Party Greeting Simulator 2014 by Bemmu 2014-12-10T20:10:00
Nice game. Got 424 first try and 737 at my second try.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → leffe108
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | Co | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | 40 | The more you have, the worse it is | Webshop Live CMS | compo | 634 | 2.65 | 2.37 | 3.55 | 3.01 | 2.28 | 1.50 | 3.38 | 2.38 | ||
| 2016 | 36 | Ancient Technology | Compass | jam | |||||||||||
| 2016 | 35 | Shapeshift | Shapes Outdoor | compo | 828 | 2.72 | 2.48 | 4.16 | 2.42 | 1.75 | 2.00 | 2.32 | 48 | ||
| 2015 | 33 | You are the Monster | Monster Tower | compo | 632 | 2.95 | 2.95 | 2.53 | 2.22 | 2.68 | 2.40 | 33 | |||
| 2015 | 32 | An Unconventional Weapon | Navennni | compo | 921 | 2.74 | 2.65 | 2.30 | 2.09 | 2.23 | 2.05 | 1.81 | 2.40 | 39 | |
| 2014 | 31 | Entire Game on One Screen | Mind Words | jam | 979 | 2.42 | 2.00 | 3.68 | 3.33 | 1.48 | 1.50 | 1.78 | 45 |
Nice game. Got 424 first try and 737 at my second try.
I think you have created a very nice game. It has nice and friendly atmosphere.
An interesting take on making a memory game (figuring out which connections that make money) and some fun puzzle work to get your train to the right destination.
After finding a connection with 2:3 ratio I stopped looking for something better. Maybe make the payment go down for a site as you deliver more and more there, forcing you to look for new connections.
Nice game with quite long gameplay. I did only cover some part of it even though I played for quite a bit.
Very interesting game idea. Reminds me of a turn based board game called Race where you get cards to move your cars forward in a race track.
I miss documentation about what keys to use to zoom in/out. Especially as your game is otherwise very well documented on what key to press for what action. Only after trying your game I saw that your game entry tells that there is a zoom functionality, which will sure be a great help when you play in MP and don't want to crash into the walls. :)
You got lots of content in your game. Both conversations but also matching pictures combined with the music creating a nice atmosphere.
Took some tries to figure out how the game works, but after that it was great fun.
Thank you for comment. I agree that the game content is a bit short. It could probably use a bit faster progress or some way to skip to next word.
I did post some details on how the game was coded to make it work with screen readers on the blog:
http://ludumdare.com/compo/2014/12/09/trying-to-make-a-screen-reader-compatible-game/
Thank you everyone for the kind words.
hoqjed:
The game compare the last collected word with the word you collect. I think the text on the submitted version is a bit unclear about this. In the blog post I clarified this a bit better I think. (the blog post is linked to from my comment above)
There is one bug though. If the previously collected word contain multiple instances of the same character. For example two "e" and the second one contain one or more "e", then you get two points for "e", where I think you should only get one for "e" and then for any other character in the alphabet that is common, but not twice for the same character.
Interesting concept, but a bit hard. Maybe add some way for the animal to jump up on the goals?
Interesting game. I got 63 as result. I wonder, do you draw the keys by random, or do you try to get something good/bad for some common keyboard layout? (both qwerty vs dvorak et al, but also different hardware setups like kinesis contoured, typematrix etc.)
Interesting concept although in the end it seems all about moving your mouse as fast as possible. Though I may have missed some more details as I did not make it past the first level.
Also to add: when I first clicked this game when I was on my phone at the bus, it loaded to 70 % and then did not start on an iPhone with iOS 8 (using the default safari browser).
It is fun but quite challenging, but not in a way it becomes a problem.
On my previous LD I was also short in time and it drives you to really focus on making things simple as there is no way spending hours on tracing down bugs. I think for using only 3 hours, you managed very well.
Interesting game idea. Not too hard but still a bit of a challenge.
The jumping animation adds a lot fun to the game. As well as picking one unconventional concept (pencil) and sticking to it.
Interesting (but not too hard) controls and physics. First time I see a LD game using microphone as an input device.
Great original game idea. Appears your enemies uses path finding to find their way and around walls as soon as you enter their room which is great and add some further challenge to the game.
As it is made in Ionic which is a hybrid mobile framework, it is very easy to install as an android App. In fact I actually did just that on an Android phone before submitting my game here. I have however not linked to the APK as I found out that sound didn't work yet on native. Probably because I need to setup rights for that or use a cordova plugin.
wooltech: Interesting find. I assumed the modal window would block you from that, but probably if click besides it, it will close. I mostly tested on smaller screen sizes where the modal takes the whole screen.
You are also spot on what I think is a weak point. That production is not displayed in the map. So it becomes a bit of a memory game trying to remember what each spot produces.
Thank you for the feedback.
To HuvaaKoodia:
In the end of the game it prints out number of turns you used to complete the game. Thus you can still try to reach the moon in a short number of turns.
The difficulty to do so depends on random numbers as both dice and the resources of all places except the start location is randomized for each game.
Also with your arguments, city builders like Sim City is neither a game.
That said, an AI could be interesting to have in the game, if the board is larger and I had more time to work on the game.
Thanks for the warm feedback.
I added a post compo version with some bug fixes:
> No longer possible to cheat by dismissing the robber dialog
> A "next" button on the intro screen so it is easier to understand how to proceed
> The max number of towns and cities limits did not work. In particular when you reach max number of cities there was a hint in the error message how to win the game if you had not figured it out yet by then.
The post compo version is available as a link above, but the default is still the LD32 version.
Interesting game that took a few tries to figure out how new tactics in how to deal with the bats and spikes. Should one fall quick or go slow. etc. Great with some exploration to figure things out.
Very well polished game. May be good to stick some note at the beginning that the controls are WASD + mouse click.
Also, I had problems with the iframe player here on LD. It shows a website with the game somewhere down so I had to go full screen, but when clicking on the mouse, full screen is closed. However, when using the web link to show the game fully contained in a browser tab, it worked very well. However, I did not let this impact the rating as your game is otherwise very nicely done and should you had some more time I'm sure you would have been able to package the game better for the iframe above.
Cool game with a concept a bit like pacman but in a interesting way.
I did have a problem with the font being difficult to read though. I think for the instructions, it would be good if they were given in a font which allows easier reading.
Really great audio in the game.
I enjoyed "press S to start". :-) It get a bit repetitive after you figured out how to rescue your first 6 civilians to the base.
Thanks for your comments. I'm glad you liked the game.
GagaPete: Regarding difficulty, this is the hard part with these kind of games, balancing costs and adding challenges but still not making it too hard for casual players. And well, balancing takes time which is limited in Ludum Dare. That said I added some levels as response to comments on a previous game, and will try to get better at adding more depth to the simulation part that matters for players.
Belug: Regarding music, I made some for my previous LD game, but this weekend I didn't prepare by practicing music creation in advance so I felt it would take too long for me to get off the ground with that.
madameberry: Did you see the 'story' in the beginning? Basically, in the Netherlands there is a Town called Monster. While the player is not playing as Monster mayor, you build the tower for the mayor. So well you are right you 'am' not the monster, but if you look on my previous LD entries, you see that I'm not much found of making games with war or killing theme. Last two themes I had to be a bit creative to avoid doing that. I admit the Monster Tower game will probably not win the theme competition, but it was the best idea I got when looking in my English dictionary and on wikipedia for alternative interpretations of 'Monster.
Thanks for your feedback regarding visual feedback. It was not until quite late, I added visual feedback on where rooms/stairs can be placed.
As for showing visual feedback on illegal positions, I could probably do that. Though I need to add some mechanism to track cursor position without adding a Tab stop for those positions. Which is probably not to complicated, but needs doing as having to tab through all invalid locations would be annoying.
Since this LD, I have continued on this game a bit. I have reworked how rooms are built so it now shows a red rectangle on illegal places. The keyboard support for construction was also greatly improved (use arrow keys or hjkl instead of tab to move pointer around). Other highlights are save/load support, elevator shaft that can be resized and better screen reader support.
If you like to play the updated version, click the source link which takes you to Github where there is a play link for the latest version.
I liked your game. Played it first muted, but then with sounds it may be easier.
Great graphics and level 2 was challenging (the first one where you should target the moon). Took me some time to figure out first which stone to aim at and second to actually succeed at it.
I like the idea that you have 6 different characters and have to figure out which one can solve different tasks. Later I saw some text in the top right that for example the bomb guy only have 5 bombs and I had used all. :-) Eg. the text contrast is a bit too low perhaps. Nothing wrong that you have to try out what each character can do, but when it comes to having a limited set of 5 bombs, it is good if that is readable.
I liked your game. It add some management overhead over time, but not so much. Would be nice if there was a collision detection in place so you could not just place all trees on the same spot. Also I was surprised that houses can be placed ontop of each other.
Finding the time to add agents to a LD game is not so easy (I tried in my first one), but perhaps if there is overlap detection for tree placement, and you have a minimum distance between houses and perhaps also that trees has to be within some range of houses, then player is forced to spread out a bit.
I missed this LD myself, so I cannot rate your game, but kudos for a nice attempt.
Interesting game.
I do wonder if it is supposed to have audio as you didn't opt out to be rated on audio. I played in Chrome using the Web-link in a new tab and F12 only listed favicon.ico as a 404.
I managed to click on a square with 1 in it to probably select level 1. Then I cannot understand how to play the game.
But then, what should I do to control the game? I tried to click as the instructions says so, but I cannot see how it changed anything in the game. I have clicked on all 4 squares and on the circle. Only clicking on [R] seem to do anything - reset the game.
I tried both the Web version in Chrome on my computer and the Android version on my tablet with Android 5.1.
I probably missed something on how the game should be played, and would like to rate your game if I just knew how to play it.
I see now. You shouldn't click. Instead you shall depress the mouse on the circle and then move in some direction and then release the mouse button or your finger (touch). I guess your description is fine, just not the way I read the word 'click' as a programmer as for me that means an event that get triggered when you release the mouse button/finger. :-)
Anyway, once figuring out how to control the game, I think it is quite fun to play. Seems to be a game designed more towards tablet/phone which is nice to see a few fellow phone games on this LD.
Interesting to mix a bit of puzzle with a story based game.
If you make it so that points snap and lock, you could have flexible connection length to some extent until the force is too large, giving more possibilities in the puzzles. But that could become too difficult.
Some hint on how to complete the second level would be nice. I hacked two items, but no exit door or new item to hack shows up and I feel that I've looked around at all places of that level. I played in the web player on Firefox if that makes a difference.
Fun game that takes a little time to figure out. Not bad though that there is a little bit of challenge figuring out what the mechanics are. Overall nice graphics and mechanics.
I got to level 14 and what made me lost was that it started on the wrong side and at a location on the screen which I didn't expect so I didn't see it fast enough to switch side. For the rest of the levels, it is not so many side changes so you can often plan long ahead what changes to do meaning there is no hurry.
That said, it can be relaxing to play a game with just one button that is not to chaotic.
Main purpose of the voice messages is so that you can put the phone in your pocket while you walking and still get notified when you are in range of a shape. The one on the about menu is mostly a gimmick, but appears to help getting text-to-speech work on iPhone/safari by going to about menu and then back to the game.
Indeed, I don't expect people to rush to the game. But I already got more reviews of it than I would ever hope to get given it asks you to leave your comfortable chair.
Overall very nice. Require a bit fiddeling to find out what you can do. Took me some time to realize that draging to different edges give different effects.
Kudos to also to work towards mobile. Not so much for it being mobile, but for going a bit outside the box of computer based web games and do things different. Lot of interesting possibilities there. In my entry I used geolocation to create a game to be played outdoor.
It was good that the key control is shown permanently in the game as an aid. The game get difficult enough anyway as it progress. With that you could even left out the controls instructions to shorten the time to get started with the game. A good thing in LD.
Overall a fun game with nice graphics.
I played the Android version.
I think the progression to harder levels could be steeper. It was not until level 7 you had to shapeshift without having a wall/corner to rest against. (but now I see there is a easy-medium-hard selector I forgot about. So maybe I should just blame myself for not selecting medium)
Kudos for using the gyro to control the game as well as doing a mobile friendly game.
I as well didn't understand how the game worked until looking at your video.
I completely missed that you could use the mouse and in fact need to use both mouse left and right button as well as mouse movement in this game, as the instructions only talk about keys.
I like the idea to do something with hands. I kind of hoped you would do something related to sign language like finger spelling but still just seeing a game about hands is nice. :-)
I also got the out of memory error. It says the developer has to increase some memory limit.
Hope you find out how to fix it. It looks like a fun game to play.
Interesting game, but difficult with so much to take into account in short time. Nice touch with different loosing sounds that rotate or is picked by random. Global high score while not really difficult to do if you know some backend development, its still a nice addition.
Interesting puzzle. I read now that there is a restart, but having it non-easily visible to player make you have to think through and plan before you move which I think is a good thing. I liked that there was no time limit.
Wished it was a bit easier at start. You could make it progress to harder, but currently it is hard already at the beginning.
One way to make it harder is to slow down the movement or make the travel distance longer so you as player get more time to plan ahead and there is room in the beginning of the game to make an erroneous movement without loosing. At least to me, rotating using arrow keys doesn't feel intuitive which one to use to turn in which direction. You could perhaps show an arc with arrows below or above the circle that illustrates in which direction the cube rotates using left and right arrow key?
The graphics was nice and clear. Audio was simple. Maybe next time try to add some music. (although if you like me isn't good at it, you can get reviewers complaining about the music not being the best part of the game :-) )
I like the strategic part of setting up rules. Though I didn't manage to complete the game. Could be because I have no idea what the difference is between aggressive attack and skirmish. I did find out though that the different ships have different properties and that it is a good idea to use the ships differently.
Nice framing of the game area and side panel like a classic strategy game.
Interesting game, but hard to sustain any takeover.
Cool game. Easy to get started and addicted to. :-) The walls are good but maybe doesn't have to be 20m tall? As it is now, you can get the hats to build up against the two walls and make a large tower of hats. Also after getting 20m as online record, at start the game zoom out to show the 20m mark and the hats fall a longer distance at start so they caught up each other while falling due to different speed. But once I catch the first hat the camera zooms in. Also I notice when you have high tower if you lose one hat at the bottom the camera adjust for that which shows your attention to details.
When I use the arrow keys to navigate the menu the whole page scrolls up and down (Firefox), so I use the number keys and escape to navigate the menu, but then I couldn't read the descriptions, so I ended up spending money on massage when there was no need for it. That said, I could have used the mouse to play your game. So kudos for providing multiple options.
One thing I found was that the first week felt too slow before anything happened. And then I lost after second week partly because I wasted 2000 on massage at the wrong time. :-)
The game has potential with nice artwork and audio, but I would reduce the sensitivity on the controls especially while in air as it was very hard to control the character. Maybe it is just me and my programmer keyboard, but I cannot tap the arrows short enough time that the game require me to do.
Fun and easy gameplay. It was easy to learn and understand the game mechanics in general. The only thing I didn't figure out was why or when the pile started over with a new fresh wodden pallet.
The world is amazingly large but to me it became a problem that I never felt I could accomplish anything or get a reward. I only could lose my sheep in to the water on corners etc. Maybe it would be more fun if the large world is broken into separate levels with a clear start and end with a medal or similar for completing the level? Nice graphics and music give it a nice mood (even if the world is a bit hostile).
Cool with the medals that end up cluttering your screen until you realize it is not a good idea to take as many medals as possible. :-) Overall well made game. Perhaps a bit steep difficulty increment from first to second level.
Interesting and innovative game although it shows that I'm really bad at knowing which finger is at which key as I only know how to type from memory but not remembering which finger position is which letter. And using dvorak on a qwerty keyboard means only A and M is possible to visually lookup. :-)
I like how slow the character moves in contrast to many jumpers that are way too fast. I first skipped the water holes as in other jumpers, but then it was fun to find out that the water cools you down and you should use it as a tactic to complete this game.
What made me play our game was that it was made in Delphi. :-) Otherwise I'm glad it doesn't give me any physical hangover from all the in-game drinks the game require me to drink for too stereotypical purposes for my general liking. But looking past that the game provided some strategic decisions. Not sure if it was on purpose, but if you try to click on a drink and your timer expires to refresh the drinks, then you can end up clicking on a different drink than you thought. Maybe hide all drinks for 0.7s and then present the new drinks, or use the draw event to render fade out/fade in. Or slide in/out the drinks with an animation loop.
Interesting game, but I find it hard to move the hand left/right without the plate not dropping on the floor. How many pancakes can you collect? I once collected one before loosing. The other 4-5 times I tried I didn't collect any at all. Thumbs up for catchy music.
Great usage of animations to make the game more liveful and fun to play. Easily forgotten but adds so much to the playfulness.
Fun game. Interesting strategic decisions with the skip button.
You game is good at conveying a mood and scene. It was fun but I'm unsure on what the actual challenge is? Is it to get power ups so you can run a longer distance? Because after learning to jump over the first obstacle, it was not a problem to get over the other obstacles. I like your graphics style and music it fits your game nicely.
I like that I could play in my pace and take my time to figure out control and solutions on the problems. I think it adds to your game that there is no clock or rush to complete it. You got me addicted and I completed all levels.
Interesting and innovative game well implemented. It was a bit overwhelming at start. Maybe it is possible to make the instructions progressive as you play?
Fun and addictive. I like that you get your paint framed on a wall after completing a level. If something was to change, maybe make the difficulty increase more each time? Although I have to admit that I picked Easy.
I'm glad you liked it and it was not too hard to figure out how to play the game. I was a bit short in time and by biggest fear was that I had not had enough time to ensure there is enough feedback on your actions. Also I agree that there are some issues with drag-n-drop that would need more care. Currently it drops to the cell where your mouse pointer is, but actual visual feedback like a ghost placement would help I think.
Users need to be happy (high opacity) in order to click on the buy button. Provide them with a picture of the same color as the cursor in order to make them happy and then move the buy button so they click on it. Users lose happyness when they reach a picture of the wrong color or read a paragraph of text.
In my mind I would like them to have some better visual indication and/or sound effect when they get bored other than opacity. So yes there is room for improvement. :-)
Thank you for coming back and giving quality feedback. I do agree that the feedback to players is still not good enough and is what I would have worked on if I had more time during the weekend to work on LD.
I found that the game works on new versions of Firefox and Chrome. On Edge the layout collapses, probably because I used CSS Grid which is a rather new CSS feature. I don't have a Mac so I haven't made any testing on that - only Windows. Safari have no Windows version so I haven't tested on it.
Kudos for thinking wide in game idea and nice atmosphere. I had trouble understanding what my goal is and the mechanics. That can be both a negative and a positive thing. It adds to the mystery that I have no help on what the controls are or what the game is about along with the atmosphere. But I don't know if I replay the game, on what objective should I try to beat myself and how/why do I stay alive longer other than not using the AWSD-keys at all which seems like a boring tactic?
I like the interaction between the leaves and yet the seem to have some random behaviour. Also it is cool how realistically hard it is to move all leaves in the beginning even if you want to clean them all off. It looks like you managed well to pick a reasonable sized game idea and work an all aspects and deliver on all aspects like graphics, audio, mechanics etc.
At first interesting, but it got repetitive until I decided to try to lose the game. Maybe try to add some more graphics or background picture to make it more playful?
Cool game. I like that there is some strategic decisions in when and what to buy. And a intro scene that tells the story of the game.
I like that you chosen to experiment with an more original game idea. The cut scenes could have captions to make them more accessible to deaf and hard of hearing users like me. But then my games are unfortunately neither world leading in accessibility in the LD time constraint.
Simple, quick and fun game. It may be a bit slow at start, but soon it get more challenging and entertaining.
Great game idea and graphics. At the beginning it was fun to play but once you figured out how to solve it, I could repeat the same tactic on all levels. Turn on the lights in one room until people get unhappy and leave and then move to the next room. I didn't figure out what to do with the bathroom door. Maybe there are hidden ester eggs I didn't find?
Is it intended that this game is published in Compo? Or was it meant to go into Jam? Because at least as I understand the rules, use of 3rd party music/audio/graphics I think is only allowed in Jam?? (That said, it would still be a good Jam game)
Solid and addictive game. Sometimes I would have liked a more top down view as some tables were hard to click on when a customer is in the way, but maybe that is part of the game and what makes it overwhelming when you have too many things going on at the same time. :-)