Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → micahcowan
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | Co | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | 38 | A Small World | Super Small-io World! | compo | 423 | 2.93 | 3.15 | 2.84 | 3.72 | 1.97 | 2.83 | 2.20 | 2.48 | ||
| 2015 | 32 | An Unconventional Weapon | AntiCon | compo | 647 | 3.07 | 3.47 | 3.18 | 3.42 | 2.07 | 3.33 | 2.62 | 2.57 | 82 | |
| 2014 | 30 | Connected Worlds | Friendly Baubles | compo | 596 | 3.17 | 2.65 | 3.58 | 3.72 | 2.53 | 3.61 | 2.83 | 3.07 | 88 | |
| 2014 | 29 | Beneath the Surface | Title Unknown |
Contrast wasn't the theme, of course; it was the most downvoted theme. But then, I suppose it also manages to kind of meet the Beneath the Surface theme, too (if the dividing line is "the surface"?), so I guess you managed to meet both the winning AND losing themes?
What a fantastic entry! Loved the challenge of the last few levels.
Fun and challenging! And I love your interpretation of the theme, very original.
At some point it would let me pick up pegs, but not connect them anymore. Not sure what happened. I lost obviously.
Really great. Simple, fun gameplay, soothing music, appropriate sound effects, challenging math puzzle. Awesome!
Good fun! Sure got tired of clicking, though. ;)
Wow. I can't believe you did this in 72 hours. A fantastic job!
It's an awesome depiction of what it's like to live with bipolar. Particularly, of constant, often severe "mood swings". It's obviously too simplistic, but I don't see how anyone could do much better with a 10-minutes-of-play game.
Love the graphics, love the mood, love the gameplay, love the stark openness. Thanks for making this!
I love tether mechanics, too. Worked well here.
I think it'd be nice to be able to see the tether points, though I suppose with a game this simple it's the only way to keep a challenge.
The collision detect on the heart is poor, had to move around a lot until it registered I was there.
Excellent entry. Challenging and fun!
Fun! Challenging. Gonna take me some time to get good at it. :)
Such a simple concept, but it makes it much more challenging and fun. Loved it!
Fun game, good use of the theme.
Love it! So simple/basic, but fun, novel, addictive. :)
It's amazing what a diff good bg music makes, too.
Chrome works fine, but Firefox had the following errors:
screen.init is not a function
screen.update is not a function
If these are optional functions of a canvas, perhaps protecting them with a try block would get things further?
Short, but very enjoyable. I particularly liked the variety of gameplay available.
I did feel like the very first level, the asteroid field between Earth and Mars, was far too hard (though obviously I got past it). There's very little reaction time available between when most of the asteroids appear on screen, and when they can hit you. Even a slight reduction in asteroid speed could make a difference there.
For the final bit, shooting down the asteroids, I thought it could last a little longer, and ramp up more from easy to hard difficulty challenge.
Great game!
Gets my blood pumping. It's friggin' hard! Really, really solid entry.
I really enjoyed this game. Very simple in every way, but devilishly challenging.
It did take me a bit to figure out that by Left Control you meant the left control key; I thought it meant the control that takes you left (i.e., the left arrow key). D'oh!
The art is good, and I love the kinky deal-sealing.
I appreciate that you made it that the robots couldn't shoot bullets you couldn't dodge, considering how much vertical real estate the player character takes up. :)
The graphics are fantastic! And the segue from "real" music to "imaginary" music, with the same melody but different timbres, is really awesome.
I didn't have any problems with the submitted version, by the way, I thought the difficulty level was perfect. Only died once in lava, made it through the rest of the game without dying again. The dragon's great!
Very nice. Sometimes it's hard to get an angle that both provides a good view, and still makes sense with the controls.
Like missile command, without having to wait for the missiles (and only one city to save).
It's confusing that the same person apparently wants to make calls to multiple people... at the same time!
Note: sometimes the tree's still there after I've chopped it down, so I can chop it a second time.
Felt like I was playing NetHack (except I'm not constantly dying)
Hah, nice. I love the look of panic on the planets' faces. :D
At least once (level 2 I think?), the two remaining planets were no longer connected together (this made them easier to save, definitely.
Challenging, unique, and fun. Nice job!
Gridlines might help (slightly). And more worlds of course. ;)
The music's fantastic! :)
Very nice!
I love absolutely everything about this. Great graphics and animation, the little guy reminds me of tachikoma from Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone. The puzzles are good and challenging without being frustrating.
And the final status makes you want to immediately replay it. :)
Fun, and definitely thematic. Died of expended line a lot. Don't seem to have quite got the trick of launching to the next planet, either, seems like I don't quite overcome line momentum a lot of the time.
Very nice! No way I'm playing to level 60 though.
I don't actually understand how the levels work. I got a score of > 140 in the typing game (finally just let them fall), but my level wasn't nearly that high (was plenty high enough to satisfy the security cat though). In the walking game, seemed like my level increased even on games where I really sucked.
Nice little piano ditty. Mine has piano music I played, too. :)
Addictive. I read the instructions, but somehow the "can't do same colors" thing threw me for a while anyway.
The timer's too fast. Aaaaaaugh! :D
Yay, I won! :D ...Game was pretty hard, especially that jump in level 2.
Really solid job. No external libraries or anything, only 48 hours... impressive!
Job well done! All the more impressive for not using any libraries, all one file.
Very nicely done. The glyph names being similar to Hebrew or some other Semitic language makes it seem like you're looking at the "Spoken Word underlying creation", and the graphics evokes the idea that we're just running in the Matrix.
Surprisingly addictive for what it is. And no losing condition (that I know of?) so, relaxing.
Very nicely done. Simple and minimalist, but fun, complete, and polished.
I stuck with it. Good game, sound effects were awesome (what is that, ukelele?). Accidentally walking offscreen and erasing the yellow line is really, really frustrating though!
Somehow felt like maybe I hadn't beat the game when I think I had (went back to original user, who asked for privacy ha). Could use a closing screen or something.
Great game! Loved it.
Fun! Had a hard time, probably because at first I thought you had to avoid blue AND red. D'oh!
Love the randomized sound effects.
The camera makes the controls hard. Maybe the controls should be independent of the camera?
I couldn't figure out how to play world 3, guess I suck. :(
I can't tell you how much I enjoyed the music. Yes, I know you just churned it out hastily by dubbing your own voice over itself a coupla times, but it's catchy, and the acapella nature of it just makes it that much cooler.
Thanks for making it!
Very nice! Fiendishly difficult.
Can't seem to point myself at 'em before they've blown me to smithereens in short order. Though that's probably me.
Works in Chrome (or at least, gets to the game). In Firefox, debug console says "Reference Error: earth not defined" when I click on the Start button (nothing happens).
...I think it's because you're using document.write() everywhere; in most browsers, this causes the equivalent of a "new page" to be started: it doesn't write into the current browser. Which means that all your <script> tags would potentially be lost, which is probably what's happening? If you could just set the body element (or, probably better, a div element)'s innerHTML attribute, you'd probably get better results.
As a code quality matter, the indentation is all over the place, making the code hard to read (it's important for you to be able to follow your own code, too - it makes it faster to work with, and speed is everything in LD!). Also, you don't need all those individual <script> tags everywhere - you could put everything in one big <script> tag.
You seem to have // comments lying _outside_ the <script> tags, too, which would show up inside the body, where people can see them. The only reason no one sees them is because you're writing a new page with document.write() (but that's causing other issues).
(I'm not going to affect the ratings with code quality, just making some observations to pass on to you.)
But anyway, on to the actual game: you wrote a complete game, on your own, in JavaScript, without any outside libraries! Way to go! w00t! :D
Good idea, great music, fun. But over way too quickly, and there's basically zero challenge to it as it currently stands. You can't really gain much gold (I got as high as 70), as you have to keep moving if you want to avoid hitting a "zero" town, so you can really only stay somewhere a few times total if you want to make maximum profit.
Very nice for a first LD (this was my first too).
Mezzenstein, er, for kids? Not quite. Some of the sayings in the fourth world are a bit PG to PG-13.
Not that that stopped me from letting my 7-year-old play...
Thanks badlydrawnrod: I've updated this page with a PARENTAL GUIDANCE warning.
If I get around to fixing the game's glitches, I'll probably add a "clean" mode that completely replaces world 4. I was shooting for a higher "humor" rating, though, and naughtiness can be funny. :)
lorniebear, I tried to start up elec. guitar, but never really got anywhere. Unfortunately, I don't think I have the time to get really good at another instrument, and you can cover so much with just piano/keyboard... :)
If you're interested in hearing more, I have some youtube up with some piano stuff: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wW7GVad6LQk&list=PLHHHTIsNQayoj53fzX9bJH4eQ7KU1jZfw
Thingo Studios: any connection should be able to go either way. Maybe you accidentally hit the wrong person? The glitch where switching worlds seems to mess with the sync of the movement patterns makes it a bit more difficult...
DrCicero, you really expect me to find time for all that in a 48-hour race to the finish? :D
As to video feedback for hitting something, didn't I provide that? If you hit someone with the talk balloon, they... talk. If you hit 'em with the grabber, they disappear. If you hit 'em with another friend, they talk, and potentially swap and open a new world. There could always be more feedback, and certainly finding time for another sound to put there (especially, one distinguishing connection success from failure), but clearly something happens in every case that you hit something.
A bigger problem, to me, is that when you hit something, they don't always look close enough to be touching. There may be a glitch in EaselJS there, or else in my use of it...
It doesn't lag on any devices I had handy (except for my Kindle Fire HD, but that doesn't do Canvas stuff very efficiently at all), but if I had to hazard a guess, it might be because I'm using SVG for the spritesheet, and if EaselJS isn't careful in its implementation, they might be getting redrawn inefficiently. There's probably some ways I could try to work around that.
Anyway, thanks for your feedback!
Dining Philosopher, yeah, maybe not. The idea was for the music to fit the theme of "forming connections with friends", but it doesn't really match the energy of the gameplay itself, and certainly doesn't fit the fourth "world". ;)
Thanks for playing/commenting!
Heh, yeah, my attempt at humor hear was woefully immature. Still mostly glad I did it (because it made it a little more fun for me), but it probably wasn't worth the exclusion of younger players. It is interesting too how the gentle music sort of tricks you into a whole different feeling while playing the game.
I _just_ fixed all the graphics in the "Improved" version if you want to try it (also worth trying if you hadn't yet, because the friend movements are more challenging).
The lack of tool indication is definitely a big problem. Thinking I'll fix that tonight, and then call the game done (with the possible exception of a "clean" version). I enjoyed making the game, especially the path mechanics (though the code for that is atrocious), and I'm very happy with my novel interpretation of the theme. But it's not actually that inspiring, and I'm not very motivated to make more of it than I have already (in the "Improved" version, that is).
Nice, simple game, having the video on adds ambience. It would work better if there wasn't the load beeping that starts partway through, though...
Played better than many "Choose Your Own Adventure Games" of my youth did. The font adds a lot to the feel of it, though the opening quotes seem to display low, like it was written for a language other than English (I'm using Firefox on Mac OS, if that matters).
A few misspelled words, like "led" was "let", and "younger than" was "younger then". Also, one moment I'm watching TV, the next I'm apparently in an insane asylum. Seems like more of a segue would've been nice. :)
Enjoyed it. Thanks!
I guess I didn't see much connection with the theme, though?
Some sort of timer to indicate that you're in the process of reloading would be nice.
God mode is fun. :)
Clearly inspired by one of my all-time favorite games, Abe's Oddysee. :)
Saved 8 souls. Wasn't clear that's the end of the game, just sort of stopped there. Would be nice if it said "8 out of N", too, so I can know if I missed any.
Hey, look at that, I won! :D
Congratulations on a successful first LD. Solid offering, and a funny idea. :)
I love the cowboy getup, I love the switch-crystals, I love the wraith-deaths, I love the goal-statues.
I think this tied with Bacon Installer for my favorite game so far. :)
Very cool! The original is just way too damn hard without some introduction. The revised version obviously fixes that, but it seems like maybe the full-on level in it runs a little faster? At any rate it doesn't seem to read my keypresses as consistently on that level as either the earlier (slower) levels, or the full-on level from the original.
Music's nice, glad you gave it a little more to do during the intro sequence in the revised version. Fun game!
Pretty cool! Kind of tough to stick with playing a game that unfolds in real time, though, especially if there's not all that much to do in the first place.
Maybe you could add a link to a "Plus" version that lets you skip ahead in time if you want to play with the morning/evening transitions and stuff?
Very nice game! Got to the boss, but didn't beat it.
A three, or even two-bar health system would make it a little less frustrating. ;)
Gorgeous and fun. Like the intro. Nice way to make me exercise two different parts of my brain at the same time.
Hey, you finished your game! And it works!
Fun to play, but obviously way too short. :)
I don't think I figured out quite how to play it: I'd connect the worlds and hit "Generate Path", but it didn't seem like anything would happen after that point, and my energy would keep dropping (running Firefox).
Music is very nice. Took me a while to discover I could also click and drag to rotate the view.
Very cool idea, and everything seems to be working right. Got hard really fast.
Really cool idea! Nice interpretation of the theme.
I had some difficulty running it on Mac OS X: it got an error while trying to load the level files. I don't think it was finding it via the relative path: you might make it easier by finding the path containing ColouredWorlds.love and setting it as the current working directory.
I worked around it by dropping the "love" app directly in the same directory, and then running in the terminal:
$ love.app/Contents/MacOS/love ColouredWorlds.love
A lot of fun, and good use of the theme. Never quite beat that 10th level. The 9th sure tricked me. Geat game idea! Would love to see it developed further.
Very awesome for 72-hours! Fun, and it has a basic AI!
I like the way the camera sort of swoops onto the action (delayed pan), as opposed to just shrinking directly to it.
Fun enough, but I couldn't do very much. Never figured out how to mine rocks, is there no tool for that? There were things that looked like pickaxes, but these were tracked as regular axes for chopping trees. Anyway, it's a nice go!
Nice job!
It's a bit too hard, to me. Hard to tell which planet is being aimed at if there are more than one in the path of the missle. Also, as someone else noted, it's a bit hard to keep up with the planets on a trackpad, maybe they could slow just a bit.
It might be easier to tell where the missiles were headed if they moved in a straight line - that is, if they targeted where the planet is going to be after a certain distance, rather than where it is now (in real life it'd be done this way, as it saves on fuel ;) )... but I suppose that requires a bit of math.
Ran fine for me on Firefox, at least on a MacBook Pro.
Game's terrifically fun, and a fantastic idea. Great graphics, good sound, great take on the theme...
It was a bit easy, though - I never really struggled at any point.
Post your source, it's required! This is 48-hour compo. Minified isn't readable, I'm guessing it doesn't count.
Game is fun enough. Is there an end, or you just keep trying to expand?
I'm assuming this is the link that was meant to be posted (by going to github.com/cboissie and poking around).
https://github.com/cboissie/cboissie.github.io/tree/master/ld30
Er nevermind, even that is still minified. :P
Mmmm. Bacon.
Absolutely amazing!
Fun game! Those guided-missile peas are a thorn in my side. ;)
Since you're not actually throwing food yourself, just shooting bullets of some sort, the weapon doesn't seem all that terribly thematic, really.
Awesome. Left me wanting more. Those guys with the mirrors could be so infuriating. How dare you have weaponry equal to my own! Heh. :)
Fantastic graphics and ambience, and really polished. And the game feels like a puzzle game (love puzzle games!), even if it's probably more action than puzzle.
This game has no gorram right to be as fun as it is.
Would be nice to have a scoring system, or something to make it feel like progress (and compare how much longer you've lasted than your friends).
Another web game with a similar theme:
http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-32/?action=preview&uid=38974
Fun play, good interpretation of the theme. Over too quick :)
The idea reminds me of the idea behind my game for LD 30, "Friendly Baubles". Had to connect friends from your different "worlds" by matching up their dialog and shooting them at each other. (Dumb game, but the idea was fun to work on, anyway.)
Managed to beat two, but still had no real idea what I was doing.
Great, ambient music and graphics!
Very relaxing, pretty art. I hope you guys continue working on it!
I'm the worst stone fighter in the world.
Great music, awesome game idea, well executed.
An HP bar could be useful.
Link to the CoffeeScript source for your compo entry?
Well, that was fun. Definitely left me wanting more.
Definitely a novel take on the theme, and I feel like it worked pretty well as a game.
One minor issue I had was that jumping and moving sideways so you hit a platform shortens the jump, which makes for mild awkwardness in the controls. But in general it felt really smooth.
Oh yeah. And the added music for the "Bass Blast" were decidedly "trebly" ;)
The graphics and music are great!
...The collision detection seems unrealistic though. Kind of ET-for-Atari style - if someone punches where your feet are on the screen (you seem to be up in back of them by a few feet?) you still get hit, etc. IOW, looks like a layered perspective, but plays by an exact collision detection, which isn't intuitive.
The game itself is basically button-mashing, so not really too much fun after a minute or so.
The intro's awesome!
Fantastic game! Fun and versatile theme, and great, nostalgic sound.
I have to confess I never could figure out how to get past what's probably the first non-tutorial level, with the big gap. I could never quite manage to get myself up high enough to that platform. I'll have to come back to it and try again later.
Really great job!
This game is freaking fantastic. Really well-done!
My only complaint is that it's hard to click on the green balls while moving - maybe if there were an in-game cursor whose game-field position stayed in place while the character moved off (until it hits the edge of the screen anyway), it would be easier to grab? But then I suppose mouse-grabbing's a problem for the most part in web games... And it helps that the actual gamespeed is slow enough to usually give me time to grab stuff (unless that's just my computer, heh)
It doesn't seem like it fits the theme very well, though... I mean, repulsor/rocket/attractor is a common enough theme in 2d platform games I think. But still loads of fun!
Fun game! I think it'd help if the controls were a bit more effectful (used keyboard+mouse); it felt a bit sluggish (not framerate, just gameplay due to time it takes to turn).
It's really difficult to get the throwing power just right, though practice helps. Also, waiting until they're close up. :D
Pretty fun.
Really difficult to build up enough steam to kill them. If I kill one and then die, after the restart the firing is out of sync, making it harder to dodge both bullets.
So, personally, I really couldn't get anywhere in the game with those valid keys... so I hacked the source to give me "JKL;"... I'm assuming you had that originally since it was "JKLH" instead of "HJKL". Then I got 10, 11, and then 37 spectators dead, so that worked better for me personally. :)
I get why you changed it though. Still, maybe a choice would be nice. I just couldn't be fast/consistent enough with HJKL (even though I'm completely a vim user... don't ask me!).
Anyway, fun game, and a nice interpretation of the theme.
I think that music would probably kill me too if I had to listen to too much of it. ;)
Great idea, great execution, clever game/level titles. :)
Frustrating wall deaths, but hexagore's probably right that it makes it a much better challenge. Still probably found them more frustrating than fun, though.
Couldn't finish the game. Probably right towards the end, with three enemies, all up on platforms, with the tree between them. Just could not do it fast enough to get all three!
I love the unconventional weapon. What a great idea, and the voicing really adds a lot to it. Some of the mechanics don't completely make sense, like "sending" yourself or the puppet underground, when in fact you're no longer standing on the platform (so there's no way to reach it through the ground). But it comes in handy, even if it doesn't make physical sense. ;)
I didn't have trouble with the camera, but I thought the "send projection" thing was too finnicky. Kept missing my target and having to send it over again. Would be nice if you could left/right the projection or something.
Lovely game! Great work!
Love me an isomorphic game.
That room like two before the lights go out is insane, though. So hard to tell where things are in spatial relationship to one another.
Didn't get past the four guys waiting for you at the bottom of the stairs, couldn't find the way to proceed there.
Great game!
The graphics are fantastic! Can't believe you did 'em all in 48 hours. And the music. Guess the gameplay's not complex enough to have needed much programming, though, so guess that'd leave you the time you need.
Neat game, neat idea. :)
Yay! I got victory with no terrors on my very first playthrough!
Then I played it again to see the lovely little pleas for help from the townspeople. ;)
I have a feeling this game would be extremely challenging for a lot of people I know, who can't touch-type. Hunt-and-peck won't exactly work here! I'll bet you could program macros to type the words in for you, though - then you could just hit one key to type them in. ;)
Would make a nice diversion as part of a larger typing tutor / typing practice app.
Seems pretty solid, and it's a fun/cute game. Good use of the theme, too. Nice job!
I like it. I can't get past cave 2, those little red thingies are a pain in my rear.
The Web/HTML5 thing crashes for me (Firefox/MacOS). I've been seeing a lot of complaints about Unity HTML5 builds not working on MacOS, but that Firefox fixes it (but it never does for me). Just FYI.
Hilariously awesome! :)
Okay, well there's not much to it right now so I can't rate it very highly - but I _love_ that you wrote this in Elm! And you were unexperienced with the language, which makes it so much harder. That deserves an extra point just because you're crazy brave. :)
I've played with the idea of doing my next LD in a language like Elm or possibly PureScript, _maybe_ ClojureScript. I'm worried about performance degradation in using those languages, but I feel like they probably win out for developer productivity (_provided_ I'm already good and familiar with the languages before I start), given the fact that (especially for Elm and PureScript) certain whole classes of runtime bugs go away.
I might use this LD's game as a template to try rewriting it in one or two of those languages, to see how comfortable I can get, and if I feel like it saves me troubles.
I can't seem to open the door. I tried jumping in front of it, onto it, from it... :(
Doesn't seem to fit the theme particularly?
Solid game. Mechanics seem to work well, and it's undeniably an unconventional weapon. ;)
Text is too small/blurry for me to read (didn't rate). :(
Nice! Makes me think of Worms, somehow. :)
Well, that was quite fun.
Bonus point for writing it in Elm. If I feel adventurous I may try to use it in a future LD. :)
Um, yours is pretty damn hard too. :)
Nicely done. Creative (and frustrating) idea.
On the second cutscene, I shot myself with my own bullets while the dialog was still playing out. I'm all, "wow, glitch!" But no, that's the gameplay mechanism. :)
Seems to work okay if I fire a stream of shots, and then get the hell outta the way. But I still usually die eventually of failing to dodge myself. Much like all the weapon's testers. ;)
@sanojian - you don't really have to get particularly close to the blocks - the floppy bit/tether stretches if you get the momentum going, just swinging it around. Faster it goes, further it stretches (to a point)... like one of those rubber-ball paddle thingies.
@madameberry - Yeah, it's a little less tiring on a trackpad (what I used), but I'm thinking if I work on this post-compo, I'll incentivize less repetitive swinging. Like the weapon will overheat or something if it goes too many times too fast in the same direction (probably ditch the whole "con/sibling" idea - maybe an energized alien so I can keep the sounds, though - they're fun!). I'll have to play with it a bit to find out what works best. And maybe plug in a mouse. :)
BTW, if people want to play with the tether and springiness, you can open a JavaScript console and muck with the value of AntiCon.defs.TENSOR_TETHER_STRETCH_LENGTH. You probably don't want to fuss with the tether length "at rest", because if you lengthen that it just makes it harder to get it swinging. :)
Lengthening the swing does indeed make it easier to hit the baddies without getting close in, but it also makes it much harder to clear/avoid bullets...
@gnx, that's basically just a function of how fast your mouse is. I mostly practiced with a trackpad. At the moment there's no speed limit, so it actually jumps to wherever the mouse is now (somewhat useful info on the tablet, heh: you can just warp to wherever you touch next). I'll probably add a per-frame speed limit if I continue working on it, but meanwhile you can just slow down your wrist... ;)
Nice game! Simple, but good fun.
Might want to check out "Love Hurts", another web game with a similar theme:
http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-32/?action=preview&uid=12006
@jmborden yeah, as you can see I didn't go for an FPL. Might next time. I'm a little concerned about efficiency because most of the current offerings seem to sacrifice it in order to preserve immutability (where applicable).
But immutability would've saved me valuable debugging time with my first Ludum Dare (#30). I managed to avoid problems this time around, but I'd enjoy playing around with Elm or PureScript, or possibly ClojureScript, see where I get. I like ClojureScript because it's closer to the actual language I'll get errors in ;) ...but Elm and PureScript let me have ADTs and strict typing, which can help avoid certain kinds of mistakes. I'll have to play with them all.
Pretty awesome, love the crazy little songs. Obviously since the game's really more about the votes than the actual songs, you could've omitted them if you had to, but I'm glad you spent the time making them, adds a lot to the experience. :)
Can't launch the Mac app. No errors, nothing happens.
MAC FIX:
Open the terminal and type:
chmod +x /Users/mcowan/Downloads/Freakish\ Revolution\ Mac\ OS\ X/freakish\ revolution.app/contents/MacOS/Freakish\ Revolution
(your exact path may differ, adjust as needed)
Not sure why the program wasn't set executable when Unity generated it or whatever...
Decent game. Feels like the bullet collision doesn't take sometimes, like for the "unconventional" weapon, even when I'm fully charged. But the gameplay's pretty solid (though there's not much to it). Nice job!
Terrific graphics, and the gameplay feels very clean. I'd love to see more of it! Very impressive for 48 hours.
I can't get "feather" either. I can get "faether"...
Nice job using ClojureScript - functional programming ftw!
Thanks for fixing, it works great now.
But: I had no idea what to do with "thcr"; I had to peek levels.cljs to see what word I was meant to make, heh. :)
It would be nice if there was at least some sort of congratulatory message when you finally beat it.
Anyway, I had fun!
Simple and short, but well done, fairly polished, and fun. Nice work!
Would be nice if there was some sort of feedback when you push the DVDs into the pit, so you can be sure you're heading in the right direction. That, and a display of how many DVDs remain to be shoved in.
I played the HTML5 version, as I'm on a Mac at the moment. I see the decals fine (Firefox) - at least I assume you're talking about things like the signs on the bus stop, and the game DVD covers?
If you're having trouble with the decals, it might be because some browsers refuse to let JavaScript load up arbitrary files for resources, as there are security problems with that. If you can put it up on a server and use it from there, you may find that it works better? Worth a shot (if you can get access to a hosting server).
The artwork (bus schedules, game DVD covers) are not original creations that you made during the compo though - isn't that a rule violation?
Hey, so question: If I wanted to set up a private lua server to run for a friendly LAN party or something - how would that be done? The sources made reference to a console "reload" command to load a different server from a file, but I don't know how to get the console, nor the format/expected pathname of the file... :)
Crafting4U: I think you scare them away by sneaking behind rather than getting them from the front or (sometimes) side.
Fun to play. Might be nice if you don't get sent away even when you sneak up behind them. The path-finding for your adversaries seems to be inefficient in wide-open spaces.
Man, I can NOT get more than half way there. Incredibly addictive game, though.
Yeah, I agree, forcing a FB login seems pretty sketchy.
Really stellar game. Addictive, fun, catchy tunes. Near perfect!
Did pretty well, but there's no way I'm getting through that boss, no sir. Especially when I've already used up all the handiest words by then ;)
Really great execution of an interesting concept. Seems many people thought of using words as weapons, but yours is probably the most directly "weapon" I've seen so far. :D
As usual, you've made a fantastic game in 48 hours, complete with addictive music.
Took me a while to realize that there is zero incentive in actually _using_ the weapons on the badguys, except when it's necessary to clear some space or eliminate a threat - that the goal is actually to obtain these weapons. Which is cool, because it forces you to gain a familiarity with the different weapons so that you can easily switch gears to the different weapons based on which one you just picked up (there's little time for studying them, naturally).
Nice!
I guess spawning only happens if you move/the screen scrolls, which is handy because I can sort of chill for a bit if necessary if something else needs my attention. :)
Looks like fun! Very respectable first JavaScript game.
I can't escape the G man long enough to destroy all the records. Be nice if there was a way to slow the G man down, maybe if the vomit made him slower for a bit or something.
Holding the key down moves, pauses, then moves in a sustained fashion; this is an artifact of how the keydown event works in JavaScript, but you could work around that by setting a flag when keydown is fired, and removing the flag when keyup is fired, and checking that flag in the main loop/timeout callback instead of calling a function directly from the keydown handler.
Nice job!
FYI, Linux build doesn't work out of the box... I unpacked it, plus the window one, and then ran the Linux binary (TheMaitreD.x86_64) from within the Windows directory.
The message I get when running within the Linux directory is "There is no data folder". Obviously that's incorrect, but maybe some items are missing from within there?
...and I'm wrong, that only got me slightly farther. I notice all the level* files are missing from the Linux one; perhaps that's part of the issue?
(However, the Windows build did work out of the box on Ubuntu Xenial, using Wine. Fantastic game! Hope you plan to put it on Steam!
Ha! I made it pretty far on my first life, and then for some reason I had trouble figuring out the first little area past the spawn point (but I love that: using your solidified tiles from going under the platform, as newly available platform to rise up the tower!). And then I kept dying on stupid stuff, like touching a spike underneath my ledge, instead of giving it a quick hop. I must be tired ^_^
If you're still doing a post-compo version of this game, let me know (`micah@addictivecode.org`)! The idea's very intriguing, and it seems like there's probably a lot of room for creative puzzles with it.
Save points might be nice :D
Looks cool, but man I had little idea what I was doing. Placed a couple buildings and stared at it a while. :)
I'm in awe. That's a fantastic game for 48 hours!
I like the visuals that identify the barriers to movement. It's like the ones in VR games, and gives a clear indication of where you're meant to be.
The music's so chill, and the Gaia/earth creature looks great. :)
The first level with coins was fairly challenging, but I did manage to make the end. :D
Cool, a chemistry game in JavaScript! Congrats on finishing this all on your own in 48 hours
Like @shillingburg I basically just fumbled around, but it seemed to fall into straightforward patterns. Pretty easy to interpose the "extra" atoms in with all the rest just by making it a link in a chain.
Ended up being a bit easy (even for a chem n00b like me!), maybe something else is needed to make it more challenging. But it's always great to see good educational STEM game ideas!
Even just a sound effect or two for the start/end of making a connection, and maybe finishing a compound, could make a difference in the "feel" of the game. But I know everything's a scramble in these jams to fit what you can in the available time.
Anyway, great job! And thanks for checking my game out too. ^_^
Yay, a fellow JavaScripter! ^_^
I love the artwork in this. The difficulty gets too much for me fairly quickly, but it's fun!
Very zen!
Yeah, a bit extra-rough for mac users, especially on a MacBook. Two-fingered clicking does right click, but apparently not reliably enough to get far in the game (not to mention how overwhelming the black ants can be).
But I know how it can be when you have to scrap your project and start something new from scratch, and this game's pretty impressive for six hours' work! Congratulations on finish a game for Ludum Dare!
Congratulations on finishing a game in 14 hours! Guess even a full weekend still has time for a Ludum Dare entry!
Fun, zany concept. A bit light on substance of course, but hey, you finished it, and it's reasonably fun. :)
Haha! Poor Potto, can't do anything right.
Great game! I had a lot of fun. The challenge level was just right.
Maybe a "challenge" mode where you may only jump a limited number of times? (Inspired by your GIF racing through the diagonal-spikes enclosure level)
Neat idea! The first bee level was a challenge. I beat it, but didn't take time to play much further. Congratulations on finishing a game in 72 hours!
I thought the game wasn't going so well, down to one little friend, when lo and behold the lovemaking begins! (They even make love to themselves to produce, what versatile guys!) They sure mature fast, too. No wonder the invading army wants them so bad! :D
Game was a lot of fun. Sure is hard to protect them when there's a bunch of them, but protecting a couple is a piece of cake.
Took me a bit to get used to the single-bullet respawn happening. I'd sit there leaning on the clicker, wondering why my bullets aren't reaching the invaders. ;)
Congratulations on completing such an entertaining game by yourself in only 48 hours!
I had a little difficulty figuring out what to do at first. I think a little more feedback that you really can't move inanimate objects (perhaps a refusal to enable "pick up" on them at all, with a buzzer sound?) might help with that.
The variety of aliens and their workings (the Chrysornax and their ability to chain / hatred of cuddles especially) offer great variety. The puzzles are short but challenging, and there are a bunch of them!
It's amazingly good for 48 hour compo! Really impressive!
It could maybe use a "par" or something to improve the challenge. And earned stars based on how close to par? I suppose you'd have to add a game element that needs those stars...
Ah, no! Nonononono no! There needed to be so much more to that! D:
Heheh. So fun. Wanted to keep playing. Excellent job to have made this yourself in only 24 hours! Whoa!
Congratulations! You made a game! ^_^
I agree that the store makes it hard when aliens start shooting - and the store HUD gets in the way when there's aliens that spawn by the store, too.
Very simple, yet challenging!
Love the art, and the variety of characters. Your guy jumping around with enthusiasm is great, I can see why it's so infectious!
Solid offering. Congratulations on finishing it in only 48 hours, especially if you're newish to Unity!
I like that it's a tower defense that has the shot powerups from my favorite classic sh'mups. Defending those towers sure is a lot easier once you've got fast spreader shots, but then the enemies ramp things up too.
Really fun!
This is a straight up amazing game for 48 hour, solo compo! It's a complete and enjoyable level. I really got into automating as much as possible to speed up the bamboo growing process and win me that trophy. Has a "factorio but for gardening" feel!
I'd love to see this developed into a full game. If you ever do, please let me know! micah@addictivecode.org
I love TIS-100, so it was fun to see this game! Could really use a debugger or something, though, because when something goes wrong, it's very difficult to tell what it was. Particularly with the SCA command, I thought.
Surprisingly fun for such a simple concept. The "hop out of your seat and place your guns" bit has a mild "Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime" feel (but fortunate that you don't have to go and individually man the guns!
I like thta I have to anticipate their future location and adjust accordingly with the gun aim, and that I can often hang out in their blind side (where they have no guns), and wail at them from there! ^_^
Congratulations on making such a fun game by yourself in only 48 hours! And thank you for having played my game as well. :)
Excellent first-ever game! Was fun, and very challenging once you reach the level where "which pixel to get" keeps shifting. :)
Sorry about that, @joyfired, I'll try to be careful of that for next time!
Do note that the music can be toggled with the "M" key (though the other sounds will still play)
Heh, @tiny-planet-studios - you can probably tell I spent like 95% or more of my available time on developing the core mechanics. Everything else definitely took a backseat (especially the art, obviously).
The wavy-line-following enemy was intended to be a _touch_ aggravating. But it _is_ predictable, following a path that's just a combination of sine waves that have a whole ratio (so it cycles predictably). But yeah, it trains you to pause for a moment for it to reach you and return, when all the rest of the game is "go go go! you're going to miss the time!"
BTW, I hadn't actually beat the game at the time I published it, so wasn't 100% sure it was possible in such a strict time limit. :D I was gratified to learn, after a few more practice runs, that it is indeed possible - even easy, once you've learned the right pattern of moves ;)
@nilanjan Thanks very much! I'm glad you think the stick art is "charming" - both of the sprites in the game are prototype art of the "what can I bang out in GIMP just as fast as humanly possible?" variety! ;) The enemy in particular is very obviously me just scribbling something out and hitting "Save" ^_^
@kleinzach, perhaps it is a bit too mean. I'd definitely leave the respawn mechanic in - otherwise there's almost no game (I didn't have time to make bigger levels and such, spent all my time on the mechanics!). But I could make it a lot less aggressive of a time limit.
It'd probably also help if you don't hit a coin automatically when you fall at the start. That starts the timer the moment you've fired up, before you've had a chance to think/move.
Sounds from a few peoples' comments that the collision could use some adjustments. I think they're all radius-based, so probably just need to expand it a few times. I think I did purposefully ease up the enemies' collision a bit so it wasn't _too_ ridiculously tough.
Thanks to those congratulating me on making my own engine! To be clear, the engine was _not_ part of the 24 hours, but was mostly developed beforehand (just in case), so that's the "preexisting codebase".
@piscythe, thanks for the feedback!
Usually when you can't jump when you feel like you ought to, you're in the midst of a bounce from having landed in a previous jump (or from a bouncepad, especially). Ideally you should be able to jump when you bounce, too, but I guess I didn't get that quite right. ;)
To those having difficulty predicting enemy movements: They're all simple repeating paths. The floating-in-space enemy has a more complex path, but it's predictable if you watch it. The two enemies traversing the larger world in opposite directions are moving at slightly different speeds, so they don't keep meeting up at the same place each revolution - that may be part of the difficulty in predicting them (and is intended, of course).
@philomory, oh yes, definitely! But I'm probably not going to do further work on this game idea - or, if I do, it'll probably end up being very drastically different.
I had wanted to make something more Mario-ish, but with 5-ish hours left to go all I'd done was the mechanics and the music, and probably the bounce pad sounds. So I just whipped up the gameplay you see here, which I'm pretty happy with, but yeah, it's definitely on the higher end of difficulty.
Ideally I'd have larger levels, with more worlds, and more to do on them, and various types of enemies. But if I did that, I'd probably scrap the disappearing coins - they can only work if you can very quickly get back to where you started to reclaim them, and wouldn't be good at all for larger worlds.
All in all, the coins were a "clever" device to keep folks playing, instead of the game being done in all of 10 seconds. ^_^
@frenchie, thanks for the feedback!
It actually would be a piece of cake to make the camera orient on the user. But I wasn't convinced I really wanted to do that, and left it out. I think I was concerned that it would move the world around the player too much and could be a bit dizzying. I don't know if "lagging" the camera a bit behind the player's alignment might help or hurt with that.
There's been a few other games with a similar control scheme to mine; on one of them, a user suggested orienting A/D to "left/right", but with the same key meaning the same clockwise/counter-clockwise direction until it's released. That could possibly work to help alleviate confusion with the controls... but I imagine a quick reversal after the "meaning" of D had changed might then be surprising. That is, if you were underneath the world, and used "D" for right (counter-clockwise), and then, once you looped around to the top of the world, you quickly released and then pressed "A" for the reverse direction, you'd actually wind up going in the same direction you were, even though it's a different keypress.
I imagine you could fudge that away with some sort of release timer or something, but anyway it's an intriguing idea. Of course, the camera alignment method is much more reliable at ensuring the player isn't confused about the controls.
Another way to improve visibility of the world-gliding enemies would be to have the camera zoom out a bit more, either by default, or when the player is near the prime jump spot to that world.
Enemy avoidance would probably be much better if I improved the ability to jump when you bounce from the big landings. Maybe I could find a way to fudge that so it "feels" better.
I don't currently plan to do a post-compo version of this game; or if I do, it'll probably be very substantially different (and later).
@blaster391, I find that there are patterns that you can discover through practice that make it mainly a matter of skill. However, today I'm realizing that because the "elapsed game time" counter doesn't reset when you die, those patterns can actually shift and clobber you without much warning, bringing the game into that trial-and-error territory.
I think I've been avoiding it mainly because when I was practice getting my runs fast enough to beat it, I'd just spam refresh when I knew I was taking too long - so I always got the same pattern to practice on.
@gamerjenn, I know the single-hit kill can be frustrating, but I liked the challenge of it, so I'd like to keep it. But I _would_ like to diminish the sheer frustration of it, particularly when the death isn't really your fault. I'm thinking that fixing the above-mentioned timing issue, increasing the visibility of the jump to the large world, and maybe being more forgiving with the "can't jump when bouncing" thing?
@izunah, yeah, more bodies would be nice. But then I'd need more mechanisms and obstacles to keep it interesting, and there wasn't any time left for that... and with the coin reappearing mechanic, you don't want to get too far away from the starting position!
**NOTE**: A [new, mildly-tweaked version](http://micah.cowan.name/smallio/latest/) has now been uploaded, to make things just a little bit more fair during gameplay. It's still fairly punishing, but not quite so unfairly so. See the description at the top for details.
Man, I suck at this game! Congratulations for finishing this in 48 hours. :)
Gameplay wise, the only things that hung me up were the colored plugs part (it took me a while to realize those green/red boxes meant I chose the right cord to go to that box - I was expecting to actually plug the cord in! - but I realize time was tight), and the fact that a mouse click is needed to advance the text (expected Enter or Space to work, since I'm mostly using the keyboard to naviage)
Very respectable game! You finished a game, which is quite an achievement in 48 hours. Great job!
I am so in awe of this game. It's an excellent example of how sometimes more restrictive controls (such as being forced to turn the wheels for a simple 2d location) can enhance the fun. The sounds are awesome and immersive. The crappy, money-grubbing company adds to the fun :) Congratulations!
Lol, can't get too far in this game on my laptop trackpad ^_^
Fun and funny. Nice job in 48 hours, and the sound is particularly entertaining!
Hi! Mac build (both pre- and post-jam) is still failing. An excerpt of the error message (if I cd into `Strangeness.app` and run `MacOS/Strangeness` directly from there:
``` /Users/mcowan/Downloads/Strangeness.app/Contents/Resources/lib/yaml.rb:5:in `
I tried doing a local `gem install psych`, but that didn't fix it for me. I have fink installed, so I also did an `apt-get install libyaml`. That didn't work. Neither did copying `libyaml-0.2.dylib` into `Strangeness.app/Frameworks` - apparently it actually has to be the `/usr/local/opt` directory. What _did_ work, was creating that directory path (as root, via sudo) and copying the dylib file there. So I got it working for _me_... but most people will have more of a challenge in getting `libyaml-0.2.dylib` in the first place (unless, like me, they're a "fink" user), and copying to that absolute path is definitely a hassle. Maybe there's some other path within the `Strangeness.app` that would work, but I didn't find it.
Great, solid little game! Congratulations!
I especially like how many of your puzzles will fake you out into thinking you solve it a particular way (misdirection).
Looks like we both did something Super Mario Galaxy-ish (though mine was 2D).
As with others, I found the parkour a little on the too-challenging side, but it all seems to work fairly well, and the sparse lighting and the audio go a long way to making it an experience.
A little bit of a ramp-up/acceleration on the movement, rather than just suddenly moving, might go some way to easing the controls a bit.
Excellent job!
I love the artwork, and the look of the characters!
I feel like it'd be nice if gravity slowly pulled the bullet into the planet or something, because after a shot is fired, it seems like it's basically just about dodging that one bullet.
How the _hell_ did I make it through my first playthrough without squashing any hyoomins?!
Made up for it by squashing as many as I could the next round. Only got like 23 though.
Great game! Fun, challenging, simple. :) Congratulations on getting it done in a weekend!
Wow, I'm totally in awe. This game is great. Way, way too short - I hope you make it into a fuller game. Also with gamepad controls or something, because the mouse controls get a bit tiresome.
The look and feel, the art, the mood, the idea, the panicky little humans, and the very atmospheric music, everything's just fantastic. Great job!
And thanks for having played/rated/commented on my game as well. Appreciate it!
Nice to see a fellow JavaScript game-coder in the Portland area! ^_^
My [first LD game](http://micah.cowan.name/friendly-baubles/) a few years ago was about making connections between people, too (I think the theme was "Connected Worlds").
@law5guy Heh, well believe me, no one is more surprised by that than I am. All the actual gameplay stuff was added in the last few hours of the compo, and I had no real idea what it was going to be until it was finished. Toss in some coins, make them reappear, add baddies. Presto, game! :D
I always spend the bulk of my time (a) creating weird and interesting mechanics (b) wrestling with debugging all the quirks in those weird and interesting mechanics. ;) I need to up my tool game so I can develop those more rapidly. Then maybe I'll have time left to throw art at it, instead of basic HTML canvas shapes, and scribbled, unanimated sprites that took 30 seconds to draw. ;)
@law5guy I think that worked well for you. The art direction started good, and stayed good. You can clearly see what happened with mine ;) Meanwhile, you also managed to turn that art into a game, or working and fun toy at any rate. I count that as wild success, especially for 48 hour compo!
Don't forget to include a link to the sources (if the .zip doesn't include them). Might be good to identify what platform the game is for as well? I'm assuming Windows, I'll have to check it out when I'm at my Windows machine.