Loach Dive by Manan 2021-04-30T02:20:32Z
Really enjoyed this one, was super simple to pickup and fun to play around with.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → JPGFG
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 58 | Collector | 👥 | WebWeaver | jam | 230 | 3.72 | 3.63 | 4.05 | 4.00 | 3.69 | 3.60 | 3.69 | |
| 2024 | 56 | Tiny Creatures | 👥 | CARDTAGiON | jam | |||||||||
| 2021 | 49 | Unstable | Destructo | jam | 713 | 3.55 | 3.50 | 3.12 | 3.56 | 3.77 | 3.29 | 3.34 | ||
| 2021 | 48 | Deeper and deeper | 👥 | Deep Freeze | jam | 1435 | 3.21 | 3.03 | 2.51 | 3.25 | 3.09 | 3.17 | 2.26 | 3.38 |
Really enjoyed this one, was super simple to pickup and fun to play around with.
The fact you put together this loop or prototype in only one day is pretty impressive, I enjoy the concept for sure and this could absolutely be improved upon.
awesome art assets guys!!!
I love the art style and the game is really well polished from an aesthetic standpoint. The only issue I'm having is how loud the successful enemy attack sound effect is, compared to the music it is a little loud.
really enjoyed the background!
Really liked the artwork and ethereal style
I really liked the art style, very stylish and cute
Game is pretty hard!!! but really cool idea and pretty fun world to mess around with. Very melancholic soundscape for the game
Loved the violin piece and the tree with the sunbeams looks amazing, pretty fun
Hype!!!!!
@malfeasance Thanks, we are working to patch some of those smaller quality of life issues. Really appreciate you playing though.
@tengusheath thank you, we're considering something like a minimap to remedy that issue, what do you think? Or were you thinking more like a hit space bar to zoom out camera?
@yellowsalamander that's all due to @mkane1317 !!!
@fireslash thanks for that awesome feedback, the win condition is simply to finish!!
@manan yes I think we are learning alot about good level design trying to provide better direction to the player through level building. Thanks for the awesome feedback.
@skosnowich that's a great idea. That would be a great reward for a short experience
Not a bad job I'd never played a core game in my life, and this was a cool experience, good job!
I like the retro level design
Big fan of the fact that this is all scratch made, written in c++ using your own framework adds technical prowess in my eyes, there really should be a category for technicality and programming prowess. Great job!
Hey! Cool experience but difficult for me to figure out exactly what I should be doing. Still thanks for submitting!
Lol this was pretty funny.
For 6 hours that was really fun to mess around with, its actually pretty hard! I had to learn to predict some of the early behaviours to get further into the game. I had fun though, hopefully you can release the unfinished game you had been working on!
I tried figuring out the gameplay and it was pretty difficult, doing a 4x game for a game jam is a Huge attempt so I want to properly understand what I'm doing, do you have a written tutorial anywhere?
Couldn't get very far, the ropes kept killing me! But it looks very polished and was fun to play.
Hey that was great!!! The level design was intuitive and carried you through the mechanics then opened up to test the player's capability. The controls felt easy to use and straightforward. The gameplay was super fun and the console responses to the players fortune or misfortune was very funny. I got caught up in the gameplay and completed all levels. This could be processed into a full mobile release!
I enjoyed that you can break the law, that was pretty funny, this was a fun and funny game to play!
This was a cool puzzler, it seems all the levels were handcrafted and they fit together nicely. Some of the longer ones get a little painful when you make a mistake as it is a long level.
Game looks absolutely incredible!!
Super difficult. But good job and good job for finishing the jam! Thanks for posting
Hey awesome atmosphere and mood. I couldn't jump sometimes and I think it was due to physics objects? Either way cool entry, you have a knack for mood building.
cool chill graphics and a nice environment you made. Simplistic but cool, I really like the look of the game.
Hey pretty fun once I figured it out! One suggestion I would have would be to upgrade the UI a little if you plan to do a post-jam submission, because in its current state the UI is a little drab. Otherwise the game is fun cool submission!
This is super fun to play, however the learning curve is a little difficult but I got determined to learn the mechanics to play around with the cool environment we put together. Either way, I really like the system you put together here and thanks for making this, I will be back to play more tbh.
That was awesome, you did a fantastic job bringing this to fruition thank you for submitting this!! I'll honestly come back to play more! A SOLID entry!!!
Cool dice game with a cool twist, I enjoy shooting dice and playing cee-lo irl so this was also a fun game. Took me a little while to figure out exactly how to play properly.
The UI and graphics you put together look incredible. A true pleasure to play, I had a blast great job!
Very great game you guys put together!!
Super cool to play, great job.
It took me a little while to figure out what to do but after that it was a cool little puzzle-like game. I liked your pixel art too! Sometimes I felt like I would move into objects and it would look like I was vibrating in place. Otherwise cool submission!
The screen shaking was a lot, but the voice acting was pretty funny. Lol it was a fun play.
your pixel art is awesome in my opinion you did a great job with art style and animations. I got stuck inside the workbench when I placed it and had to forceQuit the game. I tried again and it looked great walking around the world you built
@ethernal-tech not at all, was just informing you on the bug that occured, I'll check it out again!!
Haha, Wallace the worm is a hilarious character. This was a cool entrance to jam!
Super difficult, but the atmosphere was awesome and well put together, I had a great time with the environment of the game.
hey cool submission, i enjoy shooter games like this, the beginning of the game is a bit slow, but cool. Maybe next time to get people to play throw some flair into the submission page to garner interest! Cool submission tho!
A wholesome murdering shoot-em-up. It make me happy to kill bad guy. Oo oo ah ah. I fuckin love shoot em ups. Great entry, absolutely impressive.
Definitely seems like a strong take on the instability theme. I liked the intentional buggy look however.
cute art styles and a cool concept. Great job!
Checked out after your stream! Cool entry!
Hey that was great and honestly touching. I appreciate you uploading this entry for me to enjoy. Thanks a lot. Pretty moving
The artwork is awesome, I really enjoyed messing around with the penguins and enemies. I couldn't tell if I could die or fall off the cliffs but I had a lot of fun. I couldn't get the penguins to go to the goal platform but still had fun messing around in the world.
Cool work. The puzzles were challenging but I enjoyed the challenge. This is a solid entry and I truly enjoyed the way the world looks. Sweet submission
I like the shift in style, it almost becomes like a pachinko game with the pellets falling down. I enjoyed messing around with it though and didn't experience any bugs. The artwork isn't exactly original as you are playing as pacman and mario on pacman stages. Thanks for makin it though!
the speed was cool for sure, i agree with @ideaspersecond the camera gave me some difficulty but it was pretty fun to play.
Hahaha this was super funny and surely a good time. I'm happy I came across it. The mood was great, but I was slightly curious about how much the game sort of tells you what to do vs. Letting the player figure out where to go next. But I realize command based games are difficult due to the massive number of words a player could use.
This was extremely polished and fun to play, feels like a complete release, and I truly enjoyed playing this game!
It was pretty difficult, a reset button might be a good idea like @barrier said, I had to put one in my game because it was a buggy mess sometimes as well. lol!
Game worked well, I wish there was some audio to provide player feedback.
This game was pretty fun and simple, the pixel art was really out of this world. Juggling all the tasks was fun, I wasn't very good at jumping onto the moving platforms and I fell into the waste a lot lol good time tho thanks.
I liked the music a lot, really great mood setting. Thanks for the entry for sure. I had a good time with this project.
Fun little idea, almost like a negative panic bejeweled with some space invaders thrown in. Had fun playing around with, and yeah it is pretty difficult. Thanks for making!
Woah! absolutely awesome game!! I was very bad but this is a full finished release and it plays like one. Thanks for the awesome submission!!
I enjoyed the drawn in characters a lot too. That was really enjoyable to see.
This was a lot of fun, I played earlier on stream, I like the subtle meme-ness of the game and I think you hit your aesthetic so well. Almost too well. The vine boom was hilarious and I was waiting for a bruh somewhere in there. Anyway, thanks for hangin earlier! Happy LD49
Was scared of the AI! its like HAL 3000 from 2001 A Space Odyssey!! Thanks for posting such a cool submission. Cool perspective and the graphics were really high quality!
I kept hitting spacebar to jump like an idiot but this was a fun submission thanks for posting!
Its honestly pretty relaxing to play, which was nice, I certainly enjoyed that aspect as well as the nice color palette and ambient music.
Short simple sweet to the point fun, just what I would look for in a game jam game! Nice work.
Dude, this game is extremely polished and really fun to play!! Honestly it seems like it could be built out to a full release. The humor embedded in the game and the interesting gameplay is a ton of fun. I think you guys did such a great job. Thanks again!!
Pretty cute game that could (I agree) be brought to a mobile release because it's noncommittal and fun!
Hahaha DDR for fingers is right! cool submission, thoroughly enjoyed.
The game was definitely pinball! It was an interesting concept but felt pretty bare without atmosphere
High marks for mood for sure, that was very creepy and quite intense but too bad it was so short. That was pretty creepy and I enjoyed playing it, good job with your designs!
Cool game! Fun and relaxing to play, the quiet was nice.
Just played your game! I really liked your pixel art design and the enemy types had great animations and move cycles. All in all the sound direction was also awesome. The movement sounds from the slimes as well as the shooting enemies were top notch imo. A bug I found is that its sometimes easier to kick the fire into the pill rather than throwing the pill into the fire. Thanks for making it!
Hey! What an awesome entry, the graphics are excellent and I loved the different sprite styles for the different colors, reminded me of the original sword of mana games
This is another reason that I wish there was "technicality" aspect for the rating system because this is an impressive programmatic achievement. Great job for the compo!!!
simple game with some minor bugs, definitely an upgrade from your first LD entry. I can see your learning process and that's always cool.
@oillen Thanks so much for your input and the way in which you provided your pros/cons. That really helps to streamline my refinement process. I am thinking to recreate and re-release this project as a mobile game for IOS and Android, so thanks again for rating and playing!!
@itsboats hey that's a great suggestion, this is a pre-mobile concept so the touch is the only control hence mouse controls, however for pc versions I could certainly utilize key controls like that.
@zliebowitz I'm surprised you could afford it so early! That's intentional though, it's meant to be the most powerful upgrade in the game.
@bentglasstube yeah that procedural tile destruction seems to cause some issues sometimes with blocking the player from completing levels.
@weine You don't actually have to pick up any items the xp and gold are automatically added to your inventory after killing enemies or opening a chest.
@mhorth Hey yeah that's the bug I have been hearing about where the command list blanks out and cannot be played. It appears to be due to enemies moving to illegal tiles and breaking the game loop.
Thank you everyone for your input and your suggestions and feedback. I can't tell you how much it means to me.
@recher Thanks for your input on the possibilities for changes to the formula to affect RNG. I like the cruelty but it is problematic when the game doesn't allow you to continue beyond a certain stage.
@cyangmou thanks for your input, it means a lot that you actually came over to play it. I'm gonna be squashing bugs next week, and I've decided to build out the game for real and have a few directions I'm thinking about taking.
@honey-pony Thanks for your notes, I definitely agree that it could use some more polishing and I plan to continue to address some of the polish issues and the amount of bugs in the gameplay for the post jam version.
@omiya-games wow, that is excellent feedback. I really appreciate you taking the time to play again and give me your honest opinions on the game. I will absolutely take your suggestions into account when I put together the post-jam version of the game. Seriously thanks again for playing and leaving your feedback.
This game is FUN and that is what I think is most important. I had a good time playing around with this one and the gameplay loop was addicting as I wanted to improve my score. This was well put together, nice job!
Game was a little difficult but it's great because I felt like my mistakes were my own. Cool entry!
really enjoyed to artwork and it was pretty hard haha
Really fun gameplay! This was pretty funny to play and I had a good time with it!
This was a lot of fun and it was pretty funny to see what kinds of things the bombs would be covered in coming out of the conveyor belt. I think I struggled to manipulate the scissors easily but it was still pretty fun to play. I loved the comedic aspects a lot.
I would say that I spent a decent amount of time just waiting to get back the scenes I needed to get the last of the equipment. The artwork and general idea of the game is pretty fun to puts around in. It would be cool if the environmental objects had some more variations.
I couldn't quite figure it out, but the cutscene and polish looked nice. The pixel art also looked great with a strong influence from team meat
Hey I thought your idea was super intuitive and pretty fun to mess around with, it does just sort of drop you into the environment though and that can be a bit trial and error. Cool game dude
Car is a little hard to drive but vehicle controls and physics are honestly pretty hard to program. Good entry!
Hey this was fun! Great submission, a little jank but then again it was an ambitious game idea so jank is expected!
I liked playing the endless runner and enjoyed the process of getting my way to the game as a reward at the end of the game. It was a unique submission and you put it together nicely.
The SFX scared the shit out of me. But this is a finished game thats fun to fool around with! Thanks for submitting
Hey this was pretty cool!! I had fun with the silly nature of the game. Thanks for submitting!!
This was a fun slasher/top down shooter. I had a good time as the player controlled very well, I had to be wary of killing civillians though.
Hey congrats on finishing your first jam! The game works and was fun to play. I can't wait to see what you do next time or in the future! Thanks for the entry.!
I don't think I beat it?
This was a cool entry! They physics system setup was cool but the game was really hard I found, so I also would spam parts to get my way haphazardly to the exit. Cool submission though!
Game built well for me! And it was a fun little arcade style game that was entertaining. The main menu design was honestly beautiful, the graphics in game weren't bad either and the drag-style mechanics were a lot of fun to fool around with. Entertained me for 15 minutes or so!
Absolutely unbelievable that this was put together in such a short period of time. This is the absolute highest standard of a release and the bar has been set almost too high with this entry. Truly incredible.
Lots of fun! I love games in the terminal as well. Good job! Had to rely on the spoilers
hey this was cool, I don't really get the whole core thing but it seems to be really powerful for making polished looking games, cool entry.
Hey this was cool, dialogue heavy games are difficult for me so it was cool to see it here. Thanks for submitting!
It was a cool concept but I don't think I was playing correctly.
Enjoyed playing it and it was a fun project!
It was really hard, some of the sounds were a bit jarring but i liked the obstacles and the mechanics all in all fun entry.
The concept of keeping a burning ship afloat is really fun. I just wish there were more gameplay centered elements/polish like feedback sounds/notifications for doing the right thing. Also I feel like I was constantly fighting fires that would re-appear behind me, but maybe I'm just not very good haahha. Thanks for the great game!!
The fact that you did a jam on your own engine is honestly pretty cool. That in and of itself is a feat!!!
messing with anchorpoints on your UI might help with some of the resolution distortion you're seeing. Cool post, like GTA2
This is a pretty damn cool entry, really liked the asteroids randomly flying across the scene. It was a really nice ambient touch. Cool entry!
OH LOOK AT THAT ONE IN THE DUNG.
rockstar entry, the singing scared the FUCK out of me initially, but its pretty funny. And really trippy. My group also almost made a game about mushrooms.
Art style and UI design remind me of a final fantasy game. What technology did you use to build it?
Screenshot 2025-10-08 at 12.25.02 AM.png
This is an awesome entry. You managed to make a tight platformer over the course of a weekend with a coherent art style without the gameplay loop getting boring. That's huge straight up!
Gonna give a full review here and some notes because you took the time to make this awesome game.
The great:
love the limited color palette and the spritework, everything seamlessly comes together and it's nice to look at. The enemies are varied enough with your limited sprites to not feel stale, you got around this with reskins and resizing which is a great skill in a game jam.
I can't believe you were able to create individual boss mechanics (simple as the mechanics may be). With a boss battle music track too! Damn man. That was gas. The platforming was tight as well, it can be difficult to keep platforming interesting across a couple levels, you executed that really well here.
The bug collection room is awesome too, it made me determined to see my progress after every stage, and wonder what other bugs I could collect.
The improves:
I found myself able to double jump up some of the two-stacked high tiles, if I'm thinking about it, I think maybe I was able to get my "feet" collider up to the platform close enough to allow me to jump again (if that's the pattern you went with).
There was some slowdown evident in some parts of the levels, and especially the beginnings of the boss rooms, I'm not sure if maybe there are some physics clipping or something going on in the background that is contributing to that, but there is plenty of time of optimization later.
I think the weapon range is just a little bit small, you can often take damage when trying to get close enough to deal damage. Once you get the hang of it this isn't a problem, but I think a little bit more range would be very free-ing to the player, not having to worry so much about collider overlap.
Something to think about:
Some of the channelization tactics you used to show the player where to go (overhead tiles to create a corridor to the boss level) made me curious to try to find secrets. This was aided by the fact that the bugs in the trophy room aren't in the sequential order they are found, they are separated by "boss" bugs and "level" bugs. So I spent a bit of time in each level trying to find secret passages or extra content.
I don't think that's a bad thing, just maybe a possibility to add some secrets if you're not burnt out post-jam (I know sometimes I get that way). And if I missed something please let me know! I'll go back and find it.
Synopsis:
This was a great entry and you should be super proud coming up with a complete and tight platformer. I hope to see you in future projects and game jams because I am definitely a fan of this entry.
TLDR: Good game, smash bugs with club.
Feel free to hit me up if you wanna chat games sometime!
stamps, my second weakness, after bullets
took me a few tries to get the resolution correct on my screen (on a macbook pro HD). Once that Was squared away I was able to play around with the game. Some tooltips on your stat ui elements might help a lot for understanding how the game system works together.
@xsangyhix Thanks for playing! I think you hit a bug that we're working to resolve right now, the game-controller shorts out and doesn't seem to want to bring the level completed screen back in. Will bugfix when we get a second in between work and school. We should also implement the "about" and "settings" to at least allow for volume control. The about page was translated into the LDJam page for brevity's sake. Hope to see you around.
@jackofcups Thanks man! We tried to make it as comfy as possible.
@mackelio I know the tutorial slide is pretty busy but were happy with it explaining some of the more nuanced concepts about segment strength. Regardless thanks a lot for the input, moving forward I think we'll try to tone down how busy it is. Thanks for playing!
@yichen Thanks for checking it out!
@bobap I'll have to go check that game out then, maybe pick up some new tips! Thanks for playing
@hassanm I'm glad you enjoyed it, addictive is what I like to hear. Thanks for playing
@robin-schmitz hey thanks for calling the artwork fancy!! We feel pretty lacking in that department.
@ciphereo I'm glad you think so! Thanks for checking it out!!
@ira-baciu that was the goal!! We had a few ideas for spider sprites we threw around, we might have to push some of the others for additional cute-factor
@tesseus Thanks for playing! We had a lot of fun putting it together.
@ryusui Glad you had fun even when the flies were besieging your webs. Thanks for checking it out!
@tesseract We wanted to have the player building web-like structures so we were thankful that it worked out that way, that was the whole idea behind the reinforcing mechanic!
@stephenwhoskins That is high praise coming from you man! We wanted it to be a comfy experience, and also, you are the first person I've seen to max out on the last level, consider me learned!!!
Thanks for checking it out and a million thanks for the review.
JP
What a cool atmosphere. AND VOICE ACTING?? Super sick cool entry thanks for posting
I got my bones back!
funny entry, love stuff like this.
JP
Your artwork is fantastic, I found some of the colliders to be a little janky, the anchor colliding with things that seemingly aren't there not allowing you to build up big combos. Nice entry.
Hey where am I supposed to go after getting the extra high jump?
I got lost after that.
So hyped, I saw this on a blog post during the weeking, glad you came away with something awesome.
Gotta link your game!
I love the artwork especially. Great entry.
The artwork is incredible, I felt like I was playing a DSM-5 test or something like it. The situations and dialog were very peculiar as I understand that's the point!
Really unique entry, glad to see it!
cool stuff here. For sure, a bit buggy and unclear of what the point is at the beginning, but I got the hang of it and have played a few deck builders before so I was able to figure it out. Art style fantastic, sound and music also fantastic.
Cool entry!
That last minigame was unbelievably difficult, but we got there.
Since it's your first gamejam as a team I would say congrats 100% You guys should be super proud you finished a game that plays coherently and actually has an ending as well.
The first two minigames are pretty straightforward, but the last achievement of the three is really hard! I tried really hard on the platforming minigame to get outside of your tilemap, but I could not. You can however double jump almost infinitely if you are positioned against the tiles on the characters right side. Probably a case of "foot" collider overlap.
Regardless this is a super cool entry, and the last section nearly gave me a heart attack.
Great job by all!
your artwork makes me want to redownload and play maplestory again...
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I must have forgotten to hoard things.
Gonna write up a review for this cool entry.
The great:
Programming something like this in a weekend is no small feat. I can see the work that went into this and am super impressed, it would lend itself well to some procedural generation (not in a weekend) but for the future for sure if you guys aren't too burnt out. You could create varying maps and encounters with some simple rooms-and-corridors generation algorithms.
I am most impressed by the inventory and equipment systems. Those are also pretty difficult to wrap your head around, but I liked the implementation, simple for what was needed for the game loop.
The improves:
For me when I played it seemed that no enemies attacked me. I was able to just faceroll through every enemy and even the knights just let me beat them down. I did stack a ton of armor so maybe I was just too tanky? Not too sure.
I play a ton of classic roguelikes so the UI and working with the game came second nature to me, but perhaps a little tutorial blurb wether in the game or on the LD post page or itch would be helpful.
My team also had the idea of a dragon collecting things prior to a coming hero invasion so its cool to see that great minds think alike.
Something to think about:
The bones are already set up to take this to a next step, add in some procedurally generated maps, some more options in dealing with foes (magic, fire breathing, etc) and maybe baby animations on attacks, you've got one hell of a short-turnaround-roguelike.
Thanks for making !
Feel free to hit me up to talk games in the future, hope to see you guys out there.
Hey this is pretty cool, I think the initial time you have per "run" or "night" might be a little bit long, just for the style of game you have here. But it's really satisfying to rack up a big combo and let it go to watch all the star-score add up. Great work guys.
I love pathfinding mechanics, so this is a really cool simulation. I love the presentation of the data as well, to find an optimized pollen route is I think really cool.
Also the visuals are super appropriate and well placed.
Great entry!
there's no game!
Hey you are using unity! Maybe export as a web playable export and host on itch! Will def get you some more exposure.