Outrunning Space! by drludos 2018-08-15T01:17:34Z
I love the creativity of your take on the theme!
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → Pace
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | 42 | Running out of space | 👥 | Over-encumbered | jam | 598 | 3.38 | 3.41 | 3.16 | 3.76 | 3.22 | 3.23 |
I love the creativity of your take on the theme!
Nicely done! After getting the hang of it, I didn't even need the X option, I was able to just swoop back and forth along the bottom and stutter at the right times.
I would enjoy a steeper difficulty curve - after about 12 levels, it wasn't getting noticeably harder - it seemed like the iris was moving around but not shrinking. After that point the game froze right before an iris transition.
I won! Excellent level design, introduces mechanics and teaches them to you at a good pace. Great take on the theme. The only two things I would improve are (1) Make it less easy to surround yourself in ways that feel unfair. If I make an error of judgment, please punish me, but if I'm one pixel off and I get stuck just from moving around normally, I don't want to have to restart the level. (2) distinguish solids, make it visually obvious when I'm trying to warp into a wall.!
Examples of losses that felt unfair to me: Screenshot 2018-08-13 08.31.07.png Screenshot 2018-08-13 08.31.54.png Screenshot 2018-08-13 08.34.56.png
Also it's possible to smush yourself inside the wall: Screenshot 2018-08-13 08.54.01.png
I love how you avoid the powerup-hoarding problem by making unused powerups turn to stone (immovable stone, no less!) and by only allowing you to hold one at a time. However, I wish they all acted consistently, i.e. all took 1 left-trigger press to use instead of some of them being push-to-activate and some of them being hold-to-activate.
Bugs (other than the obvious bugs that are crawling all over the place: - sometimes a stone bug will move, I think it happens when a red one teleports in and I immediately shoot it - when I'm standing on a powerup and my current powerup runs out, I should pick up the one I'm standing on instead of having to walk away from it and come back
This is one of the most fun LD42 games I've played - it has a lot of potential! I hope you come up with a clever way to transform it from a "you will eventually die" 10-minute game into a bigger and longer experience!
My high score: 53350 Screenshot 2018-08-14 20.14.05.png
Where's the game?
404 error
Cool, you and I had similar takes on the theme! It's interesting to see how you took a very similar idea and did something very different with it! I notice that we also faced similar challenges: the player getting confused about what the heck is going on up top while we're keeping them busy managing their inventory!
Why does my score go down sometimes?
Bugs: - your HP continues to decrease, going negative, after you die - sometimes you can't let go of an item, and it becomes a permanent part of your cursor (my cursor is above my HP count)
Screenshot 2018-08-14 20.44.42.png
Fun! The design/theme flaw, though, is that running out of space isn't a bad thing! You can just camp in a corner and shoot everything that comes at you, unless it spawns on your nose which is pretty unfair. If you could figure out a fix for this, this would be fun to play!
This is a great start, but it's not yet in a playable state. You can't die, enemies don't move, and unless I'm just impatient, there's only one wave. I hope you turn this into a playable game - I would love to play it!
What a clever take on the theme! It reminds me of real life, where my happiness goes down each time I disappoint these people that I hardly know...
I played twice, and both times the game softlocked after I had about 20 friends. I could click on people and it would tell me their likes and dislikes, but no new acquaintances came down the conveyor and time stopped flowing.
I'm winner! The concept is good but the execution is poor (e.g. you can pretty much fly) and the level design is uninspired. If you polished this, you could have a game as awesome as .S!
Congratulations on your first finished game! I really enjoyed the gameplay - unfortunately I ran into a crash when entering the first room that's only accessible via triplejump, so I wasn't able to finish. I also enjoyed the self-referential humor. Get Danny Wallace to do your voice acting and you've got Thomas Was Alone 2: The Forgetting (;
It was the same thing that @themonsterfromthedeep ran into. I got the triple jump, backtracked, and went up to the alternate path, then ran into that screenshot. I don't know the level number but I'd guess 5.
This is an amazingly excellent first two-thirds of a game, but either there's a key instruction I'm missing, or it's not finished. No matter what items I get, the timer sticks at 00:01 and I don't know how to exit the level.
Minor bugs: - what does the compass/map icon do? The one below the backpack. I couldn't figure out how to use it. - The grabby arm leaves a couple of teal pixels behind when it retracts
Despite this, I love the music, I love the concept, and I love what you've got so far!
Very well done! This is one of the best LD42 games I've played! I was also confused about how to aim. Perhaps the tutorial screen could make sure you can place a word in some orientation other than left-to-right before it lets you get to the main game?
Nice! My first couple of tries I got crushed, my third I got Time: 228, Height:28. I tried to jump to a taller island, but apparently it was too steep? I'm not exactly sure why I fell off. If you keep working on this game, I suggest nerfing the crushing mechanic. I spent lots of time looking up and waiting in fear, which is not the most fun (:
A solid platformer! I love that it has an introduction and an ending, and sticks to a coherent theme throughout. You could totally extend this into a great game!
Here are some specific suggestions:
* If you make the top of your lava sprite transparent instead of black, it will rise cleanly and smoothly * On the first level where the lava doesn't rise, there's a tile in the bottom-right here
Screenshot 2018-08-14 17.11.28.png
it looks like you can stand on, but you can't. Unless it's an intentional troll, it's good to be visually clear what tiles are load-bearing and which aren't.
* There's a blind jump here
Screenshot 2018-08-14 17.14.03.png
which is generally considered unfair/unkind level design. Later in the same level, there's a similar situation except you get a glimpse of the lower platform ahead of time, so that's fair - you just have to remember.
Those are good options - Another option to consider would be allowing the player to hold the down key to scroll the view down a bit.
I loved this game! I love the frantic feeling of rummaging through your inventory while ghosts inexorably hover toward you from all sides.
I also like how the different colored ghosts have different personalities.
Giant Cleaver is OP!
With reliable controls and some bug fixes, this could be a fun "beat-the-challenge" platformer! I love how it tells you the levels will start trying to kill you AFTER I've been boiled alive by lava twice. (: I made it to level 7, but technically I won by selecting level 13 from level select.
Well done! It's fun to play! I made it to the third segment. I like the different powerups and their effects.
Ohhh! For all of you who gave up before reaching the ending: try again! It's worth it! My tip as the same as one of the in-game tips: Take your time.
This is a well made game, and it's quite fun! If you want to turn this into a full commercial game, you could do it! All you need, other than polish and bug fixes, is a bunch of levels and something like bronze/silver/gold times for each level. You've got something great here - I hope you continue developing it!
Here's a screenshot of me getting squashed between two platforms: Screenshot 2018-08-14 17.24.30.png
My high score: -1:-22
Screenshot 2018-08-15 15.56.43.png
It's not too hard if you mash like mad. The "plan out your moves carefully" constraint didn't work out, unfortunately.
Straightforward concept, pretty well implemented for jam constraints!
I absolutely adore the way tracks get added to the music as you ascend. 5 stars for audio because it's amazing to see that technique under the constraints of a jam.
Bug: You can run away, and then things get wacky.
Awesome, I'm happy to hear you're going to keep working on it! It's an accomplishment to create anything playable under jam constraints, especially when it's your first jam! Congratulations!
A good start at a game! Things that would need to be improved include: * smoother movement controls, the current version doesn't do well with switching directions * understanding what's going on in the final room with the spiral
All I get is an empty .zip file.
We added a restart button, we fixed the bug where gold was not spawning from chests, and we tweaked the difficulty curve so that it starts out easier and ramps up. Runs are a little longer now, and I think/hope a lot more fun!
More item variety and less RNG are great ideas, but they will have to wait until after the jam due to time constraints.
Thanks for the feedback, you three - you helped make Overencumbered better!
Thanks, toad! No mystical trash container, sorry! (:
I like your idea, @wxzuir. For the jam, we decided to go with a more straightforward and frantic gameplay style, but it would be interesting to add more recipes and a bigger backpack, thereby adding more strategy.
It's not always better to craft red mushrooms into a health potion, though - slimes only do 1 damage, so if you have two red mushrooms, getting hit by a slime will only consume one of them.
925 is good! My personal best is 1238 so far. Thanks!
Thanks, @zblah! I like the icon idea for the meters. Our plan for using items was to make them fly out of you and into the pug's mouth when they're used, we just didn't have time to implement that.
And yes, you're in good company in suggesting ways to mitigate the very random RNG.
Thanks for your feedback, suggestions, and encouragement!
Thanks, @historymaker118! We actually discussed 2048 as a mechanic during our brainstorming phase, and we decided that 2048 stands on its own as a game, and trying to embed it into Overencumbered would overcomplicate things. I do like the idea of more combinations, though - thanks for your feedback and encouragement! <3
@lloyd 1431, that's the current highest score I've seen - higher than my personal best! Congratulations!
The pug will eat mushrooms, but as for trash disappearing, that sounds like a bug - I'll look into it.
Thanks for your feedback and kind words!
@mapedorr Yes, the red lizards are very difficult to defeat without a mana potion. Thanks for your comment!
@johan-vischer Yes, if we are going to make a post-jam build, making spawn rates less random and more fair is high on the list! Thank you!
Thanks, @peachtreeoath! There's actually a bit more strategy than is obvious, we just need to do a better job of communicating that to the player. For example, if you keep red mushrooms against gelatinous cubes instead of crafting them into health potions, the pug'll only consume 1 mushroom when it gets hit. If it's a potion, it'll drink the whole thing.
p.s. I have not yet begun to shake up the status quo (: