Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → lucasvb
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 49 | Unstable | 👥 | Atomic Rock Paper Scissors | jam | 393 | 3.78 | 3.71 | 3.61 | 2.83 | 3.76 | 3.38 | 2.58 | 3.27 |
Pretty good. Love the presentation and gameplay, and the animations are great.
The embed code isn't working in Opera, by the way. You should look into that.
Haha, funny take on the theme. I love that the score is casualties, such a macabre take on the game. The simple graphics, sound effects and cheerful music are a cherry on top of this concept. Well done!
Such a polished, stylish execution! The mini games are all pretty fun to do, despite being simple or based on some existing simple mechanics, but game really adds its own twist to them to make it all interesting.
The game over screen has to be one of the most stylish I've ever seen in a game too! Overall really nice job to the team!
Great game! Concept, graphics and sound are excellent! I haven't encountered any crashes (running on Windows 10) but the browser embed has a visual issue: the dotted lines don't show up for me!
Overall, the gameplay is more frustrating than it could have been, and I agree with @mikoziq's comment about the area of effect.
What I would add is that, because you implemented the effects as hard-toggle when the stabilizer particle gets inside a certain radius, the effects of moving a tiny amount can be huge in the trajectory, which makes it extra frustrating!
This sort of dynamics here is already a non-linear chaotic system (which will be sensitive to initial conditions), but this hard radius for the influence to affect the particle makes it much worse, and breaks the notion of "tiny continuous change in initial conditions lead to continuous change in trajectories" which is essential for the trial and error nature of the game.
You could go with a force proportional to 1/r^2 like gravity or electromagnetism (or 1/(e+r)^2 for some minimum radius "e" to avoid infinite forces), but the effects at a long distance tend to make this sort of setup difficult to play with. Changing the power from 2 to something else doesn't tend to help much in my experience. I would suggest then playing with a polynomial force that goes to zero after some max radius, something like:
function force(r) { if (r > MAX_R) return 0; return FORCE_INTENSITY * Math.pow(1 - r/MAX_R, FORCE_DECAY_POWER); }
Graph would look like this.
polyforce.png
So (1) you don't get infinite range; (2) you don't get infinite force at r=0; (3) easily tunable by three parameters: intensity, decay and max_r.
Anyway, I think this would keep the continuous nature of the force nicely and would allow you to fine-tune the parameters for gameplay purposes well enough.
Just my two cents! But overall, excellent concept and execution! :)
Hah, I *LOVED* this one! Everything about it is great. The animations are all smooth, the art is cute as hell, the use of theme is super creative, sounds and music are excellent, there's plenty of nice jokes and funny animations and screen transitions, and the gameplay is pretty fun!
Just top notch job all around. Definitely one of my favorites so far!
I couldn't figure out how to kick, though. How does it work?
Outstanding little game! The graphics, animation, music, sound effects, adherence to the theme and gameplay mechanics are all so wonderful! Easily a 5/5 on all categories for me. With a little extra polish this would be such a wonderful game! Great job!
Super creative take on the theme and was executed wonderfully. The contrast between the relaxing sounds of fishing and the heart-beats and gunfire really works amazingly well to set the tone.
I am especially impressed by the way the audio and visual transitions between each of the game states, It's very smooth and convincing.
Sound design overall is flawless, I honestly can't find anything bad about it. Visually, some extra animations on the fish would have been nice. Still, I found it very cool how if you fail the fish swims away to the side, that's a nice touch!
The only thing I would say could improve the game would be a bit more variety in the gameplay. Maybe having different minigames to be chosen at random in the PTSD phase would have helped here, so you're always on the edge about them and the unpredictability. I think paired with the sound design it would really kick up the mood up a few notches.
But overall a very solid and polished entry to the jam!
Brilliant game! Very compelling gameplay, and cramming some lore into LD games is always a plus in my book!
My highest praise goes to the music and sound design. The way you dynamically incorporated the violins when spotted, and the "ethereal" sound when you enter the dead state is badass as hell, it sounds and works amazingly well! It helps the music is pretty good too.
Another technical praise I can give is the particle effects. The little details like when you destabilize and the sparks fly randomly, the force fields, or the stars "charging" your power, all of it works beautifully.
An utterly excellent entry for Ludum Dare. You should be proud!
Outstanding work here, all around. Love the slow transitions between screens of classic 8-bit games! The music kicks ass, but it *is* a bit too loud.
Hah, excellent! Love the idea and humor. But man, you really opened some trauma scars with this the minigame haha.
Really digging the overall look. The slightly offset blocks are a very nice take on the grid level design. Animation is rich and smooth. Sound design is a bit inconsistent, as the character looks distinctively male with a moustache but death voice sounds feminine? Maybe I'm reading it wrong though.
I like the take on the pink worms turning blocks into sand. It really amps up the challenge in a creative way.
This game is incredible. Everything is beautifully crafted and thoughtful, gameplay is simple but also incredibly rich and adds to the world-building. This deserves all praises I can give. Congratulations!
Quite challenging! I like the apple goal, and weird desolation and infinite-tower structure of it, together with the random objects and sounds, really set up a compelling funny+ominuous mood. Exceptional job on the theme too!
This is such a ***wonderful*** little game! The setup, use of the theme, mood and technical execution were all superb. You folks really brought this little candle to life! I honestly could see this expanded into a longer mini-game with other mechanics added to it.
Thank you very much for doing this. It's ridiculous that this one does not have higher ratings!
My only complaint is that the moody music could be a bit longer, as it felt like it could develop into something really nice if it continued on!
Very well polished, the pixel art is really good, especially the backgrounds. The mechanics is pretty nice with the randomness (really forces you to invest in thinking about the spells), although I object with wizards going on a rampage on innocent wildlife! :P
On a more serious take, I was wondering if there was any benefit in using certain combinations for different creatures, but other than the dynamics of the magic (like the water bubble falling, so I can't hit bees/crows) there did not seem to be much of a difference.
But overall, very good and fun entry for the jam!
Well made, the art, music and sounds are excellently made. The mechanics is compelling, but it does get a little cumbersome. As someone with a terrible short-term memory I'm not very good at this sort of thing, but it was definitely a cool entry overall!
Pretty cool game. Love the non-euclidean/memory dynamics. Graphically it's a little glitchy, but it's understandable that switching around rooms and light sources would be problematic.
I'm unsure if the concept has been done before like this, but a escape room kind of game based on this mechanics could be very, very cool to play, and mind-bending if done right. Are there plans to pursue this sort of thing in the future?
In any case, great entry for the jam and well executed.
Wonderful little game, love the humor too! The execution is incredibly smooth, and the audio and music is superb for the style. Well done!
Super fun and very well executed! Some puzzles are pretty tricky too. The inclusion of Sokoban dynamics of moving boxes was very clever.
I particularly appreciate the effort you put in the explosion animation. Having the clouds fill the screen was very satisfying to watch every time. That degree of polish was great!
Lovely take on the theme, and the story is pretty nice! The running animation was very charming well made, and chair mechanic was a nice addition, although it was difficult to get it right at some point, especially in the bedroom.
Extremely well polished all around. I just wish there were some more visual interactions between the saber and the walls, like some sparks. It feels a bit bland compared to everything else, despite being a central element of the game. It just felt a little neglected.
The pixel art is surprisingly good. Considering the limited colors and resolution everything reads very well and has a lot of charm. Controls feel very smooth too!
Really cool art and sound design! Love the puns! The bear animation is really great, and the roar really gets you.
Gameplay could be a bit more varied, but the execution made it quite fun nonetheless! The idea of the floor breaking apart is interesting, but at random it sometimes made me get completely stuck in a tiny spot. I think this sort of thing would have benefited from a path check to see if the regions are still connected.
Having other ways to survive to interact with the bear and the weapons would allow the game to have more depth. But as it is it is a great entry for LD. Nice job!
Pretty surprising how disorienting the camera can be, but it's also a little satisfying when your brain "clicks" and gets used to it.
Illustrations are wonderful, game is a pretty fun take on the theme too Very well polished for a compo game.
My only complaint is there's a lack of feedback on interactions. A few sound effects would have really helped bring the game to life. But regardless, it's a good entry!
Totally excellent art and sound/music design! The gameplay is simple but quite challenging and clever. Pretty polished overall too, I couldn't find anything that was particularly glitchy or poorly implemented.
I second everyone who would like to see a few more tasks implemented!
Interesting take on the theme! I like the idea of randomly changing shapes/abilities and making do with it, could work very well in a more polished version of the game. Shame about no sound, but the visuals make up for the setting/mood I think!
Very cool game! Graphics are pretty good, and I especially liked the enemy variety and their design. Music and audio design is also quite good. But I think with this setup we are a bit too much at the mercy of the RNG to get us good items and get us on the proper timing, no?
By the way, the game crashed WebGL a couple of times for me (Firefox), which is odd, but ti hasn't happened with any other game.
Such a wonderful idea! Simple but the execution here, both in terms of graphics, sound and music, are what makes it work so well. The minimalistic gameplay and dizziness mechanics balanced one another unexpectedly for me.
I could really see this expanded into a slightly bigger more polished mini-game that explores some themes with the mechanics, I think it has a lot of potential.
And I really loved the music and wish it was longer. You folks should release a soundtrack somewhere for download, if it's an original piece (or if not, link to the source).
Overall really exceptional work in game design.
Great art and sound/music design, but it's a rather complex game, if not rather confusing. It feels like it would be really interesting and more compelling if given a bit more time and fleshign out the dynamics.
But I loved the lore and worldbuilding, and it's very intriguing! I'd definitely want to see what you folks would achieve with it given more time available.
I think the general concept of possessing objects and the graphics used are really nice, but the way the physics and controls were implemented made it very difficult to use the mechanics to our advantage. In many cases, it was easier to just float around straight to the goal.
I don't think this is easy to achieve though, especially on short notice. The concept here requires some really crazy use of the physics engine to really feel nice. Games like *Everything* sidetracked this by using some ridiculously silly movement system, but here it would have to basically be a type of movement for each object, where each would have a movement strategy. It could lead to some incredibly rich mechanics if done well!
It's a great concept and the design was hitting all the right notes, but in my opinion it was very bold and tricky for a time-constrained event like Ludum Dare. But it would be very cool to see the idea fleshed out a bit better!
Cool mechanics, the setting of the game is very well done for your use of the theme. Creepy as hell! I am not sure how you did the dynamics of which patches of the level are turned to flesh, but it was the right amount of predictable and unpredictable to be interesting, so well done with that! The game hinged entirely on that innovative technical aspect and you did it very well.
I did not find the controls frustrating or unresponsive, to me they were very smooth. The game is just unrelenting, which is pretty good in this case.
Overall a very polished creepy little horror game that focused on a single idea and did it very well. Great job!
SUPER fun game! It really kept me on edge with the fast pacing, the crazy enemies and their attack patterns and the ridiculous mixture of weapons and buffs.
Graphics and sound were all pretty nice too and blended very well. Great job!
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Such a cool little game you've got here! The art is very well made and animations smooth, the gameplay is polished and controls are very fluid, the music is very nice and even has the occasional meow! The detail of the cat being having a "cosmos" passing by is such a great little thing many will miss!
Honestly deserves to get way more ratings. It's a great entry to this event!
(Also, as a physicist actively working in quantum information, you've got my official seal of approval! :D)
Really a masterclass in game making. This thing is so well made and polished it's basically a full game. I really have nothing to comment other than praise. You folks rule!
Loved the thematic aesthetics, graphics, music and general concept! Super funny elements and details all around. I love the skeletons and the death animation.
As for the the gameplay, it is a little too unbalanced to be really fun to play for many attempts, though, especially when the power goes out. It's pretty much impossible (unless I'm doing something very wrong) to get a good pacing going.
The jumping and stair control were pretty glitchy to me, but that's understandable on a short deadline. Those are two of the most difficult things to get right in platformers, especially for something fast paced that uses both simultaneously like this. It was a still playable, so that's a pretty good achievement!
Overall a pretty cool take on the theme and the aesthetics was lovely. I would love to see more of this radical 80's nuclear safety inspector hijinks! I can totally see these visuals and style as some sort of retro platformer like the old Commander Keen.
I love how wacky it is as a concept, but it was very well executed and everything is super polished and visually cohesive. The control is very responsive and the balancing feels intuitive, despite lack of any physical feedback, which is pretty cool.
Contrary to what some have said, I think the preview is a nice touch, although it doesn't seem to actually help much.
I agree with @micheldever's remarks, though. The uniform randomization of objects did not provide with an unbalanced variety on average, so there was very little surprise or strategy to make full use of the gameplay elements. Having a long-tail distribution of object weights would be more appropriate, so you would really challenge the skill of the player by throwing off the balance with a big object to the side. I'm not sure it would work in practice, but it would have been nice to experiment with that idea.
Overall, it's a very well-made entry and it deserves much more ratings and plays!
Extremely polished gameplay concept. The idea of picking curses along the way is so good, and the ones you folks came up with were all very interesting to play around with.
The enemies are weird but all very interesting to handle and visually distinctive despite the small resolution and amount of colors. The flashlight mechanics is well done and works really well with the overall controls and the movement speed.
Graphically, I'm impressed by how well you managed to make everything read despite the 1-bit color resolution. The details on the border are a nice touch too.
I also though the music was very very good. Please @bruncket, release the soundtrack somewhere! :)
By the way, I got a bug at some point where the game got stuck, with an exclamation point that appeared earlier never materializing.
thelesserevilbug.png
@mrbamboo, @dodori, @chainsawmcd, @jonah, @datadazer, @cirno, @khaoz-fang, @deav, @cjce, @gorypixels: Thank you! :)
@mega-marlon: Thank you for the feedback! The animation was indeed too slow as I was trying to understand a flickering bug when new pieces fell (you can see it in the video), and I thought it was related to animation speed as it improved when it was slower. Turned out to be related to the particle system and how sprites get removed from the poll. Should be faster paced now.
@bhughes: Thank you! @m1nus originally suggested that too, but I felt like it could be ambiguous, implying the player could choose how many pieces to take? We will think about it in any future remakes! There's probably a good way of doing it that doesn't feel too much like "thinking for the player" visually.
@enya454: Thanks! Yeah, balancing is probably off. We had many ideas of how to make it interesting, but many would take too long to implement. We'll try them out in any future remake!
@glebshik: Thank you! :) Yeah, we're a bit upset about it too! The original plan for the gameplay involved the computer doing counter-attacks and new pieces being added from every side, not just the top. The cyclic nature of Rock > Scissors > Paper > Rock would lead to weird chain reactions that would make everything chaotic, and more "unstable". But it turned out to be very difficult to implement on short notice, or even to conceptualize, so in the spirit of the Jam we opted for getting something playable out there that's fun, even if it meant sacrificing a little on the theme! We'll see how much of these ideas make it to a potential remake in the near future! :D
@xeke-death: Thanks! Glad you had fun! Nice score too! :) Yeah it's intentional for this release. The idea here was that as you begin playing the metal blocks become more likely to appear naturally, as a way to increase difficulty.
This is a bit of a hack, though, because the original intent of the game was for the computer to counter attack you after every move, so the metal bar would grow based on that attack, and difficulty could be tweaked based on some crude AI and/or making the metal bar easier to fill.
But there was no time left, so we went for something simple for now! :)
@goddoesplaydice: Thanks! The power bars at the bottom indicate whether a nuke will drop or a metal bar will drop next. The nuke bar fills as you do good attacks and combos, or explode a nuke.
The metal bar fills every time you make a mistake (your move ends up with your piece beaten). (If you do a combo attack that ends with your piece beaten, the metal bar fills with the combo too.) The original intent was for the CPU to counter-attack every move, so that's what would fill the metal bar, making the game more and more difficult with time, requiring strategy.
But due to time-constraints, I ended up making metal blocks appear randomly more frequently despite the metal bar level. So it kind of ends up confusing to have the bar around. But it's too late now to change. :P
@namnam: Thanks! Ah, I never thought about sliding! That's a good point. We focused on desktop, so the thought of using the mouse like that never occurred to me. Could work in a future mobile version! Thanks for the suggestion!
@pink-shard-games, @quoc: Thank you so much! :)
@gmedley: Hah, sorry, but we didn't want to grab an existing track or use existing assets. I ended up whipping a shitty John Carpenter-ish loop, and I'm not really a composer! But we promise future releases will definitely have some bangin' music!
@alex-aspa: As it is, the game starts adding metal blocks randomly with increasing probability. At some point it is literally impossible to continue! The trick is getting nukes early on to ensure you get rid of them, as later in the game it's too difficult to do anything. But this was not the intended gameplay, it's just the hacky version I managed to implement on time!
@Baturinsky: Yeah, totally agree! The game needs a lot of balancing still! I ended up implementing these features at the last hours. I'm working on a post-LD release of the game with the intended features and some tweaks to the gameplay, and nukes will be a lot more plentiful and fun to play around with!
@tomer-cool: That's a great idea! I will add it to the post-LD "director's cut" release! :D
@tomer-cool Check it out! The first implementation of it, for a future release! :D
bignukes_smaller (2).gif
@xiyou: Nah, we were never trying to do a typical "match 3" game. Quite the opposite, we wanted to move away from all the cliches. One of the first things we wrote down in our design sketches was "player has to ***avoid*** chain reactions", which was how we approached the "Unstable" theme originally. However, most of our ideas did not make the cut.
So the decision to *not* have chain reactions in the player's favor was deliberate from the start, and a central point in our game's design. We wanted the player to be in full control of what's going on, and chain reactions to typically have unintended *negative* consequences.
The point was that you could not rely on things randomly going your way, like in typical matching games where you earn a lot of points for doing nothing. You have to earn your combos, and if you don't act carefully you miss out on most of the bones the game throws at you.
This is even clearer in the newer post-Jam version (to be released soon). Having bombs create a chain explosion is a core aspect of the mechanic, but it's not always desirable to do it. In many cases your strategy is to work around the bombs to prevent a premature explosion. It's much more challenging and interesting this way.
This is also why we did not want to include timed events/moves. We wanted the player to be in total control of the game. It's supposed to be a thoughtful action puzzle.
@shigor You're in luck! The post-Jam version is now live!
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/atomic-rock-paper-scissors/atomic-rock-paper-scissors-gets-a-major-update
This was short but challenging! I appreciate the little background lore.
A lot of cool little things show you folks put a lot of thought into it, like the fire in the rail going down as you jump.
One thing that I felt lacking was the switching rail animation and how it dragged the fire with the character sprite. It would have been great if they jumped sideways, not just shifted, and if there was some nice sparks and other effects. But I understand the time constraints.
This mechanic could really be expanded into a very challenging fast paced game! Not sure how much you thought about lore into it.
All that said, the music slaps and the sound effects are pretty good too.
Very wonderfully done all around! The tutorial and gameplay were both a little confusing, but once you get the hang of it it makes sense.
"It's not very complicated", he said!
Brilliant game, everything was implemented flawlessly. It was very difficult for me, but it's an exceptional take on the theme and an entry to the jam! Well done!
This game is criminally underrated as of yet here.
This was brilliant! Super creative, well-executed and funny. Great job!
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Very cute and well made, all the art and music meshed incredibly well. Love the take on the theme too! The gameplay is a little down to luck I think, as the physics engine is very unpredictable sometimes. But I managed to get three stars on everything! :)
I was hoping to see her happy, but at least she's safe!
Great game! :)
Please put the soundtrack somewhere, it's really relaxing and nice.
The limited jump mechanic is a nice take for the theme! Overall pretty solid entry.
Hah, the controls are really juuust the right amount of frustrating to be fun and on the theme! The music is really great too, and cute art overall. Very nice!
Gameplay feels a little obscure and unclear to me, but technically the overall execution is nice.
Simple gameplay mechanics, but the execution with visuals, music and narrative themes make it incredibly exciting and had me pumped throughout!
Too bad I'm too slow to enjoy it fully, but this was really exceptional work!
Great take on the theme! Art is quite pretty and the sneezes/cough/hiccups were unexpected and hilarious! :)