Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → LMB
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 50 | Delay the inevitable | LD50: The Mages Massacre | compo | 283 | 3.48 | 3.51 | 3.26 | 3.57 | 2.00 | 3.34 | 3.17 | ||
| 2021 | 49 | Unstable | LD49: Homeward | compo | 193 | 3.64 | 3.40 | 3.42 | 3.73 | 3.31 | 3.26 | 3.77 | 3.66 | |
| 2021 | 48 | Deeper and deeper | LD48: Down the Rabbit Hole | compo | 184 | 3.77 | 3.88 | 3.38 | 3.88 | 3.11 | 3.29 | 2.98 | 3.44 | |
| 2020 | 46 | Keep it alive | LD46: The Lighthouse at the End of the Universe | compo | 869 | 3.00 | 2.92 | 2.31 | 3.31 | 2.94 | 3.18 | 2.08 | 2.90 | |
| 2019 | 45 | Start with nothing | LD45: Kongenital Kaiser | jam | ||||||||||
| 2019 | 44 | Your life is currency | LD44: Minter | compo | 143 | 3.56 | 3.31 | 3.56 | 3.64 | 2.79 | 2.91 | 3.27 | 3.18 | |
| 2018 | 43 | Sacrifices must be made | LD43: Super Space Sacrifice | compo | 452 | 2.76 | 2.34 | 2.06 | 2.54 | 2.52 | 2.84 | 2.37 | 2.52 | |
| 2018 | 41 | Combine 2 Incompatible Genres | Blind Faith | compo | 500 | 3.14 | 2.70 | 3.73 | 3.58 | 3.28 | 3.10 | |||
| 2017 | 40 | The more you have, the worse it is | Metal Fear | compo | 669 | 2.32 | 2.43 | 2.45 | 2.75 | 2.09 | 2.71 | 2.89 | 2.29 |
Quite entertaining! I've spent a good deal of time on it and still plan to play through it some more times. Great mood, sound and graphics help to build tension. I see the relationship with the theme, but it I think it is only marginal.
Nice job, thanks for making it!
Puzzles aren't really my thing, but it seems to be some nice ideas here. With some polishing, could be fun to play. The main points for improvement, in my opinion should be the controls and the graphics (even if you keep using placeholder graphics, try to make their meaning somehow more clear; I was constantly thinking things like "is this thing an empty space?")
Nice graphics and idea, but really hard to control! Also, for me it seems that "A" (shouting to kids) doesn't do anything. Could become a fun game to play with a little polishing.
Simple, effective and entertaining! I think it is only marginally related with the theme, but for sure you did a nice job!
Cute, simple, well-rounded game! Graphics and animation are top notch! Music worked pretty well, too (I didn't knew about Wolfram Tones!)
I was sure that was going to hate this game. It has so many elements of games I tend to dislike. Half an hour later I was still playing it and having fun! Really nice, things really worked well together!
My only suggestion: better instructions. It took me some time to understand those colored circles around the flying pieces. And perhaps the music could be less repetitive. I kinda liked it, but after 15 minutes it starts to not feel nice anymore :-)
Anyway, congratulations! Nice execution of a simple concept that worked very well for me.
**Update:** Just read your comments about planned-but-not-included features. Go for it! There is a lot of potential here!
@elemel Good point about the joy of discovery! I guess there are different types of players. I personally prefer not having to discover about the more fundamental mechanics of the game (though perhaps I may change my mind if there is some kind of narrative or riddle being told along the discovery -- and not saying that your game needs any narrative). Anyway, digressions apart, yeah, valid point.
I liked the idea very much, very good use of the theme! Sound effects were funny! Multiplayer support was a nice touch!
When playing, what missed most was feedback. Am I being hit? Did I hit him? The information is on the screen, but it's hard to look at my HP meter and at the play field at the same time. As you mentioned, "hitreg" isn't perfect either. I believe that if you improved these two points (feedback and hitting), the player experience would improve a lot!
I basically agree with @rngsilvercraft: the idea is nice (that's really a good interpretation of the theme), but the game is too short. I found the jumping a bit unnatural and I found no use for shooting (perhaps you just ran out of time to make it relevant -- this kinda happened with me :-) )
Good graphics and music, nice idea. I had the same issues mentioned by @thijs-tak, but just leaving the screen in its default size seemed to help a lot. I had some difficulty to understand what was going on. The ghosts for example? I suppose these are the ghosts of dead cats, but I couldn't understand why my cats were dying (in fact, I saw many more ghosts than I ever had cats, so perhaps they are not the ghosts of my ex-cats). I also believe there is a bug: often, when when I click in a cat, it seems to gets sold (I thought I had to drag them to the "sell box").
The tutorial was a nice addition, as were the quests. They help to give the game a "real game" feel.
@Khorm @mr-madcat Ops, so I was indeed responsible for the fate of all these kittens :-(
A good entry, I played 'till the end! Loved the alien graphics and sounds of aliens being rescued. The music works very well, too. Another really nice thing: for a 48-hour development, you ended up creating a good number of different levels, each of which feels unique (this gives a feeling of "this is a real, complete game" that I only dream to achieve in the future).
Has a few glitches, all very forgivable given the short development time. Regarding the theme: surely follows it, but (in my opinion) not in a "surprising" or particularly creative way.
All in all, kudos for you!
I also found the controls a bit cumbersome, but I am on the team of those who don't like to move with keyboard and aim with the mouse (many people seem to like it, doesn't work for me -- not in 2D, at least).
The concept of getting fatter and slower as you eat is very interesting: basically, there is trade-of in taking power ups :-)
Oh, and nice graphics!
I'd call your submission more a work of art (social critique, perhaps) than a game. I can enjoy it as such, but I can't really see it as a game per se. It is well done. Nice graphics. Sound fits well (repetitive, which makes sense in this case). Certainly moody.
I liked the field of view variation: it's a less obvious way to change the difficulty! Graphics are nice, but I really enjoyed the music I found it a bit too difficult for my taste. I had difficulty especially with the jumps. I could not find any obvious bug, which is always a good thing.
The default key mappings were very hard to use for me, but I could easily configure the way I wanted.
BTW, Linux version works, thanks for providing it!
I like the "multiple tamagotchis" concept, this new for me. I would prefer to have some goal, though. Thanks for sharing some technical details, too -- and congrats for using real equations! I think devs nowadays tend to just use Booleans and IFs everywhere. Some simple equations can enrich behaviors quite a bit!
A very solid submission! Feeling like a "real" game, not a jam development. Pretty graphics (including animation), nice sound, quite fun to play. Humorous, too: the cow talk is great!
I had some trouble with aiming (maybe the collisions aren't fully tuned, maybe I am just a bad player). At one time, the timer stopped to count days and no more enemies spawned. Other than that, I found no bugs. Great job, I am impressed! :-)
The hunger x fat conflict was a nice idea, though I found it *much* easier to "die" of hunger than of fatness. Suggestion: add some information about how hungry and how fatty I can get before dying. You don't even have to use fancy bars, just showing "Hunger: 25/100" would work. These things helps us players to understand what is going on and what we must prioritize. Music is very good! :-)
All in all, a nice simple game.
A nice, well polished game! You have all it all: interesting (if simple) gameplay, very good music, graphics that work, even a background story. The quotes were a nice touch (that one about Michael Jordan made my day :-) ). I found no bugs either, solid implementation. Congrats!
There are some bugs, as other commented. But, hey!, well done! I like how you found a simple mechanic based on a few elements and then explored these elements in different levels (I kinda tried to do this in my entry, but ran out of time to really explore the possibilities). Had some fun playing it, even though these puzzle-ish games aren't much of my liking usually.
Concerning the alarm: yeah, perhaps my biggest mistake in the jam was that I didn't leave any time for playtesting and balancing. I only played the game fully in the day after publishing! I had some good reasons to make the alarm increase even without enemies on the screen, but perhaps these reasons became bogus as I had to cut features due to the approaching deadline.
About the AI: sure, they are dumb! The funny thing is that I was so happy the time I had my first gunfight in the game that I immediately deemed the AI good enough and never looked back at it. I guess that some playtesting would have been good here, too.
Thanks y'all for commenting! I am learning some lessons already!
@artefare I also LOLed the first few times I played after adding the music :-) My main goal with the in-game music was to give some aural feedback about the alarm level (and I was pleased in this regard). Anyway I wasn't expecting any praise for the music. :-)
@calighula Showing bullet trajectories is the one additional feature I wanted to have implemented but I didn't have time to. I would still prefer to have spend time playtesting and balancing, but in terms of features not seeing clearly where the bullets are going is bad for the players. Thanks for commenting!
@ruthiepee Thanks for testing and commenting about the OSX version!
@tom-panton @gilborn Thanks for playing and commenting! Next time will try to end up with something more polished, with less glitches and bugs. I am very happy with Metal Fear, but I don't think it a fun game to play in its current state. On the other hand, I had some real fun playing much simpler entries from other jammers.
Minimalist game design is not my thing, that's for sure, but I want to find a better compromise.
@professor I believe this is my fault. I think I did all the recording and editing in mono and was in a hurry (additionally, I didn't even try to fix this using the audio features in my game engine). I'll try to learn more about audio before the next Ludum Dare!
That was a neat idea! I liked the way it started, with the little back story/tutorial. Too bad it was so short. It ends when it should be really starting! Please consider spending some more time on the concept, it got potential!
Hey, moral questions aside, this was a nice entry! Very good interpretation of the theme. I wished there were more cards, as it became repetitive after a few playthroughs (yeah, I know, the 72h limit :-) ). Anyway, well done: nice graphics and no bugs. Very different from the kind of games I usually play; it was nice to have to have some contact with this genre.
Nicey :-) Controls were a bit strange at first, then I kinda got used to them (though not completely). Simple concept that worked well in practice. Now, this is a matter of personal taste, but for me the game fits in a rather uncomfortable place: it feels too simple to make me want to spend more time on it, but too hard for me to enjoy it as a casual game. Anyway, that's just me, and I recognize that many people will find it more enjoyable than I did (and just to be clear: I didn't dislike this game! It's nicey :-) )
Music is pretty solid. The dragons behavior is interesting (thanks for the technical information about it -- long-time Reynolds fan here!), though perhaps the source of the difficulty I mentioned above. I missed a stronger connection with the theme, though.
Shooters are not exactly my cup of tea, but I recognize that overall you did a nice job here. I mean, it looks like a complete game. My greatest difficulty was understanding was on the screen (should I take that colorful flying thing or should I shoot it? :-) )
The demo mode was a very nice touch! Arcade feelings :-)
I had some moments of fun playing it. Not bad at all! It's quite challenging: I completed it, but it is on the limit of difficulty I'd usually find acceptable. I liked that the enemy ninjas have two different weapons. Implementation is solid, I found no bugs!
That's a nice idea, very fitting to the theme. Graphics are superb and the sound is also very good. But I found the game itself a bit lacking, it didn't entertain me for too long. Felt like if my actions and choices didn't really had much effect on the outcome. You are clearly creative and have the talent to make a nice looking and nice sounding game! On your next attempt, aim for developing a more compelling gameplay -- you may achieve something big!
The best one I tried so far in terms of fun! As others have pointed out, achievements tended to get on the way. Also, I found it a bit hard to switch weapons (or, at least, to select the weapon I intended to -- hmm, the more you have... OK, I guess I can forgive this).
Thanks and kudos for making this one! Very nice!
Cool game, with a creative interpretation of the theme!
Like those of you who can make nice games using only simple geometric shapes. I should try it someday :thinking:
Very nice music, I especially liked the "victory theme"! One thing I didn't enjoy was having to wait some seconds for actions to complete. Also, nice writing!
Excellent game, very solid entry! Very nice how new mechanics are introduced in a natural way, as part of the level design itself. These games with multiple characters with different skills always remind me of *The Lost Vikings* :slight_smile: Enjoyed a lot, thanks for the game!
Wonderful idea!
Good game! Good level design, good controls. Didn't like the graphics at first, loved them after three minutes! (BTW, the view of the tower between levels was great!) Sound was OK (though some music would have helped a lot to create a mood). In the suggestion front, I can think of two things. First, the game started to feel a bit repetitive after some time (which is perfectly understandable for a 48-hour game!) Second, those big guys with big swords. I found it really hard to know when they are going to attack. For me, it felt as a matter of luck -- I was mad the two times I had to restart from level one because I was killed by the two of them in top level. Also, as other have pointed out, there is some visual glitch with their attack animation.
But a very solid entry for sure! Feels like a real, complete, polished game. Had fun playing it!
A well-made game, with good controls (it's short, but while it lasts it is cool). Graphics are obviously simple, but work well (animation, in particular, is quite good). Sound worked well, too. I have two main complaints/suggestions. First, I found the controls very non-ergonomic (no way I can use WASD, space baser and the mouse with only two hands :slight_smile:). The second is the theme: I really couln't get the relation between the game and the LD43 theme). But, yeah, cool game.
@organicpencil I hopped no one would find my game before I updated the description :slight_smile: Anyway, now it's updated! Will take a look at your entry: I liked the graphics of the title screen! (Serious!)
@jlv Thanks for the comments! Some very true advice there!
@dob @pcmaster Thanks for playing. The wasn't meant to be that hard, it just came our like this I didn't had much time left for balancing. The only thing I managed to do was to increase the chance of killed enemies to drop power-ups, but since killing an enemy is hard on the first place, I recognize this doesn't help much.
@vinay-rao Thanks a lot for all the comments, suggestions and detailed description of your experience! Also, nice to see that someone managed to reach the toll (regardless of what happened there)! :smile:
Nice game to play, good graphics and sound! This oxygen mechanics worked well (along with the firing rate varying with the number of crew members). Good job!
Here are some suggestions:
* Why using the mouse to fire? If am moving with the keyboard, I'd rather also fire with the keyboard. * I found the allies a bit distracting. Not sure how to fix this, but the fact is that they make it harder to focus on the things that can kill me.
Thanks for developing and posting it!
Interesting concept, really nice idea and a creative interpretation of the theme also! Some suggestions for the next LDs:
* Some more feedback to the player about what is going on would be nice, In particular, I am not sure if beat the game or not (I reached the guy saying the boss will beat me; looked like the start (or end :smile:) of the game, and I couldn't find anything else to do, but who knows?) * Character movement didn't feel natural * Key mapping wasn't great, in my opinion. For example, there are too many controls on the left hand (WASD, Q, only left shift works for running), it's hard to use them all comfortably. * I found some glitch: Press A and D simultaneously and the hero starts looking at the wrong direction (as if moonwalking :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:). Also, walking and shooting really quickly makes the bullets self-destroy (or destroy each other).
Not sure if I'd call it really a game, but I sure had fun! Writing is great; the strongest point in my opinion. Maybe that's why don't know if I'd call it a game. It kinda feels like some form of literature to me... I don't know, maybe a short essay about game clichés :slight_smile:
Music and graphics are excellent, too, and create a very nice ambience! Very well-polished. Congrats!
As others said, quite a mood difference from the title screen to the game itself :smile: I really enjoyed the 2D graphics (both on the title screen and the guy giving instructions): quite elegant programmer art! Sound isn't bad either, gives the right ambience, ate least.
Nice and fun! Loved the cheesy lines from the pilots -- very appropriate for the genre! :smile:
Wow :slight_smile:
A *really* good game, in all aspects.
The only thing I missed were instructions -- it took me some time to understand "free moves" versus "normal moves".
Writing was perhaps a bit cheesy/cliché, but worked well. Sound, graphics, mechanics... these were all very good! Kudos!
I like how the calm ambient music constrasted with the fast-pacedness of the work!
@brinkhousegames Oh, I did! 'twas weird :smile:
One could say that the gameplay is shallow, but it doesn't have to be deep in this case. To me, this game is all about firing up your thrusters and discovering a fascinating world!
Beautiful game, not only visually (but, sure. *also* visually). Great writting, too. One of the most satisfying Compo entries I ever played!
Nice, easy to grasp, fun to play. Simple, but feels like a complete game. I missed a bit of "strategic thinking" ("depth" as others said): as it is, the game consists of memorizing which key corresponds to which spell and then doing some hand-eye coordination to hit the monsters. Someone already suggested more spells, like one damaging all enemies on the screen; this would help on this "strategic thinking" I am asking for (though you may want to think of other ways to achieve it).
Anyway, nice job. The implementation feels solid, I didn't find any bug. Graphics and audio are nice.
Somehow, it was quite funny to play for some time. I especially liked the icons ("auto-fire", "more money", etc): they were very clear, easy to discern. Good thing you focused on them (which are very relevant for the gameplay) instead of, say, the cars (which can be simple boxes without degrading the gameplay).
@saladon @koemeterion Thanks for playing! I didn't expect any one actually finding the game before I had the instructions in place! Anyway, I just improved the game description, including instructions.
@paul59 Sorry! :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:
@cheesepencil You can buy better tools in the office! Though they can break, they are much faster at fixing machinery. Thanks for playing!
@charlesschar Thanks for playing and for the comments. I guess you hold the current non-developer World Record! :medal:
Cool, had some fun playing it! Might need some balancing and tweaks as others said, but everything fits well in place and works. A solid compo entry!
Sound was very atmospheric! (Really, no pun intended!)
Long time I haven't player a text adventure! :slight_smile:
Your interpretation of the theme was very nice, maybe the most creative I saw so far. If you think that an interactive fiction author is by nature a storyteller, a story about using stories as currency has a beauty I didn't see in any other game I tried so far. :thumbsup:
The game itself felt a bit short and simplistic for my taste, tough -- which is understandable, especially given that you were not feeling well and didn't have much time to work on it. I enjoyed playing it anyway, thanks for making it!
I saw no real reason for having to aim before shooting. As others said, it felt cumbersome. Otherwise, very nice for a compo entry! The graphics are nice on their own way and those story screens in the beginning and end (yeah, I finished it!) worked really well. The level design is also cool, several little nice touches. There are some glitches here and there (like a brick failing to keep a the button pressed), but, again, very nice for a compo entry! Kudos!
Not bad for compo! I liked the mood: graphics and audio worked well in this regard! Gameplay itself could be polished, but it works well as a simple game.
One concrete example of gameplay polishing: A couple of times I was cornered by enemies and could not get rid of them (in one case I had a weapon, in the other I didn't). Even though I had a good deal of health, a simple mistake (being cornered) was effectively a game over. To me (and most other players, I read somewhere), this is too much a punishment. I mean, if I did something wrong, punish me, but give me some chance to fix things up and remain in my eternal punishment :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:
Cool, fun to play, especially with a drawing tablet :slight_smile: Loved your interpretation of the theme. Sound is very good. Graphics are simple but fitting to your idea. Nice job!
Bas-cat-ball :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:
I considered a time or two to do what you did with the audio, but I didn't had the boldness to proceed. Worked well :slight_smile:
@itsbamboo @aemiliu5 Thanks for the kind words! I still believe there may be a good game trapped inside this :-) Maybe I'll revisit the idea in the future.
I am not a fan of this type of mechanics, but I enjoy worldbuiliding, so I found things to like here. :slight_smile:
Anyway, personal tastes aside, this is very well-done! A good, solid, short experience. Gorgeous graphics and effects, great mood (as everyone said). All in all, one of the better LD46 games I played so far.
I can't really think of many suggestions. I found the pixelated text a bit difficult to read. Well, not really difficult, but somehow uncomfortable. (But it fits perfectly with the visual style of the game, so I cannot complain too much about it).
Congrats!
I hate those days in which my dog is eaten by a shark!
Nice game, enjoyed playing it! Graphics and animations are *really* very nice (cool attention to the details, like dog legs and guy body disappearing when swimming).
Suggestion (the big one suggestion): the one single that often ruined my experience were the controls. This mixed keyboard/mouse controls were too complicated for my taste. I'd suggest using keys like 1, 2 and 3 for each of the items, so that I can easily use the one I want. With the current control scheme I often had one item selected but wanted to use a different one, so I had to take one hand away from the keyboard to the mouse, my attention away from Dodger to my mouse pointer, my mind away from the action to focus on the controls... I have a *strong* feeling that your game would feel *much* better with the control scheme like the one I am suggesting.
Minor suggestion: add instructions (even if only here on the game description page) telling how exactly the ball works. It took me some time to find out that Dodger will run to the ball only if it is on his line of sight. I believe this works well as a game mechanic, but it was a bit frustrating until I found out how it works.
But I am wondering if should report your game as breaking Compo rules. You should have done it alone, but you admitted having help from Barley :thinking:
Just kidding! :smile: Very nice game, thanks for making and sharing it!
As others kind of said, I believe this could become significantly with a few more hours of work (looking at things bouncing is still entertaining after all those years! :smile:). For example, I can't lose, can I?
Interesting interpretation of the theme!
You probably know this, but with enough gladiators and bounciness, the simulation explodes. (But great that you killed gladiators after some time, so that this doesn't crash the game!) I was consistently getting ~7000x combos at some point, with the simulation exploding every time.
Thanks for making and sharing the game!
This a very well-polished game! Nice title screen, cool graphics and sound. Simple mechanics, but they are fun for a while.
@fryer @james-beninger About the Ctrl+W issue: :face_palm:! (As a workaround, you can use the arrow keys to move. Or, better still, use a controller!)
@nick-rafalski Yes, you are right about the 8-way aiming. One of my self-imposed, secret goals for this Ludum Dare was to learn how to implement proper analog controls, so I optimized the input for controllers.
Maybe I should have used a different control scheme for keyboard users. Perhaps something like left/right turn the ship, up moves it forward, down moves it backward (or makes a 180-degree turn). Not ideal, but probably better.
Thanks for the comment!
@cheesepencil Thanks for the comments! Good to have some feedback about the gamepad controls! :video_game:
@meelo Hey, thanks for the suggestions! You are probably right about having the ship "move along arcs". In the beginning I didn't have a clear vision of how this game would play. It wasn't meant to be so everything-happens-in-circles-around-the-lighthouse. But now, in retrospect, I guess it could have made sense to use a polar coordinate system for everything, including controls.
(And I am writing this comment while listening to your game's music in background :musical_score:)
@tgb20 Thanks for the feedback! Indeed controls were optimized (well, maybe "optimized" is an overstatement) for analog controllers. If you have one around, you should be able to use it even in the browser version. But, yeah, lesson learned, next time I shall give more love for the controls, especially for keyboard controls.
Nice creepy atmosphere, thanks mostly to the audio, but the whole situation is creepy if you think about it (because it's all pointless... keeping an alien hidden from everyone, locked in a closet, feeding him only pizza and not ever doing any actual petting!). I liked the graphics also. My biggest suggestion would be to give more feedback to us players so that we can better estimate when mom is more likely to come.
Nice idea, and overall well-done. I thought it was too hard, didn't have enough time to do what the plants were asking. I also missed some clearer feedback about when the plant was about to die (it looks healthy in a second and then is dead on the next instant).
Nice one, overall a very polished compo game! Loved the audio and graphics! The gameplay felt a bit repetitive and "random". By "random" I mean that I could not see any way to use strategies against the various enemies, because it didn't feel like they had any strategy on their side. But again, congrats for the game. It is hard to have something so "looking like a real game" in such a short time!
A bit weird, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Graphics are good (programmer's art!), especially the character and those clouds in the background. By the way, the clouds and the music are quite moody, gives me a feeling of helplessness. In terms of gameplay, I didn't found any good reason for moving the boxes around with my hands (I just used the boat movement to control which box I wanted inside and outside the boat).
Congrats on your first Compo entry! :slight_smile: Had some good minutes of fun with it!
Fun fact: the "AI" on your game made me recall of the name of a very old DOS game, "Bouncing Babies", so I looked for an online version of it. Your game is *way* better :wink:
The music is quite good, actually! Sounded medieval and stuff :slight_smile:
Otherwise, a simple game that works, no obvious bugs, etc. I'd say it's a nice entry for a first!
Kudos for your first game! A simple one, for sure, but it has a soul :slight_smile:
Writing is very good, really funny! (That headline about the 5-second rule made me laugh out loud!)
I am afraid I don't have much useful feedback. I could say that the gameplay itself felt repetitive quickly, but looking at your replies to previous commenters I see you are well-aware of this.
So, keep learning and keep creating games!
Hey, you made something interesting here! Nice concept: a simple, small set of mechanics that can be combined in infinite interesting ways. (I want to make a game that fits into this description someday :smile:)
Consider polishing it and developing the concept further!
Two suggestions:
1. The "gun" (or whatever is this thing that you shoot with left clicks and select the mode with the mouse wheel) doesn't add much to your design. 2. I found the controls a bit difficult to grasp, especially when using keyboard keys other than WASD/arrows. I think this could work better: left click to move the herd; right click to make the herd circle. Do these clicks on the player itself to call the herd to tour position or to circle yourself. If you want to keep the "gun", middle clicks should work.
Thanks for making and sharing this game! I enjoyed playing it!
Beautiful game, really! Music is very, very good. The writing worked very well. Music and writing created a very nice atmosphere. Simple but effective mechanics. Kudos!
Simple, nice and fun! Congrats on your Ludum Dare debut! Yes, please come again for Ludum Dare 47! :smile:
If you want some criticism, this game is a good example of what I call "gratuitous use of 3D". This is very common in Ludum Dare: games that are really 2D but for some reason were implemented with 3D graphics. In my opinion, your game would look *so* much better with simple 2D graphics than with simple 3D graphics! (But of course, you are the developer, so this is your call. Maybe you want to learn how to do things in 3D, maybe you like the aesthetics of simple 3D graphics... plenty of good reasons for using 3D.)
In its current state, I'd say it doesn't really work as game, but I must congratulate you for trying something different here! From the games I looked at so far, this is the most interesting one in terms of mechanics, simulation and even gameplay. By "interesting", I mean that they have good potential, even though you apparently (and understandably!) didn't have the time to polish it.
The interpretation of theme is quite nice also.
Some suggestions for improving the game and how it is received by the players:
* Take some care to make it more easily playable. On Linux, I had to run the game as `LD_LIBRARY_PATH=./SFML/lib ./ludem-dare-46` so that it would find the SFML libs. (From others' comments, apparently the Windows and Mac versions have similar issues.) * @hanamigi, complained about his trees catching fire spontaneously. I guess what happened here is that this player used "the nature powers" too much and got punished by the gods with a solar flare. But I know(?) this only because I watched your video, and there I saw a text that appeared *very* quickly (had to pause the video to be able to read it) saying there was a solar flare, *and* I read your game description telling about god punishments. For someone simply playing your game, the trees are indeed spontaneously catching fire, because there is no in-game feedback about what is going on. * Later: Ah, I think I got it: for all punishments you show the message as long as the punishment is active. This makes sense for things like "global warming", which last for a long time, but the solar flare seems to be active for just the fraction of a second during which the fires are started. * Overall, the game does not help the player to understand the mechanics. What does that red/black bar mean? What do each of the buttons do? (The fourth one, "stop the time" was actually very hard to figure out.) * The available "nature powers" don't play well with the lava within the context of the game. The "make things float" and "stop the time" powers are technically cool, but don't have any use for the game AFAICT. The rain and ice powers are more useful, but I didn't see any interesting interactions between them and the lava. (Again, I am talking about things in the context of the game: sure rain and ice help to stop the lava, but these are a very simple interaction that does not lead to interesting strategies or surprising results for the player.) * Just brainstorming: what about a more dynamic setup, like the lava source point changing from time to time ("the lava god decided to visit a different place")? Or a dynamic environment ("the earth goddess decided to create some more land")? Maybe this could make the gameplay more dynamic.
Thank you very much for making and sharing this game! While I can't say I liked it as a game, it made me wonder about game design in ways other games didn't. And, hey!, this is a gamedev jam, so take this a huge compliment! :thumbsup:
@catomag And thanks for the feedback about the feedback! Really, really, *really* happy to help fellow humans :slight_smile:
I essentially agree with @hunter-x: I think what you have here works quite well, but would still need some work and additions to become a more interesting game.
Some comments:
* Controls worked well for me on an X-Box controller. * Web version ran smoothly on Firefox. * I think at some I flew a couple hundred of meters (or feet?) above the water surface, then the controls went weird and I could not return to the water. * A design philosophy question: I kept the trash compactor button pressed almost all the time, because that was easier than thinking when to turn it on, and had no drawback. * I was feeling like "hey, why do I have to do this? It would be better if the trash compactor was always active". * Curiously, I don't feel like this in shooting games with infinite ammunition, which have the same issue. Go figure. (BTW, I am guilty of creating shooting games in previous Ludum Dares which have this same issue -- if this is really an issue.) * I'd say you did a good job creating an underwater feeling. Graphics and audio worked well together in this regard!
Nice one! I loved the graphics (super cute characters, simple but effective animation, background is equally simple but adds a lot to the mood). Sound worked well, too (it's not good music _per se_, but worked very well for the game). Simple and interesting mechanics. Canonical example of "the sum being larger than its parts"!
What I missed: First, the battles felt too random in the sense that the opponents don't seemed much smart when selecting their "soldiers". Second, I think that I won the game, but there was no message telling me that!
Oh, and a nice interpretation of the theme! I really tried to come with more creative ideas, but could not think of any non-obvious idea that was also fun. Hats off! :tophat:
You should be proud indeed, this *is* a game! I had fun, thanks for making it!
Some random comments:
* I missed the typewriter sound when pressing backspace. (Really, felt a bit weird to fix errors without the same feedback I get for other keys). * Speaking of sound, I see you mentioned freesound.org in your tools list. As far as I understand, this by itself is OK, but please take a look at the derivative works explanation on the [rules page](https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/rules), to make sure you are complying with them. (I, on your position, would have added an explanation on how I changed any downloaded sound samples in order to be very open about it. And please, don't take me wrong: this is not an accusation, or anything like this!) * I liked the idea of buying "tickets" to fish on other places. Doesn't add that much to the gameplay, but makes the game feels more like a "real" game. :slight_smile: * Don't belittle your graphics! I agree they are probably not good enough for an AAA game, but they are not bad. Programmer art is not a bad thing! * You could easily make this into a commercial "typing training game". Would likely not be a super sales success, but I guess it could sell some and would be a nice experience for you if you ever intend to make a commercial game. (But I am saying this without first-hand experience, I never published a commercial game!)
All in all, a very nice Ludum Dare debut! Hope to see you again on the next edition! :smile:
@breadstix I am not in the position to give The One True Interpretation of the Compo Rules, but _my_ interpretation is that all assets (except fonts) must be either created from scratch during the 48 hours, or must be derivative work of some other preexisting asset. I'd say there is a good deal of judgment on what constitutes "real" derivative work, but I think the fact that the asset "is there for everyone doesn't change anything.
I really didn't mean to make you concerned! I am pretty sure you did everything in good faith and you are doing things in the spirit of the compo! Should you withdraw somehow? Again, I am not the one running Ludum Dare, so I can give only my opinion: just relax, maybe do some more research on what the rules really mean and do different next time if you conclude you did "wrong" now.
One of things I like most about Ludum Dare is the community. I always learn a lot from the comments I get and I try to help the others to learn too. In my book, you are a good member of the community, not someone trying to break the for fame and fortune. So, relax and keep learning! (And if you happen to be one of the top games of the compo, well, then maybe contact the organizer and get everything straight to decide what to do.)
Good game! Got my crown, so I guess I liked it :slight_smile:
Random comments (Edit: nothing new here, these points have been brought by others already):
* Game is sort of simple, but super well-polished. You clearly put a lot of effort on things like visual and aural feedback, nice animations, and some juicy things like the effect when a fish bites. * The music itself wasn't bad at all, but I think it didn't fit the game well. I don't know, I think I was expecting something ore relaxing on a fishing game. * Speaking of music: I think it was too loud in comparison with the sound effects. It was a bit hard to hear the effects. Also, my fishing memories are all more silent, hearing more the environment than anything else. The loud music broke the atmosphere to me. * I felt that the game progressed too slowly, especially in the beginning. I probably should have invested in dogs before :smile: * I think there's a bug with traps: I had a couple of them disappearing. I forgot to test properly, but I think the problem is: if I am already carrying a trap and I try to take one from the ground, one of them is gone.
All in all a very nice game! Kudos!
Cool game! Very complete, even with a boss fight and a nice victory screen!
Random thoughts:
* Is Chuck Challenger an Oompa Loompa? * Nice character design! (Not much common to see non-generic characters in a compo game that is not story-centered!) * Music is good, sound effects worked well enough (sorta funny). * Boss battle: I lost a couple of times until I (by luck) ended up in a position in which apparently _Malpractice Mole_ would never hit me. * No bugs while I was playing.
Nice game all-in-all! Congrats!
Great simulator! I felt like a real growing root! :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:
OK, seriously, not sure I would call this a game, but it was a nice, if somewhat psychedelic, experience for a while.
The root rendering is pretty slick. The sound also worked well for me, including the whistle! The music variation depending whether you are moving or stopped was nice.
And, yes, the gamepad works! :video_game:
@chumzy Ouch, that's the second time in a row I made a game with this Ctrl+W issue :face_palm:
You can also move with arrow keys also, anyway.
@quinn-patrick You raised some really good points here! Thanks for playing and for the feedback!
@magna Honest question: did you try the "instructions" screen? Or it was so hidden you didn't saw it existed? Or it was too confusing? Or it had too much text and you you gave up reading it? Or...?
@skoopidy Thanks for the comments! I totally agree that the game is lacking better feedback. This was on top of my TODO list at the end of the 48 hours. I added the "alarms" to tell when Armadillo is under attack and when it is about to leave, but there was a lot more I could have done to improve the situation awareness to the player.
Creating a more complete, sellable version of some game is something I want to someday. Maybe this one could be a good candidate for further development. :thinking:
@alessandra Thanks for playing! Visual and audio feedback is my most received (and well deserved!) complaint -- thanks for bringing some different kinds of feedback I could add! I also appreciate the comments about the level generation!
@agrdev Thanks for the comments! I've been trying to make my Ludum Dare games easier to understand. One thing I never tried was to add an in-game tutorial (like, playing hints while playing, instructions on demand...) Maybe it's about time to try something like this. Would probably help you and other players (like me) who prefer not to read instructions :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:
@the-neon-shark Wow, this is some first-class feedback! Thank you *so* much! I am getting more and more inclined to work on a post-compo version of this game, so I've been thinking in ways to improve it. Your suggestions are overall aligned with my own ideas, which probably signs a good way to go on the next iteration. But you sure mentioned a thing or two that didn't think of! Super useful comment!
In the name good discussion, I'll mention the one point I very much intend to diverge from your suggestions: the mini-map. I was intentionally trying to create a feeling of "I must take care to not get lost". I think this can play well with the tension between exploring but needing to back to the driller before it departs. I actually added one subtler cue about Armadillo's location: the game sound is spatial, so can actually (er, sorta) hear where Armadillo is. Admittedly, this spatial sound didn't work very well, but I'd like to pursuit this route of keeping the player worried about remembering the way back. (But if this fails, I agree the mini-map would be a nice addition).
Not bad, but has a few rough edges:
* Some instructions would be nice. Took me ages to find out how to make the shop work. * I am personally a hatter of this mixed keyboard-mouse controls. It makes me feel that I need three hands to properly play the game. I think it would be much better to use the pick with a key instead of with the mouse. (Also, you can allow both the mouse and a key if you wish, so you can make everyone happy. Same for arrow keys versus WASD.) * Controls were a bit clunky sometimes. At one point, my character was jumping over and over again even without input. After I pressed keys randomly and frantically for for some time it worked again. * I think it took too many hits to mine stuff, it felt too laborious to me. I would liked better if, say, my golden pick would break ruby stones faster.
Other than that, it's a nice game. Feels rather complete for a compo entry, actually.
Played till the end, BTW! (Recognized my favorite game engine by the default, blurry font on the "congratulations" screen :laughing:)
These Pico-8 games are so impressive :smile:
A _very_ good game! Sound and graphics are very good for the platform, the game mechanic is quite nice. Also, perhaps the the most creative interpretation of the theme I saw so far! No bugs either.
Voltaire was hard! I beat him only with light-cheating: pausing the game and pre-planning my finger movements in advance!
Sorta like @jrevel mentioned above, I found it extremely hard to internalize the idea that my controls where moving the empty space. Even after I understood that this is the way it worked, I apparently had some kind of block: my brain and my fingers were not working together to make the right play! (I found this amusing... perhaps because in games I normally control something, and in this case I was controlling "the nothing"?)
Thanks for making this game, really enjoyable!
I don't see many of these "building games" on Ludum Dare and they tend to be quite bad. I don't know why, maybe this kind of game needs a certain critical mass of content to remain interesting for a significant amount of time? (And of course the time limit for the compo does not allow for much content.)
But, anyway, your game is definitely not one of the bad ones! Some more polishing would be nice, as would some better controls (e.g., to control the direction of the drills, which works but is a bit unintuitive). But it works as a game and I had some fun playing it. In fact, I played it, and then played again!
On the second playthrough it already started to feel repetitive (perhaps the content thing I said above), but the core experience you implemented felt solid to me.
The bottom line: you chosen a very challenging genre and still managed to do quite well. Considering this was your first Godot game, sounds like an accomplishment to me!
Oh, the music was very nice, too! As some mentioned, it gets repetitive after some time, but this is 100% forgivable for a compo game!
Very good and polished game. Super pretty, super moody. Thanks for making a Linux version available! :penguin:
Very, very nice graphics! The dwarf is gorgeous! :smile:
I liked the level design, lots of nice details (including that treasure hidden at plain sight on the first screen).
I found it easy to get to the end, but hard to get the treasures along the way (which is an interesting take on difficulty).
My biggest complaint would be the controls, for two reasons:
1) I have only two hands :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: Seriously: I need one hand to control the direction, another hand to jump, and yet another one to use the mouse. Maybe jumping with the right mouse button could work better?
2) I found it really difficult to get those wall jumps right. It was a matter of luck for me, actually. (Maybe you could have added some walljumping instructions to the otherwise excellent tutorial?) Overall a very polished game for the compo! Kudos!
Wow, really really impressive for a compo entry! Very nice and fluid animations, great dark atmosphere. Extremelly well-polished overall.
Controls were mostly good, but I found hard to reach a few certain platforms.
I liked the sound effects. The music itself is good, but I think a "darker" music would be a better match for the game.
At a certain point I started to think that my biggest complain would be that the game was too long. Then I reached level 1, level 0, level -1 and gave up at level -2. Is there an ending after all?
Anyway, kudos! Very solid and fun game!
@scalphamission No need for a boss, a written message would be fine! (By the way, I am not suggesting that you should have added a "congratulations" message. It's all about implementing whatever we think will give us the best return in the short time we have -- and in my opinion you did a very good job prioritizing features for your game!)
Nice idea, great mood (graphics, sound and writing working well together!). I found it hard to read the text while dodging -- especially the longer bits of text. It also took me some time to understand the "sync" mechanic.
Interesting idea, different from most games I saw so far! Has a few rough edges, but generally it is well done, too!
I managed to get to the bottom! :smile:
Some random comments:
* It took me some time to understand that I can fix rooms. * It seems I was always short of plastics, maybe some additional balancing would be great (but I empathize, I never left much time to work on balancing on my Ludum Dare games) * Two times I had to restart because apparently the camera went lost or something like that. * Building rooms sideways seemed useless to me. * The game felt shallow (joke intended, offense not intended!), there seems to be one optimal strategy, which doesn't give much space to making interesting decisions while playing (case in point: why bother building sideways?). _But_ I kept thinking that with an additional mechanic or two this game could become _really_ interesting. * The game doesn't benefit at all from being 3D. You could probably do a 2D version in less time and use these extra hours for balancing and adding this mechanic or two. (Of course, you want to learn/practice/work in 3D that's fine! I just don't think it is the best choice for this game.)
Hey, and congrats for your fifth Ludum Dare in a row!
The game looks and sounds great! I also love mom's(?) message to Rory, very cute :slight_smile:
Gameplay didn't felt so good. It's basically going up until you have just a little over half stamina, return home, repeat. I agree with @super-hadoken's comment and his suggestions. (Incidentally, I reached the second cabin doing just as he did.)
Alternatively, I guess I could enjoy the experience if it had more places to visit and a story unfolding, or even just memories of previous strolls coming back. (Of course we can only make so much in 48 hours...)
Found no bugs.
Very polished game all around! Nice puzzles, really good graphics (so simple, so effective!) and music, fun story.
I am not a fan of puzzles (to say the least), but this was a cool, short experience that I enjoyed.
The game is very pretty, graphics and animations are really nice. Sound worked well, too. Execution overall I'd say is good. It is well-polished and bug-free.
My biggest gripe is that the game felt extremely grindy to me. The amount of busywork I have to do for each "unit of satisfaction" I get is too high. I see you added portals and drills to the game (perhaps to mitigate that), but I only managed to get them after a good deal of time playing.
Other smaller notes:
* Combat didn't feel very satisfying. I few times I managed to hit-and-run until I killed an enemy without getting hurt. But most often I was just clicking as fast as I could. * I mistakenly clicked on "Quit" once and lost all my progress :slight_frown: * Took me some time to find out I had to click and hold to leave the cave.
@joeshanahan
> As for the progress being lost, that sounds like a bug! Progress should be saved every time you change floor, and loaded again on startup.
Oh, I think I must apologize then! It was probably my mistake here! The state was probably saved as you said and I didn't notice it. When this happened I was not very far into the game, so I didn't had any upgraded equipment or placed any portals or anything that would stand out if the progress was saved. I just (unfairly!) assumed my progress was lost.
For what is worth, just tried the game again and my portal is still there :wink: (and this saving thing is a very nice touch, by the way!)
All the best for you and sorry again for being unfair!
Simple, little game that works fairly well for what it tries to be!
The sprites are quite nice, but what I liked most graphically were the light effects. Those luminescent fishes in the deeper areas are super good-looking!
Controls felt really good. I was expecting a simple 8-direction control scheme, but what you did here worked better for your game.
The second "barrier" of jellyfishes was quite a challenge. Took me several attempts to cross it.
In summary, quite nice for a game with such small scope. You should be happy with the results, indeed! :smile:
Cute game, but quite thelassophobic!
I found the controls a bit on the hard side (especially hard to do "pick grabings"). Was also a bit too hard to my taste: too easy to drown and when I die I lose all the crystals.
But, hey!, it _is_ a game, complete, without bugs, in 48 hours! :thumbsup:
That was a crazy one :smile:
Interesting idea with graphics that are nice on their own way (not an euphemism!).
Random comments:
* I didn't understand how the "generation" affects the minions. * Controls felt strange sometimes. I couldn't pinpoint exactly why, but felt as if sometimes I would click on a minion and it would not be selected. (And I would not notice that, because the marker that identifies the selected one is not much flashy.) * I reached the end, yay!
Some impressive stuff in here! Loved the enemy design, the variety of enemies, and how each enemy type looks and feels so unique! Well, graphics in general look very good. Music and sound also worked very well.
I found the game too difficult for my taste, and I think the main reason is because when I move my ship to the right, it gets closer to the right edge of the screen, and therefore I don't have enough time to react to incoming enemies and shots. Many games do the opposite: if you move to the right, you actually appear more to the left of the screen, so you can see more of what lies ahead. I this would work really good for your game!
I had some fun on the negative levels, too (going to the left) :laughing: It was easier, for sure!
Kudos! Very solid compo entry. Could be a _really_ nice space shooter with some additional work on balancing, controlling, and maybe some additional content.
By reading your description of the game and looking at the game itself, I'd say you are very aware of what works and what doesn't in the game (and this is a super positive point for you!)
Still, I need do say the graphics and animations are gorgeous, wonderful for a compo game!
And as someone who is very-much-more-a-programmer-than-an-artist, I daresay you are not very far away of being able to program some cool games! Keep learning! :thumbsup:
Gauntlet, but better :slight_smile: (Really, I never enjoyed Gauntlet's quarter-devouring mechanics... Brubnar works better to me).
Cool game, plays well, straightforward, no bugs... I can't really think of any reasonable improvement (considering it's a compo entry). Maybe the weakest point is that it gets repetitive too soon (but again, not bad at all for a compo entry).
Some things I like especially:
* The music and sound gives me arcade vibes. Sound gives good feedback about what is happening around you (hit wall, was hit..) * Funny writing. Intro was very nice! * Enemies are really well implemented. I like how they "jump back" when hit, and how the mages flee from your blows.
Good game, congrats!
First of all: this is one of the nicest interpretations of the theme I have seen! Really interesting idea! Game is nice too, I played it for quite a long time (until I found everything).
Some points:
* Nice graphics! * It was a bit confusing to me that the large discoveries do not disappear after being unearthed (as the small ones do). * Gameplay was very relaxing initially, but turned slightly stressful (or work-like) later, when almost everything was discovered and I was basically clicking madly to find that last coin. ("That last coin" is figurative, the game started feeling worse more or less after I finished the three big discoveries.) * This coincides with my change of strategy: in the beginning I felt like someone digging an archaeologic site, carefully removing layers of earth as I followed some object. In the final part I was more like drilling, going deeper at rnadom points. * By the way, that exposed t-Rex tail in the beginning of the game, and the fact that it gradually goes to lower layers worked beatifuly as a concealed tutorial. Beautiful design! * As others said, I think this could work well as a mobile/touch game. * The coloring of the layers was confusing sometimes ("hmm, is this color above or below that one?") * Whenever the borders of many different layers were close to each other, this made playing on that part of the screen fell worse. It was difficult to understand how deep I was, it was almost impossible to dig as a proper archaeologist (and instead I just clicked rapidly). Maybe if you require a certain distance between borders (like, to require a gentle digging slope, forbidding "deep wells"). * I suspect that the game would work better if there were less layers. (Better in the sense that it would tend to feel more like in the beginning of the game, which I liked more.)
Thanks for making this game! A nice one!
Nice little game! Simple mechanic that is actually fun for the duration of the game! The game has a nice atmosphere, with the music, visuals and the storytelling bits working well together.
I agree with most other commenters: nice idea, some good technical achievements, but needs polishing to become more enjoyable.
I think the one-minute time limit was too short, it didn't give me enough time to understand what was going on and learn to play the game more effectively. I'd say this was the biggest issue with the game. (About this: "Now that you have collected x gold in the free play mode, try the 1-minute challenge")
My only miner once got stuck. (In general the pathfinding worked pretty well, as others said.)
Seems this was your first Ludum Darem right? So, welcome and see you on the next one!
I didn't play the game (don't have a Windows machine around), but I just had to stop by to say that I loved the title :laughing:
Game indeed plays nice on Wine! (Thanks, @pizzasgood!)
Cool game, fun to play.
I don't have anything to suggest that others haven't said yet: didn't like to restart the whole game after dying, jetpack was a bit too strong and took some time to feel natural, Sparta kick was not very useful (though was a fun moment)!
Great Ludum Dare debut!
Good game overall, interesting mechanics that worked well. My main suggestion: currently there is no incentive for killing enemies. This idea of kill them from below only is interesting, but I have zero incentive to risk my life just to kill an enemy that is already behind.
Good game, though very hard. Nice graphics and sound, too.
Some suggestions:
* Sometimes enemies seem to spawn right on top of me, that was annoying. * Controls were too compĺex for my level of coordination (which is admittedly low). I could not make good use of teleport, and hardly ever managed to use bombs. Maybe I would get used to these "commands" if I insisted more. * I think I would find the game more interesting if there were less enemies, but if they had more varied behavior. With the current enemy behavior, what I was trying on every level was to put all enemies in a cluster so that I could just walk in circles shooting them. * Those black, faster enemies in later levels were a nice (and simple) change, though they didn't really break my walk-in-circles strategy. (Oh, and when say "nice and simple change", this is a big praise! Gotta love simple solutions!) * I also understand that implementing different behaviors for a compo game tends to be challenging because of the time! * The effect of the various "power ups" left by killed enemies was not clear. I still don't know what each of them do.
A solid game, thanks for making it!
Quite fun to play and challenging! Graphics work very well, animation was very nice. I especially like the way the arena keeps its scars as the game progresses: looks nice and doesn't distract from the more important game elements. Sound helps to create a very nice mood.
I have a personal gripe about those games that use the keyboard to move and the mouse to shoot. I'd love to see how this game would play on an analog gamepad (use the analog stick to walk on the exact direction you want to shot, then just shot). I think it would feel much better!
As other commented, I think the game was not a good fit for the theme, but the game itself it very nice!
@youthfulidealism
> That’s amusing, I have a personal gripe with gamepads as an input medium
Amusing, indeed! :laughing: And you might be right: I cannot remember playing _any_ games with this keyboard+mouse control scheme (well, other than FPSs). I need to find and find some games like this, to maybe create a taste for them!
Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
Hey, nice little game! Good, creative (though sorta sad) interpretation of the theme.
I especially liked the controls, felt very fluid (pun intended!). Jumping over the boat and bombarding with trash was especially satisfying! (Yes, @roolow, _Echo the Doplhin_ feelings!)
The only ideas that come to mind are not necessarily good ones, but if you wanted to make the game feel more gamey, you could add some "records" to the game. "New highest drop on target: 12m", "New highest amount of trash on a single drop: 7".
Nice game! I am afraid I don't have anything to add on top of what others have said already, so just passing by to thank you and congratulate for for your Ludum Dare debut :smile:
Overall, I'd say the idea quite is nice, but the game lacks polishing. Not sure if this is really what happened, but by the look my guess is that your initial design was a bit too much for 48 hours but you kept trying to deliver it anyway, so you have several features in place that are not much developed and therefore don't contribute much to the game. I presonally tend to prefer a smaller number of well-developed features that help to make your game stand out. This would be my main suggestion.
(Hey, but please take this as constructive criticism! It seems this is your first Ludum Dare right? I think it is really difficult to get the scope right. And, come on, _Miner Creeper_ **is** a game you made in 48 hours! This is no small feat!)
Some random thoughts:
* Graphics were good enough in general, with some sprites (like the player character) being quite cool. The spiders and the monster were also nice! * To get a pickaxe, you need to be very close to it, but even if you are not close enough to take it, the pickaxe icon will appear. This is confusing. If you can see thing icon, you should be able to take the thing. * Music was very simple but effective! Nice! * Having multiple pickaxe types was not very useful. (I mean, to the game. If the game had only one pickaxe type, it would be equally good.) * The sanity mechanic idea is cool, but I think the execution was a bit weird. Unless I missed something, it works more or less like this: initially you cannot lose health, you can only lose lose sanity (touch a spider, lose sanity). Then, when the sanity goes down to zero, a monster attacks you for each hit you get from a spider. But it doesn't seem to be anything I can do about the monster: I cannot dodge or attack it, it always hits me and causes me to lose some health. So, for all practical purposes, sanity and health are sort of the same thing. I think it is not working well as a mechanic. It would be better in my opinion if there was some interaction between these two, or if they had different effects somehow. For example, one quick idea: spiders make you lose health. As you go insane, you start to see more spiders, but these are just hallucinations, so they cause you to lose sanity. (Of course you don't know which ones are real or not.)
That's it. As I said, congrats for finishing the game in time! See you on the next Ludum Dare!
Hey, congrats for your first game and first Ludum Dare!
As others have said, the hardest part was understanding how to play. To me, the game felt like a puzzle at first (and I tend to hate puzzles :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:) -- seriously, no metaphors, it _really_ felt like a puzzle to me.
I think think things clicked the moment I understood my hook was at some spot on the 2D place, and using the reel would bring the hook diagonally -- upwards and towards the right. It made sense to me, but only after I understood it!
After I learned how it worked, it was better than I thought it could be! Quite fun for such a simple game!
Given my experience, the obvious suggestion is to improve the how to play instructions :slight_smile:
Hope you'll be back on the next Ludum Dare!
Nice, very well-polished game! Loved the descriptions of the items in the shop! Graphics are also really pretty.
Gameplay also seems OK (I not a fan of this "move with keys, aim with the mouse" control scheme, but that's a matter of personal taste, I guess.)
It is an incomplete game, as you said, but I really liked the hypnotic tunnel effect! That was well-done!
Well, as other have commented, this is basically Russian roulette, which I don't find particularly engaging. Maybe with some ways to influence the chances this could be a nice game. For example, use your funds to buy some item that protects you from one "attack".
Also, I once actually ended with more money than everyone else, but the game said I was lost :cry:
This is your first Ludum Dare, it seems! Welcome and please come back next year! :slight_smile:
The game is not bad but it has its frustrating side for sure. I loved the intro dialogue and the whole bizarre situation. The graphics are pretty nice, too -- especially the characters!
I think the only new point I have to bring is the following. OK, that fall through the ground to the sewers was cool. It looked great and was surprising. But, looking from another perspective, I'd say it does a bad for the gameplay. The problem is that it puts the player in a position that is worse than the one at the beginning of the game. I, for myself, simply restarted the game whenever I felt to the sewers.
Side note: your game somehow made me remember a very old game from the very old MSX 8-bit computer: _Magical Tree_ by Konami :smile:
Oh, boy, I love when I see these crazy ideas! The concept is very innovative, and maybe the ingredients to be one of those fun, casual (and with some luck even viral) games we see now an then.
In my opinion, there was one big problem, though: I never felt like my input was having much impact on what was going on on the screen. Or, put another way: I don't know what I can effectively do to improve my score!
I guess it felt a bit like the young kid "playing" with the disconnected controller given by the older brother, you know? I mean, I had some genuine fun until I started to suspect that something was not right. :wink: (To be clear, I am not claiming the controls are not doing anything, it's just how I felt while playing.)
I think this could be a very, very nice game with some overhaul on the controls.
Kudos for your Ludum Dare debut! Hope you'll be here again on the next one!
(Final note: the music sound a bit Jethro Tull-esque, nice!)
Very nice game! I am afraid I don't have anything to say others haven't said already, but here are my main thoughts:
* I liked the controls. Perhaps a bit confusing in the beginning, but easy to get the idea. (You don't often control swarms in games, so I'd expect some time until one gets it.) * Really good camera control. Very effective and smooth. * Good sense of humor! * Perhaps a bit too difficult. Took me almost 30 attempts to fertilize the egg, and by that time it was already starting to feel tiring. * Ran very smoothly on my desktop (Firefox on Linux). * Good interpretation of the theme, and overall nice execution. Very polished game.
:thumbsup: :thumbsup:
Nice, fun little game bringing some good amount nostalgia! (Using an US Robotics modem!) I like how you went around your time constraints and focused on the right things. I want to play it a little more later today (to complete it!), but so far it felt quite well-balanced (which is always a big thing for compo games).
@jimbly
> I did spend a while in the past trying to find the perfect nostalgia modem brands to use for that menu, but it’s hard to say what actually resonates with different people
These little obscure references are not the kind of thing you can optimize much to reach larger audiences. Players should be able to play the game without getting these references, and you are probably better off not relying on these references for an enjoyable experience. But you create magic moments for those few who get the references.
Well, at least that's my perception. Again, nice job!
Love the title a nice character with an inflated ego! :laughing: Fun to play for a while, with good music and funny sounds (as everyone has pointed out!).
Ice cracking and nerve cracking! :laughing: Lot of tension seeing the hunter approaching and I having to slow down because of the ice breaking under my feet.
Super cool idea, and as far as I remember best use of input methods I ever saw in a Ludum Dare! (You might restrict your audience by requiring a gamepad, but you are exploring a *really* nice idea here!)
Very good use of sound as clue to the player. (When I first player I had my audio mistakenly on mute and I though the game was pretty much impossible to play. Then I thought, "why did he use Audacity for a game without sounds?" and noticed my mistake :face_palm: Anyway, once I turned the sound on, it was a much superior experience!)
If I had to complain about something it would be the game gets a little repetitive quickly. I can imagine some nice extensions to this core mechanic. Like moving around a 2D plane, maybe getting stuff (power ups, whatever) or trying to crack the ice around the hunter to drown him. Of course, we can only do so much in 48 hours, but this mechanic is so tasty it deserves some side dishes!
Kudos!
> Playing with sound is definitely increasing the tension which improves the overall experience :)
Not only that, it seemed like I could really help me to feel if the ice was breaking under my feet!
> Another idea I had is to let another player to control the hunter, so it could be a multiplayer chase game.
I am not a big player of multiplayer games, but it might be worth a shot! Could be fun for couch muliplayer, maybe? Or perhaps something more asymmetric, like 3 hunters versus one yeti.
Hey, not bad! Apparently I played it for over 20 minutes ('till the end!). Felt a bit like Saints Row IV! (Which I enjoyed back then, that's a compliment :wink:)
My biggest gripe is that the four levels felt like the same. I am not sure there is any difference between them, to be honest. Anyway, no big deal, but if the game has multiple levels I expect some variation, even if just increasing difficulty.
But kudos and thanks for making this game!
@recessive Thanks for the comment! I'd like to understand this point better:
> It would be nice if there was actually an end goal though
Well, the goal is to survive until you reach Earth. So maybe this goal was not clear enough? Or do you mean something deeper?
@commanderstitch Thanks for the comments, nice to know you enjoyed the game in family! :slight_smile: The game is too hard, indeed (not intentional, I just didn't had the time to test and balance it properly). You need to be a bit lucky to beat it. (But the win screen is super lame, you didn't lose much :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:)
Great game, congrats! Super nice idea, wonderful visuals and sound, fun gameplay. My main complain is that the game is _hard_. First, because of the controls (as other mentioned, it's too easy to commit suicide). Second, because each playthrough is very long.
One the best I played so far on this Ludum Dare! Kudos!
(And hello from São Leopoldo! :wave:)
(PS: Just saw you have already addressed my two points above in a post-jam release, cool!)
Very nice! I like the idea, but the gameplay itself is not bad either! In fact, quite fun for such simple mechanics (kudos!). I'd like to have a way to not having to restart from beginning after dying. (I want to see what's in the end, but there are some bumps around March or April 2021 that always get me! Might give it another try later!)
Nice one! The glitchy physics felt like a feature (except on the first level with cars of different colors, that one was painful!)
Excellent the programmer art!
Thumbs up!
thumbs-up.png
Hey, not *that* bad! Got to the end after four or five attempts. I pretty much agree with everything Skleembof said above, so I'll not repeat here :smile:
Hey, this felt like playing a demo: it ended just as I felt like I mastered it and was ready for bigger challenges! (And this is a compliment :wink:)
I found the controls to be a bit hard to "get". In fact the hardest "level" to me was, by far, the first one. I think this was because of the combination of low friction with high acceleration, not sure. Anyway, while this behavior matched the theme, I would have preferred more "intuitive" controls. (Or a simpler first level, maybe.)
But overall a super nice game with very interesting variations/challenges along the way.
Oh, man, if this was easier it would be a lot of fun for me. (I understand the difficulty was a deliberate design decision, it's just not my cup of tea.) Pretty cool graphics, nice variety of enemies, interesting mix of genres (level 3 quickly became a bullet hell!)
My main suggestion would be to give better feedback about things like how the reload mechanic works (I see that bar changing sizes, and apparently I need to have it grow back to maximum to be able to shot; but sometimes it stay small and I can shot). Or ammo: I saw I could buy ammo, but couldn't see how much ammo I currently have.
I also like to complain about this move with keys, aim and shoot with the mouse control scheme, but it seems everyone likes it :-)
Anyway, good job!
These Pico 8 games often impress me, but this one is mindblowing! Incredible game, quite fun, top notch graphics and sound for the platform. Mood is super great (and matches the theme!).
On the "double jump" level I once got an unbeatable level, with the "goal" locked in an unreachable area. Other than that, no bugs. It's a bit too hard, maybe. In most levels I had to rely on luck to advance (being lucky to have all goals spawning close to my posititon).
But these are just minor points. This _is_ a great compo game!
PS: Is there escape from the "No Escape" level? :thinking:
Good one to chill out for some minutes! My winning strategy was to mine crypto, after I discovered an exploit: once you hit the "bonk" button once it remains with the keyboard focus, so I can just hit space very quickly to buy stock that, on average, is at super good prices -- especially after I manipulated the market to increase the stock price of one of them. :moneybag:
Cool, I don't see this "sequence of mini-games" concept very often at Ludum Dare. I agree with nevyn about the controls on the coolant balancing game, but otherwise they played nicely. Many little nice touches here and there, like the password on the wall and turning the lights off. I am not a big fun of puzzles, but these were short and enough for me :smile:
First off, I am not a big fan of the genre, so take my comments with a grain of salt.
I liked the mood _very_ much. The sound and images worked very well to convey an interesting atmosphere. Writing is pretty good, too. Perhaps a bit too convoluted (should I say "literary"?) on some passages. (This is not bad _per se_, I love reading!, it's just that in games I expect something more direct (as I said, interactive fiction is not my cup of tea).
As for suggestions, one thing that comes to mind is that the story has some nice variations, but in order to see them I have to play multiple times. Again, not bad by itself, but since there isn't much variation on the core story, one needs to see a lot of repetition to see the variation. (I suppose this may be by design.)
Anyway, a pretty nice Ludum Dare debut, congrats on your game. Thanks for making and sharing it! :slight_smile:
_Very_ interesting idea and interpretation of the theme!
On the last level, my character was falling even if I did nothing (had to move quickly to not lose immediately). Not sure if this was intentional, but I preferred the more relaxed experience of the previous levels, in which I could think a bit before moving.
I think you really need to add some instructions (either in-game or here in the game description). It took me a good deal of time to understand how to play and what I was supposed to do.
Once I figured it out, it wasn't bad! Vibes of "Jenga: Creative Mode" :laughing:
Visual and the music are good. I think some sound effects would have been a nice addition to create some mood. My main criticism, though is: it felt too much like I was depending on luck. I know it all depends on where exactly I click, but since I don't have much feedback until after I click and see where the block is falling _and_ small differences on the point I click make a big difference, the game felt a bit random to me.
I think that if you can find a way to make the player feel like he's more in control of the situation, you could turn this game into a pretty nice casual game.
This seems to be your first Ludum Dare, right? Congrats on finishing your game (that's always an achievement!) and hope to see you again on the next one!
Hey folks, congrats on your first jam game! The graphics and the sound and pretty good and the idea was also quite interesting! Here are some suggestions for improvement:
* It took me some time to understand that I had to press the red buttons on the hydrants(?) to free the horses. * I am still not sure I understand when I need to use my "stabilizer gun". Can a non-stabilized horse be teleported (saved) by the UFO? Is it worth to stabilize a horse that is already on fire? One idea would be to not start the fires until the player saved a couple of horses, to give him time to grasp the main game concepts.
* I don't understand what triggers a game over. To me it felt random. Might be related with the number of fires? I don't know. Some more feedback about it would be super nice. * The stables seem to continuously spawn new horses, and this was overwhelming. I could not follow everything was happening on the screen: many stable, many horses, many fires. I think you should either have less things happening and once, or make the most important things stand out more.
I hope these are useful suggestions! And I hope to see you making games again on the next Ludum Dare! :slight_smile:
A nice casual game! Simple, easy-to-understand, almost relaxing(!) gameplay! Graphics and sounds bringing good vibes from the past :slight_smile: Solid implementation, too, no bugs found!
I found the controls and firing rate very unsatisfying at first, after some upgrades it felt good. Nice game overall, had fun over mu couple of playthroughs! Oh, and clever use of "LD50" :slight_smile:
I'll join the chorus to say that you did an awesome job in creating a very moody atmosphere. The theme, graphics and sound worked incredibly well together. Kudos on that aspect!
The gameplay itself felt a bit repetitive, without much variation over a relatively large world that is meant to be explored. There are also some points that could be polished. For example, I found it hard to "read" the bars showing hunger, cold, etc. (they were too thin, with the labels far from them.)
A nice compo submission!
When I started playing, first thing I thought was "this game will get my _Needless Use of 3D Award_", but quickly I felt like the graphics worked quite well, so no award for you :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: Maybe only significant problem graphics-wise is (as someone already said), it's a bit hard to see the hitbox. Otherwise, the visuals are very nice, simple and atmospheric. Loved the Space Invaders-like characters! :space_invader:
Audio is gorgeous, writing is cool, the "echolocation" feature was quite handy and even the bullet hell mechanics were nice enough for me (not a fan of the genre).
All-in-all, a very solid compo game, certainly one of the top I have played this far on LD50. Kudos!
Nice game, well polished, with all parts (physics, graphics, audio) working well together. I also like how you added extra game modes by using only small variations on top of the base game. Lots of gameplay-bang for the game-design-buck!
The game looks _very_ nice and doesn't sound any bad at all. Nice to see a racing game on Ludum Dare, seems to be an underrepresented genre to me :slight_smile: Gameplay was good enough for a compo entry, but started to feel repetitive after two or three races. I noticed some glitches. The right (or was it the left?) arrow wasn't working, so I had to use WASD. Also, in at least one race, it was impossible to pass the leader: whenever I went a bit ahead of him, it would jump ahead again, as if it was doing a "short distance teleport" just ahead of me. Overall, a nice entry, thanks for making it! :thumbsup:
Incredible how good your game looks even though the individual sprites are especially pretty! This is some talent! (Serious!) My main suggestion would be to have some feedback about hunting the birds, because as far as I could see, it made no difference hitting them or not.
Otherwise, a nice simple game. (Oh, and a nice source of inspiration!).
I like what you did here! As others said, there are points that could be improved, like adding sound, balancing, and making the game easier to understand. But I really appreciate the interesting, simple, and quite versatile mechanic you created here.
Fun idea, nice graphics. Like other commenters, I missed more options, the actual gameplay is quite limited. *But* there's one more thing I like to praise when I see: the much you did here is quite well-polished: the game has a title screen, a game over screen, you can do stuff, and didn't see any bug... it's easy to let these details pass when evaluating a game.
So, my suggestion for for the next Ludum Dare: try to keep the good stuff, but be bolder with regards to gameplay.
The game looks and sounds great, and plays well also. I find it a bit awkward to use echolocation to fins other birds that I think needed to avoid, but other than that it was a smooth experience.
I like the concept very, very much, love the graphics, sound is nice too. The story is also pretty engaging, but there are two (related) points that made my experience less great:
1. I'd prefer to start making choices sooner. 2. I'd _very_ much like a way to skip parts of text that I have already read on precious playthoughs. I played the game twice, and would have played more if I didn't had to wait and click so much to get to the points I was interested in.
But again, cool game overall! The concept of being the mediator of a conflict is very nice! Thanks making and sharing!
This game is pretty deep for a compo entry, and the kind of game I could spend hours on. I'll join the chorus, though, and remark that I found hard to understand how to play and what is going on while in combat or space traveling. It was fun (although a bit grindy) after I got the grasp of it.
The music worked super well, created a good space atmosphere (see what I did here? :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:) without feeling repetitive.
This can be quite a fun game with some polishing and balancing!
A fun one, well-done! Pretty to look at, not bad at all to listen to, some nice "dialog", very well-polished for a compo entry. "Easier mode" appreciated. Biggest gripe is that I (too) often tried to left-drag the button :neutral_face: Otherwise, cool little game, thanks!
@kbf123 @dkmk100 Yup, I was definitely looking for a slightly more tabletopey experience here. Thanks for the comments!
@erryndev Thanks! Text display and scrolling is really handled by the tool I used (I also liked it). Someday I hope to try something that is more like a illustrated book than text only.
@brachistosauro Thanks! I agree, some sound would do good for this game. (Not long ago I'd say that sound and text-based games don't mix well, but I have seen some very good counter examples. Sound and music can add a lot of mood and character for an otherwise text-only game.)
@lone-wolf Thanks for the comments and for the suggestion -- indeed, very nice use of music to create a cool atmosphere for a text-based game!
@dennis-magnusson Thanks for playing and for the kind words! The character customization screen is abominable, indeed. I had only about half an hour left and couldn't think of a better way to implement it within the deadline. Now I think that offering a few pre-made characters with different stats each would be better.
@knatt Thanks for playing and for the comments! This “aim, aim some more, aim a third time” thing was not nice, agreed! Your idea of allowing the player to chose negative outcomes to get more points might be interesting to try out in the future. I was also thinking on things like "get an extra point, but lose one skill point for x game hours", as if doing some extraordinary effort to achieve some result.
Fun (if difficult) game, I played it to the end (in 29:14). I like how with took one core mechanic, explored it well, and polished the result. Worked really nice.
My suggestions: First, while I like the labyrinthic level design, choosing which way to go was felt mostly random choice (maybe with the exception of one friendly refrigerator warning me that sometimes difficult paths lead nowhere). Second, as I said, the game is difficult. But more than that, the difficulty felt "random" along the way. It starts substantially hard (for a beginner, at least), then has some easier portions, and finishes with some devilish hard screens.
Still, fun experience (otherwise I wouldn't keep playing till the end :sun_with_face:)
Nice art, environment and general atmosphere (even the sound, for a compo game, it is pretty good!) Gameplay was a bit too simple to my taste, but as others have said, this could be the base for something bigger.
Not bad! I would have enjoyed some better feedback about when you are ready to be eaten (I like how you used sound cues for that, but it wasn't enough in my opinion). My biggest frustration is that I couldn't think of any good "bullet hell" pun to name this new genre. _Bakery hell_?
This is a super nice entry. Very creative idea, well-executed. Loved the simple but pretty and meaningful graphics. The music is repetitive but unlike most repetitive game jam music, it didn't get into our nerves after several minutes playing!
Gameplay was fun for a while, but would need something to spice it up (if it was meant to be a longer game, that is).
Thanks for making and sharing it!
Nice entry, with pretty Pico-8 graphics and matching sound. I like the water animation and the sparking thingies in the sky. Controls feel good overall, but I think jumps with controllable height would feel better.
Interesting game, cool to see the theme taking people to such different places! I am not a super fan of puzzle (to put it mildly :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:), so take this into account when reading my next comments/suggestions:
* It took me some time to understand the game, even after reading the instructions. I detail some of the reasons below. * It was not always immediately obvious which direction each car was pointing to. * I wasn't clear how much each car would run every "turn". I was half-expecting they moving one tile per turn, took me a while to get it. (Animating the movement of the cars would help a lot, I think). * The time limit felt overwhelming at first. Maybe start with a higher time limit and decrease it gradually? Or even no limit at all for the first few turns. * I liked the use of sound to alert that a car is overheating. * I could not strategize too much. The selection of road pieces felt too random, and the time limit limited my ability to plan with the "next road pieces" display. (Again, my lack of experience and taste for puzzles probably contributed to this!)
But a nice cute game it is! Thanks for trying these different ideas!
To be be honest, I was not impressed and had a long list of suggestions for you. But then I played the "final version" and it seems you folks had a very good perception of what needed to be improved most! Iterating and improving on what needs most improvement is, IMHO, _the_ way to make a game (or anything, really) great, so I guess you are on the right track!
To me, the next step to improve even further (from the final version) would be to make the game flow more smoothly. I mean, I didn't like that pause/wait after each thing I said. I guess you already feel this was not nice because you added a skip button already -- but there must some way to improve the game flow, to make it feel more continuous. (Not I am expressing well my point.)
Folks, please take this as a constructive comment! I think you are doing the iteration dance right, and this is the most important thing in the long run! Keep improving!
After the second fight, my character stopped turning toward the opponent, which I believe is a bug. Other than that it's a fine compo entry, with some great jokes on the dialogue part,
Hey, not bad, but I think it is missing something, I am not sure exactly what. Maybe a clear sense of progression? On my first playthrough I didn't notice I could grab the little people, so I went straight up fleeing from the darkness. Then, before my second playthrough, I RTFM and understood what my real goal was.
Alright, so let me try saving people. Right on the beginning each pair of people go one direction, so I couldn't easily follow everyone. I immediately felt I already had to chose the of them to die. And quickly, I felt overwhelmed by the speed the darkness was coming (even with my "light shots"), and decided I was not skilled enough save the two of them. So I grabbed one and went straight up, as in my first playthrough.
But you see, this all happened too quickly, I didn't felt like making choices, it was like the game has chosen for me. So, maybe a redesigned map and perhaps even something like "darkness ~~rubberbanding~~(*)" at the start would help to show the player how to play _gradually_, allowing him do ponder and feel on top of the game.
(*) Edit: Not really rubberbanding, I think. What I mean is: make the darkness slower as it gets closer. My hypothesis is that this will help with situation awareness without overwhelming the player.
Well done, feels like a complete, polished game. Fun for a while, but gets repetitive quickly. (Well, until one finds what to do with the TNT box, which was unexpected.) Super pretty visuals!
I liked the enemy design and the visuals in general, all contributing to a dark, apocalyptic mood. Speaking of mood, some music (even some very simple notes playing on the background) would have done wonders! Gameplay felt nice for a while, but I quickly started feeling helpless and doomed -- which matches the game (and jam) theme, but I don't feel much inclined to keep playing if I don't see some sort of progression as I go.
Controls are good, too (I don't like these "move with keys, aim with the mouse" games, but apparently it's just me :stuck_out_tongue:).
Cool game, thanks for making and sharing!
Yo, nice one! Love how you used the theme to come up with a game mechanic! Game is fun, power ups are very satisfying, the countdown before the end of the level is a good and useful touch...
Here are some suggestions:
* I'd love to play this with an analog controller. Aiming was a bit frustrating, I think analog controls help with that * Finding "the GET IT" felt a bit random and luck-dependent. I'd prefer if this was less so. * As much as I love the "delay the inevitable" mechanic you created (and I do!): who cares for high-scores these days? :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: Alright, half kidding, but I'd really prefer if the bonus was not in score but in something else that affected gameplay. Like, longer lasting power ups on the next level. Or maybe allowing to "spend score" to buy different power ups (item magnets, a "GET IT" detector, armor, moar guns...) I can imagine a super nice game, with more variety than one can make in 48 hours by following this path.
Kudos again, nice one!
PS: Your user name didn't sound totally unfamiliar. Now I know. Send my best wishes to Brubnar! :wink:
Hey, there are number of nice technical achievements there for a compo entry, but I couldn't really find my way through the game in order to really appreciate what it has to offer. The game would benefit a lot from some instructions and more feedback for the player. For example:
* How many grenades do I have left? (And where can I get more?) * What do I do once I found a refrigerator? Do I have to drop it? Or explode it? * How do I get back to the oven? (Not sure if this is necessary, but I quickly got lost after going around for a while)
PS: Love the bizarre story! :laughing:
After some attempts I simply stayed hovering over a geyser. I though I had found a degenerate strategy (well, I think I sort of have), but then when I reached about 100 science I was eaten by a giant flying squid. :slight_smile:
A bizarrely fun idea! :laughing:
Gameplay is simple and works quite well. Nice job!
PS: You may want to opt-out from the graphics category, since you are not the author of the cats photos.
The game looks great in all its simplicity, and the music helps to create a nice atmosphere. But to be honest I was quite confused while playing. As I get smaller after eating each green dot, I lose all situation awareness. Where do I go next? And why? Why does the scale sometimes changes at random moments? Is there a way to win?
This is a very original idea (if a bit detached from the theme), really interesting. As others said, quite difficult to understand how to play, how the traps cycle, how the bullets move, even to understand I am on a sort of track and I am supposed to move up... but once one everything clicks, the game becomes really interesting. There's a lot of potential here!
I agree when you say the game gets too hard too early. Took me many attempts to reach the first additional piece of ship. By the way, I couldn't find a way to get it without sacrificing one of the two original pieces. _If_ this is intentional, I think it is a quite clever design, but probably something to be used later in the game (again, to not make it so difficult so fast).
I didn't play much longer after getting that first additional piece. mostly because I got tired to replay the whole first section. This is also something you may want to improve in the event of a post-jam version. Random/crazy idea: a rewind feature that allows me to go back in time one turn at a time so that I can retry without replaying everything.
Details aside, you have a very solid and unusual/original core mechanic here! Well done!
_Very fun_! Had a good time playing it! (And will play a bit more, I guess!)
Solid compo entry, feeling very complete and polished. The graphics are _really_ nice, except for one thing: I found it a bit hard to interpret the small icons in the resident stats (especially the chess board and the plant). The interpretation of the theme is spot-on (if dark)! The music felt repetitive quickly, but it is more than good enough for a compo game. I like the gameplay too, it's different from what we see most often in Ludum Dare.
Thumbs up! :thumbsup:
Very fun, well-produced, well-interpreted dialogues. Graphics on the cut scenes are very nice. Audio is super good. Not my favorite kind of gameplay, but I had fun as much as it lasted. Controls felt generally snappy, but there was one point, when staying on the top platforms, when I wanted to jump only one level down (to land near the edge of a mid-level platform), I often ended up right to the bottom level. Finally, strange to say, but it's one most geriatric games I ever played! Nice game, for making it!
First of all, I like very much how you were attempting to try different things with a text-based game/IF! Overall, the game looks polished, with good use of music and sound. Writing is good in general, with some nice/funny remarks (like the one about the police of your future ex-country), but also some passages that didn't sound very natural.
Now, as much I like the experimentation (that's one of the nicest sides of Ludum Dare!), I can't say I liked the results very much -- at least not on their current state, maybe some of the ideas can be made to work better. Here's a summary of my thoughts and some suggestions. I hope you find them useful!
I think my biggest dislike is the real-time nature of the experience. This mechanic incentivizes me to not read and enjoy the story, and instead to just click the next option as quickly as possible. Every time I tried to slow down and appreciate the text and the story I ended up in jail. The different kinds the random events, also contributed to take the attention off the main story text.
I don't dislike the ideas _per se_, though. Maybe if the time passed in discrete steps, and only after I selected some choice, I would enjoy the random events and time-dependent action.
Thanks for the game, keep experimenting! See you on the next Ludum Dare!
Very nice game, good exploration of the "you-sort-of-also-control-the-enemies" mechanic. Finished in 13:29, which I guess means I liked it :slight_smile:
Funny sound effects, but to be honest at some point the repeating dialogues every time I touch an enemy became a bit annoying. (Especially on level 12, which I had to play many times and that dialog pause always made me fall to the spikes :cry:)
I missed a clear link with the theme, but otherwise it's a great compo entry. Great programmer art, with some pretty decent, fluid animation!
Kudos!
Hey! This seems to be your first Ludum Dare, right? Nice debut, congrats!
I don't have much say that others haven't said already. Took me some time to understand how to play, especially to find and understand that I could power the air purifier and the gel faucets. Some in-game help would be nice for sure, but even some instructions here on the game page would make the experience much smoother (like, just a few screenshots with some arrows showing "this is a fruit", "this is excrement", "this is the air purifier").
Having to water the plants several times in a row to get a fruit felt a bit grindy.
Anyway, after learning what to do it was fun to play. Very nice wordlbuilding/backstory, too!
Beautiful game, in all senses! So polished, so many small details done well! One of the best compo submissions I have seen over the years!
Very nice for a first! A simple idea quite well implemented. I appreciate how you cared about giving good visual information about where raindrops are going to fall next. Some instructions on how to play would be nice, but it didn't take too many seconds to find out how to play. Pretty graphics, too.
See you on the next Ludum Dare! :smile:
Puzzles are not my kind of game (I played maybe through six or seven levels), but as far as I can tell, this is a very solid entry. You have a simple game mechanic and explored it in interesting ways. I liked the level design, with some simple levels introducing new kinds of cards before using them in more complex ways. Graphics are cute, music works well. I can see people playing this kind of game on their phones or something like that.
I am afraid I don't have any useful suggestion for you, but congratulations! A very polished game!
Nice game, fun to play! Unlike someone else, I actually liked the high rate of fire: it brought a kind of strategic element to the gameplay. Graphics and sound worked well, too! Solid game, thanks for publishing it!
Oh, just one negative point: I actually finished all levels, but I couldn't read the end screen because I was hitting the button and thus I was immediately sent back to the title screen.
Oh, and I guess level 10 is a reference to Space Invaders, right?
@drludos Hehe, thanks! I guess my number of deaths was way higher than zero :wink: And, yes, I enjoyed it :thumbsup:
Nice idea, worked well!
I am not a puzzle guy, but I can recognize you achieved something nice here! Nice mechanics, nice implementation. Here are some thoughts that might help to improve: first, this game has a very high mental load, so to speak. There are four radically different weapons, action is reasonably fast-paced, you have to walk around the playing field, aim and fire... it is a bit too much for me (but then, I not a puzzle guy). Another point: I personally tend to hate those controls in which you move with the keyboard and aim with the mouse (works nicely in FPSs, but not in other genres, in my opinion). Perhaps aiming with the keyboard (I mean, shooting in one of the eight directions you can face) could work better (as bonus, would reduce the cognitive load on the player a bit).
I think this was a interesting way to combine the tho genres, I enjoyed playing it. I was another one of those who kept clicking on the icons to select the tools. I would have enjoyed keyboard-only controls. Graphics worked well for me. I liked the mini map, too, was quite helpful. As you said yourself, there are one or two things that feel unfinished, but the game is cool nevertheless; I believe this is largely because the concept is solid. Congrats!
What a cool game! Loved it! Graphics are not terrible. Or maybe they are, but they tell what they have to tell very clearly. The car physics is very nice (except for the reverse as others mentioned). The levels are really well-designed, nicely progressing as new gameplay elements are introduced.
One little suggestion: if the game is completely played with the keyboard, please don't make me reach the mouse whenever I die just to try again. (I least, I couldn't find a way to go through the "you are death" and "play again" screens with the keyboard. -- oh, looks like @radical-dog suggested this also :-) )
Congrats! Nicely done!
Very, very nice game! Fun to play, nice plot twist, really nice simple graphics. Wonderful animation, really! Music is excellent, too. And I guess I learned with you a thing or two about how to make a player know what to do :-) Very solid compo submission, kudos for you!
This was a nice idea, and the implementation isn't bad either (especially considering that you were learning the tool along the way). I liked those mountains in the background! What I found most difficult (in the annoying sense of the word) was the jumping. It was too hard for me to get into the desired platform. I ended up staying mostly in the ground.
A nice, fun little game. Nice graphics and sound. My only suggestion would be to make that starfield in the background to move slowly to indicate that the poor astronaut is moving. Ragdoll-like physics for the astronaut would perhaps be fun to see (but I guess this wouldn't add anything the game itself).
Beated it! I find the camera angle a bit awkward initially. As @incobalt, I spent some time looking for the wizard -- until I understood it exists in a different place (so to speak). The music was nice, created a good mood. Very stable, I didn't see any glitches.
Ignoring the fact that I personally just hate these clicker games, you did a quite nice job here! Graphics look really good (I love the style!), there is a good level of challenge, the genres are well-combined, controls are pretty good (it's hard to make jumping feel good, you did well in this regard!).
The game feels a bit "flat" to me; you know, just buy the platforms and jump, it always happens in the same way. Others suggested diverging paths for the platforms: this would be a possible way to inject some more life to the game.
Other than that, a good game. Apart from the lack of sound, looks like a finished product.
I found it a bit confusing to play, but the idea is actually very nice. I mean, the way the world is interpreted both as a sideway and a top-down view is quite cool. I also like the idea of controlling different characters with different skills (reminded me of The Lost Vikings, in this sense :-) )
Perhaps my mains suggestions would be improve on the feedback to the user. There is a lot happening in your game, but it is not clear to the player. For example: it is not evident when the player characters are being hit by the enemies. Some sound and visual feedback would help here. An even simpler example: the energy bar on top: simply adding an "Energy" label, or some kind of icon (a battery icon? or a lighting icon maybe?) would make it instantly recognizable as an energy bar.
If you find a way to make the game easier to understand from the beginning (maybe an initial tutorial level?) and with a good deal of polishing (which takes time, I know!), you could end up with a very enjoyable experience!
Interesting casual game, not bad for 15 hours. My major gripe is that the level and the cards appear to be generated at random, without any link between them. I mean, often it felt as if luck was the major factor to have higher scores.
Funny crazy idea! Thanks for sharing!
(Side note: I believe in the compo you are supposed to create all the game assets, including music, even if you opt-out of the "audio" category).
The idea is very nice! I enjoyed playing it for a while, but then was flooded by the torrent of emails... this was overwhelming. Made me think of the poor life of all the people who work filtering email in real life :thinking: 😛
@neverautomatic @NateTheGreat Thanks for the feedback! I think *Blind Faith* is much better than *Metal Fear* (my LD40 game) thanks to comments like these!
I improved the game description to give a better idea the controls and, especially, of what to do when playing. Next time I'll try to make this more evident in the game itself.
@jshaffer94247 Thanks for playing and for the comments! Yeah, the feeling of "I don't know what to do" is common among the players. I'll try to keep this mind for the next time.
Concerning the bugs: I tested the HTML in Chrome and Firefox (under Linux), and other than some sluggishness I didn't found any errors. Next time I boot my Windows I'll try there, too. I noticed this issue of having to kill the process (even under Linux!). I just did a few quick tests and this didn't happen with other small projects I had around using the same engine. I'll try to look further after this (but I'll try some more games first :smiley:)
@The_Icy_One I believe I made it hard to understand, but making miracles actually give you faith back. The catch is that to make it worth it, you have to make miracles thar matter. For example, healing one single worshiper who is already in good health will not give you much faith back. But healing a group, or maybe a single guy who's almost dying will give you a "positive net faith".
@JustinM Thanks! Yes, I believe there are some interesting ideas in the game, but I failed to make it enjoyable. I am learning from the comments, hopefully next time it will work better!
@johnny-turbo Thanks for the feedback! I can't really say I spent much time designing the island, I just added things until it seemed enough, but didn't do much playtesting or balancing after that (at least not in what concerns hiding places). If was redoing the game I'd also probably make it more explicit what can be used as a "hideout".
@wildcard Thanks for the comments! These are points I'll surely want to pay attention to in the next time!
Had fun playing it! (Though I'll probably get an RSI for all that clicking 😛) If I understood correctly, you spend well less than 48h to develop your game, which explains the lack of polishing here and there, but overall the game is really well-made. My main concern is probably that when I am on the field collecting resources I lose the sense of what is happening back home. Maybe that's part of the idea (I felt indeed a bit anxious to return and see how things were going there), but I didn't enjoy this element very much.
But great game, really! Congrats!
This is ridiculous in the best possible sense! *Really* liked to play it! It lacks some polishing, as you said (like, how much energy do I still have?) and is short. But other than that, a very interesting concept that worked well. Graphics are nice enough (probably better than "nice enough", actually), the animation is pretty good, the music is great and fits well into the game. Great job!
The game has brought a nice nostalgia feeling, but I got bored after a short time. With more options of what to do it would be more enjoyable. (For example, buying better, more expensive equipment or baits that increase your change of getting more expensive fishes, or that "unlock" bigger, more expensive fishes.)
First, I agree with @geeitsomelaldy, I wouldn't consider the game as mix of something with "resource management", as this is really just a simple mechanic. Now, the game itself isn't bad at all. It is simple, but was entertaining for some time (I managed to beat the game, it gets kinda hard near the end).
Interesting note: I never heard about "Game and Watch" before, I guess I never saw any of those here in Brazil. But we had similar things, which we called by names like "minigames". After a few seconds playing your game, I thought "hey, this is inspired by minigames!" So, look like you were successful creating the feel of those old portable games. Same look and feel and sound.
I find it confusing, I am not really sure what to do. Please consider adding some instructions to the game description.
Maybe it's just me, but I didn't see a very direct relationship with the theme. That said, *very* fun to play! (And a solid implementation, I didn't spot any bug or glitch!)
@Damienp Thanks for the explanation! Makes much more sense to me now :thumbsup:
Edit: And by the way, while playing I actually had some feelings like those you described. "Gee, these are real countries with real peopl exploding". Things like that...