Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → mhorth
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 57 | Depths | Deep Dive | jam | 368 | 3.64 | 3.70 | 3.28 | 3.76 | 3.61 | 3.88 | 3.40 | ||
| 2024 | 56 | Tiny Creatures | Insect Racing League | jam | 33 | 4.25 | 4.36 | 3.96 | 4.50 | 3.47 | 3.94 | |||
| 2024 | 55 | Summoning | 👥 | Ritual Realm | jam | 333 | 3.79 | 4.00 | 3.47 | 3.75 | 3.56 | 3.45 | 2.54 | 3.38 |
| 2023 | 54 | Limited Space | 👥 | On The Edge | jam | 565 | 3.57 | 3.42 | 3.28 | 3.75 | 2.88 | 4.05 | ||
| 2023 | 52 | Harvest | Cyber Shapes | jam | 134 | 3.91 | 4.03 | 3.34 | 3.32 | 4.19 | 3.86 | |||
| 2022 | 51 | Every 10 seconds | Terminal Velocity | jam | 136 | 3.98 | 4.25 | 2.94 | 3.48 | 4.21 | 3.81 | |||
| 2022 | 50 | Delay the inevitable | 👥 | Space Ninja | jam | 464 | 3.69 | 3.56 | 2.82 | 3.86 | 4.40 | 3.80 | ||
| 2021 | 49 | Unstable | 👥 | Perfectly Balanced | jam | 158 | 4.00 | 3.96 | 3.65 | 4.50 | 4.03 | 2.46 | 3.64 | |
| 2021 | 48 | Deeper and deeper | Low Notes | jam | 485 | 3.78 | 3.93 | 3.31 | 3.45 | 3.42 |
Great game! I may need to pick your brain on how you synced the notes to the beats. I played through a handful of times trying to get a better score, and kept having fun each time. Thank you for making this!
This is excellent! I got so hyped when I saw clouds at the end, I thought we were going to eventually fall from the sky and land right next to the pool for a perfect loop. Really nice job here. I originally wanted things to move faster but I actually think the pace works very well.
Really really cool! The sound and visual effects were perfect (dash and scene transitions how?!!?!). Thank you for making wave 11 how you did, because it definitely took me quite a few tries to get the core. I had been working on a top down shooter for months, and yours is 10x better in only 3 days. Great job!
Nicely done! Huge credit to your animations, the way bullets deformed when they hit, and the shapes of the pod moved around when changing directions, really nice touches.
I was a little worried after a bit that there was no ending and it was just an infinite scroller, but right before I gave up and closed it, I heard the music change and knew I was in for a boss battle. A very nice soundtrack as well! Perhaps some indicator to show that you're making progress towards and ending would help.
Great game! I'm going to keep playing it to try to beat my score. Literally the only thing I can critique is the audio is quite loud. The sound effects themselves are great, just need some mixing levels.
Absolutely fantastic! This is a game I'm going to tell my friends to play. Had a blast. You gave a generous amount of time for each fish, and yet I still felt the urge to beat them up as fast as possible. The combos just felt that good to hit. I had the money 1 day earlier but I saw something at the bottom. Had to play one more day to catch it.Screenshot 2021-04-27 175605.png
I would not have expected the microphone control to work as well as it did. I expected buggy or choppy movement. You made it work beautifully, congrats!
Took me a while to get used to the controls but then it was pretty fun!
The background image fit the setting but I almost found it distracting that it didn't move. If you could get some layers and slide them around to make a parallax effect, it would look amazing!
I'm really impressed with your art skills!
Great artistic design (including sound)! It felt really well polished. I was able to fish out of a few spots but then started getting this, maybe a bug? Scrolling down would dip the hook into the water like normal, but then scrolling down more would reveal the hook again and seemed like it got stuck. I tried putting the fishing rod away but didn't seem to help.
Screenshot 2021-04-27 210627.png
+1 to all the polish comments you've already received. This feels ready to sell on Steam. When I realized I wasn't going to make top 5 on the leaderboard, I played around a bit looking for new paths. That playing led me back up to the surface where I learned I could jump out of the water. Blew my mind that you guys thought of that and added splash SFX and a dialogue of the professor yelling at me that we should go down, not up. Incredibly well done, you should all be very proud.
+1 to everything said above. Art, music, sound, and concept are nicely done. Just rough around the edges especially with what I'm supposed to do at any given moment.
Very cool concept! I spent so much time getting through the first bullet dodging area that I'd forgotten about the whole debug stuff. I was confused at the invisible walls until I remember "oh we have to do debug!". Really interesting. Would love to see what this idea can turn into.
Well, the ending definitely ups the humor rating! That and the easter egg both gave me a good laugh.
I would recommend adding some instructions for the controls. I kept trying to use WASD to move while I was falling and almost gave up. For anyone else trying, use the mouse for control once you've jumped.
The game also closed every time I clicked restart. Not sure if it was a crash or if the restart button is actually making the game quit.
The audio track is fantastic and earned you a really high rating for Mood.
Really nice! No learning curve, just jump right in and easy to play. The polish is already pretty solid (in my opinion). The animation and sound effects when changing rings is very satisfying.
Absolutely amazing! I gave up during 3 feet below but after seeing the comments about a great ending and that you've released an easier version, I'm going to go back in later.
I'm wondering if perhaps another solution to the difficulty would be to have checkpoints within each map. The most painful deaths were the ones where you've pulled off some tricky moves and made it far in a map, and die close to the exit.
Or I could just get good, it sounds like you were aiming for higher difficulty and there's nothing wrong with that. Either way you're getting top ratings from me. Great job!
...I'm speechless. This is absolutely incredible. Top marks in every category. Perhaps the best compliment I can give you is that I delete most games after I've tried them out and given a rating. I won't be deleting this one.
Nice :wink: lol Screenshot 2021-05-01 182807.png
This is really really good! I'll try to find one tiny thing to nitpick. Some of the tiles seem to be totally unbreakable. If this is true, maybe a different animation (like the getting hurt animation) to tell you that it's never going to break. The dark gray rocks cost me a little time because I thought I'd eventually get through if I hit them enough times.
That's all I have though, everything else was perfect and far surpasses my expectations of a game made in a weekend.
I didn't realize that the map areas were going to have progression, I thought it was just going to be pick one at random and go exploring. I did not have the tools ready for the first spot I chose lol. Once I went back to A1 and worked through them in order, it was nice and calming with the great sound effects and music.
Really unique concept here, and it felt polished and played well! I think the only thing that held back my immersion is my own lack of knowledge in the topic. Even so, I found myself going much further than I initially expected. It certainly started giving me a "hacker" power fantasy.
I wasn't able to beat the game, the mice and birds were too difficult for me. However from what I played, the audio design was great and the animations for the cat attack gave it a really good feeling. Nice job!
Nice job with this one! The sound effect on the whip attack was really satisfying, and I'm happy with your choice to let us spam that rather than having a cooldown. Those slimes still got me but at least I didn't feel hindered in my control of the character, just my lack of skill lol.
Really really good game here! I was about to give up in the first room that the green blocks were introduced, the puzzle seemed impossible. It was pure luck that I jumped and landed on them and noticed the trampoline effect. Glad I found that and kept going, the rest of the game was very fun!
Only suggestion I have is to make it more obvious that the green blocks are trampolines. Perhaps an animation or even just text that shows up the first time they're introduced. And if you keep developing the game (which I hope you do) I'd keep that in mind for future block types that you add. Make sure that the player is spending their time figuring out the puzzle, not figuring out how the game works.
This was a fun one to play, and congrats on finishing COMPO! I did feel like I got mixed messages from the game. Some of the mechanics reward me for going fast, others for going slow. Perhaps that's exactly what you intended and it's working perfectly. It confused me until I realized that I would ONLY get points for drilling through gold, not just falling farther. Perhaps falling farther gives a slow drip of points while gold blocks give a large amount at once?
This is absolutely wonderful, feels so great to play! Count me in for wanting to see that devlog/making of video.
Since everything is so amazing, I'll try to find one thing to nitpick. The animation for the plant growing is pretty slow, especially once we're in time trial mode and we've already seen it grow fully. Perhaps skip that animation during time trial? Other than that, wonderful!
A tiny detail I want to compliment is that the first time I saw my mini roots going towards poison, I got nervous that they'd hit it. But you thought of that and made sure that small roots won't grab poison, nice!
Well done! I didn't have the patience to kill everyone, but the design was great and got me really immersed. The soundtrack was really good, as well as the animation, and is that a custom shader that outlines the models? Really nice job.
This is a type of game I haven't played much but I really like the concept. Requires a little planning ahead and keeping a mental count of your ingredients, which I actually enjoyed. I didn't find it possible to keep watching the counts on the right and then switching my focus to the objects. I also found it pretty difficult to grab objects, but that could just be my own skill level.
A suggestion I have is slider style fill bars for the ingredients so it's easy to tell at a glance, "oh I have to much milk, gotta stop letting that through."
I was not expecting it to go completely dark, good surprise! Your artistic backgrounds were really nice, I get that the screen goes black for the game but it's a shame not to see your art anymore.
Are the obstacle spawns randomized infinitely? I found I was able to stay up at the top of the screen for very long stretches with no obstacles.
Holy crap this is really ambitious for a jam game and you pulled it off well! The core concept and mechanics are nice.
I think if you work on the feedback it could become a great game for a full release. (Which worker is selected, if you tell them to do an action that they can't do, notify with a sound and a message why not, progress bars for building, etc). There's just a bit of a learning curve with a game like this, and even with your tutorial, players will try to do some things that aren't allowed. That feedback would go a long way.
Nicely done! I thought the mood was great especially with the soundtrack, but it looks like you've opted out of that category. Some quick feedback, the sound while moving the submarine is great, but a bit overpowering. I'd be interested in that sound effect being quieter.
I agree with most of the feedback you've gotten so far. Special abilities were nice to change it up from a bland platformer, physics might need a little polish, as well as pacing.
The art and music and core idea is really great! And considering how little time you had to put this together, you should be proud of a job well done!
One thing I haven't seen mentioned yet, it was counterintuitive for me that I could touch the enemies (love that you pit letters and numbers as mortal enemies :laughing:) from the side and be just fine, but if I landed on them from above, I died. I got over it but I guess that's just expectations from other platformers.
The grappling hook felt really good, and the gun audio and visual effects were fantastic! The difficulty curve is the only part I'd say needs attention.
Not sure if I had a bug or if there is no audio in the game. The initial amount of oxygen felt a little bit too punishing, but I get that might have been the intention. Good job, and in 48 hours for Compo!
Nicely done! This is very polished and fun to play. Even after reaching the end, I didn't want to close it, I wanted to play again and see if I could do better.
Only criticism I have is that the aiming controls are a bit difficult, at least for me. I found quite a few spots where the quickest tap on the arrows would not make a small enough adjustment to hit targets.
Some suggestions if you want to build off this game: try using mouse input to aim, and maybe allow the screen to scroll faster (for speedrunning!). Great job!
@chris-dirkis great feedback, thanks! I think I’ll divide the health bar into quarters or thirds and only do the pitch change when crossing a threshold.
The appearance of which note comes first in quick alternating patterns is definitely an issue, I’ll have to do some more thinking on the best way to solve that.
Glad you had fun!
@timtipgames thank you! I’m pretty embarrassed that my strategy for making levels was pure brute force, scriptable objects that contained a list of notes, and I manually typed in what time those notes should cross. It was easy to edit and customize but painfully slow and tedious. That will be the first thing I work on if I continue with the game.
One of my friends also mentioned better feedback on successful hits, so I’ll look into cranking that up more.
@pizzart64 thanks very much! When I was getting close to my deadline I thought "I wonder how it would look if I made the notes 2D lights and added bloom post-processing..." I stopped myself from going down that rabbit hole but I'll try to add more juice to the graphics. Happy to hear you enjoyed it!
@borabee thank you so much! I like all your ideas and I'll keep those in mind when I get back to working on it. One of my friends play-tested for me and caught the same thing, he just mashed all 4 arrow keys the whole time and got a perfect score lol.
If I ever go for online leaderboards then yeah I'll have to punish wrong presses, but as long as it's local, I know that I like the freedom to fidget with the keys between actual notes.
@studio-gomp thanks for the feedback! I'll probably include a toggle option to disable the pitch shifting altogether if this ever gets to Steam or anything really public.
@goggleskitty both great ideas! I had spawned the notes off screen because I didn't want them to just pop into existence. I think spawning on screen at a consistent radius will help with ordering and I can do like a fade-in and grow animation to avoid popping. I also really like that circle idea. It could get cluttered but I'm definitely going to try it and see if that helps.
As others have said, it ambitious to go for an experience like this as opposed to a traditional "action" game. You'd have to really pull it off or else it comes of as a joke and just all falls apart. I'm happy to say that you guys did it well. Really gets the thoughts going.
Nice job! The animations were good and really sold the idea of my characters jumping into battle to take their turn and attack.
However, I didn't see any indicator for whose turn it was. If I wasn't keeping track of my attacks, I wouldn't know which character I was about to command.
The camera aim felt soooooooooo good. I'm not sure if you added some secret sauce or if it's pretty standard, but I can think of a few AAA shooters that don't feel as good to aim. Nice job!
Wow this was good! The simple controls mean it's easy to just jump in and start playing, there's no learning curve or trying to remember what button does what. I was amazed at how good the aiming felt too. I was expecting I'd have to overshoot with my mouse to get the rat to move where I wanted, but it followed my inputs super well, really good job with that!
I want to leave you with one idea for improvement, but it's so minor. It seems that the hitbox for the rat includes the sword, so if I let the tip of the sword hit a rock, I'd take damage. I had to remember that the hitbox while swiping was much much farther down, so I had to swipe early. If there was some way to indicate where the bottom end of the swipe hitbox will be, or maybe take the sword out of the rat's hitbox, it might help?
Awesome job, you should all be very proud!
I REALLY liked the art style. I can understand that it's not for everyone, but boy did it stand out. Makes me want to try that style for my next project. Is that just 2D lights and bloom?
I'm also curious how you did the reveal circle, if you don't mind giving away your secrets...
I couldn't resist using an auto clicker after playing it normally a few times. That's totally on me, but it completely broke the game haha. It seemed like it would go forever, so I stopped around 15,000 lol. Then I went back to playing normally, and had a lot of fun! I really like that you let us click as fast as we want, so we can decide if we want to play slow and careful or skip a bunch of floors and play risky.
I really like each section of your music track, but I think it did get too busy when they all got added on top of each other. Maybe keep the main theme always lying underneath but then swap out which instrument you add on top, rather than adding all of them?
This was a great way to implement the theme! I got to level 14 and then gave up on all form of strategy and just tried shuffling them around. Were there any clues I missed, or is it just "start making groups until I start to see patterns"?
The audio design is great in my opinion, the sound effect for placing a happy Glyouber is very satisfying.
Unfortunately the game is crashing after about 2 minutes for me (windows) each time I open it. I think I would've liked it, as a math based game. Let me know if you upload any new versions and I'd like to try it out.
It looks like other people are having success with the Windows build, so maybe it's just my machine.
Wooooo someone knows their shader graphs! Nice job! I think I got to the end? I found the cube to jump up to the floating sphere, but couldn't find any progression after that.
Really trippy. I'm glad you put the warning in there, it definitely started hurting my eyes haha.
Amazing game you've made here! All I can do is echo the other comments. It's so well polished, feels so complete, this could be released right now and people would pay for it. Fantastic job.
I have to know, what's the 1st place score?
Screenshot 2021-10-09 182016.png
Really great game! The art is very simple but refined, you made it work well. I wanted the bomb to completely cancel my current velocity and send me purely based on the outwards direction, but maybe you tried that and it was too easy? As is, it was a bit frustrating at first that my timing had to be just right while considering the bomb detonation timer, where it will be, where I want to be, and what velocity I'll have during my jump at that time.
Still, I got the hang of it and got it completed, so maybe it is the right level of difficulty. Either way, had a lot of fun with it. The sound design is really good too!
Wow! I mean right off the bat, 5 stars for audio, with enough stars to spill over into humor and mood haha. "AND THERE'S DINOSAAUUUUUUURS!" Everything else is really solid but man the soundtrack just takes the cake here.
The tree spawn animations are so bouncy, I love it! Had a lot of fun playing this one, at it actually kept me engaged and worried about how my troops were doing/where they were standing. Well done!
This is so well done! The art and animations seriously look like they've been worked on and polished for months by a team of people. Huge kudos to you. I'm glad you decided to let all levels be selectable, because there were quite a few I couldn't beat.
I wanted to play it on controller, but on a PS4 dualshock controller (the only kind I have) the buttons are mapped strangely. Square was jump, x was smash, and circle was attack. Based on the xbox icons that were listed, I don't think this layout was intended.
Oooh this was fun! I really like the playground at the end, I will remember that idea for the future. You have players practice mechanics to get through the level, and then (assuming the mechanics are fun like yours), they'll want to just keep playing with them in a sandbox. Really neat.
Literally the only thing I can complain about was that you could swing into the ledge that you're supposed to get to, but if you're too low in the swing, it's just over. Didn't cause too much trouble since you have checkpoints (nice) and I could just keep my pivot points in mind for the next run. But I'd be curious if it would improve the game feel if you could "mantle" edges that you are right below.
Nice job!
The mechanic was really creative and fun to play with. I did feel a bit frustrated at times that I was locked into death and had nothing I could do about it. Stuck on a middle level with not enough rock power to slide down or air to slide up, dead. I think if there was an additional way to re-stabilize, it could help. Perhaps standing still for a time lets you balance back out to 50?
Still had fun with the levels that I was able to pass, good job!
This is really cool! As a math nerd, this is right up my alley.
Ditto what other people have said about how you got new emotions out of us. "Nooo not the 0, not there!" etc. That was great. And it felt good to stare down "Mathman" knowing I'm about to knock him out.
It totally makes sense how you had to make the controls tough with tilting platforms to feel unstable, but it did make it feel like I couldn't always do what I wanted.
I have a few ideas if you want to continue with the game. - If you want to keep instability in the game, perhaps the numbers could change as they're falling? (with some animation so that players will know that they're about to change). - The strategy does feel "solved" where you just want to get a :heavy_multiplication_x: in every operation slot and then the biggest numbers you can find. Perhaps it could be more interesting if short equations were falling instead, and collecting them added that number to your cumulative score? Players would then have to evaluate the equations on the fly instead of always just searching for the same things. - You could even tie those 2 ideas together, make equations fall and they slowly shift around as they fall which keeps their value unstable.
And a whole new world opens up if you want to add sound effects. Nice entry!
Reading some of those other comments, I see another idea forming that I really want to support:
Another way to get past the "solved" state of game play is that rather than trying to get the highest number, you give the players a target number for each round. And the winner is whoever got closest? That immediately breaks the strategy of "just get :heavy_multiplication_x: and big numbers without a care!"
Ditto what everyone has said about the voice acting. Not many games in LD get that, and you did it really well!
I played both versions, but made sure to do the original first so that I could rate the game fairly. It was neat to see the improvements you've made since then, my favorite was that some of the UI indicators now had numbers updating on them, like cranking the water valve.
Ditto what toomblercazz said. It was tough to push the cubes into desired position by moving into them, so I found it most effective to just jump on the high corners. So the landing dust particle animation and the jump sounds did not go unnoticed, they were really good!
Although on my way to those corners, I found it nice and satisfying to push through the cubes which I think was a good choice.
How'd you do the separate camera views? I definitely focused on the main view, but that's pretty cool tech.
I didn't recognize your name when you left a comment on my game. But after cracking up at the hilarity of your game and the familiarity of your graphics, I checked and realized that you're fish punching guy! I should have written your name down last time, but now I can officially say you're on my list to check out your game every jam. Fantastic work as usual. I'm sharing with my friends once again, would you prefer they call you fish punching guy or horse trampoline guy?
I loaded it up determined to take the speedrun record, but boy I was not prepared for the difficulty. An hour and a half later, I finally completed my first run lol. Would've quit much sooner than that, but you made it so damn fun!
2:40, it wasn't great. I started out trying to go as fast as possible and it just wasn't working out. I ended up playing much more carefully and slower to get the job done.
I think the only issue I had was with the ropes. Would have been nice to release and go through them to keep moving forward. I kept getting blocked by them instead. I realize that's just because I'm bad, but might have helped people keep playing to grind for high scores.
Other than that, really great job! The post processing is right on the border of being too much but I think it's still good where you have it.
I agree with most of the other comments here. The game is in a great state, very clean and polished, and works perfectly. Just feels like something is missing. Some kind of time pressure I think. Either way I had a lot of fun, thanks for making this!
Ditto what the others have said about the movement, it was a little strange given the camera angle, but I got used to it pretty quick and it never really caused a problem.
I thank you for keeping the puzzles pretty straight forward. I think you hit the perfect difficulty (at least for me) where it was interesting enough to think about the order I had to do things in, but it was always pretty obvious once I looked at all my surroundings. Nice job!
Nice job here! I think the only suggestion I have would be a slightly different animation when the tiles change. It looks smooth having them grow in place, but if you had the incoming tiles *move* from the source to destination, it could clarify to players what the switching rules are.
This game really sucked me in for a long time! The gameplay felt good, the animations and sounds gave great feedback and made things feel real. It was all great.
Literally the only thing I can complain about is that the level seemed too long with no new mechanics. I guess the game itself sort of evolves as you get deeper (should have submitted this last jam xD) but I wish something new would have been introduced when I was at the halfway mark.
You guys are on my list to make sure I check out your game every jam. And I'm still feeling good about that decision. This game had me laughing at the silliness of it the whole time.
I did find it difficult to get out of upside down table in a few spots. I ended up just shaking pretty wildly in all directions and that usually did the trick. I don't have nearly the skills to control going up on the high paths to collect the letters. Super innovative on the control scheme, nice job!
This game gave me that lightbulb moment where I realized you had strategically placed things around the level as paths. Like rolling up the see-saw to jump off the other end, starting in the bed and going around the cabinets.. sooo good.
And I loved all the little quips along the way! Great job with this! "As is commonly known, some doors can only be opened after eating enough food lol".
Aha! We have balance games, we have horse games, and now you have the balance and horse game! I haven't enjoyed many of the games that put instability in the controls, but you did it pretty well! Nice job here.
Wow! I feel like most jam games would just do the building mechanics for a game like this, you guys really went the extra mile to have a battle phase as well, and it was fun!
Reiterating what a few others have said, the damage system could use a bit of work. It took me embarrassingly long to figure out that simply destroying their base didn't help at all, I needed to find where the crystal had fallen, expose it again, and hit it directly. I spend quite a few shots just trying to tear their base down, which was satisfying on its own.
That new game transition though! Give that man a raise haha, that got an audible "ooooooooh" from me. Hilarious sound effects!
You were right about how similar our games are. I do think this would have benefitted from some better indication on where the plate was tilting though. Especially since you let the players put the camera straight down. I used that camera view while I was playing since I found it better for precision placing, but then it was harder to notice any tilt.
I think I had a pretty good strategy since I was essentially practicing your game all weekend :wink: But then I found it even more fun to just rapid fire click since you let me place new objects almost as fast as I want.
I just played and had the freezing bug, when I was fighting three of the bigger enemies. The gameplay loop is fun and I agree with the other comments that this could be really cool with some more polish. Sound effects, perhaps a visual to highlight whose turn it is. I never had trouble knowing whose turn it was, just think it's little things like that which make the game feel more polished.
The font you chose fits so well in the type of game, but the kerning between some of the letters makes it so hard to read lol.
It's not my type of game, so I'll withhold from giving a rating in the fun category. Everything else (as has already been said) is very impressive!
I played the jam submission version first so that I could rate the game fairly. But it seems like you guys have already heard about all the bugs with it (and fixed them, what a response time!).
It was a really fun changeup from the FPS games I'm used to, having gravity keep changing and seeing what that does to the gameplay loop. Unfortunately, I wasn't very good at it lol. Did you intend for the mouse aim to be smoothed? If not, I think that would make it feel a ton more responsive, just using raw mouse input.
Wow, big shoutout to the artists on this team, very very good work. There were a few times I thought I was bringing people the item they wanted, but it ended up being wrong. Usually this was the type of food. Maybe this is what you had in mind? It definitely evoked the emotions of "oh crap, I didn't bring them what they wanted, I'm a terrible concierge" haha.
Ditto what a lot of the other comments are saying. It was really confusing to get started, and the enemies are maybe too healthy too soon.
Other than that though, it still made me want to keep playing to learn the systems and stay alive. Very very cool twist on the tower defense genre. Please let me know if you develop it further and release new versions in the future, I'd really like to play a game like this!
Great job here, and congrats to @patafoin on your first LD entry! I was confused by the controls until I remembered that AZERTY layout keyboards are a thing. My camera movement was slow and clunky as a result, but didn't make the game any less fun. The sound effects for placing a block were great! Did you guys make the music yourselves?
This is pretty solid for a full game jam, even more impressive that you did it in just 12 hours. I was a bit worried that the initial "systems check" might actually be checking our average typing speed and then scaling the difficulty up. Maybe could be fun?
The only critique I have is that I wish the words wouldn't have overlapped with the instructional dialogue at the top of the screen. Maybe they don't appear until passing below, maybe the dialogue goes away... plenty of ways to handle it. It was just a bit frustrating seeing a word there to type but not being able to start on it yet. Similar for the phrases that wrapped to multiple lines. Seeing the 2nd word first was a (very small) pain point. Maybe scaling down the font size so that it'll never wrap?
Aside from that, I actually enjoyed it a lot, good job!
As others have mentioned, the art style is really cool. The 2D characters in a 3D world looked nice, but it did make it hard to tell if attacks were hitting.
Main critiques I have are all about feedback to the player, making sure there's some UX that tells them why something is happening. I died quite a few times when no enemies were around, and I could vaguely tell there was something about me going insane, but it was always a surprise when just "poof" ...dead. A super minor thing, the button navigation usually worked fine but confused me that the darkened button is the one I had selected, while the others were bright. In the main menu I could figure it out because one button stood out from the rest. But on the pause menu, there was 1 bright and 1 dark. I always thought it was the bright one I was clicking.
Oh and big congrats to @marvix for your first LD jam!
This was great! I also had the rocket slide a few times but it didn't feel buggy, I thought you had intended it, and it was pretty fun to use that in my strategies!
As others have said, this was really enjoyable. I wanted to keep going for high scores, but my strategy was blocked. I tried just putting all big blocky shapes in a single vertical column, and when it reached the top of the screen, the camera did not move up, so I couldn't go any higher.
Maybe that's intended so we have to fill out more of a base? I was kinda bummed but I guess that's fair haha.
This was a lot of fun! Gameplay-wise I kept finding myself wanting to move the platform really fast underneath the next block, but the fast motion was terrible for the blocks I was holding. I think this is exactly what you intended though, and certainly makes it unstable.
Even without music, I have to give you high marks for audio. The sound effects are all fantastic and funny!
Nice job! All the sound effects were really juicy, and tiny screen shake really sold the impacts. Hoping you make a devlog for this one, I always enjoy watching those. Keep up the good work!
Who else knows this pain hahahah Screenshot 2021-10-07 172745.png
I was definitely having a lot of fun and cursing you devs at the same time while playing this. Such intentionally bad controls that it was hilarious to see how clumsy the table was.
Haha playing a 3 minute round, there eventually was enough debris on the ground that I could barely tell where myself, the ball, or the enemy was. I think this added to the charm though, nice job!
I'm seeing your name on top of a lot of leaderboards, I challenge you to try and take a high rank in mine!
I'm really surprised at games that can put this many rooms and content into a jam. Each room did something totally unique, and you had to make new UI for each mechanic, that's really a lot to tackle!
The fishing snake frustrated me at how tough it was to stop the progress bar right on the line. But when I finally got it dead on the line and still missed, that's when I noticed the sign about being patient. Got the glitch right after, I should learn to read the instructions xD
That bee was tough to beat! Had to use a 2-handed spacebar spamming method to get him, but as I'm writing this, that probably means there was something I missed yet again that I was supposed to do hahah.
That's so kind of you to offer! I do have a team of real life friends that I'm planning to keep working with in the future, but if it ever happens that they can't make it and I'm left alone, I'll let you know!
This blows my mind that you can make an online game for a jam, really cool!
Overall I'm just going to echo the other positive comments. So I'll offer 1 suggestion in addition. Especially if you're going to continue this series in more first person shooters, you may want to add a mouse sensitivity slider.
I really liked the super simple art style, you made it work very well. The timing on the sound effect really help boost the feeling that things are breaking down into an unstable state. Nice job!
Wow, just wow. I'm taking notes from this game on how to improve game feel, audio, just about everything for my games.
I've seen a couple of your YouTube videos here and there but this is the first game of yours that I've played. I can see why you're a professional, this is absolutely amazing. Really really well done and you deserve very high rankings for it.
Holy cow your graphics are really well done. I'd love to see you expand on this and make more scenes. Icy planet, gassy planet, I'd really want to see what you make.
I was not able to find the huge meteor, so alas my objectives are only 4/5. Really cool camera-based game, and a great mood.
Everyone else is right, the game feel here is sooooooo good. Sound effects, animations, all of it. Fantastic work on the polish. Kept me playing again and again to get a high score, and the fun never wore off. Which is why I can say the octopus has been dethroned.
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Man you got robbed on those ratings. I wanted to come back and check a few games that I enjoyed, yours was easily the most fun, and one of the only games I gave 5 stars in the Fun category. This game is really good.
These community ratings.... give interesting results.
Really nice job! I had the same confusion as other people where I didn't move the goat out of the stable immediately, so it fell off camera. Then I was confused that the cart wasn't responding to my controls. I'm wondering if you had the camera track the goat instead of the cart, if that would have helped? It sounds like all of us eventually figured it out and got to play, so no harm in the end.
I gotta reiterate the other comments that the music and sound effects are really top notch. The art style isn't for me but I can appreciate the skill and effort that went into it.
This kept me entertained way longer than I would have expected when looking at the screenshots. Really well made and all the animations are great. My favorite are the moving borders around upgrades. And your difficulty/upgrade curve feels perfect, all the upgrades looked enticing so it was sometimes tough to choose, which I think is a good sign! Nice job.
More more more! Everything you've done so far is wonderful. The sounds, the smooth animations, it's all great. I think there were 2 level where we *had* to move an obstacle while the ball was rolling. The rest felt like "prep the course by clicking on stuff until it's flat".
I watched more of your GIFs after and realized the satisfying part was supposed to come from clicking blocks into the right spot just in time for the ball to keep course. I guess it depends if you want to lean into the puzzliness or not.
I'm curious what you guys tried with graphics. It's obvious that the ball has a much more refined appearance than the rest of the stage. I wonder if applying shiny reflective materials to the environment would help the aesthetic? Or maybe it's so good right now because of that difference.
This is really well made! You should all be proud of the quality of the product you made, and also the message you're conveying.
I noticed that the cursor actually switches back to my default system cursor when hovering over an object. If I may make a suggestion, I think reversing the cursors would have been an improvement. Default cursor when exploring the picture, and then a new sprite when over a clickable object. Either that, or somehow make the clickable objects stand out in the pictures so players know how to proceed.
Great job! We made pretty similar games but it's fun to see the different mindsets that they can require. Yours makes me want to play super carefully, take my time, consider the builds, and line up the drop as best I can.
Wow this is good! My first action was to just navigate up and down the main menu buttons because the sound effect was so satisfying. That held true for the rest of the game, I knew I didn't have time to kill every enemy, but I fought as many as I could because all the animations and sfx were so juicy, the game feel here is excellent.
And you threw in a boss at the end?! You're getting really high marks from me. Well done, I'll keep my eye out for games from this team in the future.
Everyone's already told you most of the stuff I would say, so I'll try not to be too repetitive. One exceptional piece was the rotational parallax in the skyscrapers and the grass(?) in the foreground. Not sure how you managed to make it look like the ground was covered in fog, but great job all around on your art.
- I had difficulty climbing ladders very often, not sure if it was something I was doing wrong or just bugs. - The gameplay changing on the moon was a really nice touch, like jumping higher. However, the camera being so slow to catch up with player's rotation actually made me nauseous on the moon. I wanted to keep playing the game to see the end, but I actually had to close my eyes while running around the moon. - The explosion sfx at the end of the game are cranked up a bit too high.
Those complaints are so minor and easy to fix, so hopefully you realize I'm not calling it a bad game, those were just literally the only things standing between your game and absolute perfection. The rest was amazing, great job!
I really like the sound effect of hooking up a rope! And the springiness of seeing boxes launch towards each other, really satisfying. The hitboxes feel so good, thank you for making those generous.
I actually think the controls were great and I'm not sure you would need a jump. Some of the most fun moments were when I was cruising along and then end of my current platform dipped down, I had a reaction of "ohh no no no stop stop nooo."
It's endless, right? I never saw anything in the distance. It might have been cool to introduce new mechanics along the way, but the core was really enjoyable.
Well I played that way longer than I should have, got everything though! All the cities powered and all the research done. I will say, it was really tough getting started. Forgive me for assuming, but I'm betting you specialize heavily in the programming side of gam dev. I can tell that the underlying math is really well done. And the way the pipes connect, how are you making those meshes on the fly?!
I would recommend practicing on UI work. The game would have been much easier to get into if the blocks even just had their names printed on them. It took me a while to memorize that green = turbine for example.
You know how to make a fun game, now you just have to make it easier for your players to get to the fun!
This was really nice! I've never made a story-centric games before, but you've got me thinking about that now. I might suggest having the conversation window more prominently displayed in the center of the screen, possibly with some cool animations like they've just received a text message. I think this would reinforce that it's the main thing players should bring their eyes back to between the repair mini-games.
This is awesome! Really really well done. Echoing a lot of the other comments, there was just a little bit of punishing difficulty, especially that vertical climb (you know the one lol). Outside of that, flawless! The death sound was a fantastic reminder that it's a cute little game and not to get mad at repeated deaths haha.
How do you keep making such consistently awesome compo entries?! This is great, and I'm glad I checked your past entries to notice you're the guy that did Roots. You're definitely on my list now to check out your games every jam, very well done.
I've got nothing at all to critique on this one, everything is wonderful. Anxiously awaiting further releases. Any chance you'd make a devlog detailing how you can get bounces synced up with the music?
I did have a little bug where all my option buttons in the bottom right disappeared. Not sure what led up to that. But I refreshed the page and was able to play again, so no problem.
It was a lot of fun and I'm surprised you could make this many systems in a single weekend, nice job! I was a little conflicted killing the enemies since they were all named Mike, just like me. Oh well, the best Mike survives.
@jefvel thank you! And I'm glad you had fun!
The difficulty curve was probably the hardest thing to get right for me. I was inspired by rogue-lite games, so it's intentionally impossibly difficult on the first round. As you get more upgrades it gets easier. To balance that out, the spawning gets more difficult the longer you stay alive. The spawn rate ramps up to 1 block per second after 10 minutes, and new (trickier) shapes are added along the way. These changes are accompanied by new music tracks to show that it's getting more intense.
@gamesplusjames thanks so much! This really means a lot coming from you, since I've learned a good deal of stuff from your Unity tutorials.
@sir-onionknight thanks for playing! Did you have any upgrades by that point? What you're describing sounds like the first round which is extremely difficult, by design. As you purchase upgrades (especially the springs) it becomes much more forgiving.
Oh noooo! That's on me, I should have made it more prominent to let people know "hey, you have money, buy upgrades!". A few of my play testers did the same thing, they kept clicking play again immediately. My mistake for shrugging that off and pretending it wouldn't be an issue.
@kaiomoi thanks so much! That's what I was going for. I'm a programmer and I know my artistic talent is a big fat zero, so I lean extra hard into taking simple shapes and making them presentable.
@peachtreeoath thank you so much for your kind words! Especially that it was intuitive and easy to pick up, since that's always my goal with jam games. I hadn't heard of Viridi, but after looking it up, you're right! We almost copied their vibe without knowing it.
@gaming-night thanks! The upgrade system was a feature I knew I wanted before we even started. After seeing games during LD48 that had upgrade systems, I found them so compelling for replay-ability. I'll definitely check out your game after work today!
Thanks everyone for all your kind words. It really means a lot! I'm making my way through your games to give you some feedback as well.
@mateu that's a really good call. Even for me, if I open it up again to try new stacking techniques, I first groan and say "ahhh damn I gotta earn all the upgrades again." It would be a huge quality of life improvement to be able to continue playing at the "endgame" once you've gotten there. I'll do that and a "reset all upgrades" button in a new build once the jam is totally over.
@dj-depressive thanks! It really was a fortunate coincidence that I had just started learning databases at work a couple weeks before the jam. I knew there were easier ready-made services like Dreamlo and LootLocker, and even a fellow jammer @owca made a public service. But I found that all of these were locked in regarding what data you could store.
I thought it would be fun to put my work-learnings to use in games, so I used MongoDB to store my data in the cloud, and then found tutorials on writing a web app with barebones REST API that can communicate with MongoDB. That web app is hosted in Azure (because that's what the tutorial did that I followed :laughing:).
Then the UnityWebRequests I would guess are very similar to how they are implemented in your game, and they talk to my web app. This gave me the freedom to choose my own data structure, rather than being limited to what the pre-made service tells me to use.
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@charles-viau thanks so much for your feedback! One of my testers found a pretty cheesy strategy to get high scores. My tuning of the difficulty/scoring could definitely use some work, as the super heavy yellow blocks aren't worth many points, but are so tough to control. He basically just throws all the yellow blocks off the side since that doesn't cause a game over. Without that strategy, the highest any of us got was around 600 using intended balancing/stacking methods.
I really appreciate the advice on audio! You got me looking at sound cards and all that jazz now :stuck_out_tongue:.
@rufson thanks very much for the compliments, glad you liked it!
I'll make sure to try out both of your games after work today.
@ausstein nice! You're up to 2,105 at the time when I checked the leaderboards, first non-developer/tester to break 2,000. I get why you're winning all the games now hahah. Glad you enjoyed!
Thanks everyone! Glad to hear you had a good time with the game :)
@wouterk12 thanks very much! The difficulty curve was a piece I was really worried about, so I'm glad to hear you found it alright. I was hoping to play your game and leave some feedback, but it looks like android only? Let me know if you post a Windows or web build, and I'll try it out.
Thanks for the feedback! Totally fair that not everyone is going to enjoy the same kinds of games. You're certainly right that I probably could have thought up more systems to keep it engaging.
Thanks @goldey2! There are 2 shapes that do appear later in the game, but I think my difficulty curve was tuned much too harsh, as the majority of players aren't getting to the point where those shapes start spawning. If you're curious, the video in the description above will show how crazy the game gets when someone survives long enough to get the new shapes. Glad you enjoyed!
@tiptoe thanks so much for the feedback! I remember turning the vsync option off in Unity, but I did notice that it was locked to 60 fps when some streamers were playing it. Maybe I accidentally turned it back on at some point. I put an fps counter in the top right corner, I don't suppose you remember what you were getting?
@astramorae I'm glad the controls felt intuitive! I spent a good amount of time and thought trying to get it there. Did you have any upgrades purchased? I went with a rogue-lite system for this game where it's designed to be impossible at the start, but each attempt earns some money where you can buy upgrades that make it easier. Other users have mentioned that they didn't notice there were upgrades to buy, and kept playing in the impossible state. Could that have been the same for you?
Gotcha, sorry to hear that @tiptoe, I know that can instantly kill the fun of a game. I really appreciate you letting me know, and I'm glad you were able to still enjoy other aspects of the game.
Thanks so much @ptsnoop! A few hours before submission the cubes were just appearing at normal size and then falling immediately. The growing animation and sound effect were added as a "huh maybe this will be a bit more fun". I'm so glad I did it, it instantly felt 10x better! I'll check out your game when I get home from work tonight.
Wooo what an aim trainer! It's way more fun than any of the aim trainer games I've ever tried before, it kept me playing way longer than I probably should have. Wanted to pass 1,000 on hard. Hopefully that's a high score!
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This is the kind of awesome game with a simple mechanic that shouldn't really be that fun, but you managed to make it fun somehow.
I think animations for the electrons going up and down rather than just teleporting would go a long way towards polish, if you wanna continue with the game.
+1 to all the comments about about how great this game is, really really good job!
I specifically want to highlight how you introduce the mechanic at the start. Show the player what happens if they run low on water, give them water, let them see how they're now in a better state. It's brilliant! Seems simple, but so many games in jams have a hard time explaining their mechanics.
Very impressive to make a strategy game like this in a single weekend! And for your first LD jam? Congrats!
I agree with what most of the others have said, the text can be hard to read, and it can be difficult to figure out how to play. After that, the gameplay experience and the strategy component are solid.
You've made a fun game, now you just have to make it easier for your players to get to the fun. Keep it up! I'm excited to see what you do next jam.
Well today I learned that I should never be a pilot lol. That was tough! Did the controls get weaker as the game went on, or just less boost time?
This is a great example that graphics don't need to be ultra-realistic to look good. Your water animations and sky gradients are so smooth and well done, it's really nice to look at. And your first Ludum Dare entry?! Great job! Hope to see more from you in the future.
This is really cool! The feedback is amazing, I always know that I'm about to do something if I click. My favorite is the tiles lifting up to let me know that it's about to be selected.
The only piece I feel is missing is clear communication on WHAT I'm about to do. Perhaps expand into a tutorial that only lets me use one of the 3 abilities and is set up in a scenario to make it really clear what that ability does. I think I got the gist of it after a couple of rounds, but it could help with onboarding new players.
And since I think you've really got something good here that you can run with, I think it would be a small improvement for the spell animations to have more direction to them, making it clear who it's coming from and where it's going. Some of them just appear and end so quickly that I questioned a few times, "did I do that? Or is that the enemies attacking me?"
Nice job, and congrats on your first LD jam entry! I quickly realized that I'd have to be more strategic about my paths and abilities than just using them the first time the minotaur saw me.
One suggestion for future games, it's always nice to be able to quit the game. Pause menus with a button are an obvious way to do it, but even just a key that quits is fine.
Oooohh I'm gonna keep this one and make all my friends play it. You must have done other jams before, right? This is much too good for a first game jam hahaha. Well huge congrats on your first LD jam either way, you deserve some very good rankings for this one.
The sound effects and animations make it SOOO satisfying to shoot the enemies. I like seeing games like this where "yeah, the enemies are just squares" but that doesn't make it any less fun. The game feel is on point.
So the 2 critiques I have are super minor: - Since we're moving the mouse around really fast, I think a more noticeable crosshair sprite, possibly in a good contrasting color, would be easier to track. I lost sight of my mouse cursor just a few times. - You have a really nice color scheme going with the 3 buttons on the main menu, and also during the gameplay. I think if you kept that color scheme during the upgrades page, it would have tied together really nicely.
Bonus points for you because I played it on an ultrawide screen and it worked flawlessly.
"This is easy, this is so easy, I got- oh my god they're going everywhere so fast!" hahah that was a lot of fun. I'm glad you gave me some time where I could keep up and then evolved the experience to chaotic stuff going everywhere. It was good to see both phases of gameplay.
The polish on this game is excellent. Animations are nice and bouncy, sound effects really add to every action... it's all great!
And for your first LD jam, big congrats to all of you!
Can't go wrong with a shooter game! It felt really good to play, and I mean you even have enemies pathfinding around the map which isn't an easy thing to do. The controls did seem to break if I ever ended a round and hit try again, but I could just close the app and re-launch it, and it would work for the first round.
For your first LD jam, this is a great entry. You completed something, and other people can play it! Sounds like you're already planning to practice your time management, which has me really excited to see what you'll bring next jam. Good work!
The game is really well made! Everything felt very tight and accurate. The only flaw I saw is that I can keep my cursor on the top of the screen and spam to drop buildings higher and higher. Got a score that's probably ridiculous with that method xD
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If you continue working on the game I would recommend exploring sound effects!
Ditto what @jane-wei said. I liked the art style and was interested to see how the story progressed, but I could not pass the 3 rapid dashes in the 2nd running section. The only time I passed it, my character had gotten so far to the right side of the screen that I couldn't see what was coming up next. I'm not saying I would have beaten the rest of the running, but maybe keep the camera more tightly locked on the character.
Oh and congrats to all of you on first LD jam!
Your FPS mechanics feel so good here! And the environment wouldn't look out of place in a borderlands game! Really great job with those.
As others have already said, sound effects would really add some juice and carry your game pretty far. After that, I would go with some popups on the UI on things we do that affect the stability. Sure we can see the progress bar on the side of the screen, but I think the feedback would be really good if we kill an enemy, get a nice sound effect, and a little floating text on the screen like "enemy killed: +10 stability".
Ditto Jin9310's comment. The game worked perfectly and all the actions felt good because of the nice feedback and sounds you put in, I just had no idea *why* things were happening. Depending on your target audience, that might be just fine!
I like that you already say "Huge lesson in prioritizing polish over actually building out more of the game!" I think this is so true. There are certainly teams that can submit something really complex and make it work well, but I find that most often, the best games are ones like this. Not very many or very complex mechanics, just one simple thing that's polished up and works really well.
Huge congrats on your first jam, I hope you enjoyed it and I'm looking forward to what we get to see from you guys next time!
Man, this game nails everything. It just goes to show that you don't need a ton of mechanics and super flashy graphics to make an engaging game. Great job on this!
Wow this is impressive! Everything is super polished. Sound effects, animations, screen shake, etc. all work together to make every action feel real and visceral.
I took some screenshots of the UI for my reference files, it was soooo clean. Really nice job here!
I would just reiterate what sjpixels and gaston-camacho said. Art is great, game is nice and very fun! Sound effects and the snappiness of the animations made everything feel very real.
Really the only drawback I had at all were the controls. The mouse sometimes felt like it was "sticking" and not moving freely, and then I felt like sometimes I walked when I expected to jump and vice versa. I'm not sure exactly what caused that difference in expectation, but I think this could be a really top notch game if you could improve on the control scheme.
Still a great entry, congratulations!
I don't think any other game has made me plan and think so far ahead, really creative! Only feedback I have is that it felt bad when I got two of the same card. Maybe a little logic to prevent ever putting the same option on both cards? Nice job, especially in compo!
Nice work with this one!
The only critique I can give you is that the indicators towards patients were awesome for the left, right, and bottom edges of the screen. However I didn't get them when patients were off the top edge, so I had to manually go check on them, and I was usually too late.
But if that's the worst thing about the game (and I think it is), then that means you did a hell of a good job with the rest of it!
Holy innovation batman!! Incremental music video... you nailed it! This was seriously so cool. I've never been a huge fan of idle clicker type games, yet here I sat playing this one to completion. Was not expecting it to pull me in so much.
I was going to come back and write a ton about how amazing this is, but @pkenney already did the typing so just +1 to that review lol.
How you got a 3.7 average in Innovation is beyond me. The community scoring system at it's finest... lol. Sorry to see that you got robbed.
Dang this is impressive, especially for compo! A full ability system with cooldowns, very nice work. The overall gameplay was very interesting how you forced us to make strategic choices, it pulled me in way more than I expected.
Only critique I have for you to work on next time is sound mixing. All the sound effects and voice lines were very good, just the volume of some of them was too loud and came off a little harsh. I'll be looking forward to what you bring next jam!
And this is why I make sure to play your games each jam. Holy crap what a fun time! Not nearly as difficult as balancing a horse on a tightrope lol. Super super well done, the sound effects and animations make every action feel impactful. Throwing things at bad guys was so satisfying.
Top marks across the board for you!
I was really surprised by how much depth there is in this game! I caught myself saying "I could make them run straight across with slimes, oh but they have an archer, slimes won't be good..." Really really cool. And a great implementation of the "prepare phase then simulate phase" kind of game.
Congrats to your whole team, especially @lordanb and @pedro-cortx for first Ludum Dare!
Cat pun overload!! :laughing: Haha I loved this, claw-some job!
The music especially was wonderful for setting the mood. Good level of difficulty for a platforming game in a jam, it wasn't a cakewalk, but was manageable once we got used to the trajectories and jump strength.
I was going to leave some constructive criticism to practice UI, but there are already some really good UI elements in there. Really, it was only the oxygen and repair meters that needed work. The instructional text and menu UI looked great! I would guess time was running out and the meters had to just get into the game FAST, which happens to all of us, no big deal. Thanks for making this and congrats on the job well done!
The game looked wonderful! And the polished animations with sound effects for every action were so satisfying. Really nice job here.
The only critique I can give you is to work on player onboarding. It took me a few rounds to really understand how everything related to one another. I'm glad I stuck through it though, the game was surprisingly engaging. Congrats!
A compo game came out this polished?! I wouldn't believe it if I hadn't played it haha. Really nice job!
Very impressed with the intro cinematic, and all the art in general! Your team's games always look great, even down to the font choice. Never though I'd have to think about racing lines for a balloon, but here we are.
The collider seemed like it was just barely in the player's favor, which is a good choice, made it feel good during close calls.
One bug, which I'm hesitant to reveal lol. During challenge mode, I was going to give up so I held Escape to quit out, then changed my mind and clicked play again. It put me on the final level without my timer resetting. I tried it again multiple times and it seems 100% reproducible. You may want to remove my challenge mode score from the leaderboards.
Wow wow wow! The thumbnail alone caught my eye and made me say "that looks like a cool graphic style, I'll have to check it out." I'm so glad I did, it's very minimal but comes across sooooo well. The 2D shadows are awesome, the music sets such a good mood.
And that's before we even get into the orbital trajectory programming and you telling us that our shots are on intercept path with a meteor or not. Super smart!
I agree with most of the other commenters that the balance felt a little off. It had really neat underlying mechanics, and I saw no bugs at all. Just had a pretty difficult barrier to entry.
I appreciate that you tried to compress the the game time so that players wouldn't have to spend a long time in it. In your case though, I think your game was interesting enough that we would have liked to spend a lot of time on it, which makes room for a slower ramp up in difficulty.
Either way, really impressed with the pathfinding system you have, especially in compo! Nice job!
Really impressive to pull off an FPS during a jam, nice job all! At first I wasn't a big fan of each level being in the same room, but it grew on me. It ended up feeling pretty cool that it just kept opening up more and more areas.
Only critique I have is to add a sensitivity slider, the rest was great! I had no issues with graphics performance, everything ran very smooth.
This one made me laugh a lot! I think the poorly played saxophone soundtrack helped a lot with the mood and making a silly atmosphere.
I think the only feedback I have for the team is a bit more work on player onboarding. Some parts were great, like the pencil sharpening, trash throw, and coffee all had prompts on the screen telling me what button to push. I'm embarrassed to say though that it took me a few trips to the bathroom to understand what I was supposed to do. I had no prompt there (maybe a bug?) and honestly thought it might have been intended that I just sit there and wait it out.
Try to think about how the dumbest player (me) would approach the game. Is it possible to misinterpret, is it super obvious what to do, etc.
I'm impressed how many little details you guys threw in there, tiny little models that are tucked away, but really made it feel like I was playing in an office. A lot of games give off the feeling that the environment is a result of the type of game that the developers wanted to make. This one felt like you all stumbled upon a real office and decided to make a game in there. Super immersive.
Holy crap, you weren't kidding about this being a nice relaxing, soothing experience. Now that I'm done playing it, I think I'll just keep it running a little while longer to listen to your soundscape. Awesome work here!
Ahhh, I thought I was going to catch the wizard and win! You're leaving it open for a sequel I guess :wink:
I appreciate that you made the combat very forgiving. The hitboxes on enemies seem quite oversized which is great so that we can focus on platforming, with aiming being a secondary thought.
I actually have no constructive criticism... I think you nailed everything you wanted to do in this submission. Keep up the good work.
All I can do is echo what others have said so far. The amount of content in here and how complete it feels is astounding, nice job!
Wow wow wowwww! I'm not exaggerating that my jaw dropped during the plot twist. I was already planning to score you guys pretty high for Mood, and that pushed it up to a 5. The character portraits for the dialog boxes were really nice.
Only critique I have would be the jump physics. I'm not sure exactly what was off with it, but it didn't feel super responsive. That's literally it though, everything else was wonderful! Nice job! And congrats @stilettomenace for first Ludum Dare!
This man is unstoppable!! Or inevitable I suppose :wink:
Procedural room generation is impressive, and the voice lines were awesome. I think that added another level to the game's immersion. I'm trying to imagine playing it without coworkers walking around and talking, and it just wouldn't be the same. Great job team!
I didn't expect to enjoy a clicker game, but this one was well designed! The art and the music are wonderful!
The only critique I can leave you is very minor: It felt... weird when the purchasable options disappeared from the vendors if I didn't have enough fruit to buy them. Others stayed in the list and turned red, which feels more appropriate. But again, that's a tiny tiny thing and really didn't take anything away from the game. Nice job!
Took me a bit of time to figure out what to do. I think you guys have a really cool game and could work on player onboarding type of stuff. Like:
- Where can or can't you grow hair? - When are patches ready for harvest? (I started noticing a small color difference, but it's pretty slight in my opinion.) - What elements are just scenery vs. actual gameplay. I spent a long time slicing stuff that didn't actually seem to be part of gameplay?
Aside from little stuff like that though, really impressive game! The art especially was amazing!
The menu using the gameplay mechanic is really sweet! Nice job. Impact sounds and death animations made it very satisfying to hit enemies, until I learned that it might be the best strategy to just rapid spam the mouse button lol.
Still a lot of fun even then! And the different shading on the trees in the background looks soooooooo good! My compliments to the art team.
It's impossible not to dance in my chair while playing this lol. Even the pickups and the ship are vibing and everyone's having a good time.
I was going to add an opinion for the controls being too icy, but I read your explanation that making them any tighter started to lose the fun feeling. It's awesome to see that you had the presence of mind to try different controller settings and pick the version that is the most cohesive with the game design. Nice job!
This game is BEAUTIFUL! Wow wow wow for the art. The audio also set a great mood, and the controls played very smoothly.
The only thing I'm confused on was the flow of the game. Exploration platformer, and when I fall I wake up, then going back to sleep lets me play again? I think I got to the 3rd ghosty guy and then when I died, I stayed awake. I'm just not clear if that's the end of the game or what. So advice for next jam, try to make it obvious for dummies like me when I've done something good/bad and when I've reached a goal or have more to do. Currently I have no idea if I reached the end of your game or only saw 10% of it. I had a good time either way, very relaxing!
I can stop trying to figure out how you made this. Real-time mesh generation? Sprite shape? Tell me your secrets!!
I'm always scared to do a full character movement game in a jam, out of fear that I won't get a character controller that feels really good to move around. You made it happen, nice job!
Agreed on the last level being a really cool potential rhythm game. Some of the jump almost matched it which started feeling really good.
The controls were really snappy and responsive all the way through. Especially on game #3, I was worried there might be some lagginess on the jump, but it always triggered perfectly.
Only minor critique I have for you is some indicator on the breaking platforms. It seems that you have them break after a random amount of time. Early on I had a very quick one, and assumed they would all break that quickly. This led me to play pretty dumb and rushed. Once I realized that I typically have more time on the platforms, I got through it. Had a lot of fun with it, nice job, especially for compo!
Really nice graphics! It was clear to see what everything was, and I'm always impressed by a good water effect! Nice job here!
This was a really good job, and even more impressive that it's in compo! It's a well implemented endless runner, and then adding extra mechanics after a minute was a really good choice to keep it interesting.
This was a great laugh lol! The voice acting fit the character and style very well. I wanted to master the controls, but I think I handicapped myself by playing the Keyboard Cowboy's balloon game first. That one wired my brain to do the exact opposite of this control scheme. Tried a bunch of runs but couldn't get past 5 seconds, even with a couple of pool upgrades.
I had a few minor bugs like getting out of bounds, the flame maybe falling too far behind that rooms became a non-puzzle, and just a few times blowing up on oil patches that weren't lit as far as I could tell. I also found it unintuitive what the upwards arrows did at first. I thought they were indicating wind direction with the lines VFX on the screen, and I spend a good minute or two trying to solve that room with wind in mind.
That might sound like I had a bad time, but I wanted to say that because I *still* think this game will win it all! The art is fantastic, from the sprites to the color scheme, so good. The mechanics are amazing and so creative, I've never seen anything like it. Fantastic job all around.
I got to this room and can't progress. As far as I can figure, the only strategy is just straight up and try to outrun the fire. Is it possible there's a framerate issue and you can only outrun it at 60 fps or something? I'm expecting the puzzles afterward are equally creative or more.
wicked flame.gif
Ditto the other comments about it being difficult to learn. I think it's easy as we develop a game and play it for 2 to 3 days and get really good at it, to forget about new player experience. Gradually adding mechanics in over time, or a tutorial, will help a ton! Nice job though, once we learn it, it's a good balance of frenzy.
I especially want to call out how well you tell the player what to do (without explicitly telling them what to do). The graphics in the mini games are all presented in a way that I don't need to be told what the controls are beforehand. It's very intuitive. I think that's super important for jam games. Like changing my mouse cursor to a flyswatter for the sleep game, okay, I instantly think I need to mouse over bad things and swat them. It was perfect!
I think sound effects are the only thing missing, then this game could feel really really good. Great work!
It's soooooooo preeeeeeeetty aster defense.png
I'm honestly surprised how fun this turned out. If you were to explain the gameplay to me or write it down on paper, I would call it boring. You proved me wrong and made this quite engaging. Sure there isn't any difficulty ramp up, but that didn't stop it from being satisfying to build proper defenses. Difficulty balancing is one of the hardest things to get right in a jam game, and it's ALWAYS better to end up being too easy.
I honestly only have 1 critique that's super minor. The coloring on the buttons at the bottom made me think I couldn't afford or needed to unlock the other choices. Maybe some different colors like red for not enough money, or maybe even just showing their cost, would have helped there. Selecting could make that sprite bigger than the others?
Either way, nice job!
Always impressed that you get a multiplayer game up and running! Very smooth steering physics too, nice work!
This was so much fun! The art was so charming, and the gameplay felt so unique but instantly easy to pick up. I really liked the way projectiles spawned slow and then sped up as they went outward. Probably wasn't necessary, but just adds a level of character to the game. That speed up also made it quite pretty to just spin the dinos in circles holding shoot, got some pretty cool patterns!
Only feedback I have for you guys is that maybe the collision detection on the meteors was a little off? Sometimes I felt like I should have hit some that I didn't.
Congrats to both of you and especially @ffffchai for your first Ludum Dare! Great job!
I recognized @vidu's art quality from 20,000 Lightyears in the Sky, and you knocked it out of the park again! 5s all the way, I'm super impressed.
The bite animation on the screen and sound effect were soooooooo satisfying!
Implementing a flight controller during a jam is impressive. Doing it alongside all these other mechanics is nuts! Nice job!
I did find that I could just sit directly under the spider on a hornet and the spider kept resetting. If you wanted to add some more difficulty, maybe once you reset the spider, that hornet falls and you need to get a new one?
The art style is great! And the music and sound effects are well chosen (though the item falling sound does get a bit painful haha). One thing you might try is slightly randomizing the pitch of the sound effects that get repeated often. I was having the same annoyance with very repetitive sounds, and then I added one line of code before playing the sound:
``` _audioSource.pitch = UnityEngine.Random.Range(0.95f, 1.05f); _audioSource.Play(); ```
Randomizing the pitch up or down by just 5% instantly took away the repetitive pain for me.
I especially want to call out the extremely responsive controls. I was worried there might be some animation-locking or something where I can't change directions as quickly as I might want. Nope, they were perfect!
That was a blast! The sound effects were really great and sold the actions very well.
Only critique would be maybe a crosshair image that would stand out well on the screen. Moving my mouse back and forth, I lost my cursor image a few times (I lost track of it, not that it disappeared).
"JIMMY!!! DON'T YOU KNOW HOW EASILY SANDWICHES GET OUT OF HAND?!" I lost it here lol, thank you so much for the laughs!
Talk about a unique game! This is incredibly clever and surprisingly fun to play with. Certainly difficult, but I think the uniqueness is good. Top marks for innovation.
I did get stuck on I think level 6 and took too many tries, and gave up. A good rule of thumb for jam games (especially when creating never-before-seen controls like this) is that you are by far the best player in the world at the game, so if the difficulty feels okay to you, it's probably pretty hard for everyone else.
Still had fun, thanks for making it! And congrats on your first Ludum Dare!
Very cool use of negative space for the game title screen!
Were the old lady's instructions usable the whole time?! I had a very happy "OH COME ON!!" moment when I started the next round and figured out it still worked.
Really really fun take on the theme and great job with the game!
Great message here! It makes me happy to see a game where the inevitable thing is us, the player, conquering whatever we set our mind to, no matter how long it takes.
TRON bikes with cows!! I had a lot more fun with this than I was expecting, nice entry! The sound effects really sounded like ice and fit the game well.
Next time I would look to add some music. You could probably go for really frantic and silly music for this one, or a really calming ambient background track.
That is such a sweet mechanic, and one of the best theme-fitting games I've seen. Reminds me of the Google Magic Cat Academy game, which was a ton of fun.
Great job on this one!
I get the feeling this is meant to be like a Frogger type of cross the road while dodging traffic game? But you changed it up by having us play a ghost and we control the humans crossing the road to help them out?
It's a really fun take, but I had trouble with the mechanics. When I used my telekinesis, it would shift the humans by a little bit, but they kept going the direction they wanted. So it didn't really feel like I could help them effectively.
You have a really cool idea here and the music sets a great mood.
Thanks for the feedback guys! I definitely agree that there's currently no depth/strategy. I actually had tried both of your ideas @minibobbo lol.
Earth was originally in the center, but I found that the meteors above and below were too close to when you'd first see them, it felt a bit unfair to the player. I also had a little bit of math in place so that the slice would lag further and further behind your mouse cursor the longer you held it down. I didn't think it felt great at the time so I removed it, but maybe I should try it again.
Appreciate the advice and thanks for playing!
Thanks everyone!
@trashbag sorry to hear that! I tried to do every trick I could to optimize it, but in the end it is a fairly GPU intensive game. If you haven't already, I would try downloading it and making sure it runs on a dedicated GPU, rather than an integrated graphics on a CPU. If that doesn't solve the issue for you, then I'm really sorry, that's me failing to make it accessible for everyone :heart:
Thanks everyone for your feedback!
To those having framerate issues, I'd be curious if downloading it helps. If so, I'll probably just remove the web version since it's becoming a pattern.
Thank you @arqitech and @jefvel for the suggestions! While I was developing, I had multiple points where I had to make the decision "should I restrict what the player can do, or let them play how they want?". I always leaned to the latter. But with all the feedback so far, it seems I went too far. I'll consider doing a post jam version with more interesting strategic choices.
@bottled-up-dark-peace thanks for letting me know! Was that in the web version? If you’re feeling up to it and have the time to play a downloaded version, please let me know if that plays smoother. If so, I’ll go ahead and delete the web version.
@jcg thank you so much for the kind words! I'm glad it left such an impression! Here's a sneak peak under the hood at the button/trail interaction. It relied on getting the rectangle of the UI object and then moving in a straight line to each corner in succession.
``` IEnumerator MoveToCorner(int corner) { Rect rect = _currentParent.rect;
// Calculate the position of the corner to go to Vector2 target = corner switch { 0 => new Vector2(0, rect.height), 1 => new Vector2(rect.width, rect.height), 2 => new Vector2(rect.width, 0), 3 => new Vector2(0, 0), _ => Vector2.zero, };
// Keep moving closer until we get there while (Vector2.Distance(_rectTransform.anchoredPosition, target) > 1) { _rectTransform.anchoredPosition = Vector2.SmoothDamp(_rectTransform.anchoredPosition, target, ref _currentVelocity, .04f); yield return null; }
// It should be there now, target the next corner int nextCorner = (corner + 1) % 4; StartCoroutine(MoveToCorner(nextCorner));
} ```
When you mouse over a button, I'd run this code. When your mouse leaves the button, I'd stop it and do a similar smooth damp towards the mouse position.
@halflemonstudios Aha! So there is some strategy after all! :wink:
Just kidding, I'm definitely looking forward to trying out some more strategic gameplay once I'm done playing and rating. I think you're safe up there with that score, but how is your arm feeling?! I hope you took breaks lol, thanks for playing!
Thanks so much for the kind words and advice everyone! These scores are getting ridiculous lol. Hopefully that's a sign that even without any strategy and depth, the game still feels fun enough to play for a short while.
Thanks for the comments and feedback everyone! It makes me smile seeing so many people having fun with the game :smile:
@muriel I'm happy you noticed and enjoyed some of the details. There were quite a few parts during development where I caught myself "wasting" time down a rabbit hole where I could have been working on more gameplay. "Everyone will be looking up at the meteors, you don't need to spend an hour making sure the clouds look believable!"
@bqq good catch! I'm a PLC programmer at my day job, so yeah "output enable" is rooted in EE circuits/programming.
Thanks @peachtreeoath!
For my leaderboard stuff I have a custom web app for my api calls, which communicates with a MongoDB database to read and write data. Those 2 parts replace the typical services like dreamlo, lootlocker, etc.
This tutorial is a good starting point if you want to go that route. But that's really only necessary if you want to store more data than those pre-established services can handle. If you're just looking for names and scores, [dreamlo](https://dreamlo.com/) will do just fine. I like it because I can now store extra stats like the highest combo reached.
https://youtu.be/MNepwvCcKXA
Either way, the Unity side is the same, it would just point to a different url to get the data. Typically I was only getting the data on the game over screen to show the leaderboard there, but I realized there's no reason not to to get all of it during the game too (I just grab it once when you start a round, it won't update during the round).
Once you get the array of all the scores, you can do whatever you want with it. For the score markers across the bottom, I just set up some logic to spawn markers until one of them was too far ahead. Then I'd wait until the player's score got close enough to that marker to make it move off the end, and then I'd spawn the next leader. Repeat again and again.
Good feedback @chris1919, thanks! Sorry to hear you weren't able to have much fun with it, but you're definitely right about the ability to just swipe back and forth without a care. I'll keep that note in mind for next jam.
This was a really fun change in perspective to play as the shopkeeper! Congrats on a solid entry
The music and storytelling give off a great vibe in this one, nice entry!
I did get stuck on the 3rd level. I reset a few times trying to see if I collected things in a wrong order or something, but couldn't ever pass it. Still had a good time with it. Let me know what I missed, I'd like to come back and play the rest of it.
Absolutely amazing job here team! I love rhythm games and this was so much better than I thought a jam game could do in that genre.
The only complaint I have is that I wanted to play music for a longer duration, and spend less time in the transitions. The 15 second snippets were just enough to get me into a groove, and then done. Obviously getting this many different tracks into the game means they need to be very short, but this is a good problem to have, because your development path forward is very obvious. Just map out longer chunks of the song!
This was really good! I especially liked the sound design, even the music track had some stereo parts that would only come up in one ear or the other, that felt like really high production value.
I gave you guys an almost perfect art score. Each piece on its own is really well made and would have gotten a 5, but combining the different art styles felt to me like it lost a little bit of value. I know paper style 2D characters have been done in 3D environments before and looked good. I think the difference for me was low poly/pixel style art mixed with really clean vector art. Even on the main menu, pixelated font on top of the super sharp bubbles just clashed a little bit.
But that is literally the only critique I have, the rest of it was awesome, nice job and congrats on the impressive entry!
Very nice portrait art! The rest of it was good too, but the portraits really stood out as excellent. I also enjoyed the sound design. The background music set an excellent mood, and every action had an appropriate sound effect that made it feel impactful.
Difficulty was on the easier end of the spectrum which is absolutely the right choice for a jam game, nice work!
Excited to check this out in the morning!
Definitely had some fun with this one! I think the typewriter effect is a good choice because it makes me feel like I'm getting a mission briefing about having to go save the world. I'm also curious how you did the hit detection? Since the bullets look like they travel in a straight line but I was able to hit objects from really far away. Whatever you did was good, because otherwise we'd probably have to get really close to land shots. Maybe you could have had the projectiles as a child object of a pivot point at the center of the asteroid, and then rotate that pivot point? I think that would make it look like the projectiles are wrapping around the curve of the asteroid.
Constructive feedback I have for you is that the graphics don't feel too cohesive to me. Each individual piece is pretty good, like distinct silhouettes for each type of turret that clearly indicate how they're going to attack. But it almost feels like each piece was made in a different art style and then mixed together. The asteroid has pretty high detail geometry and texture, while the turrets are low poly and colored flat.
Controls felt great, played very smooth, and difficulty was perfect.
Oh boy, you really know what you're doing with game development! The art was great, even with cinematics and the UI. Everything was very clear what it would do. All the controls also worked very smoothly, though I would recommend in the future when making camera controls like the left/right orbit, to include an option toggle to reverse them. Just for player preference.
I think your game has a similar flaw as mine, where there's a pretty easy "just do this and you win every time". In this game, I basically just moved each building up as high as I could (could even stack buildings on top of buildings!) without much care. So maybe next jam you can have some other gameplay limitations so that players have to make smart choices.
I don't know how well this would turn out, but maybe in this one, placing buildings on a slope requires a long construction time of creating supports for it, and it won't generate money during that time. Then players have to think about putting buildings on flat ground to earn money right away, or move the building to a safer spot but not get money as soon.
Either way, still really impressed with everything you were able to get into the game and how well you tied it all together, nice job!
+1 to the animations being just a tad bit long. They were good animations, it just felt like I was taken out of the game and had to watch for a few seconds.
Great well-defined art, good sounds (got really loud when we got into emergency state).
But hey, first Ludum Dare and you went for compo, that's incredible, nice job! You should be proud.
This game is winning the art category, hands down haha. Basically everything was perfect, except, I don't know if it would be considered level design? I felt like I had no agency to control where I'd go next. Just a 50/50 guess of should I jump or don't jump, and hope for the best.
Maybe camera seeing farther ahead would help?
This was really nice! Huge congrats for you first Ludum Dare!
I would look into how you could make snapping onto the ladders more forgiving for the player, rather than requiring them to line up perfectly. Unless you want that to be a mechanic of the game :wink:
Man this is cool, what a great mood! Does the game end at the PUSH envelope? I kept typing push there but it seemed unresponsive.
Ahh yep, now I got to see the ending! Very cool storytelling. Other than that, I would just echo what others have said. Spamming J and L felt like it was forced into the game as just an extra mechanic that wasn't really cohesive with the rest of it.
But that was really the only downside, other than that I really enjoyed it!
Edit: I wouldn’t say a design error, more just an unfortunate side effect due to many other games we’ll see in the jam don’t have an ending. At least for me, when I get into a situation like that, I have to wonder if there’s more or if it that was it. I guessed wrong in this case. Maybe a future patch could have a text pop up that says “nothing to push”, so players will know that their input was registered and they’re doing something wrong?
This is really really impressive for the jam in general, even more so as a compo, nice job!
The only thing that frustrated me at first was that nothing felt very impactful against the asteroid. Even when I split them into tons of tiny pieces with the solar beam, those pieces were just new hazards that could end my game. Then obviously I realized :bulb: oh yeah, inevitable. It's a great fit for the theme. If you had any plans to continue this into a full game (and I think you could, this is a really good base), my opinion would be to go for a game you can win. The weapons could drive asteroids back further, or could actually destroy small pieces so they aren't a threat anymore.
After realizing that breaking the asteroid into more pieces maybe wasn't in my best interest, I tried just using gravity tractors behind the asteroid to slow it down. The first one I placed behind it, I noticed actually nudge the asteroid forward. So the next few I placed just in front of the asteroid and it would sometimes get pushed back. I ended up using them as just physical obstacles and got my best score of 130 lol. No blame on you for that, that's me poking around and exploiting haha.
Nice one, huge congrats on your first jam!! The art, design, and audio were very well put together. The difficulty might have been a bit on the hard end, at least for me. I was rarely able to get a clean hit on the mages without them hitting me back.
Really sweet take on the theme!
I'm really impressed at how much you have in this game! Unit selection and movement systems are no small task and they feel quite polished! The all the sound effects are so bassy, I didn't even mind when aliens were attacking because it made an awesome soundtrack! Nice job!
I love graphics like this because it proves that we don't have to be super talented artists to make something beautiful. The color choices and simple shapes made the game so clean, and the 2D shadows added an extra level to it, nice job!
First Ludum Dare and you went straight in for Compo? That's an impressive feat alone, and even better that you finished something so original like this.
It's awesome that you put a ton of audio cues in everywhere, but I would offer some critique on your choice of said audio clips. Especially the rocket explosion. It still worked in an abstract art kind of way, but I think I would have enjoyed the sound design more with something a little more in line with "explosion".
Ditto what others have said about the hand drawn art. It came through really well I think. And congrats to all 3 of you on first Ludum Dare!
The art and sound is great throughout, everything is very clear and never had any questions about what I'm supposed to do or how the game works.
Obviously it makes sense that the difficulty has to increase as the rounds go on further, but I do wish the difficulty came from something other than precision mouse movement over small objects at high speed. That's just me personally, I'm sure others loved it. Regardless, I think your difficulty curve is good because anyone can enjoy the game and pass the early levels, and then they'll start losing when the game passes their skill level. Can't be mad about that, great design!
This was great fun! There were so many nice little touches to animations: the camera shake, the springiness of the player's dot moving around. Just when I was thinking "it would be nice if the green things were hidden behind red things to force specific routes", you did it! There was so much content that I was trying to figure out if it was procedurally generated, but it had such a good hand-crafted feel to it that the puzzle difficulty increased perfectly over time. Really really nice job.
My only critique is that it was hard to see the monsters in the background behind the foreground gameplay. That kept the game very clear and easy to see, but I feel like I missed out on the art skills.
Maaaan I'd really like to know the tech you used to make the green terrain change like that. Is that shader magic or are you animating that some way? Looks really cool whatever you did, your graphics impressed me a lot.
I went through a mental roller coaster on this one: - These controls don't work very well, I can barely steer. - Oh I don't steer! - These upgrades are too cheap, I can keep just buying them all. - Oh I'm replacing parts, not upgrading them!
In the end I really liked it and am very curious how you pulled of the AI. Sometimes it made silly decisions, but for the most part it was pretty smart. Once I stopped being dumb and realized how the game actually worked, I got really into it, nice job!
So ambitious to not only make one character controller for a jam, but 5+?! Nice job. I do feel like that caused some of them to work better than others. There were times in golf mode that I couldn't play the game because enemies were on me, so I was moving a little bit, so the golf club was disabled. But the flappy bird, popcorn thruster, and standard shooter all felt nice.
It's a really really cool concept and I bet if you had another day to work on polish, this would have been a contender for winning the jam. As is though, it does feel a bit unfinished, mostly in the "game feel" department.
I know I can always count on you to bring some innovation to the table! This is probably my favorite one of yours yet. While this one still has some periods of waiting, they were filled with action to watch and strategic thinking to do compared to Study Lady's "just wait for this screen to come back around". And the 10 second loop was so short anyway so it was never boring.
It took me a short amount of time to fully understand what my goal was, that the spells were going to move the ghosts in a specific pattern and the spells would always cast in the same location and my timing adjustments were to control the space. Did you have any trouble making the bouncing deterministic so that it always took the same path with the same inputs? It seems like the idea would have failed if you didn't make that happen, so nice job there.
Once the mechanics clicked in my head though, there was an audible "oohhhh okaaayyy!" It became so much fun that after beating it, I went back through another time to try to make even better combos. I started playing my own meta game to see how I could arrange the spells to maximize all of their hits and it just got so satisfying. How many games do we play where you beat a level, get offered to continue onto the next level, and instead say "nah I wanna stay here and keep watching that replay."
Controls were super smooth too, it was a joy to place spells on the timeline and then be able to slide them by fractions of a second.
exorcist patrol.gif
This one somehow gave me a tougher time than horse on a tightrope! I think it was deceptive that it looked simple and I always thought I could get another punch in before I needed to get back to a square, then didn't make it. Or the assholes who would come into my square with the perfect timing and bonk me outside of it. Had a blast the entire time though, always love to see what you come up with.
I don't think I can truly blame any deaths on this, but I do with the character's decel was quicker. It felt a little out of control that I could let go of movement and I'd still slide a bit further.
So let's pretend my difficulty in understanding the game was totally not my own fault :laughing: I restarted 7 times before I finally started to understand how things work and what I was supposed to do. The gameplay and amount of content you were able to build over the weekend is astounding, I just feel like the barrier to entry was too high. I read the tutorial (twice), read the infographic here on your ldjam page, and still had no idea why things weren't working.
The biggest thing I stumbled on was that I was looking at the small yellow arrows on the ground of the transmitters, and it wasn't until attempt #8 that I finally got that they only send power in the direction of the BIG arrows. The rotators took a small amount of time to figure out after that, and then I was finally off to the races and had a good time with it. That could be completely my own fault and lack of knowledge since I don't play many games of this type.
Very cool! How did you detect how close we matched the goal? I'm very curious to know your tech! I also really liked the touch on shaking the background when the buzzer is on, nice job!
That’s really clever, I never would have thought of that. And thanks for taking the time to explain it!
I don't know why, but reading "and his name is JOHN CENA!" as one of the yearbook quotes made me lose it :laughing: Exactly the right kind of goofy fun that I love about your team's games.
One thing I'd suggest whenever picking things randomly is to implement some rules such as "each choice has to be picked once before anything can repeat". I think I got 5 or 6 dab poses in a row before anything else. Still had fun, just a small thing to keep in mind for certain types of games.
Call off the rest of the rating period, we've found the winner...
Seriously this was soooo good! Like I'm honestly skeptical that this is the team behind Cuphead just smurfing in a jam for the weekend. Art was super impressive, sound design was excellent, gameplay/difficulty was perfect.
Well done by the whole team. I usually try to think of at least something to suggest as improvement, and I'm coming up blank here.
*pleeeeeeease* continue working on this. I'm a fan of rhythm games and this one has seriously good potential. It felt so good to do gameplay action in sync with the beat. I know you were short on time and might already know most of these, but some things I would suggest focusing on if you do decide to take the game further: - Input feedback. When I just barely missed the beat, nothing happened. It would be nice if there was some indication that my input was recognized and that it was my fault for missing the timing, or maybe even my move/attack is less effective. - The attacks had almost no warning, they would just appear and if I was standing in the wrong spot, I was going to get hit with no chance to avoid them. - The attacks to the side seemed useless since I couldn't kill the red blocks? I guess you were planning to have small enemies in the play area where this would come in handy.
Even in this raw state I had a lot of fun playing and it just *felt good*. If you polish it up, this could be amazing.
Loved the idea that the main menu to start was on the player's arm and part of the world, very cool! This has really impressive 3D graphics, is it an endlessly generated maze?
If you're looking for suggestions to take the game further, a sensitivity slider for the mouse would be really great. Nice job!
@fabula-rasa I started with that too, but I eventually alt-tabbed to the blue screen and moved the mouse around. It was our player starting by looking straight up at the sky :laughing:.
Once I realize that, I got to play. I don't think I got too far, never got into combat, but was able to pick up food and be less hungry for a little while. I would recommend trying to get sound effects into your next jam entry, it can make a huge difference! Still a great job getting the game done in just a weekend!
You guys absolutely nailed the mood here. Such a calming vibe you made with this!
Wow wow wow your team members in charge of graphics absolutely crushed it! From the images at the start that told a great story, to the loading animation of the sneaking fox, and then the overall 3D assets and "behind a wall" and "field of detection" shaders. Everything else was good too, the graphics were just next level.
You already know about the collision issue that makes us move backwards sometimes, other than that I really don't have any critiques. Maybe a little bit too hard? The 2nd level already had tons of coverage where I couldn't walk, it made it a bit overwhelming. Still a fun challenge though.
This is such a cool idea! Top marks for innovation. I think the lack of a scoring or checking for accuracy system dropped a little bit of the fun for me, but at the same time I imagine it could be very frustrating if there was a correct answer that didn't match what we (I mean the AI!) decided to make. So probably the right choice. In fact, definitely the right choice because sometimes I found that I didn't actually want to add anything on the 3rd round. I think I had a prompt that a guy with wild eyes stares at his past or something, and I just didn't put any 3rd objects in there so he was staring at nothing.
You've already heard plenty of feedback about the character speed, which is the only critique I would have said.
Otherwise, the idea is *really* cool. I love the thought of a platformer/puzzle game where you switch between two worlds, nice one! The transition effect was also really good in my opinion.
This was great! I played the normal mode a few times to make sure I'd gotten to see all the various minigames. My best run was 8. The amount of content your team made it astonishing, but I gotta say my favorite bit was how the main menu just moved the camera around to various parts of the room, really slick.
Only critique I have is that audio was a bit harsh at times. I think all the sounds were good, just different mixing levels might have helped. Mostly the TV static noise was quite loud. Nice job all around!
This game has no business being this fun! Such frantic gameplay in the upper levels, it kept me really engaged and I wasn't expecting to get so much entertainment out of clicking to prepare food. The strategizing on what food I could prepare early really hooked me in, so I'd have to say major props on your game design and how you left some rules open to the player. Nice job!
@triangle-point thanks! If you have the time, could you let me know if you noticed any bugs around showing your score at the end? The leaderboard seems to have not recorded your run, so I can type it in manually if you remember what you got. Thanks for playing!
@kitkii thank you so much! I worked hard to convey the feeling of speed with all the sound and visual effects, so I'm very happy to hear that you enjoyed it.
@ryan-dotsikas so happy that you enjoyed it! I had some of those moments too during playtesting where the countdown was at 2 or 1 and I just barely got too a checkpoint, and I'm glad you liked that tension.
@fluffy-kaeloky sorry to hear about the monitor, I've honestly never heard of that before so wouldn't even know where to begin looking for a setting to fix that :laughing:. You're absolutely right about the unfairness caused by random generation. I did implement a rule that lasers and checkpoints weren't allowed to be close, I could have done the same for boosters but just ran out of time for perfecting the difficulty curve. A tip I found (not by design) is that if you stay towards the outside of a curve rather than the inside, you have a much easier time seeing what's coming up ahead. Regardless, glad you had fun!
@chillertyp, @infinitycore I truly appreciate that feedback. I was ignorant about other games that did the same thing. If you have the time, would you let me know some of the good ones that you've played? I'd like to do some research and see what a professional version of this idea would have looked like.
@boxedmeatrevolution and @borabee thanks so much! The laser colliders were made quite undersized to go in the players favor, which I think contributed a lot to the feeling of making a clutch dodge just barely in time. I bet this is also the reason you may have visibly crossed a red beam and not been slowed down. The only other reason I can think of is that I was lazy and didn't program any special interactions like "what if you're at boost speed and hit a laser, should you only lose partial speed?" I just set it up so whatever collider you entered last would take priority. If you hit a laser and then next frame hit a boost, you'll go at boost speed.
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@peachtreeoath I'd heart your comment twice if I was allowed! I always really appreciate your insights into the deeper layers of game design. You're spot on that I actively try to give players the simplest baked down version that my games can be with the fewest possible controls, and only the mechanics that directly add to the fun. I find myself getting burned out on some AAA games where I start the tutorial and there's already 15 different moves I need to keep in mind. I say "no, no that's such overkill, 75% of that doesn't actually add to the fun, and the rest can be introduced over time instead of frontloaded."
Glad you found some use for the brake! I'll be honest, the only reason I made that an input at all is because I wanted to put a brake light on the vehicle and make it light up when someone pressed it :laughing: Hopefully you enjoyed that small detail. Also I noticed you played on ultrawide for that extra racing experience :wink:
Thanks for the feedback @almost! I did have to make that decision very early on in development whether the player would spin around a stationary tube, or the tube would spin around a stationary player. I went with the latter because then left and right would always make sense. If the player went upside down, left and right could get switched. So I didn't fully explore the other option, you may be right that it would have been less dizzying.
Thanks everyone! It makes me so happy to hear you all having so much fun with the game :smile:
"I'll be your ghost today. I mean your host!" was already enough to make me smile and get you top marks in humor.
This is not the type of game I'd normally enjoy and somehow you kept me interested in it the whole time. It's really well put together, no bugs, plenty of immediate feedback to know if my choices were good or bad, and the 10 second pacing added a good urgency and encouraged me not to take it too seriously. Nice job!
Nice one! Big improvement from your previous game regarding keeping a consistent visual style throughout. Everything felt like it belonged, and was very clearly depicted. Your enemy design conveyed itself very well too, when the bad guys turned into the bigger version, they slowed down which clues me in to how they might behave. Same for the faster swarming birds.
Audio was excellent. It almost went right over my head that the music was changing with the environment. I could tell *something* was happening, but I had to actually stop shooting for a second and focus on it before I noticed that the music was different each time. That's not a criticism, it's almost like it blended *too* well, perfectly seamless transitions right on the beat. Once I noticed it though, it was a great vibe. I also really liked the crunchy sound when pieces of the tower were destroyed.
Only critique I have for you is to try to add controller support, especially for a top down shooter style game like this. I got excited when my controller could move the character, but then wasn't able to aim.
Agreed with squimmy, the idea is neat but maybe needs a little adjusting to balance out the risk/reward.
Sound effects would certainly be a step to work towards, but we all know in a jam we don't have time to get to everything we would have wanted. Art is looking good though, I especially like the health bar being a customized gun sprite rather than the typical rectangle, keep it up!
Huuuuge congrats on your first Ludum Dare. Making this solo for your first entry is amazing, way better than I did my first time. I really liked the teleport animation. It was too fast for me to tell exactly what was happening, but I think that made the effect really work. Were you just stretching the sprite or was there more animation to it?
The thing that stood out most to me was the characters animations were excellent! Great job there. I thought the movement control felt fine, the slower movement made it easier to make sure we landed exactly where we wanted to. I think you've got a good start here and would be excited to see what this would have turned into if your team had more time.
I got stuck on the test where it asks me for a verb. Not sure if that's the intended ending?
Other than that I'm impressed you got a smooth first person shooter up and running in just a weekend, not to mention a little bit of storytelling around it! Nice job on that and congrats on your first Ludum Dare!
As others have said, this is a really neat idea and the gravity shifting works great. Your team has a real talent for level design, because you had to make levels that are playable in all orientations. You did such a good job with that, that every side felt like it was the correct floor with good ramps and ledges and openings to jump through.
I would agree with the controls feeling a little floaty. If that got tightened up to be more responsive and you added some sound effects, this could become a really great game for speedrunning! Congrats on the entry!
This has some *juicy* combat, very well done! The sound effects and the screen shake really sell the impacts and felt great.
As per usual in jam games, difficulty curves are one of the hardest things to get right. I felt like I got to lulls in the game where there just weren't enough enemies to fill the meter and had to wait for a few respawns. I'm not sure what the best way would be to fix that.
I was not expecting that level of graphics from a snake game. You had a lot of animations like the spinning squares that really added a nice touch. Music also was a great vibe.
I did struggle with the movement a bit, I was constantly late by one square of where I wanted to turn. I agree with your previous comment that smooth movement looks nice, but I wonder if the chunky step by step movement was necessary for snake to have precision control over what lane of the grid you would turn on. I also got frustrated the first time I was about to eat food and it turned into a wall, but I realized that's the whole point of the theme and I just needed to pay more attention to the timer. After that it added a lot of depth because I had to think about whether I could make it to that food in time or if I'm setting up for a crash.
Really really impressed by your reimagining of an old game, nice job!
No one survives the death tunnel!
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I love tower defense games like this. Even after beating all the waves, I knew there was more fun to be had coming back in and building cleaner and better. If you didn't touch the gameplay at all and just added sounds and music, this would be a 10/10 game.
Tiny tiny bug I found that worked in my favor, sometimes placing down a summoning circle brought in 2 demon workers? Not a big deal at all, but with the obvious strength of programming that went into this, I bet you can figure it out.
It's hard to balance out upgrades and create a loop that feels good during a jam. You nailed it. The upgrades were all so satisfying, and I really felt the impact of each one. On the last few levels I don't think I ever delivered any Froot to the truck, I was purely on rat slaying duty, and I loved how that evolved over the course of the game.
The only thing I can critique is the sounds. I see your description that you were otherwise aiming for compo, so generated sounds make sense, but they seemed to clash. I think you even had the same sound effect for bats dying as clicking on an upgrade that I didn't have enough money for?
That's super nitpicky, but that shows how good your game is. The only fault I can find is that the sounds weren't amazing.
Quite a risky decision you took here to base the game around a nostalgic mechanic that might only capture a small audience. But I think you did it in a smart way that even for the people who couldn't get the hang of bunny hopping (me) there was still fun to be had in optimizing paths for a good time. So great job with your game design!
I'm gonna tab back and give it another go in a second, but shame on you for making me feel so bad when I tossed my little monkey teammates out of the tree to their death :laughing: The little noises and facial expressions they make as they're flying and trying to grab onto something make it feel so real. I'm panicking at my keyboard trying desperately to grab onto the last branch, and the monkey on screen reflects my desperation with a look that knows he's about to die. The emotions during this run all the way from "oh nooo Nooo NOOOO!" to "hell yeah that was such a nice lineup!"
I loved the gameplay depth you all created here with a mechanic that seems so trivial on the surface. But every move had the consequence of where you'd end up. This made me feel extra rewarded once I'd spaced out my monkeys into strategic areas of the tree, I could put them on a line that they'd collect a leaf, get caught by another teammate, and toss them back to their original position to not mess up my spacing.
The zoom out mechanic was an excellent addition to let us plan out the throws. My favorite ones went up first, then fell through a line of two or three leaves and ugh it just felt magical to pull it off.
My best score so far, but I'll be back later in the rating period.
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As always, love the art style that this team brings. It has a great artistic touch, yet it's still able to convey what everything is perfectly. Hats off to you, this was a ton of fun.
Nice job team and congrats on your first LD!
It was nice that the gameplay goals were extremely clear of what we wanted to do, but I think I had a few instances where I died and restarted the level, and some of the flower images stayed in their pollenated state, but logically weren't actually pollinated. That along with the graphical distinction between the states were my biggest gripes. You had particle effects spawning from the source plants, I think those would have been placed well on the target plants.
But, that is minor improvements to a game that works, has a perfect level of challenge, and is fun to play.
Holy crap. As soon as I saw the menu I knew this game had some serious talent behind the graphics. Everything was rigged and animated very nicely.
I played on a controller, and this could absolutely be an issue specific to my controller, but my character kept flicking opposite directions than I wanted. As if there was no deadzone. So if I was kiting away from enemies to the left, then pressed right to do the attack, but then let go of right, I would flip and end up attacking left.
It didn't detract from the experience as a whole, still had a nice difficulty that lets us experience all 10 shifts without demanding absurd skill, just maybe something to consider for next time you do controller support. Though again, that could be specific to just my controller.
The audio was also fantastic, from the sound effects to the perfectly fitting music that got me in the mood to harvest some souls. Thank you for making this, I truly did have a fun time with it. Well done.
I'm very inexperienced in this genre of game. I got frustrated on my first play thinking the numbers were tuned much too harsh and that it was near impossible to get very far into the game. Coming back to read the comments, I saw a lot of praise and people making it much further.
So I started another round and realized the starting tiles are randomized per run. This might be common for the genre, but may I point out a flaw as a newbie? My first run had no water tiles in the starting area, which meant I had no way to gain fish, which meant I couldn't build a lighthouse to reveal further tiles. Maybe the start area should be static so you can give players an "easy" start, and then randomize as it expands outwards?
On my next playthroughs I kept restarting until I had a gold mine and water in the starting area, which felt like a much more friendly start. After that, the game kept me playing through quite a few restarts, trying out new starting strategies, is it better to go for the town or the gold mine first, etc. Definitely got into it after a while, so I think all the frustration was simply on me not having played games like this before. Thanks for introducing me!
Nice job on this one! It's really generous of you that we're a bit faster than the farmers, so even when I got caught, I could run away and get back to stealing corn. Thank you for that.
I'm always curious in these types of games how the detection is programmed. The graphic representing their field of view was great and super helpful, but what did you do under the hood to match that graphic? (If you don't mind sharing your secrets of course).
You're a front end developer I'd bet, right? The UI was great and smooth from the start, but the most satisfying bit was that your right side drawer closes if I click anywhere else on the screen. That's some good UX :smile:
I did get stuck not too far in unfortunately. I bought the lab and was directed to research a quince. I made a quince and put it right next to the lab, but nothing seemed to happen. If you can tell me what I might have missed there, I can come back and see what else you had in store for me in the late game.
The level design feels professional here. There's usually a feel in the quality of these jam games where you can tell an amateur developer made it in a couple of days. Not here, the aesthetics feel perfect, very very good world building. I couldn't get comfortable with the controls to get very far in the game, but it looks like your team is aware and already has plans to change them.
One super minor thing I can offer, since I've seen Tricky_Fat_Cat's posts about having prototype plugins... The buttons on the pause menu are blocked by the text. If I hover my mouse over the text itself, I cannot click the button. I have to hover over the background image of the button. No big deal at all, definitely not game breaking. But that could help improve your plugins for next time.
Congrats on compo! That alone is always an impressive feat to me. It's a great base and I'm happy to see your comments that you want to continue taking it even further.
This played great! Once I got the sniper rifle(?) and was no-scoping all the bad guys, there was no stopping me lol. Everything was clearly communicated and the sound effects complemented the gameplay well.
I played on a typical 1080p monitor and had large yellow images on the sides of the screen, really narrowing my field of view. Was that intentional difficulty or a bug?
+1 to the comments about the fixed camera, though I do realize that it made the challenge what it is. Aside from that, it worked great and was a very pleasant mood after all these soul harvesting grim reaper games :laughing:
I completely agree with WhaleJam's feedback. This was simple, but in a good way. There was no clutter and everything was clean and polished, well done!
As you've already heard, the graphics of the game are excellent. Not only was it pretty, but everything had a unique look that was clearly communicated. So there was never a question of "what am I looking at?". Nice job there.
After I realized enemies could take souls out of the well, I decided my best strategy would just be to collect 5 and dump them in all at once. Upon doing so however, the level didn't complete. I re-read your description and realized the day ends after 3 minutes no matter what. This makes the objective feel pretty contradictory, like the best strategy is to hold 5 souls and them dump them right when the day is about to end (unfortunately, I didn't see any countdown to let me know when that would be?).
I'd suggest a slight tweak that the level can end as soon as the target souls are reached. But that's just what I'd find fun. If your goal with the gameplay design was to make us collect and defend, then mission accomplished.
Take notes everybody, this is how you get top marks in Mood lol. Great job to the team, this was visually amazing!
The only gameplay issue I had was sometimes when the camera was right behind me (or at least I thought it was), holding W to walk forward took me in an arc, slowly turning to the side and veering off course. Not a big deal at all.
@torban thanks so much! The camera movement was inspired by Geometry Wars, I'm glad you like how it felt. One of those rabbit holes where I know I shouldn't spend much time on it, but ended up pouring hours into trying to make it just right.
@caeonosphere I agree the pulse is over-tuned lol. But I'd be lying if I said I don't enjoy stacking 2 full strength pulse buffs and one or two speed buffs and just running through everybody :laughing: Thanks for playing!
@willpower Thanks very much! I've found that all it takes is a little bit of motion in the UI elements to take them from boring to polished. I leaned into that hard for this game to make sure things fade in/out or grow/shrink rather than just popping into existence. Glad you had a fun time!
@peachtreeoath I think "opt-in difficulty" is the best phrase for it. It was a notion that one of my friends led me to during our brainstorming, that a good way to use the harvest theme is that you can harvest things at any time, but you get most rewarded if you harvest it at the perfect time. I didn't care what game I ended up making, that idea was locked in because it just felt like such a powerful game design tool. Now that you've reviewed it, I realize all it was, was opt-in difficulty. Thanks for playing!
@mnocenti Thanks so much for your insights! Indeed the way enemies complemented each other surpassed my own ideas, some things naturally happened that I never consciously intended. I was laughing in my chair the first time I had a shield guy decide to protect a healer, while the healer was linked to a another enemy. Totally unplanned, accidentally created really interesting gameplay choices.
You're certainly not alone with the frustration of killing enemies that you wanted to harvest. It was the last thing on my "unsolved issues" list when I submitted, that when you get really strong, and are killing enemies faster, it becomes near impossible to harvest them. I could say that this was designed, and that I wanted players to feel that as another choice to make, but I'd be lying. The truth is I just couldn't figure out a good way to solve it.
Regardless, glad you had a good time!
Thanks @angiemon! No no haha you're absolutely right, the blue line motion graphic was stock footage, then I just sampled one of the colors in it for the rest of my graphics.
Don't feel bad, you're not the only one who has struggled with the harvest mechanic, which means that I certainly failed to make it clear. I have further work to do to make it easy to understand, but the gist of it right now is when an enemy gets low on health, you'll see two blue triangles appear around them when they can be harvested. And only the stronger tier enemies would leave power ups on the ground when you harvest them.
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If you wanted, check out the 2nd gif in my showcase. Hopefully you'll see that an entirely new game opens up when you start harvesting the enemy powers. You can steal a shield from them, health regen, movement speed, etc.
Really great storytelling on this one, very high points for mood. I definitely appreciate the tutorial/backstory being told in game, somehow that's more digestible than reading it typed out on the submission page.
The use of color was really cool, desaturating the flower colors unless I walked far away from them. My brain can't connect why it made the gameplay more engaging, but it certainly did add something.
Selfish question: what was the main font you used for the text? I really liked it and might want to save that for future projects.
The spherical planet gravity worked perfectly, great job! Any tips on how you pulled that off?
I had the same experience as @ale where I thought I'd achieved my goal when I harvested the produce, and tried taking them directly to the conveyor belt. Figured it out eventually though. The game worked great, and evoked a real sense of urgency which I think is exactly what you were going for!
My main suggestion for improvement is just the user experience and onboarding. You had it in quite a few places, like if I tried to water the ground when there were no crops, I got a error blip noise, that was helpful to tell me I'm doing the wrong thing. A bit more of that and I think your players will understand exactly what they need to do.
Understandably this was Compo (congrats on that!) so you may have been working towards that anyway and just ran out of time. Definitely something to be proud of here, nice work.
Nice game and congrats on your first Ludum Dare! I was going to come back and mention the same thing about having a checkpoint after level 1, but it looks like you already have plans to take care of that.
The next thing I would suggest working on is sound effects. A game gets much more immersive and enjoyable when there are sounds, even if nothing about the gameplay has changed.
Wow wow wow! Top marks for the mood without a doubt, this game really struck a chord with the isolated character roaming around an alien landscape, and the background music really sold that feeling. Great job.
And then the gameplay and content as we were impressive, was not ready for the jump to 3rd person, I was like "whoaaa what is this now?!" Really excellent story progression and telling.
Your first LD, compo, and first 3D game? Very well done! That's a super impressive combination. I think the difficulty was tuned perfectly with the small area but the enemies being smaller than the hay bales. We still had to constantly move around and check the corners.
I do think just a crosshair in the center would have been the biggest upgrade you could have made if you had any time left for it, but the game was still fun to play.
Dang, this was a lot of fun and really really unique! Even more impressive that it was the first Ludum Dare for most (all?) of you.
The key rebinding is amazing, and really helped. In my brain it made more sense for down arrow to decrease throw distance, while up arrow increased it. Once I changed that, I was really able to get into a flow and had a great time.
Woooo a 3D game with cutscenes and werewolf converting animations?! Damn this is impressive, great job everyone! I found the steering to be a little bit floaty and hard to control exactly where I wanted to go, but I guess the game probably would have been too easy with perfect steering?
Took me a few restarts of trying to complete levels as fast as possible to aim for 3 stars, before I realized it was the move count that mattered. After that I realized it was a puzzle game, not a speed action game. My puzzle brain then engaged and it was really enjoyable trying to plan out my routes.
Nice small scope for a jam, and very well executed. I had no bugs or anything, just good pure harvesting crops! Well done.
The music and the slow-mo made hitting zombies feel sooooo visceral, very nice job conveying those impacts! I was experimenting to figure out what the controls were, and it seemed like spacebar was just increasing the bar at the top of the screen (I think that was a score of some sort?) Was that perhaps a dev cheat left in there? :wink:
Oh man this was good! Fantastic all around, especially the sound was really well done.
I very much appreciate the little detail that you don't let me purchase a plant that doesn't stack when I already have one. You made it clear with the description, but then not letting me purchase it anyway was icing on the UX cake.
I think I hurt my chances by not fully understanding what each plant did the first few rounds, and made a pretty poor setup. But as it became clear what each one does, the gameplay became very interesting and revealed strategic choices, love it. The beams reflecting onto a nearby enemy is always a great mechanic, and I'm impressed how well you got all the upgrades interacting with each other. Great job!
I couldn't pass the level when one of the planets had 2 moons, and the outer one going really quick. Even so, a very neat idea and I enjoyed the time with it.
The variety of sound effects was a nice touch, to prevent from getting repetitive.
Really great job on this one. The music stands out here really well, I'm wondering if that was a big focus for you this jam. Your sounds effects have always been awesome, but this time the music was really top notch in my opinion.
Really really neat idea, I think tuning the physics to keep players a bit more in control would have made the game more enjoyable for me. I like the concept that small ball = more control less speed, and big ball = less control more speed. That should stay, but I would have liked if the control was overall higher across the spectrum.
I have two other small suggestions. - Make sure every surface has a pattern on it, just something to make it not a flat color. There were times I had the camera pointed down, so my background was filled with the flat blue color of a platform, and I couldn't gauge my speed or direction. Having stripes or a grid pattern would solve that. - If I'm not pressing any movement input, I think it would feel better for the ball to slow down to zero speed. Tapping back and forth to stay still didn't feel great.
Aside from those, I think the core concept that you have here seriously has potential! I hope you continue working on it, I truly see this concept becoming a hit mobile game.
Ohhh that ramped up quick! And was way more fun that I expected, nice job!
Oh hell yes! This is fantastic, you guys crushed it, very well done.
I'll leave you with two minor notes: - I had a controller plugged in (but not touching it), and every few seconds my WASD movement would just stop. Once I unplugged the controller, this conflict stopped. - This one is certainly personal preference, but I like the character movement to decelerate pretty quickly if I let go of all movement input. The drifting certainly adds some personality that you may be going for, but for me it felt out of control.
Aside from those things, I can leave you with the greatest compliment I give to LD games: I'm gonna keep this one on my computer, it's not getting deleted.
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Nice one! I had a lot of fun and played a few extra rounds after winning (happy to see that upgrades persist even after going back to the main menu). The aiming control felt great. I know sometimes it gets messy trying to have a 3D game with a view like this, and aiming is done by projecting the cursor onto the floor. I had no issues with it though, it felt very reliable.
Really the main downside (from my opinion) was the game got too easy too fast. I forget the exact order I bought upgrades in, but the boss seemed to just roll over and die by run 3. Maybe there's a combination of your players get used to the game and skill improves, and at the same time the upgrades are making them more powerful. Perhaps the upgrades being weaker would have smoothed that out?
Or, once Greg dies, your next round is fighting against Greg's older brother, who has significantly more health. Bullet sponges may not be the most fun mechanic, but programming-wise could come together really fast. That loop could go on forever, and then your players are discussing "I got to Greg #8, how far did you get?" Or maybe each time you win and click "play again" your next round starts with less and less tiles. Of course, the most fun probably comes with new boss attacks. I think a shockwave expanding out from the boss would have been a good one, that players have to jump over.
Wow! That was such an impressive amount of content. I kept expecting the story to end quickly, but more and more kept coming. I'm really curious to know your technique for managing such a large story space, with different dialogue options. Really really well done.
I'd just echo what other people have already said. The concept is cool, and I think it was working as intended, but there was a high barrier of entry for me to get into the game and start having fun. Feedback, polish, and UI design will help a lot without having to change the game mechanics at all.
Either way, nice job on your first LD jam!
I was not expecting this game to be that much fun. My strategy had to evolve during it. At first, I realized if my bounding box never crossed paths with red squares, it was impossible for the black square to lose. That worked for about a minute, but then had to get more creative.
I really enjoyed the extra layer of control, this one gets a high score from me. Nice job!
That was trippy! I honestly didn't realize it was repeating geometry until I tabbed back to this page. Then I started looking for the path up, and eventually got there. Really really neat effect. I'm curious if you achieved that purely by moving positions of things, or some graphics rendering trick. I did catch one balcony get partially culled as I was jumping onto it.
When the main mechanic of a game is a platformer, you'll probably want to put the coyote time feature in there. I got caught a few times trying to jump at the edge, and no jump happened, just fell down. Otherwise, it was great!
I agree with some of the above comments. The game seemed nice, was very responsive to the controls. But I don't feel like I got to really experience it since I don't have a player 2 to fight against.
Something to keep in mind for future jams, how accessible the game will be.
Oh those controls were too much for me haha. The concept of the game is fun, but after level 4 or so, I had to stop using boost and just strafe through the levels. Then I gave up on 10 after a few tries using boost to get through the gravity pits.
The thing that confused me the most was when I started a boost, turned, and used strafe to "slow down". As soon as I released strafe, my ship took off in the original boost direction. And if I tried to do a new boost while holding strafe, I got really strange trajectories.
Even with that, still a fun game concept, and the short levels + quick reset made me feel not to frustrated when I hit a wall.
FYI, I played with a PS4 controller and it worked perfectly, so very nice job with the gamepad support.
For games where the player has a limited amount of time, I've found that it's more engaging to start them with a smaller amount of time, and then add to it each time they do something good. Makes the player feel rewarded and like they accomplished something.
Otherwise, no issues encountered, that was a nice little typing game!
This is a tooooon of fun!! Really great job!
The only pain point was the sound effects became very repetitive and happened very frequently. I like to randomize the pitch of those sound effects, just up or down by 10% each time it plays, and it seems to fix that.
Great job! I played the first few rounds without planning ahead, and got stomped pretty quick, as deserved. I like that there wasn't any time pressure on the turns, because then I was able to look closely at the map after each warp and figure out which skull I could get to before any of the adventurers got to me.
Screenshot 2024-04-14 224639.png
You've got a good eye for level design, the layout of the map and placement of assets felt really good.
For any game that has mouse control of the camera, a sensitivity slider will help a lot. The default sensitivity may be great for some, but it was high in my opinion.
You did an incredible job with the graphics! Nice work. And the music creates quite a nice relaxing mood.
I got down to 6 creatures remaining, did a couple of laps, and couldn't find any more. The FPS mechanics that you made here worked perfectly, and the water shader looked really good!
A mouse sensitivity slider will go a long way if you want to continue this game, or any other future project where the mouse has direct control of the camera.
My first playthrough I think I soft-locked myself by leading a bear back to home and then not having enough bushes to hide in to let him retreat. On the next playthrough I was a bit more strategic about using bushes to make sure bears reset (the shockwave effect on the ground when they stomp is really neat!).
I'm curious what the map was like farther away, but felt like I couldn't ever explore that far due to how many moves I was allowed and how much food I needed to bring back. When I got to 8 required I lost. I had 4 plants in the farm but couldn't figure out how to get 4 more food back. Maybe there's more strategy to this than I thought, but even the amount I found was very engaging. Nice job!
I totally botched my first run lol, but the rules made sense by the end of it so my 2nd run was pretty fun. I was a little frustrated that the UI panel at the top of the screen was covering some flowers, but I don't think that every actually hurt the gameplay.
Overall I truly had a good time with this, nice job!
I got side tracked with some exploring so it took a little longer than it probably should have, but I got them all safe!
The gameplay seems simple, but I'm sure the development was far from easy. This game seems like it could have plenty of weird edge cases that you have to handle carefully, or else it could be impossible to complete. For example: - When a zone only needs 1 more duck, if 2 ducks walk into it on the same frame, what would happen? - If a duck goes back to idle state within the scare distance of a scarecrow, could I collect that duck and bring it out?
I didn't have any problems like this, the game played perfectly for me. I'm sure that was no accident, and that you guys were careful to make sure these edge cases were handled well.
And I really liked that the ducks used smart pathfinding rather than trying to move straight towards me, a great quality-of-life feature! Thanks for making this!
Wow, going through the tutorial alone I kept saying: "oh wow that's an impressive amount of interactions. OH there's *more*?!" Very ambitious, especially for a compo, and you pulled it off. Very well done!
Really played on my stress levels with the time pressure gameplay lol.
Great job here! You followed my favorite rule of puzzle game design:
> The difficulty should be "how do I solve *this* puzzle", not "how do I play this game?"
The rules were disclosed progressively over the first two levels, just learning about moving and then learning about changing colors. This makes the new player experience so much better than starting with a level about playing with two colors.
I think an interesting puzzle idea if you want to make more would be a level *after* color changing is introduced, where players must keep some of the creatures un-colored. That, and requiring multiple color changes to progress through a level, especially if that includes partial backtracking.
The art was minimal but that did not detract from the gameplay at all, at least for me. I was very engaged the whole time.
@ugly-robot was this the Hot Wheels game? Because this image was on my inspiration board after brainstorming lol. I so badly wanted to make environments that would live up to that game. image.png
Thank you very much for your comments, glad you had fun!
@chocolat-endive thank you so much for your comments! Good eye on the main menu. I didn't see that until after I submitted, but I figure I'll mention the fix in case anyone runs into the same issue. I don't think it's super obvious.
It all comes down to the pivot point on the *Content* object. I started with the pivot being at {X: 0.5, Y: 0.5} and that caused the behavior that you see, the track select group being centered. Changing the pivot to {X: 0, Y: 0.5} makes the content start with its left edge on the left edge of the scroll view. Similarly if anyone wanted to start on the far right, I imagine a pivot of {X: 1, Y: 0.5} would achieve that. Screenshot 2024-10-11 091439.png
@knarf thanks for your feedback, and good suggestion! That could be very good to collide with flowers/leaves, and maybe they bend out of the way after slowing you down a bit.
I do have to let you know that there is no AI or bot-racers in the game. The world record that you see is truly another player!
Sure thing @ategon, feel free to use gameplay video, and thank you very much for playing!
I also experienced some of the enemies getting stuck in walls. I don't think it was really a game-breaking issue, unless something extra happens by truly killing every last one?
I really liked how the shots bounced off walls, that let me feel very safe staying around a corner and still being able to wipe out the nearby creatures.
The tank-style controls worked perfectly, but I'm curious if it would have felt even better if the camera rotated with the tank. Since the camera stays fixed, thank you for putting a light on the front so I know which way I was oriented.
Great job!
Fantastic job you guys! Really knocked it out of the park with this one.
Animations in the menu, cutscene leading into the game, vacuum physics, goo soft-bodies, the shader work to make sure you can see the player and goos behind objects; all so good!
The audio stands out to me as the best part, especially the goo chatter sounds! The music gave off a relaxing vibe, which made me choose to believe that I wasn't sucking up goos to dispose of them. I was just relocating them to new spot where they could live out their happy little lives.
The only constructive advice I can offer is about UI scaling. I played on a 21:9 aspect ratio monitor and the UI buttons were in odd places. I recommend using the dropdown on the Game view in Unity to try each scene in different aspect ratios to make sure your anchoring does what you want. That didn't mess with the gameplay at all though, so not a serious issue. Screenshot 2024-10-08 173700.png
Other than that, I enjoyed this very much!
Oooh awesome job to the team! As others have mentioned the art style and graphics as a whole really takes the cake here, super well done.
And I agree with the other comments about pacing, just speeding some things up would help the feel a lot. Such as the camera pan to the winner of the battle, I think that could be less than a second.
Oooh I had a good time with this one. A lot of small details that really help: a mouse sensitivity slider, darts pierce so I could kill multiple wasps at once, no limitation on fire rate (I killed the queen by just saving up enough darts then rapid clicking to burn her down), the wavy animation on the honey ammo. It all helps the game just feel more enjoyable.
The level design was awesome as a whole. Especially the first level, it had enough ramps and platforms and just *stuff* packed into the rooms that it really felt like I could use some FPS tactics. The middle level was a little bit lacking in my opinion, and then the queen's room was excellent. I'm jealous of how well the team did in this aspect, since level design felt like one of my biggest challenges.
Graphics were top notch, I literally have no constructive feedback here. It was very clear what everything was, and it all felt like it belonged together.
Music may have helped the immersion a bit, and I also would have liked a notification (either audio or something else) when the exit to a level opened up. Sometimes I had trouble finding it. But one level I happened to be looking at the exit when it opened, and it was really nice that it animates rather than just disappearing!
Overall really great job, thanks for making it, I had a lot of fun!
Congrats to the team on completing your first Ludum Dare, hope you had a blast! Taking on a puzzle platformer like this with so many interactions with the world is quite ambitious! Great job on completing it.
I only had one bug, which was the animation for legs getting pulled into the shell being opposite the slam attack. It didn't affect gameplay, just looked a little silly.
I think all that's missing here is some polish. Your core idea works and is something I haven't seen before, so it feels very innovative. A charge meter for the jump strength and a line that shows the path I'll take/where I'll land would go a long way.
I did get some super jumps that were a lot of fun!
For your first Ludum Dare game and working solo, this is really good!
Oh this was tons of fun! The progression feels really impactful, nice balancing on that. I'm curious what logic you put in there to get the roly polys out of an avoidance pattern, because I definitely felt some subtle nudges bringing us towards each other. The parry mechanic was a really engaging part, really well done!
I have no constructive criticism on the gameplay, just adding audio as you know would have taken this up from fun to amazing.
I had a bit of frustration at the start with the steering. It took me a little while to understand that I was drifting even after I let go of the controls, and gravity would constantly try to pull me down. I think it was the snapping movement that made that less-than-obvious.
Once I realize that though, this was good! I think you nailed the sweet spot on tight spaces to make sure it wasn't too easy, but it also doesn't require absolute perfection. Nice one!
Nice touch at the end, having the Discord channel names appear :wink:
I think I had a smile on my face the whole time, this really was an awesome mood. I would not have expected to enjoy a trip down someone else's memory lane, but that was a great time! Thanks so much for putting this together.
When you have rapidly repeating sounds (the shots), it can help a lot to vary the pitch randomly, even just up and down by 10%. Try it out and see if you like that more. Otherwise nice entry!
As others have said, that parallax background is absolutely wonderful, nice work! I also thought the game controlled very well, it wasn't too drifty or too tight in my opinion.
I do think the timer for getting through the whole thing is a fairly restrictive choice though. Maybe a timer per layer and if they don't make it through, just reset that layer?
Oh and the art looked great overall, but it was a little jarring to see some of the obstacles at a different pixel size (the green orbs). If all the sprites in the game were the same pixel size, it will instantly tie the graphics together even more.
Nice one! I *really* like the touch that we don't die immediately going off the top of the screen, but instead get a little grace time. Awesome design choice. The difficulty ramp-up speed was *perfect*.
The only thing I can suggest is try having the score text at the top instead of the bottom, since the bottom is where I think everyone will want to look to see the incoming obstacles. Or off the sides may be an even better choice?
Ooooh I agree with the other comments that this is a fantastic foundation to build from. The game was very fun in this state, and you have an awesome eye for making puzzles! If you wanted to keep going with this, I bet it would turn into something awesome, nice work!
Whoops! I jumped right into the game without reading any instructions, and thought the spikes were obstacles to avoid 😅 I played again once I understood the directions, and it was a lot of fun! I actually have no critiques, it worked perfectly smooth and graphics were clear what everything was. Audio was great!
Nice work team!
Out of all the games I've played so far where we're swimming down into the depths, this conveyed the feeling and atmosphere the best *by far*. Really really nicely done!
I really enjoyed the locating mechanic, as it's a simple tool and you allow us players to figure out the strategy to use it. I also think the amount of oxygen was really well tuned, sometimes you could uncover a part in a single dive, but sometimes you had to return up for air and go shuffle the rest of the debris. In my opinion, perfectly executed on the pacing, nice work!
Whoa this was craaaaazy unique! I always enjoy rhythm games and this one was a lot of fun.
I do feel like it was a bit harder than it should have been to see the pattern. Once I got it, I often found myself saying "oh that's it? It looked way more complex." Maybe during the demonstration phase, rather than the hands just appearing, they either translate in from the side or something a quarter or half second before they are played, letting the player know that it's about to hit. And then maybe no hands at all for the player's input phase? I'm not sure it that would do it, I just found that my brain was hurting trying to recognize the patterns.
Great job though, once I got each pattern the game worked perfectly, so the difficulty was all on me, the game felt very well made and responsive to control.
@isayneigh you're very observant! The depth your character goes down to is based on both the jump height and the entry angle. Higher jump = go down farther, and a more vertical angle = go down farther. I thought it would make an interesting choice for players to prioritize safety vs. air time.
Thanks for the detailed bug report @christian-zommerfelds! I wonder if the d-pad on that model acts more like an axis than a binary button. I did my game pad testing with a PS DualShock 4 and it was working nicely. If I had a DualSense, I’d happily dig into the issue and try to solve it. Happy you were still able to play!
Ooooh I haven't played minesweeper in a while and this was a great twist on it. I had a lot of fun!
I did have trouble getting started, might just be getting old lol but I actually found the text hard to read and understand what the rules are, and the idea that I was looking at a side view of digging a hole. I spent a while clicking on the lighter colored tiles and wondering what the inputs where since nothing was happening lol.
Once I learned the game rules though that was very well put together and a great design choice to add the diagonals, nicely done!
Very nicely done! At first I didn't really appreciate the idea that light pulses whenever I land, but just a few screens in and it became obvious how *excellent* of a design choice that was!
The screen transitions are soooo smooth too, I'm curious how you did that.
I would be curious how the game would feel if deaths respawned you right where you jumped from, rather than the start of that screen. When I lost almost a full screen of progress it hurt, but that could be exactly the intention, especially since it seems like the hardest jumps were at the end of each room lol.
With the length of the game, I imagine you guys couldn't simply play through the whole thing very often. So I'm extra impressed that there are no bugs in the late portions of it. A long game seems like a recipe for untested sections. Nice work!
As always, the music was incredible and set the perfect mood.
The only critique I have is that it felt bad to fall to the floor in the first room with two fast-walking guys. I didn't see a way back up, but I landed on a small part with no spikes. Bit of a soft lock (unless there was a way to recover and I didn't realize it). It felt frustrating to have to jump on spikes to die and reset, I'd rather that floor be entirely covered in spikes so I'd die right away.
This was awesome! It totally reminded me of scanning planets in Mass Effect 2. Really nicely done, and nice shader work (?) on the images going in and out of focus.
I also really liked that the UI was in game controls, even the volume slider!
Wooo the transition on the fish was really really well done! I never saw a pop where the model or color changed, so did you guys do that programmatically? Really really cool.
Some of the collision detection I would recommend making unrealistic in the players favor. For example the big clumps of bags, I seemed to get caught in them when I didn't expect to. Maybe try shrinking the collision detection and see how it feels. Otherwise awesome job!
I did have a bug with the tutorial text at the beginning of the game, when it says "Hit spacebar while the mini-harpoon..." The mini-harpoon UI showed up and I instinctively thought I should try left clicking when the mini-harpoon was in the yellow zone, and the text box kind of freaked out. It displayed the next text prompt multiple times and played the typewrite effect backwards. Hopefully that's enough info that you could recreate it.
Everything else worked fine as far as I could tell, and I had a good time with this one, thanks for making it!
Whoa, serious innovation points here, this is very unique!
I do think there was a bit of conflict between the timer mechanic rushing us, and the in-depth research wanting us to take our time and fully explore. I'd be interested to see if the game feels even more fun if it leaned into just one category, rushed or chill.
Veeeerry nice visual effect with the sonar highlighting the walls, and I love the extra touch that the wall color fades out between pulses! The propeller spinning animation was impressively convincing, I would expect that to be hard to do in 2D, so really nice work there!
I think the sonar sound would have been really neat if you did some echoing or reverb on it, maybe something to try.
Congrats on your first Ludum Dare! And going right for Compo!
Like some of the other comments, I felt overwhelmed when the text was rushing by to explain the game. It truly is an awesome choice to have the game be explained in-world like this rather than just a static page. So great choice going for it, just a few tweaks: - The text going away when it wanted to, rather than letting the player dismiss it. - The text had depth in the world and was covered up by the cards in her hand. - The font was thin, combined with the shaking, made it harder to read.
Other than that, really impressive content in the game! A full card system, animated 3D models, and sounds to go along with it all. Great job!