Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → Kyrio
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 58 | Collector | 👥 | Fighters Keepers | jam | 151 | 3.86 | 3.94 | 3.84 | 4.07 | 4.25 | 4.09 | 4.40 | 4.05 |
| 2024 | 56 | Tiny Creatures | 👥 | Fastigrades | jam | 291 | 3.80 | 3.80 | 3.17 | 3.88 | 4.15 | 3.75 | 3.90 | 3.66 |
| 2024 | 55 | Summoning | 👥 | Doomsday Care | jam | 957 | 3.23 | 2.46 | 3.35 | 3.56 | 4.20 | 3.00 | 3.28 | |
| 2023 | 52 | Harvest | 👥 | Flavors of Victory | jam | 145 | 3.89 | 3.36 | 3.73 | 3.49 | 4.64 | 4.26 | 4.08 | 4.03 |
| 2022 | 50 | Delay the inevitable | 👥 | Fur Steam Ahead! | jam | 638 | 3.56 | 3.37 | 3.56 | 4.17 | 4.22 | 3.41 | 3.79 | 3.68 |
| 2021 | 49 | Unstable | 👥 | P.T. Bone-um's Fabulous Tightrope of Terror | jam | 413 | 3.76 | 3.44 | 2.81 | 3.77 | 4.62 | 4.24 | 3.71 | 4.02 |
| 2020 | 47 | Stuck in a loop | 👥 | A Short Detour | jam | 846 | 3.46 | 2.73 | 3.46 | 3.93 | 4.69 | 3.70 | 4.37 | |
| 2020 | 46 | Keep it alive | 👥 | The Glimmering Woods | jam | 818 | 3.65 | 3.37 | 2.76 | 3.70 | 4.66 | 3.51 | 4.14 | |
| 2019 | 44 | Your life is currency | A Binding Contract | jam | 3.00 | 2.33 | 3.00 | 2.16 | 3.66 | 2.50 | 2.50 |
@matthew-hrehirchuk @memel06 Thanks for the kind words, really! I believe there's a lot of cool things to do with this idea, but as I kept working on the presentation I ran out of time to think about what interactions I'd put in the compo version, let alone implement them. So I'm glad you liked what you did get to play :slight_smile: I'll try to fight my overpolishing habits next time to ship a more complete game.
@ekilibr Yeah, that was the plan. I wanted the house to be a tutorial, but that alone turned out to be a lot of work. Thanks for rating the game, and for your advice!
@annie-owl Thanks for playing it! I really liked Sinking Town, I wish I could have developed my idea as far as yours. I'm glad the concept was appealing even though I couldn't design proper puzzles in time.
The game is impressive as it feels both simple and very polished (e.g. having an auto pilot feature, pathfinding, the fog of war effect). Here are the issues I met:
- It's difficult to see the population on islands. Maybe that's intended, but often I felt like I was only encountering empty islands when there was actually tiny dots of roughly the same color to gather. It's mostly a problem on your first run, since there's nothing indicating what you should do. - I quickly seemed to run out of things to do. I enabled auto pilot which led me to bigger enemy ships, which is pretty cool, but I still couldn't really see the objective. I never saw any ports where I could trade my "currency"; collecting and battling feel good but there doesn't seem to be benefits? - Maybe add an HP bar to the ship? Or something to indicate permanent damage (smoke, etc.), if it is permanent. - The ship spins around once when asked to go straight ahead. - Edit: I kept playing so that I could find a port. They're very rare so I think people might miss them, but the mechanism is nice. Beware of font sizes though: it's difficult to see item names (in white!) when not playing fullscreen.
I had fun with this! The art is excellent (I'm surprised by the number of different assets!), the universe is original and left me wanting more. For some reason, it reminds me of Beyond Good & Evil! Here's the points that might need improving:
- The camera should probably be a bit closer to (and higher than) the player by default; I thought for a second the game was in first person and I was looking at an NPC! It's cool that we can change the angle, though. - The dialogue box sometimes gets hidden by geometry. It might be better to always make it appear on top. - It is well hinted at but I guess it's a bit odd that simply talking to someone requires selecting your head first? I tried a few times to talk to the track legs salesman while having another body part selected. - The way to obtain the diamond at the end isn't intuitive. I had to look it up. The rest of the quests made a lot more sense so it's mostly this one that needs tweaking! Maybe it should be made more obvious that Gears can turn coal into diamonds?
Okay, I've played three days and I enjoyed them! The visuals have a lot of charm, the music is quite catchy and I really liked the overall feel and mood. There's nothing especially original or challenging with the gameplay but greeting the constant flow of colorful customers and providing them with what they need is more fun that I expected!
Here's for constructive criticism (I hope): - It's difficult to notice the window at first, so the player gets a couple of seconds of confusion as to what they should be doing (and what the game is about) - The objective isn't very clear either: it took me a while to realize I was collecting eggs. When I heard a coin sound I was looking for a counter somewhere in the HUD. Also, I wasn't sure if the game would proceed endlessly or if there'd be a final score at the end. - For some reason I expected deliveries to be timed (as in, the customer eventually leaves) but it looks like they only leave if you mess up twice. This is probably for the best but I think the flow of customers leads you to believe you're on the clock. I also didn't know at which point the day would end, and what I would miss by losing a customer. - Some adjectives seem mismatched: is a scythe really lavish? For consistency, "Tool" could also be replaced by an adjective, i.e. "Utilitarian" - **Bugs**: my second customer (first day) had its last line overlap the previous one instead of appearing under it (1). I believe one customer's dialogue overlapped the previous one's "thank you" at some point, too. - Not sure how it fits with the theme? Is it because eggs give life, and eggs are currency here? :smile: - This is meta criticism but I would've liked to see your names and roles. As it stands, I can only tell it's a jam game - and I'd like to know how many you were on it, if you produced your assets during the jam, etc.
Still, great work! The game is witty (2) and visually pleasing, so it's a win for me!
(1) bug.png (2) I mean, one guy was going to propose to his wife with an olive.
The main mechanic is very cool! It's reminiscent of Wonder Boy games, but swapping to complete aerial tricks feels good and with a bit more polish on controls and player movement it could be a great basis for a game. As it stands there's something a bit frustrating with the movement and key combinations, though I can't really pinpoint what it is... As others said, as the spider the "move forward" key depends on whether you're on continuous movement or you stopped vertically and try to move again. Of course there's no easy solution to this, since you expect to be able to keep moving by leaving the same key down (e.g. D), but then if you stop on a wall the L and D keys are used to target a parallel platform to jump on.
Since the spider mechanics are similar to the mouse in The Dragon's Trap, I'd suggest examining how the recent remake handles them - I remember it feeling more natural to me. Regardless, great job on implementing all of this during the jam! The game looks great (kudos for the art and music that feel very polished) and is only a couple of enhancements away from feeling great.
This was great! One of the best I've played so far. I have to say it was a bit stressful because going to the recipe book doesn't pause the game and thus your plants DIE :cry:
The Macron reference was top notch and my friends and I just died. Like our cacti. :cactus:
@alexandroskap Thanks for the feedback! I tried 2d scaling on your suggestion, and it does seem to improve scrolling in some cases. I initially dismissed it because the docs recommended viewport for pixel-perfect games, I'll try to dig deeper.
@notan-lemon Thank you! @un-ornithorynque-dans-la-piscine made those sea tiles. She wouldn't make them static so I had to find a way to integrate animated tiles, but Godot had my back!
@vesper What we had in mind was hard to achieve in three days, as we would soon find out, but we're glad we managed to give you a glimpse with that final animation. Actually, we were almost done with animations for the story, but as we couldn't get gameplay ready for the second part of the game, we had to cut before that. I hope we can go back to it!
The art was lovely! The platforming needs a bit more work to feel good, though - it's a bit floaty. I liked the idea of collecting rain drops! I wasn't sure how exactly to water the tree, sometimes it used my water and sometimes it didn't. I think I had to come from above to water it. Make sure we also get the difference in effect between fertilizer and water :slight_smile:
That was pretty good! Good job on making the camera and movement feel fluid, I had trouble achieving that with our own Godot game. The bullets that bounce back and can interrupt others are a nice touch. I also thought the tutorial was well-made, and the music is quite good. Here's some stuff that I think can be improved: - You should account for other keyboard layouts (like ZQSD), perhaps by using scancodes - Mining doesn't give the right feel, there should be either a sound effect or a breaking animation, though I assume you didn't find the time - There are a few typos left in the beginning - It might be nice to have health packs or a health bonus for killing a series of enemies, so mistakes at the start don't impact you so much.
@willian-oliva Great! Glad you could iterate so quickly.
The graphics and animation were a lot polished, I'm impressed you had time to make all this during the jam. The lipsync is also a nice touch. I must say the atmosphere is a bit harrowing, I think Jezebel should move out ASAP! I didn't manage to save Terrence even after finding all characters that are willing to give you wood, but I suspect I shouldn't have turned down the mayor. Gotta stick to your principles!
Very relaxing! The art is great and the music is soothing. I didn't have as much trouble as @pekolio :D
I'm not sure it's worth stating it at this point, but the visuals were top notch. I'm surprised you managed to produce these assets during the jam, and obviously you used the Unreal Engine to great effect with depth of field, light effects etc. The mix of western nature and sci-fi elements is a great idea, I love the turrets that are reminiscent of Zelda BotW's guardians. However, the controls were a bit frustrating: I felt like every other time I tried to blow wind it didn't work. I eventually assumed there was a cooldown but the game doesn't tell you there is. I think having a way to blow continuously would be great, though I understand it would make the game easier too... Still, great work!
That was great! The art and animations are top notch, and you conveyed the needs and objectives quite well. The feedback on actions feels very good, and though you withdrew from the Audio section I think you chose the right sound effects. It did take me a while to figure out what the donut was for, but my goodness, that was the perfect twist. Congrats!
I didn't understand at all that I was supposed to take an exit and not keep turning around :smile: Otherwise, this is very novel and extremely fun. Very accurate too, as a Parisian. Good job!
Thanks @honest-dan, I really wish we had time to achieve our initial vision but we strived to give a proper glimpse of it. I'm glad you saw potential in there :heart:
That was amazing! I tested the jam version out of fairness. The level of polish is incredible, from visual to audio feedback, it's all so bouncy, so juicy, even relaxing. The humor is on point, definitely dark as opposed to the whimsical visuals. Don't forget to rate other games so you reach your necessary rating count ;)
Hello Mr Stoff and team! I tested the jam version out of fairness. This was a really nice looking game, the pixel art and animations were really pleasant and detailed. The concept is cool and you managed to bring in a lot of variety for a jam game. One gripe I had with it is that the gameplay felt somewhat slow, due to a slight delay when jumping but also the animation and running speeds. I feel like increasing these would give a better play feel. I think the timer is a bit frustrating considering you already have to die + backtrack very often, I don't think it's entirely necessary. Otherwise, I thought the music was fitting and very polished, but the first time I started the game I had no audio at all even though the volume was supposedly at max level. Good work :slight_smile:
Very original concept. It took a while to register but I eventually got it! The graphics and audio were very nice and polished as well. Good work!
Hello again! I remember you from Keep Me Breathing earlier this year, and this is another great entry (especially for the compo)! The design is very clever, but I was a bit lost in the third minigame (the sailboat). It took me long to figure out how to create gusts of wind.
The character animations are great! And I loved the concept, even though it took a solid 15 minutes for me to understand the gravity system. Maybe add a tiny tutorial? Otherwise, great entry, congrats :)
The art was really cute and so was the music! I feel like the game lacks some feedback to inform the player of what's working. I was never sure if I was doing the right thing to spin the hoop, and it wasn't clear if I was hurting enemies or not. It's hard to hit them before they carrot you to the ground! I reached the chest but nothing happened :( Nice work for your first time!
A nice concept, and the presentation is quite cute (it's a shame some of these are recolored Zelda 1 sprites, but the slimes are adorable!). The turn based approach is good, but it doesn't feel great when you need to move quickly.
This is such a silly and cute game, I didn't expect to like it so much! The concept is fun, and it seems simple at first but then the levels show you all the tricky situations it can create. The graphics and music are adorable. One area I would improve is the controls and collisions, which are a bit unwieldy and can get you stuck often (even though you can restart, sometimes it's better to just give the player a way out). That is especially true on the victory level but... I didn't realize there was no bonus to finishing it, so that's a few minutes I'm not getting back! :laughing: You could also make sure the music doesn't restart when you retry or change levels (if it's the same mood state as the current one), and do some mixing so that the voices aren't louder than the rest. Great job!
Thanks to everyone who's played it so far! I have finished coding a post jam version with a more fair (but still challenging) level layout and a lot of gameplay improvements so that your jumps finally feel right (I hope that solves your issues @funemaker)! The sound effects, which were ready but we couldn't add in time, will also come with this version once our sound designers are done balancing them out. Hopefully tomorrow!
@hobzone We've just released a post jam version with many fixes, and sound effects! I'd be delighted if you tried it!
@jackaljk I made a number of improvements in the post jam version so you can jump a little early before landing or late at the end of the platform. Hopefully that fixes it!
@ruofusun There is an end! But play the post jam version if you want a chance to reach it ^^'
@sanemsky Could be the animation! The actual jump is pretty reactive.
This is a GREAT entry, I'm stunned that you could come up with the concept, the art and the implementation in only three days. The additions of the post jam version, like auto collect and the map, are excellent. It's pretty tough, but rewarding to find the solution... and the music helps a lot. As someone who worked on a 4X strategy game (Humankind), the simple mechanics here are inspiring. Nice job using Godot, I love it :)
Wow, this took me a while to figure out! This is a really great concept, but some things are too obscure at first, which made me wonder if I'd ever get it. For a long time I didn't understand that the variations in temperature were due to orbiting (distance to the sun), and I just didn't know how I could keep it balanced. The tutorials also don't make it clear that the machines act as the opposite of mountains, I didn't know what it meant by stabilizing the climate. Other than that, the presentation and music are excellent, and it's a very innovative take. Good job!
Good job Curdle and Stoff! This is impressive for a LD entry, the concept is solid, the execution too with lots of different parts that are easy to tell apart, a comfy art style and simple but clear animations. There are lots of physics bugs but it's almost expected in that kind of sandbox; I've also seen a few cases where I couldn't activate the thrusters by pressing the assigned key. Besides the obvious QOL stuff that couldn't get in (edit vehicle rather than reset it), I think a few tutorial elements could have helped; namely a vague indication of what the part can be used for. It's part of the fun to figure it out on your own, but if we compare it to Bad Piggies for example, there was a quick drawing of what a part was for, or an introductory level. It's nice for people like me who have no spatial logic, haha. Congrats again!
I suffered. But this is an amazing entry, very polished, excellent concept and an incredible amount of content. Congratulations!
@benk86 Thanks for the feedback, we actually recorded a lot of sound effects but due to software issues we couldn't get them in. Hopefully we can get a version with them soon.
It's hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that you did this for a JAM. It's a huge amount of work and it's so well thought out that it works perfectly. It even loads rooms dynamically! Congratulations on making this, and thanks for sharing it. I would like a fill tool, please :)
This was really fun! A good interpretation of the theme. Is the coffee supposed to make that framerate drop? I also would've liked a little indication of what to do at the beginning. Thanks for sending this to me!
This was really good... but so hard! I'm playing mouse & keyboard, and it's not ideal. Especially since I have to use the arrow keys as WASD is not mapping to ZQSD (maybe you could solve that by using scancodes). I didn't initially understand that I had three dashes and had to wait for them to fill back. Thanks for making this!
This was great! I don't have much to give feedback on as everything feels very polished, from the varied buildings and their lights to the really clever tutorial and end screen. One thing that bothered me is that it seems my children can trigger the guards, and since they can get stuck in various places, I once had my lantern meter go up without being anywhere near a guard, and too far from the concert to do anything.
It took me a while to figure out how to summon the zombies. I had kinda forgotten that from the tutorial and since you can only do it from one side of the graveyard, I didn't stumble upon it by accident.
I had a hunch from the art style but I see some of you are French, cocorico! :rooster: (that explains the ZQSD... thank you for that)
For some time I didn't really know what I was supposed to do... I saw empty drawers with a material name, and an animal I didn't really see how to heal with metal or wood. Eventually as they came back, I understood the idea, so that's probably on me! Still, I suppose you could make it clearer that you need to drag and drop to progress. And the text is a bit too long to display, maybe you could tone down the animation? Overall, this is a very original submission, and the dialogue is very funny - but I feel bad for those poor things!
SCIENCE! This is a very good entry, the gameplay is extremely simple without any twists and yet something about it makes it work, and that's probably the presentation. The auto steering works beautifully and the audio actually adapts to the type of movement... my only gripe is that the rover sounds went crazy at some point and played out of sync (playing on Firefox). Very nice use of Construct, too. Congrats!
This is very cute! As someone who grew up with a lot of dodo t-shirts from a Mauritian family member, this was a nice throwback... I don't know if their taste for melon is scientific fact or Ice Age fact, but I'll accept it. The dodo trivia was a nice touch! I wish there was some animation when you scare off the tigers, and I also encountered a bug twice: when you hit Replay, sometimes the dodo no longer animates and just moves off the edge of the map. Congrats on the release!
I enjoyed this a lot! The art is great and the ambient music sells it very well. All the characters have a different feel and I would have certainly played a lot more of it if there was any. Congrats on making this with Godot and thanks for sharing it (and for playing our own train game, haha) ;)
@togo-sepultraut Thank you for noticing! There are 16 knights, and the one you get is determined by the stats of your soup. That wasn't easy to do but it's worth it!
@morpheyz Haha you're right, I made sure to put the stats on screen in the right order. The Help button was supposed to show the rules, but we ran out of time - that's also why there isn't a proper tutorial to ease you in. I'm glad you enjoyed it regardless!
@exofrenon Thank you so much! It's a balance we had to hit, the game might not be very surprising if we break down the entirety of the battle system. It was supposed to ease you in by having a few simple fights with only certain ingredients, then moving to the full system and sometimes not giving you the full intel on enemies. More importantly the battle screen was meant to have a scoreboard. Unfortunately time got in the way, so it's a little more opaque, which is why we explained the rules in more detail on this page. Basically, every stat of your fighter attacks only the stat it "beats" in the rock-paper-scissors, if the enemy has that stat. Then it's the enemy's turn. Each stat victory gets you a point, and we compare your score to the enemy's (a draw is considered a defeat). Hope that clears it up!
@v0odo0 I'm really glad to read that, because it took time to develop the system so integrating the visuals to make it a "real" game really happened in the last few hours!
@chompdev I was actually worried people wouldn't think of dropping ingredients above the cauldron, which is the most fun way to do it! You can also drag it all the way to the pot, but it's less bouncy.
Thanks everyone for the feedback!
@sakura-magika Yeah sorry, showing the rock/paper/scissors model is exactly what the Help button is for, but we ran out of time to make it happen, as @gizmolo noticed. That's why I made sure to show the stats in the right order from top to bottom, it serves as a reminder.
For the details on who won and why, I actually made a simulator that prints all the calculations for a battle (so we could test our formula). But we weren't sure how much we wanted to tell the player, and in the final rush we just went with the assets we had and made a more simple battle screen. Actually in some cases the battle ends in a draw, but it's considered a defeat.
That title music... :rofl:
This is a fun twist on Stardew. You think you know what the gameplay's gonna be, then you realize it brings you nowhere and start cheating. I particularly loved the voice acting which reminds me a lot of Wheatley from Portal 2. The character animations are really smooth with the motion blur effects, although they do feel slightly out of sync with my inputs. And the corn moves just right! Though I didn't realize I could eat raw corn, haha.
I had a bug on day 3 where I couldn't plant my pumpkin on the patch of dirt I made at the neighbor's farm, I was only able to do it the next day despite what the crow said.
I actually killed my neighbor early. I tried to sneak on him and figured I could probably not hit him with a shovel but then... The reaction from the crow is top notch.
All in all it's crazy that you were able to do all that for the compo (not to mention the music), and the game really shows you have a good sense of where to cut corners and still deliver something great. Congrats!
The idea seems simple but the execution is extremely polished! Apparently I'm 5th in the leaderboards now, haha. It's too bad the game doesn't explain much, I had to look at the comments to think about using the last letter of a word to start the next, in order to keep the multiplier up. Of course that's communicated through colors in the game but in the heat of the moment you may not pay attention, haha. You might also be disturbed by some words "failing" while you type another, thinking it gives you a penalty when it doesn't.
I like the fact that the systems are quite simple in the end; there are bonuses but not for speed and accuracy as one might think. The speed is only important to keep the number of crops down, and accuracy is to not lose your multiplier pointlessly by "wasting" letters without clearing words. So in the end you really only have to care about the overgrowth and your multiplier and that's where the strategy lies. It encourages you to wait for more words to appear so you can plan ahead, but not too much... I don't think I've done that a lot to get my 160k score (still wondering how that happened) but it's wickedly smart, congrats!
This is a very well-made game with smooth animation and movement, however I admit I couldn't go very far due to the controls.
I'm not sure CTRL is the right binding for something you do as often as slashing since you have to hit it with your little finger. I couldn't get my left hand to handle direction, jumps and slashes with those controls. Using arrow keys for movement would work a lot better, I think.
I also suggest using scancodes so that people with non-QWERTY keyboards (such as AZERTY) can use their equivalent of WASD without having to change the keyboard layout.
Hey, I remember playing your game "Sinking Town" ages ago!
This is a very special game. I wasn't sure I would be invested in a text adventure but I was quickly drawn in. There are some typos left but you probably didn't have time for a lot of proofreading. Otherwise, the art is excellent and soothing in itself! I've done two runs hoping to fix what I got wrong the first time, but even now I know there are plotlines I haven't seen yet. The bride joined the teacart business in my second run and I'm really happy about that.
One small issue I had is the Merchant in the epilogue, who talked about a golden ring that I took even though that hadn't happened.
All in all, congratulations for a very atmospheric game, once again!
For something you made in 24 hours, it already has some good ideas! I wish the game gave you more feedback on whether you timed your hits right, otherwise it looks like you can just press space for every item and still get the same score. At some point I think the tree and stump beats were swapped (stump on snap, tree on beat), but it went back to normal later (tree on snap :fingers_crossed:). It would be nice to see more variety in the level too.
I liked the fact that the game says "Chop to the Bop", which is the opposite of the real title, haha.
I've played on Windows since the Web build had too much trouble handling the mic.
This is a fun concept and the visual aspect itself is very good, with the apples' expressions as they fall, the bounciness of the rabbit and the guardian shouting. However the voice detection is a bit too unreliable for the gameplay to really work: there is usually a substantial delay before your shout affects the game, the audio feedback is sometimes very noisy, and a single shout is often recognized as two distinct bounces. I'm using a headset with a decent mic (Logitech Pro X) so my setup shouldn't cause any issues.
I think the idea is very good and I could definitely play an updated version with improved voice detection! I particularly like the idea of screaming in a higher pitch to bounce the apples higher, and I had fun with that. I think you could probably remove the audio feedback in the game (after the initial setup) since it's always a little weird to hear yourself. You could replace it with music!
A very good entry, the gameplay is rich and fun in a way that's hard to achieve within three days, and you managed to add an AI and multiplayer, which as a programmer I wouldn't even approach during a jam! The music and SFX are very effective too. One thing I did have trouble with are the controls, which are typical top-down vehicle fair but take a while to get used to, which I guess is part of the fun as you keep bumping into stuff.
The intro was very well-made, funny and perfectly timed to the music, it's impressive that you could make all that by yourself, assuming that's the case (I wish you had included a description here and/or on itch so we could know more about the game and what you used :))
Well this was very nice! Appropriately scoped for a jam. It's a very relaxing game and the lovely music and absence of a timer help a lot with that. You just have to find the solution in your own time, and I think that's nice :laughing:
The art is cute and effective, and while the gameplay loop is nothing new, it works well and there's something rewarding in obtaining the next item. I also liked the wargame-like presentation with a fog of war, it makes a nice contrast with the art style! There's a proper ending, too - although I wasn't sure the sword did anything, I had to click right in the middle of the dragon for things to happen.
My suggestions would be mostly quality-of-life; it would be useful to have buttons to empty all the summoning slots at once rather than have mushrooms pick items up one by one, and I think making the mushrooms replace their current item with the one you click would be more satisfying than having to manually put down an item. Especially since they tend to pick them right back up! I think it's interesting that you added an AI to the mushrooms, I can see how you might have had bigger ambitions - perhaps with the mushrooms doing most tasks on their own with manual input only needed for specific things. The way they forage berries or cut trees on their own is very reminiscent of Age of Empires. But since the game is actually a puzzle game, those automatic behaviors can get in the way.
Congrats on finishing!
@dan-allison Thanks for sticking to the end! I just uploaded a new version after being too tired to work on it this week. It now has a timer at the top showing you when your creature will evolve, and I also added the rest of the animations my teammates made during the jam, so it's a lot more lively and responsive! Each stage is shorter, too. I wish these things were in the jam build so it's a little less frustrating, but we're a lot more happy with the game now :slight_smile:
@monika The next form you get depends on your most filled stat at the moment of evolution; we have three forms per stage with each one corresponding to bloodlust, wrath and swagger (I particularly like the final swagger form). So it's not really an evolution tree but I'm told this is what Tamagotchis were like :smile: Thanks for playing!
@ale Yeah, it's actually a little surprising when you go back to those ancient LCDs with the front light... We even adjusted the palette because it was too pale on that screen.
I guess a lot of homebrew enthusiasts have modded screens or maybe even the rare backlit model (AGS-101). But I only have my trusty old SP. I did manage to try it on a Game Boy Micro and it's a lot better :wink:
@whirlguy Thanks for the kind words! It ended up being a _little_ ambitious to make something for the GBA in three days when we had no experience with it, so the game had to be quite smaller as a result. We usually have a composer with us but he couldn't make it this time. Perhaps next time we can make something more well-rounded!
This has a lot of polish for a jam entry, from the visual feedback to the FX and sound effects. Frankly it's a tremendous amount of work to integrate all that in three days, I have to assume there were several programmers on your team, haha. The core idea is very strong, it actually reminds me of a Nitrome game from years ago. I really like these types of games and I had already noticed your GIFs during the jam! The spells are inventive, too.
I'd say the main issue is clarity: even after reading the rules, it can be a little tough to make sense of what's happening on screen. For example, it's not obvious how much health we have left, I think I understand now that it's the color of the sphere but perhaps it should've been emptying gradually, _a la_ Diablo? I also initially thought killing enemies would give me their elements, but you need to collect them the same way as the water. The placement of the puddles, right at the bottom of the screen, makes it a little awkward to trace a line on them; it would've been nice to have other puddles in the empty spaces near the top of the screen.
Finally, though I'm not sure of it, it felt like we couldn't store more than a fixed amount of elements, and yet it kept filling up without me consciously collecting them, so I often had too many different ones and not enough of each to make a useful spell :smile: In the end, I spent a lot of time trying to collect water for a simple splash spell, and I'd often hear the slurping sound effect without actually gaining a water element. I'm not sure what I did wrong!
In any case, it's an impressive entry and these are mostly suggestions to make it even nicer. Congrats!
Congrats on putting so much content in a jam game! I wasn't able to try the two-player mode, but it's impressive that you could add it when you already have several levels and an endless mode. There's a lot to like here, from the very catchy music to the variety of enemies with their different attack patterns (and ways to convert them). Obviously, the AoE references are welcome :smile:
The main issues I encountered were UX-related, for instance I wish the button at the end of a level would take me to the next level rather than the same one (it felt like it would). That button also doesn't work with a controller. I also didn't really know what made the uncolored enemies different. Otherwise, I feel like the "techno" aspect of the game could've been emphasized, maybe by having the "converting" mechanic be rhythmic? In any case, good work and go Toulouse :)
@furano I used the Windows build, from itch!
I don't often rate compo games since I usually join the jam, and doing all that work, including audio, by yourself in two days sounds absolutely impossible to me :laughing: Anyway, this is an impressive entry, especially considering the number of levels. You added an apology for not finishing but this is already a _lot_ of content! You did what I probably should do, which is come up with a simple mechanic early in the process and then make levels to showcase it; and honestly there's a lot of effort in the level design here. Comparisons to Portal are a bit stale but I could sense the same progression from obvious to more arcane or roundabout uses of the mechanic. The presentation (visuals and audio) are simple but effective.
To list some of my gripes... I didn't think it made total sense that horizontal tunnels let you move at your leisure while vertical tunnels are a free fall. Though I realize that you can jump in the horizontal mode, so tunnels don't remove gravity. Eventually you just accept the mechanic as it is, but it does mean you have to press a combination of buttons (namely up + shift) very fast before you end up in the wrong place (or die), which is not my forte. Also on the logic side, I initially thought it was a bug that you can just look up or down to make spikes go off screen and thus avoid running into them when you summon a tunnel, but later puzzles obviously make use of that. Still, I sometimes got killed off screen, perhaps by a spike that wasn't completely out of sight.
I had to skip two levels, including the one in the image below, because I couldn't find the solution and it could get a little frustrating to me due to the things I mentioned above. The cheat code is appreciated!
hardlevel.png
Finally, I think you can jump higher than usual when you're in a vertical tunnel; that didn't feel intentional but maybe it is! I liked the cheeky answer when you pick a "custom" name :wink:
Congrats on finishing :smiley:
Hey, congrats on making something for the jam! The way you came up with a universe and interaction systems but didn't quite have time to develop puzzles that make use of them reminds me of the first time I joined LD :smile:
As a prototype, this is already quite good and really left me wanting to see the rest. The visuals are gorgeous, and it's not just 2D art, as you used various subtle effects to augment it. The animation quality is also noteworthy for a jam: I particularly liked the introduction cutscene, it makes me want to see a whole game with our heroine! It's too bad you couldn't go past the tutorial but I know all too well how short those three days can be.
As others noted, you can get stuck if you transform back to Polly when on top of the trees. I also think you could get rid of the last Q press after drawing: it could be "keep Q pressed while you draw and then release it when you're done", or it could consider the drawing as done when you release the mouse button. I'm not sure there's any point to doing multiple strokes now, but perhaps you were thinking of combining "spells" down the line? Anyway, congrats again!
Edit: Also, thank you for not being one of countless Unity games that hate non-QWERTY keyboards... everything worked fine here ;)
@spica Hey! I have an AZERTY keyboard. Usually, if a game uses scancodes or physical keys or whatever your engine calls them, it means that the QWERTY key chosen by the developer will map to any key that occupies that space in other layouts. E.g. you set W as the forward key, and in your mind that is the W that sits above A, S and D. If you used the physical W, it will become Z on an AZERTY keyboard because that's in the same place as your W. It can make button prompts more confusing if not addressed, but it's much better than the alternative since you're guaranteed that the user will have the same hand placement as you envisioned.
Apparently that's the default in Unity now, but I've seen so many Unity games where I had to change my keyboard layout because they were expecting the actual W and A letters, which aren't adjacent to S and D (that's why French people call it ZQSD, not WASD :smile:). Imagine that + non remappable controls!
I do like to see Ace Attorney references in my Ludum Dare :smile:
Funnily enough, the first thing that came to my mind after hearing the theme was court summons, but that didn't really inspire my teammates, so I'm glad someone did it. The game's presentation is solid, a giant toad for a judge is perfection. I like that you had different voice bleeps for various characters, although Jaya often went mute and other characters sometimes swapped voices.
To improve it as an Ace Attorney-like, I would suggest to make the dialogue lines a little shorter, and add effects to break the monotony of reading text (AA has sound effects, flashes and screen shakes during dialogue to mark emphasis). I'm also not sure how I managed to get that "not guilty" verdict as it felt like we knew very little about what happened, certainly not enough to clear Abbadon's name entirely (maybe that's why he went to purgatory?) I assume it's because I reached the end without getting three strikes.
In any case, congrats for finishing!
score.png
I don't think I've managed to get much farther than this :laughing:
I always love to see old console games in the jam, having tried my hand at a GBA game myself in a previous LD. I had heard of the console but it's my first time trying a Pokémon Mini game. It's obviously very simple but I think the only thing it's truly missing is sound - though I don't know if Pokémini games had any music.
Regarding the game itself, I felt that the ant's peculiar shape made it tough to figure out its hitbox. It looks like it doesn't kill you to hit something with your legs, but I think I sometimes died because my behind hit a rock? It's a bit hard to gauge in motion. Otherwise the main issue is that you sometimes have to choose whether to stay in the left or right lane, but if you're unlucky, the path you've chosen might be a dead end and there's no way to know in advance. I'm also not sure the the random rock placement is guaranteed to always leave room for the player, as I sometimes found myself in front of a barrage like this:
barrage.png
Congratulations on making something in such a short time! Especially if you had to learn the basics of making Pokémon Mini homebrew along the way.
First of all I have to point out the level of visual polish (_juice!_) in this game: nothing is static, the cards move smoothly to the right locations, and the creatures sprites even have their own animations. It's stuff that we take for granted in card games but is really hard to deliver during a jam. I have to imagine you polished things as soon as you added them and not at the end (which is what I tend to do as well, even though it costs me :sweat:)
Now, full disclosure, I am terrified of these card games. They have way too much information for me to digest and I can never keep track of my full hand. Nevertheless I forced myself not to give up and I beat the first, uh... _two_ levels. And only some of my successes were sheer dumb luck!
It's surprising to see a game that largely plays during the draft phase, whereas the actual battle is almost instantaneous. It did make it hard to figure things out in the first level: you are told to pick the right cards, but none of the descriptions make sense to you since you haven't seen a battle yet. Maybe it would help to show an explanation of scores, and how combat works in general, before the initial draft phase. I'm still a bit confused by the combat itself, even though I eventually got that you need to match your opponent's score at every turn.
The descriptions could be a little clearer in general, I think they just lacked a bit of proofreading. For instance, I couldn't really tell what the "Scare your creatures" mention was about. Still, once you actually understand how a card works and use it at the right time, it is quite satisfying. It reminded me of one card game I did play for a while, [Pocket Crystal League](https://moodytail.itch.io/pocket-crystal-league).
Congratulations on your entry! It's an impressive amount of work, I can see how much content I've missed (on account of _sucking_).
As someone who made a Game Boy Advance game for the last LD, I'm always glad to see homebrew console games in the jam! And making it 3D is an additional challenge that I wouldn't dream of putting myself through. You went for a uniquely PS1 visual design, with pixel art sprites in 3D space, and it's particularly effective - especially with the warping on the edges of the camera.
Of course the perspective makes it a little harder to time your jumps right, and I couldn't tell if the jump was longer if I pressed X for longer. There didn't seem to be much of a difference and this could be a nice improvement to avoid landing on the end of the platforms.
A few things worth noting: - There's a steep difficulty gap between stages 1 and 2 but the latter is still doable (harder if you want to collect all friends), whereas I found stage 3 to be almost infeasible even when ignoring most friends. - As there is no middle ground between "stage completed" and "stage completed with all friends rescued", there isn't an incentive to collect as many friends as you can if it's too hard to collect them all. Maybe showing the number of friends at the end would help, or perhaps you could unlock the next levels by reaching a certain score. - Sometimes the music would stop looping and start again a minute later. - It's not always obvious if a gap between platforms needs a jump or if you can just walk over it. - I think there is some kind of coyote time where you can still jump for a few frames after leaving a platform, which is good, but it probably should be more forgiving given the camera orientation. I often died without seeing how, as sometimes you can see your character fall for a bit before dying, and sometimes you die immediately as you hit a ledge (maybe it's when you get sandwiched between two platforms).
The game has a lot of things going on with the scrolling level, camera, physics and the nice bonus of having your friends follow you. It's impressive you managed to do all this during the jam. The music is very catchy as well, congrats if you made it for the jam too!
Very cool entry! The main mechanic isn't something we see too often. I didn't immediately understand that the runes in the lower left corner were the ones I had "memorized", because the first one I played (the teleport) wasn't among them. But it eventually clicked. I think it could benefit from notifying you when you get a new song because when I was in the "underground" level, it took me a while to realize I had unlocked a new song from those individual runes. I also wonder if I missed something in that part of the level because some paths led nowhere, or led to inverted platforms I couldn't reach.
I wasn't sure how to progress but I eventually went back to the starting area, hoping I had the full song (I had found two parts) and that's when the game froze, so I used the cheat code after that. The boss fight is a bit tough due to the unforgiving platforming, and once I reached the top with the face, I had no idea what to do to beat him. I tried every song and even tried climbing on top of the hands when they fall, but to no avail. Maybe there's a clue that could be made clearer?
One final suggestion would be to have a small "deadzone" around the player before the camera moves, especially on the Y axis - it's more pleasant if the camera doesn't jump up as soon as the player does, but only when you reach a certain height.
Congrats on finishing the jam!
@cliff-coffee Oh right, A and D aren't mapped in the game. You can use the mouse buttons or the arrow keys. I tend to prefer the keys but you still need the mouse to pick an item, which is a bit of a UX problem, haha.
@neoawesomeon Yup, definitely some Flash inspirations here, particularly one game with a certain _yeti_... At 295 mm, you must have reached space! I always wonder if people will manage to see that second biome. There is actually an end to the level but it's a bit further still!
Thanks so much @ginxel! We were a bit stuck looking for ideas until Saturday morning when @helicule suddenly said "how do you feel about tardigrades"? I don't remember how we landed on "let's throw them in a cannon" but tardigrades definitely helped us find a game idea :smile:
@justmars Thank you! We had to put the controls in the description because there wasn't much time left to put them in the game, but at least it's fairly straightforward to guess how to launch and dash (braking is not always needed, haha). Next jam I'll remind myself to make the controls screen first so I don't forget until the end. And yes, you reached the end!
This is a truly impressive entry given the amount of visual flourish, mechanics and content included, especially from a team of one and with a custom engine. That totally excuses the initial crash :smile: Most jam games need to cut _much_ earlier in terms of features ~~and you're making all of us look bad~~ :see_no_evil:
What I'm about to say has probably been covered by others, but here are my notes: - It's impressive that you could deliver procedural generation on top of everything. Although I think it could be adjusted so some resources are easier to find; it took me a long time to even find millstones or ores. - It's not obvious what you can obtain out of a certain item on the ground, even if you've done it a few times already. Houses can be built from normal branches but also from white ones, which I kept confusing with rock shards that would get me a pickaxe. I get the idea of having zero text, so I would suggest showing the result of the recipe in the tooltip (perhaps only after trying it once). - At first I tried playing without reading the "how to play", as you suggested, but some things are hard to guess without it. For example, I thought clicking on berries gave me a resource to use elsewhere, just like every other item. But it didn't appear in any recipes, so I just didn't bother with berries at all. It's hard to tell that your character is harvesting as it looks like he's holding a resource and there's no visual indicator that you're exploiting the tree. Perhaps the way to gain population should be less obscure altogether, as it's also unclear what houses do, and I never really saw new people appear. - I noticed I was getting new flamebearers every now and then, but I'm not sure what action led to this? - When I first sent a guy with a helmet to the... dungeon (?), he disappeared in the fog of war as soon as he entered, so I couldn't tell what I gained from it. - It can take a long time for the character with the right resource to arrive when you're building something. Perhaps their speed could be increased as long as they're off screen?
This is a really nice and addictive twist on the AoE or god game formula, full of intuitive and juicy elements (the little guys jumping into the recipe slots!). For me at least, the micro-managing became a bit overwhelming as my settlement grew, and after a while I started wishing for a way to let my citizens gather resources on their own - which probably would make it a very different game. Still I'm stunned by the quality of the presentation here, and this is definitely an entry that could morph into a full game.
This is very well done! Obviously there's not much to do but it's still full of content and variety, which was also our approach when we made a Tamagotchi tribute in the last LD. And it's a very clever use of the desktop and Godot features to have it sit in a corner of the screen, similar to what games like Rusty's Retirement are doing. It reminds me of old "screenmates" like [Neko](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neko_(software). That was kind of our undoing last time, as our game couldn't really be left in the background unless you downloaded it :sweat_smile:
I particularly liked the item descriptions, which are very witty - and that's easier said than done. These types of games often seem simpler that they actually are: here, I assume you had to plan for the accessories to appear at the right place regardless of the creature and pose. Overall, it's an impressive amount of content and polish.
It's too bad we can't interact much with the Buddy, as the main button is only used in the rare event that it's crying. It'd be funny if it had some random reactions to the button, or to you moving the window. The tribute would be complete if you could play some basic minigames with your Buddy, but that seems out of scope for a jam.
(Also, I had no idea you could use Rider for GDScript! Another point for Rider... :smile:)
This is a really fresh concept! I'm always impressed by games that manage to pull off multiplayer during the jam, it reminds me of a previous LD where one game was a collaborative art gallery. Asynchronous multiplayer feels like the right choice here, because it makes the game feel collaborative without having to wait for people to show up. Although I ended up staying to find the beetle by myself, which I guess most people will do unless they're playing with friends? It makes some roles like the Naturalist feel a little less useful, unless you want to place a beetle sign closer to where you're looking at the moment.
The roles feel quite complementary, and I could see it develop into something more real-time, similar to social investigation games. There's an impressive amount of art assets, and the music is especially catchy. I didn't even realize the theme had variations according to the character!
I want to point out the level of polish, too, as you bothered to include localization and most importantly a tutorial, which most jam games won't have time for. I wish the tutorial would tell you to use mouse clicks to move, as I was trying to use arrow keys or ZQSD (go France!) - and it would be even better if you supported both input schemes, as it's a bit cumbersome to move using the mouse when the camera is close. Something odd did happen to me: I didn't get any character-specific tutorials in my first playthrough. I only noticed it when I restarted the game and suddenly saw them. I would have been less confused initially if they had appeared.
Overall, congratulations on an impressive entry!
@ditam Hmm, this is odd, the battle should start immediately if your mouth is full. It wasn't the case initially, but I patched it out the day after.
@ditam Oh, I never thought about this case! You're right, it may happen if you only use hazelnuts the first time. Sorry that it slipped through!
@cameronpenner Yes, that was the idea! But we did have dialogue that gave hints about the next enemy, we just couldn't implement it in time so we added descriptions on the page. Thanks a lot!
@weirdbitgames All the music was composed (extremely fast) for this game by our teammate @jack-s, who also made the sound effects!
Well that was almost excessively cute. The game has a few rough edges but makes up for them in charm. Even though I don't speak Dutch to know what the smaller voice lines was saying, having native voices was a nice touch - very gezellig.
Picking up an item can be a little finicky, it goes out of reach too easily and the button prompt stays open for a short time, so it feels like a bug when it doesn't actually pick it up. The camera should probably have some sort of physics to avoid going through walls and hills.
The graphics are quite original, evoking early PS1 games with basic texture work and low res rendering. Was the framerate choppy on purpose? That lent it some extra realism.
Of course the one item Opa didn't ask us to get, but probably should have, was pants.
Well done! The gameplay is quite simple, but well executed, with lots of visual feedback. It actually got quite hard so I had to switch to Easy so I could go beyond 6 o'clock... haha. I actually thought it would go all the way back to 12 but the boss happens a little earlier. I loved the fact that the music seems to progress with you; I don't think it's actually adaptive music but it does give a sense of things getting tougher, more or less in step with the bullet patterns.
One thing I noticed is that unlike the main level where your progress is rolled back when you die, the boss doesn't regain health when you do. The clock winds back, but you can pretty much die as much as you want until you exhausted his HP. Otherwise, the Quit button doesn't work on Windows :D
The visuals are very nice, with the time of day being a particularly nice touch. The controls are simple but reactive and intuitive. Overall, a very nice entry.
I won! It's actually more challenging than it looks. I'm always impressed by compo games; there's already a lot of work to do in a game like this without having to draw everything! Music would've been nice, but in a 48-hour jam, something has to give.
The rules aren't obvious at first but the game is full of visual feedback that help you understand them, and that's the right approach. I actually think it's a pretty novel take since powers don't immediately activate, the creature has to wait for its turn. The strictly turn-based approach makes it easier to plan your actions.
Two things were unclear to me: what do the buttons actually do? They seem to be pause, normal speed and fast forward, but they seem to skip your turn when you click them. Otherwise, I would have liked a visual indication of whether my "alive" creatures go back to my deck after a fight, or if they're spent definitely. Great job overall!
It's a neat idea that reminds me a bit of Zelda BotW recipes, and a previous LD entry of mine (Flavors of Victory) which had ingredients to drop in a cauldron :smile:
The game has a lot of juicy elements which feel nice, like the physics of the ingredients or the various dangling items around the room. The amount of illustrations for the recipes is a nice touch.
A few bits of feedback: the first few minutes in the game can be confusing, as it points you towards clicking the recipes on the right of the cauldron, but these are the "nothing" and "unknown" recipes and it's not obvious what it means at first. I would suggest giving a simple recipe that has the ingredients listed as a tutorial, which would help with my second issue: it took me a lot of time to realize the recipes tell you the number of ingredients (as bones).
I managed to find a lot of recipes organically, but the last one for me (Bone Appetit) was not obvious. I thought it would have eggs, like many types of pasta. I ended up brute-forcing until I found the solution. Maybe another way to help would be to add a tooltip on the ingredients to know what they are (egg, flour, etc.). In any case, congrats on the release and on a fairly polished entry!
This is simple gameplay but well executed - that should be an inspiration to us all, haha. You didn't give yourselves a harder time trying to randomize the list or make several levels, and yet this single loop has a lot to offer. The music and sound design are a highlight, giving the interactions a lot of extra flavor, especially with the spatialized sounds for your character's (and _her_) movements. The art is consistent and welcoming.
As a solo programmer myself I know it can be hard to integrate all the cool stuff artists and musicians make, and this entry seems like it doesn't miss anything. The approaching "enemy" near the end is a nice touch, and a very funny twist once you reach the victory screen.
A couple areas of improvement: I think the chest could be made more identifiable. I had found the key first, but I think I wouldn't have understood that it required a key otherwise. It can also be tough to realize that you picked the wrong item since it takes the place of the outline in the inventory, so you can't check that you got it right without putting the item back. Congrats for the release!