Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → johnbjuice
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | 36 | Ancient Technology | Babel | compo |
Very funny! Great color design - I instantly knew what to avoid in terms of the scenery. Beautiful artwork and great sound!
Cool concept, interesting mechanic, great pixel art, and very good music!
Definitely would be better to let players choose their level or start over at the same level - annoying to play that easy first level over and over!
You should probably prevent the player from grabbing blocks on the far left right before they go offscreen - I figured out I could basically cheat by doing that!
Very difficult, but in a good way - the challenge felt fair and interesting. Great job!
HIGH SCORE: 210
Very fun concept and story, had a lot of fun! Love the ending too.
Would have liked different font choices for the text that wasn't the title - felt a bit out of place. Definitely a graphical version of the story would have been better as well.
I feel like the only gameplay problem for me was that the optimal strategy was to focus on dodging, since there was no way to recover shields and the primitive people were surprisingly accurate with their rocks and spears! So I ended up getting a bit annoyed at how much dodging I was doing, since dodging doesn't really make you any progress of get any points. This could be remedied in many ways - perhaps shields regenerating, making the player have a time limit, or making the primitive people less accurate...I'm sure you could come up with more ideas as well!
Overall, a very solid LD game! Bet nobody can beat my high score!
I don't have anything new to say, other than that I got stuck on the ramp level for a while because I didn't realize that moving up a ramp made me jump higher!
Great game though, the portal mechanic is really cool!
Couldn't get the LD Embed or the HTML5 link to work on my dinky Win7 laptop! Sad - the screenshots look gorgeous!
Running - Windows 7, Google Chrome
Very pretty atmosphere, but I couldn't figure out the puzzle. Definitely keep working on this!
Sadly, your game crashes on my computer with no error message of any kind. Was hoping to give you some good feedback!
Windows 7
Intel i5-2500K
8 GB RAM
PyGame can be tricky - good luck getting it fixed! Let me know if you figure out the problem and release a new build.
I CRUSHED THE ENEMY!
Very fun, cool idea to mix the platforming and the turn based strategy. The platforming sections were a little buggy and the AI was VERY AGGRESSIVE but it was still fun!
Good job!
Lots of laughs, wonky and hilarious controls, and just a really funny concept! I failed so hard at collecting garbage :(
Wish there was sound! I love Harald, best dinosaur ever.
Congratulations on your first compo! Your game is not bad for a first time compo entry!
Definitely agree with previous posters about the controls - very slippery physics, and it was difficult to remember all the different keys to control everything!
The menus were well laid out, if a bit drab. You can definitely make some bolder design choices there.
I like the dark and dreary atmosphere though, and your main character is pretty well animated.
Would have been great to have some music or sound effects - even just BFXR sounds can do a lot to bring life to a game!
Once again, congrats!
Such a great puzzle game! The two mechanics really compliment each other well, I honestly found myself wanting more levels at the end!
Cute lil pixel art, great sounds, good controls - can't really think of any negative feedback to be quite honest! You should definitely make this into something bigger outside of Pico-8!
I FIGURED IT OUT!
Very cute little puzzle game, love the music and quirky art. A little confusing at first, but sticking with it and poking about was worth my while!
Probably my only criticism would be to implement more positive feedback - there were definitely times where I wasn't sure if I was making progress.
Cute music, interesting mechanic, though I couldn't get more than 750 points! Would have been nice to have the juice explained in some way, discovered it by accident! Very nice art as well, this game looks really polished!
My only criticism is that the cursor at the bottom should just have the letter of the key. Instead of "Press A key" or "Press S key" it should just be "A" and "S". Would still communicate the controls and look much better.
I sank two ships before I ran out of soldiers! The physics are funky but the game definitely needs some tuning - the ships moved quite slowly, and I couldn't discern any viable strategy other than luck.
Very beautiful assets! This is probably the most good-looking 3d game I've seen so far.
Great job!
Wow that difficulty spike was harsh! Definitely could have used a slower ramp up in difficulty. Also, the controls were a little wonky - why not just use the Construct 2 8-directional behavior?
But regardless, it's a really fun little Gauntlet clone with a lot of character. Love the voices and sound fx. AI is good, maybe too good! Probably would be a good idea to have an enemy # cap as well, otherwise that second level gets impossible pretty quickly!
Finally, as a fellow C2 dev, let me tell you - the sine wave behavior goes a long way into adding that extra little bit of polish! The menus were a little static, just some movement would have livened them up!
Overall, a very solid compo game! Great job!
Cool procedurally generated puzzle game! Felt like a simplified roguelike, reminds me of the old Unix game robots or Anna Anthropy's Frog Assassin. Played through 5 boards before I decided I should move on and give feedback to other games!
Lots of clever design tricks in your simple graphics - almost every bit of the level taught me how it worked by playing, and those that didn't I figured out quickly by dying! Love the color scheme as well.
Wish there had been sound though! Even just a few sound fx would have gone a long way, though what would be really cool would be if there was music that only played each time you moved! Just an idea.
Would love to see an expanded version of this, and will definitely be poking around in your source code. Great job!
HIGH SCORE: 107
Great job on your first compo, especially considering how late you got started!
It's super fun that made an old school arcade-y game and made a fake boot screen as your title - very creative and it definitely piqued my interest!
The game itself is surprisingly interesting for how simple it is - the low jump height and long enemy fall/sideways movement combined quite well. I was constantly positioning myself based on how I could dodge the incoming enemies, but then needed to collect those apples!
Tweaks I would have made -
Make the apples worth more (5 or 10) and give the player a single point for each enemy they successfully dodge. Makes the game feel more involved/active, while still keeping the player's focus on the apples.
Prevent enemies from spawning in un-dodgeable patterns - this happened to me once or twice, was kind of frustrating. Might be tricky to do if you are just spawning them in randomly though.
Use a pixel font - the sans serif font you used kind of stuck out, seemed like it wasn't an active design choice. A pixel font of some kind would have fit the aesthetic - perhaps you could look up an old Atari or Commodore font!
Your sounds were great and fit the game well, but some were not well balanced in terms of volume - a few sounds were too quiet, a few too loud. Nothing Audacity can't fix.
Anyway, great job regardless! Your game was very fun to play!
Haha, what a cute little puzzle! Very funny.
The flask puzzle was the only one that stumped me, probably because Anne-Marie keeps drinking even if you've already interacted with something once, so it didn't occur to me that I had to get her more drunk by using the flask on everything!
Very interesting platformer! Cool mechanic, took me a little bit to find the star!
My main crit - please add input delay after dying! Many times I missed a jump, died, then ran off the edge to die again! I only played the compo version, so maybe you added delay in the improved version.
Anyway, great job!
Woah, what a cool idea! Had a lot of fun figuring out those puzzles.
Very natural progression, creepy mood - great job!
Cute! The guitar really adds a lot of atmosphere, and the little robot is very sympathetic! I love the narration of the tapes too - wish I could have listened to them again somehow! Also, was annoying that the tape cut out when you switch rooms.
Your collision detection is definitely a little rough, but it's forgiving, which is nice. The main problem were the moving platforms, which seemed all kinds of buggy - wasn't sure I could put the blocks on them at first! I'm sure you'll improve!
Some Z-ordering issues with your assets, and I also found the sideways doors confusing at first - I think the asset is just hard to read on first glance.
The puzzle design is superb - not particularly challenging, but pleasing to complete and very tidy. Each puzzle brings a slight change which is quite nice.
Great job!
A very clever, simple little mechanic, realized into a cute little game! Very cool stuff. The platforming feels comfortable and the related mechanics are intuitive. The animations are crisp and clean as well. Very juicy feedback.
The level design is well laid out, though I would have appreciated a map/markers of some kind to navigate. Then of course, there's something nice and simple about the way the UI works without them, focusing only on the collectibles. Maybe just an indicator of what direction the last few collectibles are in? I found 4.75 of my friends before getting stuck, was super sad to not be able to find my way and complete the game.
Very quiet game - like the sound effects, not sure if I dig the music Is there music? I thought I heard something? Maybe like a very VERY quiet atmospheric something? I'm not sure. This is how I feel about the audio.
On that note, the atmosphere of the game is very well done, despite my audio complaints. There's an emptiness that the drab palate compliments, as if the world is an endless dead machine, waiting for you, the tiny little gear, to bring to life! Would have been cool to see some more juice in the interactions with the world though? Not sure.
My main criticism would be the difficulty. The set pieces were very interesting, and the game is bursting with interesting ideas, but the puzzles tended to be pretty straightforward to figure out. The issue was how the platforming difficulty of each set piece would vary wildly - one puzzle would be super easy, another would take 10-20 tries! Tricky wall jumping paired with the conveyor-pushing mechanic led to quite a bit of frustration! A few puzzles also had aggravating restarts - either a spawn location placed too far away or a mechanical piece forcing me to wait before resuming play. Especially that puzzle near the top with the three conveyors which controlled each other - so annoying to have to wait for them to scroll back!
On that note, I'd also add that it is unclear to me which parts of the level reset when I die and which ones do not? I know that there's some design trickery going on around that, but as a player it was frustrating when I opened a door, died, and then found out the door closed again!
But I'm nitpicking! Probably because the game is so well polished, expansive, and fun, I've got to focus on the little stuff. You've really got a knack for creating interesting/different central mechanics with juicy presentation! Great job!
PS: WAITING FOR SOURCE PLZ VERY CURIOUS TO SEE HOW CERTAIN SET PIECES WORKED SO PLZ DELIVER SOURCE
Music glitch - the piano part played over itself until it got super loud and painful! Seems like a bug where the game keeps playing the file even though it is already playing.
The controls are interesting and difficult - I found myself just moving the shooting crosshair every once in a while and mostly focusing on moving the character.
Not a fan of the GG reference, gross.
Art style is consistent and good otherwise.
Solid game.
@Ilseroth - Yeah, can't have WASD controls when one of the mechanics is typing! Oh, and I definitely would have added more variation on the music if I'd had more time!
Thanks for the helpful feedback - gonna go take a look at your entry!
OKAY I REPLIED TO A BUNCH OF PEOPLE BELOW SO LOOK FOR YR HANDLE IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN WHAT I HAVE TO SAY K THX AGAIN FOR PLAYING MY GAME!
@DragonZBW - Glad someone discovered that! Did you ever fall off the tower? :)
@samu - Yeah, I reduced the intro when you replay from the death menu, but you still have to grab the spellbook.
@thatsBamboo @Rico The Jammer - Actually, the game has a mix of random characters and premade bunched-up "words" (incantations). No spaces though, since space was the jump key!
@joemag - I was definitely most proud of how tense the game felt as you're typing with the lava coming up underneath you, glad to see that came through, thanks!
@danielsann - Construct 2 has its pros and cons. It's definitely good for LD though because you can prototype so quickly!
@6bangs - Were you at the very top level of the tower? The text only appears when you reach the very top. If so, please let me know if you reproduce the bug, what platform/browser yr on, screenshot, etc. if you can!
@AWOL - It doesn't make a difference if you played someone's game or not if your feedback is only two words. I'm not trying to start an argument, just trying to be direct and helpful. As for the theme, the game is set in the Tower of Babel! That's ancient technology! Yeah!
If there's one thing I learned in this jam, it's that I can't rely on my intuition to determine the speed of my platformers - I apparently like them really fast! :O
Thanks everybody for the nice words and helpful feedback! I'll get to playing everyone's games eventually!
CURRENT HIGHEST SCORE - 780M by 6bangs
A BUNCH OF REPLIES FOR THOSE INTERESTED IN THEM!
@tweetzzzzz & edgeofcode & dkdwrek & Mine10blox & Fib & Avalanche Games & NinjaNic & Amine Tcherak - Thanks for the praise!
@Anudin Considering the religious themes, as well as violence, I'm not sure I could make this kid-friendly enough!
@Corinator - When you don't have time to include volume controls, go loud? Sorry! Will put up a warning.
@TheTeaGuns - Thanks! What was your high score?
@kraiom/guiocm - I'm glad at least one person discovered falling off the top of the tower! Was a last-minute addition that turned out surprisingly well.
@Bogden - NEW HIGHSCORE OMG YR A WINNER
@DaleP - Oh wow, didn't think of the backspace issue - I'll add that feature to my upcoming post-compo release.
@appleskin - Would have included WASD controls, but needed those keys for the typing of course! Clearly people like WASD a lot...honestly I'm always annoyed when a game uses WASD and doesn't use the mouse!
@Vaiaphraim - Balancing the scale - I've had a 50/50 split of people liking words vs randomly generated gibberish! Might figure out a way to include WASD controls in a future release, since people like them so much!
@blinry - Oh no! I was so sure I tweaked all the bugs out of the level generator! The levels are built based on templates which change...are you sure you just didn't find the route? Cause I can't find the bug :( Anyway, your game was so great! Thanks for playing mine - you're one of the few people who found the game easy, so you probably could have gotten the high score!
@mockthebear - Noted. Post-compo release will do away with that!
@MarekkPie - HI ON TWITTER! @johnbujalski
@justinooncx - Yeah, I'll probably tweak the font in the post-compo release. Made the font myself, and had already been tweaking it, but the K/X problem is definitely fixable. Shoot me a link to the post-compo version of Retro Player!
OKAY THAT'S ALL!
CURRENT HIGH SCORE - 812M by Bogden
Cute little game! I would probably mark this as being ready to play only on Windows though, since to run it on any other platform your user will need to compile it with LÖVE. Maybe a good idea to do that work for them in the meantime? Porting!
It's a fun little platformer, though the delivery and lasers get a bit repetitive. I felt like the difficulty wasn't really increasing, so I could have kept delivering packages forever. I stopped at 22. Perhaps you could speed up the movement/lasers? From skimming your profile it seems like the lasers were a last-minute addition, perhaps you'd scrap them and add something else instead.
The platforming physics felt a little...stiff? Definitely a floaty, low gravity sort of feel, especially since you hit the maximum falling speed pretty quickly. I think the fact that the level was fairly empty made the character feel slower as well. The best part of the level design is definitely the alternating steps - avoiding the laser while platforming those was very fun!
The environment was very pretty, and I almost wish I'd been able to admire it more, though the lasers kept me moving! Sad that the placement of grass/flowers wasn't randomized - seems like something that would be relatively easy to make procedural? I'm not sure, haven't made a big project with LÖVE before.
Also, not exactly sure how this game is on theme? I guess delivery by foot is a very old technology! But whatever, I wasn't a huge fan of the theme anyway.
Your animations are pretty good, though your main character ISN'T WEARING PANTS OMG! Jokes aside, my main tip would be to include a falling animation - the T pose seemed rather stiff among your other animations. Even two-frame animations can look great! Would've also been cool if your character was holding the packages during the delivery.
The music is repetitive, but pretty good. It sets a rather laid-back tone, which may or may not have been your goal. Sound effects do their job, though I would have liked more of them! More sounds! Yeah!
Overall, it's a very solid entry and you should be very happy with it! Congratulations!
Wow, so cute! I love the art and the music! I would disagree with previous comments about the mix of 2d/3d - I think it worked really well! The battle system was interesting to navigate too.
My main crit is actually font design - I think some of your font choices could have been better.
But otherwise, such a great game! It was funny to see your interpretations of each well-known device!
The atmosphere and sense of scale are really great! Love the color design as well - despite the limited grayscale palate, I never felt lost or couldn't find my disk-thingy. I felt very in control of my character and played the game through to the end. Definitely some Shadow of the Colossus vibes going on here, but the disk throwing mechanic made it a very different kind of game.
On the subject of the disk, I liked its strange flying patterns a lot, though sometimes I felt very out of control of it! Then of course, that added to the sense of hopelessness which made the atmosphere so great, so perhaps it was a good thing.
I am not a fan of Instant Death™ though! Pretty frustrating when you get barely nicked by the robot's toe and have to start from the beginning. But hey, it conveys scale/danger even further! But perhaps not worth the frustration. Maybe you could have the character go unconscious? Shadow of the Colossus does that really well.
Also, I would have liked a simpler control scheme - that fourth button (left, right, space, and Q or E) made things just a bit confusing for the beginning of the fight. It also wasn't clear to me at first that Q/E did the same thing! Perhaps you could fold together the right click and Q/E and make a system like Zelda Z-Targeting? Might be tricky though. Jumping also felt kind of pointless, to be honest. Perhaps in an expanded version of this game it would be more used as a mechanic.
On the subject of cameras, I think your camera work here is mostly great! I've got one gripe and one compliment. Gripe - when you de-target, the camera jumping to the overhead view of my character was initially VERY disorienting! Would have liked a different angle to be the default, perhaps forward from the character's point of view. Compliment - the sharp upward angles of the other cameras worked very well for emphasizing the size of the sentinel! Foreboding!
Finally, I wasn't a huge fan of the sound design here. It wasn't bad, but you definitely could have gotten more out of it. Big bassy sounds for the robot would have punched the game up a lot, and it would have been great for the music to get more intense for the fight.
Overall, despite my nitpicks above, very great work on this - seriously, it's so impressive that you made something this great in 48 hours, and you could definitely expand this game into something really special in the future!
Overall, a very nice game for 48 hours!
Quite a text dump to start, but I was intrigued by the story and it was well presented. Thankful for the tutorial elements at the beginning as well.
It wasn't immediately apparent to me that the controls included the mouse! But I figured it out.
Couldn't figure out how to fight the enemies without taking massive damage, so I mostly avoided them until I died.
The rain effect was wonderful, and the art is good. The music when you find each book was very nice, would have liked more musical elements and sound effects as well.
Great job!
Wow, great game! I love the mix of mechanics - its a really cool spin on the 3-lane runner game. I've got some more feedback for you in a moment, but I'd just like to let you know that technically you aren't supposed to collaborate for the compo - it's supposed to be solo only! But that's not a huge deal in my mind - your game is really great and you should be very proud of it!
The music is superb, and really drives the game forward. I also enjoyed the plot and the big boss fight at the end. Plus, it was really great that you allowed players to replay sections or skip forward.
Some criticism!
The art is a bit rough, but it works pretty well! My only real complaint for the art is that the hitbox for the player isn't very clear with the current asset.
The controls could have been better laid out and consolidated - why not use the same button for bridges and water, since they're never used at the same time? Also, try to keep your main action buttons grouped together - my left hand got a cramp reaching the shift, Q, and space keys all at once!
Finally, would have loved to have seen more feedback when I died instead of the game jumping straight to black. Perhaps you could animate the character falling into the hole or catching fire? Or a sound cue? Your call!
Regardless, very good job, it's a wonderful game!
PS - POST MORE SCREENSHOTS! :D
Embed doesn't work for me in Chrome. Oh well, got the download!
Cool mechanic with the spinning gun - feels like this could make a very good mobile game, since it's only got one input!
The text dump at the beginning was ridiculous, but funny. The art is nice, though I would have liked even more different kinds of hippies!
The music was kind of bland, but alright.
Overall, a really solid compo game! Great job!
Thanks for the volume warning, though you could avoid the term "EAR RAPE!"
The music IS really funny, I like it a lot! The tone here is good, the art is funny though some areas could use some polish.
The physics are actually really good, the problem is that the arrow sprite doesn't rotate correctly (causing the arrows to fall flat sometimes) - you could probably fix this with some tweaking.
Finally, you spelled Defense wrong? Unless it's a fence pun?
Anyway, great game, you should be very proud of it!
Wow! What a stellar entry!
The sailing mechanics are interesting and very well made - I had so much fun navigating, and was constantly playing with how I tacked into the wind. Wonderful!
The graphics are really coherent and great as well - nothing dazzling, but they really serve that central mechanic well. I definitely wouldn't want much more detail.
The controls were surprisingly intuitive - at first I was worried that they were too complex, but as soon as I was on the sea I found them very easy to use. Controlling the ship was obviously a challenge, but the feedback was very good at helping me figure things out.
Great difficulty curve as well with each subsequent group of castaways, and the narrator was funny! Love the castaway flavor text as well. And the sail darkening when you're evil is a nice little touch. Lots to explore for a 48-hour game!
My only criticisms (nitpicking here) are:
It was very easy to get stuck on some of the islands and be completely unable to move until the wind changed. Would've been nice to have some way to push off the land, maybe by shaking the rudder?
Would have liked more variety in the scenery - I suppose that time went into perfecting the sailing. Also, different kinds of missions besides just collecting castaways would be cool, but once again, time!
Saw a Z-ordering bug - the sea monsters overlapped on top of the land! Probably not hard to fix.
The music wasn't as good as everything else - it fit the mood and did the job, but eventually I tuned it out.
Anyway, such a great game - you should be very proud of your work! This could definitely become something much bigger if you continue to work on it!
Congrats on your first compo!
Apparently you've been leaving some pretty...curt feedback, and I've done some poking around to confirm this. And indeed, you have been leaving 2-word comments instead of useful feedback. You have to understand why people are suspicious - at best it's rude, at worst it seems like you're gaming the system to get more attention.
Regardless, I'll keep my feedback short and to the point.
Your game is playable, but it needs a lot of work. The assets are a wash, nearly no animations, the controls are clunky, some of the walls don't collide at all, the enemies get stuck on each other, the pop-ups are annoying, and finally, yes, the title screen hurts my eyes too. Also, the music gets annoying pretty quickly.
Congratulations once again on completing your first compo entry - I hope to see you improve your game development skills and your feedback as well.
Couldn't get the web version to work and the downloaded .exe said it was missing files! Oh no! I've copied the error and pasted it below -
------------------------------------
Data folder missing
There should be 'TheCrush01_Data'
folder next to the executable
------------------------------------
Maybe you uploaded just the exe, but it needs another folder? I'm not sure.
I'm on a Windows 7 laptop using Google Chrome. It's a piddly little machine so I should probably try the web version on my desktop tomorrow. Regardless, hope you figure out the problem with the desktop version! I wanna play this, it looks super cool!
Also, I think using premade assets is against the rules for the compo - you should have submitted for the jam!