Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → JemSmith
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Category | Score | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 🥈 | 2024 | 56 | Tiny Creatures | Sky Rats | jam | Fun | 4.56 |
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | 56 | Tiny Creatures | Sky Rats | jam | 5 | 4.46 | 4.56 | 3.87 | 3.79 | 4.53 | 4.07 | 4.48 | 4.21 | |
| 2020 | 47 | Stuck in a loop | Pip's Journey | jam | 447 | 3.75 | 3.65 | 4.34 | 2.54 | 3.56 | 3.68 | 3.59 | ||
| 2017 | 39 | Running out of Power | 👥 | The Kleptocracy of Rodentia | jam | 103 | 3.90 | 3.62 | 3.23 | 1.69 | 4.80 | 4.09 | 3.25 | 4.17 |
Really awesome game, well done. I love these kinds of process-of-elimination games, although I did feel like I didn't always have enough to go on. Playing a few more times may solve that. This reminds me quite a lot of card games like The Resistance and Avalon. Nice work!
I like what you were going for here, but I would like to see a version of this without the random draw of 3 tiles. I know that's the point for the most part, but with all kinds of interesting zones on the board, I feel like there could be a better optimization-style puzzle in here. The small random tile deck meant that I often had to place a few random wires in cheap zones just to get the tile I needed. I'm not sure what else would have to change if you had an unlimited deck, but it could be interesting to try.
Really fun puzzle mechanics, and great graphics and atmosphere! I felt like the physics cables could've used some work (mainly in their floaty gravity), but I really enjoyed the puzzle mechanic that I saw emerging. It feels like there's quite a lot you could do with this.
I really liked this! Your graphical style is deceptively simple, but really effective.
I enjoyed the way that the spear was effective for a while after attacking, so I could sort of run through my opponents, and then turn around and have the spear tip hit another opponent. It would've been cool to have the spear head change color or something to denote when the tip is in a damaging state.
Great use of the theme, and the powering down mechanic was very original. I also like the little bit of storytelling in there. The player does power down in really big stages, but I think this works well in the context of a short jam game play through. The theme is therefore communicated to its full extent. Good work!
Hi! This was a really fun little game. I haven't looked through all the comments so I'm not sure what I'm repeating here in my feedback, but I'm sure it'll help to hear repeated feedback in any case.
I had a lot of fun with this, but I'd much rather the power was just represented as a number of available jumps. Frequently it would look like I had one more jump available, and with that jump I'd reach the goal, but I'd lose on the basis of running out of power, which is evaluated before the win condition. I think it would be more elegant to see how many jumps I actually had, which also adds a bit of a strategic choice for the player. I'm also not a big fan of the physics on the character (in terms of the wind resistance/friction during a jump). It makes it a little harder to figure out where to land. A more consistent jumping arc may be more fun, but it's worth a try anyway.
In terms of other small things: I like the graphical style a lot, but the audio looping is a bit jumpy, and the music loop itself is a bit too short. Anyway, those are small polish fixes anyway.
Nice work!
I like the presentation of the light box and its relation to the theme. I think as you mentioned, some sort of indicator of the next level would be good. It took me a while to figure out that just clicking the center bulb of the first level solves it. When I did that at first, I got the next level, which made me think there was something wrong with how the light logic was working. So a brief break and some audio/visual indication of the level being complete would be good. Anyway, good job!
Really fun game! I found the difficulty became frustrating at times though, almost entirely when I found myself running into an enemy's attack. It almost feels like sometimes they would do an attack even when I wasn't close, and then I would run into that, though I may be wrong. Other than that, really fun to play, and great looking visuals and audio. Well done.
Hiya - I really liked this entry, good job! I really enjoyed the minimal graphics and moody audio, so despite the simplistic graphics, you created quite a tense and ominous feeling.
I had two main issues with the game:
1) It's pretty unforgiving, which provides a nice level of challenge, but as an impatient gamer I would've liked some checkpoints (ideally at the light orbs). That could just be me though. For jam games, I favor being able to play the whole game over being overly challenged.
2) The light mechanic fits really well with the theme, but I wasn't watching the bar at the top. Instead, I was expecting the scene to get darker and darker, until a point that it was obvious that I'd lose. Having the player suddenly lose without being able to see that in the world feels a little jarring. Also, having the light diminish to a small ring around the player as they run out of time could provide some interesting challenge (ie. having to memorize the last few steps to get to a light orb).
Overall, really good job!
Wow, that was a really incredible game, well done! I can't think of any really significant flaws in your presentation. I would've liked perhaps one or two more features on the track (the ramps were fun, I was hoping for more satisfying things like that). Maybe some curvature to the road would make the environment feel a little more Wipeout-ey, but those are small issues.
I enjoyed this. I haven't played 868-HACK, so I don't know how close they are in gameplay, but nevertheless this was fun to play!
The new pixel graphics are a bit closer to 868's visual style, but I do agree they look like a better fit than the vector art which feels a little clip-arty. Is there a particular reason the critters are real life animals?
I like how you've integrated with the theme too. Well done!
This was quite fun, but I think it would've felt a lot easier to play with a crosshair, which would create a more intuitive connection to the aiming/mouse look. I think the cursor was also not locked to the window, as I kept minimizing the game accidentally.
Aside from these issues, this could be quite an interesting set of mechanics to play with. The limited vision with top down shooting is interesting, especially when hearing those crazy enemy sounds, which creates some good tension.
Good job!
I like that despite not having audio, you managed to create quite a compelling mood and environment by using harsh lights and shadows. The distant shapes of those curvy "statue" things was quite spooky, especially when they cast huge looming shadows down the corridor. I didn't really know what to do, or understand the theme mechanics, but it was certainly an interesting environment to explore nevertheless.
I made it home! Although this had quite a simple mechanic, I enjoyed it. You could throw in one or two extra twists and see what emerges. Good work!
Really awesome game, especially for a jam - I'm really impressed by how much you guys managed to get in.
While the draining power fit the theme very well, it also felt like it detracted a bit from the Limbo-style puzzle solving, which is where I could see the appeal being. I'd like to see a future iteration with this mechanic implemented differently, or just removed entirely, as the puzzle platforming is the game's strength.
There are also a few things that aren't reset on a restart, which sometimes results in impossible to solve situations. That's something that you can iron out fairly easily though. Awesome stuff!
Thanks all, your feedback is really helpful and much appreciated!
The camera angle and light level obscuring the environment is definitely something we noticed, but we obviously got a little too used to it. It's useful to hear that it makes finding your way around difficult. We'll experiment with either hiding the front facing walls when you're near them, or having a character outline show through. I'm a little more in favor of having some interesting wall cutout effect happening, to show the player. Items may need some sort of extra effect to be able to see them better.
Unfortunately, the AI is something I struggled with towards the end of the jam. More specifically, the problem lies with the pathfinding and the way I'm integrating the character controllers with Unity's navmesh (as well as having the navmesh get dynamically generated once rooms are randomly laid out). This is not something I've had a lot of experience with, so there are still plenty of problems. On the plus side, they present a fun challenge to solve. My takeaway here is that I shouldn't have left solving these problems to the last few hours of the jam, when my brain was a gibbering mess :P
Anyway, thanks for your continued feedback everyone - keep it coming!
@fangzhangmnm The lighting magic is mostly Unity's. We set our camera to a deferred rendering pass, use the realtime setting and soft shadows on lights, and mark house objects as static. If I recall, I also used a darker skybox and set the ambient light level low, as well as a very low light directional light. Most of it is trial and error, as my understanding of lighting in computer graphics is pretty basic. The main camera also has a bunch of Unity's camera effects, like tilt shift, antialiasing, and screen based ambient occlusion.
@steve-johnson Damn, sorry about that. Thanks for letting me know though. I normally work on a mac, but recently moved to windows and wasn't able to test on OS X. I'll see if I can get a colleague to test and see if I can find the issue there.
@Sarrixx Thanks so much, that's a great video! I enjoyed seeing you evading some of those cats, good stuff. I noticed that bug of not being able to hide after you'd dropped your bag, I'll sort that one out. Thanks again for playing :)
Really moody, atmospheric game, well done! I wasn't really sure what I was looking for in terms of the enemy's movement patterns and whatnot, and didn't fully understand the point of the floating balls. It could have been pretty cool if the invisible presence knocked them around as it moved (I'm not sure if that was what was happening, but I didn't see any getting knocked around). But on the whole, you created a really good degree of tension and atmosphere.
Edit: I've read the initial description and your comment about the light - that makes more sense. I should've used the lights more extensively. I like the power mechanic related to this, but it might also have been cool to have that shown somewhere for the player, to have the kind of power management/balancing stuff found in Five Nights at Freddy's. Still, awesome stuff!
Really fantastic game, well done! It's very reminiscent of the Talos Principle, as you say, but that's not a bad thing at all. I think you've added a twist or two to the mechanics there, so it was really enjoyable to solve those line of sight style puzzles.
You've done a lot for 72 hours, though in a future version, I'd love to see a few more rooms. Great job!
I really liked this one! You managed to create a pretty compelling mood with quite minimal but appealing graphics, and the audio was great too. I enjoyed the feeling of improving my "speedrun" with each loop, eventually figuring out what to do for the final one. My only criticism is that the mouse look speed was really high, though I was playing on a high DPI screen, which might've had something to do with it. Nice work!
I stole $1273!
I'm a huge fan of physics in 2d games, and I really like that everything is physically interactable, including the character's body parts. I think a higher gravity setting would help the movement feel more tight, and something like a wall jump could feel cool when trying to escape and get over walls that are too high.
I also really liked how the monstrous elements started spreading as I went to more rooms. The monsters themselves were pretty creepy, and having some of the furniture sticking to the ceiling made it all feel quite uncanny. Good work!
This is a pretty fun clicker and works nicely with the theme! The upgrade escalation is nicely balanced here for a jam game, and I definitely got that satisfying clicker game feeling of watching my money increase radically after each upgrade.
I also found the clicking aspect to be a little tiresome. I understand that you're supposed to be a mindless drone, but it would've also been cool to buy upgrades later that speed up my claw movement, or add a blast force to the object I'm dropping to speed up its fall. In fact, adding a bunch of dynamic movement and control to the claw (like having to use the mouse to grab and fling things around into the right boxes in a factory) could add a really entertaining control scheme to the clicking part of the game, which could solve the problem of idleness between clicks that people are talking about above.
I like the graphics and the styling too, and in an expanded version of this, I'd love to see more world building and story in terms of the corporation and its boss, as well as more use for the building map. So there's definitely something cool here, nice work!
This is a nice little puzzle game and definitely fits the theme well. I found it a bit tricky to remember which switch affected which bit of track, so I think some sort of indicator on the switches or the tracks could be cool, because then I could plan my route accordingly. Well done!
I adore this art style, really nice work! The sound track is lovely too. Nice work!
That was a lot of fun, and would be super exciting with some more speed and juice. An expanded version with a couple more enemies that fire back would also be fantastic. I love the retro aesthetic too
I really love this idea, and it could be taken a little further if the team is keen. I liked having to jump around the scenes figuring out where things could be, and you could expand this nicely with a few moving/interactable elements elsewhere, though I know getting a lot of content with this level of art quality is time consuming. Overall, really wonderful everything, art, music, the whole lot. Well done!
Hey, I really loved the music in this and how you tied it to the gameplay! I also like the meta-use of the theme, in restarting after completing. I like how the tether attached to your character kept them from escaping. It worked from a thematic point of view, but I would've liked to have been able to do something with that tether, or just having it react more to the game (like maybe getting shorter every time you got hit). Good stuff!
I found your gameplay here to be really interesting and novel, and I love the cutout paper art style! It was fun to figure out how to get around the beam. Even though the beam isn't explicitly explained, it fits the dark tone and narrative well, seeing as it feels like someone is scanning the room to catch you. I feel like a little more backstory might be cool here, and it might be better if the border of the beam was more clearly defined. Really cool game, well done.
@happygamer500 Thanks! Yeah, it's especially overwhelming at the beginning.
@cyborg-studio Thank you! Yep, you have to repair the bridge to get the pawn across. Have your rook move up and speak to the townspeople in the next board.
@j-loy Thanks for your detailed feedback, that's really helpful. I didn't have a great deal of time to playtest with anyone, so there'll definitely be a lot of those game-stopping bugs and situations you can get yourself into. There is a restart key (R) that keeps your progress by board, but in my sleepy state last night I forgot to add controls to the description. The lack of any change after the end is a pretty big oversight for this kind of game (and the theme), so thanks for pointing that out. I'm sorry it was a bit of a time waster - I would've also assumed something would change for my next playthrough. I definitely would've like to spend more time on the context, story and loop theme to try and make this all make a bit more sense. Next time!
@doot @probeprob @wolfier Thanks for the feedback! Yeah there are definitely lots of placement bugs that affect some of the gameplay. There are also weird things that happen, like moving a piece up a board causes it to take one of your other pieces and restart the board. I'll fix a bunch of these if I work on this some more.
@recher Thanks so much for the encouragement! I'm so glad you enjoyed the game. I've just played (and finished) Knight Errant and I really liked it. I like that chess pieces give you the ability to sort of solve a puzzle incrementally and in different ways, rather than having to find the exact right solution every time. I started to explore the idea of a chess "battle" scenario on the last screen or two of this game, but I think there's a lot of fun to be found there, especially if the rook can do things like place rocks in different places to block enemy moves.
As for the other feedback - I didn't get around to changing up the lumberjack's dialogue, but that would've been good. I like that you saw that aspect of the neutral village characters. I'd really would've liked to flesh that out more, but it was late and I'm not a particularly experienced writer. The violet ground at the end is also terrible - it's supposed to be a space background, but I'm not an artist, so it needs a good art pass.
Thanks again for your feedback (and for the link) :)
Thanks very much for your comments everyone!
@blue-pin-studio Yeah, a tutorial, or at least some more establishing dialogue at the beginning would help the player understand what Pip's goal is. I really just needed more time there.
@empty-set Yeah, I only really got the enemy "battles" in towards the end, and in my sleepy state I was terrified of trying to figure out enemy movement AI for chess! So I simplified it and just made the pieces move when they could take you. In larger version, enemy moving would be great. I did link where I got the piece sprites at the bottom of my description, and I didn't have time to make proper ones. This was my first time doing pixel graphics in a full game, so I'm not exactly fast at it.
@enad96 Thanks so much! I'm glad it was one of your faves :)
@invixel Thanks for the detailed feedback. Yeah pixel graphics isn't my strong suit, or any art for that matter, but it was really fun to do some art for this jam. The lack of audio is a really disappointing omission though. I have a few shortcuts to add sound easily to the game, but I just ran out of time.
@virtual-turtle-studio Thanks so much, that's great to hear! I'd like to keep working on this at some stage, and don't worry, I'm terrible at Chess and refuse to try and get better, hence my desire to try and make a game that only has a few pieces on the board at once :P It still gets tricky though.
@codertrevor Thanks so much!
This is really great, I enjoyed managing a tight defense in the limited space given, and I really love the theme and tranquil atmosphere (in spite of being swarmed by a horde of hellish gulls!). I would've liked to be able to destroy buildings to rearrange my defenses, but I guess the alternative is starting again with a better strategy. Great work!
I like the very literal interpretation of the theme here! Ropin' cows is a great idea, and the pixel graphics and peaceful audio are nice, but the gameplay is a little let down by the lack of a force indicator, or something similar. I'd love to play a post jam version of this where it's a little easier to figure out the throws. Nice work!
This is an absolutely gorgeous game, and I really like the presentation overall. In an expanded version of this, I'd like to see a little more of a manageable UI for the shopkeepers, and a bit of a clearer presentation of which stats would be overwritten when purchasing items. I also think a dungeon screen with some awesome attack animations would be great, instead of having to stare at the shop keepers while you fight. All of this isn't really easy in the scope of a jam though, so what you've done is great!
That was a lot of fun! I love little point and clicks, and the characters and their dialogue were cute and funny. Having a little mini game in the middle in the form of controlling the drone was also a really nice touch. Short and sweet, great work!
This was pretty awesome, and the visual style is fantastic. There was maybe a little too much camera shake, or rather too frequent a shake, but aside from that, pretty cool!