Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → ninjacreeper47
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Category | Score | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| π₯ | 2022 | 51 | Every 10 seconds | MAGIC-281: Intro to Alchemy | compo | Innovation | 4.54 |
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 51 | Every 10 seconds | MAGIC-281: Intro to Alchemy | compo | 97 | 3.77 | 3.40 | 4.54 | 4.02 | 2.88 | 3.85 | 3.57 | ||
| 2022 | 50 | Delay the inevitable | Dealer's Trick | compo | 2.50 | 2.50 | 3.50 | 2.25 | 4.00 | 1.75 | 3.25 | |||
| 2021 | 49 | Unstable | Cryptomancer | compo | 516 | 2.76 | 2.28 | 3.19 | 3.40 | 2.40 | 3.09 | 2.45 | ||
| 2020 | 46 | Keep it alive | Smiley's Grid of Fun | compo | 3.00 | 2.50 | 2.50 | 3.25 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 1.75 | |||
| 2018 | 43 | Sacrifices must be made | π₯ | Meteorite Command | jam | 2.66 | 2.41 | 2.00 | 3.25 | 1.91 | 2.33 | 2.50 | 2.08 | |
| 2017 | 38 | A Small World | Planet Hopper | compo |
@rumor I should have said this in instructions in game but the shots go towards where your crosshair was and disappear once they arrive at that location, so where they disappear is controlled by you. Thanks for the feedback, I love the idea of a nuke everything option and I think I'm gonna add that in a V2 after rating is over.
I like how this game uses words both in the title and the icecream names ( I really liked how they looked handwritten). I would agree with everybody's elses assement of needing more feedback of what you pickup, the sound effect works sometimes until it randomly decides not to work (especially on strawberry)
I was a big fan of this game stylistically but gameplay wise it felt like I did not have enough to do. I can either throw cargo off or switch it from left to right. If the plane was tilting then the obvious thing to do would be to pick up the cargo and put it on the other side or just throw it off.
This game was very polished, I loved the effects:the words appearing, the camera work for cinematic throws and enemy introductions ect.
I felt like the only effective option was to throw my friends, the melee could have been vastly improved by giving just a little more range (like using a sword instead of a punch) or have the enemies have big long obvious draws to their attacks so you can learn their timing. In the same vein as increasing your melee range I feel like the hit friend hitbox should have been slightly bigger, it was aggravating to miss friends that I was right on top of.
I like the use of levels and progression, most ludum dare games go for the endless approach, but you put a lot of thought into how it should progress into a beatable expereince.
I was pretty disappointed that I could not throw my reinforcment friends.
I like the idea of sacrificing cards, but I feel it could have been expanded to have more choice: The player will always sacrfice 1's instead of 18's. I feel like some other bonuses or consequences associated with sacrficing would make it more than just luck ( as sacrficing seems mandatory to get cards)
This was the best game I have tried so far. I would say it's biggest strength is that it makes you feel the theme. You feel like the operator who realizes they do have to make sacrfices. The player embraces making sacrfices by doing things like saving their truck to get the most value, not bothering with odd numbers if they only have even cards ect. The music adds to the urgency which the player constantly feels and the graphics show exactly what is going on while reinforcing the theming. I love the mechanic of hand and cool-down managment combined with making choices of who to assign. The skill trees add interesting decesions about what hand you want to have. My absolute favourite thing about this game is the inclusion of the description of the emergencies, this is brilliant becuase as the operator you realize that these don't matter. Instead of thinking about what happened to these people you look at them as just numbers. My only complaint with the event descriptions is that th ere was not enough variety, which deimmeresed me after I saw the 4th wheel chair race in one day, that felt off.
I didn't really notice a difference when using the fast moving skill tree, so I would make that more impactful.
Your game was a lot of fun! I love how the bus handled. I was just wondering why there are crosswalks if half of the pedestrians ignore them
@aquachain @baturinsky Yeah the intent was for the main strategy of the game to be what you even are paying attention too since there is so much overwhelming decisions everywhere. I might have gone too far in this direction and made a game which is way too mentally intensive for the amount of actual strategy in the game (which probably isn't that much) , which is the the same mistake I made in the last ludum dare I submitted for as well
I am really impressed by the graphics of this game! The particle effect in the background of the title and gameplay is really cool. The pie chart area control effect is quite clean as well.
It's pretty hard to click on the little guys, which adds a lot of frustration. I feel like the gameplay is missing another mechanic to make it more strategic rather than jailing whoever you have the most off and releasing what you have the least off.
I like the art of the main character, it's a simple style but he's pretty charming. Especially his death sprite is just great. The main gameplay concept is cool, I love games where you have to balance multiple tasks at the same time (here moving and literal balancing). Unfortunately the control scheme really isn't suited for this. Since there are only 2 tasks to control ideally you would be able to control each one with one hand. Therefore I think the Q and E keys for balancing are a really poor choice, as they make it really hard to effectively use both hands. The gameplay was still screaming for me to use both hands, so I ended up having to make both hands occupy the same space and it was really awkward and uncomfortable (but to me seemed necessary to progress because it was really hard to do everything with one hand). Though, I am really glad you made the pizzas balance by a separate input rather than the momentum or direction of your movement , which I makes the concept vastly better.
Also shoutout to the NES style jumps with no air control that lock you in a certain arc. They are a uniquely frustrating thing to see in games, but it's not as bad because it does fit the style of the game here (and gives you a chance to focus on just balancing).
Graphics are amazing and concept is neat but gameplay is really boring because you are functionally invincible. Just spawm water shield and then you have no concept of taking damage. Even if you do, you eventually get a free heal spell. Then at the end you get the insta kill combo (chicken ring -> fire ring), which isn't even challenging because you can constantly pause to bring up the spells so you know what to type
This is quite a fascinating concept, I like the strategy of attempting to force a bad move on the opponent. Also amazing use of the theme, it is really cool to see unstable used as your goal instead of a force opposing the player. Finally the animation for the actual flipping is a great touch!
I'm glad you included the par scores, first time through I brute forced some of the levels, but replaying to think through the par score was pretty fun. Also managed to beat the par on Star :) ParStar.PNG
Great puzzle game! I enjoyed beating all the levels and a lot of them are quite good. The plates were you put down animals for them to be later picked up are a very clever mechanic and add a lot to the later puzzles. I also agree with the choice to make animals picked up by going adjacent to them rather than through them, which makes it more interesting The presentation is wonderful, the graphics are perfect for the type of game this is.
With the element of timing in a lot of the puzzles I think there should be some kind of indicator where other paths are when you are at a certain point (say all paths are by default darker, and then they fill up with the lighter version of their color with how much that path would have progressed at the point you are building your current path). Counting path sections is really overatedc
It seems unintentional that you can clear any type of block just by shoving and rotating blocks into each other. I was able to keep a clear board just be constantly shoving the next piece into what I just placed.
First of all the graphics are just fantastic. Being able to rotate the camera and at any time gaze at the glorious sun that is coming for you is great. I also love the effects as you the sun gets really close to you! Alongside the great graphics is just a great concept, it's hilarious to see the planet with a rocket booster attached boosting through space (this along side with the planets with faces and the description of converting fuel makes me wonder why you opted out of the humor category) I love the intro tutorial, it's so funny how the message is at first like "oh by the way that's the sun, you can ignore it" and then it shifts to OH NO WE HAVE TO GO STOP THE TUTORIAL. Great mood setter for the urgency in the game. It's also pretty interesting to have a tradeoff between wanting to go fast and wanting to have time to scavenge at planets. The game has a nice mix of strategy of deciding what to build and gameplay of piloting the planet, although it's probably a bit too easy: if you begin right then it seems pretty hard to lose. Even though mechanically I had the run in the bag after a while, that didn't bring it too much because of the mood and graphics are still urgent. (Also the game ends at the perfect time, right as I was starting to get bored).
I think choosing which tile on your planet to place a building is pretty jank, and it clicking from the shop should either automatically place or you should commit harder and have placement location actually matter (say give certain buildings adjacency bonuses or penalties). Additionally on my first run somehow all the future planets disappeared at some point, which seemed unintentional
Neat game! I appreciate how you put thought into the visual design of each atom so they would have a distinct color and interior design, makes the readability very good. I really like the idea of the gameplay but it is pretty frustrating to control due to the way angular momentum is implemented. I feel like the player should have more control over rotation, with a shorter acceleration time. The current rotation system make is pretty hard to intentionally place an atom anywhere, especially once you have a mega structure (which should be when the game is the most fun and hectic, but right now it's when you basically lose all control). Although you losing control as the structure spirals into chaos does fit the theme well (and that's on top of the very good use of the theme with atoms decaying).
This is a fantastic design centered around a crazy innovative idea. I can't believe I've never seen the idea of having to stack dice and cover up pips like this, it's genius. I am really just blown away by that mechanic. It doesn't just fall into the trap of being an interesting gimmick mechanic, because it actually is also fun, I love the mix of strategy on deciding how to build your structure/which dice in your pool to use along with the dexterity of actual executing and never toppling your tower. I usually despise dexterity games but I really appreciate how this one can still be played without a need for incredible precision. I also really like the scoring system, it encourages you to build risky and tall while still appreciating the value of survival. I can not stress enough how good the design of this game is, this might become a staple game I attempt when I have a spare few minutes since I always carry a bunch D6 with me anyway (for making decisions). As a fellow board game designer I would love to hear about the process of making this game, since the end result is so elegant and beautiful it would be very interesting to see the journey of how the game progressed throughout the weekend.
My primary problems are involving the rulebook.
Firstly you did not clearly define the lose condition. It would have been nice for a line to directly and clearly state that the game ends when your tower topples. More importantly you must define what a topple is. Obviously if the whole structure collapses that's a topple, but what about individual pieces falling off?. (If individual pieces don't count what's the threshold for counting?) If I hit dice off with my hands accidentally does that count as a topple or only actual structural failure causes dice to fall? If dice get significantly moved, but none have fallen off the structure completely and somehow the pips are all still legal is that a topple? If your tower falls while rolling/planning for next round do you still score last round (which gave you a delayed failure)? I had all of those questions while playing, which need to be cleared up by a very explicit rules section on the lose condition/ definition of topple.
Next the example graphics and diagrams are not the best. They are really hard to read, although with some effort I was able to interpret them. I would recommend using 3D diagrams, either made in some 3D program or with real life pictures. Additionally your examples heavily suggest that you are limited to a ~line, when in fact you have a whole plane of a surface area. There should be an example showing a more spread out build.
Finally I really like the freeform nature of this game, that spawns a bunch of variants. You can vary the surface area size, amount of dice, size of dice and get different experiences that still all maintain the core of the game. It really suggests that this can become a like a game that gets passed around because there isn't any strict playing requirements, rather it adapts to what you have on hand (assuming you have at least a reasonable # of D6). It would have been really cool for the rulebook to have some kind of chart that standardizes scores (or just suggests scores to beat) across all these vastly difference playing conditions, but that would have been really hard to do and highly testing intensive. I think it does end up being fine that your first play sets up the standard of how hard playing in your specific conditions are, and then you just try to beat your score.
This is an interesting design! I quite like the feast of gods mechanic, and how you can dynamically distribute your workers based off what you know has passed and is likely to come. Also I'm personally a big fan of the historical theme, and a struggling empire definitely feels unstable.
I think I have found a strategy that successfully breaks the game. Firstly is the feast of gods distribution: The most important part is to allocate 0 onto sea people raid, as they are the most dangerous in the early game. Then 3-1,2-2 or 3-1 onto famine-assyrian aggression (not sure which is optimal because famines are eventually good in this strategy but there is an argument for wanting an early aggression, In the game where I tried this (2nd play of the game) strategy I went for 3 famine-1 aggression, but I probably got a bit lucky, and I think 2-2 might be better. For worker placement never place on Nuhasse, it is useless and redundant. This makes you less spread out, giving you more workers. The weakness of this strategy is the small chance of getting unlucky in the early game and rolling a sea people raid on this territory. This weakness will disappear as soon you draw your first Assyrian raid, which makes that territory no longer a vulnerability.
Then you have the workers to something along the lines of 3-4 Hapalla, 3-4 Kizzuwanta, 3-4 Hatti. This gives you a reasonable enough defense in the frontier territories that you actually care about, and hopefully a chance at getting a decent worker income.
Next you wait while hoping you don't get really unlucky. Your goal is to have at least 13 workers (which should be pretty likely in a reasonable amount of time given the amount of prosperous years in the deck), at which point you can shift to the next phase which is the actual core of this strategy. In this phase you have enough workers to have 6 in each of the 2 frontier territories you actually care about, which is the maximum amount of defense you can get while still having the 1 worker to field hatti. It is now very unlikely for sea people raids to harm you at all, and the Assyrians have to get the lucky 6 to be able to make more progress. They key to this strategy is to now always leave only 1 farmer in hatti. Famines only make you lose farmers, so if you have only 1, each famine can only give you net -1 workers in your pool. You should still be able to have a semi net positive worker gain over the game because there are more prosperous years than famines (which will both now have a magnitude of 1 regardless of roll). Additionally you are immune to civil uprisings because half of 1 rounded down is 0. If at any point you have surplus workers dump them in Hapalla (so that they are not farmers which are too vulnerable and so they are not in the path of the Assyrians which has a low but non-zero risk of you losing the entire stock). Now the game is staple, anytime you lose your 1 worker in hatti you should have extra workers lying around in hapalla to fill their place on the allocation. I was able to reach the stable point after about 10 cards, and for the rest of the game I was bored, because I had already won (as long as I didn't get absurdly unlucky). The game no longer felt like managing an unstable empire after I hit the critical mass of workers.
The existence and possible effectiveness of this strategy shows some design problems in the game (like leaving only 1 farmer in hatti being optimal doesn't feel right, because the intent of the game is to make you balance farmers and soldiers but farmers are just too vulnerable.
Anyway, Great job! The first game I had the intended experience and watched in horror as everything went wrong and I didn't have enough workers anywhere and I enjoyed the time I spent thinking how to optimize this game during the 2nd play!
Going to pile on with everyone else saying the graphics are just amazing. Really cute and looks great. The splash art on the top of the page is cool as well and made me immediately excited to try the game.
I love the dialogue and upgrade descriptions, and the flamethrower is just so incredibly satisfying.
Are the grenades implmented? I bought the grenades but never got one, my grenade counter was always at 0
I like the tension of managing your fuel, and having to master jumping off the platforms with good arcs instead of boosting everywhere. Additionally I really like how you have to out of your way to get score, and It's interesting but it gets boring/predictable after a bit. So the core mechanics are really interesting, but it needs some way to vary other than just platform and shard placement. Also shoutout to the background audio track that's very atmospheric
I like the atomic justification for size changing! Quite odd how the levels just loop and after you beat the 10th level, you are just kicked back to the first level. I replayed the ten levels again and couldn't notice if there was a difference, so the game definitely needs a "You won" screen.
I really liked the alternate paths! The place unstable tiles mechanic was a lot more interesting than I thought It was going to be. Nice music track as well!
Sweet game! Just all around awesome I adore the absolutely extra visual effects on the level portals. It's so rad All the graphics work in this game is super impressive. Love it
I love how the tutorial was spaced out in this game. Shoutout to game designers who actually think of the player experience of learning a game, even more impressive to do this during a game jam.
The breath of the wild stasis mechanic is cool. Who doesn't love going brrrrrr. Pretty neat to make it work off a timer in an area instead of an object itself. leads to some interesting gameplay. I enjoyed realizing that you could create another statsis bubble somewhere else to launch something faster, which is intuitively encouraged by the timer and enemy system of the game.
@oolimry Thanks for the praise! That's awesome to hear
Spoilers for the test. Here's the answer to the bonus problem
It is actually possible to make the bonus recipe. The key thing is that you can use flux as a proxy for one of the components. The flux can be used to copy some plant or metal, so that you have the required amount without breaking qluix's law. Here's an example of how you'd make this Add 5qx of Plant then add 6 qx of Metal. {Kudu's law is not broken because there isn't any weird water yet} Add 4 qx of water, which immediately turns into weird water Add 3 qx of plant {now at 8} Add 1 qx of metal {not at 7} Add 1 qx of flux, which copies the last ingredient, which is metal. You now have 8qx worth of "metal" but one of it is flux Now you have 4qx weird water, 8qx of plant and 8qx of metal without breaking any of the alchemical laws along the way. This is just one arrangement of how you could make this, there's actually quite a bit of flexibility in how you achieve recipes in this system
@mossieur-patate Thanks for your feedback, you brought up many interesting points. Your perspective is really interesting, i'm grateful that my game got to be the target of your stream of consciousness.
#6 I feel like the best satire comes from a place of love. I'm one of the rare students who can actually get a lot out of the traditional lecture and theoretical explanations. I love the experience of learning, and often just attending classes is enough to turn around my day. That said, this system is also incredibly flawed. You're totally right that discovery and problem solving is a much better way to actually learn things. I set out to make this game to show both the best and worst of the traditional education style I have experience with.
#7 I didn't really consider that there would be focus problems on the actual presentation. It makes obvious sense now that if someone is also using another program to take notes it'll mess with the timing. I actually don't know how to solve this without making my own presentation environment. I think it was the right choice for the jam to use powerpoint. From what I can see the .pptx file actually works better for taking notes then the .ppsx file does, which is not what I was expecting.
#8 Development fun fact: I actually was happy with 30 slides because that would mean time wise the presentation takes exactly 5 minutes, but i had to add 3 more after I playtested and realized that some slides weren't helpful enough.
I am very glad to hear that the test succeeded in what I was going for. It was the most rushed part of the jam for me. My process for making it was thinking about my playtest with someone experiencing the presentation and going "what would be absolutely evil to put on the test". All the scenarios were written in a little bit of a trance as i had mere hours left before the deadline. A lot of the questions on the test are intentionially on things that aren't actually that important , stuff you'd know if you memorized the presentation but stuff you could struggle with even if you have a really good grasp on alchemy. I do think the best questions on the test are the ones that actually engage with the fundamental understanding, like the scenarios and bonus question.
Also I tried to go out of my way to reinforce the laws. Generally the information slides are meant to be "challenges" and the diagram/picture slides are there to be actually helpful aids in understanding to the player. The diagrams about different types of the same components still being able to break laws are explicitly there to reinforce the concept of those laws. It's good to know that I could have improved on this aspect though. On the one hand, I wanted to evoke the feeling of being overwhelmed, but on the other hand it's a shame to waste a chance to actually teach the interesting system. To me the obvious compromise is that I should split things up into more slides {or as you said repeat critical information on more slides} , although that has an obvious time cost. The idea for this game was born from wanting to make a slideshow that advanced every 10 seconds, but I think it'd be cool to try to make something that doesn't have to deal with that limitation and cares more about actually teaching rather than taking potshots at education systems.
#20 I created the name Qluix because I wanted to make something weird to pronounce, and thought starting with a q and ending with x would be unwieldy and memorable. I also liked the resemblance to the word quick, which made me think of quicksilver. The name Kudu is stolen from an extremely minor character in Dune.
I enjoyed the movement system and animation of the slashes. Fits that "samurai feeling" decently.
I have actually no idea if the theme "every 10 seconds" was implemented in this game. Reading the page description it seems to be the condition for spawning new waves, that felt pretty invisible to me while playing.
I appreciated the autotapping option quite a bit. At first glance the game is pretty boring but a few of the hidden mechanics have some interest. I liked the idea of being able to skip to higher levels, which worked in an interesting way with the score as healthbar mechanic. I think the enemies do a pretty good job of being erratic, but adding more of them per level is only interesting for so long. I like the incentive to experiment with tapping in different places. Pretty easy to get bored off
It's incredible how well this captures the experience of learning to drive and park. It feels pretty natural to me now, but this game reminds me of the days where it was alien and confusing. My brain had so much trouble translating the left and right wheel movement to the car movement and turns. This control scheme feels like an incredibly faithful translation of how it felt to control a car before it became comfortable. Then you've captured the vibe of trying to practice parking even better. I love how the cancel and limited crashes mechanic encourages you to be overcautious, just like in real life where you are terrified of hitting something. I love how the only way to build an understanding of the relationship of your input and how the car turns is through practice. I'm terrified of this game but with a level that has you reversing.
This game makes me feel less alone, because I know someone else understands the exact way I struggled with learning to park. Oh yeah and the graphics and polish are great. I adore how the consequences of crashes are persistent on the environment. As far as fun goes, it's cool to experiment with how you should make complex turns to arrive at your parking spot, but it ends up feeling pretty tedious. This feels like an overall positive to me though because it contributes a lot to the experience this game communicates
the graphics are rad. Cool way to show fog of war in darkness around the map. I couldn't really find anything to the gameplay other then attempting to hit and run which was pretty boring. You have so little tools for dealing with enemies that the modifier cards don't really feel like interesting challenges
There's too much information per ten second window. I am an incredibly fast reader and still couldn't keep up. This game obviously encourages skimming to look for keywords. This is not something I'm very good at, since I'm used to just reading linearly very fast and not thinking about how I'm reading. So it could be partially skill issue, but I am convinced that the timing is too tight to the point where meaningfully engaging with the game is near impossible.
I also made a game this jam where I was intentionally overwhelming the player with information. I think I learned some important lessons from playtesting that I'll talk about in my feedback here.
1. It is tempting to overwhelm the players so thoroughly that they understand nothing . After all that's the very point we are trying to make with our games, this could be viewed as achieving the intended experience. More difficulty is just selling that premise harder. I think this is a mistake. Understanding is a spectrum with being lost on one end and mastery on the other. Our target should be the sweet spot in which a player is trying their hardest to understand but it's still overwhelming. When the experience is too overwhelming, players give up. They won't engage with it the experience can be simplified to "have no idea what is going on".
It's better to have the players invest themselves into understanding something, and then overwhelm them. There must be a finely tuned balance where the experience isn't just all impossible complexity. If you go too far on difficulty then you ruin it.
I think the fundemental problem is this game is that it goes so far in being absurdly overwhelming that I grew apathetic and couldn't appreciate anything
2. It's so easy to keep adding funny and interesting complexities . We should be aware that these increase difficulty in a compounding way, instead of linearly per feature as might be intuitively expected. Varibles such as the amount of noise, amount of different types of information , facts that have to be kept in working memory and strangeness of information all interact in complex ways. Be careful in making one of these more difficult when that change exists in the context of all the others.
There's a lot of things that individually would be fun in this game, but all together makes it cross over to being "too much". Laws covering specific edge cases and potentially contradicting with lower order more general laws. Having to parse details such as age and gender, especially adding in NB. Having to keep all the laws in your head. Reading through the noise of the scenario for the key information. Not getting distracted by the silly details. Having to quickly connect the scenario info with the relevant laws to make judgement. If I had to do some of these things, the game would be fun. It could be the right amount of overwhelming. All of these together, especially within a mere 10 second window is the problem for me. I am convinced the right answer would be to cut something.
3. Decide which information streams you want to be challenges and which you want to be helpful to the player. Having footholds for the player can be helpful in reaching the aforementioned balance of difficulty. Without things that actually help in understanding the only way to hit an interesting difficulty is to carefully make sure you don't go too far. I think this game suffers from having nothing in the player's corner. Perhaps the laws could be reworked to be more easy and useful to parse, which could have huge effects on the entire experience. Perhaps you could seperate the experience of reading new laws and judging new cases; giving you time interact with each.
Consciously acknowledging what is meant to be helpful and what is meant to be annoying goes a long way in intentionally designing things. It's especially important to test out the things that are meant to be helpful, and make sure they are doing their job.
I love the concept of trying to plan on a timer. I found it pretty hard and couldn't get past the 2nd level {I'm bad at visualizing rotations and couldn't figure out which route could do it enough moves}. I really like the u-turn commands, at first thought they're useless, but approaching other turns from a different angle {or moving past an empty squre and then reversing into it with a command now placed} are cool realizations to have. I had a lot of trouble telling how many squares the circle would move on each iteration.
Might try to give this another attempt. Would be a nice quality of life to have a quick reset button, after screwing something up sometimes I wanted to just quite the program and go back {instead of waiting forever, and sometimes the collision glitches so that isn't even an option}
I've played a couple of programming games like this, but having to plan ahead to try and solve an entire room while occasionially advances is a neat take
Obvious lack of minigame variety which hurts a lot, but what's here ranges from ok-great. I don't understand what the point of the flag one is, it is so trivially easy. The shape match one rules, i love having to parse the board real fast, good on you for including symbols and colors. The cut paper allignment one is also pretty sweet, it's an interesting visual challenge. It also feels like it was more diverse then any of the other games.
Nice work on the overall feel. It captures the intended vibe pretty well. Like the graphics and audio here.
I could not tell how the theme related to this project at all.
The start of this game is so incredible that it's a bit of a shame the screenshots spoil it. It's an excellently crafted moment. This then spills over into pretty much the whole game doing a great job of evoking the intended emotion and mood.
This is the best "you are allowed to see every 10 seconds" game I've played from this jam {there's been a few of them actually, even another one with thunderstrikes illuminating the world in a brief flash}. The thing that makes it work here is the conflict between wanting to run away from a threat and see where you are going. It's hard to know quite how close the monster is to you, and the path ahead of you is full of instakills. This creates a great dynamic of needing the thunderflashes but not simply waiting for them.
I wouldn't call this game "fun", but that's ok because the main focus is on evoking a feeling and I consider this a great success in that regard. I love the checkpoints, my favorite part is the troll one
It was pretty frustrating that the enemy respawn cycles weren't consistent. You pretty much always have to go forward upon respawning at a checkpoint {or monster eats you}, but sometimes that means you simply die because you got unlucky with the enemy cycle. This is especially egregious in the spider section.
The idea that producing creates a free transport truck to a warehouse but supplying only has one cart per warehouse is interesting. it took me a little bit to figure out what was going on with this, but it does lead to some flavor in placing warehouses and planning the topology of your network. Would be cool to see a game that focuses on that aspect more
I see where the supply chain gameplay is going, and it could become fun if the game get developed past the point of simply making more of buildings for resources you are low on.
Right now the game is just mindlessly building stuff since there's no real strategic essence.
Nice graphics!
Felt pretty satisfying to finally get it in time. Understanding each puzzle individually was pretty boring. The best one is probably the one in the middle
The big thing missing from this game is a good inventory UI, so I know what resources I already have. This kind of thing would be real nice to see when I'm deciding which ingredients to prepare. Checking the brew screen just to see what kind of ingredients I have is kinda frustrating
I don't really see how the 10 second theme affects my life in this game. I just prepare ingredients and prepare potions as fast as I can, especially since you have time to serve everybody after the day ends. The mechanic gives no pressure or essence to the game. It's just there, although it is cool to have a little bit of time to prepare random ingredients at the beginning of the day.
I like the idea of slowly rembering recipes better and having more and more of the game in your working memory. The game currently doesn't incentivize this, especially because customers wait for you. I think coins from orders scale downwards the longer someone has to wait, but it was hard to tell. That said the minimum is clearly 1, and I have infinite time at the end of the day so what stops me from preparing all the ingredients I'll ever need at the end of a day.
I really like the style and graphics of this game. I also have a special fondness for alchemy themes. The minigames are neat but they get boring quick.
I didn't feel like I had a lot of control over my fate at first, but then grew into the physics a bit and it felt better. Even now it feels just a bit under where my preference for fun would be. The movement has some skill and flavor to it but still felt boring to me.
There's a clever nuance to the way balloons work in this game, which I appreciated. I like how they are similtaneously a healthbar,hitbox and propulsion. Nice detail that you go up with less power as your balloons decrease, or can move slightly faster with more balloons. That latter thing is balanced nicely with popping every 10 seconds, which also gives a good incentive to try to catch ballons. Overall the design of the ballons is well thought out. It also all makes intutive sense which is a plus.
I love the sky background, it looks sweet.
I am very impressed with how well tuned and designed the platforming levels are. The timing is perfectly tight. The platforming has just the amount of space and challenge so that you have to respect it, which works well with the timer and lives because the levels are neither frustrating nor trivial.
That said, the lives are a bit frustrating. It's pretty easy to make a mistake, and sometimes there's an interesting screen that I would have preferred to try until I beat, or after dying i'd have to go through levels which are getting more and boring. It still works for what this game is going for, but how good is that thing you are going for?
This game also desperately needs some basic tutorial or instructions, I figured out space to jump fine but then would consistently get to a screen which required a dash. It took me a bit to realize this game even had a dash, the game was unplayable until i thought to try pushing shift.
Simple, but what is here is excellent. I adore that the consequence for shooting is to create annoying obstacles for your future self. That mixed with the natural increase of 1 asteroid per km makes for a good difficulty pacing. There's a bunch of situations where I wouldn't have died had i shot an asteroid, but I didn't consider it mandatory fast enough. I like that because shooting is a tool you should use, although it seems like a tool to avoid at all cost.
I thought the trajectories of the incoming asteroids was done well. I like how there's varying angles and speeds. This game does a good job of not making the asteroids feel incredibly boring.
The bug where a shot made while you are moving upwards moves up {and same with down} is pretty funny. Honestly this could be a sweet mechanic in a different game, since there could be an interesting skill to aiming those shots. Obviously out of place here.
The embeded version on this website is terrible, because it doesn't load the card images. Glad I gave this game another try on the main hosted site.
I really like the way the cards scatter around each deal. super cool. The sound effects are nice as well
I enjoyed the gameplay of rushing to create good enough poker hands, with the card pool dwindling each deal. It did feel like it kind of simpflied to picking a number or two and looking for matches of them in the pile. That's not good enough to beat the hard or perhaps medium ai, but I don't feel like i have time to meaningfully do anything else {except for probably going for flushes, which I suspect is actually the dominant strategy here}
I found the traffic ai impressive. It's cool how drivers have more states then just "move", some of them get backed up and eventually decide to leave. I know from personal experience that traffic simulation and intersections are a pain, so congrats on the work here.
Flying around feels pretty good, the movement here works.
My biggest problem is that the interaction between the bird and the city simulation is kind of boring. Which puts a dampener on everything because that's like the base idea of the game. It's pretty clear that you want to mess up cars, so the game is more about timing/aiming then like thinking. It's also kind of awkward to line up shots you want, although this is definitely part of the skill of the game. I don't think i was ever really able to "get in the mindset" of a pidgeon causing chaos. This game just feels like flying around and occasionally I hit a car which is useful. I feel like the game overall discourages moving around, which ideally would be part of the fun. The chain reaction events helped this problem but they didn't feel like enough The pidgeon with auto aim was especially boring, the game was much more fun with the other birds.
Fun to see an incremental game. It's satisfying to progress through, and I like how many things cost previous buildings. I really loved the idea of making an "idle" game where everything happens on each 10 second tick. I've played some other games this jam that have "you have to maintain things every 10 seconds", but here it works because the difficulty of maintenance is directly proportional to your greed and you have other stuff you want to be accomplishing with your life instead of just maintaining everything each 10 sec. I like having to balance the robots being overwhelming and wanting lots of resources. The final robot is fun. I love that feeling of invalidating everything else. Although it doesn't actually work because you overflow the resources very quickly, meaning you can't build anything anymore.
I liked how there were different effects from the buildings, it avoids just making numbers go up, but it still wasn't enough to feel like I was making strategic decisions {especially once I had a fair amount of resources/infrastructure}
Graphics were very nice. Shoutout to the highly readable rust effects.
Trying this game was miserable. One of the most frustrating gaming experiences I've had in recent memory. I'm not very good at rhythm games, but figured I'd try this one anyway.
The setup is simple, the expanding audio is really cool. I liked the way the light moves with the dot. THEN THE DOT DISAPPEARED.
At this point the game became impossible for me. After 10 minutes of practice i was able to sometimes get 1-2 invisible sets in a row. i have a terrible sense of rhythm, i rely on visual information to help me play rhythym games. Trying to burn the timing into my mind was so hard. Even if i got it once or twice I'd go straight back to 1/10 after that. It doesn't help that i'd still sometimes miss hits when the dot was still visible
I probably should have stopped playing immediately, but I wanted to finish at least 1 level/set of 10. I tried for a bit but couldn't even do that. As far as I'm concerned the core idea of this game {getting familiar with a beat to be able to do it by memory} isn't even accessible to me. I almost feel bad rating this game.
I really enjoyed the core premise of exploring a maze in darkness with brief illumination moments. Mazes are often unfun to just stumble around through, and unfun to navigate when you can see the whole thing. This idea strikes a great balance that makes it fun!
The big thing lacking here is an interesting game essence. Right now you have no reason {other than your own patience} to not wait for lightning strikes. Also the monster being static really ruins the point of it. You'd have to be trying {or incredibly impatient} to ever run into it. There needs to be some kind of challenge that takes this great concept and gives the player a reason to engage with it.
Maybe the monster could move around. Maybe there could be many monsters. Maybe there could be a key you need to find in the level and then make it to the exit in a certain amount of time. Maybe lightning strikes could make the maze harder. There just needs to be some kind of dynamic that rewards you for understanding the maze or changes the way you interact with exploration.
There were a couple of times the maze spawned me right next to the goal. That felt pretty pointless
Shoutout to the horse character that has wheels. Also thank you for making the movement speed reasonably fast, that really helps the game
The idea of having to visualize your position relative to the enemies while programming towards the goal is neat, although it's a bit under explored. I really like how the enemy paths are shown to you, and you can see their position each turn.
This game would hit pretty well on the vibes for me, except that it plays the same audio clip over and over again. Why are the zucc lines not randomized? Hearing the same thing over and over again made me want to scream, is this intentionial? to mimick the discourse? The random "hacker" numbers are nice. The satire here misses for me. It feels like it's a pure vibes satire rather then a content/ideas satire. The metaverse is worth making fun off, but this game doesn't really explore that aspect, it more just uses it as a skin for the vibe it's going for
What a cute and clever idea! It's cool how you use the language of pacman to make this concept, it feels natural and intuitive without you having to do a lot of work to explain. Mark Rosewater calls this concept piggybacking {I'll link an article about it}. https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/piggybacking-2012-08-20
I like the split between the two phases: in one you can act but are have less information, and the other you have the information but can't act. I like the way this tests your memory and makes you interact with trying to remember the ghosts. Generally I'd pick two or three ghosts to actively remember per cycle. I wonder if there is any way to make you have to remember properties about the whole group instead of singling out ghosts to focus on. The cycles in this game are especially successful because of the overarching timer on reaching an amount of sacrifices. {this framing is so funny btw}
In the web version I played the grid perspective was completely ruined. I thought it was just some stupid movement rules I wasn't understanding, but looking at other comments it seems this might be unintentionial? I'll post what the grid looked like for me PacmanPerspective.PNG I didn't even notice that this was meant to be a specific isometric perspective, i just saw a jagged grid with varying rows and columns. For what it's worth I tried the 1.1 version, and that way of displaying is much better. I liked that a lot
Cool to see that you included a colorblind mode. I don't need it but I like to see game developers thinking about it.
I felt like the dark timings was too long, but obviously that's pretty hard to get around with the theme specifically saying 10 seconds. I really liked seeing the enemies before they attack, but I'm not sure that was enough for the dark gameplay to be really reasonable to accomplish anything during. I would just make sure to keep moving so enemies wouldn't hit me, but couldn't really accomplish anything until light turned on.
I liked the text narrative a lot.
Are you meant to have a way to reduce smoke? It seems odd to use a machine that dooms you to losing. Clicking as a mechanic feels pretty tedious. I guess it could be interesting if there was ever a time management component so it feels like it's giving up focusing on something else. Having conveyor belts that face a wall feels pretty OP, not sure if this is intended. I pretty much just placed one wall facing conveyor belt, then some acids and just waited for the rest of the game, occasionally repairing things and clicking boxes that acid didn't kill.