Space Shield by Infinite 2020-04-21T00:58:28Z
Looks great and sound design is fantastic! Nice work!
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → Overlook Studios
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | 47 | Stuck in a loop | Beat Bash | jam | 15 | 4.37 | 4.40 | 4.36 | 4.02 | 4.57 | 4.35 | 3.15 | 4.14 |
Looks great and sound design is fantastic! Nice work!
Really polished game! Even the itch.io page was polished. Well done team, well done.
Cute style you went with, I enjoyed the goofy sound effects and the fast paced music (really liked it!). It feels really good to dodge at the higher speeds. One thing I found that could be tweaked is that when attacking blocks, your character bounces a lot higher than I would expect and kind of slows down gameplay. If you made that faster with some polished effects it would really suit the satisfying gameplay you guys have built. Well done.
Very impressive art and overall mood of the game! The model and sfx of the monster is well done! I really like the maze of the level and appreciate the detail you put into it. Making it so some walls can be seen through with the cracks was a great design decision. I think the game could have benefited from some music to accompany the monster when it sees you to build that level of suspension. Additionally I think you guys decided to increase the usage of stamina while increasing the speed of the enemy it would definitely add to the suspense. Great job!
I like the overall mood of the world you built (reflections + music + backgrounds).
I think this game would benefit from camera shakes to really give those bullets some satisfaction. Additionally having some indication for how many bullets you have before a reload would be useful as well as having HP visible for enemies, my opinions though.
I like that you guys put in the effort to make and put in a boss, shows you guys were dedicated to having some form of progression
Shooting and hitting things felt really good which I think was important you guys did considering it was 99% of the game. With more polish and some more ideas (powerups etc etc) I could see this being a really satisfyingshoot-em-up.
This game was great, felt so polished with the cool art style, great music and sfx! Definitely making the most of a relatively simple gameplay loop (and truly sticking to the theme).
Awesome job, loved the complete package you submitted. Very interesting gameplay mechanic you made and really stands out for its uniqueness. Love the cute little art and simplistic music. Very satsifying and polished to hit enemies. I will say that having a rotational command scheme on keyboard is very, very difficult. My hands started to hurt by the end of it by having the repeated keystrokes. I can see this being a fantastic indie game for consoles though. Great job!
Really like the art, the animations look like the artist knows what they are doing. I think the concept you guys had was good for the jam, a nice combination of hack and slash and bullet hell in the level. I think you guys keeping to a simplistic set of mechanics (slash/dodging) was a good idea. I think though hitting things/getting hit didn't feel satisfying enough to really go for the impact the art was displaying. Things like knockback, screen shake, time freeze are all relatively easy additions to a hack and slash to make it feel like each hit has its weight behind it. Also for the dodge I think it would have been a good idea add invincibility frames (or make it longer if there was any), I think it fits the games style. Good job on submitting and with some more polish this could be really good!
Really impressive submission! I enjoyed the puzzles and the visuals. Attacking robots could be a little jank at times, but it wasnt a huge issue.
Very cool concept! LimeZu did a fantastic job with the art, and the music and sfx were very fitting and helped create an unnerving mood. Sadly I couldn't figure out how to progress the game past day 01.
Liked the music and the art! Was a very cozy experience playing. The onion sprites stand out a lot and don't really mesh well with the world though. The controls in some ways feel tight and satisfying (the dashing left/right feels good), but trying to dash upwards is a lot on going on with the left hand and can cause frustration (space -> hold up -> shift). I quick remedy would be to have the default dash just go upwards so you can easily do that. Additionally the jump itself is quick and snappy which feels good but having the camera jolt upwards everytime is a lot everytime. With some more polish, some changes to the control this game could be really fun! Congrats on finishing.
Incredible world you guys built, really liked the style you went with I think its a real eye catcher. The gameplay, whilst simple was effective on showcasing the world you guys built which was a big highlight. I think the game definitely could have improved on adding some SFX especially the spikes since it did feel a bit empty. The movements are clean and feel good, this game definitely feels like a jump would be a good addition but I see how you guys wanted to keep it simple. I personally think a final ending would have worked well in this instead of just looping back but I understand given the time constraint. Nice work!
Very cool idea! I loved the art and the overall arcade vibe you went with. Feels very polished and put together. Encapsulating all the enemies in the loop and timing it to destroy them all felt great. I will say that there is a serious flaw in the design of the one mechanic which is that you can simply just keep creating a loop that surrounds the entire screen to keep destroying everything. This kind of makes the game extremely easy and almost undermines the really cool mechanic you built. If enemy AI was a bit better at projecting its shots towards the edges or possibly having an enemy break the look itself, or even limit the size of the loop you make could easily remedy this. Great job on submitting and I had lots of fun playing.
I like the art style and overall mood of the world you built. Not entirely sure what the objective is or you were going for more of a atmospheric walking sim type game. Definitely has potential from a stylistic point of view
Love this art style so much. really like the ambient darkness with the two doors being two beacons of light. I will agree with others the "solution" to the puzzle is not very obvious and kind of requires some trial and error of just hugging the walls that I dont necessarily fits with the style of the game. But I respect the choices you made and overall was a very nice complete experience. Congrats on finishing and I would like to see this art style pushed further because I enjoyed that the most!
Cool entry! I loved the cthulhu-eque theming. I really liked the level design and how you could shoot through portals to solve puzzles, along with the intuitive nature of the looping edges of the screen. I liked the particle effect when bullets collide with obstacles, but I felt it was a little unsatisfying not being able to walk and shoot at the same time.
The enemies added a small amount of challenge to the puzzles, but their A.I. was lacking. The last boss was a little underwhelming because you could just stand in one spot and unload on it without risk of dying, but I liked that there was a conclusion to the story afterwards.
Very cool concept that I'll admit is pretty challenging to wrap your head around initially. I like the overall art style and theme you guys followed for this game. The platforming feels really clean which is something not a lot of submissions can nail like yours. I would say that there isn't much for me to give suggestions other than the in my opinion the levels get pretty hard pretty fast but that could just be me. Given the context of this being made in 72 hours I think you guys did fantastic, nice work.
PS.Good strat with the waifu on the main page haha
Really cool compo submission! I felt similarly to some of the other reviewers, in that the player's jump could use some tightening up, and the bullets moved too slow, but I still enjoyed it and beat it all the same. The enemies were creative, and the concept was innovative despite there being other games with similar "clone the player after they move" core mechanics.
I really enjoyed this! The simple monochromatic art style fits perfectly with the simplicity of the games mechanics. It feels quite polished and jumping feels quite satisfying (while I did find some bugs that when hit would just hit revert me back to the start of my jump).
The movement feels good but as with any 360 degree radial 2d game, it get can confusing when the player is on the top and you hold right only to go left (as the movement is relative to the player not the world). I don't have much to offer there as it is an inherent flaw of the style of the game and not really on you guys.
One criticism I do have is that the design of the enemies make it impossible to not get hit by them when you attack them (which is why you guys rapidly introduce hp I assume). Adding some form of a shield at your feet when jumping to prevent getting attacked always could help with this.
Fantastic job, a well polished experience that I think is underrated for sure.
Pretty hard game and a bit frustrating but I also like these parkour-type puzzle games. Reminded me of the game Naissancee in atmosphere and art style which was a plus too. Nice integration of the theme as well! Great entry, hope you get the remaining ratings!
Incredible! Really loved the art, the dialogue, the sound, everything seems incredibly polished. One of the best things about this submission is that it feels like a complete package. It has a well put together idea with gameplay that matches well with all the assets. I really liked the story you were telling! My only criticism is that not being able to fire while moving kind of feels bad, I can see why you made that design choice but I'm not sure if it necessarily feels the best as a player. Great job, definitely a top submission for me!
way too difficult, but overall a good amount of polish especially for your first platformer! You guys nailed the jump physics and the wall jumping, but a lack of checkpoints made it frustrating to replay the same level over and over.
Interesting take on the theme overall. I like how the mechanic was explained by means of a hiccup, but for actual gameplay I couldnt shake the feeling that I was just lagging every x seconds - so it was more annoying than fun traversing the map. Was also surprised you guys didn't opt out of the graphics category considering you used a public tileset for the majority of the art in the game.
Man, I really dig this game. Simple, yet addicting. Managed to score over 110 points. I also love the title. great work, really.
Those voice lines really got me, strange but hilarious and fit the rest of the game pretty well
Very interesting mechanic that doesn't get boring and keeps the players attention. With more polish this game could be really great! I liked the art of the girls, you should try to incorporated that more with the art of the actual game.
The 3D effect is incredible, great job!
an excellent effort by a solo dev! shooting with wasd and moving with arrow keys freaked out my brain, though.
Extremely cute, loved the art and mood! I think some of the gameplay could use a bit more polish to make the movement and lasso feel a little better but it doesn't detract from the enjoyment of the game
the aesthetic is so clean and pretty. The sounds are soothing and great for a puzzle game. A compo gem. great work
Absolutely blown away with this, Ill be honest I wasn't expecting much but man did you take such a simple concept and really polish it. Fantastic idea perfectly incorporating the theme and pairing it with an incredible, yet simple attention to detail. I personally love the feeling of hitting each shape, the sfx the visual cues ah its very well done. Its probably one of the highest ratings I've given out. I am seriously impressed this execution well done
The idea is very original, at first the mechanic with the player on the opposite side was kind of confusing but after a couple of rounds I got the gist of it. Cute graphics with simplistic controls that make the game more centered on the puzzle mechanics. Good idea and with more polish could be a great full fledged game!
I loved the charm this game brought, by the end of it I was attached to this little guy. The game's style is simple but effective, as with the hat mechanic. It offers optional increased difficult that doesnt introduce it too rapidly. A fantastic closed experience, with more polish I could see this being a good game!
@jeremy-ryan Thanks for playing! we are a team of four (2 programmers, one musician, one artist). We updated the our page to show that since we share the itch page.
@yossarian Yeah the big thing we've noticed with peoples confusion is the shop. definitely something post jam we realize could have been designed to be more intuitive. Thanks for playing.
@lazenman we found that if you full screen it should be good as long as you have a 1920x1080 resolution, otherwise you will get some stuff cut off. never noticed until after since we only have those resolutions while developing haha.
@corentin-benoit-gonin Thanks for the feedback, definitely showing the gold value for each item would make it much easier to know if you can afford them given the short time you have for the shop.
@no-grapes-games Thanks for letting us know! I think its more apparent in the web build compared to desktop but for sure something that can occur especially if you play for longer periods of time.
@charlotte-raymond Thank you for the kind words we really appreciate it!
@jrevel Thanks for playing! definitely the shop could be improved on for better readability and intuitiveness
@gentoogames Thanks! I spent a bad amount of time making those background transitions look so pretty haha.
@jakob-reborn Great suggestion we never thought about that, it would help for sure signal to the player its their time to start strategizing, thanks for playing!
@renge Thanks again for playing it was awesome to see someone live play our game for the first time
@mrmaico Thanks for letting us know thats so cool we got featured! Glad you enjoyed it. We also think a multiplayer setting would be pretty fun too!
@barbiche Glad you enjoyed it! We agree that the tutorial is definitely a bit overwhelming to look at. We originally wanted an in-game tutorial, but we had to prioritize other things! -Adam (artist)
ps. I'm thrilled you like the art! it was super fun to have all the enemies dance to the music (:
@indivicivet All great suggestions! Thanks for taking the time to write such an in-depth critique. We're glad you had fun with it (:
@indivicivet Michael(programmer) here adding on to what you said since you had some of the more indepth suggestions so far (really appreciate it!):
1. I think we decided to hide any ui to show when things are reshuffling to give that better illusion of more of a infinite pool of cards that you own, but I can see how it would be useful to show the player when a reshuffle is about to happen. Additionally there is a discard button (in between your hand and the enemies hand) that you can drag and drop runes to to discard from your current hand. If you mean to discard from your deck completely I think that would be a great idea as well to help sift through the bad cards you started off with
2. Looking back, having the shop be more intuitive is probably the thing we wish we changed/tweaked since its the biggest hurdle to understand (given most of peoples feedback).
3. Adding a final score to the death screen is a fantastic idea and would enforce trying to get that highscore given the endless nature of it, great suggestion!
4. Totally agree once you have a stacked deck with the max cards the game becomes very easy, one of the ideas we had was actually to be able to upgrade ur existing cards to do more damage, have elemental effects. Obviously given the time constraint we went with a fixed damage/shield number instead.
5. Another great suggestion, that was something I thought about afterwards but didnt have the time to implement. Definitely a nice polish and would be very satisfying when you fully blocked the enemy. would feel like you out-played them
Thanks again for your comment we really appreciate the rating/comment/play!
@rs11s21n Unfortunately the web version in non fullscreen-mode will cut off some of the game. Additionally if your resolution isnt 1920x1080 you will get things cut off. Hopefully you were still able to play!
@matthewrobo thanks for the feedback! We originally were going to have the cards be both draggable and set via 1-4 hotkeys (or asdf for example). Didn't have enough time to get to that unfortunately. Thanks for playing!
@drevilbrain we definitely agree the heal is too low of a cost and does result in the game being pretty easy if you don't buy cards in the shop often. Thanks for playing and the feedback!
@blue-pin-studio ah damn that sucks to hear that the music was desyncing with the art, we didn't have much time to test on various setups that could cause desync. Thanks for letting us know and thanks for playing!
@echo-gameworks @jimbly Thanks for playing, sorry to hear the screen gets cut off. Are you guys on a 1920x1080 resolution? We only really tested on that resolution so if you don't it probably will cut off like the screen shots @jimbly has posted.
@jimbly Thanks for the help, I am looking at it that now, itch.io doesn't seem to resolve much when fixing it to a set 16:9 ratio for the view port (tried 640x360, 1280x720, 1920x1080). I will most likely attempt to try to make changes to the build itself. Apologizes for the cutoff, thanks for pointing this out and offering solutions I appreciate it.
@echo-gameworks I'll try to continue working on it to fix issues with cutoff. Full screen most likely won't be possible since you dont have a 16:9 ratio but we should still get it to work non full-screened in browser.
@jimbly @lazenman @rs11s21n @echo-gameworks @pranjalbisht
We just released a patch for the web build so now it will default display on a 1280x720 canvas. This should at least make the game playable for those that dont have 16:9 aspect monitors (make sure not to full screen).
Thanks for bringing this issue and we appreciate you guys playing and giving feedback.
@pfs Yeah we had planned to make an interactive tutorial but didnt even having time so we went with a image tutorial (albeit still a lot as others have put). thanks for playing
Really unique idea, never seen anything like it haha. I appreciated the voice acting and the overall idea you guys stuck to. The gameplay is very simple yet polished. It can get a bit slow at times and I think having a fast forward to end the day would be a good addition since getting 6 egg nogs done is really easy especially at the start. I think just from a graphical perspective having the side tabs text vertical doesn't look the best but I can see why you need it to be on the side for space reasons. Great job on the game!
Overall extremely well designed and polished game. Best "ghost" loop mechanic from any puzzle genre entries i've played so far. Thanks for challenging me to beat the last level, idk if I would have without the incentive. took over 30 mins to figure it out. (read your post on the front page)
Probably the most experimental game I've played from all the submissions. I have no idea what was going on or where it was going (figurately and literally). I really appreciate the vague kind of unexplained nature of the game. I think everytime I tried to play it broke because it didnt seem to progress? Im a big fan of this weird kind of esoteric style of story telling so rated it pretty high. If this was made into a complete experience I would be a fan
Very interesting idea, I really liked the concept of multi-tasking and having to plan ahead with the next dishes. It definitely has a learning curve, the addition of a tutorial was very much needed and very much appreciated! It was a good idea to have the tools required to process the different types of ingredients but having to constantly move the tools off the material after processsing it and having to switch to a different tentacle to pick it up was kind of frustrating. I think that would be fine if I could drop the tool anywhere but since I had to drop it specifically on a table (which if there was no table I'd have to toss on the conveyor belt) which also added some unnecessary obstacles. Great idea and well put together!
Very simple concept that does it really well. The art style and overall mood of the game is very polished and feels like a complete and cohesive experience. There is a lot of potential and with more complexity to the mechanics could make it even more fun.
Definitely an interesting take on tower defense and while the idea is very neat, the execution of it is kind of lost in lack of polish. I can see the goal that you were trying to go for but it does result in a lot of confusion in the gameplay. I would say the art is very good and feels like it belongs with each other, but the lack of feedback from bullets or damaging the enemies makes it hard to understand. Congrats on finishing and submitting, keep it up!
Love the art and music, the mood you guys put together was very polished. Some suggestions I thought of while playing: - When diving (holding down) the camera shifting up was kind of jarring and sometimes hard to follow. I think if you moved the camera downwards so that the player can see more of where they are falling and possibly a slower transition of camera for that, it could be satisfying since the falling itself feels good. - Possibly showing the abilities you have unlocked/have no unlocked in game somehow, but I see why you guys went with a more simplistic ui to match the mood more
Overall a great submission and am completely in love with the complete and polished style of it!
Nice entry! Who would've thought cleaning up could be so fun? The 3D models were impressively polished and the music was catchy. The paintings on the walls made me chuckle. I would have liked to see more in the way of progression level to level besides having to clean up more stuff, but it is a jam afterall! I did notice that sometimes debris would fly behind the vacuum and I'd have to turn around and chase after it. Wondering if this was intentional or not. but either way it added more challenge to the game - which I thought it could use.
Cool concept and take on the theme. I enjoyed the different types of "tasks" you came up with. I will say though that the game does get exponentially harder to impossible (as you have stated). Could possibly add some mechanics to delay the conveyor belt for a bit or slow down time, just to at least extend the games life. Nice job!
Nice work, pretty simple concept and not super interesting but challenging and entertaining regardless. Liked the engine sound of the ship a lot too!
Completely blown away with this. Seriously one of the most complete experiences i've played yet. I personally am a sucker for ambient horror so this really hit the mark with me. The progression of the levels getting stranger and stranger accompanied by this old nostalgic soundtrack that equally devolves with the visuals just gave me chills. The game itself is simple in nature but I'm glad you guys focused on story telling more than introducing distracting mechanics. Its a specific type of horror thats not the easiest to pull off without cheap scare tactics, you really showed the attention to detail and the understanding of what really invokes that unsettling feeling in a game like this. Truly one of my favourite submissions yet and it's a crime its so underrated.
The graphic style is polished and cute, but the gameplay is very lacking. it doesn't feel very satisfying to hit the cups. Also if you click and hold the mouse she doesnt finish her attack animation until after letting go of the mouse which feels and looks odd. A good effort
Nice submission! Graphics were nice, and the music was soothing. Levels were a bit long and unforgiving without checkpoints A way to skip the or speed up dialogue would be nice too, as it got repetitive reading it after dying multiple times. The electricity could be hard to notice sometimes, unlike the poison gas.
Really like the mechanic you guys thought of! I can see the potential the difficulty of a puzzle platformer with this. I liked the visual effects you guys added for death and the dashes, made it feel really satisfying (w/ the sound effect too!). I will say though that some of the sfx in the game was very loud and kind of jarring ex: speech and dying. Great job it was fun to play and interesting to see the thought process for the puzzles of the level.