Luther-1

YOU ARE FIRED! by urbanhelsing 2018-12-04T06:58:37Z

This game really stands out from others I have seen in quality. It was very fun to play and never had a dull moment. Everything felt intuitive and I picked up the flow of the game in a matter of minutes. Despite this, I do have a few complaints. First of all the text and who you are going to kick out could be aligned better. I found that more than once I found a bad employee and pressed space only to send the guy next to him flying out the side. I will admit it was pretty funny but it also took away from my experience as I felt a bit cheated. Additionally, the money required for a new floor doubling every times seems a bit too fast for my liking, It makes the game feel like it has an artificial cutoff point at around the 7th or 8th floor which I feel should be removed and replaced with something else such as an ending. All in all great job with the game! I would love to see this as an actual game with some more polish and a couple shiny new features.

Electrocuted by Odlog Oglog 2018-12-04T06:10:15Z

This game was fairly fun to play as an exploration based puzzle game, but falls short in terms of fitting the theme. Unfortunately I just can't see how losing energy from damage and from walking is really a sacrifice. Some of the pixel art in the game feels a bit lacking but can be excused because of the lack of time. As a general statement I think that power stations are placed in odd intervals. I found that my power would sometimes be 7/10 when I reached a new one and sometimes it would be 1/10. Additionally, in the last level I found that by just pushing the box to the right without stopping you would be able to reach the next power station before you died, making the level feel a bit boring. Finally, I think that replacing the power number at the top left with a bar changing size and colour above your head would be a nice alternative. Overall the game was OK and I think that mixing the power draining aspect with the exploration was a very good idea. The controls were solid and I never had a problem with the collision on objects. The levels were open yet still had a good sense of direction, I never felt like I didn't know what I had to be doing. A few adjustments to the game and some general polish would do this game well.

One Coin by Meoanar 2018-12-04T05:39:20Z

I was pleasantly surprised on how captivating this game was. You really nailed the theme on it while keeping it original and interesting. I couldn't help but play the game again and again to see how different choices changed what happened. The art style of the game looks great while standing out from what I've seen in other games. However, the game is not perfect.The first thing I noticed slightly strange movement, I found that I fell off the edge in the second room more often than not. I also noticed that near the end I had the same 3 choices of what to give up and ended up just giving up gravity every time. Overall the game was beautifully designed while staying simple. I will be disappointed if this does not reach top 100. Bravo!

Eartheors by MrRyzen 2018-12-04T04:06:22Z

All in all I enjoyed the game, but it's the concept I really love. An issue I think needs to be addressed is really explaining what everything does. I found myself coming back to this page mid game trying to figure out what I was supposed to do with things. After playing it for 10 minutes I still don't know why you would send a rocket instead of a nuke or what bases do :/. Furthermore it was a bit bothersome to not know if a tile was destroyed without clicking on it and looking at a menu, putting an x over the tile would help a lot. If you polished up the game and added more features I could definitely see myself playing it outside of this game jam. Great work!

Bloodlust X by Mitch Cutler 2018-12-04T04:32:23Z

The first thing I noticed when I started up the game was the lack of options. I moved my mouse half an inch and I turned around fully which is far too high for my liking. I personally don't like that the game didn't include up and down camera movements, but I can live with it. Movement felt for the most part good, occasionally I would start floating (notably in the spike floor room and down the descending hallway). Despite this, I couldn't help but play the game a second and even third time trying to reach farther into the level. I enjoy this take on the theme a lot and the atmosphere of the game is very defined with the ambient sounds, great work on that part! Every time I opened a door I was excited to see what I would find inside, the game did a great job of making exploration feel valuable. A feature I would like to see implemented is an indicator to show how much blood will be taken when opening a door, sometimes it's hard to tell if you can make it or not. Finally, The randomization of the floor tiles in the spike floor room needs to go. After playing the level for 5 minutes the last thing I want to see is an impassible floor because of RNG. Amazing work on the game overall!

Connection by Luther-1 2018-12-04T05:10:59Z

@philippkick We were we bit rushed to pull everything together near the end, apologies for that. The instructions on how to play are at the bottom of every level, we didn't have the time to add a GUI to make them stand out more. Our idea for the game was that in every level you would have to make someone upset so that someone else could be happy.

Slaves to Mammon by fizzhog 2018-12-04T05:17:04Z

After playing through the game once I noticed a few things that I believe need the be changed. First of all there are a lot enemies, this alone would not be a problem but because the enemies also do not have a spawn pattern it makes feels like you're just randomly pressing buttons in the hopes that the enemies die. Giving the enemies a recognizable spawn pattern would let the user identify what type of threat a lane is and how to deal with it. The second problem is the cheese strategies. I found that by pressing 1 then just pressing 1 and 2 then 5 and 6 over and over made me invincible, and it's not very fun to play a game you can't lose. Finally, the game became a bit bland after the first half minute as nothing new happened. maybe add a new enemy or special event like one ring locking up that happens every so often to spice it up. The idea behind the game is pretty nice though and the concept of literally stopping sacrifice made me laugh a bit. This game has the potential to be great, and I think that with a few improvements to the functionality of the rings and spawn patterns of the enemies with a few new enemies sprinkled in you could make the game a lot of fun to play.

Murder Cow by abubanggheed 2018-12-04T03:30:45Z

I found the game to be a little repetitive with having to do the same part over and over. For a game like this I think you should keep the levels small and short (ideally on one screen) to keep the game feeling fresh for longer. The camera could use some work too, I felt like I was cheated a few times when I had to make a blind jump and hit a dragon. Moving the camera to show more of the screen where the player is facing would help out a lot. Overall the game was fun to play for a few minutes and even got me to laugh a bit when I heard the sudden cow noise. Once you get the hang of how the patterns you can really pick up some speed. Some little improvements and polish would go a long way for this game. Good job.:slight_smile:

Ye of little faith by Andrea 2019-05-01T02:29:20Z

I had quite a bit of fun playing through this game, having initially played on the easiest setting and absolutely destroying it I felt hard mode might not be so difficult. I was wrong. The game is quite simple, yet has enough depth and strategy to it to make it worth playing over and over to try and win. I enjoyed playing the game and I might just have to come back to play it some more, great job on the game! Despite all this, I still do have some things to bring up. The building system could use some light improvements such as showing some display to make it obvious you are currently trying to build something, I built more than a few buildings on accident thinking I had nothing selected. Additionally, a nice visual addition would be a red overlay of sorts on tile which cannot be built on. On the subject of the people, it would certainly be nice to be able to assign them to prioritize a resource. At some points during the hard mode run I didn't care about food and just needed more wood for housing to stop the fast decay of happiness. Another nice to have would be more statistics. Tiles could show exactly how much they are producing on right click and the meters on the right could show the current production and theoretical production when you have the required workers. My biggest complaint though is the lack of buildings and options. Once you build a building that's it, nothing more to it. An upgrade system or demolish ability would be very nice especially for those late game moments when you're just building buildings over and over. As an example the house could have an ability for 5 wood to increase capacity by 3, but would cause food requirement to increase by a few extra percent. Random events such as an extra cold winter for less food or longer summer for more food would be interesting, however these events would have to be controlled lightly to prevent ruined runs on the first year and the such. Additionally, the non buildable tiles could have some other interesting characteristics. The water tile could have the option to build a fishery which would produce more food than farms, but has the chance to produce nothing during extra cold winters, preventing a reliance on the better tiles. In the end, the game is a very nice product. It brings a lot of strategy to the table and I genuinely had a lot of fun playing it. I hope you are able to polish this game in the future to create a more in depth experience. Again, great work on the game!

you need believers by Querk 2019-05-01T06:34:59Z

Playing through the game I had a few bumps from time to time, but overall the game was relaxing, enjoyable, and simple. I enjoyed the concept of spending your faith in order to gain more faith and I think the way it was executed prevented the exponential growth common to these types of games. Good job on that. I also enjoyed how relaxing it was, just floating back and forth and getting a rhythm of w - q - e down to replace dead bushes. There are a few things that could be changed though. First of all it should be possible to delete a tile without killing the people on it. This could be part of the challenge but considering you can't always tell exactly what tile a person is on it does not seem very fair to me. Simply moving them off to the side or preventing the deletion of a tile while someone is on it would alleviate this problem. Secondly, a life bar above people and bushes to tell when they will die would be nice. By adding that it would allow the player to pre-plan their route and where they need to stick around instead of just flying back and forth to find all the bushes near a totem to be gone. Finally, the addition of more types or tiles or some form of end goal should be implemented. After you get started and gain around 200 faith the game becomes the same thing over and over with no chance of losing. Perhaps there could be some form of disasters and you would have to move the people around to keep the safe, or maybe there could be farms which require people to work them but produce more food. There is quite a bit of potential to add more content into this game to make it last much longer and be a lot more engaging. Although, on it's own it still is quite a nice simple game to play. Good work.

Tod Lost His Dog by Atwooooooood 2019-05-01T05:55:34Z

This was certainly one of the more interesting games I have seen so far. Although it felt a bit rough around the edges it more than compensated for that with the story and implications. Everything in the game felt just a bit surreal, enough to put you off, and with the constant talking of tod being your only connection back to real life it brings an atmosphere of a bit of stress and worry to the game. You certainly conveyed your opinions on what the theme really meant in the game and it came together to be quite the experience. Furthermore, the graphics in the game were very beautiful. Although the rest of the game doesn't compare to the start menu scene, that scene alone is enough to gain you a high rating on the graphics section. Among the praise, I do have some minor complaints. The movement in the game felt a bit unresponsive and it wasn't very smooth to control in general. I also experienced the camera clipping through any wall I went close to, which I tired to abuse to find what to do next. This ties directly into my next point: the direction you are supposed to go is a bit too unclear for me. I can certainly see the reasoning for making it a bit mysterious as to what to do, but I believe there should be more pointers to to know exactly where you need to shoot. I was stuck in the last room for quite some time shooting the fan thinking I needed to destroy everything to progress. I recommend making the light source a lot more obvious in the last room to shine on the destructible wall. I applaud your game and i'm very happy you did not give up on the game jam. Felt a bit unnerving to play and had a great atmosphere to it. Great game, i'd recommend it to anyone.

Evil Current by raoz 2019-04-30T02:20:37Z

Aside from a few bumps at the start, this game was quite interesting and had me thinking for a bit on some of the levels. The physics and collision seem very impressive for something done in only 70 hours, Great job on that! Furthermore, the concept of the game is very unique and had me laughing when I realized the connection to the theme. Some things could use some improvement though. Specifically, it was not very obvious the switches were closed when the circles were touching them and led to confusion as to how to activate them. Another thing I noticed was that you can click the red '+' sign to turn the current on and off to the whole circuit but it does not state that it is a switch or show whether or not it is on. Those issues are very small though and overall, it was definitely worth my time to play. Level design was solid enough to show me how to activate the switches without the animation so good job on that! Solid game considering the engine was made from scratch.

LifeCurrency by user75641 2019-04-30T02:40:42Z

Initially getting into this game my attention was immediately drawn to the iron ore patches on the ground, I think it's quite nice to drop the player into the world and let them find out what things do themselves and given your game I think it goes well with the whole zombie theme. Although the grass messed with me a bit at first the colour variation patterns in it look quite nice, feels natural. I do have some issues to raise though. First of all attempting to full screen the game caused a crash every time on my computer, which lead to me mashing every button thinking I just didn't know the controls. The lack of any instructions also helped in causing the frustration while trying to figure out exactly what did what. However, the game and controls are very intuitive, so even with the lack of instructions it didn't take long to learn how to play. Extending that thought, lack of information was a big problem through the game. Without health bars for the zombies you start to wonder if you're even doing damage at points, and how much longer until they are dead is a complete mystery. Health bars are not required, but it must be obvious in some way that you are doing damage to the enemies. As for the player's health bar it was far too small for me, something as important as the player health should be in an obvious spot and large enough to see at a glance. Finally, The aerial controls in the game are a bit much in my opinion, given the other design choices in the game it seems like the control in the air could be toned down quite a bit. With the implementation of these changes I think this game would be much easier to play and more enjoyable. Despite all of this, I like your idea. I played through the game for more than 5 minutes hoping there would be more to explore and find and I think if you added some more content even if just another rock to mine or a day night cycle it would be much more interesting. Your game has a lot of potential to be worth playing for a bit but unfortunately right now it's just missing too many features. Good work on the basics though, I hope you can use this to improve the game further.

Wanted by KJG 2019-05-01T05:30:23Z

I can see a lot of potential in this game to be great, but at the moment it's just lacking too many features for me to give it a good rating. Despite this, the idea is there and there were some good design choices in the game. Starting off, having the game be an open world opens up many doors for features to add to the game. This does come at a price though, and in one run I was trapped in a square where the enemies could not reach me and I was invulnerable. Adding mandatory holes in all the lines of blocks would prevent this. Moving on, given that it's randomly generated it might be worthwhile to add some randomly generated stores that you can spend your hard earned money on for better guns, more ammo, increased health etc. This would add much more game play and give the player a solid direction instead of just 'kill enemies'. Additionally, to compliment the new stores a ramping difficult could be added where more enemies would spawn as time goes on, possibly with better and better stats. New enemies could also be introduced later on in the game such as an enemy that rides a horse which is faster but turns a lot slower. The choice of having the player rotate as the mouse rotates is a feature I just can't get behind, it doesn't feel intuitive and I believe that it would be much better to just have the player point towards the mouse at all times. That alone would make the player feel much smoother to control. Another feature that would be nice is a minimap to show where in relation to the player the enemies are. This way the player would easily know if they should engage or run away from threats and plan before the heat of action. A health bar would also be appreciated so instead of dying in one hit you can make some mistakes and still recover. Finishing off, my final and biggest complaint was the lack of UI elements. There was nothing to show the ammo of the player, nor was there a health bar (which to be honest isn't very needed at the moment given the lack of health). At points I found the enemies were running towards me and I click to shoot only to see 'reloading' above my character. All in all I think the idea is there and with some more features and improvements I can see this game having some real depth to it. Good work on the base idea, it stayed with the theme well and has a lot of potential.

Miserable Game by WTMK_BK 2019-04-30T04:27:48Z

Nice short game, delivers exactly what is promises. The spin you took on the theme was interesting, but it worked out in the end. I'm impressed you managed to make an idle game and still relate it back to the theme. By far my favourite feature in the game would be the ability to visibly see your money pile up, at first I thought it was just a particle effect but was pleasantly surprised to see that they were physics objects. Watching your money cut in half when you bought something was quite fun to watch, I think it was a very smart choice to make your money visible like that. The game does feel a bit empty though and you complete it very fast, only taking about 3 minutes to win. It would be nice to add just a few more things to buy such as maybe a money cloud that rained money every now or then or the ability to sacrifice your health for more money. This would compensate the exponential growth since your cash income doesn't scale exponentially while the prices do, leading to a block where there's no point in playing after a bit. Additionally, more explanation on how the gamble button really works would be appreciated. It is unclear that the cost is how much you are wagering. Adding a green/red number for money gained/lost above the button would make it much easier to understand. Also it would be nice to be able to select how much you want to wager instead of a random number. Final note on the gamble button was that I found that you needed at least $25 in order to gamble, which is not stated anywhere. Finally, The button to increase payment frequency stopped doing anything after a point but was still an option to buy causing wasted money. All in all it was a nice quick game to play. fast, to the point, and related to the theme, just a little too short for me. Nice game overall.

Labour Micro by Luther-1 2019-05-02T02:10:46Z

@dorblin7z7 @lot9s There is only one level, if you got stuck at the part after you demolish the tree the problem is that auto move gets turned off without the user being notified and you need to press space or 'next turn' to progress. It is confusing and poorly designed in that aspect, but we couldn't think of a good solution other than an awkward and probably also confusing text box telling you that so we just hoped the user would figure it out themselves. Please let me know if this wasn't the case and the game generally just didn't do anything on right click. Thanks for the feedback!

Save your money by Denis0601 2019-04-30T02:56:12Z

Nice job with the game. Admittedly when I first played through it I wasn't super impressed by it, but despite that I couldn't help but play it again and again trying different strategies to try to reach the end with the most money left. I enjoyed the concept of it and thought it was a very original idea which fit the theme very well. I also enjoyed the challenge of trying to speedrun the game which given the speed the character moved felt natural to do, I can imagine this game being expanded with more levels and concepts and seeing people fly across levels taking zero damage. However, before any of that happens there are a few key things that could be improved. First of all is the camera. Given the style of game the camera should at the very least be centered on the player, but ideally it should be showing the majority of the right side of the character in order to let the player plan on how he will engage the enemies. Secondly, additional features to how the money is thrown would add a lot more depth to the game. Having the ability to chose to throw less or more money and having the enemies take time to collect the money from the ground with the time being based on the amount of money on the ground would be nice. This would also open up doors for a cover system where the enemies would not try to attack you unless they had line of sight on you, allowing for the player to throw money down and jump to more cover ahead while the enemy is picking up the money. With the addition of just those two features the game play would expand a lot and player interest would jump up massively. Great work on the concept and the overall idea, I would love to see the game have those features added to compliment the base idea.

Backcourt Brawlers by Luther-1 2020-04-21T08:45:10Z

@shugor @lectvs Thanks for the feedback on the game. The dash lacking a visual cue and the ball height problem were things that we didn't really know how to solve effectively. Last minute the ball size scaling was added along with a buff to dash timer as a bit of a band-aid fix. Do you have any ideas on how we could have made the height of the ball more apparent? Or any ways that we could have made hitting the ball feel more reliable in general?

Backcourt Brawlers by Luther-1 2020-04-21T08:53:15Z

@carson-bentley Shoot, thought I'd rid most of the movement bugs from the game. Every time we do a game jam I remake my movement system and it's always got some problem. Could you elaborate on the situation that you got stuck please? Was the game frozen? What did you do to get stuck? Where did you get stuck?

Also what about the controls felt awkward? If possible could you give some recommendations on different key binds that might work better?

Backcourt Brawlers by Luther-1 2020-04-22T07:40:38Z

@carson-bentley Mouse dashing seems like a good idea, I guess we got too stuck on the idea of keyboard only. Whoops. I have analyzed my code and I've found the reason for the two bugs you mentioned, thank you for that feedback!

If you're interested: The teleport bug is due to the slight scaling of the player as they move in the air, which also scales the hitbox, something I forgot to account for. The screen getting stuck is a frame perfect bug which happens due to the fact that your movement is calculated after the check to hit the ball, bypassing the check if movement is paused for that one frame. If you hit a wall in that one frame your state unexpectedly changes from 'Hitting' to 'Bonk'. GameMaker may behave really strangely sometimes, but most of the time it's a mistake on my part 🙃