Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → palemachine
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | 38 | A Small World | SUN GOD | compo | 78 | 3.84 | 3.63 | 3.41 | 3.64 | 4.33 | 3.94 | 3.16 | 3.56 |
Cool, a game with fast-paced distilled TBS gameplay and japanese schoolgirls, just the way I prefer it. Everything is clean and crisp and it's very fun to play. But yeah, I wish there would be more indication as to what happens. For example, when I got to the second screen the first few times I died I didn't actually realise it at all. And I sure do love kiririn51! :heart_eyes_cat:
Sweet, the production values for a Compo entry are insane. Simple but very vibrant pixel art and a lively chiptune soundtrack, great responsive controls and a fully developed core mechanic. Great level design as well with a stable difficulty curve. I couldn't get the fruit on the level where there's a tunnel with bouncy stuff on the floor and lava on the ceiling, but I still beat the game! Incredible job, thank you.
Super well made in every aspect. Great clean 3d graphics, hilarous sound effects, very tight and responsive controls, physics that make it fun to play around with all the stuff in the tub and of course the incredibly fun arcadey gameplay that gets more challenging the more you play. And this is all in a Compo timespan. **Great** work!
I didn't have much trouble finishing the levels without any tips, so it's definitely doable. Loved the game, honestly, and I'm kind of sad it was so short! Would definitely want to play an expanded version. Super stylish limited palette pixel art, moody background music and a mix of puzzle and very tight platforming for gameplay. I think the difficulty is pretty much where it should be and the idea that you have to both memorize the solution and excel at the precise platforming seems super cool to me. Great game, well done.
Had to spend a bit of time to wrap my head around the core mechanic, but I'm glad I did. Cool idea! Love the art. The animations are very fluid and it controls well, making it a joy to play. The music is super groovy as well. It's going to be a great game if you expand on the LD version!
@ilseroth could you please post approximate times when you run the server? i'm very curious to try your game out! EDIT: eh, nevermind, a commenter just below me seems to have it working fine, so I guess there's something wrong with my setup. :(
I know how hard it is to make a compelling platformer in a jam, but I think yours is a good shot. There are all kinds of cool movement tricks you can do with the ball and the environment. Cute visuals as well. Well done!
Fun game. I was confused at first when I couldn't drag the clouds away, but then I realized those aren't hazards at all. I wish there would be more types of hazards introduced the more you survive. That would make it a lot more compelling to try to survive longer. Anyhow, nice entry!
Reminds me of a nice little boardgame called Forbidden Island where random tiles being flooded is also one of the main mechanics. :) I like this quite a lot.
Apart from that I agree with what everyone else is saying, needs a bit more work in terms of UI and definitely requires an in-game tutorial.
I'm just going to mirror what everyone else says, really impressed by the art style and the quality of animation, too sad you didn't have enough time to do more. I'm definitely going to check out your other games when I have the time!
Nice game, in the same sort of "genre" as Bernband and Morning Post, both of which are super cool, so this one is cool as well!! Definitely turn down the blur a notch, but everything else is stellar. Good entry!
I really like the gameplay mechanics and the overall presentation of the game, I just wish it would be properly turn-based instead of this turn timer thingy. That's just a preference, though, and apart from that I really liked the game. Great job!
I totally missed the egg mechanic on my first try and now I feel so dumb. I won't comment much on this since it'd be spoiling stuff, but I really liked how the game is actually a lot more diverse than you initially think. I wish the player would move a bit faster, cause to me it felt a little bit frustrating, but it's a subjective kind of thing. I also think the planet HP bar could be a bit fancier. Apart from that I loved it! Great visuals, groovy music and secrets.
Wow, I am so thoroughly impressed I don't know what to say! Loved virtually everything from your take on the theme and gameplay (kind of a social puzzle game, super cool) to simple but charming visuals, funny audio and hilarious writing. Superb entry, well done.
Yeah, I also wish there'd maybe be a bit more options when building stuff in cells. Apart from that and the lack of music (I played an imaginary soundtrack in my head anyway), this is a **very** good entry. As others have mentioned, the visuals are amazing, reminding a bit of Osmos and Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime, but still having an original flavor. The sound design is good and most importantly it fits the overall aesthetic. And everything's just very smooth and controls nicely. Loved it!
I remember your first LD game and I'm super glad to see more of your super rad art style, @cakeknuckles! Love this game to bits. The art is cute and bright, the gameplay is a cool mix of light resource management and fun mini-games (but I have to say the dog is totally ruthless) and the music that plays in the background is very groovy. But what I liked the most is how the game design is concise and straight to the point, no unnecessary elements that would make the experience cluttered, it's very tight and gives off this feeling like you know exactly what you want to do. That's a very nice achievement in a jam environment. Only :bug: I encountered was when I lost the last bits of my health in a dog mini-game once I could continue playing. Thanks for the experience!
Aw, man, really sad that you didn't have the time to add some more content, but then again I have to say your idea's really big for a jam and even what's there is amazing. I love games like Uplink and Hacknet and even stuff like Digital: A Love Story, so I had lots of fun with this little tutorial. Interfacing is also a neat idea which I guess would develop into a sort of dungeon crawling mini game. So, overall, sure, there's not much here, but it looks, feels and plays amazing. Great job.
Nice throwback to the platformers of ye olde days, and it's not just the audio-visual presentation, but the game design choices as well. Seeing new types of enemies and discovering their movement patterns makes repeatedly dying not so frustrating!
Yeah, I agree with the previous commenters. I think the writing is very good and the core idea is superb, but in my opinion there needs to be a bit more to do for the player to feel engaged, cause in this version it feels like there's a lot of downtime. Regardless of that I enjoyed this a lot! :)
Oh wow, I **really** enjoyed this one. Great level design with a solid difficulty curve, simple but clean visuals, a soothing piano track playing at the background. Making the menu interactions in the same style as the core gameplay is always a nice touch and something that I truly love. If you made the artstyle a bit more cohesive and added a bunch of new levels I could definitely see myself pay for the pleasure of playing this. Great entry!
@somethinboutgames Sorry, I missed your response, because there are no notifications implemented yet x_x My main issue with the art style was really just the player character. I may just be prejudiced against stick figures, but I didn't like it. However, I think it would look super cool if you made it look something like [this](http://i.imgur.com/diXZDyf.png) (based off of [this](blob:http://imgur.com/1b077549-3854-46fc-9a2e-92db2d9160c9) famous statue), basically a black outline resembling an ancient roman statue, but in the same pose as the stickfigure person you have in your entry here. I'd also maybe tweak the colors of the Earth ball a little bit and make them a bit softer. It's all very subjective, of course!!
Rather short, but super good. Lovely art, groovy music and super fun core gameplay. Neat idea to have the player manage two resource bars wih the the same type of resource and the sort of single player coop is also very cool! Superb entry :)
Great entry. Solid take on the theme, enjoyable writing (what can I say, I'm a sucker for sci-fi) and probably the most unusually shaped tile-based map I've ever seen. :grin: Nice music, gives off a very strong sense of urgency. Also at some point when you move further along the ring the keyboard controls get sorta confusing, but that's what you get for not playing with a mouse!
You basically made a fully functional Spacebase DF-9 kind of game in 72 hours with tutorials and other messages fully voiced. This is nothing short of incredible! Spent a lot of time with this entry. My only gripe is the choice of the font, it was kind of hard to read for me for some reason.
Incredibly atmospheric ambient music that reminds me of Stars of the Lid, great art style (and the usage of 3d models against 2d backgrounds is so lovely and reminds me of old games in a good way) and despite a few typos here and there the writing is very captivating and the ambiguity of the ending makes it even more enjoyable. If there's really anything that needed some further work, maybe it's collider placement. For one, sometimes the colliders don't correspond to the scenery very well, so you might walk a bit on top of things you're not supposed to walk on. I was also able to go from one area to another without triggering camera movement, which I don't think was intentional. Doesn't matter all that much, really, since it doesn't detract from the experience. Great entry.
A lot of love put into this for sure. Beautiful art,funny voice-overs with the delay effect reminding of old arena shooters and enough gameplay mechanics to not make it feel too repetitive for me. Great jam game!
It's a nice game with very strong ideas, but it really needs to give better indication as to what is happening (sound effects and level transitions, stuff like that) and better camera controls (I actually like having castles serve as these beacons for your camera but it's really buggy right now). Still a cool game though!
So much depth, variation and strategy for a game basically presented on a single screen! Absolutely great in every aspect and it's just so cool how there's such an incredible attention to detail in the visual presentation despite the time constraint.
Looks and sounds amazing, and the physics are used in a great way, making it very fun to fling asteroids at planets and then watch their pieces float into other planets and crash them as well. I agree that this could be made into a solid mobile game!
Nice game, very tidy and crispy pixel art. Kind of a puzzle roguelike gameplay fusion, very unusual and rather fun. Two things I didn't like were the sound effects (a bit too harsh for my taste) and the enemies (I think it's kind of unfair that you get killed after a single encounter since there's no way to know where they will go the next turn; what would be nice is to at least have an infinite amount of restarts, although having a game over sure makes the game more challenging!) Overall I really liked the game, I guess it's just easier to talk about what you don't like rather then what you do, haha.
Great core gameplay mechanic, really challenging, had a lot of fun with it. Expanding on this idea would be tricky though, since right now there's definitely a single correct way of placing buildings that would get you the top score and you'd need to eliminate that in a bigger game to make it interesting.
The intro was very funny! Good visuals, the gameplay is simple but varied enough. I agree with everyone else in terms of music. Overall good entry, well done!
Can't go wrong with a classic, although I didn't understand how it fits the theme. Loved the visual style, this kind of lo-fi 3d is something I really enjoy and rarely find in games these days! Music is nice. I wish the camera would have a little transition animation for when you turn the snake, because the way it is right now is pretty abrupt and it disoriented me a bit each time I turned.
Am I losing my mind or is Mother secretly Nicolas Cage? The game is fantastic as it is, but considering it's a jam game it's just jaw-droppingly good. The visuals are super-slick. The writing hilarious and witty. There's definitely some thought put into the camerawork in the cutscenes. The pacing is just superb. And despite shooting being a relatively minor gameplay element, that last firefight felt so damn cool. Oh, and the voice acting!!! This is insanely good. The world needs you to make a full commercial release out of this.
Apart from a few typos the writing is superb and captivating and I loved all the little creative ways you found to present the story bits. You made me want to try my hand at Twine as well, thanks!
For some reason I couldn't get the keyboard to work, but playing with a gamepad is even more fun! The game is great and controls super nicely which is amplified by buttery smooth animations. Really impressed by the quality of work you were able to put out in such a short time period. I am also very much in love with the color palette.
Simple but fun! Loved the FTL development meter idea and how Earth population escapes the planet in the end. I didn't have much trouble discerning UFOs from the background since you can always track them by the beam they fire.
Sweet soft color palette and a touch of film grain make the pixel art visuals connect beautifully to (sorta lo-fi) slow & moody piano arrangements and realistic sound effects. It does not necessarily need "more gameplay", but I still feel for some reason that having just a few meaningless interactions scattered about would make this experience even stronger.
Wish there would be more levels as I enjoyed this a lot! Nice art and I really liked how the elevators are made. My only complaint is that I wish you could interact with buttons using your keyboard. Having to click your mouse in this situation has no practical use, honestly. :(
Good entry! Quite challenging, if not for the checkpoints I would definitely have a lot of trouble beating this. Could this be Gulliver's Travels: The Game?
Fantastic work, especially considering it's a compo entry. Great writing and clever puzzles. The art is incredible and helps set the mood. And I loved the music, calm, but sort of menacing, and making it quiet was a good idea, it enhances the atmosphere of the game. Very very good (although I have to admit I couldn't finish it, but I swear I tried my best!)
Aw, it's really nice. I like your interpretation of the theme. The visuals are very cute and the audio fits well and is quite relaxing. Changing up projectiles was a good idea. Overall, a great relaxing experience with a bit of childhood nostalgia. Thanks!
Cool little wave defense game with cute art and lovely music. Controls are pretty responsive and there's enough enemy variety and fun upgrades, which are the main points for this type of game. As people already mentioned I think the player should be able to upgrade more easily and also maybe bump up the player projectile lifespan a bit, because as it is right now it's a bit unfair to fight against the ranged enemies since their projectiles reach you from afar but you can't shoot them back until they come closer. Anyway, good entry!
Well-constructed experience that is also a great way to interpret the theme. Loved how the game world and the mini game screen were in sync. Super thick on the Mood part. I wish you would include the option to not invert the Y axis though, I always get confused by inversion.
Your take on the theme and the game's core idea are just superb, hilarious and unique. Yeah, it's too easy, and maybe the visuals aren't the game's strongest suit, but I had my share of fun. As a side note, thanks for including For River as a bonus song. It's such a strong piece, damn.
Although this game might be a bit too easy (I gave up after 10000 points and let the munchers eat the cookie :'( ), it's super charming and cute. Loved the visuals and the sound effects, which are also hilarious. I'm also a sucker for games with a minimalistic approach to player interaction (for example here you can only move left or right and jump), so overall I had a lot of fun.
Well done, congrats on your first LD!
Awe-struck by the amount of polish and the wealth of content put into this. The mix of Papers, Please style interaction with the sort of limited information controls from Duskers works perfectly, the visuals are simple, clean and atmospheric. I want to particularly praise the sound designer, every sound is gorgeous and I loved the weird noises coming when **someone** unloads your cargo and how the sonar activation sound and various sounds given off by different objects found by the sonar are all different notes in the same scale, so they play next each other nicely, slightly reminding of the masterful sound design of Mini Metro. Awesome entry all around, I seriously hope you win this LD!
Beautiful art and simple but very satisfying gameplay. Most important thing is that smashing feels very good to do!
Such a clevel idea! A metanarrative of sorts. Loved the vibrant color palette as well. Controls are a bit stiff, but that's okay. Great entry! :heart:
Really liked this game. Sure, visually it may be a bit simplistic and the controls are wonky, but the gameplay is very fun and I could see more clever uses for these mechanics. My favorite moment was when you had to (or at least that's my interpretation) stand on a red platform and then rotate it so that it propels you upward. Very cool! I also appreciate it that you spent the time to include key rebinding options. :) The only thing I didn't quite get is the timer at the top. What is it for? When the time runs out you can still continue playing.
For a Compo entry this is just an insane package. Nice visuals, a great amount of content, addictive gameplay and a very interesting theme interpretation. Superb!
Music and monochrome visuals set a very thick mood, which is something I always enjoy in jam games more than anything else. A very enjoyable experience overall, although I wish there'd be a a few more scenes to give the player more room for interpretation of the overall idea behind the game. But wishing a game was longer I think is the best compliment one can give ;) By the way, this reminds me of The Cat Lady a lot!
Nice entry, simple but quite hard to master. Really loved the music, sets the mood perfectly!
@florian-van-strien All of yours are valid complaints, some of which I was aware of but couldn't quite fix due to the time constraints while others were just me being dumb, but difficulty part was intentional! I playtested it a lot and changed things around until I thought it was challenging enough, but I agree that it may be frustrating. My interpretation of the theme was the idea of the universe contracting, making the world smaller every second, but I guess it's kind of a stretch. Anyway, huge thanks for the feedback!
@huvaakoodia Wow, I actually think it would be MUCH better if the player ship would land automatically. Great suggestion, thanks.
@zarkonnen Yeah, you're right, I should have listed the controls here right from the beginning. Done, thanks! And no, there's really no practical usage for rotating the ship and in retrospect I guess it wasn't such a rational idea. Could've just made the ship rotate to where it's headed.
@davidthelazar @t-mw You are both very much correct about the game being hugely luck-dependent. I wanted to implement a kind of randomness manipulator for planet starting positions that would make sure it's not too unfair (which is not that hard to do, I know), but ended up not having enough time to do it. :(
@flukeshot Yeah, it's just a particle system with particles leaving trails and some noise added into the movement to make it look cooler and more sporadic! I honestly stumbled upon that combination randomly while I was trying to achieve a different looking explosion altogether, haha.
People who spam barrels and rocks miss out on the most beautiful animation ever that is the nuke detonation animation! Fun game, and overall the visuals are super nice.
Very impressive for a jam game. Polished, visually pleasing, expands on the gameplay mechanics nicely. A very potent puzzle game. Well done!
Love me some puzzle games, and this one has a very satisfying core mechanic, great puzzle design, sexy visuals and sweet music. Loved it! :heart: :heart: :heart: UI feels a bit out of tune with the general style of the rest of the game, but it's fine!
I actually didn't have much of a problem with the noise filter and had a great time with this experience. Certainly reminiscent of Silent Hill, and yes, that is an extremely good thing. My one minor issue are the voiceovers. I don't know what kind of effects you applied to them, but it feels like they are vocoded and basically to me it sounded a bit flat and cheesy instead of menacing and creepy. The soundscape that plays in the background is super good though. Great job overall!
Incredible. Yeah, the colony management may be simple (there could be adjacency effects and whatnot, but it's a Compo game, holy moley!!), but it's very fun and engaging and I couldn't stop until I researched and built everything. Loved the goal system that gives the player some direction. The little animations on farms and tree buildings are lovely. I would love to play this if it got developed further!
Who would have thought that all I needed in my life was to become a Pandazilla? Nice aesthetic, juicy sounds and a very funny premise. I only wish the game would overall maybe be a bit faster (both in terms your HP decreasing deal and how fast your limbs move), but it's still :cool: Oh, a quick edit: Loved the tutorial. Short and straight to the point. I should learn a thing or two from your game.
I'm not a dog person at all, but you managed to convince me with your cute puppers, haha. Very nice game that quickly gets very challenging! And yeah, as someone else already pointed out, it's a cool idea to have the keyboard be both the input method and the playing field, kind of reminds me of some experimental games with unusual controllers. Well done! My final score was 400!
Gorgeous visuals and a kicking soundtrack combined with a very hard game. Surviving the first night is definitely an achievement, haha. Finely crafted!
I really liked this! I very much enjoy optimization games like this one, and it's neat that there are a lot of things to consider and that they all affect each other in one way or another. There are also different random events to make you busy throughout the game, which is cool. Yeah, I wish there would be sound effects, but I enjoyed the music a lot. There are some issues with chord spacing (or whatever it's called) which make the melody sound a bit unnatural (the best way to describe how it should be is "a melody is like a conversation"), but it's not that bad and sounds nice and the choice of the instrument makes the whole experience really moody. Reminds me of the wonderful Minecraft OST. Oh, yeah, and the visual changes to the planet as you change the stats is a really great motivation to keep going. Great entry!
The ideas in this game are really very interesting, but I advise anyone playing from getting boost strength power-ups. Once you get a couple of them it gets super hard not to launch yourself straight into a game over. :D Good job!
Wow, the camera perspective (the overall setup, whatever you call it) is really cool, and I like how it looks like a small planet but the lab just goes on and on and on. Everything looks very nice and cohesive. Great moody ambience as well! The story bits were hard to read sometimes though :( And that's probably my only gripe with the game. Oh, and I found the debug path!!
Super lovely art. The game is fun and funny all around. Thanks for making my day a little bit better! :heart:
Cool, the story gripped me from the get-go. A very solid adventure game in a cyberpunk setting. And I think the music fits pretty well with the story and the setting. My only real gripe would be the money mechanic. I got stuck basically at the very end of the game because I spent money trying to gamble and couldn't then buy something that was needed to progress with the story. I don't think being able to "lose" like that is something desirable when it comes to adventure games. Still, I very much enjoyed it! Great entry.
Yes, this is a nice physics-based kind of comedy game in the vein of Goat Simulator and Octodad! The whole premise is very funny. What's important is I think that the controls manage to strike a fine line where controlling the character is quite funny but also functional. The amount of levels you were able to design is also quite impressive. Good job!
Yeah, the water flow is kind of wonky, but it's understandable and honestly not that bad/does not affect your ability to progress. This is a very good puzzle game, in my opinion, and the difficulty curve is really fluid. Great overall audiovisual presentation as well, looks and feels very polished in a distinctly non-game-jam way.