Signal search by notime4games 2026-05-11T22:49:19Z
I love this concept and I wish the game was longer. It made talking with NPCs really satisfying when you needed to tune radios to them
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → InfinityWhile
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | 59 | Signal | Signal Warp | jam | 2.75 | 2.67 | 2.89 | 3.07 | 2.82 | 2.19 | 2.34 |
I love this concept and I wish the game was longer. It made talking with NPCs really satisfying when you needed to tune radios to them
That was definitely interesting, it felt like more advanced battleships.
I reached 8 stage. I'm not sure if the problem is with my understanding of a game but it sometimes felt like I have not much of a choice and I just need to hope that enemies will be there where I'm shooting. Nonetheless I liked the simple graphics and variety of skills. But after some time I needed to turn off music, it was too repetitive for me.
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It had fun atmosphere and I like the aesthetic. It also started to be more fun when I understood the mechanics, and it basically reminds me of JRPGs' turn-based fights. And with that goes my suggestion that we need to be shown what demon/human we are currently managing as it wasn't clear to me what I'm doing at first with signals. It could be as simple as highlighting them during their round. Also I would prefer in-game tutorials / instructions over recordings but I understand that maybe time-constraint made it impossible to make proper tutorial or maybe you didn't want to overwhelm us with a lot of text. Other than that it would be great to have option to go back if you change your mind what you wanna do before choosing person or swing type
I liked the concept here, I can see it being nicely expended into great puzzle.
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As it stands I think I was mainly setting up monitors to the same, one signal to open doors, but I can imagine signals being needed to be added etc. Also despite it being short, with simple level design, it was still pretty fun and satisfying to play so good job. Nice music also probably helped in that
Not sure if game is endless but I did few rounds and had fun multitasking between trying to get the signal and steering the wheel correctly to not get into crash. Also I think it nicely captures the mood of drive at night, with its music, graphics and white noise. I realized later that you can hear music better if you get 750 on radio perfectly, it's kinda fun to me, that you can manipulate how much noise vs music you wanna hear
Not sure if game has end, I ended on day 10. Overall I like the mood of this game, to me it resembled a bit of papers please vibe. Also I liked clicker game in management game, it's kinda funny concept
That was nice, little puzzle, especially as it was surprisingly intricate, even on lvl 2. What I have problem with is like all other comments, 20 trains as target is a bit too much. I understand that it's probably about getting used to level and not just lucky getting the trains. But after leading many of the trains to their correct station getting accidentally crash and going back to 0 trains is just brutal. It could be slightly mitigated if there was button to increase trains speed to x2 so you could potentially get back faster. But I think decreasing target count would be good idea too, even if speed button was added.
And about music. It isn't that bad, I didn't mute it thru all my tries on lvl 3 and that can tell you sth. I mean it is pretty repetitive so it could get to the point of being annoying. But I also think the track fits the game nicely.
Oo, I didn't play snake in a long time. Not sure what **scramble** does but I enjoyed the new mechanic of matching 3 signals to get rid of them. It was quiet refreshing.
Music is also kinda fun to me but I'm not sure if it won't get too repetitive after some time. Maybe some button to turn it off just in case would be great.
There is also a problem with site sliding with use of **down arrow** (it doesn't do it with **S**). And I'm not sure if it doesn't start to get too fast to quickly. I think I would enjoy it slower for longer with more gradual increase of speed.
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The graphics, the concept, the puzzle were great! Sounds were also fitting but it definitely lacked some music. And also some animation or (particle?) effect when trains crash would be good too, to let you better feel the impact
Thank you all for feedback! There are actually 10 levels, two are very fast (6th and 10th) to change up the pace, but I admit that they actually too hard and a bit depended on your luck.
To help with reading the string, there is actually highlight that recolors digits that you've already got from the sequence. Unfortunately I messed up the contrast so it can be hard to differentiate between highlighted yellow digits and not highlighted white digits.
And getting signal perfectly was intentional to make it more challenging but it wasn't probably the best idea, as it feels more frustrating than anything
That was interesting idea for tower defense. I'm not sure if it wasn't a bit too overwhelming for me but maybe it's like others said, I would like the towers to be more responsive. I also wish I could move towers during waves (maybe some other Morse code for that? idk), as at day 2 and day 9 I didn't notice the opening of another line, and they wrecked me
That was pretty neat, relaxing atmosphere. I think others interpret signal as sth you need to rush into, so it was nice change of a pace. And music was pretty complementary in that, tho it stopped playing at some point.
For a long time I didn't play with any ciphers so it was also nice to do that again but I would recommend in ceaser page to remind player about how whole alphabet really looks like lmao. Also page with ascii didn't contain **space**, would be helpful if we don't wanna send players to look at wikipedia.
Other than that I would also make **enter** send the signal, and I think UI could be improved if notebook was moved away from the screen so we could better see the signal. OR if the intention is too not do writing and looking simultaneously, then I would move it more to the center to hide the screen better. Because for now it's in this awkward zone inbetween.
Pretty sure I reached the same signal as @wizard and couldn't figure out how to progress further.
Probably my favorite game this ldjam. I found bouncing circles on planets to be charming. But there's probably a bug, sometimes red planets when you lose don't get red circle around. I think it can be some issue with it being clicked or hovered just before losing?
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But overall, graphics and music complemented nicely this simple in concept but fun game. But for the length of it, audio was starting to get too repetitive. Maybe some variation in that would be needed?
Instructions where ok, they didn't overwhelm me but they didn't exactly prepared me for the first two levels, either. I think I understood mechanics after 3rd level, which isn't bad but imo short tutorial could potentially improve that.
And after I got it, I slowly started to get the hang of it and developing certain rhythm. So in that sense it resembled music games. It also reminded me the type of games where you need to remember sequences (of lights, for example). As here with each replay of the level you where slowly finding your own path with trial and error. Until you executed the remembered sequence perfectly. And it is fun aspect of the game! I also liked the freedom in this path creation, you could choose to follow different planet at the start, to go back, etc. Especially in later levels, after few failures, I was changing my approach, trying to go different way to maybe finally breakthrough.
I've reached 22 level, as the layout differs from the Deng's comment, I assume that it's endless game, it would be cool to somewhere acknowledge that.
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@divarium Well I didn't try to take hearts from them lol, I was shaking acorns for them and I assumed that squirrels are tamed when they had heart reaction to me when I came close to them, and I was searching for those that are escaping from me to tame next.
Tbf, my search for them wasn't super long but they do sometimes hang out in places I cannot reach, like bushes so I couldn't always quickly tell if it's one I didn't tamed yet. Like I said I didn't know about the flute then lol, knowing that it's much easier game so it's not really big of a problem.
I also wasn't sure but I did assume that hiding in the bushes is intended part of the game. Though it would probably look more intentional, if they looked more immersed when traversing them. Maybe like 2nd layer of leaves that would be on top of the squirrels, and would have leaves more sparse so we can still see them. Sth like that:
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Maybe my previous comment sounded unintentionally harsh but I really enjoyed this game. I enjoyed playing it with and without flute honestly. Without it, it was like herding them and it was pretty satisfying to tame and see that they no longer are escaping from you, and instead are greeting you with little hearts. I liked figuring out what to do and overall I like the mood of the game. It even inspired me to go out and look at the squirrels (from distance of course), unfortunately didn't found any at the time.
When I turned on the game I was confused with enigmatic starting sequence and then being thrown into gameplay without instruction. From reading game page more carefully, I learned that there is in fact rule list, I just didn't locate it yet. I think you could take a note from *Papers Please* here, and just start the day on instruction page, so player will be forced to read them. I like your way of showing the rules, quickly hovering over them. It makes it easy to re-check them when assessing the monsters. But if you planning to expand the rules more, you could think abt turning them into book with pages or sth like that.
And it took me a bit to understand those rules but I think it's fine, if you are going for players slowly figuring out how the game works. But to do it effectively, they need immediate feedback. They need to know if they weren't supposed to let that monster in, it cannot happen after the day ends (*Papers Please* prints you notice shortly after you messed up, with the info what you didn't account for). Actually I would recommend it even if rules were written more elaborately, because regardless of how many words we use, it won't make sure that player understood any of them. Well that said, I figured out how purple flags work (it's about disheveled hair/look) at the very last playthrough... with resetting few times first day to be sure of my assumption.
But I beat the game. And I enjoyed slow progression of in-game mechanics / rules across the days. Other than that, I appreciate the aesthetic and sound design, they definitely added to the mood and were worth the effort. Those sequences, starting and ending were also great even if I didn't understood the plot here.
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Not my type of humor but I find quiet charming voice acting (tho it quickly becomes too repetitive for my ears), and smiled at "Cappuccino Assassino".
Unfortunately game really badly lags with every shot while progress in activating towers (toilets ig) wasn't being saved and there was a lot of enemies to deal with, so I didn't go farther than 2 towers. I suppose the way would be to get more levels to quicker kill enemies, so you could have time to activate towers. But as it is now it lags too much for me to continue
I did both easy and hard. Though I'm not sure if hard isn't too hard? I'm writing that because this game is really about the signal but in hard mode it's actually a hindrance, I don't think I signaled even once without getting hit. But maybe that's just me
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Wow, that was really good puzzle. I really like going like breeze through levels until the last one in the column, and then slowly trying to piece out what you missed on previous levels to figure out the signal. And the last signal was so clever, !> reminder for me to look through all controls that games offer lmao
Also maybe I found bug: when you click **tab** in level menu, your game unfocuses and you need to click back with mouse. And I actually would like to have option to update my notes from there too, not only when I'm in the level
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I've played it before update! I remember that you really could feel the mood, how you are just a small critter traversing dangerous forest, and I have to say that update kept those qualities.
Also I'm so glad swimming was changed, it's much better experience now! But I think some regen would be great when you out of water, as I don't know if it's possible to gather all the acorns from water without dying. And I'm also not sure if it's intentional (maybe water is supposed to be poisonous) but squirrel still loses hp when it swims above water, like that:
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I like also other polish changes like faster owl and increased amount of acorns. And yeah persistent acorn count made it so much more satisfying
It's really cute game with great mood, I adored so much different areas with drawn different planets. And I liked diagonally moving platforms (rockets) but I think it would much improve game if player would move with those platforms. At some points game seems buggy with crates and those chasing you robots with heart monitors. But platformers are not easy to program, and especially not physics in such a short time. Also I think it's not always clear where is signal and that it needs so specific location (in lvl 2 I was stuck for a bit and almost gave up). Maybe a bit increased range of signal would improve that? Or better indication at what direction signal starts to increase? But I've got my message back so the game still works well ;)
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I can say that I've beat the whole game, I recorded all 13 ships that showed up. Probably the last one was the hardest as I had about 20 sec to ask all info and record it. I would appreciate if we got number of all ships that sailed, as I needed to count them on my own just before the end. Sth like: *"You've recorded 8/13 ships"*, would be enough. Also maybe you could get some points for recording just 1-2 fields for the ship? Because at the beginning noting any info isn't easy and you get no feedback that you did anything correctly, if you missed any field of the ship.
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At the start I definitely needed instruction that you gave to Yopox to know what to do. And to get hang of it I needed combination of pausing, screenshoting and noting on paper. But I quickly noticed that DEST/ORI locations are repeating so it didn't took me long to memorize all of them by their starting letters, and I was able to start doing it real time (without pausing etc). Also I could always get ship codes as they were written in my notepad already. This allowed me to "camp" for the ships, I would be: 1. Waiting as notepad updates and read the ship number there 2. Quickly go to flag tab, find letters of the ship and then add ORI to the end. 3. Look at waters to see what location ship hoisted, read abt 1-2 first letters to recognize name and memorize it. 4. Go back to flags, delete 3 letters, add DEST and hoist flags. 5. Look at ship and memorize DEST location. 6. Go back to flags, delete DEST and append ERVD. 7. Read number and then go to notepad. 8. Write all the memorized info. 9. Quickly switch back to flags and delete all of them to prepare for the next ship. (Maybe some button to reset all the flags, could be added there) 10. Go back to notepad to wait for the next ship.
Technically even without ID in notepad, I could just look at the ship and without much thinking repeat its flag sequence without really decoding it. Sooo maybe in some hard mode you could just make the 4th input field when you need to encode ship id on your own? Yeah after learning a bit game, it gets a lot of easier. But there is a learning curve, as you can read in other comments. Maybe dividing game into levels could fix that? Slower tempo on first levels, faster later. This would also allow you to change up locations every few levels, to keep it fresh.
Some Quality of Life improvements would be also key shortcuts, like **ESC** to turn off tabs, maybe **Z** or **X** to turn on flag tab or notepad, sth like that. I definitely appreciated that I could already copy and paste locations from input fields