Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → KScorp
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | 41 | Combine 2 Incompatible Genres | TypeBoxer | compo | 500 | 3.14 | 3.62 | 2.77 | 2.89 | 2.08 | 2.79 | 2.66 |
Interesting game! Looks nice, sounds nice. I don't like having to tap to fire though, it feels unnecessary since I just spam and it works fine. Especially if you try to build a maze, because now every column has a turret! My poor finger!
Great game! I love the looks and sounds. They fit together well!
The gameplay is quite clever. Doesn't take too long to get the hang of it.
The only issue I had was that I found it difficult to get new cards when low on health. I think the cards that the enemies shoot should be differentiated a bit more, since I might have missed some shield cards because they look so similar to bullet cards. And it gets really hectic trying to find a card you need if there are a lot on the screen.
"Uh oh... *head explodes*." Just what kind of zombies are they!?
It's not a bad game! The difficulty ramps too quickly in my opinion. Also, there seems to be a bug where the difficulty isn't reset after a game over, resulting in very fast zombies. You need exit the game to fix it.
I can't kill more than 15 or so zombies after the first playthrough, they swarm me too quickly.
I play one game, get a score of ~40 or so, enter my name on the high score screen, press ENTER to play again, and the zombies start very fast! I can't get more than about 10 or so before one gets me.
@gonutz I figured it out. You're right, the zombies don't get faster (I think I just got really lucky my first few times). BUT, their speed IS affected by framerate. I use a 120Hz monitor, so the game runs twice as fast! If I change it to run at 60Hz, the difficulty is much more reasonable.
@gonutz New version fixed it!
Man, why you gotta deny me my 100 population like that? Those robots scared me.
Really fun game! My only disappointment with it is that other than at the very beginning and the robots appearing there isn't really anything interesting going on. The populace takes care of themselves pretty much. And that apparently I can't actually win... damn robots.
Lots of potential. Good work!
It looks great!
I have to agree with the others though, sound is _very_ important to getting a game to feel good. Don't neglect it next time! With some simple tools (Like Sfxr or Bfxr) you can make some fitting sounds in only minutes.
Also, the laser is sooo overpowered haha. Had to laugh when everything on screen instantly died.
This can become a fun game with some more work!
I guess it represents texting and driving? I don't really get it. I don't really see the "horror" part, using the "scary" font for some of the words didn't really do anything for me.
Standard brick-breaker gameplay. It's not bad. Having to juggle typing and brick breaker made it more interesting, but both sides were so easy that if the game didn't force me to stop I could go on till I got tired.
The typing portion had some issues. Sometimes words I didn't want to start get started. I think the last letter for the word I'm typing also counts as the first letter for a different word, which was confusing.
Sounds got really repetitive. Music was good and relaxing, but hearing the same "tink" sound every time the ball hit something got really tiring. Needs to be some variation.
I like the music. Sounds pretty good, although the breakout ball can get really annoying when it speeds up and hits things like crazy. I got it stuck for a short time and it was just flying around the screen beeping at me!
Pretty fun! I don't fully understand what I should be doing with the breakout portion though, I don't have enough control over the ball so to me it's just a random element of the game. If you fix the breakout portion to be easier to control this would be much better!
It seems a lot of the gameplay mechanics you wanted didn't make it in. I could place platforms wherever I wanted, so all the levels were pretty easy.
The game looks fantastic. I like the music and sounds. Everything fits together well in that regard.
I didn't like the card game portion that much. All the platforms do the same thing for me: I didn't really care if I got a short platform, long platform, L platform, flashing platform, etc. They all helped me get higher up, so it didn't matter to me which card I got.
Ice platforms are ridiculously slippery. Is it even possible to stay on them? For me, I just avoided them entirely.
It has a good foundation, gameplay needs a lot of work but it could be made fun.
You did a lot right! Sounds/music is great, makes a good mood. The "story" fits the mood as well. I like how the game looks as well.
Just a few comments: - The text is really hard to read... you shouldn't use fancy fonts like that all the time, it's tiring. Use an easier-to-read font for the long bits of text, and use the fancy fonts for keywords or other small bits of text. It would greatly improve the game, especially since reading was kind of important. - It wasn't clear at the end if I failed and had to start over, or if I simply reached the end of the game. Make your failure states clear. If the player is doomed and can't do anything more, you might as well game-over them. And don't make the failure too punishing if you can avoid it. - Small issue: the mouse loves leaving the game area when playing in a browser. A bit annoying having to click back into the game every time some text pops up.
This is a clever idea. Execution has a lot of room for improvement, the game is fairly easy to break. With a lot more time put into it it could become something pretty fun.
Some comments: - I don't see the point of the "clicker game" at the start. I think it spread you too thin, and it doesn't add anything to the meat of the game, which is the pinball+programming portion. (And some of the options are just bad. Steal car to get a ton of money or force you to restart the game? Why does that exist?! I can just steal a car and reset until it succeeds, and start off with a ton of cash.) - Sounds are important. They make games feel good to interact with, which helps a ton. For example, a sound when the ball hits something, a sound when a flipper triggers, etc. The "tone" actions you provided don't count... those are too jarring and made me restart the game to turn it off quickly. - Speaking of the tones, I think the programming part should just focus on actions you can make the pinball machine do. Makes things simpler. - There are some glaring issues as well. With the programming part, you can step one step at a time, but also change your program between steps. That means, you don't _actually_ need to program anything! You can just do things one step at a time and manually pick the action you want to do that step.
I can tell that a lot of the things you added were just to play around, which is fine. The comments I added are for if you want to take this further.
I felt like a real modern art critic.
Gameplay leaves a lot to be desired but even so I enjoyed my short time with it.
Amazing game. 5 stars all around.
There is one thing that you could improve to make the game feel much better: the controls and attacks. I think the game would play a lot better if you were locked to the grid like the enemies are. As it is, it's kind of difficult to align yourself with enemies, or properly avoid their attacks.
Game looks nice! Animation and style are both good. The sound/music isn't that bad either.
Gameplay has a lot to be desired though. "Walk over the plots until you have enough plants grown" is WAY too simple, and doesn't feel rewarding. The movement restriction doesn't seem to have an effect on the game at all either. No penalty for bad movement or bonus for good movement.
I think that next time you should focus on what the players' goal will be, and make it interesting.
Very nice typing game! You had a solid idea here. A lot of the mechanics would need to be refined (as a lot of others have pointed out) but with work it could become a genuinely good game.
You're already aware of the issues with capital letters in your game, but I want to delve into it a bit anyway since I also made a typing game and made a similar mistake. It's important to think about what players will naturally want to do while playing your game, and make sure your game accommodates it properly. In this case, it's handling capital letters: typists will instinctively capitalize letters at the start of sentences. A few possible solutions: - Differentiate upper and lower case letters in the font. In your game, everything is capitalized, but only accepts lower case input. If the font makes it clear that the text is lower case, it would be less jarring to the player if they try to enter upper case letters and fail. They'll quickly learn that the lower case font actually matters, and it will come naturally since the text itself is lower case. - Accept both upper and lower case letters. Unlike the above solution which would gently remind the player to enter only lower case letters, this solution opts to skirt the problem entirely. Much easier to implement, but might not be ideal for a typing game.
Very nice! A very solid base for a game. It felt good to play.
I was surprised to see that you could damage and break the bookcases to walk through them. It felt good seeing that I could do that.
There are two major things I think you could have done to greatly improve this, without needing to spend _too_ much time: - Better music. Sorry, it was just too repetitive. It got tiring to listen to after less than a minute. It was easy to tell the beat at least, so I'll give you that. - Increasing difficulty over time, or difficulty in general. Once I found the shotgun, I was effectively invincible. I wasn't going to die unless I simply stopped playing. I lost interest at that point, because the high score becomes meaningless as a measure of skill. I feel an easy way to solve this is to ramp up the difficulty as the game goes on, such as by increasing the amount of enemies being spawned, increasing their speed or health, etc. Easy to implement, and fixes that problem.
This is a pretty funny game! I was really hoping that the gameplay itself would involve playing a first person shooter.
Interesting idea! Some comments: - Zombies were too loud, they drowned out the music. - Adding sounds for _player actions_ is probably more important than passive background sounds such as the zombies. It makes the game feel much better when you hear sounds in response to your actions. For example, when you shoot your gun, or when you shoot in the correct type of zombie head. It makes players feel rewarded for playing your game. - For a game where the sequence of enemies is important, it was too difficult to tell apart the zombie types! I'm not saying it was _hard_, but it should be _much easier_, since it's a critical part of your game.
It was definitely not a bad game. Easy to pick up and play.
This game doesn't seem to work properly for me on Windows.
The guards move ridiculously fast. I can just walk through them.
I don't know what the "beat" is that I'm supposed to keep. I try to keep her beat, but that doesn't work for me. I think that the speed bug I saw might be screwing up the beat I'm supposed to keep.
Also, why is the game so huge?! 1GB?
Art looks nice and the music/sounds are not bad either. The setting (a girl who just can't help singing in a stealth game) is pretty funny too.
Gameplay was a too slow-moving in my opinion, and the basketballs behaved too erratically when hit by the meteors. Didn't feel great to play, since I didn't feel like I had much control over the ball behavior.
Having even very basic sounds would help a lot. It didn't feel rewarding to score, since there is no feedback to the player other than a small number on the screen going up. If I have to name a single thing you should try to improve for next time, it would be adding sound.
It's pretty much impossible to play in a browser because of the hotkey conflicts.
The combine controls reasonably well. It sounds realistic. Game looks pretty good.
There's at least one thing I think you could have improved to make the game feel much better: give the player better feedback when they do something! I couldn't tell if I was planting seeds or fertilizing successfully. Make the fields look different when the player does it, or play a small sound to make it clear. It doesn't feel that good to play because I don't feel like I'm doing anything.
I love the title.
@Lightyn I noticed the status bars, and the fields _did_ update. I just had to look _really_ closely to notice. That's the problem! It should be obvious. (Also, simple status bar updates are boring.)
I see. I think the problem is that the "btnp()" method you use triggers on repeated keystrokes as well. You know how if you hold a key down while typing the key is eventually "repeated" quite quickly? The same thing happens when holding a key in your game. I think you might want to fix that, because that is what was causing problems for me.
It seems there is some issue with your Windows build RAR file. I am not able to open it with 7zip.
@john-darrington You can try to outrun MACHINE, but you will fail eventually. 🤖 Thanks for the feedback, I felt the same way about the sounds but couldn't figure out how to fix it in Bfxr. I ended up just turning down the volume on their playback so they aren't as harsh.
@chaseplays Thanks for the feedback! Theme-wise, the game was meant to eventually become a sort of "fighting" game. For example, words would collide in mid air, so you'd have to work to block opponent's words while getting your own words across. Sadly I didn't have time to implement that, which I'd imagine is going to cost me in the theme scoring.
@bcvery1 Thanks for the feedback. I'm using Godot 3, and its HTML5 support leaves a lot to be desired. Sorry that it didn't work for you.
@ManBeardGames Thanks for the feedback!
Yeah, about the backspace. I should have removed that behavior. It's a hold-over from when I was planning the fighting mechanics, in case you wanted to switch the word you were working on. Like you said though, naturally a player will want to backspace their errors, so there ends up being a conflict between what a player expects and what actually happens.
I'll keep that in mind for future games.