Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → JovialKnoll
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 57 | Depths | DEPTH CHARGE | compo | 165 | 3.40 | 3.18 | 3.13 | 3.40 | 2.80 | 3.08 | 2.69 | 3.21 | ||
| 2022 | 50 | Delay the inevitable | Ready, uNsTeAdY, FIRE! | compo | 365 | 3.34 | 3.24 | 3.66 | 3.46 | 2.62 | 3.22 | 3.52 | 3.04 |
JovialKnoll leaves an average of 36.0 feedback comments each event.
I loved the art (especially the cute hand sprites in front, was very encouraging to keep pushin' it in), though I wish the camera zoomed out a bit when I started pushing objects so I could see around them better (this was only an issue with the larger objects).
A simple but compelling upgrade loop, very glad you're giving three random options per level up, prevents me from being overwhelmed with options. Excellent visuals! I really liked how the enemies had animations as they moved, the numbers and bars were clearly readable, menus looked nice as well. Sound effects were also great, would have loved a little music with it
I'm extremely impressed with the sheer amount of *stuff* you packed into this. Gorgeous animations, multiple types of movement that all feel great, great music, jokes, seamless transitions between different entire gameplay loops. Kudos!
huh, I think you made qwop with rockets.
Really solid core game loop, good controls but I feel like being able to play with controller, as a dual stick shooter, would have been perfect. Pretty much all the content you needed but one or two more weapon types and 1-3 more enemy types would have taken this over the top.
Gorgeous art, lots of juice in the card movements and details, full marks for that. I liked what you did with the theme and where this is going. I think if you had time to make some more content (types of cards and variations) and implement another mechanic or two (more options for how to approach cards), this would be really very good.
I love the audio, it fits well with the strange feeling of the art and layout. As was said above an undo on grabbing people would be good, but other than that the gameplay felt good. Movement wasn't too fast nor too slow. An interesting look into a strange little world, thank you.
I liked the mood that you were going for. Also, glad that movement wasn't linear, but probably having more deceleration when you stop pressing buttons would make it a lot easier to control. Also, for platformers, I'd usually suggest having a bit more expressiveness to the jumping; making the jump go higher or lower depending on how long you hold the jump button.
Love to see that someone else also did a shmup. :) I was very impressed with the art and sound effects. Gameplay was pretty full-featured for what you were trying to do, and I though enemy movement looked very good.
For the keyboard controls, it would be nicer to be able to shoot etc with Z and X, so I could have one hand on movement with arrow keys and another handling other actions. For the movement itself, I think it was a little too fast. I couldn't tell if it was a high accel up to your top speed or just linear movement, but in either case a bit more noticeable accel when starting movement would make it feel a lot more natural / nicer.
I really wish you had mentioned that shift let you move more slowly (it's pretty necessary), but I did find that button eventually! Had a good feel to the movement for that sort of game, I liked that I had objectives other than just "protect myself".
I enjoyed the audio (music and sfx), and the enemy sprites, though simple, had a neon flair to them. Controlled well, too.
Would probably have benefited from more variety in gameplay, and it felt a little unsatisfying that dodging was useless.
Good for having some expressivity to the jumping, but was very demanding without movement having a great feel to it. Separately, I think there were some performance issues, or some slight staggering to the game drawing.
Pretty funny that some people respond well to rude greetings. I like the idea a lot, unfortunately it seems the sort of gameplay loop that would live or die on quantity of content, which is more difficult for a short jam. Interface was good.
Being able to push around already placed numbers is clutch and gives the game enough depth. Visuals are pretty clean but I'd like font for numbers to really fill up the balls, to make it more quickly readable. It should probably also have a higher contrast when the balls are darkened due to not being able to shoot.
Your art was very charming, somehow the style reminded me of (a much better, and higher res version of) old edutainment classics like math blaster.
Mechanics started to feel too simple, but then I realized I would be expected to use teleportation to move boxes, which made the puzzles interesting enough.
Art style was just what it needed to be without getting in the way, fit the gameplay well. I wonder if it would have worked to have some sort of dash with a cooldown or similar to manage.
I liked the core concept of having to maintain and burn resources continually while traversing.
I liked the art a lot, except that seeing low-res pixel art squashing and stretching, and not all aligned, makes me twitch... Sound effects were good, I think if you had the time to make them a bit louder so they stood out against the music they could be very good.
Room transitions looked good.
Fun artstyle, nice cutscene! I'm really glad I stuck with this a little bit more; at first the gameplay felt much too simplistic but additional complications come in over time, which is really nice. A moving hand or maybe multiple people could have been helpful? As is I mostly wanted to hang out on the left side (minus mantis dodging).
I really liked the core idea here! I kind of wanted individual sections to last a little longer, it felt like it took me too many falls to get a better feel for the game; probably you could still preserve a desired feeling of franticness even with somewhat longer levels or slower base speed.
Graphics and audio were good.
I liked the almost textless intro quite a bit, art was good in general beyond that. Sound effects could have been toned down a smidge but were also nice.
It took me a few tries to realize what the power ups were (mostly they increased the heart size by only a little so it was hard to notice). You found time to craft level that hit a few different feelings.
Clean and clear graphics, cutesy and smooth work well for puzzle games. Good sound effects. Not my personal favorite mechanic, but I liked how there was room to plan ahead a bit.
graphics were good, liked the idea, controls were too slippery, audio indicators or other juiciness would have helped a lot.
I liked what was there of the art: main character animation was solid, liked what the engulfing wall turned out to be. The looping around of falling off the bottom to appear on the top was surprising, not necessarily bad but I think added up to the game being too easy. Serviceable idea though.
Lovely art style, I like the restrictions you imposed. Sound effects felt fitting. Gameplay felt a bit sparse, but the main components are there.
I'm blown away, visual and gamefeel polish on everything. The sunset visuals, the simple yet effective music, the particle effects and the chunky blast feel of the kunai throw. Bravo.
Ah, to be a child sorting M&Ms. Anyway: increasing complexity over time is good, but still pretty simple. The mechanics are there, but the details of scoring and risk don't really change the flavor of how the player interacts with the game.
Nice audio crunchy-ness and camera shake. You spent time on the juiciness of the central thing that is happening here: I like that.
Short and sweet. Only limited possibilities for strategy but the increasing pace keeps my attention despite that.
Clear and readable visuals with a little polish.
Felt like a nice first level: would be really cool to see this lead into levels with additional mechanics, things to dodge or temporarily untouchable tiles or what have you.
Good concept and easy to understand controls. I would have liked for my decisions of where to strike with one or the other attack to feel more impactful. I might have been wrong, but it seemed like people spawned based on buildings, so the lightning attack only hitting people didn't seem to do much.
Like the controls, clean and straightforward graphics. I liked the sound effects.
I think having to bring up visibility isn't a bad idea, but it needs to be in service to something. There wasn't much here, felt like a demo project.
Well you get high marks for innovation and humor from me! Instant classics like "your musshi is having a stroke" and "how sad to die so young". Yeah I just played again this is amusing.
I think you made a SSH-text-pet-sim-learn-BPM game about as good as that mishmash of words could be.
Strangely compelling game loop. Reminded me a little of the early bits of A Dark Room. I think I liked it? Was good to take advantage of efficiency of making sure to harvest 10 potatoes at a time, things like that. Some of the resource juggling got a little tedious but was fun to feel out the system and figure out when I can start being sustainable.
Graphics mostly aren't, but the game is completely readable and clearly presented, would only have liked the space for it on itch to be a little longer to eliminate (at least on larger monitors) the need to scroll up and down sometimes.
Nice job.
Very amusing juxtaposition. Short, simple, and to the point.
Visuals were lovely but at times I wanted a little more contrast. I really wanted the top set of paddles to have a longer arc, or at least be tilted a little more to start with; they felt relatively useless.
Felt like I didn't want to play more than twice but mostly that's because the game does everything it wants to pretty quickly: nice job.
Always cool to see some proc gen, though the environments felt slightly rough they didn't involve anything untraversable so that's great. I liked that you had distinct enemies with different behaviors. They also had different interactions with your attack which was a nice touch (try to line up shots to hit multiples but don't bother with the shield-holders).
Controls were a little confused, not sure there was a reason for mouse, would have preferred all keyboard. Maybe you intended to have aiming but didn't have time to implement? Though only attacking straight forward felt interesting given all the jumping.
Here's a real nitpick: I like the option of avoiding enemies in roguelikes, it would have been cool to not need to defeat all of them for a level, maybe pick your poison?
Bottom line: I think this has a lot of potential for future development, especially if you want to develop more content, loot, maybe ways to increase the time left. Really solid base.
I liked a lot about this one: * seemed to really buy into it's own arcade-y loop, was focused. * simple evocative art and sound effects * nice feeling movement (I kind of wanted it a little faster paced / more frantic feeling, but that's a nitpick) * visual indicators for the crystals appearing that are visible from most locations, clearly readable game in general * I liked how the gameplay naturally shifts to more running and avoidance as you run low on ammo and rely more heavily on finding the next crystal
Visuals were solid, basic gameplay loop makes sense and is a nice direction, would have liked to see more interesting choices or secondary effects on cards.
I think the basic concept was solid but the game didn't click well. Choices didn't feel very interesting to me, though maybe if the game was faster paced that could have worked better. Sound effects would probably have gone a long way to making the interactions feel nicer, even a simple "clicking into place" noise.
Worked and is a complete game in theme though!
LD57 — Depths (33)
The Nameless cave 2 by Knatt 2025-04-22T01:19:36Z ♥ 1
I liked what you were going for with the spell upgrades though I wish there was some more management options on that (a bit sad to get my only projectile spell overwritten). Nice animations.
Shafted by DecadeDecaf 2025-04-16T01:49:35Z ♥ 1
I like the gameplay concept a lot, and it's a good idea for an upgrade loop. Music and audio was also very good.
I think this wants a lot of tweaking. The cart is painfully slow to move across the board before you get any upgrades to that. This could also be fixed by making objects fall more slowly. I think it could also be more fun to have objects move or bounce around in less obvious ways, at different angles based on chance and/or the angle of impact.
Ridge Heart by firellon 2025-04-15T01:36:19Z ♥ 1
I really like how you decided to implement this type of placement puzzle game! Reminds me of Carcassonne, but more exploratory. The music and sfx came out great as well, and the UI doesn't get in the way. I wish that moving the mouse wouldn't keep scrolling the field when I'm just trying to select something above, but that's a small issue.
Caver by Harmadillo 2025-04-13T02:15:51Z ♥ 1
cool to see some dungeon diving (or close enough). I'd love some quality-of-life upgrades like keyboard controls to go through text boxes quicker and make gameplay actions without the mouse. Love me some proc gen.
Mystical Caverns by sbackman 2025-04-13T02:04:34Z ♥ 1
I like the feel of this area though a little more guidance would have helped me.
The Bends by henk 2025-04-13T01:54:21Z ♥ 1
I really like the concept for an in browser game with the scrolling! Looks and sounds decent as well. Unfortunately the gameplay is really unforgiving and terribly slow, felt like it would have taken me hours to complete.
Wishing Evil by andruid 2025-04-13T01:45:44Z ♥ 1
Visuals are quite good for this style of game, and you have the right sort of sound effects and music in place too. Starts very simple but I'm glad it doesn't take too long to ramp up to an interesting (frantic) pacing. If you wanted to pad this out into something with more to chew on, maybe adding occasinoal sprites to click for health up, or shields, etc, would be fun. This is fine for this length though.
Deep Protocol by elykx 2025-04-13T01:39:44Z ♥ 0
I think I'm seeing some great ideas in place but unfortunately a game like this wants a tutorial or more explanation / build-up. Nice aesthetic choices, the visual flair was appreciated.
Deep Delivery by BhanosTheGameDev 2025-04-13T01:35:27Z ♥ 1
I like the button-alternating-as-swimming idea, I wanted to be able to do it faster but if I had to keep a certain pace I think some indicators might be helpful (though I may be just too rhythm-game-brained). Gameplay felt a little abrupt to me, very little room to maneuver away from anglerfish once spotted.
Drop Into Hell by boboneoone 2025-04-13T01:20:14Z ♥ 1
I think the enemy movement and the sort of barrier juggling on that is a good direction. I think allowing more frequent sword swinging would feel better, as-is it felt much slower than the rest of the pace of the game. I think there's also an opportunity to add more vertical motion to the falling section to make the dodging a bit more than just moving back and forth, though I could see reasons to not change that as well.
Buried Under Profits by tinykidtoo 2025-04-13T01:13:45Z ♥ 1
UI was almost all great, the end of game text didn't fit the rest of it but that's minor. I like the models, "fish with gun" is a good bit. Gameplay was a little rushed feeling for me, and seems I either ran out of ammo or couldn't shoot for some other reason too soon? Unless the intention was to approach this in more of a stealth manner? Performance had some issues (lag somemtimes, hitches, etc) that was unfortunate (I'm not playing on a super old computer).
Get to the bottom by jk5000 2025-04-13T01:05:41Z ♥ 1
Pretty cohesive aesthetics though I'd love a bit more color. Making a single player mode as well might be worth it since there's no interaction between players anyway. I liked the pachinko style rebounding. Maybe wants higher stakes or rewards... like hexes that explode or add more blocks on contact, etc. Solid basis though.
Drowning Simulator by Mikeliosus 2025-04-13T00:58:45Z ♥ 2
It's always tough to learn a new system during a jam. I encourage you to play around more with this though.
Deep Drop by bad_fetus 2025-04-12T23:08:09Z ♥ 1
Just arc jumping with no air control feels a little stifling to play out but it's an interesting concept. I think this wants an indicator of your path or more of a hint there, it's a brutally difficult game (which can be fine) but there's not as much bringing me back to it. Audio design is pretty good though.
Ctrl + Dive by thomz12 2025-04-12T19:01:01Z ♥ 2
I thought the visual effects and sonar sound fit in very nicely with the aesthetic you're building here. I didn't end up taking the time to collect everything but the game made me feel like I should just keep trying, was very compelling.
Possibly the deceleration on a moving sub (without buttons pressed) should be a little more, but overall I think it felt very good. I liked the UI displays giving me a ms count though that might mean less to some players, maybe that could be in addition to something like a visual showing the time delay (A circle being drawn in that amount of time? a bar filling up towards "one second" at max? unsure).
Great implementation of the theme, I love that the depth does something mechanically instead of just being the location.
Focus! by grid96 2025-04-12T05:36:53Z ♥ 1
Interesting and innovative mechanics, great implementation of the look.
The repeating hints became a little unfortunate when I was struggling to get the timing right on clicking the bird.
Song of the Depths feat. Shian by rubatotree 2025-04-12T05:13:02Z ♥ 2
4.5s and 5.0s across the board, very well done! This game has a lot of juice!
I love the particle effects and little fish, I love the layered sound design, how this all fits naturally in with the innovative mechanic, how this provides so much feedback during play. It's a delight, it's like a bowl of sorbet on a hot day.
Even the speed, which is almost too slow for my taste, is a good choice in the context of the vibes of the game, the sort of relaxing light puzzle atmosphere it's going for. I would not be surprised if you get top 10 in a few categories.
Dead & Buried by Frogravity 2025-04-12T04:43:37Z ♥ 1
Gorgeous game. Not just sprites, but the backgrounds, the UI, how the text is laid out, the little flourishes in all of those, graphically one of the best games I've played from this jam so far. Music / audio very nearly as good. Humor is a home run as well, actually funny without trying too hard.
Innovative gameplay, but I think I would have had more fun if there were more layers on top. "next to family members" for points is good, I'd like to see it scale up from there, maybe that becomes mandatory once the big hole opens up, and we keep adding more placement restrictions or opportunities for bonus points (say placing coffins of the same color adjacent, or one family needing to be away from another, etc). Plenty of room to add to something like this, could even be randomly generated. Lots of potential here if you wanted to develop further.
Interstellar Dragon - Into the depths... of space! by Camer the Dragon 2025-04-12T04:26:46Z ♥ 1
The movement felt good, especially enhanced by the sprite animations and how all the visuals fit together well. Music fit well too.
For this sort of infinite dodging game I think more spread out obstacles might be nice, and varying their movement more could also help. I think I wanted more to manage or more things to have to think about and try for. As is it felt like either I had openings to avoid damage or I didn't.
Pits and Bricks by jimmothysanchez 2025-04-11T00:42:53Z ♥ 1
Wonky physics: fun! There's some weird accel or smoothing / something going on here but it kept me on my toes. Making this a placement-style game was weird-in-a-good-way. Sure, the camera movement could be smoother and the brick growth numbers maybe want a little tweaking, but this is way more solid at 30 seconds in than I thought it would be at first. Innovative and on-theme, we love to see it.
Spring Drill by TopperVideoGames 2025-04-11T00:30:11Z ♥ 1
Innovative puzzle mechanics with fitting graphics, really solid core here, but too slow for me. Almost had a bit of a fast-but-turn-based feel to it. With bouncy/cartoonish fast movement I think this could have been very engaging for me. Very on theme at any rate.
Punch Miner by recursor 2025-04-10T01:07:09Z ♥ 1
I like the wall hanging mechanics, the movement, running on slopes, etc. Wish I had more reasons to want to mine, or that mining was quicker, pressing several times in a row while just standing there isn't fun. The art looked cohesive, the physics were set up well. I think the game wants a little tweaking on momentum and acceleration when starting running, it feels a little sluggish but with this sort of game it would feel fun to have a bit more oomph in our steps.
HMS Lumos by Helagos 2025-04-10T00:59:59Z ♥ 0
Gameplay setup made sense and UI looked good, fully-featured. Audio was similarly good.
I'd like to see an indicator of how much oxygen it takes to rise to the surface (I was told I didn't have enough one time though I still had some in the bar). Noticed a little bug where the oxygen level low indicator doesn't go away for the next run.
Gameplay excitement could probably be improved by varying the movement speed of the obstacles and treasures, maybe adding some horizontal movement into the mix, make players have to anticipate and dodge.
Nice entry.
Holy Moly! by Thomas_Bringer 2025-04-10T00:30:25Z ♥ 2
Extremely cute art, and I liked the music too. The camera lagged a bit behind catching up immediately, giving a good sense of speeding forward. Audio cues made everything pop more.
I think the gameplay would be improved by something like a cooldown on tunneling, maybe combined with some other options, the combat got a little silly (but was a great base).
Dark Pit by Haokai XU 1999 2025-04-09T01:15:39Z ♥ 1
I liked the concept / mechanic, though I think it would have felt better with a little pause on platforms falling again and if platforms were more often horizontal. Different falling speeds could have also been interesting, and I'd like more visibility of the dark sections. Visual effects are good though.
Focus Hunt by dhim 2025-04-09T01:04:37Z ♥ 2
I liked the music and it was certainly innovative but I'll admit that style of gameplay isn't my cup of tea, and the performance really killed it for me. (Cool technique, I wonder if the results could be pre-cached on load?)
Abysmal fate by K1n 2025-04-09T00:56:59Z ♥ 1
I think a game like these needs more room for strategic choices. As other commenters have noted there are simple strategies to win, I never felt like I had a reason to use a particular method over another. UI works well.
Fosu! by island-jam-2-group-3 2025-04-09T00:51:06Z ♥ 1
Clean visuals, good icons for a timed puzzle games. Fitting sound. I think the gameplay only starts to come into it's own once the speed picks up, I wish there was more to juggle here (like trying to hit different powerups, or combos of some sort, or lining up things to explode obstacles, etc).
Digdigdig by hubol 2025-04-08T03:24:11Z ♥ 1
I loved the visuals and the music fit them very well. Interesting gameplay idea, and it's probably good that the game is so forgiving with what counts as a square. Combat could get a bit frustrating when some attacks are very hard to dodge though, and some enemies move around faster than I would like given that I have to draw around them.
Topography by sudocoffee 2025-04-08T02:59:37Z ♥ 1
It took me a second to figure out what the character was (had carved in that area first so couldn't initially move), but once I figured that out I really liked the experience.
To start: I loved the visuals implementation and the wispy-ness there, and I think the dynamic music fit that super well. Puzzle mechanics were well-suited for the sort of short game this is, doesn't overstay it's welcome. Just overall super clean. Made me think of tilt mazes mixed with sandboxes, minus the tilting. That's weird, in a good way!
Directive: Downwards by ThePelranthean 2025-04-08T02:44:25Z ♥ 1
Impressive and clean graphical design and nice grappling animation. I had some trouble with the "group activation" button, couldn't find more to make it work. Movement felt fine for a puzzler though more consistent grapple selection would be nice. Feels like a basis for a more filled-in puzzle game, but probably wants more elements for that.
SATURATION by swooty 2025-04-07T02:39:57Z ♥ 2
I like the mood that you're going for, and it's very on theme. Gameplay-wise, for me, it felt too slow and frustrating, especially since you have to go around quite a bit to have a clue where to head towards (the sonar is not very responsive).
Crush Depth by Psedera 2025-04-07T02:28:59Z ♥ 1
I like the concept of pushing players around instead of having a health bar, though I think the feel was mostly a bit too floaty for me. Probably would have felt much improved if there were more than one way to affect the enemy's position. As it is, it's mostly a "spam button" game with "use your shield whenever you can". I liked the art, and everything's reasonably on theme.