Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → Ishisoft
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Category | Score | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 🥈 | 2013 | 26 | Minimalism | Princess Chardonnay in Bomb Kingdom | compo | Graphics | 4.77 | ||
| 🥉 | 2011 | 22 | Alone | Split Party! | compo | Fun | 3.89 |
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | Cm | Co | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2013 | 26 | Minimalism | Princess Chardonnay in Bomb Kingdom | compo | 41 | 3.96 | 3.93 | 3.52 | 3.15 | 4.77 | 3.14 | 3.47 | 32 | ||||
| 2012 | 23 | Tiny World | This Precious Land | compo | 6 | 4.26 | 4.04 | 4.08 | 4.29 | 4.51 | 2.78 | 1.97 | 3.60 | 54 | |||
| 2011 | 22 | Alone | Split Party! | compo | 6 | 4.00 | 3.89 | 3.74 | 3.63 | 4.05 | 3.41 | 2.42 | 2.54 | 2.00 | 28 |
Ishisoft leaves an average of 7.4 feedback comments each event.
Fun concept, I liked chaining coffees together to go super fast. I wanted a lot more left/right control though, I didn't feel like I had enough time to react to get coffee / dodge lava, so I just tried to get coffee when I could and not hitting lava was up to good luck. Consider trying out responsive controls with instant changes in direction so the player can weave through obstacles.
The ending looks fun, shame I didn't make it there!
Had a quick play ages ago but kept meaning to get round to playing the whole thing. The grappling mechanic is great once it gets harder later on, lovely stuff :)
Lovely lil' game! Gorgeous lo-fi artwork.
Fantastic mood in this! Shame about the couple of collision issues you mentioned but very enjoyable anyway. The audio especially is lovely.
Quite mindless but in a good way! At certain points it just hits you how ludicrous it is. :) Love the music too.
89 points!
Haha, this was great fun. I loved the Help app.
Apart from the graphical glitches others have mentioned this was nice. Reminded me a bit of Edge. The colour swapping stuff could make for some really tricky puzzles, hope you continue with the improved version!
Nicely presented, simple but tasteful. I enjoyed the gameplay too, I've played a couple of things similar to this before but this mixed it up more. Found I had to come up with different tactics to filter myself out from each of the 'enemy' behaviours.
Nicely done game! Love the graphics. The teleport mechanic is nice too. My only real issue was the enemies coming from behind; it's a bit cheap and killed me loads of times.
Fantastic stuff. I got a bit lost once it all opened up, I probably should have done the tutorials. The way the rules are all explicitly shown is ace though. Lovely music too.
Charming game! The platforming was a bit floaty, though I ended up appreciating that on the chasm section, as I didn't know if it had continue points or not. Only died once near the start before I figured out how to utilise the stealth.
Cute little game. I liked the jumping mechanic, there's some depth in there with timing the four flaps correctly. Could have done with more of an ending though :)
Beat the game! Died twice, level 24. Most enjoyable! Beat the final boss by spamming alternately with Dr Freeze and Blasty Jr. Didn't realise the lava was freezable, I just struggled through and swore a lot. :)
I didn't notice the oxygen either until I died once and looked at the comments. I did spend most of the game just staring at the distance value, but enjoyed noticing the surreal stuff floating around space. Bonus points for rainbow stars. :)
Not bad for four hours! Could do with a *little* polish obviously, but the puzzle mechanic is really nice.
We made quite similar games! I was even thinking of placing groups of blocks in mine, though I went for individual tiles in the end. I enjoyed playing it, a satisfying little puzzler. Love the subtle lighting and the rainbow blocks. Best is 3360!
Very compelling, I didn't collect all of the hearts but made it to the end. Cool little ending too. Nicely rounded game. :)
Was hoping for some climbing puzzles or something involving the iron blocks, but I think I just held up+right for the whole thing. Quite charming though, and I enjoyed talking to the people along the way.
Unfortunately it crashes while doing the procedural generation. Tried with openGL and directX.
Very cute, love the music. I yelled at 67 frogs.
Rather enjoyed this. I liked how the jump unlocked more of the environment - but I then found a massive stash of items that gave me all the abilities. I assume they weren't meant to be there?
Regardless I had fun exploring the rest of the world, and got all 6 secrets. :)
Quite fun building things and seeing what comes next!
The curved world is really cool, and the bulls are kinda scary. The flak cannon was my weapon of choice in the end.
Enjoyed what I played of this, the level designs did a great job of keeping things interesting. I like puzzle games where a few elements can be combined to create a good variety of puzzles.
Unfortunately I hit some sort of bug around level 23 (entrapment plus); I trapped the baddies and then the level ended, then it kept moving me to the next level every few seconds, then crashed shortly after. Enjoyable game though even so! :)
The puzzles involving luring the enemies to a certain spot were a bit slow, but excellent otherwise. Loads of variety. Moving the player back a floor is a tidy way of replacing death too.
Loved the robot's narration, gave the game a lot of character. I killed the final boss, though no-one was left alive. Poor lonely robot.
Took me a while to figure out what was going on in this, had some fun playing it once I had though. Sometimes I was able to sneak into a corner or something to survive, but sometimes it was a bit frustrating being surrounded by dots and feeling a bit powerless to escape.
I liked the idea of remembering the thought/dream/memory to continue, although eventually I started just waiting for the next word to appear in order to progress and I think I stopped taking in any actual meaning. I think I got through about 9-10 rooms before getting game over.
Nice game! I'm a sucker for puzzle games, and the mechanics tied into the theme really nicely.
I found the controls rather awkward; I think just pressing the Up / Down arrows to climb on or off the girl/ladder/ledge would have been easier to understand and play. Also it was a bit confusing when the guy would do a few movements in one frame - for example, climb onto the girl, climb onto a ledge, climb onto a ladder. Simple jumping animations would make it all feel a lot more polished and more playable - it's that kind of polish that I'd concentrate a little more time on in future, rather than new features (as you said on TIGSource). That's my personal preference though. I felt the game was an enjoyable length for me, for a 48 hour game.
The use of dialogue added a lot to the game, with some nice mood and humour. I enjoyed the ending too - a bit harsh on the guy since he didn't really have a choice. I was expecting a sort of triumphant walk down the tower rescuing all the girls. Your ending is more fitting with the theme though, of course.
The graphics were suitable but could just use a bit less grey! :)
Enjoyed playing through this. Quite atmospheric, and I liked the attempt and making the facility seem inhabited by real people instead of faceless scientists. The 1337 and kittens and stuff were a bit jarring though, I think it could do with more timeless humour to sell the futuristic setting.
The bit I most enjoyed was the room with the platforms leading down into the darkness. It worked well with the limited vision range.
The enemies had me stressing a bit, as they should do. Their introduction was a little confusing as I was more focused on reading the computer logs, and I assumed the noise was coming from one of the computers, then suddenly the robot was on top of me. The upcoming enemy could be signposted to the player better with a lot of blood and a suspicious long corridor, for example.
Nice to see a 48 hour game with lots of backstory text!
(copied from TIGS)
Lovely stuff. Surprisingly touching considering it's just a couple of blocks. The text and animation does a good job.
Gameplay-wise the puzzles were well-designed. Occasionally I failed a level by going on the red tiles, but it took me a bit by surprise. Quick animations when the blocks move between tiles, and an indication of one when it lands on a red tile, would make it clearer what was going on.
Just a small niggle though. Enjoyed it overall.
Brilliant stuff, really enjoyable bit of puzzling. A bit of music would have been nice but obviously 48 hours is a tough timeframe.
Very cute, lovely colour palette and sprites. The piglets are especially adorable.
Level three is a bit of a difficulty jump. The spikes are rather unforgiving, and the choosing of respawn points seems a bit random. It's also quite easy to drop items on the spikes which gets you a bit stuck. I spent ages trying to get through the level without stabbing myself, the piglets, or dropping the money into the spikes, but couldn't keep up the jumping precision. Sorry! I could see how to solve the level though.
Would love to see it expanded to focus more on the puzzling though. Nyan!
Interesting presentation of a poem, which would be nice to see taken further. Occasionally I didn't really get which order some of the words were supposed to be read in.
I didn't fall to my death on my first playthough, I always knew which direction I should be falling off the platforms. Not sure if the inclusion of a death mechanic is necessary though; if I had taken a wrong turn it would have been rather annoying and jarring to explode and return to the start of the poem. Would be better if it could be fully prevented, or handled a bit less extremely - fade to black and return to the last position where the player was standing safely, perhaps.
Nice puzzle mechanic. Took me about 6-7 levels to get to grips with it; I think I got caught up on "a puppy is happy if moving one square won't leave it alone" and forgot that the puppy should also be next to another puppy to start with. I felt it got easier, but also more interesting, once there were all three types of puppy in the puzzles. Good use of writing to provide a bit of interest and context, something I should adopt.
LD42 — Running out of space (1)
GRIDLOCKED by bradleypollard 2018-08-16T12:41:11Z ♥ 1
I enjoyed this! The last level is a real step up in difficulty but I think it was a good inclusion to showcase the complexity the game can achieve.
I'm not personally a fan of having a timer, I'd rather sit and ponder a solution rather than feeling rushed. This was compounded by the feeling of fighting the interface a lot of the time. I can see its value as a design decision though, to try and prevent the player from having time to plan the most space-efficient solutions.
There are some bugs and usability issues, and lots of scope for polish, which could turn this into a really satisfying game to play. Some things I'd love to see polished:
- Add output/input nodes on the source/target numbers to make it clear that wires can be connected to them. - Don't have a separate wire mode - I found it frustrating having to constantly toggle this on/off. Instead I'd allow wires to be dragged from the input/output nodes at any time. For this to work nicely the gates and nodes should highlight when the mouse is over them so it's clear what the result of the player's click will be. - Allow deletion of wires, maybe by right-clicking on them. As with the previous point, the wires should highlight when the mouse hovers them to indicate what will be deleted before the player clicks. The only way I found to delete wires in the current version was to add a gate to the wire, then delete the gate. - I think it'd be nice to leave the adjacent wires in place when deleting a gate, and if possible connect the wires up in the square where the gate was. - Make it clear which is the primary input node on the subtraction gates. It's not obvious which number will be subtracted from the other. (Same for division, also using a percentage icon is confusing for division) - The blobs that travel along wires could faintly display the value being carried by that wire. This may reduce some of the mental maths required, but would make more complex puzzles easier to keep track of. - Improve the visuals of the crossover gate so it's clear that one wire is bridged over the other. As it stands it looks very similar to the splitter gate so it looks like the wires are being split/combined in some way. - I'd like my whole palette of gates to be visible at once rather than having the scroll wheel. Removing the wire mode button, rotating the large gates to be 2x1 rather than 1x2, and scaling them down a little could help with fitting them all on the screen. - Make tooltips appear instantly rather than animating in/out, as the animation is very slow. Make the tooltips disappear when the mouse moves away. - Colour-blind friendly colours for input/output nodes
But yeah, love the idea, and excited for the possibility of more hand crafted levels. e.g. ones where you no longer have simple gates like addition, so have to get creative with multiplication and division. Thanks!