Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → Julian Ceipek
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | Co | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2013 | 26 | Minimalism | Auraline | jam | 12 | 4.07 | 3.27 | 4.27 | 4.42 | 3.64 | 4.31 | 2.05 | 4.11 | 67 | ||
| 2012 | 23 | Tiny World | dot | compo | 201 | 3.38 | 2.65 | 3.25 | 3.48 | 3.52 | 3.29 | 2.60 | 3.38 | 30 |
Julian Ceipek leaves an average of 19.7 feedback comments each event.
The game seems like it has a compelling premise, but I couldn't really tell how my actions were affecting the game other than by repelling electrons, and it seemed as if interaction wasn't strictly required. I think indirect control systems need more feedback than this game involves.
On a technical note, I ran this in Chrome on a Macbook pro, and it seemed very jerky.
I agree with the other posters here, and I wasn't really sure what to do. Most of the time, the game told me that I couldn't apply improvements to "that building type" and I somehow made it to the feudal stage and completed the game without knowing what I was doing.
Unfortunately, I don't have an android tablet.
I agree that more people should do web games, but I'm not sure how well this one works. In Chrome, it has a firing squad intro and then a lot of planets. You can zoom in on a house, zoom out, and hear firing noises. After a while, zooming in displays the frame of a house. I was really confused by the lack of interactivity. There appears to be an anti-war message in there somewhere, but I think it could have been conveyed more effectively; the dissonance between the instructions screen and the rest of the experience seemed too jarring to me.
In Firefox, most of the graphics don't show up.
Running Mac OS X Lion.
I liked the style and concept, but the controls were barely usable in Chrome on Mac OS X, the camera adjusted too slowly, the text was cut off and hard to read. Making the game full screen made the character unresponsively walk off the edges.
I don't know if I'm ever going to get that buzzing out of my ears! At least for me, "Easy" is still really difficult, and I haven't been able to get past level 2. I agree with youdonotexist with respect to getting one's bearings, and I also kept falling off the platforms. However, the game's mood is extremely well executed.
Really cool concept, artwork, music, and SFX. I agree with Zythiku that multiplayer would be a great addition to this (or simply better AI -- I thought it was a bit easy). The game looks very polished overall, but it would be great if the building types had explanations associated with them and the buildings to be placed had a visual indication associated with when they could be built (maybe a red tint?).
@DoktorAce, except for the audio, it worked pretty well in WINE for me.
Excellent concept and level design. I think the jump physics could be improved, though.
@Cell: Thanks :)
@daredevildave: Unfortunately, no; because of some architectural issues early on, we ended up having to do a complete rewrite at 11:00PM on the day before the competition ended. Hopefully, we'll have better luck next time.
@iforce2d: The Windows link is an executable inside a 7zip archive. We tried to compress in standard .zip format, but it kept getting corrupted. Sadly, we couldn't figure out how to compile to an executable for MacOSX or Linux (even though most of our dev work happened there). If anyone wants to try creating binaries, I'd be happy to host them on GitHub.
@Saxon Douglass and @ScreamRawr: Thanks! We really wanted to add actual gameplay, add a starry background through a window to indicate the ship movement, and add interactive elements like firing hanging turrets, but we ran out of time and faced a number of speed issues with PyGame. I'm thinking of doing a Pyglet port or rewriting everything in C++ with SFML. Any suggestions? Pygame is really fun to use, but we haven't figured out how to do layered backgrounds at acceptable speeds, even though all drawing in the game is optimized using dirty sprites.
LD26 — Minimalism (48)
Min by foxor 2013-05-05T19:36:00
This game didn't feel very compelling, but the music and feedback system made me feel compelled to do so. Interesting.
Timining 1D by GodsBoss 2013-05-05T19:28:00
An interesting take on the crafting theme, but the game doesn't seem to have much challenge and involves too much grinding and walking around. The gameplay misses out on what makes Minecraft compelling.
Street of Rave by TinyDrakkarStudio 2013-05-05T19:15:00
Really neat idea, but the cops proved too challenging for me to avoid. In some cases, they seemed to teleport towards my avatar.
Minimal Shootage by mramaizng 2013-05-05T19:07:00
I really liked the minimalism and authenticity of a soundless space (although the flickering stars were a bit strange). The particle effects were very rewarding. I would have liked to see some feedback as to the amount of damage I was doing to the last enemy and found the pacing overall to be a weak point.
North Korea World Savior by tsb 2013-05-05T18:56:00
Sorry, but I don't have Android.
COLLECTRONS by ned366 2013-05-05T18:55:00
I'm not a big fan of the pacing or the death sound, but the game fits the theme well.
crush. by oatsbarley 2013-05-05T18:46:00
I really liked your take on obstacle avoidance. The mood was perfect and the music was very serene. As others have said, the difficulty curve could be improved; it starts out very slowly and then becomes very difficult without a well-paced transition. My only other complaint is with the controls; I think an analog control scheme would fit the mood better.
The world is in your hand by jacklehamster 2013-05-05T17:11:00
This is a really cool concept that deserves to be expanded. As others have said, it is easy to get stuck in corners and the bouncing off objects behavior is jarring. I didn't realize that I could help people until I read the comments because of the amount of time it took for them to react to my avatar and because they ignored me otherwise. At least at first, I felt powerless to change anything.
I think this would work better if the people would take notice of you as you pass them and the first person you could help was very close by.
Nice use of the theme!
Fire by killerstarbunny 2013-05-03T04:22:00
As others have said, this is an interesting concept that could certainly be expanded. It certainly has more content than my first Ludum Dare, and I did that with a large team. However, the interface here was so frustrating that I felt compelled to stop upon encountering the fire level in the second screenshot, and the level design for introducing the mechanics felt unnecessarily architected and pedantic. For me, half the fun of playing a game is understanding the mechanics and overcoming the challenges intuitively after learning that I have an ability rather than being told how to approach situations.
You said you wanted some suggestions on how you could improve Fire.
The general mechanics in the game are actually quite simple: you can pick up and drop objects, you can move, and you can jump.
Let me talk about the controls first. I can think of various alternate approaches that would reduce frustration with the mapping. Your main concern seems to be with the ability to interact with the world based on your orientation.
If you want your avatar to have an orientation, displaying that in the interface seems like a bad approach. Why not use visuals to make it apparent? You could have eyes on your avatar (even a few pixels of a different shade would be effective), and you could map space to jump instead of w. Then your character could look at everything without any trouble, and you could get rid of the p key for interaction mode. Concise modeless interfaces are almost always superior to those with multiple modes.
What about interacting with objects? Do you need to make building and destroying distinct keys? If not, you could just bind e to build and destroy, based on whether there is anything in your path. If this could lead to unintentional creation/destruction (which is something you will want to playtest and consider during level design), then that would be a bad choice. If you can use the context-sensitive creation/destruction but don't want to use orientation (which might be better), you could use ijkl for directional placement and keep wasd for moving and jumping.
Let's say you want to keep orientation and also need to maintain a distinction between creation/destruction. What if you bound the mouse buttons to create/destroy and were to use it to alter your orientation?
What about level design?
Examples of games that pull this off really well are Knytt Stories (a free download), Super Meat Boy, and Braid. Play some of them to see what they do well in terms of level progression. They all introduce mechanics one at a time and allow the player to explore what they can accomplish with them before introducing any others. They introduce obstacles and trust that players will discover how to overcome them by themselves. Games are an interactive medium. I would recommend that you not tell players how to overcome challenges, make the level design teach them how.
Lets look at a simple example from Fire: movement and jumping.
I might approach this by first making a level with nothing but an exit. I wouldn't say that it is an exit. If it looks inviting, players will walk towards it.
Then I might make a level with a small gap and give one instruction, either in the form of a visual icon of the jump button or with the message "Press _ to Jump."
Some gaps are unjumpable. I might make the next level contain a large gap over a valley that contains a block resource. I would then communicate how to pick up/drop objects. The player would inevitably discover that the only way to proceed is to pick up and drop the block at the edge of the valley.
This ended up being much longer than intended, but I hope it helped to some degree. I'm interested in what you come up with for your next LD. Good luck!
Circle Barrage by CaseyHardman 2013-05-03T02:04:00
For some reason, when I played this, my square stayed in the top left corner and I couldn't see my health or progress, which made it seem like I was moving the circles rather than my avatar (which actually seemed like a really game concept). Given your screenshots, though, it doesn't seem like that is what is supposed to be happening, though. Nice difficulty progression, but it seemed like I could get pretty far just holding "A" and shooting the circles that came too close.
"" by davidpeter 2013-05-03T01:52:00
Nice graphics and mood, and I like the concept of the central mechanic, but the game difficulty doesn't feel very balanced. Getting past the first three moths was really frustrating because permadeath + the lack of a reset to just after the game introduction made the experience of losing quite tedious. I was about to give up before reading the other comments. After that, the game lost all its challenge and I played through in one go without losing. A gradual increase in difficulty to overcome obstacles (with a more forgiving start) would have been very welcome. The ending felt incomplete, and I tried to grab the fallen star and escape the cave for several minutes before I realized that there was nothing else to do.
Good work for a first/second LD.
Bonk by tove 2013-05-03T01:29:00
The concept for this is really cool, but without reading the other comments, I would have assumed that the game was glitchy. I think this game could be really compelling with a few changes:
1. A more natural control scheme. I think rotating the field by 90 degrees to resemble breakout would have made the stereo sound effects work better. The digital, arrow-based control scheme was very frustrating because the location of one's avatar was thus hard to control.
2. An initial background shade. I didn't realize that the paddle was fading until my second game.
3. Cleaner audio. The buzzing sound became grating after a while.
The Minimal Machine by Andromatta 2013-05-03T01:15:00
Nice graphical style and overall concept, but the music felt very repetitive and the manipulation interface was frustrating enough that I couldn't make it past the second level. I kept wanting to manipulate objects with the mouse and the control mapping worked against the Taoist theme because it was view-independent and unintuitive.
Squeezed Out by HybridMind 2013-05-03T01:00:00
Nice and simple gameplay that gets pretty tense. I wasn't very satisfied with the difficulty gradient, though -- the game seemed very slow initially and switched to being very difficult in an almost binary way.
Distradiction by shines 2013-05-02T04:28:00
Interesting take on the theme, but the level design seems more like a heavily architected tutorial explaining the nature of distractions than a full game about them. Should this entry have had an ending at all? Distractions have a nasty habit of being endless.
Great work considering the amount of time you spent.
You Must Escape by GertJohnny 2013-05-02T04:19:00
Brilliant game concept and, overall, good execution. The tension-filled mood and graphics are superb. The notion of echolocation actually came up while I was working on my entry as well, but we eventually decided to go a different route with audiovisual gameplay. I do think that there are a few things holding this entry back from being truly great, and, while each one is individually relatively minor, they combined to make me almost want to give up out of frustration several times before making it to the end.
1. The tutorial levels seemed very pedantic and not very much in line with the theme of minimalism. The central mechanics are pure enough to be self evident as soon as the player knows which buttons to press, and the text detracts from the potential of exploratory gameplay that entries like Orbfuscated excel at. By the same token, I think the escape narrative could have been conveyed more effectively using only sounds and graphics.
2. The controls felt off during the entire time I played the game. The movement speed felt awkward and the footstep sound didn't mesh well with the movement distance. The sneak mechanic was aggravating because I kept getting trapped in walls. The sneak movement speed was especially frustrating. On some of the last levels, I tediously moved around until I thought I was at the other side of the level only to realize that I was only halfway through it. The lack of feedback was frustrating, and making up for it by continuously tapping the space bar lightly was tedious. I also had no sense of my own size and that of the enemies. The visuals made me feel like a point source, but running into traps and enemies convinced me that I had a non-zero radius.
3. The level completion sound felt really great, but the accompanying visual animation was almost-but-not-quite a beautiful animation that illuminated the entire room, which I think would have greatly enhanced the experience of getting to the next level.
Overall, great work, and I'm really excited to see what you make in the future.
Square Circle Triangle by my.digital.decay 2013-05-02T03:19:00
This looks like it has some great potential to explore shape morphing as a mechanic, but unless I'm missing something, all there is is a single environment with a morphing shape and an invisible platform from which your avatar can tumble endlessly.
Tessitron by radmars 2013-05-02T03:07:00
Awesome entry with great music and a really nice skill-based feedback system that kept me trying multiple times despite my ineptness at rhythm games.
LESS [Last Exit Scary Square] by Tsuki_Usagi 2013-05-02T02:50:00
Despite the poor grammar and incompleteness of this entry, I found that you set the mood quite well using text and audio. With more time spent on level design and narrative exploration, this could make for a really great game. Good work for your first Ludum Dare! It's much more complete than my first entry was.
xro48 by larb 2013-05-02T02:17:00
It took me three games to fully understand all of the game rules, but now that I do, I really like the concept. I think if there was a slower difficulty ramp-up, the rules would actually become self evident without requiring multiple play-throughs or explanations. The visuals are good and the audio is beautiful and perfect. However, the control scheme and avatar were quite frustrating. I think a freely moving avatar with direct positional control with a mouse or touchscreen would have worked better. Overall, a very nice piece.
FvOOM by spolvid 2013-05-02T02:03:00
The audio cut out after a few restarts - was that intentional?
Excellent use of audio and visuals to set the mood, and nice, tight controls. I think the difficulty curve is a bit steep, though. The color barrage made me feel very strange after a few minutes of playing -- perhaps a less random assortment could be used to intentionally shape the player's mood.
Too Much Loot! by CheesyRamen 2013-05-02T01:53:00
Really neat idea, but, as others mentioned, the control scheme and low data/ink ratio ultimately made the gameplay tedious. Great job for a first entry!
Defenders of Order by DNA Yarn 2013-05-02T01:29:00
Nice art and audio, and the take on tower defense is interesting, but it didn't seem balanced very well; at times, I wasn't doing anything and at others I was getting overwhelmed with no recourse.
PNG by dscripps 2013-05-02T01:13:00
I'm getting "VerifyError: Error #1014: Class flash.display3D::Context3D could not be found."
Sleepwalker by disease 2013-05-02T01:06:00
A cool idea, but the control scheme was very frustrating to use. The challenge in the game resulted more from fighting the interface in the limited time than in solving the puzzle.
Parabox by Jon Fischer 2013-05-01T06:52:00
One of the best entries I've played so far. Excellent storytelling, music, graphics, and, above all, level design. I really enjoyed it, except for the "Can we still be friends?" level. That was just evil :)
Nice work!
I, too, would recommend switching to Unity for game dev while sticking to Blender for graphics. The two play together really well.
Root Route! by netpro2k 2013-05-01T06:12:00
This is easily the most addicting Ludum Dare entry I have seen so far. I was really impressed by your spin on the one-button mechanic that games like Canabalt use.
There are just a few polishing touches needed for this to be almost perfect:
1. The root growing graphics should be smoother and make the location of the root more obvious. While playing, the split point becomes ingrained in the player, but I had to look at the root out of the corner of my eye because the twisting was actually uncomfortable to watch. By the time I finished the game, it took me a few seconds before I stopped having the impression that the game player was rippling.
2. The cool-down time for splitting needs to be made more obvious, or removed. Every time I tapped the spacebar and nothing happened, I felt that the game had unpleasantly ripped control away from me.
3. The level layout needs to be apparent at the start. Angry Birds does this very well with a panning animation. I think that would work well here, too.
In all other respects, a truly phenomenal entry that could easily become a more fully-featured game.
All Fall Down by lambomang 2013-05-01T05:32:00
I loved the atmosphere and the beautiful graphics, but the storyline enforced gender stereotypes and was too much of a cliche for my liking.
The music set the mood really well but became repetitive after a few minutes of gameplay, which, as @HuvaaKoodia said, is rather monotonous. The "?" animation was incredibly frustrating because it removed player agency for a long time. On the other hand, I really liked the sense of discovery I got when I discovered the first key.
Good luck on future entries!
F I N D by rinesh.t 2013-05-01T05:07:00
A really neat concept. I feel like I have a much closer connection to my trackpad now.
dodecaphony by heuermh 2013-05-01T04:37:00
@heuermh:
I couldn't get this to run on OS X either, but I configured Gatekeeper appropriately.
Minimal Win *Proof of Concept* by Cognizant Game Studios 2013-05-01T04:33:00
I couldn't get this to run on OS X:
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.UnsupportedClassVersionError: ca/cognizantgamestudios/game/Main : Unsupported major.minor version 51.0
at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass1(Native Method)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClassCond(ClassLoader.java:631)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass(ClassLoader.java:615)
at java.security.SecureClassLoader.defineClass(SecureClassLoader.java:141)
at java.net.URLClassLoader.defineClass(URLClassLoader.java:283)
at java.net.URLClassLoader.access$000(URLClassLoader.java:58)
at java.net.URLClassLoader$1.run(URLClassLoader.java:197)
at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
at java.net.URLClassLoader.findClass(URLClassLoader.java:190)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:306)
at sun.misc.Launcher$AppClassLoader.loadClass(Launcher.java:301)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:247)
Solace by kazukishida 2013-05-01T04:29:00
Great concept! I'm glad another team decided to make an audio-based game (although you took it in a completely different direction). This is a solid tech demo of the idea, with a neat visual and audio style, but it lacks consequence beyond that which the player assigns it (which, I admit, is an interesting concept in and of itself, but maybe deserves to be its own game -- who knows?). Nice work; I'd love to see where you take this!
Cube Colors by PabloAlexandre31 2013-05-01T04:13:00
RGB has a similar mechanic: mixing colors, but Cube Colors implements that mechanic in a significantly more compelling way. This has really great potential. However, the level design was ultimately too frustrating for me to get very far in the game for a variety of reasons:
1. The acceleration-based controls made it difficult to avoid obstacles, which is a shame, because the emphasis of the game shifted from gathering colors to avoiding obstacles.
2. The reset time on death was long and unforgiving.
3. There were too many shades of colors and they were all introduced at once, much in the same way that the mechanics were all introduced very rapidly. I would have preferred a slow ramp-up of difficulty over a number of levels that introduced the mechanics and color combinations rather than an explicit tutorial level followed by a vast environment with what seemed to me an absurd amount of possible color combinations.
LoneStranger's Drag by LoneStranger 2013-05-01T03:42:00
Though simple, this game can quickly become addicting. I had no trouble figuring out what to do, although I think a rapid visual change to accompany the sound effect might make it even more intuitive. As others have said, this game would work much better on a touchscreen. Overall, cool idea and execution!
RGB by Boiúna 2013-05-01T03:32:00
I really like the concept, but felt that the gameplay got tedious after a while because of the separation between the color sources. The music worked well, but the hum didn't loop properly, and the click became jarring after a while. The ending was quite unexpected :)
Orbfuscated by CaptainKraft 2013-05-01T03:01:00
I really enjoyed this entry, although the level design was on the verge of being too difficult, and, as others have said, the controls could be improved a bit. I almost gave up on the moving platform level because I couldn't seem to land on the first of the stair-like platforms.
I'm a big fan of discovery-based gameplay, and I think you nailed it. Like @bleatingheart, this game reminds me of Unfinished Swan.
This is not a game. by AaronYip 2013-05-01T02:19:00
Thank you for making this.
Min by peaveyj 2013-05-01T02:13:00
An interesting take on the theme, to say the least.
Hyperdimensional Gorofu Shot Champion by uncade 2013-05-01T02:09:00
A solid entry that provides a unique experience with some excellent graphics and music. The gameplay is quirky and fun, but the game seems slightly unfinished.
Minimalist Art Club by basspenguin 2013-05-01T01:55:00
I really enjoyed your take on the theme and the mood you evoked. However, the controls were quite frustrating to use (and their presentation didn't match the mood) and the text-based response system seemed quite finicky. At one point, I filled the entire screen with blue and kept getting the advice to add even more.
Orb by Grouflon 2013-05-01T01:37:00
Truly brilliant graphics and audio with a generally serene atmosphere that I very much enjoyed. Unfortunately, I was frustrated by the mouse-based control scheme, both with a trackpad and with a gaming mouse, which may or may not be an artifact of the size of the web player. The paddle seemed a bit jerky and would sometimes jump to the other side of the world because the radial mouse movement introduced multiple sensitivity zones. Furthermore, the changing background made the ball progressively harder to see, which might have been intentional but reduced my sense of connection to the controls even further.
S.A.M by Lafolie 2013-04-30T22:32:00
This entry has a lot of potential; its intent seems to be to reverse the typical platformer trope of gathering new abilities as you advance. I could imagine a long level progression where you start with many abilities that make overcoming obstacles easy as you learn about what you can do and then future levels that encourage you to overcome the same challenges with more ingenuity as your repertoire diminishes. However, as @TriBeard mentioned, the game has too many mechanics to explore any of them well. I get the sense that you could have done much better with more time, but as it is, the premise isn't properly fulfilled because of the limited content you were able to produce. Given the scope of Ludum Dare, I would have liked to see fewer mechanics more honed to perfection.
There're Easier Ways by matheod 2013-04-30T18:49:00
An excellent puzzle game that hits the theme and fulfills its premise perfectly. Bravo! I have two minor complaints, though: the visualization for solving level 2 doesn't make sense to me and I had to hit ";" rather than "m" to go to the next level.
(By the way, I was able to play this on OS X without any trouble)
The Last Night by Ivan_ 2013-04-30T18:35:00
Excellent use of audio, graphics, and spawning behavior to convey mood in what would otherwise be a boring, generic FPS. The first time I played, I was attacked from behind, and thereafter, I was overcome with a sense of tension and claustrophobia. Nice work!
Crystal Of Shadows by Serilyn 2013-04-30T18:21:00
A refreshing take on the tower defense genre that unfortunately seems somewhat underdeveloped. The mechanics are interesting and have the potential to make for a more compelling game, but the experience doesn't seem to be balanced very well; I didn't get the feeling that I was being challenged very much, and the act of juggling mushroom types, which seemed to be the game's focus, didn't feel very urgent because I was never in danger of losing the crystal resource.
Mrazish by rupazero 2013-04-30T17:59:00
An odd experience that doesn't feel very substantive and seems to be rooted in absurdism rather than minimalism. The audio when eating the potato is disturbing and the core gameplay didn't feel compelling to me.
However, the art fits the entry well and I can certainly say that I haven't quite seen anything like it.
Lifebloom by Hologuardian 2013-04-30T17:47:00
I couldn't run this on OSX:
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.UnsupportedClassVersionError: lifebloom/com/LifebloomMain : Unsupported major.minor version 51.0
at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass1(Native Method)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClassCond(ClassLoader.java:631)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass(ClassLoader.java:615)
at java.security.SecureClassLoader.defineClass(SecureClassLoader.java:141)
at java.net.URLClassLoader.defineClass(URLClassLoader.java:283)
at java.net.URLClassLoader.access$000(URLClassLoader.java:58)
at java.net.URLClassLoader$1.run(URLClassLoader.java:197)
at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
at java.net.URLClassLoader.findClass(URLClassLoader.java:190)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:306)
at sun.misc.Launcher$AppClassLoader.loadClass(Launcher.java:301)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:247)
Cloaked by deammer 2013-04-30T17:39:00
A frustrating experience with great graphics, Cloaked ultimately suffers from poor level design; the exits are hard to spot and a failed jump spells almost certain failure, which wouldn't be a big problem except that the game implements permadeath. The behavior of the gems and glowing light orbs seemed inconsistent. I played Cloaked 10 times and got midway through the third room before giving up.