Cavern Tycoon LD48 by Kato
Brilliant sound design (I AM NOMINATING YOU FOR AN OSCAR) and a great premise, but it seems a tad buggy and the interface could be better.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → Problem Machine
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | Po | Cm | Te | Jo | Co | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2012 | 24 | Evolution | EvoWorld | compo | 621 | 2.48 | 1.59 | 2.84 | 3.52 | 2.08 | 1.87 | 52 | ||||||||
| 2009 | 15 | Caverns | Candle | compo | 21 | 3.61 | 3.22 | 4.02 | 3.67 | 4.07 | 3.88 | 2.82 | 3.45 | 61 | ||||||
| 2009 | 14 | Advancing Wall of Doom | Manually Operated | compo | 83 | 2.87 | 2.52 | 3.61 | 4.22 | 1.83 | 1.00 | 3.75 | 2.18 | 2.09 | 1.50 |
Problem Machine leaves an average of 50.0 feedback comments each event.
Brilliant sound design (I AM NOMINATING YOU FOR AN OSCAR) and a great premise, but it seems a tad buggy and the interface could be better.
Pretty cool, though I almost got screwed by the maximum exit capacity. Unpleasant surprise XD
Haha, the most effective way to kill these guys is to crawl inside them and shoot them from the inside. Creepy!
Really cool game, I wasn't able to figure out the last race but it was fun playing around with it trying to set them up and the audio design was great.
Very cool graphics effect, but the text overlays get annoying because they block out the rocks I need to be dodging XD
Nice, it's like Worms: puzzle edition. Or maybe they added a gameplay mode like that to the game, it's been a while since I last played it I'm curious how you did the collision, it doesn't look like it's per-pixel; I'll have to check out the source later.
Pretty fun, though I'm not sure if it's a shmup as shooting seems to mostly not be worth the trouble. Maybe it's just a mup!
I like the way the music changes after the level transition, though I didn't notice it changing after the first.
I think it's amusing that the 'monsters' just run away while you aggressively hunt them down. It's fun.
I AM THE REAL MONSTER!!!
I really like the aesthetic of this one, even if the graphics are super simple. It reminds me of the Gameboy Kirby game. Also that NPC creeps me out!
Not bad, though it bothered me that the ship pivoted around the lower left corner instead of the center. The music was a rather unusual choice for this kind of gameplay, but one that has its own charm and keeps this kind of fidgety gameplay from getting too tense. The overall effect is good.
Oh, the framerate seems to bog down after death. Perhaps there's something funky in the respawn counter draw routines?
Nice atmosphere, but in the third level I started stuck in a wall. Also, sometimes it wouldn't shoot when I pressed space.
This is fucking awesome in every conceivable way.
Some nifty tech, but nothing very interesting happens with it. There's some potential there if the mechanics get spiced up, but right now there's just not enough to make it fun.
I like the background effects. I can't tell if there's any actual reason to attack though, it seems like it raises my rad counter without any commensurate benefits
Fun game, but I think some music would have really added a lot. It's a little tricky sometimes to figure out the recovery on the dash and when you can start a new one, but I got the hang of it after a little bit.
I really like the particle effects you got going with the destroyed wall fragments. It makes me reconsider some of the resolution choices I made for my own project, because the only thing keeping me from doing stuff like that is that it takes too much cpu to do it at 640x480.
It turns out you were also doing some of the same destructable terrain and pixel perfect collision detection stuff! If I find a better solution I'll share it, because it looks like we could both use it :)
Very frustrating trying to hit small fast moving things with slow projectiles and low mouse sensitivity. Some nice trippy sounds would have really made it more fun too, I think.
Throw some monsters in and you could have a pretty awesome little Gauntlet clone here.
This is cool, I really like the way you handled graphics and the elegant way of modifying the terrain without making collision a hassle. I was occasionally annoyed by the digging system, which had a tendency to make me dig in directions perpendicular to those I was pressing in. Not a big deal, but maybe worth adding a button for?
Decent puzzles, though the collision was a little unforgiving. Sometimes slowed down with long explosion chains.
I found this absurdly addictive, just going through and trying to milk every little bit of treasure out of the ground. Unfortunately, the game didn't seem to care much, and kicked me out after I got all three treasures even though there was still loot to find down there.
I particularly liked the hyper-ladder exploit, where I could build ladders every other square to preserve my initial jump momentum and make a little-man-cannon. That was excellent.
Cool demo of procedural cave generation, and there is something undeniably satisfying about digging around and finding stuff. Lack of fail/win conditions and other interactions keep it from being entertaining for long, but it is a good basis to build a more involved game on.
Really cool aesthetic (though I didn't like the protag sprite much), and a very innovative way to do exposition. I particularly like how strange and unnatural the patterns of the caverns get later on.
It's fun poking around and finding gear and whatnot, but the combat seems a bit random for my tastes. When I won I didn't feel like I did anything especially right and when I lost it was doing the exact same things I'd been doing when I was winning. Also a rat threw a knife at me, and that was weird.
It's like I'm playing Spelunky! From the PAST! OooOOohh.
Just kidding; it's a pretty cool little game, especially for how quick you made it, but I had a pretty hard time with the controls. The retro graphics are pretty great.
Really great atmosphere, a bit more sound and music would have been perfect. Definitely a nice little experience.
Haha, this is great. I'm not sure if the key collecting is supposed to be a satire of old-school FPSes, but it totally works on that level; in fact, I would have started throwing in increasingly ridiculous key colors just to keep it fun. You found the eggshell key! You found the blackwatch plaid key!
Between that and the old school graphics I kept expecting to get yelled at by nazis. But then, it's always good to be prepared to be yelled at by nazis.
Can't play, don't have love.
Nice feel. Too bad it's not a game.
Fun race against time, but it felt like kind of a ripoff when I made it and immediately got dropped into another identical level. The low gravity was odd, but fun to play with. It bothered me that it didn't seem possible to go forward and strafe to the side at the same time, though.
I think the lack of music really hurts this, it's a lot harder to get into it when it's either silent or constantly emitting a harsh buzz at you. It took me a little while to get the trick 'cooldown period' and understand why I wasn't getting points for any of the things I was doing; a little more explanation on that might have been helpful. Also, I ended up having to shut it down from the taskbar because I couldn't find an actual way to exit the game.
The animations were great, though it's weird that one goes into slo-mo and the other doesn't.
Once I found out running into walls didn't hurt I just flew around slamming into walls and generally abusing my ship horribly.
I like the background effect too, particularly the subtle blur you applied. If you wanted to get really hard core you could use a color matrix to simulate atmospheric perspective :D
Nice music, but it doesn't loop. Decent little Metroidvania, but the wonky collision detection on the spikes killed the fun for me. Also the gravity is really low, which is an odd choice. I love the way he wiggles his legs for the walk animation.
Argh, stiff controls frustrating, collision detection wonky, music awesome, story silly, game fun. Mixed feelings!
While this game has nice art and playing a coprophile mole-man has an intrinsic amusement factor, the lack of actual goals is kind of a drag.
This robot is really bouncy. It's hard not to get pushed between rooms, especially when just touching the outer border transports you instead of having to actually go off screen. I was having fun until I tried to repair and got pushed into a wall where my robot disintegrated. And brother, let me tell you, when it disintegrates, it disintegrates!
Decent little puzzle, but it could use some more red herrings; once I was assured that it was, indeed, solvable, it didn't take me long to figure out what it must be. That said, still a good experience except for the absolutely horrible sound. Sorry, too loud and repeated too quickly.
Really fun little game, and a stylish take on the theme.
Nice atmosphere. It would be fun to have a little story where you could discover why a ghost is haunting a cavern like this.
If this were a game, it would be a cool game. Unfortunately it isn't yet.
If you do turn it into one, maybe make the movement a little bit less grid based? It feels really weird when it ignores my input because the little guy isn't finished moving to the next tile over. If you want to keep it grid-based, it looks like the head might be a separate sprite, so you could do a thing where the head turns to the direction he's moving next once input's received? Just an idea.
I found the grid movement frustrating, as I'd sometimes overshoot the slot I was aiming for slightly and have to wait for the entire move, by which time if I was luring a spider I'd be dead. Cool stealth puzzles, but the controls kind of killed the fun for me.
Dynamic lighting is great, but there's not really anything else there
It's an advancing wall of doom! How nostalgic!
Ascii shmup is neat, but it makes it hard to see the shots. Also, it seems like I can take multiple hits, but I have no idea what my status is and whether I can take more hits at any given point. A little confusing, but a nifty concept.
Oh, this game is so short. I kind of like it, but it's so short, and there's basically no choices involved. I hope you'll build on this, it could be a fun exploration platformer.
I'm glad you decided to finish this, and I really think these different enemy types were a brilliant stroke. Each of them serves their role very well in keeping you moving. Zooming out is of questionable utility sometimes, as it's impossible at the widest zoom either to see yourself on a white background or to see the gold on a white background. Perhaps those important parts could be marked in some way on the zoom out.
Haha, this is awesome. Everything works really well together.
I think having more than one sound effect and more than one obstacle would make this quite a bit more fun. As it is, while what's there is nice, I don't think there's quite enough there to keep it from tedium, even with the 100,000 point carrot (especially because it would take a lot of time to get there)
Very pretty game, but runs rather choppy on my system. Also, the game cursor splits off from my windows cursor, and when I click on objects at the bottom of the screen I end up changing windows because of this.
Man, this is a huge level, and some bits seem to be inescapable once you fall in. It seems like maybe you had some scope problems here. I like the basic gameplay, but the timing on the wall-jumps is finicky, and it doesn't like it if I try to press away and jump at the same time to jump off a wall. I think you could make something pretty cool out of this if you wanted to though.
I really liked this, even though sometimes it was extremely difficult to tell the proximity of the wall before I ran into it. Very nice relaxing music and atmosphere, none of the sounds were jarring, interesting approach to 3d. Excellent submission.
It seems like you went to a whole lot of trouble to replace the protags legs with a spring and then didn't use that in the gameplay at all, which was a very odd choice. The controls work out to be appropriately floaty and dreamlike, but if you mess up and fall in a death pit it takes forever to get there (and I have no idea what those things that return you to the start are supposed to be... onions?)
I did like the music though. That kept me playing a couple minutes longer.
Amazing, I have no idea how you produced so much lovely art within the LD deadline. I think this would be really outstanding if you had some music to reinforce the sense of wonder that the art brings, but this is a really nice little world to spend some time in even without that.
Okay I was able to play the non-compo version, compo version crashed. I really like the atmosphere of it, and the music was absolutely fantastic. Unfortunately I'm kind of just not willing to draw my own map, so I'm trying to just remember things as I go.
Seemed like the physics and 3d graphics made what should have been simple puzzles rather difficult and chaotic. Was fairly easy for a puzzle to turn unsolvable due to factors beyond the player's control (stupid AI, unpredictable collision reactions), which was a source of frustration.
It was fun when it was a puzzle game, but once you brought in all the missiles it got a little too chaotic. Basic control is good but feels a tad stiff. Nice simple aesthetic.
FINALLY SOMEONE'S MADE THIS GAME.
I was a little confused about what the benefits of each trap were. It seemed like each one was just killing one, but spikes are way cheaper than fire.
This is pretty cool! It's a little hard to get the hang of the controls, but it's fun to bounce around comboing stars like crazy. Some kind of online scoreboard would be particularly cool.
I think I may have only died at the point when it was physically impossible for me to escape the screen-engulfing tide of rocks descending from above, but that's okay because I was considering intentionally killing myself until then. So, uh, you may want to tweak the difficulty a bit
PS: FUCK GALILEO, WOOOOO!
It could be pretty fun doing vomit-strafe-runs (just like playing l4d!), but there's no enemies to asplode. The explosion sound effect is WAY too loud; fortunately they never stacked or I'd be concerned about my speakers. Could be good, but too unfinished.
Like most sim games, it's fun to play around with and watch stuff happen, but there's really not a lot of complexity here to back it up. It seems like an easy way to add interest would be to add some other hollowed out spaced you can burrow your way to as goals, and a minimap would be awesome.
I'm getting a 'this application failed to initialize properly' error
Pretty fun shooting gallery type game, very strange setting, and I don't understand the reasoning behind the weird single-key movement system. Definitely a unique take on the theme!
Dangit! No key!
The exploration is cool, but avoiding spontaneous depressurization is such a drag.
Argh. There's one part near the end where the beacon goes down off the screen, and since every other goddamn time it goes off screen you're supposed to follow it I do. I was often annoyed by the last area (how does a sliver of black in between two lit areas kill me?) but the overall experience was really cool. Great art, great atmosphere.
Dwarves are assholes and dress like leprechauns.
Amusing idea, and the gameplay is decent, but it gets a little stale after the first few dinosaurs. It would be nice if there were a couple more kinds of dinos to fight.
Haha, I love the way the Leprechaun can't actually walk, just shuffles left and right. The background music makes this pleasantly surreal.
YEAHHH! I'M GONNA PISS ON SOME ALIENS WITH MY SPACE UZI! WOO!
Kind of frustrating to play, but a cool idea nonetheless.
LD24 — Evolution (15)
Mad Scientist Monster Maker by frosty 2012-09-11T06:27:00
Cool game, but I accidentally lasered a scientist and made the second level unwinnable. Maybe killing a scientist could spawn another scientist in a random building?
cuboidAI by JH 2012-09-04T08:46:00
Greyscreened here too. Windows 7, Radeon HD Mobility 5870.
CritterLab by berkano 2012-09-04T08:35:00
Interesting- it's fun to spawn a population and watch them drift into a few different species. I enjoyed reading the description of the stats in particular, though, since our projects were so similar it was super interesting reading how you approached it.
Praepoch by Connor 2012-09-04T05:30:00
Really nice aesthetic, though I found the music a bit grating and everything was kind of tiny on my screen
I Am A Tree. You Are Not. Ha Ha. by angrygeometry 2012-09-04T04:49:00
Really cool strange experience. Reminds me of Space Funeral for obvious reasons.
The Best Dinosaur by TomSmizzle 2012-09-03T08:28:00
I was briefly the second best dinosaur. I'm going to have to console myself with that fact.
Lenimentus by firehand94 2012-08-30T08:47:00
Kind of fun. I found myself ignoring the whole weakness chain in favor of just upgrading one weapon to max and clearing the hallways with it, and played about 10 minutes that way wrecking face before I got bored.
Lots of screen flicker when I move around, though. You should look into double buffering.
EverWorld by KageToraNoTsume2 2012-08-30T08:29:00
Could not run: "The Device is not Ready"
Far From Earth by Ramikaze 2012-08-28T14:51:00
Fun little tower defense kind of thing. First time I played I ended up making like 300 archers, which seemed super effective but slowed the game to a crawl. After that I tried making military units and snipers which seemed a lot less effective. Balance might not be great.
Dragonom by Kinokochan 2012-08-28T09:54:00
Beautiful assets, though there's not a lot of meat to it.
Feesh. by Teejay5 2012-08-28T09:42:00
A nice, pretty little game. I really like the minimalistic aesthetic here. Sound would add a lot to the experience, though.
Constructor by link2x101 2012-08-27T03:47:00
I really enjoyed this one. Though it's kind of frustrating not knowing exactly what the buildings do at first, it's fun deciphering it via trial and error. The music is super relaxing too, and it looks nice. Excellent.
Evo Space by edibletoaster 2012-08-27T03:08:00
Really neat, I like the feel of it and the reflecting bullets, but dodging enemies and attacks is very difficult.
Evolution by nosfer 2012-08-27T03:00:00
This game will haunt my nightmares
Hot Damn that's a Lot of Blobs! by Geti 2012-08-27T02:59:00
Interesting, reminds me of Terraria. Hard to control though.