Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → joebeard
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | 39 | Running out of Power | 👥 | Zzap | jam | 124 | 3.85 | 3.71 | 3.74 | 4.10 | 3.93 | 4.00 | 2.48 | 3.64 |
This reminded me of Llamatron in many ways, with how fast the character moved and the finesse needed for aiming. My only complaint was that it was very easy to get lost, and I couldn't make out the direction of light on the trees to figure out which way I should be heading.
Aw man I wish I had seen this back when there were more people playing, this is the first LD game I've played with a server connection. I have to hand it to you, doing anything with an internet connection is a hundred times more difficult than a single-player affair. I notice that simply logging back in and renaming myself didn't regenerate my energy :P I can only imagine what havoc several players could bring down upon that poor little golf ball. One little thing that would have been nice to see is a "last action" message or similar, showing the last time a person interacted with the ball, and perhaps even how many times it has been putted and by whom.
Agreed with the comment above, the 50k upgrade was a bit expensive considering that the rate of money acquisition didn't increase all that much. It's a very addictive game though and very polished indeed.
I played the WebGL build and it seemed to work OK, although it took me a little while to find the gun. A wee bit more contextual help might have made it easier to understand. The lighting effects were very cool, it definitely fit the theme of the competition.
I used to love playing boxxle on my Gameboy; this reminds me of it. With a few more levels and slightly tighter jump controls there's no reason you couldn't put this up on a store somewhere. I noticed that the site you've hosted this at has a low rating for the game. Don't be discouraged by that, the animation and graphics are smooth and clear, and the idea is well executed.
The puzzles just kept on getting more interesting with each level. I think my favourite was the single screen level where I had to keep re-routing the cable around different blocks but to the same outlet. There were a few moments where the cable clipped through the platforms, but that's understandable given the short amount of time to build the game, and how unpredictable Unity's physics can be. I also really loved the wide eyes on the player character when you plug them in. A really fun puzzle game, I hope you get your twenty ratings!
That was spectacularly fun and hilarious, especially those reversing nuclear arms.
The game has a great story, but I got a bit stuck eventually once the base had opened up, and ran out of power. Maybe having had some sort of restore or restart point would have been a good idea, or perhaps I was right near the end and didn't even know it. Really dig the sound effects, too many games leave them out.
This was a lot of fun, I liked the aesthetic of the arena and the droning ambient sound. The lights were a little bright for the UI, but it was fine once I full-screened the game.
I've a few observations about the difficulty and skill balance:
* The laser vision seemed to be ineffective in almost all cases, as it took too long to wind up and too long to kill a monster. * The Ring of Fire was weird, in that it wasn't super useful to begin with, but really came into its own at about the 50-75 kill mark where it was possible to chain two together to kill large groups of monsters. However, after about 100 kills onward, the ring doesn't do enough damage and doesn't spawn ammo frequently enough. Even with a stack of 2 rings activating on the same group of monsters, most of them were unphased. At that many kills, two is all you're going to get off before having to teleport, which then mixes the monster group up again. * The fireball and teleport were great. * My browser began to choke at 170 kills or so because of the sheer volume of creatures in the game, maybe spawning less of them but increasing their speed could be a solution? * I had to suicide at 175 kills as my graphics card threatened to file a complaint with the kernel :P
I don't think I should ever be allowed to lead a glorious revolution. From the point of view of the people, the real tyrant was always me :( I agree with @estebe - this is a truly unique entry. I felt like the failure / success sounds were flipped, and that the failure sound should have actually been success, since it played a higher note. Aside from that, this was really cool. Adding the percentages was a nice touch, and doesn't make the game easy in any way at all. There's definitely some strategy needed here, if only I could figure out how to take those generals out. For the good of my people!
@somnium Oh! I must have misunderstood what was happening. I got the impression that the sombre note indicated victory which seemed backwards. When I heard a high note, the game was telling me that unfortunately, my mission had failed. In any case, I was an absolutely terrible commander in chief. Out of interest, when is the best time to attempt assassination? Is the chance always low except when you are already close to victory, or is there some way to perform an assassination attempt with a high success chance even if you have fewer followers than your opponents?
I like the twist there at the end when her shield goes down and the game gets a lot more frantic. I did experience a bug there though where the player character seemingly ran off like a coward, which was actually quite funny.
After finding the pile of gold stuff I wasn't sure what to do. I managed to climb a couple of the hills with a few tried and tested FPS tricks, but that didn't really get me anywhere. I liked the graphics and the terrain, I just wasn't sure what to do!
At first I had no idea whatsoever as to what I was doing, but after a few glasses of fine wine, I got the hang of it. I love the player character and ship sound effects!
Seems I couldn't scroll the map with MMB in either the Web or PC builds, which meant I couldn't see what my turrets were shooting at. Whatever it was, they seemed to kill lots of it :P
This was a cool game with a poignant story. It was a little difficult sometimes to understand the logic behind being able to place wires in some locations, but not in others. For example, why can I run a wire through glass but not over some rubble? The end was good, although the player character freaked out and shot off into the sky, which was quite funny :P
I had fun, and it was certainly quite difficult. I think upgrading the gun might be the way to go, as speed doesn't help much when you end up with a lot of aliens warding you away from batteries. There was a decent amount of strategy here, and the sound was a nice touch.
I think a minimap could have been quite helpful here, and I managed to get our poor captain stuck behind some moving walls during the second part of the psyche experiment. At least the pilot's leg is gonna be alright :P
Ah man, everything about that was great. Strangely enough I think the walking animation of the player character was my favourite thing - it just looked so cute. I simply had to find my friend!
Way back in Uni we had a blind professor who tasked us with making a game with no graphics, and only sound. This reminded me of that assignment. It really brings home the importance of sound in a game, especially in terms of aural cues. I had no problem completing the levels, and the narration (especially the end) kept me grinning throughout. This is probably my favourite LD39 entry, cheers!
It was a bit tricky controlling the space ship, maybe removing its constant thrust would help?
How has this not gotten 20 ratings yet? There was so much to do and so many good ideas put together in just a couple of days! A really swell game, I hope you keep working on it!
An interesting game, but it blew my PC to bits when I tried to exit it, had to hit my power button and cancel the forced shut down once windows became responsive again.
Oh man this wins the most realistic simulation award for sure. I didn't read the tutorial as I saw the screenshot and wanted to see if I could figure things out. I eventually got the hang of it! If I may, there's one suggestion I'd like to make - during some of the more hectic moments, it would have been nice to have had an "on state" for the ship's system buttons, so that it would be easier to tell at a glance, what systems were powered up. I realise that the power consumption is noted, but it takes just a hair too long to read the green text when you're right in the thick of things.
Didn't think I'd ever play a battery dating sim. Now I've seen it all! Those electrical puns sure kept on coming, one might even say there was a surge of them.
A nice idea; it was a bit difficult to switch between the ship systems - I agree with the other poster above about maybe having bound them to key presses. Other than that I feel that a wee bit of ambient sound might be a good addition.
This is a really cool concept, and definitely a throw-back to old school puzzle platformers. It also requires a keen sense of the game as a whole to be able to switch away from the screen to interact with the rest of the cube, and not lose track of what you were doing in the platforming portion. With that said, here are a few suggestions / observations, if I may:
* Control of rotating the cube was a little difficult; while the size of the interactive elements helped, especially being able to grab the shaker and push the screen power button without needing to rotate the cube all the way around, receiving a little assistance (even if optional) here would have been a nice touch.
* Needing to switch away from the platformer portion happened a little too frequently. Balance here is a bit tricky, given the theme of the jam and the concept of the game. I'd argue that since the platforming portion was the main focus of the game, having to switch away from it quite so often even at the early stages of the game was a little frustrating.
* SFX were a little simple, although certainly appropriate and cohesive; there could have been a bit more going on aurally.
* Screen usage was limited to an almost square aspect ratio; there were large portions of the screen that went unused, perhaps being able to zoom in to the main screen would have been helpful, but on the flip side, that might detract from the idea of the game being the cube, instead of just being contained within its screen.
I was expecting the gun turrets to come to life, it would have given a purpose to the rotation of the turret. The end was really abrupt, it would have been cool to have the text on the wall instead. The idea is neat, I hope you add more to it in the future :)
That was pretty unique, the scrolling effect on mouse movement was a neat little touch too. I was just about able to make my way around the maze, the arrow key widget helped a lot with that.
I've not seen another clicker type game so far this jam. I love the graphics, especially the way the engineer jolts awake when you poke it. The intro is, of course, perfect as well. Thunder storms - every gamer's worst nightmare ;) I don't think I have the stamina to get all the way to the end, as I have stiff hands, but this was a ton of fun. I'll be off buying a new mouse now.
This was really a lot of fun, especially the coughing fits which got me killed a few times. It's good that you can keep continuing though, I suppose that sort of fits the spirit of the game too. One minor thing I noticed was that sometimes enemy attacks would land even if the player character seemed quite far away from their point of origin vertically. I loved the start too, and the babbling reporter!
The theme was cool, the constant power drain was a bit of a drag when the player wasn't moving, especially when having to wait for the moving platforms.
The best game I've played so far I think. It had a pretty proper old-school difficulty to it, especially after picking up ship parts. The theme reminds me of R-Type and Turrican, nicely done.
Although the concept was good, there were a few bugs / features that made the game more difficult to play than it should have been.
* The build menu is pushed off the bottom of the screen, so building towers down there can't be done.
* There were also few indications about the state of the game. For instance, it wasn't possible to see what was consuming power, and how much power each building was consuming.
* The towers could not lead their targets, and it wasn't obvious what their range was.
I really liked this, the game is quite well balanced and it took me a few goes to win as the humans. My only criticism would be as mentioned in one of the other comments - the shadows attack very unpredictably, and it's not clear when a human dies, how they got killed. I lost at least one of my guys from a position I could have sworn was not too close to another shadow.
I think tightening up the controls would go a long way to making this easier to play; in some cases the camera felt like it was over the shoulder of the robot as well, as it didn't seem to be going straight in the direction the camera was pointing in.
This is one of my favourite stories of all time, I hadn't even considered that it fit so well with the theme. Of all the games in LD39, surely this one fits the theme most perfectly. If there were 6 stars for that, I'd surely award them. The music and graphics were of course great, and the scene selection was handy when I accidentally refreshed my browser.
The graphics were really pretty, but somehow the screen-tear and flickering started to mess with my eyes. I don't usually get motion sickness from games but that made me feel a little bit off. Maybe reducing either the flickering or screen tear effects would help? It seems to be the combination of them that does it.
Pants I missed the message! I'd consider allowing the player to move on both axis at once, as it feels a bit weird to have one direction override the other.
This had some simple but well thought out mechanics, and the sound and graphics were really great as well. The game over effect was suitably abrupt, damn that giant... rock ball guy! Hopefully you guys do something more with the game, since it could work well on just about any platform.
I especially enjoyed the shake when firing your weapon, it goes well with the heavy bass from the sound. I just wish it got more difficult faster.
Hmm well I liked the prospect of death, walking simulators are so 2015 and anathema to video games. Death here also played neatly into the peril that the player character / father was in, which increased as the player continued to drain power from the lights. I don't think there's anything I'd want to change about this game, it was very cleverly put together.
The battery indicator was difficult to read, perhaps that's because I was playing it in a window and the lines got aliased? The one thing this game needed the most I think was sound.
There were a lot of game modes and options available here, which was unexpected. It seems like you had a lot of different takes on the "space invaders" model and they all worked quite well. I found the catch variant a little difficult to play, as the power pylon didn't quite move fast enough. I also dig that you added an installer for the game (especially as the zip seemed corrupt?), that's a nice touch. Overall I think the game is pretty polished, and you obviously made good use of the time available. I'd have left the music on by default, it adds a nice little tune!
I loved that double-tap combo of stun and melee teleport, I don't think I've seen skills combo that well in any of the other games yet.
A really well balanced and fun game, I liked how the SFX and graphics fit a retro theme so well. The player could have been a twinge more agile, but maybe that's just because I was a crap player!
Hahahaha! Oh man, I loved this. That end was absolutely inspired. I think though, that Joyce may have turned out to be a dude IRL, you know how these internet romances usually go ;)
That ship sinking animation makes this game a 5/5 for me. That, and it reminded me of some sort of weird mix between Major Stryker and BattleTech: The Crescent Hawk's Revenge.
That flipping lamp post! I realised my foly right after I jumped. "A lamp post? Oh, why thank you level designers for giving me a slightly easier section than the previo~... Bugger." In general, the controls were great. The player had just the right amount of air control, and I appreciate the ceilings in the corridors being high enough that you won't bump your head off of them if you don't execute a pixel-perfect jump. What can I say? I liked this. I'm going to go back now with some rubber soled shoes.
That was a good story, with a bit of a dark twist there at the end :) I may have found a way around most of the creatures though, by wall hugging as much as possible. I swear my hero, while down trodden, still had a bit of fight left in him yet!
@tmpxyz Difficulty was something we had a hard time balancing.
Essentially, if you are quite good at quickly finding an optimal path through a series of obstacles, you are going to blast through the twenty levels.
The purpose of the gameplay is to plan a route through each level in as efficient a manner, and as quickly as possible. The corrupted tiles are supposed to add a sense of urgency, as waiting for too long will give the tiles time to spread, and crossing them is expensive. The levels are designed to take less than a minute to solve, in my youtube play-through I managed almost 40 levels (I failed on my first attempt) in about six minutes.
The reason for the short play-through (although we never really discussed it as Dave and I seemed to be on the same page about most things, correct me if I'm wrong @hs-Dave ;) was to let players see the end of the game without spending too long playing - there are after-all, many games for everyone to try! The knock-on effect of this however, is that the difficulty can seem a little random. Some players may face a greater challenge than others to a certain degree. As @frankiesmileshow noted the levels have a degree of random generation to them, although I should add that a) they are guaranteed to have a non-blocking path through them, and b) there is a difficulty scale that affects the spawn chance of the different tiles, the cost of movement, points awarded, player health etc.
We're continuing to work on the game; in fact, I'm in the process of adding an "Endless" mode now after having added proper campaign and scaling difficulty support. Feedback about the game's difficulty is greatly appreciated, I think moving ahead that's going to be a big factor in whether or not the game has replay value especially in its endless mode.
Thanks for all of the feedback everyone, we're glad you found the game enjoyable!
@maybelaterx It's actually meant to be a fast paced game, but getting the time pressure to feel right and build up was a challenge. With that said, since the latest build supports campaigns with varying difficulty curves and tile spawn chances, it would be reasonable to add a "classic" mode that emphasizes careful planning over quick reactions. @hs-dave has written a path finding algorithm which provides us with a difficulty weighting for a particular level, so we can more easily ratchet up the complexity of each level without making it impossible to complete.
In general, we've been looking at difficulty scaling a lot, and right now the level builder doesn't have enough control over where it places corrupted tiles. For example, we've added the concept of different zones to the game that can be reached by taking an alternate exit. The exit should naturally be harder to reach if the zone you are moving to has a higher difficulty rating. However with the present implementation of difficulty, the chance of spawning hard tiles is uniform across the entire level, not just near the alternate exit.
Thanks again for your feedback folks, it really helps to give us an idea of what parts of the game need extra attention.
@pavel-kouril There's just five basic layouts at the moment, but we plan to add plenty more. It's also possible to add geometry specific to the levels themselves, like perhaps something for the tiles to be anchored to, which will make things look more interesting.
@talouin @hs-dave has experience with leader-boards, so definitely maybe!
Presenting information is a continuous challenge. Imade that dinky little rotating hud display at the start, but it's nothing compared to a decent tutorial. Allowing the player to pause the game mid-play on "easy mode" (whatever that turns out to be) and presenting contextual hints might be the way to go.
An endless mode has been implemented, and we are currently working on skills, and level generation ahead of releasing the game.
@somnium there will always be an aspect of random generation with the levels. We are shooting for a "get through many levels" approach as you said, where managing you health, and assessing the risk of collecting points vs exiting the level are integral to game play. Our latest build now features an xp system, a skill tree, and a world map that connects different zones. The idea is for the player to spot and prepare for incoming risks. For example, the world map shows zones up to five levels ahead of the player, so they can see a fork into a more difficult area approaching them.
I think the difficulty could have been scaled a little bit so that it was easier at the start, like maybe just having the power bar drain a little slower. There's loads of potential for ramping up the challenge that could keep people playing a long time. I only managed to get to 9 switches, but it felt like an achievement. Nice game!
A toggleable option to add gravity would have been great, since I found it fairly easy to add a little bit of horizontal momentum and then to just control vertical when I needed to. It was a good game, and required a fair bit of concentration.
This was such a good game. I loved the animation, fluffy's untimely death, and especially the developer logo ;) I can't say I felt bad for fluffy in the end though, he had gained so much weight that the town's people finally raiding the power station to feed him to their starving children seemed more like a kindness than anything else.
This was super fun, the shop was a neat touch too and adds longevity. The music and sound was also pretty cool, it's good to see (or rather, hear) entries that haven't forgotten about audio!
Oh man my fingers hurt after that. I loved how the game got progressively more insane, but never seemed to be completely impossible. The different ways to restore power were great, and made things even more hectic. My one suggestion would be to make incorrect presses / rotations / movements on the power panel cost energy at higher levels ;)
The way that items increasingly become dangerous obstacles if you don't need them is clever. Having to correctly prioritize the collection of certain items over others adds even more complexity. You've got a really cool mechanic here that I don't think I've seen implemented in quite this way before, certainly not in any of the other LD entries.
It's a good game! I just think maybe you could have given the player hitpoints to satisfy the "running out of power" theme, and making death a little less sudden.
Gotta love sticky keys ruining the fun, quite possibly one of the most loathed features of windows.
Aside from that, this was really cool. Good job with the shaders too, they make the game look suitably moody. As you said, getting anything substantial done during LD is difficult, but I think you guys did well. A two player game is especially complicated to build in a short time.
One thing that would have been nice to see was some ambient sound. Even if it's from a library, since you did such a good job on the lighting, a little more audio would really make a difference.
This seems to bare a striking resemblance to the Unity top-down shooter tutorial?
It sure was a lot of fun harvesting those poor pixellated people. I wish there had been more variance in the areas, but it was good fun and the graphics and sound were perfect.
The only thing about this game that wasn't spot on, was the plugs getting stuck. While it does add to the challenge, especially as you have to pay attention to where the fourth plug is resting, I feel like the physics were just a little bit too unpredictable, which led to a few moments of frustration. I did however restart the game several times until I completed it, so in hindsight perhaps it was a smart addition after-all!
Hmm I can't seem to unzip this, I'm using Winrar and getting various errors when attempting to unpack the archive.
This is a really cool fusion of two totally different genres, and could definitely work as fully fledged game!