Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → JamesTanm
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | Co | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | 56 | Tiny Creatures | gmO- | compo | 164 | 3.53 | 3.48 | 3.21 | 3.03 | 3.17 | 3.66 | 3.96 | 3.30 | ||
| 2015 | 34 | Two Button Controls / Growing | Project Sunflower | jam | 22 | ||||||||||
| 2015 | 33 | You are the Monster | Fear of the Dark | compo | 237 | 3.44 | 3.44 | 3.48 | 3.65 | 2.92 | 3.60 | 3.67 | 51 |
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Great engine!
I dont know why, but it is supper satisfying to punch in this game. It would be even better if there was some reaction from the enemies when getting hit.
Great Game! I had a blast killing all those filthy peasants. My only criticism is that the movement felt a bit sticky at times, and it was a little hard to hit people
Awesome aestetics, though the controls were a little frustrating at times. there seems to be a weird effect when you try to jump when on a hill where you just start going down the hill / have your momentum changed. It can really screw with your ability to fight enemies
It really didnt feel like the buttons were doing anything. you might want to work on your player feedback
Getting a runtime error. Hope you can get it fixed up!
I didnt really understand the goal of the game, which made it a little unsatisfying to just wander around lost
I get an error when trying to run the game from both Chrome and Firefox
Very cool game. I liked that you started on the top of the screen rather than the bottom, which you would for many of these games.
The bullets were a little bit too difficult to dodge while still being able to attack the tanks. You might want to try less of them, and have them move faster
The controls when unsing a controller are a bit off. It feels like you dont stop fast enough. Still though, neat game
fun game, though some background music would hae been nice. the bottom right corner on level 3 stopped me. I just couldnt get through the guards
I like the game, though it took me coming back to the page to figure out what I was actually supposed to be doing
The concept is really cool, and I love the sound effects. However, you move too slowly, and it makes it frustrating to play when you get spotted because there is no excape
I really didnt understand how to play this. Maybe a bit more of a how to section on the controls might help
Got to the "The prince is confident and he is fine" loading section and couldnt make it past
Great job on the game! A couple points of criticism:
- The walking sound was a bit loud for how repetitive it is
- There should be a way to find the kids without haveing to resort to wandering through the maze, especially considering
- You move a bit too slowly. Going down a dead end is super frusterating when it takes you a minute to backtrack
Good job! The tone is spot on, and you really nailed that NES feel. The only real problem is that what I played of it was a little uninteractive, so it didnt hook me
Cool game, though without sound it felt a bit hollow. Still, great work!
I lost, in space!
Neat game! I would play a longer, turbo-er typing tutor version of this game. Maybe not turbo-er, it's already super
The positives: Loved the art and the music! Very fun, and super impressive for a 48 hour compo. I felt like the theme of tiny creatures works really well with the microscopic parts of the body, and I dont think many people will take that angle!
What could use work: I wish there was a bit more feedback on player interactions. I couldnt really tell if I was hitting things right or not. Also, pressing a button will remove the next note regardless of how close it is to the bar, so you could remove all the notes on the screen just by spamming.
One final note, you might want to check your volume sliders. I moved the sfx bar down to 40% and the music wouldnt play anymore
7:02 time
Very fun game, especially when you get a few speed upgrades in
What I liked: - solid music track. Often times music is one of the last things to get added in these jams but honestly I couldnt imagine playing without it. Very Doom coded - great gameplay loop. The key for me was learning this is a mining game, not a shooting game. of course, once you hit 6 minutes that definitely changes a bit, haha - I like encouraging the player to move around by changing up the resources. Definitely changed it to be more exploration based than a static shooter - The gun felt really nice to use, especially after a few upgrades (in case you are sensing a theme here...)
What I think could be improved: - I think the character starts out feeling a bit weak. It provides a great juxtaposition for how bad ass you feel near the end, but i worry players wont want to push through feeling so sluggish. if nothing else I would love a bit more base movement speed - I did have a bit of an issue finding the other biomes. I ended up walking north and mining to the edge of the map not realizing there was a specific direction I should go. - I wish the enemies were a bit bigger. This is hard to balance, as that means they have a bigger hitbox, but as is I kinda just felt like they were red squiggles. it wasnt until I stopped and really looked at them that I saw how varied their designs were - I know adding in new enemies is where scope creep begins, but it did feel a little underwhelming that the only real difference in the biomes seemed to be the color and hardness of the rocks
The positives: - I really liked the atmosphere of the game. Atmosphere can be hard to really nail down but i think the art and the music really blended together well - While i understood while I was doing (foreshadowing, haha) the gameplay was fun and addicting. - I think you managed to make backtracking fun, which can be difficult. The first half being exploration and problem solving and then having to retread the level at speed is a really great gameplay loop - Honestly, the atmosphere is so good I am going to mention it twice, nailed it
What could be improved: - I accidentally started on the third level and didnt really know how to get over the first obstacle. When i realized what i had done, I thought "Oh, the first two levels must teach you how to get over this"... then I played them and they didnt - I can see from your screenshots that you are somehow able to glide upward, and I managed to accidentally do it a few times, but I couldnt ever find out how to do it on purpose - some of the pieces of movement (like jumping high off the signs) required multiple button inputs that were hard to figure out, and sometimes a bit unintuitive. Once I understood how a level was "supposed" to flow it made sense, but then it kinda felt like there was a specific way to do the level and every other way was wrong.
All in all a great game, especially for the time frame. I only put this much work into criticizing games I enjoyed, hahaha
The Positives: - I loved the concept. Fit the theme really well, and the gameplay really matched well to it - The art was great. I love the personality the hand drawn nature brings - The mechanics were interesting. Having all the fleas climb over one another was a lot of fun
What could be improved: - The music was fun, but the clip was a bit too short and got a bit repetitive - I wish the puzzles had a few more elements. by the time I finished I had already learned and mastered the wall climb, and i could have used one or two less levels
I always appreciate everyone who takes a swing at the compo. I know that sometimes the idea of giving up can dangle before you, but sometimes you just have to thrust through when it gets hard.
All hail torpus, the hamster god!
The good: - Loved the atmosphere. Perfect for spooky season - Also really loved the pseudo ps1 style graphics. Really added to the horror aspect - The bugs were a good combination of easy to spot once you were looking in the right direction, but difficult to notice from afar. I liked that the later the game got the further you had to venture out before you spotted them, lead to the spookiness - The creatures were a good combo of distinct enough to see them from a distance, but vague enough that I still dont know what they actually look like
What could be improved: - Moving slower than the creatures means that if they spot you then you are kinda screwed - would have liked to see torpus at the end :( - the lack of stamina management meant that it was beneficial to always run, which killed the mood a bit
Great job for a compo game. I could absolutely see this being a good foundation for a full horror game
I really enjoyed this one. Made it to the level where you had to dig up and got stuck, haha
The positives: - The visual style was nice. It all meshed together very well, I felt like i was playing an old windows 95 computer game, haha - The music was also great. Gotta love that bass line, its gonna be stuck in my head I know it - Great premise. Digging games like this are a classic and it was definitely a lot of fun to play another, I cant think of too many in the past few years - I love the main characters hard hat <3 - I really liked the in built challenge mode of the gold nuggets
What could be improved: - that jump is really strong... like REALLY strong. going up 1 tile was quite tricky, haha - Like i said, I did get stuck on the digging up level. I dont know if I missed a piece of tech or something
As someone who has put 300+ hours into slay the spire in the past few months the inspirations are noted and appreciated
The good: - The artwork was awesome! - The visual indications were really well done. After I figured out what the circle was all about pretty much everything was super easy to read - The music and sound effects were also very good - Everything stayed really on brand! it felt like a really cohesive package - I felt the game balance was also really good. I won my first round, but it was really close. I appreciated the slice and dice style of letting your downed teammates come back after each round
Things that could be improved on: - This is a bit nit picky for a 72 hour project, but the game feels a little stiff. Everything is moving in straight lines and on static movement curves. Would be nice to have a little more life to it - I wish there was an ability to skip adding a card. Definitely had a couple choices where I would have just preferred nothing. - Another nit-picky one: I didnt feel like I really understood what was in my deck. Maybe I just missed it, but every turn I just kinda played whatever was best and for card pickup it was the same. Would have been nice to have a bit more of a general idea of what I was working with to synergize more, but like i said that is really asking a lot of a 72 hour game
Best game I have played so far. Friend was watching and said "wait this was a game jam game? this is dope as hell"
The positives: - Great art - A decent tune for the time limitations - Loved the little rabbit villagers - We love a bear week game
What could be improved - Controls were a bit tricky, though i think that might have been on purpose. - Would have liked a bit more direction in game. Was a little bit hard to figure out exactly what I should be doing, I killed all my villagers the first time cuz I thought that was the goal :( - If you press esc you get stuck in a menu and need to alt f4 the game
The positives: - Really fun game. The gameplay idea of burning little creatures with the magnifying glass is a great combo of something everyone knows, but no one has made a game about - I felt there was a lot of personality in the game, from the sound design to the aesthetics - The choice to do a paper cutout style of art was really really smart. I really felt like I was holding a magnifying glass interacting with little magical paper people. Plus it made the art style pop - Addicting gameplay loop
What could be improved: - after a few seconds I got the hang of it, but it felt weird that to hit the paper people with the light you actually want to shine it at their feet, not on them directly - It was unclear if I was really doing the right thing. Checking afterwards I saw that the bar at the top was something I didnt want to fill up, but it was the only thing I could make increase. Maybe some kind of score to show that burning the people was the right thing to do? - Honestly, having all of the little paper people spawning like crazy was something that turned on the ole dopamine. it sucks that you dont want that to happen, I wish there was some reward for letting them spawn faster. - The gameplay was fun, but very static. It takes a long time to kill the paper people, and I wish there was some way to speed it up to keep up with the increased pace, or maybe increase the size of the hit area to kill more at once. - I wasnt really sure if burning down the buildings was something I was supposed to be doing or not. I get now that they use them to hide, but it would have been nice to have some more concrete feedback
You folks knew you had good art and boy did you capitalize on it. Amazing looking game, feels very polished and clean. Gorgeous artwork, the motion and actions of the finger are really well animated and feel very satisfying. I also loved all the little cameo creatures, I know I saw the godot head and I think that is the default unity cube in there. Quite fun with great sense of humour
As for improvements, I think the only thing I would recommend would be clarity. I knew I probably wasnt supposed to let the dust clouds finishe what they were doing, but I didnt know what it was that they were trying to do. I knew I should answer my moms phone call, but I didnt really understand why (other than the fact I love my mom, of course).
All in all very impressive for a 72 hour game!!
The positives: - Best art and music of all of the games i have played so far. - I thought that all the small creatures were really well done, gorgeous and had a lot of personality - Very calm and chill. I feel like there is a push in these jams to make something high intensity so its nice sometimes to just relax - I dont think i have ever played a game with quite the same concept before. Especially living in a part of the world where the leaves are changing color, getting to interact with the fall beauty was great
What could use improvement - The bee sprite seemed to have some issues with color compression, some squares seemed to alternate almost blue - on some of your branch transitions (especially 2 - 6) I noticed some issues with the tree trunk graphics having strange lines appear, like there were assets getting slightly displaced - Your parallax layer seemed to have a few issues. A minor visual fix is it felt oddly tied to your vertical movement, which was a bit funny. It also seemed to disappear abruptly on every branch transition - It would have been nice to have some kind of UI element keeping track of how many leaves were left. with some of the more out of the way leaves it was difficult to see the ones I missed - I dont know if its intentional, but if you have a multi monitor setup your camera can zoom out really far as your mouse moves across screens, haha - No exit button
The positives: - The art of the fish was great. Was really cool to see all the variations as they came up - The music was quite good, if a little repetitive. I find its always so hard to make music that is catchy for these things and I think you did a great job - The idea was pretty cool. I dont know that I have played another breeding sim in a compo game, so that was a lot of fun
What could use work: - I wasnt really getting much of a sense of player feedback here. - I couldnt really figure out what the shop items were supposed to, or if they were working. I think I was supposed to buy the items and drag them onto the egg, but I couldnt really tell due to the randomization if that was working. - I like the idea of the multitasking element with catching more fish while you wait for them to breed, but without some kind of sound alert I usually just noticed that there was a fish on my line after they got away
The positives: - First off, I LOVE the animations. All the movement and actions looked super smooth and polished - The movement was very kinetic. I would have almost liked a bit of a platforming section before the boss to play around - The subtle sound effects were nice. Having even little footfalls and punching efforts breathed a lot of life into it - The boss was pretty fun to fight. A classic hit and run boss which was made more challenging by the animation lock
What could be improved: - I loved the sound effects for the player, and would have liked some for the bosses attacks - I did get stuck once on a tentacle spawn point - I was never really sure when I got hit with the boss's attacks. Some kind of feedback like a color flash or some knock back would be fun
As for the controls, they lock you down in place, but I didnt hate that. Made it a bit more strategic when to attack.
All in all great game for 48 hours!!
Great jam game: simple premise, well coded, with enough content to really get a feel for it. I wish there had been at least one puzzle that required the use of multiple balls, but for 48 hours it was really good. I like the sound effects, and the graphics are simple but engaging. I think the far right puzzle was definitely the hardest. Took me a while to figure out how to get the speed required
Edit: Ignore this
@imai-time Balance is definitely something that I knew was an issue. By the time I got to sunday I was too exhausted to go back for it. I think next time I would start with balancing the game with 2 animals and giving them good pros and cons before adding in the third
@sudocoffee wow, thanks for putting in so much time and thought :) I tried to make sure no animal was completely useless, but definitely wanted there to be a reason to use more than just the chickens, so the all chicken strategy was definitely dev nerfed, haha. Glad to hear it did end up having multiple paths to victory though!
As for reasons to go with various strats, my original goal was to have periodic events which would alter the ratios of price, time, and suspicion which would encourage people to go down different paths. but the time crunch comes for us all :(
@sutt00 noted :)
@henk its funny, if I do continue on and juice up this game that was the first thing I was thinking about adding. That and giving the sprites an idle animation to make them feel a bit more alive
Dude, I was literally just saying to my friend how the steeb genre has been stagnating lately, and lo and behold we get a new steeblike!
The positives - Great art. I love their little steebutts - Solid concept. The controls were fun to get used to, but it all felt very natural once you got up to speed - The sound design is minimalistic, but very fitting. it all flowed well together, and fit the art style quite well - I liked the puzzles, especially the 453 puzzle. was a good challenge to try to get them stuck so they couldnt interfere with each other.
What could be improved: - honestly, not much. I think this was a fantastic scope for a game jam that was really well executed. Maybe some music would have been nice on the longer levels, but all in all this is a pretty dope ass game. Best game of the compo ive played so far