Clearly going for the humor card, but successful at that :) I liked how I could fly my helicopter upside-down even before I got to China. Is the music really original?
Straightforward, sound gameplay. You quickly learn to take it easy and not try to rescue everyone. Maybe there should be a penalty every time stranded people are killed?
Sometimes survivors are off the screen to the bottom or the right where you can't reach them but they can still be destroyed by bombs. Too bad for them!
Insanity mode isn't that hard because all the islands block bombs from the sky. (Plus it's easier to fill up your boat very quickly.) I played a few times. :)
Game makes sense and works right. Being quick seems more important than strategy. Bridges being unbreakable and the distance along the graph being irrelevant means there's not much subtlety with them. One card tower is plenty to get more cards than you need; the problem is that you're at the whim of the dice with those.
Once, it wouldn't accept my clicks on the third play.
Hard mode is very hard! A lot of it is the luck of your first few cards. I did want to keep playing it. :)
Enjoyed this one a lot. I was very confused at first because I had configured my controls but didn't realize I could use the mouse to look around.
This game is all atmosphere, and well executed. It wasn't hard to find the radios and it was a neat to hear the soundscape (a major part of the atmosphere) change as I did. I wish there had been an "inverted" mouselook; that was actually the biggest challenge for me. :)
Love the graphical style and execution. Top notch. The puzzles are very easy. The pellets seem to basically have no purpose, since it never benefits you to be longer. Doesn't seem to have anything to do with islands, though.
I liked the puzzle game, very reminiscent of Lolo. The 4th level was pretty hard, which was good (though it was mostly about being fast). But the fifth is obviously impossible, unless I'm missing something? If I am, please give a hint because I want to play through it. :)
Clever. It was hard to figure out what to do, because generally there is not that much feedback (including why your solution was not acceptable, for example, I kept trying on the first level to make an otherwise legal solution where I'd visit one of the islands twice). One thing I really dug was the remixed music in Let's Do It! mode. (A smoother transition between the two pieces would have been especially slick.)
Feel free to put your game files wherever you want. :) But it did make me pretty dizzy to play fullscreen. It probably would have helped if the scroll wasn't completely locked to my player.
This was a modest platformer that I played through to the end and had a good time with. The graphics of the main character are real weird but pretty funny. The puzzles weren't too frustrating because restarting them was fast (sometimes too abrupt, and I didn't even see what happened), but I also usually failed because it didn't register my jump because I hadn't landed before hitting space, or something. A little leeway for the player here would have been nice to reduce cruelty. Some of the platforms in some of the levels seemed unmotivated, so that was kinda a downside. Still, enjoyable. :)
Nice graphics. I liked the whimsy of this game. The gameplay makes sense but it was a bit unexpected. The first time I fell in a hole I was wondering why it took so long to die. The second time I was wondering why I could still move while I was dead. Then I figured it out. :) Some of the routes you have to take are pretty cruel... it seems more about memorizing the path than having good reflexes, but that's ok. The main problem with playing is not being able to tell what will block you at any given point; its just too hard to see the relative depth of my player and the obstacles. But I did keep playing to level 5. :)
Real good! Clever game mechanic and some good puzzles. In some ways it's better with the minimalist graphics, so I'm glad you polished the gameplay and puzzles first. :) One of my favorites so far.
This is a really cool game, a good idea and great graphics. I think some of that is undone by the game being too hard to play. Being able to configure the keys would have helped a lot; like some other folks the buttons seemed backwards and I kept throwing my axe into the water and stuff like that. It's also too easy to get yourself stuck at the beginning, if you forgot your axe or threw it into the water. But I did keep playing it, even though I suck! :) I think I'll like the post-compo one even more...
Oh, my poor starving thirsty people! Seems like the concept is good, and the graphics and sound fit well. I found it really hard, though: I think I need more feedback to know what's going on with the game, in particular to know which hexes are being worked on and when they yield dividends. I can't tell whether I'm going too fast or too slow, or what, but oh the casualties... :)
Wow, the graphics are so cool! I like the music too. I'd love to play this game, but in its unfinished state it's at best a teaser. :) What is up with those lumps, anyway? They just wanna get in my way?
Really impressive artwork! I made it to the end and jumped in the drink. :) For what it's worth, I thought the horizontal movement speed was too slow and the jump seemed unbelievably high. Wish there had been more to do...
This is a good idea, and the game plays smoothly. I got to level 7, too. I like the simple graphics (the red fuzzies are very uninviting) and pace. The main problem with the game is that most of playing well involves waiting for a random opening. On the later levels this isn't much fun. I think it needs some way for the player to influence the movement of the red or white dots, or to kill off red dots, like by surrounding them? But, generally likable. :)
Fun short platformer. I often walked off the edge and 'jumped' in the air (to my death). I wish there had been a 3x mode, since fullscreen is pretty intense but 1:1 is too tiny. Liked the music and graphics.
This is pretty good. (Is the audio not original? If so this entry isn't legal; too bad.) The graphics and sound fit. The controls are good (though you should have mentioned that up also jumps; it's pretty hard to hit spacebar while using the arrow keys and the mouse at the same time!), the gameplay makes sense, and the computer opponent is pretty strong. Winning seems to be about getting the right item drops, and managing your opponent's health: Leaving him with with only a little bit so that you can kill him at a moment that's very inconvenient for him, and then make a run for the flag. The speed powerup seemed to me to be the most useful by far.
The gameplay did get a little repetitive, but I had fun playing a few times until I could reliably win. Some platforms to make the route non-obvious, or something like that, would have really spiced it up.
This was a very weird game that I found myself liking more than I should have. Strange noises are panned hard left, repeating throughout the game. A story (in French) about Napoleon's deal with the devil (he trades for his hat). It's 100% jumping puzzles/performance, which get pretty tense when you get high up, because you really don't want to fall and have to do it again. Still, somehow I felt compelled to play through to the end, and I did really like the ending. The jumping is buggy (I think it's something like, for the first 1 second that the player is holding the jump button, decrease the y coordinate), and the collisions are buggy (platforms extend invisibly to the left), but some of the jumps in the game force you to understand and exploit both of the bugs. That's weird but kind of great, too.
Great one! Reminded me of some of the gameplay in N+, but very creative use of the theme and a nice smooth implementation. It gets old faster than it gets hard, but there are lots of things you could add to improve that.
Wow, awesome! I love the graphics and everything plays so smoothly. It was also interesting to develop a strategy, part of which involves balancing the island placement to be near the top corners, but not so high that you can't react to falling magma fast enough, and balancing dense islands for bigger combos with space to quickly shuffle away precious squares. It'd be perfrect with cool music to go with it, and some way for me to win. (Or maybe there is... I got like 1600000 points before suspecting that it would just go on forever, but maybe I'm not patient enough.)
Spoiler instructions (one of the things I liked about this game was figuring it out with just the in-game nonverbal cues): Once you decorate your island, you can sell the contents by clicking; you get points proportional to the number of adjacent objects. As you get more coin, you can build more expensive stuff, but the volcano gets meaner.
One of my favorite LD17 games. Really good, congrats! :)
Love the creepy graphics. The game looks a lot like rhythm games, but really isn't; this is misleading, but once you figure out what's going on the gameplay is sound. It's pretty confusing when you miss one of the arrows, since it's not obvious whether you should try again or skip it.
On my sixth try, got 100% FC (537642, which I guess is the maximum score unless I don't understand the scoring). http://islands.spacebar.org/screenshots/hulascore-tom7.jpg Didn't try two-handed, that's nutz.
Game crashes if you try to close it using the [x] on the window, which is a bummer.
Good game! The gameplay is pretty tight. I made some bad choices the first few times playing (it's easy to build guns that can hardly ever hit stuff, because they don't lead shots) but eventually I figured out a good strategy, though I never really quite understood the power flow. The music reminds me of Rampart. Very apropos use of theme. Played this for like 45 minutes. One of the best so far.
I basically understood it, but this game is like information overload. I desperately needed some kind of price tracker so that I can tell whether I'm getting a good deal without doing homework. I wasn't expecting to die when I did.
This game was more confusin' than E.T. for the 2600! :) Eventually I figured out what was going on, but it's pretty slow on my machine and hard to understand how I'm making progress. Intriguing concept, though.
Nice concept. It plays smooth and was intuitive. It's only hard at the beginning, though. I found it easy to outpace the rising water. One strategy that works pretty well is to just fly around flinging the spazzing balls randomly (or better, towards the island), since they glom on their own.
The intro text scrolls way too fast on windows, too. I swore that the vibrating hud was an earthquake, and all of a sudden I feared for my tall and thin tower. :) I observed one spaz ball that I could attach my grapple to, but that would not be pulled. It'd just stretch my grapple all the way across the level.
Liked this game a lot and wished I could finish it. I tried playing through it three times but each time a bug prevented me from continuing (in the 1.1 version I got stuck after exiting the second workshop; I wasn't anywhere to be seen and apparently couldn't move). That was pretty frustrating because the game is pretty punishing for making you start over when you die. I actually thought the pace of the game was just right, except that it felt like a chore to play through the beginning parts after dying or getting stuck. Wish there had been continues in the wild, and fewer bugs. Great audio, though the boar-killing sound is outrageously loud! :)
A pretty straightforward implementation of Galcon. Pretty strong AI. More color on the islands would have helped because it's a bit hard to see at a glance which ones belong to whom. Saw some weird behavior: some dudes seem to spawn at 0,0 (disadvantage for red :)) and sometimes I saw population numbers actually go negative?
I did play a few times until I beat it. More layouts would have been welcome.
Thanks for making a puzzle game with actual puzzles! The gameplay is totally sound, and while I don't think the idea is new, it was well executed and has actually hard puzzles in it. The level title starting on top of my dude is pretty annoying. Wish there had been an 'undo' button, since it's easy to accidentally press the wrong direction when looking at the upside-down guy, for example. The continue code should display on the level (or there should be some way to see it), because once you're into a hard one and realize you have to stop, but want to come back later, you can't at that point get the continue code! Generally, good job. :)
Unexpectedly playable for a game with just one button! This game also has the most minimal sound in any non-silent LD17 game I've played; it sounds like a one-sample click, only when I move backwards. Just a few minutes to play and a satisfying victory. :)
Very funny. I particularly like the lo-fi guitar theme song. First thing I did was sail off the screen and crash it. :) Gameplay is pretty Pokemon-esque, and pretty hard (but seems mostly to be based on random luck).
I liked this weird game. Is there any reason not to be dashing constantly? You fly much faster, you get a beacon, you damage enemies instead of dying, and it's the only way to go upward to where the floating babies are. The objective was always in the same place, so once I found it, the later levels were pretty easy. I upgraded only my health. I didn't really understand how to damage enemies or how to avoid getting damaged, but I did get "better" at it. Lots of spelling mistakes in the text, btw. Good job on the audio atmosphere.
Nice complete platform! Played it through to the end. Appreciated the intro and outro sequences. The game plays very smooth and makes sense (though nothing new). The hardest thing about the game was the camera not showing me what's ahead, particularly when sinking down in the water. But that's manageable. Saw a bug in the part where there's the underwater heart. Somehow as went down the passage to the right, I fell out of the world (or something) and reappeared falling from the top of the screen. That was nicer than getting stuck and I got to skip a few obstacles, but probably a bug. No other issues I saw (compo version). Nice!
Asp Turtles are the Katamaris of the sea! I keep getting stuck! And I thought the people were octopuses for a long time. :) But I like being an Asp Turtle.
Fun little platformer. Might be some of the most annoying MIDI patches known to mankind, but I can't deny that they go with the island theme. :) I like the graphics a lot. Having the coin-get sound be a little tone, but which doesn't go with the music, makes me kinda not want to get the coins. How come when I die, I have to start over from the beginning, even though I can save and then load as many times as I want to continue? It should probably just be saving for me every time I beat a level. In the last level, you can jump up through the green globes for a very short path to the end.
Not bad. I played through to the "end" (hint: you can see the "end" by pressing the cheat-key 'esc' at any time :)) and it was challenging even given the simple goal. The biggest hazard was getting stuck on a wall, because if that happens and there isn't a whirlwind coming, you have to use the cheat key to start over from the first level. Nice, weird music.
Good platformer. Thought it was the right length for LD, though I'm pretty sure I didn't explore every room. (Is there just one ending?) The jumping controls didn't feel quite right, like too much hang time at the top of the jump, and not enough clearance when jumping to a block at my maximum height. Also, the placement of the save point at the beginning is kind of a blunder; if you hit that before getting all the hoverberries, then if you die towards the elevator you need to make another whole loop to pick up the hoverberries, go back to the start, and climb up again, and you can't save because the save point is already active. Game sped up after I got past the elevators, which was welcome. Contains spelling errors "violaters" and "congradulations". Loved the harsh pixelated graphics styles; reminds me of knytt.
The art on the main creature (especially) and the intro material is great, and I thought the theme was weird and cute. There's not much to do other than walk and smash stuff, so it sort of plays as an animated comic, and it's a bit too long for that. But I guess that's kind of like a metaphor for being a fish with feet. :)
Pretty good. Plays smooth, nice graphics and music. I could never quite figure out why sometimes the skaters punched me and sometimes not. Sort of like real life. Didn't really seem to have anything to do with islands.
Hi-score 78##? (Something is wrong with the score display at the end?)
Really cool graphics! I don't know what to do in the second puzzle, and the temptation is too great to fly on words. :) There appears to be lots of clip regions that don't correspond to anything onscreen, which is pretty weird. Atmosphere is top notch, though.
Very inventive gameplay, nicely thematic. Bonus points for being high-tech and using ML. :) The game's pretty hard. My best strategy was to write off mixed groups of boats and trap them in lagoons without killing them, though it was hard to predict when they'd become "stuck" and die. I think it would have been better if the two colors of boats had different physical properties so it was possible to separate groups, or somehow to regain lives, because otherwise the game is always getting into a higher-entropy state. But I guess it is a physics game. :)
Cute rectangular-pixel ultra lo-fi look. SFX are primitive but work with the aesthetic. Sound gameplay, except that sometimes I think the islands that are thrown at me are unnavigable?
The two-mode system was pretty clever. It really reminded me of the old days, like vi. :)
I didn't understand what the view that always faced right was for, and anyway it's too hard to see anything when underwater. I just ended up learning the enemy's route and then charging it, letting go a torpedo when really close to that thing.
The red border around the outside of the game behaves pretty strangely..?
I actually did have fun driving around (mostly trying to do it really quickly, drifting into my parking spot) and meeting the characters, even though the gameplay is pretty simplistic. Control is very smooth. Suggestions for more fun: Timed quests, upgrades for the boat, some place to push those boxes, some kind of conflict and resolution.
Nice! The graphics are superb. The gameplay is simple but pretty fun; reminds me of Toe Jam 'n Earl. I think the biggest flaw is that some of the randomly generated levels can be impossible. The very first one I got I was stuck right away, and I was wondering like, is this a difficult puzzle game or what? But when I realized it was random I realized that the extra care to generate only solvable levels was lacking. Hard to blame you for 48 hours. :) Cute concept, story, sound, funny, plays smooth. Very good.
It's so hard! I loved the graphics and sound, the counting down battery and the atmosphere were right from the start, and I really wanted to climb the tower (after verifying that the underwater is not hospitable). I love how my heart robot does flips if I jump far, or how I explode when I die. But I don't like dying. I finally got to the third room with baddies, but got killed when I fell back down to avoid a fireball, back onto the crab I had just killed! Arg! The most frustrating thing about the rooms is not so much that they're hard, but you have to shoot the crabs so many times that there's lots of waiting for them to step on cracks to do it safely. If it was just about performing difficult maneuvers it would be fun to try, but the hard stuff with waiting in between encourages me to be reckless and impatient, which is frustrating. I didn't give up on most of the LD17 games I played, so this must be one of the hardest. :) Still, I liked it. Plays really smooth.
LD17 — Islands (49)
I HATE ISLANDS by nitram_cero
Clearly going for the humor card, but successful at that :) I liked how I could fly my helicopter upside-down even before I got to China. Is the music really original?
Rescue the Stranded! by Redbone
Straightforward, sound gameplay. You quickly learn to take it easy and not try to rescue everyone. Maybe there should be a penalty every time stranded people are killed?
Sometimes survivors are off the screen to the bottom or the right where you can't reach them but they can still be destroyed by bombs. Too bad for them!
Insanity mode isn't that hard because all the islands block bombs from the sky. (Plus it's easier to fill up your boat very quickly.) I played a few times. :)
Islands At War by Srekel
Crashed without XNA installed, bummer. :(
Game makes sense and works right. Being quick seems more important than strategy. Bridges being unbreakable and the distance along the graph being irrelevant means there's not much subtlety with them. One card tower is plenty to get more cards than you need; the problem is that you're at the whim of the dice with those.
Once, it wouldn't accept my clicks on the third play.
Hard mode is very hard! A lot of it is the luck of your first few cards. I did want to keep playing it. :)
Radio Silence by Terry
Enjoyed this one a lot. I was very confused at first because I had configured my controls but didn't realize I could use the mouse to look around.
This game is all atmosphere, and well executed. It wasn't hard to find the radios and it was a neat to hear the soundscape (a major part of the atmosphere) change as I did. I wish there had been an "inverted" mouselook; that was actually the biggest challenge for me. :)
Deep Under an Island by Sparky
Love the graphical style and execution. Top notch. The puzzles are very easy. The pellets seem to basically have no purpose, since it never benefits you to be longer. Doesn't seem to have anything to do with islands, though.
108 seconds of loneliness by Draknek
I liked the puzzle game, very reminiscent of Lolo. The 4th level was pretty hard, which was good (though it was mostly about being fast). But the fifth is obviously impossible, unless I'm missing something? If I am, please give a hint because I want to play through it. :)
Atollery by Cosine
Clever. It was hard to figure out what to do, because generally there is not that much feedback (including why your solution was not acceptable, for example, I kept trying on the first level to make an otherwise legal solution where I'd visit one of the islands twice). One thing I really dug was the remixed music in Let's Do It! mode. (A smoother transition between the two pieces would have been especially slick.)
Arcipelago by 1009
X8H WIN!
Feel free to put your game files wherever you want. :) But it did make me pretty dizzy to play fullscreen. It probably would have helped if the scroll wasn't completely locked to my player.
This was a modest platformer that I played through to the end and had a good time with. The graphics of the main character are real weird but pretty funny. The puzzles weren't too frustrating because restarting them was fast (sometimes too abrupt, and I didn't even see what happened), but I also usually failed because it didn't register my jump because I hadn't landed before hitting space, or something. A little leeway for the player here would have been nice to reduce cruelty. Some of the platforms in some of the levels seemed unmotivated, so that was kinda a downside. Still, enjoyable. :)
ChickenPost! by pythong
Nice graphics. I liked the whimsy of this game. The gameplay makes sense but it was a bit unexpected. The first time I fell in a hole I was wondering why it took so long to die. The second time I was wondering why I could still move while I was dead. Then I figured it out. :) Some of the routes you have to take are pretty cruel... it seems more about memorizing the path than having good reflexes, but that's ok. The main problem with playing is not being able to tell what will block you at any given point; its just too hard to see the relative depth of my player and the obstacles. But I did keep playing to level 5. :)
Ascention by kd5bjo
Real good! Clever game mechanic and some good puzzles. In some ways it's better with the minimalist graphics, so I'm glad you polished the gameplay and puzzles first. :) One of my favorites so far.
Worked perfectly for me in Chrome 4.1.249.1064.
Hi score (first play) 18:16.23
Paradise Fort by Hempuli
This is a really cool game, a good idea and great graphics. I think some of that is undone by the game being too hard to play. Being able to configure the keys would have helped a lot; like some other folks the buttons seemed backwards and I kept throwing my axe into the water and stuff like that. It's also too easy to get yourself stuck at the beginning, if you forgot your axe or threw it into the water. But I did keep playing it, even though I suck! :) I think I'll like the post-compo one even more...
Isolated Empire by Daz
Oh, my poor starving thirsty people!
Seems like the concept is good, and the graphics and sound fit well. I found it really hard, though: I think I need more feedback to know what's going on with the game, in particular to know which hexes are being worked on and when they yield dividends. I can't tell whether I'm going too fast or too slow, or what, but oh the casualties... :)
Galapagos by jovoc
Wow, the graphics are so cool! I like the music too. I'd love to play this game, but in its unfinished state it's at best a teaser. :) What is up with those lumps, anyway? They just wanna get in my way?
Monkey Islands by Wiering
Really impressive artwork! I made it to the end and jumped in the drink. :) For what it's worth, I thought the horizontal movement speed was too slow and the jump seemed unbelievably high. Wish there had been more to do...
Island Repair Man by chrisp
This is a good idea, and the game plays smoothly. I got to level 7, too. I like the simple graphics (the red fuzzies are very uninviting) and pace. The main problem with the game is that most of playing well involves waiting for a random opening. On the later levels this isn't much fun. I think it needs some way for the player to influence the movement of the red or white dots, or to kill off red dots, like by surrounding them? But, generally likable. :)
Islands in the Sky by UnionGames
Fun short platformer. I often walked off the edge and 'jumped' in the air (to my death). I wish there had been a 3x mode, since fullscreen is pretty intense but 1:1 is too tiny. Liked the music and graphics.
Flag Island by ToadieTechnika
This is pretty good. (Is the audio not original? If so this entry isn't legal; too bad.) The graphics and sound fit. The controls are good (though you should have mentioned that up also jumps; it's pretty hard to hit spacebar while using the arrow keys and the mouse at the same time!), the gameplay makes sense, and the computer opponent is pretty strong. Winning seems to be about getting the right item drops, and managing your opponent's health: Leaving him with with only a little bit so that you can kill him at a moment that's very inconvenient for him, and then make a run for the flag. The speed powerup seemed to me to be the most useful by far.
The gameplay did get a little repetitive, but I had fun playing a few times until I could reliably win. Some platforms to make the route non-obvious, or something like that, would have really spiced it up.
Napol�©on et la punition myst�©rieuse �®le du diable by joaquim
Je ne parle pas anglais, haha.
This was a very weird game that I found myself liking more than I should have. Strange noises are panned hard left, repeating throughout the game. A story (in French) about Napoleon's deal with the devil (he trades for his hat). It's 100% jumping puzzles/performance, which get pretty tense when you get high up, because you really don't want to fall and have to do it again. Still, somehow I felt compelled to play through to the end, and I did really like the ending. The jumping is buggy (I think it's something like, for the first 1 second that the player is holding the jump button, decrease the y coordinate), and the collisions are buggy (platforms extend invisibly to the left), but some of the jumps in the game force you to understand and exploit both of the bugs. That's weird but kind of great, too.
ICELAND, OR: How I learned to stop caring and love Eyjafjallajokull by drakfyre
Great one! Reminded me of some of the gameplay in N+, but very creative use of the theme and a nice smooth implementation. It gets old faster than it gets hard, but there are lots of things you could add to improve that.
Hi-score 7300
Simcano by Nora Shishi
Wow, awesome! I love the graphics and everything plays so smoothly. It was also interesting to develop a strategy, part of which involves balancing the island placement to be near the top corners, but not so high that you can't react to falling magma fast enough, and balancing dense islands for bigger combos with space to quickly shuffle away precious squares. It'd be perfrect with cool music to go with it, and some way for me to win. (Or maybe there is... I got like 1600000 points before suspecting that it would just go on forever, but maybe I'm not patient enough.)
Spoiler instructions (one of the things I liked about this game was figuring it out with just the in-game nonverbal cues): Once you decorate your island, you can sell the contents by clicking; you get points proportional to the number of adjacent objects. As you get more coin, you can build more expensive stuff, but the volcano gets meaner.
One of my favorite LD17 games. Really good, congrats! :)
Land Ho! by nihilocrat
I kept trying to reach the skybox like in Truman Show, but I never reached it! :)
Hula Girl HD by philhassey
Love the creepy graphics. The game looks a lot like rhythm games, but really isn't; this is misleading, but once you figure out what's going on the gameplay is sound. It's pretty confusing when you miss one of the arrows, since it's not obvious whether you should try again or skip it.
On my sixth try, got 100% FC (537642, which I guess is the maximum score unless I don't understand the scoring). http://islands.spacebar.org/screenshots/hulascore-tom7.jpg
Didn't try two-handed, that's nutz.
Game crashes if you try to close it using the [x] on the window, which is a bummer.
Enjoyed this one! :)
Island Guns by pubby8
Good game! The gameplay is pretty tight. I made some bad choices the first few times playing (it's easy to build guns that can hardly ever hit stuff, because they don't lead shots) but eventually I figured out a good strategy, though I never really quite understood the power flow. The music reminds me of Rampart. Very apropos use of theme. Played this for like 45 minutes. One of the best so far.
Every Man Is An Island by brian
Ha, yeah, I got a Leisure Suit Larry vibe from this too, I think because of the size of the hair. :) Cute graphics, plays fine, very short.
Piratey Tycoon by Tyler
I basically understood it, but this game is like information overload. I desperately needed some kind of price tracker so that I can tell whether I'm getting a good deal without doing homework. I wasn't expecting to die when I did.
False Flag by Baiame
This game was more confusin' than E.T. for the 2600! :) Eventually I figured out what was going on, but it's pretty slow on my machine and hard to understand how I'm making progress. Intriguing concept, though.
Planetfall by Grieve
Nice concept. It plays smooth and was intuitive. It's only hard at the beginning, though. I found it easy to outpace the rising water. One strategy that works pretty well is to just fly around flinging the spazzing balls randomly (or better, towards the island), since they glom on their own.
The intro text scrolls way too fast on windows, too.
I swore that the vibrating hud was an earthquake, and all of a sudden I feared for my tall and thin tower. :)
I observed one spaz ball that I could attach my grapple to, but that would not be pulled. It'd just stretch my grapple all the way across the level.
Hi-score 2048
Lonesome Flotsam by Pyrrhuloxia
Liked this game a lot and wished I could finish it. I tried playing through it three times but each time a bug prevented me from continuing (in the 1.1 version I got stuck after exiting the second workshop; I wasn't anywhere to be seen and apparently couldn't move). That was pretty frustrating because the game is pretty punishing for making you start over when you die. I actually thought the pace of the game was just right, except that it felt like a chore to play through the beginning parts after dying or getting stuck. Wish there had been continues in the wild, and fewer bugs. Great audio, though the boar-killing sound is outrageously loud! :)
Island Warriors by ruben01
I loose! :)
A pretty straightforward implementation of Galcon. Pretty strong AI. More color on the islands would have helped because it's a bit hard to see at a glance which ones belong to whom. Saw some weird behavior: some dudes seem to spawn at 0,0 (disadvantage for red :)) and sometimes I saw population numbers actually go negative?
I did play a few times until I beat it. More layouts would have been welcome.
The Naturalist by JMNielly
Haha! This is a great idea and the graphics are hilarious. I wish that you had gotten to the game part. :) Evolved tuxedo, hehe.
Pleochorism by smn
Thanks for making a puzzle game with actual puzzles! The gameplay is totally sound, and while I don't think the idea is new, it was well executed and has actually hard puzzles in it. The level title starting on top of my dude is pretty annoying. Wish there had been an 'undo' button, since it's easy to accidentally press the wrong direction when looking at the upside-down guy, for example. The continue code should display on the level (or there should be some way to see it), because once you're into a hard one and realize you have to stop, but want to come back later, you can't at that point get the continue code! Generally, good job. :)
Beebop The Island Hopper by treeman
Unexpectedly playable for a game with just one button! This game also has the most minimal sound in any non-silent LD17 game I've played; it sounds like a one-sample click, only when I move backwards. Just a few minutes to play and a satisfying victory. :)
Poke-Slayer by bulle
Very funny. I particularly like the lo-fi guitar theme song. First thing I did was sail off the screen and crash it. :) Gameplay is pretty Pokemon-esque, and pretty hard (but seems mostly to be based on random luck).
Kallista's Dream by zez
I liked this weird game. Is there any reason not to be dashing constantly? You fly much faster, you get a beacon, you damage enemies instead of dying, and it's the only way to go upward to where the floating babies are. The objective was always in the same place, so once I found it, the later levels were pretty easy. I upgraded only my health. I didn't really understand how to damage enemies or how to avoid getting damaged, but I did get "better" at it. Lots of spelling mistakes in the text, btw. Good job on the audio atmosphere.
Island Escape by NateNaterson
Nice complete platform! Played it through to the end. Appreciated the intro and outro sequences. The game plays very smooth and makes sense (though nothing new). The hardest thing about the game was the camera not showing me what's ahead, particularly when sinking down in the water. But that's manageable. Saw a bug in the part where there's the underwater heart. Somehow as went down the passage to the right, I fell out of the world (or something) and reappeared falling from the top of the screen. That was nicer than getting stuck and I got to skip a few obstacles, but probably a bug. No other issues I saw (compo version). Nice!
TWM wuz here!
Life-Cycle of the Great Asp Turtle by Ashera
Asp Turtles are the Katamaris of the sea! I keep getting stuck! And I thought the people were octopuses for a long time. :) But I like being an Asp Turtle.
Island Assault by Selkie
Fun little platformer. Might be some of the most annoying MIDI patches known to mankind, but I can't deny that they go with the island theme. :) I like the graphics a lot. Having the coin-get sound be a little tone, but which doesn't go with the music, makes me kinda not want to get the coins. How come when I die, I have to start over from the beginning, even though I can save and then load as many times as I want to continue? It should probably just be saving for me every time I beat a level. In the last level, you can jump up through the green globes for a very short path to the end.
Hi-score 173
SkyLands by Diet Chugg
Not bad. I played through to the "end" (hint: you can see the "end" by pressing the cheat-key 'esc' at any time :)) and it was challenging even given the simple goal. The biggest hazard was getting stuck on a wall, because if that happens and there isn't a whirlwind coming, you have to use the cheat key to start over from the first level. Nice, weird music.
Giant Floating Island Adventure by QOGQOG
Good platformer. Thought it was the right length for LD, though I'm pretty sure I didn't explore every room. (Is there just one ending?) The jumping controls didn't feel quite right, like too much hang time at the top of the jump, and not enough clearance when jumping to a block at my maximum height. Also, the placement of the save point at the beginning is kind of a blunder; if you hit that before getting all the hoverberries, then if you die towards the elevator you need to make another whole loop to pick up the hoverberries, go back to the start, and climb up again, and you can't save because the save point is already active. Game sped up after I got past the elevators, which was welcome. Contains spelling errors "violaters" and "congradulations". Loved the harsh pixelated graphics styles; reminds me of knytt.
a bridge too far by hazman
Even Euler knows this game can't be beat!
Attack of the Canvey Island Monster by Catmoo
The art on the main creature (especially) and the intro material is great, and I thought the theme was weird and cute. There's not much to do other than walk and smash stuff, so it sort of plays as an animated comic, and it's a bit too long for that. But I guess that's kind of like a metaphor for being a fish with feet. :)
Roller-Derby 20XX: Mega Islands of Awesome by refrag
Pretty good. Plays smooth, nice graphics and music. I could never quite figure out why sometimes the skaters punched me and sometimes not. Sort of like real life. Didn't really seem to have anything to do with islands.
Hi-score 78##? (Something is wrong with the score display at the end?)
No^Man by youdonotexist
Really cool graphics! I don't know what to do in the second puzzle, and the temptation is too great to fly on words. :) There appears to be lots of clip regions that don't correspond to anything onscreen, which is pretty weird. Atmosphere is top notch, though.
Dare Islands by XMunkki
Very inventive gameplay, nicely thematic. Bonus points for being high-tech and using ML. :) The game's pretty hard. My best strategy was to write off mixed groups of boats and trap them in lagoons without killing them, though it was hard to predict when they'd become "stuck" and die. I think it would have been better if the two colors of boats had different physical properties so it was possible to separate groups, or somehow to regain lives, because otherwise the game is always getting into a higher-entropy state. But I guess it is a physics game. :)
Hi-score 60
Cartograph by MJG
Cute rectangular-pixel ultra lo-fi look. SFX are primitive but work with the aesthetic. Sound gameplay, except that sometimes I think the islands that are thrown at me are unnavigable?
The two-mode system was pretty clever. It really reminded me of the old days, like vi. :)
Hi-score 367
Micro Silent Hunter by DJ_JIA
I didn't understand what the view that always faced right was for, and anyway it's too hard to see anything when underwater. I just ended up learning the enemy's route and then charging it, letting go a torpedo when really close to that thing.
The red border around the outside of the game behaves pretty strangely..?
i thought we had a thing by localcoder
I actually did have fun driving around (mostly trying to do it really quickly, drifting into my parking spot) and meeting the characters, even though the gameplay is pretty simplistic. Control is very smooth. Suggestions for more fun: Timed quests, upgrades for the boat, some place to push those boxes, some kind of conflict and resolution.
Infinite Deadly Islands Of Terror by Hamumu
Nice! The graphics are superb. The gameplay is simple but pretty fun; reminds me of Toe Jam 'n Earl. I think the biggest flaw is that some of the randomly generated levels can be impossible. The very first one I got I was stuck right away, and I was wondering like, is this a difficult puzzle game or what? But when I realized it was random I realized that the extra care to generate only solvable levels was lacking. Hard to blame you for 48 hours. :) Cute concept, story, sound, funny, plays smooth. Very good.
Hi-score 16067
On an Iron Isle by L
It's so hard! I loved the graphics and sound, the counting down battery and the atmosphere were right from the start, and I really wanted to climb the tower (after verifying that the underwater is not hospitable). I love how my heart robot does flips if I jump far, or how I explode when I die. But I don't like dying. I finally got to the third room with baddies, but got killed when I fell back down to avoid a fireball, back onto the crab I had just killed! Arg! The most frustrating thing about the rooms is not so much that they're hard, but you have to shoot the crabs so many times that there's lots of waiting for them to step on cracks to do it safely. If it was just about performing difficult maneuvers it would be fun to try, but the hard stuff with waiting in between encourages me to be reckless and impatient, which is frustrating. I didn't give up on most of the LD17 games I played, so this must be one of the hardest. :) Still, I liked it. Plays really smooth.