Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → jonmerrin
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | 53 | Delivery | 👥 | Waiting for Godot-livery | jam | ||||||||
| 2022 | 51 | Every 10 seconds | 👥 | Justin Time: Man of the Hour | jam | 340 | 3.73 | 3.74 | 3.81 | 4.18 | 3.24 | 3.24 | 3.22 |
Hey! Fun game, fun concept, and great job doing a story game in a jam! That's tough. I felt sometimes that the hitboxes for the monsters was generous to the monsters, when I feel they should be generous to the player (allow for a slim margin of error). Aside from that, I thought it was really nice!
I loved almost everything about this! Before I give any constructive criticism, I want you to know that I played until I escaped with all 5 treasures, so I did really enjoy myself.
The sounds, visuals, even gameplay are *extremely* reminiscent of the old classic 8-bit style. I think you captured it perfectly. Even the funny looking character you play as. Really really nice. The game was responsive, clear, to the point. I liked the ambiance, I enjoyed searching the map for the treasures, really really good.
I have two notes: the first is that I wasn't sure exactly how this fits in with the theme. I didn't notice a timer, and I don't think the wizard appeared every 10 seconds for me. The second is that the wizard was REALLY hard to escape once you were in a room with him. On the one hand, that's exactly what I'd expect from a tile-dungeon-exploration game from the 8-bit era, I can think of several examples of games that do this. On the other, there might be some room for some innovation there, giving the player a little bit more agency over the situation. That way when I got too close to the wizard, I'd try until the last second rather than throwing my hands up in defeat. I don't know if that's actually necessary, but I would've appreciated it.
Great job and great game!
To echo what so many others have said, wow you managed to do a lot!! That's an amazing number of assets, great variability among the enemies, which each have their own characteristics. That's an awesome amount of content, and that's not even counting the huge and detailed map I was just running around! That's awesome!
There's so much to love here. Music/sound effects are on-point. Regular progression with randomized buffs. Tower defense style turrets. The feeling of fighting off an inevitable loss. I enjoyed lining up the hordes of enemies in time for the blaster to mow them all down and watch that XP pile in. Overall a really polished entry with just a *ton* of stuff to shoot and look at. Really great job!
My one problem was I was playing the web version, so take this with a grain of salt, but sometimes my cursor would move through the screen like it was pushing through molasses. It was a very weird sort of half-lag that made it hard to aim in time. In terms of actual gameplay, I might've liked a little bit more to do. 9/10 seconds my only action really is running away. Having more pickups or more frequent turret drops would give me some more goals to achieve during my surprisingly long 9 seconds of down-time.
Congratulations on a job well done!
Mwahahaha, Cthulu has fallen! I'm the Eldritch Lord now! Bow before me!
This was neat. Took me forever to get started... some indication of which panel could be pulled off would have been great. Or something to tell me to click there. I kept trying to click on the panel with a bent corner, but that didn't fall until the crowbar. But I liked the puzzles, it was bite-sized but satisfying. Really fun, good job! Edit: Also, nice job on the art!
Good stuff! Really funny, fun world you set up there. I liked the frantic nature of it when I started, but once I got the hang of it I could play without any fear of losing. Really great job on the atmosphere.
One note is that I couldn't figure out how to pop the balloon the first couple of times I played. I got it right by accident once, and then it was fine. Also, I wish that the game kept pace with my skill increase. Not necessarily giving me less time, that would make some tasks impossible, but some kind of difficulty curve would keep me engaged for longer. That said, I did get up to 130 points, so I guess it kept me engaged for quite a while! :smile:
Great job!
Hey! This was great. Really polished, seemingly bug free, and well put together. I liked the idea of using the dice to overcome obstacles, and I especially liked the extra die you got every 10 seconds. It made me feel like there was a measure of strategy on top of what was otherwise random die throwing. The visuals were great and the UI was super intuitive. Really great job!
I think I agree with Blaster about making the consumable dice permanent, with a single use per round. That would've encouraged me to pick them over an extra die sometimes, which on my second playthrough I realized I never wanted to do. Making them permanent gives the game a sort of deckbuilding aspect to it that I think would compliment the luck part really nicely.
I often got stuck without the dice to use to pass an obstacle and nothing to do about it, so I just had to take the extra time penalty. That's a bit unsatisfying when it's neither my fault and I can't do anything about it. Maybe some sort of incremental progress, or more ways to affect your dice, might help.
Overall, really nice job, and really well put together! You should be really proud of this!
Hey! Kudos! This is awesome. As a dev from another team that went the roguelike-deckbuilder route, I'm super impressed that you did all this solo. You really have the whole card system in there. It's easy to see where it was going and how much of it you managed to accomplish. This is amazing, and you should be really proud.
One thing I didn't understand was health... I didn't see where my health was being indicated, and at some point I realized I wasn't really afraid of dying. I brute forced my way through and won. It was fun, but I wish I understood what was going on a bit better. I did spam the health things for a while, did I maybe build up an excess?
Aside from that, I feel like this is a great foundation. As people have said: the store, some visual indicators, etc. would fill out the game really nicely, but you've got a strong start. Really great job and congratulations!
I like the aesthetic a lot, and I always enjoy musical theming mixed with gameplay. The cursor movement was a little extreme on my computer, which made it hard to aim at times, and I wish I could adjust my trajectory a little in air. A bit of coyote time would have been nice too, to avoid the feeling of "But I jumped!" when you fall off a ledge (https://www.giantbomb.com/coyote-time/3015-9701/).
Hey, great game! I love rhythm games, they're one of my favorite genres. The art for this game is stunning, the bird is really cool and really cute at the same time and I love the stylization. The actions were funny and dramatic, and I liked that the symbols for the rhythm game were the actions that the bird then immediately did. Something about that was funny to me. It was neat that you didn't use the default arrow keys, but it still felt really intuitive. The "do anything" spaces were a nice touch too, that was fun and cool!
The music was also fantastic, as was the timing of the beats, and the game felt so responsive. I was surprised at how smooth it got, usually rhythm games let you give your own input lag offset, but I didn't feel I needed one here.
My one real note is that the extra poses that fall from above were hard to see and hard to understand. They were partially cut off on my screen, so I couldn't see them clearly, and I was so focused on where the notes were coming from, I didn't notice them at first and didn't understand why my combo kept breaking. Even once I did notice them, it took me a while to understand what I had to do to hit those notes in time. Maybe a little more information on them in the tutorial would have helped.
Also, I saw someone else already pointed it out, but when you try to replay it, there's no music or notes.
Overall, really great game! It felt really polished and complete and I had a ton of fun playing it! One of my favorites of the jam so far!
Wow, what a pick-me-up. Really funny!
This was very nice to play through. It also had a great, unified visual style about it, with nice scene transitions. I also appreciated interpreting the theme of the jam as part of the story for the game rather than being present in gameplay, and the story itself was simple and sweet. None of the mini games were too deep, but they felt like a good vehicle for the story. I also appreciated the simple changes made to increase the difficulty of the games as you went on. That was nicely done!
My one technical note was that not all the minigames lock the movement controls, so I'll be playing a game and walking around at the same time. But other than that, it played very smoothly!
Well done, congratulations!
@last-angle I also really enjoyed the dark humor. Something about the flippancy with the deadly aspects of the game was really fun. The tutorial was great, both in presentation and just helpfulness. I tried to play once without the tutorial and was totally lost, but having the tutorial as a new-employee-orientation-video sort of thing was great for immersion and it really did teach me how to play!
Like others have said before, some pizza restaurant background music would help a lot with the ambiance. Also, needing to constantly flip between the pizza making screen and the pizza delivering screen felt like a UX pain-point. But the game itself was fun, humorous, and a fun take on the theme! The shock humor of the giant monster thing devouring the corpses of the customers also got me really well, I think you guys handled the humor masterfully.
Also appreciated the diversity in the customers. Nice representation :)
Greetings from the other Justin Time game! This was super fun! It took me a couple of tries to not immediately lose, but once I got the hang of it, I had a really good time! I love tower defenses, and I liked the switching between two styles of gameplay. Each side on its own was simple, but splitting your brain between the two was very engaging! Also the art was great, I'm really impressed you filled out the scenery so nicely in so little time!
My main feedback would be that you can die too easily at the start. I had to keep replaying the game so I could have enough time to figure out where to go to make the towers and that the towers only shoot in their lanes. Also, once I'd fully upgraded the towers, I'd essentially won since nothing could get to them anymore, but the game kept going.
I had a lot of fun with it once I got the hang of it, and thinking about where I should place the character so I could maximize my time on the next phase was really fun! Great job!
I agree with Sohei, this was a cute idea and the screenshot is fun!
This was super fun! My team also went with a roguelike deckbuilder, so it's nice to see someone else going down that route! I love the blocked movement mechanic, it's a really fun and intuitive input system. I immediately knew what the cards were and what they did, and the whole thing really clicked into place. I love the idea of a roguelike dungeon crawler real-time-ishness crossed with deckbuilding. Gives me vibes of Crypt of the Necrodancer, maybe crossed with the combat from the Mega Man Battle Network series (which has a combination of real-time combat with turn based card play). I think the visuals were very satisfying for a jam and conveyed everything really clearly, but if you were to build out the level generation/art/polish stuff, I think you have a really strong foundation for a publishable game!
Some notes I think would help: * Having more than 1 of each tile in the starting deck. As is, you guarantee that your band is always the same until you add cards. For me, I felt that was incentive not to add any cards to my hand, because no cards were better than the cards I was already using and adding cards meant less access to potions or the exact direction I need. Sure, moving left twice was strong, but not worth it if I couldn't access my potion in time to survive an enemy. * Having more variation in cards. I know easier said than done, but having the cards you pick up be better than base cards is what makes me want to risk diluting the deck. A double-move in one direction, for example, might make me willing to add enough rope to my deck to hang myself with. * Either a nerfed heal or ways to add to max health. The +5 health potion was a great get-out-of-jail free card, but assuming I never added more than 4 cards to my deck (so that I'd get the potion roughly every other round), I could survive any fight. This might also be a good opportunity for easy card variation, where your base heal is 2 or 3 and a heal that you can find is 4 or 5. * I walked onto some spikes for fun and found that it let me discover a card before disappearing. I'm not against this as a mechanic, it reminds me of the Binding of Isaac rooms that let you trade health for items, but it wasn't clear if this was intentional. If you want to keep this feature, I'd make it clearer that it's supposed to happen. * A goal/something to work towards would be nice. My game is missing that too, but I do feel like it's good motivation to come back when you lose.
All in all, I really enjoyed it. That sort of rhythm and fast acting thinking is hard to capture and you did a great job!
This was really funny! Personally couldn't get over the literal train. My friend who works at the Department of Transportation just started dating someone else from the Department of Transportation and it was too perfect not to send to them.
Really fun, really enjoyable, and the connections were just tenuous enough for me to be unsure of what to pick, but understanding when I saw the answer. The art felt really appropriate for the humor and scope of the game, and the time limit definitely added an element of chaos that I think it really needed. I'm not sure if I have any notes, it felt like a pretty complete package. More characters are always nice, but you already have a good bit of variation! Well done!
edit: Also, changing the soundtrack per location was a nice touch!
Hey! Great game! It was visually stunning. Had to play with the volume off, so I won't review the audio, but it was really fun!
Some feedback: I had to refresh the page a couple of times before I actually got past the loading screen, too. It took me a bit to understand that the goal actually included destroying the towers rather than just surviving. I also wish I knew what the green dots did. I assumed they were health, but even just a single-screen tutorial of "This is what the things on screen are/mean" would have helped without being intrusive. Finally, I would've liked some indication that the world was about to switch before it did. I think that's more of a design choice, if you want to keep it sudden like that, but I think even some visual warping/flashing/something a second in advance wouldn't give me much more time to react, but a bunch more time to build anticipation.
But that's me trying to do constructive criticism. The game was super fun, and I cannot stress enough how pretty it was. The majority of it was clear, intuitive, and fun to jump right into and try and try again. Really great job!
@mateu Hey, thanks for following up. You are totally right, your audio design is on point! The swell right before the switch did exactly let me know a switch was coming, and replaying it in general let me get a closer look at a few of the details. The music was catchy and set the mood for the type of enemy you were facing in the moment. Also, the healthbar was cut off when I originally played it, but I could see it this time, so actually a lot of my previous criticisms don't apply anymore!
Really fantastic job. Super polished, and a really cohesive game!
Really fun! I think you nailed the ambiance, between the music and aesthetic. I liked that all the people were wearing bags over their heads. A funny look and it made me feel less bad for eating them! I also liked the sound of the indication that you found someone compatible. That was really helpful for me playing on O mode trying to spam q on everyone I saw.
I agree with @fribolin that refilling the full 10 seconds would make it feel more fair, though it may make it too easy (especially on AB mode, it would just be a people-eating simulator!). I feel like different ways of making it difficult would make the game feel more fair, even just obstacles.
I enjoyed this! Very zen, learn some bird facts, fits the theme. The music really grew on me too! I got the same bird a few times in a row, though, maybe something to prevent that from happening would be nice, like a list of recently seen birds so you know what not to repeat. Good job!
Congrats on getting this in! It looks really nice, and has a fair bit of platforming in it! Like the others, I would've liked some kind of ending. Also didn't realize I could double jump until after I'd beaten the game. I really liked the theming, bear traps as enemies was a nice touch!
I don't know how the engine you used works, but you may want to look into having one way colliders on the top of the platforms and using a separate foot collider for the bottoms of the bear's feet. That way you can have Ted only responds to the platforms when his foot hits them (instead of sticking to it from the side and being able to jump again). Also the walk animation made Ted dribble a little, I'm not sure what was causing that.
Overall, solid submission and really great job!
Truth be told, I'm not sure I understood the timer... I always got an x regardless of how many boxes I filled in the timer, and I never got a game over. That said, the pixel art is very cute and I like the concept. Overall, really nice job!
"I have a gun in my backyard!" Classic.
Really funny, great ambiance. Well done! I did wish I could move backwards, and one of the starts of the levels felt like a trap (the one where you're in a tight room with people). Good job overall, incredible job making a game engine. Really nice!
@heine-hohenhart Haha, great minds think alike! I'll have to try Just In Time next! I always love me a good tower defense, looks like fun!
@huskitch That's a good note, adding some screenshots now!
@lonewolfdev Thanks so much!
@justaroom Thanks for the feedback! Sound affects for cards were on our todo! They're technically implemented and in the game, we just didn't get a chance to fill them in. Except Lickity Split, that has a slurping sound on it. We noticed the targeting bug too late. It's not actually a bug with the card affecting everyone, but with the game double spawning the same enemy, so it hits the original and the copy lives to see another day. We'll clean it up after the jam, but it feels dishonest to keep bug squashing after the deadline. Rest assured, we'll get to it!
@sliphtrex Holy cow, thank you so much for that. That means a lot. We're really proud of what we put together for this jam, and honestly I can hardly believe we got this all done too. Time wizard was absolutely thrown around during our ideation phase, though the inspiration for that character was... let's just say we called him Clockwork Mike. We know the rounds were too long. We had originally wanted the boss to be something of a final boss but prioritized other aspects and made it into a sort of infinite runner instead. If we extend it further, I do think we'll need to have some sort of end goal. Also, trying to make the enemies more varies or have more health rather than introducing greater numbers. All of those are good notes on gameplay/quality of life improvements. Maybe shadows can help with the placement of the flying enemies. I agree some reworking has to be done with the drag and drop, I play it on trackpad and constantly accidentally drop cards. Maybe if you're not targeting anything, it doesn't play the card. Thanks for all the feedback, and thank you for wanting to see a fuller version of the game! We had so much fun making it that I'll definitely keep working on it, so keep an eye out to see if it shows up again somewhere!
@jonathan-vinesar Thanks for the feedback and I'm glad you liked it! Like I wrote above, we know that the card selection/targeting needed work. It worked well enough that we wanted to make sure we got more content in, but that meant a few bugs went unchecked. More enemy variation would be great, and so would more card variation! Thanks so much for your thoughts, for playing, and for having fun!
Thanks everyone for your feedback!
Hey @aristurtle, thanks for playing! I loved your entry, really fun!
Yeah, it is a Z-fighting issue. I've fixed it on my machine, but it didn't make it into our submission. Thank you for the feedback, I'm glad you liked it!
@frankey333 thank you for the feedback! I definitely agree that the rounds start to drag as you get further in. We talked about making the cards actually reduce the time in your turn, but that made the game feel too frenetic, whereas now there's a regular pace and rhythm. I was thinking of maybe adding an "end turn" button, so you don't have to wait for longer than you want to, but you can still catch your breath.
I'm really glad you liked it!
@mcmuniz thanks so much for the feedback! I'm glad you had fun!
Thanks @dxk2294 , I'd love to keep working on it! We'll see where it goes in the future, but there will definitely be a 2.0 version that incorporates some bug fixes and feedback from these comments.
@amarokczukay Thank you for the review! I'm glad you enjoyed it!
@digital-bacon Thanks for checking out our game! We rogue-like deckbuilders have to stick together, eh? It does seem like a few people had difficulty with the targeting. I think we would've benefited from some playtesters there. We talked about switching the card to a target, or something less obstructive. I kind of think even just making the card disappear without a mouse indicator might've been better (because then all you'd see is the highlighted spaces). That wouldn't have worked for the non-attack cards though. I'd love to hear your (or anyone else's) thoughts on what would've felt better. I'm so glad you had fun!
@rowdy3 Thanks for the feedback! I think trying to balance urgency and not stressing out the player too much was both really important and something we kinda lucked into. We made the decision early on that the cards should be drawing from your time pool, but shouldn't actually shorten your turn, and I think that wound up being key. It does mean the turns drag on a bit, especially once you start stacking up those extra second bonuses, so I think we would benefit from an "end turn" button.
As previously mentioned, seems like targeting is our weak point, but I'm glad it clicked. We figured it would take a round or two before it did, since we didn't manage to finish a full tutorial in time.
Thank you for playing and thank you for the feeback!
@sibi Wow, what a review! Thank you so much, I'm so glad you liked it so much! Tbh, I also played it for too long after we submitted... nice to enjoy what you made, but once the levels start being 200 people long it gets to be a little too much!
Maximum Overtime is extremely busted. The plan is to make it more expensive, probably 13 or 14. That way, you can't use it unless you either prep for it the turn before (so it's harder to pull off and a bit more "earned") or get a bunch of permanent time upgrades. At that point (once we introduce more enemy varieties), the enemies would be a bit beefier and take more damage to take down, so while extremely powerful, it shouldn't be an automatic board clear.
We also know we need an extensive tutorial. I think once you know what things are, the game flows pretty well, but learning-by-doing is too bumpy. But a step-by-step tutorial for the starting deck would really get the ball rolling quickly, and I think you can imagine the consequences of the other cards once you get the basic idea of the game.
If you've got more thoughts, on the game or on these potential fixes, please let us know!
Thank you so much for the feedback! We're planning on cleaning it up and putting at least a more polished version to itch, if not a full version in the future!
@miltonnh25 Thanks so much for the feedback, and I'm glad you had fun!
I'm actually really proud of the system we made for creating new cards. I might make a post about it. We wanted to make an effort to get in one of each type of card we were imagining, but we actually missed a couple because of various issues or last minute bugs. For example, having cards that push characters forward/backward or left/right, or rotate a circle, etc. We only got the characters to work right when bumping into each other in the last hour, and by then I think we weren't ready with art/were in getting the final build mode.
That's actually part of our solution for melee cards. We realized when the game was going out that melee cards weren't all that useful. You may notice that the actual area of effect of the melee card extends one space beyond what the picture depicts. That's because we knew that it was by far the least useful card and we wanted to do a last-second adjustment, but we didn't get to change the picture. One card type we'd talked about included cards that pull enemies closer to you, with varying other benefits (like a lot of damage, or a stun affect, etc). That would allow you to combo enemies into getting close to you without needing to be completely overwhelmed before they start being useful.
That said, we have aspirations of more enemy variation that includes beefier, more interesting enemies. In that case, we'd hope that some of them make it closer to you, making the extremely strong melee cards a more useful safety net. One card idea I'm fond of is a melee AoE in a ring around you, dealing some damage and pushing them back two spaces. Name could be something like "Give Me Some Space-Time", idk, I don't remember if we actually came up with a name for it.
Thanks so much for the feedback!
@sibi We love roguelike deckbuilders too!
I definitely agree about Maximum Overtime + increasing turn time being an easy breaking combination. I like the idea of being able to gain additional seconds for your turn, especially if we're using cards that scale with time remaining, but definitely don't want to let it break the game. If we keep it, we could (and probably should) slow down how often you get those bonuses, or totally revisit it (maybe instead of regular time bonuses, it's a specific one-time bonus, like a relic in Slay the Spire). A lot of our systems were built with the jam in mind, wanting to make sure that people who only play for a couple of minutes can get the full experience.
Still, even 1-2 damage to everyone on screen is an incredibly strong card, especially if you get it basically every turn. If the types of enemies you face have more health as the game progresses, then maybe it won't totally break the game, especially since it's the only card you play that turn. I also think overpowered is ok overall, as long as you really need to work for it. I'm sure we'll have to play with the balance.
As for UI/noticing things, we've been getting good feedback on that. While a tutorial would definitely help, I also think there's room for improvement.
@mateu Thank you so much!!! That really means a lot!
I also appreciate the critique, and I think you're 100% right. The game can only get so difficult. We have one tougher enemy, but I think we were too stingy in how often we sent it out, I think that would've given the jam version more staying power, but I think it would have only delayed the moment when you feel like you're done with it.
One thing I think would help is more enemy diversity, and specifically more durable enemies. We tried making the difficulty scale with higher enemy spawning and more interesting arrangements of enemies, but there's a pretty low ceiling on how tough that can get. Another would be having an ending. Having an ending would give some goal to work towards, so you're not caught in some purgatory of winning forever, and I think it would help with tuning enemy difficulty.
We've gotten a few people giving feedback about the time indicator, but I think you hit on what the real issue is. I don't think anyone's trying to do the mental math of seconds left vs. cost (except to the extent that they have to so they know if they can play it), but I do think people care about the impact of playing a card on their time remaining. I wonder if showing the cost on the timer while a card is selected would help with that, so you also get an intuitive sense of what you'll have left? We have an indicator of how much of your time you've spent, why not use a similar language for showing how much something would cost?
Thank you so much for your feedback, it was really insightful! (Also congrats on your own game too. I know I commented on it already, but anyone else reading this should check it out, it was really good!)
This was a short, sweet, and compact experience. I really enjoyed it, and I agree with others that it first started feeling more frantic as it sped up, but then I realized it was sort of getting easier. I experimented a bunch with how low down the rope should be before jumping and noticed that the line just got higher as the rope sped up. I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing, but if you wanted to do away with it, you could add a negative condition for if you jump too late. It could be a cooldown on jumping, adding a second rope that comes not too long afterward so you need to jump in succession, or maybe just make it move fast enough that it comes back around quickly.
I also agree with everything @aristurtle said, and I also jumped before the rope started moving to see if anything would happen and got punished for it. Maybe add a conditional in the function changes your score that checks if the game has started yet? Or in the function that performs the jump to keep you from jumping before the rope starts moving? Just some ideas.
This game is absolutely brilliant. Love the concept, love how it ties into the theme, and most of all, I love the tension of trying to go for just one more before the time runs out. The background and loading screens are simple but beautifully animated, the dots pulse with the music, everything is so well put together. Really great job.
One note I have is that it's not super responsive when trying to do rapid turns (like pressing up then right too quickly). I might suggest trying some sort of input buffering, so that when someone makes a move in a legal sequence, even if the second move isn't legal quite yet, you could still execute it so the user doesn't feel like the game isn't doing what they tell it to.
Awesome game, awesome job!
Hey! Cool game! I liked the visual style. Like @sagiii I also tried all the possibilities for the chest code, but kicked myself when I saw it. I should've gotten that!
I would've liked it if the character walked a little faster. Also, the dialogue text got jumbled sometimes, I wasn't sure if that was a bug or a feature. All in all, great job, nice use of the theme, and way to go!