Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → Kardamom
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Mo | Co | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | 32 | An Unconventional Weapon | Myland | jam | 155 | 3.68 | 3.33 | 3.50 | 4.00 | 3.52 | 3.53 | 51 |
The idea is great! Although I would do the enemies easier to erase (fewer strokes) and if that made the game too easy, added more of them. The way it is it is too much of a clicking excercise.
I like the concept, but for me it was very hard to understand what my attacks/abilites could/will do to the opponent. Also the fact that philosophers reuse each other's utterances breaks the fun a little. Nevertheless this is definitely an unconventional weapon!
Great atmosphere. The audio is gorgeous. I didn't really understand the transform mechanic (what is the shoot option?) but the game was great.
A little confusing, but after I got my head around what's happening it started to be engaging. I still don't understand why I loose after the black things appear (or do I lose?) and what can I do to avoid it. So maybe more guidance, if the game has an explicit goal, or tell the player straight away it is more of an exploration game and there is no explicit goal... The graphical presentation is interestign anyway.
I like the idea, but was little confused by the mathematical model below. Since resistance decreases very slowly, the more powerful actions are not really worth using (maybe except the very end of the game where you need to quickly gain followers). I would also prefer fewer action options - it would make the game easier to understand. But overall - good job!
An addition to my previous comment (spoilers ahead): actually, the only way I found to sustainably increase followers was to keep using "Word of mouth" on every country. By the time I used that on the last country, the first had resistance back to 0, so I could start again without increasing resistance. While this makes some sense from the simulation perspective (you cannot do a good long term PR campaign without word of mouth), it is not very engaging...
Unconvetional weapons everywhere! The mechanic was well designed and difficulty ramp up was reasonable, although some concept of waves could probably help pacing - once you do a mistake or two, there are just too many enemies to kill and more keep coming.
A very steep learning curve but was fun after a while of accustumization. Maybe have slightly less opponent birds at the begginning to let the player learn how to play?
This game really has some interesting and innovative mechanics. Don't mind the graphics, the gameplay works great, wish there was more of it. I also didn't recognize any kind of win/lose condition, but that actually wasn't really an issue... Maybe you could just let the player do ridiculous stuff and not really care about score? :-)
I don't think it really fits the theme, but it was fun, the graphics are great and the gameplay is innovative. There was a bug that I can honk even when I used all my honks.
I like the idea, but the execution is missing a lot. The largest issue I see is that it quickly turns into a waiting game. I have little tools to actively alter the peoples movement around the house, so I need to wait until the random number generator is generous enough to let the poeple walk before the shelves, which is not fun. Maybe if the TVs were reusable after a time and placed in such a way that I could actually lure people to dangerous places... This is even worse after I manage to kill three poeple in the first house, there are almost no tools left and I just have to wait, if the other two panic or not. I think people should start panicking really quickly when they see dead bodies. This would induce fast-paced gameplay after the first kill and would IMHO help the game a lot.
While the game works from mechanical point of view, it is just a regular shooter with sprites replaced by something related to the theme - hey you even have regular explosions. I think the idea of a shooter with cakes and sugar is good, but the mechanics and graphics should do better job at supporting it - enemies could explode into small candy bars, you could protect innocent teeth from onslaught of sugar and pickup toothbrush powerups... Or thinks could just become stick by contact with sugar...
I liked the mechanics, they are innovative and work well. On the downside, the game made me repeat tutorial every time I played. I also had problem with the movement - either W,S,A,D should correspond to actually moving in a direction or the camera should rotate with A,D. Since it was hard to tell which direction the character is facing, this made the gameplay confusing. But overall it was good fun.
Could use some more sound/graphics effects to help the mood. But fun overall.
Nice and sweet! I could probably have it even sweeter, more rainbowish - robot unicorn attack style. The mechanics seem balanced and support the idea of the game.
I think the mechanics are good. I especially appreciate the idea of using (deliberately suboptimal) drone AI as a mechanic. When the game ended I was surprised, I didn't know what was the victory/loose condition and suspected there just isn't any. Maybe some stronger feedback when the drones reach the humans will help. The sound effects worked, but same music would further help to keep pacing.
The game looks pretty and the audio is awesome and really helps the mood. The problem I saw was that very quickly, the speed of fall gets so high that I felt I am loosing control and my progress depends merely on luck and not on the actions I do. I also didn' figure out how to hurt the bats - your description implies that it is possible. Maybe improve the instructions?
That was very psychedelic! I liked the argument/battles, but I think that platformer is not a good mechanic to be accompanied with it - a slow paced explorational game would IMHO be a better match.
While the concept is sound, the ships move too slowly and I didn't find a way to not run out of resources before any of my ships reaches another planet - a lot of balancing and mechanism design needs to be done.
Very well done - it has almost all the bells and whistles needed and the mechanic is engaging and well though out. Few minor things: it is intentional that the red asteroids have very low contrast with the background? Also the missile research seemed to be much less powerfule than the other two.
The concept is interesting and funny, but the controls felt very disjoint from the characters - it took me long to figure out whether I am actually controlling the cat and which one.
Very professional, didn't expect this level of quality. I think I most missed small things that would support the theme: a jolly music applauding you for bunny kills, a slightly less conventional explosion... Also a tighter height limit, faster flight and shorter bomb cooldown could probably help me get better pacing. Some form of wave mechanism / levels would help obviously but I understand those take time to make...
Kudos for letting me kill the bunnies with the plane directly!
It works, it has physics, the balance is reasonable and some thought went into level design. But I guess it needs more attention from game design perspective. I am not a big fan of piss jokes, but if it is a game about pissing, it should BE ABOUT pissing. It should not look like using a regular gun. Maybe you should collect drinks so that you can piss? Or instead of regular damage your piss could accumulate in low places and drown your opponent or whatever. This way it is just a shooter with yellow-colored ammo.
Oh, you can split the mouse! Fun! Quicker changes to other levels would be nice and I would appreciate faster difficulty ramp, but I know I am a bit extreme in that.
Lovely graphics! And it is an innovative gameplay! I had a bit of trouble figuring out what to do, but after a bit of trying, it started to make sense... The feedback to the user could use some impromevemnt (e.g., showing that you hit a wrong person with the script - it took me a while to realize I am doing something wrong)