Suit Yourself by cassowary 2026-05-07T04:29:21Z ♥ 1
Nice work for such a short time!
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So I had a whole review written up about how much of a hard time I was having, but then I realized I missed the part that you could build your chains across colors (via connected suits), and immediately beat my high score. I guess it helps to read the directions!
This was a nice twist on the Match-3 genre, and I liked how puzzly it was with the optimal routing while still being an arcade game and not a puzzle game. I think the one thing that feels missing is the satisfying automatic daisy-chain of combos you sometimes get in Match-3, since you have to clear all the tiles yourself (with the exception of the black ones when they hit the bottom). But there was enough satisfaction to be had with the connecting mechanic.
I've crunched the numbers and decided to award you this *Smoothest Transition From Gameplay To Game Over Music Award*. It really just kind of blended right together. Congratulations!
LD60 — Old Tech (10)
Slam Duck by Lucky Racoon 2026-10-28T22:33:20Z ♥ 0
Congrats on your first Compo entry, and with PyGame no less! Sounds like you're really interested in getting some nitty-gritty feedback, so I'll give as much as I can that could be helpful.
**The best parts:** Here's what I think you are already doing great: - The little character animation is fantastic. I love the little animations when he is idle and moving his trunk around, and how his ears flap when falling. - The visuals for the enemies and car were great too. I like that all the parts were unique and you could see the car being assembled, and ducks with guns are just hilarious adversaries. - The overall game flow of getting past the ducks, getting parts, and driving away in your car was nice. You did a good job ramping up the complexity and difficulty in the first few levels and it never felt like there was a huge jump in difficulty.
**Bugs I found:** Very few! - It felt like the "you fell to your death" check is based on time in the air. With the floaty character, I think I ran into it just playing normally and taking my time getting down from a high point! There might be a more sophisticated check here to check whether you're somewhere "recoverable" if a death box at the bottom of the map would take too long to trigger.
**Design feedback:** - The duck behavior was very unpredictable (especially around firing bullets), and it sometimes felt difficult or impossible to approach certain groups of ducks without the risk of an unexpected shot hitting you. A visually obvious animation for "about to fire" would go a long way in making the enemy combat feel more fair. - The later levels were difficult, and more importantly, quite *long.* Neither of these things are bad on their own, but with the player dying in one hit, the combination is a bit problematic. A lot of times you can spend several minutes picking up three of the four parts, get surprised by a duck's quick draw, and lose all of that progress. You could tackle this in a couple ways: - The "long" part -> make levels shorter, while keeping a similar level of enemy threat. Or, make the player movement quicker so that you can re-do your progress with less time wasted on death. On average, players in a jam will probably only play for 10-15 minutes total, so you want to make sure to make that 10-15 minutes as memorable as possible. - The "difficult" part -> make the levels more forgiving by giving the player multiple lives, or somehow retaining progress or making the level easier on retries (such as keeping the parts you've installed on the car or keeping dead enemies dead). It's a game jam, and the rule of thumb is that it's always harder than it feels to you, because you have 48 hours of practice! - For the camera movement in particular, I'd recommend having the camera "lead" the player rather than follow it. If you're looking and moving right, you probably want the camera to position itself to where the player is on the left half of the screen, so you can see more in the direction you're looking/moving.
**The spice:** These are things that I think could take your game to the next level: - Death animation for ducks (and maybe a sad "quack" sound when they die!) - Sound effects - Extra "juice" like particle effects, blinking on damage, and screenshake for impacts. For an example of how far you can go in a pygame platformer in 48 hours, look at some of the effects in Explont by DaFluffyPotato: [https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/explont](https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/explont). Also recommend watching the Vlambeer talk about "The Art of Screenshake" on YouTube. - Tutorialization - It can be as simple as floating text in the first couple levels to tell you how to move and interact. One thing I missed even reading the game description is that you can actually kill the ducks with the stomp, the first couple levels I just avoided them! - Web build - It's actually not too hard to do with PygBag! Happy to give you help or resources for this if you want, I've been doing web builds for Pygame for the last several events.
(Max comment length!)
Recaller by basic_eagles 2026-10-28T21:17:26Z ♥ 1
Nice work! I like the atmosphere of the office and the sinister, looming vibe with the mysterious goings-on, crimes, and whatnot. It was a nice detail that all of the callers are mysterious shadowy figures except for the one who actually tells you his name, at which point he becomes an actual person.
I will say the "intended" solution for pretty much all of the calls was pretty straightforward - the exception being the robbery at the end, which I'm not sure had a correct solution so much as multiple bad ones from my two play throughs.
Nice work for 72 hours!
For your effort I've awarded your team the **Satisfying Office Fidget Experience** award! Don't spend it all in one place.
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Antiques Mech Show by Coda Highland 2026-10-28T20:39:50Z ♥ 0
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Neat little game!
I kind of have a soft spot for these "keep everything running smoothly" games where you have a bunch of buttons and levers and tasks to maintain the machine; it reminds me of Space Team or Captain Sonar. I think you did a great job of having the mech's movement be clearly visible and obviously important while still having an appropriate amount of UI real estate for the actual things you're interacting with.
Of the little maintenance tasks, I really liked the vacuum tube minigame, since it felt a bit more unique and I actually felt like I was getting better at it over time. I appreciate the real-world inspiration for that you mentioned in the comments.
Obviously you had to make some content and visual cuts to ship the game, but that's always a big risk for LD, and you did a good job of putting together something short but playable before the deadline.
The competition was tough this year, but I'm awarding you the **Most Accurate Vacuum Tube Troubleshooting Experience For A Giant Robot** award for your hard work.
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Lexitron by woona 2026-10-28T01:47:48Z ♥ 1
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Really clever little game! Definitely very open-ended, with several potential solutions on some of the puzzles, and the amount of space seemed very intentional to limit how much flexibility you had while still allowing for creative solutions.
I particularly liked the wackier tools for synonyms and antonyms, which spiced things up and was always just a little unexpected. I wish there were more solutions where the intended solution was to modify the original word, then feed it into the antonym machine. (Of course, maybe this was intended and I just missed it!)
The music and graphics were great for a solo entry and I was particularly fond of the music that only plays when the machine is running.
For your impressive design precision I've awarded you the **Perfectly Sized Sandbox Puzzle Area** award. If it was one less row large, I don't know how I could have beaten the last couple levels!
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Detective Of The Dead: The Dirty Deal by Jahwffrey 2026-10-27T20:22:16Z ♥ 4
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Wow, that was a strange one!
I think I also might have lucked into the demon guess with partial information, but I did get it right on my first guess with the information I had. I kept being surprised at how many more objects and containers there were, and the tapes and videos were all delightful and I can tell you guys had a ton of fun making them. I particularly liked it when the game hinted you to use an item you had all along on an object you had all along.
Would have loved a few more sound effects, etc. for interacting with the environment, and some of the UI was a little clunky (especially the submit UI, which I couldn't figure out how to hide without dragging it off screen), but ultimately it's a 72-hour jam and you guys made a really charming game.
For your hard work, I've decided to award this team the **Mixed Media Mastery** award, congrats!
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CrossbowThing by Nnnnneeeedddd 2026-10-27T19:47:03Z ♥ 1
Man these guys are spooky, especially when they come absolutely sprinting at you! This is literally the exact experience I always have when the theme is announced.
I tried to play "fairly" without glitching into anything, but the game gets really difficult long before I got close to 100 enemies. The flow and timing on pulling back your shots, picking up your arrows, etc. felt really good though --- the one QOL thing I would have liked is a crosshairs where the arrow would actually be fired!
I think the biggest area for improvement is probably audio, since horror games in particular rely very heavily on the atmosphere and sounds. That said, I still got jump scared even with the BFXR sounds so they're clearly doing their job considering this was made on Compo timelines!
For your hard work I've decided to award you the **The Theme Was The Baddie All Along** award! Don't spend it all in one place.
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Iconworld Doctor by cassowary 2026-10-27T00:52:07Z ♥ 1
Once again a fantastic little zucchini-bread sokoban game!
I loved the retro aesthetic, including the little boot up sound, screen wipes, and interactive radio buttons and checkboxes. The game oozes charm in the look and sound.
The window dragging added a lot to the usual sokoban formula and made for some really solid puzzles! #13 in particular made for a great "a ha" moment once I realized that there were gaps in the left wall for a reason. However the problem space does get pretty darn big for the harder levels --- I ended up making it to 14 after playing for over an hour before my brain needed a break, but I'm going to try to come back and finish it up later this week.
I'm happy to award this game the **Charming Boot-Up Sound** award for your great work.
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The Base for Old Creations by alaah 2026-10-22T17:45:23Z ♥ 1
What an odd entry! I had a lot of fun with it, the atmosphere was lovely, but I truly was confused for most of the time I was playing it.
I did have to use the walkthrough at times, I think I got a bit confused because things that were previously not interactive (like the pile of cans, and summon program) later became interactive without a great indication that they would behave differently. Or I'm just dense.
I love the mix of new and old technology, referred to by wizardly names (like wand for controller, and potion for canned drink).
For your hard work I've awarded you the **Surreal Anachronism** award. Don't spend it all in one place!
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AURORA Project by Mathstr0fficial 2026-10-22T14:12:58Z ♥ 2
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I don't have a ton of experience with text adventures, but this felt very approachable and I had very few spots where I felt stuck or unsure of what to do. It had a really interesting story and atmosphere, and the writing was really well done.
I did have a couple points like 100th_Coin mentioned where I wasn't exactly sure what was interactive or what verb I was supposed to use, but for the most part I could figure it out with small references to the tip sheet.
For this incredible achievement I'm awarding you the **Most Helpful Mutant Rat** award.
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Caption Obvious by 100th_Coin 2026-10-19T19:37:33Z ♥ 1
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Once again a delightful little detective adventure from Trivia Hart!
The title card mechanic was a lot of fun, even though all of the puzzles were pretty straightforward (except "blind tiger" - I don't think I had ever heard that phrase before!). I love the random weird little characters and some of the gags like the boat crash. The jokes were on-point, especially "Nope, just a detective" and the Captcha text actually being verbatim something a character said.
My one disappointment was that I couldn't respond to "I'm going to get away with it!" with "Yes" to immediately end the game in a loss! The previous game made me think that could actually be a possibility.
I don't give these out lightly, but for such a lovely game you've clearly earned the Funniest Nautical Jump-Cut award!
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