Thief of Insulo by Cake&Code 2014-12-10T01:09:00
"I'm not an ambiturner! I can't turn left.."
Fun game, the difficulty progression is pro: it works well to teach the mechanics while being just challenging enough.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → nine baobabs
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Hu | Mo | Co | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2014 | 31 | Entire Game on One Screen | Attack of the Questionable Snowmen | compo | 975 | 2.76 | 2.71 | 2.67 | 3.71 | 2.84 | 3.15 | 2.57 | 40 |
"I'm not an ambiturner! I can't turn left.."
Fun game, the difficulty progression is pro: it works well to teach the mechanics while being just challenging enough.
Oddly very satisfying obliterating snowmen. You're right our games are awesomely somewhat similar. Great to get the chance to throw snowballs at snowmen in another game, it's like going to a parallel universe!
Lovely game. I like the silhouettes with the yellow.
I felt the snoring was a bit loud, I liked the very subtle crying, though.
Not crazy about the look of the text.. maybe a warmer color and softer font? Yellowish? I dunno, I'm not the person to give these kinds of recommendations!
Probably the best I've played so far. Hilarious and original concept and put together well, very professional presentation. Also love the little fruit ninja reference.
Biggest pain point for me was the initial learning curve, took me 4 or 5 deaths right off the bat to get the timing right. Once I did though I kept playing hoping (oops, I almost wrote hopping) to get the swipe minigame and learn the timing on that one too.
My only other note would be the "prepare" and "victory" sound effects got a little repetitive. The music was wonderful though.
Not sure if you do this for a living?? but it definitely feels like a game from a pro dev!
Wow! Awesome premise. How can you not love it? Wonderful art too, I really got into it at the start.
I'll admit with some shame I lost interest during one of david's monologues during the chess game (I was so hoping to watch a game, too! ^.^)
Wish there was a bit more interaction.
One of the best impressions I've had so far though, nicely done.
What fun! Wonderful little game. The cows leveling up (and giving you powers I think) is a neat touch, feels like farming. I like how responsive the cows are to the stuff you plant. The writing was one of the highlight for me, very droll and hilarious.
No constructive crits come to mind. The shade of blue of the main guy sort of rubs me the wrong way for some reason.. just a personal thing, dunno, I'm not an artist!
Worked for me on windows 7, 64 bit. I might have all kinds of weird dev stuff installed though, visual studio, python etc, etc.
I liked the game. I played a few times, I eventually died on the level with the row of squares coming at you from the right and didn't feel like going through all the levels again. (Maybe a timer would help with this, like "can I do it faster than I did before?" or some kind of metric to try and improve next time.. dunno, just brainstorming.)
I liked the music, I thought it set a wonderful mood to the game. I liked having to try and lead the targets, figuring out this timing was fun. Bouncing off the walls surprised me, I wasn't expecting it. At first I thought it was cool, then I felt like maybe I bounced too far? Dunno.
Anyway, well done! I hope you make more. Also, the "linux, source, buggy windows port" made me laugh. It has a wonderful sort of like classical joke rhythm, like beat-beat-punchline. [Haha, ah, here I am over analyzing everything (thanks ludum dare!).]
Oh yeah, I was going to mention, the collision detection felt a little unforgiving. My rule of thumb is always give the player a little leeway. "Better to feel like they dodged a bullet then got killed by air."
Very nice game. This is one I'm going to keep on my desktop and play again at some point. Know of any similar full-length games?
It looks like a roguelike but plays like an adventure or minecraft style game. If minecraft was inspired by dwarf fortress, this game sort of asks: what if it was the other way around?
I never actually found water my first game, but I enjoyed looking quite a bit. Really like the sound of mining stone. The sound on the computer seemed too loud, though.
Also, on the computer, I felt like I was entering numbers faster than it could register which was a minor frustration.
The intro text/tutorial was good.
Oh, this is great. Very well done on the actual business cards, I'm not sure why it was so satisfying just typing my name in! I'm not sure why, but I guess I was hoping for a.. totally different kind of game?! I dunno, that's weird isn't it? I guess I felt like the game didn't do the theme/premise complete justice. I guess I just wasn't expecting a dexterity/skill game! Anyway, nothing against the game, that was just my strange experience.
As for the game, I liked how you eventually flooded the area with these rumors sort of like negative vibes, like you could see the negative work environment you were creating, all by yourself!
The music and the mechanics went very well together, I really loved the phone on the soundtrack.
Oh god, this is like a quintessential ludum dare game. That drifting is so sexy. This should be in a list somewhere
Neat! I really enjoyed the beginning when just figuring out how to control the bunnies with the carrots, dropping last-minute saves to keep them on the screen. When figuring out you could just place in a circle, my interest dropped off. When a hole (?) appeared things really got crazy fast.
One idea I had was to add a limited pool of carrots or something to make people be a little economic about where they place them. (Maybe they grow over time and you have to go click on them to pick them up? This way too, you force the player's mouse away from the bunnies.)
One thing about having the lose condition be related to losing X bunnies is once you get a ton of bunnies, this can happen very quickly. Another game mode to try might be like a "timed" mode, so you just try to not lose X bunnies in Y time.
I liked the sound and the green background (for some reason!). At first I felt like my carrots weren't appearing, but they were just being eaten immediately.
For the record I tried this game because I thought the thumbnail looked interesting. But I'm a programmer too so sometimes I don't trust my own perception when it comes to this sort of thing, haha.
Also, I liked the ground art, it felt hand-painted.
As for the game, I didn't understand if there was a system to the scoring or if it was just random. Throwing snowballs was oddly satisfying. There was a moment when hitting snowmen fast enough, that the beats of the sfx became a sort of emergent music which was neat.
Kind of trippy, in a sort of harsh circus ballerina type way. I wouldn't say I "enjoyed" the experience, but I'm glad I had it and can appreciate that games can facilitate all kinds of experiences..
As a metaphorical expression, it works, if in a sort of dissonant, unsophisticated way. I was initially confused and then frustrated, and then finally satisfied/relieved at the ending.
Another note, the thumbnail strangely drew me in. It's the reason I tried this game.
Love the little robin hood guy.
I liked the feeling when you're close to an enemy and moving backwards and turning in sync; it felt like dancing.
I can't be too harsh because overall the game play is similar to my game, you just move backwards kiting things.
The biggest pain points were (1) the invisible edges, (2) B not seeming to do anything and (3) enemies spawning so close you can't respond in time to avoid. Address these and you've got a very playable game!
Thanks for your thoughts! ^^
A tip for killing snowmen, aim for the hat. Though, it will still take a few hits to knock it off their head.
Unfortunately, there is no winning, just surviving longer, to no ends. ;)
Haha, thanks Meral. Since you asked, the full story is the snowpeople high council of snowperson land convened and officially declared you (the player) friend to all snowpeople everywhere. They sent a welcome committee, but something got lost in the human-snowperson communication and this game is what ensues. (They were initially supposed to wrap you in a bear hug when getting too close, but jumping was easier ^-^).
Thanks for the feedback all, much appreciated!
Discovered a bug with the snowball power, it was framerate dependent! So the faster your computer, the less effect your snowballs had -_-.
I tweaked the difficulty a little:
-hat is now one-hit kill (unless it's askew towards you)
-first snowman always spawns to the right
-should now take two direct hits to knock off a snowman piece (unless unfavorably askewed)
Thank you for the comments, very appreciated!!
Very neat concept. I got a pretty nice/lucky platform layout and managed 57. It was probably my third or fourth attempt, the first few tries I wasn't sure what was going on. Oh, liked the music as well, very chill.
My ideas for making it a little less confusing would be:
-wait a little more before turning off the first lights (my thinking here is to let the player get a coin or two and get used to the controls / room layout)
-maybe try turning off just one to start with, then two, etc. this might help communicate to players that the lights are going out
-fading out the lights just a little over time as they go out might also help with this
-a little dithering affect on the edges might give the player another clue that the black represents darkness (i'm thinking warcraft 2 fog of war here for some reason).
-maybe when hitting something in the darkness, you see an edge appear or a little effect to let you know you hit something (a simple way might be to just show like a shadow of the whole platform for a split second).
-one frustration point for me was waiting for my guy to land (either floating down onto a coin or onto a platform so I could jump again), I seemed to spend most of the few seconds available on each coin just waiting to land..
Just some ideas!
I like the premise of having to remember the layout and navigate it in the dark. Also the idea of encouraging a little friendly competition was ingenious :) Hope you iterate on this one a few times. Good luck!