Can you dig it? by Flipsy 2021-05-03T01:22:44Z
Simple but very challenging game. It's almost more of a puzzle game the way you have to plan out your path and timing in order to dig deeper. The character art was very cute as well.
Nice job.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → Jason Wilson
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | 52 | Harvest | Dang Crows! | compo | 154 | 3.50 | 3.58 | 3.17 | 3.77 | 3.13 | 3.05 | 3.32 | 3.25 | |
| 2021 | 48 | Deeper and deeper | Into The Depths | compo | 556 | 3.31 | 3.34 | 2.90 | 3.73 | 3.08 | 1.86 | 2.13 | 2.98 |
Simple but very challenging game. It's almost more of a puzzle game the way you have to plan out your path and timing in order to dig deeper. The character art was very cute as well.
Nice job.
Character and enemy art was very cute. Music was also fun and fit the tone of the game.
I didn't understand the benefit of additional shovels. I agree with some of the other comments about smoother scrolling of the level would help a lot to be able to see what's coming up.
Great work.
I really liked the art and the take on the Undertale like combat system.
I found the movement speed was a little slow and the combat encounters were quite difficult. It would be better to ease the player in a bit more with some easy encounters before ramping up the difficulty. The game would also benefit from a run away feature so you can escape an encounter you're having trouble with. I was having a really hard time defeating the heart and had to restart the game to try going a different path. Fighting the brain was much easier, so it would've been nice if I could try different alternatives without restarting the game.
Great work! Given more time and polish, I think this could be an interesting game.
It's nice to see a card game entered. It makes for a change in experience from some of the other games.
I don't know if I was lucky or not, but I was able to dig through the entire deck on my first play. Is there intended to be a way to play off the cards in your hand after the deck is finished, or do they just detract from a perfect score?
Cool game!
I had a lot of fun with this game and could see myself coming back to it to play again. Graphics and audio were great. The cracks on the rocks do lend a big help in directing you where to go, but I didn't quite understand how close a rock had to be to a gem to sparkle.
Fun simple game. Visuals and audio were great.
I found the controls took a bit to get used to, especially with the hexagonal tiles. Centipedes were very difficult to anticipate. Felt almost random whether I would get hit or not. Not sure what strategy to use when I hear them coming.
I also wasn't quite sure of the advantages of getting longer were.
Cool game. Great work in 48h!
Very zen idle game. Music is a great match to the play experience.
Minor nitpick, but the upgrades have a "Coins" cost, but you're actually spending and collecting "Dust". I was confused for a bit as to how I collect coins, until I just tapped an upgrade and saw that it was consuming dust.
It crashed for me when clearing the last brick of a level. I was trying to use an arcana at the time, so I'm not sure if that might be related.
Great work!
This was a really great looking game and the sfx you chose were a good match. The options on each level seemed very limited, which made it hard for me to strategize to keep my workers happy and safe. Since there were limited choices, I don't know what I would do differently if I were to play it again to do better.
I didn't understand the advantages of promoting someone to manager. Does it make them more effective at their job? Are there tradeoffs?
There was no economic pressure. The cost for advanced units was very low in comparison to the amount of money I was making.
I liked the excellent pixel art and the audio was great. With the repeating levels it was hard to get a sense of progress. At a certain point I began to think that I was in an intentional loop that I had to find a way to break out of. If there is a solution, I didn't find one.
Liked the retro art and sound track (pretty necessary with this being an NES game). Puzzles were decently designed. I had one instance where knights got out of sync and I couldn't pass without dying and restarting. Other than that, well done. Great work for 48h.
I thought this was a cute little game, but I found some elements confusing. The oxygen meter starts off way too low, I didn't even register that it was a meter and that it was ticking down. I actually thought I came up on my first round from getting my air line caught on the rocks. It took me a couple of runs to realize that my gold was going straight into air upgrades. I also have no idea why I hit a game over.
When I got to the game over screen, I couldn't figure out how to restart or quit and had to alt-f4 out. On a subsequent play through I noticed I could esc to bring up the pause menu, but that didn't seem to work in the game over screen.
This game could be fun, but a little more polish on communicating how the mechanics work would go a long way. Great job!
I think there is potential in this concept to be a really interesting game, perhaps with a slightly less stereotypical gender dynamic. It comes off as a bit patronizing. That is to say I liked the concept, but the tone wasn't my cup of tea.
Other than that I think it was well executed. Great work on putting this together in 48h!
I could never get those hidden 3D images to work as a kid, and I couldn't get the image to show for this game. :(
While playing in cheat mode, I didn't get a sense of depth as to where my paddle was in relation to the hole so I had no idea when I would collide. I often felt like I didn't have enough time to rotate into place.
This seems like a cool idea. I wish I could play it as it was intended.
Pixel art was great and well animated. A couple of times I got stuck in a conversation loop where I would try to end the conversation by pressing E and it would just start the conversation again. I also got stuck in the bedroom with the doors closed and had no idea what happened and couldn't figure out how to advance.
Definitely has some potential to be a fun adventure game if you worked out the bugs. Great job.
Great little game. Art is cute and the music and sfx are well suited to the game. I also experienced a crash when trying to quit the game.
I found the lighting to be extremely dark which made it hard to see where the platforms were. (Playing on WebGL, Chrome on Mac). The concept could be fun, but I found it really difficult to play.
Great visuals and audio. It was a very interesting combat resolution mechanic, but I found moving tiles to be unintuitive. I feel like if pressing up moved the blank space up and pressing down moved the blank space down, it would feel a lot better.
Other than that, this was a fun little game. Great work.
Art and lighting effects were awesome. Music was well suited to the visuals and atmosphere. I didn't see the value in holding the hammer as I didn't encounter any enemies or obstacles, but it seems like they may have not made the deadline. Great work nonetheless. The visuals were well worth the time spent.
Loved the pixel art and the concept was really interesting. I'd suggest adding some feedback on the rocks to let you know that they are breaking down when you hit them. Like cracks appearing, or something.
It also felt like it took a long time for the magical gate to appear after collecting enough gems.
Other than that, I thought it was a fun little game. Great work!
Cool spin on tower defense. It got really fun once I got the hang of the strategy and started manipulating the path finding and walling off my core. Then I realized there was more than one round. :)
The obvious additions would be different types of towers, or tower upgrades, and then different types of enemies. Great work
I liked the art and the sound effects. One thing I would say about the art is that the pixel sizing didn't seem to be consistent which made the character feel disconnected from the other game elements.
I didn't understand the purpose of the heart pickups, and I wasn't sure if I was taking damage or not.
I'm also not sure if I won the game or lost. The end screen just said Game Over so I don't know if I beat the second boss or I just died.
Otherwise, I think the mechanics have the potential to make for a cool game, just needs some more work.
That was certainly something. The VO work was great and the art style give it a charmingly weird vibe, it made it worth going back to try the different dialog options, and like any good adventure game my choices didn't really matter. :)
Great work.
This is an awesome puzzle game with some truly challenging puzzles. The art and audio and fantastic. Well polished and put together. Excellent for a game jam! Well done.
Really cool interpretation of the classic snake. I had to keep playing until I beat it. The starting levels can feel a bit slow as the fruit is really spaced out and the snake moves relatively slow, however, the challenge really ramps up once you get to the bottom layers. Great job!
The pixel art was great and the sfx were quite good.
I found the range on the players attack to be really short. You had to get really close to an enemy in order to be able to attack them, making it really not worth the effort. It was better to just avoid them.
Great work putting this together in 48h!
First of all I love your title. :) Second this is a great polished little game. Liked the terrain destruction and the upgrades. It took me a while to realize I could aim the missile.
Well done!
Liked the cute pixel art. Control scheme was awkward at first, but I got used to it after a while. The one thing I didn't like was getting stuck by my own tools. I realize the ocelots can come and move the tool, but it didn't feel great to get stuck without a way to recover on your own.
Otherwise, great work building this over the 48h!
This game is well made with good visuals and music. I like the concept, but the puzzles were just way too hard for me. Maybe I'm just not very good at Sokoban.
Great work for the jam!
Fun little game. The intro cinematic was a nice touch, added context and a bit of humour to the experience. A score counter would be a great addition.
Are all the gems in the second level obtainable? It seems like some are placed just to tempt you to die.
Overall, great work!
Well done putting this together in 48h. I was a bit confused when the level counter read -1, I thought I was heading the wrong way especially after reading the description. I then turned around and saw that the level was now --1. :)
Even though I knew better, I kept expecting the ship to remain facing and shooting right when I moved left so I could dodge incoming enemies and projectiles while still firing forward. This is pretty standard for the genre, so I think that's where that instinct was coming from.
There was also a slow moving blue cube that looked like a "powerup" to me. It didn't get hit by my bullets, but when I went to pick it up it destroyed me. I'm assuming it some kind of projectile from an enemy ship.
I actually had quite a bit of fun with this. I could see this being an interesting mobile title for on the go. The art was solid and so were the sfx and music. I think the only thing that could be improved is giving the player a tiny bit opportunities to interact.
My daughter played this game as well and really enjoyed it.
I'd suggest starting with an air dash to give a bit more interaction in the very beginning. It was a lot more fun when you could do something on your way down.
Great work.
Pixel art was really well done, but I found it nearly impossible to avoid catching healthy fish. This made making progress feel really really slow. I understand wanting to make it challenging, but I felt like there was really nothing I could do to avoid grabbing the healthy fish, so I eventually stopped caring.
At the second depth level the health and sick fish were virtually indistinguishable. They should be much easier to tell apart.
Other than that, I think it was a nice concept and could be a fun game if tweaked a little. Great work.
The pixel art and audio were excellent. When throwing rocks at the wolf, I feel like there could be more of an indication of whether you're successfully scaring it off or not. I found I was throwing rocks and not knowing whether it was doing anything or not. Does he take multiple hits? Am I just not hitting the right spot?
I also was unsure whether I was to head back after collecting all 5 berries, or keep moving forward. If it is to move back, it can feel like you're in an impossible situation if the moon is nearly full and you have a long way to walk back after getting the last berry.
I wasn't entirely sure when the limb changes were happening and what benefits I was getting out of them.
The game was definitely a cool experience, and well made within 48h. Well done!
Great simple game with some nice monochrome visuals. I loved that you made it two player.
I don't understand how lives and damage work. The second player in one game took a lot of hits compared to the first player. Having some kind of damage indicator would help a lot.
Great work
Cool concept. The UI didn't play nice with my monitor so the meters for Spirit and Fury at the bottom ended up off screen.
Great work.
Great simple and polished game. The pixel art was great. Sound effects and music were good. I didn't really care for the blurring at the sides of the screen, it hurt my eyes.
Good job!
Really liked the pixel art and animation. Music and audio were well suited. The variety of achievements provided some fun objectives to explore. The one issue I ran into was that after blowing up and dying I couldn't get out of the trophy display and restart the game.
Really great puzzle game. The levels were well thought out and challenging.
I'm not sure how I feel about the dark levels. On the one hand it does add another level of challenge to the puzzles by not being able to see the entire level, however it felt like my only option was to blindly try different paths until I figured out where the puzzle wanted me to go and then memorize it.
However, this is a well done game. I liked it a lot.
I liked the double take on the theme, pushing the sword deeper in to do damage and going deeper and deeper on the elevator. Character art was great. Audio was good.
I didn't understand the powerups, and I also didn't understand what the glowing spots on the enemies represented.
Great work for the jam!
I didn't really understand this game. If it's meant to be a clicker of sorts, I think you need to add a lot more to the shop aspects. I wasn't even 100% sure what buying damage was doing for me. Other players are mentioning it being really interesting once you get outside the structure, but when I got outside the game stopped responding and I had to kill it.
A clicker game with some exploration elements, does sound like it could be an interesting combo, but I think there needs to be a bit more for it to come together.
@branden-wilson thanks for the feedback. I fixed those bugs soon after you posted.
@sugarsugarsugar the player getting stuck on the walls was a side effect of my tiled collision boxes and Box2D weirdness. If I were to do this game in less of a time crunch, I probably would've rolled my own simple 2D physics, since I never get great results from Unity's.
@ianthebee thanks for the feedback. I'm glad you enjoyed it and liked the art.
@pseudohausen I see what you mean about the block tiles. I probably could've went with something a little less stripey. I glad you liked the game.
@loig I was going for a rogue-like vibe with the starting from scratch every time. Having the gold preserve over runs could've definitely been a different approach. I'm glad you liked it.
@dhim it definitely works best in full screen. The random generation can be a bit punishing at times. It should guarantee at least one chest per cave branch, but one chest vs. two or more chests can be a big difference.
@nisovin jumping out the water never quite worked as well as I would have liked. If I were to spend more time with the game I think the physics would be the first thing I'd fix.
@sugarsugarsugar wow, that does work a lot better. Thanks for the tip.
@southpawdevelopment thanks for playing! I was hoping to add more of a sense of discovery with new types of enemies and treasures as you get deeper and deeper, however time was my enemy there.
@lithia-studios I'm glad you enjoyed the game. Thanks for playing!
@crucknuk I'm glad you appreciated the art. The random generation of the caves is pretty simplistic so there is a risk of there being no treasure at the end of a tunnel. If I were to keep building this game I would probably make the generation a bit more intelligent to make sure there was something of value at the end.
@wuppos 332 meters is pretty decent from what I've seen. The aspect of risk and reward of pushing deeper was something I really wanted to explore in this game so I'm glad you appreciated that element.
I had hoped to add more enemies and more enemy types as you progressed deeper but it was cut for time. Up until probably an hour before the compo ended I only had one working enemy, the squid was a relatively late addition. I had plans for a great white shark and a cave troll, but they didn't make it.
@machwerx the original plan was for their to be health pickups that would allow you to restore hearts that you had lost so that having empty containers actually meant something. An unfortunate cut due to the time frame.
Thanks everyone for playing and the great feedback!!
@shaolin-dave scuba diving seems to be a popular style of game this year. :)
There is a limit to how many spears you can shoot, which is upgradeable at the weapons shot. Probably could use an ammo counter, or some other kind of indicator to better communicate this.
Enemy health is dependent on how far down the enemy is when it is spawned. Sometimes enemies further down will make their way up making the health seem a bit inconsistent at times.
@cppchriscpp well done on the 979m. The flippers and rebreather are definitely an essential purchase.
That's interesting idea to have the air fill back up over time rather than instantly. I didn't want players to have to spend too much time waiting around for their air tank to refresh, so I went with instant, but there is probably a good middle ground rate where it refills quickly enough that it's not too much of a nuisance.
I haven't seen the graphical glitch you're referring to. May I ask what platform you were playing on, Windows or HTML?
@masaru I'm glad you liked the game. Thanks for playing.
@eugenik thanks, I'm glad you liked it
@slowfrog-again asking the hard questions. One which will be debated for the centuries to come.
@ladybenko thanks for playing. I'm glad you liked it.
@fargred the fish getting stuck on walls is an unfortunate bug in my super simplistic AI. If they spawn to close to a wall the trigger volume used to detect an incoming collision and turn around won't fire. Making smarter and a wider variety of enemies is definitely something that got cut for time.
@mhorth unfortunately the lack of audio was not a bug. The initial oxygen amount was meant to be enough for you to get in and out of the first branch of the cavern. You also start with some gold so you can purchase one oxygen upgrade for free.
@pious I'll have to look into the pixel perfect camera you're referring to. Thanks for the tip. Glad you liked the game.
@schuster thanks, I'm glad you liked it. I'm happy to get a lot of positive feedback on the upgrade system. It was probably the largest time sync out of anything I worked on in the 48h. I'm glad to see it paid off.
@jokubasg thanks. I'm glad you had fun with the game.
@flipsy the cavern bottoms out at around 5000m, but it's meant to be virtually endless. Adding more creatures would've been great and add a lot to the sense of exploration.
@shin0nome thanks a lot. I'm glad you enjoyed the game!
@rushhourz thanks. I'm glad you had fun!
@felo07 I'm glad you liked the graphics. Art is definitely one of my weaker skills, so I'm really happy that so many people have appreciated the art.
@verygenuinecraze thanks for playing. The flipper speed upgrade is a bit excessive and definitely could be balanced a bit better.
@bentglasstube there's a weird bug I could never figure out that would sometimes cause spears to disappear prematurely. Something I definitely need to dig in deeper to figure out. I'm glad you enjoyed the game. Thanks for playing.
@michaelyount thanks for playing. I'm glad you enjoyed it!
@maaxoom the flipper upgrade is definitely a little overtuned and could definitely be rebalanced. Thanks for playing!
@oddarock finding air pockets is definitely the more challenging of the two objectives. When I come back to the game I'll have to look into this pixel perfect camera. Thanks for playing and the great feedback.
@bw-devel the game does have a very simple form of procedural generation so that the branches, chest locations, and enemy spawns are all different each time. Thanks for playing, I'm glad you liked it and thanks for the great feedback.
@johannimations thanks for all of the great feedback.
Audio was an unfortunate bit that got missed. I left it as a polish task that I never got around to. In future jams I plan to at least put in quick placeholder sounds so that I at least have something.
The levels use a very simple generation algorithm. I preconstructed about 10 different 10x10 tile chambers and then the algorithm basically carves a path through the map with some basic rules for what type of chamber can spawn next to what. For instance there's always exactly one air pocket in any given branch path.
The fish despawning has to do with my very hacky way of culling enemies that are too far away from their start location. Sometimes enemies can wonder far away from home and then end up getting respawned when in view of the player. A future improvement for me is to despawn things relative to the player rather than relative to their starting location.
Health pickups was an intended part of the design, hence why you can purchase heart containers rather than just adding hearts. It unfortunately didn't make it in in time.
I'm really glad you enjoyed the game. Thanks again for playing and all of the feedback!
@zackary-bazzle thanks for playing. I'm glad you liked the game.
The intent of the game was for it to be "rogue-like" in that every time the player dies they start again from scratch with a freshly generated cavern to explore. Should I return to this game I think I will make it a bit more "rogue-lite" with some elements of progression like certain upgrades or currencies persisting after death.
@dk5000p thanks for the feedback. Music and sound was an unfortunate bit that didn't make the deadline. Next time I intend to put more sounds in right away, even if they are placeholder.
The enemies are really simplistic, only basically moving left to right, or up and down. In a more full featured version of this game there would be more complex and varied enemies.
Thanks again for playing!
Character art was great and the animations were pretty well done. I would suggest making a series of animations into a combo of sorts just to make it feel a little more dynamic. I noticed the attack animation also shifts the character back slightly, which isn't ideal for mashing attacks on tough enemies.
The rune system was interesting once I understood the concept. Making equations to boost different attributes is definitely something I haven't seen before. The system would definitely need some kind of tutorial in a full game. Being able to so drastically vary movement attributes like jump height and dash distance would definitely make level design a lot trickier, but it could open up a lot of opportunities for exploration and returning to a previous area with new abilities.
I encountered a big enemy before the first checkpoint that no mater how much I hit, didn't seem to die. I ended up just dashing over it as it didn't seem to pose much of a threat.
Cute little pixel art robot and the underwater creatures were well done. Difficulty curve is well done. It definitely ramps ups at a fair pace.
Something to consider adding would be some powerups. Shields or bombs could add a bit more strategy to the game and give the player an element of risk vs. reward if they are found in trickier spots.
Great game. Well done for 48h!
First off, great first attempt at making a game. I hope you enjoyed the experience.
I didn't quite understand what was happening and what I was supposed to do to advance. I think you might have an interesting concept, but if you decide to turn this into a full fledged game consider adding a bit of a tutorial and highlight when the player is doing a positive action.
Great job! Keep working at it.
I really liked the visuals. I'm not much of a rhythm game players (lots of mediocre Rock Band playing), so take this with that in mind, but I found it hard to tell what bars were simultaneous presses when there were a bunch really close together, especially those that were not adjacent to one another. Maybe having them shift in colour slightly as they approach the middle of the circle. Either to a different colour or getting lighter. It could really help with keeping things visually in sync.
I loved the art and the sfx were cute. I reached a point where I felt like I could go on forever. I kept waiting for a victory screen but the game kept going. If it's meant to be an endless style game, the difficulty should continue to ramp up. Increase the number of things that appear or add more challenging things to deal with.
Cool idea for a game. Great job
I really liked this game. The pixel art is fantastic. Some of the later jumping puzzles were quite challenging to pull off, but stretched over a longer game they'd probably be appropriate. This is really well done. Great job!
Pixel art was excellent. Great simple game. I found myself wanting to spend all that cash I'd been earning by catching the fish. Perhaps the next step would be to upgrade or buy new subs.
Great work!
I had a lot of fun with this game. The audio was great. The visuals were minimalistic, but worked well for the design of the game. It took me a bit to get the timing for what made a good move. Having some other visual indicator to indicate your timing would be a great addition. Maybe having the outside circle pulse or change in shape would work.
Overall, great game. Well done for you first jam!
Art and audio are fantastic. Well done!
I found the zooming in when you die a little disorienting and made it harder to understand why I died.
The timing on some of the medusa heads made it impossible to pass them without getting hit at least once. There should be more space between medusa head spawners, or larger gaps between the spawned heads.
Other than that, this felt like a really polished and well put together game for a jam! Well done team!
Great simple but fun game. I loved the pixel art and the lighting effects. If this were adapted to the phone, I could see myself playing this on the go.
I reached a point where I had zero visibility and was just moving blind with no way to recover. I feel like it would be a better experience if there was still some way to come back, even if extremely difficult or risky. Maybe if the glow orbs were still visible, even in the dark so you could make a desperate attempt to grab one before you die.
The models and animation were great and the music wasn't that terrible. :) I found myself getting hit by the same shark multiple times, so maybe a longer invincibility period would make that a little less frequent. I liked the double interpretation of the "deeper" with the submarine going deeper while reading deep questions.
Overall, great game. Great work for 48 hours!
Art and sound were excellent.
It can be hard to tell the difference between some of the levels of mud tile.
I found the timing on some of the puzzles to be really tight, and could be a little bit more forgiving.
Other than that, I found this to be a fun simple game. Great job!
This was a great game. The introduction of new mechanics was well paced. The pixel art was great and the paint spatter mechanic was well done.
The spikes could probably stand out more once they are painted. Maybe a slighyl different shade of purple, or some kind of shimmer effect, just to help differentiate hazards from safe surfaces.
I found the end boss quite difficult until I discovered I could hit him off screen in relative safety.
The volume on the death sfx was a little high in comparison to the other sfx, but other than that audio was great.
I could totally see this being a full fledged game with 100s of levels. Great job!
I found the art and sense of humour charming, but the controls were simply too frustrating for me. This may be the type of experience you were going for, so in that case you succeeded.
Seems like from the other comments you put in quite a bit of content, so well done there. I got too frustrated trying to land the platforms after the first boss to continue. Great work nonetheless.
This a really cool concept that adds a new spin to "Pac Man". I found it hard to take advantage of the teleporting between mazes mechanic. It mostly end up being more of a hindrance than something I could you to my advantage. Perhaps a way to preview or remind yourself of the other maze so you can plan out your path or better set up traps for the zombies.
Great stuff!
I thought I had devised a clever strategy until the price of rice exploded. This was a pretty fun game! I could see this being turned into a really fun boardgame or multiplayer game. Visuals worked well and the music and sfx were perfect. Great job!
This is a fun concept with a ton of potential. I found myself getting to the end of the level and wanting more, so that's a good sign. :) This could be a fun game to play over a campaign where you get progressively harder opponents and are introduced to new tile types.
Buying spaces didn't feel very impactful, but does seem like a cool idea in theory. Maybe if you got bonuses for certain arrangements of tiles (like 7 in a row) having a wider play area would make those more frequent, or even possible.
Visuals are all super well done and the audio fit perfectly! Well done.
Really fun card game! Some of the later battles turned out to be really easy, but I think it may have been due to RNG more than anything. A lot of watering and rock placing, and not much in the way of actually placing crops.
I lost one of the earlier battles and was offered the chance to retry. However, I really wanted to rearrange my deck as I felt I had made a suboptimal deck, but wasn't given the option to. I did manage to get past that battle, so it turned out in the end, but it did feel like something was missing there.
The art is extremely well done and made the game feel extremely polished!
The "explosion" sound was a little hard on the ears in my head phones.
Overall, I really enjoyed the game. Great work!
I really enjoyed the simple art style. The character was well animated.
I found the controls frustrating. The attack animation felt too long and leaping forward with the attack made it much harder to hit the target I wanted to hit. Perhaps the "charging" of the attack could impact the leap distance so if you want to hit something close by you just do a quick tap. Bouncing off the target took some getting used to, but with the issues above I found it hard to chain attacks especially if I needed to divert my attention to a crow. I would often miss and then be launched to the ground and then be no longer able to attack the crow or the plant I was trying to send to space.
Having more options to launch yourself upward to get back to plants or attack the clouds would be helpful.
Could be a cool concept, but the combat controls need some work.
Fun little escape room game! The puzzles felt like something I could definitely see popping up in an escape room. Well done putting so many great puzzles together in such a short time frame. The art was perfect, simple and conveyed the idea behind each puzzle. Overall great job, I had a lot of fun escaping.
Very nice looking game and fun little game. I think what I'd like to see is more reward for playing more aggressively. I found it was far too easy to play defensive and avoid the bad apples without any cost. Maybe something like a combo meter that ticks down if there's too much time between consecutive apple collections.
All in all well done!
This is an extremely well done game! The animation and audio were topnotch. The leaderboard was a nice touch.
I found that I ended up with quite a few plants offscreen that were hard to get back to. I guess it was a matter of which plants I choose to harvest first and the direction they were taking me.
Great stuff!
This is a neat concept. As others have noted it wouldn't be too hard to expand upon this without ruining the zen vibes. It would be cool to unlock different plants that may have different requirements for water and sunlight. Maybe some way customize the moonlet.
Great stuff!
I found this game punishingly hard. I'm not very good at bullet hells to begin with, so take that for what it's worth. I don't know if I missed it, but I didn't see any kind of indication as to the player's health. It seems like they can take 3 hits, but I'm not 100% sure.
The music is epic and very well done. The character art is super cute. Great work!
I don't think I understand the farming phase. I planted the seeds, but then what? Do I wait? Do I collect them later after beating the boss?
The boss was also extremely difficult. Maybe I just suck, but I couldn't beat him in at least 10 tries.
I found the transition to death very abrupt. Some kind of feedback, even just a popup telling you that you died would be a big help.
I liked the visuals of the game and the music track seem fitting for the hyper intense gameplay.
It took me a while to get this game. I didn't click for me that leaves increase your growth rate while growing fruit will consume it. I had to read through some of the other comments to get the fruit part, but the leaf part alluded me for longer than I care to admit. Once it clicked the strategy became more clear and it was bit more fun. I get the hesitance around having a full on tutorial, but there probably is a graceful way to teach the player the mechanics as before it clicked for me it actually was a bit frustrating to play.
The music and sfx were great and set a great mellow mood which suited the minimalist game feel. I could see a longer timed mode or even endless mode being quite zen to play. Overall I'd say this is a pretty solid little game that just needs some improvement with the introductory experience to be great.
What a delightfully weird game. The art was strange but very well done. The sfx and music track also worked quite well and suited the game. The controls took a bit to get used to, but once I figured it out I was off harvesting fingers.
I was playing the HTML5 version on Google Chrome and didn't see the patience meter at the bottom of the screen.
All in all, great game for 48 hours!
Pretty neat concept. I liked the art, reminds me of old school shareware PC games.
I found it was easy to exploit the invincible door during waves of bugs and have them move toward it and be virtually safe.
I managed to place turrets in such a way as to block my way out. Luckily I had enough rocks left in my base to finish the game, but it was a bit frustrating. Easiest way to avoid that might be to remove collision between the turrets and the player.
One of my turrets was firing side ways out of its nozzle for some reason, which was an odd bug.
I think it would be a bit more fun if you had more rock piles but with less total rocks to mine. It'd give a greater sense of progression to see the rock piles used up and it forcing you to move progressively further and further away from your home base.
Great work!
The art style was cute and had a nice chunky retro feel to it.
The camera movement when the player moves is a bit jarring and made me a bit nauseous, which made it hard to play.
I didn't hear much in the way of audio besides a sound when the player took damage.
The level felt way too densely packed with enemies, which made it near impossible to avoid taking damage. Adding a mechanic to fend off enemies would help a lot. Either some kind of an attack, a defensive item, or even being able to use enemies against one another (ie. Tornado can consume a scorpion).
The theme felt like a bit of a stretch for me. More of a back story than a central component of the game.
I think this is potentially an interesting concept but needs more work.
Great fun little game! Graphics are well suited for the type of game. I could see this being a fun little time waster.
I was not expecting there to be an actual end. It felt like the type of hyper casual game where you're always just trying to get further and further with no ultimate goal than to be your previous best distance.
I felt like there was a bit of a dry spell for upgrades in the early game. I'd suggest balancing it so that there are a couple of upgrades you can get easily within one or two runs in order to make the first time experience feel more impactful.
Great work for the 48h time line!
Interesting concept. I had troubles getting used to the controls, but looking at some of the nostalgic comments above they may be a bit of a genre convention. The visuals were great and definitely had a retro 3D vibe to them.
Great submission!
@pe7e I made the upgrade Window big so there'd be lots of room to read each upgrade description. I noticed the issue with the accidental presses as well. It used to be much worse because I had the entire upgrade description area as a button, so making a smaller button was a compromise. I'd have to give some more thought as to a better solution so the game is very clicky.
The bounce audio was intentionally over the top, since the game is a bit silly. I'm glad you liked it.
@enzo-dufour I really enjoyed Vampire Survivors as well. Believe it or not I had set out to make more of a tower defense game, but on a whim I decided to allow you to move the scarecrow and it evolved into more of a survivor-like. I had lots more ideas for enemies and weapons, but they unfortunately didn't make the 48h time limit.
Thanks for playing.
@the3rdhunter I unfortunately didn't test it in the web player until the submission hour so didn't notice it didn't scale properly. It definitely plays better in full screen.
I'm glad you enjoyed the game.
@ben-burnes I'm happy you liked it. I tried to give it a bit of escalation in intensity, so I'm glad that worked out. Thanks for playing!
@upcharlie Unfortunately it doesn't scale well in the little web player window and works best if you full screen it. I might look into patching that, since it's an annoying bug.
@deepfreeze The UI scaling is an unfortunate bug. I think with all the feedback it's getting I'll definitely need to address it with a patch. Music is not my strong suit, so the track was just some random notes I put into a midi editor that kinda sounded good. Last Ludum Dare Compo I did didn't even have audio so I figured it was a step up!
Thanks for playing. I'm god you liked it.
@iminsoftware I'm glad you really enjoyed it. Having more progression with more weapons and more enemy types is definitely something I would've liked to have added. I had plenty ideas but they had to be cut due to the time constraints.
@itskristeneh I'm glad you had fun and I'm glad you liked the hopping sound. That was the first sfx I put in and I felt like it really helped the game come together.
@paulstraw Thanks for the great feedback. The stones are definitely overpowered to the other weapon choices. It's funny with these types of jams, very often the first set of balancing numbers are the final ones. :) If I were to continue to work on it, they'd definitely need to be rebalanced to make them effective, but not TOO effective.
@euske Thanks for playing. You're not the first to mention that the game felt a bit slow. I didn't want the intensity to ramp up too fast, but I may have erred too far in the other direction. Thanks for the feedback.
@candlesan Thanks for playing! There were more animals and weapons that unfortunately didn't survive the cutting room floor, but I'm glad you enjoyed the variety that made it in to the game.
@fnelix The movement is a little slow. I had planned on adding a movement speed upgrade, but it unfortunately didn't make the cut. I'm glad you appreciated the art style. Art is definitely not my strong suit, so I was really happy it turned out as well as it did.
@froissant It was certainly a challenge to get it all done. I kept to a pretty strict schedule as to how much time I could spend on each component. I also often went with a first draft on many things to keep moving forward, which was tough for me since I tend to be a bit of a perfectionist most of the time. Thanks for playing.
@gomango99 Thanks for playing! It does get a lot more interesting when you get more upgrades to play with.
@xfinktion The sprinkler increases the growth rate of the crops. It's the last weapon I added so it had the least amount of thought / balancing put into it. I think to make it more worthwhile the crops would need to grow more slowly. I also contemplated adding a damage component to it as a kind of continuous AOE type damage.
The ramp up could definitely go much higher. I literally put the any semblance of progression in in the last 20 minutes of compo. Before that it just spawned enemies at random on a fixed interval.
@ipsl0re Thanks. I really like how it forces the player to have to try to multitask and pay attention to multiple locations on the field at the same time. I'm glad you liked it.
@jonqs I hear you on the slow movement side as I've been getting a lot of feedback on that. I really wanted to include a movement speed upgrade and it looks like it would've been a good call. I'm glad you liked all of the bonus upgrades. Thanks for playing!
@sillyman987 I'm glad you liked it. Thanks for playing!
@rasblo Thanks for the compliments on the pixel art and music. I'm really happy with how they turned out. The style of movement was more of an answer to the question of "how would a scarecrow move" than anything else. It also felt suitably retro since I could totally see an Atari era game going with that kind of movement.
Holding down the mouse for auto-fire would be a good call. It would also reduce the chance of misclicking the upgrade UI.
Thanks for playing!
@vidarn I'm glad you liked it. I was really happy that the game does really offer you a lot of choices without any clear right answers. Thanks for playing!
@sebbernery Autofire is a pretty good idea. It would definitely make the game a lot less of a click fest. I'm glad you enjoyed it. Thanks for playing.
@jakobthequizguy The mole is the final enemy in the game. I had ideas for a bear and a swarm of locusts, but they didn't make the cut in time. The music loop is admittedly short. It was my first time trying to compose any sort of music and with the time pressure of the competition I just went with the first thing that sounded halfway decent. I'm glad you had fun with it! Thanks for playing.
Great work on the game! It gave me almost an "Escape Room" meets Myst kinda vibe, and I love escape rooms. The puzzle has a decent progression to it, so I didn't find myself getting confused or lost. As noted two of the objects are a bit similar, but I didn't get hung up for too long.
The visuals are very pretty. Well textured and modelled.
The movement controls felt a bit stiff and tanky which made it a bit awkward to navigate around the space. Audio would've put this game over the top, but I can understand how that can get missed in a 48h time window.
Great stuff!
This is a beautiful game! Love the art so much. However, the mushroom hallucination effect would flash on and off which was hard on the eyes. I also noticed a few z-ordering issues when the player character would move too close to an object.
The music and sound were great and matched the aesthetic and vibe of the game well.
The text scroll speed on the player dialog was a bit on the slow side.
I felt the theme was a bit of a stretch as it played more a part in the back story (or after story?) than it did the actual game play.
All in all I think this is a really cute game and great work for a jam! You all did an awesome job.
This a cute little clicker game. One suggestion I would have would be to make the cost of items increase exponentially rather than linearly. It was way too easy to outpace the cost of new upgrades with clickers and pigs. I had 10s of thousands of corn but it only cost me a few hundred to buy the next upgrade. You want to create the feeling of having the next upgrade just out of reach so the player has something to work toward.
Otherwise it was a great entry. The art and sfx were simple and cute and suited the style of game. Great work!
I don't think there's much more that I could say that @lisyarus hasn't already said. It seems like he had a near identical experience as to what I did. I didn't find the fighting mechanic very obvious. It might deserve a mention at least in the control descriptions.
To give the player more reason to expand their farm and clear out bushes and boulders would be to have some longer term crops. Longer term crops would allow the player to be able to manage more plots without having to worry about the plants withering away too quickly.
The art for this game is fantastic! The sfx were also well suited.
I had a lot of trouble telling where exactly the hammer was going to hit. I very often hit the carrot when trying to whack the mole. More visual feedback on where exactly the hammer is aimed.
Like others have pointed out the time being a percent and ticking down in large chunks isn't ideal.
There's a lot of visual polish that could help to improve the game. As I said above feedback on where the hammer is, like a shadow, would be tremendously helpful. More feedback on what's being hit would be super helpful as well, whether that's flashing the hit target, adding in a hit reaction animation, or having some kind of "explosion" type particle would help tremendously.
Great work for your first time doing a game jam! This shows a lot of potential.
The pixel art for this game is incredibly cute. I loved just watching the little farmer wander around. The sfx and music were well suited. I wished there was a way to keep track of the day night cycle so I know how much longer until night fall. I also wish the water bucket would just auto fill to max rather than having to press a bunch of times.
With some further fleshing out I feel like this could be a fun little game. Give the player some additional tools and a few more things to do and build, and it could be a lot of fun! Great job!
@cukeds I thought a similar thing had happened to me with a plant dying, but what had happened was that the plant was in the top corner of my farming patch and one of the growing stages was the same color as the surrounding grass so it just blended in and looked like the whole patch had disappeared. I watered that spot and then it continued growing.
Nice version of a classic game. I experience some slow down on the HTML5 version playing in Chrome. It happened a couple times, but was still playable. I also heard a weird "tinging sound" that seemed to just come out of no where.
I didn't feel the theme very much in this game, but the visuals are great and the sound design was well suited. Great work! I hope you're feeling better!
This was a fun little game. It definitely had that arcadey feel which tempted me to keep going for one more run to try to improve my score. The art and music were well done! I appreciated the in-game tutorial as it is something that is often neglected in a jam game!
Great work!
Congrats on making your first / third game jam game! The game is very cute. The voice acting was funny, but as others have mentioned it can get a little overwhelming when lots of things are happening at once, making it hard to make out what some of the dialog lines are. Great stuff!
The game felt too random to me. I have no idea what causes the Stray ending and how to avoid it. It feels really unsatisfying to lose randomly and not based on my choices. In a game like this I think you want to have the player's choices have meaning.
I liked the art style. It was simple, but conveyed the ideas of the game. I also liked that new options appeared based on previous runs.
Overall, cool idea, but too much randomness not enough player agency.