Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → Palmish

Palmish

Games

YearLDThemeGameDivisionRankOvFuInThGrAuHuMoCo
201637One roomRed Panda Expressjam1983.713.673.143.864.673.652.943.6745
201636Ancient TechnologyDying in the Snowcompo

Performance over time

overall score (left axis) percentile (right axis)

Scatterplots

Fun vs Overall

Innovation vs Overall

Theme vs Overall

Graphics vs Overall

Audio vs Overall

Humor vs Overall

Mood vs Overall

Comments by Palmish

LD36 — Ancient Technology

The Cursed Farmer by KLegacy 2016-08-29T21:35:00

I think you touched on the most important issues yourself. Cleaning up the interface and balancing the game. But here are some of my thoughts:

Quite difficult. Only got to 16 years in two tries.

Not sure I understood everything entirely. The yield ratios start at 1 in the winter (not spring?), and typically go down. But what do they mean? Is 0.5 half a harvest? It looks like I *lose* food when I harvest. Maybe it should also be clearer how much food is being consumed vs gained.

It seems more logical that the food supply should be at a max in fall and then slowly deplete until next harvest. Cattle and pigs can be used for food as well. That way you get tension into the game as well. Will the food last? Banished is a great example of a game that does this right.

In this game, I found myself surviving mostly by selling tools I was given and buying food.

Linear A by Recursiveanomaly 2016-08-30T18:38:00

Cool idea and well executed.

Appreciated the extra polish, and the music.

I was reluctant to use the help button, thinking it would just give away the answer, but it's was quite a cool way to give a hint.

I thought it was pretty hard to get all words, even with the help system. One example is on the last sentence on the very first tablet. There were also some that I couldn't figure out at all.

Pain in the Cave by esquellington 2016-09-02T22:48:00

I tended to focus on controlling the hunter and only using the others passively when there were no wolves or bisons nearby. That seemed like a good tactic, but perhaps not what you intended. Died by walking into a bison rather than shooting it. I think it's difficult to tell if the hunter will walk or shoot. I once accidentally shot another guy when I meant to just walk past him. I also think I saw wolves spawning in at the fire a couple times.

I quite liked the cave painting style art.

I like games were you control several characters with different abilities, like Lost Vikings! I think you could develop this into something cool. Perhaps the gameplay would have to be a lot slower, though. One problem is what happens when a character dies. If they are all essential, the game is pretty much over, and that is pretty difficult to prevent.

My best score was 143s

Tech Tree (the game) by osthekake 2016-09-02T23:00:00

I've played this a few times and I just don't think I get it.

It's too hard to tell if a choice is a good choice or a bad choice. The first time playing I didn't understand what the challenge of the game was. The number of turns should be much more clearly shown. I don't understand what the People, People Queue etc are supposed to tell me.

That said, it's a good looking tech tree, and with a lot of work perhaps it could be a cool game as well.

Tribe by c2v4 2016-08-28T23:15:00

Cool!

I like the idea. It's sort of like an incremental game, but with balancing instead of clicking. It's similar, but more challenging.

Improvement ideas:
Add option to run at 2, 3, 5 times speed
The population should die less quickly when food hits zero.
The efficiency mechanic is a bit unclear. Not sure it's working

The Machine by jeremyfa 2016-08-30T20:57:00

Sooo cool. Great entry.

Almost perfectly executed! It's so well polished. I liked the story, although because you are trying to be cryptic/mysterious it also becomes a bit hard to follow. Shame you weren't able to finish it in time.

I really how well the timing of the text is tuned. Such a small detail to get right in 72 hours.

Adding a puzzle to break up the storytelling was a great idea, but the puzzles are far too simple to be interesting. Obviously, understandable with the time constraint.

nat by zuurr 2016-09-02T23:08:00

Nice dreamy/psychedelic style

LD37 — One room

Fox in the grange by DevForPizza 2016-12-16T23:08:00

Tsone: Good gameplay, funny graphics and good you have scoring. Very nicely done short arcade splash. I used trackpad so it’s a bit hard to aim, and the characters move too fast, but otherwise this is great. And thumbs up for reversing the food chain :)

An Intergalactic Quest For Interior Walls by BlueLlama 2016-12-16T23:02:00

Tsone:

Creating and removing walls works, and graphics look nice (thumbs up for 3D). Movement is good. I have no idea how to complete a level?

Palmish:

Had to re-read the description to figure out it out. After that, it was fun but not really challenging. I played all four levels without ever having to go back and rethink a solution. Moving the cylinder within range to place walls is an interesting idea. It could add to the challenge of the puzzle as you have to avoid painting yourself into a corner, but it mostly it just slowed me down.

I liked the music and the space backdrop, but the game looks very bland with those default Unity shapes.

gRAvity by JonathanG 2016-12-18T15:43:00

Nicely done. I like the style and mood of it. Everything fits very well together, even the ending which was a nice surprise.

It was a good idea to add the wires, otherwise it would have been tedious looking for the next pressure pad. Movement speed could have been a little bit faster. Ultimately, all puzzles were pretty much the same.

Overall a good effort.

Decade by graebor 2017-01-03T00:01:00

Lovely presentation. The writing and the attention to detail in the presentation is excellent.

The game itself was enjoyable for a while, but I eventually got to a state where everything was just slowly increasing and there was really no threat or incentive to do much. I started trying to speed things up by increasing food production, using the ration decompression to get more materials and then creating more solar cells. That was fun for a bit, but ultimately there was no reason to do it.

There's a lack of progression after the first couple of minutes which really kills the game. I was hoping for some threat to appear, but none did. If you had the time to add that, I think this could be a lot better.

Overall it's a very good effort that is just missing some final pieces.

Dethroned by Devastus 2016-12-19T21:39:00

Great!

Hard to find anything to criticize. The music is great, but it doesn't loop perfectly. The prompts should change color rather than go away when attacking. In the current version they are removed and the remaining prompts move which makes it a bit trickier to play.

Would have been nice to have a combo counter (counting successful hits/blocks).

The progression system was a great addition. I would not have played the game half as much without it.

Overall, fantastic entry

Laser Panic by ACCBDD 2016-12-17T00:26:00

FUN!

It's pretty hard, though, and you need to work on the controls. At the times when I felt like I had control, it was a lot of fun, but when I didn't it was just frustrating. I think the ability to shorten and lengthen the rope might help. Try giving the player more control over the movement somehow.

Graphics are same old terrible Unity blandness. Music is really good and it's great that you have sound effects. All sound effects are good except the laser hit effect which sounds weird and is too loud.

Escape The Room by DevilLime 2016-12-18T15:20:00

Second puzzle is clever. Shame there is only two puzzles, but the cat was nice.

Paul Terguei: Glory Room Keeper by grena 2016-12-13T21:40:00

Pretty fun. The gameplay itself is quite dull, but the presentation and graphics help a lot. Wish the level changed more each time. The items are nice but not enough to change up the gameplay.

@wujood
Click to make them go in the opposite direction. Guide them towards the door. There is a button that opens the door in the lower left. One of them has to click that button.

Marimo by Bemmu 2016-12-13T20:58:00

Flow / Spore / Osmos clone with great polish.
Fantastic audio, effects.

Actually fits the theme in a good way.

Controls could be improved. The acceleration doesn't feel great. Wished Marimo rotated in the direction of movement.

Heavens Inc. by komjaur 2016-12-13T20:31:00

Neat idea. I appreciated the completeness of the game. There are plenty of events, enough to play multiple times, but they should be sorted at the start rather than picked randomly to avoid repetitions. No clear connection to the theme. Graphics were nice. Attempts at humor mostly fell flat. Overall it's a good effort based on a neat idea.

Red Panda Express by Palmish 2016-12-16T23:38:00

DrPetter did all graphics for this.
We also used his sfxr for sound effects.

There is no end state. We considered opening the center door, and that exiting through it would "win" the game. We didn't have time to do a win screen, though.

Server Room by GameDevExtreme 2016-12-13T20:47:00

Awesome that you shoot 1s and 0s! I thought the FPS counter was just an fps counter at first. That's a fun idea but it totally fooled me.

The enemies really need to indicate that they are taking damage. Just flash white or something. I liked the screen shake effect.

Toy Wars by concalf 2016-12-18T16:01:00

Pretty fun. Only managed to get 5 though after several attempts.

It's hard to tell what you can and can't fly over. Similarly it took me while to figure out why I couldn't pick up the energy (flying too high). I like the graphics. There's a lot of good details, like the plane rotating a little when turning and the stars that appear when you take damage.

I wish I could see further and that the play area was a little bigger. You have to guess where the tanks are from the direction of their shots. I think it would be more fun if it was easier to kill one tank and you instead had to fight multiple.

BattleTub by NoobPete 2016-12-17T00:54:00

Controls could be better. Moving the ship when firing is a nice touch, but it's not fun that the ship slows down so much when shooting forward. You can fire backwards to move faster though, which is neat.

You should lock the camera so that it's impossible for it to move beneath the water or to view the ship upside down.

The giant duck was pretty funny. I like the graphics. The water looks nice.

The "combat" aspect wasn't much fun, really. Maybe if the ducks moved around a little. It's nice that the balls splash into the water, but I wish you had added sound effects and some music. That would have added to the overall experience.

I think you should be able to fire in one direction and look in another, especially with a controller with two analog sticks (which the game doesn't seem to support by the way).

MFBFS by pixelpotions 2016-12-18T16:31:00

Very good. Maybe not losing everything at death would have been better. In the games you are clearly inspired by, dying is actually not that bad. It's too demoralizing to lose all progress with one mistake. It's a bit annoying to not be able to strike at all when the stamina is too low. There should at least be some feedback when you can't roll or strike because stamina is slow. A grunting sound perhaps.

I thought the sound and graphics were pretty good.

The key bindings are a little unusual. C and X are kind of hard to reach when using ESDF. Shift works, though.

37 Hours In A Room by doppelgunner 2016-12-17T00:11:00

It's a great idea for the theme and I like the graphics. All problems have already been pointed out. For the controls, I think you need to separate movement from attack. If you had used WASD to move and click to attack that would have been better. Also, a ranged attack might have made more sense than melee, as there's no way for me to attack melee without taking damage. I also think it would have been great if I could place walls or move the items in the room to fortify it, rather than just wait for the enemies to come in.

The enemies get stuck on walls. To solve this you could make all walls destructible, or move the enemy to the closest opening before moving toward the player (if the player is in the house).

Clean Room! by bossinc 2016-12-16T23:48:00

Tsone: Awesome graphics! Although it’s funny to play around with physics, it’s frustrating to try to get the items the place you want. Shadows help but what this would need is some hotspots selected under the cursor to throw items to. It’s awesome how the mother comes and shows the mistakes you did, really funny! And a very good idea to break the gameplay with those firecrackers!

Palmish:

Fantastic!

My only gripe is that it's annoyingly hard to pick up some of the items. Seems like the cursor has to be at exactly the right place.

The Room in The Ocean by zoopei 2016-12-13T21:56:00

I like the graphics too. Similar to Grow Home's naive happy style. Moving very slowly with tank controls is a weird choice, but it's really not that bad when the levels are short and there are buttons to press. It gets old pretty quickly though. Fortunately the enemies definitely make things more interesting. There are a good amount of different mechanics, but the game could have used more polish instead. The intro sequence could have been sacrificed for more time on polish. There was a level with an elevator that was hard to beat because the button ended up going off screen (in full screen).