Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → Metatheos
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | Co | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2013 | 27 | 10 Seconds | ReTurtle | compo | 820 | 2.78 | 2.33 | 3.15 | 2.90 | 3.06 | 1.36 | 1.17 | 1.72 | 100 |
Really interesting idea, but I found it really hard to follow the action due to a lack of continuity (feels almost like I missed something and it's actually there).
Also please open ASquareOfTimeAndSpace.html in any text-editor and change line 20 to 'params: { enableDebugging:"0", disableContextMenu:true }' (it disables the right-click-menu).
The rewind-mechanics would sound way more broken on paper than they feel in the actual game. I mean it's a mechanic that recovers health, gives you offensive advantage by letting you control an additional character and progresses the victory condition at the same time. What makes it interesting in the actual game is that the position of the object to protect changes with the progression. This way your previous version defends a completely different location than you will have to protect after the rewind.
I think it would be interesting if the cube would travel on an predefined path through a level, so you would have to mix clearing the path ahead with catching up after a rewind. I also see myself having to balance fixing misses from the previous iterations and making new progress. Really inspiring concept.
Two hints to anyone trying this game:
- Intro can be skipped by r
- You have to actually sit on the pilot's seat to finish
On the game itself: Someone here seems to like himself some Hotline Miami. Enjoyable attempt at the concept, but some oddities of the execution are really frustrating, especially that dead enemies seem to still absorb bullets. Other than that it's a fun little game.
I had trouble actually developing strategy to save more robots, not sure how much that is my fault. I like the concept though, maybe making timesteps discrete would be interesting, since it might make robot-interaction much more predictable.
I'd really like to play a further developed version of the game that isn't bound to the requirements of the theme. The mix of firing missiles and also being able to attach to one for mobility shows so much potential. I think the game should be faster overall though. I'd also like to see the missile-physics being more arcade-style for the projectile-version. And finally I think the missile riding should be controlled by mouse, not switch to WSAD after launch.
I think I had little trouble following this because I had made something similar myself once. The one thing I feel this game really lacks is a grid (though you probably have intended hitting an intended spot as part of the skill). Other than that its really fun to try your take on the concept, since due to how rare games like this are, they are bound to have significant differences. With some tweaking I can imagine this becoming a really great game.
For everyone struggling with the game I'll try to explain the fundamentals in my words. There is a timeline at the top and at the bottom. You have four actions: [attack or defend] x [high or low], these correspond to the four rows on your keyboard the game uses. The leftmost key in the row places the action at the left end of the timeline, the rightmost at the right end. Actions move to the left and are executed when they hit the left end (queuing further to the right is cheaper on the stamina-bar).
I really liked the approach to turn-based-stealth, shows a lot of potential. The concepts introduced in the different levels make for an diverse experience too.
I wonder whether it was a conscious decision to make the player vulnerable at two points during the turn (before and after the enemy moves). Intuitively I'd say that removing one of these checks would improve the player's mobility, but might make it hard to create nontrivial puzzles.
I found the best strategy to be just going in circles and gathering energy behind (which pretty much guarantees to not run into the clone or having to avoid trailing projectiles). At some point I collected everything at once by crossing over to my old self just to make up for some random hits. Interesting concept, but with this strategy there was too little diversion for the length of the game. I also had trouble understanding the reason behind the non-square-playfield. What I really liked was the gritty look of the game, reminds me of old prerendered-sprite-games, and it is supported really well by the music.
I tried getting through the game for a few tries, it's quite old-school to punish me for not knowing what to do in a level and still limiting lives, making me restart from the very beginning. I got to the second hell-level and gave up at that point. Without any checkpoints it was just asking for too much. I was losing a few lives to levels being randomly unbeatable (like pickups being covered for most of the time in the pong-level), losing another few to those squid-things spawning right over pickups (and being able to kill you after you have picked up everything), and then getting to new levels where you lose lives to not knowing what to do. I think otherwise it is enjoyable with a nice, diverse set of levels (I can imagine how much work it was to produce this amount of levels with so many individual mechanics). I just wish you'd have added some dirty last-minute-hack to help with the lives-issue (like increasing them by one for every completed level, throwing the player four levels back with a full set of lives on gameover, or just dumping lives completely), so I could have seen all of them.
Solid platformer, not too experimental though. I liked some traces of 'life vs. time'-trade-off coming through because of the asymmetry in their availability. The whole presentation is also great. One thing I wondered: is there any use for the ability to shoot upwards?
I think it has quite a few things going for it and I enjoyed it for the most part. I like the blend of turn-based decisions with the real-time-countdown. I don't think your choice on being strict with the definition of a roguelike in regard to the graphics was a good idea (especially after you even dropped permadeath). Having to read text in the corner of the screen to find out what's going on doesn't work too well in your game. This way it is I missed any tactical stuff you might have added and just ran around killing things until I found the exit (which would get old for me quite fast if the game didn't have the perfect length for this). What worked really well was how the last floor conveyed that it was special and the dragon was well identifiable as a boss.
I really liked the visual style and the deformable mini-planet to run around. I had trouble figuring out whether there was any victory condition, I tried to activate 'all' the beacons and had to kill the game because it got too slow. Still, awesome presentation, and nicely designed mechanics.
Good take on this kind of puzzle, with a good visualization of the rules. A few puzzles actually made me grab pen and paper to write down vectors.
In fact your guys can be killed by friendly fire. For previous incarnations it also can be a grenade you are drawing somewhere they will move to.
You're right about the lack of feedback, there are quite a few things I had to cut in that regard (obviously sound, visual feedback on hit/block/reflect/projectile-strength, battle-timer/boss-hp, intro/outro, a proper main menu,...).
About having to restart manually: if you mean restarting the current round with r after you get hit, the motivation is that three guys hitting the maximum amount of fully charged shots should be able to take the boss down (two might be enough with some reflect-magic). So if you're at 98% progress after four guys, you can still easily win by landing a few shots, getting hit in the first five seconds and watching as the others finish the job. If you mean clearing progress, that's part of cutting most of the menu, sorry about that.
Thanks for the feedback though everyone, really appreciated. I might add a post-compo-version over the next few days, fixing a few of the things from the top of that list.
Thanks for all the feedback everyone! It's scary how much all those things I had to cut seem to negatively affect the experience. For now I reformulated the description a bit to give some hints on the mechanics. I also made the hint that you can restart a round by pressing 'r' a separate point in an attempt to make it more visible (should have added that as an in-game hint though). I'll really have to find some time to make a post-compo-version.
Thank you all for the feedback. I noticed that people probably use rapid-fire way more than I'd want them to, bad communication on my part here. I added a hint to the description explaining that it's best to let the shot recharge fully.
@Fervir: In the compo-version it's really hard to get any use out of the shield and even in the post-compo-version it's something you'd only use to optimize time, it's mostly there for depth.
@CosmicAdventureSquad: Nice to read some feedback on the post-compo-version, thanks for trying that out too.
@JonathanG: You're right, that you're getting hit by the first batch of bullets is a really stupid quirk of the compo-version, makes a really bad first impression, doesn't it? The thing hitting you randomly might be the grenades the enemy launches at two points in the battle.
@Almax27: Good job on noticing that. You're right, the ratio between player-projectile-speed and boss-movement-speed is really awful in the compo-version. I indeed bumped the projectile speed on the player up a bit and lowered enemy-motion-speed significantly for the post-compo-version.
Simple but surprisingly fun puzzle-game, really liked it.
From a short look at your code and my experience with the game I assume that the map is generated by scattering empty tiles in some random (with some restrictions) fashion. Then you draw items by some hand-tuned distribution from all unlocked that can be placed at a valid spot. Have you considered using a generator that is more friendly to the player? For example you could pick a target score and distribute items in a way this score is barely reached. Then collect the items from their tiles (generating the room this way), shuffle them and hand this list to the player for re-distribution. Might be too restricting on randomness (making the game bland) though.
On another note, since I'd guess leaving a comment at the declaration of participation is easy to miss. I wondered whether you're still at the KIT, which would mean I could have asked this in person ;)