Nothing to Say by celia14 2025-04-13T04:31:01Z
Fun and cute! Found this near the top of an itch.io search for Ludum Dare tags.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → NBumgardner
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | 59 | Signal | 👥 | Sinking Signal - Physical Rules Edition | jam | 410 | 3.58 | 3.57 | 3.95 | 3.68 | 3.70 | 3.18 | 3.69 | |
| 2025 | 58 | Collector | 👥 | 30 Days in the Fog | jam | 425 | 3.47 | 2.93 | 3.17 | 2.91 | 3.81 | 3.82 | 3.25 | 3.75 |
| 2025 | 57 | Depths | 👥 | Mousehold | jam | 552 | 3.39 | 3.00 | 2.92 | 3.40 | 3.50 | 3.37 | 3.59 | 3.37 |
| 2024 | 56 | Tiny Creatures | 👥 | TUSK | extra | |||||||||
| 2024 | 55 | Summoning | 👥 | Heroes of Keys & Kingdoms | jam | 49 | 4.24 | 4.16 | 4.41 | 4.08 | 3.95 | 3.80 | 3.43 | 3.87 |
| 2023 | 54 | Limited Space | 👥 | Packrat | extra | |||||||||
| 2023 | 53 | Delivery | Volleyball Returns Game - Physical Rules Edition | jam | 2.75 | 2.50 | 3.75 | 2.25 | 2.00 | 1.75 | 2.37 | |||
| 2023 | 52 | Harvest | 👥 | Farming Combos | jam | 564 | 3.25 | 3.16 | 3.41 | 4.08 | 3.12 | 2.95 | 2.63 | 2.87 |
| 2022 | 51 | Every 10 seconds | 👥 | Power Up! [Local 2-Player] | jam | 3.40 | 3.10 | 3.30 | 3.45 | 2.54 | 3.70 | |||
| 2022 | 50 | Delay the inevitable | 👥 | Like a Boss | jam | 1372 | 2.60 | 2.08 | 2.37 | 2.64 | 2.68 | 2.26 | 1.95 | 2.23 |
| 2021 | 49 | Unstable | 👥 | Tug of Warriors [Local 2-Player] | jam | 1266 | 3.07 | 3.03 | 3.26 | 2.96 | 2.03 | 2.73 | 2.83 | 2.38 |
| 2021 | 48 | Deeper and deeper | 👥 | The Whole Game | jam | 1888 | 2.45 | 2.14 | 2.11 | 2.90 | 2.38 | 2.69 | 2.42 | 2.47 |
| 2020 | 47 | Stuck in a loop | 👥 | Enough | jam | 2.62 | 2.18 | 2.31 | 2.75 | 1.81 | 2.43 | 2.37 | 1.92 |
Fun and cute! Found this near the top of an itch.io search for Ludum Dare tags.
The theme is really clean and I enjoy the writing from the perspective of the arcade kid.
Great job! The music, sound effects, and space loop theme fit really well together. I also thought the gameplay was intuitive after the first game over, since I could see the power meter dropping as I used it, and the targets stood out well from the background.
Since the Help and About sections are just placeholders, it might have been better to leave them out of the final build. I also appreciate the "get good" humorous text on the finish screen.
Nice job with the game design, sound effects, and animation! Its satisfying cleaning everything up, and it was difficult enough that I didn't get it all the first day which feels fair. The edge cases get cleaned up by each day cycle too which is nice.
A couple details I would be interested in seeing in the future:
**Trash Bag Weight:** Does the trash bag's fullness do anything, except limiting how much it can hold? I seemed to always run at full speed even when carrying something, and I would have more incentive to throw trash bags all the time if it helped me run faster. Then if there were more places to dump trash, I could aim at those places too if that is something you want to do with your game design.
**Less Broom Teleportation:** I can drop a broom on the other side of a wall, then not be able to pick it up without walking around the wall, which was kind of funny.
**Infinite Doorway:** Lastly, the front entrance does not have an invisible wall, so you can throw trash bags to fly off-screen, or drop your broom out of reach, which fixes itself on the next day's reset. This could also turn into a feature if you want to add windows to throw trash bags outside of the building in different ways.
Great job! The game is fun and has nice minimalistic graphics, and seeing your clones help you fight was entertaining. In general it seems like an easy game since you get unlimited lives.
Possible Bug: I was able to run out of lives by crashing my ship directly into the enemy 2-7 times, and I respawned without a ship to control, as seen below. I was playing on a Google Chrome browser. thebulletofsisyphus.png
As a programmer I like the premise, and the programming seems really robust for displaying the correct console output for wrong answers. The music fits in well to with that zen feel, and I got stuck at level 3, but it was fun none the less.
Good job conveying a monotonous feeling with the soundtrack, and having the employees be vegetables was a clever choice. At first I thought "the plants are dying" was very serious because everyone is a plant.
Having the CEO event helped me find the water coolers, because at the beginning I did not understand why the fridge and food station only helped hunger, so I like the level layout.
I still don't know how to end the day without passing out though.
This is a fun game! The music is a jam to listen to and the controls are smooth. Having some indicator about how close I am to winning would be nice, since I cannot tell if it is endless or if I just gave up to early. Looks like its the latter based on the other comments!
Good job on the graphics and simple game design. It is a bit low on replay-ability. Since there is only one enemy type you can rush past them without attacking and finish the game in about 2 minutes. I hear a little bit of sound at the start, I don't think there is in-game music? It definitely gives ominous, gloomy vibes though.
The music was relaxing, and the checkpoints felt automatic in a good way. Great job making a game with a simple design! It is kind of funny how the gems can be ignored since you are only looking for the flower.
Great job on the game, its a relaxing take on programming instructions for a robot. I got to level 8, then the generated level was a little too big for my interests. Looking forward to what you all build next!
Great job fitting multiple platformer game modes into one entry with a common theme and a good reuse of assets.
Its a fun game, I liked the rock-and-roll music to go along with the shoot-em-up. Would be nice to have a checkpoint between the start of the game and the 1st boss.
Good job on finishing! The ores feel spread out and I like how the music changes as you get deeper. I only played the first 10-ish minutes. It seems like a slower paced game, and if you don't sell your ores you lose them all on death.
Thanks for making a fun, challenging game! The AI was really good until I started jumping, then it started to beat itself by missing me and digging its own grave.
Great job making a fun game! Having a more zoomed out view would be nice if this was a longer game, since I felt a little strained at the end trying to look ahead, but the levels are short enough to memorize for the most part.
I like the peppy music and graphics! If the game were updated I would like to see a way to shuffle or detect a loss if there are no possible moves left. The gameplay is tried and true, and the hints had a nice animation.
Great job keeping the scope small while being fun to play! It definitely lends it self to having a high-score counter for a future version.
Thank you for the feedback! Good catch on the controls, they are accidentally reversed for player 2.
It is fun, I was able to beat the tutorial in 5-10 minutes and start the first level. It can be pretty challenging but easy to get into. The tutorial felt a little too zoomed it but it had a good learning curve if a little hard. I started to get a headache on the first level with how quickly the background moved. I do not know if being able to toggle the level camera to be fully zoomed out would help or not. Other than the camera and hard difficulty, this seems like a great, polished game!
This game has a great overall atmosphere with the music and art fitting the gameplay of outmaneuvering your enemies! Some optional feedback on difficulty and controls:
1. Normally I am running away from enemies and don't notice it, but you can lose almost instantly if you keep running into the same enemy. This could be avoided by destroying enemies you touch after they hurt you, or stun them and make them harmless for a couple seconds. 2. The game could be made harder by having a limited amount of acid fluid you can drop. At first I thought the repair canisters were ammo until I remembered them from the tutorial. 3. I would like to also be able to retry by pressing spacebar or another key so I do not need to switch away to a mouse. 4. If ammo is always unlimited, maybe let the user hold spacebar to continuously spray it, or reward them with a bigger splash for waiting, or narrow down the trail until it recharges over time.
Keep up the great work, the early game feels polished and intuitive to me!
The music hooked me from the start, the characters' spooky theme was charming, and I liked the difficulty curve being on the easy side while also progressing through harder maneuvers.
A possible bug related to the camera, is you can lose a life by jumping down into the right-most valley without touching any walls, as if it were a bottomless pit because you traveled too fast.
For future versions, maybe the checkpoints could sound more ghostly with an Oooh! to be in character, although the sound used was still good for sounding like a checkpoint. I felt a little regret at not having some optional collectable that could change the storyline, maybe note fragments teaching the character something that would help them understand something ahead of time ... even if in their hubris they only read half of it and still make the same cutscene choices.
Overall great job, looking forward to seeing what you all do next year!
Good job having it switch between game states smoothly in and out of mini-games, and to have a creepy atmosphere! It took me a while to realize I was not going to find anything to heal myself. It did well without sound effects, but for next game I would recommend adding some to let the player know when they hooked up the wires correctly or not. Looking forward to playing your future games as well!
A fun puzzle storytelling game. Definitely reminded me of procrastinating with the dead ends.
The web link gives me a 404 error, looking forward to trying the game once its ready!
The pictures look great! I was hoping the web version would let me play without downloading anything though.
@wendel-scardua I get a black window, and if I click the white arrow that shows up if you hover over the right edge and click it, then I can see the Stallar game cartridge. Clicking it doesn't do anything, double-clicking it puts it away, and clicking the '+' above the game cartridge prompts me for uploading a file.
I've never tried a NES cartridge from a browser before so maybe I'm missing something obvious. I can download the link for the game and reupload it but that doesn't start the game either.
Its a fun game! Its like having the power to do instant save scumming. Speedruns of this would be really fun to watch with how fast you can go.
Excellent, it was fun and simple to play. The white corners of the cards could be transparent to look a little more like actual cards. The music was a good choice for being hypnotic.
Interesting how you are playing as your own opponent, and destroying your own units is actually how you survive. The numbers on the grid were hard to read since they overlap the characters but the first two levels were easy enough to win by filling squares randomly. Sound effects for placing units would be nice, but the highlighting on the checkboard works really well for user feedback so its fine without it.
Great theme! I had no idea how close I was to failure though. I also appreciate how the ingredients were always listed in order. Why don't more people order cheeseburgers? Half joking.
What a relaxing platformer! At first I thought landing was what ran down your meter because you were losing water from the impact, so a short hop would have helped, but I think its just a time limit. I also found myself slipping off narrow platforms a few times. Very nice animation though and starts with a good challenge for people who have played platformers before.
A nice, calm game about waiting for mummies to move out of your way. The music and art are cute choices and fit the theme of exploring a temple. I really like the highlighting system, and would be interested in if I could double back, or plan my next move while the zombies were moving.
What a poetic game, it is nice to relax to after the hectic rush of finishing a game jam.
I like the concept a lot, and the tutorial is helpful. As a beginner it feels too fast paced for me to know what I am doing, besides just play every card in my hand and buy the most expensive shop card. An easy mode where you have to click end turn instead of using a 10 second blitz timer would be nice for learning.
Based on the map I thought card position might matter, but that does not seem to be the case in practice.
A fun word game. The modifiers feel inspired by rouge-likes to increase replayability, and the music is relaxing to let you focus on the problem solving.
Dragging letters into any middle position was tricky for me, I think I had to drag a letter one spot past where I wanted it to go.
Awesome game. The use of theme is very creative without slowing the game's pacing. A few areas with all one type of attack strongly encourage waiting but is not required. Those areas can also be used for healing if a player wants to be slow and steady. I think it would be nice to keep items when you lose, making the game easier for new players. Definitely feels like a game a speed runner could optimize or a streamer showcase well, screaming when getting swapped and hit at the wrong time.
The art style reminds me of hand-drawn books in a good way, like the trash can barriers and different rooms. The music is optimistic and fun.
Excellent job! I overthought level 11 but eventually beat the game. Some thoughts:
1. At first I thought letting you move Anne with arrow keys during the start menu would be really fun way to teach movement. But since the ground falls beneath your feet in levels I like your way better of waiting until a level actually begins to learn. 2. Of the cute moments, my favorite is that the word bubbles come from the carrots you are about to harvest. 3. The contrast of the normal carrots giving fearful glances while the power up carrots smile and blink is retro and simple design in a good way. 4. Are the decorative seeds on the ground hints, or just decoration? 5. The first level is both easier and harder than it looks, which I appreciate. There are many ways to lose compared to later levels, but it teaches the player to reset when they get stuck and if you blindly chase carrots without running into a dead end there are many ways to win the level. 6. Nice job of reusing the spacebar for special abilities, while letting the user highlight or burrow to where they want to land without committing to crumble movement. 7. The footstep SFX helps a lot with the audio feedback and contrasts with the music.
For visual and audio constructive feedback:
7. Make the end goal unlock even more obvious. For example, you could play a more triumphant SFX once the last carrot is collected and throw some confetti out of the flag as it turns green. 8. I think backing off on the percussive-drum and/or xylophone-attack parts of the music every other playthrough or during the smoother bridge could be nice, to let the player focus on puzzling as more of background music. The music is great for having variety and drive, but felt repetitive I think for me due to the punches. That might just be my taste though, I write a lot of repetitive music too. It is just my feeling for this game being on the calm side. 9. Let the burrowing out animation play before triggering the visual of the level being over. It only happened once, but if I were spectating someone else play then I would not know exactly from looking what triggered the end of level victory.
Again, excellent job on polishing the entry and finishing strong.
Congrats on making an eye-catching RTS in such a short time! I have some feedback on game mechanics:
1. Selecting units and moving them once works great. 2. I do not understand how to combat the enemies safely. My troops fight really well at first until they get stun locked in a tight group where the enemy keeps pushing them back without my troops fighting back. Maybe some invincibility when an ally gets hit would help it have enough time to recover and hit back. 3. Combat units clump up and are hard to separate out for strategies like surrounding the opponent. Maybe if the troops spread themselves out while traveling in a hexagon formation they would be stronger as a team. 4. I like the simplicity of the unit selection, and how the title screen encourages almost mousing over the hive on start up to direct the player on where to hover. 5. I think the title screen would be more user friendly if the mouse was at least partially visible, such as by making it partially transparent and drawn on top of everything. Making a mouse completely hidden may confuse the user when they lose track of their input of a mouse cursor.
I also like the uniformity of the art and gameplay for simplicity, I forgot I was even looking at a game and was able to focus on tactics within a cheery world with nights of danger.
I am very glad someone made this pun!
Adding a way to reset would be nice to save on load times from refreshing the website. Or maybe show "The End" or something on the screen so the non-secret endings look finished and not like the next scene refused to load.
The writing felt believable to me and I look forward to seeing more of your games in the future.
Congratulations on the game! As others mentioned, increasing feedback on the Tamagotchi section would help make it more fun to explore by feel and easier to tell how fast your training is progressing toward a stronger hero when you harvest. I was impressed by the smooth switching between the 2 game modes, and besides a few UI overlay glitches after a death, it worked great!
I laughed to myself when I accidentally rolled off of the level, only the pits in the middle of the level seem to have invisible guard rails.
@jaj I am glad you liked the sound effects! My focus was to make them sound good both alone or layered if a player swipes through multiple activities at once.
@guiti I am glad you liked the music! In the final build it plays the full version throughout due to my own time constraints. It was composed in layers with PxTone to eventually play more layers based on the game's combo multiplier.
A well made clicker game. Besides the desire to just mouse over without double-clicking every patch, I think being able to play on a smaller monitor would be nice if the upgrade menu was anchored to the right edge and could be collapsed/expanded.
It is a fun game, and nice to see 3D graphics in a game jam. Farming corn gets repetitive, so having a way to get a money multiplier instead of extra chances for farming would be nice so the player does not feel obligated to use all 5 or more tries of harvesting corn every day. Maybe capping the number of fields to 3 could help with that too. I wonder what the non-corn upgrades do, if the chicken money is free or has a 2nd mini-game.
This is my favorite game I've played on Ludum Dare before, great job! The gameplay is fun getting to amass lasting powerups while defending your land.
For future gameplay polish, I feel like having a way to return to the ground faster would be nice for greater control. Whether that is making holding jump go full height so a tap does less, letting you dash downward, or making you heavier while carrying a seed, I often find myself scrambling in midair to land.
More weapons could be cool, maybe granted by reclaiming a haunted house for long enough to have it drop a weapon like a boomerang, or a lance that has a big forward hitbox while charging and a smaller hitbox at the tip while holding it upright. Or maybe you go inside the house and defeat 6 ghosts to free it, and then it also lets you hold an extra seed and counts as a shack for providing more seeds.
Also having a way to increase the time limit would be nice. Maybe there are special enemies that leave after a while and drop stop watches for +5 seconds each.
Making the player invincible was a good idea since the kobold-like hero has a stubby range. I also like how the attack lasts long enough you can hit multiple ghosts in one swing at higher speeds.
Congratulations on finishing your game! I felt confused while playing and curious enough to explore what I think was the whole map. The itch.io description hints helped me understand some of what to look for. The audio seemed chaotic, so I was not sure if the sounds were animals calling in the distance or just synthetic background music.
You did a good job of having the camera follow the player. To give more player feedback it would be nice to have visual lines or waves coming from the edge of the screen to point to me where nearby animals are. Maybe the audio was already doing that, but having visual and audio cues working together would be even more clear.
The delivery mechanic was innovative, I was able to collect 600 points before acquiring a green toy gun that might have defeated an animal? I was not able to figure out how to drop what I was holding. Maybe visual or audio feedback of if an animal ignores your held item would be helpful, but the game still works by being snappy when an object does work.
The audio is very calming to go with the gameplay of waiting for contracts to complete. I like how the Success Chance is a description to imply how hard a mission feels, so it seems more important than the other statistics at first glance.
The visuals and gameplay loop feel disconnected to me. I think having the number of pigeons on-screen increase and decrease to be in proportion to the pigeons listed underneath Intel would be nice, even if it is 1 pigeon on screen for every 5 or 10 pigeons in the statistics, whether the ones sent on missions fly or fade away, either would help show how accepting a contract sends away pigeons, which are your main resource.
Making hyperlinks clickable in the credits is a clever idea, how did you do it in Godot?
Submitted!
@lord-byte thanks for the feedback! For a solo experience I recommend counting how many turns you can keep the volleyball in the air as your high score.
I agree it is unconventional to submit a board game instead of a video game. So, I tried to label the title and description clearly and keep the rules as simple as possible since the players have to remember them instead having of a computer referee.
@xwilarg good question. “… contiguous line without gaps …” in rule 7 means the 3 character tokens have to form a chain touching each other. So if the volleyball is landing in the center row, then the only winning moves are pretty limited.
When the volleyball lands on row 3,4 column 2 like you have, then the character pieces would need to occupy columns 2 & 3 & 4 of that row 3,4.
In the spirit of real volleyball it’s OK for your pieces to move 1 square off the board as long as you don’t cross the net, it just makes it extra hard to return the next serve. As long as the 3 character pieces make a chain of 3 touching in a straight line, and the volleyball is NOT landing on the middle of the 3 characters, then the interception is successful.
Thanks for posting a picture of your board, it’s great to see another person trying it out!
@quentinverlhac great idea, I think a single-sided PDF for the board would be helpful. The rules PDF intentionally does not exceed 2 sides to make it easier to print and give me a constraint to encourage a tight, simple rule set.
If I had more time I would also have liked to include pictures of example board states, and maybe rename rows to A, B, C.
@alchemic thanks for the feedback! All diagonals are allowed, so other than that your assumptions are correct.
**Q1:** Is the whole serving zone considered one big _square_?
**A1:** The rules do not specify, except that you get to decide exactly where to place your starting positions, including your server. The intention is that there is a ring of extra squares around the board, and the serving area is the 3 squares to the left or right of the outermost column. But if all players agree to combine the serving squares into one area and never move off of the board except to start in the serving area, then that is perfectly fine.
**Q2:** Which one [die] is considered _first_ if we rolled both at once?
**A2:** The rules do not specify. When using digital dice read them left to right, when using real dice roll them one at a time. The first/left die determines the column, while the second/right die determines the row. You may also use differently colored dice.
**Q3:** Do we get to choose [dice order]?
**A3:** Officially no, you cannot control where the volleyball lands. However I was playtesting on Twitch yesterday and after the first couple points were scored, we increased the dice to 3 dice and let the active player choose 2 dice to be used in any order, which sped up the number of turns but slowed down each turn because the players had more decisions to think about per-turn. A second suggestion was to roll 2 pairs of dice and pick one pair. In my opinion players should learn the game as written and playtest one full game point before introducing more control over the volleyball in this way.
**Q4:** Step 4 shouldn’t be a “step”, as it is just flavor.
**A4:** True, that is good feedback. The step is flavor, but was intended to help give more context for players to understand the transition between active players and notice the net. I think the flavor and motivation could have been better moved into a 3-6 sentence summary at the start of the rules, then tighten up the real rules below.
**Q5:** I think Step 5 should also refer to rows and columns.
**A5:** I totally agree, replacing `X axis` with `rows` and `Y axis` with `columns` would be better, I missed that inconsistency.
... continued below ...
... continued from above ...
**Q6:** Step 6 should clarify whether or not diagonal movement is allowed.
**A6:** Diagonals are allowed, so mentioning it in the rules would definitely help out.
**Q7:** Can a single piece move twice in one turn, taking 2 of your 3 moves?
**A7:** No, you cannot combine moves onto one character piece. If this was clarified more, then I think I would also re-state that you do not have to use up all of your movement either, thus the `up to` phrasing.
**Q8:** Our interpretation of the text, _3 pieces in a straight, contiguous line without gaps_, is that the pieces need to be orthogonally adjacent.
**A8:** No, all diagonals and orthogonals are allowed, as long as the line is straight without any bends in it, and no gaps between the 3 pieces.
**Q9:** The board description seemed to imply that you can’t move outside of the specified rows, and the only extra column is the serving zone.
**A9:** Correct. Officially the rules do not say either way, mostly because moving a piece off of the board feels like a last resort that would probably make your next receiving turn more difficult, so it probably would not extend the game length very much. Trying to explain the board being larger than 12x3 and with 2 kinds of special zones felt too challenging to fit into a double-sided PDF of rules. Given more time I think a print-able board would make it easier to allow a more complex court to show that the ball lands in the 12x3 area but character pieces may move in a 14x5 area as long as they stay on their half of the net.
**Q10:** We had several long sequences of bouncing back and forth without needing to move any pieces. The long, narrow board also means that keeping your pieces in a straight line down the middle row is a highly effective strategy.
**A10:** Thanks for sharing the strategy!
@alchemic thank you both for playing! Your stories helps me to find the fun, unclear, and interesting bits to iterate upon in this beginner-friendly game.
A well-designed game, it reminds me of Root Beer Tapper in trying to fulfill orders for endless customers. The arrow press effects are heavy with gore but that fits with the topic. The audio and visual cues are on point too. Well done!
Congrats on finishing the game jam! Having an easier mode with a larger building area would be neat, but the limitation does fit within the puzzling genre and the theme. The friction logic is pretty amazing, it really open up the puzzle possibilities.
Letting the enemies get destroyed by traps is a nice touch. The end goal seems almost unreachable, and the non-start options could be removed to simplify the start menu. I laughed a bit when the money spawned in the pit, making it completely unreachable. It was probably just random chance, but it fit with the theme of impossible odds for viewer entertainment.
Elegant, nice mini-game!
The game page looks impressive, unfortunately the `gx.games` page never finished the _downloading data_ stage for my Chrome browser.
I like the concept and art quite a bit! I agree with the earlier comments about slowing down the princess would make the game easier, such as replacing running with slow walking. It becomes quite tense further into a level where one false move sends you back to the last door. The idle and jumping animations are excellent, I can almost imagine the rustling of paper and various deaths in my head.
Amazing job! I almost got queezy from the stretches, but that seems like a minor issue compared to how the game has charm and puzzles to enjoy!
Limiting the dashes to level up when the time runs out is some clever game design! The audio and fade-in graphics for the lasers are also well done to give the user some time to anticipate being shot, but fast enough to let the player consider if they should dash.
Congratulations on finishing the game jam! The core loop of the game is intact, yet I found it hard to find enough fruit, or know how much health enemies have less to know if I hit or not. Maybe arrows at the edge of the screen could point toward the fruit, or some other game mechanic to help the player track them down. Just having much more fruit and danger could work too.
Something to also consider is limiting how fast the player can shoot between bullets, and letting holding down the click button shoot as fast as possible. Otherwise letting the player shoot as fast as they can may encourage accidental hand strain.
I also liked how responsive the game is to mouse movement. The trooper characters also fit in well with the gritty landscape.
Nice job making a creepy atmosphere! Given more time, I think adding a settings for removing or lessening the gunshot flash would make it more viewer friendly, especially for live streaming the game. I also really wanted the elevator button lights on the left side to go out from bottom to top to show how far up I got up the elevator, for extra user feedback. The ending sound effect is a nice touch too, and the built-in retry.
The persisting upgrades and animations were fun! I got used to the low amount of collisions and it felt empowering! Nice job making such a large map with sub-levels.
Interesting concept. Adding a level select option could be helpful, especially if you fail on a later stage or want to show off certain areas during a game jam without needing to replay earlier levels. I like the minimal art style as well.
I like the character/crystal lighting, click controls, and the way the eyes follow the mouse while near. It makes for a cute approach to a clicker game without requiring as much clicking as most games in the genre, which is good. Given more time I would maybe experiment with crackling noises to make the minions sound more firey without becoming to loud? Additionally, adding a message on reaching the 2nd or 3rd safe room that you can use A or D to navigate between rooms as well could be helpful to tell users when it is most useful.
I got halfway up the progression tree on stream, so I think the progression makes this game a good teaching tool for compounding interests, while being cute and low stakes. Also great job on the music and flute, it gives a medieval knights of the round table at dinner feel, festive.
I played this after reading the post-mortem explaining how to play, which made it very easy to pick up. The star(s) made more sense after I obtained and clicked it to see what it did. Excellent job.
The art style and waver of orbs looks calming. I could not figure out how to play since my Nintendo Switch controller or a keyboard and mouse did not do anything for me. The thumbnail art for the game is intriguing and fits the theme really well. Maybe the goal is to spread influence to capture the enemy base while gaining power from the 6 unclaimed nodes?
screenshot_2024-04-28_slime-manager-2025-screen.png
Great job making a polished game! I thought a bridge would lead to the castle at first, and I kept clicking and dragging to try and move the screen faster. I also like how the land across the water gives the illusion of a river to feel like a larger world.
Cute concept! On the first playthrough I won without casting spells, then tried casting them and was amazed at how much stronger the attacks become! It looked like I might have some shielding while spell casting, so that could be neat to try adding to reduce the pressure of casting while fighting. Or maybe the player is just intended to take some damage to change weapons. The pew-pew sounds are satisfying, and I liked the story segments to tie the game's theme together.
One of the top 2 funniest games I've played all jam! The ease of controls was good, I think running a little faster while not sweeping or actively attacking could add a little more strategy. The concept of the game is great, original, and well executed. I especially liked the wizards' lisp in the voice acting, it added a touch of pomp to their characters making me look forward to evicting them.
Easy to learn with randomness for spice. Given more time, I think adding a sound effect when hovering over the cards in your hand would be helpful for player feedback. I would also recommend removing the 'X' quit card from the web build of the game if its not hard to do with your engine.
For the game balance, I made it to level 4 without seeing tower cards, then on my second playthrough I got them early and they allowed me to reach new enemy types at level 6 or 7. I think more visibility or control over the deck building aspect could make the gameplay more strategic. With the current balance, massing towers in the center, playing the cheapest unit to cycle my deck, and placing a troop next to me for emergencies seemed like the optimal strategy. Maybe making a kind of card that always summons near you instead of where the card is placed would be good for a quick bodyguard ability.
Great job with the bouncy graphics and consistent art style.
Thanks for bringing this to today's stream. Great job on the atmosphere of digging particle effects, standing slightly into the blocks, and the tonal shift of music after the intro. The volume increase caught me off guard but I was able to turn it down some and it was smooth sailing. I also don't understand the purpose of the T-shapes built into the background on if they serve a purpose.
I really like the memory aspect too, its a good skill to train so I've been looking for it in games recently. Have you ever played the board game Gobblet? It reminds me a bit of that with the playful feel and uncovering treasure, or in this case, digging up graves.
Ohhhh I just got the title pun! 🤣
After about 15 minutes I think I figured out how the game is supposed to be played, and it is pretty fun.
I think villages get more powerful the larger your base because they heal all buildings equally, so 3 villages created a swarm of repairers to top everything off. The main puzzle seems to be knowing what order to build in, that a sawmill is worth most when placed closest to home, and roads can tank damage the cheapest.
Besides adding building descriptions in-game, being able to pan the camera while paused would be nice too, otherwise I cannot build sawmills in the bottom-left corner to be safer. That's a pretty minor concern though, because if I am placing a sawmill that far away I either messed up, or I have lived past the first 2 turns and victory is already certain. Having multiple level options could be nice too, this game jam entry feels like a boss fight when coming in as a new player and maybe staring the game without summoning buildings to just start taking damage without a way to attack as the hero. Maybe some starting roads to soak damage would be a way to make the start easier, and give the player time to realize they are in danger. But with how strong villages can heal, that might be too much of a boost.
The 3D art is adorable, it made me want to zoom in to see the units closer.
Good variety of disasters to choose from. The music fits the tinkering aspect of trying out the tools. The game and music felt repetitive after a while. Part of that may have been I thought the crystal limit was 5 after upgrades based on the outdated starting tooltip, so building more may have helped me. They didn't mine all of mine out though, and even overlapped them with buildings which sounds like it may not be intended? But it is in the player's favor which is good.
Having the cheat button for free points turns it into a stress-relieving destruction game. For the normal game, I like how the early game peacefulness has the ominous purple glows from the pillars foretelling the coming disasters. Nice work.
Great concept of summoning monsters to collect more parts, and a spatial system that ties in with the summoning theme. There are a lot of different directions this game could go after the jam, pun intended. Someone else already mentioned adding tooltips for understanding the game better, yet for me I think continuing on the map system has a lot of possibilities, even without knowing what each element does.
- Allow rotating at what angle an ingredient points toward before pressing the '+' stone. - Add shortcuts for the arrows that cost mana symbols. - Allow finding or buying better arrows that cost mana, to add to the player's toolbox of choices. - Remember a history in case the player wants to re-cast when they have enough ingredients to exactly copy a previous summoning. - Allow the player to keep 1 monster from the previous battle, like having a familiar. - It would add more persistence between battles, because after making a cool monster it was disappointing to lose all of the hard work, and have no minion barrier between myself and potentially damaging enemies. - That could just be my skill issue though, I think the game gives enough tools to succeed with enough drive to explore and optimize spells. - Allow scrolling around the map to see if I missed anything. Having the map question marks revealed was fun, it made me want to explore and rewarded moving far to the right side of the screen. - A mode where the map's resources are randomly placed could be a fun challenge.
Some of the above suggestions may undermine some players' enjoyment of learning a spell that works every time though, so its mostly post-game-jam ideas. Do you all have any plans on making the Unity code open source?
Staying back while thinking about summoning positions is one of my favorite parts of this theme. It felt relaxing and fun to play, partially because I did not need to micro the monsters after summoning them and they were smart enough to have their targets be the units that hit back most of the time. I also like the minions having generous amounts of health so the player does not have to be too precise with them.
The starting menu graphic felt a little jarring to me with 3D behind 2D, and the music gets repetitive if I wait on the start screen, but I'm not sure how I would change it, especially because it communicates the controls well and is representative of the 2D over 3D to come. Zooming in on the characters and the skeleton crowd is a fun touch.
The shadows and unused gold resource nodes are a nice touch to make the game feel retro and immersive. How was it like programming the triggers and logic for units?
The atmosphere is out of this world. It took me about 4 tries to understand what the timing wanted, but the gameplay loop is so short that failure was a good teacher, while the happy shapes cheered me on. I do wonder what the edge behavior is if the score goes too high, but it seems unlikely in the space of a game jam and I like the arcade feel of the UI.
Thanks for explaining the leaderboard on stream, the irony of those at the top looking for friends most often is pretty witty.
I really enjoyed playing this on stream! The environment's assets, shading, and music mesh very well together. It might not fit the mood as much, but I could imagine a collectible with a ding sound as you collect them would fit the sense of exploration and secrecy, while paying off exploring at the risk of it feeling more like a chore than optional to explore every nook and cranny. The UI for the ability cooldowns did a great job too. The carvings on the stones might be my favorite part, how did you all make them look realistic?
Witty and with good music for the settings. I have not made a 3D game before and appreciate the heart and tempo of the story.
Cute use of art assets. Given more time, an option to jump to a specific level or at least retry the current level would help a lot for the puzzle genre. Similar with how audio would bring the characters to life. I like how the enemy AI logic was predictable so I can make risky plays where the computer could win by ignoring my summon, but chose not to. In a longer game I think a smarter AI would be nice to provide more of a challenge.
Clicking around the menus was interesting, and the wave-blue-ish background is fancy. The text was also easy to read thanks to the panels, even without outlining the font.
I attempted level 1 a few times unsuccessfully, which makes me wonder what level 2 would be like. Given more time, adding audio would be nice to help communicate the phases of gameplay and know the severity of losing a run. At first I thought I would get to retry and rebuild my party after a loss, and was confused when my 4-star cards were missing. Fusing everything does take some time for each new run, but maybe I am missing out on the strategy on choosing what to fuse.
A web build would also be helpful to get more eyes on the game. I liked the variety of card abilities, how did you come up with them?
Thanks for pointing out the web build and intended strategy! I usually ignore the builds embedded into Ludum Dare because they tend to have issues with audio not playing or low performance in general, and go with an itch.io web build if it has one linked. Giving this one a try it never loaded in Chrome, and gave me some console warnings which may or may not be normal. I'm glad the download worked great for us both though.
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Great job introducing the dance moves and story at the end, it is charming. The running section was too difficult for me though, maybe with a 3rd or 4th jump or the ability to move forward or backward or having health would help make the game more forgiving.
Also I can listen to the game while its out of focus without having to be good at it, nice tunes. The bass drum is probably there to help with the timing? The drumroll finish made me smile too.
Good use of modular design for an upgrade system.
I like the vibrant art and the concept of being a trainee with only 1 summoning spell, it fits a game jam format of having a focused purpose.
I was not able to hear anything, so in the future if a game is silent you may want to opt out of the Audio category. You might also try a web build and publish on itch.io for free next time. I don't see any C# files in your source code, so the process of making a web build should be relatively easy and can get a lot more eyes on your charming game! Congratulations on finishing, I look forward to seeing more of your games in the future.
A sea game with depth. From a new player perspective, I think the most complicated parts are:
- Trying to correct boats while close to the temple. - It makes the side-effects of old wind is more obvious. - As-is, it seems to message to the player that they should have taken care of direction issues earlier. - Player feedback when starting a wind. - Having a starting whoosh sound effect that is different for a failed click versus a successful swipe could help confirm the player executed an action. - Adding a visual, slightly-opaque arc to the front edge of the wind gust could make it more obvious, and the current wind could be a trailing effect for flavor.
If you work on the game longer post-jam, I think you could randomize the island and rock positions some as long as they don't overlap with the same type.
The pixel art and realistic music compliment each other well, I'm not used to that mixture but you did well with jaunty strings and satisfying crunches when a ship wrecks. Great job with the color contrast too, I can still identify everything uniquely through a black-and-white filter.
Clever and refreshing with cute squish graphics. Jumping off of each others' shoulders in midair and the ending confetti were my favorite moments, and the game design is clever to not get players stuck while feeling smart solving puzzles.
The graphics, sounds, and mood fit well for creating a forest setting.
I noticed a minor graphical glitch. If a user plays until the first selection at normal zoom, then expand to full screen, the tooltip bubbles are render too high.
A different idea for the post-jam, is adding a shortcut of shift-click to automatically send a die into the only matching zone. It could be a nice extra input to consider to avoid the screen panning around as much when putting all dice into a far right target.
I also liked the length of the game. Given more time, having a way to reset to the beginning without losing could be good too, since you already have the reset logic coded.
I escaped the fish tank! Does that count as winning?
Next time adding a timer counting up or score as you eat could be a way to gamify without too much work for the minimum product. SFX for lunging and something quiet for swimming could be good too. Or if fish don't hear me, maybe its a stealth game of maneuvering around fish to a blind spot.
The bouncy music is fun and cheerful, the gameplay that goes with it is relaxing, and the graphics are similar enough in style to be immersive, great job!
Cute and calming game. Given more time, having a title screen could be a nice place to have bird chirps or a start game sound effect when you press any key. At first I wasn't sure there was audio until I started moving. Great job with the sound effects, the chomps are my favorite.
Nice job capturing a sense of wonder and that there is always a bigger fish in the pond. It would be nice to see more powerups or a victory condition for the game since eventually you are too slow to catch up to anything. I am curious, is the water audio original?
The presentation and staging of what the player should be doing is good, battling 2 critters in an arena. Against a computer I used the same button W over and over to see who wins. I think full mouse-click support or WASD menu navigation with written out reminders during battle of what keys do what attacks would be helpful in a post-jam version to be more approachable. The tooltips were also a smart idea to include to decipher what symbols mean.
Challenging, yet with a nice variety of movement with good character themes.
Finding the most powerful upgrade was a lot of fun, and the goop graphic is stylish. I winced every time I cut a bug, but eventually I managed to desensitize myself to it. I suppose that shows how convincing the creature design turned out.
The multipliers add to the replayability, balancing collecting with attacking. Nicely done.
A fun challenge, it makes me interested to learn what units counter the others.
Great job making a full accumulating adventure. I agree with the progression feeling slow, a third in I felt like buying a defender like herd dog could be nice. The game feels satisfying to finish with the enemy variety.
Cute and charming. The graphics, music, stops on losing a duck, and light humor work together well. It is challenging but the charm makes it fun even to lose, if a little stressful when penned into a position where you can't move without a loss.
It'd be nice if the ducklings that fled went back where you found them, but with the day time limit it makes sense how that would probably make the game worse or harder because backtracking loses too much time.
An inventive physics game, the tip to pile ants at the bottom helped me a lot. The introduction animation was stylish and high quality too.
Happy Ludum Dare 56!
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The multiple layers of immediate and mid-level user feedback are great. The deep yes in the song is cute too.
On my second life I figured out the fast controls. I like the lake scenery's calm view to contrast with the violent hunting gameplay.
It captures a soaring feeling really well. I don't know how hard it is too add a pause on death, but that might help users recognize when they crash and what they could have ran into.
Building combos is hard but grabbing pickups is intuitive with the outlines and not too difficult to learn. Restarts are quick, sometimes too quick because I will press a Windows key or click the game to gain focus, and we are off to the races!
I like the whimsey of the art direction and good reuse of sprites in a believable setting.
Great job making a large team work together. If I played recklessly I could lose track of the goal, maybe a hint arrow could help. Adding the tiny creature abilities accessible from a mouse wheel really expands the possibilities while being charming to look at.
The connections between the resources were well thought out. The audio got repetitive, yet it is a repetitive, challenging game. I also liked the popup book map, it adds to the charm of this fleshed out, animated game. Great job.
The consistent slightly creepy art style is convincing. I got to the 4th room a few times before getting stumped. What were your team's inspirations for making the game?
I like how the graphics, soft music, and enemy types work together to tell a story with a mostly relaxing gameplay loop of rescuing tiny creatures to overpower enemies, while doing a bit of avoiding tough crowds in the early game.
Nice atmosphere and hooking the voice acting up to the game. I kept forgetting to press space and had to cycle with 'E' a few extra times, but the game is calm enough to let the player set the pace of the game. Looking forward to the games you make in the future!
This game's humorous context was the highlight of my day. The mini-games require increasingly good reflexes and timing, so I am glad there were infinite retries. Would definitely recommend everyone playing at least the first 2/3 of the game, and after that point you might as well see it to the end.
A simple adventure with plucky writing. I like how the environment sells the scale of the small mouse hero. Learning to use the environmental hazard was my favorite part.
Nice polish with the idle animations, and animating both movement and resets.
Cute and strategic. The gnome death animation stood out as more grisly than the rest of the art. I think showing what card you currently have held down would help the user feedback even more. The disabled visuals when trying to attach the wrong limb helped a lot, because I kept forgetting what cards were which types, and if compatible or not unless I dragged them together.
The variety of art fit well, I didn't even think about drawing some legs in the background versus foreground until I saw you do it.
Its fun setting up artillery, and the smiling stickered bugs are easy to tell apart from enemies. Great job on the upbeat music, and making the sound effects subtle enough not to over-pile upon each other. What does the sign on the fort mean?
Thank you all for the detailed feedback! I am glad the mechanics we fit into the game jam play nicely together.
@ruiqianzhang thanks for showing that tough start! In the future maybe we should guarantee the first enemy is weaker. When the enemy is stronger you, charging still breaks through at the expense of some health, in your screenshot it would be 8 - 5 = 3 health.
An approachable light-horror adventure game. If your weapon could dent things that would be a fun touch. The level design and audio is both convincing and has distinct parts that make it easier to draw your own pen and paper map as you go.
Challenging to precisely control, yet in a cute way that makes you want to keep trying.
As a goofy idea for stream integration, you could grab a name from chat for writing above each blob so viewers can cheer themselves on.
I like how the fun mousing over of text leads to learning more depth by mousing over and clicking game pieces. Excellent job, and even better that it has public source code! Have you thought about adding a license to it, open source or otherwise?
Played a couple full games, still fun and has replayability with the shop choices. Coding everything manually was impressive too, Godot's built in mouse replacement tool does not work for web builds but your version does. Looking forward to where the project goes!
Good take on a skill based game!
Adding sound effects for failing an action like trying to enter a blocked zone would add even more polish. Having an alternative for right click would also be good for single mouse button users. I feel like the arrow charging mechanic could go well with a future game where different characters charge up at different rates.
For a game about a struggling computer, this was surprisingly smooth.
When learning the game, I did not realize I was getting hurt because the sound effect was so subtle. After learning the advanced movement it makes sense with how fast paced the game is that getting hurt is just a minor inconvenience.
Speaking of audio, great job on the end goal sting. I also like how impactful the bombs sound and was pleasantly surprised on how bombs interact with the movement options.
I was surprised at the storyline, it served the gameplay well while keeping players on their toes. There were a few minor spelling typos in the first half of the game, but nothing major. The audio is really well done to hear the gravity of actions. It sounds like you did a great job organizing a project with so many people too, I think the game design was a good choice for being able to work on sections of the game and have it connect together at the end.
Cute and I like the unlocked mechanics. Version 1.1 slowed down to about half movement speed, but the undo and restart buttons were always instant speed, which was helpful.
Nice system! Given more time I like the draggable idea, and also being able to rotate with 'R' would help for choosing which direction to build, as long as the directional symbols always face north. Also great job staying organized to get so much coded, and designing distinct borders for different electronics.
A nice compact game with story and some monologues to tie the experience together. Nice job with the effects hyping up the combat, and including multiple game difficulties.
Lovely job on the art. I was not sure which choice would do what, and the character insults could be varied if you want the characters to seem smarter, however I think the pleasant nature of the story works even without full knowledge of the character decisions. I like how the layers of story unfold and the introduction of talking characters to contrast with the abstract fluffy fields.
Nice walk cycles and blinking eyes to set the mood. It has a nice sandbox feel and not being able to lose lets the player walk around and enjoy the world layout.
Nice job making a beatable puzzle game. I could not hear the audio and pressing Esc freezes the game, leaving that out or adding a reset option could be helpful. The game loads pretty fast though so a reset isn't essential.
The shrinking mechanic paired well with the level design. The ability adds a sense of wonder at which gaps will I be able to sneak through next!
The writing's charm encouraged me to finish each quest and talk to everyone. Adding SFX when lifting and setting objects down would add even more to the game's feel. The ending also made me chuckle.
Nice sense of scale with the multiple rooms and diving into deeper floors. The neon hurt my eyes some, maybe a secondary scale or a toggle for replacing the white of the tubes with a solid color for everything except for small text would be helpful. Below is a quick mock-up using Gimp with a threshold-fill of 25.5, then shrinking to 1/4 size to fit in this comment:
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With 10 minutes of practice, the game feels exhilarating to play. These tips helped me:
1. Keep your mouse cursor near the center of the room. 2. While battling, try to keep your mouse a little more pointed toward the lead enemy. 3. Peeking into a room and then backing out will reset enemy positions without respawning them. 4. Let non-ranged enemies come to you to defeat them safely. 5. Slowly circle ranged enemies while looking for an opening.
The invincibility while attacking feels nice, and the whoosh sound effect to go with it.
Nerve racking and interesting. I think I lost around level 5 when reloads did not seem to work for me anymore. Nice job with the enemy variety.
Thanks for teaching me the controls on stream, the game is quite fluid and fun to figure out the best tricks to go for per random level. Charming execution to go with the visuals and gripping music.
Having different background music per phase of the game is great for immersion. Given more time, adding a hover over sound effect for buttons would be nice, and price tags to know how much the shop items cost. Also the contrast of tall people in the museum and a rounder digger for exploring is a nice contrast.
The game has a mesmerizing feel to it. I kept making the mistake of thinking 'R' was for respawn. As a future idea, the special controls list is short enough that a reminder could fade in near the top of the screen when you stand still for a couple seconds. Also by the time I started feeling lost the music came in with the higher volume version and added to the mystery of the level design. Great teamwork with the environments, animation, and mood!
The ZIP download worked for me, the link versions were blocked by my computer but maybe it works better for different countries. I was wondering:
1. Is the tower open on 1 side or 2 sides so that players can reach the inner levels? 2. In the Descent half of the game, do you choose which direction to move before rolling? 3. Does the Haste condition always move you the total of 2 dice, or is the affect optional? Looking at the "Can roll ..." versus "Must roll ..." wording.
Also cute job on the berry art, it gives a strategy game feel to the game.
An easy to digest game, it had me playing until the end. Including story lines for each level fit great, and the difficulty fit a classic ramp up to teach the player by playing.
Congrats on making a relaxing, interesting pool game. Adding slight color to replace the black background would be nice to look more complete. The way the sides of the dice have pool balls stuck to them is cute, it made me wonder if I could knock them off if I feel off of the edge slowly enough.
Nice use of a 3D model for the main character and 2D assets for the background and interactables.
Since the game is made in Godot I would highly recommend trying out the export web build feature since its a good way of getting more eyes on your game.
Filling to 30% worked well for me, anyone else have gardening tips?
Great job coordinating 3 developers on the same team and still having time to polish an intense feel into the game. The starting screen's dome and monster in the background gave me the impression of a tower defense game when this seems more of a race with yourself to collect the most treasure. The character outfit made sense at the end and the screenshots do a great job of showing that the game will involve grid digging elements.
Cute entry, I came after hearing about the original audio and enjoyed the puzzle mini-games upon landing on yellow platforms.
Thank you everyone for playing and the feedback! We had a fun time putting the pieces of the game together while working in a new team and focusing on immersing the player in the mousey experience.
@Uzpykes nice moving spotlight idea. It could add some extra challenge while reusing art.
@winniehell thanks for pointing out the z-axis layering bug. It was my mistake while making the levels on the last day.
I am glad the repeating levels weren't too hard to beat so that players could get to see everything we made. I also agree more variety or a clear finish would be helpful to add to reward players for reaching the end. Speaking of endings, all 3 of our team members contributed to the game over background art; the sketch, cutting it out, and coloring it in.
This was the first winter game I tried this game jam. The snow, wind, and bells when placing an object synergize well. It felt like a Norse mythology setting to me with the setting and mysterious 'x' feedback. Reading the comments above, its good to know discovering how to play is part of the game.
Given more time, being able to make the game full screen would be nice, even with the narrow dimensions. Also the variety of objects is funny and charming.
Good chip tune music, with music theory behind it. I enjoyed the scanning the scanning mechanic a lot, it combines the fun of exploring fog of war with an arcade game.
Persisting upgrades through death and being able to stack them was unexpected and fun. The darker levels were my least favorite for making it hard to see, especially with a locked window size. The number keys were beyond my skill level, so I just used arrow keys and always shot to the right. Nice work bringing the crystals back in bounds after a second to avoid soft locks.
The setting felt convincing. The last line of the tutorial had me nervous the whole first game. I could hear the music slightly, so adding a settings slider for the music could be nice to make it even more obvious which way to go. The buzzing insects felt very fitting for wilderness.
Also this was my first time playing a game where you carry a camera where you can see its view in 3rd person, it felt innovative to me.
A fun tactics game, clicking around near the beginning teaches the basics and it was neat seeing the different orb enemies with various stats.
A polished puzzle and timing game. Story wise it felt like I was in the shoes of a doctor whose patient is complaining that they won't survive, which fit really well with the pulse to slow down the player into being ready for the next attempt. (Look the other way patient, you'll forget or forgive the mistakes once we succeed!)
I could see how adding health or ways to survive would change the game too much from being about discovery and training your reflexes. Drawing a map, converting it into instructions, and sometimes using my mouse to hover over where I wanted to turn next helped me mentally break down the challenge into smaller pieces.
A small change I think could be fun would be making the trails persist faintly between attempts, maybe choosing a random color to tell them apart. There is already a trail during a current run, yet having more ways to analyze what went wrong could be a nice layer of feedback. Kind of like how some games leave a splat on the background where you last expired.
Also nice job mixing the voices to fit and making aesthetically pleasing level designs. How did you XpMonster come up with the level designs?
The starting area's models are great for setting the tone and I could understand all of the tools. Restarting to try every tool at the start would have saved me some time. Refilling air faster would be nice, I just rested instead since it was faster. On day 80 I got stuck behind a tree and 2 crates by jumping behind it.
The setting is intriguing and had me excited to brave the depths. It is a challenging game, I got to the second floor and found its doorknob covered by a platform I could not reach. Muting footsteps while in midair would be a nice touch. The 2 enemies complemented each other to build the habit of jumping over zombie miners and then accidentally jumping into spiders. Looking forward to seeing what you both create in the future.
The circular shading helps reinforce the feeling of a small field of vision. Moving the character blurred in a way that hurt my eyes. I also like how the enemies can be pushed around with some resistance, making them feel more real.
Congrats on making the best death sequence I have seen all game jam, it has a pause, audio feedback, and leads to a game over. For future game jams I highly recommend making a web build so more people can play your game. Fitting the tutorial into the home screen was a nice touch.
The high health gives the player time to decide how many obstacles to carve through while trying to survive, which I feel adds to the strategy of going for a high score. Looking forward to seeing what games you make in the future.
2 mini-games in one with the fishing and the shop! It would probably be a lot of work to set the reeling in to SFX, and everything else feels like a good fit for the consistent experience. The fisherman animation makes me smile.
The shading, transitions, art and choice of music build a fun, slightly spooky mood. Given more time, I have 3 recommendations please:
1. Keep lights attached to the enemies on death. The current way of leaving the lights behind is nice for showing where enemies were when you were defeated, yet is less realistic when they swim away. 2. Fade out the main menu music when a button is clicked to fix a blip sound. You already have a delay for animation, so adding the fade out would fix the blip sound that can happen when cutting off audio playing at a louder volume, such as during a scene transition. 3. I think the audio might get louder each deathless loop of the game?
Not a big deal on either audio point since you are not competing in audio, yet it adds to the player fun to complete the smooth experience.
Also great job fitting complete menu navigation into the game jam, including the retries for the finale.
The bubbles and larger background art were nice for scale. The player is felt fast compared to other games, which is good since there are no threats in this peaceful, short adventure.
Thank you for including a skip button to be able to see all of the levels' balance quickly, it was probably helpful while coding and testing as well.
Nice job on making a skillful challenge that depends partially on luck of the level generation and partially on building an efficient digging strategy. I did get stuck once with rocks on 3 sides and a water bottle overlapping me, yet I could restart the game quickly by refreshing the browser. If you continue the game in the future, then adding a squish sound effect and a victory sting could be nice for polish.
It captured a bouncy feel. The game design like a brick breaking game at first until I saw how much faster the score increased by moving downward. I think players with strong reflexes would enjoy the challenge of diving quickly while avoiding the death traps. Looking forward to seeing what games you all make in the future.
Want to phone a friend? I've got 4! Phones in my pocket, that is.
Pretty and challenging. Having a way to pick up orbs you throw or be like boomerangs might be interesting to try to see if it makes the game easier. Different characters could have different ways they use the orbs.
Interesting way to make a gamified browsing tool. Listing controls somewhere might be good for knowing about scrolling for zoom and right click hold to drag the view. I like how the hexagon sizes show off the thumbnails well while being a unique shape.
Thank you for bringing your game to the stream! The variety of houses and music train loops were cute to admire as part of the background while thinking up the next set of tracks to lay down.
I like your UI ideas of adding keybinds and looking into UI updates. Being able to place rails faster would pick up the pace and let players try to race their own train too. I am also glad we noticed and avoided the one softlock near the end of the game.
The surprise halfway through my game wowed me, I thought I had seen it all. Good job surprising your players with that special gameplay reward. Moving through 2 rooms in a row made me laugh out loud with joy.
Excellent humor! The cute shapes, bright terrain, rock music, and trash burn mechanic complement each other in being lighthearted. I was so immersed I tried moving my mouse cursor to look to the side while driving. Given more time I think more drop-off points would help encourage exploring while earning points, but having 1 dump site does make sense. The steering was also well done, the garbage truck corrected its orientation to go toward where I wanted.
The mood from art style, audio, and backstory ties well together. The fishing mini-game was hard at first, but since the timing movement is always the same speed I got better at it in maybe a dozen minutes. Given more time, I think trying to open the shop should close the tackle box screen, instead of needing to manually close it the tackle box first.
Some of the Easter eggs made me laugh out loud, so I'd say it was a good time.
Well done with the card system to support partial art, full art, holographic, and 3D rotation. How much is in 2D versus 3D to be able to tilt cards?
Playing at the original entry, I agree a smaller map would add to the experience. Otherwise having an auto-walk button like _Num Lock_ or make riding a vehicle through the sandy desert the main mechanic would fit the aesthetic more than walking on foot. The ending felt satisfying, short and sweet.
Cute game! I like the wiggling of the characters. Ran into a couple crashes though.
I got to the 3rd conversation scene just now before getting the following error:
``` Error
dialogue.lua:59: UTF-8 decoding error: Not enough space
Traceback
[love "callbacks.lua"]:228: in function 'handler' [C]: in function 'print' dialogue.lua:59: in function 'lineprint' dialogue.lua:30: in function 'dialoguedraw' main.lua:30: in function 'draw' [love "callbacks.lua"]:168: in function <[love "callbacks.lua"]:144> [C]: in function 'xpcall' ```
After trying again and collecting everything I could, I got an error during the 2nd conversation:
``` Error
dialogue.lua:5: attempt to index field 'col' (a nil value)
Traceback
[love "callbacks.lua"]:228: in function 'handler' dialogue.lua:5: in function 'dialoguedraw' main.lua:30: in function 'draw' [love "callbacks.lua"]:168: in function <[love "callbacks.lua"]:144> [C]: in function 'xpcall' ```
Hmm, I heard it was fixed, but unfortunately now I get a _Virus detected_ error when I try re-downloading.
The outlines of the art are excellent and the tooltip system is helpful. If it is a game it is very slow paced. I would recommend removing the conversations and see if the game is still fun to play. If you do keep the text, then some things to make it more approachable may include:
- Host a web build on itch.io with an expand to full screen option. It would especially make it easier to read the text on the starting scroll. - Hide the Quit button for web builds, since it will freeze the game. - Allow advancing text by making a click go from some text showing to all text for that box of dialog showing. - Allow the player to do something around the shop between customers walking into the store. If someone knocks and the player clicks on the door, then the player may feel more invested and willing to listen to what their visitor has to say.
The fade in and walking animations of the NPCs are good too. I look forward to seeing what you make in the future. Congratulations on finishing your project!
A way to jump further in the story for returning players could be good too, especially in case they refresh the browser, but usually that is hard to set up in the limited time of a game jam.
The gameplay does feel like nurturing plants, and it was fun realizing and calculating how to balance my inputs and outputs. Given more time, if there were options to turn off the light buzz sound effect and maybe the TV effect I would to smooth out my own playthrough. Lastly, the story does a good job of pushing the player along with a layer of intensity to increase engagement.
Thank you for bringing your game to the stream! As a physics platformer it was challenging and sticking with it rewards the player with the fun of mastering something interesting.
I appreciate the quick animation and reset after each death, it helped me learn through my 346 deaths how to carry momentum falling from different heights.
The SFX fit really well too! I never would have thought of blowing bubbles into a cup under a blanket to get water sound effects, great job on the creativity. Its nice hearing about your process, and I hope your engine making goes great too.
Lastly ,the game also led me to laugh out loud a few times when I accidentally let go early to fall to my death, or flung myself into a ceiling or back where I started. Good times.
I could not take my eyes away when I first started playing. Closing of the level let me skip ahead to later levels. After a while I left it running and around level 60 my score would plummet in a flurry of wolf slurps. I don't know how I'd make the volume even out when there are that many entities, but the cheerful music complements the gameplay well. Great teamwork.
Cute game, it was fun to gather so many things and see the goals get completed. At maximum speed looking at the grass pattern started to make me feel dizzy, which could also been from how fast the camera followed the farmer even with the easing to catch up with him. The sound design was peppy to go along with the gameplay too.
A calm, well polished game. I'm curious, how did you implement in Godot saving to carry over data in a web build after the game is refreshed? I feel like it fits the theme really well to have saving implemented.
Thank you!
Like a backseat driver, this game gave me so many thoughts.
Making the text word bubble grow taller over time to fit added text is clever.
When the gameplay started I felt intimidated with the green bar going down, conversation bubbles to read, trying to glance at my surroundings, and understand what the choice bubbles meant and had to use them. Maybe an extra step for turning the key to start the ignition or something would help for easing into seeing the scenery before adding in the timers and choices.
A minor detail with the start menu. It might be challenging to do for this game since the starting screen is balanced to fit 4 buttons at the bottom, yet I recommend hiding the Quit button from web builds. Otherwise clicking it makes the game look like it freezed until the browser is refreshed.
Having a speed limit without a moving spedometer was puzzling to figure out. The downside was funny though, I liked the contrast between the urgent siren, the fear of being caught, and the silliness of buildings flying away then regenerating. Later I found out how to unlock it, but the police still felt somewhat random or hard to not trigger by going slower.
For balance, I think switching the first 2 characters might help ease into the gameplay, having someone who talks less while figuring out how to drive.
Lastly, I don't think the game's reset is finished. The 2nd playthrough my passenger was silent instead of verbose, and the 3rd playthrough my vehicle turned blue in a photo-negative sort of way. Running into someone led me to almost instantly lose to fix colors. The 4th playthrough seemed similar to the second, with upgrades persisting through runs.
Overall very interesting, the story elements seem to fit well together. The gameplay feels connected, but having so many distractions of text, phone, pedestrians, speed limits, turns, plus an invincible car makes the game challenging to learn in a way that almost seems like a 2nd, intentional story about distracted driving.
Fun automation game, it plays like it looks like it would. I thought the boxes in the middle would unlock into something or let me place upgrades into them, yet it seems more of a reminder of the 3 tiers of buildings.
A cut building placement game with multiple animated buildings. The prioritization of SFX sounds good, and having more of them would fit for a post-jam version. I also couldn't see a downside to building next to 1 resource versus many, which make the game feel more relaxed. Lastly, I like how the scale of the high number of buildings leads to a feeling of having an old-world empire at the end ready to conquer new lands.
The town setting helped ground the adventure. I also liked how plentiful the ores were. It was hard to see ores in the dark, especially before upgrading to be able to mine brighter ores, but staying near the entrance was still a reasonably paced way to get rich. I don't know if there was time to add an ending, but I feel like using maximum speed to launch yourself from the seesaw into freedom would be a fun way to escape the pen.
The game feels calm and relaxing. The sound effects to recharge and mine are done well too. The storm visual is smart, using a variation of sand to show it being tossed around.
A multiplayer version or turning up the resource frequency could be good. After I got the first permanent upgrade I found myself rerolling worlds after circling the base for easy resources, since faraway resources we challenging to save up oxygen for and rerolls are free.
The personalities of the candles are fun to look at and fit the gameplay. The explanations of the non-red candles are great too. I think I am too used to drafting games where some options are clearly better than others, and for this game I would need to develop a deep understanding to go far into the game. The background and calculation animations are well done too, and I like the curtains to make game overs a little more dramatic while still making it easy to jump back into a new game.
Nice concept and communicating of the locking of dice slots. I felt immersed enough that I checked if stalling a match would lead to an enemy running away.
The random chances for items feel a little uneven, but I think with strategy almost every run is already winnable by using the multi-slot equipment.
The abstract art mixed with monster hunting felt like a good fit for the gameplay too.
The heroic, slightly spooky music fit the art and gameplay of gaining power in a graveyard. The combat feels balanced, it seems like a nice launching point for making a game with more randomness or custom swords.
Thank you for bringing your game to the stream! You all built many systems in a short time, with a cute art style and well functioning mechanics.
Given more time, I think making UI elements clickable plus a touch control for moving would be a nice way to minimally support mobile user controls. A setting to turn off flash and shake of battle would be nice too in case users feel overwhelmed by it.
The location of a floating island and a day night cycle adds a lot. It gave me things to ponder while figuring out my strategy of what monsters I could catch without strain, versus had to catch because it takes too long for them to run away. Overall great teamwork in making this fun game.
The icons are distinct and compelling, leading me to wonder what crazy combat awaits inside the game. After finding some invincible strategies on later stages and winning while standing still except to enter doors, I figured the game is more of a sandbox for trying the different abilities of the game. For that I think it is fun, and the addition of enemy variety might make it even more fun in a post-game jam version.
For the SFX I recommend trying to set a lower _Max Polyphony_, like 6, on each of your _AudioStreamPlayer_ assets. The growing audio of 100 enemies dying at once might be fixable by limiting how many simultaneous sounds can be played, or somehow capping the maximum volume to protect your players' eardrums.
Also, one quirk of the in-browser build was if I click away, I have to use up a bomb to gain focus on the game again. Giving unlimited practice bombs at the beginning was a great idea too.
What an addicting game, it had me trying it again and again. I think in the short term randomizing the power-ups is good because it feels like there are more choices, but for repeated plays I would rather they always appear in the same order so I do not accidentally pick the wrong power up when there are only 3 total to choose from. The reset does not reset the timer like I expected, it becomes 0 for a second before jumping back up to the original time plus 1. Overall great execution on a twist on a fun game mechanic.
Good question, I couldn't figure out how to play it either. The download took a minute or 2 but the root level folder only has 2 folders and a `LD58.uproject` file. The screenshots in the author's post about it at https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/58/ld58-totem-traveller/first-solo-game-project look vivid and fun though.
I am glad it is working for most players! It booted up Tuesday successfully and I took a few steps then. Today I unfortunately got an error on startup even after re-downloading. Below is the popup error log I get in Windows 10 in case it helps debug it:
``` LowLevelFatalError [File:D:\build\++UE5\Sync\Engine\Source\Runtime\D3D12RHI\Private\D3D12Util.cpp] [Line: 991] RayTracingDevice->CreateStateObject(&Desc, IID_PPV_ARGS(Result.GetInitReference())) failed at D:\build\++UE5\Sync\Engine\Source\Runtime\D3D12RHI\Private\D3D12RayTracing.cpp:663 with error E_INVALIDARG
0x00007ff7d4816d67 LD58-Win64-Shipping.exe!D3D12RHI::VerifyD3D12Result() [] 0x00007ff7d47c2185 LD58-Win64-Shipping.exe!FD3D12PoolAllocator::CreatePlacedResource() [] 0x00007ff7d47c3f80 LD58-Win64-Shipping.exe!FD3D12RayTracingPipelineCache::FShaderCompileTask::DoTask() [] 0x00007ff7d47c4dd8 LD58-Win64-Shipping.exe!TGraphTask
Crash in runnable thread Foreground Worker #0 ```
I couldn't find an option to switch from Russian to English, but there are some interesting pictures and anime-style characters. The right door seemed to lead further into the story for me.
I saw this game after checking out your LD55 team entry.
The highlighting for chess moves was very helpful, and switching to play as a different piece was my favorite part. I expected the dialog to let me choose whether or not to capture a piece, so call me immersed.
The SFX and pulse line animations were good to help the user have reminders and context of the game logic.
Labeling the levels as A, B, C, or with numbers, or otherwise letting the player know the game looped might be good to set player expectations might be good. I had similar feedback 2 jams ago so just passing that along.
The mood of the bulletin board and graph paper textures was nice too.
A great game that fits the clicker genre except its about strategically updating your logistics network. Given more time, dragging a click to connect multiple nodes in a row would be great for speeding up gameplay, especially in the late game.
@alexhonor nice job expanding the game out! I have copied the below feedback for the post-jam version on your feedback form.
The turrets and asteroids change the game balance a lot and will take some getting used to for me. I probably need upgrades in order to consistently defend a single crossing line with a red-1 turret.
Also as a heads up, the fullscreen web build has a few bugs when you have time:
1. The Controls menu overlaps the top-right corner 'x' and cog, so the only way I found for backing out was by pressing Esc which also leaves the fullscreen. 2. The Upgrades menu's tooltips for unpurchased upgrades overlaps `1star(`. Maybe add width for the star to fix it.
Great concept and execution. Listening to the sea chanty music and zooming in on the background through the light fog was fun.
Given more time, adding more feedback on ship crashes would be helpful, such as arrows on the edge of the screen, or making a bigger spectacle of a game over so the user can tell where the mistake happened. Being able to pause with the main menu would be nice too, clicks were still registering through the pause menu buttons. Still though, having menus and reset choices is great and doing more for options and audio controls is just polish on top.
Glad to hear the team had fun using source control and working together! Looking forward to seeing what you all make in the future.
Tense and with good storytelling. I'm not usually one to hit the side of a T. V. but I sure got used to it! Nice idea on using stock footage for background.
A couple things for a future version, is the chin hitbox could be larger in case the user is not looking from below, and some more shortcuts could be always available from the beginning of the game.
Great job, its always a pleasure to try out your team's games.
Nice title and thumbnail, they helped me find the game. The cost curve for the upgrades feels good and makes me curious what the source code would look like.
The SFX sound good until there are too many clicks, so the volume controls at the top were a good idea. I also could not always buy the $10M dial when money was shown at $10M, probably due to rounding.
The bounce and turning green of dials felt satisfying to watch and hear. Looking forward to playing the next game you all make.
Congrats on the detailed art and combat system. If there are multiple levels more than level 0, then they seem long to get to the next part. Nice touch on having the characters complain when hit by friendly fire.
Well done making a tight game with animations and audio that match up with each other.
The move system is clever. There are 4 moves, 1 randomly omitted at the beginning, then the missing move is restored by replacing the chosen move. So the game always cycles among showing 3 of 4 choices. I'm not sure if it would fit what you have in mind, but one way that could make the game easier is to have all 4 options shown in a big spaced out 2x2 grid, then shoot out the chosen instruction(, kind of like a shuriken being slid forward,) leaving a disabled ghost behind. That could teach the players how the move system works intuitively, and touch users still cannot accidentally make the same move twice in a row.
The current system and timer feels more arcade-y, so maybe the above system would feel less fun? But it definitely reminded me of great board games like Scythe or worker placement games where you cannot repeat the same action twice in a row. It also would not fit the arrow key shortcuts, so it might turn into more of QEAD shortcuts or something to represent diagonal choices.
Also clever idea of having the ending screen's button link to this page for rating the game, I like that a lot.
Great game jam game design where the game is quick to finish, replay, and discover secrets within. Thanks for letting me know the manual characters were made with Gen AI so I could ignore them while rating.
Given more time, instead of quitting to a black screen on Esc, I think escaping to the title screen would be preferable. The current design is good for quickly muting the game, but requires a page refresh even though finishing the game normally lets you retry from the beginning.
Nice touch on making the audio slightly muted while indoors, and the humorous character writing.
The people heading toward the signal was interesting, they reminded me of fireflies with all of the lights.
I was not able to find the hospital or hear the audio, but refreshing the page did fix the blurriness as reported earlier.
@Gideongriebenow good eye, yes it was a family endeavor! Board games are rare on Ludum Dare so we polished ours as best we could in the time allowed. Thank you for the kind words!
@ionhaven no, there is no printed release. This game is original for Ludum Dare 59. The 3 PDFs for printing it out yourself are linked at the bottom of the post (3 pages of rules, 2 pages of cut-out components).
**Q:** The bit about them not landing on any items is confusing, and what happens if there’s multiple dice on one row/col?
**A:** The repeats are ignored without re-rolling the dice, making the round easier for the player. (Insert explanatory picture here.)
A cute, memorable, point-and-click adventure with some movement. The cutout art-style was a great idea, and the puzzles were challenging enough to get stuck a few times, but it helps extend the life of the game since each playthrough would be the same.
Performance issues were fixed by escaping or changing the game between full screen and not. The game first halted when lighting a fire.
The SFX were pretty comprehensive, the SFX for fire going out reminded me of someone softly snorting out from their nose. I look forward to seeing what you all make in the future!
Nice title, thumbnail, and gameplay. It fulfills a fantasy of lining up a perfect shot in pool or other trajectory games.
As an alternate way to play, it could be nice to have an option where the 3 shots with the most impacts and unique results are offered to the player instead of manually hunting for them. Not sure how hard it would be to code though.
Gameplay wise, buying more slots felt expensive since I could only buy 0-1 new items per level, but maybe it is protecting me from myself to not have too many items on screen?
A few hopefully easier things to fix in a future version are some minor typos:
- Crusher Wheel description: Should say "... add a charge ..." - Bottom-right predictor: Should say "... coming."
Rarely squares can stack on top of each other with different rotations, I think they still worked though.
Lastly I also noticed a syncing issue with starting a new game still showing the older _Depth_ until you finish firing your first shot. Allowing the game to reset is great though, saves the user from having to refresh the browser page.
Overall great game, and I look forward to seeing what you make in the future.
Nice reuse of game mechanics for throwing items from different angles.
Given more time, it would be nice if clicking during the in-game instructions skipped to showing the text all at once, similar to the gameplay storyline. Being able to hold E to keep picking up or holding Space to throw multiple times would also be good, as long as it does not make the game too easy.
How much of the game was destructible surprised me, nice job on making sure the player can always find more items to pick up.
A quick to learn game with a cute setting. At first I thought I could continue text with Spacebar, making it truely a 1-button game. I like how the robot pauses while you type. In a longer game I think it could be funny if a super long message pushes the moons away or does some Easter egg music.
Felt great to play. It is a hard game to balance, unless you give free partial/full heals after every fight which would make it easier to see the end game with multiple strategies. Nice job including a game over screen that leads to the main menu.
Playing a second time I did much worse by straying from high-defense cards, because losing health snowballs into having less damage to survive further. Some other thoughts about the game I had are:
- Would be nice if you no longer drew cards for fully missing groups. - Surprised the _... Hold ..._ card still works without defenders. - Could make giving up Defenders early more interesting if the Defend cards were removed from your deck of cards. Maybe removing Defenders would make the game too hard though if I cannot block. - Swapping columns 1 and 4 does not do anything when the 4th column is empty. I would expect it to not be able to be played, kind of like when the cards that move a defender forward cannot be played when an enemy is in the way. - Fun to strategize with. - Not sure what the best deck would be, maybe taking the Close Shot and lots of defense, since blocking is difficult and often needed consistently.
Great job overall. I look forward to seeing what games you make in the future.
The game feels like a poem turned into a video game, it trusts the users to look into its deeper layers and has unique art/audio.
Writing the instructions into the foreground of each screen is clever. The starting menu's _Press Space_ could be made more bold, white outlined, or maybe have an outline appear when you mouse over it to be more eye-catching and obvious. If you go for the outline approach, you could do the same thing for the 5 moods to hint to the player yellow is stars, purple is horror, and so on.
For the scenes after collecting dreams, it would be nice if the player has the option to skip in case they have seen the dream before, either in 2 steps to show all then move on, or just move on immediately. It was probably out of scope though since in your original idea there was more persistence between levels.
Also great job on balancing the audio without overloading the wind or being too quiet with the voice lines. I can almost imagine the background trees and TV dishes swaying with the wind sounds.
A fun, unique, and innovative game. I had to read the sniper controls and try them out before understanding how to get positive points greater than 1. It might also be nice to have an additional button for sniper mode instead of just the right click for players with 1-button mice, however I did not have any problems with right-click in the browser which was great. Good job on the immersive sound effects and listing the tools used too.
Thanks for the tips of ignoring the timing bar that was fixed in the post-jam version, it affects the gameplay feel and understanding a lot for new players.
In the post-jam version, the word count should instead say letter count or count differently. The number was always zero on the jam version, so it never came up as counting the wrong thing before. The post-jam breath circle was a good idea, it just makes the options controls slightly harder to use since it is rendered there too.
Some ideas for end/post game:
- Could be neat if a giant pelican saves or eats you depending on if you harmed any birds and got far enough. - Would be nice to be able to scroll horizontally after game over to see what you spelled.
Lastly, good idea to have the birds fly behind the title of the start screen.
Fun army gameplay with a twist on limited lifetime per unit.
For the text display, growing the text from the center was too hard to read until it was fully spelled out for me, compared to writing from left to right.
For the gameplay balance, the 3rd unit's very short time seemed too short, unless it has area of effect I did not notice.
The glow and art are pretty too, it fits with the setting and makes the pixel art look more lively.
Nice animations on the robot bobbing up and down as well as jumping into the end portal. Given more time I feel like being able to draw notes notes on the walls would be cool and fit the tone of the art, especially for the 4th level where I wanted to trial and error how to dodge each enemy perfectly. It also seemed pretty creative to have multiple levels cap out at the 30 command limit.
The game made me laugh and smile. Using a mouse-over control felt great to reduce clicks and auto-target compared to similar giant-tower-defense genre games, while also fitting better into the Signal theme.
I wonder how many levels and enemy types there were. The crawling enemy's attack animation was my favorite.
Although art and audio are not part of the rating for this game, there are nice graphics on the radio controls.
I was not sure what cues to listen for unless I try the game multiple times. The green dots were nice in the tutorial first day, would be good to have those for every day. The speaking voices were probably just for flavor, and not meant to judge characters by.
Nice job setting up the daily cycle of events. I look forward to seeing what games you make in the future.
Good storytelling with a main gameplay antagonist. After I was told to play it was a test of patience. Other than the story, my favorite part was playing with the lettuce to see if it could block line of sight or have some other use.
I was pleasantly surprised over and over by the details of this game. Lots of particle effects, a variety of enemies, and feedback when you are outside of the safe zone. I almost expected the folding chairs to be destructible.
The game was difficult and fun. The monsters made me jump, even when I knew they were close. I think the charging monster attack SFX helped contribute to it. The audio was relaxed and engaging.
I like the smoothness of the rotation animation. It makes me imagine a rhythm game, especially if SFX were added for shooting and receiving balls.
To improve the browser build, I recommend disabling the outer expand button in the bottom right corner. The blue button worked for me while the clear button does not. Additionally, you probably want the game's Quit button to just back out to a start menu for browser builds.
For the gameplay, it would be nice to be able to control both receivers in the level 3 missions. Maybe with an extra keybinds like Z and C for the second receiver.
Congratulations on finishing your first Ludum Dare game, I look forward to seeing what you make in the future!