Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → Lafie
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Hu | Mo | Co | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2014 | 29 | Beneath the Surface | Elemental Serpent | compo | 895 | 2.83 | 2.80 | 2.80 | 2.97 | 2.66 | 2.47 | 2.38 | 54 |
This is an amazing adventure, and lengthy to boot. Genuinely funny dialogue. The Gameboy Color graphics style and audio put me off a little though, perhaps because it didn't always seem consistent.
Genuinely impressive and enjoyable puzzle game. The audio-visual cues when switching realities and interacting with the puzzles were spot-on and very helpful. With more levels, this has some real potential.
If I read the 48 hour Compo rules correctly, using preexisting royalty-free music is not allowed though.
The game ran fine here, and it looks great. The graphical style is consistent, sharp and very clear.
The sfx got a bit annoying after a few levels, and the graphical style doesn't quite match with the 8-bit sfx.
The gameplay is conceptually simple, but very well designed. The difficulty also ramps up well with later levels, and it was a joy to finish.
With a few more underground hazards and more levels, this has great potential.
The graphics are completely functional, with a clear distinction between the player, objectives and hazards sprites. The turn-based control (similar to asteroids) takes a little time to get used to, but works reasonably well otherwise.
The game could benefit a lot from increasing difficulty, for instance by increasing the number of barrels over time. Right now, once you have to control down, the challenge is gone.
I found my way out of the cave, and I had fun doing it.
The control mechanism is fascinating. It felt a little like a first-person perspective of a top-down arcade game, where the player has limited movement and viewing directions.
The movement required some getting used to, but it did turn the game from an otherwise trivial FPS into a non-trivial challenge.
Fun little arcade experience. The player (diver) controls well, and shooting the harpoons is satisfying. The colorful fish that cost you points if you shoot them are a nice touch, and a nice way to discourage spam firing. The sad faces those fish make when you kill them are a nice visual cue of that effect.
The game could benefit from a difficulty increase over time, as currently it seems you always fight the same number of eels. I also occasionally shot a colored fish off screen, which was a little frustrating.
Overall, I enjoyed myself well into the hundreds of points. It's fun.
This game is missing some important audio-visual cues when the player gets hit. Currently, I die rather unexpectedly if I don't watch my HP like a hawk.
The random map generation is interesting, though. And the combat is nice, albeit simple. It is a true rogue-like, and I had the most fun juggling multiple enemies by using specific moves to manipulate their pathing.
The graphics and sound design complemented each other very well, and created the scene for a nice underwater adventure.
The movement and air blasting mechanics were intuitive and enjoyable, although I did manage to get myself stuck in a plant because of the way the player's hitbox flips when you change direction.
Incredibly awkward movement is the only thing holding this platforming adventure back. Other than that, it's very impressive. The graphical style looks good and is very fitting, the music and sfx are strangely haunting and the story elements are well presented.
Nice parallax background
The movement is a bit slow and floaty, and therefore imprecise
The flowers and particle effects are a nice visual touch
I enjoyed playing it overall
This platformer introduced several fun gameplay mechanics very well, and the physics based gameplay especially was a joy.
The graphics are simple but functional, with enough visual feedback for actions like mining and killing an enemy. The sfx and audio are quite good, although I do feel the music is too fast for the gameplay pace. In general, this game could benefit from slightly faster movement, to make the platforming more engaging.
While the binary at the end(?) was quite rude, I enjoyed getting there. The ASCII art is a nice touch and the puzzles are very appropriate for it.
The gameplay is quite simplistic and seems mostly to serve as a means to demonstrate the incredible visuals and sound design. And this little game is very pretty, with a consistent art style throughout, that in tandem with the sfx create a very strong atmosphere.
With a production of this quality, I can understand a lack of gameplay mechanics and length, given the time constraints of the Jam.
This game looks and sounds fantastic on every front. The theme is also very present in the story and visuals.
The gameplay is a little awkward though. The movement feels floaty and imprecise and the combat is not very engaging, likely because of the lack of weight to the attacks.
Combat against the ground enemies was otherwise fine, but I frequently felt cheated by the flying enemies, which can hit the player constantly killing you before you can even react.
Quite a comprehensive little game for 48 hours. I had a lot of fun selecting all ants simultaneously and moving them all as one. That resulted in some fun ant hive behavior.
Unfortunately, I got all my builder ants stuck in the nest blocks, and breeding didn't create new ones, woops.
If the finicky controls are resolved, this has some real potential.
Graphically, this is a charming game and the music and sound are very appropriate. The physics-based gameplay is fun at its core, but any challenge or difficulty is currently missing. With the addition of a decent failure state (e.g. limited number of moves) and a more satisfying success state (e.g. leaderboards), this game could have quite a lot of potential.
Fine pixel graphics and music.
The boulders and lava provide a good challenge.
The movement in the air and on the ropes is great, but the running feels a bit sluggish.
Although conceptually simple, it was a joy to play through those three levels.
While the graphics are perfectly functional, they are too simple to stay engaging. The shading on the rocks is nice though, and makes them properly stand out from the background.
The gameplay doesn't present much a challenge, and the challenge that does exist borders on frustrating because of the poorly aligned hitboxes.
The miner wrapping around when moving beyond the level borders is a nice touch and could work well with a more engaging level design.
The graphics are perfectly functional, albeit not fantastic looking.
The gameplay works like a charm and the light puzzle gameplay is fun.
There might be more potential in the puzzle mechanics than these levels showed.
I'm quite impressed by the graphical style, stylized and consistent throughout. The music is also pleasant and appropriate, although it loops quite awkwardly.
The game does seem to run at a very low frame rate and without collisions, there isn't any challenge in the gameplay yet. Other than that, it's promising.
The rotation controls felt inverted to me, and I couldn't quite get used to them. The game is also quite difficult, even on the lower difficulty level, but the mechanics are definitely promising. I really like the graphical style of the thermal and sonar sensor views, but the main view looks very aliased to me.
The graphics are functional, and the blood effects are a nice touch, although the enemy sprites don't turn to the camera, so walking past them turns the enemies invisible.
The enemies move very erratic, which makes it really difficult to shoot the last few enemies. Other than that, the round-based gameplay with the timer offers a clear objective and challenge.
I managed to crash the game once by consuming a jellyfish two sizes smaller.
The graphical style is very impressive and especially the dynamic movement of the tentacles is a very cool effect.
The music is appropriate, as it does not call attention to itself.
The movement is different and interesting, but it could benefit from some visual feedback. Having the tentacles pulse to indicate movement, for instance.
The gameplay is conceptually simple, but there is potential there when expanded with moving hazards for example.
Nice ASCII game running in the console, with excellent music and a neat little backstory. The gameplay itself is quite slow and simple, but the fact that you can adjust the number of lives and machines (enemies) is a nice way to allow for adjustable difficulty. I had some fun breaking the game by setting zero and negative numbers for lives and machines.
The movement was quite awkward, requiring me to restart a level multiple times by messing up the movement, rather than the puzzle. The puzzles were also not very intuitive, and I got stuck fairly quickly.
The graphical style is simplistic but very appropriate for the puzzle design, and the audio creates the right atmosphere.
The gameplay concept is deceptively simple and the puzzle mechanics are very clever.
The graphics and sfx are simple and functional, but don't stand out much.
The controls work most of the time, although I did find myself occasionally mining a block I didn't want mined.
The gameplay is key here, it's interesting and uses the theme well.
A very simple game, indeed. Graphically very simple as well. The fact that you have to balance multiple tries to get the best depth without drowning is a nice touch. The decision to not show the amount of air left is crucial to that, so I think that was the right call to make.
Deceptively simple gameplay, as the context provides the incentive to perform those simple actions, as well as giving weight to the success and failure states.
The graphics are appropriate, and I'm impressed with the atmosphere that a texture-less environment can still provide. The excellent audio also helps massively in creating the right atmosphere.