Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → johanhelsing
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 51 | Every 10 seconds | 96 beats per minute | jam | 687 | 3.42 | 2.92 | 4.09 | 3.80 | 3.87 | 3.55 | 3.80 | ||
| 2022 | 50 | Delay the inevitable | evaporate | jam | 496 | 3.66 | 2.94 | 4.08 | 4.33 | 3.52 | 3.08 | 3.86 | 3.97 | |
| 2021 | 49 | Unstable | 👥 | Wine Guy | jam | 672 | 3.57 | 3.56 | 3.68 | 4.53 | 3.57 | 3.38 | 3.74 | |
| 2021 | 48 | Deeper and deeper | Will and Testament | jam | 929 | 3.50 | 2.92 | 3.55 | 4.02 | 3.67 | 3.32 | 3.22 | 3.80 | |
| 2020 | 47 | Stuck in a loop | Petri Dish | jam | 911 | 3.42 | 3.15 | 3.74 | 3.40 | 3.57 | 3.14 | 2.97 | 3.50 | |
| 2019 | 44 | Your life is currency | Cowry - A game about change | compo | 159 | 3.53 | 3.33 | 3.88 | 3.11 | 3.25 | 3.53 | 3.01 | 3.83 |
Interesting spin and twist on the farming genre. At first I was getting really relaxed and ready to live a nice quiet life on the little planet. Then I heard that first freaking miao, and I was so scared. And the cat is SOO huge and PURPLE :) Love it!
I love how the asteroids' HP are communicated through the number of vertices! Great idea.
I don't think the gif at the top does the graphics justice, feels much more smooth fluid and polished.
I wish I could hold to fire, though. But that might just be a personal preference.
Audio is great. The game over sound fits in really well with the music. Nice job :)
Haha, definitely 5 stars for humor.
I really liked the voice acting, would not have been the same without it!
Pretty good feel to the platform controls. Visuals remind me of commander keen.
The intro, although funny and goofy, felt a bit long. Or maybe it's just me being impatient... I was very eager to start playing the game, and still I didn't want to miss any dialogue... Maybe it could've been portioned out a bit?
Also, it's confusing to spend lots of lives on upgrades prior to even knowing what kind of game it is... (Are jumps important? What kind of enemies will I face? Will I ever get the chance to upgrade again?) Maybe have the player walk through some basic level before the first upgrade screen is presented. I think some megaman game does this really well.
Otherwise, cool game :) Had fun!
Very nice and polished graphics. Screenshake is a nice touch. My hand got tired of clicking after a while.
The text at then end was funny :)
Very cool sprites, and overall very coherent and retro look :)
Cool game, I enjoyed figuring out how to live a good life. Died three times of depression, then became a happy artist who liked to cruise all the time. Nice job!
I love the crow. Graphics and audio are really cool :)
Really cool game, and pretty well polished. It's got a good office sound to it as well, which increases as the office grows, really cool :)
I managed to spend too much investing the first time and had to close on the first payroll, the next time I found the game to be way too easy. I invested in meeting areas and arcades exclusively, and I wish there was a way to speed up (I now have lots of cash and nothing to spend it on). But really impressive how much you managed to create for a compo!
I won! :)
I really like the visual style. The screen shake was really fun at first, but then got a little bit too much when it turned out to be on all them time. Otherwise it feels really coherent. I like the level up text and the particle effects.
The menus looked really nice as well.
As for gameplay, the game felt good, but it was a bit monotoneuous (and maybe a bit too easy?). I wish the upgrades felt more like upgrades. It was hard to say exactly what they did. Maybe bigger jumps between upgrades and faster increase in enemy strength would solve it.
Otherwise, quite fun.
EDIT: Oh and also how the money worked and whant the -$ and $ meant wasn't soo easy too figure out. Maybe add a help text the first time?
I played this unitl "I made it" as a CTO in a startup and didn't have to worry about anything. Studied all there was to study, then worked myself to death washing dishes.
Very original mechanics, haven't seen something like this before.
I like how the levels build up and let you discover each new trick gradually. Nicely done!
Graphics also look cool and the audio is great.
Interesting concept and good use of the theme.
The first time I felt a little bit stressed trying to read the text while the time was running, which again fits well with the theme.
I played the game a couple of times just to see what would happen with the different crops. Turns out you'll survive with any combination as long as you don't spend too long trying to decide. Not sure if that was intentional or not?
The text on the tooltips was a bit hard to read, btw.
Felt kind of fresh :)
I like the art style, and otherwise felt suprisingly polished.
A twin-stick gamepad would prbably fit this game well!
Some sound effects and music would probably have been nice :)
Haha, felt kind of goofy.
Don't go in the cells if you have a gang looking to beat you up!
The music was kind of catchy too. Really simple. I probably need to check out bosca ceoil myself :)
I also only get a black screen in both firefox and chrome. There are some errors in the console, maybe that helps you? error.png
Haha, this was really fun. I love these kinds of game where you wonder what the goal really is. The parody of the "game" is also really cool.
Nice job!
At first I found the contrast between the menu music and the game itself a bit jarring. Makes the battles feel very hectic in a way. I guess it fits well with time to relax/time to blast some weird insectoids
The level with the three beams is really cruel, especially when you don't have a shield.
I think there should be some kind of timeout on the game over screen. I was so busy clicking like crazy that I dismissed it before I understood I had died.
The graphics and sprites are really cool, pun intended :P Really consistent and fits well together.
Really cool idea. There is a big jump in difficulty between level 2 and 3, but otherwise, this felt very polished. I was a bit bummed out when I suddenly lost the game due to maintancy costs. I think this would be a much more fun game if it didn't have to follow the theme.
Music is awesome :)
Cool and original concept.
Took me a while to understand that I could walk on one side of the face. Then I felt a bit dumb for not realising it. Maybe just me :P
I guess I would've liked it if the first level was a little bit easier. It was kind of hard to get the momentum right, and I got a bit frustrated.
Nice spin on the theme! And cool graphics :)
Awww, I suck at these kinds of games. I get so frustrated by instadeath/restart sequences. Otherwise, it was a really interesting concept. I feel like the character and graphics are very much in tune with the gameplay :)
It still crashes for me on Windows 10.
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@sebastien-bourgeois Some Intel integrated on my laptop. I think it's Iris 540.
It was fun for a the first few rooms, but I was annoyed that it neither got harder nor ended or changed.
But cool for a first jam :)
EDIT: The music was also kind of fun. Like the rest of the game, if you flesh it out and add some more variety it could be really cool.
I ignored most traps and just moved as quickly through it as I could. Got through at about $500k.
Nice use of the theme :) I like the way damage and loss of score is communicated, mechanics and visuals fit really well together. Nice job!
Very cool core mechanic with trading body parts for weapons and debuffs. I went for speed and reach at first and finally won with one leg and one arm and a sword :)
Animations and fighting mechanic also felt really smooth! Good job!
Really cool mechanics. The forced sleep is really cruel, but I really like it! Especially how you can starve to death while sleeping.
I like the intro dialogue, it really made me care about the slime and getting it out of that nasty place. I think the "but at least they are dumb" should be in it's own paragraph so it would be more punchliney.
btw: I got to the golden door at the top, then jumped to the right and fell of the world into an abyss. You might want to make that distance longer, or the right side steeper.
There was no audio for me, not sure if that was an error or not? (I played the html version).
The jumping while crouched was also kind of hard, for some reason, I cant press three arrow keys at the same time, and even if I could it would be pretty crowded.
Btw, you can consider uploading your game to itch.io, they let you host the html version directly. Would make the game more accessible.
First time for me as well :)
@noobexception Yep, the problem was on my end, got it working eventually :) Sorry for the trouble. The audio was great, really adds to the mood of the game!
This was suprisingly fun, but very easy once I understood that I could just spam a single blow of wind.
It's kind of disturbing how the game starts out really peaceful and calm, and then looks really industrialized and ugly after a while.
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The bot is very cute :)
Btw: This was my first time participating as well ;)
I really like the graphics and animations, especially Jesus
Some sound effects when swinging the sword would've been really cool.
I wish it was in English though... I had to guess at what I was upgrading.
Very psychedelic and cool graphics. The enemies kind of remind me of that creature from spirited away :)
Really amazing on innovation and theme. I love that the core mechanic itself is so original and tightly related to the theme. That, and it also looks and sounds beautiful. Great job :)
Great art style and soo moody. Fitting music. Great use of lighting/smoke. Cool text animations. Manages to be minimalistic, but still look interesting.
Also fits the theme quite well.
Only feedback I have is that the itch.io site background was a bit bright and I couldn't find a way to fullscreen, which is sad because it's so moody and beautiful and I wanted to view it without distractions.
Really cool art style and great animations.
I wish there were some way of skipping the intro on the second go.
One thing though: on 4K it seems the UI doesn't scale, you might want to select the scale with screen size option in unity. Was pretty hard for me to read the intro text.
Again: really impressive to create all this in such a short amount of time, good job :)
Spot on the theme! Very humoristic and good pace as well. Quite relaxing and fun to play.
Voice acting is hilarious!
Really nice use of colors, and soothing soundtrack.
I was a little frustrated by being sent all the way back when dying, but maybe I'm not just hardcore enough.
Anyways, really impressive in only 5 hours!
Thanks for the kind words everyone! Will play your games later today :)
@wevel: Actually, you can break the circles if you drag very fast. I guess it would have been good with a bit more of a tutorial/intro, though.
The game over appears when you have a monoculture (only one species left), or if the dish gets overpopulated... I put the limit at 300 which is where my machine started to kneel for performance reasons, but I guess I should have set it a bit higher.
The original idea was to make the dish break when overpopulated and have the creatures explode all over the black area of the screen, but I ran out of time.
@hank-ather yeah, it's quite hard, and I wish I'd found some better way of balancing it. Basically you have to make sure that one species never exceeds 50% and regularly battle the two strongest factions against each other.
Hi :) Quite fun, though maybe a tiny bit too easy in my opinion, I found myself always follow.
The last level was a bit buggy for me, even in the version with the "bug fixed" postfix... I ended up going outside in the lower left corner, even though the paddle was the right way.
In any case, it was a quite fun experience, good job :)
Cool visualization of the path. I was struggling a bit on the second level, until I discovered you could regulate the escape velocity, so maybe I was just thick :P
The dying/crashing sound is genius.
Great job :)
Did it on the first try :) Not sure why, but I kind of chuckled at the square being named alexander :)
17 points :)
The art style is pretty cool. And cool spin on the theme :P
One thing I found is that I ended up not using the loop adjusting mechanic very much, although I wanted to, because it's cool! Make tuning down the wasd movement speed and making the loop more configurable would have worked?
Or perhaps having a bigger minimum size for the loop would force you to use it more.
Seems like the game page is missing... Perhaps it's still in draft mode on itch and you forgot to make it public?
This felt incredibly well polished for a jam game. Love the visual style, and the itch.io page is also really nice. The game itself fits the theme and is pretty fun to play.
Good job :)
Pretty engaging, I liked the idea that some buildings consumed resources so there was an element of balance that's not common in clicker games. Also interesting to pair it with the tile-based map, never seen that before.
I didn't understand how to get pickaxes, though, nor gold. So I got stuck at a point. From then on, I tried "exploring" a bit by building buildings as far away as possible, but didn't find anything that looked like gold or pickaxes.
In any case, I got pretty engaged with this game and played this longer that I intended do :P Good job!
Wow, this game is beautiful! And moody!
I love the palette and the way the "echo effect" gradually lights up things in the distance. The audio is great as well, both the music and the sound effects.
I was struggling a bit with the controls at first (I only tried using WASD, and the particle effects don't fire for those, so it's slightly confusing that the controls are sort of inverted. It was better after I read the description and started using the arrows as well.
I couldn't find a way to look around, not sure if that was intentional or not. Like, I really wanted to see down if I was going the right way or not.
In any case a really beautiful and moody game! Good job! :)
Hey, really moody audio, it fits the setting really well, and helps on the feeling of being isolated deep down somewhere.
The art style is simple but cute and the way it alternateds between dark and darker also really cool.
I missed the tutorial first time around (I was probably just assuming "Info" was credits or something), so on my first playthrough, I didn't understand that I was supposed to go up again, so I just swam all the way to the bottom, then died of suffocation.
It would probably be a good idea to either just always display the tutorial after clicking the start button, or ideally if you have the text in-game and make people do one simple iteration of collecting treasure and buying upgrades before they are allowed deeper down.
In any case, as I said I really liked the mood on this one, good job!
Great entry. Quite interesting spin :P on the theme, reminds me of Getting over it, but I think this game feels more fair and less ridiculous.
Also cool soundtrack and charming sprites!
This is my favorite entry so far!
I love the colors. It's retro, though still elegant.
Very clever how the first few upgrades acts as a kind of tutorial to what the different ui elements, I'll try to remember to steal that!
The sound effects also fit really well. The screams of the dying aliens is a bit loud and piercing, but I guess maybe that's intentional? In any case; I can feel their pain!
The enemies are also incredibly cool, and I love the cover art. I wish there were more types of enemies and more content, but hey this is already incredibly polished for a game jam game.
Great job!
Hey, came here after reading your post-mortem. Thanks for sharing!
Regarding the movement: Yeah, as you mentioned just 4 directions feels a bit annoying when the blobby things are circling you. Like, it's usually unfair the other way around (enemies restricted, but you are free)
I do kind of like the idea that you can't walk in *any* direction and attack/shoot in another one though. I think if you made it completely independent with something like mouse shooting, it would shift over to be just another bullet-hell game and kind of loose some of its old action rpg-ey vibe, which is one thing I really like about it.
Idk, maybe I'm just rambling, just thought I'd share my thoughts.
In any case the maps and proc-gen is pretty nice and it feels like a big and coherent world.
I also like the music, but as someone mentioned some of the sound effects are too loud and piercing.
But otherwise: Good job :)
The moodiness in this game was awesome!
Also, thanks a lot for making checkpoints I've been playing my frustrated way through way too many games without it.
I saw you wrote it in the description, but I missed the fact that bursting used a lot of oxygen. At first I though I was dying because I ran too fast into a wall. In any case I figured it out after a while then felt a bit stupid.
In any case, really cool visual style. And I simply love all the creepy fishes. Good job!
This is a great idea! I love games that challenge what games really are and move outside established genres, and I think this one one nails it! Great job :)
I actually really liked not having a tutorial, many games nowadays often rob you of the satisfaction of figuring things out by yourself.
My submarine crashed and got stuck, I think. But it felt totally justified, I was driving rather recklessly!
Wow, this is simply an astounding amount of polish for a compo game! Incredibly juicy and really fun to play as well!
Thanks everyone! Yeah, I totally should have put in a retry level button!
@lev Thanks. Short version is that the dirt blobs are simply cubes in Unity's physics engine. I do some hacks to freeze them in case they are moving very slowly, to forcefully stop unstable shivering piles of dirt, and to save performance and also turn previously dug up dirt into new "walls" of dirt.
```c# private void FixedUpdate() { drowsing += Time.fixedDeltaTime; var sqrVelocity = rb.velocity.sqrMagnitude; if (sqrVelocity < SleepSpeed * SleepSpeed) { if (drowsing > 1) { rb.Sleep(); rb.constraints = RigidbodyConstraints2D.FreezeAll; } } else { drowsing = 0; } } ```
I then simply "wake" them up by removing the constraints in an area when the shovel is thrust forward.
I actually think the rendering does most of the heavy lifting here. As they merge together when they are close, they look less like separate objects and maintain the illusion of being "packed" dirt. But that's a different story entirely :)
Might put all this in a post-mortem at some point :)
I got a message "Failed to load mono" when I tried to start the windows version.
For me the instant perma-death came in the way of something that would otherwise have been quite moody and with an interesting story. That said, I really liked the environment, and quite impressive to make all that just for a ludum dare! Good job :)
This is super moody and and weird in a good way! I also really like the retro look and the audio fits really well.
It felt a little bit too hard, though? I was really curious as to what was down there, and how it would progress, but I simply couldn't do it (I tried for 10-15 minutes).
I also generally don't like the memorize and retry kind of setup, maybe it would have worked to make the spheres a bit randomly placed and just had the game be easier. That way it would be disorienting on every playthrough.
But as I said the mood is sooo strong in this one, and the graphics and audio are really well done :) Good job!
I love this one. The art is brilliant, I love the watercolory parallax effect. Music is also great, and I'm really impressed that the gameplay also felt really balanced. I struggled a bit on the first try, then got though it on the second.
It was a pleasant surprise that the upgrades were randomized so my second try was a lot more exciting than I thought it would be.
Great job!
Fantastic mood in this one :) Reminds me a lot of Papers, please. I really like how there's almost no instructions as you start and you just got to figure it out as you go along. You really nailed the old-control-panel feeling! Great job :)
Fun spin on the typing game genre. The effects and the mood is really well executed. Love the blurry closing eye effect. Well done :)
This is an incredibly deep, well-balanced and innovative game for a game jam!
It was a bit hard to get into, felt a bit frontloaded with info. Perhaps consider locking away some of the options somehow? (like what you did in dome romantik, which was really clever)
Once I understood I had to click the buildings for info (and read all the hover tooltips), it went from confusing to incredibly engaging. I played this for over an hour before I beat it, which almost never happens for me with jam games.
The town center said something about upgrades when you get orbs, which I still don't understand (unfinished feature?).
I love the art-style, and the music is really fitting and easy to listen to.
My favorite game so farm. Great job!
I've played this for waaay longer than I thought I would.
Things I really like:
- Fading in multiple tracks as the level rises, that's a really clever way to bring attention and also tention into the game - The music in itself is very cool, and fits the game well - Tetris-style palette changes are cool really help bring some variety in otherwise very similar levels. - The gameplay itself is a great idea. It's fun to explore the patterns and see how few digs you can get away with and still get it right.
One of the things I discovered pretty late was that you had way more flags than there were jellies, so you didn't could mark non-jellies without much penalty except maybe missing a drain powerup. Maybe it could have been communicated better somehow that it's fine to mark tiles that are not jellies?
Having the drain powerups carry over to the next level helps keeping the game fun from the start as you want to save up for the later harder levels, but it also means that you don't really get a feel for the ramping up in difficulty until it's really hits you and you're out of drains.
Also, the sound effects feel really nice. Submitting a level feels great.
It's kind of weird to put this as a feedback on a jam game, but I really missed being able to save the game and return to it later.
Overall a great game. Definitely on of my top three this jam.
Oh, and section Q was just ridiculously hard.
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Great entry. Getting the spiders and other flies squashed was so satisfying. Love the green gunk :)
We should probably make a games-that-are-really-hard-to-figure-out gang :D
Btw, the web player didn't get past the unity loader for me. The windows build worked, though.
First time I launched the game, I think I was a bit unlucky with the rng. I started in the middle of only rocks and mashed the keyboard and dragged the mouse like a madman, and I almost gave up.
When I relaunched the game, I was more lucky, but I was still a bit unlucky with the rng because the passages from the starting room were too narrow to move through.
Third time, I managed to beat some of the big enemies, and got the pitfall mecanic, and managed to knock down some of those red little guys.
I still don't understand what the 10 second timer does? For me, it seems like it's just the game pausing every 10 second while in a fight? Or is there something more to it?
Anyways, I had fun trying to decipher how this one worked, and pretty satisfied I managed to trip those tiny red guys.
Robot model and driving sounds are cool. I like the offset hexagonal rock tiles as well :)
Reminds me a lot of Extreme Violence for the amiga
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Effects are cool, though the rotation made me a bit dizzy. Probably the intended experience though :P
I'm the legend!
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Not that good with hittin perfects notes though :P
I really liked your game from from the last ludum dare (Rising Tide), and I got to say I really like this one as well!
First time I played it, I didn't read all the instructions, so I didn't get it about the white flash being the weak point and didn't follow the beats, but still got to around level 7 before I quit and actually read the instructions.
So after I rtfm it felt really great!
I think you're really good with making sound effects and audio that feel great. I love the level transitions in this one as well. And like rising tide, changing background and colors help keep things fresh.
I feel like the difficulty ramps up pretty quickly at around level 7-9 and could have enjoyed playing a few more easy levels first, simply because it feels and sounds so nice it would have been nice to just enjoy it a bit more at an easy pace. However, this probably a very individual thing, so other people might be more impatient to be challenged.
Great work!
I love how cute this is! This and the one with the frogs from a recent mini jam. I love how light and playful this is.
The panda hits the perfect sweet spot of being annoying but not overly frustrating :)
I love the character design. I like ambiguity of whether he actually is a snail, or just thinks he is one.
I don't mind the escape and timing being a bit hard, but some checkpoints would have been really nice, so I wouldn't have to replay early easy sections.
Cool ideas and original gameplay. I like that the spells are once per 10 seconds. Means you can't spam them, but also are not afraid of using them.
I like the rat and wizard dialogue, just the right amount of text for my taste.
A shame you didn't have time to do checkpoints before the jam deadline. Would have been a *really* great entry with it.
Anyways, still a great entry :)