The Messenger Assist by graebor 2020-04-21T03:24:46Z
I love how atmospheric the sounds are! The visual effects and the sounds really sell the location. Very cool!
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → Junebug
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 49 | Unstable | 👥 | Pizza Pony | jam | 451 | 3.73 | 3.54 | 3.81 | 4.43 | 4.17 | 3.61 | 3.97 | 3.53 |
| 2021 | 48 | Deeper and deeper | What Happened in Addison's Grotto | jam | 605 | 3.69 | 3.05 | 3.89 | 3.96 | 3.64 | 4.18 | 4.51 | ||
| 2020 | 47 | Stuck in a loop | RESCUE ATTEMPT #[REDACTED] | jam | 385 | 3.80 | 3.85 | 2.91 | 3.76 | 4.26 | 3.95 | 3.89 | ||
| 2020 | 46 | Keep it alive | Blooming with You | jam | 1107 | 3.54 | 3.09 | 3.51 | 3.98 | 4.04 | 3.63 | 3.43 | 3.92 |
I love how atmospheric the sounds are! The visual effects and the sounds really sell the location. Very cool!
You've said it only loosely fits the theme, but honestly I think the fact that it's such an out of the box interpretation of the theme makes me more impressed with how you used it, not less. The feedback via screenshakes, sounds and visuals for slamming your fists down is A+. Good stuff!
I love the aesthetic you've made with this game. It's amazingly cohesive given how much time you had to work on it. Even though a lot of the environments are just made of grey blocks it doesn't feel like placeholder art, but like it was intentional and as a limitation of the "system". Even some of my frustrations playing it, like not being able to move and shoot, I accept because it feels like an older game where that sort of thing would be standard. Thank you so much for making the robot dying not a game over, and for the generous checkpoints. The only thing I would have wished to be different was having the code for the last door be randomized every time you die. I took too long in that section and lost, but then when I came back I was able to quickly rush through it because I remembered the code, making it feel a little too easy. Other than that one hiccup, the level design and pacing was great. One detail I especially liked was how the robot had to drop the baby to lift doors. The animation for opening them really sold the difficulty and the fact that it was established at the very beginning made it feel like a fact about the world and less of a game-y hindrance. You folks did a really good job on this one, A+!
Thanks for showing some of the behind-the-scenes! Especially impressed that you even made your own font. Dog CPR was obviously the best part.
Love the visual style, it's obviously reminiscent of Paper Mario. I'm curious how the player is rendered, they get rendered over top of some of the obstacles in the overworld. Why not just place them in the 3D world? I liked the battle mechanics, although guarding seems to never be a bad decision. Do you plan to take this further, or will you be leaving it after the jam?
This is a clean and simple interpretation of the theme. I like how straight forward and responsive the gameplay is. Frantically trying to get the power ups while defending the earth at the same time was a fun way to spice up the repetitive task of destroying asteroids. I would have liked to see some kind of penalty or incentive to not just spam rocket shots, maybe by having a combo system that resets on misses or limiting the number of active rockets a la old arcade games. Overall, well done!
I skipped reading some of the controls in the beginning and didn't realize you could swap the kind of item you were holding and needed to pick one of them up in order to feed the unicorn. I actually thought that was kind of a cool limitation and it made finding items at the right time more important. My mistakes aside, this was well done! The art style was cute and it felt pretty polished. With a few more features, this wouldn't have been out of place on one of the free flash game sites back in the day. Great job on the visuals, the unicorn was super cute! Hope to see another project from you this fall!
I like it! Getting subtle Earthworm Jim vibes. The coyote time is strong with this one (in a good way).
Long live Cosmic Felk! In actuality though, from the description of animal noises and people moaning in tubes I'm kind of glad we got to listen to some holo-ska instead. The pixel effect was cool, I liked how it grounded the art style more than it would have been without it. Good work :slight_smile:
EDIT: Just realized I left the game running so I could keep listening to the music while writing this. That's how you know you did good. :P
What a wacky concept! It's stuff like this that makes game jams so interesting. The end of day stats were a good touch, they really encouraged me to keep playing. Good to know that even if the fish weren't making it to the motel, someone was putting them to good use!
For the first 4/5ths of the game I was thinking "wow, I love these plant designs" and then you made me kiss a naked Neil deGrasse Tyson plant and for that I can never forgive you.
So far this is the only game this jam I've come back to to kill some time, so take from that what you will. Honestly, with a few more levels this would have fit right in with any of the free flash tower defense games I used to spend hours on. Taking inspiration from chess pieces and how they move is a neat idea, mostly because if the player already understands the rules of chess, then they know approximately how the tower is going to function. The only thing I felt was missing was a clue to what pathing the poker chips would take. Especially on the blank slate first level it was possible to place a tower and have the pathing change in an unexpected way, having you lose very quickly. Showing a dotted line with how the pathing will change while you're placing a tower would be a welcome addition if you decide to revist or update this game in the future.
This game was really well made! I enjoyed the way the activities that kept your stats up interacted with each other, how you need to go hunting to get food to eat, but also for fun, but that drains your energy faster. Contrary to some of the other commenters, I actually found hunger the easiest stat to keep up, it was energy that kept killing me by running out while I was distracted hunting. I liked how your home got more decorated and homier over time, would have liked to see some kind of reward for maxing out all four stats. The art was well done, I liked the kind of mono-chromatic style and the harsh lighting on the objects in your room. Overall, great job!
I loved the sound effects, especially the way the ultimate says "heal" while it's active, it was charming in it's own way, and helped me realize that it did heal since I skimmed the rules a little quickly. Nice work!
Great job! You can tell you put a lot of care and time into this. It's impressive the amount of content you were able to create within the confines of the jam. My favourite bit was how the music changed from zone to zone seamlessly, it was really well done. The boss at the end was hard! Some of his attacks like the laser were pretty easy to dodge, but others combined with the smaller enemies were trickier. Overall, well done!
Great work! Having the extra mechanic of needing energy to keep players moving is a good addition to the game of life formula. It runs out quick enough that you need to keep looking for it, but not so quick that one or two unlucky generations makes you lose right away, so good job for striking a good balance there. I appreciate that they always spawn somewhere safe for the player so you don't get baited into letting yourself die by the game of life rules.
Once I figured out that I was over watering the plants (I was so confused) it was a fun and kind of calming experience! The art style was cute, I especially liked Kale's character design.
I think level design and balanced puzzles are some of the trickiest things to do on the fly, so good job here! The second level specifically was just the right amount of having to figure it out, and I had an "aha" moment when I accidentally got the Queen to run across the exit in the middle of a move and realized she just had to touch it, not end on it. It'd be cool to see more levels of this, it's a good idea!
The graphics were well executed, the lantern light, and the silhouettes looked pretty cool. I'm not sure if it was just my computer, but the lantern oil depletes extremely quickly. In the first stretch with the falling water it felt impossible to complete in time, even on the attempts that I moved near perfectly. Echoing what others have said about the camera position, it would have been nice to be able to see lower, especially since down does not always mean death. Additionally, having the oil drain about a sixth of the way before even being able to start moving after death was annoying, would have preferred not to have to bump in to the oil can again to have the maximum amount of time before running out.
The gameplay of A Tale of Rebirthism is fun and engaging, but obviously what makes it stand out is the dialogue, which was consistently funny throughout. I wasn't sure if the typos and misspellings were intentional or not but they only added to the charm. Good stuff!
Echoing what others have said about the visuals, they're amazing and you really knocked it out of the park in that department. The only part I had issue with the gameplay was the first ramp, travelling up it I wasn't able to summon the wind and it took a few tries to get over. The visual cues for the wind, and having other things that it interacted with beyond the tumbleweed was excellent, it really sold the idea that you were the wind, and not just controlling the tumbleweed with an unconventional controls. Amazing job.
@edalbung Thanks so much for playing! It's a bit hard to get the true ending, so I've made a simple walkthrough for you (or anyone else) who'd like to see it. The true ending has a little more going on than the others, so I think it's worth the replay to get it.
Walkthrough: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1snbjBcSEX_KDC4aVwKTurgk_cm6Eb3pnBcZC0AwBtJY/edit?usp=sharing
@helen I'm so glad the bonsai bloomed for you! Thanks for playing :)
@graebor There is a quiet phone buzz sound effect if you have the phone down when you receive a message, which I decided not to have play when the phone was up, but I do like the idea of having a couple different notification type sounds for sending/receiving while the phone is up! The buzzing could maybe stand to be a little louder as well. Thanks for the suggestion!
I love the retro feel! This is my first time seeing anything done in bitsy 3D, so it was an interesting first taste. I was about to ask if you were going to do a post-mortem, thought "I should check her twitter first just in case she's already talked about it" and now I might be subbing to your patreon soooo... good job! The retro horror aesthetic was well executed on, I loved the grainy textures on the interface. Echoing what others have said about audio, but otherwise this is an awesome compo entry.
Having this style of game play inspired by a theme that seems to have encouraged a lot of frantic, fast paced games is pretty refreshing. Thanks for the chill diversion, I hope more people play it so we can see the true end!
Thanks for the explanation of the spider's movement! It's always very cool to see procedural animation in action, and it works really well for insects and stuff like this. Having the spider be procedurally animated also added to the spook factor I think as well, more than it would have been if it were just traditionally animate. You picked an interesting visual style, clearly reminiscent of Limbo, and did well with it. Having the visual for how far your sound traveled was a good touch. Nice work!
This is pretty good for "technically [your] first finished game"! It was fun to figure out when it was most effective to perform certain actions, although preaching at school and murdering in the alley always seems to be a good bet. Thanks for sharing, I hope to see your games in more jams in the future!
Good work! The visual style is pretty appealing, with the bright colored blocks. The little achievements for getting taller were a good touch.
The cats are so cute! I had a fun time playing it with my girlfriend, racing around the island and buying an inadvisable number of boots. So many boots.
Feels like it has potential as some kind of rhythm game! It would be neat to try a version with a pulsing beat that matched when you hit the colored barriers.
Weird! In a good way! I don't know what else to say about it really that won't spoil it for future players. Having the visual effect when you were going in the right direction was a good idea. I wonder if you could have made it possible for players to see again the number of the house they were supposed to find. The first time I played it I wasn't sure I found the right one and had to restart because I didn't remember which number exactly I was looking for.
Everything in this game looks super polished! It's such a tight concept and execution, so everything combined really makes it feel like something that was made over a month or two, not in a weekend. The graphical style is very cute, the tank tracks left behind when you move were a nice touch. Great job!
Thanks everyone for your nice comments! I'm excited to try your games too when I have the time :smile:
@neithernathan Thanks! The premise is a little vague, especially without the little blurb on the itch page. I'm hoping to add a little intro cutscene for context in a post-jam update.
@chris-hay Sorry about the controls! I picked what felt natural to me, but you're right about it not being that typical for 2D platformers. I've added W as a jump button and tweaked a few other things in an update. Thanks for commenting on the cape, I was pleased with how fluid it ended up looking.
Thanks for the feedback everyone!
@blubberquark @jetyh The small bullets actually aren't mirrored when you fire either, :laughing: a bug to do with some unused code that allowed for the bullets to fly at any angle. I just found a fix, so I'll upload that tomorrow.
@blubberquark That's good to hear about running on linux! When I have time this weekend I'm hoping to figure out a web build and linux build, but I'm glad there's workarounds in the meantime.
@jetyh Best game so far this jam is high praise, thank you so much! I agree the enemies on the small pillars are more annoying than intended. I'm trying a couple of different solutions, but simply not having enemies spawn in those locations might be the best solution. Thanks for all the feedback you gave on stream as well! Based on your suggestions, I'm planning to better communicate progress/score and work health pickups into a post-jam version.
I love the graphics for this game, your pixel art has a really clean and consistent style to it, which I appreciate. At first I felt like the gameplay was kind of repetitive, and would just involve going around hitting switches until the door opens, but by the last 3-4 loops I was starting to really think about the puzzles and the system grew on me. If you don't mind telling, were there any features or gameplay elements you wanted to add but didn't have time for? I'm curious what kind of things you might introduce in later levels beyond the scope of this jam game.
You did a great job with this! As folks have pointed out, the music and art was great. Sometimes it seemed like the rocket passed right through enemies though, which was a bit annyoing. The character was also a little slippery for my tastes, but that's a more personal opinion. Might have been nice to be able to take more than one hit before dying, but it does emphasize the "stuck in a loop" aspect of the game, so it does have a positive aspect as well. Once again, great job!
This is such a unique concept! Having to catch the passengers to gain back fuel is a really out-there mechanic, it's very innovative. I think I was maybe most impressed with the audio. The soundtrack really supported the theme of the game, and the sound of the coaster travelling along the cart both evoked a rollercoaster, but also rocks sliding and cracking against each other, really selling the concept even with the minimal visuals (which were also gorgeous). Great job!
I loved this one! I think the music and audio might have been my favourite part, it was so upbeat and the music for reeling in matched the feel of trying to dodge all those fish and rocks. The fish felt a little hard to shake when they started tracking you. The C to blast them away helped, but I wished that they would stop chasing after some time. It felt like the screen got really clogged up if a lot of them spotted me.
Thanks for sharing this! I had fun.
Nice work! Like others have said, some feedback on if you actually got a picture or not would have been good. Nice work with the light being blocked by objects, I imagine that was a challenge. Cute game!
I thought the adaptive soundtrack was really cool, with how it panned left and right or faded out depending on how fast and in what direction you were going! The way the root looks as it moves was also really well done, there was clearly a lot of effort put into how that looked and how it should feel to move around rocks, etc.
Only suggestion would be to add some sort of reward for collecting a certain number of water pockets. It wouldn't need to be much, just a little "Congratulations" pop up or a small visual effect, so the player is given permission to stop playing before they get completely bored.
I loved a lot about this! The melancholy music, the hand-crafted environment, even the way the camera follows a little behind instead of snapping to the character, they all really work together to set a kind of reflective mood. Good stuff!
Having the bulletin board build up with the different clues you've collected and letting you rearrange them is super cool! Moving the pieces around gives you a sense of ownership over it, this is YOUR board of clues. It's a really cool way of granting access to the different story events. Great job!
I'm really impressed that this was your first time doing 3D! The gameplay was a little repetitive, but I enjoyed how each level was themed differently to keep them interesting and memorable. I got jump-scared by the first scientist in the reception area pretty bad, which was great. One other specific feedback would be it felt a little odd to have the enemy melee attacks make sound even when they didn't hit me or a wall. Not the most important, but it was something I noticed. Great job!
This was fun! I enjoyed the pun take on the theme. The character animation was great, I was really impressed with it. The skeleton enemies felt unexpectedly challenging, when taking into account our relative attack ranges, how attacking them knocks them out of the player's attack range without interrupting their attack, how you can't move while attacking and how they turn to continue facing the player mid-attack when you roll past them. It's really hard to fight them without taking at least one hit, and I ended up just running past them instead of fighting. Kind of a multi-layered problem, but I think there could be a few different solutions. I liked the tennis mechanics in the boss fight at the end, it made it a little more interesting! Puzzles felt just tricky enough.
Overall, good job!
This was a really great entry! The drilling mechanic was a lot of fun to play around with, even if it did feel a little out of control at times. The difficulty in some of the earlier levels almost turned me off, but once I got into the groove I found myself really pushing to get past those tricky sections. I liked the longer key level at the end, it was a relatively chill way to wrap it up, and the final ending was cute.
I streamed it for my girlfriend, and she wanted me to say that the keys floating behind you was her favourite part.
Thanks for the fun experience!
@ec2151 Thanks for playing! That I haven't had time to play and rate other games yet is probably contributing to you being the first. Thanks for the feedback!
@bamallama Whoops! There are still a few bugs and unintended word loops. Do you remember what word you got stuck on?
@trusty Thanks for the compliments! Do you remember what word you got stuck on?
@not-as-artistic Thanks! I haven't played Her Story but I am semi-familiar with the concept so it was a loose inspiration. I'm definitely looking to adjust the word generation to remove dead-ends and dead-end loops so if you remember what you got stuck in I'd be interested in finding out!
Looking forward to trying all your games as well!
@bamallama @not-as-artistic Thanks for letting me know! I'll try to get it fixed soon.
@nethead Thanks for the compliments and the feedback! I agree with what you and others are saying, that it's hard to tell if you're progressing and if you're doing what you're supposed to. Excited to keep working on it for a post-jam version.
@mattwoelk That's not actually the end. :cry: Once you've reached that part you can go back using the history on the right and then there's another path that opens up (look for "Beach"). Sorry it's not very intuitive. :sweat_smile:
@lovewerk Thanks for the detailed feedback and your humorous account of how your play-session ended! I'm interested in continuing to polish this one, so the suggestions and thoughts are much appreciated.
What a stellar entry! The music, art and low-action gameplay really combined to create a reflective mood. I'd mentioned before, but the tileset for the environment was especially impressive and was reminiscent of the freeware version of Cavestory. I didn't have the same issues others had with the walljump, I actually found it a lot easier to pull off than similar mechanics in other games. I guess it really just comes down to what different people find intuitive. My only real complaint was that the moment at the very end felt like it went by a little fast. I'm guessing if I had been moving slower it would have felt a little more impactful, maybe if I'd been forced to move at a slower speed it would have worked better.
Overall this was a great experience! Good job!
Cute little game! The sound effects were fun but the clicking after every sound spoiled them a little. Congrats on finishing something for your first jam!
I really liked the visual and audio effect for the pulse attack!
I loved the art style! The handcrafted look of the submarine and the character was really cute. It would have been great if there was one or two more mini-game-esque activities like the green buttons, but I recognize you don't always have time during a jam.
Good job with this one! I loved how juicy the sound effects were for lighting braziers and losing were. It's also neat how both the player's health and the kind of "timer" mechanic of the descending tentacles tie into the torch and relighting braziers. Only weird thing was wall jumping. I'm not sure if I was supposed to be able to do it, I was able to a couple of times, but it was pretty inconsistent to pull off.
The ending felt really poetic, with everything kind of blurring together as puzzle pieces from different pictures showed up together and you could see all the different stages of their relationship at once.
@dgspitzer Impressive!!!
I love the stable music!
This is so good??? I'm super impressed that you managed three distinct types of gameplay, plus a dialog system, all in a jam game. It doesn't even feel like any one minigame underperformed compared to the others, and the progression of them was logical and fun. Loved all the horse puns.
I love it! Also getting the goat simulator vibes. Making a car pile was great. I enjoyed that you didn't shy away from letting me enjoy causing as much chaos as I could. You don't really have to work to break this game, it just kind of breaks itself when you poke it enough, which is something more physics simulation-esque games should aspire to.
cone.png >*Working as intended.*
This is so cool! Once I figured out how the relay mechanic worked it was a lot of fun just to try and link up as many planets as possible and cover as much area as I could. Definitely appeased the "overlapping circles good" part of my brain. The little lines showing the path your connection took back to earth was also neat. Only complaint: shouldn't the moon be tidally locked? :stuck_out_tongue:
I love the mood of this game, with the music and the background art. The sound effects are subtle enough to not disrupt it, but still be felt. The game mechanics were really smart! It's a good example of taking a popular genre and giving it an easy-to-understand twist that makes it feel fresh and new. It was fun to try and setup board rotations that would match a lot of colours at once! I got to a point in one run where I had so much stuff piled up in one corner that the board kept rotating between the two faces the corner was on no matter where I put the next block, which felt a little weird. Not sure if that was intended or if not then how you would fix it, though.
Great job!