Then Came A Stork by bonkibot 2024-04-15T22:57:56Z ♥ 1
Wow, this is really impressive. Beautiful (visually and feels-wise) and crammed with content.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → karln
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | Co | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | 55 | Summoning | Summon Creativity I | jam | 745 | 3.43 | 3.46 | 3.00 | 3.48 | 2.98 | 3.86 | 3.21 | ||||
| 2020 | 46 | Keep it alive | Untitled Caterpillar Game | jam | 1204 | 3.50 | 3.68 | 3.32 | 3.65 | 2.61 | ||||||
| 2018 | 41 | Combine 2 Incompatible Genres | Bloxcars | jam | 3.42 | 3.50 | 3.83 | 4.42 | 3.33 | 3.25 | ||||||
| 2017 | 40 | The more you have, the worse it is | Rucksack | jam | 489 | 3.53 | 3.63 | 4.05 | 3.15 | 2.69 | ||||||
| 2017 | 38 | A Small World | Gravity Does Not Work That Way | jam | 194 | 3.70 | 3.78 | 3.78 | 3.78 | 3.59 | 3.23 | |||||
| 2016 | 37 | One room | Going Outside | jam | 659 | 3.04 | 3.15 | 2.69 | 3.07 | 2.92 | 3.12 | 58 | ||||
| 2016 | 35 | Shapeshift | xXShapeShooterXx | jam | 569 | 3.22 | 3.38 | 2.89 | 3.43 | 3.00 | 2.00 | 2.72 | 71 |
karln leaves an average of 13.0 feedback comments each event.
Wow, this is really impressive. Beautiful (visually and feels-wise) and crammed with content.
You definitely should mention on the game page that RMB is needed, I was completely stuck until I read the comments and found out that I should try that. Once I got past that issue it was a really nice game.
Nice concept. Probably a bit too fast-paced and buildings die too fast in the early stages, I quickly ended up with just one building that's pretty easy to defend. You could make the first night easier (not so many monsters, and they don't hit so hard) but make powerups important for the following nights so that if you lose too many buildings you won't be powerful enough later?
Fun to play though.
He seems to mostly get launched way over into the bottom left corner :( Nice art and music though, looks like it would be really good fun if I could control it :/
Guys thanks for labelling the places in the cafe and for the environmental storytelling. I do like environmental storytelling.
I wasn't sure if the crazy glitchy tentacle meshes everywhere were intentional, and I'm still not sure whether it matters
Wow this is really nice. The art is nice, I love that audio is an integral part of the game (although you probably should put a warning on the game page in case people have sound turned off or are, you know, deaf) and that it uses stereo to help you navigate.
Oh also, at one point I was like "oh cool a sun that will be warm" and the game was like, "be careful around suns the ship can explo..." and I was like BOOM and I was like "right I see"
oh noooo did I just let myself get eaten by a bear FOR FRIENDSHIP
that's touching
I like the enemy variety, having some that target the fire instead makes it tougher and is surprising the first time. Wasn't quite sure what makes the flash guys sometimes "fire" and sometimes not -- is it when I'm looking at them?
I like the main mechanic. Controls were a little fiddly unfortunately. I couldn't figure out where to go after I passed the torch underneath a waterfall and reached a brazier set against a high wall :(
18 rounds
I love the interpretation of the theme on this one! Nice atmospheric sounds and effectively simple visual aesthetic too, nice work!
That was pretty fun. I really missed box select once I had a whole bunch of guys but I managed anyway and saved that ol' Earth yay
I saved!
That was an interesting mechanic. I beat the second level by just leaving my dude at the start and then coming back for him when I was done (actually I took him in two stages, first to the buildings in the middle then to the end), which is probably cheating a little but it worked :)
I keep falling out of the world :( Really pretty 2d art though
I do like my fish girthy, thanks
I got quite confused by the controls when I walked into the corners of buildings. I was trying to turn 90 degrees after moving into the corners but just kept turning back on myself.
Nice look and mood.
I may have been missing something, I couldn't figure out how to shoot the sniper ("SHOOT SNIPER" didn't seem to do anything) or how to use medkits or what to do with crates :(
Nice idea but it was a little hard to play because the shot timing is hard to predict (often seems to fall on off-beats) and the white edges are hard to see. Maybe a different colour would be easier to see and/or the crosshair could pulse or something?
Also you should probably mention in the description how to reload, it took me a while to figure it out. (For other players reading this: you click on the "ammo" area in the bottom right.)
Still, I like the idea and the fact you even have a tutorial.
Really nice opening screens and gameplay implementation as far as it went. Shame you didn't have time to make it what you wanted. I stopped after the first encounter, wasn't sure if there was going to be a boss or something but the first fight went on so long I didn't think I could face another :/
Very nice underwatery background sounds :) Gameplay is nice and relaxing too.
For some reason I felt like right arrow should be right-and-down etc., presumably from other games I've played? And it took a long time to adjust. Would be nice if that were an option -- if you had time you could even maybe start the player on a one-way platform and set the controls based on what direction they push (Psychonauts does something like this with the up/down camera control).
I couldn't finish level 2 at all! I was trying to grab an orb, quickly take it to the altar on the high ground, then do the same with the other orb, but I can never escape the water with the 2nd orb before it catches me :(
Unfortunately I didn't manage to eat enough (4 or 5 tries) to see if anything happens if I get too fat so I'm not sure if it fits the theme or not :/ Maybe if the burger guys were knocked away from the player when the player takes damage it would help avoid the player just getting hit 3 times in a row and dying from one burger.
I didn't understand why everyone else is shooting a continuous stream of strawberries and I can only splurt out one every few seconds or something :(
ad doesn't load for me so I can't make it to the game :(
Interesting idea. I definitely think it would feel more comfortable to play if you could shoot in one direction while moving in another, whether twin-stick style (or WASD to move/arrows to shoot) or aiming with the mouse. Maybe that would make it too easy with only one enemy type -- you'd need other types that can get in front of you and that would take time to implement :/
what is my arms
what is my legs
I love them
at first I thought I was supposed to collect all the calories but now I have learned a valuable lesson
The analog stick controls could maybe use a wider dead zone (the range of small motions that don't trigger a response), my player keeps drifting to the left when I'm trying to hold neutral. Cool game otherwise though :)
I love the concept! Implementation is good too but you could make the bad kitties show up a bit better against the background. Sometimes I didn't even see one coming :(
Oh I love this :) At first it was just a well-made platformer with a neat theme, but then I tried out the first "Games" folder and it made me smile.
I particularly like the jump physics. The way the character "pops" up into the air before going into a more traditional jump arc feels nice and responsive and the squash-and-stretch animations are satisfying too.
Would have been nice if you could have found time to create a lot more file and folder names that the game could choose from randomly, and given the folders their own names to make it more clear where teleporters will take you. But between that and the nice polished platforming experience you made, I'd take the platforming :)
I liked most things about this game but I thought the way the birds move was pretty unfair. They often change direction without warning so that you can be passing over/under one and it just decides to move all the way over to the edge of the play area in your direction so you can't dodge; they also sometimes fly right in front of hoops so you can't get them without taking damage, etc. Some changes to the bird AI would be welcome.
It's really pretty though and I like the tiny circular playfield :)
argh I kept getting squished even though I visibly moved away before the finger landed :(
It's a shame it's so hard to play, the idea is really fun and I wanted to see more of the story...
re @elektropapst's idea, I think it's interesting but in practice there's probably too much difference between keyboards for it to work? Which is a shame.
Fun puzzles, but I would have liked to have less delay before I can make my next move.
Quite an interesting little game. The title screen is particularly pretty.
I didn't play this because it wanted to install itself and I don't want my system to get cluttered with game jam games that I forgot to uninstall. Would prefer if I could just extract some files to a folder and run it from there, that way it'll be deleted later when I delete my whole "ludum dare ratings" folder.
It's a beautiful game, but I think it's a little spoiled by the controls. The character feels a little too slippery, maybe could be slowed down slightly and stop faster when the controls are released. Also the jump speed feels very strange, I think the game would feel much better if vertical speed were lower overall and especially near the peak of the jump.
I just kept vanishing despite holding Space :(
The graphics somehow made me nostalgic for my old Amiga games. Nice effect for such simple graphics :)
I like the jump mechanic, but it wasn't clear at first that I jump on release. Maybe the squashing animation could be a little faster at the start so that the player can see it responding? Also did you ever try having the player press down instead of up to jump? I think it might make sense since the blob is pushing itself down in order to spring back up, and it would make the idea clearer to the player.
Maybe you could also reserve the full squashy animation for charging up jumps only, and not on landing, so that it's more clear when you're charging a jump and how much charge you have? Landing could still have a little squash to it but much less than now, and it could be overridden by the jump-charge anim.
In one sense it's cool how big the map is, but in practice I ended up getting lost with no idea where I was going and where I had been. Might have been better to make it smaller and to limit the player's paths a bit?
Overall, great game with a nice feel to the controls and effective use of old-style pixelly graphics!
I liked it :) Played 3 times and finally had a success. I was surprised to find on later playthroughs that the dialogue is actually not reacting to what I do -- you had me fooled the first time, I thought the messages about depleting resources and getting ET activity from Pluto were tied to my performance :)
I thought it was slightly odd that generators seem to have exactly the same power output as factories with no downside. Deliberate?
I love the smiling scary vicious planets! Made me jump when they started shooting at me.
The flares thing is weird and interesting, feels like there could be puzzles or set pieces or some kind designed to use it better though. I just set it to wiggle up and down, and never touched it again...
Beautiful music! I like the graphic style too and the variation in graphics style between the four areas.
That said, there are some rough parts to the gameplay. I know how it is with a jam, there's so much to do and so little time, but as the swordplay is such a big part of the game I think you maybe could have taken time away from other areas to play around with it some more.
In particular, the "cooldown" between attacks was kind of long and it wasn't clear when I could attack again -- maybe the character animations could show that, like by having her hold the sword up when it's ready to use or something? Also I noticed that the reach of the sword didn't seem to match the graphics, which makes gameplay feel a little weird too.
Finally, I thought the knockback against the enemies, while a good idea, could be a bit more effective. You could consider putting the enemy into a "recovering" state for a short time after being hit, in which it doesn't chase the player.
Still a very nice experience overall :)
Heck! I like the art style, reminds me of Braid.
Heck! Also appreciate that (I guess) I heal back up after taking a hit?
Heck! Could really have used checkpoints though, it's annoying having to play through from the start after hitting spikes, especially when I couldn't see them from the platforms above :(
Heck! Very impressive for only 24 hours, nice effort :)
Good fun but a little frustrating :) It might be better with a different camera movement scheme, as the camera seemed to move unexpectedly sometimes causing me to miss shots because the target wouldn't be under the mouse any more. If it's possible for the game to take control of the mouse pointer it could make it move with the camera? Otherwise maybe it would be worth just having no camera movement and making the game fit on a single screen :/
Also it would be neat to make hearts appear in front of dead aliens, the hearts are more important for the player to see :) Still, I had fun :)
I couldn't figure out how to do anything besides place turrets and hit things :( The mining doodad was always red and wouldn't place.
Also it would be helpful if you left the instruction screen up until the player presses a button, it vanished before I was done reading...
Love the backdrop and the floaty feeling of the boats. I did have to resort to shoving all the boats into the middle before I could hit anything though, and I was confused for quite a long time about what was happening until I realised you have to drag in the opposite direction to the one you want to shoot/move.
Was I supposed to be able to throw a million mud balls in a row by spamming the Space bar? It's super effective!
This was fun, I've been wanting to do a game that unlocks abilities as you go but not come up with anything yet.
Could have made the bramble things show up a bit better against the mud background though :/
Nice and unusual idea. A couple of times I clicked what I was sure was the right person but it was wrong - are there duplicates?
Took me a while to work out what was going on and I'm still not sure I understood what 'repressurizing' does. But it's playable and quite fun in a stressful way once you've figured out how to seal the nodes and what that does.
It's beautiful and the look and sound kept me playing for a while, but I found the controls and layout of the room infuriating.
Unless you want to make the player tear their hair out (which doesn't seem to fit with the pleasant mood of the room) there are a few tweaks that might help with playability:
- give the player a short 'grace period' after running off an edge when they can still start a jump despite being technically too late
- stack the books on the second window ledge a bit higher so it's more clear that you can't jump over them
- arrange the first series of lights so that they're spaced exactly right for either a running or non-running jump. You could put the harder version of those jumps further along, above a shelf or something to catch the player and let him walk back and try again quickly
- generally have something underneath later jumps to catch the player and not just drop them all the way back to the start.
I did really like the feeling of being in the room and the idea of climbing around on all the features around the walls, though.
Nice idea, good level design, controls are mostly good but I could have done with an alternative jump button away from the left/right controls (my arm hurts now) and maybe it could be a little easier to grab walls?
I like how level 3 teaches you that you can drag boxes sideways by giving you a very simple setup with no other solutions.
I like the audio effects, visual aesthetic and the trails idea seems quite original, although in practice it tends to push the player into standing still and thus having no trail to hit.
Maybe a version in which the player can't shoot and can only use their trail to damage enemies could be interesting? Or it might just be frustrating. Destroying enemies with your trail is a neat idea though.
It felt like there should be some visual effect when an enemy is destroyed, even just a little puff of particles or a brief flare of light, and an audio response of some kind.
You made it too addictive.
;)
Love the Final Fantasy vibe in both the graphics and music.
Great idea and nice graphics. I found it hard to control myself in midair since you stop almost instantly when you release the move key; in most shooters you take a second to slow down and stop after you release the key so I kept stopping short of the platforms out of habit.
I like it! Turrets are a nice touch, and the pickups give you a reason to not just hide in a corner and let them work. I would recommend putting a bigger pointer or crosshair or something at the mouse location though, as I kept losing my mouse. Even if you don't disable the default mouse pointer it helps a lot.
All I see is the score display, the rest of the screen is just black.
It's an impressive achievement in 3 days. Would be more useful if we could place more than one tile after selecting the tile type, by dragging or just clicking multiple grid squares. Unless I've missed something?
Good fun but a bit too fiddly. Did you try having a third button for fire at any point? Very interesting mechanics anyway.
Was fun once I learned the order of the shapes. Might have been easier to learn if they were in order of number of sides: circle, triangle, square, pentagon.
Very pretty, nice feel. Shame the music is on such a short loop.
Probably should have a the offensive content checkbox on for the 'game over' message.
Very pretty, nice music. Seems a little odd to have no feedback effects when you successfully pass a gate. Occasionally my attempts to change shape didn't register, maybe because I was still inside the previous gate? Would be good to have a little feedback for that too.
I think I get it -- you shapeshift randomly when you hit things maybe? -- but after a while I just become a normal tortoise and can't find any way to get out of that form. Looks like it'd be fun if I could work out how to avoid that.
Nice spooky atmosphere. Wasn't sure if all the shaking was a bug or part of the intended experience, but it was appropriately unsettling. I'm afraid my patience ran out at 53 spheres remaining though :(
that was awesome
although I was so sad when I died to the 3rd boss and got sent all the way back :(
Would have liked less of a delay in getting back into the game after dying.
that was fun. Liked bombing guys from atop the hill with my wizard fireball. The dive was nice too once I learned to trust it was really hitting the enemy.
Well done on your first game! I like the idea of the platforms that the bird can't cross.
Would recommend you play around a bit with the speed of moving, falling and jumping to see if you can find a less 'twitchy' feel for your next game. Unless that's what you like, of course :)
lol
argh cannot play too hard
fun idea but I could barely play it at all :(
have no Razer Hydra
Had fun finding loose money around the world, but I never did find anyone who wanted anything from me :/ Oh well, still very impressed with this game :)
the difficulty could maybe ramp up faster? After five minutes nothing much seemed to be happening, I just had a ton of turrets and nothing was a threat yet.
Nothing seems to happen when I run the exe. I get the usual warning about software from an unknown source, I click 'run', and then nothing :(
LD55 — Summoning (21)
Fire Quota by quadtree 2024-05-01T17:34:46Z ♥ 0
A fire elemental is clearly the best kind of elemental. It's a shame that the game was freezing up a lot in the first level (maybe shaders being loaded for the first time? idk) but once that resolved it was fun. I wasn't clear how to try to break free but it happened for me anyway and I was able to go on my rampages.
Veiled Ocean: Echoes of Nautical Grief by WiredOverload 2024-04-19T23:28:33Z ♥ 0
Nice work, as a vegan I can confirm we are the strongest of all :D
Anybody There? by Marcie 2024-04-19T18:09:11Z ♥ 2
Great concept, well executed. I took ages to get the cassette player puzzle because I didn't know if pressing any of the buttons might cost me a life. Maybe a better way to do that would be to have three cassettes out on the table, mousing over each one plays the song faintly, and you select one by putting it in the machine?
Summoning for Dummies by Cievers 2024-04-19T12:27:02Z ♥ 1
Woo I won by the skin of my teeth :) Nicely balanced. I liked the artwork and the variety of card effects, and that it was pretty self explanatory.
Summoner's Dungeon by PoesDraughtnDoos 2024-04-19T12:15:59Z ♥ 0
Nice work. It was too hard for me to reach the end but impressive anyway. Could use some tweaks to movement speeds and jump arc etc. to make the controls feel a little less slippery.
Shadows Of My Foreman Self by Skyeward 2024-04-19T00:00:24Z ♥ 2
I couldn't really figure out what the workers were doing exactly, but I was having fun and it was pretty impressive that you got five full minigames and all those graphical assets in there. Well done :)
Grid Land by TheMixedMaster 2024-04-17T23:55:35Z ♥ 1
This was nice to play with. I think it needs to run a little faster, or to have a button to collect essence right away. I ended up spending a lot of time with my guys set up how I wanted them and just waiting for the next essence tick. I was enjoying looking for new creature types but the waiting around got to be too much :(
Djimm's Revenge by player04 2024-04-17T23:36:21Z ♥ 2
Really nice animation. Something weird seems to be going on with collision detection -- I kept bouncing off of platforms that I thought were higher above me? And it wasn't clear sometimes why I got caught. Maybe bubbles were spawning right on top of me? Nice artwork though.
Don't get seen. by RRADU 2024-04-17T22:28:48Z ♥ 1
I like the retro-looking stippled texture style and the general vibe. Mouse sensitivity was way too low for me unfortunately. Could have used an option to adjust that. Nice work otherwise, though.
Dark Dominion by ChuChuGeralt 2024-04-17T22:15:19Z ♥ 1
Awesome, I totally darkly dominated them! Really nice work, plenty of features for a jam game. I liked the goblin's patapata animation and sound effects too. Could have used a faster transition between phases or an option to speed things up after the tutorial.
Shadows of the Devils by PatteDeCanaard 2024-04-16T22:14:13Z ♥ 1
That was fun :) It took me a couple of tries to figure out that summoning demons costs candles, but once I had that down it went okay. Well done!
Cadence Crisis - Ludum Dare 55 by AllDee 2024-04-16T22:04:26Z ♥ 4
I can't figure out how to buy any turrets in phase 2, and when I try to proceed it just game overs. Have I mmissed a control?
Keyboard Summoner by Andreas Roschal 2024-04-16T21:30:38Z ♥ 2
Wow, this is addictive. I like that the bombers are activated manually. It would be good to have more of that going on in a more built-out version of this game, splitting attention between summoning stuff and activating powers etc. The bonus freeze spell thingies are fun too.
CrateCaster by Whismirk 2024-04-16T12:43:21Z ♥ 1
This is nice. I wouldn't worry about the lack of levels, it's kind of expected for a weekend game. You've got a solid core for a bigger game if you wanted to develop it further, and what you do have is totally playable.
Chernoblock by GhostTori 2024-04-16T00:36:03Z ♥ 3
I am not at all sure what I just played but it's interesting, I'll give you that
Summoned by Bender Biber 2024-04-16T00:29:45Z ♥ 1
Nice, it controls pretty well and it's atmospheric. Sadly my controller has a lot of drift and it made it too painful to continue once I reached the spikes. It would be good to have a deadzone (an area where the analog stick doesn't register movement in the middle) and/or support for d-pad controls.
Unpetrify by Jawdan 2024-04-15T23:47:41Z ♥ 2
I see a guy made of flowers! Unfortunately the game is slowing way down now that I'm getting further into it. It's intriguing though.
theGRIMOIRE_ by 0x0961h 2024-04-15T23:20:35Z ♥ 1
I'm completely stuck at the U-D-R level, I'm afraid. Really cool and atmospheric, though. Just a bit too brain-bending for me :(
Vocatio by Mantsje 2024-04-15T23:09:23Z ♥ 3
Nice concept, I'm impressed you got gesture recognition working so well. It was fun but it's tuned a bit too difficult for me. Could use more time to read the chapters and learn the spells, and I couldn't work out how to deal with the moped marios on chapter 2 :(
Goblimancer! by phost.dll 2024-04-15T22:40:37Z ♥ 1
help I'm pressing all the 1-2-3s and nothing is coming out :(
Unpacking Armageddon by notnasiul 2024-04-15T22:29:43Z ♥ 1
Nicely balanced, I just scraped through to win I think. Nice concept, timed/random sokoban thing. Great art style and audio.