Lovewerk

Infinite Square Well by orangeoceans 2023-10-06T17:39:55Z ♥ 1

This is amazing. I wasn't sold on the crow, although the banter with the statue was funny. But Ol' Vinny won me over in about 3 seconds. Your sense of humour is great! I love the way directions are given. E-ward and F-ward are at once foreign and familiar. "Shift S-ward from here until you start to see purple" is an amazing piece of dialogue, with or without context. The music is extremly varied and interesting. Each character has its own distinct mood thanks to the audio. I think it would be helpful if the player dialog had an indicator or something. Often I read actions and player dialog in the voice of the character I was speaking to and had to pause for a moment when I realized it was not something they said.

Some of the directions got me mixed up. Especially the colors, because we have different ideas of what's purple and what's blue. I think this could be fixed if you added some more objective shape landmarks. ("If you get to the polka dots, you'll know you should have gone R-ward at the squiqqles, then S-word into the blip blops before taking a Q-ward turn at the spherical cubes")

I also wish there was an option to turn the dial faster. I got lost a lot and scanning through the dials randomly takes a very long time. Sometimes I would start to make out a location and tweak the dials to get to a sweetspot, but then I'd get to a point where any dial I turned made the location fade. I guess I don't understand how it works.

But overall this was awesome and so creative!

Sky Aisle by ZeeHatcher 2023-10-06T17:07:18Z ♥ 2

I love the game's thumbnail and main menu art! The sound effects were very appropriate and soothing. When switching to construct mode, it switches to mouse controls and the icon at the bottom shows 'R' to rotate. (Extremely intuitive rotation diagram by the way). However since I was switched to mouse, I assumed 'R' meant right mouse button and it took me a second to realize I needed keyboard 'R'. I would prefer 'Q' and 'E' to allow rotating in the direction I wish. Then I also wouldn't need to move my hand from the platforming controls. I also initially assumed from the name "construct mode" that I was placing new tiles, but it turns out that I needed to move existing ones. I think if the pieces you need to pick up turned green or something, that would help. The falling sound effect is very cute. The "F" icon does not reappear after exiting Construct Mode so I mistakenly assumed that you can only make one movement per life.

The sound design was restrained and tasteful. However, I think the checkpoint and "enter construct mode" sounds stuck out a little too much. I really liked the sliding stone sound.

The last puzzle was pretty clever and I think there's a lot of potential for this game!

Limited Space Under Press by AleksandarDev 2023-10-06T16:55:32Z ♥ 1

This game has a lot of style! As others have said, the fast group of three notes has wonky timing. Since you had to compensate and anticipate the note, it would help if there were a guide showing where the beat falls. The fast notes at the beginning didn't seem to have a musical representation, which also added to the difficulty of landing them. When the background switched to the monkey with cymbals, the bassline plays the fast rhythm, so it's much easy to get the right feel.

I didn't finish the game, but the music was nice and if the timing issue is worked out, then it's pretty much perfect!

Ex Automata by ping78 2023-10-06T16:43:07Z ♥ 2

Interesting game. It took a while to figure out what was going on but I started to get a handle on it after a few minutes. Since there's no explanation of what to do, I picked my own objective and set about trying to empty the board of pieces. I was down to one castle piece and then I suddenly got game over. I see in the comments you said that placing enough consecutive pieces that are immediately destroyed is game over. I think if you're going to be intentionally vague about how the game works, then the ruleset should be more forgiving for people to play how they want. I felt like I had figured something out about how to place pieces to prevent them from cluttering the board, and then I was hit with a game over before I could complete my objective.

As a quality of life thing, I would have liked to be able to click on the board and automatically place the next piece there instead of having to drag.

I liked the glowing piece that blows everything up, it was very satisfying

Space Ltd. by mortusnegati 2023-10-06T16:20:19Z ♥ 1

This is a really impressive entry! The tutorial is really good. Short and sweet, and each level specifically addresses one mechanic at a time. It too me a little while to realized that the blocks on the surface of the cube continued inside of it. It was fun to walk along all sides of the playing surface. For the last level, I couldn't really see the insides of the box so I just flailed around until I solved the puzzle. The music suited the game's style perfectly.

Good job!

RIDE OF THE LIVING DEAD! by deadjolly 2023-10-06T16:10:31Z ♥ 2

This game was pretty stylish. I liked the way you split up each encounter with a driving section. I think the driving was a little too long though, unless you were to add something interactive to do during the wait. Some of the items like the gun could be a little bigger or easier to see. I thought it was a little zombie on the ground! A sound effect for the car getting damaged would be nice.

Thanks for uploading your work!

2 Dudes against the Liquidator by Kitira 2023-10-06T15:57:32Z ♥ 3

THis reminds me of the game Moving Out! I think you did a good job getting all the mechanics finished and multiple levels. I found the character inertia was annoying to deal with. Once furniture started rotating, it was difficult to keep track of which character was controlled by WASD and which by the arrow keys. I liked the music at the startup screen, but the in-game music got annoying fast. The visual indication that doors are about to close was a nice touch that adds some anticipation and stress (especially when you're wedged against the wall beneath the door and can't get unstuck!)

I think the timer should be more visible or have some sort of effect as time runs out. When I ran out of time I realized that I hadn't even seen the timer.

Good work, thanks for sharing!

Whiskers in the Dark by Diego Teran 2023-10-06T02:20:40Z ♥ 4

This is really well done! The movement immediately felt intuitive and "right" in terms of speed, jump height, animations, etc. I'm torn on the wall-hang mechanic. I loove how clingy you are when hanging on to the edge, compared to the slipperyness of other wall-climb mechanics, but it was frustrating to unintentionally stick when trying to climb fast. I wonder if that could be improved by only sticking to the wall while pressing a movement input against the wall.

For the light mechanic, I would have liked if it were an accumulating "detection" value rather than a binary one. Being caught after leaping through a tiny sliver of light felt bad.

I was really surprised how nice the music was. By the time it started playing, I had already heard the "you got caught" sound a dozen times and wondered to myself why it started quietly instead of with nice music. For the capture sound, perhaps some sort of sound like a subtle reversed noise swell would have fit in without becoming too annoying. But if it's something meant to be heard over and over, I think it shouldn't have pitched musical content, and ideally would have slight variations on each playback.

Thanks for sharing, I enjoyed it a lot!

Pong Begrenzt by EqualEnergy 2023-10-06T01:49:53Z ♥ 2

Pretty good implementation of Pong. The sound effects felt satisfying and the paddles had a very smooth acceleration. Interesting choice to freeze the paddles immediately on hitting the ball and then having them retain their previous inertia upon gaining control of the paddles again. I did not like the giant paddle power-up. Since it covered the whole screen, there was nothing to do while it was active, and then when it ended, there was no warning or audio cue before the paddle shrunk. There was no time to react and it felt unfair rather than like I messed up.

Well done, thank you for sharing!

Calves of the Braves by Furano 2023-10-05T18:43:09Z ♥ 1

Good job! Most of my comments have been covered above so I won't repeat them. I did find that sometimes the controls felt a little unresponsive. If there were a more obvious visual/audio indication of when your attack cooldown ended, I think that would help a lot. Sometimes I think I got the timing off by a small amount and ended up not attacking when I meant to.

COSMOSTRIDE by Catusfelony 2023-10-05T18:27:34Z ♥ 1

This game was fun. It took me a while to understand, but I think the reticle shows where you have to aim to hit the target at furthest and closest depths, and then the player needs to go somewhere in-between the two when ships are moving between front and back?

I found it difficult to gauge when exactly a projectile was close enough to hit me. Some of the enemies spawn up close and shoot just as they come on screen and if you happen to be in that corner there's not much chance to dodge it. I would like to see some stronger enemies who can fire at your trajectory rather than your position. Hopefully that would counter the dominant strategy of moving in a circle.

For the upgrades, I think it would be cool if instead of being offered upgrades from level 1 to level 3, if they were always level 1 and you powered them up by choosing multiple of the same upgrade over the course of the game. As it is now, I got a level 3 speed upgrade after the first level and level 3 shooting speed after the second. It didn't really make much sense to select other upgrades after that, especially since moving fast seems to be an unbeatable strategy (as long as you remember to keep moving when you hit the corner).

I think you could have enhanced the feeling of movement through space by adding a particle system sending little white dots towards the camera. Would hopefully look like you are zipping through the stars.

Cool Star-Foxy game, good job!

PhotoMemory-Find my mempries through old photos- by 12spots 2023-10-05T18:02:15Z ♥ 1

Very relaxing little game! It took me a while to figure out what I was supposed to do because I was clicking the wrong parrot and thought things didn't work. The music and artwork are very nice. Hiding something inside the arcade machine was very sneaky of you! Thanks for sharing your game :)

The version you uploaded onto ldjam is not working by the way. It says your index.html file is in the wrong place.

DoomsdayTruck by OldDog 2023-10-05T17:45:34Z ♥ 6

wow there's so much here! As others have said, it's fun and addictive. I'll share my thoughts on the balancing. At first it feels good to find a stronger survivor, but losing them all at the end of the level didn't. I would have liked if they were persistent between levels and could level up on their own. If you run out of health on a level, you lose all your soldiers. I think this would strengthen the gameplay by giving a risk/reward choice for engaging zombies. As it stands now, I was just blazing through each level trying to get enough wood to unlock everything (I gave up after the grind stopped being fun).

The upgrade system is nice overall, but it also had some drawbacks. Even though all the upgrades make you more powerful, some of them made the game a litle less fun. The soldier quality upgrade took away the nice feeling of finding a high quality soldier. Perhaps instead of raising the minimum level (so eventually you always got a 5-star soldier), it raised the center point of a range. Perhaps at full upgrade, it would give soldiers between level 3 and level 7 (special boosts above level 5).

The AOE options like grenades and missiles were strangely balanced against the guns. At first, they were significantly weaker than the guns due to small radius, minimal damage, (and me not knowing how to get the missiles to hit). It seems like the explosives only benefit from the damage bonus on the first target, so their damage upgrade is much less valuable than the gun variant. While the explosive radius upgrade compensates, it somehow feels worse to take out a horde of zombies with 10 blasts compared to a rifle taking out one zombie per shot in the same total time. The other problem is that by unlocking explosives, the chances of finding a gun soldier went down, so it was a significant downgrade until I could afford to upgrade them. On the missiles, they were so slow that the only way I could figure out how to consistently hit (without dying) was to run directly away from the zombies so they were in a straight line. This meant that unlike all other weapons, when you got a missile soldier, the only way to play was by drawing aggro and kiting a horde in a straight line. This excacerbated the issue where hordes disable/despawn when you get far enough away from their origin (Perhaps hordes should only deactivate based on distance if they are not actively chasing the player?)

I did experience a few bugs (health bar jumping to 0 then back up, falling out of the map, truck flying up in the air when hitting a barricade, getting softlocked when returning to base while the menu to select a new soldier was up).

Finally, it would be nice if a survivor was automatically picked up if you had the space. It would definitely help things flow a little better when you start grinding the levels for wood. Also, implementing saving between sessions is awesome!

Overall it was really fun and you did a great job! Thanks for sharing your work.

Space traffic controller by rej 2023-10-04T19:41:34Z ♥ 0

I agree with the above about the warning sound. It was a bad day to wear headphones haha. Cool concept that seems simple at first but quickly becomes unmanageable. I like the visual indicator showing what direction the satellite will be going after course correction. A little audio blip or something when a new satellite spawns would be nice, and perhaps a more obvious visual cue so you can see it better. A couple random ideas: different satellite shapes, asteroids (and laser satellites that can destroy asteroids automatically within a radius), a limited use / cooldown time stop ability to let you make multiple course corrections in very little in-game time, sine wave path for satellites.

Very cool game!

Art - Official Intelligence (an AI fever dream) by Ben Parisi 2023-10-03T19:12:51Z ♥ 1

Fun sense of humour! It was interesting to read about your process. The text was a little slow, but having it speed up when you click and hold helped a little. It would have been even better if holding your click to advance to the next line of text automatically switched back to the fast typing mode.

Good work!

Farewell, Fava by nckpark 2023-10-03T18:57:14Z ♥ 1

A nice story game with some cute art! I found the shrinking effect on each new line of text made it harder to read and it got visually tiresome after going through the whole game. I didn't feel very interested in any of the choices until the very last trade. I think it would have been cool if the gravity of each choice increased more clearly until we reach the final one. As noted above, going through the dialogue again after making the wrong trade was a little annoying. Overall interesting concept. The final choice was the best part of the game and I'd like to see you support that high point a little more with the rest of the design.

Necr♥mantique by ukirain 2023-10-03T07:36:37Z ♥ 1

Cool game! The character art is my favourite part. I didn't really understand how it worked at first. It told me to go for the strongest characters, so I couldn't understand why clicking on the kinghts made me lose. Once I understood how you need to work your way up through the different unit tiers, it all clicked though. Good job!

This is fine by Vincent7 2023-10-03T05:21:50Z ♥ 3

This is a nice little tactics game. I think the artstyle is very strong and I agree that it's pretty sad. I would have liked a little tooltip or something to explain the mechanics of the 3 abilities. I'm assuming that you're meant to lose pretty quickly, but I think it would be more engaging if the balance were tweaked so that you could survive a little longer. The AOE of your abilities is tiny compared to how fast the fire spreads, and I'm not sure why movement takes an action. It doesn't seem to give much benefit since the fire moves so much closer every round anyway. Also, I prefer the zoomed out camera that is shown on the fire's turn. It's nice to see the whole map at once.

Really good job!

CrystalLine by graebor 2023-10-03T04:08:22Z ♥ 1

Really polished! I like how juicy it all feels, and having the controls and rules on the side is a nice touch. I was disappointed to find the game does not reward my preferred playstyle of walking around randomly and hoping for a match. After a few minutes of playing I started to develop a little more intuition on how to plan matches ahead of time. Sadly I never managed a double match on purpose, but I definitely had fun! One thing I would have liked to have is the ability to move multiple squares with a single long-press of an arrow key. I also had trouble visualizing how a move would change the board state as the tail got longer, but that might just be a skill issue haha

Unsquished by RogerW 2023-10-03T03:26:21Z ♥ 2

S P A C E. This is awesome! It took me a minute to figure out how things work, but it's a really cool design. Pushing back the borders feels really good and the ultimate was satisfying. The music came in bangin right from the start too. So cool!

Depths of Eonar by GreyNovemberGames 2023-10-03T03:16:43Z ♥ 1

This is so fleshed out! Tons of mechanics, big levels, good job! I didn't read the controls before playing and found the sign icons very unintuitive. I actually thought that the first prompt was trying to tell me to interact first to actually read the sign. I also thought the signs switch sprites a little too quickly. I was having trouble parsing what the images actually were. But that's just nit-picking, awesome job!

You Wouldn't Download A Car... by the3rdHunter 2023-10-03T02:59:10Z ♥ 3

You did a great job on this game! I loved all the jokes in the background, Noot Purd was my favourite app.

Guaxinim's Antiques, Rarities & Knick-knacks by ThomasTournoys 2023-10-03T02:49:44Z ♥ 2

I was promised treasures and trinkets but I got stinky shoes and pine cones instead. Really cute art style!

Amazing Squirrel by Sora 2023-10-03T02:38:14Z ♥ 3

I love the "clay" look of the materials and your choices of smooth vs flat shading. Super cute squirrel too!

Then Came A Stork by bonkibot 2023-10-03T03:48:26Z ♥ 2

This blew me away. Multiple objectives, fleshed out flying mechanics, a second flying mode. Then the music kicked in and the story started getting juicy. And finally, the way it ended. Just wow.

Ziggurat by nethead 2021-05-08T22:16:46Z ♥ 1

Great job on this game! The audio was very well done of course. Movement and jumping felt good, but I didn't like the way climbing/wall jumps worked. I kept releasing the left/right button and trying to climb just by pressing up. Similarly, there were times when I wanted to stay against the wall without climbing or falling, so I'd release the up key and just press the direction against the wall, and end up accidentally falling to my doom.

It would be nice to have a sound or other effect to indicate that you've taken damage. And in the icy level, I wanted a checkpoint or something for when all the diamonds have been collected. I got hit by some ice on the way back and had to redo it 3 more times (each time I got more impatient/reckless since I had already gathered the cubes so many times).

I only had one health left at the very end and was dreading my inevitable demise (mostly having to do the whole level again) when suddenly I died to a streaking white creature like myself. It took me a moment to realize I had actually just finished the game. Maybe player speed could be reduced in that section as others have mentioned, or change the tileset in that area to one that feels less "threatening".

Anyway, very cool game. It's so amazing that you did it all in just a couple days!

Tomb of the Old Gods by Dylan Fries 2021-05-08T21:48:32Z ♥ 1

I feel like the world and narrative of this game has a lot of potential. The artwork was really evocative and I love the "messiness" of the crash site compared to the earlier area. The shattered doors and the character's speculation about them definitely piqued my curiosity.

Here are my observations I jotted down as I was playing through: - the falling rocks seem to be on the wrong layer after landing (character walks "beneath" them) - the movement acceleration doesn't feel very good (but I thought the top speed was perfect. I love the contemplative feel that it brought to the game) -the art style and character animations are very stylish - the way the beetle creatures scurry away is pretty believable - would be nice if there was a delay before the text boxes disappear (I kept accidentally sliding out of the text box trigger before I could read the dialogue) - it's difficult to tell what is and isn't an obstacle in the crash site - I walked around a lot before I realized that the staircase was a staircase

Anyway, thanks for sharing this game! It was cool to explore.

Into the Painting by JellyfishFromMars 2021-05-08T21:17:23Z ♥ 1

I had a great time with this game (well, at first it was frustrating, but by the end it was great). I thought the music in the Van Gogh area was particularly nice, but unfortunately the audio was crackling quite badly (I'm not sure why. It wasn't peaking at 0dB, and other audio on my system was working fine).

The Van Gogh area was my favourite design. It felt really magical to explore a new representation of such a familiar place. I didn't understand the first hint so I searched the area fruitlessly for about 10 minutes (those cubes were super conspicuous). I kept falling off the world and spotting the underground shaft in the church, so I knew I was eventually going to have to go down, but I couldn't figure out how to get inside (protip: it's not by taking a running start at the light-barrier). Eventually I found the next clue by accident and was able to complete the rest of the game without further troubles. My favourite moment was jumping off the bridge in The Scream. The umm... naseloid... creature later on was certainly interesting.

Overall it was a cool game, but there were a few things that I thought took away from the experience. The eye-adaptation effect was too strong for me and I would often end up turning the whole screen black while trying to explore. The camera momentarily clips through obstacles when you collide with them and the resultant flicker is a little bit jarring (also made the adaptation issue worse). I didn't really like the movement acceleration so I found myself moving around with short taps of the movement keys, which made things quite jerky. I'm still not sure if being able to fall out of the Van Gogh world was an intentional creative choice (since the world in the painting also ceases to exist beyond the canvas).

Finally, the shader effect in the Van Gogh area was excellent. I especially liked the smaller texture on the church walls.

Great work everybody!

What Happened in Addison's Grotto by Junebug 2021-05-08T21:07:10Z ♥ 1

This game *oozes* style. The audiovisual aesthetic is worderful. I might just be dense, but I didn't understand at first that I needed to press the red button to submit my word selection. It was also unclear whether or not the voice over the speaker knew what word I was submitting (at first I thought yes, of course, but then when I selected Addison, she only asked him how he knew that word after he spoke it out loud, rather than when it appeared on screen. I'm assuming she wouldn't ask him how he knew the word if she had just given it to him. Maybe I'm overthinking this).

Like others have mentioned, I got into a loop right at the beginning (between truth, false, and lies). There was another word available to break the loop, I just didn't like it and was still trying to figure out how things work, so I went back and forth for a bit. But overall the word association thing was excellent. Most of the words are mundane, their connections obvious, and consequently I let my guard down. So discovering the juicier associations was very satisfying (shiver-inducing on a couple occasions with a few bruh moments on the side).

I don't think I finished the game as intended, but I kind of liked my non-ending. I kept clicking a certain word that rhymes with schmidle until the screen and history were both filled up. I think I clicked it around 40 times or so (because Undertale taught me to repeat the same thing until progress happens). Anyway, I checked for hints on the game page and tried to rewind the word associations, but it didn't work, so my adventure ended with a meditation on the nature of the schmidle (the flickery effect was very cool too).

It would be nice to submit a word by double clicking it rather than having to mouse over to the little red button every time.

Very cool game, I'm looking forward to seeing more of your work in future.

His Darkness by VarantTitizian 2021-05-07T18:54:37Z ♥ 3

The spooky atmosphere in this game was very well done. The disembodied footsteps were unsettling and the loud crack at the end of the chest-opening audio clip was enough to make me jump (more than once, too).

I found the combination of the narrow field of view, speed of the camera rotation, and limited amount of light left me feeling a little nauseated, but maybe that's just me. It would be nice to have a button to toggle movement speed to something slower and more cautious.

Maybe the lighting could be a gameplay mechanic to add a little bit of time-pressure. Perhaps the player could be holding a fast-burning candle which grows dimmer as it burns out, and new candles could be scattered throughout the levels.

This is pretty nit-picky, but the character controller was very floaty when descending the stairs, and I got distracted from gameplay to test how far I could float.

Seeing the photographs at the ending was actually pretty comforting.

Anyway, good job!

MION FOREVER by JoshTheStriker 2021-05-07T18:13:13Z ♥ 2

This game has an interesting idea, but I found it very frustrating to play (the highest score I got was only 6 before I gave up). The most frustrating thing was probably how close the camera is to the player. Such a small field of view made it more difficult to dodge the enemies, and it meant that it was very easy to shoot the ball out of line-of-sight. Speaking of the ball, it took me several minutes to realize that player position doesn't affect how the ball moves (I thought it had something to do with the light around the player).

The animation that plays when you left click looks great, and dashing was nice and zippy (it was _too_ nice and zippy... I wanted to do it all the time just like Hyper Light Drifter).

Overall, good work! Sorry I skipped out on at least 2/3rds of your game..

Deep Dish Delivery by shaner421 2021-05-07T17:50:49Z ♥ 1

Well done graphics and audio (I especially liked the roll animation, the spinning kick, and the painting in the background of the first area), and a surprisingly lengthy game with 3 (!) boss fights.

The movement feels a little bit jerky, and that combined with the skeleton reach advantage made it difficult to get close enough to hit them before they took a swing.

Airborne movement in particular caused me some troubles (I meant to step off a platform just before the first spike pit and instead zoomed straight into the pit). Stepping off of a platform, or jumping while already moving feels like it gives too much velocity on the x-axis and the airborne movement speed is not zippy enough to let me correct my trajectory. As others have mentioned, mid-air attacks would be cool.

I was able to solve the book puzzle (after running around the library looking for hints to no avail), and I felt slightly clever for doing so, but I think that puzzle expects too much from us simple folk haha. For the second puzzle, I didn't even check the environment since it was easier to brute force it (worth noting that I first tried to re-use the logic from the previous puzzle, ie: snake has 1 "limb", bird has 2 wings... but then it fell apart)

Anyway, great work!