MufinMcFlufin

HackOS by stevenjmiller 2017-08-09T19:16:36Z

A notably different puzzle game that understands and works with and around its own mechanics in an interesting manner. Clear difficulty progression that leads to good flow. Teaches the player everything they need to know about the game without being obtuse about it. Graphics maintain a well-defined style, although some of the sprites don't overlap very well together; it was difficult at times to see which tiles were what when overlapped by locked tiles.

Personally, I feel the theme wasn't very well incorporated, as it didn't very much convey "Power". This same game could have easily been changed to call the power, "Life", "Distance", "Seconds to death", or a plethora of other names while still working in the same manner. Name aside, this mechanic felt like it only really half contributed to the puzzles. Running out of power did mean that whatever path you were trying to get to a new node was the wrong one, but that's all it ever felt like. "This is the wrong, find a more optimal path." This made it feel more like an inconvenience to run out of power.

Theme aside (as that's only a minor part of the ratings) the rest of the game was very well executed. Overall 5/5 from me.

A Forlorn Wizard by Max Amaden 2017-08-09T20:02:50Z

Good graphics and overall aesthetic that works well with the audio work. Gameplay is interesting, your mobility is your offense and your defense made for some unique decisions for the player to make on the fly.

That said, I personally don't care for exposition dumps for teaching the player. I tend to find that it leads to a "reading a manual" type situation with games, where either you read and understand everything the first time (sometimes works depending on the length of the dump) or you have to keep referring back to it as you understand the different mechanics and how they relate to each other. In my opinion, a much better tutorial would be one that instructs the player while allowing them to experiment to get a better understanding of what they're being told while applying it.

The controls would feel a lot better if it were to lock the cursor to the window for the game. Perhaps it does this in one of the downloaded versions, and I'm missing out because I played on the web version (which has its own minor problems), but I'm assuming this is not the case. This is a problem I find with mouse-based games that are faster-paced. The nature of the game may often have the player quickly moving the mouse all over the game's window, and if the player accidentally overshoots, they could easily miss a necessary jump or movement by clicking outside the game's window. If the game were to pause while not focused (another thing a downloaded version may fix, but I also assume not) then this wouldn't be as big an issue, aside from the interrupt in gameplay the player has.

Most of the non-gameplay screens are wonky at best. The Restart/Gameover screen requires you to not click the screen in order to actually restart (despite being the opposite of what the game tells you to do), the exposition dump takes significant time to skip once you've read and fully understand it (rather than allowing the player to just spam left click through it), and the web version's exposition dump actually goes off-screen. It only cuts off one letter on the left and right sides, but it's still an issue that should be addressed.

Lastly, the power is just life/health/hp. There's not really any two-ways about it, this is almost nothing but a life-bar that slowly goes down. The only strategizing involving it is making sure it's somewhere above 0. It doesn't change your offensive power, shorten/length your blink distance, or affect any other gameplay in any way other than giving you a gameover once it runs out. The mechanics fit the theme in name only. Theme 1/5 from me.

Overall this was a game I did legitimately find fun, and would like to see after given more polish to the overall experience, but was barred down by several issues some worsening the first experience of the game, others the entire experience of the game.

EDIT: I did actually go back and try this game's downloadable version, and found it did actually pause when not holding focus. This does help the player get back into the game rather than punishing the player for missing the screen with every click, but still inhibits the flow of the gameplay, and literally pauses the pacing of the game.

Unlit by xdegtyarev 2017-08-02T21:46:09Z

Given these comments, I feel like the only one who didn't really care for this entry. Being a platformer, there was a lot of jumping around, timing movement and jumping with obstacles (spikes), and finding checkpoints, but that seems to have been all of the gameplay there was to this game. There aren't any decisions to make, no creativity on behalf of the player (other than perhaps finding new routes, but there aren't many opportunities for that), few mechanics to work with, only timing your movement to run from safe-spot to safe-spot before spikes kill you in-between.

I ran into several glitches while playing the game that definitely hampered the experience with unnecessary deaths: the spikes that come from floating ceiling pieces can still kill the player if they walk against the side of a wall that contains the spikes (example after checkpoint 5) (check player hitbox and make sure it's not overlapping into the wall when moving against the wall), the player can clip through some wall corners while falling (example after checkpoint 7, when falling down to the first challenge area after checkpoint 5) (not sure what to recommend to do to remedy this one), and lastly the checkpoints themselves can be very glitchy at times, sometimes spawning you about 5 blocks or so above their location, and they apparently have a hitbox you can jump through and stand on top of (make sure they only act as a collider, unless this is intended).

The checkpoints that are in areas that will kill you are just plain frustrating because you cannot control when you respawn, so you may sit there and wait until you die 2 extra times before you have a chance to move. This would be much less of an issue if the game waited until spikes/blocks were not literally directly in your hitbox when you spawn, and would still retain the challenge of some of the checkpoints will kill you if you wait there too long.

The camera can take a long time to pan back to the player if the player dies a far way away from their last checkpoint, which is frustrating when you know your next checkpoint is a ways away and you need all the time you can get to make it to the next checkpoint. It'd be nice if the camera would either snap back to the player, or move faster back to the player if it knows it has to move further. I can't tell if you already have a system like this in place, but if so, then reducing the time it takes for this snap-back to complete would be helpful.

Movement felt clunky to me, like the players movement was inconsistent and was jittering a lot, but after checking the game again, it seems that this is an issue with the camera snapping to the player at about 10-20Hz. It appears this camera snapping is handled via FixedUpdate, and would look a lot more smooth if it were instead on Update.

Lastly, I just didn't feel that the light/power/time between checkpoints ever gave the impression of being power, and this never gave me the feeling that I was Running Out Of Power. Besides death and slightly dimming the screen, power didn't appear to do much anything, so rather than feeling I was running out of power, it felt more like I had an obscured timer ticking down that displayed a (presumably empty) battery upon death. Perhaps if the light from the player was a bit more noticeable (it appears to be much more significant in your screenshots than in the actual game) and having that be reduced closer to death, or perhaps making the screen dim much more significant would better convey to players like myself who never got that intended feeling.

I'm glad you do still have people who enjoyed it, but I really didn't care for it in many ways.

tl;dr: Didn't enjoy the core gameplay and felt it didn't well fit the LD39 theme, but explained my several other gripes with the game and possible fixes for many issues and some bugs.

PowrConnectr by JOrbits 2017-08-01T06:14:19Z

Good puzzle game, a bit of a different take on the usual pipe puzzle game by draining power through the pipes to unlock different sections of the puzzle. Graphics made for a great aesthetic which paired with the music and simple gameplay made for a nice overall experience. Definitely a great entry.

My only gripes with the game was that the mechanic for connecting power to a red node caused an instant failure of the puzzle and the colored tiles all moving simultaneously weren't well conveyed (to me at least) and it took a few more puzzles than I believe was intended before I really grasped those concepts.

The instant failure probably could have been handled better by making it more obvious to the player (at least near the beginning of the game) that the level has reset back to its original state (perhaps having each tile rotate itself back to their default states).

The colored tiles all moving simultaneously issue I ran into was because of misreading the puzzle fail text (because it was showing up behind the puzzle for some reason) and thinking that the red power drain nodes also had the same logic applied to them for the red colored tiles. Perhaps this could have been better conveyed by avoiding the use of red for pipes.

Either way, small misunderstandings about the game's mechanics that were eventually properly understood to eventually complete this overall very nice game.

Powering Down by jwin 2017-08-02T20:37:29Z

Overall, this was a game that had a solid concept (well suited for the jam) and stuck to it well. The mechanics all lead to interesting decisions for the player to make to better dodge shots, tank hits, or do whatever to their power consumption to make sure they have enough power to get to the next recharge station.

I agree with Pedro, the controls felt a bit clunky because of having to pause to change systems around, but this was otherwise a great game, and I'd love to see more to this than could be made during the jam.

Cave torch and black screen for ludum dare 39 by mat1er 2017-08-03T02:20:30Z

Interesting premise. Could definitely use some quality of life changes, such as being able to move your flashlight down to see your immediate area or being able to change batteries while moving and/or in the air, and making it so the "ghosts" won't spawn immediately next to you before you have a chance to move. I died at least twice going into a new zone and having a ghost spawn directly next to me before I could move or react.

While I can understand and respect sticking to your guns about not moving while in the air, it'd be nice if there was one or two extra frames after the jump before cutting off movement. I often would be stuck between 2 objects and unable to get out because any time I'd move then jump I'd either not get the movement before the jump or move too far into an object before the jump. There's a distinct difference between designing your controls to make the player uncomfortable and frustrating the player with bad controls.

Besides that, definitely a more challenging platformer that did a good job of conveying the intended mood. The eyes coming at you, finding ghosts nearby you when you leave your light off, and many other obstacles made me always want to keep a very healthy supply of batteries while trying to move through the level as quick as possible.

The art was all consistent with itself, the music was well timed with the remaining charge of your flashlight, and the enemies showed up just frequently enough to make the player always try to get further into the levels quicker.

Overall pretty good, 3-4 stars for most every category.

Recharge by mponomarev 2017-08-01T05:15:43Z

Looks nice, good music and sound effects, and sticks to its own aesthetic well, but there doesn't appear to be anything gameplay-wise. The hitboxes don't appear to either function correctly or are fully implemented, running out of power doesn't seem to do anything, and there doesn't appear to be any objective (yet) in the game, so you can only really platform through walls, recharge, or fall into the endless void.

PowerBalanceTD by Infernal 2017-08-01T05:29:59Z

Neat twist on the typical tower defense game, power generation is not something you often seen in them. Would have been nice if I could pay even $5 to destroy a placement (as just a nice little QOL thing) after realizing it wasn't a great placement, but I suppose I could just start over and try again. Started getting really loud when all towers were constantly firing simultaneously, though.

Dark Risk by jaydonteh 2017-08-01T05:44:04Z

Nice interesting game here, the lone piano playing Silent Night gave a creepy vibe always keeping me on edge, especially with the very dynamic camera. The zoom/reach of the flashlight always had me darting around looking for more mineral deposits before I even realized why I had to be more careful in the dark. Not very much to the game as a whole, but a great short experience for that creepy atmosphere.

Fading Points by SMILEY_4_ 2017-08-15T01:30:13Z

Interesting and unique puzzle game that sticks to its aesthetic well.

Graphics are nice and simple. They convey most everything the player needs to know well, although I would have liked something to tell me how many right clicks I had remaining.

The game was fun as a puzzle game, but I could tell it would get dull relatively quickly. Personally, I stopped playing it before I really ran into that, so it wasn't too big a deal for me.

I didn't find the game very well fit the theme, unless that's supposed to be how/why the grey walls keep disappearing.

I ran into a bug that broke one specific level, but could easily break any level: Small red dots appear to not realize that the large red dot is not navigable. I had the situation pictured below where one red dot was stuck behind the large red dot and would never move itself from behind it, so I could never destroy it. Not a very big issue, unlikely, and definitely not game-breaking, but it is level-breaking, and it shouldn't be too hard to fix. ss (2017-08-14 at 01.49.24).png

The puzzles appear to be randomly generated, which lead to some interesting (nearly impossible) first puzzles after learning the mechanics. The game feels almost too easy on almost all the larger puzzles (it's easy to split up enemies and set up walls to destroy each one at a time) and extremely difficult on smaller ones. I never found myself actually using the second of blue dots, as the usual strategy tends to be bottleneck on one route and destroy anything that comes through while hoping your grey walls hold up. As a side note, it would be interesting to change up the pathfinding algorithms from time to time to keep the enemy dots from being totally predictable when there are multiple optimal routes, and the game could definitely be improved with some better random level generation (look into some maze generation or terrain generation methods, some may suite this game well)

Overall a very interesting game that just needs some more polish and TLC to really shine.

Lost in the Dark by Schu 2017-08-01T05:00:04Z

Great use of the theme, but only really got interesting once the lasers were introduced. Very trial-and-error heavy, though. Not very fun retracing your steps to find one new path that doesn't get you closer to the exit.

Chromadice by AugusteTheClown 2018-08-22T21:49:04Z

@aurel300 Yes, animated movement was a huge issue we were trying to implement, we we knew ever since we first saw the game in action that it would be an absolute necessity for players to understand what was happening in the game. We unfortunately didn't plan out our time during the jam well enough to dedicate enough time to properly implementing it. There actually was a fix we had for the game that would (in theory) implement movement, however we simply didn't have the time to get it functional or fix the bugs it introduced. We're currently working on a post-jam release (planning to be marked as post-jam) that will address this and attempt to fix some of the game's very easy difficulty.

MechaSnek by bluescrn 2018-05-04T15:18:55Z

Extremely impressive. Controls are tight, camera works well with the player, gameplay naturally makes the game harder and harder the more you progress, everything looks and feels well polished, and the game itself gives off a very fast paced vibe to match the fast paced gameplay. There's not much to say about this title that hasn't already been fawned over by the comments above, this is just one very well designed and well polished title. This will definitely be one of the top titles for the jam.

Lootbox Simulator 2018 by aaranos 2018-05-13T04:10:26Z

I get it. It ain't making me laugh, but I get it.

A clicker game without the automation that leads to addictive play, and lootboxes that don't appear to actually give you anything.

I liked the music, sound effects, and what graphics were there were nice, but the humor ran out after about a minute of play.

M3 DEFENSE by rplnt 2018-05-12T15:17:15Z

Personally, I didn't care for it much. I couldn't ever tell if any of the colors made a difference, or if they were there purely for the match-3, I (like others here) ran into the issue with turrets randomly not firing (if you did this in unity, depending on your implementation I may have a few tips), and not being able to reposition the pairs of turrets was very frustrating. The attacks from my turrets never felt like they had any impact. It'd be nice to see if the enemies took some recoil on being hit or lost health, but I know my own Tower Defense could have used this as well.

That all being said, I just personally didn't find it much fun. To me, it felt like it was missing several key elements to hold the player's (or at least my own) engagement.

C://TEXTRIS.EXE by Ryan Gannon King 2018-05-04T13:50:52Z

Very interesting game. Shows a great concept with good execution, but still a bit buggy: I had words that would trigger from off the edge of the tetris workspace, and caused the entire workspace to shift 1 letter to the left somehow, I found that the game doesn't appear to handle clearing multiple lines at the same time quite right (the bottom line is darkened, then all lines disappear), and there appears to be a slight issue with triggering words when you're also placing a tetrimino that would complete a line (that could be a balance decision, however considering how difficult the game is already for the player to impose control over the text scenario, that seems unnecessary).

My biggest gripes with the game was that I could never keep up with reading the new text every time I completed a word to figure out what just happened or what my next action should be, and it seemed rather difficult to try and control what I was doing. At some point, I had to stop worrying about what letters I was putting where, and concentrate entirely on where I was putting the tetriminoes, which lead to completing several words without being aware of what I did, or what was happening because of it. It would have been less frustrating if the player had at least some better control over what letters showed up so they could at least impose some control over what they do.

Unfortunately I couldn't get very far through the game. The bugs I was encountering made it difficult to progress much farther than I already had, but with a few bugfixes, and possibly a few balance changes this could make for a very unique and interesting experience.

Wizsnooks by kroltan 2018-05-11T16:20:32Z

A visually polished title, but definitely lacking in gameplay polish.

The physics definitely needs work when banking shots. It looks like many smaller colliders were used as hitboxes, leading to a problem where balls with hit the corner of one hitbox and bounce off of it at a weird angle instead of reflecting off the wall as the player intended and expected. This makes banking shots difficult if not impossible at times, not that they're necessary. The way the game is currently set up, does not incentivize any tricky shots other than hitting enemies into one another. Rather than taking one shot to bounce off a wall and hit an enemy towards a lava pit, it's far more effective and reliable to use 6 taps to line up one shot. Not really in the spirit of billiards, in my opinion. The lack of being able to pan your screen to see your farther shots also doesn't help with this issue, as it's far safer to take small taps to navigate rather than let yourself hit a dragon at the end of a path you couldn't see down.

A few smaller gripes: I wish there was some way to take no/reduced damage during attacks (two balls collide, the one going x% faster than the other is considered the attacking ball or attacks first and can kill before taking damage, if neither are going fast enough then they both attack simultaneously) as it was frustrating that I couldn't strategise the be more effective while at low health (perhaps all enemies face the cue ball, and hitting the back of the enemy causes you to take no damage?). This leads into a general gameplay flow gripe of how the game currently forces you to constantly stop your gameplay in order to heal up after every engagement. I know it's only a few clicks/taps to go to inventory, select unnecessary equipment, and disenchant to heal, but it was frustrating to do that after killing every single enemy when I was trying to recover from a low health situation. A sidebar with your most recent pickups that allowed you to disenchant from there could help with this particular issue, so the player could stay in the flow of the game without being interrupted by inventory after every kill.

All that being said, I did still enjoy the game. I love billiards and RPGs, and I think this was an interesting mix of the two. Unlike some of the other people here, I was quite fine with the lava pits being instant death, as it does still keep it consistent with how the enemies interact with them, and it further drives the point that the player needs to make sure none of their shots sink themself, only their enemies. As far as the game itself goes, I just feel that a few key elements were missing to let this mix of 2 great genres really feel like it was in the spirit of either.

Dragoon Drop by jhandsy 2018-05-04T15:51:22Z

Easily among my favorite games this jam. I was able to get a good feel for how the game worked after my second or so try. I especially liked how each card explained mechanically what it did (although I think a few of these terms could use some better clarification, "Leap" "Quick" and "Attack All" for a few examples) so it was very clear what the player's options were.

The game may benefit from having specific abilities that can be semi-reliably used (using this card leaves it "tapped" or flipped over for X turns) as I often found myself with a lot of attack cards when trying to platform, and a lot of movement cards when trying to engage with enemies. Any such permanent cards could be used as "Hero"/Class cards that are specific to the character you're playing, if that were the type of play you would consider trying.

Besides that, the game was very solidly designed. As long as the player is paying attention to the environment around them, they generally have the space to naturally figure out how the environment works in relation to what they're doing, and what enemies are doing, as well as how the turns interact with one another. The audio was very fitting, and the graphics were good looking pixel art that was all consistent with itself. I hope you make sure to rate plenty of other games, as I look forward to seeing this title among the top titles this jam.

Modern Fairway 4: Spec-Ops in the Rough by Lost Dutchman Software 2018-05-13T05:05:08Z

Very impressive title. Graphics, mechanics, weapon detail, audio effects, ammo, scope, weapon swapping, all of it very impressive. The game itself got fairly boring fairly quickly.

I can understand trying to remain faithful to the shooter genre, however I feel like this game could have benefited from straying from the CoD formula in a few regards: limited ammo, stamina limiting sprinting, and pretty much all of the automatic weapons.

Raucous Raccard by noumenus 2018-05-12T14:59:00Z

In general a great game. I really enjoyed the theme and humor, and the feeling of trying to plot out how your next turn is going to go only for it to fail spectacularly.

I do wish you could de-select cards in the event you change your mind or accidentally select the wrong card, or similarly be able to return cards back to your hand for the same reason. I also had trouble understanding exactly which direction I was going to be moving when I landed on platforms, and the walls weren't very obvious why they applied to the player but not the NPCs (perhaps doors to illustrate that the people can get through them, but not a raccoon?) but besides those few minor gripes, still a very enjoyable game.

Dungeon Typist by the_noffs 2018-05-04T14:41:01Z

I love the idea of this, and I think with more depth, this concept could work as a legitimate full scale game. That being said, I think this iteration of the game is sadly lacking in a lot of the potential depth this could easily achieve.

Because OPEN and CLOSE both appear to have infinite range (so long as your letters can reach their target) it took me about 5-10 minutes of kiting an enemy before I realized I wasn't dealing any damage to it, and had to wait for it to get very close before I saw those damage values ticking. The game could definitely use some way of better illustrating that HIT has a limited range. Judging from the comments, I don't think I was the only one who struggled to realize this.

One other nitpick I had was that it felt awkward going back and forth from regular typing to the arrow keys. I'm sure the player could eventually get used to it, but something about it just felt a bit off/odd as it was.

Other than that, the game was just very simple. I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing for games, but this is the type of game that absolutely could benefit from plenty of depth. I really do hope you can expand upon this more than what's in the post-jam version (how do you eat the apples, and what does SLAM do?), as I do think this could be a novel addition to the Dungeon Crawler genre.