meelo

Dimmer by Chaseplays 2020-04-21T19:50:59Z

The game froze on my tenth or so attempt at level 8, but I enjoyed the experience up to then! The graphics are quite nice. I think the controls could be improved. Some sense of acceleration or momentum might be nice, as might creating segments of levels that require precise motions to get through - I just never got the sensation that I was going fast or accomplishing something really tricky, which would be really nice to have in a game like this. I liked the music quite a lot.

Insect Infestation by schizoid2k 2020-05-04T00:20:02Z

I almost tried flicking the first ant that showed up... I assumed it was real (I get lots of bug visitors to my computer screen for some reason). I had a nice smooth experience with this game - the controls work well and the idea is easy to understand. I started to feel at about wave 9 that I could no longer hope to keep the bugs away (though the health reset at wave 10 was very welcome) - maybe adding different challenges than "more bugs" would help (I really liked when the ants showed up, for instance) or adding some sort of risk-reward mechanic (e.g. if there was a good reason to go far from the home - with the mower idea, there could be some sort of trail of cut grass which slows the bugs down or has some other such positive effect to give a new dimension to the game). Though it could be expanded, it worked well as a short game - I enjoyed playing through it.

Ball Keeper by JCMonkey 2020-04-20T02:52:51Z

The Mac version doesn't seem to open (on OS 10.15) - it gives me an non-descript error message if I try to open it from the file browser, and outputs "LSOpenURLsWithRole() failed with error -10810" if I try to open it from the terminal. Something might be wrong with the package?

the Isle by zillix 2020-04-21T03:51:38Z

This is beautiful - and the graphics really go along well with the overall story.

The Angel Recording the Truth by Kevin Prehn 2020-04-22T00:11:14Z

This is a neat idea - and the graphics were really quite cute, especially the beginning scenes. I thought it was quite cool that the game actually evaluates the truth of statements, rather than having an answer key - this is something a lot of educational games get wrong, so I like that this one accepts all correct answers and rejects all others. There's a few times where you might want to make parts of the formula immutable, though - for instance, it's easy to get through the two predicate section just by putting in two existential quantifiers on everything.

Putting on my mathematician hat, though: you could definitely improve the interpret feature - translations like "For all x in trees, there exists a y in water such that x is next to y" would be an improvement over what you have (it's grammatical and how one would most often read a string of symbols out loud), although I would angle more towards getting translations like "Every tree is next to some body of water" - or possibly even allow multiple "levels" of translation. Having some experience teaching mathematics, I just doubt that the "verbatim" part of the translation is where students usually get stuck - it's either at the "translate into useful English" stage or the "strictly evaluate the truth of this" stage. (Also you absolutely would have to remove "It is true that" - that's a phrase I try to purge out from anyone I interact with mathematically; it's like writing if(b == true) in code where b is a boolean - not incorrect, but useless).

The pain by pfeyffer 2020-04-27T00:45:06Z

Wow, this was horrifying (in the best possible way). I liked the graphical style and the puzzles were of a nice difficulty - I made it to the end without feeling like the experience was too easy or too hard. One feature that I think would have been really nice would be if you could draw pieces of paths without connecting to either heart - sometimes I could reason about exactly how some sub-path had to go, and it would have been nice to record that. Nicely done.

Keep the GameBoy alive. (on GameBoy Advance) by Timo Strating 2020-04-25T01:30:44Z

This was fun - once I got into the groove of it, I really enjoyed the simple mechanic and the challenge of watching the little dots (electrons? haha) move around. I wish it had lasted longer though - I think I finished the game in about 2 minutes total. It might have been nice to have a bit of time before each level began to examine the setup in order to avoid the "oh no, I don't know how to respond to this at all" feeling when things happen too soon. I'm not sure how I feel about being set back a level on losing. I sort of enjoyed the extra tension, but I can imagine that getting old real fast if the challenges were more substantial.

RestoPlane by GlacierEclipse 2020-05-01T22:43:20Z

The concept here is really neat - flying around in a rocket with limited fuel with gravity is a great mechanic and feels nice to control, especially with the "ground effect" bonus. I made it most of the way through the game, quite enjoying just flying around (but then I accidentally refreshed the page when I was almost done... I wanted to restart the level, oops). I think there's some improvements to other aspects though - first, the hitboxes are really unforgiving - it often felt, especially with more narrow gaps, that an unexpected boost from a nearby wall (or the lack of an expected one) could let the player *just* scrape a wall and lose the ship, and when this happened, I always felt frustrated - especially since the game has a rather slow pace where dying for a silly reason means doing a lot of stuff over (and also: since "restart" was only an option when you lost entirely, not mid-level, meant having to wait to get rid of my remaining ships if there was no chance to succeed from the lost fruit - this waiting definitely harmed the experience). It was also never so clear to me when fruit would be attracted and when they wouldn't (and it was often difficult to feed the fruit to the Mogmog - it seemed like an unnecessary challenge). I think removing or mitigating some of these obstacles would improve the experience - as might creating new challenges that require different styles of piloting (e.g. things that must be done fast). I quite enjoyed playing it as it is, though. Nice job.

Save the Space Whales! by Aik 2020-05-05T19:32:27Z

This is a neat concept, though I had some trouble with its implementation; as others have mentioned, the controls were difficult to understand - I ended up using both hands with my left hand on w/s and my right on d (and I still often got confused about directions). I also didn't feel like the thrust was sufficient to do much - if I was moving fast enough to traverse the whale in a reasonable length of time, I was also going fast enough that it would take a long time to reverse. Making it easier to control would definitely be an improvement. It might also be cool to have a minimap or different kinds of aliens. I managed to get rather far - it's enjoyable enough as it is. I especially like the music and sound effects. There's some nice polish too, like the links of the chain falling off when you plow through them.

Space Drone Guy by TechnoNugget 2020-05-01T21:29:37Z

This felt very polished - the graphics were nice (especially the little touches like the radar and the debris left behind by ships, or the smooth integration of the game into the page), the enemy AI felt nice to play against, and the sound effects were really fitting. I immediately died since I didn't initially realize that the controls were purely acceleration, but the controls felt nice after I figured that out - the mouse felt a bit awkward (maybe showing a whole line of aim would help instead of a little dot?), but not terribly so. I found out on my second run that ramming other ships was a fun (if not terribly effective) strategy. I could see this expanding in lots of directions too - for instance, adding power-ups or a rogue-like item system could work really well (especially since I can see lots of interesting possibilities for weapons given the commitment to physics - why not smash your enemies together or blow them and their bullets around - perhaps causing difficult forces on yourself) or even a more retro class system where you unlock new kinds of ships by playing. Of course, more enemy types could help as well - perhaps some that necessitate larger scale planning (e.g. a carrier comes along and parks far away, spawning ships, or a ship that can't take any damage but just straight accelerates at your host). The core of this game just feels so nice to play, even with limited content - would love to see it expanded in pretty much any way. Well done.

Another f****ng escort mission by dodormeur 2020-04-24T14:42:31Z

I really *really* wanted to murder my escort. Nicely done. This was all very funny, but I especially liked the "Help" choice on the menu. I found the controls a *bit* awkward, but not terribly so - the aiming feature was a nice touch.

Prototype Towers by marbles 2020-04-29T03:22:06Z

This was a lot more fun than I was expecting from the concept - I was quite enjoying the skill aspect of it by the end, although the tower defense aspect seemed largely forgotten once I had 3 prototype #3's going and plenty of money in case there was a problem. I think that adding some greater level of risk vs. reward would befit this game - like towers that have some extra special effect, but need a lot of attention; possibly doing this as some sort of upgrade tree would be really nice. I would also suggest that you allow WASD input (or, even better, though not so likely in a game jam: allow custom key bindings) - my keyboard has really small up/down keys, which made this rather difficult. I like the idea here - it seems like it just works to create a fun game, and I think it's even a concept that could be pushed further to make a really good game. Nicely done.

Vampire BloodLust 3D by polegar 2020-04-27T19:44:52Z

"Oh no! ~Sluuuurp~" - great sound effect, there. Really made sucking all that blood feel good. I found this enjoyable, but I couldn't figure out how to win; I didn't feel a clear sense of direction after a while (about after I went through two doors and one wall that seemed to be in a corridor was when I really felt lost). It might help if there was some special kind of wall that you could pass through, as opposed to going through all walls - that could confirm for the player their direction - or if the level design was more clearly directional (or just give the player a map, I guess). Very retro graphics.

Venusian Cargo by MCjammydodger 2020-04-21T19:31:45Z

The concept here is really great - I could imagine this expanding into quite a fun game. I did find the controls a bit awkward - I was more expecting WASD to be "forward/back/turn" rather than "move up/down/left/right" given that the vehicles turned - and this made keeping the alien in the back sometimes a bit hard; smoother controls could open a lot of new possibilities for this game. But aside from that, the game works great - the rewind mechanic is solid and feels great to use.

Keep the Fire Alive by stmatn 2020-04-25T01:01:05Z

This game really stands out with its mechanics - the idea is really cool and the mechanics seem to work really smoothly. I, like others, had some difficulty understanding what was meant at first (the first time I saw the help screen, it was very overwhelming. Then I tried to play and quickly ran out of coal without accomplishing much) - but by the second time, I figured out what was up. The coal-moving mechanic reminds me a lot of the energy mechanic in one of my favorite games: Harvest: Massive Encounter. Once I figured out the controls, I enjoyed myself, creating a little network of coal miners, though I think I would have enjoyed more challenge - which could take a whole lot of forms (e.g. more expensive things to construct or more complex production lines, or just having enemies or some other disruption to the clockwork nature - I could imagine tendrils of darkness occasionally showing up, but maybe being repulsed by propellors, or something?). It's a very nice start in any case.

The Holy Chicken by multiplexor 2020-04-22T00:51:39Z

The graphics and music are really great on this - especially that loading animation at the start! The idea is neat, but I had some trouble with the gameplay - it seemed difficult to pass the chicken reliably, and sometimes it seemed that I had done everything perfectly, yet still didn't make it. Still, it was entertaining enough to play quite a few times.

Katastrophe by Yeti Kid 2020-04-29T03:38:54Z

This was really fun! The music is quirky, but I really like it a lot. The graphics really fit the style of the game and there were a lot of nice touches. I like the mechanic, although I did somewhat feel that the game had only just taught me the basics by the end - I think there were a lot more things to explore, although it was a nice experience as it was. My one complaint is that the wall jumps felt a bit awkward, since they went straight up - it was sometimes hard to get on top of a platform after wall jumping. I would love to see this expanded into a game with more worlds/levels.

IO: Live Birthday by Armani03k 2020-04-30T00:21:10Z

This was fun - the controls felt really nice and the game was simple to understand and enjoy immediately. It seemed like, about after you had killed 50 baddies, the spawn rate increased so high that no weapon could deal with the hoard as fast as it spawned - maybe introducing some new kind of challenge instead of just more enemies would have allowed the difficulty to grow further without becoming outright impossible.

Croze's Moving Castle by croze 2020-04-20T03:04:48Z

The introductory dialog definitely made me chuckle - I felt quite inspired to go find wood (once I found the door), though I then felt quite abandoned when I went south to get some and couldn't find my way back for quite a while (but I did manage to get some wood back into the ship, contrary to what the description says!)

Cytokine Storm by Gurbx 2020-05-04T01:26:56Z

I really like this entry - the mechanic is really novel (it reminds me a bit of "Into the Breach", but this entry is certainly its own idea). The sound effects and graphics are both really great - I love the virus moving sound especially. I found the randomness a bit much, though - sometimes there were turns where there wasn't meaningful progress to be made; I'd consider giving the player a bit more control on the end of what actions to play, given that the all leucoytes moving at the same time provided plenty of interest on its own - I could imagine this working even without randomness on what actions are available (since the virus movement is already providing some randomness), or with more limited randomness (e.g. disallow random actions, but allow most, or draw actions in hands from a fixed deck - which prevents hands consisting of only a few actions). I could also imagine this expanding into a longer game, possibly by adding more kinds of actions (e.g. different profiles of where an attack lands than just lines). Really great work on this game.

Father... Musn't I Kill It? by Andrfw 2020-04-26T23:56:08Z

What a strange concept - but well executed. Somehow, I started to feel paranoid that I would accidentally or impulsively hit the spacebar again by accident on my second play-through after modifying a suspicious cookie labelled "dead" (and I just had to squish the little guy when it started bumping my hammer...)

Symbio-tech by GenericToast 2020-05-02T05:21:33Z

I had a lot of fun with this - the mechanic of having upgrades persist between plays definitely adds a level of addictiveness to this. Plus, the graphics and audio really work for the style. I did wish that I felt a bit more in control as the player - it sometimes seemed like I was getting hit no matter what, and winning was mostly a function of speed + hit points. I think making it a bit easier to take on enemies would help - which could be done in easy ways (just make the shield take up more angular space and have bigger radius) or harder ways (expand on the shield blast idea and have multiple weapons to deal with enemies - or add some sort of power-ups on the level to create a tradeoff of staying near the nexus vs. getting power-ups). It also might help if the player could just go through the nexus or if shield bashes had, at the start, a smaller cooldown, since it was hard to defend against two sided attacks (especially the fast attacks indicated by lasers - those usually missed though). I think that anything that makes the player more able to defend against all threats would create more of that arcade-style gameplay that I think would really suit the concept and the style. I really enjoyed playing it as is though. Very well done.

What An Alien Addiction! by jaywoody 2020-04-29T23:43:08Z

I had a good deal of fun playing through this - the fourth and fifth levels were a nice level of difficulty, although I wouldn't have minded the game being longer (and having perhaps more elements); that said, for a game jam, it feels like this game hit all the essential pieces of what could make its idea work, so well done. The audio seems to have a lot of polish - like the little sound clip for winning or the sound effects for eating/throwing food offscreen; I like the background music as well, although it felt like it evoked a mood different from the rest of the game. Well done overall.

MoMo by RustyRobotGames 2020-04-21T19:21:29Z

The graphics were really cute - I liked them a lot. The controls felt nice a fluid too - the little text that told you what you were doing was helpful (though I didn't catch on to all the actions until my second attempt - my first ended in tragedy). The traps seemed a bit overpowered, though - once I got to 5 of them, it was mostly a matter of waiting to win.

MR YELLOW by p-r 2020-04-27T00:06:51Z

This seems like an interesting concept, but I found the controls frustrating - I couldn't figure out exactly how Mr. Yellow decided which way to go after a teleport, which made it hard to get things done. I also often found myself clicking and having nothing happen or having Mr. Yellow come out an adjacent square to where I'd intended - something might be weird about how mouse positions are rounded to game positions. Nonetheless, I found myself becoming really invested and managed to beat it after two nerve-racking runs. Sad that Mr. Yellow's planet and people weren't saved, though.

LavaLampSpaceMission by Fabian G 2020-04-26T04:04:20Z

I liked the mechanic here a lot and it was fun to play as it is - though I think there's a lot of things that might be improved. Particularly, I think it would be nice if either the ship moved much faster (to make a game of more skill) or if there was some more long range visibility or a map (to allow more puzzling) - and I think this could expand nicely into either direction. I also wonder if there could be more variety - maybe, for instance, there could be obstacles that would dissolve if hit by a hook (or could only be hooked once); I'm sure there are other ideas, but more variety would improve the game. As it stands, it's a good short experience, and the graphics seem fairly polished and fun.

Also: I didn't like the keyboard layout for restarting - sometimes I would fly off towards a thingy by accident, and would have wished to restart from the last orb immediately - but this not an option. Also, since "R" is so common for "restart the last level", I pressed it twice wanting to go to the last orb, but instead going to the start, which was sad (especially since I did it both times at what turned out to be the second to last orb!)

Keep me alive by dick-claus 2020-04-24T14:29:24Z

I feel like I didn't fully understand the game - on the first level, I couldn't figure out how to win, so I tried eating all of the tiles - but then realized that the "Esc" button at the bottom wasn't an instruction about controls, but was actually part of the game. The second level, I didn't see how to get most of the apples. The third level went fine though ;). I never figured out what this guy did:

Screen Shot 2020-04-24 at 10.26.42 AM.png

The audio was really nice to listen to, though, and the graphics were simple, but seemed quite polished.

Wayward by ColeSlaughter 2020-04-22T02:17:33Z

The aesthetic here is stunning - it felt like I was watching a beautiful animation, and yet it was interactive! Nicely done.

The Elons Xtreme by jkniest 2020-05-05T20:27:46Z

There's a lot of nice polish here - especially in the graphics and the smooth interfaces is rather impressive for a jam game. I like this genre of game a lot, though I found that this game moved too slowly, even after I found the fast forward button; it seemed straightforwards what to do, but doing it involved a lot of waiting around for supply ships where I had nothing to do as the player. I think it would help to start the player off at a more interesting stage of the game - like, to have them make some amount of choice immediately and to have the best outcome be better and more varied than "we're gradually making Wuppeluppel ore and not dying." Maybe even adding some sort of factory mechanics (e.g. you can mine different things and combine them somehow on Mars - or possibly you need to put together a good supply chain to even feed yourself/make oxygen) would increase the interest.

DieDry by AAA 2020-05-03T02:57:12Z

This was so fun! It's hard and it took me a lot of attempts on the last level to beat, but it felt really satisfying to do so! I love that it's still entertaining when you die because of the ragdoll physics (...and I *almost* got catapulted to the goal once, which was a nail-biting experience). I often found myself yelling at my computer when I died (especially if my fishy was with me). I think the controls could be improved a bit - they sometimes seemed a bit slow to react, especially jumping - and music would be amazing with this game, but otherwise, no complaints. I would definitely play more of this if there were more levels.

Omiga Daycare by Wheffle 2020-04-25T02:28:10Z

This is honestly brilliant - both as a business idea and as a game! It ramps up at a nice speed - and it's the sort of game where everything goes to crap (literally!) before you lose, which makes the losing just as fun as the winning. Also, the music is so good, I love it!

DangerPet by ArBe 2020-04-25T02:06:36Z

It took me a few runs to figure out what was going on, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. I think there needs to be more clear feedback about the witness mechanic - the first few plays, I just thought, "Oh, I got arrested... I wonder why?" and I had to come back to this page to figure out what was up. Once I did, I enjoyed the game much better, obviously. I thought my little pet (who I named Floofaboo) was very cute, and the style of graphics seemed great to me. The rendering process seemed off, though - like it was designed for a fixed window size and zoom amount. The audio effects fit with the vibe of the game and seemed quite responsive - definitely made murdering everyone more fun.

9Lives by Tec 2020-04-30T00:13:33Z

This is a really unique submission - I love the graphical style and the narrative is excellent (even if I had to load the levels from the main menu since I couldn't beat most). The concept is really neat too - having indirect control over a kitty through a few objects. The music is really outstanding - easily the best I've heard in all the games I've rated. I found the gameplay fairly frustrating though - I felt invested in the game, but couldn't make it past the fourth level after many attempts - and it felt like there was a lot of luck involved. I think, largely, my troubles came from not being able to see enough about the game state - for instance, it was difficult to tell the depth of my character, which made it hard to know if I was lined up with the kitty - and the vague nature of the sprite suited the ghost vibes, but practically, it made it difficult to know when to jump. It was also hard to see enough of the level whenever the kitty needed to jump. I think these are all reasonably easy to improve - just adding a shadow or some visual indicator of the player's position would help a lot. You might consider even just letting the player float around without needing to jump - it seems that the strength of this game is in getting the kitty to move around, and forcing the player to also jump around is actually detracting from this strength. It could also help to allow the player to get a bigger picture view of the level - either by letting them see it ahead of time or adding a map or making the perspective more vertical and more zoomed out (there's a lot of ways to go about it). It'd also be nice if the kitty was a bit more still or at least had greater warning before moving - it was troublesome when the cat moved suddenly before vacuuming, but losing this way didn't feel like it was the player's fault. I think that there's a real lot of potential in this game - and I would be very interested in seeing it improved with more polished gameplay, since everything else about this game is so solid. Despite my troubles with the controls, I enjoyed this a lot as it is - and I hope that you all will consider developing it further and getting the gameplay to feel as good as everything else. Nicely done.

Orcs v. Trolls (HTML5) by David Greene 2020-05-03T02:21:58Z

I never managed to make it past level six, but I enjoyed playing through a few runs, varying my strategy of which power ups to get. I feel that this game would be improved if it did more to involve the player (or at least add a fast forward button to minimize the bits where the player has little influence) - if I ran out of mana, it regenerated so slowly that it seemed like I could no longer really participate in the battle and was just kinda hoping things would go okay. Similarly, for the power-ups, there was a lot of talk of specific technical things (e.g. max # of minions, attack damage, max health, chance of big minion), but, far as I could see, no way for the player to quantify these things to make a meaningful decision or understand what was weak in their setup - showing a lot more to the player would enhance the experience, especially since I think that the base mechanics here are solid. The music and sound-effects were great - they definitely made watching the battles way more fun.

Connection by Trifectuh 2020-04-22T04:07:55Z

This is a really original concept - there were definitely some emergent phenomena in the gameplay, like realizing that one's opponent's cards might often not be wise to get rid of in order to protect one's own cards. I managed to win twice by following this strategy, although it also made me lose once (sorry, Earth) - so there's definitely some subtlety here. I can see this working really well as a two-player game with some tweaking - at least for my taste, there were somewhat too many variables to track; I could imagine either using smaller hands (e.g. each player having just three cards) or a smaller set of possible tiles (e.g. three kinds of cards are revealed at the start; they are the only cards that will ever be played in that round) creating a more understandable experience. It's quite fun as it is already and I think it has a lot of potential for improvement too - well done.

LD46: The Lighthouse at the End of the Universe by LMB 2020-04-27T19:53:50Z

Fun little game - it reminds me of a lot of this sort of "fight lots of spaceships with little geometric graphics" that I've much enjoyed in the past. As has been mentioned, the controls didn't feel so great on a keyboard - I can see that a controller would make this a lot better. One thing to consider for keyboard users would be to have the ship move along arcs of a circle, so that it turns smoothly from one orientation to the next or just to make aiming less important by giving the bullets a bit of homing ability or just having them fired in some spread pattern. The music and sound design were really nice.

Your Pet Alien by AdonisDevs 2020-04-27T00:34:46Z

I really like the sound effects on this - the echoing voices really add to the "oh, this is an alien" sensation. I'm not sure I fully understood the gameplay - I balanced doing chores and getting food for a while, but eventually, it seemed like just getting food worked just as well. The graphics are cute and seem reasonably polished.

NeBROmancer by Racso 2020-04-21T03:42:02Z

I knew I had to play this game as soon as I saw the title - and it did not disappoint. It took me a few tries before I realized how spells worked (I somehow didn't understand the tutorial the first time - not sure how though - it seems pretty clear now). The game might be improved if the nebromancer was stronger individually - it seemed like most of the game was just hoping your undead do something smart, because casting harm doesn't do much in terms of damage in comparison to a whole bunch of undead. Nonetheless, I did enjoy watching all my undead buddies make me new soon-to-be-undead buddies.

Balloony by Ryfi 2020-04-21T23:09:10Z

"It's the only one we've got!" (5 minute later) Oh my gosh, there's a lot of balloons! I loved that intro, though - and the sound effects were excellent too. I like the idea for the game - it was pretty fun, although I think a higher frequency of obstacles would be appreciated. I also found it a bit easy - perhaps instead of having more balloons that are expendable, having more that are not would be a nice addition; it seemed pretty easy to keep my balloon out of harm's way, but I bet it would get hectic (in a fun way) if I had to keep two or three or four alive.

Dice-Town by PiIsFour 2020-04-25T01:24:12Z

It took maybe 5 minutes of playing before I had any idea what was happening, but I started to enjoy myself once I caught on - I thought the level of difficulty was too low, though; it seemed like death was always far away and I was constantly making new dice and slowly upgrading them. I think a faster pace and higher difficulty would make this more fun - especially since, as it is, the main storyline is fulfilled just by getting high enough totals across your dice. It might work better if some reasonably expensive and important events only occurred occasionally or along with others to force the player to make choices. Nonetheless, this was very original and I enjoyed playing it through.

SuperOgre64 by BlueCalx 2020-04-29T23:23:15Z

It took me a bit to understand what was going on, but once I did the challenge didn't seem very difficult - just get enough of everything, occasionally feed someone to the ogre, and wait until the win conditions are met. I think the game would be improved by having fewer villages, but making more meaningful choices - perhaps if there was some incentive to sacrifice higher level villagers, that would help. Interesting idea, though, and the graphics are nice - especially the ogre itself (and I greatly enjoy the idea that the villagers get put on a conveyor belt to the ogre!) - and the audio is subtle, but a nice touch. While it definitely needs more balancing, I can see this growing into a unique game.

Empire Tactics by PoshDan 2020-05-05T19:59:03Z

I like the idea here a lot - I like the clean hexagonal style of the grid and the core mechanics are easy to pick up. I found it hard to make meaningful decisions without more information being presented to the player - the stats of a stack, in particular, would have been very nice to have at hand, as would the movement range of any ship you hovered your mouse over (especially *enemy* ships) and the order of movement. The balance also seemed off - the ship that threw swords seemed really really powerful in comparison to the others. I didn't manage to win Mission 4, but I got through the rest and enjoyed playing.

Gate Crash by Ranjan 2020-04-29T05:01:16Z

This was an interesting experience - the graphical style of the game was neat (and had fun puns), and the controls felt well implemented enough to enjoy the bullet hell part of the game. The music was pretty good too. I felt that the mechanics of "put the gates into the right sockets" and "get the gates while dodging bullets" didn't mesh that well - I just quickly glanced at what gates I needed (though it seemed that all the puzzles had non-unique solutions?) and grabbed them, making it more like two separate stages than an integrated whole (this was especially true since if I waited any length of time to solve the puzzle side, the bullet side was just too hard from the spawn rate). I wonder if some sort of effect of the logic gates other than "you won!" might improve this - for instance, if they controlled something meaningful in game (e.g. some sort of upgrade or turret, or even just a door); such effects might also open the door to more creativity for the player, if different circuits did different things rather than were just right/wrong.

Crop Time by nicksmaddog 2020-04-23T02:29:38Z

Aw, the main character is so cute! And the little animations for watering/planting are nice too. It took me until the second try to water a plant early enough that it later withered and I felt legitimately sad when this happened - my poor little farmer failed! It seemed, though, that this might be more fun if there were more elements of challenge than "water these plants" - something, for instance, that occasionally had to be done in some random place in the screen. Otherwise, it's sort of just planning out a route to water your plants.

Cubi & Spheri by Hugo kieffer 2020-04-29T03:28:55Z

I don't have Windows, so couldn't play or rate, but I'm very amused that this game is about a cube protecting a sphere, where I made a game about a square protecting a circle. I feel that I've been one upped (in terms of dimension especially), haha.

Seeds of Hope: The Last Stand by Corbak 2020-05-02T02:40:23Z

This is good fun - it took me four tries before I realized that staffing the cloning room was *way* overpowered - my record before this realization was 4 probes... immediately after this realization... well... Screen Shot 2020-05-01 at 10.37.23 PM.png a little better. The game just looks and feels very nice - the graphics are all very smooth and the music is very nice (especially later on in the track). Gameplay-wise, I think I found it harder because there was little indication of where problems were - all the info was basically displayed as counters (or, for costs and that sort of thing, somewhat hidden in a menu - some indication of "you can afford an upgrade for this room now!" or "there's a human doing nothing!" would have been nice). I think I personally would have enjoyed it more if there was a longer period of an easier difficulty - just to afford some time to the player to upgrade the ship as they like before things get really bad (especially if some elements of randomness were added too - it seems like there's not much pressure to adapt one's strategy as it is). I like that the player starts off with a ton of shields that, essentially, they can't hope to replenish faster than they are lost - I think that creates a nice sense of urgency, though getting it exactly right would take more balancing. I could see some sort of randomness that allows one-time increases of shields at some notable cost being effective in adding more variety without taking away the mood of "watch your ship count towards oblivion." This was a lot of fun as it is, though - and I really started to feel the tension of the situation while playing. Very well done.

Seeds of Hope: The Last Stand by Corbak 2020-05-02T04:27:03Z

Took a few more stabs at it... almost got a record - I definitely think there's some need of randomness now, since the "put everyone in the cloning bay, build things back up right before death" strategy seems unreasonably effective and sort of turns the game into "click the pod button whenever you have enough resources to not lose the food boost".

Screen Shot 2020-05-02 at 12.16.25 AM.png

FISHHEAD by literallyjosh 2020-04-24T04:05:09Z

You should edit this page to list the platforms supported - it looks like the "Source Code" link includes a Windows executable, so it'd be worth listing that even if you use the same link (and even same file) as for source code. You also might find more luck if you exported to multiple platforms (I think Unity can do that? I'm not very familiar with it) - or even better, if you exported it to the web.

Heavy Petting by WongKongPhooey 2020-04-20T20:48:41Z

It gave me quite a scare when my cute lil' kitty grew into a tiger after eating a little food - and, once I was over my first encounter with the tiger (it didn't go well), I really appreciated the little details like the larger droppings in the litter and the tiger sleeping on the couch. It was a bit tricky to time the jumps at first (I was trying to take a running start, which usually meant I just ran into my pet), but comfortable enough once I got the hang of it (until my tiger got angry and decided to eat me :( ). Definitely a short and enjoyable experience for me!

Daisy Danger by Reef 2020-04-24T04:39:51Z

I loved the facial expressions of the daisy! I was kinda sad, though, when the baddies started spawning constantly. No more smiling daisy (also, daisy slowly lost all of its petals and died, but let's not talk about that). I think the game might benefit from having the challenge expand in more ways than "now there are a lot of baddies" - like if there had been one or two new types of baddies; it felt that, unless I was unlucky, I could handle basically any amount of baddies. I still had fun keeping the baddies away, though.

AliveBirds by ManTou 2020-04-21T14:28:09Z

This was a short and sweet experience. The graphics look really nice and the sound effects seemed to add to the mood - I really liked the sort of "poof" sound the cats made when you squished them. The controls were really smooth. The difficulty certainly could've been higher, but the increase of difficulty with time was certainly sufficient to keep from getting bored in a game this short.

Elemental Babysitter by gquibao 2020-04-21T15:13:18Z

These cubes seemed surprisingly cute to me - it was a little sad when they came to harm (which seemed, inevitably, to be the result of one straying too far and then me dragging it into something by accident). The sound effects were really surprising at first, but I came to like them.

Keep It Alive by Ratstail91 2020-04-22T01:12:46Z

After a bit of whacking down trees, I decided to let the fire die - and it is legitimately quite scary the moment the fire goes out and you're just in darkness. Nicely done on the mood.

Work from home - rat battle! by knason 2020-04-28T02:32:29Z

I made $290, woo-hoo! I think a greater variety of challenge would benefit this game - either new types of dangers for the cables that require a different solution than standing on them, or something that constrains where the player is (even something as simple as "oh this particular rat is super dangerous; don't touch it"). I quite like the graphical style here - it looks reasonably polished and has lots of nice touches, like the brief displays of cost or the little money signs next to the homes.

Virtual Pet: No escape from Life by MickM 2020-04-27T20:05:58Z

This seemed like a solid entry all around - the gameplay was sufficiently fun (though I think that the pet might not have actually needed to play? At least, I forgot to let it play for quite a while and it was fine. It was fine on the outside anyways) and the graphics were not exactly beautiful, but I enjoyed the style nonetheless. The audio was nice. I really felt myself caring about my little pet while playing.

The Diamond-Flowered Orchid by Frank Gevaerts 2020-05-04T01:01:15Z

Nice style of game - I like the little asides, especially the unicorn hiding behind the banana leaf. I got stuck, though - whenever I tried to clean my arm after getting water, it said that my arm didn't need cleaning, but it wouldn't let me sleep until I cleaned my arm... which was a problem (and I tried restarting, but got stuck the same way) - I spent a long time wandering around, but didn't find a way forward. The sound effects were nice - I had expected them to be a bit cheesy when I first noticed they were there, but they were actually really tasteful and effective.

Ice Ice Baby by Fabrizio Spadaro 2020-04-27T18:08:55Z

I like the idea - and the melting mechanic is cool, especially how you use it on the last level to require a certain amount of melting to jump far enough. The graphics a *really* cute - especially the little face on the ice cube. I found the controls frustrating though - especially in the last level, I didn't really feel like I had adequate control over my character to execute the required jumps consistently - it just took too long for the ice cube to accelerate (which was especially frustrating since the ice cube didn't go so fast in the first place). While the mechanic of going faster when slower is solid, I think more work would need to be put into making sure it still feels good to control the big ice cube. This is really solid as it is and I would definitely want to see it expanded into a more complete game.

Keep the Princess Alive by Fernando Tonon de Rossi 2020-04-26T03:47:09Z

Fun little game - I quite enjoy the graphics. I played a couple of rounds, and then got a brilliant idea that led me to discovering that this is a *fireproof* princess, which I think is very exciting.

Screen Shot 2020-04-25 at 11.43.07 PM.png

(Also, nice to see another WebAssembly game - I also learned it for this Ludum Dare, though with SDL rather than Qt. I really enjoyed using WebAssembly - it's so much like writing a normal desktop program!)

Seeds of Eru by Fersyvanderzee 2020-04-20T20:25:00Z

It took me a while to figure out the controls - the first two times I played, I thought it was just arrow keys, but backwards, but then I figured out that the mouse did something (I didn't get the hang of it) - and I enjoyed it much more when I realized I could just turn SARA around and have the controls I was implicitly expecting. The win screen was very cute - I liked that bit a lot.

Save It by sundhar 2020-04-24T04:01:31Z

I really like the concept here - even with the short game, I had a few pleasant moments of "Oh, that's how you do it" when figuring out a puzzle. I did find the controls difficult to use - I think it would be improved by making them a bit more snappy - faster to get up to full speed/stop and not having jumps float so far. I also suspect that the isometric perspective wasn't doing any favors for the player - jumping on to a platform was a bit difficult, and the WASD controls didn't line up with the cardinal directions of the screen. I could definitely imagine this expanding into a very interesting game though.

Innocuous Pong by MachWerx 2020-04-26T03:18:11Z

Hm, I dunno. This is just an innocuous game of pong. Pretty boring...

Oh wait! No - this was so fun to play, definitely the most fun I've had in any game I've rated! The music is wonderful and bubbly - though a longer loop would be appreciated - and the idea is really clever. There were definitely some times where it felt like losing was unfair - particularly around the 6 transition (where sometimes my paddle would teleport at a very inconvenient time) or the 12 (where sometimes the ball would head straight for a corner - and it was hard to know which paddle to bring over, and even if that went well, the ball would just fly off before I could move my mouse all the way across the screen - you could possibly get the same effect by having the paddles move along arcs of a circle instead of sides of a square to avoid these discontinuities). I only managed to get to 19 (I might come back again and try to get to 20 later) - the 3D was so hard, especially if, like for the 12 transition, the ball headed towards an edge or corner - it might be more fun if the physics cheated a bit for the 3D to not cause collisions in too rapid succession. I also wonder whether keyboard controls might suit the game better - especially if 3D things are going to come into play - it might open up more possibilities of control schemes that make the player feel like they are definitely in control of what's happening. In any case, very well done.

Oaks & Pines by Argon 2020-04-21T22:57:52Z

The game is really pleasant to play - though it was more of an experience of "ooh, look at the pretty forest growing" than something with a lot of meaningful interaction from the players. I enjoyed it nonetheless.

The man who watches the time pass by TPZombie 2020-04-21T18:53:41Z

Just lovely!

Keep the blob alive ! by NewinGames 2020-04-28T04:02:34Z

I *really* like the mechanic here, and it seems quite polished. It felt like the sort of game that was very pleasant to watch evolve over time - and which had nice little touches, like the "live" blobs wiggling up towards the ends of their big blob. While it's very effective as a sort of passive game, I think there's further potential in adding more active mechanics that really make the player feel in control of the outcome - in particular, anything that makes the shape of the blob more meaningful or requires change in response to the situation (though I lack specific suggestions). It also might be useful if the moving the blob feature were more effective - it mostly works on only the very end of the blob, it's too hard to move anything else. You might consider a scheme other than "pick a joint and move it" for the movement - for instance, you could implement a system where moving a given joint nudges the joints around it as well or allowing selection of a region of joints. The graphics and the audio are both quite nice - although I do think the background music could be improved by making it more ambient (i.e. less notes). Very cool entry, well done.

Kill the Beast by limbo 2020-04-25T14:57:58Z

I was sometimes a bit confused at what effect each option might have, but the dialogue was interesting to read nonetheless, and it told a nice little story.

Blobbysitter by Jake Marks 2020-04-30T00:32:06Z

I feel that I must have missed something - I never managed to interact with the door, so blobbaby always died if it needed to relieve itself. Still enjoyed the game though - the humor is excellent, and I love the little touches, like the photos of blobbaby hanging on the wall (I'm so sorry, owner. I did kill your blobbaby. Repeatedly). The music is good and fits the theme well - and, of course, the voice acting is top notch. The blobbaby started to look kinda cute to me by the time I stopped playing... which maybe was a sign that I had played too long. Well done.

Blobbysitter by Jake Marks 2020-04-30T04:19:02Z

@heiach Thanks! I dunno why I never tried that. I beat it on my second try after being armed with this new knowledge. Now I can rest easy, knowing I'm not a terribly blobbysitter.

Body Guards by Hcursino 2020-04-21T14:50:42Z

This was a fun game - and there's an impressive amount of content in it. I will say that I found that "spam normies and play all cards immediately" seemed to be a bit too effective of a strategy, but I still had fun doing that. I really like the game over screen, it's great. I liked the music too - it's funky.

Are you kitten me, Cthulhu? by BIG EVIL CORPORATION 2020-04-29T04:10:00Z

I have no words for this. There was absolutely no part of me that thought opening the door might lead to Cthuwu reaching in with tentacles, just straight clipping through the door and going through the [up/down]stairs windows. Everything about this experience was a quite off - lots of z-fighting among objects, kitties that seemed to be floating in the air, strange console messages - and yet I enjoyed it **so** much; this game just made me really happy somehow. Thanks, I guess, haha!

Keep it Ali...ens! by Eldar 2020-04-23T02:20:58Z

I'm really quite impressed with the graphics - the little renditions of San Francisco, New York, and the White House were lovely. Plus, the designs of each ship were very nice. The controls caused me trouble, like others, but I found myself really enjoying the game anyways - and I thought the difficulty level was quite appropriate - I barely beat it on my first go.

Bomber Escort (or boomer escort) by thatOtherNerd 2020-05-03T02:06:10Z

It took me a bit to figure out the controls - especially, as others have noted, that holding space bar doesn't fire, but also that you could fly through the escort and that the red % thing was the enemy health (maybe better to use a health bar over the enemy for this?). Once I figured these out, the gameplay felt plenty smooth, though. I definitely had fun playing this, though I think there's a lot more opportunity with this mechanic - even just zooming everything out and increasing the speeds might help, since it'd be nice to have a challenge of "oh, this plane is approaching in this direction, I need to be behind it" rather than just "oh, I see bullets, better point my gun towards their source - and hope it doesn't start doing damage before I had a chance to react" - a bigger field of vision could also work well with expanding the content to include more threats (e.g. multiple enemies at once or multiple types of threats) to allow more strategizing. It could also help to create a bigger sense of movement - not just in terms of speed, but to use the idea that the bomber is itself moving to your advantage - maybe to make it more like "if you want to get further behind the bomber, don't go straight ahead" instead of "turn all the way around to go back", which might lead to more interesting gameplay and work better thematically (plus: it adds the option of "turn all the way around to go back **really** fast - maybe *too* fast"). Nicely done for a first jam.

LD 46 - Guinea Pug by Notredamstra 2020-04-29T04:26:23Z

That story was so good - I mean, for me, the reader (not so much for the Pug and all its bones). This is a really solid entry - I enjoyed playing many times, and when things were going well, it felt great (especially when new things like green arrows/red electric things showed up for the first times). I found it a bit hard to control - it felt like there was a lot of luck involved, but still enjoyable. My suggestions would be to increase the angle of the perspective (make it closer to top-down - maybe even use an isometric projection) to let the player view more relevant information at once (it would also help if the decaying blocks came with more warning - I never managed to survive once I saw them show up from behind). The pug's shadow is a really nice and helpful touch - could help if there was some better indication of landing position when you weren't in mid-air. It also seems like the level generation is some sort of independent random choice for each block - it might work out better if the generation had some sort of "planning" to it to make intentional contiguous paths (and contiguous gaps too) or other features that would give the player a more easily understood world - there's just a bit too much entropy in the generation as it is for a player to really get what's coming up. In any case, I enjoyed this game quite a lot as it is - well done.

Oh! And the music was really nice!

Corona Grocery Run by sneakycocoon 2020-04-23T03:36:24Z

I tried to go to the doctor when I had all the symptoms. Instead my mom disowned me. Sadness ensued. But at least I brought 854 people down with me, mwahaha.

Sleep-Rolling Pangolin by Khyrgrim 2020-05-12T19:47:32Z

This is amazing! I really enjoyed how the level design was amenable to all sorts of deductive reasoning, despite having so many possible choices at any given point in time (...the last level was awesome once things started clicking together - especially since it seemed like the solution might be unique, even though it looks so complex. I would definitely play through more). I don't really have a lot of suggestions for this - it's really nice as it is.

This Fire Burns by Thrawn911 2020-05-05T19:39:36Z

I managed to find two branches on my first try, then tried twice more and found zero more sticks. The music is a nice ambiance - I might recommend smoothing over the music looping though (you might try overlapping various audio clips that fade in/out smoothly to get the same effect with a higher level of variety and polish without too much more work). I wished there was something in the forest to be afraid of - it didn't seem inherently scary to me to be walking about a dark forest - you could even do this with treacherous terrain if you wanted something other than "there's monsters in here too."

Keep IT alive （Play Online） by BongoBongo 2020-05-03T03:08:28Z

I had a good time playing this! I really like the graphical style - it feels very polished, especially with the little touches like the machine vibrating when you get stuff from them. I do not know why this IT guy needs so much medicine - is he alright? (But I'm glad he gets someone who brings him everything he even thinks to desire - nice workplace). The gameplay was easy to learn and the controls generally felt good - though I was sometimes a bit unsure of exactly where I could walk, and it sometimes felt a bit unfair if I got conversation'd when I was waiting at a machine. I thought the difficulty was pretty good - it was maybe slightly on the easy side once I got the hang of things, but at a fun level of difficulty nonetheless. The idea to show the intent of other workers was solid, although I think it could be integrated more - it'd be nice if they thought their thing before starting their movement, for instance, and it could help if there was some coordination between workers (e.g. having a meeting at some specific point- perhaps at a specific person (a boss character?)) so that the player might be able to understand the broad picture of the NPC movement without trying to keep a ton of unrelated individuals in mind. The music was also very fitting. Nicely done.

Protect The Plant by Metehan 2020-05-03T03:40:38Z

I enjoyed playing, though I found it rather easy - the plant had *so* much health, so it took forever to lose even when I decided I wanted to see what happened if I stopped shooting the enemies. The controls felt good, although the movement was a bit fast and twitchy - maybe either slowing it down or adding some slight period of acceleration would help. There's room for a lot more content in this game, and I think more content could improve things a lot - whether that be some sort of story (e.g. you have to leave the plant to seek out a bigger quest's objectives) or a power-up/item/upgrade system or more variety in enemies or having an enemy base somewhere or really anything that incentives the player to do more than wait around and shoot anything that comes to the door. It seemed like there was a nice level of polish on the graphical side - the night/day cycle was neat and all the animations looked good (plus the menu screens were really good).

Treeblocks by mincho 2020-05-04T00:43:52Z

I quite enjoyed this - the gameplay feels smooth and the concept works really well. While I think this is already quite strong, it might be nice to have a bigger variety of things to deal with later in the game - it sort of felt like, at some point, I was mostly at the mercy of the randomness of the famines and droughts. I could even imagine more extreme challenges like "you need to build this *fourth* resource now" being really interesting later in the game - to create a more controlled scramble than a game of maintaining a system that basically works. Good entry.

Hamloon by NoelOskar 2020-04-20T02:46:54Z

The graphics are really cute - the field of mushrooms made me quite happy to see. I think it'd be nice if the difficult had increased faster - and perhaps in more meaningful ways than having more pins and faster pins thrown at you - because I got a bit tired of doing an easy task before there was any challenge (and then it seemed like it was easy to lose all your bandages in one bad incident - maybe some time of invincibility after being hit would help?).

ALYVE by jspacek 2020-04-28T03:47:29Z

This was fun - I beat it my first try, and decided to go back for another run. The controls were really confusing at first - I had to basically push all the buttons on my keyboard until I figured out the controls were Z, X, C + Arrow keys (and the first run through, I found them awkward - I couldn't get turrets down fast enough to save my test tube buddy/monster). There's definitely some balance issues to work out, though - the Pulser far outpaces any other weapon in terms of damager per second per $$$ - and you can get a perfect score (on my third attempt, hehe) up until the final day with just un-upgraded Pulsers: Screen Shot 2020-04-27 at 11.44.06 PM.png (I nearly killed the boss too; had only two segments left when it got to me). It might need some rebalancing. I really dig the graphical style and the audio is simple, but fun. Very nicely done.

Keep Heart Beat by zilulu 2020-04-20T20:14:08Z

I quite enjoyed this once I got the hang of it. It took me a bit to get the hang of the controls - my mind apparently really thinks left to right corresponds to lower to higher - but when bigger chunks of "stuff" started showing up, I started to have a good bit of fun. It might be nice if there was more dense formations showing up as one goes on - and I bet building a sense of rhythm would help this game as well. The graphics struck me as really nice - the particle effects for failure/success were particularly enjoyable!

Keep Heart Beat by zilulu 2020-04-20T20:14:10Z

~I posted twice by accident. Ignore this~

The Apocalypse: Your Fired by oramun 2020-05-03T03:20:53Z

This was a familiar concept, but it was well implemented - the controls felt good, so the core mechanic of "shoot zombies, don't get hit" worked out. The music was *awesome* - I loved it! (Though I also had the issue that it stopped playing after a while) I think there's a few things that would really help this game: first, some measurement of progress would be nice - this feels like a game where adding a score counter would improve the game a lot, since then players could be motivated to get a high score. I also think there were some indicators that would be useful to the player - for instance, instead of suddenly dimming the fire, it'd be nice if there was some sort of warning, either by having the fire fade gradually, or by adding a "fire health bar" sort of thing next to the player's health and using that to indicate the status of the fire. I also think some sort of additional content would help - whether that be more enemies, some sort of power-ups, or things like that (maybe something like "this is a special log; if you put it in the flame, you get an upgrade for a while!"). A little more sound design would be nice too - like footsteps or fire burning sounds. I enjoyed playing this, good job.

Experiment #31415 - The Takeover by RedSponge 2020-04-25T01:45:31Z

This is definitely one of my favorite games I've found so far in the competition - it took me a bit to realize all the mechanics (especially that you could cycle through targets), but after I did, the controls seemed really nice and fluid and generally fun to play with. The tutorial was really excellent - I somehow had a bit of trouble and ran out of syringes before the immune person arrived the first time I played the tutorial (and so couldn't finish), but, that aside, it was a very well executed tutorial. It really starts to heat up when the doctors start becoming immune. I wouldn't mind a greater variety of challenge - maybe some "higher tiers" of doctors with special abilities (e.g. shielding nearby people from disease) - but it's quite fun even as it is. Well done.

Save It With Fire!!! by Jason Woerner 2020-04-23T01:57:33Z

The concept is neat, and it's a good use of the theme, but I really had a hard time remembering what was what - I can think of two things which would have really improved this for me: first, it would help to build in time for the player to learn the associations, perhaps via a smaller training level with fewer things going on. Second, having something really concrete that links the words to the machines would be so helpful - something like a little symbol displayed both as a need and at the dispenser. This was especially a problem when the mixer came into play - I didn't realize salt wasn't dispensed at first, then I didn't know how to make it and had to quickly look at the description, and then I put the wrong ingredients in and lost which felt somewhat unfair. I think there's a good idea here, and there were definitely some nice elements of polish (like the words that tell you why an action failed), but I think more needs to be done to assist the player.

Carpe Diem by Jojo The Clown 2020-04-21T15:04:05Z

This is an amusing idea - and the music is weird, but somehow fits the absurdity of the concept really nicely. I liked the little touches like the background changing as the sunlight fades or the second bit of music. The controls seemed fine, but I found it really really hard to judge where I needed to put my plant if I wanted to grab a stopwatch between two obstacles; the perspective just made it seem like the obstacles were too far to judge only a moment before I needed to be precisely positioned in reference to them. Also, as far as I could tell, there was no way to reset the game except restarting the browser - this definitely made it harder to play.

Keep It A-Live by Marco Le Van 2020-04-20T14:16:11Z

I really liked playing this game - the controls felt really nice and the difficulty seemed appropriate (...though I was hoping to know what happened if I won - didn't get terribly close to finding out :P). The music was fun and I found the conversation with the other policeman funny.

Space Station Techie: Keepin' It Alive by Galactic Chimp 2020-04-27T00:28:07Z

This is an interesting idea and I enjoyed it as far as I was able to get (the hyperspace broadcaster level was too hard for me; I just couldn't get through, even when I thought I did really well). As others have mentioned, the controls were difficult - especially when the character "snagged" on a wall - and I think that the game would be more compelling if the player felt more in control, so that their failure to match the timer felt more as a result of their tangible actions than "oh, my hitbox hit the wall and I stopped. :(". I liked the first server level particularly - it had a nice puzzle element to it in figuring out the fastest path, and I think that combination of puzzle + speed is what could make this game really fun.

One major suggestion: there is, far as I can tell, no way to restart a level except for letting the timer run out. It didn't feel great to realize that you weren't fast enough at the start, then have to twiddle your thumbs for a minute.

Bubbles Saves Grandma by Caladrius 2020-05-03T21:23:34Z

Love the humor and the music in this. I think the controls need a lot of work, though - in particular, I found it entirely impossible to know whether I would be able to jump each time I tried to (or exactly when the jump might happen even if it did work) - and twice I got stuck between two things, unable to jump, and had to restart. I definitely got better at the controls over time (I eventually saved Grandma), but never to a point where I felt that they responded predictably to my input. I also think that having S slow Bubbles down would improve the experience - there wasn't any place where I thought, "oh, not being able to slow down means I have to do something clever", but there were tons where I was just frustrated by running off an edge. Plus, making the controls easier would allow for harder level design than what is basically a string of "jump here to here and here to here and if you fail, you get set back a bunch of jumps." Nonetheless, I enjoyed the game, especially for the aesthetic style and the voice over.

[Web] Escape Great A'Tomb by Kerri 2020-04-21T23:23:31Z

I like the idea here. I think it would probably be helped if the player had more choice than where to go - on the higher levels, I mostly found myself running around until I either found an exit (yay) or got cornered (not yay). Some sort of progression for the player (e.g. occasionally drops make the chest more powerful) could be nice too.

Tundra by a1gemmel 2020-05-04T01:08:36Z

This was nice and easy to pick up and play. I think more variety in challenge would be nice - it got repetitive to go around picking up logs. It could be natural to have some sort of "campsite" mechanic to complement the "out in the cold" mechanics - for instance, if there was some sense of building shelter and tradeoffs between gathering lots of wood and using wood efficiently - and I think this would enhance the mood of the game (which is already good), since going out in the cold would contrast more sharply with being at shelter.

Circle of Life (Unfinished) by mvanbaalen 2020-04-23T02:07:02Z

I'm not sure what's happening, but I like to think that I am winning - the Frulzoodgag is doing really well, ever since it survived the Great Starvation Event of Month 8 where I put in a bunch of large carnivores without any herbivores. I dunno what you were thinking to put in the big black space, but it'd be cool to see these numbers graphed - that tends to make sciencey games way more legit :P. I kinda get the impression that the game might continue running for a long time. These numbers are big and they seem to be getting bigger.Screen Shot 2020-04-22 at 10.06.42 PM.png

Circle of Life (Unfinished) by mvanbaalen 2020-04-23T02:59:10Z

Screen Shot 2020-04-22 at 10.58.02 PM.png

I think this may be a world record.

Keep it alive by robertino 2020-05-05T20:09:01Z

I feel like I must have missed something - I spent a long time walking around in the first level (the bit after the first time you touch fire), but I couldn't find any path forward or anything I could interact with? I'm confused - I felt that I was pretty thorough in looking around. Audio's nice though.

Beat-o-matic by greizgh 2020-04-20T20:36:37Z

The Mac version doesn't open for me (on Catalina, anyways) - but the web version seemed to work fine, and I didn't notice any lag in the inputs. I enjoyed it whenever I could get started - but getting started was always rough, since there didn't seem to be a lot of feedback available before you started having attacks. I think this game would benefit a lot from having more feedback about the right pace to keep, and maybe being a bit more forgiving - it would be particularly great if the heartbeat sound effect could play at the appropriate speed - it was jarring to have "ba-bump (silence) ba-bump (silence)" at slower BPMs and made it harder to keep pace. I only managed to get the cloud-based stage once, but I thought the text there was pretty funny - well worth the trouble. (...though I was not a very good cloud based pacemaker. :( )

Bluebird by cjm 2020-04-24T04:27:34Z

I found this rather pleasant to play - there wasn't much of a challenge (except for one near miss with an eagle), but it felt nice to fly the bird around. I think even a change as simple as "make the game longer, and make eagles spawn more often as times goes on" could really make this a lot more fun - the controls seem to lend themselves to something like that, since they feel very intuitive, but are a bit unusual, which could make the challenge of planning a course through danger quite interesting.

Also, it wouldn't be any trouble to me to host the WebAssembly version of your game on my site for the duration of rating period - let me know if you'd like me to. (My site is currently very empty because I was mostly motivated to start one to host my own WebAssembly entry... though I do have other plans in the not-so-distant future for the site)

Bluebird by cjm 2020-04-24T21:13:22Z

@cjm Here's a link to the new web file on my site: http://www.themilobrandt.com/bluebird/

Spirit Of Dying by Sierpinski-Simon 2020-05-04T00:29:25Z

The game looks really nice and the audio works well. I found it pretty easy - I lost at the first key door, then at the spikes, but on the third try I beat it without feeling too pressed. I really liked the health bar wrapping around the screen - that brought me a lot of joy. The core mechanics seem solid to me as is and, as others have mentioned, I think it would benefit from being longer (and harder). While it's not so much of an issue with such a short game, if it were expanded, it would be worth adding checkpoints and making it take less time to respawn (I could even imagine this being the sort of game that works with "if you die, the camera pans back to a checkpoint quickly and you immediately respawn) - just to make sure that the player isn't punished for exploring. I enjoyed playing it, even if it was short.

NWO Simulator - World peace is an inside job by herzig 2020-04-20T14:26:45Z

I enjoyed playing the game, though I think I might have enjoyed it even more had the controls been more forgiving; the radius around each state seemed a little small and I often found myself running past it by accident. The difficult also ramped up a bit unevenly - it seemed like levels 1 - 3 were quite easy, then level 4 was a hard challenge and level 5 seemed mostly impossible (...and then I got to level 6 where I just figured I'd watch the nukes go around) I liked the setting a lot - I've always wanted to be a lizard working for the NWO and the nukes and the twitter logos were somehow both quite cute as they travelled on their little arcs.

Guardian Angel by PolyPickle 2020-04-25T02:16:53Z

A neat idea and quite fun! The controls felt a bit difficult, though - it sort of seemed like I could just knock everything around, but didn't have much ability for precision. Even so, it was fun to watch all the weapons fly by and to try to pile all the little humans into the center where they might be safe. (Though those fools would just crawl back out. Humans.)

Keep Hope Alive by keybol 2020-04-21T03:30:18Z

This is excellent! It took me a bit to figure out the mechanics of the followers, but I thoroughly enjoyed it once I did - and I found the difficulty curve of the game satisfying - though I think there's definitely more to explore in terms of harder levels. The graphics are lovely - I especially liked the little hearts particle effect! It didn't take me too long to finish, but it was a very enjoyable experience.