Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → Mark A Pressler
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | 59 | Signal | 👥 | Precious Spacimens | jam | 398 | 3.60 | 3.76 | 3.43 | 3.21 | 3.63 | 3.86 | 3.29 | 4.09 |
| 2023 | 54 | Limited Space | 👥 | No Gloop, No Glory | jam | 949 | 3.10 | 2.97 | 3.02 | 2.52 | 3.02 | 2.92 | 2.44 | 2.75 |
| 2023 | 53 | Delivery | 👥 | To Infinibee And Beyond! | jam | 402 | 3.73 | 3.71 | 3.63 | 4.13 | 4.02 | 3.86 | 3.50 | 3.89 |
| 2022 | 50 | Delay the inevitable | 👥 | Grovetender | jam | 493 | 3.67 | 3.41 | 3.45 | 3.95 | 3.87 | 3.50 | 2.94 | 3.87 |
| 2021 | 48 | Deeper and deeper | 👥 | In a Barrel | jam | 750 | 3.60 | 3.34 | 3.26 | 3.60 | 3.65 | 3.67 | 2.57 | 4.17 |
| 2020 | 46 | Keep it alive | 👥 | ViolAnts 2: For Queen and Colony | jam | 1398 | 3.42 | 3.31 | 2.94 | 3.47 | 3.00 | 3.12 | 2.50 | 2.89 |
| 2019 | 45 | Start with nothing | 👥 | Spirit of the Herd | jam | |||||||||
| 2018 | 43 | Sacrifices must be made | 👥 | Renegade Fire! | jam | |||||||||
| 2017 | 38 | A Small World | 👥 | ViolAnts | jam |
Nice game! The artwork was cool and it was enjoyable fulfilling my fantasy of forcibly launching food at animals. It did feel like the food often just kinda bounced off of them which wasn't as satisfying as having be immediately absorbed or something, which would've made accuracy feel better. Keep up the good work!
Very cool game! The visuals are clear, the music and sfx are fantastic, and the story (at least the little bit that I did) was fun. The monsters were cool, I definitely got chills when I shined a light on my first one! I sorta wish they didn't path through walls but it's a very minor nitpick. I ran into an issue on the second blue dot, where it seemed to be in the middle of the wall with no way to get to it. I circled all around and couldn't find a way to it—maybe I'm dumb and missed it, but a more accessible map of the area you're in would be nice as well, though I get that as a mysterious exploration kinda game that's not really what you were going for. Overall, very nice job though.
This is a fun little game! The world looks great and is fun to explore, and the animation of the squirrel running is very nice to watch. I felt like the world was massive for such a little squirrel—I might've condensed it to 3/4ths or half the size with all the assets much closer together. The controls generally feel quite good—I felt like sprinting could have been a little faster to have a more noticeable difference between it and normal speed. The glide is really fun, but again I wish it had a bit more horizontal movement to feel like more of a difference between it and normal falling. Audio-wise, I personally am not a fan of sfx that's just blowing air into the mic-I get what you were going for with the rushing of air sound, but I think that's achieved with a bit more of a whistle rather than just air blown on the mic that starts hurting the ears after a while. Overall though this was just a very pleasant and relaxing little world to explore, thanks!
Pretty cool game! The graphics are very unique, and do actually add to the gameplay a bit as it's nice to be able to see the sticks you want to gather through the hills sometimes. The audio is very nice and enjoyable to listen to. I didn't feel much of any sense of urgency, as the fire doesn't go out very quickly and there seems to be plenty of fuel to gather. Maybe some sort of warmth bar would be cool—that goes back up when you're standing close to the fire, such that you have to decide between staying warm and going out to get more fuel. Overall, nice job though!
Interesting concept! I would've loved to have more gameplay progression—as such it felt mostly just like gathering some food, waiting for fullness to decrease, feeiding food to the blob, and watching the 3 stats go up. If, for example, as you fed more cookies and the chub counter went up, the blob got fatter, that would be very enjoyable. This is a good start though!
As others have said, this is a nice start but did not contain much playable gameplay from my attempt. The world is beautiful and the background music fits perfectly, giving it a very nice ambient feel. Unfortunately, all I could really do was walk in a circle around a hut while my camel was either ravaged by or made excellent friends with some wolves. Great start though, would love to see this developed further!
@solifuge Thanks a bunch for giving our game a solid go! Yeah, we were doing balance testing at the very tail end of the jam, and turns out @oohoos is just really good at this game or something, because his ability to beat it definitely isn't reflective of mine or most others that have tried haha. But the rate that enemy colonies spawn is on its own curve that could very easily be tuned to have it not be so crazy, we just didn't want to change anything post jam in the jam spirit! But we'll definitely take this lesson moving forward— if there's only one difficulty setting, tune on the easier side, not the more difficult lol.
Sound-wise, that warped doppler trumpet was accidental, we were using 3D sound effects for all of the ant sounds, but attached the background music to the camera so it wouldn't be affected by the camera movement. However, the 'new enemy spawner has appeared' trumpet sound was attached to the new enemy spawners themselves, and is the only more melodic sound attached to something on the ground, which is why you get those weird warped trumpets whenever you're moving the camera as a new one spawns in. It is more of a 'global warning' sound though, and as such should've been attached to the camera as well. Glad you enjoyed it though and thanks for the kind words!
This was quite fun! I enjoyed the little gameplay loop of trying to get some green munchin' on while being wary about attacking wolves. It also felt fun to get a successful wolf dodge off. A bit more variation in the world, places to hide, etc would be fun but hard in a constrained amount of time. Great job overall!
This is a fun concept! I wish there was a little bit more of a visual indicator or clearness as far as which research upgrades were available and which weren't—it seemed like red text was used to show that there was a precursor you didn't have, like the crane, but then red text was also just used for all of the titles which was a bit confusing. Also maybe the background color when you hover each research option could indicate if they were possible, instead of all of them just being green. I think often some clearness is added in research trees by drawing lines between things and their precursors. I wish the atmosphere adjustments were a bit more forgiving—it felt a bit bad to ever adjust the atmosphere because I had to spent $50 to adjust a slider at all. It would've been nice if the amount I spent changed based on how much I wanted to adjust the slider. Otherwise, really great job! I felt like I really had to stop and think about the path I wanted to take to make sure I had a budget and science points moving forward while still managing to keep the alien alive and friendly.
One more fun little addition to the game would be just a little scrolling feed somewhere that had little excerpts from the news articles, or people's reactions to them, or scientists journal entries or notes, just fun little bits of text I think would add a lot of life to the game :)
This was my first time playing a LD game with the unreal engine, so it was fun to see the differences there! The graphics definitely look pretty nice for a jam game, and I have a decent computer so lag wasn't an issue for me. Puzzle games are tough to make, one thing I think is really important is lots of feedback whenever the player takes an action towards trying to solve the puzzle. In the first room, I couldn't really tell if my stepping on the plates was doing anything, so it was hard to tell if I was doing the puzzle right or not. I did eventually figure out that stepping on the plates changed the tiles, and that I wanted the tiles to match, but this would've been more obvious if there was some visual effect on the tiles when they changed. It was also a bit frustrating that the way the lighting worked seemed such that I couldn't see the symbol on the tiles when I was standing more than a few feet away from them. It also seems like the tiles keep shifting if you just stand on the plate, which was frustrating when I was trying to see if I was on the right one, and it just changed again on me—maybe make it so the player has to get off the plate, then get back on it for the symbols to change again?
As others have stated, the full reset with any mistake was very frustrating. A reset to the beginning of the current room would be much nicer. I made it all the way to the room with the smashers + the swinging axes, but died to an axe and didn't really want to do the whole thing over again so didn't make it to the end.
Overall, nice concept but could use a lot of polish for playability. Good start!
Really enjoyed this game! One of the few that made me want to keep playing it over and over to try to get a bigger flower. The controls felt pretty good, other than occasionally having some issues running into other units in weird ways. I wasn't sure if I was supposed to be able to push back the snails without water, but it seemed a somewhat effective strategy. Cool game though! I like how fast it is, it feels like a very small investment to try again which is what keeps bringing me back!
Pretty cool game! The mood was really nice—I think the graphics and the music fit together really well to really make me feel immersed. Good variation with enemy types as well, I think the snake enemy and the stab up enemy especially worked well. It seemed like the yellow enemies just stood there—not sure if they were supposed to do something more? I also really appreciate that the respawns happened at the beginning of whatever section you were on, rather than sending you all the way to the beginning as I feel is often the case with jam games. I would've loved more of a ramp up in difficulty with more combos of the enemies towards the end, I felt like it was pretty easy to make it through, but I know that's tough on such a limited time schedule. Overall really nice job!
There are many extremely satisfying things about this game. My favorites are the fantastically calming music and the screen shake during pigeon impact. My only tiny nitpick is that I wish the incubation sound was a bit less squeaky and a bit more....nestling into something-y. Also the owls could be a slightly lighter color maybe? To look more like a barn owl and look more significantly different than the falcons. Overall just a wonderful game though, great job on the art and sound especially but everything is great.
Overall nice job! I know this is above the scope of LD, but if you tinkered with the horizontal control a bit more this would be super fun as a side scroller, as you propelled the baby through a level with obstacles and such. For the current scope, it would've been great to have a bit more noticeable variation as the levels continued, even just via a little effect on the paddle or something that showed that the push was getting stronger—I didn't really notice just from playing. It also may have been nice if the baby 'bounced' off the side walls a little bit, I felt like I could kinda cheat by getting the baby against a wall, then moving my mouse away and back towards the wall and keeping it there indefinitely so I didn't have to worry about horizontal movement. But the movement felt controllable and good, nice job with that!
Nice job! I think the mood/atmosphere was very nice—the surrounding world and little text bits plus the background music was very enjoyable. However, I think I would've prioritized clarity in the gameplay over these 'extra' bits. For example, if the gem on top contained the same symbols as the elements, it would have been more quickly clear that you needed to only grab those. Also, if when you clicked and dragged, a line appeared where your mouse went, and if there was a positive visual effect/sound when you moved through a good element and a negative visual effect/sound when you moved through a bad element, the gameplay would be much easier to follow. I also think that the elements disappeared just a little too fast. But a great start, and nice job for a jam game!
Cool game! I finished the whole thing which doesn't often happen with jam games for me, but I enjoyed the parkour gameplay—nothing seemed too hard and the course layout made sense for the most part. The assets and music were both quite nice and overall the world had a very relaxing feel to it. Nice job!
Cool idea! As others have stated, it took me a while figure out what I could click on, and how these things effected the various levels of the 4 attributes I was trying to keep up. It wasn't super always super clear which would do what, for example I thought turning on the AC might positively effect the 'green' bar, but it negatively effected it, which I think is because AC units running are bad for the environment maybe? Some more clarity across all of this could've added a lot. Also a border on hover over objects that were interactable would be great. But overall the room was very pretty and the ambiance was on point, nice job!
This was fun! As others said, it would be nice if the burned pieces eventually were removed, although I do think it creates some gameplay to have them stay for at least a bit and cause you to have to take them into account when moving unburned wood around. Also yeah, things speed up so much as you go on that I feel like rotating things was only really useful at the very beginning, after which i could just be moving things around quickly and keep the fire going indefinitely as long as all the burned stuff didn't get in the way. Overall nice job though, definitely fits the theme!
I absolutely loved this game! The music felt nice, the punches felt satisfying, the diversity of fish was amazing, the animation of the fishes eyes changing with each punch was hilarious. My only tiny critique is that it would be nice to have some point or combo thresholds that I was rewarded for, even with just a pop up or sound saying good job, 100x combo or something like that. Such a fun game!
Cool game! It would be nice if there was a little more depth or choice in the combat such that the optimal gameplay wasn't to use your 3 torpedos and then spam laser things/spam go deeper for like 10mins. It also would have been cool to have some end point—maybe there was after running out of oxygen or something, but that would have taken more clicks that I was willing to click. The graphics and general ambiance were nice though, good job!
Cool game! The controls felt really smooth and it felt not too hard but not too easy to dodge stuff, and also like you could sort of change the difficulty on your own by sprinting through everything if you wanted. There did seem to just be one continuously repeating sound effect that didn't really seem to sync up with anything and was a little distracting. Also, this maybe more personal choice but I kinda wish the levels were tad bit more linear, I kinda wanted the gameplay to be more focused on dodging interesting combinations of obstacles rather than trying to find a door. Overall though, really great job!
Super cool game, great job! A few minor critiques: - It felt like when the pitch went down you maybe did that in such a way that the tempo slowed down slightly as well, but the visuals didn't slow down at the same rate so at slower speeds it seemed like I couldn't get a hit on the notes by going off of the song rather than just the visuals. - Because of this, I found that I often was just button mashing to get back up to fast speeds, rather than trying to line up the hit to the song. Maybe if the button hits gave a sound it would disincentivize that sort of button mashing gameplay.
Overall though, I had a wonderful time and actually wanted to finish all the levels which doesn't happen often! You rule!
Really great game! The visuals and sound effects work well together, and the controls feel super comfortable. My one complaint is that it's just really hard! (can't say I'm the fastest gamer out there) I finally made it past the first wave that had the virus rockets and was immediately overwhelmed by the next wave. It would be cool if there was a teeny bit more wiggle room, with either some hull damage before death instead of always getting 1shot, or maybe by having the continue start you after the last completed wave instead of at the beginning each time. But still a very well-designed game, great job!
Cool game! At the risk of echoing every other comment about it being 'too dark', I wanted to be a little more specific with my critique in that: what made me stop playing the game was that when you run out of your flashlight you literally can't see anything, and if there's no lights in sight you can't orient yourself at all and just get stuck. I get the idea that you want the player to value light as a resource, but I think you can do that without making running out have such harsh consequences. Overall though, the graphics and sound and general feel were fantastic, really great job!
This is a brilliant work of art. Thank you for blessing my soul. Toot toot.
Cool game! Fit really well with the theme. I wish there were some more ambient SFX when far away from the fire. And the mouse controls felt a little wonky. But overall good work!
Cool game! As others have said, I wish the units you bought had a little more impact. I thought I was playing much better the second time around and the units didn't really feel like they made that much of a difference in how long I survived. Good fitting of the theme though!
Cool game! I wish the jumping sound worked a little more harmoniously with the music. I also kinda wish water only took you down 1 level instead of taking you all the way back down to the bottom. But overall great job!
Cool game! I too didn't understand the gameplay and thought the goal was to destroy the bridge with as few boxes as possible lol. But the controls were interesting and once I got used to them it was fun to throw boxes super high up into the air and have them come down and smash the bridge.
Fun concept! The art style was nice and the music was pleasant! I think more variety with the objects available to place and with the design of the levels could go a long way in making this more enjoyable. Overall nice job though!
Really fun and well balanced! I feel like it's tough to make enemies whose movements are predictable enough that you can dodge them, but not so much so that evading them is trivial, and I think you found just the right balance. I played all the way through and really enjoyed it, very nice job. The biggest thing that I think would elevated it would be some spooky delivery music!
Cool idea! It has a decent difficulty curve, my brain was definitely working harder to process the pattern matching as the speed of the conveyer increased. My biggest critique would be to mix your audio a little bit, some of the sounds were extremely abrasive.
Overall I think you executed the idea really nicely, it fits the theme well and is really satisfying to play. Also coming up with a bunch of unique level designs for a game jam is tough, so props on that—I felt fairly challenged and that I had to use all of the tools in my toolkit for most of the levels I played.
I think the sfx were a little loud and abrasive compared to the music, and also wish the music had an element that made it feel a bit less empty—even just a few continuous chords in the background instead of just percussion and chord taps would have filled the sound out a lot more. It also would've been kinda nice to have tooltips for the different tools you have at your disposal, but they were easy enough to figure out through trial and error and for the scope of a jam I think it's fine that they weren't there. Overall really nice job though! I really enjoyed playing your game.
Oh, I didn't even realize the levels were procedurally generated. Wow! Even more impressive for a jam!
Really fun game! Loved the humor, the upgrades were fun to progress through, the only thing that was my fault is that even though I got the upgrade for it, it didn't register to my brain for a while that I could steer the bolt back and forth, so I was getting frustrated with never hitting any of the boosters! But once I figured that out it was quite fun to steer between everything. Really great job overall!
Very fun aiming game! I like the combined gameplay of it all—the time limit puts the pressure on to not spend too long perfectly adjusting the cannon, but there's still lots of incentive to spend the time aiming well so you have to spend less time running the rest of the way. I wish the ragdolls had a little less bounce, as I felt incentivized to shoot in certain ways to minimize the bounce before I actually gained control and could run the rest of the way. My only other desire is that I wish there were keyboard controls for the cannon adjustments, as adjusting the sliders with the mouse was a bit awkward. WASD for yaw/pitch, and then maybe Q and E for power? Overall great job though!
Oh, the other thing I wanted to mention is that I would have probably made the beacon for delivery location stand out a bit more. Maybe some glow or it's pulsing or something? Just so it's a bit more obvious (and looks cooler) as I'm swinging around.
Fun idea! My only recommendation would be that at the beginning, we see a short message going out, like "HELLO" or something, just so that we can see what the duration of a long press should be. I never quite got the hang of it and always failed letters that included long presses.
Big scope for a jam game, but made more sense when I saw the credits at the end and all the people who worked on it! Nice job! The controls were a little wonky, but once I switched to using only my right hand for the spacebar and my left hand for WASD it got much easier. The story was fun, other than that I was forced to kill a deer in return for ONE BONE. But I guess bear redeemed himself in the end. Overall, 2/10 because your barn swallow's face is red instead of rusty orange. Just kidding. The barn swallow sounds were magnificent though.
Ambitious game for a jam! Story games are tough but yours was at least compelling enough that I played to the end. Some of the delivery of the audio lines definitely made me laugh. And impressive work drawing out the entire background of the world as the stork flew along! I would work on mixing your audio a bit, some of the dialogue lines blasted through my speakers compared to the volume of the music. The controls were a bit clunky but acceptable, I probably would have sped up the flapping and pecking animations a bit. Overall good effort and nice job for a jam game!
Nice job! Controlling a cube with WASD is always going to be a challenged but you managed to make it feel pretty good! Most of the levels you designed were good and had a good amount of challenge to them. A bit of music would have been lovely!
Great game! The music is lovely, the physics are fun to master, overall really great execution. My only critiques are that I wish there was a victory condition instead of just filling barges forever, and that once I mastered the raise and throw it seemed pretty trivially easy. I got into the 40s and then just let it sit while writing this out just so I could see the end state of losing. Aaaaand it's still got 1/3rd to go. Waiting....waiting.....almost there....still going.......aaand lost. Cool. Overall really fantastic work.
Good effort, vehicle controls are hard to make! I definitely would simplify the movement controls a bit. I would also make the roof of the garage become semi translucent when you go in—I couldn't figure out which way I was facing or what was going on in there once I went in and got the trailers attached, and was stuck inside for a long time. I would also add some sort of uniformity in how the trailers get attached—it seemed like my trailers got attached kinda sideways, which resulted in me turning to the left when only pressing the accelerate button, going straight when I pressed the right turn, and not actually being able to turn right at all. The music was nice though, and I liked the touch of the honking horn! Overall a good foray into a top down driving game!
Very fun idea! Took me a bit to wrap my head around controlling different elements with different keys at the right times, but it was very rewarding when I did it successfully! Nice job!
Really awesome platform shooter! What made the gameplay for me was that you could cancel out bullets with your own bullets—really nice job with that. It completely changed my gameplay and let me be much more aggressive once I realized that was possible. The controls felt responsive enough that I wasn't annoyed by them, which is a feat in itself for a platformer, and the visuals and audio were both fun. Very nice job overall.
Very cool concept. Made me appreciate those who are blind. Navigating the world through sound only is definitely a challenge. Nice job!
Nice! Love the art! Very cool to see kid's artwork in a game like this. And the VO lines are great as well! As stated by others, my only desire is the keyboard controls in the description—I had to go to the comments to figure out that "E" is the package grab / drop-off button!
Fun game! I do wish that I could continue to place defenses after starting a run. Otherwise good job though!
Nice idea! A few small critiques—I think making the flight controls a little more responsive would've made it more fun to fly around. I also couldn't find a second package after delivering the first—I flew to the front of both post offices and found nothing.
Great game! Loved the hectic-ness and tension building as more items built up. Definitely some cool strategies that can emerge as far as finding the best storage locations for organizing different things. Very nice job!
I loved this! I think it might have been a bit overly difficult, but I think that's kinda the point as well, and made it fit the theme better. I loved messing with the physics and throwing pickles around. Very fun!
Interesting idea! Similar feedback to above - I quickly lost track of which direction my ship was facing, so a front indicator would help a lot. I also was initially confused about the relationship between energy and jump strength - i thought a stronger jump would take more energy and watched my ship move at 0.0001mph for a bit before realizing. Good job with the bouncy physics though! That was fun.