Bitmo Pirates MMO by josefnpat 2013-12-16T04:45:00
Second for cloaking device! I'm having a good time exploiting combinations of items. :)
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → namuol
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | Co | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2014 | 29 | Beneath the Surface | Without a Paddle | compo | 147 | 3.68 | 3.68 | 3.55 | 3.42 | 3.10 | 3.00 | 3.29 | 3.16 | 54 | ||
| 2013 | 27 | 10 Seconds | PAC MANy | jam | 183 | 3.36 | 3.27 | 3.18 | 3.27 | 3.00 | 2.60 | 2.73 | 2.63 | 37 | ||
| 2013 | 26 | Minimalism | Factory Consultant | compo | 114 | 3.74 | 3.85 | 3.91 | 3.09 | 3.26 | 2.73 | 2.86 | 2.79 | 57 | ||
| 2012 | 25 | You are the Villain | BOTWALK | compo | 59 | 3.68 | 3.76 | 3.65 | 4.18 | 3.97 | 3.05 | 2.97 | 3.44 | 71 | ||
| 2012 | 23 | Tiny World | muniverse | jam | 58 | 3.50 | 3.13 | 3.19 | 2.54 | 3.08 | 1.56 | 1.90 | 3.05 | 89 |
namuol leaves an average of 35.2 feedback comments each event.
Second for cloaking device! I'm having a good time exploiting combinations of items. :)
Great feel to the game, lots of stuff going on but simple to understand, easy to pick up and play.
My best time was 35 seconds, but I have a feeling I could do better. Great fun!
It could definitely use some polish as far as game-feel goes, but the dimension-switching mechanic is pretty interesting.
PS. I think I've fixed my game for FireFox if you want to give it a try again. Thanks!
I believe I've fixed PAC-MANy for FireFox if you want to give it a try; thanks!
Nice atmosphere and music -- the 10-seconds-to-live mechanic actually sort of took away from the more zen-like exploratory nature of the game, which is definitely the strong point.
With some more content/procedurally generated ocean floor, I could play for long stretches just to see what's "around the corner" :)
Many of the levels felt "exploitable" in unintentional ways, but I really like that there was plenty of variety in the level designs.
Insanely detailed! I'll have to come back to read through everything. How much of this did you write from scratch for the compo?!
YESSSS! So much fun. Amazing how much gameplay you can squeeze into 10 seconds!
Very nice graphics and music!
I love the variety in the world! I'm not sure the pits really add much -- I feel like the time limit is what keeps it interesting, most of all, and sudden gameovers are kind of a bummer (although the instant restart makes the damage feel not-so-bad).
Add a summary/game over screen and track my high score, and this would have a lot of addiction potential. ;]
Very zen once I figured out the mechanics (the tutorial was actually quite helpful, if a little wordy).
Hard to know if I'm doing "well" in the game or not, but I enjoyed playing, and absolutely love the concept, visuals, and graphics.
Not to beat a dead horse, but those are some fantastic graphics!
The gameplay is fun, but imbalanced. I think the problem is that it's too easy to just cluster weapons directly in front of the lighthouse -- there should be a limit to how many you could place in one spot to force the player to micromanage as their defenses get destroyed.
Nice graphics!
That boss tore me up, but the ghosts were easy to avoid just by running.
kick ALL THE BIRDS!
My only complaint is that it was a bit sluggish on my computer. Super fun. Needs a high score table!
"Fill your rage bar in time or you'll be heading to the unemployment office!"
This is my real life as a freelance programmer.
I'm literally crunching numbers right now and it makes me so happy.
Nice take on blackjack! I'm terrible at arithmetic, but apparently I'm better when I'm under pressure and don't have time to think about it. o_o
Challenging, but in the best of ways. You've clearly got a hit on your hands!
Great production all-around, too.
One question: Are the dungeons always guaranteed to be solvable? I'd love to hear about your approach; mostly because the layout is so simple, it would act as a great starting-point for getting into "procedural" dungeons/puzzles (although I'd guess you had more deliberate control of the dungeon design).
Really captured the essence of the sort of micro strategy minus most of the tactical stuff. Perfect for the theme, and pretty fun, too!
Bonus points for TA reference.
Very impressive! Fits perfectly with the theme both in terms of mechanics and presentation. The sand effect is extremely satisfying. How did you achieve that?
This belongs on mobile/tablets!
Impressive number of good tunes!
Also quite fun.
A little frustrating to go through the game's menu transitions every time I die (which is often), but otherwise enough content to keep me coming back to see what else I'd discover on the next level.
Outstanding puzzler. Presentation is lovely. One of my favorites so far, no question!
Nice pixels. Runs smoothly in Chromium for Linux.
One tip would be to include some kind of pathfinding; the bee-line-to-mouse-click-position doesn't really make sense when you can fall off a ledge. I guess this could be seen as a gameplay feature, but it's more tedious than it is fun.
Neat mechanics (especially the staff-jump), although I found the challenge to be less about clever use of the mechanics so much as reflexes/muscle memory. This isn't really a bad thing, but I wonder if you could have explored the mechanics a little more if there was more time.
The sort of game I love to play.
I would've liked to see it be more rhythm-oriented/musical in the sense of producing actual melodies, but it's fun enough thinking about the puzzles. I think if there were specific bounds/limitations set the puzzles would feel more like puzzles and less like programming -- but that's more of an observation than a criticism; I kinda like the openness of it.
GREAT MUSIC!
Obviously, this is a crowd-pleaser, but I felt that the RAGE could have felt more RAGEy -- I need air-dash and power-slams!
Still, hard not to like.
Cool mechanic. I've always liked games that required me to control something "blindly" -- I even made a snake game based on this idea a few months ago: http://blind-snake.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/
I have to admit, I'm feeling inspired by your game!
Nice little tune -- it's intense but in a creepy sort of way that obviously fits well with the dark motif in the game.
Hmm. Can't play in Ubuntu Linux 12.10 because it doesn't support Flash 11.4 (I have 11.2 :( )
Aww this looks like it could be fun, but I don't have anyone to play with. You should consider writing AI for a game like this next time -- these sorts of games aren't very hard to write AI for if you follow a decision tree approach!
Outstanding graphics and audio, as usual. ;)
And great use of physics -- the control feels pretty good, which is not something I usually can say about games that feature physics prominently like this.
I'd have to second what @Jrykface said regarding stairs & timers, though.
*Shoutout from a fellow libGDX user* (although my entry is uses an unreleased HTML5 engine)
Love the tiny animations!
The gameplay was too repetitive/easy to be fun for very long -- if things moved faster and you incorporated some kind of combo system, or even just offered a "difficult" setting, I could see myself playing this for extended periods.
Nonetheless, great entry -- Bonus points for a decent soundtrack!
Glad to see an entry about minimalism in the sense of decluttering. The "feel" was a bit sluggish for my taste in platformers but I can fogive it for the multitude of mechanics presented within it.
Outstanding atmosphere, mood, visuals, sound ... but tragically-brief. Still, this stands out as one of the most memorable LD entries I've ever played.
I've seen two different endings -- are there more?
Solid little adventure game. What was used to make it?
Fantastic production work, but I'm terrible at the game -- I keep dying in the lava for reasons that are apparently out of my control; the ghost doesn't always drop bricks in ways that provide a way up.
With some tweaking in the gameplay you've got a really great entry.
That *music*!
Great concept, and it was executed pretty well. I played with a trackball, but had no problem raking in cash. ;)
A few small suggestions:
1. I love the tactile-feeling UI, but the paintbrush should be a simple circle indicating where I'm actually going to paint; it's very hard to be precise because it's unclear where the paint will go.
2. The canvas image's torn edges can really throw you off since it looks like you're closer to the edge of the image than the game treats it.
Otherwise, loved it. Were you by any chance inspired by Jon Blow's Painter game? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAJ60gBBjjU
What did you use to build this?
I'm a sucker for memory games. Nice pixels. I'd only recommend that maybe it gradually speeds up as you play, and that there's no delay between button presses (that is, so you can hit them as fast as you want).
Looks great but the game doesn't want to load for me from NewGrounds. Not sure why -- I'm in Linux, but Flash usually works fine. Do you have an alternative URL or SWF link?
It's already pretty satisfying to play this, but put a some post-compo time into it (focus on getting the motion of the apples to feel "weighty") and you could have a very fun game.
Astounding polish. I just wish I had someone to play with!
Nice potato cameo.
Linux users: this works almost-perfectly in Ubuntu with WINE. For some reason the mouse pulls down constantly, which is very annoying, but it doesn't make the game unplayable. You need to "look up" first.
Nice little puzzles. Was a bit confused about "where to go" toward the end, but since it's 1D, it's "straightforward" to explore, if you will.
@texel: Baby, don't hurt me.
Nice graphics, but the gameplay is essentially broken. It's mostly a game of chance when I can tell you meant for it to be a reflex-oriented game.
A few suggestions:
- Spawn cop cars out of view so there's more time for the player to react.
- Ensure that there's always at least 1 car width for the player to pass through whenever you spawn a cop.
- Smaller cars/hitboxes!
Other than that, you have the framework for a fun game; add some nice sound effects, maybe a few animations, and some music!
Okay so, I'm just on the title screen and I think it's fair to say that the voice reading was the most bizarre thing I've encountered in the compo so far. Congratulations, I suppose!
Other than that I was kinda lost as far as what I was supposed to be doing. I think I killed some cats, though. What have I become?
Enemy encounters are quite fun. Also, nice to see a game with multiple songs in its soundtrack!
Just so you know, the cost of decoding an MP3 or OGG file in windows is negligible. You really wont notice any slowdown on _any_ machine, I promise. Please, avoid using WAV files, especially for music!
Yup, broken link. Which is a shame, because this one looks pretty neat.
I think I'm going to make a tutorial for uploading files to S3...
What @Benjamin said! Those controls need fixin'. It seems like you're only triggering a single-pixel of movement whenever a "keypress" event occurs. Instead, you want to change the _velocity_ of the player whenever a key goes from being up, to being down, and vice-versa.
What I learned today: elves with red hats? Good. Elves with green hats? Bad. Bonus points for snowflakes. :)
Hmmph. Chrome/Windows is telling me that EnvyFarmer.zip appears malicious. You might want to look into that -- I'm willing to bet you've missed a lot of votes just because of that. :[
Has potential to be quite fun, but the mouse controls are very hard to gauge. Make the "hitbox" for the mouse larger, and perhaps change the visuals to reflect it better, and you have a fun sort of on-your-feet puzzle game!
Loved the production as a whole, though.
3 hours! Great job!
Cool puzzle game.
It can be very hard to tell how close one square is to being "over the edge". I think it would be a little more playable if you used numbers instead of colors. Or something like bars filling up/emptying.
Another thing to play with might be some sort of animation illustrating how the "light" is being distributed whenever you press a key, so you can piece together the series of actions you need to make without too much guesswork.
It's a stretch to fit it over the theme, but it definitely has a sort of "vampiric" vibe to it.
I love games that really play off my expectations.
Not sure how I feel about fighting off PTSD with QTE's, but the flow of the narrative was ... interesting. Nice job.
Needless to say, love those shadows.
The tongue mechanic was unique -- I think it could have been more fun with some tweaks to how it animates and responds to your movement -- maybe make it feel a little more physical -- like have it shoot out, slow down near the end, then spring back. A simple sine wave motion would do the trick. Just a small suggestion!
Really liked the different endings. Nice touch.
It's hard for me to discern what the game's saying -- if anything -- but at least it made me ponder and play through a couple times experimenting with playstyles. I'm mostly grasping for how this has to do with the theme. I thought I played with conviction but the game still seemed to end the same way and tell me the same thing: "Without conviction, there are no heroes." Oh well, c'est la vie. ;)
I got to see all endings; interesting take on the theme.
Great music!
Hehe... http://i.imgur.com/QmLXv.png
Felt good once I broke that barrier.
BTW you can put up a "post-compo" version of the game here -- it's not cheating as long as you make it clear which game we're judging.
A solid arena shooter! The names and talk bubbles add a lot of charm. Excellent entry!
(Please add sound/music for a post-compo version!)
Gwah! It took me way too long to realize what I needed to do there. Heh. Clever.
But man, that is one brutally-large hitbox. Ouch.
Yeah man, I always hated those planes when I watched King Kong as a child. Poor King Kong. :[
Well done.
*Slow clap*
That music is *perfect*. You know how to make the most of the sin() function. ;) Hilarious premise. Great stuff.
The dancing was hilarious. The cruelest kind of torture.
Looks and plays very solidly; not bad for 48 hours at all. You should pick it up and add some more content if you're so inclined!
I'm an ImpactJS user, but I'll have to check out JawJS. Cheers!
Nice to see a game with some solid music!
Gameplay is a little too straightforward -- would have been nice to see the ability to control different hordes of enemies at once, and a slightly more strategic "enemy" AI. But hey, the game plays well!
Why hasn't anyone made a game where you play a sea monster like this before? It's awesome!
Not that this is a complaint really, but I found the game very easy -- I could probably continually play until I fell asleep or died of starvation.
The minimap is a nice touch.
The voice-acted sound effects are amazing. Bonus points!
A little polish could bring this a long way! Gameplay-wise, my biggest suggestion would be to work on giving the user feedback (it's hard to see when I'm swinging my club, for instance) -- this means adding a frame or two to some animations, and some sound effects (sfxr, ftw!). But the gameplay is mostly there, otherwise.
Cheers from a fellow ImpactJS user, and someone who wants to smash things (who doesn't?). ;)
Great gameplay! Graphics are nice too. My high score was a (pathetic?) 518. Overall, a very solid entry!
====
I did experience some sound problems in Chromium in Linux (audio just stopped altogether eventually).
I've experienced this before with HTML5 audio. Here's my advice: with ImpactJS include MP3, OGG, and M4A files for all your sounds and use the SoundFile.* syntax to load them. Also make sure to enable M4A support with ig.Sound.use (check the docs); I found this is required for the newer versions of Safari.
Lastly, if your audio files are very short (< 100ms or so) try "padding" them with 100-200ms of silence at the end. This will not increase the filesize by much at all. I've solved almost all of my sound problems cross-browser by following those steps.
Tough but not too tough. The wall jumping occasionally drove me mad. But I got through my second try. How does this fit the theme? Still, fun little platformer.
Clever. :)
Ooo! This is quite difficult, but there's a lot of potential for like, action/stealth puzzles. Really nice. You should add checkpoints though; it's brutally difficult for me to get all the way through. Good stuff overall!
Yay, now I can eat the princess!
Fun. There were some balance issues with the units but that's something that can be fixed with some playtesting and number tweaking. Lots of potential. Nice artwork!
I loves them chunky pixels! Also, ImpactJS FTW. Our games have a lot in common! Great minds think alike. ;)
BIG bonus points for being super-playable on iPhone/Android browsers! The simple controls really made that a no-brainer. Great job!
Bad Job! That means good job because you are trying to be bad.
Loved it! very simple but solid mechanics. The evil laugh is such a great bonus. Super fun!
This isn't bad, but it breaks a few rules as far as platformer design goes (in my book).
The biggest one for me is that my character has no momentum -- that is to say, as soon as I let go of left/right, even in mid-air, my character's horizontal velocity immediately goes to zero.
Another is having a fixed-height jump. This is less important with your game based on how the levels are designed, but allowing the player to make "shallow" jumps and extra-high/long jumps could open you up to trickier level design.
But you can be assured that these are *very* common "mistakes" as far as platformers go. If you want a few examples of platforming bliss, look at how Super Meat Boy, N, and Braid all feel to control.
--
Nonetheless, you only had 2 days to make this, and it's not just your run-of-the-mill platformer; bonus points for the grappling hook. Scaling walls with the it is very satisfying!
You should consider statically-linking the Visual Studio DLL with the project since a lot of people won't have it on their system. I can't seem to figure out what I need to make it work on my system... It looks great, though; I want to play!
Feel free to leave a shout on my game's page if you find a fix so I can play!
Fun -- would love to see more levels/enemies and maybe some puzzle elements in a post-compo version. Really, this could be a contender if it only had some more gameplay. Such is life in a 48hour compo, eh?
Character animations were quite good, and I was even compelled to let the music keep playing! This is rare for most LD entries. ;)
And oh, the emoticons were a cute touch.
I think it's fair to say that this is a pretty ambitious game. RTSs are fairly rare among LD entries.
I have similar complaints to the others regarding the interface -- you really just need to build in more feedback. There's no way to know how much each unit costs to create, for instance (as far as I can tell). The graphics could use some polish, but they get the job done.
I like that your resources are essentially just the carnage from the enemy. Kinda reminds me of salvaging metal from the wreckage of a battlefield in Total Annihilation.
Haha, adorable/twisted.
My friend suggested I change the humans in my game to puppies and see who still plays the game to find out who the "real monsters" of the world are. Looks like you've done something like that, here. Since I gleefully enjoyed your game, I must be a monster. ;)
I watch a lot of Dexter lately, so this is fitting. Love the blood-cleaning mechanic. It wasn't very challenging near the end once I had the powerups. I would have liked it if there was some kind of reward for never causing a panic, since that tends to be a much harder way to finish a level. Still, the graphics were lovely (the monotone colors make the blood stand out -- stylish).
You may want to look for better hosting -- it's taking 10+ minutes to download a file under 20 megs. That's not a terribly long time, but when there are literally hundreds of games you want to play, people are going to try the ones that are fast-to-load first.
I'll report back when the download finishes, and I get to play. That screenshot is enticing!
I like the pixels, but they really need some animation to come to life. I like how the "stand-back" mechanic feels.
Best entry I've played so far -- it was really hard to put it down! I don't really have any complaints. Definitely gonna check out the rest of your work. Cheers!
Always a pleasure to give innocent people fatally-explosive diarrhea. :]
I was waiting to see something like this pop up. Very nicely done! You're already featured on indiegames, too! Excellent work.
I like your visual style. The muddy banjo music adds to the charm.
This is definitely one of the stand-outs I've played so far. I even went through and completed the story (even though there's loads more to play from the look of it).
I kinda sucked so there was a lot of grind to upgrade my ship, but I really liked message you conveyed, here. Bravo!
I dig the glitchiness -- reminds me of ROM CHECK FAIL.
So many delightfully-awful puns.
The game is fun, too! Great stuff.
Hilarious!
Fun, but challenging. I never seem to have enough to pay for a refinery -- I tend to go bankrupt once I have 10-15 rigs built -- it's just hard to find the juicy spots. I'm willing to bet once you get to that stage things start to slide into place.
If you intend to keep working on it, I'd recommend highlighting squares high in resources so there isn't as much "mouse hunting".
(Understandably) Brief game, but well-polished. Nice n chunky pixels and a cool trip hop tune playing in the background. Each screen has essentially all-new graphics (lo-fi as they are).
The puzzles are simple once the solution is known, but interesting to watch/figure out. I would like to see more puzzles that employ the rotation mechanic -- there's a lot of potential there.
Solid work!
I agree with the others -- visuals are lovely. It's *very* satisfying to complete a level, simply due to the nature of the mechanics. Great stuff.
I have to say that I too did get frustrated occasionally. It would be nice to have an "undo" button -- especially since you can't really see what's going on at the beginning of each level. Just something that puts the game in the state previous to the last move you made would essentially eliminate forced restarts.
You should add music to this -- it already has great atmosphere but music will really push it to the next level.
Mmm arena shooter yes. Feels good man.
Graphics/sound/gameplay are all solid. A sound/visual for when enemies die would add even more joyful catharsis, but I think you already have a hit on your hands. ;)
Hmph. I guess I'm one of the people who can't run it. :(
Here's the error dump: https://gist.github.com/2667302
I'm running 64 bit Linux, by the way.
Looove those planet graphics. Lots of nice content here, actually.
It was a bit too easy for me (I got through without dying once), but I'm sure you can address difficulty in the extended version (my suggestion would be to make the "wave" weapon's strength diminish more the more it expands).
Nice job doing this from scratch in javascript/canvas.
Love the focus effect -- it's a very elegant technique.
Agreed, not exactly a game per se, but still an enjoyable and unique experience, and certainly fits the theme. Full points for mood, for sure. Nice job.
Nice music. :)
The intro text almost suggests something like a stealth-RTS, which, as far as mechanics go isn't *exactly* what you have going on here, but it's an idea really worth exploring.
The controls were a bit cumbersome, especially considering how this is a pretty frantic decision-making game. I think something like a radial/multi-directional menu would be perfect for this.
Pretty fun -- there's certainly strategy as far as when to send out specific units (and of course, which planets to target). One thing that bothered me though was the lack of challenge -- I never seemed to die. I usually die a lot in strategy games. ;) A little tweaking of numbers would probably help make this very addictive.
I really like the unique visual style -- hope to see a more 4-year-old-GPU-friendly version soon! ;)
xD
Love it. Would've felt a little more genuine if the AI actually did a reasonable job correcting its mistakes, but it was hilarious nonetheless.
Some sound effects of typing and frustrated profanity would really add to the hilarity. Bravo!
Nice work!
The controls for the fighter kept throwing me off -- probably because I'm used my own wonky controls -- but eventually I got the hang of it and started upgrading my ship. Once I got to a capital ship I started kicking ass.
I'm curious about the experimental web version -- what library did you use to get it to (almost) work in both Java and HTML5?
Love the style in graphics/sfx department. Especially the tiny globe. Great attention to visual detail.
I echo the same basic complaints as everyone else for the most part, so I won't bother repeating them.
Okay just one: maybe this is an OS-specific thing, but zooming takes *forever* for me in Linux. Like, literally 10-15 seconds of frantic scrollwheeel action just to see the other stars.
There's potential here for a hit, I think -- now that you have the framework in place, it's mostly a matter of tweaking gameplay and maybe adding some different unit types (or maybe not, I like the simplicity). You should definitely finish this, which seems like it's going to happen based on some of your journal entries, so I'll try to keep an eye on your github repo for updates. :) Cheers!
Heh. I resisted cheating as well. Took me long enough even once I realized what was going on.
Doesn't fit the theme, but it's fun and hilarious.
If you make the bunneh more maneuverable based on how small it is, but gain more points the fatter it is, add some sort of combo system, and add sound, I could see this somewhere like kongregate. (okay that's a lot of suggestions but whatever).
Pretty sweet. Difficult for me at times but mostly because I'm slow to react for various reasons right now. The galaxy image is really cool -- you should try to incorporate it into the game somewhere since you went to the trouble to generate it.
I like the idea of needing to play some sort of minigame to gain fuel and progress on. Inspiring stuff since I'm considering options for planetary-landing minigame(s) in my game at the moment.
The randomized popups were a nice touch. :)
Beautifully simple! The way it progresses is perfect. And to top it off, you didn't cheapen the experience with any kind of UI cruft at all.
Tiny itty bitty complaint: a level-restart button/key might be helpful for those with crippling doubt -- pretty sure I went out of view at one point -- of course, I can't be sure. :p
I love this mechanic and think it could be explored even further. Bravo!
Awesome -- a few really nice surprises here that made me grin big. Obviously scoring points for innovation here, but I thought it also fit the theme especially well and loved the graphics.
Things I might have done differently would be to probably just add more checkpoints or remove the ants entirely. I understand that you'd want to add a challenge but you could have worked in challenge with platforming, alone -- the ants really just made frustrating what was otherwise delightful.
Oh -- there might be a bug in the linux version [maybe it's just me] where if the window loses focus, it never regains keyboard controls, and so I was forced to start over several times. Anyone else have this happen?
Still -- one of my favorite entries! Thanks for putting out a Linux build! (Although in hindsight, I could have built it in processing myself since I use processing, too. Derp.)
Nice hectic-micro-management. Has some of the same ideas as black & white, of course, but boiled down to its simplest form: maintain a high number of believers by regularly performing miracles.
Would have worked better from a more zoomed-out view I think. Also, had a little trouble with the planet-jumping mechanic -- are the arrow keys supposed to really do anything mid-air?
Liked the crayon-graphics. :)
"Why, it's so physically plausible!"
xD
Nice job. Fun & simple. A bit easy once you get the hang of it, but that's something that a little tweaking and some additional planet types (bomb planets? etc) could help.
Oh and I agree, the opening music is epic -- like straight out of an action-hero movie. Nice work!
Maybe the best (intentional) laugh I've had from all the entries so far. xD
But I love the art style you have going here -- you should finish this!
I have chosen to replace all punctuation in this post with BEARS in honor of BearsBEARS
I have failed the people of EarthBEARS a few timesBEARS Sound and stuff could make this a semiBEARScultBEARShitBEARS
Silly games always get extra pointsBEARS so that was a wise design choiceBEARS I thinkBEARS
One of the best I've played so far. It takes a lot of exploration to figure stuff out, but it's very rewarding when you do. Graphics are very nice and the music-transitions are a really nice touch.
Nicely done! I love "pretentious" games. ;)
Doesn't exactly fit the theme, but the simple "mechanics" make for an succinct emotional experience.
Super fun! I love how the world blocks can interact with each other. Saw you on RPS -- congrats! Also, I should really look at Crafty.js...
Definitely too hard for me but really fun while I actually manage to survive! I think maybe if walls just lasted a while longer but you could only have so many at once it'd feel more balanced and less futile. Giant nerd points for doing this all on your transformer!
The camera zooming in when you're smaller actually acts as a penalty since you can't see the giant baddies careening towards you :p I think if you just kept it zoomed out at all times it'd feel a lot more balanced. Good fun when I don't spawn next to a baddies and immediately shrink too much,though. Nice job. BTW thanks for porting to Android!
Potential for great fun but is way too difficult on Android. Maybe if there was something to slow down the planet gradually or if it could turn faster. Pretty innovative design -- you should definitely polish the gameplay difficulty and try putting it on the Market!
Android link is down: "Error: blob is too big" Please upload this to a proper hosting service, thanks!
Love the vector graphics but they eventually brought my tablet to its knees :p
Gameplay seemed fairly easy at first and then suddenly it was game over! Was quite fun for the duration, though. Nicely done. Work out some of the performance issues and gameplay rampup and I could easily see this selling on the market.
A good start for a game -- the touch controls were nearly perfect on my tablet and the gameplay has the sort of charm that katamari has. Add some UI stuff to let the player know how close they are to consuming the solar system and maybe a timer and you've got yourself something you could put out on the Android Market :)
After a long wait I've got a bunch of workers and warriors, but they aren't collecting food! How do I make this happen?
I _think_ I figured it out. :)
If you worked a bit just on giving the user feedback (for instance, how can you tell which ants are farming?) and add a layer of polish you're on your way to a unique and fun action/strategy game.
If there were 1. a warning where/when the bird is going to strike and 2. a way to gather ants after they're farming, the game would feel more "fair", I think.
I like the graphics and SFX.
Gameplay is mostly what I'd expect from a missile defense game, but the added twist of stalks that grow and block your shots makes it much more difficult. There were times when one landed right on my turret and I had no choice but to wait to die. :p Maybe if there was a way to clear them once you shoot down enough seeds or something like that it'd feel more balanced. Or maybe I just suck at missile defense. ;)
Very original in all regards (graphics, concept, and gameplay). I especially like the movement mechanic in the "eat algae" mode. It feels very organic -- excellent job. You should finish this -- if you want to continue working on it now, you can just post a "post-jam" version for people to try after they've rated your jam-version one. That's what I did. :)
Bonus browser-nerd points for doing all of this from scratch in HTML5/JS.
Hmm. Doesn't seem to work for me.
In Chromium on Linux I can hear the music playing but I have nothing but a blue screen on the page (really, lol).
In Firefox on Linux I hear music and can see the score text, and when I click I hear a "jump" sound being played... but I don't see anything else.
Worked great in Chromium.
I'm surprised at how many solid HTML5 games I've played so far, but this one is especially nice. Love the "tunnel" effect at the intro screen; it's rare to see procedural effects in any entries here, simple or otherwise.
You hit the sweet spot with minimalist graphics but still have attention to detail. It feels polished.
The gameplay is straightforward and fun, but I can't help but feel like it's an exercise in dice-rolling when it comes to getting a high score. I was trying to beat 9 seconds; I got 12 after several minutes of suiciding until two gold asteroids appeared in short succession near the beginning. ;)
Perhaps adding objects that you need to avoid hitting would spice gameplay up, and allow for a combo system that would make the player's high score more than their time.
It's like a radial version of Astrosmash! Although most people will probably compare it to Space Invaders.
When simple mechanics make for intense gameplay, you can't really go wrong. Add some more interesting enemy types, sound/music, and a layer of polish and I could see a game like this getting 100s of plays a day on the right browser-game site.
The timing mechanic is a nice little twist -- I would have liked to see battles play out all at once (instead of just repeatedly hitting a directional key to get the next turn), and for there to be a separate button for block to spice up the difficulty a little.
Also, bonus humor points for anything that satirizes RPG tropes.
Nicely done! The music/graphics set the mood, the gameplay is smooth, and there's a good deal of variety of content which makes it more replayable than most entries.
I ran this in Linux through WINE, so I'm not sure if there were missing SFX or not (I -did- hear music). If it's not just me, you should totally add some SFX. Big bang for your buck.
Cool! I'm a fan of Scorched Earth, and the gravity mechanic could make for some interesting tactics. Good idea -- you should explore it more with different planet/star layouts.
One complaint I have is that I can't tell which weapons correspond to which keys, but once I select the weapon, I'm forced to use it. Maybe something like a mouse-select or scroll-wheel to select and then space to finally begin aiming/firing.
Simple mechanic + good controls = fun. Nicely done.
Cool to see Android games here!
If you want to target Android in the future but dont want to leave out Windows/Linux/OSX, try libGDX! It's a great library; I've used it for cross-platform development and it's surprisingly easy. Cheers!
Hmm after 30ish nanoseconds things start to fly so fast I pretty much just give in to the benign indifference of the universe and accept death... My high score is 38.25ns. :)
I'm happy to say that getting the game to run was more frustrating than figuring out how to play it. :P
I've actually built games with SFML before, but I still had trouble (mostly my own fault-- package manager was broken).
Anyway -- the concept is simple enough that even a single tutorial screen would be enough to explain it -- I highly recommend doing this next time!
Gameplay was a bit tedious at times, but I sort of like frantic games like this. Maybe if there weren't really penalties for things going to the wrong shape on their own, just a lack of extra points. Another thing I'd like to see is shift-left-click-drag to _add_ units to your current selection.
The color choices were not the best. I had a hard time distinguishing green from green-blue(?) -- Maybe next time use different _symbols_, like they did with Tetris Attack or the like. Also, it wasn't always clear which units I currently had selected; was this a bug or just a poor choice of color?
Other than that, my only tip is to write games for the web, as you're going to get a much wider audience and better feedback that way. (Although I will admit to loving SFML, so I can't blame you for choosing that as your framework. Heh) Keep it up!
Nicely done. The graphics were a bit rough but the soundtrack and unique gameplay experience made up for it. I love the unmentioned -- yet, intuitive -- balance mechanic, which I wont spoil for anyone who hasn't played yet. ;)
It sorta caught me by surprise, but it's very elegant. Perhaps if you made the bird gradually sink unless it produces enough huts, you could milk this balance even more. But I can understand if you want to avoid too much "time-sensitive" gameplay -- it seems like you were aiming to give the player a more contemplative experience.
Very fun indeed! I love the jump/bounce/kick mechanics. Very satisfying to keep afloat. Is there a sort of combo system going on in the background? If so, you should emphasize it with a nice big arcadey combo-counter. :p
And yeah, you should add sound! The game is already pretty damn fun, but with even the simplest "bounce" and "pop" sounds of the enemies, you'd be surprised how much more cathartic the whole experience becomes!
Oh and I actually like the procedural animation. Maybe some different color choices, but the graphics were mostly charming in my view.
Keep it up!
This is pretty awesome. A lot of high-quality content, here. Naturally, here are a few pieces now but an interesting game could easily emerge from here.
I agree with the others that the controls can be a little clunky, but I know how easy it is to run out of time to tweak stuff like that. ;)
I think it's mostly because the character is limited to moving one square at a time (is this for a technical reason?), but during the time he's moving to the next square, you're "disabled" from moving in other directions or shooting.
You guys should join forces with me so I have some gameplay for planetary landings. ;)
Keep it up! (I'm also a sucker for space games, of course.)
I can't help but be gleeful when that background music plays. What's that? Oh I just murdered a dozen aliens who were protecting their home planet? I can't hear you over the glee.
*bee-da-boo ... doobadee ... dabadee-do-bee ... debadoo*
:P Nice work!
Controls are realistic which is cool, but it's frustrating because it's so damn hard to destroy the asteroids. My suggestion would be to make them one-shot-kill. I don't mind drunken-rocket-flying around space as long as I can do it for more than 2 minutes at a time. ;)
Nice SFX/GFX and controls, though!
Loved the graphics! You should make it clear from the beginning that the cursor turns red when you get close to a "gang member" -- I failed the first mission but got through the others with little trouble.
Nice idea. Liked the visuals and sound, although it was very difficult for me to maintain population for more than a few minutes.
It would be nice to program multiple/all people at once, and to add multiple instructions or simple conditional loops/branches. Also, you should just get rid of the need to command your people to drink water...
Red eyes in the dark -- cannot fail to be terrifying.
Always had a thing for rolling cubes. There's something satisfying about how they move.
Wow! Very polished.
I love this kind of puzzle.
Were you by any chance inspired by Simon Tatham's "Net" game?
http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/java/net.html
It's easily one of my favorite speed-puzzles. You should add a time-attack mode to this game. I'd be totally addicted.
Oh and just to echo a minor complaint: the graphics are great, but too dark to see properly without adjusting my monitor.
Fairly good balance, although I found that there were lots of moments of getting stuck waiting for my cities to turn out enough points. Maybe I just suck :P
Nice use of minimal visuals and realistic lighting. Very pleasing to look at. The soundtrack and sfx were fitting, also.
Great stuff!
Fun -- I would love to see things get more frantic or even a kind of puzzle mode.
One annoyance that could easily be fixed is that planets near the top are obscured by the HUD -- you should limit their position so they are always below the words of the HUD.
Cheers!
Haha. Very nice. With some tweaking of the enemies to make them a little more "intelligent" in dodging asteroids (and so they can catch them, too) it would amp the challenge enough to make it a very addictive game.
Jupiter's big red eyes made me laugh in the nerdiest of ways.
Great game! There's a good deal of balance. The in-ship music is very nice, and the in-game control cheat-sheet was all I really needed to get started with the game. I love the conveyor system as well; perhaps if you added indestructible tiles, you could force the user to be more careful with how they use conveyors.
If you had more time, I'd suggest adding a handful of tilesets for the planets to emphasize the progress the user is making.
With some balance tweaking and maybe a more relaxed difficulty curve, you could easily make this an Android title. Gotta love libGDX. ;)
"You are Commander Jameson" -- I think our games may share an influence, despite their major differences. ;)
Nice work! I'll definitely have to check out the library you used. WebGL is something I've sort of avoided for a while because it used to be so primitive... What was your experience with PlayCanvas like?
One feature request I'd make is being able to rotate the camera around the cube, but that may defeat the challenge of certain puzzles.
There's something really endearing about the way the little sphere-folk move around.
Nice palette and uber-spaceman-SMG. And pink alien blood.
Got somewhat far but couldn't seem to beat it -- kept ending up in a pit of despair. :[ Good fun otherwise. Nice work!
Very Osmos-like. Also, you can't go wrong with Sagan.
Nice GFX!
If you could make the camera sort of "zoom out" or "look ahead" when you speed up, it would be a big improvement on gameplay. I found myself suddenly crashing into things a lot.
Oh and, everyone loves screeching tires. ;) Keep at it, dudes.
I ran this with Linux. I enjoyed it more than most entries so far, but I didn't hear the voices that other people are mentioning. Somehow I managed to figure out each one, heh. I'll have to give it another try in Windows, later. Very unique, love the minimalist visuals and "controls".
Inspired, no doubt. :) Not a bad thing.
Rather nice graphics & music. Could use more gameplay diversity/difficulty balance but that's the sort of thing that takes a whole lot of playtesting to get right, so given the time limits, great job!
With some fiddling with libraries, I got this to run in Linux. At first, there was no sound and it was mildly entertaining.
Then I got sound to work and BAM -- CRUSH SMASH DESTROY MWAHAHA. Nice work helping me channel my inner giant monster rage.
My only complaints are that the tiny people move too uniformly -- moar chaos please -- and that I would like to be able to move at diagonals. Otherwise, fun stuff!
Nice work -- are you using an HTML5 game library or was this all done by hand?
Bonus points: having an interactive tutorial was very helpful.
I found the lizard. Curious what's going on, though. Regardless, it's surreal. :)
Nice music.
And I like the subtle effects on the grid/ground.
Kudos for implementing a pretty legit language in such a short time.
LD29 — Beneath the Surface (30)
Paddle Battle Pegasus by Boltz Interactive 2014-05-19T09:12:00
Easy to pick up, difficult to master. Controls feel great. I love the passive movement of the ship caused by the vortex.
Nice tune!
ARKEYNOID by mint 2014-05-19T08:49:00
Cool take on the action-typing genre!
It's a bit too difficult at first; I'd definitely start by only keeping one ball on the screen for a while, and slow things down a bit; then, gradually speed things up and eventually introduce an extra ball every so often.
Beneath the City by deepnight 2014-05-19T08:40:00
A very solid stealth-em-up puzzler!
The game definitely needs more puzzles that explore the mechanics, but you've built a great foundation in 48 hours, and slapped on a -really- nice coat of paint, to boot. Great work, as usual. :)
ScubaBear by _Rilem 2014-05-13T18:16:00
Outstanding! Easily the most "complete" game I've played yet. Easy to pick up and play. Needless to say, superb graphics and sound. BRAVO!
Splitted by CodeHat 2014-05-11T21:03:00
Nice atmosphere, concept, and graphics, but I have to agree with the others; the platforming is -painfully- touchy.
If you ever have the time, read through the "Sonic Physics Guide": http://info.sonicretro.org/Sonic_Physics_Guide
It's a little on the long/detailed side, but it's a great reference whenever you're implementing the jump/run controls of any platformer.
You don't have to copy the same "physics" of the Sonic series, but there's a lot of subtle tricks they use to make the run & jump -feel- a lot more "natural". I've never seen a better write-up on the subject.
Cheers!
Aqua by littleball 2014-05-11T20:50:00
Nice graphics, really nice background music! Would've loved to see more diversity in the scenery, but you did manage to build a pretty large puzzle to navigate. :)
There wasn't really enough communicated when I found keys; I constantly found myself just shrugging and wandering around until I found a newly opened pathway. It might help to cut a camera to the door opening and then cut back to the player whenever one opens?
By the way, were those "impossible-to-reach" keys reachable?
Ama by machine_screen 2014-05-11T20:34:00
Love all the details; in particular how the sky changes as the day progresses. Much cooler than using an on-screen timer.
Gameplay is a little simple, but I wouldn't say that's a problem.
Some post-compo suggestions:
- Prevent getting "stuck" on corners.
- More "swimmy" motion; something like Aquaria's but simpler.
- More to explore: Sea creatures, special treasures, what have you. Lots of room for that sort of thing.
Great job!
You're Pulleying My Leg by Draknek 2014-04-30T09:16:00
Wow! One of the most sophisticated games I've seen made with Puzzlescript. Very inspiring stuff.
Still working on solving it, but it's been a pleasure to play thus far.
Seriously. Less than 800 lines of puzzlescript, which includes level data and graphics. The mind boggles.
Hide-n-Stab by bendmorris 2014-04-30T05:22:00
Awesome! You ought to put this up on a server with some more bandwidth; there's a bit of lag.
Player animation is good. Concept isn't new really, but I haven't seen it done on a large scale multiplayer capacity like this before!
Sink or Swim by noom 2014-04-30T05:16:00
Nice tune. Simple controls. Easy to pick up and play. :)
~Fun fact: minutes ago I played a game where I was a fish *avoiding* falling objects, and trying to *collect* bubbles. wat~
tell my story by mjrevel 2014-04-30T04:58:00
Why not make the camera follow the player instead of moving really slowly?
The Valley Rule by Raiyumi 2014-04-30T04:07:00
What tech did you use? This is astoundingly well-done.
Advanced Cave Crawler by josefnpat 2014-04-30T02:41:00
<step>
"You found a shield in perfect condition."
:)
<step>
"Your shield cracks."
:|
Seemed like I could *always* avoid battles if I run away, but never could seem to win them. I was playing "My body is ready" mode.
Really neat graphical trick. I'd love to try making something like this, some time. Your next challenge is to make a raycaster in LOVE. ;)
Underground City Defender by Switchbreak 2014-04-30T01:52:00
Very difficult -- with some balance and simple unit AI (that automatically attack/gather resources), this could be really fun.
Great music!
Ben is the Surf Ace by lessmilk 2014-04-30T00:20:00
Relaxing, until I die. Sorta like my game, I suppose. Also, 5 hours?! Nice work!!
Dany's Room by Alexandre Szybiak 2014-04-30T00:13:00
Nice graphics! Would like to have seen more things/places to explore. What did you have in mind, originally?
Lost, beneath the surface. by Nambiar 2014-04-30T00:06:00
Strange choice for controls, but you score big points for mood and audio!
SUPER ROBO GARDEN ARENA by nxT 2014-04-30T00:02:00
Really nice graphics.
Mouse aim would allow you to throw more enemies at the player, which is always a good thing. ;)
<GAME NAME> by zacaj 2014-04-29T23:59:00
Very unique visuals and gameplay. Not too easy. ;) Props for three.js <3
Doug: A Miner Inconvenience by Aaants 2014-04-29T23:56:00
Nice music and graphics. Jumping feels good.
A tad frustrating, but we're living in an age of Flappy Bird, so I'm not sure that's a bad thing, anymore.
Maniac PengMaku!! by spotco 2014-04-29T23:52:00
Played to completion! Being a penguin is hard. Great job!
Crazy Drill by calimeraw 2014-04-29T23:03:00
This is fun, but I'm pretty sure I could play this indefinitely by holding down and sweeping left-right for oxygen tanks. Maybe throw in some kind of barrier that forces the player to get a certain combo/score before they can proceed down?
Monstrenga by Marcos Rodrigues 2014-04-29T22:56:00
Nice twist! Great music choice! Would like to see more levels/puzzles.
Deep terror by ghostonline 2014-04-29T22:51:00
Fun, but a little difficult to attack without being hit, since boats tend to fire in very close proximity to themselves. Am I missing something?
Great graphics!
Deep Down Beneath Us by Woo Sang Hwang 2014-04-29T20:33:00
The "Web" link is a bit of a misnomer... Is this a Windows build?
mungo: wrenchlord by 01010111 2014-04-29T20:32:00
*sigh* Another platformer about a plumber.
Just kidding. Outstanding sound/graphics/polish!
Sundiver by kmakai 2014-04-29T20:19:00
Curse you, homing skull-asteroid things!
Nice style. I am going to assume the corruption graphics were inspired by the fabled "Missing NO." Pokemon.
Sea of Sorrows by brother.byto 2014-04-29T20:14:00
~all I have are the bubbles to keep me company in my dark ocean chamber of death-rocks~
ECHO THE DOGEFIN RESCUES FLIGHT MH371 by matt_j 2014-04-29T20:07:00
Very fun. You nailed the controls! Would've been more fun if there was a larger area to swim around in!
ITS A TREE by lyla 2014-04-29T19:45:00
Those sandwich graphics are amazing.