Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → novodantis
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | Co | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | 42 | Running out of space | Vogon Constructors Ltd | jam | 917 | 3.09 | 2.72 | 3.21 | 3.20 | 3.45 | 2.82 | 3.45 | 3.10 | ||
| 2017 | 38 | A Small World | Microspace | jam | 264 | 3.57 | 3.00 | 3.14 | 3.66 | 4.00 | 3.66 | 3.76 | |||
| 2016 | 37 | One room | StormRunner | jam | 293 | 3.56 | 3.00 | 3.75 | 3.44 | 3.69 | 3.50 | 3.56 | 33 | ||
| 2015 | 32 | An Unconventional Weapon | Sling | jam | 195 | 3.62 | 3.42 | 3.35 | 3.58 | 3.69 | 2.91 | 2.75 | 45 | ||
| 2013 | 28 | You Only Get One | LITH | jam | 95 | 3.54 | 3.30 | 2.79 | 2.74 | 3.74 | 3.78 | 2.06 | 4.15 | 56 |
I like the 8 bit feel to it all and the one key mechanic is done well except for one point that confuses me: the K key becomes a warp back after you've used your key. At that point you need to restart anyway as the labyrinth becomes unwinnable (if I'm understanding it correctly), so would it not make sense that k would reset the level too?
It's taken me far too long to get around to playing this, but I'm glad I did! I love the chirpy, upbeat feel and the music reminds me of the Megadrive/Genesis synth chip in the best possible way. Brilliant reversal of the idea of winning a prize, that also fits the theme with a pun to boot. Difficulty ramps up nicely, also.
If I was to add anything, it would be a selection to be Jaden or John. It wouldn't do anything, but you could claim DOUBLE the playable characters =P
I think this is an idea well worth pursuing, there's a lot that could be done with things like varying threat (you can try to smooth talk a guy or you can shout and wave a gun at him) to try and get different information. The biggest thing it could benefit from is a random element to introduce replayability, but I understand that would have been tough in the time allotted!
I say! Spiffingly funny!
Very interesting use of the theme. Thought-provoking stuff.
A really superb little music/puzzle game. One of the most fun and addictive in the Jam, for me!
Simple and easy to play, although it quickly gets very hard. Jumping left in particular felt like a mental reprogram. Overal a nice implementation of the one-button mechanic.
Very enjoyable take on the Last Bullet theme! There's a lot of polish here, great characterisation & music and it plays well. Number of ricochets as a score incentive is clever, although not immediately apparent to the player. Took me a while to complete some of the later levels, but it never felt impossible.
That enemy death sound is hilarious
A neat and rather ambitious concept; unfortunately I feel that the atmosphere does suffer for that lack of sound!
Hilarious, frustrating and highly playable
Love it! And loving the cheeky little To Be or Not To Be reference in there, too.
Thanks all!
Also, apologies for the clumsy Google Drive link, I knew I shoulda used Dropbox...
I'm definitely looking to neaten this up for a post-Dare version (and make the Liths a bit more sophisticated; my attempts to smooth their movement resulted in them being frustratingly conservative with their paths).
Well written, nice art and very well polished. I thought the theme was really nicely implemented.
Agree with most of the points raised by other players, but I really liked the feel of this game!
Pretty inventive, but it is indeed rather hard. The random placement after going off the top of the screen makes it very hard to stay in control. I found the most success seemed to be had by holding down the button and hoping for the best. Sound was a definite plus; simple, but effective.
Neat idea. I actually scribbled down "RTS with 1 unit" as a possible idea, but crossed it off when I had no idea how that would work. But this pulls it off rather well. My main gripe would be that it felt under-paced, but that's minor given the challenge met.
Very innovative visuals.
Love the concept and the challenge of it, but I feel the difficulty is more in the control than the gameplay. The docking ring appeared to be on the upper side of the ship, but the view seemed to be rotated 90 degrees which made it a lot harder somewhat arbitrarily. Despite the frustrations, its a cool concept. Love the Interstellar difficulty.
Cool game! Interesting control system and the visuals are tidy.
I like the rope tool, the angle threshold made using it a real skill that was great when it worked, although it could get frustrating at times. Look and feel is so spot on; this is one of my favourites here.
Would love to see this with more meat on the gameplay bones (the moving platform glitch was also a pain, but it's one I'm all too familiar with from the old days of making platformers). I really loved the story and the mood was great. Nice dialogue, too.
Slick animation and great humour in this. The controls are tight and the whole thing exudes polish. I agree the levels could use a little more variety and music would be really great, but what's here is all top stuff.
Love the art style. But that sure is one flamboyant stealth drone =P
Spent way too long firing out blackcurrent dudes and then trying to flip them into the back of the truck again...
Thanks guys! Yeah I wanted to make the pulling mechanism more varied but physics just wasn't playing nice to allow time for it!
Regarding the crosshair, it is a very hacky rangefinder how it currently is. As the aiming point moves down and to the left the closer the target is, it actually helps to show only the furthest relevant dot. Of course, one that is painted on a "laserpoint" raycast would have been even better.
Oh, well that's annoying! I'm not sure why that might be; perhaps a problem with PBS rendering? I'll be making some webplayer versions so hopefully you might have more luck with those.
@ironleonem - Yes, indeed! On my original To-Do list (sadly unticked) are for the soldiers to move around every now and then and for them to be alerted by the sight of the clamp or a body. I'd like to add those in post-jam, but then I always say that and never seem to find the time...
Superb, probably my favourite so far! Great design, slick implementation and airships, what more could you want?
I like all the little touches too; like the way the high audio frequencies cut out when you respawn.
Winner of Most Unlikely Divine Rampage award, easily.
Would scoop again.
Very well put together, the audio really helps the atmosphere too
Really nice concept; pretty inventive style of play and well polished. Didn't have any issue with the camera control. The complete restart was harsh, but then... um, I'm guilty of that one too.
Btw, I uploaded a webplayer version of Sling, you may have more luck with it than the download? (its a longshot, but I'm not sure what the problem was caused by)
Very cool concept; I found the first section very tough though.
Tough game, but I like the concept. Pulling off a bullet dodge is satisfying.
Really good fun! Hard to hit opponents, though this does make successful hits all the more satisfying.
I loved this! Not only did it have a great visual style, the gameplay was rather novel and engaging too.
Great mood and aesthetics. Despite being pretty simplistic, it's tight and very well made.
Neat idea and pretty well executed. Could have done with some sound effects, but other than that it was a good use of the theme.
It's a tough game, but pretty interesting. Lack of sound prevents the mood from being that immersive, though.
What it lacks in replayability it makes up for with cute catchiness!
Apologies for the controls issue on the windows build, controls had mistakenly changed to Z and X; this should now be fixed (you can also set the controls in the Input panel of the startup loader).
Great concept. There's a refreshing feel to it all, but I just couldn't seem to get the interplanetary travel working. I really enjoyed the art stil and effects animations.
Very simple but wonderfully packaged and felt polished. The camera pulling out at the ending was a nice touch.
I see what you mean; yeah a very different take indeed! I love the implementation of game mechanics around real-world mechanics here. Art and sound are cute; I agree the music loop is maybe too short for the session time (stuff like that is always really hard to pick up on in a games jam). I liked how you introduced the organs gradually with the activity of the day. Going forward, it'd be good to see the day's activities causing strong dips in the oxygen levels of certain areas, maybe with a rough outline so that you could get an element of strategy going, to break out of the "okay I'm at the lungs, what organ's lowest?" pattern.
In all, I really enjoyed it. Also, who doesn't love a punny title? =)
Short but sweet! As with any other game of this genre, you tend to be either completely stumped or breezing through. It was enjoyable and atmospheric, though.
This is a really polished entry graphically; I had some issues with the controls because I was using a gamepad (the buttons seemed to be keyboard only but movement worked). Great voice acting and the music was just right.
EDIT: So yeah to be fair it works much better on keys, hence you only gave key controls. Still found it a bit tricky to use right/left throws past my WASD hand but the gameplay on here is pretty tight!
MOAR EDIT: Also I think with this beautiful art it would hugely benefit from a thumbnail in the game listing!
I enjoyed this one, especially once I better figured out what I was doing. I came close to the end on playthrough 2, but was then informed Atlantis fell; though it seemed to still be okay. Perhaps because one of the towers sank?
In any case, I think I grasped the overall strategy and I think the immersive feel here is spot on. Was pleasantly reminded of Greed Corp (what with all the collapsing hexes), as well as the boardgame Forbidden Island. I'd be interested to see where you take this, given time to tighten the UX and presentation.
Very cinematic, especially for an LD.
I think I broke everything when I possessed a T-Rex and accidentally stood on my drone.
@jason-kennedy Linux build is up!
Thanks for the feedback, all. Now available on Linux and Mac too; please let me know if those versions work =)
Updated the builds to fix a controller axis compatibility issue on some platforms. While doing so, I've made it so you can control with purely the keyboard; left CTRL/Command should be fire and the arrows control pitch & yaw.
Also, if anyone is having trouble with the controls, I highly recommend trying both modes (pressing Y at the title screen): Forward=down (AKA 'flight' mode) and Forward=up ('FPS' mode). Also, controlpad feels a lot nicer if you can hook one up.
@joemid Yup, definitely considering an educational-but-fun human body voyage simulator. It'd make learning biology so much more fun if you could be like "So today class, we're going into our Microsubs and taking a look up close..."
@julianeder33 Yeah, those seams are so ugly, but alas the only way I could figure to do junctions was to make preset meshes for them (the main tunnels themselves are dynamically made from splines). With a little more time I could probably come up with a better way that looks more organic.
@all Thanks again for all the great feedback, and helping us finally reach the 20 mark =)
As others have said, it's a very overwhelming game at first. I died a few times before figuring things out, but it seems like there's a lot of potential for strategic nuance here.
A cute world and an easy-to-grasp mechanic make it very approachable. I liked the little touches like variation on the laser sound and the detailed lighting. I think the addition of "destroy FX" on enemy death would go a long way to making the combat more satisfying & clearer, but overall an enjoyable entry!
This is really cool! Simple-looking, but there's a lot to play with in the gravitational mechanics. Starts to get particularly interesting when multiple planets are involved.
10/10 would launch shell into neighbouring planet's orbit again
Took me a while to spot that drop-down build menu and the info panel appearing when I chose where to build something was a tad confusing, but there's a lot here for so short a time in development. Unexpectedly, the dialogue was my favourite part of this.
This is a rather fantastic example of how great worldbuilding doesn't have to take itself seriously. The length and character in this was hugely impressive for a games jam. This really isn't the kind of idea I'd expect to be able to pull off in so short a time, but you guys did so with style! I'm looking forward to seeing more of this one =)
I enjoyed the music, thought it really fit the art and feel nicely. Wasn't a fan of the way the weapon cooldown only advancing while the fire button is being pressed... took me a while to figure out that's why my cannon fire never seemed ready. Once I'd figured it though, it was very easy to go indefinitely with four cannons and the fire button held down.
The little upgrades/shop dude was also really cool.
I found this one to be pretty interesting. Something about it reminded me of the simple fun I had making space games that got me so into Unity in the first place. It's a shame you ran out of time before you could add in more playable elements, but striking the right balance with how much time you spend on what is exactly the sort of thing you'll improve on as you do more jams!
I'd like to offer a few points of critique that stood out for me: - When making title text, always consider the background! I think light-coloured text would work better here. - Whack up the resolution/tiling of the starfield by a few factors, I think it'd make a big difference - I didn't notice if there was already, but a slight randomisation on even simple elements can add a lot of replayability.
Anyway, good luck with future games! =)
A nice looking game with challenging gameplay. The controls were quite tricky, but the concept of saving the fishes being the main objective made it feel more varied than a straightforward shooter.
Glad I finally got around to playing this, it's great fun once you get the hang of it. I imagine even better with human opponents, but the AI did a pretty good job.
Rashlander is a superb name. Tells me right away what I need to know: it's a bit like the mechanics of Lander but I will be taking ALL the risks.
A great game, but yeah pretty unforgiving. Area 4 was the furthest I could get.
I do like that saving fuel in early good performance is important, but perhaps some kind of refuelling mechanic (powerups, time bonus etc) so that it doesn't just feel like a lost cause if you have low fuel by area 2.
Well, managed to escape the lab! After an admittedly shaky start not really knowing what I was doing. Main thing that it took me a while to grasp was that the list of microbes (with their three letter names) are *individuals*. And you can only take one of those as the foundation of the next generation, after modifying a few traits as DNA points allow. I especially liked watching for "heroic" ones (bashing the crap outta Flu), noting their name, then going straight to selecting them for improvement at the end of the generation. That soon had them kicking ass, but it takes a while before they start doing notable things.
A lot of fun! Definitely potential in this.
I thought they were human players at first (I took the other meaning of "play online"). But then I started doing well, so clearly they weren't =P
Takes a while for the difficulty to pick up, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Surprisingly very addictive. I feel like I should have been planning ahead based on what was coming up, but in practice that was much harder than just hammering at matches as fast as I could. Wasn't sure if different items also had additional effects, such as healing you when matched? If not, I think this would be an interesting way to add variety to the items themselves.
The combined effects of unit placement on their Attack/Defence was initially confusing, as I couldn't work out how the enemy were always so strong! But the feature definitely adds a large amount of depth to combat. I liked the styling and the UI felt very solid.
It's been said by others, but I'd like to just reiterate that the ending transition where you actually fly is excellent. I could see it being left out by more utilitarian designers, but I actually think it's pretty important. Apart from serving as a momentary breather, it somehow makes all that frantic fitting together feel like it was worth it :)
Thanks for the feedback!
@echo-team I had hoped to put a little more info into the main view, which would have made navigating the map outside of planetary selection a lot less bewildering, no doubt. But yes, many things dropped to time constraints!
Thanks all!
@reax Haha, but now you don't have anywhere to go between! Except maybe... neighbouring jurisdictions, but of course that is completely out of the question. You'd need a new form, for starters.
@justinmullin Glad you liked the look and feel! I know what you mean about the gameplay though, I think. There's much to do in terms of balance and making the whole thing more comprehensible. Right now its hard to get a sense of the overall strategic situation and, as @erikiene points out, you can indeed get lost pretty easily. I did plan several features to mitigate that. One was a gradual "lerping" of the camera when selecting a planet (rather than instant teleport, which can be disorientating). I also wanted to have a horizontal grid from which all the planets would have lines drawn out of, with name tags and income shown without selecting. I think this sort of reference point would help make it a little less overwhelming!
Hey! Thanks for playing my game; tried this back when the link was down, but now I see it's working and thus gave it a go.
A classic use of the theme, the sinking island is a powerful motivator. I'm sure you had many more ideas to implement... always the way of LD. Still, what's here seems to work and forms a loop of gameplay, even if aspects of it still need fleshing out.
Plays really well, managed to survive for 6 years just about. The feeling of running out of space is captured perfectly.
Cleared space for the Vive again, looking forward to giving this a go in the next couple of days
I had fun bopping away the things flying at me, though it took me a while to figure out the grip buttons are what let you pick up the hammer (despite the physical dissonance, the trigger tends to be the norm in most other experiences I've tried).
I think it's tough getting feedback for a VR-only entry, but I may well do one in a future as there's a lot of interesting ideas to explore :)
Simple, but very nicely done and an excellent take on the theme. Controls did seem a little rough at the edges, but then they are absolutely core to the gameplay so getting them perfect just isn't doable in a Jam timeframe I think. It was certainly highly playable and nicely complete, but there's plenty of room for expansion on the idea; like recording Best Times and moving beams.
One of my favourites so far (and not just for being a fellow alien-intergalactic-transport-system game :) ). The level of polish here is stunning; animations, flourishes and sound design. Nor does the gameplay let it down, either; presenting a tricky balance of needs and interesting exchanges between the alien types. Top job.
Moving the walls to splat aliens was highly satisfying! I like the balance between crew and walls, deciding what to spend that one precious move on was tough. Once you understand how it all works, you can really keep on top of things for a while through careful spreading out of your crew to cover all bases... but as soon as it starts to go down the pan, it's pretty much time to abandon ship, haha!
In all, really enjoyed it :)
I love it. There's definitely something satisfying about the movement. Even though the EVA aspect is hard to balance, its great to have the option and really helps to flesh it out into a more rounded experience.
The penalty twist was a great addition to an otherwise-straightforward rhythm game. I found the timing sometimes felt contrary to my instinct, but then I'm neither a drummer nor a dancer. Great use of theme and innovation overall.
Found it hard to figure out if I was doing the right thing, but overall heartily encourage wholesale destruction of planets B-)
Combining the lunar lander mechanic with tetris worked really well. There's a few issues, such as the 5-wide blocks causing an unavoidable game-over if they're your first block, but this idea has a lot of potential.
I found this one to be pretty fun, the variation in voices and the quotes was a nice touch. Overall management seemed to have enough depth but still be easy to grasp. Wasn't a fan of the minimap rotating with the player (especially given that the main view did not); I prefer a consistent north, but it's more the discrepancy between the map and main view that felt disorientating. Other than that small niggle, it was pretty solid!
I quite like @Sidnoea's idea. Routing from the start point would leave some element of random failure, but routing from the player's position would mean if you went slow enough, it would always be possible. That might still work well, as you score better by speeding up.
An interesting eventuality to this approach would be if you came to remove a tile and there was no tile that could be removed without blocking out the player. In that eventuality, you could remove the one the player is standing on instead: "took too long!"
In all, it's a simple concept that is actually pretty engaging and addictive.
Really well polished and an amusing concept!
Love the styling of this one! Nice gameplay and story too. Now I need to look up more about PICO-8...