Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → MrWarranty
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | 59 | Signal | Call Me | compo | 145 | 3.48 | 3.50 | 3.25 | 3.85 | 2.63 | 2.85 | 2.88 | 2.58 | |
| 2024 | 55 | Summoning | Wannabe Warlock | compo | 210 | 3.35 | 3.08 | 3.29 | 4.14 | 3.10 | 3.66 | 3.91 | 3.32 | |
| 2022 | 51 | Every 10 seconds | Cadet Set Go | compo | 464 | 2.72 | 2.81 | 3.10 | 3.18 | 2.29 | 1.27 | 3.22 | 2.56 |
This was a fun foundation for a game. I feel like you spent a little too much time and instruction on the weapon-switching mechanic (which honestly felt superfluous), but the graphics/shading and the top-down gameplay worked really well.
Weirdly fun and addictive gameplay loop with an enjoyable aesthetic and good sound design. This is what it's all about! My only complaint is that the spacebar didn't seem to have an in-game effect in browser.
Really interesting and different take here. A unique setting with the aesthetics to match; I approve on that front! The angle of the camera led to somewhat wonky controls and it wasn't always easy to tell what I was doing, so I suppose I'd like to see a slightly modified interface. But overall it's a pretty neat game and I always like to see something I haven't seen much of before. Nice work!
I had fun with this! The bomb beeping started stressing me out, in a good way. :sweat_smile: I felt like I was finally getting the hang of it when the game ended, which was a bit of a bummer but shows that it was well-designed since it left me wanting more. I especially appreciated the ludicrous gibs. The game felt a bit forgiving on saving the blue guys, I suppose; I'd almost want to see the requirement that you save all of them and design the levels around that. But it's a minor quibble for a very good entry!
*Managed to kill them all! :grin: * bomb.png
I played all the way through and I honestly forgot I was playing a jam game. I'll echo others in calling the music a masterpiece that really put me into a flow state. When I got to the second "search" section I was a little disappointed at first that it was in the same location (because I'm ridiculous and greedy like that), but that quickly went away when I saw that you were having things "catch my eye" in a different way than before. So cool and creative.
The story was neat and something different from the usual things you see in games. I will say that from a narrative standpoint I felt like I was a bit thrown in and didn't necessarily connect with the characters until closer to the end, but that's a lot to ask from something made in this kind of time. And there was maybe a little less story and gameplay integration than I'd hope for - at first. By the end, it made a little more sense.
All in all, this was such a unique and cool piece of art. Thank you for showing me something new.
Love the quirky aesthetic of this one. The web version didn't quite work correctly for me; I was shooting with no discernible effect on the white dots. But is it weird that I still had a good time? :laughing: Slapping a 3-D world onto a 2-D game is always interesting to me, even when it doesn't go 100% smoothly.
Thank you @castitatis @mcnuttys and @googlypoo for the feedback! I know the lack of audio is lame, but I did zero prep for this jam and have no experience making audio, so something had to give. :sweat_smile: I like describing this as "reverse tower defense"; glad this theme helped me stumble upon a new/obscure genre! I'm also glad you all enjoyed the dialogue - I hoped to use that to make up for my lack of aesthetic skills. If you decide to try getting through the tough levels, I think it's reasonably rewarding from a narrative perspective. :wink: Thanks all for playing and rating!
@zimonitrome Thanks for the feedback! I could definitely see dividing this game into "Story Mode" and "Arcade Mode" with no dialogue. @jibberwocky I understand where you're coming from. If I'd done the full 72 hours I would have made it so the dialogue only played the first time (or better yet, had more adaptive dialogue for multiple failures), but I was pretty burned out by the end of this, lol. I just tried to keep it short enough that it was still fun but wouldn't get *too* grating. Thanks again, all!
@papaya Totally would include music but as it's the compo I would've had to make my own somehow. I play a little guitar but I figured silence was better. π
@decadedecaf I'm glad you finished it and enjoyed the little narrative. π
@ayxs I'm curious about scaling the UI. Do you have any advice/resources for this? Working with the resolution has always been kind of a pain, especially with "Free Aspect" as the cursed default. I'm always trying to learn, since I teach it to beginners. (-: I learned a bunch in going through this project and it's actually the first time I've published anything online, even though I've made a bunch of standalone applications.
@mikushi Next time I do a jam I hope to have a little more experience with Audacity or GarageBand (or something else) under my belt for making basic music and sound effects. I have some royalty-free ones I can use but I don't know if that's in bounds with the compo; I'm guessing not. I definitely would have wanted sound somewhere in this to improve what I was doing.
@ayxs No, this is great, thank you! It's really nice hearing from more knowledgeable devs. π
What a cool idea! As a poker player, I'm qualified to judge. And a little ashamed that the computer kept kicking my butt. But the layout and challenge of the game were both pretty excellent.
This is so delightfully pretty and I really enjoy your writing. I wish there was more! Definite shades of Monkey Island (and the duels of Suikoden II) but you put your own fun twist on it. I'd love to see the story expanded.
From a gameplay perspective, I liked how the menus/option selection handled a lot (you really have an eye for this), but at the same time I didn't have the greatest sense for how my choices were affecting the game, even after I played through it a few times. Overall, you used the theme effectively to make something special and I'm glad I played this. Thanks!
I've seen a *lot* of platformers and I know they're generally a bit played out, but you really made a case for what you can still do with one here. Fantastic sound design, beautiful visuals, and addictive gameplay - plus, having the animal NPCs provide critical information was a very good design decision. Pretty brilliant to polish everything this well in 48 hours; kudos.
I hurt my fingers trying to get through Level 5. :sweat_smile:
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I got stuck on the hourglass screen. Does that just mean there aren't enough people online? Is there a particular time you'll have people on to play so we can try it out? The idea sounds cool and the title is super creative.
I've thought about making a game like this and I really like your execution. The music was catchy and the graphics are great! I'll have to try out JummBox. One issue is that some of your text was too long and got cut off below the box, at least on my computer. And of course it might be nice to have some kind of reminder of the progress we made, since 10 seconds is a short time to execute this fully. But I really like what you've done here!
What a neat game! Using the cards along with the board definitely makes for some fun mechanics, and the overall gameplay was pretty intuitive, which is hard to do. It was also quite pretty and sounded great. I'm impressed! One thing that bugged me - and maybe I was missing something - was that there didn't seem to be an "undo" option once I clicked a card. I think that's the biggest thing I'd want to see, probably with a right-click. But I like the depth of the systems here and I'm glad I downloaded it. I'll probably return to this one!
Wow! It's strange to say, but this is the first game from this jam where I really felt how fast 10 seconds could go by. :sweat_smile:
Pretty sneaky how this could have worked for either "10 Seconds" or "Harvest". :wink:
I especially liked the tutorial level at the beginning. Perfect balance before throwing the player in. Really great proof of concept for your game and the simple but effective music hit just the right notes. Great work!
This is so cool! Exactly the kind of game I want to play in my browser. Reminded me a bit of "The Textorcist". Fun and challenging, with great graphics and music and a spooky aesthetic. A+.
That art is incredible.
Okay, now I'm honored that an artist such as yourself had something nice to say about my game. ^_^
Really had a hard time telling what I was supposed to be doing. I think as a player I need more feedback from the game. Kitchen definitely burned pretty good though.
Wow, this was really great! Your 3-D modeling served you well here and the music/sound were perfect to complement the actual challenge of a fun game. Getting that final helicopter animation was very satisfying, and of course I love the humor present in the menus. No, I'm not playing over and over to see the death messages; I'm just that bad at this! :smile:
Always interesting to see new takes on a color-matching puzzle game. One thing that bugged me here was that once I made matches on the screen, I often had a long time to wait before I could actually do anything new. The gameplay felt a little unintuitive as far as strategizing or reaching a particular goal; ideally I'd want to see a little more explanation inside the game itself, at least to a degree. But it looked and sounded pretty nice, and even though I wasn't always sure I was making the right action, the pieces always did what I expected. Nice job!
There is nothing I don't like about this game. Fantastic all the way around. Enjoyed the retro graphics and sound, and the control switches felt like me pointing the Vector3 the wrong way. ^_^
I had some fun with this one! I especially liked the humor you put into the tutorial. The interface was a little bit tricky to parse; it would have been nice to see the units' actions in real time a bit more clearly. But as a sort of programming-oriented design, it worked in its way, and it was interesting. Thanks for this!
I enjoyed the atmosphere you created here. Really felt like a throwback to the early FPS days.
Mutual congratulations to the two of us on finishing our first compo. :smile: I used to play a board game like this with my son called "Robot Turtles" when he was a little guy. Planning out the moves in advance is a great trainer for mentally stacking up logical progression. Your overall execution of this is pretty great, especially for a first-timer. I liked the sound and retro feel. Obviously the game was shorter than anyone wanted, but that's the nature of the beast. I think I would have done away with the darkness (or at least used it more sparingly); perhaps the challenge to the player could be an overall limit on time or number of moves so it feels a bit fairer than just making them blind fire their strategy, if that makes sense. But you really did something cool here!
Very impressive puzzle game! The art is cute and the music is catchy, and I like the way you designed the menu as well. Well done!
@zimonitrome What did you use for the music? I need something like this for my future jams!
The graphics are great! Really liked the concept as well - very Metroidvania-ish, which is a big swing in 48 hours and I respect it. You used the theme perfectly, since the hounds are for combat and also unlocking areas. The sound effects are good, though it could've used some music. I agree that the game was too short but I know you have to start with a proof of concept. The real frustration for me was in the hitbox for the necromancer (I died multiple times with no real indication why, and the game didn't give me an animation or anything before cutting to black) and the ending (again, cut to black as soon as I got there). I'd recommend putting a delay on going to the game over screen - gives the player a second to process what happened and adjust. Otherwise, really nice effort!
This is SO good. The graphics pulled me in, and then once I clocked the gameplay I realized it was basically Picross Story Mode. I'm super impressed by all of it and could absolutely see this as a puzzle-a-day mobile game (perhaps with a story told over time) that I think people would love. Really, really well done.
I enjoyed messing around with this. Some of the mechanics were difficult to figure out but just as a platformer it's really well designed and you have a lot to be proud of with the visuals and sound design. A few more in-game indicators of the depth in play here would be welcome.
This is so well designed! Really enjoyed the Atari aesthetics and it was tightly polished. Everything really contributed to the overall enjoyability of the game. My one minor quibble is that "summoning" isn't super central to the game, but if you want to argue that you're summoning the dino and summoning the staff, I'll allow it. :sweat_smile: Just a really fantastic game to have made in such a short frame and I enjoyed it a lot!
So ambitious! What made you decide to go with online multiplayer in 48 hours? Some interesting visuals but it would take more players to fully judge gameplay and functionality.
Ayyy, I did the thing!
Very cool design and impressive that you got this put together in the short frame! The music is great and the visuals are really neat. Controls can be a bit disorienting (I figured them out with some experimentation but there wasn't a ton of guidance in-game) and the fact that you can totally screw yourself by not placing water early and therefore being short on mana is a bummer. :cry: But I love the design of the menus and that you were able to put so many systems in here. Well done!
This is really, really good. I loved the voiceover narrative and the music is professional-grade. The visuals really work for this and the overall approach to gameplay was solid.
I wish there was a web build so more people would get a chance to play. The stones said "A" but it was actually "E", and since it was a hold rather than a press this threw me for a minute.
Honestly this is one I might return to when I've got more time and am not trying to write a lot of reviews. I really enjoyed it and your design prowess is pretty remarkable. :smile:
I think we've all been in this very common situation.
Really nice design all the way around! Very high marks from me. The recipe being convoluted was a bit frustrating but frustration is kind of the name of the game when you're constantly being summoned to teach math to small children. :laughing:
Can you throw this on itch.io so we can try it?
Ha! It took me several playthroughs to see the pun in the name.
Fun idea and the music supported the atmosphere well.
Sometimes because of 3-D view, citizens would stack behind each other, making them difficult to see or click.
"What say you in the matter of banishing all women? ...Excuse me, are you wearing PANTS? Get out of my courtroom."
Nice job on this one!
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This was such a delight. From the quirky concept to every bit of the execution, I really enjoyed myself here and it's impressive that you were able to make it so tight in only 48 hours. The bully crying made me laugh every time. I wondered about the choice to switch between blue rocks (which didn't take out your onions) and gray ones, as well as the choice to make any upgraded onion (or pumpkin) basically immune, but I was back and forth on that and can't fault you for making it easier on the player. The animations were really nice. I was a bit sad when I took the time to combine 3 red onions and got... 5 red onions. But in retrospect, I should have combined those and filled the screen with red onions, lol. I know you had to cap the upgrades *somewhere*. XD
But overall, straight fives for me. This was a great time. summonion.png
Thanks @pebkac ! Yeah, I know there were some occasional issues with the hit detection on moused-over elements, which I'd clean up with more time. Hopefully you were eventually able to get it working!
@sirjupitron Thank you so much for the kind words! My friends like to tease me about the Paintcore drawings but I never claimed to be a great artist. π
@fnelix Thank you! I think what happened with the text was that I never intended for the game to be played full-screen and itchio kind of let me down by allowing it. I tried to position it to be legible but it was only for the 800x600 resolution. Thank you for powering through though, ha.
@davidtrac I'm giving you an F-minus. :grin:
@mythrilminestein So glad you enjoyed it! This was actually my first time doing sound design ever, and I was really pleased with how it came out. I'll definitely build off of what I learned here! Big shout-out to the Jonas Tyroller video on the subject.
@fusionnist That's just the line I was trying to walk with the difficulty - not trivially easy, but not so hard a person cant finish, either. π Thank you for the kind feedback!
@torte478 Thank you! I've never considered art to be a strength of mine, but I bring what I've got. π It was really nice to find that sound design, which always intimidated me before, wasn't so hard once I actually got into it. I'm definitely finding a pattern of falling back on my writing in these games, so to be able to add other aspects - and hopefully keep improving my gameplay in subsequent projects - feels really good.
@stmate03 That's just what I was going for! I know all gamers are secret deviants. π Glad you found it rewarding.
I know of one spot that still has a potentially game-breaking bug: When the first giant rat comes, I failed to clear the existing sigil to make room for the new ones. So if those weren't moved, you have to restart. That said, in the name of fairness and laziness, I'm not changing it, lol.
@josion Thank you so much for the kind words! I didn't intentionally go for '90s, but apparently that's just when my art skills stopped developing. π Glad you enjoyed it!
@keithswanger Thank you! "The Many Deaths of You" was exactly the trope I was trying to invoke, lol. Wally is very wimpy. I didn't want that to be the entirety of the game, but as I started developing it I realized that a lot of the fun would be seeing how you could die - hence the 20-30 different random death messages for each type. It was fun for me to write those. I'm glad you enjoyed it! As far as getting stuck with two demons, I made the will charge 25% faster than it depleted, which creates a challenge but never makes it impossible, I believe. Of course, since you can't charge while telekines...ing, it does force the player to learn quickly. Bugs aside, I'm happy with where the difficulty curve currently is - though if I were spending more time on this, I'd prefer to get it to at least 10 levels and a bigger story. My original plan was to have enemies come from four and eventually eight directions (with the adjacent towers mixing their attention between those). But for 48 hours I had to go with this version.
@vidarn I appreciate the kind words! It's funny, I hadn't even thought about setting up the sigils to get a jump on the next placement while I was designing the game, but it's a great strategy for shaving off precious seconds. The thing that bothers me the most is that sometimes you can drop a sigil on the circle and it still won't detect it, which is obnoxious but thankfully not prevalent enough to break the game, I hope. The timing is definitely tight, but I like that about it since it encourages the player to keep trying. Hopefully it doesn't feel unfair! Due to the time constraints I had to really speed through Level 3, which I think resulted in a somewhat uneven difficulty curve. I blame it on this terrible scene-loading bug that probably cost me 5 hours of productivity on Saturday.
@rolly Thanks! It sounds like you were the ideal player for this thing, since you're so defiant. :laughing: I did see the problem with the screen cropping, even though I set the resolution to 800x600. I'm not sure what the itch.io browser resolution ought to be, but I guess I'll adjust it for next time!
Thank you all again for playing my game and taking the time to write comments. I'll get to the rest of your games and give feedback soon!
The game is gorgeous and I like the use of the theme. But how to actually play was unclear for me. I got a tone by clicking and I couldn't tell why the dogs were responding how they did or how to elicit certain behaviors. I guess I'm no dog whistler. :sob:
+ The idea and title were really good. The concept of mixing summoning with romance really drew me in. + The piano music was pleasant and stopped me from quitting when I got frustrated.
- There was way too much going on text-wise at any one time. Very overwhelming for the player. - The intermissions had too much text on the screen at a given time. Maybe show one date at a time with simple visual representations, to help connect to the characters. - The rules were pretty unclear at first, and after reading them two or three times I realized that we're just trying to beat the RNG. - There really isn't much strategy here, since the cards don't stay in hand from round to round. Pick the highest value you need every time and just hope you get the right types.
+ The animation on the demon at the end was nice. Visuals (minus text) were good.
Overall, a solid effort and I know you had some good strategy mechanics going on. I just don't think they're accessible enough and ultimately don't bring enough depth once the player figures them out. Thank you!
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LOL, I'm so glad there was an ending to this thing. So many wrong paths. Reminded me of being married. Spooky-Jack doesn't know what he's getting himself into.
Really nice job with your design! I like how you took advantage of the simplistic visuals and made them work for you. Your narrative had a lot of charm and never dragged, even when I was clicking back through the options. The mini-game was cute. Well done!
There's a lot going on with this game, and not a lot in the way of in-game feedback, so I found it a little disorienting. I can tell that it's impressively put together and I like the way you can focus on the different windows, but without clear directives it can be challenging to get into. I like the visuals and music, and the overall systems are spot-on! Really impressive work for a jam.
Great job, guys. I want to spend more time in the Jeeves-verse! Why is he a ghost butler? Does he have to spend more time solving crimes before his spirit can move on? Is this some kind of unholy pact that Mr. Dactyl has? Is that why the game breaks when you try to talk to him more than once? Are he and Valorie going to move past the affair? Will Terra receive her comeuppance for being so conniving? I'm thinking we need a sequel.
Very nice work on this one! You took a basic platformer and elevated it, for sure. I echo the sentiment that this has Trine vibes, in a good way. Like many others, I got the jump glitch, but since you can summon a platform underneath yourself to fix that, it isn't a game-breaker, just a mild annoyance. The art and atmosphere are delightful, and the "You're Still Dead" game over screen cracked me up. I'm a little sad there weren't (to my knowledge) any secrets in the game, since this setup would really seem to lend itself to more exploration. But maybe I just didn't explore enough. :grin: Great job!
This is great! There's something so much fun about generating these random detachable creatures with hilarious names and then bouncing them off each other. You did some really excellent work here.
By the way, I'm pretty sure I got the best one: glorble.png
I like a courtroom visual novel and the visuals here were interesting! The music was really good and set a creepy tone. The story was easy to follow and the jokey answers were enjoyable.
The sound effect for the judge in particular (every time he spoke) was very loud and grating. I went back through a second time (since it was quick) to see if I could get convicted but they just wanted a repeat trial. :shrug: It would have been nice to have a little bit more mystery or something to make the story more compelling. But as far as setting the scene goes, you nailed it!
I agree with @ooboob that the interface was just a little too overwhelming here. The level of professional design is clearly there but perhaps going for a simpler proof of concept that gets the player right into it might be more appropriate for a jam?
Wow, there's just so much to like about this game!
-The overall concept is delightful and such a great use of the theme.
-The music, my god the music. Had to hear the two tracks on repeat a hundred times and never got tired of them.
-The art is fantastic.
-Having the timer in there and the overall construction of the menus is just super smart.
-The gameplay loop is so addictive. We *will* escape hell through capitalism!
-The BUY MAX button is a huge QOL upgrade.
As far as "constructive criticism" goes, since I like to be useful:
-I'd like to see more variety across the board. A few more character portraits, a lot more dialogue in the "oh, you want a tip?" spot - I'm a fan of keeping that fresh, as you saw in my game. :sweat_smile: And of course the big one, having more mini-games beyond just fetching the remote from the same room that everyone weirdly has (I guess that's hell for ya). But then again, clearly the game really works as-is since nobody can stop playing it, so what do I know? :laughing:
-I agree that load times are a bit slow since we're doing it a lot, and adding an upgrade option for that is an inspired idea.
-Simple thing, but maybe a slight overhaul or different font in the menus? That's the kind of thing one would see outside of a jam game, though.
The real hell was the tip creep we found along the way! tip.png
This was fun! I liked the cutesy theme and the puzzle game was surprisingly deep and original. It took me a minute to figure out strategy, and I had some suboptimal placements, but once I figured out the patterns it made me want to play more. Great job!
Cute little game and a fun concept! I didn't get far enough to get into the summoning theme but from the other comments it sounds like that's a skill issue. :laughing: Always good to have a leaderboard and your use of particle and sound effects were great. Could maybe clean up the text and be a little more cautious about enemy spawning. I agree that having enemies do less damage would be wise. Definitely has potential though.
I enjoyed playing this! The visuals are very cool and a well-tuned rail shooter is always fun. Kudos for pulling that off in such a short time! My main gripe is that this doesn't seem to have much to do with the theme. We're deciding which track to turn onto, which is a good mechanic, but with a train that seems like a signal in only the loosest sense. As a standalone game, though, this really works!
Very fun platformer! Honestly given the art I was expecting a play on words with "trap" at the end but I'm glad you didn't go that way. :laughing: The signal twist on jumping was a very good way to make gameplay interesting. Would want to have sound added but overall it was good fun and something I haven't seen before. Well done!
This was so much fun and had loads of personality. Especially loved the acapella theme song and voice acting. Way to play to your strengths! I very much enjoyed the math-based frame timing and the end boss messing with the timeline himself, plus the ending cracked me up. My only complaint is that it doesn't feel like "Signal" was really the inspiration here. But considering how great the game is, it's hard to worry too much about that. Great job!
Quite enjoyed this one, both in terms of theme/mood and as a clever puzzle experience! The sound effects especially made me chuckle. The interface looks really good and this was an excellent jam entry. Well done!
Definitely reminded me of Buckshot Roulette in a very good way. The visuals and atmosphere are top-notch, and the simple strategic gameplay is elegant. The game is perhaps a bit too easy since we are the only ones that get to use items, and we can see the opponent's hand, but going any deeper on enemy strategy than that is probably too big an ask in 48 hours. Great job!
The visuals of your world were so impressive! The audio, too - overall, the atmosphere really impressed me and drew me in. The phone mechanic works well and looks really good. I made it to the tower quickly on my first try and didn't encounter any unspeakable horror, so I went back and looked around. Maybe he should be more aggressive? But anyway, making this in 72 hours is excellent work. And I really enjoyed reading your relationship story as well!
Thanks @kyanoss ! I'll make sure to get to your game soon.
Thank you @mr-flower ! I'm surprised to hear that you didn't think the theme integration was good, since I thought making the point to find where the cell signal was strongest, but I'm glad you still had a good time with it. Maybe something lost in generational translation? :sweat_smile:
@mr-flower Lol, from one Mr. to another, I totally understand. 48 dev hours fried me!
Thank you all for the comments! The feedback means a lot to me and I'm glad people are getting their hands on my game!
@aou Haha, I assure you it was a toxic relationship. Probably for the best. :grin:
@firewater09 This was happening to me during testing too, which I thought added to the comedy value. :laughing:
@fabelay That means a lot coming from you! I love this creative process. I teach this stuff for a living, so hopefully I can throw something good together once in a while. Even if my art skills are, um, slightly below yours. :sweat_smile:
@richjbaron Thank you! I discovered sound editing a couple years ago for "Wannabe Warlock" and I've just had so much fun with it. The dozen or so sound effects in this game only took about ten minutes to throw together, and then only another ten for the music! And I find that it just makes all the difference in the world in giving a game personality.
@universeflow Thanks! I think taking your time on something like this makes perfect sense. I didn't want any sort of time pressure for the player. Definitely would have liked to design a few more levels and mechanics, but I think each one I have here earns its place. No hazards until Level 3, so you've got at least some chance to consider how it works. One advantage of having the levels all be the same size is that I could just copy one scene to the next and make whatever changes I needed as opposed to burning time making each level from scratch. But yeah, I would definitely do away with the stick-figure backgrounds and integrate backgrounds into gameplay if I were turning this into a full game.
@rafa-fiedo Thank you very much! Sound design is so much fun. :smile:
@loig I know what you mean! I had the game object for the signal spot visible until the very last minute, but my girlfriend said "no, be cruel and make the player find the spot" so it became part of gameplay. :laughing: I'd want to include an "easy mode" where you know exactly where your target is, in theory, but I tried to make sure the bars were visible enough that it was clear when you were close. I also didn't want to make the levels so huge that there would be too many areas to check.
@boltdapikachu234 Thank you!! It's hard to find a good difficulty balance with puzzle-oriented games, especially when you have very little time for play-testing. Luck is probably a factor as much as anything else if the product turns out good in such a short time, but I think just going with a very simple idea and adding features one at a time helps your chances.
@gideongriebenow Thank you! I realized early on that having more boundaries actually made the game easier, so I had to consider how to handle that. I considered a super-tough level where it's all holes on the outside, and that is probably the last one I would add at the end, but the time pressure made me decide that seven levels was enough. I love the emergent strategies I've seen as people are playing this thing. I especially tried to make all the interactions between different objects meaningful, which is why I had to limit myself in how many I added.
@gideongriebenow That is such a great idea! I feel like this is complete enough as a 48-hour game that I probably won't return to it (if history is any indication), but if I were going to, that's something I would really like to add. I'm going to keep that in mind for my next game, thank you!
@acid-infinitely Thank you! I'm seeing a number of other "cell phone" oriented games so I'm glad I wasn't on an island there.
@hammeredzombie I believe in you. :grin: There are only seven levels, if that helps!
@haln Thank you! That's a good idea about marking the location once you actually get there. Blame my girlfriend, who wanted it to be more realistic: "You can't really see where a good signal is in real life!" This while I was throwing dogs into holes. :laughing:
@avhatar I'm glad you enjoyed the music! I ended up throwing something together in 10 minutes with BeepBox but I really do like doing that sort of thing. Thanks for playing!
@frowsyfrog Thank you! I am also surprised to hear that the trigger wasn't happening. I did have a last-minute bug where the numbers on the starting positions weren't set properly on one of the levels, which made it impossible to get to the exact signal positions. (Probably not the best way to handle things but that's 48-hour coding for you, lol.) I thought I fixed all of that, since the game is in a "fixed" state now, but it sounds like something might have thrown one of those numbers off. Hopefully resetting the level corrected the issue for you and you were able to finish!
@roroto-sic :laughing: You were the first person to realize my subtle artistic intent with the green level on their own, so well done, my fellow sicko. If it makes you feel any better about the breakup, the guy initiated it, and they are both toxic as hell. That's why they are tromping around oblivious to everything while on their phones. :grin:
@w2k Thank you! I heard a few people say they thought it was too hard early on, so with more time and more artistic ability I might add some intermediate levels. But I don't think there are any levels that are (significantly) easier than previous ones, so I'll chalk that up as a win for progressive level design! One lesson I learned from a Jonas Tyroller jam video was that it's always good to have different objects interact with each other as much as possible, because it's just more fun that way. So once I had holes and dogs, that fit well for the player to discover... and then I had birds who don't interact with the holes, so that naturally led to a way to get rid of the birds! I'm glad you liked it.
This is a great puzzle game. All the different elements - sound, visuals, execution of mechanics, leaderboard - worked brilliantly together to make something special. The "signal" theme is maybe slightly weak, but I really enjoyed playing this and it's an excellent game. Very nice!
I played a lot of NES games as a kid, and let me tell you something: This would have been right at home alongside "Paperboy" and the like. Had a lot of fun playing crossing guard to birds and eggs, even if I'm a bit dubious about the size of some of those houses. (Must be egg houses.) The music is fantastic, and the visuals are also very good. Excellent work!
This game is bonkers and I love it. Didn't think I'd be trying to interpret crab signals today but here we are. A+.
Impressive as always! Leave it to you to come up with an RTS in 48 hours, lol. And I love to see the return of the glorbles.
The visuals were really interesting and unique, and the interface handled very well. I more or less understand the emotion system and while it fleshes out the glorbles, I'm not sure it integrates as well in gameplay. I also wasn't sure how to improve my buildings to put up a better defense, because the enemies quickly scaled up enough to beat down my little guys. And finally, you put in this great system of examining each individual element, but there isn't really any time to do that for the sake of strategy or flavor, as far as I could tell.
Nitpicks aside, it's a very cool game and you continue to shine as a dev. Bravo!ld59 ss1.png
Wow. This felt like a much better-looking version of the kind of arcade games I played as a kid, like "Gyruss" with free movement and power-ups. Incredibly polished for a jam game, and a fun gameplay loop. Most excellent work.
The propulsion movement and visuals in this are so nice, and it just goes to show what you can do with creative lighting and a different approach to controls. Definitely want to see this developed into a full game with either a player goal or maybe even a narrative; you wouldn't need extra code to just place some text that shows a short story or poem (or whatever!) that is revealed by the changing lights. Just a thought! Very cool foundation.
I was totally lost on this at first, but after messing around with it (and pressing WASD after increasing the signal), it became a really wonderful unfolding puzzle experience. I'll echo the sentiment that it needs more instruction, but it was definitely worth it to figure it out. Brilliant work! (Too bad I didn't get some fanfare for accepting the challenge. :grin: ) ld59 ss2.png
It's so impressive that you made this in 48 hours. The exceptional art and interface really drew me in, and it's obvious that there's a lot of depth to your mechanics. Unfortunately, I was left pretty confused about what I was actually supposed to do - I got that I was trying to get a signal across with the mathematical commands, but I wasn't able to reposition them between rounds and it wasn't clear to me what they were actually doing and in which order. So, the robot picked me apart before I could get any damage through. I think with a little more explanation you probably wouldn't need to change too much, but for me right now it doesn't make as much sense as I would like. I'm still giving it high marks in most categories because it is so cool; it's just a bit impenetrable.
This was fun! I like the esoteric nature of the glyphs, and you used the theme really well. The basic visuals in the small window really grabbed me. Some of the key-mapping could've been clearer but I eventually figured it out. It took me several tries to get going with it but I finally hit my stride and got what I think is a decent score, haha. Thanks!
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Fun idea for a game, and I especially liked the integration of sound. Obviously would've wanted more in the way of an interesting path for the player and to not run out of level - or to have some fanfare at the end - but it's a nice proof of concept and it implements the theme well!
The long wait early on is probably a dealbreaker for most players, but it was nice to have a little variety of mini-games once we got going. Still some UI bugs present throughout, but I was able to get to the end! Nice job getting something together in such a short time.
The concept is very cool and I think you should see the development through! Just having those cool graphics and interface sets the tone really well. Would love to see you follow up on it.
The graphics are excellent - some of the best I've seen on here, and very unique. I also really like the idea of a tether platformer. Would have wanted some sound effects and musical variety. The inverted mouse camera was brutal, just because it's so unintuitive and takes a lot of practice to get right. But it's important to create different kinds of things that challenge the player, and this is the perfect setting to experiment. Really nice job overall!
Very nice world you created in such a short time! I'm glad you found passion for design here. I struggled with the minimap not showing me where the towers were reliably, but I still enjoyed exploring the world and I liked the little details you included to make it feel realistic. Good job!
A really nice and creative idea. Definitely want to fix the buggy jumping in particular as that can kill immersion with a platformer. And it would be good to have some simple visual indicator for which robot is being controlled, along with maybe some animations. But overall the visuals were nice and I liked the door opening sound effect. The idea of having only enough signal to control one robot at a time fits well with the theme and the puzzles were well-designed - would like to see them be a bit more challenging, but they work well to get the point across. Nice job! ld59 ss3.png
Interesting art and video! I'd like to see how the "restore signal" is worked into the story more to be convinced you nailed the theme, but it's still a game I would've liked to have played. And Lilah presumably deserved it.
Good stuff! The visuals and mechanics were excellent. I'm embarrassed to admit that it took me too long to figure out that I was taking damage from being outside of the signal, lol. I was impressed by the variety of enemies and mechanics. I'm not sure the weapon switching was fully working for me. My preference would be to have an ending or boss rather than just restart the game, but that isn't a knock on it. So many good things about this one. This is a little thing, but taking the time to make a different animation state for the player being in the water? Chef's kiss. Great work!
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Incredible visuals. Every bit as good as Animal Well. The game was also punishingly difficult, at least if you were trying to finish with a decent amount of acorns. Would've liked more of a motivation to do that and perhaps not losing all of them at every checkpoint. But it was loads of fun and "atmospheric" is definitely the word. Wonderful job!
I loved this. Exceptional art, mechanics, and use of the theme. I really got frustrated on the final puzzle until I figured out that I could signal the spirit from on top of him - which speaks to great level design, since it required me to learn that before moving on. This is the kind of thing I'd like to see turned into a full game. Puzzle platformers are so hard to get right (a la Trine), but you really nailed it here. One note: I might decrease the iteration time even further, since falling into the spikes is so easy and figuring out the exact hitboxes is tricky and leads to a lot of death (especially on the level in question). Just a fine-tuning thing, though; this is really top-notch.
This was pretty much perfect. Very cool in concept and a wonderful experience that implemented the theme well. I saw the little things you did to enhance the immersion, like the shaking text - that goes a long way. The writing was excellent. This is the kind of game that LD is all about.
Ha, fun read. Would've liked to see more screenshots and treat it more like a real game, and I'm not sure the "signal" theme was integrated as well as could be, but it's nice to see something different.