Treasure Diver by kleinzach 2021-04-28T06:34:59Z
This is great! Really liked the particle effects in the background, and the decreasing visibility the deeper down you swam.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → jkyd
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 57 | Depths | 👥 | Lockpicks-11 | jam | 46 | 4.19 | 4.19 | 4.06 | 2.46 | 4.56 | 4.08 | 3.58 | 3.96 |
| 2024 | 56 | Tiny Creatures | 👥 | Bobby's Beautiful Bugs | jam | 430 | 3.65 | 3.60 | 1.97 | 3.28 | 4.28 | 4.07 | 3.76 | |
| 2024 | 55 | Summoning | 👥 | Mycelium Runner | jam | 192 | 3.96 | 3.98 | 3.55 | 2.66 | 4.25 | 3.36 | 3.59 | |
| 2023 | 54 | Limited Space | 👥 | Quetzals & Ladders | jam | 60 | 4.20 | 4.12 | 4.34 | 4.16 | 4.46 | 3.54 | 3.25 | 3.95 |
| 2023 | 53 | Delivery | 👥 | Peggy's Post | jam | 148 | 4.03 | 3.46 | 3.37 | 4.42 | 4.62 | 4.00 | 2.16 | 4.11 |
| 2022 | 50 | Delay the inevitable | 👥 | Extreme Plant Sitter | jam | 157 | 3.99 | 3.77 | 3.94 | 4.02 | 4.38 | 3.83 | 3.73 | |
| 2021 | 48 | Deeper and deeper | 👥 | Caverns of Mal'Dur | jam | 1191 | 3.35 | 3.14 | 3.57 | 3.26 | 3.07 | 2.40 | 2.75 |
This is great! Really liked the particle effects in the background, and the decreasing visibility the deeper down you swam.
Super satisfying!
Yes. This is everything, it made me so happy :) Real disco elysium vibes. The only thing I found myself reaching for was a pause button/menu, just so I could go get some popcorn without missing any of the dialogue
Great animations!
Fun to explore! The descriptions & destinations were intriguing and I really liked the space-exploration concept paired with this chill-retro vibe :) Like others have said, the warp effect and parallax stars are awesome. It'd be cool to see a goal checklist/task list progress as a UI element and maybe gentle prompts to return to x location once you've got the fuel or when you're ready to "return home"/end the game. Solid submission overall!
Awesome concept! I really liked the depth-of-field-circle-bit as a border for the game. It'd be great to have a visual indicator for exactly where layer switches occur, as fine-tuning the depth felt a little gimmicky at times. Regardless, I was definitely down to play a few more levels!
Really cool idea! I found the fast-paced nature to be a really good fit for the game, would love to see notifications for when new taps are added to the surface -- I lost way too many games confused before figuring out why. And like others have said, the ability to swap out misplaced pipes would be an awesome addition. Overall, I probably spent the most time playing this game than any other submission, it's frustratingly fun, & as a water resources engg -- I approve :)
Nice job! Would love to see a skip for the typing of dialogue implemented. Also you can continuously play cards from the discard pile -- don't think that's intended?
@squirmonkey update: there should be a webgl build :)
@sirDuck will get our best devs on that asap ...@suvi?
@Lancival Thank you for the feedback! We'll add that to the bug list :)
@superpokeunicorn Exactly what we were striving for! Not the bug-- we're working on a fix & hopefully will update soon. Thank you again!
@pd-dev Couldn't agree more! funny that @suvi does music, but we ran outta time... ah, next time, right?
@--0 thanks!
@squirmonkey Thanks for the awesome feedback!
Yeah, you hit the nail on the head with the importance of legible fonts for text-heavy games, and we'll definitely be changing those (questionable) font choices asap.
The "A Way Down" tiles offer other ways of increasing your final score -- implicitly by allowing you to start uncovering a new lost-civilization (which will reset the deck/board and your hand), as well as explictly adding a civ bonus to your final score for every "A Way Down" discovered. Since the number of turns remaining act as a resource, it's up to you whether it'd be more lucrative to spend them uncovering more tiles in the current civ, or trying your luck on another floor with a refreshed deck/hand. The game does heavily lean on the player piecing together tile synergies accross multiple runs, so hope this clears things up!
@krexor Glad you liked it! Bummer, sometimes excavations just don't have more to uncover -- better luck at the Symposium next time ;)
@andidebob Thank you so much! We definitely had to simplify numerous aspects of the game for the jam, sacrificing clarity or initial intent/balance in the process. However, we now have a pretty strong idea of where we want to go from here, and have already started working on a more fleshed-out version we hope to eventually release as, like you said, "a fun little puzzle game".
I gotta say, we were stoked to read your comment -- we have some ideas on adding multiplayer, more puzzle/strategic depth, and of course, a complimentary story. I also spent a whole day messing with paper prototypes, so it's super gratifying to see the board game aspect shine through!
@thegamerasd Thanks!
Nice! I could definitely see myself getting hooked on a faster-paced version of this, keeping the floaty-nature but increasing the fire rate. I feel like adding some juice to the projectile impacts (both player and enemy) would give 'em some weight & boost the "feels-good" aspect of the game. Overall, solid entry!
link broken!
This is great! Really like the concept
This is great! Had a fun time jostling some balls. Please don't quote me on this.
Nice puzzle game!
Fun game! :)
Very cute and relaxing! With the game play being minimal by design, I feel like strategically adding some sporadic nature visuals (i.e. fish splash/bubbles in the water, trees swaying with a gust of wind, etc), would help hook the player into continuing to watch the serene scene. Especially if placed between story lines both for variety and carrying over that intrigue.
When you're not giving the player many things to do, there's a bit of a trade-off with giving them a variety in things to hear or look at. The changing day/night cycle, the fireflies by the end, and the moving shadows were all wonderful touches, that some players might miss if they're not hooked at the beginning. Adding in some ambient movement on the flowers/trees/bobber, or having the cat occasionally flick their tail/twitch their ear, especially at the beginning, would add some visual interest and hopefully give the player an expectation that the game will change visually over time.
Also I would have loved if there was the sound of running water, especially with the cat pointing out how calming it sounds! I feel like I'm missing out! But maybe the cat just has better hearing than me... :)
I really liked the story touches and you definitely nailed the relaxing mood, nice job!
Great theme!
Love the idea! I think prompts for the controls (specifically the space at the beginning) would be helpful
Nice game! I really like the art style :)
I really enjoyed how intuitive this was to play -- a simple concept that was very well executed. It didn't feel like it was exactly possible to lose, or like there was any delaying of the inevitable, but I still enjoyed playing through till the 'end' :) Great job!
I really like the concept and the art style! I feel like taking inspiration for more monsters etc. from the board game Munchkin would go really well with this, if you were planning on expanding it in a dungeon-crawler direction.
Awesome entry!
Nice job! Fun little arcade game
Very cool! @suvi has a point -- super impressive especially for a compo game!
Awesome! @d00kl1 has a point with the style change though -- really love the watercolour!
Cool idea and fun to play! Love the artwork, animation, and the JUICE.
Side-note: the 2 full-screen buttons on itch.io are overlapping -- if you disable 'fullscreen button' under 'edit game' on itch.io, that should remove the offending one
Awesome job overall!
Very, very cool! Love the concept and the execution is well done.
Fun gameloop! Felt myself reaching for a shift-incurred boost at times -- there's definitely potential for more exciting upgrades/mechanics. Overall, it's got a polished look!
@jonathan-ray-pollard Thanks! Those plants definitely become a handful... :)
@dunusoor Love it! ...not gonna spill how many dev hours were lost to giggling at throwing pots around the room...
@spladug Thanks! Yeah, this game idea definitely wasn't fueled by any personal vendetta against a certain PEACE LILY that won't just BE HAPPY... ah... plants, right?
@natpat Thank you so much! We would definitely love to make a more chill version of this :)
@gamedevalexandr Thanks! You and me both... :)
@nardandas The inevitable is pretty sneaky sometimes
@junklab Thank you! Definitely sacrificed some (editor's note: "a significant amount of") time to throwing things around myself :)
@apaull0 Thank you! On the the object-flinging note: I concur. :)
@doctor-zeus Thank you so much! We really appreciate the comments :D The hit-box's are a little funky sometimes -- try aiming for the pot rather than the plant (@suvi says he's sorry about this)! And the dry air is solved by the little grenade-looking spritzer (@jkyd is sorry about this). Love the idea of a non-sense, 10-plant overloaded ending :)
@nate-the-great Thanks! :)
@lunaxolotl Thank you! The sink does pull the watering can towards it when you release the can for refilling purposes, however you should be able to grab it right back anytime!
@otterfaelure Thanks so much! Unintentional, chaos-induced game quitting? Love it. For using the watering can, right click needs to be held down as opposed to the single click for using the other items -- that's on us for not making it clear :) Glad you enjoyed it!
@mopifish Thank you for understanding my qualms with houseplants. Although, I keep buying more...literally went +1 houseplant this weekend for "game research purposes" and "art inspiration"...
Glad you enjoyed the game!
@finn-pickart Good point -- we just put up a new build with SPACE as an alt for right click. Let us know how it plays! Thanks for the feedback :)
@jzucc12 Perfect. :) Thanks!
@vivyhasadream Haha! Love it! Disclaimer: me and @suvius' mothers are both wonderfully lovely people... as well as avid plant killers.
Glad you liked our game and thanks for the comments!
@bottled-up-dark-peace Yeah, a checkpoint system's a good idea. We initially intended for a new run of the game (after failing a run) to skip the "tutorial levels" and begin with all the items, but it got chopped last minute during the chaos of the last few jam hours :sob: ...and we're like, it's a rogue-like now! It came down to running out of time for a bunch of ideas we didn't implement -- that's the nature of Ludum Dare I guess!
The granade-looking spray bottle is for fixing "dry air" (my bad on the art, but it's kinda funny), and the poison spray bottle is to fix "infestation". They should flash when you need to use them.
Honestly, we didn't expect for many people to do multiple runs (esp. for LD) -- you kinda get the gist after a minute of playing. With that in mind, we intend to extend the game a bit (after a little break, cause boy that was an intense weekend) and implement our chopped ideas, better difficulty scaling, maybe an upgrade system, and other nice-to-haves.
Thanks for the feedback!
firstTime_PlantMeme.png
@magic-mike Thank you so much! Will look into the three pots/lives issue. It also could be that even if you got an 'F' on a plant, it might not be at zero health and the pot/lives on the report card will only go black if you've fully killed a plant to zero hp -- this should prob be made more clear where 'F' means the plant is at 0hp/dead. (Edit: this was fixed in the last update!)
Glad you enjoyed the game and thanks for the feedback!
@anaxie-studio @marvis @jacinto-mba @reronin @zwodahs @noiyy @gabriel-dias-oliveira-de-almeida Thank you so much for all feedback and lovely comments!
@anaxie-studio There's definitely a sink bug, and for the life of us, we can't figure it out :sob: And hopefully we'll make the time for music next LD -- @suvi is an amazing music composer, so it's very much a shame imo <3
@zwodahs We tested out the game without physics and personally didn't find it as much fun, HOWEVER, if we had more mechanics (and maybe an upgrade system) to play around with, turning off the physics would definitely be the right move towards a more serious management sim :)
@gabriel-dias-oliveira-de-almeida @anaxie-studio For my first foray into sound effects -- I'll take the compliments! Haha, thanks so much!
@ildenh Nice!! Thanks so much for the feedback and lovely comments! We were hoping to clean up the game a little bit after LD and implement some of our ideas that got chopped due to time -- hopefully you'll check it out! Oooh, I like the idea of more artwork on the end game report cards... maybe even a short animatic?
@brandon-js-lea Thanks for sharing that story -- your poor Dad and his sabotaged plants! Your nan seems to be a master of malicious compliance though :) "oops! Instructions unclear"
Glad you enjoyed the game and your comment really made our day!
@filgru @yearningboo Thanks so much for your comments and we're glad you enjoyed playing!
@marc-antoine-girard Thanks! You definitely got a point about the lack of background music, hopefully next LD ;)
@amberfall92 weird! Glad it ended up working and thanks! Yeah the physics would be a little wack for a serious management sim -- but they do make for some funny moments and occasional giggles :)
GORGEOUS artwork, absolutely loved watching the changing scenery. In terms of game play, I would've liked to see more interactive elements along the journey. Regardless, watching the landscape go by was enjoyable on its own, just not necessarily riveting game play. When I clicked on the flower, I was a little confused about what had just happened, but I think that was the end of the game?
Overall, an enjoyable experience! Awesome job :)
Love the concept! Little confused at first with how-to-gameplay
Fun twist on Tetris, nice job!
Awesome mood and art! Having to type out the words was a cool design choice, but I found it conflicted a little bit with having to spam J and L throughout the whole game. I guess that's part of the challenge! I could see the 'J+L/keeping your eyes open' portion replaced with having to type out sleep-related words at random intervals (and made less frequent!). Really solid entry!
Love the idea! The pixel art is awesome :D
Aw, I get an error when I try to play: "indirect call to null" :(
@finn-pickart web version!
Cool concept!
This is awesome!
Awesome, love the arcade feel and the pixel art! It's begging for a tech tree with upgrades :)
Awesome sokoban-style game! Everything's very polished and satisfying to play
Nice game! Took me longer than I care to admit to figure out how to hit those traffic cones, but super satisfying once I figured it out
Really liked the concept and the story-telling! The audio did a really good job of setting the mood as well
This was really fun! I really liked the idea of incorporating two hands into the mix -- it definitely added to the chaos of processing packages. I think the mechanic also paired really well with only having to match the colours for stamps and deciding where to sort the mail, as it's very satisfying to fly through processing packages.
Great job overall! We also did a papers-please-like game so it’s really cool to see other team’s take on the genre and some pretty creative solutions to the problems we were running into :)
That was fantastic! I definitely have a weak spot for narrative games, and this one really pulled me in. The audio/graphics/general mood was very cohesive, and figuring out how to activate the pillars was genuinely quite fun :)
I agree with the sentiment of some of the other comments regarding the amount of clicking required, but it did make it feel like you had to work for the messages/clues while giving you some time to try and figure it out on your own -- awesome entry!
This is awesome! The art style and palette are really well done and consistent. I wonder if removing the "sliding" of the frog on the ground (like making him stick wherever you land) would make it feel more satisfying to control and lend itself better to looking/feeling like a frog jumping. Regardless, fantastic submission!
Really liked the concept of bad handwriting making the letter undeliverable and it was pretty fun to sort the mail into the slots!
Great job overall! We also did a papers-please-like game so it’s really cool to see other team’s take on the genre and some pretty creative solutions to the problems we were running into :)
@hundekuchen Should be up now, forgot to switch from draft while looking into the scaling issue
@adam-gaskins @svenerik @peterfiftyfour GLORY TO ARSTOTZKA!
Thanks for the feedback and bug reports -- we'll try to fix 'em tonight :) and @peterfiftyfour, it's not you, it's probably most likely definitely the 5am janky spaghetti code :D
@aweelex @aalula Thanks! Yeah a tutorial would've been great!
Try clicking the "next" button to get a new customer. When the "end day" sign pops up, click that as well to continue.
@rohanmoon definitely agree, it needs a tutorial and better scaling/a difficulty curve where mechanics are slowly introduced. Thanks for playing and the feedback!
@mr-danh sorry about that! The destinations on the package must be on the shipping route that day, otherwise you have to reject the package. If you're shipping every package, you'll probably run out of stamps
@aevek Sounds about right! The blueprint inventory systems are randomized, sometimes you roll one with less space than others. We intended to have more than 1 shipping route (and blueprints) per day, but ran out of time for the implementation.
@ani Thanks for pointing that out! Seems to be an issue in Chrome specifically on OSX, as the slotting works as intended in Firefox and Chrome (on windows) for us. We'll look into it
@bts Thanks for the feedback! We're definitely planning on fixing it up post-jam, it was a lot of fun to work on :) I'll have to check out your game and the other papers-please-like games too, would you mind linking some of the ones you played?
@bts thanks, I'll check em out!
@necriptos weird, looks fine on our end -- does no customer spawn at all for you? or are you stuck when the "end day" sign is up?
@necriptos that's wack, sorry about it not working! If TAB works for you, then try "d" as a shortcut for "next" and "a" for "end day". Do you mind sharing what browser/device you're using, we'll try to look into that issue
@necriptos Yeah the shortcuts won't work on the exe build but glad that they work for you on the webgl one! That's super weird though, we have no idea why the button clicking is not responsive X'D Thanks for the info though, we'll look into it
I really like the theme and the drawing-of-the-ship-route mechanic was very fun! While pretty to look at, I found the icons a little hard to understand/read -- especially with the background image not scaling to 100% width on full screen. Awesome job overall!
Very cool! Love the intro stills, the vibes are very cohesive across the board and the juice is great :)
That was super fun! The audio was great, love the art style, and the switching characters mechanic is a fantastic idea. Great submission!
Very cute! Love the mad-libs component, but the intro stills really take the cake :)
I like the concept of having to take postage off other some letters in order to send others! I found it a bit difficult to put some of the large letters into the blue/red bins -- they kept getting stuck and didn't always respawn. Also, I felt like having two different styles of moving items around ("click to pick up/drop" for letters and "click and hold" to move stamps) didn't lend itself to being intuitive.
Great job overall though! We also did a papers-please-like game so it's really cool to see other team's take on the genre and some pretty creative solutions to the problems we were running into :)
Love the pigeon theming, art-style, and audio! A tutorial skip and longer playtime/more mail to send would be fantastic, Herb is one hungry boy
Had a lot of fun playing through the post-jam version -- the LD-jam one was having a hard time loading. Love the vampiric contraband theme, and the x-ray vision is such a great mechanic for making an simple task that is still rewarding/intriguing for the player. Not sure if I was just an unlucky package inspector, but very few packages actually had contraband in them. However, when I did finally find some sneaky stakes, stamping "deny" was super satisfying.
Great job overall! We also did a papers-please-like game so it’s really cool to see other team’s take on the genre and some pretty creative solutions to the problems we were running into :)
Glad I finally got the chance to check this out! I found the controls intuitive and appreciated the different highlight colour on the cursor when items were held/the flashing "call" button when trying to initially figure out the gameplay. Thew colleague passing notes was a great take on citations from papers please, although they did feel very chatty when they were supposed to be working :) Also the extra pages on the sides of the books to show you whether you can flip in that direction was a really nice touch. Nice job!
I clicked so fast when I saw this -- I love planning. There's definitely some bugs with dropping events both in the calendar (sometimes the bigger events don't snap to where you want them) and if you want to move an event back off the calendar (starts drifting upwards?), but I love the concept and art style! It would be really cool if some events had limitations on where they could be placed (i.e. "go shopping" store hours: 12-5pm, "call Dr." in office Wed-Fri 8am-noon, "RPG night" Druid's available Fri/Sat and Warlock can only do after 5pm weekdays), it would add a bit of a puzzle element to it and make the placement of specific events feel more intentional. Dude-- and if those limitations were indicated with colour-coded stickers :o That would make me so happy
Awesome job overall! Thanks for making such a satisfying game :)
Very cool! The level design is great :) Sometimes the game would lag mid jump (web build), and Alice would miss the platform, which was a little frustrating but I appreciate that the disappearing card platforms would re-spawn after a second or two. Great job!
I really like the concept! I think a variety of tetris-shaped packages and different truck bed shapes would be a fun addition along with the increased difficulty ramp-up that others have mentioned. You nailed the sound effects and I'm definitely partial to the chill vibes :)
Art is great! Would love to see more mechanics incorporated into this concept, sorting is always so satisfying :3
Definitely nailed the arcade vibes :)
Such a cute, little pyromaniac! Love the artwork, would make a great sticker pack :3 It's always a challenge to maintain the intended project scope, so kudos for keeping it simple and polished.
@lone-wolf Thanks! Just uploaded a fix for the Quetzalcoatl and Aztec occupying the same space, however a splash sound and instant restart are a tempting addition... :)
@stevenjmiller Thanks for playing and the feedback! Some of the levels definitely feel brute force-y with getting the timing right rather than a satisfying/clever solution. Wish we spent more time making levels and less time fiddling with the Quetzalcoatl xD Good catch on the overlap bug, gotta love edge cases :)
I really like this! Very polished from transitions to sound effects to having a cohesive art style. Gameplay is also great, I has a fun time solving the levels :)
Lovely story! And of course, the art and animations are fantastic. I did feel like every time I clicked on the chair, I expected Alina to sit down immediately so the prompt asking whether you wanted to sit or not seemed a little redundant. Coupling that with having multiple subsequent tasks to do at the desk (commission work, chat, marketing, emails), and having Alina immediately stand up after completing a task -- it was a little repetitive to have to go through it over again. However, worth it regardless to get to the ending! Great job :)
Very fun, the art, music and vo were all great and I'd love to see more objects/characters/adventures! The inventory box was a little buggy sometimes when rotating some items, but there was usually enough space to slot everything in regardless. Great job overall!
I really enjoyed this! It has similar vibes to Flower/Journey, but with 'shrooms :) The tutorial level is done really well, and the sounds effects/audio are a great fit for the gameplay. There were a couple instances where I felt I should have been able to pick up the yellow spheres, but didn't. Maybe I missed an alternative path to collect them, however I couldn't figure it out. Love the graphics as well, great job overall!
The graphics are fantastic, you definitely inspired me to try that art style in a future game! I can a puzzle version of this concept where there's maybe some more actions available for separating a person from a larger group to avoid having to yell (which could have immediate negative consequences, like alerting authorities and increasing the player's notoriety for instance). Regardless, I'm glad I could do something special for the cutest Cthulhu I've ever seen on his birthday :3
This is really impressive for a solo jam! I actually really love the style. I think the art really works, it's got almost pico-8 vibes, and it's super consistent which can be an endeavor. Having any indicator for when you're taking damage/attacking/who's attacking (like even a sprite nudge, tween or a colour flash) would go a long way, combined with maybe stretching the individual attacks of the auto-battling portion out a bit longer to increase the suspense? I'd love to see more opportunities to deck-build (shops/card synergies) and more choices with going left/right on the map, but that's definitely outside of a jam-scope :joy: The final boss I think was the only combat that lasted more than a round for me, so I'd definitely up the difficulty scaling, but overall, this was pretty fun :) Too many hours in Slay the Spire, I'm a sucker for these types of games -- Great job!
Very cool! My game dev partner and I were working on something similar for a previous jam, but ran out of time to submit -- so congrats on the submission especially as a solo dev :D As others have mentioned, it'd be great to have more expected terminal behaviour work in game -- for me, specifically tab to auto-complete and honestly just the root directory listed so it's clearer to see where you are and where your last command occurred.
I'm not an audio person, but I believe there's a way to splice an audio clip, swap 'em, then cross-fade so the transition is at least less jarring if not pretty difficult to notice that it isn't just a continuous audio clip. But I really like the sounds you chose, they fit really well into the mood of the whole experience.
The image in the location files also looked super cool in the terminal aesthetic, would love to see more images in the different files. Also had the same issue as the other commenters: I couldn't figure out anything past pushing the three files, but I would love to play any future updates. Great job!
That key art is beautiful 🥲
@save-sloth-studios Do you see the "start running" button at all? There's been a couple ui layout issues in the mini player we're ironing out today -- I'd recommend playing in full screen :)
@sstyles93 @yoyoj @gabrimer thanks for the feedback! We ended up with about 2 hours left for audio... An executive decision was made that it would be a *much better* experience sans audio than adding the horrible sounds we were able to scrape together in that time :rofl: This style of game definitely needs some juicy sfx though, we'll add some in post LD
@mircudx Thanks for the feedback! We'll definitely add keyboard controls and audio into the post-jam build :)
@lisek-gagatek Wow thanks, this is exactly the kind of feedback we were hoping for! You bring up a lot of good points, it definitely isn't interesting to continuously run in circles to quickly pick up moisture before it evaporates -- I really like your idea of launching it in a random direction away from the killed enemy. That, or adding a time limit for each level with infinite enemy spawns and every droplet is collected automatically.
I didn't think about the item/slot costs like that before, but yeah, that's a very good point. I wonder if it'd be a good idea to prevent these higher-cost/power items from showing up in the shop before you have like 3 slots unlocked in a specific body part. Or if it'd be more interesting to see something you can't afford/takes up a potentially affordable item option at the beginning of a run, but gives you something to build towards.
Thanks again for the comment, you gave us a bunch of things to think about!
@cresceda I was definitely inspired by TBoI's art style for the baddies :)
The different background visuals for each stage are fantastic -- I feel like that sorta visual variety tends to end up getting cut out due to time constraints during these jams, so it's nice to see :) I found the enemy spawning rates on the second stage a little slow at the beginning compared to the first stage, and like the commenter above pointed out, the hitboxes weren't super clear so I found myself hitting the air instead of the enemies quite a bit. Great job on the submission!
Very cool! I really like the art style, music choice, and the techno-juice of it all! Especially in the early levels, I found it rather easy to dodge the bullets, perhaps because the player movement speed is so quick in relation to mouse movement (though I had a lot of dodging practice recently with testing our LD game). In later levels, having the lasers completely block off parts of the map really helps mitigate that, adding more complexity in actively blocking the sigils you can cast at that moment. While the sigils themselves aren't necessarily complex, I did find it a little overwhelming to get them all at once and not really have any time to look them over because the game is going on in the background (albeit slowed down). I did fall into a rut of using just one or two sigils back-to-back -- it would be interesting to potentially limit available candles at times to force players to use new sigils, or introduce them in a deck-building way such that you're constantly swapping out which few you're able to cast at any given moment. This being said, what a fantastic submission! Such a unique take on the theme mixed with a bullet hell game, wrapped in a very polished manner :) Great job!
It's super nice to see cut-scenes in a LD submission, the dialogue adds a lot to the immersion. I'm not exactly sure how the cards affect the gameplay -- I was almost expecting a Pokemon encounter but with deck-building cards at some point. I did run into a bug where the person I was supposed to summon got stuck in a crowd of people and wouldn't/couldn't follow me back to the gate.
I can see a future version of this game as perhaps a puzzle variety? Where the trip to the person summoned, as well as the return with them, has more obstacles to consider (like guards, angry villagers, or an unexpected fruit-stand-spill). I used to play a lot of Zelda growing up, and the levels where you as Link had to escort Zelda through a dungeon (where she would stop moving upon seeing any rats), are a great example of an interesting way of puzzling through an escort duty of sorts.
Great job on the submission!
Whoops LD stopped responding and posted this 3 times :s sorry!
The art style is really cool and I love how everything moves when you walk over it. However, I did find it a little difficult to tell who's an enemy or a summoned creature, especially with so many set pieces across the arena -- I'm torn though, because I genuinely really like how it all looks and would prefer a more interesting arena to the typical boring vampire-survivors-like background art. The music was also fantastic, loved the jazzy vibes.
I really like the concept of having to craft a summons in this style of game, and would love to see more options/recipes as the player "levels up". Great job on the submission!
Very cool idea! I kept wanting to use a "cancel spell" button as I kept messing up the order of the spell components :'D love the background 'shrooms
Those intro stills are adorable :3 Love the animations and sound effects of the slime, as well as the background music choice -- it feels wizardly somehow. The puzzle design is fantastic, I especially like how the stones can be used to both weigh your jump down (which can help just as much as harm) and fill in spiky holes. I am notoriously bad at precision platformers, that being said, the difficulty was good but there were times I wished for checkpoints. It was very satisfying to finally figure out all the tricks to completing a level and executing them perfectly from start to finish.
I did get stabbed through a rock I was standing on though, which honestly made me quite upset at the time as that was the furthest I'd gotten in the level after like 10 mins and the falling spiky rock things set the precedent that you couldn't get stabbed through them. But then again, this is not my forte and I still played through till the end :)
Great job, what a polished submission, both in game design/balance and overall experience!
Very cool! The visuals are so serene and fluid, complimented well by the sfx. The "levels" felt well designed in both the difficulty ramp/introduction of new concepts as well as player navigation -- I don't think I got lost or stumped on how to reach the next pickup and make my way back even once, which is a feat for someone who's typically geographically challenged. The one-way-only sections were a great way of encouraging exploration, as up until that point, I was intentionally following my path back every time I ventured out. I appreciated that dying didn't reset my progress, and the fishbone dropping segments was a very clever way of showing hp loss in a way that fit the minimalist aesthetic of the game. Super polished, and I enjoyed playing!
Beautiful concept! I would definitely play a longer version of this game, especially if it went down the puzzle route. Awesome entry :)
Very spooky! The lighting (or lack of?) really added to the atmosphere, and I enjoyed trying to navigate the maze on-my-toes in anticipation of a spider around the next corner. When fighting the spiders, it did feel like a technical challenge to stay within your attack range, but just outside of theirs. Especially with juggling sprinting bursts to match their velocity while navigating backwards. When there was more than 1 spider, I found out I wasn't too good at coordinating all that :) but it was still fun and 'Antonio' is a great title
Thanks for the comments!
@irene02 Congrats! For sure, the closest we have to that atm is tweaking the difficulty in settings
@krit1k Ah geez...it does, doesn't it...and I thought we were being clever and original :'D
Your daughter did such a good job with the bug designs -- the head/middle/end components are all so creative and unique, it makes for a really good search!
You wrote the audio is not pleasant, but I would argue the sounds themselves aren't bad, just the volume for the "correct/incorrect bug" is a little too loud compared to the softer "level select click". Assuming you're calling `PlayOneShot`, you can optionally specify an individual volume for each audio clip to even out the loudness, otherwise it defaults to blasting them at 100% volume. We figured out that hack a little too late during a previous jam :D
I noticed there's nothing that stops the player from clicking all the bugs without actually trying to look for the right ones. Perhaps allowing only a set number of incorrect clicks could counteract that.
I also really liked the grass photo background choice against the hand drawn bugs. Awesome job!
Beautiful game! The character animations were great, the ledge grab specifically felt really good. As someone who typically uses keyboard/mouse controls, I really wanted to be able to control the camera with the mouse, or at least show a little more of what's in front of the character when running "south"/towards the camera. But it definitely gives it a more ethereal vibe with the camera automatically zooming in/out facing the same direction. The unique sounds for the tiny creatures were very creative, and definitely added to the mood of the game. Awesome entry :)
I love a good rhyme, and with that voice over effect -- superb! There's so much pretty art and all the desserts are making me hungry just looking at them. What a creative way to do a quiz :)
I really loved everything! Music is great, the rain sounds are so calming, art is lovely -- the colour palette was a really good choice imo. I really enjoyed the puzzle elements, and the critter descriptions in the book were helpful when I got stuck without giving away too much.
Lovely game! The art and music choices are great, and 1-bit style is always fun :) The mechanic of switching between tiny creatures to progress is a really cool idea, would love to play through more puzzles using that. I enjoyed playing, awesome submission!
A non-game related nitpick: the background image of the viewport on itch blends in to the actual game, making it a little confusing to see where to go (and fullscreen doesn't display properly on a widescreen monitor).
webgl_backgroundimg.jpg
This was so much fun! Peeking around the corners in anticipation of hidden loot or a jumpscare really made you want to keep exploring, and the SFX and intro narration fit really well with the mood/style of the game. I would definitely play more of this, especially if there were more puzzle elements like the gun locker combo. I found myself reaching for shift to make the character run faster -- I feel like adding the option to run would be fantastic in addition to the slower walking pace, cause I did quite like the slower pace for adding to the tension or when you want to explore a new area carefully. Awesome job overall!
@gaspar Ha, good point! Not sure how neither of us thought to put in a cutscene skip, especially considering we literally had a testing shortcut to do exactly that x) Thanks!
@jtap oof, that sucks it happened on the last door! Yeah, we forgot to reset the progress bars for that fishing mini-game after you've already beat it once within a run -- we'll get around to patching it
@jamesgames1000 Thanks, yeah we'll definitely be adding that in :) Doors button was supposed to be a collection view of all the doors you've been through and a way to replay specific minigames (initally thought it might be useful for testing/de-bugging), but we didn't get around to hooking it up so it's currently just a monument to our hubris
Cool idea! The t-rex animations were really well done, and I love the palette choice/background art. I did get stuck in the wall though when I deconstructed next to it stuck.jpg
Finally, a fellow dev team who understood the true theme :) This was amazing 10/10
This was so much fun! The idea to reveal the insides of the locks was fantastic -- the padlock puzzle was especially satisfying in that regard. The mastermind puzzle took me a bit to figure out that it was indeed mastermind, but I think it ended up being one of my favourites. I probably wouldn't have figured out the ordering of shapes by their number-of-sides solution without seeing your comment above. However, I think that it could help to make the graphics for the shapes a tiny bit bigger, as I didn't really notice them at first and the fact that the number of sides was important, wasn't super easy to read.
We also made a lockpicking game! It's nice to see another dev team that was similarly inspired by "doors", and went for the challenge of tying in 2 themes :)
This was so good, you nailed the cozy platformer! I love the animations -- super cute -- and the sfx/music fits so well with the retro aesthetic. I did notice the shooting didn't always fire a bullet, so at first I thought the heroine was just ult-ing the finger guns for pizzazz x)
I really liked the clever puzzle design unique to each sample! Also the stick figure animations are amazing, especially the jumping/falling frame with the arms up :)
Love the concept! The art direction/execution and palette choice is really cohesive and a treat to visually explore.
I saw your post asking for constructive feedback: - Coming from someone who historically has consistently either done a similar "tutorial-screen-wall-of-text" or scrapped tutorials entirely due to lack of time, I've found it's just too much for players to read and have it stick all at once. Maybe having at least a tldr reference card for the controls somewhere in the corner of the screen or ideally introducing them individually with a prompt at the start while the player can try it out themselves would help a ton, especially when the controls for movement/interaction aren't super intuitive. - That being said, it's a lot easier to rely on a players previous knowledge of game mechanics, controls, etc., in terms of maybe not having to explain how to play. Something like changing the mouse cursor/highlighting a button on hover intuitively signal to the player that they should click here. Or for a point-and-click, I would expect maybe "E" to interact with a station/item and that just clicking on the doors/stairs would immediately have the character walk there and go through. - I think the camera-(smoothly)-snapping on the player when they walk off screen would be a great addition, especially with a time-based resources-gathering situation. I'd recommend looking into cinemachine (since unity), you can set rules to have it automatically do it for you.
The game looks super polished/unique in terms of assets, so I think it makes the un-intuitive controls stand out a bit. This is a bit outta left-field, but I can imagine a cozy, exploration-version of this game being really fun to play :)
I'm crying, this was beautiful <3
The entire time I thought the walking sfx was just a ticking clock, which honestly I thought was super profound with that one line that mentions you staying still while the world ticks on.
At first, I tried to line up the player(?) with the circle outline on the background, thinking it would do something (maybe unlock the next line, or change the player somehow). Which, if you were ever to expand the game/do another similar style project, and want to add more gameplay elements, I feel like that sort of thing would be a great option to explore and would have a bunch of potential for creating other impactful ways to compliment the writing.
This somehow reminded me of Disco Elysium, and all the best ways your Reptilian Brain or Inland Empire talk to you -- do you have any other work? I'd love to read it!