Planet Licker by ohsqueezy 2015-08-31T05:21:00
I saw this demoed at Babycastles and it's awesome! I can't wait to try it out once the popsicle controllers are finished!
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → kalinova
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Hu | Mo | Co | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | 33 | You are the Monster | The Days at Florbelle | jam | 588 | 3.14 | 2.94 | 3.35 | 3.21 | 3.06 | 3.28 | 41 |
I saw this demoed at Babycastles and it's awesome! I can't wait to try it out once the popsicle controllers are finished!
Love the blob graphics and the C64-style soundtrack! The collision detection is a bit off -- it's hard to grab the colored puddles and B(l)ob shakes when colliding with stuff -- but otherwise it's a nice game.
Loved the sense of humor and the merger of office work and wanton (rather than wonton) destruction. The writing reminded me a bit of Douglas Adams with its detached acceptance of the absurd. That said, there could have been more branching paths through the narrative and a more diverse set of outcomes. I felt like I was being herded through the story at several points, such as being forced to go to the library because the cinema is closed.
A scathing critique of clicking games... that is played by clicking! The strategies required to complete the game are deeper than I'd imagined going in: beating the clickers takes some planning and careful management of resources and time. My only real criticism is the lack of graphics (I'd love to be able to see the frustrated and raging faces of the players, for example) and the fact that the pop-up powerup doesn't seem to do anything (although I may be wrong and just didn't notice it: again, some graphics showing the "enemy's" screen and their cursor position could be useful).
The Dragon Quest-style graphics and the enemy quotes are charming, but the combat is far too simplistic (all you really have to do is "attack" every turn) and the entire game is just grinding for the final encounter. Also, why would a final boss monster have to grind, anyway? Maybe if you were a lowly slime who wanted to be the final boss it would make sense, but shouldn't a boss already be powerful?
Crab is nicely animated and cute and controls well. It got a little crowded and hectic towards the end but I was able to beat it without dying. Crab battle!
All that effort and I didn't even get to see the boat I worked so hard to steal money to buy! Booo!
Seriously, it's not a bad game, but the employee movement seems totally random: maybe if they had paths and routines that could be observed it would give the game more depth. Right now the action is pretty rudimentary and based more on luck than stealth skill.
The top-down perspective is interesting, particularly since you can see the sides of all four walls and yet the character appears in a totally different, head-on perspective. Ultimately, this unconventional viewpoint works well for a game that seems to examine the allure of the fragment, whether a fraction of a sentence removed from its context by ellipses or a shard of glass fused into a stained-glass window. My instinct, as a player, was to attempt to fuse these textual fragments into a cohesive narrative, but ultimately, like the game's stained-glass windows, any cohesion was brittle and easily fractured by the slightest touch.
Love the theme, but the execution is lacking: I've tried a number of different strategies but my shareholder confidence always goes down and I lose.
A fun, if fairly easy, roguelike! If you start with a monster with high luck, the game seems to spawn tons of level-up and strength-up potions, and after that nothing can touch you. With low-luck monsters it takes a little longer to win, but it's still not too challenging. Even so, it's a fun game!
Had the chance to play this during the Jam at Babycastles. I love the concept of playing as a malevolent (or, at least, self-preserving) AI. My one major critique would be the difficulty, which starts out high and never really changes. Personally, I'd like it if the game started out with simple passwords (letters and a few numbers) and, as you hack into more and more vital ship systems, the security increases and the time limit goes down. As it is now, there isn't really a sense of progression. Even so, it has a great mood and I love the soundtrack - it reminds me a bit of Uplink.
Super cute art, but the gameplay is very simplistic and not very innovative or challenging.
Love the Playstation-style graphics! The beautiful dissonance between the happy atmosphere and the brutal murder of innocent emojis is the big takeaway for me.
Reminds me a bit of "The Marriage" with its clean geometric visuals and its abstract presentation. Nothing about it seems terribly monstrous to me, but it's fun and presented nicely.
I had the privilege of being part of this game's first playtest at Babycastles, and it was a blast! Looking back on things, here are a few suggestions I thought of:
1. Some direct-damage cards could be useful, since (as was made evident during the playtest game) it takes forever to actually kill someone unless everyone gangs up on him/her. Maybe a card that only damages whoever is the monster at the time, or something like that?
2. Should players be stuck as one character class for the entire game, or should there be cards that can swap classes? It would make some sense, like a rich person becoming a politician, for example. It would also serve to nerf the broken Merchant class, since everyone would want it and it would be swapped around a lot. This would also make the Peasant and Commoner classes useful: they could be "penalty" classes that could be given to players as an offensive tactic, and there could be cards that damage Peasant/Commoner players more (like regressive taxes, for instance, that hurt the poor more than they do the rich).
3. Some of the prestige gaining cards could be toned down a bit. This also makes the game last longer, since players are that much harder to kill (as evidenced in our playtest game).
I really hope I get the chance to play this game again! It's awesome!
Anyway,
Remember when we were children?
You owe me nothing
Let them see what money can do
To know nothing and tell me that
I've spent my stint in the city
I didn't like him in anything
Be aware of it like a computer
I see this more as a piece of electronic literature than a game. The monster theme adds to the mood but the poetry generation could probably stand on its own without it.