Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → McBaker
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | 59 | Signal | Signal Jam | jam | 223 | 3.85 | 3.79 | 3.83 | 4.12 | 2.29 | 3.22 |
Agreed that the main menu was too hard to read.
The concept is interesting, but I just ended up dying repeatedly and remembering the layout by heart. I wonder how adding a permanent small light to enemies (so you can see them from a small distance, but they can now see you too) would affect the gameplay.
Very polished, loved the visual effects, the car controls were really nice and remind me of some old schoold racing games.
Maybe it's a fact that I haven't played any racing games for some time now, but I just couldn't finish the last 2 levels: - to me, the camera in the second to last kept switching too fact and too unexpectedly. - maybe I'm nit-picking, but in the last level, I found it a bit odd to see that I'm driving over 200km/h and see "turn in 10 meters" and had to wait a few seconds for the cat to say "turn now" - shouldn't I pass 10 meters in 0.2s? :D Anyway, reviewing the footage after race, I kept turning too early, driving into terrain and running out of battery
Pretty fun game. I'd say it could be a bit more difficult - maybe add either faster or shooting enemies? Especially with the movement speed upgrade, you can just kite zombies and never feel threatened.
Unfortunately, there are some game breaking bugs that I encountered pretty early that discouraged the play.
If you click twice to buy a tower (because you have enough money), the game will let you do that, charge you twice, increase the price twice, but will only let you place one tower.
Collectors kept breaking - they would just stand and do nothing.
It would be great for towers to have some range indicator, or a projectile, to give you a feeling of how far they can shoot.
I think I'm missing something. I used 3 bouys and waited for like 2 minutes and they didn't seem to move much - Screenshot 2026-04-26 at 21.58.19.png. Am I supposed to push them, or wait for them to start moving again eventually?
It wasn't clear to me that they were supposed to form a line of bouys that were close to one another - I only learned it while reading the comments here.
In the end, I just spammed bouys, because well, why not? :P Screenshot 2026-04-26 at 22.02.19.png - the level complete message left me confused - I used 145 out of 5 bouys - so... shouln't I fail? If there are only 5 bouys to be used, I would suggest to indicate it somehow, maybe fail the level if the player keeps sending them, or just don't let the player send more.
I'm curious about what the intended way of playing you were aiming for? Pushing the last bouy with the next sent? Having them float around and taking currents into consideration when sending them, so they eventually line up? It's just not clear to me and it would be nice to have a deeper mechanic than sending bouys towards the harbor, so the player needs to make some decisions when using them.
I love RTS games, this was fun. I loved the Aiur reference ;)
Sadly, I only reached like 86% signal strength. I kept like 5 miners, 6 artillery and 3 medics.
Spammed scouts, still died to like 3 mines. So I'd say they are a bit too punishing and/or there aren't enough minerals on the map.
Really great entry, very polished. I loved the graphics, the sound, the computer startup sound :D
I kept having a feeling that the game is "baiting" me to go one way, only to find I can't make it going that way, making me more engaged and paying closer attention to the level. Ihope that was your goal, if so, good job :)
I missed the fact that I need to wait for the computer to start before uploading the datapads and only did it at 3rd computer, skipping the 1st two.
Seems like I'm stuck at tutorial.
It tells me to turn the input camera towards the signal. The signal is on the right, so I turn to the right - nothing happens. I turn left very slowly, then all the way back to the right - again, nothing happens, no next step in tutorial.
I'm not sure where I'm pointing, as I can see more cities on the landscape than on the map. I tried restarting the game twice and nothing changed. I tried to mess with the second dial without success. I'm lost. Any suggestions?
Screenshot 2026-04-26 at 22.19.19.png
HTML5 at the top of this page, using Chrome
Interesting game, nice mood and sound.
Would have been cool to spice it up a bit somehow - maybe make the signal searching a bit more complex, or add another thing that a person could do while waiting for signal extraction? I spent all money on navigation/extraction speed and still after a few minutes hit a signal that took about a minute to extract. Maybe I'm a bit impatient, but I would love to have something to do in the meantime :D
I love TD games, surprised there aren't more at LD! It's a decent prototype and you should be proud if that was your goal.
Some thoughts that came to my mind: - you have 2 types of towers (plus shield generator), but 5 different kinds of resources. Usually, I'd suggest the other way around, so the player might build some towers that require more of a specific resource for example - I don't know what upgrades do. I know, things do more damage, looks like have a bigger range, but as a player, the game doesn't tell me in any way whether it's worth building another tower, or upgrading an existing one. - a bit related to the previous point - there is not much "strategy" here - if I knew that, for example, upgrade costs 3x more than building stuff, but gives me 5x the fire power, I could choose between a bit more danger now, with saving money for upgrade, or investing in new towers now, which might hurt me in future rounds, but helps me now - would be cool to see some more diversity with the towers, so I can choose between big damage, or slowing enemies down etc
I had fun, that was a nice game. I liked the graphics and mood. Easy to pickup and understand.
I think some comments mentioned difficulty balance alredy - at the start you barely manage to kill the "kamikaze" before it reaches you. Once you get 4 bullets upgrade, you pretty much can almost just stand in place once you get some regen and improved aim.
Nice game, I liked the graphics, the gameplay was smooth, I enjoyed it and finished it.
I found the chests confusing though. At first I assumed I could pick something up there, or maybe I should find a key with the same icon to open them. I would suggest replacing them with something - maybe some "purple mist" for the confusion effect and like a trampoline for the thing that lets you jump further?
Also, a small thing, but I think I've found a bug with the arrows - Screenshot 2026-04-25 at 09.00.11.png - I was repeatedly able to just walk over this one - it seems to have like 25% chance of just turning the frog, but not moving it. I tried another 1 or 2 arrows and they worked find.
Nice game, art is really well done. The game is simple and intuitive.
I feel like the balance is a little off though - it seems that you can get by with like 2 gold mines and 2 iron foundries and then just spam archers and defense towers after few upgrades you get after you die.
I can really see a potential in this game, if it can get some balancing and a bit more depth.
Pretty fun game with nice graphics.
@ternarycat - I thought about that too, but since the skeletons only block theplayer, they would become meaningless, I guess with that change you would have to make them kill the player.
As @axodo said, a proper ending would be nice. I was confused and started to look for more things to do (like reaching an island at the end by making a bridge of zombie corpses, didn't work tho :D )
Nice game, I had fun playing it.
I got stuck at GTA level. I assume I need to do "--.-.-"? It was quite easy to miss :D I'm pretty sure I followed that, but it didn't complete the level after sending the signal to the receiver. Not sure if I missed something or if that's a bug.
Would be nice to have some feedback for how much signal you finished, e.g. by changing the color on the sequence that you already finished.
Having a disclaimer that only lower-case letters work is a bit strange ;) You can just do something like "player_input.to_lower()" that would make it work with any mix of cases.
I liked the mood.
The game was a bit confusing to me at the start though. I wasn't sure whether I wa supposed to survive for the given amount of time, or find someone.
The splitting path was a nice addition to the otherwise linear game.
The messages were not appearing on the 2nd play after I ran out of time.
The flashlight was cool.
Nice twist on the asteroids game.
I encountered some bugs that made the experience a bit worse for me related to asteroid movements: - they bounce off the screen edges, instead of appearing on the other side of the screen. - sometimes they change their direction suddenly in the middle of the screen for some reason. - they also fly out of viewport and become unreachable for a few seconds
I found the controls a bit unintuitive - in the games I played, the up/down arrows meant "speed up/slow down", while left/right were used to turn. The controls in this game took some getting used to.
Thanks for the kind words! I just double checked that lvl 8 is actually beatable :D thankfully it is ;)
Wow, good job. Now that I know it's possible I solved it in 4 moves too, but my intended solution was 11 moves :d
Pretty much similar feedback to others - I found the game a bit too difficult for me. I think it would be great if there was some indication when turns start. It feels a bit too punishing that the player turn is wasted on a single mistake I think. Perhaps some clicking/clacking sound on each bit, to help the player get into the rythm?
Really nice graphics and the game gives an impression of being well polished.
The fact that I had to hide from the bird and lightning like every few seconds started to feel annoying after some time though. Especially as you lose all your acorns on every death, so trying to pick them up and risking dying to the bird/thunder seemed not worth the risk. I think it might be more fun to have local dangers, like snakes etc that would signal their attack so you need to dodge it, or wait for them to fall asleep etc, rather than having a global threat you have to hide from very often.
Controls felt a little weird, perhaps I have high bar, since I just played Hollow Knight ;) But I feel like the movement seems a bit fast, while the jump a little slow? Feels like it was too easy to fall of platforms, maybe adding some acceleration to movement would help.
I've had exactly same experience as @constance
OK, so the first cell dies very quickly and you have to click the sun pretty much immediately. It would be nice to have some indication that I lost, as it looked as if the game froze.
once the cells take like half of the screen, the performance starts being very bad - the game keeps freezing for a few seconds at a time. Then, when (I guess cancer cells) eat/turn my cells, I lose all currency? So with the performance freezes, the game pretty much is unplayable, since I cannot buy anything, as after each freeze I'm out of money :(