Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → mike_inPrinciple
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | 43 | Sacrifices must be made | 👥 | Threadpoint | jam | 476 | 3.47 | 3.26 | 2.87 | 2.51 | 4.08 | 3.50 | 2.09 | 3.17 | |
| 2018 | 42 | Running out of space | One Man's Trash | compo | 190 | 3.64 | 3.58 | 3.50 | 3.91 | 3.58 | 3.52 | 3.39 | 3.14 |
mike_inPrinciple leaves an average of 51.0 feedback comments each event.
I found the game quite immersive, which was surprising to me, because I don't normally find text adventures compelling at all. On my first and only playthrough I was able to succeed at finishing the story successfully, as far as I could tell. I didn't have to drop the cargo or anything like that, so I didn't really experience the "sacrifices must be made" aspect of the game at all. I enjoyed the game. Good work.
Really liked the physics. However, I didn't enjoy having to mind the vases. I would have preferred some solid objects like boxes that can be catapulted out of the truck's bed, so that when they bump one another it's not a problem for the player. This way, I felt like safety was prioritised far too much over risk taking. And the fun part of videogames, in my opinion, is the latter, not the former. Get my wife to drive if you want safety, but we'll all be asleep when we get there.
I understood the puzzle immediately, which made your game very short for me. I didn't like that some dialogue bubbles would disappear faster than I could read them, whereas some would stay for much longer than needed. Would have preferred to have control over that.
@thomas-olsson, your game is really good, but if you don't review other people's games it won't be seen by many. I think you should take some time to do this, as the game looks like a contestant for a high spot in the competition in my view. Good luck either way, just wanted to encourage you to get to at least 20.
Couldn't get either trigger to work at all. Didn't evaluate because of that.
I couldn't figure out how to get past the day one report. Is this bad?
After the 5th time or so that I died due to obstacles I felt like I hadn't encountered and / or learnt about yet and I was teleported to the start I gave up playing. I'm not going to subject myself to this degree of repetition. Sorry. I really liked that the music was there to help navigate the level, though.
The game doesn't work. Moving your doc around is broken. When you move back the doc turns around at the end of the locomotion. A and D turn as opposed to strafing, like in the '80s. When doing the surgeries I was not able to understand the instructions so I "did the wrong thing" 2 times in a row. That was sufficient for me to quit.
Saw you make part of this, so I'm a little biased. With that said:
1. I enjoyed that it's a complete game, so to speak. It has a progression, with parts that get locked off after you pass them, enemies of increasing difficulty, and a final boss as well. I also like it that it has a tutorial, some lore, and a full loop with credits. Further, there are 4 different abilities. I ended up using the teleport the least, by the way.
2. Aesthetically I am torn. I enjoy the quantity of detail in the art (with some glaring absent details, like no walk cycle and no jump animation). There are castles in the background, the blood moon, different enemies with animations, an animated boss with a few attacks and so on. However, I think many of the assets look somewhat unappealing, like the ground tiles, for instance. This is very much subjective, of course.
3. I like the audio effects, they are quite different from one another and I appreciate that some attacks travel across the screen. The lack of music is quite evident though, which knocked my rating down somewhat.
4. The theme was hit in principle, however, I didn't feel any compunction whatsoever in not killing the innocent dudes. From my understanding they were either necessary to play, or in the way. So I didn't see them as sacrifices, more as blood containers.
Congrats for making another LD game. Cheers.
Have you seen these? https://proxy.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fpokemongamersblog.files.wordpress.com%2F2008%2F10%2Fblue-luma.jpg&f=1. Nintendo may take issue with your art...
I could never figure out the connection between the number displayed on the final report for the day, in terms of profits versus the number I would have starting the following day. The sacrifices didn't seem to be worth the cost. HIring level 4 employees didn't produce more money. So I ended up in debt every time. Also, I ended up further in debt than I should have, but the game didn't end. What I perceived to be bugs ruined me experience, even though I thought the game was fairly well put together.
I couldn't enjoy your game much because I encountered what I interpret to be several bugs. From ramps spawning backwards to the car hitting barriers unexpectedly, from the car sometimes resetting despite it looking like it should have fallen on its wheels, to the acceleration simply not working because the rigidbody of the car was rotating on the Y axis (remember to lock the constraints). This looked like the type of game I could have enjoyed, but the poor execution ruined my experience.
Too easy to complete. Nothign to go back to once you're done wiht the game. Didn't enjoy the weird physics on the head, as it doesn't roll but it slides instead. Finally, I think you guys missed the theme, because it's not really about me making an informed decision to sacrifice anything. you decide that for me as I move from level to level. It's not a sacrifice, it's a different character I play as. With that said, i think the game looks very good in terms of setting. The sounds were also quite good for the theme you chose, in my opinion.
A solid entry. I can see myself playing it more, in potentia, but there are a few aspects of the experience that didn't click with me:
I find the aiming exceedingly difficult to control. I think there are several reasons for this:
1. There is no in game indication of where the cursor is (I did notice the arrow at the character's feet, but that's not what I mean). The standard pointer cursor blends in with the black and white graphics of the game and I often found myself swinging in the wrong direction.
2. The character's attack animation locks you in a direction. You need to wait until the end of the animation to rotate. I see why the devs did this, logically, but it may be a good idea to experiment with allowing the player to move and rotate the root bone irrespective of animation status.
3. Sometimes enemies spawn on the protagonist's head and they seem to want to stay there. The camera angle makes this difficult to notice, so the player finds himself swinging the sword pointlessly several times before he realises the situation.
4. The most deaths I experience were not from falling to my death, but rather being hit by enemies, because I wasn't swinging my sword their way, but rather the opposite way.
Conclusion about controls issues:
It seems to me that this game would benefit from a completely different approach to controls. At the moment it's setup as a twin stick shooter, however, in the game one never shoots anything. Perhaps a more Diablo-esque approach to the combat may have been more empowering for the player. Another option could have been an auto-targeting system based on proximity? Take these suggestions with a pinch of salt, of course, as they would entail redesign of the spawning system and who knows what else. The bottom line is I didn't enjoy the controls as a user, and that puts me off of the game forever, and you don't want that as a dev, and I don't want that as I player. :)
I also have a bit of feedback about the audio. The music seemed quite dramatic, enticing, and overall fitting of the setting, however, during gameplay it was really quiet for me. Perhaps its overall volume is set too low in the mix? I'm no expert, but the music felt faint while playing, and the lack of other in game SFX was much more evident because of this for me.
I really liked the purchasing system for repairs. There are a few problems, like less than clear UX for when you don't have enough money and seemingly pointless upgrades, like ATK+, but the repairing of blocks made me feel in control of the space running out situation.
Good work guys.
Hi there, I tried your game on request. Here's what I have experienced:
1. The description is incorrect. You don't use W to kick or Space to punch. It's left and right click, at least for me. 2. I started kicking enemies when it seemed appropriate, say at 0.5 meters distance, but that would get me hurt all the time. Also, some enemies would be impervious to any and all of my attacks. 3. At that point I started simply continuously clicking both the left and right mouse buttons and I started defeating all of the enemies without any trouble. When I got to score 100 I was bored, and I gave up playing, as it didn't look like the game would get any harder. 4. I saw your clouds in game teleport. It seems to me that you are moving their transform. You should have scrolled the x axis on the UV of the texture instead. Something like material.mainTextureOffset = new Vector2(Time.deltaTime, 0f); would probably have worked.
All in all, unfortunately, you have a broken game that is easily exploitable with very little incentive to keep playing it.
Fantastic execution, especially given the limited time. The UI for the numerical pass code and the verbal password looks the same. This led me to believe that I had to input a 4 digit number in the notes app password. I eventually solved the problem, thanks to somebody else, not myself.
As a substantially more mature man (read old) than the story discussed, I found both the main character and the child (L) insufferable. This made it very difficult for me to actually care for the girl's safety.
I think for a LD game this may be a little too ambitious, in that there is a lot that can go wrong. In my experience, the battles were far too slow. The first two to three turns were spent approaching one another. I never once felt in danger.
Unfortunately I grew bored of the game fairly quickly and I gave up playing after finishing the second battle.
Suggestion if you make a similar game again. Change the sun orientation so it points down. That way I at least have a reference as to where the llamas are going to fall so I can try and catch them. Alternatively, try a different camera angle.
I found the clicking on the students quite unresponsive. Considering the amount of plates this game expects the player to balance I find the precision required to successfully clicking to get the students to sit down is excessive and distracting. The same applies to determine which row they will go to. Perhaps adding steps on the sides of the auditorium may help clarify which row the student will choose to go to.
Lastly, a small detail, I found the professor's exploding head's sound obnoxiously loud.
I'm not sure why you decided the game needed a cage to come up over time. I think it would have been more interesting if the shelves would fill up and then maybe start to tip over from the weight or something. Because of the cage, I felt like my only option was aiming as high as possible, which made me stare at my character's low poly bottom and not be capable of seeing where I was going.
I got as far as a few levels in. My primary problem with this game is the inconsistency in the UX communication. Some level have balls that have physics, some don't. Some shrink over time with physics, some don't. Some levels need you to complete all balls to 42, some don't. This put me off of the game quite a bit. I think I would have appreciated different aesthetics for "balls" with different properties, so I would have been able to attempt to successfully resolve the levels before the dev forced failure on me as a user, just so I could understand what was expected of me.
I completed the game. The think I liked the least by a distance is the amount of clicks and movement I had to do to pick up a thing and use it. It's quite clunky. When you walk on an object, you have to drag the object into your inventory and only THEN can you equip it, which one extra drag movement I could have done without. Also, some object that are weapons don't look like weapons at all, like the faucet, for instance (assuming it is one, pixel art FTW).
I had 2s and 3s adjacent several times, yet, they would not get removed? I'm afraid I don't understand your game, so I gave up.
Well done Jolene, for helping daddy and mummy make games. I also make games like them, and me and my little daughter Zoë make games together too! If you have the time (unrelated to LD42), feel free to play this game Zoë and I made for our family: https://multi-core-collider.itch.io/table-top-gear
The pain...
Very well designed game. I studied the learning curve alongside the difficulty curve in your game thoroughly as I was playing through and I'm impressed at your level of competence both in systems design and level design.
I can only suggest two improvements: 1. Allow a small frame of leniency to jump off of a platform. You can leave the bool grounded variable on true for a few frames before you forbid jumping when the player reaches the limits of a ledge. 2. When detaching from sideways sticky walls, pressing down bounces you up. Talk to your friend spaceface14dev for a screenshot of what I mean.
Anyway, excellent job. I hope you go far.
I liked the blood permanence. I think there ought to be a way to control zombie killing. From what I understood, the boxes would fall on zombies and it would be pure luck whether they would be killed or otherwise. Generally I didn't feel much in control of the game.
I realised early on in my experience that I could simply delete the first slot of memory with each room I would cross. From that point on, remembering how the map would look like served no purpose. This weakened the effectiveness of the intended design.
With that said, I'm not sure the intended design works in the first place, at least not with this execution. I found the memory management mechanic to be irritating. It felt like a completely arbitrary limitation that served no other purpose other than annoying me as a player. It reminded me of the inventory limitations in the Resident Evil series of old.
I played this one for a while, for my first playthrough. After a while it got quite repetitive for me. I was climbing up, getting meat, burning it, rinse and repeat.
One thing that a buddy of mine who was watching me play suggested was that it would be more interesting if your safety on the surface from the wildlife depended on the snobby being alive and fighting. I concur with him. I think this would make the relationship between the snobby and the 99%-er much more realistic and subtle.
I think I encountered a bug. As I lost, I was holding one of the directional keys. This registered in the game over screen, which led me straight to the main menu, so I have no idea what my score was.
Peculiar experience, I'll grant you that. I thought that the game mechanic actually got in the way of the experience. I'm not sure what sense it made to read words and decide if this word was bold enough or large enough or if the character were far apart enough. I found myself more interested in the content of the videos than the words.
The experience aggravated for me when I started getting irrelevant and politically charged words all in a row, like "racism", "antifeminism", "bigotry", "chauvinism", "sexism", and so on. I felt like the game was trying to direct my thoughts much more than the films being played. And I got the impression that the game was all about demonstrating how the videos in question in fact were aimed to modify my mindset instead. I may be reading too much into this, but I always get defensive when I perceive that people, especially artists, devs included, are trying to project their morality onto me as an end user.
The only thing that I found weird in the game was that when I wanted to clamp 3 files I had to be exactly in the middle of them. I would probably add some kind of AI that checks left and right and the pushes you in the right direction by 1 unity before clamping the files.
In my experience, I didn't run out of space much. What I ran out of is time every game I played, so I'm not sure the theme has been hit as well as it could have?
With all this said, I enjoyed my time playing this game, but I think it would need more mechanics to retain interest.
I like the concept. I found myself spending a substantial amount of time in the menu, freestyling. This is largely because that gave me much more freedom than the game itself. I think the time limit in the game (assuming that's what it is) diminishes its engagement for me. I think I would have preferred to lose when I pressed the same key at the same point on the bar a number of times, as opposed to finishing randomly. A complete board would have resulted in a victory.
I had trouble understanding what the game wanted from me in terms of being on beat. I wanted to improvise sometimes, so I would do a 16th note, for instance, and I would get two orange boxes, but sometimes I would get one register and the other be ignored.
The colour scheme meant nothing to me. Had no idea what an orange box was as opposed to a yellow one. The only one I understood is the repetition brown one.
Another feature I think I would have enjoyed is re-listening to my "composition".
All in all, a solid entry, but the obscurity of a few of the communication devices in the game hampers its fun, in my opinion.
One thing I couldn't wrap my head around is the camera movement. I had no idea why it moved, when it would move, and what for. This was very distracting.
The thing I could not wrap my head around was the fact that you go through falling blocks to land under them, even though on the previous column you are comparatively higher. So, in 3D terms, you clip though the falling block. That got me in a non fun way. What got me in a fun way, is that my brain screamed press left, and the character walked right as the premise of the game goes.
I'm sure many people say this, but this is my very first straight 5. And I evaluated every category carefully. Thank you for this experience. I hope you win the contest.
The outermost blocks keep falling, so it's fairly easy to predict what to do. At that point the game becomes a grind. I rated it quite highly though, as it's quite complete, good looking and good sounding. Just not my cup of tea.
I enjoyed the experience overall, however, there was a design choice that led to a game breaking bug for me that I thought I would share. When I transition from 2D to 3D for the first time, I wanted to go down, not up. This is because in my mind my little ship was sailing on the sea before, so, when I transitioned to 3D, the game wanted me to navigate into what I thought was the sky. I would recommend simply blocking down movement when in 3D. That should solve the issue pretty simply.
I don't know if it's just me, but I felt like I had to press space quite a bit earlier than what the graphics suggested. I got used to it eventually, but with the speed increasing it tripped me up every now and then.
It took me a while to understand how to eliminate the blob. once I got it, it took a few seconds and I was presented with a winning screen.
The game has a relatively large world to explore, but nothing to do in it other then get redundant blocks to stop the blob, that, as far as I understand, are not needed anyway.
It feels to me like many disparate ideas went into the design, but they don't gel together in a coherent experience.
The art is hindering gameplay. It's not often not possible to tell where the colliders are. So several times I found myself hitting obstacles when I thought I wouldn't and avoiding obstacles that were actually in the background.
Every collision kills you immediately, even the ones on your wheels at slow descending speeds, which forces restarts. I gave up after the 5th restart.
I liked the concept but I couldn't get into it due to the choice of controls. The shoot key is mapped to left shift, which implies I should use my pinky to shoot. That caused me cognitive stress, that, compounded with the directional arrows for colour and WASD for movement while the floor is getting flooded made it almost impossible for me to play. I think I would have enjoyed this with one less layer of complexity, possibly, and the shoot button on something more central that I can use different fingers for, like my thumb for Space.
Interesting case study. I was completely convinced I would find a graphically interesting game from the thumbnail, and the only screenshot here, showing the only art that the game has that is actual art. But the game graphics and mechanics are very rough instead and fairly simple as well. This game sells itself well thanks to the thumbnail, but I found it quite shallow to play it.
I couldn't get a proper grasp of the mechanics. I clicked on memories and repaired them, but then that forced me to go repair other memories I had already seen. That grew old fast, so I started ignoring damaged memories.
Unfortunately, it looks like the text was written by somebody with a fairly weak grasp of the English language. Because this game is story driven, this damaged the experience quite a bit, in my opinion. I would recommend that for the next LD you guys invest some time at the end of the project to proofread your content with a native English speaker.
I enjoyed this one generally, but I'm not sure I agree with the idea of having the debris falling from the top kill you. I'm not sure this is actually what happens, but this was my perception.
The game seems to crash when clicking the Start button in the menu. I haven't investigated why, but I think it may have to do with selecting other menu options before you select Start. Look into it.
You have decided to move the character using forces and you have not limited the maximumVelocity in any way, so the game is very difficult to play. Not so much because you MADE a hard game by design, but rather because the character slides all over the place and very fast as well. I was not able to complete the first level.
I liked the matching idea, but there was a technical thing that was really bothering me, perhaps more than it should have. When you merged two bodies, the animation leads them to the center of the universe, as opposed to the centroid between them. What you can do to fix this is:
Vector3 centroid = ((planet[0].transform.position + planet[1].transform.position) / (float)planet.Length);
Then you can lerp to that position.
I couldn't get past the second level, so I didn't evaluate this game, but I thought the second level's locomotion mechanic was quite novel and brainy. It was interesting.
I think this game is excellent. I am very impressed with the vehicle handling. One could almost call it realistic! The only downside I saw to the experience, is the lack of motivation to do well, especially over time. If this game had a scoring system that is exposed to the player, with various evaluations, this game would be a straight 5 for me. Great job.
I found very little use for the rewind function. Unless I am mistaken, rewinding is only useful to attempt to be more efficient at egg collection. So unless one is deeply invested in getting a high score, which I was not, the rewind feature seems not particularly useful?
Then humour was there. I kinda wish I wasn't playing snake, so I could have focused on the song instead. :)
I liked the physics in the game, and the ability to rearrange gift. I caught some of the as they were falling, and it was a great feeling. However, I didn't enjoy the timer on the gifts. It seemed unjustified and unreasonably short. I wanted to take my time with the placement. Did you consider stacking the gifts on the stools and letting the physics do the failing for the player? I think that would have been more fun. Just my two cents.
I though the dialogue selection movements didn't do anything for the game other than increasing the chance of misclicking. This may have been the design intent, meaning that the devs wanted the drunk bear to slur his words, or say something he didn't mean due to inebriation. I found it irritating. This was a little mitigated, though not in a good way, by the fact that the comments the bear had to make were all unrelatable, in my opinion.
I thought I fell off my chair too often and unpredictably. This diminished my chances of success. Also, the pattern at which things come out of the walls is random, so you may get easy or difficult runs, and it's completely out of your control.
I didn't enjoy the controls in this game. When moving to a next tile, the controls get ignored, inconsistently. So I died quite a few times, because I had expected that the game would buffer my button presses. In simple terms, I pressed Right, Right, Up, yet the game thought I had pressed Right, Up, skipping the middle input, which sometimes led me to my death.
Secondly, I don't understand the purpose of doing any of the things you can do in this game. For instance, you can accumulate money and then spend it to fix the broken tiles. Just so you can accumulate money, and fix the same broken tiles again.
Lastly, I think RNG damages the experience substantially. On some runs I had half the level broken and no money, on some other I was more wealthy and I could easily manage the broken tiles instead.
I think the game was a little shallow. After I did the tutorial, I was capable of succeeding at every minigame (more or less) and a queue of customers never formed. So the game became dull fairly quickly for me.
I couldn't grasp the controls for a while during my play time. This led to numerous failures that were not enjoyable, because I thought them unfair. Then I read your description and learnt that you can rotate and go up and down with the right mouse click. That changed things, but it was too late for me, my good will towards the game had dissipated. I would recommend you add the controls in the blue space within you game. There seems to be plenty of space for you to fit instructions there.
THe only think I struggled with is enemy detection. I blame the asymmetrical and vertical map layout. Other than that, this was a great entry and I enjoyed what I played.
I enjoyed the "get out of the way" feeling I was experiencing throughout the game. I also liked the different languages the characters spoke in their funny chipmunk tones. This is a game that genuinely made me chuckle on multiple occasions. With that said, I cannot see it turned into anything other than a quirky jam game.
I lost once because the timer ran out without me noticing. I would appreciate being aware of my surroundings while I play. I understand the inherent difficulty and joy of balancing multiple plates at one time, however, in this case, I think the feedback is too meager.
I think the combinations make no sense. I cannot recognise the icons and what they will do. My brain basically resorts to "more combinations = more dollaz", which I think is in line with the design ultimately, but I do think this hurts user immersion.
With all this said, I found this entry fun to play and aesthetically pleasing. Nice work.
I think the physics in the game are too far removed from what I perceive as real or predictable to make this an enjoyable game. I spent the majority of my time avoiding conflict due to being almost certain that I would miss all of my attacks, and, in the game, all missed attacks result in inevitable (or close enough to inevitable) ultimate failure.
I had trouble jumping off of platforms when I wanted to. I would recommend you look into tricks to make the jumping mechanic more intuitive to execute. I though the standard non-charged jump was sufficient, and even excessively high to cover most distance. In fact, I often felt like I was hitting platforms above me.
In my opinion, you should have waited to move the hazards until the player inputs anything to make the character move, especially because you cancel input listening when you respawn. In other words, when you die holding the A key to go left, you respawn and your A key is ignored, yet, the hazards do trigger and you die quickly.
En enjoyable pick up and play top down shooter. Not very innovative, however, and the theme is only marginally present. The flames to devour the environment over time, yes, however, this is the typical "boulder is chasing me" mechanic.
One more thing, I found the game very easy to go through, yet, I died unexpectedly once when touching the fire. I wasn't able to clearly determine where my HP were and make decisions according to my health status.
Other than that, I had fun playing it.
The thing that kept me from enjoying this entry the most was the aim dependent movement controls. For a top down view, the conventional controls scheme is that you move in the direction you point your left stick (WASD) and that you aim independently from the direction you move. I got stuck in the environment many times due to this controls scheme.
The game has a great presentation, but is somewhat shallow in content.
I think this is one of the best narrative drive games in the jam so far, and it gets there without using words. You feel the oppression of your living space shrinking as you play, and at some point, you simply have to accept your inevitable and tragic fate.
Reminds me of good old mindless fun games like Carmageddon. Had a good time playing this, though I'm not sure where you could take it as a proper project. :)
I've tried a few playthroughs and several times I felt like I was being spotted without justification. It doesn't mean I'm right, I just felt that way. :) So I started focusing on the witnesses. Doing this made me slower so the population would grow too fast for me to cope. Unfortunately, due to this dynamic I didn't enjoy your entry as much as I thought I would.
With this said, it looks like a fairly complete game, so congrats for that.
I played it for a bit. Initially I thought it was quite a novel idea and well executed, what with all of the effects, screenshake, characters being fired at you and so on, but I was a little disappointed to find that there was no difficult curve, as far as I could tell. Nothing was managing to kill me and enemies were not becoming tougher.
Also, I don't think you hit the theme. I don't see how I would be running out of space. I always had somewhere to go.
I couldn't get past the first level where you drop through data. That level required me to memorise the pattern of the data all the way down. Should I fail, back to the start I go. I didn't enjoy that at all so I dropped it completely fairly quickly.
The art style and the narrative seemed compelling.
The spawning of boxes after the first wave is too slow, in my opinion. It seems to me that it would make more sense that we would get MORE boxes over time, so we get a proper difficulty curve.
I experienced a crash after my second restart.
Why F6 to restart? Am I missing a joke?
Art is stunning. Game is politically inclined. I enjoyed killing the earth. :)
One of the most feature complete games I've seen so far. It's a proper adventure game. One gripe I have with these games, usually, is the enemy respawn. I understand why it's there, but I'd be eager to see some new inventive solutions to the problem of empty rooms. Seeing exactly the same enemies appear makes me feel like my progress is being artificially held back. For instance, the Souls series did a great job of justifying full respawns, but that's rare. I'd like to see a differnt solution, like a change in enemies, or a reduction of them, or something. Fantastic job.
Liked the ship movement. Despite being in space it is quite responsive. That felt great. I really enjoyed that the player's shots were in tune with the music.
I found 2 bugs: 1. The music does not loop properly. 2. Point blank shots produce the particle effects but do not inflict any force on the asteroids.
One of the best games I've played in this event. The team behind this is a talented bunch. Keep going. One thing many, myself included, should learn from this team is tutorialisation. Also, I appreciated the attention to detail. Everything animates, everything is dynamic. Well done.
I didn't like it that When I scroll the mouse wheel up is down and viceversa. Maybe a setting for this? Then again this is a mobile game, so probably nothing to worry about. I also had trouble with dealing with my cursor being all the way up. the game did not default to going down when there were no obstacles underneath. Not necessary a suggestion on my part, just an observation of my psychology playing your game. All in all, a competent entry. Well done.
I came here to evaluate your game, but after launching it I was greeted with unskippable dialogue. A lot of it. Then, just to try the mechanics, I realised that I had already used 3 or 4 lines of paper. This discouraged me from playing any more. So I didn't leave you a rating, because I haven't basically experienced the game. I just thought you would find this feedback useful, hopefully. It's a shame, because I found your premise quite intriguing, otherwise.
I think this game would benefit from more leniency when jumping after having left a platform. Also, there is a bug where you can enter colliders by hitting them diagonally, I think.
I started getting quite immersed and I was becoming more efficient, which is great, however, there were no mechanics to keep me playing after a bit. All I did is the same thing over and over, just facing what seemed to be an inevitable overwhelming end due to faster, more demanding passengers. I never unlocked the second and third lift. Quite a good entry, but it got repetitive for me fairly quickly.
I couldn't understand what to do on the rooftops of the second level, after crossing past the wooden planks. This ruined it for me.
I'm not sure this qualifies as a game... One technical suggestion, avoid moving the character using the Transform. Move the character by applying velocity to the Rigidbody instead. This will allow you fto avoid all of the clipping and flickering.
Fantastic presentation with a title screen to kill for. However, I had trouble understanding the game's map at first, because I was lazy to read all of the instructions. With that considered, I also had trouble understanding which room was dangerous and when. The light intensity wasn't helping my understanding. Great project though. Good luck if you decide to carry on with it.
I found the setting, graphics and sound to be very well suited for your context. Unfortunately, the mouse sensitivity was too low for me, which made it very difficult to enjoy your game properly.
One of the few actually funny games. Just a suggestion for the controls, say that smashing space is a valuable technique.
Not too shabby, however, while it makes sense to have slidy controls in space, I really did not enjoy how difficult it was to get my ship to move and stop anywhere close to where I wanted it to be. This made me put down the game a lot faster than I normally would have...
I really liked it that I could push the walls back. The design is neat, but the execution could use some work. The game is a little clunky in controls, collisions, the camera has a really weird angle, there are no physics on the props... Overall, I had a surprising amount of fun with this. Good job.
Fantastic game. Big props for your tutorial. Often overlooked in games, but you did it basically without using words. It's great. This is probably the best game I've seen so far, even though it only marginally hits the theme. And I've reviewed 70 or so. Congratulations.
The controls are insane. :) Play with a controller plugged in.
I think the most important part to improve here is user feedback. It's difficult to understand that the hearts are a currency you need to use to go through spikes, for instance. Essentially your hearts are nothing but keys. You should look for ways to clarify this, or, even better, alter the design so that they are keys and they are used as keys. For instance, you could use the heart manually to become armoured so you can take a hit. Or you could use the sphere object to become transparent so you can pass THROUGH the spikes. Other that this, I think this type of game has been done ad nauseam.
I enjoyed playing it for a bit, but it gets repetitive quickly, due to the lack of mechanics. It's a little shallow, unfortunately. But I thought the aesthetics were very pleasing, especially the little details, like the blinking character and the cracks on the blocks.
I had a lot of trouble understanding what the devs wanted me to do to build new shelving. There seemed to be a very specific order in which things had to be done, and I struggle getting it. With that said, I did have fun playing the game and I would play it some more, just to see how many barrels I can safely stow. One more thing, I would recommend against making it possible to REMOVE barrels from the shelves. On a few occasions I found myself picking those up, as opposed to adjacent barrels lying on the floor.
I really liked the artwork on the characters and the story board. The plot was simple, but effective in getting me emotionally invested in the character. I think the theme was missed completely, however, because the raft disappearing is just an aesthetic gimmick, as opposed to being an actual mechanic that has to do with space running out.
I enjoyed this entry. I think the take on the theme was quite clever. I like it how you can manage blob growth by shooting it. There is a small and weird bug when you stop shooting that makes several bullets fire out in excessively rapid succession. It's like you forgot to turn off a bool when not shooting, or something. Also, taking a page from the Vlambeer book, have you considered doing something when the player is not shooting? Say something like charging the laser more quickly? Just a thought.
My only criticisms:
1. It's basically impossible to complete in one go. You have to learn the switch pattern to succeed. 2. Mouse sensitivity is sky high.
Other than this it's a little short to properly evaluate it as a game idea.
Very impressive for a compo game. Great art, alright sounds, good learning curve and difficulty curve as well. I can see myself playing this more as it is, let alone more polished. Well done.
I manager to make it say "The whoooooooole... potato". :D
The game is very different, I've never played anything like it. The original clip was also quite humourous. Controls perfectly mirror the VHS recording era. One of the best submissions I've seen, but not sure it could translate into a real product. Nice.
The random generation hurts this game. Quite a few times I was hit by enemies that basically appeared very close to me, because I happened to be near a corner. I definitely had a hard time noticing when I was being hit as well.
I think this is the only game I've tried so far that's actually funny. Well done for that.
Further, I really enjoyed how I had to manage the space in two different as well as opposite areas. My eyes struggled following both sides, especially when the difficulty increased. I was running out of space due to the space between my (eye)balls. Brilliant. Well done.
I found it a little too easy over time, which made it repetitive, though with that said, I could have continued for a while.
This game is a space management game, and, in my opinion, has no connection to the theme, which is about running out of space, as opposed to deciding how to allocate it.
With all this said, I enjoyed playing it for a while. Thanks for making it.
I like it that the movement is not locked to cardinal or semi-cardinal directions, as it usually is in puzzle games. However, this does come with drawbacks, like me stepping on several tiles at once when I don't mean to.
Other then that, you have something here that looks like has some potential if you add more mechanics.
Lastly, this is one of the rare few games I've see that has a mysterious atmosphere, largely thanks to the darkness and the golden coloured environment.
Liked the art. My least favourite part is the random placement of milk and obstacles. I didn't feel in control of my fate, which diminished my enjoyment of the game. I think it may be more interesting to have the placement of the obstacles and power ups either depend on the player, or the environment, or be otherwise predictable, so that players can make informed decisions.
Lastly, it's possible to pass a "turn" even when moving into a wall, which looks like a bug to me.
It can be challenging to find a second player for a game jam game, but I think this one is absolutely worth it. It's fund describing characters and received their descriptions to make one final solutions. I also decided to deliberately disobey the orders once, which made me chuckle. Nice job.
The game cannot be completed for me. Once the selection is made, the game ends in a black screen.
I personally object to games that force me to reason with somebody else's morality. There's a clear cut example in your game, for instance: "Served in the military". Ask a hipster, and he will strongly sustain that all military action is evil, for lack of a better word. Ask an intervetionist, and the military is the only way to go, and the highest of honours. The problem with morals is that they are relative. Scoring them with a simple int is too simplistic in my view.
Novel idea. As I'm sure you expect from users, there were many combinations that made sense in my head, but not in yours. :) For instance I couldn't do fire and steel. Whenever I got stone I was essentially done, as I couldn't figure out a single combo with stone. But an alright concept if you can figure out a way to not surprise users with combinations that in their minds are missing, or combinations that make no sense, like Mana, for instance.
I liked the variety of disciplines, however, this enjoyment was weakened by the fact that every time you die you have to redo the same ones with the same level layouts over and over. This is an issue, because you often die due to your not knowing what the discipline you're about to face even is. For instance, I once touched a yellow block just out of curiosity. And that insta-killed me, forcing me to try again from the start.
The "intentionally wacky" phyzzikz can cause you to very slowly glide down or up towards the floor or ceiling respectively, slowing your run down dramatically. Not sure how I feel about that.
Overall, I enjoyed the variety. Ambitious.
For me the biggest drawback was when I got a map that had pillars instead of puddles as obstacles. I had a very hard time telling walkable tiles apart from walls.
A smaller gripe were the controls. The character accelerates too quickly and slows down too slowly, comparatively, so I find myself having trouble with precision movement that are small because I overshoot them and also having trouble with deciding when to release a directional key, which leads me to take damage fairly often.
I do think you've made an interesting use of the theme though. Many of the games I've played so far use the idea of the shrinking space, which would make your game unoriginal, however, the fact you've tied the mechanic to health and the changing layout of the map help making the concept fresher.
Same here. No link.
One of the better submissions I've seen. Works pretty well. I don't really see how you could improve it for a 48 hour dev time. Looks good, sonds good, plays well. Good job.
I think the art looks tidy and consistent, which made the game pleasant to play.
I was not able to solve a single puzzle, despite me usually enjoying word puzzles. My primary problem was figuring out which book would bind with which, in a selection 4 to 5 books with fairly long words. And on top of this, the timer was adding what I perceived to be needless distraction to what I saw as an already pretty demanding task.
In simple terms I'm not intelligent enough to play your game.
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EDIT: I played this game again, after seeing the video example and realising I could make as many words I wanted. All of a sudden the game made much more sense and was much more approachable. I reevaluated it now and I can see myself really properly enjoying it.
On later mazes the user is expected to commit the area to memory, which is both difficult and not particularly enjoyable, at least in my opinion.
I had trouble justifying the premise of a man dropping crates around. I was basically playing snake with an infinite tail.
Camera angle makes it very difficult to see anything other than the character's back. Shooting is therefore an act of faith, more or less. The game doesn't seem to have a difficulty curve of any kind, so managing the tower when there is plenty of space at the beginning is far too easy in my opinion. I was never in trouble. The music loop is way to short. I didn't mind the riff, but it was played hundreds of times.
In my opinion the game lacks a way to get you out of trouble when you make a mistake and get hit. There are no invincibility frames after damage is sustained, so playing this I die a lot and I feel like it's essentially a one hit kill game. The visuals and audio are great though. Very coherent.
I think you should turn off colliders for things you carry. The game wasn't very enjoyable for me, hitting walls with the stuff I carry all the time. Also, you should likely apply a transparent shader to your object when you carry it. Couldn't see the bin behind taller flattened boxes.
I think your main feature doesn't work! The rest is pretty competent though, if a little repetitive. Hard to eval.
The game is very feature complete. There is progression, in levels, difficulty and mechanics as well. I thought the difficulty curve is a little harsh between the planets. The levels are rendomly stitched together from what looks like pre-made parts. Overall, a very complete game for a game jam.
I really enjoyed the variety of dialogue. I was not able to enjoy the gamified mechanics much. I just wasn't paying attention at the numbers going up or down. With that said, this is one of the games that kept me engaged for longer than a mere few minutes, and I could have continued even longer. Well done.
Love the animation on the tower. Game too repetitive for me. Sorry.
Unfortunately hampered by its bugs. When you pick up pop corn you cannot put it down. When somebody sits down, I was never able to get the to go away BEFORE somebody else would spawn in the queue.
I loved the weapon variety. I didn't like the amount of bugs I found. From sometimes jumping miles into the sky to enemies falling and remaining alive and making noises.
I didn't enjoy the sticky controls when slowing down, overly responsive in the air. I found they make the game needlessly difficult.
I thought the walls moving with time + your position was quite clever. Overall a pretty good entry in my opinion.
I like the neatness of the design, however, the game's rules are highly exploitable. All you need to do to win is wait until the timer gets to 1 second, then touch the AI.
I do like the AI's behaviour, it's reactive to yours, but somewhat delayed too. Feels pretty natural for something so simple.
Last thing, I think you should have given users control over the window's position. I was trying to stream your game, and it firmly lodged itself in my non streamed screen, lol. :)
I had no idea if my input was actually producing the effects in the instructions. I did a few runs and the only thing I found working was the left arrow. Pressing it mindlessly and repeatedly lead to a win. Yeah, so not sure if I can give you much more feedback other than "I don't know that the game works". Sorry.
Enjoyed playing it for a while, however, I did have a lot of trouble understanding my own health. I couldn't track when I was going to die at all, so all deaths were surprisingly sudden for me, sometimes inexplicable, even.
Also, I think the camera shaking and lerping back all the time was excessive. It made me slightly nauseous.
Switching to full screen made my system go kaput. I lost one of the screens and had no idea how to convince Windows to give me it back. I had to reboot.
Lastly, I was not able to try out the controller? Not sure why, it simply wasn't recognised.
With all this said, I think it's a very good use of the theme. One of the best I've seen so far. Nice work.
More than meets the eye at first. I like the controls. They are a puzzle in and of themselves, for instance going to the bottom row requires reversing, which was clever. Then, when trucks don't arrive you have to move things to the area, which may get in the way of your movement later. One of the best submissions I've seen, and a great use of the theme. Well done.
Ehm... I was able to beat every opponent by clicking on the second option very fast, irrespective of dialogue. At any rate, I think you would need a much higher variety of dialogue options for this to work.
I was able to create a safe haven of frozen mummies around myself. The AI was not able to get in for a substantial amount of time. You may have to find a way to avoid spamming infinite ice bullets.
Ta dan! Thanks for bringing back memories. :D
Very clever. I enjoyed it. I really liked the lerps on the circles as well, so when you fire the lighter green kind of follows your trajectory. I do think that it gets a tad repetitive over time, however. Anyway, one of the best submissions I've seen so far, well done.
I also couldn't see anything. As it stands, the game is unplayable for me. Sorry.
Motion blur too extreme for me. Made me feel nauseous. Also, I broke your game by deliberately dropping a key block on the other side of the exit. :D
Ludum Dare's eval system really lacks something that rewards execution. This game looks, plays, feels competently done. I enjoyed what I played. Good job.
In my opinion the movement of the character is far too unresponsive. Especially in a game like this, where high precision means life or death. That's the first thing I'd look into improving if I were you.
Really pretty. But other than that, barely a game, in my opinion.
LD44 — Your life is currency (12)
Koe by velvetlobster 2019-05-02T01:27:20Z ♥ 2
I haven't made any LD games this time, so I cannot rate, but I can leave some feedback:
1. I think the art is quite coherent. Obviously some assets, like the spider and the protagonist don't look as polished as the environment, but this could work in the game's favour, as I was struggling to find interactive items. 2. I first realised I could press the Spacebar key to sweep the floor. This led me to playing the game sweeping things for a while. At some point the game got interrupted by a message that reprimanded me for doing that, and holding space through it would play a loud and obnoxious sound in a loop. Not in the sense that the sound would loop once it was finished, but rather in the sense that the sound trigger would play every frame. Quite a bothersome bug, really. 3. I was told by the game to click around, and I eventually did that. 4. I thought the messages constantly interrupting what I was doing were a nuisance. Especially when I was in the middle of making some kind of choice, which would subsequently get interrupted by these messages. I would not allow these messages to be as frequent as they are, and I wouldn't allow them to interrupt other messages. 5. I quit the game when clicking on the bed reset the level. I perceived that as a status reset, sort of like pressing "New Game", so I stopped. 6. Many of the messages are attempting to break the fourth wall too hard, in my opinion. It ceases being interesting or amusing fairly quickly. Due to their frequency and content they become a nuisance fairly quickly.
Conclusion: Fairly atmospheric, fair enough, but I found it to be rather shallow.
Faery Tales by Ryan Wine 2019-05-02T01:14:58Z ♥ 1
I haven't participated in this LD, so I cannot rate, but I can give feedback:
1. The art is fairly consistent, though some background assets look less polished than the characters and enemies. 2. There's a good variety of enemies on display here, which I enjoyed, however, some of their behaviours are erratic. For instance, the attacking dwarf seems to be able to fly to some extent, which made no sense to me. 3. I understand the mechanic of using health to shoot, but I must say I didn't find it particularly enjoyable or compelling. I did the whole first level avoiding contact. Seemed the best way to approach the level. In the second level, I attempted the same tactic where possible, but I failed 5 out of 5 attempts. 4. The second level was a little long with very few health pick ups, so it resulted in a lot of repetition of the early parts of the level, which grew monotonous for me. 5. As far as I can tell, there is no grace jump, which bothered me, as I sometimes missed jumps, either because the character "thought" it wasn't grounded, or because I would just already be airborne as I was leaving the platform.
Conclusion: Not a bad entry, but really rough around the edges.
Town of Currency by Drauthius 2019-05-02T01:04:05Z ♥ 2
I haven't made an LD game this time around, so I cannot rate, but I can leave some feedback:
1. I liked the aesthetic of the game. The pixel art was cute. 2. The music was a little repetitive over time, but it fit the context. 3. I had fun playing it. It gave me that "oh go on, one more" feeling, which few LD games achieve. 4. I didn't understand the currency thing at all, until I died near the $150 mark. As far as I can understand it's only a method to gain a life. So it's not really currency at all, and I would say that the theme was missed all in all. 5. My least favourite thing was the corpses being in the way of the action.
StuckInStocks by MrSchlag2 2019-05-02T00:54:05Z ♥ 1
I haven't made a game for this LD, so I cannot rate, but I can leave feedback:
1. I think the aesthetics work pretty well and the theme has been hit quite well, if somewhat literally. 2. I broke the gameplay almost immediately. I discovered that the character is affected by physics, so I could let him slide down on slopes and the hit the low point, hold space to the peak and let go. This was possible because my character could stop. I wouldn't have allowed the character to stop, but perhaps the forward arrow could speed up instead and give a bonus for speed of investment? Just a though.
The Bloody Merchant by Lombax 2019-05-02T00:46:19Z ♥ 1
I haven't participated so I cannot rate, however, I can leave some feedback:
1. It's not obvious how to interact with the game. I kinda realised there were those two red and green microbuttons later in the experience. Once I did, it was fine. 2. The game is quite shallow, all I did was click on yes if offered value above sticker price, click no for every other possibility. It became tedious fairly quickly.
The Iron Syndicate by Hare Software 2019-05-02T00:32:17Z ♥ 1
I haven't made an LD game this time around, so I cannot rate yours, but I can leave some feedback:
1. The aesthetics work pretty well. They are coherent and the game looks charming all in all. 2. There are very few sounds, so the game feels a little bare when you work, for example. 3. I was forced to play the protester route, despite the fact that I didn't want to. I tend to resent game developers that more or less seriously force me to embrace ideologies or moral that I don't want to. Nevertheless, I did it to see where the game was going, after 3 days of unpaid work. 4. I encountered a crash while working the first time, then a soft lock after the protesters took the factory, where the owner would come back to life every time I entered the factory and had to be executed again. The same applied to the guards who were being hanged. In essence, in my experience, the game doesn't work at all.
I Burn by mamoniem 2019-05-02T00:05:38Z ♥ 1
I haven't participated so I am not able to rate, but I can give some feedback:
1. The visuals are pretty well done for what it is. The erosion of the candle is very subtle.
2. My life isn't long enough to spend watching a candle decrease in vertical size over time. I would say "I'd rather watch grass grow", but on this occasion, the two are comparably dull.
3. This is not a game. You did mention it's more of an "experience". All I experienced is loud music and a mildly bored anthropomorphised candle staring at me.
4. I'm not a huge fan of pretentious "experiences", my apologies.
BulletHearts by beta 2019-05-01T23:51:24Z ♥ 1
I cannot rate the game because I haven't participated this time around, but here's some feedback:
1. The game's visuals are very distinctive and striking. I think that for a LD game it looks excellent. The one gripe I have about the aesthetic is the excessive use of peripheral colour aberration. For want of a less grandiose word, it's almost "painful".
2. I didn't enjoy that enemies can ram you and you can't do the same to them. I think the ramming would have been fine, as long as their ramming you would not remove your hearts permanently, but rather scatter them around the field, or perhaps steal them temporarily. I'm not sure about solutions to the problem, but bottom line is, I didn't dig the ramming situation.
3. I thought the Japanese theme was cute and fun.
Conclusion: All in all, an enjoyable entry, if somewhat short.
Social Livestock by Cikyt 2019-05-01T22:43:19Z ♥ 0
I am not able to rate games, because I haven't participated this time, but here's some feedback:
1. I think the graphics look pretty decent. The presentation, in general works OK and is kind of funny. I like the music loop as well. The sounds in the main menu, however, are too long and don't really fit a menu. I found them quite offputting.
2. I encountered some bugs with corridors generating correctly, but my character not turning the right direction to follow the correct straight line.
3. I found it difficult to predict the cost and gain of coins, cats, and luxury items. I couldn't make informed decisions because of that. I think having visible price tags or similar may have helped. Not sure, but I do know I didn't enjoy the guesswork.
4. The game concept is a little derivative. I've played many similar endless runners.
Conclusion: Doing a few runs of this was relatively fun, but it became repetitive rather quickly.
Million dollar robot: Fear the forklift by squirrelsoft 2019-05-01T22:31:22Z ♥ 3
I am not able to rate games because I have not participated this time, but here's some feedback:
1. I wasn't able to understand the game to any degree. I don't know what I was supposed to do. I saw those blocks that looked like my vehicle, but I coudn't do anything with them.
2. I obtained one of those power ups by collecting the white placeholder capsules, but I don't know what the powerups were for. in my case I got this grinder looking thing in front of my vehicle. It didn't do anything as far as I can tell, other than making it more awkward to move around, as I climbed over the cube things.
3. I had a lot of trouble adapting to the controls, given that up is top right, up-right is right, and so on.
4. I had trouble understanding how much health I had.
5. The game's visuals are fairly good looking.
Conclusion: Too unclear for me to play, unfortunately.
Bet Your Life by Star Garden 2019-05-01T18:14:01Z ♥ 1
Cannot rate the game, because I was not able to participate, here's some feedback. :)
1. Really enjoy the presentation of your page. It's concise and to the point. Explained what I was going to do in your game fairly well and it's pleasant to look at.
2. I like the art in your game. The character look and animations are cute and engaging. The environment is clear, in that I can tell background apart from interactive areas. That's useful for gameplay.
3. The lack of grace jump (meaning the ability to jump for a short amount of time after you have left a platform) ruins the game for me. I was not able or willing to adapt my brain to the absence of this feature. In my opinion, this is a must have for fast, precision based platformers such as your own.
4. I didn't like it that I cannot dash while clinging to a wall. It seems arbitrary to me that I am forced to jump first, then dash.
5. I don't quite understand the reason for detaching the player from the wall as much as you do when jumping off of a wall. Perhaps to be far enough from wall spikes. Still, my brain didn't want to accept that as a "normal" thing.
6. I have a slightly older controller with which I played your game. This means the left stick doesn't like to return to its resting position as precisely and effectively as it should. This made my character unexpectedly run full blast to the left, causing unexpected deaths. Not sure what deadzone value you used, but I would recommend a higher one, especially considering that your game has not analogue input whatsoever. You could easily have a 0.5f deadzone and the game would work perfectly well, and this problem would be avoided.
7. Music was catchy, but quite loud, and I didn't enjoy it fairly quickly in the experience.
Conclusion: All in all a pretty good entry, however, the gameplay/controls blunders I have mentioned damaged my experience of your game enough that I didn't want to play it again after the first game over screen.
Dudes of Wizardry by Nerzal 2019-05-01T17:31:04Z ♥ 1
I can't rate games at this time, because I couldn't participate, however, here's my feedback:
1. I enjoyed the art. I think it's fairly pretty. The characters look like they are suffering from substantial aliasing, whereas the environment is much more elegant. There are a few bugs with the environment art as well, for instance, platforms that extend too far, or lights that disappear into the wall. I really liked the shader on the health bubble, however, it did make it hard to read when you were using health.
2. For some reason, the game performed really poorly for me. I played the Win installed version, and frame rate was low and the game felt pretty slow to respond to commands. Especially jumping at the right time was difficult. I had to jump well in advance to get where I wanted.
3. There is a problem with the UX when casting spells incorrectly. They play the sound, but nothing happens. This made it difficult for me to understand if I was doing things right or not.
4. I initially used the purple spell a lot because it was pretty clear what it was doing. I then changed to the green spell that comes from the ground up, and found it to be much more effective at dealing damage. From that point on I considered the game "solved". I only used that.
5. Sound effects have a few bugs (like loops that don't actually loop), but that's minor. The crowing SFX is repetitive, but I think this was part of your intent to deliver humour.
6. The game's writing was attempting too hard to be funny, in my opinion. It's more a question of tone than it is one of joke. In essence, there weren't many funny jokes in the game, just many "dudes" and "mans". I didn't find it particularly funny myself.
Conclusion: I appreciate the polish in the art in particular, but, unfortunately, between the performance being choppy, the controls, and what I perceive to be try-hard-humour, the game fell a little flat for me.