Earthmageddon by calzoneman 2012-12-18T08:09:00
You can continue to shoot even after dead. The concept is neat, though I agree it doesn't feel good to have an enemy spawn on top of you while you are kiting everyone else.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → Monxcleyr Productions
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | Co | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2013 | 26 | Minimalism | The Only Rocketeer | jam | 389 | 2.83 | 2.44 | 2.67 | 2.74 | 2.82 | 2.40 | 2.31 | 3.43 | 100 | |
| 2012 | 25 | You are the Villain | Super Villains, LLC | jam | 190 | 2.90 | 2.43 | 2.93 | 3.77 | 2.47 | 3.15 | 2.79 | 2.56 | 58 |
You can continue to shoot even after dead. The concept is neat, though I agree it doesn't feel good to have an enemy spawn on top of you while you are kiting everyone else.
Cutting the rope was fun!
The cooldown indicator would have worked better as a progress bar, it is difficult to judge when the rectangle is blackish or black. The sudden wave of Santas and music change was amusing, but made gameplay jarring. The weapon cooldown could possibly work better if it was a static amount of time, and not the duration of the previous shot. Taking a shot near the top of the screen disables you long enough to miss multiple santas. An amusing game though.
As you mentioned, it's definitely very buggy. Otherwise good though - especially the art and general mood.
Ship AI could be improved. There was one port where ships couldn't leave, I found it stocked with about 10 ships, and racked myself up a level or two. Ships that aim for you shouldn't sit on top of you, but circle around you. It was easy to drop vortex and grab and be done. Difficulty was low, but it had an amusing art/sound style.
Originally I bounced in the wrong directions, assuming since I was pushing off, my arms would need to face opposite my desired direction of travel. After I understood how it worked, it was quite challenging and fun.
Thanks so much for the feedback!
Regarding some of the confusion - tooltips were something we planned from the start but had to drop due to time constraints. They will definitely be in a post-jam update.
I hope you check it out, and thanks again!
Very creative idea!
Quite fun. I love the blood pickup animation. I kept taping space to watch the blood fly around. Collision and ai were wonky in places though.
Fantastic concept, art, and music.
The gameplay was surprisingly complex and tense, although it suffers from a couple issues. Both have been mentioned before, but it was very easy to simply spam lairs early on to net a high score, and this game would benefit greatly from a zoom in/out option.
Impressively atmospheric, looks/sounds great.
I really liked the sight/sound/smell prompts, it would have been interesting to see those incorporated into the gameplay more. The movement was also a bit clunky and hard to get used to.
I have over a million points right now AND IT ISN'T STOPPING.
The text was hilarious. I'm sad you didn't have the time to finish, but I had fun regardless!
I wish when you came near the end of the map, the transition to wrapping around was smooth, would have given a real space travel feel.
Interesting gameplay, but not intuitive. Many typos in the instructions, and the formatting made understanding them difficult.
It seemed to progress in the opposite direction you'd expect, given the theme. That said, I really enjoyed the music. Was always pleasant to listen to, and evolved nicely. The gameplay was fairly standard, if occasionally clever. One thing I would recommend is adding WASD controls!
Fun and simple game. I really liked the use of fruits as a scoring system. That said, there could be a little more feedback and context. It wasn't entirely clear what 'level' I was on, and I never had a chance to try and better my score as I'd move onto the next despite how I performed. More variation in speed and distance would do a great deal as well. Great job though, I could see this being a lot of fun with only some minor additions and changes (and sound)!
The concept of a game that becomes simplier as you play is neat, but it wasn't actually executed here.
Awesome mechanic, and easy to build off of too. Waiting for the familiar pattern got slightly tedious, so I'd be interested in seeing some variation or complexity in how and when the platforms are made visible. Great game!
I saw your comment explaining the control decision, but it is still a very hard to use system. When I finished the second chamber, I wasn't really able to think through my answers because of how ill I was beginning to feel. It did say I was ready for re-integration though. The art was neat, the semi-sterile environment with large rugged doors between chambers. The government could have been described a bit more uniquely, I felt the questions in the second chamber were a bit straight forward to answer.
Fantastic art - I dropped in on Cake's stream a couple times to watch some of that in progress, and it turned out really well.
The gameplay itself was alright. It had a good difficulty curve, and I loved the references made. Felt like it was a twist or two away from being a genuinely fun puzzle game though - I like some of the ideas proposed in this comments section.
Keep up the great work!
This was a really unique take on the tower defense genre. The lack of text and visual style was a bit jarring at first, but worked really well once I had the opportunity to fail a few times. Great job!
The camera controls are a little too sensitive. Not having any vertical control over the camera view felt a bit odd, particularly when returning to the tree when your view is very obstructed. The art and feel of the game is very nice though.
The art in this is great. The dead square enemies are pretty adorable. Missing feedback on your current hp. More attack styles could break up the button-mashing gameplay. Good work!
I really, really enjoyed this concept. As many have mentioned, it was like an isolated Star Trek episode, and I mean that in the best way possible. The voice acting was great, although I would have liked to see the writing be a bit more robust. If these characters had personalities and motivations to go along with everything else this would be a much stronger narrative.
At the risk of sounding repetitive, I'll echo the issues with mouse sensitivity and discerning who is speaking in group conversations. The music also didn't seem to fit the mood of the story and concept, and ended well before I finished the game.
I hope you continue to work on this game - with fleshed-out visuals, stronger writing and maybe another mechanic or two (an inventory/clue system, perhaps), this could be a really strong experience.
A fun game. There was very little feedback on powerups, if they were working. Really only seemed to get that yellow tracer-like round. The enemies drifting towards you all at once got a little too difficult in some stages.
I enjoyed this. I started playing the game by fighting the zombies around me but quickly learned, as the title certainly suggests, that running was the best option. Well-designed in that sense. It wasn't very difficult, and a new obstacle or two would have kept my guessing. Great work!
The controls for this work very well, particularly rolling. The ship models are also very nice.
I'll echo what a few have mentioned in that I was hoping it had more levels. What was there was fun, if a bit too easy. Good job!
Took a few attempts to get a hang of the dynamic between the three, but once I did it was enjoyable enough. Fun little game, especially considering how quickly you put it together!
Interesting take on a traditional mechanic. A lot of fun deciding when it was safe to switch colors, or suddenly having to change your strategy when switching my accident.
lol, well done. I wish this music played every time I had a staring contest.
Very, very clever design. I loved the colored abilities and the combinations that could result. Great job!
Knocking over actual minimalist works is a fun idea. And I can never get enough of physics playgrounds. The Free Ride section ran sluggishly for me, but otherwise I enjoyed this a lot.
Awesome game. Tying upgrades to a score multiplier was a great idea, although it could likely do with some balance tweaks. The visuals were simple but effective. The view distance could maybe be brought back a bit, and I imagine there's not much replay value after you try out the different upgrade combinations. But the core is solid, great job!
Turning feels a little fast compared to the ship's forward acceleration, it makes it difficult to use lasers effectively. I enjoyed the simple various vector-style graphics displayed when you're damaged.
Exactly what it is marketed as. I would change the ship to lock to the mouses position, or hide the mouse (if possible). I found myself looking at the mouse sometimes instead of the ship.
A nice take on a maze game. It is rater simple, but I think that works in it's favor.
Very elegant visuals; they fit well with the theme and I instantly knew how to play the game. The mechanic was fun, if familiar, and gave me 'one more try' syndrome.
This was definitely an interesting mechanic, and I could see the puzzles getting complex very quickly. I agree that it needs more, or to be worked into a larger game. In any case, I hope you keep working on it!
Surprisingly fun little puzzle game. I think it'd be interesting if you took out that level descriptions so that players would have to figure out how to solve the level on top of doing it correctly and on time.
This was a lot of fun, had a smile on my face through most of it. Very polished, very funny, very NAMCO Museum-y. I'll echo some earlier comments in that a twist or two to the familiar formulas would have been nice, but for what you set out to create this was very strong.
Very impressive. The game has a certain surreal, unsettling mood at times that was well done. Would have liked to see some more done around it, but there was a lot here for the time it took to develop. And, like others have mentioned, no matter how hard I tried I couldn't pick up that damn key.
triplefox: Did you use all available spots in the grid? All connections must be single lines, no color will run parallel next to itself.
It's an .exe, with default UAP settings you'll have to allow it to run.
netmute: You can run on mac if you have Pytho 2.7 and Pygame. I don't have access to a mac to use cxfreeze on it.
Ha, this was brilliant concept. Great intro as well!
Interesting graphics, but the gameplay is very rough. The rewind after dying is a little disorienting.
The audio was neat, but unfortunately I keep crashing on the fourth screen.
I found the controls to not be very intuitive. One of the levels I played was extremely easy and uninteresting, so the random generation may need some tweaking. The art is neat, particularly the double jump animation.
Sometimes when respawning, you are facing straight into a wall, perhaps a check to keep you facing mostly forward. I liked the burnt rubber trails behind the cars, and how they persisted. Although sometimes chunks of burnt rubber wouldn't be draw after respawning, and it looked odd.
So ignore my above comment, I was typing into the wrong tab. :D
At first I was using the line drawn from the circle as my direction of travel, and it took me a few times to realize that is more like pulling back a slingshot. The momentum felt a but weird at times, as if I wasn't traveling as far as I felt I should. Having a couple lives would have been nice. But a visually pleasing game, with neat music. Good work.
There was definitely some confusion involved, so the title fits perfectly. It was a lot of fun navigating the maze, despite some of the control difficulty early on. Had a disorienting feel to it, reminded me of something like Antichamber.
Neat mechanic - playing with sound is not done nearly enough in most puzzle design.
That said, I felt it was underutilized here. It would have been interesting to ask the player to match pitches or tempos, or create certain combinations of sounds. Might be worth exploring further. In any case, great job!
The minigames are very difficult, especially with the nonstandard arrow keys for control. Some games weren't particularly intuitive. Neat art for some games.
The collisions for your ship could be improved. It seems you use a bouncing box around the sprite, and with the tall tail fin, you can collide with aliens if you come close (but still not touching) with the front of ship. It makes weaving between aliens somewhat tricky, and feels as if the game bugged out when you lose when you didn't really touch anything. You can also idle your ship out of view at the bottom of the screen. Generally shouldn't use a key that can close the entire game. I hit ESC thinking I'd return to menu, and it closed. Would like to see ESC return to menu, and have to close the game from there.
The idea was neat, but the execution was severely lacking. The game's windowing ranged from border only, to full chrome, to fullscreen and tooltips displaying outside of the main window. Very odd, and made the game difficult to get into. SHip building was neat, but the ui could use more feedback (highlight selected part type, etc) While in space, feedback on events seemed too minimal. I wasn't sure if what I did was good or bad unless a part exploded or animals died.
Definitely surreal, and one of the more expansive game worlds I've seen thus far. The island and its characters was interesting, but the mechanic of simply running around was boring and didn't give me much incentive to keep exploring.
Combat was neat, and the chunks of black being erased looked neat, but after defeating enemies it was too tedious. Perhaps taking out combat and making winning be based on how much you can get black, or keep black.
The visuals are absolutely fantastic. The controls took a little getting used to, and without scoring/leaderboards there was little incentive to slash through the enemy characters. It was also possible to abuse the grappling hook and swing across pretty crazy distances. That said, this was really well done, and with some improvements I could see it being one of the better entries in the Canabalt-like runner genre.
Fun, simple shooter. The lines crossing through were surprisingly fun to work with and around, and the add-ons were a nice addition.
I can definitely see the Portal and Mirror's Edge influence. The puzzles had a nice difficulty curve, and I didn't feel like they were ever too easy or difficult. Great job!
The music in this is amusing, along with Cubert's art. The pacing is fairly smooth, although the speed changes themselves needed to be over a course of a second or two, instead of a sudden increase. Fun game!
Collisions could use some work, the player pokes through the wall a few pixels consistently. The player could have been a bit small as it made taking turns somewhat difficult if you weren't lined up perfectly. Being able to use WASD to move would have been a nice option.
There needed to be an introduction to the controls, or a short tutorial. It took a few goes to understand what was going on. The colored bars could use being a slightly different hue, or bordered in some way, so when the track is the same color, the bar is visible still. A couple times I died from switching colors too soon. That may have been intended, but it gives poor feedback to the player about what they are doing wrong.
Simple and familiar gameplay, but it worked well! And I quite enjoyed the squares playing different notes as they passed by, would be interesting if you could work that into the gameplay somehow.
The art in this, especially the pixel smoke, was fantastic. Very dreary atmosphere, which fits perfectly with the setting and mechanic.
That said, the gameplay has issues, although I love the idea behind it. Allowing the player to clearly select a unit and move it individually, and making this process more responsive, would help a great deal. There's definitely some potential in the strategy behind knowing when to move, when to take a shot, how long it'll take a soldier to reload, etc. Great stuff.
A cute game. Sometimes I felt the controls weren't precise enough for some puzzles. Scaling of the player can sometimes get them stuck in walls. The puzzles themselves were fun. Fits the theme well. Good work.
A very simple TD game. Perhaps a bit too simplified though, upgraded units don't look different than level 1 units, so you have to keep track mentally of what you have upgraded. The first wave should have a countdown, instead f starting once you place your first weapon. A good start though.
Interesting gameplay. I noticed if I clicked before the map changed, and released, a ball would be spawned, but it wasn't viable before it started to move. Perhaps reset the check for a mouse click on map change.
Sometimes when respawning, you are facing straight into a wall, perhaps a check to keep you facing mostly forward. I liked the burnt rubber trails behind the cars, and how they persisted. Although sometimes chunks of burnt rubber wouldn't be draw after respawning, and it looked odd.
Awesome game. Gameplay was fun and difficult enough to stay interesting on the way to the top. The audiovisual stuff gave it a nice, relaxing mood.
The music was solid and set the mood well, and I liked the colors coming together in certain levels maybe a little more than I should have.
The mechanics-as-metaphor was interesting, although I think the gameplay suffered a little for it. Creating more difficult puzzles would help, but I'm not sure if that'd hurt the theme. In any case, good job!
The combat never made much sense to me, and the movement was often a struggle. Aside from adding mouse support to look around (I can understand why you didn't do this), there definitely needs to be some tweaking in how smooth and/or fast turning in a direction is.
The art-style was surprisingly effective, and along with the title of the game gave it a very cohesive and interesting mood. Great job!
It's incredible how much can be accomplished with lighting and sound. I'm absolutely terrible with horror games, so needless to say this had me nervously hugging the walls from the beginning. Some of the small touches were the most effective - the knocked-over chair in the kitchen, for example. Well done.
Gameplay ended up being fairly simplistic, but I really liked the art and the sweet, if a little too brief, narrative. Great job!
Great, if simple, little beat 'em up. The art was fantastic - varied color palette and I was impressed at what you were able to achieve with just three pixel characters.
That was a lot of fun. The banter worked really well, and I had a good sense of who these characters were in such a short amount of time. Would like more game to it, but maybe that's a project for the future!
I'll agree with the comment above mine, the final dialogue choice was fantastic, and really hit that relationship home. I went back to play it again so I could go 'down,' and was pleased with how that ending played out as well. Great job.
This definitely has a nice retro feel to it, but for the most part the controls were more frustrating than fun. The sound and visuals fit in nicely with the theme.
The presentation (namely, playing in the command window) fit oddly well with the idea of being a missile operator. I'll echo some of the comments here in that it was very repetitive, and I may have been in over my head to begin with.
This works well, and the different enemy types make it a little more engaging than other games of its type. That said, if you were going for a feeling of loneliness, as suggested by the title, having to actively avoid the other dots does not really align well with that idea.
And I'm glad to see you guys are going to continue working on it after the voting!
The mechanic is interesting - manipulating objects while you platform is something I've seen done in a co-op setting, but not in a single-player fashion like this. That said, the physics were hard to contend with, and the first level was more frustrating than it should have been.
The audio work in this is great. I scooted around the edge while trying to collect the music notes/hearts. It was definitely disconcerting watching the black blob grow large enough to become unavoidable. A neat experience.
Strangely difficult, and without much of an introduction. I loved, loved the art though, and I feel the mechanic of turning lights on and off could definitely go places.
I'll agree with the above comments with regards to the controls. I expected the movement to be similar to something like Asteroids, and struggled with it for awhile. The combat was somewhat of a pain because of this, although I liked how it forced you to monitor and conserve your fuel. There's a lot here and it mostly works well. Great job!
The graphics and sound/music were fantastic in this, and created a very coherent mood that I enjoyed immensely (and it was science fiction, which will always win me over!). The story was interesting, but was held back by the vagueness of the writing. The choices didn't carry the weight they should have because the relationships were not built up (specifically with the AI and your father) and the context was never made clear.
With that said, there is some clear potential here, and I'd love to see you develop it further!
The artstyle reminded me of looking through a microscope, with the little arrow that is used to point at a part of a specimen. So It was like I was fighting rouge bacteria. I didn't like the whole game restarting if I failed too many times. Perhaps a level screen would be nice, so you can go back to where you left off. Or do a level screen, and group multiple stages into a level to still have that penalty for losing. Overall very fun!
Very fun game. I really liked how you had to use all the materials at your disposal to come up with a solution - very experimental. I was dangerously close to giving up a couple times, and maybe the player could be introduced to the mechanic in a more lenient way. That said, I made it to the moon so maybe it worked out just fine!
The graphics and animation were great and I enjoyed the nonsensical mood of the game. Awesome stuff.
Great concept. The controls were a source of frustration for me, and so I wasn't able to get as far as I'd like. The basic design has a lot of promise though, and I imagine the player would eventually have to create complex Rube Goldberg-like machines in order to progress. The visuals were appropriately clean, and the music was decent (although repetitive).
Could use an option to invert vertical controls. The art style is very cool, traveling through the tunnels is very trippy in an awesome way. Glad to finally get a chance to play it without errors.
The visuals and sound were excellent (the animation in particular). The mechanic was clever and became difficult very quickly. There was a moment in level 2 where I created my own platforms to double-back on that I thought, if intentionally designed or not, was a fun and challenging experience. Glad to see you guys are going to continue working on it in the future, and good luck!
This was a very, very impressive game. It could definitely use some explanation and/or tutorial at the start, however. I only gave it a second chance after reading some of the comments here, and I'm glad I did.
I love how the information is displayed - the weapons on each side of your shape, the recharge time being clearly displayed and your health dependent only on the color. The visuals and sound in general were strong, and (oddly) reminded me of Everyday Shooter. The bosses (the ones I got to, anyway) were well designed, and while it was difficult it rarely felt unfairly so. Great game.
Beautiful, relaxing game. The difficulty curve was manageable but challenging. Some of the best art I've seen thus far, and the music fit the mood perfectly.
Roads/bridges could use click-drag to place instead of selecting between each place. Having visible workers would have been nice. I had some trouble placing bridges sometimes, and I am unsure why. A very in-depth game, especially for 48 hours. Impressive.
Great card game concept - I appreciate you creating the web version for a quick test run. It may be a tad complex without a game board or stat-keeping resource of some kind when played in person, but I'll have to try it out!
Well done and very polished entry. I really enjoyed the music and art, and although the gameplay was a little tired, it was definitely one the more enjoyable entries I've played.
The player controls are a little jumpy. The trail left by the player should match the size of the player, it's somewhat difficult to know what path you are leaving until you left, making you go back to try to minimize your mistakes, which is particularly punishing since lines with a width more than 1 become a load of cubes.
ESC shouldn't close the game when on the menu. Generally bad practice to have a key than can close the game.
The concept was neat however, and an interesting take on the theme. A post-compo version with better controls would be a pretty solid game.