Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → MadeByChaz
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Category | Score | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 🥉 | 2020 | 46 | Keep it alive | Don't Kill Death (Or Die Trying) | jam | Fun | 4.53 |
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | 46 | Keep it alive | Don't Kill Death (Or Die Trying) | jam | 6 | 4.48 | 4.53 | 4.14 | 4.28 | 4.62 | 4.32 | 4.39 | 4.25 |
Had fun with this! The interface was slick and the atmosphere was great. It was fun to see the creature responding well to my researcher and eventually eating some people! Good horror elements. The art was lovely. I think I would have perhaps assisgned the E key to all actions, like interacting with the computer etc.
Unique concept and well put together. Thanks for sharing and congratulations on your entry!
As others have said, the atmosphere here is cute. My first question however, is why did you use white text on a faded white dialogue box on the intro? It made it a little hard to see! I also wish it was skippable (for repeat plays) and there were a few typos - not a big deal, but something you should be aware of.
I love the short minigame type of gameplay. I did find that by the time I'd read the instructions for what I was supposed to do, my timer was already halfway depleted and sometimes I wasn't getting the interaction from the objects I was expecting: the toothbrush sometimes wouldn't move. My crab also wasn't moving with my mouse to avoid the objects. It felt very stop - start and left me wondering a little.
I understand it's quick shot gameplay but if it isn't so intuitive as to be instantly understandble, I feel there should be a popup panel that explains prior to kicking off the timer. Some of the instructions also left the edges of the screen (I am playing in the browser, not fullscreen).
I absoloutely adore the layout of the hub world and the artwork of the entire game is extremely appealing. I see what was being done here and I like it very much, I just feel that there is a little clarity missing in it's execution. Regardless, you should be proud of the entry.
Congratulations on your entry!
I wish I could give multiple hearts for these comments: Dan Paladin (Behemoth) and Edmund McMillen are my two main inspirations. I guess I wear that on my sleeve but it's still an honour to be compared. Thanks for the comments <3
@whismirk I'm taking your comment as a huge compliment. It is indeed my first jam; I recorded my screen for the entire process to make a timelapse of it and you can see every other game I've made on my website. I'm migrating from making Flash games! For what it's worth I went up to about 2 hours before deadline before deciding to wrap and upload.
I'm not ashamed to say that I've been incredibly moved by everyone's feedback. I'm so happy that you're enjoying it; for the large part I didn't even know if there was actually a game *in* there. I just thought the mechanic had potential. Once the upgrade shop was in and I called my brother to my apartment at 2am to record some last minute voice acting, it felt a bit more complete, but it really was touch 'n' go. But the whole event has been incredible - to top it off, the community is amazing and I can't wait for the next one. I'm going to do my best to have a good play through everyone's games!
@augus Making it felt EXACTLY like smashing together some thing at 14 and hoping it doesn't get blammed on NG in it's judging phase :) The jam brought back those feelings for me too and I'll be forever grateful that happened. Thanks for the lovely feedback.
@twistashio Thanks so much! I think I might do some tutorials in the near future. I'm so glad you liked it and thanks for the feedback!
@apandso Thanks for the comment...there is a red circle that shows your spawn cut off area when you do that :)
@paulhocker Legend! Thanks so much, I'm glad you enjoyed it :)
There's a really interesting concept here; I was initially a bit confused about why there were hearts as sometimes I would die with full health. I think you could have done away with the hearts and used the fireplace as the sole thing you need to protect (especially as the trees were gunning for that and not you personally). Also, perhaps not making the fire damage the player would've been a bit more user-friendly too. I often just lost a bit of health moving around and it felt like an inconvenience to have the thing I'm nurturing harm me.
I really liked the idea of the trees dropping the fuel for the fire and being able to use them to fuel the fire or deal extra damage, which adds a thin layer of strategy.
While the aniamtion is minimal, the artowrk itself is appealing. I like the title screen particularly.
I hope this feedback was somewhat useful - maybe I just suck at the game!
Congratulations on your entry!
Cute game; I feel inevitable comparisons to Don't Starve in the visual department! I liked the stealth aspect and thought the backstory showed an original interpretation of the theme. Music fit well and the lighting set an appropriate mood.
I'm not sure what the notes were for; my top selection was in red and no matter how many parts I dug up, they weren't getting ticked off. I'm not sure if I misunderstood what I had to do with them, but I also felt like I was digging up the same parts over and over?
I liked that the cone of vision was relatively forgiving which prevented frustrating and unfair spottings. It was fun to have the companion follow you especially in a stealth game. I don't know if he could be "spotted" but if he could that's a neat take on the stealth genre (taking an NPC in toe).
Did the rats or vampires do anything or were they just visual cues? All in all a nice package and unique interpretation of the theme. Thanks for sharing and congratulations on your entry!
You done well to squeeze out extra from a relatively simple mechanic. I wish there was a marker or arrow that was pointing to the shop so when it's off screen I know where to go instead of blindly running around!
The graphics were simple but chunky and neat. I liked that when I died it wasn't just the same game over room, but showed messages that felt like the game was expecting it. So that was nice, as was the persistent coinage and gifts for dying. That worked out very well. I managed to get to the void and kill a few enemies.
It was very smooth to play; the window resizing as the game was loading was insane. I've never seen that done before. It also had my name in it! That was cool and felt very personal.
But with WASD movement I'm not sure space bar and shift are the best options for dashing...it made me feel like I need more fingers to pull off downward dashes with one hand.
Overall a decent package and a nice progression of upgrades etc. Thanks for sharing and congratulations on your entry!
I liked the atmosphere to begin with; however I feel like the tutorial was a bit too cumbersome and was kind of too asyncronous to the gameplay. I started reading it and as it went on and on I thought it'd best to discover as I play. Unforuntately I didn't feel like I ever really knew what was going on.
I do enjoy the base concept; keep the light alive and move into the unknown (made me think of the game as being based around the Darkest Dungeon mechanic), and the meeple style actors and lighting worked well to create an ambience with the music. Unfortunately for me however I just couldn't grasp what I was supposed to be doing quick enough for it to hold my interest for an extended period of time, but I can still appreciate what was being aimed for.
Thanks for sharing and congratulations on your entry!
Very nice! I loved the vibe on this. The graphics were appropriate and it was nicely put together. I *tried* to understand what was going on after reading the tutorial through a couple of times but dont think I still fully understood it. The minigames were a good touch and the sound was fantastic. I loved the mouse clicking sound when I clicked mine. It did definitely feel very "hacker-ish". Voices and music were spot on...I think the only thing that could've benefited it further was perhaps an interactive tutorial with a demonstration of each mechanic and what it does. Overall however I thought the mood level on this one was high. Thanks for sharing and congratulations on your entry (and for your lovely feedback on my own entry)!
I was impressed that you squeezed a kind of character creator into a jam game; however it waas SO DARK! I couldn't see anything. I wasn't even sure it had loaded until the eye selections showed up a bit more clearly.
Good job getting your guitar out and recording a personalized little atmospheric loop, to add atmosphere to your game. I did however have a lot of trouble really seeing anything that was going on because of how incredible dark everything was. I must confess however that I had no idea how to play...I was moving, and ending my turn and encountering enemies but I didn't know what I was doing at all which left me a little frustrated as I feel there may have been something good that I was missing.
I think if you could bring out some colour, or at least make it brighter and perhaps made the fundamentals of gameplay a bit more obvious it would've done justice to what appears to be something fairly intricate. Thanks for sharing and congratulations on your entry!
My first impression was that the sound was fitting and everything felt nice and smooth. I was thrown a bit with the inverse aiming, it didn't quite feel immediately intuitive and the stage border limit for the mouse on the jam version was a slight annoyance especially when it came to quitting the game, but a minor quality-of-life gripe nonetheless.
I thought the hand painted style was cute, and there's a decent level of polish for a jam game. It did feel a little repetitive for my tastes; I didn't have any clear indication of what a level consisted of so I didn't know the end goal (if it *was* there it wasn't clear to me) and it felt a bit aimless (pun not intended!) as I continued to play.
Overall I think this would probably work best as a casual mobile game and would benefit from a bit more variety and progression feedback, but it is of course a very nice overall package. Thanks for submitting and congratulations on your entry!
This took me off guard! Absoloutely mind blowing that you put this together in 2 days. Art, sound and atmosphere were really married together in a cohesive way to form a kind of modernized Game & Watch forumla. Everything from the introduction to the interprative end would have been something worth applauding regardless of time frame; but that it was put together in such a short time is utterly commendable.
I do agree with a couple of commenters that it did take me a train ride or two before I knew exactly what I was doing and how the effects were being delivered, but it's a minor criticism of a complete and rounded package.
Thanks for sharing and congratulations on your fantastic entry!
I really liked the titular screen and the character art. I enjoyed the chunky sprite work and the 1bit vibes from the interface. Minor gripes would be inconsistent capitalization of letters (for instance your surname starts with a lowercase) and lack of any menu to exit the application. I understand that I plant the seeds but once I'd grown a yellow flower, I tried to talk to the lady and it wouldn't respond. I then proceeded to try all manner of seeds combos to no avail, so perhaps I shouldn't have harvested it before talking to her. Is this a bug or is this my player incompetence?
The music sets the mood but does become a tiny bit repetitive. I don't mean this to all sound too critical; for a game made solo in 48 hours I think it's a remarkable achievement. The seed system actually looks like there is some depth there and there was decent character development in a very short period of time. I would encourage you to explore the prototype further as there's definitely promise here - this mechanic built into an over arching metagame would definitely hold an appeal.
Thanks for sharing and congratulations on your submission!
I love the concept of this one; getting to pick up random food and chuck it into Slime Mama's mouth sounds like fun! I did however notice some really strange inconsistency with the movement; I either took an age to accelerate (sometimes to the point of not even moving despite multiple key presses) and sometimes I would just run off really fast. I don't know if that's because I'm playing the web build and there are some issues there but it made things like wall jumping basically impossible.
There is definitely The End Is Nigh / Super Meat Boy inspirations in both the character and the tiles with a goo state. The music fit nicely. I'm dissapointed at the movement; I hope that it is an issue with the web build and not something built into the game itself. All in all very cute! Thanks for sharing and congratulations on your entry!
Cute Vlambeer style sprites! Nice and smooth and I like the enemy design. I liked the irreverant humour. I did find a bug: after I got killed and restarted, I killed the enemy again and the space bat icon stayed on screen. Then it reset me to the menu. Not a big deal though.
It does take a bit too long to get back into the game after you've died; maybe just after talking to the old man we're checkpointed.
Nice cute game! Thanks for sharing and congratulations on your entry :)
Lots of detail for a jam game! Bit weird seeing my guy standing still but playing a walking animation and I noticed a few typos here and there (asking depressed guy if he's "alrigth"). I feel like the dialogue box could have been snappier - maybe removing it's small expand animation might've helped as it just felt a bit slow to see the text appear. A minor gripe but I think an important one in a game where it's the thing you do the most of. Sometimes when you skip text it's position changes from where it was when it was typing out and where it is when it's a complete block of text. (These are SUPER minor things and I'm just pointing them out so you'e aware. But they haven't affected the actual core gameplay for me at all).
Pixel art was *really* nice. As others have mentioned it's curious to see a team of seven! That sounds like my personal idea of hell trying to co-ordinate that in 72 hours! It definitely shows in the amount of quality assets in the game that you were able to spread the duties out to people with a single focus on them.
The music is really nice and sets the mood well. The whole package definitely has old school Sierra type point and click vibes, especially due to the art and the slightly mysterious nature of everything thats going on. I'll reiterate how impressive it is with the depth of content here. Gert feeding on his victim was a nice little move which juxtaposed nicely with the lounge music I was hearing before the horror. I really liked the atmosphere on display.
All in all a really nice package! Thanks for sharing and congratulations on your entry!
I watched the tutorial and tried the game but had to go back and refer to it. It's great that you managed to that in there, otherwise I might've struggled!
I found myself getting into a sort of "flow" while playing. I like the way it plays out; personally I think I would prefer to play it without the time element and have it more turn based, but it does add an element of tension. I was desperately trying to maintain my hype but in the space of about two turns ended up boring everyone!
I like the respresntation of streamer culture; there's defintely room to expand on the satire side of things (which would help with an increase in available cards in the deck), but overall it was a nice little management sim and the music loop was fitting and non-repetitive which is essential for a game like this. Only other thing I would add is a menu to quit out of the application, but I had good fun with this. Thanks for sharing and congratulations on your entry and feedback!
The first thing that caught my eye was the colours and artwork; really pleasing to look at! I also enjoyed the music loop. The whole thing gave me some slice-of-life animé vibes.
The controls definitely could've been mapped better; ZQSD honestly makes no sense to me and doesn't emulate the alternative (arrow keys). So when electing to use the arrow keys, as a right handed person, this meant I had to cross my arm across the computer to control the camera with the mouse. So that is definitely the main gripe with the package.
I did find a small bug; if you open up the controls panel from the menu and press esc, the game unpauses and the control screen remains visible.
I was impressed with the world that you managed to build given the deadline - I couldn't quite bare to follow the navigational arrow with the not-ideal control scheme (is it because you're a dog?) and it appeared to be point upwards to my objective. I wasn't sure how to go up, though.
All in all I think you done really well to build the world and give it atmosphere with minimal cues; colour, music and general feel is light hearted (apart from the aggression showed by WanWan to blind granny!) and whilst my feedback edges on the critical side, there is without a doubt the core of something very charming here. Thanks for sharing and congratulations on your entry!
Pretty interesting; sometimes if I pressed backspace and then succesfully completed the word it wouldn't register as being correct. I'm not sure how it fixed; maybe I had to take a hit or delete it all and type another word.
There's something fun about getting the word right and seeing it explode.
I wasn't sure about the launcher...it launched a Godot console and I had to enter that way which was strange, but overall it does what it does well. Just take a look at the bug not recognizing words! Thanks for sharing and congratulations on your entry!
This had a suprising amount of depth mostly thanks to the RTS style ability to choose between the two different unit types and the fence repair. I like that both the farmer and the dogs had strengths and weaknesses. I felt bad when the sheep got crushed. Probably more so than when the farmer met his brutal end. But for a little 48 hour jam this has some pretty neat base ideas. Thanks for sharing and congratulations on your entry!
I love the artwork on the little delivery guy and the town setting. I'm not sure about your choices of colour for the tutorial boxes; its was *very* difficult to read.
I expected to be throwing pizzas left and right like a modern version of Paperboy but it seems I had to honk next to the occasional floating pizza which felt a little unintuitive. I like the feel of the game. The graphics and music are fine but perhaps it just feels a bit lacking in features. Thanks for sharing and congratulations on your entry!
(Bug: When I left the tab in the browser version and returned, I was floating in the sky)
Unique little puzzle game. I like the minimalist artstyle; I think perhaps the camera could have been zoomed in for the smaller levels. Some of the pathfinding was a bit frustrating and sometimes he backed up on himself. I think a "queue" movement system might've benefited the gameplay a touch more.
Very creative and sound is subtle but fitting. Good use of public domain composition. I like that it had a structure and a story without ever really needing to explicitly convey much. The game mechanics were fun to figure out. It's difficult to withold the goal without it being frustrating but I think you managed to pull it off here nicely.
Thanks for sharing and congratulations on your entry!
This was a really cute and unique little game; it's such a fantastic interpretation of the theme. I wish you had explored the humour a bit further; I feel like in a game like this there is a lot of room for some wacky interaction (almost like a Card Against Humanity setup), whereas it felt a bit bland to keep asking if you want to go for a coffee! I understand the theme is to have a "normal conversation", but you could have allowed yourself some creative freedom by setting parameters to having an understandable conversation. That way some crazy responses would be borderline and add a little tension to the objective.
Interface was slick, gameplay mechanic was almost instantly understandable; it doesn't take a genius to realise that if one thing doesn't match, the next closest should be the target.
Simple but appealing graphics. With lots of repeating cards appearing it became a little repetitive, but it was definitely a fresh take on the theme.
Thanks for sharing and congratulations on your entry!
Very nice! High marks on this one for me. Jumping felt responsive and movement was smooth. Sound effetcs worked nicely. Good to see a menu that allowed to quit application, something of a rarity in the other games I've played so far.
Nice colour palette and interesting take on the Super Crate Box formula. Overall a very tidy and polished package with fantastic music. Thanks for sharing and congratulations on your entry!
Well that was certainly unique!
I don't really know what I was doing or why. I didn't understand the posing game controls at all and the boxing felt a bit inconsistent. The artwork had a unqiue charm and I like the 80's vibe. I also like the interpretation of the theme.
Definitely the most curious entry I've seen. Thanks for sharing and congratulations on your entry!
I loved this! The combat was super simple but it suited the feel of the game. The humor was good (why did it give me Rick & Morty vibes?), and the art and animation were super clean. I like the Paper Mario homage in turning around. It was a bit frustrating to give an answer to every single dialogue box; I think perhaps most of it wasn't needed and it was overuse of that feature, but where there was clear branch in the answers (ie "Experience?" or "Experience!!!"), that made good sense. The game playing out with the tutorial is the perfect way to introduce these kind of game mechanics. Audio was ok - perhaps a little bit bland and repetitive, but not to the point of grating too much. The spells were really nicely put together. Good job putting this all together for the compo and thanks for sharing!
I was *really* impressed with this; I'm particularly fond of the fact that the minigames and the point of the game were very clearly communicated. I knew what I was doing and what was required of me from the start (with a tiny exception of knowing to drag the darker square in maze), so that was brilliant. It's annoying to start a game and not really understand what you are doing or why.
I thought the atmosphere was spot on and the alarm state added genuine tension. I leaned forward while trying to navgiate the maze and felt rushed - I hit the wall! I quickly scrambled to try and move my object to it's target but ran out of time! I like that the mazes were different and not always the same.
I personally would have added universal mouse control; I don't think spacebar would be neccesary for two of the games when the rest of the game is played with the mouse and space bar isn't particularly neccesary (or leave them in, but also give mouse functionality).
Overall I thought this was an atmospheric little game and I liked the small details like the way cute face at the begnning faded away.
Thanks for sharing and congratulations on your entry!
Cute little game; sometimes I jumped when I didn't want to and I wished that when I was on the higher panels in level one that it was designed so I could run off of them and land on the ones underneath. I often found myself sliding off of it and falling past everything.
I like the idea that you need to stop chasing your objective to keep a conversation alive. It could be read as a thinly veiled commentary on the importance that phones have to most people where even when their dog is loose they're checking their phone and replying to messages!
Cute 1bit graphics made it feel like an old Speccy game and the music loop was totally fine on repeat. Cute little game. Thanks for sharing and congratulations on your entry!
I think this game holds so much potential to be one of those ridiculous physics games; it was difficult and whilst the physics themselves never felt unfair, getting Jeff caught on the corners of slopes when he simpley needed to just clear them with a jump felt more like an error in collision checking than it did a quirky thing to modifysdifficulty in the game's advantage.
I think the title is brilliant and the story behind it even explains completely why we're doing what we're doing. The artwork was cute, readable and fitting for the theme. I feel like the jam theme itself was uniquely interpreted too. Thanks for sharing and congratulations on your entry!
Cute little game. The movement was responsive but this had the downside of a slightly less responsive camera, so I felt like I was running away from myself a little bit. I like the tutorial panels to explain what was happening. I'm not sure the music looped properly - it was also a touch repetitive.
Nice snappy little platformer with charming graphics. Thanks for sharing and congratulations on your entry!
Very interesting to elect for a multiplayer game in a jam. All appeared to work okay, nice and smooth connection. I wasn't really sure how to what I needed to do to play. I picked up a bucket and ended up just pouring the water on myself :')...buckets seemed a bit rare to pick up and presumably the sticks had to be used on the fire. It was a cool little timewaster and it's fun to see other player's roaming around. Perhaps E could've been used instead of Enter and J instead of space? Either way the graphics have a nice limited pallette and I didn't enocunter any bugs! Thanks for sharing and congratulations on your entry!
I love the artwork on this. It feels nice to play but I didn't quite understand the tutorial. It was fun to run around smashing all the little guys up but I didn't know why the turrets were sometimes active or sometimes not etc. A way to quit the application from the pause menu wouldn've been good too, but overall it's a nice package. The audio also works well. Thanks for sharing and congratulations on your entry!
Very cute! It took me a while to realise that I could double jump and didn't *have* to hold the button. It flows nicely and the squash is nice when landing on obstacles. One thing I think would definitely make this feel a bit more responsive is if you removed the anticipation frames prior to a jump; I know you hold to jump but holding also makes us float while we're in the air, so we would have that control anyway. Overall a cute little package...maybe the new Flappy Bird? hehe. Thanks for sharing and congratulations on your entry and feedback on my own!
I like the mood your aiming here for and I'm always a fan of compact RPGs. I would say the exposition seemed somewhat drawn out, and there are things that even then could've made clicking through all the text slightly more engaging (character portraits, typewriter effect on the dialogue, small emotes maybe on the images). I like the 2 tone choice of colour palette and the artwork itself. I'm not sure who I was in the battle and the mechanic was completely unclear to me. I just clicked stuff until it just took me back to the map. I don't know if I won, lost or achieved any goal. Unfortunately at this point my attention wavered and I was happy to leave it there.
In summary I feel like the visuals were appealing enough in your screenshot to make me want to check it out and there is definitely some promise, but it's a bit too wordy and lacking in battle tutorialization to hold my attention past initial interest. Thanks for submitting and I hope you can take this as creative criticism/feedback!
I absoloutely loved this. 5 across the board for me!
Thanks everyone for your kind comments!
@100th-coin Thanks a lot for your comments in the video; to answer your question about whether you can get multiple electrons to entangle at the end, yes you can. I've managed to get two to the end but I guess it's theoretically possible to get more!