What lies beneath the Temple by oobie 2014-05-02T05:23:00
Ha, I like the way you took the game. I played it twice because I thought I had missed something, and the second time around I understood the script a bit better :b
I think some of the writing could have used a bit of cleaning up. Even after playing it twice, a few lines are still confusing towards the end.
Also, I have to say that the black text on gray background once you fall into the 30 seconds part is kind of hard to read. I actually didn't see anything at all until I saw a bit of a smudge on my screen and turned my brightness up.
One thing I REALLY REALLY liked about the game, though, is the very first line. I absolutely loved that you used "...right?", implying that you press the right arrow key to move. I would have liked to see you pull that off with the other buttons too, but I guess it's hard to easily write "R" and "ESC" into lines smoothly. Still, it's a very interesting game, and a humorous take on the theme :]!
LD32 — An Unconventional Weapon (7)
F A S T E R by ploy 2015-05-01T20:38:00
I agree that the game is fairly hard, even on the easiest setting. I think one main issue with the game is the green resource bar. It seems (from what I could tell) that both throwing your knife and dashing used the same resource, which is pretty limited already just trying to throw your knife. Even without dashing, I found that I couldn't throw knives as often as I wanted to, even if I had pretty good accuracy with them! Using any dashes at all seems to not only limit your ability to attack, but also only dodges one of the enemy's pass-bys. The speed at which you regenerate your green bar doesn't seem to match the enemy's movement speed.
I think some playtesting (and getting other people to playtest!!) and balancing would have done wonders for this game. That said, I did very much enjoy the main mechanic of throwing knives. I like that you only punished the player with a lost knife if they missed :b
Ad Libitum by Igor KinGamer 2015-05-01T19:10:00
I'm also not super familiar with piano keys. Though, the game doesn't really punish you for just spamming all the keys all the time (which is kind of what I ended up doing). I think it would be cool if you could only hit keys in time with the music (and that would make sense because it'd put rhythm into the gameplay). Though you already have a lot here, especially for just 24 hours! Nice work :]!
The Legend of the Fisherman by UrbanHelsing 2015-05-01T18:52:00
Cool game! I really like the concept of the game, and it's awesome that you got co-op to work! I like the way you use a single resource to power the whole game: fish are the weapons, the healing, and the money generation mechanic. I kind of got the same feeling I get with Animal Crossing and a lot of other games of wanting to optimize my path. I wanted to catch as many fish as I could, but not too many (so I could go get upgrades and hopefully catch them even faster). I wanted to sell all the fish I could to get more money, but not all of them, since I needed to fight slimes. I think it was a cool way to punish being greedy with your fish :b
I think one thing that could be improved about the game is some of the controlling. The camera, for one, has a nice sliding effect, but allows you to move too far off center. I appreciated that you guys took the time to get a smooth camera follow, but the player should still be relatively centered, otherwise it's hard to see where you're going! Also, I thought the controls were a little unintuitive. I'm used to touch typing, so I have my index finger on J usually. It didn't make too much sense to me to have to hit H to attack. I think I would have preferred the buttons JKL; instead of HJKL. It also makes it easier for me because I can switch fish with N and M with my index finger while attacking with K, rather than trying to control H, N, and M all with my index finger.
Overall, great concept; I think y'all could go pretty far with this if you wanted to continue with it post-jam :]!
Turbo Moon Hero by Photon 2015-04-25T00:54:00
This is a really cool application of the theme! I like that you gave the moon a little headband and gloves, it's really cute :]!
Although I'm also a fan of the single-direction orbiting and controlling speed, I think the game is still a bit too hard to control. One possibility could be that the world's movement feels a little slow. Another thing might be that there are only two speeds for the moon, so it's harder to get a good control over your defense. It'd be cool to see some system that would allow you to scale the speed of the moon, or possibly even pause the moon's movement?
By the way, I really appreciate that the game is embedded in this site. Super convenient! This game is really cool, I'm impressed you got all of this in 48 hours :D
Eye Rush by asobi tech 2015-04-22T09:28:00
This game is really fun! I really like the mechanic of the eyeballs bouncing back and returning to you as ammo. The game is really smooth and plays really cleanly!
I think the visuals do obfuscate the game just a tad bit. With only 4 shades of grey/green, the enemies don't really pop out from the background (especially since they're also just squares) which can be dangerous for the player, especially when the enemies are on the smaller end of their size-change cycles. It can be really easy to miss one that's near you. Also, (and this is a a very minor thing) the font at the beginning of the game is a bit difficult to read as well.
Overall, the game runs really well and is a lot of fun to play! I think you have a pretty good scoring system as well, limiting the game by both time (so you can't just slowly rack up points by avoiding death) and with your chain system (dropping your chain is very detrimental to your score). Not to mention that the game is pretty fun to play both for those who just try to survive and blast things for 1 minute, as well as people trying to maximize their score. In that sense, the game is really balanced for a wide audience! One thing I would have liked to have, though, is a timer to tell me how far into my 1 minute I am. Preferably also counting down, because the first time I died by timer, I was confused because I thought I had accidentally run into a rogue square or something.
Great game, and I'm really impressed that this game was made under Compo restrictions!
Hitchhiker's Tales by Tangible Games 2015-04-22T08:46:00
The first playthrough was a little tough, but after figuring out how the game works, the game was really fun! I really appreciate the pixel art and the details like the UFO in the background :]!
I think one of the most difficult parts of the game is getting used to the throw trajectories. It not only changes with your height, but also with your momentum. I wasn't really able to get far in the game until I realized you could grab the aliens themselves, double jump, and instantly kill them on the drop! For me, that kind of rendered the whole "pick up objects and aim them" thing obsolete for me, because now I was just throwing aliens wherever and killing them one at a time.
I really like the idea of throwing the things around you, though. It would have been nice to see objects thrown from a higher distance have a bigger AoE impact on the ground, or be able to see projected trajectories of objects, or even just the ability to throw objects straight down beneath you!
That said, I really appreciate how smoothly all of the action happens. From the movement to the object throwing, the physics of the game are really nice feeling! Also, I was really hoping there'd be chihuahuas for me to throw at the aliens :b
Nice work you guys :D Love the game!
Super Skater Waiter by MikkelLevisen 2015-04-22T08:23:00
The game is really smooth; I think that's my favorite thing about it. Everything from the movement to the way the food plates kind of just fly onto your tray is awesome!
I think in a lot of ways the base gameplay was good enough to just be built off that. I was a little confused about how to use the plate gun. At first, I hoped that hitting the customers would delay their impatience with me, but it didn't seem to do that, so I didn't really find a good use for the plate gun (even though I guess it can delay people from getting to their tables). That said, it was still pretty fun to just shoot it around at people and see all the little pieces of plate left behind!
I think it would have been really cool to see some sort of progression / scaling in the game as well! I played for a while, but it didn't seem that the number of customers increased over time nor did their patience time decrease. Even just displaying how many skater dollars you've earned or how long you've been playing is a cool way to give the player feedback!
All in all, the game is really fun to play and looks really nice :]! I think y'all put a fair amount of time into the details and it feels really polished!