Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → James Beninger
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 50 | Delay the inevitable | 👥 | Panic at the Museum | jam | 488 | 3.68 | 3.63 | 3.40 | 3.78 | 4.08 | 3.38 | 3.16 | 3.41 | |
| 2020 | 46 | Keep it alive | Sitbot 5000 | compo | 797 | 3.11 | 3.04 | 3.02 | 3.76 | 2.26 | 1.94 | 3.61 | 3.10 | ||
| 2019 | 45 | Start with nothing | 👥 | Nothing Everything | jam | 39 | 4.19 | 4.26 | 4.11 | 4.05 | 3.99 | 3.64 | 4.33 | 4.04 |
James Beninger leaves an average of 15.7 feedback comments each event.
Nice variety on the animals. It felt good to see a new one slide in that I hadn't seen before, and stopped it from feeling too monotonous. It's also a good difficulty curve. You start out thinking "huh, this is pretty easy" and end up thinking...not that.
Really enjoyed that. It was compelling and took up more of my time than most jam games. I can see the concept expanding nicely into a full game.
This has a ton of content for a compo game. The in-game help was appreciated, but in general the minigame goals were intuitive. My main complaint is a lack of feedback. I had trouble telling how well I was going on any individual minigame and whether I was making any progress. The difficulty was also a bit high (let's face it, a lot of us are playing 5 games a day and don't have time to master all these new mechanics), but that's really only a criticism in the context of the jam.
The fact that you got a soundtrack and full sounds effects (and all sounding good!) done in time is very impressive.
This is incredibly polished for a jam game, particularly the music and voice acting. Great take on the theme, and the acting and dialogue really make it come alive.
Fun little game. Is it possible to kill the big guy? I tried twice and failed. If you want to add some simple sounds next time, I used sfxr in my game, and it worked great (I mean, it worked great for me. Not so sure for the people listening to it :)
Contrats on making a finished game! It's a simple one, but it works fine. My main comments (moving along walls and the abrupt end) are already taken. I'd also suggest compiling for HTML5 in the future. It's an easy way to get more eyeballs on your game, since it works in all systems and is a bit easier to start up. Just change the target from Windows to HTML5 in the upper-right corner before building.
Agree that the Start arrow needs to be controlled by the keys and not the mouse, but I understand going for the quickest solution with these time constraints. It's a great implementation and the controls feel good. It's difficult, but I never felt like my deaths weren't my own fault. I love the extra boost off walls/the ground. It saved me a few times, and is also a neat trick to save fuel. One other request: Could we get a "dump all" button? I find the feeding is often just a skill-test in how hard I can slam the spacebar before I fly past the drop zone.
I couldn't get this working past the intro screen in multiple browsers - tried all the keys and the mouse. Am I missing something?
(Edit) I WAS missing something. If it's not full-screen, the text gets cut off. (Edit2) Nope...controls still don't work. I'm not sure what's wrong.
I liked the hack mechanic, and the hidden resource-management game where you have to decide whether you spend a lot of energy to farm the sentries or a small amount of energy to simply destroy them.
Incredible mood and audio. The graphics are also perfect for this type of game. What tools did you use to make the sounds?
There's definitely a core of a game here. It needs some balance (it felt too easy), but the gameplay was straightforward and I wanted to keep playing.
I'll just echo what others have said here. It felt very random playing through, and the game ended abruptly. Nothing a few quality of life updates wouldn't fix. Stat bars, as someone mentioned, and some indication of when the game was getting close to an end. Great creativity and variety on the cards!
Really creative combination of 3D platformer and golf. I think if you threw some time at really polishing the controls, this game could really shine. But obviously it's more important to get it done :) Great job on providing a variety of levels to show off the game as well.
Great little game. The graphics really set the mood well. My one complaint is the minigame continued after I'd gotten all the items, so I was stuck waiting until the minigame was over.
Really well done. I can think of a million quality-of-life features that would be nice, but for a jam game - especially a compo - the core is strong.
That's a nice, clean graphics style. One minor complaint about the key bindings: having WASD and Ctrl at the same time make it easy to accidentally close a browser window in HTML5 mode (with Ctrl+W).
I love the simple, clinical graphics style. Very easy to see what's happening.
Might be worth updating the description to include the vaccine and nurse/doctor powerups. Took me a while to figure out how it all works.
Wow. This is a perfect jam game. Deceptively simple and fun to play. I played for a lot longer than I'd expected.
Only note of criticism - I'd like a quick-restart button for when I die. I kept having to take my hands off the keyboard and reach for the mouse.
Seeing the asteroids a bit earlier might be nice, but right now the speed and field of vision feel perfectly balanced to be punishing but not impossible.
Good simple clicker. I'm a bit disappointed that when I reduced my Hit Requirement to zero, my eyes didn't burn a bright golden colour and I didn't slowly rise into the sky surrounded by a golden glow, consuming the universe with my infinite divide-by-zero gold, but maybe that's just me.
This is a perfect jam game. It's small, finished and polished, and executes the idea very well. I was actually a bit surprised at how well the story-to-memory technique works, particularly after the draining experience of participating in a jam.
Also, I got to label a hot air balloon "the will of the proletariat", so that was fun.
I like the take on tower defense where you have to manually grab parts of your enemies. It would be nice if the different parts affected the tower stats (maybe they do, but it felt like it was just the quantity that affected the towers)
Hey, it's an achievement just to complete a thing in such a short timespan. Good job. I can see you've got the core of a game here and it's a shame you didn't have a chance to polish it.
Great minimalist choice of controls for a short development cycle. More goals would have been great, but this demo presents the concept very well.
I'm a sucker for this type of exponential resource-management game. I can see a number of ways to expand this into a full game. The ship selection at the start is a bit sparse, particularly if you get spammed with combat ships. It would be nice if the appearance of combat ships was delayed by a few minutes. The graphics and sound are great for this type of game.
mfw you introduced the concept :-|
Have full marks for theme, you bastard
Charming. The artwork and music work really well together.
It's fun to watch. I'm not sure if I'm missing something, but it feels like there's nothing to do other than click to keep adding stars. This might be a nice screensaver if you just added stars at a regular pace.
Good foundation of a card game here. The gameplay itself is fairly simple at this point, with primarily damage/healing cards, with a handful of mana. Also, once "Everything" is unlocked, it's barely a game at all, since you can just pick "Enemy gets nothing" every single time.
I also ran into the main screen bug where "Everything", ironically, does nothing.
For a compo, this is a great amount of content and mechanics.
Too good. I have to stop playing it now and that saddens me. This game is very addictive and I'm blown away by the variety of objects that are working really well together.
Not too much to add. You've got a solid magic system here, and the combinations make sense. It would have been nice to have some endgame content, maybe when breaking the top of the pyramid, but I'd say you have a good foundation of a game here.
The spell effects are real nice.
Same problem here.
This is my favourite so far. The music is perfect for the style, and the puzzles are fun and well-implemented.
The up-dash doesn't end sometimes (seems to happen near a platform). I end up floating off into space.
Great particle effects, and I like the level-end effect.
You've got a solid platform mechanic and level design here. I could have stopped earlier, but I was compelled to try to make it through the whole thing. There were a few unexplained deaths, particularly with the bazooka. Not sure if that was due to bugs, or if I was somehow blowing myself up. Maybe a warning is in order if friendly fire is on (or maybe there is one and I missed it?)
Embedding the tutorial in the game worked great. There were quite a few mechanics and they were introduced very well.
I'd complain about the music, but you did warn me.
Bottom line, this game was fun on its own merits, jam or no.
The jam equivalent of "Achievement Unlocked: Press A". Full marks for humour.
Great take on the theme. I was confused how it related until I stopped having nothing, then it became very clear how important "starting with nothing" is.
The graphics look great. The gameplay itself gets a bit tired, but that's not really a problem for a quick game like this. It's a cool concept and it's well-implemented.
As others have said, it would be nice if you could rotate the flowers or at least know where the hive is going to appear. As it is, your first flower can spell your doom if RNJesus isn't kind to you.
I'll echo the comments of the other folk here. The delays and constant restarting do well to set the mood, but become frustrating after a while, particularly in a jam situation where we're - let's be honest - trying to review as many games as possible.
Criticism out of the way, the UI and sounds both achieve minimalism without feeling "cheap". The concept is good and is just missing a few quality-of-life features that would really make it shine. Options that are persistent between games would help, and maybe something like a journal where you could see how each option was unlocked.
I really appreciated the tiny "click" of recognition in my head when I realized the two options were literally "passive" and "aggressive".
LD50 — Delay the inevitable (4)
Drop by chingle 2022-04-05T15:31:37Z ♥ 1
This is the type of game I wish I'd made on my single-dev jams. Simple and perfect and HTML5.
The 13th Colony by kristinamay 2022-04-05T15:07:14Z ♥ 0
Wow. So much content here for a jam game. You basically built two separate games and put them together. Incredible.
Crisis Chef: 28 Plates Later by simba 2022-04-05T14:50:16Z ♥ 2
Brilliant concept, and the character design is spot on. Lots of fun.
If you try hard enough, you can win. by Rxbbie 2022-04-05T14:07:06Z ♥ 1
Great job on this jam. The game's relatively simple, but you nailed the feel. It just feels good to play.