Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → oter
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 57 | Depths | Forgotten Files | compo | |||||||||
| 2023 | 54 | Limited Space | Postcards | compo | 254 | 3.32 | 3.04 | 3.16 | 3.44 | 2.13 | 2.66 | 4.05 | |
| 2023 | 53 | Delivery | Deliver Us, Brother | jam | 1114 | 2.91 | 2.33 | 3.08 | 3.66 | 3.43 | 2.34 | 3.43 |
Cute game! It hooked me in despite how simple it looks. I played through to harvesting my first batch of pumpkins, even though I had just been clicking through interesting looking submissions. I think the lack of instructions actually played well because figuring out the game ended up being the thing that got me to stay. And the sound effects! Well done, I'd leave a rating but can't because I didn't submit a game.
I can't leave a rating because I didn't submit a game, but I've been watching along this event and just finished playing your game. I liked it! I tend to like these sorts of games, and this was well made, especially for a compo game! In case it helps, I got 4/5 solved in a bit over an hour. I got stuck on the 5th and had to come back in a fresh play session, but eventually brute forced an answer (see below).
(*minor spoilers*): First, most of the people in the play seemed out of order, so I couldn't figure out who to blame. Second, I got confused on the hearsay mentioning a director because there is also someone with the title of festival director, so I kept trying to sacrifice that person.
But hey, by the end, I felt like I had a special connection with some of the characters I was trying to sacrifice :smirk: and overall I was sad when it was over.
Like others have said, I'd love to hear how you set this up. Very cool.
I also had really bad mouse issues. I'm playing games mostly on my laptop after sitting at my desk so much during the jam. Trackpad was bad so I plugged in my mouse, dpi 800, but that didn't help, nor did lowering my sens through my OS. Since I also work in Unity and have spent quite a bit of time (albeit in my limited dev experience) trying to make first person cameras work, I'm guessing that how ever you wrote your camera controls doesn't play well with trackpads (like auto max acceleration or something) and can't detect if a mouse is there to behave properly. Hope that helps if you try to debug for a post LD release.
Very nice and relaxing game. I like the choice of setting in an adventurer's pass through town and giving life to people that are just NPCs to outsiders. It helped give this game a familiar, homey feeling.
Good puzzle. I personally liked the limited search and the search strings being a bit janky to show results, it added to the feel of the game and the feature of other emails sometimes flashing up for a second added something extra to go back and figure out, and ended up being what led me to the solution. And I really like the twist!
The controls and sfx felt very good, and I liked how fluid it was to go from one level to the next. Just wish there was a little bit more cover (though I eventually figured out your allies make for good cover), and that the health and ammo was displayed in a fixed bar at the top or bottom of the screen to make it easier to see. But still, it was a fun play.
The arrows pointing to the building you're supposed to go to is a great touch. I'd say the biggest thing to work on core gameplay loop-wise is making the interactable areas bigger, like as big as the buildings, or at least match up with the doorways (the post office was worst about this).
This was such a great game, honestly I have nothing to add besides that it reminds me of the forcefields with a similar effect in Portal 2 (maybe also the original, it's been so long). I kept expecting you to introduce vacuums with a pull effect to go alongside the push, but honestly the game you made was so well conceived that layering in an additional mechanic wouldn't have improved it/might make it worse. I'm definitely going to check out your other games now.
I like the concept, it fits the theme well. Controls issues aside, I like the idea of moving around bumping into stuff to collect it, I just wish there was more stuff! Be it the components for insulin that you're trying to collect, or things that hurt you or are neutral, I wish it traveled through the bounds of the playable area instead of just in smaller streams. It's a good start/prototype though.
I agree about the map (and showing a map at the start to tell us where the people are would be helpful) and the art, and I enjoyed the writing quite a bit as well.
I want the "Wow, keep it up!" guy to pop up on my computer while I'm coding :sweat_smile: Great game, it's so polished, definitely one of my favorites so far this jam.
Quite a nice game, I especially like the art style. I could have used a little more hands on guidance in the beginning, like a little tutorial playing with all the different seeds to understand them and the game's mechanics. Obviously not something to pack into the jam version, but just feedback if you're considering expanding this further.
I like this game a lot. After a bit, I gave up trying to deliver the squares and just tried making a chain as long as I could, ended up wrapping myself in it, realized that meant the "avoid" squares couldn't hurt me, randomly found my way back to the delivery pad, and ended up a score tally way bigger than I thought I would for just messing around. :thumbsup:
I like the concept and execution. My only suggestion is for the level to fully restart when you crash - on one of the later levels, the balloon enemies sometimes blocked the way through when I'd spawn back in.
Movement felt good, and I like the art and the use of darkness as a mechanic to encourage exploration. At some point the counter stopped counting down (stayed at 0), but then it came back seemingly at random a minute or two later. Overall I like the game feel.
Yeah I added text animation in the intro pretty last minute, it could definitely use some tweaking. Especially considering that's the first thing a player sees :face_palm:
Thanks for the feedback! I’m glad that I could share my vision of the world I imagined for this game’s setting, and that even in this small game I could convey a sense of vastness expanding beyond what is being played.
@rose I’m glad you like faces in my pen sketch to vector art style. I’m not much of an artist, but for 2d that’s what I’m most comfortable in.
@the-neon-shark @coatline I agree about the boat and given more time I’d definitely add some sort of health system so you could hit a few rocks before going down (and probably a repair/upgrade system with it).
For the audio, I wanted the sound of water lapping against rocks and a boat, probably similar to what you’re thinking. Too many of the tracks I checked out were simple “waves on sandy beach” type recordings so this was the best I could come up with. Audio was a stretch goal anyway and only added in the last hour or so.
@digital-bacon was wondering if anyone would bring up the viewpoint/camera. I originally wanted to make a first person perspective and just have the boat be something you interact with to move. I scrapped that and tried for a couple hours to make a follow cam where you can still look around, as you describe, but I’d never made a third person camera before, much less one like that, so in the end I had to settle for a fixed perspective. The camera was meant to follow the boat and keep the whole thing in frame, but at some point it ended up over the bow and I gave up trying to fiddle with it.
@nikolai-marian-sokolovskii Oh no! Is there anything in particular that was unclear/confusing?
@game-addict Thanks for the honest feedback, sorry you found the game on the bland side. In the week since the jam I've thought of a lot of stuff I could have done better, but it's been a good learning experience.
@Agrimes Thanks for the comment, I was wondering if anyone had seen that ending.
The map was a good touch :thumbsup: I kind of wish that delivering a paper was the thing that added time, rather than collecting one (or both), probably just because the spawn rate felt a bit low/despawn time a bit quick, but still a very solid gameplay loop.
I had some bugs and ended up spending all my money on turrets that didn't appear, then later got stuck under the rig, and eventually fell through the world as it dragged me around. You packed a lot in there though, so bugs are understandable. The gameplay felt pretty good and it's a good concept.
Very good. If you make more twine games I'd play them.
Same^
The controls felt a bit mushy to me, probably because of the startup time on the flying animation. And I think the camera damping added to the unresponsive feel, but maybe it was an intended effect. Your audio choices were quite good though, and the way you arranged the trees in the forest made for a nice atmosphere for the game.
As others have said, with some tweaks this will be a really fun arcade-style game. You nailed a pretty smooth flow to the overall game (though as someone said, an even faster restart would be appreciated), so that I wanted to keep going and see how high a score I could get (good touch to show it on the title screen) or how long I could survive.
I played maybe a dozen rounds (or slightly more, they go quick), and in that time there were two rounds where an enemy immediately spawned right above me so I had an instant restart. So a temporary exclusion zone for the enemy spawner (or just having them spawn higher so I have time to react), might be another helpful tweak for the game.
Since you were talking in an earlier comment about tweaking the pins, I think it might be cool to assign them to different buttons (hold down j for pin 1, k for 2 and l for 3 or something) just to feel more interactive and like I have more control over the pins as the rings move. But as it was, the game had a nice flow once I got used to the camera directions.
I like your concept here, not something I ever would have thought to do for the theme and which I think fits it in a neat mechanical way. As others have said, reloading not being explained more clearly held me back at first, and then felt clunky after I did get the hang of it, to switch dimensions to grab the pink ball, only for it to be on the other side of the barrier there.
I also have a random note, that the mouse cursor was hidden but not locked while in fullscreen on the web version so, for example, I once moused to my second monitor by mistake. I know it's a small thing, but I just thought I'd mention it because it should be an easy fix and good for QoL.
But nitpicks aside, I was really, really impressed by all you managed to do during the 48 hours for the Compo. Well done!
Sound didn't work for me (no idea why, probably something on my end if no one else has had issues), so I just hummed some wedding music to myself :laughing: A fun idea for a game, though I did get bogged down in min maxing with all those details you provide for each guest.
Well written, and I'll echo what the person above me wrote and say I really liked the graphics too.
I thought it was a bit strange that you got letters or texts from people, yet it was voice acted and I couldn't see letters on screen. While the voice acting was great and really helped bring the characters to life, I would have liked to read along from the letter, rather than get subtitle popups. But I get that you may have run out of time to add extra graphics like that.
Very unique entry, well done!
Man this was great. I was unsure going into it, the premise sounded more stressful than fun, but I'm glad I played it. Very well written, you have a knack for providing *just enough* on all aspects - premise, characters, reflections - and not letting the game get bogged down at any point. The concluding scenes were deeper than I would have expected from a compo game, and I was surprised at how cathartic the end was. It left a good feeling.
Also, I'm left wondering how much order matters: if different players take different paths through the crowd, would they be more likely to pick different people? How much would placing people randomly at the start of the game impact the experience for each fresh player? Developing it further with more characters to shuffle in for different playthroughs and giving each character a few different sprites so they aren't instantly recognizable would make this a good game to replay. This is the sort of game that makes me very curious to see stats on player choices.
Very neat, a lot to think about both philosophically and in terms of game development!
I just played after seeing your post about random level generation as you keep working on the game. It's a nice little satisfying game so I'm glad you're continuing development on it.
My only bit of feedback while playing was that I couldn't tell some colors apart: pink and orange were impossible and green and cyan were difficult but doable (I'm not color blind but use a lot of blue light reduction filters on my monitor). I know you said you might change the rules so colors don't matter, but while playing I thought of a "color blind mode" option where the background is divided and labeled, and pieces of each color spawn only in their area rather than in fully randomized spawn locations. I don't know how hard this would be for you to implement, but it was my biggest wish while playing and would be helpful if did end up keeping the rules about colored ominos.
Otherwise it's a great game, I really like the art and sfx!
Very cute concept, great mood/atmosphere. Your comment about feeling rushed in the final few hours felt very relatable, but I thought your game came out pretty well polished, even without a debugging session.
Neat story game! I was most impressed by the amount of polish you managed to add: the default typewriter speed felt good to me, I didn't notice any typos and only a few awkwardly built sentences, and the overall graphics were simple yet effective.
It was very interesting to have the conversation -> dialogue options -> internal thoughts. The interplay of these last two really made the story work for me, especially in the end (I got the main 'bad' ending, if you want to call it that). I'll admit, the writing at times felt a bit flat to me, maybe because there was hardly any reference in the story that both characters were opening up a lot in a short time, so there were times where Anton as a character felt more like a backstory container than a person, even if his personality was supposed to be bold and up front. I totally understand the difficulty of writing during the jam, so this is more a point of feedback if you continue the game or make another game like it. Perhaps if you develop this game out to last a couple of hours (as someone suggested above) you'd have space to slow down and move through the story's arc more gradually.
My only other issue was that I didn't see how to play in full screen, if I could at all. I played on my laptop, and that made the text box on the side very small indeed! Maybe I missed it, but if there was a way, maybe you could indicate it on the title screen?
I just read your postmortem (something I don't usually bother with, so that's a good thing!) and I wanted to add that: considering you wrote most of this on the final night, this game was great. That was a big thing I learned from last jam (my first) to this one: if you're going to make a wordy type of game (a narrative or dialogue or whatever), get a handle on the writing early. Even if you have to force the words out of yourself at first, it will allow you to develop the story and characters more fully over the limited time window of the jam, and prevent the issue I mentioned with Anton in the post above.
At least that's what works for me, but I'm still pretty new at this so I definitely don't have it all figured out :sweat_smile:
Jeez, I said I'd leave you a lot of feedback, but it looks like other people beat me to it. I'll quickly echo what kanity said in their comprehensive review by saying that some of the main bugs or rough points that I found were with the sprites of the other animals intersecting or getting stuck on the unicorn so that I couldn't kill them, or the unicorn deciding to wander into the spikes even though the window was plenty big (and each time it happened, it seemed to be on the top edge of the window).
Some quick ideas that might help with these two issues are: 1) Make an interior collision box that the unicorn wants to stay in just as much as it wants the other animals out of its personal space. 2) Allow the unicorn to kick other animals out of its personal space every once and a while to help mitigate the other sprites sticking to the unicorn and being unkillable. Maybe you already thought of these things and just didn't have time, but I figured I'd mention them anyway in case it helps.
And as others have said, this is the kind of game that seems ripe for either a score or a time counter (actually, come to think of it, a time counter would be a great fit for the mood you were going for: "You managed to keep this job for 42 seconds!" :P)
As a final note, I have pretty weak eyes, and while the jitteriness of the sprites wasn't too hard to look at by itself (after all, I spent most of my time only half looking as I was focused on grabbing the window to resize it), I did find it difficult to read the unicorn's text while it moved around. Just a small thing, as it didn't really impact my game experience too much, but it would be nice if the text was anchored in a box somewhere in addition or instead.
All in all, it was a neat new mechanic and cool take on the theme :smile:
Thanks for all the comments and kindness so far, it means a lot! Last time I tried to do the polite Ludum Dare thing of thanking people and responding to comments, but I've been super wiped out this time around.
@september-xyzx I wish I could have spent more time developing Venice. The way my workflow went, it ended up being one of the first things I made outline notes for, but the last thing I wrote (on Sunday afternoon). By then I'd had to slim down the scope quite a bit and was in the final crunch, so I agree completely and wish I could have written more on it (as fitting as the lack of writing may be).
@owc Yeah, I'd originally wanted separate backgrounds for each section of the story and a different image for each postcard, and spent some time sketching them Friday night. But I was more focused on the writing, so in the end I had settle on the one static background, and forgot to make the title card until ~10 minutes before the deadline. It's a good lesson in scoping, so that I can have time to do a bit of everything in the future rather than just focusing on one aspect.
@plepletier Thanks! I have to shout out Inkle, and in particular their game 80 Days for introducing me to that style, which I tried to add my own spin on with the mouseover text (though I'm not sure how much I liked the mouseover stuff in the end, too easy to happen accidentally).
Thanks again to everyone for the positive comments. I was pretty nervous, as I started learning Twine about a week prior to the jam, and was out of practice with writing. But I'm encouraged to keep learning (I want to pick up the more customizable version of Twine, Snowman, which means learning JS and CSS), and hope to go back and polish up the game after the jam ends.
@mahalis Thanks for the feedback! It's great to hear people like it who aren't normally into this kind of thing.
@penguindustin Thanks for that very insightful bit of feedback, even if you couldn't finish and rate it, a deep dive into some reasons why may be more valuable at this stage. I never intended this to be a VN style game, wanting only a few supporting images (after all Twine seems to have trouble with lots of images and audio, at least the default Harlowe version, whereas something like Ren'Py is made to do just that). I had been aiming for a series of more meditative/immersive passages with fewer choices, which culminate in choice heavy passages (the postcards) that steer the story, so it is interesting that this style didn't work for you. It may be a polish issue, as I had wanted to make the pacing/flow more consistent so the reader would never get hit in the face with a big block of noninteractive text (plus other aspects of proofing and polish), but ran out of time. I'll definitely keep your feedback in mind as I keep working on this.
@kanity Thanks so much for your feedback. I'll have to look into 1.4.2 more. I just did the basic thing of assuming the latest version must be the most feature complete, but if that version is better for graphics and sound, I might make the switch. I had been planning on swapping to the Snowman story format to give myself the most flexibility in presentation (the end goal being that I can make a Twine game that isn't immediately recognizable as such), but I'll check it out and maybe just use the older version instead. And as a side note, I had been considering asking you how you got your audio working because it seems pretty hard to get background music in Twine 2 Harlowe, so thanks for mentioning that part specifically :smile:
And thanks for the comments about the game, glad it could remind you of your trip. The initial postcard from Holland was a bit more lax about space (because I was still figuring out the mechanic) but the second postcard is more strict about longer options limiting future choices. The code ended up being quite rudimentary (a series of if statements), and in the future I might make it more sophisticated to only present an option if it has a choice path that adheres to the character limit. Sounds like a fun challenge honestly.
@kyle-farwell Thanks for the kind feedback :thumbsup:
@F1Krazy Thanks for the feedback! I was worried when making it that people wouldn't like a game like this (I've read a comment or two to that effect in previous jams) so it's been great to see that people are actually OK with this sort of thing. And thanks for the notes on stuff I'd missed in my brief playtesting at the end of the compo period. I did manage to catch these when I sat down to start polishing the game yesterday, but it's still super helpful to have them pointed out. Hopefully you could keep moving past the click-append error, I know on my screen it just looked like it had bugged out and blocked progress, but I could scroll down and keep going rather than backing up and trying something else.
Impressive! I think I'm most in awe that I didn't notice any collision bugs as objects fell, piled, and were jumped on, and the jumping also felt very well tuned to me. I played through twice but couldn't get past the spiky bomb level. The second time, I was 1 m away before a bomb came and blew everything up and right after there were a couple waves of mostly bombs, little furniture, so might need some tweaking around that point, but still a fun and good feeling game.
It's an interesting concept, but I found it frustrating at times to have so little control (levels with only one ability). In these, it felt like I was just waiting around for platforms to align, and with a small mistiming I'd have to restart and wait again. Giving a little more control to the height and direction of the jump, possibly even a line to show the jump arc, would make the game feel way better to me (though the last part would probably make it too easy of a platformer).
This reminds me of the themes along the lines of "limited controls" or "one button controls" that often come up in the lead up to the jam, and don't make it through to the end because it's difficult to make a game that doesn't frustrate the player when a core mechanic is taking away their control over the game. But, to be clear, that's not to say this is bad idea or a bad game, I just wanted to mention how important it is to make the player feel like they have as much control as possible. With some tweaks though, I think you could do it.
Very cute, I liked the music (though as others have said, needs a bit more of a lead out silence before looping, just a minor thing though) and the graphics, they both really gave the game a cozy vibe. I hope you don't mind me saying, but I thought the game felt more like the adventures of a young child's imagination of what it's like to be in a submersible rather than like I was actually in one, but regardless of interpretation it fits the theme very strongly and has a wonderful mood.
I think my only gripe with your story was noticing that my starting choice put me on an ending track, when I made it without having more context about the rest of the game. While I picked the sloth the first time and enjoyed the image of holding onto it looking out the porthole as the hints of the invisible sanity system loomed around me (and I ended up with Ending 3). The second time, playing with a friend to show them the game, we picked snacks as our first option and then ended up with Ending 6. Calling it Normal felt a bit deflating, and it felt like an inferior ending despite the cute scene exchanging food with the tinies. While both playthroughs were enjoyable and different in what other choices we made along the way, it still felt as though the biggest choice I made was in the beginning. Maybe it's just the emphasis of your game on having and displaying different endings, though, and how that's a double edged sword of both inviting replayability and showing players the extent to which different choices do or don't matter in the end. If I didn't know there were 6 (and a half) endings, but just that it was a "choices matter" game, I might not have seen or minded the importance of starting item so much. As it was though, I got a sense of how most or all the endings would play out after just two, which may have defeated the point of having six.
That's really my only issue with the game though, sorry for a long paragraph about it, I think I was still trying to figure it out in my head as I wrote it :sweat_smile: . As I say, it was very cute and enjoyable to play.
(And I've never specifically asked someone to play my game before, but as a fellow Twine developer, I'd be honored if you'd give my game a play :pray: . It's nowhere near as polished in terms of graphics and sound, but has a slightly longer story with more small choice branches, though still some big ones too. And if not, I understand, it feels weird to ask, but I'd really appreciate hearing the thoughts of another Twine dev.)
Interesting concept, I found the visuals too hard to read to time my jumps and avoid obstacles, and the timing windows were extremely tight, but the quick restarts and short levels kept me playing until the second level after the spring (revisiting the rolling line obstacles) before I got frustrated and gave up. But I should note, this isn't usually my style of game, and if I were more into something like precision platformers I'd have stuck it out longer.
I liked it (I'm a fan of maze games) but I thing there was too much going on. Between the fruit/enemies/signs in the field, the letters at the portals, and then the hints/riddles, it just made for too confusing of a game. It would really help to be able to see again the tutorial text that appears when the game first loads, and the riddles and hints. As it was, I just kept being frustrated by the enemies teleporting me (though this was sometimes helpful and might make for an interesting twist on the game) and stealing my fruit. I didn't realize I could repel them, as I tried once and either it didn't work or I didn't time it right. Free roam mode is a neat touch though, I feel like that alone could be the basis of a game (play around, customize, then share your level here).
I really enjoyed your game, although I'm biased as I'd been working on something a bit similar as a pet project for the better part of this year (though it's been untouched for a couple of months... we'll see if I ever get motivated to finish it). I wrote down some feedback as I played, but your commenters have been pretty thorough so far, so I'll just add that it would be helpful if the map room was lit up or made of unlit materials so that we didn't have to waste our first charge of the level checking the map before we went into the maze proper.
As I said, I like these sorts of games so if you decide to develop it more, @ me and I'd be happy to give it a play test or other feedback on specific things.
Well done on the compo!
Sorry you had such trouble uploading, I would have been so panicked if that had happened to me!
The game I made for this LD is very different from this type of thing, but here is a link to a WebGL build of my similar game. The main similarity is the use of light around the player, and mine was developing into a maze game, but this little gameplay slice is just a single room to get the idea of the mechanic.
https://play.unity.com/mg/other/webgl-builds-373698
The controls and everything are explained in the comment below the game, so make sure and read it all if you do decide to give it a try.
Reminds me a bit of my game from last jam (my first). One hit to restart and restarting fully from the beginning of the game, rather than the level, makes it very punishing. But I like the silly vibes and music.
I was confused when there wasn't any "you've finished" kind of text, just the counter going to zero, but I like the art for it. Well done on your first game.
Now that's a clever mechanic. And I like the sfx, very punchy.
Nice concept. Like some others have said, I would have liked to see a bit more challenge in the gameplay, though I definitely understand and appreciate your choice to focus on an easier and smoother experience rather than a more challenging one that might have bugs or less polish.
Puzzle games are difficult to make in a game jam, especially as your first time, so props to you for attempting and submitting it.
This reminded me very strongly of The Quiet Year, thank you for mentioning your inspiration, I was trying to tell the person I was playing with about it but couldn't remember the name.
We liked the game a lot, very open ended with just enough structure to keep you going. You did a great job writing the secondary "O" questions so as to open the story to more creativity and storytelling, rather than close it off by looping back to the original event prompt too strongly (if that makes sense - regardless, well done!).
Also, we found it very useful to take notes as we played, so it was a good idea to suggest that.
The only issue we had with the game was the length. We played over dinner and hadn't completed half the deck by the time we were done, so decided to end the game ourselves rather than wait for the End Card, which had landed near the bottom of the deck. We thought of a couple other ways to help the length issue: 1. Divide the deck by suits, so you can choose how long you want the game to take by how many suits you are playing with. 2. Allow more cards to be the End card, like any ace or aces and kings.
The second point goes into another system I thought might help pace the game, like a "Major Event" card. For example, draw any ace and the first major event happens. Then depending on how long you want the game to be, the next ace could be another Major Event, or it could be the End Card. This adds a little more sense of progression, but at the expense of some of the current open-endedness. But that might put the pacing and style too similar to The Quiet Year's seasons, so :shrug:
But to reiterate, great game!
Please by all means, if you and others like the Major Events idea, try and run with it! I like your idea about developing creation myth or other broad/background aspects of the village through them. It might be difficult to put something so big in a prompt, I don't know, but you certainly have the talent for it.
I appreciate you being so on top of crediting (and development generally). I've never been credited for anything before, so I'll defer to you, but sure, if you could mention me ("oter") in the guide that'd be really cool! (and my co-player declined being credited but is on board for all of the stuff I've posted).
This game was my jam (pun and compliment very much intended), glad I happened to see it a few days ago so I could make sure and play it before ratings ended.
Only negative was that I was confused that the narrator was indicating they were done and wanted to go back to the start, but there were more shinies to find! While I get that it probably would have been a slog, especially for a jam game where people just want to dip in and out, I felt torn between what I as a player wanted to do (keep exploring the awesome maze and see more narrative moments and collect/clear all the shinies) vs what the game was telling me to do without addressing the uncollected memories(?).
That one point aside though, I really enjoyed it top to bottom. Well done!
(also, holy crap just noticed it's a compo game. Extra well done!)
I ended up failing toward the end of day three, felt it was too much of a slog to replay and get to the end of day four (though I can hardly judge, I'm the same way with lack of save mechanics in my LD games).
I enjoyed the game and variety of people, all the little touches you had from the train to the dialogue over their heads, and the accompanying audio, as well as all the information you had for each person on the different screens. Very nice compo submission.
(and I should add, the failure was me testing the system at first, then agreeing to make the wrong choice for the guy who asked, then being lazy when it came to a tough choice and getting it wrong... so I deserved it lol)
When I played, I didn't realize you could click through dialogue and for some reason never thought to try. The slowness deflated an otherwise great game, and I only thought to go back and check when no one else commented on it. Maybe make a note of that somewhere in game (and if you did and I missed it, oops!).
Also love the audio. You can always tell when there's a dedicated person making the music, and @kobylarz did a great job with it. I don't know which of you did sfx but those were great too.
I agree with what everyone has posted so far and wanted to add that I appreciate whoever thought to highlight blocks that you are about to or able to grab. Also, though some people have already said it, I thought the controls felt very strange. The camera wasn't so bad for me, but it was really unintuitive for me to drag blocks from a lower level up to make a match. I had to restart the game a few times while I figured out what to do (since you have to drag up to start the game), and I still don't feel very confident with it.
I think it's the nature of the camera angle, and maybe the easiest fix would be a keyboard only or gamepad mode, where you can press the up arrow or move the stick up on a gamepad and move the block up (or to the side or down). Or even just 3d match three/tetris without the controlling the archaeologist: you highlight a block then can move it up down left right, then move the camera to move it in the third dimension.
Also, while I also had bombs all the way down, I may have nearly gotten stuck/unable to finish. I'm not sure, but it looked like there was a block with no nearby blocks that matched. Everything was chaotic because bombs kept chain exploding and blocks falling, but I'm worried that could be an issue: you're stuck at the bottom with a block you're unable to match blocking the exit, and all the bombs already exploded. Something to consider if you keep developing this game.
I thought this was a great idea, I love maze games and thought that mapping was a good impetus to explore around, so it's like this was made for me. Only I think the torch may have been bugging out or something, the fire was flickering in a way that made it hard for me to look at the screen (I do also have weak eyes), so sadly I couldn't finish.
If you kept polishing/developing this game I would 100% buy and play it though.
Loved the music and audio design! Am I right in thinking the fish had a death sound effect, rather than you having a collection sound effect, so that you could hear the orcas nearby eating them? If so, nice touch! Liked the game a lot.
Love it. Took a little getting used to all the controls and that I could easily mine for stone. After that it was smooth sailing.
Two things I didn't like: First, on my laptop it was a pain to redirect my cursor, I personally would have preferred an option to mine/throw bombs in the direction I was moving. I'm sure on desktop it's a much easier experience and better. Second, I had no idea what any other collectibles were for besides stones. Maybe I missed it, maybe it's a mechanic that you haven't implemented yet, but they felt kinda meaningless because I had infinite lives and energy (both of which I enjoyed immensely, made for a very cozy/chill game).
One thing I really loved: the variation in tiles! I felt like I had just about seen the gist of the game when I got to the city tiles, and then the same when I got to the pink (crystal?) tiles. Both of them were interesting and made me want to keep playing/exploring. I stopped for now but wonder what other stuff there is to see deeper down.
Maybe I'm in the minority, but I had no issue at all with the controls, so if you do change them, perhaps keep both versions as options.
This wasn't the type of game I expected going in--top down instead of first or third person, so more arcadey but because of the momentum-based movement it felt tactical too. Honestly reminded me of something from Ender's Game, if you're familiar, and as others have said, has an impressive amount of content and polish for a jam game. Well done!
I have no idea why but the embed isn't working on my laptop, and the download isn't downloading. It's probably an "it's me not you" issue, but just wanted to give a heads up in case there is actually something funky with the download.
Either way, I'll try again with the embed on my desktop later.
Realized that I had to hit space instead of enter to make the embed run... oops. But the download still isn't working for me.
I'm not a platformer person, but in terms of levels/zones:
First level seemed odd that the hardest part was at the beginning, then the rest was controlled falls.
Second level seemed similar at first, but then the last checkpoint was really nasty. I ended up getting through it with patience.
Third level: I encountered the same apparent softlock but realized that if I hit it while moving right and mashing space I could make the hop. Still, needs a tweak since the jump feels even less effective in that spot than it did in the actual water level. After that, I got stuck at within that first area, with the tight jump horizontal jump and the saw at the corner. I know that with a well timed jump dash I could probably clear it, but since I'm not a platformer person, I gave up after 10-15 tries maybe.
Other than level design, I really liked the art and the extra bits like the water effect and bubble coming from the character. I personally didn't like the music, found it a bit to grating and repetitive after a few minutes, but maybe that's just the NES style and not your fault.
Overall nice game!
Nice story and I liked the chess :) glad to see this before ratings end! I very much echo what sudocoffee said about this being a way to convey something about a story that words alone couldn't really achieve, I thought it was really great.
(and I also had the issue with the upgrades system they described, and I'm on a normal windows 10 machine, in case you are going to keep bug squashing after the jam)
I also got to only 800 m (could use an apple or two) but really liked the game. While playing I thought "This feels like a real game!" as in the most polished entry I've seen yet, and also a good concept that could be developed into a full game. As it stands, I was amazed to see the depth goes down to 2000 m, and I'll revisit after the jam or later in the ratings period to play some more.
I was in the same boat as randomhuman above, I got to the lighthouse on my second try, but must have missed the key item for it and had no on-screen explanation of what to do (nor even, and this is embarrassing for me, the objective, which I had forgotten. My brain just said "Go up! Escape water! Water bad!" and when I got to the lighthouse without whatever item would allow me to finish the game, I quit in mild confusion). That's not to say I didn't like it, and it's my bad as much as it is an oversight in design.
I agree with what others have said though, with polish it has the makings of a nice rapid-paced free movement puzzle adventure game!
Thanks for making the platformer not too hard! I died a few times in the fire level but never felt frustrated with it. As others have said, I liked the holo-spikes mechanic, as well as the intercom at the start of levels to introduce/hint at new mechanics. Very well thought out and executed.
I also got bugged/stuck, mine was when I moved to level four. I had used a re-roll the previous level (not really understanding what it was for, I thought it would take me to a new side in that level but instead I ended up on the same side), and for the purple level, I rolled a six. Can't think of any other details to help debug.
I liked the concept, found it all very innovative and well polished, especially for a compo game, though as others have said, it lacked some oomph to make me want to progress or play again after the bug and reach the end. In terms of core gameplay loop it's quite good, though.
This wasn't the type of game I expected on opening it, but I thought the gameplay loop was solid, and it was a nice, perfectly bite-sized jam game. Most of my feedback is just what Sam said above, especially the desire to see progress all throughout the game, because I was surprised when I lost at the end, as I thought the flower was decently big and the root had grown all the way to the bottom.
Only other "gripe" or negative on the game is that I thought the hitbox on the plant could have been a touch bigger/more forgiving, and on the tar pit as well.
I did like the risk or random based nature of the game, how I'd have to guess each time how long the flower would want a particular thing, this made the otherwise simple gameplay nice and engaging.
Also loved the music and sfx, some of the best I've heard all jam!
I didn't beat it but the first time playing, I had no idea what to do. Because the first two screens were "press any button" screens, I tried that. Then I clicked helplessly on the door while my character started to drown. I had just figured out what to do two clicks before the character died and at the death screen I burst out laughing! Not your intended effect, I'm sure, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.
There's something about jam games, because there's no dev time to explain stuff or tutorialize, where being dropped in and figuring it out just makes the game great, and this game does that perfectly.
That was great! Loved how it's weird but all fits together well. It felt very polished, too.
Only negative for me was the puzzles seemed a bit on the easy side, but since most others here said they were more on the challenging side, it seems you balanced them correctly!
Also, not about the game, I really appreciate you explaining your process for art, anims, and (especially) dialogue. Kinda makes me want to learn Stride3D (which I hadn't heard of before) and ink next jam, since ink has long been on my "to try" list.
On that note, if you don't mind me asking, was there an engine reason you didn't include audio, or was it just a timing thing?
Nice little puzzle game! I liked all of it, art, audio, idea, mechanics! Only slight issue I had (often the bane of LD puzzle games) was the balance. Level 5 (I think it was--that's my other modest complaint, the level number didn't show on screen during play, only flashed briefly at the end) felt like I solved it on accident or with little brainpower because it was introducing the auto tile mechanic. It happened so quickly I didn't really pick up on what had happened until I happened a few more times in later levels. Maybe you didn't design for the levels to get harder, only more complex, but level 5 felt like I wasn't being challenged with the previous mechanics, only introducing the new mechanic. Even so, I *did* like how you added new mechanics with each puzzle, and the overall design was great.
Really amazing amount of stuff here. I thought it would just be free roam, take pretty pictures, but the collectibles and ship vs walking around and whole day night cycle with timed events was really impressive. I got everything but two timed events that I just missed/noticed as it was exactly too late. Wished there could have been a way to speed up/skip time so I could get them too. But I can hardly request more features when you already did so much. And it really is a gorgeous game, well done on not just the art/shaders but placing them in the world in such an interesting way to make me want to explore it.
I saw someone mentioned a bug on the itch page. I also had a bug, not sure if it's the same one. I accidentally pressed E2 instead of E3 once, and couldn't find a way to clear it (maybe an oversight, maybe I'm dumb and missed it). I had to enter it, then figured I could immediately fix it by entering E3. Only after that, the squad stopped responding to any commands and I couldn't see anything else to do except quit out. I'm not sure if I took over 60 seconds to try to fix it, as I didn't know about the failsafe you implemented. If it happens again, I'll make sure and time it out.
I'll definitely come back to this one though, one of my favorite games of the jam! Love the music and all voice acting, really helps establish the mood!
Hitboxes for item placement felt a bit tight, like you could only place something in the middle of the previous object. Still, once I saw that I almost hit the heart or weakspot or whatever once, I kept playing until I could beat it. Even though it probably depended on getting lucky with tall, skinny items, the frantic trying to place them to reach the heart felt nice and fun.
I did it! Whew, I've been picking at it the last couple of days, very tough but rewarding. Looking at the final solution, I appreciate how much it made me change my thought process as I worked on solving it. I wasn't even clear at first that you had to recombine the colored lights into a white beam!
First, I echo everything positive and negative that has been said so far. And I just wanted to add two things.
When I was playing the music game, I thought that coloring or numbering the chimes/bars would have made it much, much easier for me. Maybe that'd make it too easy, but it always seemed like I'd know which one was hit but after following the sequence through, I couldn't tell by length alone if it was that chime or its neighbor, so I would inevitably mess myself up before completing the tune.
Second, someone before made a good point, but since not many people brought it up: I think the game would benefit from more and clearer feedback when the player does something wrong versus right versus just incidental stuff happening. A couple examples are the sound cue for a new villager entering. I didn't know what this was during the game and only learned about it in the comments, but it messed me up a few times because I thought it was a signal I had done something wrong and was about to fail a minigame or something. Second in the Boo game, there's no indication I've done the right thing, that I just need to do it three times, so I as a player assume I'm doing it wrong but am being gifted a second chance--until suddenly I'm pulled out of it because I have failed or time or ? Again, not clear what failure is or how exactly it happened. I think there's a gamedev term for this--legibility (if I'm remembering correctly). Your game is quite good and quite polished and has lots of content, but both the difficulty and the lack of legibility counteract all the good stuff the game has going for it.
Eager to see what the post jam version is like though!
Don't get me wrong, I do like the game! I think that's why everyone is giving so much feedback, because we can all see the potential this game has, and because you are going to update it after the fact. Thanks for going through your plans and thought process, if anything it reminds me just how much work went into this game in the first place (especially for two people, I forgot your team size til now, holy cow that's a lot of work).
Sorry if my or anyone's feedback was too harsh or demanding or anything, I didn't intend to give the impression I'm negative on your game :sweat_smile:
I couldn't find a mouse sens slider, which I know it's a jam so there isn't always time, but was sad that you had other sliders/options but not that one. Couldn't play much before I got a headache, but my feedback from what I did play: I wish it was clearer what we could land on and what the limit for fall damage was. It seemed like you had to take the prescribed path and skipping even one stone would kill you, even if it was just barely past the fall damage range. If you guys keep working on this or do something like it again, I'd like it if blocks appeared when you're able to land on them or else were a different color or shader when out of range.
Also almost forgot--may be user error, but I had to run around the starting area for a solid minute before actually being able to play. I figured out about buying the life upgrade but couldn't figure out the generator thing. I just went around clicking on stuff (especially the place where it said "CLICK") and eventually the path opened but I have no idea how. But again, I can't be too critical because in a jam any sort of tutorial at all is an accomplishment, and I know that's just what you guys were trying to do.
My mom *loves* word games (and I like them, too) so I turned this one over to her, then after a while my dad came and we ended up working on it together! Thanks for providing a nice game that was such a big hit here. For reference, we just finished puzzle 3 (I think?) after about 1 hr 15 minutes and will finish the others tomorrow.
Here's some feedback/desires they had:
1. A bar at the top that says the phrase that you have selected so far, whether or not it's right, so that you can see at a glance what you have--trying to keep the phrase in mind and follow it through the zigzags while looking for the next part was tough.
2. A way to see how long the phrase is--possibly an option to show it at the top, possibly in the form of another type of hint (like, Completion Hint: you're at 9 of 15 letters and 2 letters wrong), or like just providing a letter range for how long the phrase will be (like, 10-15 letters long).
3. Possibly an option to know if you've hit an end--like the square turns a different color or something.
4. Maybe tile color variation to reduce eye strain (like a palette of similar colors and possibly different background colors for different puzzles)
I think that was all it, but they scattered to the winds after telling me everything all at once, so I'll edit this post if I get more from them tomorrow.
Cheers for the good entry!
EDIT after beating: I'm pretty sure we finished the game today, though I'll be honest, when the credits screen came up, I thought we were at eight puzzles, not ten, and I was worried I had hit the credits screen by mistake but couldn't figure out how to get back to the game or whether we'd beaten it.
Regardless, we all **liked the game a lot**, and I have a little bit more feedback to add.
First, as someone already said, I think there is a typo in one of the puzzles, though at my count I thought it was puzzle 6: there is a 'th' word instead of 'the' which may be how the phrase is usually said, but for this puzzle game was very confusing! Second, I want to say I really liked the way you did hints. I'm not sure how you programmed or selected them, but they were always very helpful, showing us where to look when we hadn't been considering that letter, or the correct choice when we were stuck between two possible and unlikely paths.
Finally a clarification on the first part in yesterday's feedback: If there would be a way to track the letters a player has selected and show them as regular text somewhere on the screen, to help us see the phrase we are building at a glance without needing to retrace through the zigzag and sometimes backwards text. My mom kept instinctively looking for this and requesting it, so I thought it important to pass on to you, though I can imagine there are several challenges like how to make the text read the right way around and have the correct spaces, even if it's not the correct phrase.
Thanks so much for being quick to our feedback into action, and once again for making this game for the jam in the first place!
@Kawair Thanks, I'm glad you liked it (honestly didn't expect people to play it, so I'm glad you did and enjoyed it!). You can check out the Interactive Fiction genre if you want to learn more about this style of game.
Thanks for the feedback, glad you both (now three since I've been writing this post!) enjoyed it.
@dingbat Yeah, I was wondering if anyone would anyone would run into that snag. I thought about taking out the check but figured it was unlikely for anyone to need to restart after hitting it (and I ran out of time tbh). Still, if I do anything more with this game I'll fix that or try to add a better checkpoint system to avoid tedious clicking for something you already know :thumbsup:
Thanks for all the comments and kind words everyone, glad you enjoyed it!
Thanks for all the feedback today, I definitely didn't expect so many people to play let alone enjoy my game! I always play the games of people who comment, and I'm running a bit behind, so I'm @ ing @levi-kingma @cameronpenner @tetrapteryx @vinnnie @tymus @justine-d so I can remember to play all your games later tonight or hopefully tomorrow!
And Justine, yeah I was worried my wording might be misleading, sorry about that. I had intended for a whole branch to the game if you didn't install it. Essentially piecing through all the files you would see on the path *with* antivirus so that you could see the gist of the good ending and hopefully want to play again and achieve it. But alas, time.
(And don't get me started on my plans for the Clippy boss battle, also fully scrapped for time... maybe I'll have to pick this game up again and give it more love, since you all keep blowing me away with the positive feedback <3 )
@johnnysix Don't feel bad! I did zero balancing or anything, definitely didn't expect so many people to give it a try.
And I set the rating to casual mode (as in, I opted out of getting ratings) because I made it so casually compared to my usual Ludum Dare routine of fretting, prepping during final voting, and working hard with little sleep all weekend. I thought opting out would drive people to go play other games that had been fully developed amid blood, sweat, and tears but it looks like that wasn't the case :shrug: (but I do really appreciate everyone who has played and left feedback, it warms my heart to have such unexpected positivity around my little lark of a game).
@python-b5 Thanks for playing! I'll check for a bug on the boss fight achievement, since I didn't have any issues while testing, but something may have gone wrong during export (it was a hairy process for the update since I used a newer, less stable version of ChoiceScript and its IDE). If you don't mind being spoiled with a hint on the other achievement, there is a different way to install the antivirus, hinted at by the name of the achievement.
And thanks for the feedback regarding the restart process. I had to add the post-battle restart manually, rather than doing it the "proper" way, so I had never considered it would be better than the default because no variables are reset. I guess in most ChoiceScript games, restarting means resetting choice driven stats, so it would make more sense than it does here. I'll change it tomorrow!
EDIT: I just played through a couple of times and got the boss fight achievement on both, so if it is bugged, it's not totally bugged. There are a lot of possible paths, though, so it's possible you missed the ways to unlock it.
Thanks for the feedback @dock-frankenstein and @alex-niemeyer ! I just finished playing both your games, and left comments, but also -- Dock Frankenstein, if that was your writing, I enjoyed it quite a bit -- I don't think I could ever pull off that style, even in the throws of a game jam. And Alex, I really liked your music and sfx. I was considering tagging you personally in my comment on the game, but now I don't have to!
To go more into your feedback Alex, I agree that games like this more often offer actual choices, so this was probably more puzzle game than interactive fiction or text-based adventure game. There were branches after unlocking the computer, but they weren't obvious to the player, and in the original version especially, they were more of alternate endings than alternate gameplay. It feels weird to self promote, but my previous LD entry, Postcards, was much more in this branching style if you're interested, though it was cozy choose-your-own-adventure and not a puzzle game.
I was a bit confused by the green warning light (at least, I'm pretty sure that's what it was). Like Wouter, I thought at first that meant there was a collectible, and ended up taking a lot of damage just while figuring out the controls and lights. I guess I probably should have restarted right then, because I ended up dying to heat damage later.
Still, a lot of content for a compo game, well done!
(Also, this isn't really feedback on the game per say, but I've noticed this jam that several of the games I've played you either can't die or the game/level is short enough that restarting costs nothing. I'm going to try to do this more in future, and I would have appreciated something like that here, if I could have kept playing on after breaking the ship, just to see the end of the game for the sake of the jam (I'm going to go back and try again because I think it's good enough, but on some games if I die part way through I just quit). Just something to consider!)
Solid game! A few wishes if you want to develop it further: 1. On screen indicators for the lasers (or just an effect to know where the beam was about to be). Like the above poster, I died a lot in the second level, every time it was because the laser guys had moved off screen and I was standing right in their beam (I probably stood too still because that impacted score) 2. Pre-spawned enemies in the whole level. Maybe that would make it too chaotic, but I thought it was a bit annoying to wait after dropping for the enemies to spawn. 3. Up teleporters? To maximize killing, maybe at some tradeoff to use. 4. Horde mode! 5. Auto weapons! 6. Rockets and mayhem!
Good start/jam entry!
Happy to see another IF writer, and your comment at the end about Harlowe being finicky made me laugh--it truly is, though at least it is easy to get rolling with.
I liked how short your game is, made me want to go back and play again to test it out and see other options and whether he would respond differently with different choice paths. I ended up using an incognito tab to play three times, and I want to keep playing to see the true ending! In my playthroughs, I tested him but didn't press too hard, and I thought it was odd that in my final run, I went with all the softball questions, keeping him as happy as I could but ended up with a higher score than the previous run. Maybe I had just picked bad questions but I expected softballs to give the lowest score, and instead I ended up with a 70 (the time before was 55 I think, and I don't remember the score from my first run).
Still, as others have said, I really like the concept and the overall game, and I'm eager to go back and see if I can push him harder for the juicier ending.
Also, here's a couple ways to reset if you're interested. (I hope you don't mind me sharing, feel free to ignore!)
Tip for restarting in Harlowe (though there may be a faster way) -- I created a reset story passage that said "Resetting..." then listed all the story variables and reset them one by one then "Done" at the end or something as a clickable link back to the start of the story (and you can compress all that whitespace, too). For local passage variables you should be able to just redeclare them at the start of a passage, but sometimes I know Twine/JS can have a fit if the variable has already been declared.
I'm not sure if it'll work as well in Harlowe, but the other solution I came up with after switching to Snowman was to create a variable array object in my story Javascript file. Each time I created a variable I made it a part of that array (like, story.vars.unease = 0 ), then at the end all I had to do was cycle through the array (or arrays, you can create multiple for different chapters of a story) and delete all the variables. A little harder to set up but much easier to manage once it's going.
Played on latest update so I didn't leave a rating here, but did rate it on itch! Loved the game, felt very (and strangely) addictive. I thought I had softlocked myself as well, but then realized you made stamina come back slowly while standing still, very clever workaround! Also, don't know if bug or intended, but I managed to pay off the debt because the counting seemed to be funny. I remember putting in ~450 gold to get to 1k once and jumping up to 1700 instead, and it just seemed to ramp from there. Still, I very much appreciated it because I could beat the game in one sitting and it doesn't look like it has a save system yet. Otherwise, I agree that the stamina felt too limited to start, and bought two upgrades and didn't notice any significant difference. Oxygen was also a bit limited but that is kind of the point around that mechanic, and I never felt like it hampered me as much as stamina, just made me dart in and out and choose areas that weren't no oxygen zones. Loved how open ended the game was with all the different dig areas, I felt like I was going my own way, not just along a predefined route you had set, and I liked finding the little secret area past the first room!
Hey I see what you mean, our games have a very similar concept! Yours is way better though :)
Like some other people, I had difficulty with the zombie puzzle. It was a bit frustrating because conceptually I knew exactly what to do and even had the right idea of how to do it, I just always struggled at the last step. I think it was "decay to nothing" made me think I had to clear all the items from the board, and trying to use the pill would mess me up or just not work to eliminate the germ to clear it so the zombie could eat the meat. Once I did get it, I was like "oh duh." So maybe tweak wording or remove the pill to make it a bit easier. I liked that the pill cured the zombie, though, and that you could kill it, nice touches.
I started trying to make people the wrong potion to see if there would be any effect. I don't think there was, at least with the changes I tried (like hallucinations instead of insight), but doing that may have caused the game to soft lock. I can't pull any more ingredients off the shelf for the quest to make the Potion of Somnia for the little boy.
And yeah, I wish there was a way to replenish ingredients somehow. Maybe like how those shop sim games you buy ingredients at the end of the day with the money you made, or people give you more ingredients as you make them their potions. Obviously a bit of a stretch for a compo game, but just a thought.
I've made games like this before, so I'm a fan of yours. Always like navigating in the dark with some twist like your sonar. Only wish for a bit more feedback from it when you're stuck in a cave. I played twice and both times got stuck at 120m or so in a cave system that I couldn't find the exit to. But I agree with the above poster, for three hours this is great.
Also like the background music.
Edit: Forgot to mention, I love the cover art, feels very LD to me :)
I don't have too much to add, everyone has covered a lot of the obvious positives and negatives. But I did want to say that in a short jam like this, less is more. I think this game would have been better with *either* the canary/oxygen mechanic (which is a very cool idea) *or* the monsters you have to avoid (and more ways to avoid them or a hearts system). Taking one and polishing it into a gameplay loop is better than two mechanics that feel flat.
But most first games are like this, and I can tell you both poured a lot (of time, life force, etc) into this game, so kudos on your first Ludum Dare!
As others have said, I thought the gameplay could be a bit juicier or the loop a little more interesting in some way. I did like all the little details you added though, with the (nice & glowy) ores flying into and out of you and the outline around interactables, and your implementation of music and sfx even if they weren't your own assets--all made the game feel nice and relaxing, even if the gameplay was a little lacking.
I had trouble wrapping my head around your game. I think I'm in a submarine, using the screen to navigate to my destination? And the green lines indicate clear space around you, if they're shorter there's an obstacle? I tried twice and both times it said I met a terrible fate, but didn't give any other feedback, leaving me as a player very confused about what was happening and how to do better in the next run.
Good game, I clicked from the feed yesterday after you talked about going from one concept to another and ending up at extraction shooter, like so many games these days lol.
Gameplay loop is solid (I mean, you didn't deviate from the recipe, but executed it all well). I liked the level design and how it introduces you to the game at the beginning, most jam games just throw you right in.
My only critique (aside from the lag, which I fixed by switching from my laptop to desktop and playing from the download instead of online) is the arrows from the free zone. As a player, I was inclined to keep going straight, and then there was an onscreen prompt to keep going straight, so I thought the arrows were for later. When I checked after the first extraction, one of them was indeed the shop-to-be, but the other was more tutorial! LMB to shoot is intuitive, but I would have liked to see all instructions in a straight line that the player must walk through, then extras like the shop to the sides. I imagine this area is a shooting range to be, but still would like to see all tutorial parts on the core path.
That nitpick aside, well done!
Intriguing bit of gameplay for a made-in-an-hour concept! I'm wondering what the bigger plan is/was. Platformer or a different type of game where the speed boost would pay off?
Agree with all the previous comments, primarily that there felt like very little feedback/game to play. I would have much preferred just clicking through the dialogue at my own pace rather than having a timer--sometimes I ran out of time, other times I was waiting for the clock to tick down because I couldn't figure out how to make the day end. Overall I just felt very confused because it took a bit to realize what was going on, and that the only real decisions or meaningful action on my part is guilty or not guilty but the game didn't seem to respond to those choices at all. But I'm just saying all that because you asked for feedback as a new dev. I did like the music and art, and for your first real game it's great!
Very cool game, I like the ending and your music and sfx for it--really well done.
Nice game! Never felt unsolvable to me, you were very clever about shadow placement! Plus I liked how the controls were very easy to understand and were always visible on screen.
Brilliant idea. I love the way it ends. And, really, how fitting it is, how if you're distracted with your own thoughts or sadness you miss what someone is saying, and you guys could manifest that in a gameplay mechanic by having to divert your attention from what he was saying to check the sadness bar. Really well conceived and executed.
Very fun play! I'm terrible at making arcade-type games like this, so I appreciate good ones all the more. My face totally lit up when I hit the double mechanic at the end of my first run. Only critique is that the best runs feel a bit arbitrary, like I'm suddenly shooting up twenty levels and feeling great, but I can't replicate it or do it from skill, so the joy of it wears off after a bit. Still, love that the levels change as you get higher. My last run I saw slanted platforms and one started moving after I landed on it, so I imagine without the level skip mechanic, and possibly with some hand crafted runs in addition to these more randomly generated levels, this game would be fun to try and master.