Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → OlenIkimid
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 57 | Depths | đ„ | Goodzilla [Sega Master System] | jam | 315 | 3.70 | 3.47 | 3.50 | 2.54 | 4.19 | 4.00 | 3.36 | 3.88 |
| 2024 | 55 | Summoning | đ„ | Burnout Purgatory | jam | 227 | 3.90 | 3.81 | 4.18 | 4.42 | 4.25 | 3.81 | 4.19 | 3.97 |
| 2023 | 54 | Limited Space | đ„ | Calamari Odyssey | jam | 930 | 3.13 | 3.10 | 2.71 | 2.52 | 3.15 | 3.41 | 3.52 | 3.30 |
| 2022 | 51 | Every 10 seconds | đ„ | Pupu Pew Pew | jam | 466 | 3.62 | 3.58 | 3.82 | 3.52 | 3.76 | 3.92 | 2.87 | 3.45 |
| 2022 | 50 | Delay the inevitable | đ„ | Water Rises | jam | 628 | 3.57 | 3.52 | 3.47 | 3.90 | 3.95 | 3.92 | 3.15 | 3.50 |
I like the concept! You should add to your description that mouse-wheel changes between abilities, took me a short while to figure that out :smile:
It's also nice to get all 3 of the biomes placed and hear the full track with the different instruments!
The music is fantastic and really matches the vibes!
Normally I don't care that much for narrative games but this one slaps :slight_smile::cry:
What a nice little game! +++ for posting some small music/sfx workflow teasers :)
This was fun to play - solid tower defense concept. Would be nice if the bomb enemy damaged enemies too upon exploding/death :]
Nice concept! Being to move before you take an action could be a feature rather than a limitation :wink:
Sometimes the UI bugs out and I can't see any of the actions of the ship.
I like the concept. Aesthetically it's pleasant and interacting with the non-dream world keeps you on your toes!
This was quite difficult! The art and music+SFX work well together. The shadow tracer effect is a nice detail :)
blundersiege.PNG
The enemies don't seem to want to attack my king :sweat_smile:
I like the music - you could probably do an edit to keep it in a perpetual loop instead of having the track restart :D
*edit
So a sneakyboi went through the other gate/door and captured the king :laughing:. But for some reason the front entrance gets bugged.
@teddyreid Glad you liked the tunes! If you REALLY like them you can download the lossless version for free here: https://iamthevastidledhitchhiker.bandcamp.com/album/pupu-pew-pew-ost
Also got Goldeneye-vibes, excellent choice! This sparks joy, despite being HĂ«ll :smile:
@nathan-d yes the colors are awful, but that's actually the point! :smile:
[This is the effect that is being played with](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromostereopsis)
Basically, if you own a pair of [ChromaDepth glasses](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ChromaDepth) (or similar) it makes all of the graphics pop into and out of the screen (red sticks out the most, green is in the middle, while blue looks like it's "inside" the screen). The effect isn't perfect but it's our first attempt.
It might also be more obvious if all the enemies were colored the same pure RGB way but I completely forgot for the first one I made (it's supposed to be a cartoon version of Ripley from Alien, but it ended up looking like a tall Morty from Rick & Morty - I normally do sound, not graphics :sweat_smile:)
@crygos ah yes you clicked the "story" option to see the very important lore for our game :laughing: - glad you enjoyed the rest of it!
The story is written from the perspective of the squid, it's basically this:
You are a ravenously hungry space squid that "wakes up" just as its about to be chopped up for food by the station's chef/cook (the tooth is a knife, and all humans are simply meat to the squid). You grab the knife that is starting to cut into your mantle and kill the chef. You're a picky eater so you only eat some of them. You start to explore the kitchen and spot another cook (but not armed with a knife). You attack them and eat a bit. You wonder if the humans ("meat") are hungry like you. The door to the kitchen opens, a human sees you and starts firing its laser/blaster weapon at you (hence the heat and pain). You wonder why the humans are doing this to you. You kill and eat some of the human. You are still hungry.
(Then the game starts and you keep eating :wink: )
@dioinecail it was a bit tricky balancing the attack radius to ensure some skill is involved - if there was more time I would have happily made a âslaughterâ mode where the hit radius is basically half the screen so you can just run endlessly gobbling up the humans đ .
@javasaurus technically the game does ramp up the difficulty if you keep playing (it roughly peaks after 2 full loops of the theme have played), but yes perhaps the beginning could also be less crazy so you have a moment to learn instead of immediately getting blasted at and only have about 20 seconds to live XD
I like to think of it like in that BBC documentary where the baby iguana hatches and immediately has to escape a bunch of snakes trying to eat it.
I'm a sucker for space and synths so as soon as I saw that it's in space and has music I had to check it out. Wasn't disappointed. For some reason it reminds me just a bit of [Nathan Lamont's Ares](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ares_%28video_game%29), which was one of my favorite games.
Simple concept but it's really satisfying. If this were PVP I think would be a really fun game to sink some time into with friends. Obviously this is a Compo AND you only have 48 hours - so *maybe* getting netcode to work properly isn't how you want to spend your precious time :upside_down:
Nicely done! :v:
seconding @kiberptah - I like the concept and it's a executed nicely EXCEPT that I wish the room were visible, because it's a bit confusing to solve a puzzle where you can't see everything. I wouldn't do away with it entirely - some levels could be "dark" as a mechanic, but then others could be completely visible and the mechanic of only being able to move blocks within a certain distance of the player could be kept.
The music is a quite...aggressive :sweat_smile: - I would have also preferred SFX.
The enemy SFX are so creepy! All of the art choices make a very cohesive mood + aesthetic.
The difficulty is quite punishing, especially because there's no dodge mechanic and some of the enemies are simply so fast that you can't really avoid them. I think if you could regain a single heart of life each round that would also help with the difficulty curve.
Take this with a grain of salt - I have potato aim :wink:
@3mpty
[There are some other spatialization plugins that can work quite nicely for these purposes](https://designingsound.org/2018/03/29/lets-test-3d-audio-spatialization-plugins/)
I've played around mostly with the Oculus spatializer VST in Ableton (the VST is free) and I'm happy with the results. It takes some experimentation but it might be worth checking out.
Since there's no support for Godot this would probably mean making audio files for the 8 directions and then playing the correct one relative to wherever the player is. Even after that, it might still be a bit tricky for people who don't have headphones or have poor listening skills :sweat_smile:
(although it's a bit of work for not necessarily so much return on investment, it's at least what I would do :laughing: )
Absolutely nailed the elevator music, sfx, and voice acting.
Sometimes the placement is a little wonky (using HTML5, Vivaldi browser) - it took some finicking to get the tall guy in place on Level 3, and then on Level 4 I was able to put the construction worker in a spot that I think is "illegal", and then it allowed me to put others in spots that also felt "illegal":
level4.png
At any rate, nicely done and fun little puzzler!
I really like the funky soundtrack and pixel art!
The combat could have a little more variety to it I wasn't sure if the enemies are supposed to do any damage to the player or not, so it's pretty easy to just keep slaughtering everything :sweat_smile:
Also, I got stuck at Level 4 and no enemies would spawn (it also looked like the elevator was stuck between floors)
level4.JPG
Pluses: * Relaxing and nice take on the theme. * Just feels pleasant to put things down on the planet * I left the game running so I could keep listening to the music because I enjoyed it so much. Fits nicely with the scifi/colonization theme with some pleasant synths and sits in the background without feeling like it's just background music (I really struggle with making distinct but unobtrusive background music when I produce, so it's nice to hear some good examples to learn from :smile:).
Minuses: * There are only 3 tracks to listen to and they don't loop, so the game goes silent once there's no more music :cry: * Colliders for the objects make placing things a bit tricky
Additional recommendations: * Adding some resource production/subtraction feedback each time a building is placed would be a very helpful UI/UX touch - that information is available in the bottom right but I didn't really notice until mid-game :sweat_smile:
Pros: * It's a nice surprise that different things seem to happen on different playthroughs (or at least there's different scenes). I have no idea if whatever I am doing is actually affecting the outcome - so far I have gotten the same ending...however perhaps that's part of the mystery :sweat_smile: * Sound design. Minimalist but I found it pretty distinctive and works well.
Cons: * This made me visit ItÀkeskus without my consent
I like the idea and it's easy to see how the core loop could be significantly expanded upon.
Good and simple game loop that is fun to keep playing.
Pluses: * 3 enemy types, each with different and unique behavior that all contribute to influencing how the player reacts, was a solid decision * High fire rate make gun go brrrrrr
Some possible improvements: * It's not obvious what "armor" actually does - my first playthrough I tried to max that but no matter what the enemies did 1 damage to me per hit. Reducing my armor below zero didn't result in taking any more damage, so I just min-maxed fire rate and damage :smile:
* It felt like boosting health is a bad perk to take because it only increases max health, rather than current health. Since repairs are so costly, I found myself happy with only 4-5 hp at a time and focusing on damage and crit chance. Perhaps the health boosts should come with "free" health, and also reduce repair cost, or something to that effect.
Still I played for far longer than I care to admit - nicely done! ehka.JPG
Love me some menacing drone ambience!
I second the comments regarding the difficulty and hole shrinking problem - too many times did I die because I hit the edges of the hole I just made. A quick hack would be to give the player temporary invincibility to dying from the wall (maybe 1 second) when they break a hole through it. For the other objects that can kill you like the spinning blade in the middle, the iframes/invincibility wouldn't apply.
Alternatively, make the walls individual entities but ID their orientation (North, East, South, West) and the player only dies to walls if they are touching two opposite walls at the same time. Because at the moment, touching the walls kills you too before they can even squish you :wink:
I really like the idea and the ambience. Everything sounds correct and I feel like I am indeed on a fishing boat - so overall the theming is very nice. Unfortunately, the pacing is extremely slow and it can feel a bit tedious. With a couple of small tweaks, I think the game play loop could be a lot more fun and engaging:
* The net could be a hoop with a limited collision radius. You still hold E to lower it and release E to raise it. * Fish that touch the net would be caught instantly. (the fishing magnet could then increase the radius of the net a little bit) * Spawn way more normal fish and far fewer fish that require licenses or are illegal. I shouldn't have to catch a bitcoin wallet in a bottle or several locked safes to upgrade my engines :laughing: - I should be able to do it the fair and honest way - catching fish! :wink: * The fish should spawn in a greater range (up and down) * fish move slowly to the left or right, and sometimes change directions, adding a bit of skill/effort on the player's part.
With these few changes, the player has something to do other than run from the throttle to the net and back (and occasionally sprinting to the cargo hold to dump contraband as the police approach)
Some other things: * Color the icons so that backgrounds for illegal fish are red (not just named "Red Herring", although I appreciate the humor :smile:) and ones that require permits are orange. Treasure could be purple or blue. * Fining and confiscating "permit only" fish works well, but going to jail and it being "game over" could be replaced with the police simply taking all of your money and cargo for "illegal" fish (something like "we have to do a full inspection of your cargo to make sure there aren't more of these") * I like that the game has "secrets" but I don't really know what the goldfish does - perhaps I could pay a small fee to the fish buyer and the tooltip will change to be something more helpful. * Perhaps I should have to stop the boat to talk to the police and the traders. I realized later I didn't need to actually stop, I could just walk over to the radio. However, being able to do a drive-by fish sale might keep the pacing nice and quick though :slight_smile:
Some polish ideas (if only we all had more time :wink:) * It'd be nice to see the outside of the ocean passing by. Would combine very nicely with the rocking of the ship interior (I appreciated the bottle rolling back and forth) * balancing of the fish values and upgrades. * Maybe the fisherman can upgrade his peg leg so he can walk faster too
All in all, I spent a decent amount of time playing this and did enjoy it - I just wish the pacing was improved. Nicely done!
seconding @hangovergames - I like the mixture of tower defense and top-down shooting, but the camera currently makes the game quite tricky to play - fixing that would make the game so much smoother.
Also, a sound effect/audio cue just to know the monsters are attacking my factory would be nice, crabs ate my factory and I had no idea :laughing:
The PC version throws this error for me: bugged.JPG
However the Itch version works fine!
I like the idea a lot, I think it would be really nice to have better explanations of what's going on - for example the rain clouds go every direction EXCEPT east (which is what the tooltip says) :laughing:
@magnanix >the guitar riffs on the menu kept reminding me of something...maybe THPS?
Same!
This was a fun little game that would be really nice with friends in local multiplayer and a couple of controllers! I really like the art style and perfectly kicks off October/Fall season.
Strange bug, after playing it once, they closing the game, then trying to a second time, the game throws two errors and crashes. Deleting everything and unzipping again doesn't fix it (I haven't tried restarting yet). nohernando2.JPG nohernando.JPG
Also, the round didn't end after I pushed all the enemies off the platform.
@grimw0lf Good point! Post-mortem, we also figured that it would be good to have a visual indicator of the trait counts so it's easier to keep track of how many "humor", "mood" etc developers you've had working on the project. Although at the moment, if you manage to max out the Features, AudioVisual, and Polish bars, it doesn't really matter what traits you had for developers :sweat_smile:
@unless-games
>I think the role icons should be on the description list to make it more clear what is what
You aren't the only one confused! Actually, there are no role icons - the icons you see in the description/dialogue are traits like "humor" and "mood", which modestly boost those scores of your final game (see above response to @grimw0lf) Definitely could have made the function of these more obvious :sweat_smile:
>While the inner world navigating is pretty cool stylistically, I think it actually distracts from making meaningful choices. Iâd be curious to see the game with all the candidates laid out clearly, right now I think the player is more likely to just hire whoever comes first out of time pressure.
Good points - the "slow reader mode" + "hard mode" is actually my preferred way of playing, which helps deal with this time pressure aspect while retaining the strategic elements of the game and punishing you for not setting up the pipelines correctly. "Slow reader mode" allows you to carefully read the descriptions of the spirits, which give you clues as to what their roles are and how competent they are. You are still in a "rush" to find the right candidates and it's no guarantee of winning/losing, but you no longer have to just spam spacebar and hope you caught the right keywords in the 0.2 seconds you spent looking at the text.
Also, the theming of the game is you have to wander Hell a bit to find team members, sifting through varying levels of (in)competency. Of course we could just have a portal that opens and there are 7 candidates presented to you and you can pick the ones you think you need, but then we would have to figure out a different way of "gamifying" that - since if you know all the candidates and skill levels, the game becomes quite trivial.
>Maybe it would be nice to be able to let go some summons.
We made it so that you are "stuck" with summons to add to the risk/reward aspect - if you end up with an intern you just have to wait it out and read more carefully next time. However, IMHO the "Producer" (the whip demon) is a little under-powered. It would be a nice feature if summoning them temporarily granted you the ability to "burn off" summons you don't want.
Wonderful art style and vibe, a fun start to a management game. The music also matches the tone nicely.
I think I found a bug or the most efficient way to "win" - if you pump the speed/lightning bolt attribute for the manager and put them as cashier, you can eventually get to a point where you can just keep leveling up and are unable to spend your experience points fast enough. At some point the game started to really slow down/chug along (at least when using the WebGL build) - not sure what that's about :sweat_smile: bugreport.jpg
Anyway, bugs aside, this was very nice!
I appreciate how the music changes to more closely reflect the different dungeons/rooms and the variety there is among the enemies.
Like the summon-what-you-kill mechanic - I just wish there was a better visual indicator of how many summons you have left. Sometimes I was able to summon the same monster multiple times, and other times only once, but visually I couldn't really tell if it was my last summon or not.
The combat is a little tricky in places - many times I would take damage from an enemy that appeared to be well outside of range to hit me.
With a bit more tuning of the combat mechanics (and maybe a visual indicator of the dash cooldown), could easily be extended into dungeon-diver roguelike, with added loot drops that give you different movement abilities and so on.
Keep it up!
The gameplay isn't so obvious, so a tutorial/longer explanation of the mechanics would be very helpful.
Nonetheless once I started to figure out how things worked :sweat_smile: , it felt pretty fresh and fun to play :)
Love the sound design and especially how the music continues to evolve and build as the game progresses. The whole atmosphere really sells it, and despite the fact that you are just moving the mouse around a bit, it's surprisingly immersive and engaging!
I reeeeally like how well the art + music + sfx all sit so nicely together. For some reason the first that comes to my mind (after SkiFree) is that all of this could work well in a fast-paced bizarro re-imagining of marble madness :sweat_smile: Humor++, Mood++
I agree that crosshairs would've gone a long way, but I still enjoyed playing it and it only took a short while to get used to the aiming setup.
Digging the music too!
Great work with the art, audio, and theming in general!
It'd be interesting to see how the strategic side of it could be improved/expanded upon. For example, being able to move cats around and have multiple cameras, with the idea being that maybe the ghosts are "afraid" of cats and therefore their movements prioritize go wherever cats AREN'T (and cats, naturally, will wander around after you've placed them).
Also, instead of just holding E to film, what if it casted a cone of vision so you'd have to keep the ghosts inside of the cone to get any score (while the act of TRYING to film, even if they are outside of the vision cone, still makes the ghosts angry)?
Anyway, just some thoughts on how some changes could add a lot more replayable :slight_smile:
Nice idea here with potential for more in-depth gameplay!
I like the planning aspect of finding enough time to put down the heavier robot.
One thing that was a little difficult to deal with was how all robots cannot travel between train cars - I guess that keeps it a bit balanced, but it would be fun to have an army of robots that follow you around as you dash up and down the train :sunglasses:
Reminds me just a tiny bit of Papers, Please - imagining an overworked Amazon employee frantically trying to summon demons to meet order quotas :laughing:
Nicely executed!
Ditto @vantalogic's comments - this captures mindless tedium/busywork a little too accurately :laughing:
Sound design was on point and matches the pixel art quite well!
Fun little game that does a really nice job introducing one mechanic at a time, nicely done!
The mood and art are there, I just wished I could've done something with all of the monsters I was summoning :sweat_smile:. It was still nice to tinker around and experiment to see what combos summon what creatures :)
I like the concept and really like the art style. It's a bit tricky to figure out how to play, though - like the interactions with the phone and the summoning mechanics are not so clear. But then I watched the video of you playing and it made more sense :sweat_smile:
I really like the concept (it ran okay on my PC, but I'm running a Ryzen 9 w/64gb of ram + 2080ti), but the upgrades happen far too frequently and don't scale at all. I was hoping to watch my hordes of rats infect the hapless villagers, but I kept getting interrupted by upgrade popups :laughing:
Still, you could iterate on this idea where you go from village to village, getting to larger and more complicated cities, and it becomes a bit of a puzzle game like in Lemmings, where you have to infect/attack weaker areas first and build up your summoning powers before trying to hit other areas that are better protected by the plague doctors.
Nice work, even if it's not potato friendly :upside_down: - I had fun!
I didn't push play in the beginning because I wanted to just keep listening to the music because it sets an interesting tone, and I expected it to loop :sweat_smile: . Thankfully the gameplay music also loops :wink:
The art and animations are nice too, nice to see what a crocodile/alligator looks like if you could pick them up by the scruff like a kitten :laughing:
A bug I found is that you can "pause" the animals indefinitely if you spam-click on them when they are first entering the scene (it opens the Load/Decline menu, and you can't select "Decline", only "Load") - in which case the animals will then just stop their walking animations and stay still. BugReport.JPG
Neat little game - maybe not exactly fitting of the "summoning" theme :laughing: but hey, you are "summoning" towers and oil rigs, so maybe that counts :v:
Could be even more strategic and interesting if you could place turrets/towers anywhere and if the enemy armor had weak and strong points, so you would have to position yourself carefully to do the most amount of damage.
Overall, nicely done, but it could have been longer - I didn't want it to end!
Shame there wasn't any audio for this because I think it would really enhance the feeling of isolation and soul-crushing routine the game evokes. Obviously if you had more people and time working on this, you could flesh on the narrative and story a bit more - or better yet, make the "check engine" and "check greenhouse" tasks more like a puzzle that you solve, instead of "press E to check" :laughing:
But hey! It's a one-person game so it's a lot of work to do everything yourself. It also looks like your first submission to Ludum Dare, so it's a good start!
Cool little compo! I like how it's both turn-based and real-time - you can think for a bit, unless there's a propeller coming your way. I agree with @pavlov36 - would be great if it had a few more levels - it's just starting to get interesting when it loops back to the first level. But hey, it's a compo - there's only so much one person can do in a weekend :grin: Great work!
Solid gameplay loop and very nice theming!
Sometimes I don't always enjoy trying out people's games on Ludum Dare because...well...they're jam games and people are trying their best in a very short time frame and sometimes you're left with stuff that isn't...so nice play :sweat_smile:. But this was really fun to playtest! Ambience is captured very nicely. It's great that you can just keep playing and spending your money to trick out the boat so it turns into a meme machine that flies across the map in a second and can turn on a dime XD
Only equipment I wish I could buy is some helmets so my divers can tank a bonk to the head from my rocketship boat. Totally unnecessary and difficult to do in the jam timeframe, but it would also be a nice visual feature if every upgrade you bought was shown on the boat.
Although it's probably not designed with multiplayer in mind, I could easily see this as being a fun little local multiplayer game to play with friends at a lan party :)
Love the tunes and the general idea - it's always fun to see this little physics sim jams.
Some little QoL features could go a long way: 1. have a green transparent preview over the bowling ball when placing modules so it's easier to know where you're placing them so you don't have to click the "oops" button as much :sweat_smile:.
2. I agree with some of the other comments that the right click rotation sensitivity could be turned down quite a bit.
3.Finally, I wish the build was saved when clicking "retry" so one could adjust the components a little and try again, rather than having to redo the whole thing that would make it a lot quicker to prototype different ideas. Typically I was only adding 3-4 parts before I ran out space, but getting them into the same spot as before so I could make adjustments was a bit tricky without this feature.
Overall, nice idea! I had fun testing it :)
rocket printer go brrrr heh. RIP my frames on the last wave 2025-04-13 11.17.26 stefanholst.github.io 809b242bd49b.png
I like the neon style and it's fun to play, if a bit simple. As the other comments have mentioned, the rockets are a bit OP :laughing: - they have infinite range and perfect accuracy. One little tweak that would go a long way is keep the rocket's range and damage the same, but nerf the targeting ability where it misses fast moving enemies. That way, you have to put down more stun mines to control the flow of enemies. Additionally, you could add a "shield" to certain enemies which can only be depleted by the laser turret - so if the rocket hits, unless the shield is fully depleted, the rocket won't do any damage. For added challenge you could make it so the shields regenerate after a period of inactivity/not taking any hits, and add a power/energy mechanic where you have to physically place powerplants to power your turrets.
I think rather than having simply more enemies, the enemies could have different behaviors or resistances - so rather than having to just spam lots of turrets, you have to put down the right combinations of turrets to counter the enemies.
But hey it's a jam game - there's only so many features you can cram into it in 72 hours :laughing:
I liked playing it - Nicely done!
The artstyle is absolutely fantastic and I like the implementation of the physics and building mechanics. It wasn't obvious that you're supposed to just reach the top of the screen -I went out of my way to try and build a little castle towards the light and then kept going to the little mark at the top of the screen. When that didn't work, I just kept building ladders and made it out :sweat_smile:
Would be interesting to see how this could be expanded - maybe a darker twist on Lemmings or something.
I played it all the way through - some of the clues are a bit tricky to spot and some were pretty obvious - certainly took a while to finish but I enjoyed it! Good music, art style, and writing. Well done!
A bit slow but reasonably spooky :laughing:
I expected the monster to look a bit like the walls of the cave - (there are little yellow specks, and from time to time I was afraid I was shining a light at eyes when in fact it was just the cave wall).
I think if you leaned into that idea for the monster design, where it sort of blends into the surroundings, it would really enhance the horror element (and rather than making the monster's anger/lose condition instant, it could take a second or two so there is some time for the player to react while they "find" where it is embedded in the cave wall).
Almost everything about this I love - the placement mechanism with synergies is very nice and it's very addicting to play :)
I think the pacing in the mid- to late-game is a little too fast - the big ants come in to wipe everything out before you're really able to mount a proper defense, and then they come too quickly to really ever recover.
If the blueberry thing was replaced with a similar one-time-use "explody" plant that allows you to regrow turret spots in the surrounding area from wherever they were planted, I think that could really make the late game feel better. When you're planting golden rod and trying to use the other exploding plants to kill the big boss ant, there's so many coins to click and bombs to detonate that just "slowing" the ants doesn't really feel all that satisfying.
For QoL, I think it'd be good to have a logic check to make sure the player isn't replacing a plant with the same type - money is hard to come by anyway and it's easy to accidentally misclick when so much is going on. It was also a bit frustrating when I strategically placed the exploding plants so I could quickly kill the boss ant, only for the boss to spawn and instantly kill that plant when the boss lands on it. If the plant at least exploded on death, it would be a nice improvement for how that plant works.
All in all, great jamming work. It's a good sign when someone wants to keep playing the game after the first few playthroughs :)
2025-04-10 12.40.14 bluepinstudio.itch.io 18e9451ea73b.png
Had to give it another go :laughing:
I also noticed that in at least in the HTML5 version, the ending text doesn't show properly. That's okay I don't need the grumpy tree trash talking me anyway!
2025-04-10 13.30.07 bluepinstudio.itch.io 49af0659dd62.png
The music perfectly matches the vibe :laughing:. Was fun to experiment with different starting strategies - I got to about 445 or so but smashed into a level geometry border that was slightly offset from the ground. One way to extend the gameplay (clearly outside the scope of a jam game) would be if there were item pickups you could grab and use that would offer a boost or a one-time grapple hook or something to help recover from lost momentum. They wouldn't have to offer TOO much control because the whole point of being a hapless goblin miner ragdolling down a tunnel is already well executed.
Nicely done!
The art style and music work very well together and the digging feels pretty good (little tile alignment issues aside). It's a bit simple but, given more time (it's a jam game after all XD), I could easily see how one might expand it so there's more to do with item pickups and extra abilities. Nice job!
Cool concept - although it's a bit difficult to replay quickly because it bugs out after the first round and left clicking doesn't make the "left click to continue" prompt go away. I think if you were to patch that so you can just keep going onto the next round without interruption, it would be fine to dive into it a bit deeper. Currently I don't know what the teeth do - the brick's effects were quite obvious :laughing:
Funny little game - I almost made it to the end, but when I grabbed the key it didn't seem to attach properly and I wasn't able to drop it and grab it again, so by the time I made it out of the patient, the key had disappeared XD.
I agree that a few more sound effects would do a world of good to round out the rest of the game. Graphics-wise it's very pleasing and while the gameplay is simple it's a nice formula. The little black hole things are a bit frustrating - I wasn't able to get out of them at all once trapped, even when trying to use the dash/sprint ability. I think severely punishing the player by having it cost a significant amount of endurance/energy to get out of them might be a better approach, because they still serve the purpose of costing the player time and energy :sweat_smile:
Love the art, sound design, and general theming. The movement is a little tricky and I just ended up spam-tapping wasd to move around because it was a little hard to gauge how fast I would go from holding it down. I think having a little animated indicator to show how "powerful" the impulse would be would help, as well as some visual indicator to show if you're going too fast and will take damage if you bump into a wall.
Also, I think instead of just having the text indicator above the player showing which harpoon is active (I know they are color coded), coloring the entire harpoon line or providing some more immediate indicator as to which harpoon they're controlling would be a nice QoL improvement. Swinging with the harpoons and holding myself in place is pretty fun though! I think creating more feedback with the controls, rather than changing the system entirely (I like that it's trying something different and you don't just move around with WASD), would make the system feel more intuitive without removing the challenge/mechanic :)
Okay, the beginning is extremely tricky to get the hang of at first (for others reading the comments - you basically have to immediately upgrade the center, put down a uranium mine, and then also put down a farm so you don't run out of oxygen).
Giving the player a slightly longer "runway" in the beginning, with simple pointers as to what the loss condition is (when you run out of uranium, oxygen, or food, or whatever - I still don't know all the ways you can lose :laughing:), would help considerably.
I really like the art style, the music, and I think the theming is very good (are the subs a tip of the hat to the Kirov airships from Red Alert 2?). The ending cutscene was quite nice, and the whole game feels very atmospheric, especially with the SFX and slow, somber piano arpeggios. Implementation-wise, since this is primarily centered around fitting buildings into a confined space, it'd be nice to be able to rotate buildings and if they had tighter hitboxes so the player could make the base look "pretty" while they're completing their objectives. Of course, being able to control actual units would be great too - although it's a jam game, and making an RTS is usually outside the scope of sensible projects - especially if you have only a small team/duo :smile:
All in all I like it and this has a lot of potential to be expanded into a more fleshed-out game, with a little bit of exploring, maybe the ability to put down additional reactors so you can build more bases and expand out a bit further while managing your resources.