Abandoned by Noel Berry 2011-12-18T23:26:00
I was really impressed by this, especially for a 48-hour project from a young developer! You're really talented, great job with this game!
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → IQpierce
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2012 | 24 | Evolution | Schrodinger's Kittens | compo |
I was really impressed by this, especially for a 48-hour project from a young developer! You're really talented, great job with this game!
I haven't wanted to shoot a dog so much since Duck Hunt. :)
All right, a serious review. I got both endings btw, though it took me 3 tries. Spoilers below.
- The first music track was okay (definitely not great); the second track was quite poor IMO. However the fact that the music changes to a more somber track when you lose the dog, is a nice touch.
- It took me 3 tries because I didn't realize that putting the treasure/scroll onto the pedestal would mean letting the dog go free. The significance of this was unclear... obviously it's something I learned, and maybe that was your intention.
- My biggest criticism is that there really seems to be zero "gameplay" in the sense that the only interesting decisions are "do I go up, or right"? The one potentially interesting decision in the game is whether the dog lives or I do; but again, I'm not even aware of that decision until after the first playthrough. In other words it's just not very deep as a "game", it's just navigation of a maze and that's all.
- The fact that you had two endings was nice and not done enough. The emotional impact of them is well-done - the dog running away with the bone is pretty droll.
- One big flaw: at the start of the dungeon I had access to a button, but couldn't actually press it. The dog and I jumped on that button for a while. It's confusing and I'd imagine it could have been easily avoided (put another locked door in front of that button until the button can easily be used).
- One good thing you did was player teaching, making sure that they learned to use the button before proceeding; and the button themselves "afforded" pushing and being jumped on - good design choices, all.
- No bugs that I saw or anything like that - which is good for a game made on an LD timeframe. Keeping it simple was a good decision - better a game be too simple (but complete) than too ambitious (and buggy/incomplete).
Overall I give this a 3/5. Good effort - and probably better than I'll do whenever I finally dive into an LD attempt of my own...!
Oh, so I am an idiot and didn't realize "real" voting is available only to people who made a game - I was unable to participate but thought I'd go around and randomly review people's games as my participation. Well I'll leave my review here but FYI you should know it's not contributing to your "real" score. Which is a fair system when I think about it - like I said, who knows whether I could do this well myself!
Great feedback, the suggestions were all things I wanted to explore ... Maybe I will someday.
diki, yeah, I apologize for even mentioning Zynga. FWIW I was just trying to get more than 3 comments/feedback? But there are better ways to do thy than trying to capitalize on a completely unrelated notoriety. LD is pretty close to a meritocracy - the game is all that matters. And to be honest I don't and to be known as the Zynga guy. So point taken re: that over-beaten horse. :)