sense kicked in and saw the time savers. Satisfying to win and think about how you could have done it faster. You highlighted the key feel of speedrunning, good job.
Excellent application of the mashup. Nice touch with the music change with the color. I like how rotating the square piece actually means something now. Gotta dock the innovation for being straight up Tetris though, but the combo was good, so it cancels out.
Really needed something to show the controls when I went in.
Well that was super fun. Some of the interface was a little confusing as to what it did and had trouble figuring out how to regain mana. But great innovation and you nailed the theme. Impressive how much polish was done on the rpg mechanics in the given time. Great job.
Love the art!
Might try a system of increasing the complexity and difficulty. Like only starting with one utensil and one room to explore then slowly adding on.
Good mood to this. I love the idea of not having enough moves left so you plow your way home. "GET INSIDE THE HOUSE!!" "I CAN'T MOVE, I NEED TO PLOW".
@been Leveling up increases your upvotes (damage) and max popularity (hp). Enemy level increases their max hp and damage as well, but more damage than hp and they level faster. So the damage you take goes up as the levels go on. I had a system of advanced buff selection after a level up, but decided to polish the game more instead, I think it was a good tradeoff. After the jam I'll make the game get harder faster and make level ups have a more noticeable effect. Thanks for the feedback about seeing the opponents! I should put in an intro delay before they start arguing. And maybe even a caption bubble of like "Space Wars is a terrible movie!".
@PonchoGuy That was great to see your reaction to playing the game, thank you for streaming it! You had me lol-ing at Wedding > Cheese.
One tiny thing was that I was confused when I used all my moves, but didn't beat the level and nothing happened. Might pop up a restart screen at that point.
You made some really smart decisions regarding the mechanics of the game, such as the attack+drain. Would have been nice to have a shield card for when you know the enemy is diving at you, but the ability to jump and land on enemies is a great touch. Being able to jump and slowly land is a great touch in general. The art is good, especially the characters, but the color was a little too red overall. The FF7 music is great too, but considering the turn-based nature of the game, something a little less action-oriented might have worked better. Overall very fun, I really enjoyed it!
Very well done, especially for the time available. The post processing effects are a very nice touch. There's a nice element of originality in the gameplay mechanics. The beginning could have a bit more refined difficulty curve - putting the stone block one piece lower to give the noobs time to get a feel for the mechanics without as much cognitive overhead. Once there starts being more pieces, you sort of have to start writing it down. I'm guessing you need to be able to build a mental construct around how the puzzles work first before you can internalize it easier. Perhaps there could be some sort of helpful planning tool, but that might detract from the purpose of such a puzzle!
This is a really cool idea - there's a lot of potential here for a second version of this game, I encourage you to keep going with this!
Darn, I was so about to jump on the audio rating. The mood gave me tingles. I feel like this is one of those games where "fun' isn't really the right category, it's replaced with something else. Like the equivalent of rating a slow piano song in a category for rocking. Anyhoo, amazing art, you've got my attention. I'm amazed at how fast you put that together.
PS: be sure to return the favor and rate other's games too!
Cool idea to pick your path for your answer.
Tearing up your house while playing is super funny. Enjoyed the multitasking mechanics, too.
You did a good job making sure this plays smoothly. Loved the aspect of knocking bits off the tetris blocks to make them fit your needs.
A fantastic game. Great retro music and graphics. The mashup is done tastefully. It's fun to play and overcome challenges and play with extents of the mechanics. I found a speedrun strat somehow by pressing down in breakout mode and passing through walls to the right, used it to get past one of the breakout sections.
Getting a major SMT feel from the music. And a bit from the way the perspective works. Pretty awesome overall. I kept wanting more fast typing parts after those rhythm sections.
Amazing art. Good job with the theme but sometimes felt like it was a bit forced, like there needed to be a little extra something to fully pull it off. But I love how it came out and it's fun to play. Would put more of a learning curve up front because it's a little overwhelming all at once. Maybe I missed it, but it could use an instant drop button too. Oh yeah, and nice touch with the blocks squishing the bad guys if you pop it directly on them.
Felt a bit tedious moving around looking for players that hadn't gone yet. Cool mashup, big ups for that.
Some good comments here summed up some of my thoughts. Nice menu control. Prevent card spam. Great concept, love the thought behind it - really think this could be a super fun game and encourage you to follow up on it.
Awesome. Lots of fun. Once I realized you could click the obstacles, it was on.
Dig that art style big time.
Not sure if I'm supposed to not know that I had evidence to hide before the game started and I'm just forgetful or what. Flailing goofy hands around is funny though.
Really cute graphics.