Nikaoto

Succulent Drive USA by uvwar 2018-04-24T13:18:21Z

Love the visuals! The animation of the movement, the growing plant, the way it waves around when moving. Great stuff.

One suggestion would be to indicate where the cloud is. The rain could leave a trail of water (by darkening the sand, making it seem wet). This adds some realism AND helps the player see where exactly to stand. Just like how Mario64 has a shadow below Mario to let the player know where he's going to land.

I also like how the game doesn't tell you where to go, but the world has conveniently shaped holes in different spots which are exactly the size of the pot. Tells the player what to do without a wall of text.

One con: The theme is not really on point. Maybe it's me, but to have a platformer/farming sim, you probably need to have more farming and sim elements. At this state, it's an explorative platformer with cute succulents.

All in all, enjoyable experience. Made me remember my poor succulent that died 2 days after I bought it :cry:

Wizsnooks by kroltan 2018-05-03T20:18:51Z

Had a fun play session, great stuff. Innovative and theme-driven game with interesting mechanics. I liked the faces on the snkooerballs, gave them a lot of character. I also appreciate the items and how they can be strategically used for either gaining various stats or sacrificing them for health, made the game a lot more exciting.

**Some suggestions:** * Player health could be increased a bit, I thought I died too much when I was just starting out. * Technical problem on HTML5, I'm sure others have pointed that out but here it is: when clicking replay after each death, that click would count towards a move and knock the ball (mostly) into danger, or sometimes instant death. * Instant death on lava pits made the game a bit frustrating. Slightly reducing the damage (like, making it 90% of hp) wouldn't help in this case either, because the player would practically still die from hitting an enemy after having hit the lava, so I understand where that is coming from. This is a hard problem to solve, but one idea you could use is to burn the player while it stands in the lava. That way the player has to act quickly and get out of the pit. Enemies would have to obey this rule as well, so that could make a few things complicated, but it's just an idea, I'm sure you could come up with better ones with some time.

All in all, had fun with this entry. Keep up the good work :^)

Remember or Die by GameDevMumin 2018-04-24T16:34:13Z

Really fun game!

With its ingenious combination of mechanics, the game stays fun from start to finish. 96 points are the best I could muster within the 30 minutes I set aside for this game.

The music also fits very well with the frantic and stressful gameplay, where chaos is rampant and you need to watch and micro-manage everything.

In summray, had fun, got stressed, but still fun. I'll definitely play this some more.

Cardcade by Simon Rahnasto 2018-04-24T20:45:47Z

This game has lots going for it. The feel, humor, atmosphere, and most importantly, fun-factor.

Loved the visuals, enjoyed learning about the different cards and trying them out. Whether it was crafting new strategies, fighting the squatting slav boss, or getting a lucky draw (toads, toads, free card, toads, free card, toads, free card, toads), the game was ultimately fun.

One suggestion: At first, the amount of cards seemed a bit overwhelming. Starting with 20 cards is a bit too much for a new player; however, this is a problem for every card-based game. So a great way to address this problem is to look at how Hearthstone handles first-timers and build off of that, that is, if you want to release the game to a wider audience.

In summary, I'd buy it, but only if it had more toads.

Arbour by literallyjosh 2018-04-24T20:23:31Z

Despite there being no sounds, the game still stays atmospheric, in fact, I think having no sounds at all ties in well with the mood and story. Very well done!

Beat Warriors by Von Vista 2018-04-28T18:39:58Z

Lots of thoughts on the game. I'll start with the good ones.

The visuals are great. I like the voxel art style, the colors used also give the game a unique feel. The music further compliments the mood really well. I also like how the enemies kind of look like small notes. Well done there! The speed setting was also a nice addition.

Now for some flaws.

The controls were a bit off. Not because I had to use sdf and jkl keys, but because the "notes" at keys **S** and **D** did not register as well as the other ones. I would tap them *perfectly*, but I'd still fail to hit them. In addition, the grace period for landing a note was too short. I'd suggest you take a look at guitar hero and how it handles missed notes. It ranks you depending on the distance that the note was from the baseline.

The difficulty could've been handled better. You shouldn't fail the player on a single miss when the hitbox for hitting a note is so small. The notes had to be **exactly** inside the purple bar for them to register. I know that the speed setting could be utilized for making the game easier, but that's a conscious choice that the player has to make. When they slow the game down, they *admit* that they're not good enough. In addition, asking the player to modulate the difficulty of a game they haven't played yet might leave them confused, so I'd suggest, again, to look at guitar hero. Since it doesn't instantly fail newbies and just ranks each of their notes, it allows them to learn and lets the more experienced players set harder challenges for themselves (like landing all A's).

In summary, the game was beautiful, but I didn't manage to have fun with it because of its unforgiving nature. It's easy to make a hard game and give players a difficulty bar they can adjust. A punishing game can be tolerated if its rules are always consistent and leave the player thinking about what **they** did wrong, not what the **game** did wrong.

Don't get discouraged by the mistakes you made, they should instead empower you to improve. Looking at the dumb mistakes I made during this LD only made me realize how much I learned during those 48 hours and I'm sure you learned a lot as well. I'm looking forward to playing some more games from you in the future!

12Slash by Nikaoto 2018-04-24T06:20:36Z

@SplitPainter Thanks for the nice comment. Those blocks are intentional! Use right click to dash out of them. I think I should write that in the description.

Type n' Jump by Richard N Silva 2018-04-26T21:09:30Z

Great scores all around. Fun game, with the player in mind (love how some of the misspellings were OK to use).

The most compelling part of the game was just the kind of feeling I got when I played Super MeatBoy - Despite dying in the same spot a few times I felt compelled to keep trying, as if I **knew** that I could make it. If you could capture that feeling and have it laced throughout the game, I think we'd have a really fun experience on our hands. To make it easier on you, the spot that gave me that feeling was near the end, where there's a saw at the bottom and 4-5 spikes in a row at the top and you have to manage to type it fast enough to make the jump.

In summary, well crafted game :thumbsup:

Pipionem by Aleix Ramon 2018-04-24T13:49:16Z

This game is like a tiny cupcake - it's cute, tasty, oozing with flavor, but small.

Good stuff

What I liked the most about Pipionem was the art, sound, and the feel. Reminded me of how I used to play turn-based final fantasy with my toys.

Discovering what the different moves did was fun. I like how well the buttons are arranged, UI is very well designed, especially for mobile.

All of the aspects that I liked (art, sound, feel) are well done, so I probably can't give any suggestions there.

Some bad parts

* Length - The game is short (but still sweet) * User Experience - The game doesn't have any instant feedback to let me know when I'm doing well or not * Tutorial - Went though the tutorial twice, but somehow it didn't occur to me that I had to take the cooldown and each beat into account. Maybe it's obvious for you, but most people are ignorant like me and need everything served on a golden platter. You actually don't need a complicated tutorial to get those ideas through, check out the instant feedback suggestion below, which fixes this problem.

Suggestions

* Sounds - Keep them, they add a lot to the feel * Instant feedback - Action games (rythm-based ones especially) often give instant feedback to the player to let them know if they're doing well. For example, guitar hero hero has increasingly intense animations when you land the keys right. When you miss them, it ruins the song and some versions even tell you how badly you did. So the changes I would make with your game would be: highlight the button when pressed (and not on cooldown); when I land the click on one of those lines add some colorful effect (like particles or whatever fits with your vision); make the tiny lines wider and bigger (no need to change the collisions), so I can more easily see them * Release it - This game has potential to be great with casual players, especially kids. I say, polish it, add more levels, add some juice and publish it!

Great experience, keep up the good work!

Don't miss the Bus by raphimulator 2018-04-26T20:52:36Z

Good stuff, fun short experience. Would've loved some sounds, but the visuals really made up for it. They complimented the game's feel - humorous and the type that doesn't take itself seriously. Also, as some have mentioned, using your own voice for sound effects would probably add to the feel even more, even maybe voice-acting the mother and the child is a funny way :smile:.

All in all, pretty well rounded. I'd love to see some games use this game format to tell more immersive/funny stories.

Kleptomaniac by MrGago 2018-04-28T19:41:50Z

Had a **lot** of fun with the game. There's numerous things that stood out about it.

First of all, the game is simple, avoid this and steal that. Stealth + turn-based is also an idea that's well executed in the final product. I really liked the crisp sounds and in general the audio work for this is brilliant. Also, the level design looks like it was well calculated and tested. The mood and feel of the game compliment each other and tie everything up really well. The particles at the start of the screen were also a nice touch (although, you could've placed the particle emitter above the view of the camera so the players wouldn't see the falling items instantly spawning at the top of the screen). What's most important is that the game was **fun**.

Now for some suggestions.

The information about the controls could've been better presented to he player. I realized 20 minutes into the game that I could just press space to steal an item when no dogs were nearby. Yes, I *did* read the descriptions both on LD's website and itch.io but neither of them really mentioned that explicitly. They said, "use space to interact with items and e to silently steal when dogs are nearby". Most players are dumb like me, they need everything served on a golden platter.

In addition, escaping could've also been utilized better. When I would get caught, it didn't matter whether I'd run for the windows or just stand and wait, the game would still reset (failing to run would simply stop the game, so I had to refresh the page, whereas running away would restart it instantly). One way you could use the escaping mechanic would be to use the window from which the player escaped as a checkpoint. That would also solve the third glaring problem of the game, the unforgiving reset, which brings you right at the start of the game. For the first 10 plays it was ok, but as I got further into the game, it felt like a chore.

I do realize that using windows as checkpoints would really change the layout of the level, but it's an idea you could incorporate relatively quickly by changing the window locations and making minor tweaks here and there.

In summary, I absolutely loved the game. My review might mostly seem negative, but that's just because everything the game did right was done **perfectly**, so I had no suggestions there. Don't tell others, but this was the most fun game I've ever played this Ludum Dare (or any Ludum Dare, for that matter). Great stuff, looking forward for more in the future!

Rogueclick by Odward Frenry 2018-04-24T16:10:59Z

Very fun game!

I thoroughly enjoyed playing Rogueclick, even though I never managed to pass the forsaken foothills. At first, trying out different strategies held most of the fun, like only running away from the enemies and throwing every potion at them until they froze so I could run away for longer.

Later, I figured out that clicking speed actually matters in this game! Then the fun became trying to kill each enemy without taking a hit.

**Some suggestions:** * *Juice* - You could add some feedback to the player when they perform an action (it could be as simple as changing the color of the button for a split second) * *Sounds* - With the abundance of free sounds on the internet, it's easy to find suitable sound effects for any game. If you don't want anyone else's sounds, you could generate/make them with [Bfxr](https://www.bfxr.net/) * *Instructions* - The fact that click speed matters was never explicitly communicated to me, so I spent the first 10 minutes dying in the first area. When I found out, the game instantly became more fun. I suppose the word **clicker** automatically means that I have to click fast, but that's often up to the player in those types of games. It could just be me, I don't know.

All in all, it was fun and fit the theme perfectly. Also, seeing the works of fellow LÖVErs is always interesting :^)

Rogueclick by Odward Frenry 2018-04-24T16:36:43Z

@odward-frenry You're welcome! The instructions really depend on your players. The people who play these types of low-end retro roguelikes are probably willing to put up with more text than the average player, because they know what they're getting into. Now, designing casual or action games, that's a whole different story where people get agitated with each word they have to read :smiley: