From Dust by tater-hater 2022-04-04T20:03:26Z
I made it home! Well done, I particularly liked the dust/sand effect on the left side of the screen
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → Noobman64
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | 59 | Signal | Hidden Messages | compo | 231 | 3.13 | 3.08 | 3.30 | 4.25 | 2.66 | 3.69 | 3.61 | 3.41 | |
| 2025 | 58 | Collector | Soul collector! | compo | 165 | 3.07 | 3.36 | 2.72 | 3.68 | 2.95 | 2.78 | 3.41 | 3.18 | |
| 2024 | 56 | Tiny Creatures | Blob stomp | compo | 274 | 2.98 | 2.92 | 2.67 | 3.79 | 2.63 | 2.52 | 3.76 | 3.40 | |
| 2024 | 55 | Summoning | Resisting Summons | compo | 289 | 3.00 | 3.17 | 3.42 | 3.92 | 2.80 | 2.76 | 3.85 | 3.28 | |
| 2023 | 54 | Limited Space | Finding Space | unfinished | ||||||||||
| 2023 | 53 | Delivery | Click to Deliver | compo | 396 | 2.45 | 2.32 | 2.40 | 3.57 | 2.27 | 3.45 | |||
| 2023 | 52 | Harvest | Harvester | compo | 287 | 3.03 | 2.75 | 3.42 | 3.48 | 2.25 | 2.56 | 3.19 | ||
| 2022 | 50 | Delay the inevitable | 2D Platformer | compo | 591 | 2.68 | 2.73 | 2.28 | 2.91 | 2.47 | 2.65 |
I made it home! Well done, I particularly liked the dust/sand effect on the left side of the screen
Amazing work! Both the theme and game-play were top notch
I got the ticket to Alaska! Very cool game (no pun intended), i particularly liked the level design and the natural way you get players to explore
very Nice bit of interactive fiction! it must have been a lot of work coming up with all those combinations but also lots of fun. I wonder how randomizing the order of those prompts every night would have changed the game. On one hand it could make the tale crafting more engaging, but on the other hand it could have distracted from the story telling.
Thanks Andy, you are very kind. Yeah i need to learn a lot more about Z rotation and platform interactions, and your tips will help me!
Thank you everyone for the supportive comments! I will look into itch.IO to host my next project, and i appreciate the tip about using AddForce().
Well done! Really nice art, both with the visuals and the music.
Cool game. I liked the destructible walls
Nice game! it was a little confusing at first but then it clicked. I liked all the slow moving blobs with their own movements, they reminded me of lava lamps
For the players: When you start the game i recommend clicking on the white circle a few times in a row before you start moving with WASD. that helped me orient myself better at the start
nice game, I like the gun variety and the colourful art :)
I had fun playing your game. I saw a couple of people get into fights and one got injured which let me take them. that was a nice set-piece :)
Nice game! i liked the artwork and all the 3d models :)
Fun game, i liked the beautiful pixel-art! :)
*spoilers warning* You knocked it out of the park with the Audio and visuals, and i got a chuckle out of the "not today" ending too. That's usually the first thing i try in games :)
Wow you really nailed the audio and humor! As someone who enjoys 80s B movies, the broccoli "high Iron Diet" line got a good chuckle out of me :)
Very polished and fun! satisfying game-play and pretty art too :)
I think you've really hit something special with this!
Great game, I love the Athenian pottery(?) Art-style! As a side-note, i don't know if this is a bug or just a quirk of the unreal engine, but i have a VR headset and it automatically turns on when i start this game. Not a big deal though :)
I like the asteroid style controls and the clean visuals :)
Cool game! I like the spinning planet visual :)
Nice game! It took me a bit to figure out what to do (my own fault for not reading the description) but things got going once i figured out what the symbols meant. As the previous comment has already pointed it out, some audio feedback could make it easier for the player to engage with what is happening but I think you guys did a great job making a fun game, specially considering it's your first entry. :)
Hi! I really enjoyed Mind Harvest. The game-play is compelling and the music is catchy!
As everyone else has already mentioned the audio and visuals are great, but i wanted to thank you for including Pluto in the list of planets. They can remove Pluto from books but they can't remove it from our hearts!!!
cool concept! I also like the models. They have an eerie quality them, specially the player character's
I like the art direction. Also, good on you for finishing it in 12 hours :)
Fun game!The art-style is clean, the title screen is gorgeous, and the game-play is satisfying. As other's have already pointed out, Knowing when you can start chopping again is a bit tricky. I think the audio "reloading" sound is very helpful, but adding some kind of visual indicator would also help the players out :)
I liked the little hop carrots do when you finish digging them out. Gives the player good feedback as when the process is over
Great audio and visuals, and pretty easy to pick up as well! :)
Fun game, I like the AI characters!
Fun game! The web version didn't work for me but that might be because I'm a firebox user. The standalone worked great though. I liked trying to fling stuff into the growing zones from afar/ resulting in a mess that made things more hectic. I liked the art/textures too :)
Fun game! I liked the core mechanics and your 3d models :)
@mihkelroomet Hi!Thank you for writing that comment. It always feels great to find out somone else has taken the time to play with my game. Im also flattered that you took the time to finish the game too :)
Regarding the scanner, I have an explanation that makes sense in my mind, which may or may not make sense to you. I am going to share it with you here, but feel free to come up with another explanation yourself. I'd be happy to hear what others think
The scanner was not originally designed to be used by the harvesters. Its more like a civilian self-defense tool. If the device is turned on and detects the organism nearby it automatically tries to protect its user by destroying the hostile organism (without wasting time asking the user). A more sophisticated tool intended for the job would probably just incapacitate the target or let the user decide what to do. The harvesters are using these low-quality scanners in the field because they are low on supplies and don't have any better equipment left. One of the 'secret' documents implies that the facility has trouble contacting their central office, so i don't think they can get new material in anymore.
@xlores-liang Oh no! I'm sorry you ran into that issue. Does this happened in both full screen and windowed modes? When i test it, the game starts in windowed mode, and the window is resizable to accommodate a variety of aspect ratios (You can hover your mouse over the edge of the window and drag it to change the size). Then again i only have my own monitor to test it on so your results will vary :(
@adam-gould I like the comparison to the SCP stories. In my head, the organization the player character works for is like "the foundation", but is also a publicly traded company obligated to maximize shareholder value.
@simsax Thank you! I was looking at all the farming games and was beginning to think I'm crazy, but when i started reviewing games i found out quite a few people went with organ harvesting, soul harvesting, etc. I might still be crazy but now i know there is dozens of us out there :P
@natiki Im so happy that you found it engaging. I'd like to claim credit in the bold move of not including any audio, but to be honest i was completely out of time, haha
@apg Thanks for leaving that message, let me tell you how the sausage was made! To be honest, its just "smoke and mirrors". Except the 0.5 at the start to familiarize the player, all the other numbers were arbitrary. The player was supposed to trial-and-error the finite possibilities and come to the correct one. It gets worse! For a while i was thinking about randomizing the correct values each time but A) i thought it would get frustrating for the player and B) i was low on time anyway.
Before you judge me too hardly (or perhaps as a cause to judge me even harsher), let me say I used to love playing with analogue radios. slowly turning those dials until a station came on, made me feel like a code breaker. I thought the players could get a similar satisfaction out of this mechanic :)
@fusionnist Wow, thanks for the kind words, they mean a lot! I still haven't figured out how to animate things, so that scene is me replacing sprites using "invoke" on a timer and messing with the colour values. My "monster" looks pretty goofy but I'm fairly happy with the scene in general :)
@matank Thank you for the kind words, I'm glad you enjoyed it!
I was kind of worried that the drab greys would be too off-putting, but I wanted the place to look soulless and cold. Going with that colour pallet was that was the best I could do with my limited artistic abilities :)
@stormharrier I'm so glad you enjoyed your time with the game and found the narrative engaging :D
I believe that the “truth” is in the audience’s head, not the author’s. I'm going to write something regarding the story in case you are interested in what i think, but feel free to ignore it too because you decide what the story should be.
As small as my scope was, I still had to cut corners to get the game ready in time. There was supposed to be at least one other cell and it had a real person inside. The scanner Would identify them as a human and knock them out, instead of killing them. The situation when the game starts Is that everyone in the facility, except the NPC (that’s cut out of the game) and possibly the harvester (player), Is compromised by the organism. Yes, even the guy on the CCTV and speakers. If you’ve read the ‘secret’ files they refer to an incident where a guy named Yuri died and something almost got out. The first chamber you see in game is empty, except for a small puddle of blood… The overseer guiding you is already carrying the organism, he just doesn’t know/remember it yet. But again, that’s just my version :)
@therealjtgill Im sorry the instructions were unclear. If you decide to come back and revisit the game later, this may help you:
Every level essentially uses the same mechanic. You move each slider till the green light next to it comes on, indicating that the slider is in the correct position. After the green lights come on, then the player clicks on the button that says "lock in". When all the sliders are locked in, there is a "harvest" Button that lights up. you can then click on it to proceed. The correct position of each slider changes from level to level but is consistent between play-throughs
The tasks get a bit harder as you play, because the sliders start to have a narrower range of accepted values. Additionally one of the levels has a timer so the challenge comes in completing it quickly (or finding a way around it)
The game will (theoretically) try to run in a 1920x1080 resolution/aspect ratio, but that doesn't work out all the time and some UI elements may not appear correctly for you, but you can compensate for that. The game starts in window mode and the window is resizable, so you can drag the screen to change its size. The following should all be visible in every level: 5 sliders, 5 lock-in buttons, 1 harvest button
I hope that helps
@3ggplant thank you for taking the time to play my game. I'm flattered every time I find out someone has done so. I will leave some info below in case you are interested, but the short answer is that the fusebox is just there to provide something visually interesting on that side of the screen.
I don't know how everyone else operates, but I am really slow, and so I finished my last build about 15 minutes before the 48hr time limit. I think by the time I had added the links here I was just 3 minutes to the deadline. All that is to say I was flying by the seat of my pants. To be honest, the fusebox is yet another cut corner. The plan was to have a fuse randomly pop off every once in a while when the player least expects it, and have the player reset it in order to proceed. I realized fairly early on that I wouldn't be able to implement it in time, but I liked having more "gadgets" on screen to add to the "smoke and mirrors" and hopefully keep that sense of wonder and exploration going just another minute or two. My game is very short so I just need to keep the player engaged in the ride a short while. At least that was my assumption at the time. I hope this was informative/entertaining :)
@milq Hello, and thank you for your feedback. Developing games for Linux is something i am open to, but I don't currently have any Linux devices to test my builds on. Not a good excuse and i will try to find a solution for my next LudumDare!
In the mean time, if you are feeling adventurous you can head on to my itch.IO page where i have uploaded an experimental Linux build. Its just the folder unity spits out when you ask it for a Linux build. It can work great or not boot at all. https://meidaniaryayahoocom.itch.io/harvester
@burnedkirby Thank you for playing my game and taking the time to type in your feedback too! I'm going to include some additional info below in case you're interested :)
Ludum Dare compo is challenging to everyone for different reasons. I'm at the very low end of skill and knowledge required to participate, so the main challenge for me becomes "can I even make a game?". Harvester came about partially because I wanted to learn more about Unity UI. The plan was to have a variety of tasks for the player like sliders, radio buttons, toggles, drop downs etc. I ran out of time to do most of that stuff but now I think I know how sliders work!
Regarding the scary bit, I'm glad you found the other way to handle it. I tested it a few times just to make sure you can do it the normal way but my hope was that most players would realize they have another other option. I think I ended up making the time limit too lenient but I didn't want the player to feel like its impossible and give up after the first try.
As I had mentioned in another post, the scary bit's "animation" is just a timer that switches which sprites are active. I knew I didn't have time to learn how to animate, but still wanted to give the game a little flair. It took time away from other parts of the game, but I think in the end it was worth it. At least people are commenting about it
Well done folks. I liked the artwork and humor
PS: Full screen seems to resolve the clipping issues. at least, it did for me PPS: Ivy is best plant.
Neat game! There is a bug with the UI where the elements (pause screen and shop items) appear bellow other game objects instead of above them. I would also lower the cost of all the items so people can experience the game more quickly, but thatis more down to personal preference. I liked the 2D art and implementation of theme :)
I like your take on the theme and how it contrasts with the cute art is.
Nice, game. I like the sense of speed you get zipping around, chasing after the ghosts :)
Neat game. I don't know if its the case, but it looked like you were simulating some kind of suspension system with the wheel movement and it looked cool :)
Hi, I like the way you layout information in the game, and the art on the little icons is great too!
Solid game. I like the Audio and visuals!
Congrats on finishing your game. It looks great, specially for your first completed entry! I got a score of 4, not sure if that's good or bad :)
As others have already pointed out, the clean pixel art and quick game-play make for a compelling experience. I was also horrible at catching the apples, but enjoyed the frantic clicking :)
Fun game! It got a good chuckle out of me too because i started playing before reading the description and quickly mixed up the babies. Long story short, I ended up with a lizard baby that no one wanted. I think I'm legally obligated to raise it now. I assume there will be some lawsuits involved as well... Anyway on my 3rd play through I won :)
I like the art! It's not super detailed but its very clear and clean. I can confirm the sound works now, and the music is relaxing. Over all a very nice game, Well done!
I retired as the head of the institution! The art was great, and frantically running around after the inmates was fun. As others have already pointed out, there were some bugs but they didn't really reduce my enjoyment of the game. I appreciate the audio settings too. Some commercially sold games don't have sliders like that, but you managed to make a settings menu for your timed compo entry, that's impressive!
Is there a story behind the dogos? Do they randomly enter and exit the map for aesthetic value or did you originally have a mechanic in mind for them?
Fun game! As other's have pointed out the game-play is very fun. I liked the art and sound as well. Initially i tried to balance the babies on top of each-other as i held the bottom one, then I realized you can just juggle them and got to 500 points :)
I can't really say much that others have not already said. Excellent twist on the theme, amazing art and fun game-play. I appreciate the ability to skip the tutorial too. I think having some kind of UI element to restart the game instead of refreshing the browser would be nice, but that's not a big deal. Unfortunately, much like real life, I am not a good comedian and only got a C on my standup. In any case amazing work, I hope you expand on it!
@bad-b4dguy Thanks for the nice comment! The birds might not make sense depending on when/where you grew up but in some cultures the stork (a kind of bird) is said to deliver babies to homes. You don't see it as much anymore but the image of a stork carrying a baby in a bundle used to be in a lot of cartoons. If you google "Stork clipart" you will see what I was going for. The relation to the theme is that the storks are "delivering" babies and the act of bringing a baby to this world is also called "delivery". I hope that clears some of the confusion :)
@kierogi Thanks for the kind words! I'm honestly surprised more people didn't go with delivery as in babies but I guess I have a weird mind. I'm pretty disappointed in how little I was able to accomplish that day, but one of these days I'll submit a proper game. Fingers crossed for Ludum Dare 54
@whizbang Thanks for the feedback! Yeah its pretty basic. I was hoping that adding a time limit and keeping it short would keep the player engaged, but it doesn't look like I was successful
@dummy432 Yep, its a carpel tunnel exercise (:
@glove Thanks for the nice comment! I love your idea of moving the button! I could have done it in like 10 minutes, and it would have been a pretty nice improvement. Very good "bang for buck" in terms of development time. I wish I thought of it. I'm so glad you enjoyed the humor! I'm just one guy and don't have anyone to bounce Ideas on so I can never tell if my jokes are noticed and/or funny.
@milano23 Thanks for your kind words! Sorry if my game hurt your hand. I was hoping the "baby shower" button would add a bit of variety to the game and make you move your mouse a bit more but it wasn't enough. I thought of adding more buttons on different timers but they would all need their own theme and art, which there was no time for. I kind of cheated with the baby shower, in that the art was basically the stork sprite without the stork. I just needed to remove the bird to get the baby. I should look into mobile development too, thanks for pointing that out
@matt-green Ohhh! I've been hearing that phrase on twitch and YouTube and it's been stuck in my brain, but i had never looked into it. I googled it and you're right! Apparently I've stolen a Ryan George bit before watching any of his videos. XD
Anyway, thanks for the kind words. Early internet is the best compliment i could hope for :)
@purpledartfrog Thank you for giving my game a try. I agree that it is quite weird :)
@anthony-katona I'm glad you got a chuckle out of my silly game. Thanks for the comment!
@pincushion Thank you for the feedback, I'm glad you liked the humor. You are right about the win condition. In retrospect I could have made the victory button larger and given it a more eye catching colour. I'll definitely try to consider that for my next Ludum Dare attempt!
@bridgeonastick Thanks for playing! Im glad you liked the baby shower. I wanted to go full silly with this game
@pegasys That's good feedback, I really should give audio a higher priority at least once. None of my Ludum Dare attempts have had any sounds yet. Regarding the numbers, the intent was to have the player leave their mouse on the button as they click and scan around the screen with their eyes for the numbers. I was hoping this could give the game a frantic/energetic feel. As you pointed out, it didn't really pan out in the end but I'm not sure how I would handle it differently. Maybe using progress bars instead of numbers would make things easier to scan in a hurry
@thomaslebel LOL, thanks for the comment, I hope I didn't get you in trouble! :)
@thaprofesional Thanks for the kind words! I hadn't noticed the plague button being clickable until you mentioned it. That's a bug, and I can see why it would confuse players. I have a bad habit of using buttons as miscellaneous UI elements, and I forgot to turn off the interactivity toggle on that one.
@jk5000 Thanks for giving it a go! Yeah It ended up being a bit bare-bones, even by my standards
Very ambitious project! I've never worked with procedural terrain in Unity before but this looked pretty good so I might look into it. I flying around and delivering packages was fun, but i had to reload after a bug prevented me from going up. Something else that may not have been intentional, I was able to deliver multiple packages to the same house. To test it, I reloaded the game and landed on one of the rooftops and proceeded to deliver 29 before the timer ended. I liked the 3D models and the Audio. Over all a solid jam game
Fun game! I thought your level design and minimal UI were very good. Maybe the minimalist look could have gone even further by removing the counter number, but that would have its own issues as well. I also like the focus on precision, as Tnnv previously pointed out. I would have just slapped time limits on every level and forced the player to run through them, which would have been a mistake. Very impressive for 15 hours!
Another stork delivery game! Unlike mine, yours is actually good though XD
Great art, fun game-play, and compelling story/humor! I think i ran into the same issue as piano forte (the return to main button), but I had a lot of fun playing your game. Nicely done!
Fun game! I went to the red planet (mars?) and made it to the cave but died back on the blue planet (earth?). As others have pointed out, dying and starting all over again can be rough but what i found worse was that i couldn't tell how much progress i was making. Maybe a UI element could tell the player how close they are to their next objective?
Both the 2D art and the music were really nice. I also like the levels' "atmosphere". Was there an element of procedural generation at play? I think I saw segments of map and the seams between each segment so I started wondering if you were shuffling between these segments. In any case, well done and thank you for sharing your game!
Nice game! My feedback is essentially the same as the other commenters. Some UI elements to reset and/or quit the game would be nice. Apart from that, I like the core design because it's fun and intuitive. I like to jump into games without reading the descriptions first, and I was able to figure it out pretty quickly. I also liked your game's art style. The icons look nice and are easy to identify as well. I played 3 times and got these scores: 0, 7.69, 10.5 :)
I liked the splash screen and the art style. I also like the puzzle element of trying to decide which item to deliver first. As others have already pointed out, the introduction and on-boarding was a bit rough. I was also not sure if the game had an ending so i played until i had ~1000 and closed the game. In any case, thank you for sharing your game. I liked playing around with the mechanics :)
Nice art and humor! I was hoping stacking many cows in a long line would do something, but it was still very fun. good work!
I had fun playing your game, I played 3 rounds and scored an 8 (i blame bad luck on the draws for not getting a 10 :P) Music is great, The art is clear and the gameplay is engaging. I found the game rules to be pretty intuitive, with the two little arrows pointing up and down next to the icons for what each card is good at.
It's just a hypothesis on my part, but I think the reason some of the players found it unintuitive at first is that by default the game window is not very big, and the icons and symbols are pretty small. That may make them harder to notice at first. I often magnify my browser view for my old-man-eyes, which made me think. Anyway, great game! :D
Great game! It initially confused me but in a good way, like I was intrigued and wanted to figure it out. Kind of like the start of Cult Simulator (2018) where at first you're just exploring how cause and effect works, before you can plan out your strategy. It took me 3-4 tries but I was able to get last ritual done. I like the mood and eeriness too, very lovecraftian!
Nice game, specially for only 17 hours! Trying to sift through the pages in a hurry can be fun. I don't know what its name is but call it the "reference manual" mechanic when I see it in games. The clicking was easy to figure out but It took me a while to realize I'm supposed to type as well. Maybe some UI emphasis could help with that. The sound design and mood was very eerie, and the visuals were clean. Well done!
My final score was 3520 (7 attempts at 247 seconds)
Nice game and clever puzzles! I think my favorite part is last part where you are trying to find your wizard in the Forrest. It contrasted well with the indoor section and made me fee I had broken free, which is a good ludonarrative allignment!
Amazing game! It somehow evokes WW1 for me. Clever little flanking maneuvers at the start but then both sides get bogged down and it becomes an attrition war as ludicrous numbers of soldiers fight for every inch of ground. I also liked all the difficulty options, the demo/instructions scene at the start, and of course the sound effects. Very innovative all around!
Like everyone else, I think the Art and music are top notch. I especially like the little "anime run" the player character does.
@vidim888 Thank you for the kind words! Yeah I think I should set more time aside for balancing my game next time. Right before publishing, I noticed that the mashing was too good but at that point I didn't really have time to fix the problem anymore. Hope you had fun!
@drainkid Thank you! Yeah my programing is pretty limited and I can't really come up with super complex mechanics, So I tried to throw a bunch of really simple mechanics at the players to make up for it 😅
@mavvy Thank you for your kind feedback. Glad you liked the cult of game developers! I thought if everyone is summoning stuff for this LudumDare, all those stuff being summoned have to come from somewhere ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@stmate03 haha no such thing as too much D&D ;) thanks for playing my game!
@tykenn I'm very happy that you got a chuckle out of it! That was exactly what I was thinking about with the "Ludumdare Cult". :D
@bravelytyped Thank you for playing my game, and for the kind words :D
@timidger Thank you for the feedback. You are correct, though the lack of polish was not due to laziness. I didn't budget my time well and could not spend much time with balance or proofreading. As simple as the game was, It took me the full compo time limit to make it, which is a testament to how bad I am at this 😅
Your feedback is noted but I'm happy with the music as it is. This was the first time I was able to budget the time to have music in my game and I like the tune. I foresaw that some people would not like it so I added a mute button for it. In my 30 years of PC gaming I have never had my computer's audio set to %100 ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The skip indicator is to help players in their decision making by letting them know that their narrative choice will mean they will miss something. Its not a particularly new idea. Here are a few example of the same concept in different application: Many games let you skip the starting level. Some games warn you that moving past a section means that you can't revisit some of the previous section, which results in missing some content. Some visual novels will use visual ques to let the player know a certain choice may end the game prematurely. In all these cases the designers let players know that there is a risk of skipping content, but the player still has the agency to skip things if they want to. In my opinion, that doesn't make the content more or less worthy of being played. I should have found a more elegant way to communicate that, but we are back to my poor time management skills again. I finished my games with 5 minutes left to the deadline. Rephrasing the prompts was not something I could afford anymore by that point
Thank you, I will work on improving my programing. Progress is slow but one of these days I'll make something playable :)
@linky439 Thank you for playing my silly game :D Yeah the button mashing turned out to be way overpowered. Getting the players to "keep a lot of plates spinning" is something I'd like to explore more if I get the chance!
@bentglasstube Thank you for playing my game! Yeah the runes tended to overlap. I set up each one to a random timer but I should have increased the range of possible values so there would be less over lap.
@fabula-rasa Thank you for the kind words, I'm glad you liked my weird humor :D
@burnedkirby Thanks for the kind words! I'm happy the build works for Linux. To be honest, I wasn't able to test it and just hoped Unity would handle the Linux version correctly. One day you guys will need to save the rest of us from Apple and Microsoft. When judgement day comes, remember I was one of the good ones! (ElmoRise.jpeg) 🤣
@sevenso Thank you for the playing my game and the kind feedback :)
Thank you to each and everyone who played my silly game. I am extremely happy with the rankings, specially the 43rd in humor. Its the best rating I've gotten in anything! Lets gooooooo
Screenshot 2024-05-04 201004.png
Loved the game! first off, the title screen and music are very 90s to me and I approve! great innovative game play. It took me to the 3rd death to realize what was happening and then it clicked. I particularly liked the interaction between the melee copy's shield ability and the range attackers, rewarding you for planning in advance. The art was cute but also clean enough not to clutter the screen. I think I will keep this game installed after LudumDare is over and play it from time to time :D
The contrast between the tongue in cheek tone, and the dark visuals and audio really work for me! I like the lighting and camera angles too. You were clearly focusing on the visual style and it payed off.
Hi! I like the combo matching game play. Reminds me of Arrow Head studio's "Magicka". The enemy health bars didn't seem to work correctly in my play through, but other than that it was a fun game with a neat concept!
As others have pointed out, the visuals are great. The game has an early-3D feel to it that I like. The Audio was"great" I'm putting that in quotations mark because I'm still sweating. That hissing sound made me yelp the first time I heard it and the spiders popped out behind me. Kept me uneasy the whole rest of the game too. Its got good horror potential. (Either that or I'm a scaredy-cat)
Fun Game, I like the good audio. I got to level 9 :)
It reminds me of Pacman, I like it! I don't Know if it's a bug or not, but I got all the stuff rolled up and deposited in the middle and nothing happened. Some kind of win screen would be more satisfying :)
Great game! Adding the hint system and the Audio feedback for correct responses made the game much more enjoyable than it would have otherwise been. :)
Great game! I got bronze, gold, silver, silver. I thought the visuals were great. The distortion/static effect combined with the environment, gave it an eerie empty feeling. My head-canon is that we're already dead and that's our ghost flying around. There's a lot of potential to string cool maneuvers together fluidly. Replaying the same levels isn't my cup of tea, but I can see speed-runner types really getting into this :)
This game knocks it out of the park Great. visuals, good Audio, fun level design. Amazing results for a 48 hours solo project. I dare to say, you (s)nailed it!
As everyone has pointed out the art-style is great. Did you hand paint it and scan it in or is it a style/technique of digital art? Very fun and innovative over all:)
Fun game! Off the top of my head I can't remember playing any 2nd person games before but it works. I can see this as a part of a larger game where you are going room to room and house to house, facing increasingly advanced exterminators with better gear. I feel like a bit more impact with each swat (maybe even breaking some items) would have made it even better, but I know there is never enough time for these finer touches in the compo time limit. I also want to say that the percussive soundtrack was a great choice. It evokes a frantic chase scene or for me.
Anyway, great game. would ruin exterminator's career again. :)
Those horseshoes above the house were tricky but I got them. Now Oswald will never be humiliated again! Its kind of "love it or hate it" but I really liked the presentation. The art and animation have a lot of charm
YIPPIE!!! I had to go back and 3 star all the levels. Great presentation with the graphics and audio. The level design was top notch too.
Nice Stealth game, I love the voice over! I found a bug where some town-folks would gather on a point and get stuck, but my head-canon is that they were part of a cult and secretly meeting to plan something Screenshot 2024-10-06 215147.png
I like the clean UI. Great concept and execution! I can see myself playing this on my phone.
Great art and puzzles! I did noticed a bug that I'll mention here in case you folks were interested. I was having trouble with the web version So I decided to download the game instead. That's when I noticed that some of the intractable game objects were not lined up with the art. My best guess is that the interactive elements don't scale the same way as the art, and because my monitor is an unusual resolution, the different objects were no longer aligned. That might also explain why the web version is not running well for some players. I'm a novice myself tough, so that might be completely wrong. Anyways I enjoyed this point and click. The art was cute and the puzzles were creative :) Screenshot 2024-10-09 220622.png Screenshot 2024-10-09 215952.png
My blob game :handshake: Your blob game
What an elegant game! It reminds me of the Atari era, except cleaner and more responsive than the actual games from that time (yes, i'm old enough to remember those ancient times :sweat_smile:).
I was having trouble with the planes until I came back and read about right-clicking. On one hand, having instructions in the game itself would mean less people would miss it. On the other hand, the game wouldn't have the same minimalist charm if it had a bunch of instructions everywhere. One of those "catch-22" questions of designs. Regardless, 10/10, would get incomprehensibly large again!
@Dingbat Thank you for playing my game and sorry for the existential dread haha
@richjbaron Thanks for the kind words, I'm so glad you liked it :)
@mode-0x13 I'm so glad you liked the humor. I never know if a joke will land until after the game is done. Thanks for the feedback ^.^
@candlesan You're very kind. I'm glad my game made you smile :D
@ramchops-games Thank you for playing my game and thanks for taking the time to leave the kind feedback! Are you sure the Blobs were trying to summon a demon to destroy you? I wonder what would happen if someone loaded the game on a fresh browser page and didn't step on any Blobs for 3 levels ;)
@sviborg Thank you for the kind words! That's exactly What I was going for. I'm not a skilled game developer so I go for basic concepts. Hearing that people got a couple of minutes of simple fun out of my game is very rewarding for me.
@atahan Thanks for playing my game! I'm glad folks play long enough to notice the "twist". I needed a way to end the game. Originally I wanted to have a world devouring monster like Cthulhu show up but as you can tell, my artistic skills leave much to be desired so I opted for a humble asteroid in the end, haha
<3 You're too kind ^.^
@hubol Thanks for playing my game, I'm glad you liked the ending! I always run out of time when I participate in Ludum Dare, so I panic and upload a sprite from the game as the thumbnail/cover. In retrospect, it wouldn't have taken much time to take a screenshot of my game instead. Oh well, it doesn't look sexy but I like my little puddle of blood too :)
@diabolical-sloth Thanks for taking the time to play my game! I agree, I wish I had added some music. That's one of those things I always run out of time for
@nazariglez Thanks for the kind words! I agree, I had recorded a few more sound effects (which are in the source code zip) for missing your stomps that I didn't get to use.
@thomas-bringer Thanks for taking the time to try out my game, I appreciate the kind words
@sdcorpse Thank you, thank you! :3
@ecaterina Thank you for noticing! Yes I didn't want the players to feel bad about hurting them. More importantly, the Blobs have a strong union and I didn't want them getting hurt on set while doing their own stunts. The lawsuits would have bankrupted me :)
@nonnen Thank you, I'm so happy you liked the game! Normally, sound is the last thing I work on and most of my LudamDare attempts have no sound or music. However this time, very early on I realized I need to make the stomping more satisfying for it to work at all. Adding sound seemed like the best way to do it.
@fint Thanks for playing my game Blob-brother! :D
@samuel-fine Thank you for the kind words! I was going for the "guilty pleasure" of popping a zit or some bubble-wrap. My game doesn't really have depth so I felt like I should keep it short and give it a dramatic ending to hold the player's attention. :)
@exa Thanks for playing my game and thanks for the pupper :3
@daniel-finch Thank you, that's a good suggestion! I wanted to go for something super quick that everyone would finish before it overstayed its welcome, but an optional longer level would have been good :)
@aurailus Thank you for the kind words, I'm glad you liked the humor! sorry about the the full screen issue.
I love the sense of humor!. I'm sorry your original concept didn't come together but thank you for pushing through and submitting this :D
Nice game! I liked the visual style and the level layout. Kind of like a "metroidvania" game :)
Gave me a certain Nintendo vibe for some reason. Great job on Audio and mood.
Great jam game, I got a sense of whimsy and wonder! I think it would really elevate the experience if the player could sense more feedback or impact from their actions or their enemy's. The art was fantastic, probably the best I've seen so far this LudamDare. Well done to all of you :)
Took me a while but I got there in the end! I like the deck building system and how it can snowball towards the end Screenshot 2024-10-07 200721.png
Wow you knocked it out of the park with this one! I'm going to get my bragging rights in before I get Buried in the scoreboard I got #2 not that far from the number 1 spot ( @melektaus well played sir)
Screenshot 2025-10-10 232234.png
I think you are really good at having the player do "exploration" but in mechanics and systems, instead of spaces. I remember the last game I played from you (Dwarf) also had a very similar vibe with trying to balance somewhat abstract resources/concepts (my head canon is that the two games are in the same universe!). I think this is a very innovative and smart approch.
I might have found a bug but I'm not sure. I tried to really push the quality to see what would happen past grade 5 and I got this. It may have been just trying to tell me that I overcooked my egg, but it was a little jarring to see
Screenshot 2025-10-10 231654.png
I really like the satisfying interface too. The pixel art is clean and together with the sound effects, they really make clicking the various buttons enjoyable. While my monkey brain was trying to do math, my lizard brain was going "no think. I want press button! >:C". All in all a great experience!
Having inventory management be the main gameplay loop was a cool concept. How did I do? :) Screenshot 2025-10-07 231536.png
I wasn't smart enough to get past the level marked "Omen", but I enjoyed my time while playing! The siren sound effect and abstract art made the game feel kind of spooky and post apocalyptic for me. The initial on-boarding is not very intuitive but once I got past the first level and learned what to do, I was able to complete several levels fairly quickly. I'm sorry that you had to give up on the story and collection aspect, but I think your main game play loop is solid. Congrats!
Very nice game! I found it strangely evocative, so I'll include some more detailed items below. Don't take them too seriously, I'm just writing down my thoughts in case you find them entertaining or interesting 😅
I got 3 outcomes the king winning, the high priest winning, and greed ruining things for everyone. I like it when games have multiple endings, even when there is only one "winning" outcome. It at least gives an illusion of narrative interactivity and player agency.
I think the main trading game is very engaging, giving players an intuitive risk/reward dilemma. However, to play the game "optimally", the player has to spend 90% of the time looking at the enemy hand. I'm not sure there is a way to "solve" this, or if it is even a problem at all. It just reminds me of some MMO experiences where instead of looking at all the characters etc, players stare at their cool-down timers.
Potentially controversial, but I think your use of randomness was the right choice, and very clever. In a commercially released game, players can expect a more sophisticated AI, with complex algorithms etc. In a game jam where we have ~48 hours, using "smoke and mirrors" tactics is the right choice IMO. Even though the AI choices seem to be random, my brain kept assigning meaning to the moves like "this king really likes his chickens" or "he is bluffing!"
Something else that I like about your game is the narrative design. Even though the game doesn't have a "story", there is narrative and drama delivered by the setup and gameplay. There are also the right kinds of blank spaces there for the player to fill with their own imagination. I think a lot of good fiction tends to leave room for mystery and fan speculation. The tricky part is knowing what to leave out without making the audience feel frustrated. In the context of your game, I'm imagining cosmic horrors and supernatural forces secretly fighting over the world. This may or may not be what you had in mind as the author, but that usually doesn't matter in the few minutes players get to interact with a game here.
TLDR: Cool game, I liked it! 👍
I'm not a good bargain hunter, I wasn't able to purchase 3 of the games with only a few cents left. It was a little freaky seeing my username. I assume you know my bank account number and mother's maiden name now X__X.
Very neat concept. You emulated the store well and I liked the parodies. As a player I was confused at a few different times. For example, I played the game 3 times before I saw the ending screen. On one hand I wish there was more hinting the player to what was supposed to happen, On the other hand I understand that doing so would go against the design and aesthetic choices you were going for, so I don't know what I would do in your shoes. Either way you have made a fun and creative game. well done!
Just for laughs I'm going to answer your question with "Tomato". Technically you can't disqualify it as an answer 😜
This is a very cozy game with cute art. I also like the little sway animation. IMO little details like that add character and life to the game!
(I wrote a comment earlier but can't see it now so I'll try writing it again. If you see two copies that's why, sorry 😅)
I don't think I've played anything quite like it before and it all works well together. For some reason it made me feel like I was in a Red Letter Media video too which is a plus. On one of the levels I ended up with no shelves (only the empty wooden one) to pick from and had to wait out the timer. I wasn't sure if it was a commentary on the state of video rentals in the early 2000s, but that's my head canon now. Big mood! Great concept and Very cozy. 👍
Congrats on making the compo deadline! Instantly fun and intuitive. As soon as the first bit of gold gets stolen players will feel that " PUT IT BACK! >:C" energy that gets them hooked. As others have stated, the horde rolling around is a great touch since it leads to desperate attempts at putting things back together.It started to feel like they were my eggs and I needed to put them back in the nest. This is elegant!
Neat game specially for 48 hours. Initially I was confused but it clicked pretty quickly after a few tries. At the start of the game, Some kind of thematically appropriate indicator (like dotted lines) for where the ship was going would probably make it easier for players to pick up what was happening. On the other hand, letting the player trial and error their way is an element of exploration too, so I can see it both ways
A very polished experience, it felt like a slice out of a full game! As everyone else has already mentioned the Art team really knocked it out of the park with this one. Both the visuals and the music set up the atmosphere perfectly. well done
Very neat concept and I like it! Since I found your game thought provoking, I'm going to write a long comment. This is not because I think I know what I am talking about, but because I think one of the reasons we all do LudumDare is to share our Ideas. My comments are also based on the assumption that you want to develop this idea to a longer experience. Anyway here are my rambling thoughts in case you are interested:
I don't know how this compares with your other game ("Healing Hitler"'s link Doesn't load for me) but it's clear to me that you are interested in the psychology of history, and the history of psychology. Your basic game play concept is solid as well. It is essentially a visual novel with some luck based outcomes as well as the normal node based conversations. If I had thought of this concept, I would be tempted to experiment with 2 categories of items
Presentation: The models sitting in the therapy room are impressive and realistic, but since we are talking about a video game, we are not limited to reality. In addition to the therapy room, its possible to have surreal representations of thoughts somewhere on screen, maybe Stalin can have a flashback to his drunken dad giving him a beating, or maybe we could see some period photos or artwork relevant to the dialog. We could go the other way as well, stripping away the room and just leaving the chairs and the two characters present. There are many creative choices to make. Just staying in the therapy room with two models is a valid one, but I would just want to examine some of the other concepts before saying they don't fit in. Another presentation item is informing the player. I like history and I know what a kulak was, but you can't assume all players will. This doesn't mean you can't teach them. For example having some kind of encyclopedia where the player can click on a word to learn about it is one way to help the players learn about history and psychology. I think the players will like learning and also enjoy the game more when they have learned more. Then again, maybe I'm just a nerd because I remember reading all of the civilopedia entries as a kid while playing Sid Meier's civilization 3.
Mechanics: Visual novel players will happily sit for hours and read through dialogue, but other engaging elements could add something to the game. Of course QTE are a simple way to add engagement for players, but they tend to get annoying fast so you would need a lot of variety. Trackers and resources are another way of adding engagement. It looks like currently, paranoia should always come down and trust should always go up. That's good but imagine another variable that you needed to keep between two values. Whether it got too high or too low, it would create tension. The player will see this and try and steer the conversation back to where they want it to be. My last item is RPG elements. Over the course of many therapy sessions maybe your character can become better at certain things, for example an increased chance for Freudian school options, or a penalty to other schools. That's just an example. The point is having mechanical touch-points for the role playing, whatever form that may take. I think RPG elements are kind of the interface between the character and the player.
Anyway the TLDR is that I think You and your partner did a great job for the jam, and I think there are a lot of directions it could go in if you wanted to expand on it
@pres2300 Thanks for the kind words, and thanks for sharing your process! Regarding the arrows, yeah I ended up slowing them a bit and giving the player plenty of HP. I don't know if it's necessarily good advice, but I feel like it's better for short compo games like mine to be too easy rather than too hard. I don't have any real data to back that up though, so I'm open to change my stance. Thanks again for the feedback!
@tardis2snej Thanks for playing my game! The narrator was a bit mean in that ending but you got the moral victory, so you are a winner in my book 🏆
@akuta-zehy Thanks so much for your feedback which helped me make a patch. It means a lot to me that you took the time to get multiple endings of the story, write about it, and post screenshots too. I hope you find a million dollars! Also, nice website. 🐟
You got it exactly right with the bugs. I didn't fill the HP up again so the game would always think the player is dead after the first time X__X. The collision boxes were a mess from the start. My issue was that when they looked right, they would not register hits reliably. I knew I wouldn't have time to figure it out properly so I just increased the size so the game would be in a "playable" state by the deadline. You are right with the chicken script too. I'm sorry you had to see that. As a software engineer it probably gave you a heart attack, but desperate times call for desperate measures. I was running out of time 🫣.
@balimaarthebassfish Thanks for the kind words! Those archers have watched the 2008 classic "Wanted" with Angelina Jolie. They have mastered the art of curving bullets. I wouldn't expect any less from the king's elite archer squad! 😜. Jokes aside, yeah it's very derpy looking, and I didn't have enough time to do anything about it. Hope it made you smile :)
@artillepsy Hi! There is just one level so you beat the game 🎉. Thanks to feedback from you and another user I was able to patch the game so it doesn't freeze at the end. It will still abruptly start a new run, but It should be a bit less jarring than how it used to be, with everything just crashing.
I agree that the visuals were ... not great😅. Unfortunately this is one of the aspects of the game that I probably could not improve even if I had time. Apart from not being able to draw well, I also have little artistic taste (For example, I'm one of those people that unironically likes comic sans). If I worked in a team with others they could probably cover for this weakness but Compo is a solo task, so I have to get better at this 😬
I agree with your feedback about the gameplay too. I wish I had more time to make the game more engaging but I think there is another element at play here as well (no pun intended). The game has a few different endings and gives you a report card with some comments on who you chose to kill. I think If I cut all of that out I would have time for a an additional enemy type or at least enough time to give the player a better attack. Doing that doesn't feel right to me though. I like it when games feel like they are responding to my decisions and I want to include that feeling in my games when I can. Of course this is not a good excuse and I agree the game play ended up very simplistic in the end.
@triggthediscovery Thanks for playing my game and for the kind words!
@torte478 Thanks, You're the first person to comment on this! I know my game is very basic but I tried to do a little bit of "environmental story telling". Not very obvious when the art assets are so basic 😅
@eugenik Thanks for the kind words! It's not much but I'd like to think I become a little less bad with every game. The positive energy of the folks here helps :)
@huihang Thanks for the kind words! Your collecting souls for the gods, and they dont seem to care if it is animals or people. The ending depends and what kinds of souls you collected :)
@xlambein I appreciate you playing multiple times to see different endings! Also thanks for your nice comment. Here is my attempt at explaining the arrows:
Originally I wanted the arrows to face the player on instantiation, but had trouble with making it work. (The arrows always appeared to spawn facing ~20-40 degrees off). I tried a couple of quick things to fix it which did not work. I'm an inexperienced solo contestant so when things don't work, my strategy is to just move on so I can do other things before the deadline. I think what is happening is that the arrows attempt to face the player, and even though they can't, they still get some rotation force applied to them that makes them arc or move in a curve. Ill have to experiment with it to be sure.
@jimbly Thanks for the kind words! Since you didn't get to see them, I'll talk about the endings a bit just in case you are interested. If not, thanks for playing my silly game <3
There are 4 "victory screens". After the scoresheet page, the game looks at which soul types you collected at least two of (except for the rulers). I didn't want to penalize the player too much for accidents so having a margin of error of 1 "free" kill seemed like a good Idea. The conditions for specific endings are somewhat arbitrary. For example if you play a run killing only chickens, you get one of the "secret" endings, or if you get at least 2 of every human type but no animals you get another one because you were kind to the animals. I wanted to have a lot more endings but Even with 4 I ran out of time. As it is, the end screen has the whisp-like entity from the start making a joke or pun about your choices. If I had better time management (or any artistic talent 😅) I would have liked to have a unique art piece for each ending. Unfortunately as always I ran out of time so here we are :)
@ciphereo Thanks for playing my game! I usually don't get time to add music to my games so I'm really happy to hear you think it adds to the game! I did want things to be a bit eerie. For example what is your character? Is it a demon, an angel, an animal? I was going for something between all of these. Obviously my abilities are not great so it basically looks like a stick figure, but I think there is enough there to see it's supposed to be something weird
@bentglasstube Thanks for the kind words. It means a lot to me when I find out people play my game multiple times! Yes the arrows are ... not quite right 😅. Originally they were supposed to face the player on spawn, which they did not (and still do not) do. My attempts at fixing the orientation made them curve in flight, and I could not spend any more time on it. I moved on hoping it would at least be funny to some players 🫣. Thanks for the encouragements!
@6knowledge Thanks for playing my game and thanks for leaving a comment! Unfortunately the game over issue is a bug. I have fixed it in the patched version. There are two HTML5 links on this page. "HTML5 (Original) and "HTML5 (Patched)", screenshot available below. The 2nd one will no longer have this bug, allowing you to restart after your character dies. Thank you! Screenshot 2025-10-13 193152.png
@petitlu Thanks for Playing my game and taking the time to write! You are a natural! If those mortals wanted to keep their souls they shouldn't have angered the gods. I doubt they really needed them anyway 😈
@kiv Thanks! I like your style too :D
What a great game! I suppose the moral might be not to waste ones life and loose sight of what is important in life, but my man died doing what he loved. "One must imagine Sisyphus happy" 🏆
Yum Cup cake <3 . Shame one of your team members had to leave early but it looks like you were able to make the best of a sticky situation and make a sweet game! Godot is a fickle lady (as I guess all engines are). I dropped out of my last compo because I got dependency errors and Godot refused to acknowledge any of my main scenes on the last day. I don't know how it turned out for you guys, but in my case it was my own fault. It turns out if you use @export to pick packed scenes in editor and switch between them a lot in code, Godot doesn't like it. I learned how to work around it but by that point I'd had to remake the whole game in a day. Anyway what lovely game, I hope you guys are back at the next jam with something even more delicious!
Very intuitive and Good use of the theme. I had fun! I can't tell if this is a bug, feature, or something I hallucinated, but I think I died once and after the game over screen came up, the momentum of enemies hitting my body pushed me into a heart and the game went back to normal game-play 🤣
Both our games are about collecting souls, but you guys made a gorgeous cozy game about helping lost souls, while mine is just a top-down one about murder 🤣. Excellent work on the atmosphere. The combination of the art style, particle effects, and sounds really made it a nice experience
The client gave me an F, but its ok. I drank like 50 cups of their coffee so we are even!😈
Sorry I collected so many fruits that It broke itch.io . Im just that productive, and I have objective evidence for that fact now. Long live the queen, and her reasonable taxation system¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Screenshot 2025-10-15 212816.png
Really good game! I like the juggling/bouncing system where you can use the edges of the basket to keep objects in play. When I saw Vikfx's comment, it reminded me of the Nintendo game and watch too! There was one with folks jumping out of a burning building and you had to move a trampoline to make them bounce to safety. Its transformed into a nice risk/reward mechanic in your game and adds a little extra depth and interactivity to the game than it would otherwise have. The art is clean and clear as well. I don't know if it is intentional but it gave me a steampunk or Fantasy-Victorian vibe. Music and some kind of an end screen would have been nice but there is never enough time for everything with the tight deadlines so it's understandable that you decided to focus on the other stuff. Great work over all!
A nice twist on the snake mechanics. If I had to point at something to change I'd adding more feedback for the poison. When the snake runs into a wall, the player gets some screen shake and sound effect. When the snake tries to eat his tail, the player can see the anger cloud above the snake's head. However when the player eats the poison it's not immediately obvious what has happened, the same way it is with the other examples. Good work on the art too. I found both the audio and the visuals to be clean and charming🐁.
Very evocative visual novel. You did a great job with the Audio in particular. Hope you are doing well. 73!
Deceptively simple, this game got me hooked. To my shame I was not able to get above the $1600/day goal, but I'm hoping to come back and salvage my dignity :sweat: The multiplayer has a lot of potential too, I can see a coordinated group doing crazy things by connecting their networks. Well done on all fronts!
"The pipe game she tells you not to worry about" :fearful:
A Very cool game. I got to the level with 4 colours but that was just about the limits of my intellect. The retro space effects were an excellent addition. The core mechanics would still pull through without the extra thematic flare, but IMO, games really do need a little something extra sprinkled on top to make them feel nice to play. It didn't stop me from enjoying the game but I encountered a possible bug where after completing a level, the game froze in the "searching for signal" phase and I had to refresh. I'm on Win11 and Firefox. Thanks for another great LD game!
Good use of the Theme! I'm glad You had time to add the focus mode in the end. It adds quite a bit to the game. Also good work on the spooky levels! really added some mood :)
Hi! I'm going to leave you a tome to read because I'm a nerd who likes to talk about this stuff but my "TLDR" impression of your game is that I love it, and I hope I can play your next LD game too! Below are my wholly unqualified and inexpert opinions
There seems to be a consensus emerging in the comments that the scope of your project may have been too ambitious. While I can see that point of view, I'd like to be a contrarian and pursue a slightly different approach. I think your scope was ambitious but I also feel like you achieved ~%90 of what you needed to achieve for a quick Jam/demo game. In that context, I think your scope and its ambition was just fine. You clearly have skill and what you have so far is already impressive for the short time frame.
I feel like the weakest aspect of your game was the user experience. That might seem like a weird distinction to make, but I'd argue that in an alternative universe, you could have reduced the scope of your game by removing some game-play aspect, but that would not necessarily make the game easier to get into. I think that would require re-prioritizing work on how information is presented. Please allow me to bring up an example
When the events pop up they get a red circle around them to let you know you should pay attention. Nice! You have to cycle through them by using the next key. That is less intuitive than just clicking on the icon, but that's ok on its own. Maybe programming the clicking would be too time consuming or maybe the frantic cycling between the points of interest is an intentional design choice. Your selection indicator on the map is also a red circle. You stop to read the signal info panel which is small and easy to miss. You look back up. Now there are new events and their red circles look identical to the selection indicator and you can’t tell what’s what. A new player is fighting an uphill battle at every step of what I described
I’d like to end by reiterating that my experience with the game was very positive. On the 4th or 5th try I felt like I had the information to know what I was doing. At that point the game was not too hard or complicated at all. The theme was great as well. I like the idea of an overworked alien having to look after earth as he is downing a cup of space coffee and sweating profusely.
Screenshot 2026-04-22 185614.png
Great puzzle I am not smart enough to solve. My initial reaction on seeing the .png files in the archives was thinking of the Gold plated disks we have sent to space showing potential aliens what we look like. I didn't even think of sentence structure or anything like that :nerd: . I didn't get far but I still got a lot of enjoyment out of your game while I played it.
Great work! I don't know if there is a name for it but I really like the way that instead of having a UI element floating around, You present the code names on a piece of paper that remains visible on multiple views. As you have mentioned in your responses, the time limit makes it very hard to really tie things together but I see a lot of potential in the narrative aspect too. My highlight in that regard was when in day 6 I got a message that said Unknown: Please stop this" 👀 . Pretty simple in the grand scheme of things but enough to make the player think "What am I doing?" and "are we the baddies?" :sweat_smile:
I like the abstract narrative tokens mechanic. Reminds me of games like "Fallen London" and "Cultist Simulator". Well done on the post jam version as well. The colours help the tokens stand out better there
Top notch compo game! Striking visuals, moody atmosphere and innovative game design. I appreciate the hint system and the video you recently added ^. It was intuitive that the wide would be a rough estimate and narrow would be for detail examination, but I initially underestimated how useful the beam is at its narrowest setting!
@kristinamay Thank you so much for the kind words! I was hoping the "^^^" would signify that when you press it something will pop up, but in retrospect, I can see that it is very unclear. :sweat_smile:
I don't know if these count as "spoilers" but here is more info on the stations. Two stations have talking but not in English. One is a nursery rhyme in Farsi, the other is a stressed out German junior officer letting his commander know he is retreating from something :smiling_imp: I remember as a kid playing with my dad's pocket radio and listening to all kinds of foreign languages I didn't understand. I wanted to recreate a feeling like that. I generally went with "vibes" over substance with the channels :sweat_smile:
@pres2300 I'm so happy you found it fun. I was worried that just moving a slider would get boring for people :heart:
@helagos Thank you for listening! My mechanics are really simple so I tried to give it some flavor with the audio :smiley:
@purpledartfrog Thanks for playing! Was the German even understandable? I don't actually speak German and my exposure to the language is mostly just from old music. I had to do so many takes to get "zurückziehen" in one breath :sweat_smile: I'm So glad you decided to go back and give it another listen for the officer. I'll have you know he made it out unharmed, and is currently being interrog... debriefed at headquarters :)
@richjbaron Thanks for the kind words! I totally agree on the lack of punishment. Originally I had a fail-state in mind where if you messed up more than a couple of times, the end-slide would show the monster destroying the world with a message implying that it's your fault. Unfortunately that ended being cut due to lack of time. I must have been an EA executive in a past life or something because I tend to go with a minimum viable game when the alternative is being late :sweat_smile:
@ursagames Thanks for playing! I 100% agree with your suggestion. I think I got tunnel vision since I have buttons in all my games and I am not as familiar with text input fields. Having the answer be a player text input would resolve the problem without requiring me to work on multiple endings. Efficiency! :nerd:
@catanus Thanks for the kind feedback! I've read somewhere that the human mind tends to put relatively more value in how experiences start and end (specially end). Having some kind of ending is pretty high on my priority list. I don't have the skill for anything impressive but at least I can give the players a place to land and contextualize their experience. End slides are relatively quick and easy so even I can't mess them up ... most of the time :sweat_smile:
@bentglasstube Thanks for putting up with my sense of humor :sweat_smile: I was going for the really absurd kinds of conversations you would hear on Monty Python, or certain stations on GTA radio. I had a few ideas on how to cause unexpected "complications" for the player. That was my most mischievous one so I put it in the game :smiling_imp:
@fnelix @asieke Thanks for your constructive feedback! Maybe having a screenshot which points out the intractable element could have helped. I'll try that on my next game and compare the feedback :thinking:
@atmospherium Thanks for the kind words! I'm happy that you liked the content. If you break it down, the "mechanics" are just a few buttons, and some volume controls with two sliders, and the game engine (Godot) handled most that too. This bought me extra time which I used to experiment in Audacity to give the game a little bit of character with the extra content. :nerd:
I agree with you on player frustration. Ideally a hint system would have been nice, but I was not going to get it done in time. IMO having the game be too easy to finish is always better than too hard, unless the difficulty is the "selling" point for you.
@mizaless Thank you, thank you! I had to spend some time and think about some ways to make the tasks more difficult without just making the numbers bigger. I'm glad you found it pleasant :smiley_cat:
Absolutely unhinged in the best way imaginable! No joke, it made me feel whimsy and wonder like a kid again :heart:
I like your game! Good atmosphere and mood. It has an eerie sense of mystery to it.
Good puzzles! I like how tactile the interface felt. I think the clear art and audio you made. I don't know if it was by design or if I did something wrong on my side, but The music would fade out completely after a while for me. pressing mute and then unmute would fixed it for a bit. Regardless, I had fun playing the game. I got to level 11 :)
Clever game! I love the theme and 80s aesthetics like the previous commenters. I also want to take a minute and thank you for the devlog! Knowing how other people make games is one of the main reasons I do LudumDare and I wished everyone talked a little about how the sausage is made. Your cutting room ideas sounded very thematic and fun. If drugs-induced fist fights on the trading floors are not 80s, I don't know what is!
Wow what an elegant game! From the puzzle design to the flavor text, this game is oozing with character. I like the minimalist art and the clean interface. I beat the game pretty quickly, but I think I did the puzzles "wrong" because instead of doing math in my head, I just made patterns and adjusted them based on the graphs. I think that is another sign of elegant designs. Different users can interact with them differently, but still feel satisfied. Very impressive!