A Light In The Darkness by TobiasW 2014-09-15T09:51:00
Great fun - didn't get to try multiplayer, but I was able to beat it reasonably easily solo.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → pansapiens
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Category | Score | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 🥇 | 2008 | 11 | Minimalist | Mondrian | compo | Innovation | 4.47 | ||
| 🥇 | 2008 | 11 | Minimalist | Mondrian | compo | Theme | 4.84 |
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | Po | Te | Jo | Fo | Tw | Tl | Co | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | 33 | You are the Monster | Monster is a Mommy | compo | 572 | 3.00 | 3.06 | 3.61 | 2.72 | 3.00 | 3.12 | 2.82 | 32 | |||||||||
| 2014 | 30 | Connected Worlds | Planet Sweeper | jam | 126 | 3.63 | 3.57 | 4.14 | 3.43 | 3.78 | 3.34 | 3.66 | 70 | |||||||||
| 2014 | 29 | Beneath the Surface | Deep Dome | compo | 453 | 3.28 | 3.09 | 2.82 | 1.93 | 3.90 | 2.91 | 1.78 | 2.92 | 77 | ||||||||
| 2013 | 26 | Minimalism | Def | compo | 184 | 3.59 | 3.39 | 3.00 | 3.73 | 3.61 | 3.00 | 1.70 | 3.03 | 66 | ||||||||
| 2012 | 24 | Evolution | Squid-wyn Happily Cleans Up Creationist Propaganda | compo | 569 | 2.61 | 2.35 | 2.39 | 1.91 | 3.22 | 3.09 | 1.69 | 3.27 | 44 | ||||||||
| 2010 | 18 | Enemies as Weapons | Evade ? | jam | 2 | |||||||||||||||||
| 2008 | 13 | Roads | Final road : Bad Ass Frog Escapes from LA | compo | 34 | 2.89 | 2.79 | 1.32 | 3.42 | 2.58 | 2.75 | 2.69 | 2.71 | 3.25 | 3.38 | 3.85 | 2.14 | |||||
| 2008 | 12 | The Tower | The Siege of von Danken Tower | compo | 22 | 3.29 | 2.79 | 3.46 | 3.88 | 2.70 | 2.78 | 3.05 | 3.17 | 3.65 | 3.93 | 3.38 | 3.10 | |||||
| 2008 | 11 | Minimalist | Mondrian | compo | 8 | 3.79 | 3.74 | 4.47 | 4.84 | 3.17 | 3.29 | 3.33 | 2.44 | 4.13 | 3.56 | 2.77 |
| Year | MiniLD | Theme | Game | Rank | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2008 | 5 | Cover | maximalist: a cover of GBGames LD#11 ‘minimalist’ minigame |
pansapiens leaves an average of 32.9 feedback comments each event.
Great fun - didn't get to try multiplayer, but I was able to beat it reasonably easily solo.
Great classic roguelike - I like all the little character sprites.
Really nicely juiced (particles, screen shake), all adds up to a great feel. I guess I would have liked some progress indicator for each planet - never quite sure how far I was to completion.
Nice looking planet textures (especially the Jupiter-like one). I think the system and rules you have in place have real potential, but I agree that you didn't exploit it fully to find the fun in 48 hours. Maybe adding some elements (random idea: enemy satellites that orbit to try and intercept the message, insta-death if they do) would make it more interesting. Also, since it's mostly mouse driven, I'd like to be able to drag (or mouse wheel ?) to rotate your satellites.
So very very freaky. Love it (and just now I re-read and see there are ten endings .. better play again :) ).
I found it a little easy to win, but it has the foundations of a great little trading game. I would have liked some indicator on the planets I already owned, and maybe also little icons to indicate what they want to buy/sell to save so much clicking. I crushed the spirits of the galaxy's inhabitants in 7 min, 36 seconds (after one false start where I overstocked on Gorillas :) ).
Interesting gameplay. I feel like the design of the levels didn't exploit it as well as it could have - they felt a little randoms rather than a 'problem to be solved' if that makes any sense. Still, great job, it is only 48 hours after all !
Nice one ! Kudos for trying something a little different on the technical front too - doing everything with 'pixel fields' looks cool (feels like something from the 'demo' scene). Oh, also pretty fun to play, and I love that (abundant?) thumping background music :)
Great use of the theme. I suspect it was intentional in the design (to ultimately encourage impressive speedruns), but I felt the run speed was too fast. A few nicely designed platform-toggling challenges in there though, great stuff.
Really enjoyed playing this - puzzlers like this sometimes break my brain a little to quickly, but this one worked for me (the nice set of tutorial intro levels was well done). Love the whimsical faces, and the happy/sad transition was the perfect way to convey information. Thanks for sharing !
Some very amusing dialog text in there - lots of great references :) I would have never though that Lunar Lander could be made fresh by stringing together levels with a story and some powerups ! Great work.
Quite mesmerizing in endless mode. Love that level complete sound .. satisfying, and familiar in some way but I can't put my finger on it.
Every time I was just about to ragequit, I'd continue just a little longer and make some progress. I like how rather than just dying and restarting, pickups just get returned to the playfield upon collision - it kept me trying when I was close but not quite nailing it. Third level and I was done though - a shallower difficulty curve would have been welcome.
Great fun and nicely 'juiced'. Wall running makes it feel like I'm controlling a superhero. Those enemies sure aren't your garden variety Goomba :)
I like the planet pixel art, great music and the feel of the ship control is pretty nice. Design-wise, what I think would make it better is if (1) red planets were insta-death so flying around needs to be more accurate and dangerous (2) make green planets become depleted after some amount of shield recharge (10% ? 20% ?) - this would force the player to go seeking green planets, rather than just camping around one and shooting stuff.
Great visual effect - I can't quite decide if it's a scrolling UV or a cubemap reflection (might have to have a peek at the source :P ). Liked the atmosphere set by the background sound and the crunchy explosions too. I wasn't a huge fan of the control scheme, I didn't like having to find the player again after looking around - maybe locking the mouse to only look up/down not left/right would simplify things.
Fun idea (and actually fun to play). Lot's of LOLs at some of those messages ("Balls !"). Bug-wise, I seemed to hit a few collision issues, ending up inside the walls after jumping (latest Firefox, Win7).
Very cute little character sprites :) This is an interesting mechanic to explore, although I found switching my gaze constantly between two panels a little distracting. One alternative would be to overlay the left and right panels (with the underworld one being more transparent) .. maybe with the spirit-you slightly trailing the position of the real-you. It may become too cluttered to look at like this, but tweaked right it could turn out feeling more natural.
Looks pretty, but I'm not sure I entirely got how to play. Even when I thought I understood (and had accidentally won), it seemed impossible to match the signal and target by changing generator orb colours.
Quite good fun - pretty punishing until you get used to jumping in portals whenever you get the chance. I could just be me, but I'd prefer if the shoot/move controls were switched, since after playing various FPSs my brain is hardwired to move with WASD - I had to swap hands so my arms were crossed ! Gamepad support (left stick move, right stick shoot) would be great for this too.
(Twitch streamed here: http://www.twitch.tv/omgwtfgames/c/5029045 ~38 min)
Love the characters uniform - reminds me of the original Star Trek outfits. I think I noticed a bug - when switching worlds for the second time, the platforms don't seem to change (or the starting world should have the dark background ?).
This is a bit like patting your head and rubbing your belly at the same time ! I liked the minimal style & choice of complementary colours. One suggestion that could make it feel less frustrating and confusing would be to highlight the side of the box corresponding to the key pressed - I kept forgetting which box was WASD and which was arrows, but this would alleviate that, especially as future levels got more complex.
(Twitch stream here: http://www.twitch.tv/omgwtfgames/c/5029045 from ~22:20).
Great fun, cool pixel art (muscle cars !) and I love that progressive soundtrack. I sort of zoned out and kept playing for longer than I would have expected :) I think it would feel fairer if the player hitbox was a little smaller, I seemed to clip logs too easily with the back of the car when changing lanes.
(Twitch streamed http://www.twitch.tv/omgwtfgames/c/5029045 from ~44:45)
I really like the simple design of the corridors - just by throwing a few triangles protruding from the sides it becomes stylish and interesting.
Lot's of LOLs here - great work !
Great fun ! Love the little mouse & his idle animations, very cute. I think you did well to strongly hint at the block destruction mechanic, without making it so explicit that it was obvious from the beginning what was going to happen; that moment when I realized what was going on ... *facepalm* :)
Great concept and quite funny. I think the first hacking wave should be easier and shorter, just to introduce the player into how it's done and what is going on. I didn't hear the music (latest Firefox on Windows), which probably added to the confusion (it seemed like that first wave would never end).
Wonderful graphics, nicely crafted mood and exceptionally well written. Don't ask me why but I'm in love with the look of those health bars !(??) The dreamstate gameplay got a little tedious after a while since I didn't find it especially challenging, and there weren't many 'interesting decisions' to be made during combat, but it was worth it to progress the story.
I liked the movement animations of the robots - very cute. The design of the central 'all three' level was solid too. The control scheme for Baz seemed a little weird though - probably just making W = Jump, without the unlocking would have worked better for me. I hit a few collision glitches too - managed to get Baz stuck beneath the ground :)
Great simple concept - the timing was tricky but I still found it a little addictive trying to survive for more than a few triples. Nice work !
I found this pretty tough in one player mode, but it feels like it would be a blast with two players. Great clean pixel art, good visual feedback and awesome chiptunage. Great job !
Having a community of Minecrafters build the levels collaboratively really paid off - looks wonderful with lots of detail. I would have liked the powerups to better fit the theme of the rest of the environment (tough if you still want them to stand out, but there must be a solution). Also, I think it would look better if the voxel size and lighting on the ship matched the rest of the level - as it is, it sort of feels like it's not part of the level but overlaid on top (like Superman on a blue screen chroma key). Still very pretty nonetheless.
My favorite LD30 game so far (and will honestly be hard to top). I don't think I need to say much here - we chatted on Twitch about the mechanics. It feels pretty unique and is awesome fun !
Love that low poly faceted look, and the feel of the bow (controls, animation, physics and audio combined) is great. While not perfect, the boss behaviors were decent too. A little more feedback on whether a boss hit was successful would be good. Overall, I liked what is there, but I think you could have got more mileage by having a level or three with lots of smaller enemies to shoot, followed by the boss. I'd also reverse the order of the bosses, since the attack sequence required to beat the Minotaur seems less complex (just shoot it anywhere ?) compared with the Golem.
Loved the look of the funny totem god (just can't get enough of HUFNUF). I guess ultimately you bit off more than you could chew in 48 hours (easy to do) since the story and gameplay didn't really go anywhere, but what you have is a pretty good start.
Controls felt great, and I even managed to not fall off. You know you've built a good foundation when it's fun just to cruise around. Excellent music too, although the 'coin pickup' sound was a little loud/harsh in comparison.
Wonderful artwork, both the pixel art (love those trees!) and the character busts / concept art. I did find the double platforming pretty tough (the slippery ol' Unity CharacterController capsule doesn't help :/ ). It shows that you have a dedicated writer thinking about the story and dialog too - great work.
Minor nitpicks, and somewhat personal preference - I'm not a fan of pressing "up" as jump in platformers. An arrow key + X or space to jump option would be welcome. Also it would nice to be able to advance story dialog boxes with a key rather than grabbing for the mouse.
Hey, this was good fun - simple and clearly described rules made it easy to pick up. The 'tail' rule restricting movement of other units is great and helps to make things interesting (no idea how unique it is in turn-based strategy, but I don't recall ever seeing it used). The AI or amount of opposing forces made this version probably a little too easy (if I can win on my first game), but it made for a good intro nonetheless.
One thing you should do is colour code the enemy and friendly units so it's easy to figure out what's going on (not just on the minimap .. and with colour blindness friendly colours). I haven't read the other comments yet, but I'll be surprised if I'm not the first to request this (sorry if it's repetitive !). Nitpicking aside, seriously cool piece of work.
Once I figured it out, I quite enjoyed this - definitely one to keep fleshing out & polishing.
I watched the tutorial video, and maybe I wasn't giving it my full attention, maybe I don't play enough board games, or maybe I'm just slow, but I still didn't quite get it.
---
Here's my what I learned in my own words, in case it helps someone else get started:
The key realization I needed to make was that it's like a poker machine or slot machine where you can lock columns. After I realized that the key mechanic made sense !
* The top panel with the three white dice shows how many dice of each "picture type" you need to win. The picture types are the "hit" (*), "perception" (@) and "chance" (?).
* To commit a die, you 'lock' them by clicking on one of the colored versions in the bottom panel (you'll see the numbers in the top panel change eg 0/3 change to 1/3 ).
Any _unlocked_ die randomly change to another picture type ('hit', 'perception' or 'chance') each roll (this is just like locking positions on a slot machine and pulling the handle for a second chance).
* The probability of getting a particular picture when rolling the unlocked dice is determined by the color (see small not between top and bottom panels).
(Also, in case it wasn't obvious, after your third roll, when the button changes to "Continue", you can still commit dice to the encounter and win it - this should probably be "auto win" if you happen to be holding the right dice after that third roll, since accidentally pressing continue when you should have effectively won is annoying).
* When moving your soldiers around the map, the numbers on each tile indicate it's difficulty.
All of this would probably be more obvious if there was an actual 3D dice rolling animation, or a slot machine roll over effect - but hey, can't do everything in 72 hours !
Tip: Make sure you do exploration (non-mission) tiles to build up your dice (you'll probably need at least one soldier with 8), else you won't be able to beat the final mission (and I was so close !).
Extra points for not making the back story involve zombies !
(However, if humans themselves constructed the Icarus Gate, why does it have alien looking runes on it. Just sayin' :) )
Love the little animation in the background - he kind of looks happy doing what he's doing. I lasted ~4 minutes before, just like IRL, I decided to neglect Facebook. But I got to 1k imaginary internet points on Reddit !
Great take on a dot muncher - great idea and generally well executed ! Wrapping everything round a sphere with variable height walls really changes the dynamics, since planning is harder due to the limited visibility, but not impossible. Sort of puts it somewhere between Pac-man and 3-demon, I guess. Other have mentioned the slowdown feature also - great design. Loved the music - but I don't think it quite fits the visual theme. Glitch-wise, I did find the occasional corner where I got stuck and could turn but not move. Might have been the result of some key mashing (PS, I'd love to play this on my OUYA :) )
Great fun - wish I could whip something like this up in just 12 hours ! There was a moment where I thought the difficultly curve wasn't ramping up fast enough ... and then I quickly started dying ... so it's probably just right :)
That's quite dark - but we need more games where we are helpless rather than all powerful, so it's a thumbs up from me (I'm assuming they can't be saved). You did well creating and animating all these models in a short timeframe too. Chapter 5 should be attempting tax evasion :)
Very nice animation, and the feel of the controls is great. I appreciate how polished this. Personal keybinding pet peeve - I don't like using 'up' as jump, another option on the zxcv row would be nice. I never did end up beating the 666 boss - I'd eventually run into him by accident while trying to hit. Single hit death is pretty punishing in this context.
I found this quite tough, but I quite enjoyed trying. I like the aesthetic of the graphics, and the overall premise with a sort of 'advanced battleships' mechanic is great. A little more guidance on how to read the sonar would be nice (tutorial level maybe :/ ?). Also, I would have liked to be able to see the submarine range as I was placing it. Now to play the post-compo version :)
This is super fun ! You've managed to milk a lot of atmosphere out of so few pixels. It feels quite original too - lots of elements from side scrolling runner / shooter genres, but assembled such that it's not quite like any I've ever played. The in-built tutorial is really well done too. Excellent excellent entry.
The snake / worm twitching animations are funny :) I would have liked a crosshair to make it easier to aim (just an appropriately positioned quad with a transparent texture as a child of the camera would do). Since the level/restart transitions are abrupt, it would help to also show the current level with the GUI overlay - I couldn't always tell if I'd got to level 2 or been bumped back to level 1.
I distinctly remember saying, "okay last try". It wasn't :)
Great presentation (cool opening title !) and nice crunchy little sprites. You've really nailed the retro arcade style, and the UI layout is nicely conceived. Like jojocarand, I got stuck on level 2 for a while - I think the "IN AIR THERE'S NO FLIGHT" threw me off, suggesting that you couldn't move sideways onto ledges when falling. I agree with you about the logic puzzles - they aren't great. The basic foundation is good (bugs you know about aside) but the puzzles definitely need to be more interesting (even if that requires introducing some new element).
Awesome fun - the upgrade system appears to give it quite a lot of depth. I can't say I've yet cracked the best strategy, but I felt like I made some progress. Great achievement and I do hope you consider developing it further. (I made a Twitch stream here of my first playthrough: http://www.twitch.tv/omgwtfgames/c/4187190 - I actually wanted to keep playing at the end but thought I should move on to the next game :) ).
Love the graphics, and the controls have a good feel (essential, and the downfall of many other 48 hour platformers) .. but hey, you weren't kidding about it being hard :) I made a Twitch stream of me floundering around in my first playthough if you are curious: http://www.twitch.tv/omgwtfgames/c/4187136 .. sadly I'm too hopeless to get up to the bit where the mirror/flip mechanic comes into play. When I play games like this it always makes me want to go and learn how to use GameMaker.
Looks great, simple but effective premise for an adventure / exploration game. A solid and polished production for such a tight timeline - to repeat jrap's comment - feel proud because you should be. Video stream here if you are curious: http://www.twitch.tv/omgwtfgames/c/4187104 - I didn't beat it, but I'll look at the walkthrough and finish it now that I'm not recording.
Random LD trivia: Uhfgood also made a game titled "Where is my bone ?" for LD26 - http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=53 . It also features a dog, but that's about where the similarity ends :)
A stunning little experience. Thanks for sharing. Normally this is the part of the comment where I go "but you should add/change yadda yadda", but in this case .. it is what it is and I enjoyed it.
Really cute, stylish and engaging to play. Although the visuals evoke movies from the silent era, I'd probably still like some sound, even if it was understated. Also, I felt like the difficulty curve didn't ramp up enough after a while - sure, I eventually died, but it felt more like eventual bad luck than the game exceeding my skill level (if that makes any sense). I think this would be even more fun on a touch screen since you could disable multiple spiders simultaneously (until you run out of fingers).
What a great experience. I found it very relaxing to be a (virtual) ant. Now we just need Ant Vision(tm) to follow those pheromone trails :) Another +1 for Oculus Rift support.
Reasonably fun. I like how you've used the vignette to give longer range visibility of threats - it's sort of like a radar, without requiring any extra UI. I would have liked some type of extra special move that could grab gems that I barely missed - like a rapid horizontal left/right drilling move with a recharge time applied to it.
Really funny and great interpretation of the theme.
This was quite fun (I think you saw my video) - a little challenging at first but not frustratingly impossible (especially once I figured out to use wrapping through walls to my advantage). Nice subtle nod to Flappy with the font too :) I'd like to see some mystery removed from the colour-coded block types to avoid having to rote learn how many hits they will take. Either a simple number on each block indicating how many hits it has left, or use a series of 'cracked block' sprites to indicate the same thing. Alternatively you could show how many hits it will take, without updating the number displayed as hits are depleted so as to require more attention from the player.
Love the crunchy organic graphics - quite unique & really sets the mood. Why do you need to fight zombies to claim your prize ? Why can you only shoot with your head detached ? The answers to these question do not matter, since it's a fun crazy romp :) I never quite figured out if you could die in the melee battles though. I recorded my playthrough mumbling away on Twitch if you are curious: http://www.twitch.tv/omgwtfgames/c/4177965
Pretty solid runner - great choice with the banjo track. Now I feel like every (finite or endless) runner should have banjo music. It just works. Also the approaching mist of responsibilities is a great motivating effect. I found that jump didn't always seem to work for me - not sure if it was because I was touching the side of a wall, or if the key repeat on jump was set too slow. Also some of the invisible holes are a bit evil - I'd at least leave those until level 2 or 3. Also, I'd quite like to be able to continue from the start of the level after dying rather than going all the way back to level 1 (maybe in a less-hardcore-mode ?). Twitch stream here is you are curious to hear me ramble as I play: http://www.twitch.tv/omgwtfgames/c/4177965 . I probably didn't explore it enough honestly, since I never saw the upgrades.
Really enjoyed playing this, and the difficulty curve seemed pretty good to me. I never could quite tell if there was some interesting bending effect happening to bullets as they moved through waves, but irrespective the bullet collision rules (eg can't exit waves) are cool. Twitch stream here if you are curious: http://www.twitch.tv/omgwtfgames/c/4177912 (second half).
Great atmosphere, a fun challenge ... and those teeth. Those monstrous chomping teeth. I improved with practice, but it probably could do with some tuning to add a few extra platforms in the early game.
I really loved playing this. Felt fresh and original, and the puzzle design was well thought out. Awesome tracker(?) music. Intuitive controls. Stealth ! Bonus karma for providing a Linux build. I hope you plan to spruce up the graphics, build more levels and flesh this out - I'd pay some actual money for it.
Yay graphics & animation ! Nice music ! I tried various things with orbs, I got some screenshake, but not much more - I'm guessing the meat of the gameplay never quite made it in ? (or I'm missing something). Still an excellent looking foundation to build something more gamey. I'm totally looking at the source to see how you approached your lighting - awesome.
The premise is very cute .. but I must be the only one here who doesn't get how to play it properly (or I'm seeing a bug no one else is). No matter how I tickled across those keys, slow, fast, sequential, frantic, my success seemed all a bit random. Often the little guys would die (grey splats) sometimes immediately after the starting gun.
I'm embarrassed to say that I couldn't figure out the trick. Humiliation *tick* :) I might have to cheat and peek at the source.
Hey, I like the graphics ! Simple and clean so they don't detract from the core gameplay, but still juiced with cute touches like the eye movement. Love that deep bump sound when you hit a wall too. Puzzles weren't bad, but I would have liked to have seen a buildup with some 'teaching by doing', to introduce the player to tricks they might need to use. There are similar 'dual control' puzzle games out there, and you should definitely steal a few basic principles for level design from some. The directional switching had me stumped for a while, but I got there in the end (but was very close to quitting thinking it was impossible) - might have been better to introduce it in a situation where you don't have the threat of death first.
I can see some interesting strategy emerging here, but I like others I didn't understand my goal was to make $150k in the shortest possible time, until I read the comments. It does feel like an 'idle game' at the moment - which is fine (I love me some candybox2 :) ). Otherwise there needs to be something to do while you are waiting for the cash to roll in .. maybe swat something attacking your towers on the surface ? I can see some competition between players developing if you hooked it into the highscore system on one of the portal sites.
Just a little over 600 lines of code (not including libraries) ! Sure, there are a lot of little touches that would make this more approachable (I agree gnome highlighting would help, and maybe different coloured hats), but what you've got is pretty cool. I played the OUYA version, worked well. Without reading the instructions here I figured out about half of it (but not how to properly craft or record), then went back and played again knowing what to do.
I don't see any major difference between the original and the adjusted versions apart from the instructions, and since it's not against the rules to put a "how to play" in the description right on this page ... I'll just pretend you did and comment / rate the adjusted version.
Liked the nice clean pixel art. Simple but effective.
Step 1 is cool - you choose a path, it's good or bad based on colour, and you adjust next turn. While simple, with the right resource limitation this could take some careful planning. You could work a map legend into the UI here so the path colours were described without the need for instructions. Also, tradition dictates that "X" marks the spot - just ask any pirate :)
Step 2 seemed too easy to be entertaining - the colour of the dots guarantee what you will find, so I'd always just take all the diamond first, then the rum. I'd like an element of mystery and risk here - like rum is marked but only +1, diamond is unmarked ground, rarer, but worth much more (+3 ? +5 ?). Just an idea.
(Also spelling: "morale" not "moral" :) Smiley face because I feel like a douche for pointing it out but it kinda matters)
Maybe you think it's shitty, but I see the kernel of a interesting game here.
Quite good fun - I held my breath the first time I jumped out of the water. I initially felt the controls could do with some tuning .. then again, you are a slippery fish, so maybe they are just right. In terms of time allocation over the 48 hours - I would have ditched one or two of the powerups and spent that time extending the level to include a few more interesting challenges. That of course is easy for me to say now as an outside observer, having had a good nights sleep and time to reflect :)
It's a cool tech demo. You could totally mod this into a multiplayer Dig Dug.
I'm a sucker for anything glowy :) Loved the sfx and the music, and awesome that you tried a more unique (blended) genre - these experiments are what gamejams are all about for me (the mechanic does remind me of some game I played once but I can't quite put my finger on it). I actually feel like the concept has legs, but the level design might not have milked it as much as it could. A slower difficulty curve ramp up with some "teaching by doing" along the way would nail it. (Oh, BTW, you saw my laggy Twitch stream - thanks for tuning in ! Most of it actually got lost, but the bit with your game survived: http://www.twitch.tv/omgwtfgames/c/4165812 .. should remain for at least a few days).
Great atmosphere - lots of great little touches here that really juice it (flash on pickups, 'voxel' particles). I didn't read the full description and had assumed this was Unity - nope - go WebGL ! The slow floating light is a slightly more unique addition, it's an interesting way to limit the speed at which you can safely venture into the dark. I did experience some occasional framerate stutters even in fullscreen, but otherwise the framerate was excellent. One thing that would increase the tension would be to give some indication of health level (not necessarily a health bar, you could just make the orb light go redder or something).
That's an impressive cockpit - would work well on the Oculus Rift. I didn't hear sound - maybe there was none - if so, I think even some minimal sound would have really helped the atmosphere. I quite enjoy these slow paced exploration games, however I still ended up feeling like the craft could have moved forward faster, or had a 'boost' for short bursts of speed. It may not be realistic, but I guess it depends on style of game you are aiming for (more casual fun, or a simulator for purists). The sonar as a pickup bonus is a good idea too.
Great fun to play. Classic formula, well executed. It feels ominous when you see those cracks appear and .. oh crap run !
It's Pipe Dream but different - great concept and well worth fixing and expanding. I guess you are aware of the bugs - it would be much easier to play if the pipes moved with the mouse pointer, and they should probably 'snap' into place on the grid. Being able to see the progress of the hero within the pipes would be nice too. Heaps of scope here, great job.
Yay for lofi FPSes ! Love the vegetation .. it just feels right. Features I'd like: fullscreen option and strafe key bindings.
Now I haven't played every puzzle game every made, so I can't be sure, but this feels pretty innovative to me. Great icons, great presentation. I was about to say "oh, but it's too easy to beat by just making totems .." and now I realize I missed the point, since totems are defensive but gain you no direct score. I guess that points to a need for a little tutorializing or popup tips to clue the player in. You should continue working on this game since the foundation of what you have is excellent.
I enjoyed chilling out any playing this - a simple premise that works well. I'd probably have played for longer if there was a life or checkpoint system, since repeating the earlier levels got old after a while - but I guess this would be more of an issue if there were more levels. Would work great on mobile, being a single tap control scheme .. great stuff.
Really fun little adventure game - the opening text was really well written and all the little details like rain in the window and dripping water gives it a great atmosphere. Nice pixel art and palette choice - the title screenshot doesn't do the rest justice. I got stuck after getting the lighter, but I'll try to continue later. (Minor non-game related gripes: Installers suck, zipped folders rule for LD48. Also there must be better popup-free file host than Mediafire .. MEGA or Google Drive maybe ?)
Great polished game on all fronts, I just wish there were more frantic levels after mastering the first ! One thing I'd like is a better audiovisual indication of when a Digger is about to hit the core - it was too easy to forget to stop a Digger, and the result was too punishing. Alternatively, just make the core expand significantly if a Digger hits it, so it's not instadeath but a big deal.
Love the panning/zooming camera controller, works great, and the parallax is really effective to add depth and interest. That diagonal moving platform puzzle is really tough, especially since it seems platform velocity isn't transferred to the player when jumping. Wish the difficultly ramp was a little slower since it was otherwise pleasant to play & explore.
Overall, plays quite well. I especially like the helper guys wandering around, since it gives a real atmosphere of a living village that must be protected. I think you could trim back the opening story until it is better refined - it didn't seem to add much for so many words. Bad blobs from the ocean are attacking, keep whacking them till you win. I would have liked some visual feedback to tell me when I'd hit a monster (particles, flash blob colour or a hit animation) since it was hard to know when my slashes were connecting. From a design perspective, what could work well here is having an object(s) (shrine, elderly leader, vege patch ?) that needs to be protected, but is distant from the fountain.
Great looking pixelated bones and organs (bonus points for Y-fronts) ! I also appreciate the references to real immunology. I'm speculating since I'd need to do more play testing, but it felt like the Assassin T Cell was a little overpowered - I could build up a bunch, they moved fast but didn't seem to die very easily.
Great fun, sweet pixel art, solid gameplay ! When I see someone belt out a classic game like this in 48 hours it really motivates me to improve my skills. Incidentally - this mechanic of doing one thing to charge up the meter then firing the big gun (aka worm) past the player avatar from one side of the screen reminds me of Yars Revenge, although I sure that's just coincidence. (Also, you are right about IE :) .. I gave it a try believing that it had improved in recent years. Nup).
I like the zany piano arpeggio music (suggested title: "Flight of the Underwater Bumblebee") & the crabs are cute. I feel like the hit box for Sam needs a little adjustment - it was often difficult to enter corridors. The difficulty of the first two levels seemed good, but I feel like it ramped up a little quickly after that - maybe increasing maze size in 2x2 or 4x4 steps instead of 16x16. A few unique landmarks on larger mazes would help too, or the ability to drop some kind of breadcrumb (eg a very slow fading bubble trail ?). I had a peek inside src .. nice clean code :)
Lovely organic art style & and fun to explore. I was happy without any instructions or tutorial since it made it more exciting when I figured out what to do. I guess if you wanted to help players that get stuck an optional hint button could appear if they stall at a step for too long. I wish there was there was a third patient - what do you mean I'm not a real doctor ? .. would a pretend doctor have this fancy magnifying glass ?!?
Great bright fun graphics & the character is nicely animated. The level selection screen is a wonderful addition too - much more fun than a typical grid of icons. If I were to nitpick, I'd say make the tutorial text color contrast more against the background - it was a little tough to read at times. Lighting on the trees looks cool (I couldn't quite tell if these were pre-rendered billboards Donkey Kong Country-style, or using Unity's lightmapping and ambient occlusion). Gameplay wise, I'd like to be able to hit while in the air to smack enemies as I fly in. Also agree the "Windows" key got in the way of the key mappings - the z/x/c row is usually better and often used. Unity's standard CharacterController isn't ideal (eg, capsule slips off edges) but it's a lot of work to make anything better quickly from scratch ... so ... yeh :)
The lag in the HTML5 version is a bit of a killer, but despite this I had fun trying to catch that goblin. This really hits close to home as I've had to replace several princesses in the last month due to goblin (and occasional hobgoblin) snatch-n-grabs.
Wonderful silhouette art. I particularly like that tree. Jumping only seemed to work sporadically for me, but you probably know that already (agree Unity needs to do a bit more work and some important bugfixes on the new 2D features). If it amuses you watching me try to jump and babble away with bad audio, Twitch stream exists here ( http://www.twitch.tv/m/491430 ) for a few days.
Satisfying and polished. The slow paced reload time works nicely to get the player focusing on accuracy over rampant clicking, and gives the gameplay a steady rhythm. I feel like one hit death might be a little punishing (or alternatively, it's not one hit death but I didn't get enough visual/audio feedback that I was being hit from behind). I quite like that snazzy scanline effect.
Those are some great little sprites right there. And then bzzzzt! ... piles of dust.
Plays quite well, solid simple-but-effective pixel art - great job juicing the screen shake too. I think the difficulty is reasonable well tuned too(except maybe the spikes) - slightly hard, but not stupidly so. I'd quite like a reload function - as a player you can work around it anyway by just unloading a half full clip when there are no enemies around ... so you may as well just bind it to a key and make it official. Great stuff !
Great atmosphere - I like the feel of stumbling around in a dark room and discovering things. The floor tile highlighting effect works well. I feel like the scrollbar detracted a little .. that said, I'm not sure about the best alternative approach (eg, one common approach would be to have the text appear under the collectible on the background & stay put, but then you couldn't read back over the whole thing).
Accelerometer was a little too sensitive for my tastes (at least on my tablet), but it played nicely once I got the hang of it.
This was awesome fun .. love the different weapon types. I almost just missed the judging deadline because I was having too much fun playing it :)
This looks and sounds stunning, and played quite well once I got the hang of building up a bounce. Ran nicely under Wine on Ubuntu too !
Lots of lols :)
Really polished and fun. I love the lighting effect, looks great.
Great surreal atmosphere (and minimal). I find 3D platforming a little frustrating under ideal conditions - in this case the mouse seemed too sensitive and made it tricker than it should have been. Still enjoyed progressively 'building' the structure - looks great when you step back and survey it from a distance.
A really innovative puzzler, and quite enjoyable to play. This is one of the better uses of the Mondrian-style painting I've seen in a game - great job, and I look forward to an Android version !
Wow, all these are quite fun, with the odd original twist on some classics. I had a play with the sprite generator too - very nice and good fun in itself. It seemed like the sprites in these minigames don't look as crisp (some antialiasing ?) compared with what the generator produces - I think it would look better if they maintained their clean pixelated look.
That first scene turned my brain inside out for a moment. Sure you didn't collaborate with David Lynch on this one ? :)
You this game is evil and you are a bad person ... love it ! Scored just 7 before I threw in the towlr .. but I'LL BE BACK.
I really enjoyed playing this. I like the way you've incorporated story into a roguelike - works well. The amount of detail to the model of the world is great too ... stand too close to the fire, you get too hot, too far away, you get cold. Should be obvious, but I don't always expect that level of 'realism' in an anything ASCII so it caught me off guard. Now if you'll excuse me ... I'm off to try and not die this time :)
I love how I had no idea what was going to happen next. The low res pixel art is also very pretty.
Not sure if it was just the WebGL build, but key repeat made it very easy to meditate since no tapping was required.
Runs for me on Ubuntu 12.04, 64-bit. An unsettling experience - trapped in a green luminous room with no obvious means of escape. I looked around frantically, but no exit was found. I didn't hear any sound - some foley or ambient soundscapes could have tipped it from unsettling to nightmarish. Bonus points for binding the ESC key - there's nothing worse than getting stuck in a full screen LD entry with no easy way to exit (particularly when it's an unsettling green room :) ).
Wow .. this is great ... but how will I ever eat a fish again ! Casts my mind back to the days of fishing in Animal Crossing (pun totally intended).
Very cute characters - I also like the backgrounds, reminds me of 'Pitfall' but more whimsical. Android version ran very nicely - although I never saw any dual-colour barriers ... maybe I just didn't do well enough to get up to that part.
I liked that this game had real personality - something that could easily be lost when striving for minimalism. Actually the control scheme reminded me of some things I've read about providing accessible controls for those with limited mobility. Great work.
Wow, that's really good. Now please excuse me while I go over here and *barf*. Okay, let's play again :)
Great abstract puzzler, agreeable colour scheme and great use of the theme. Enjoyed the music too, really helps set the tone. Very tricky to win within the move limit - having star ratings or something for suboptimal solutions would be nice touch. Not sure if it was a bug or a trick level, but there seemed to be invisible walls on the question mark level. Solid game though, happy I played it.
Love that crazy shader ! Great atmosphere with the music too. Mouse was a little too sensitive for me so I didn't get very far, but I'm tempted to grab the source and tweak it myself so I can finish the game :)
Great idea and a big effort with all that voice acting content. I almost thought I was listening to Commander Tuvok for a second there :) Along with the high mouse sensitivity, I found selecting a player to brig tricky - didn't always seem to change when I centred my field of view on them. Got him in the end though :)
I really like the gem stealing variation, and the balance seemed reasonably well tuned (having also done a tower defense type game for my entry and not getting the balance quite right, I appreciate how tricky this can be :) ).
Love those cute rabbit sprites and the associated squeak sound. The whimsical music fits well too. This is a bit like a "Dr. Wario" game - "Dr. Mario" in reverse. I had to untrain my brain to not match colours :)
Great idea, although it was hard for me to get my head around the scoring. I thought I was doing pretty well, but I was always rated terrible :)
The grid damage mechanic is awesome - can't say I've seen that before. Sort of makes it like a cross between a dual stick shooter ala Robotron and an inverse Solar Fox. It was fun, but I'd like to see the number of enemies ramp up a bit faster. Sound design was good, but I don't think the explosion particle effect fitted the visual style of the rest of the game. Worth expanding on this game for a post-compo version to milk that grid damage mechanic.
Hey, nice work, this plays pretty well, and looks quite good (I'm a sucker for those gem shaders too :) ). I'm going to take a peek at the source to see how you did those moving clouds too - great effect.
The music fits well enough but I think the sound is a weak point - since sfxr/bfxr is such a popular tool, you need to work to make sure the sounds don't turn out sounding like obnoxious presets & fit their role (not that I haven't been guilty of this). In particular, the shooting sound is a little loud and harsh, but important to get right since you hear it so often. But really I'm just nitpicking since it's otherwise a great compo entry.
Nice art (particularly like the zany background) & love the spooky bgm loop. The auto-targeting laser is also very cool.
It took me a while to figure out that I was harvesting energy and if I didn't I'd die, but once I got past that it made sense - but that's a small hint that maybe you need just a little more help docs here or within the game. Not much, just "Abduct turdlets to keep your energy levels high. Lasers use energy" would be enough. (Minor typo: "loose" should be "lose". I do that all the time too). Great little game overall, and I look forward to a post-compo version in the future.
Great work on the zombie groans. I had the same problem. Pumped and pumped but could never shoot (oh, that sounds so wrong). I found the doo doo I wanted, but no bullets.
Next LD I want to see "Desert Rust: Pat Chenko vs. m'fn Chuck Norris" :)
Deep. Fight violence with violence, and you become the thing you hate.
Great idea. Hulk like smash Ludums :)
Great music, fun crazy game. Crosshairs were a little hard to see at times, maybe slightly thicker/coloured lines would be good, since it's something that you really need to see. Seemed like the difficulty stops ramping up after a while - I got past 3 or 4 levels and then it didn't seem to get harder. Then I just made Piet dance crazy for a little while, which was really fun :) Which gives me an idea - a 'dance crazy' bonus round where you just have to tap everything fast, maybe with point for style (mixing up limbs, making them do full circles). Thanks for the LOLs :)
Like the art - amusing. +Points for humor on the advanced mode :) Background music works pretty well with the Japanese setting too. Agree with others that a little sword animation would be nice. Can't say I've ever seen this type of combat mechanic before - great idea if it's original, and thanks for exposing me to it if it's not :)
For some reason it wouldn't run for me on Windows (Vista :/) ... so I made a Linux build (+source):
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/126566/tmp/LD26/MiniJump_linux.zip
... which actually runs in Windows and Linux for me :)
I love the overall visual design of the levels and the colour scheme - great setup for a minimal platformer. My cat enjoyed watching me play too - she seems to love anything with little moving squares.
The nitpicks: Left/right movement felt a little sluggish. Maybe it's because my expectations always compare to one of the SMBs (Super Meatio Broboys), but I'd like it to feel like there is a little less resistance to walking. Spike collision detection should be a polygon (or design the levels so you can never walk into the side of a spike block) - but yeh, harder to implement than a box collider, depending on the engine. And finally ... the character should have a tiny little eye and mouth (dot and line) to make me care more about him/her :) Great entry, thanks for making it.
It's a strange little game, but I like it. Being a one button game, it would probably translate well to a mobile touchscreen device.
Good fun, short and sweet, made me LOL. Makes me realise more interactive fiction should go the extra mile to make best use of the medium.
This has a unique sort of feel for a dual-stick shooter. Love the explosion visual effects and the bigass score display. Nice idea allowing different ship features at the cost of multiplier - no idea if it's actually balanced (I seemed to do best with just shields+speed) but theoretically it could be a good way to allow players to adapt the game to their play style and compete on the same leaderboard.
eXcellent 48hour submission (I don't believe no one has made that pun yet :)). Having the tutorial was good - I never find time to implement an game tutorials for LD entries, so good on you for getting that in there - helps set the tone and doesn't leave the player completely perplexed. The technology menu appeared for me just once and then I never saw it again over several plays - not sure what was going on there. I'd also like a 'bleed dry & destroy' button to prevent accidentally destroying settlements, particularly to prevent it happening in the early game where you only have one ... otherwise it's an instant lose which can be jarring.
What a stunning little game ! Someone get this into a gallery STAT ! (I'm too dense to get the deep meaning myself, but I thank @lekochen for explaining it above - mind=blown).
Great little challenge - it's like Superlinear Hexagon :) Reminds me of the good times trying to beat the flying level on Battletoads from Gameboy .. at some point your finger have to move faster than your brain. Nice touch with the play button tweening from the title screen to become the player.
Liked the vector graphics. Clusters seemed to explode sometimes ... not sure if this is a feature or a physics stability issue. Android version ran fine until the gun put too many objects on screen, then some slowdown (Galaxy Nexus .. should be able to handle it)
Whoa ! You are messing with my head ! Love the 'completely augmented reality' thing.
Music was great, really set the atmosphere. Right on theme. Beautiful clean graphics (Inkscape FTW!). I played the Android version and it ran great (although the tutorial did mention the right mouse button :P). You're making the rest of us look bad with your polished compo entries :)
Many LOLz :) Despite the ropey programmer art, this reeks of polish and humor. The janitor was GOLD. Also liked the touches like blood slowly accumulating on the saw blade. Main music loop got a bit old but the title music was nice ... maybe a longer in game loop, or just mix it up with the title music. (Minor gripe: Doesn't respect the Android app life cycle ... music still playing when backgrounded, no Back button support).
Great music and sound, but what went wrong with the sprites !?! Some weird anti aliasing here. Gameplay is mildly entertaining. On Android, Back button doesn't exit on title screen (hint ... Android Back button is bound to the ESC key in Unity).
Great chip tune soundtrack ! Didn't quite get the rules (although actually reading them here now I kinda get it) .... it's a bit like a 'captain forever' mechanic and could make an interesting game with some refinement. I played the post-compo Android version: performance was just fine on Galaxy Nexus.
Great mechanic, very satisfying to play. Minor gripe: Back button on Android does nothing on title screen.
Great gameplay, well suited to mobile. Drum background music was effective but maybe a slightly longer loop would be good. Sure, there's only a few levels, but the basic format & tutorial style addition of features each level was well executed ... I'd quite like to see this 'finished' and released. (Minor gripe: on Android Back button does nothing. Could be something Game Maker Studio should do better by default).
Endearing graphics, pretty good 8-bit sound although more variation in the ant fight sound would be good. Didn't understand how actions I was taking effected gameplay (eg no clear view of genotype or phenotype). I guess that was kind of the point but it seemed too subtle and mysterious for me. Good handling of Android app lifecycle (eg sensible handling of Back button). Keen to play with the Android port of FlashPunk - seems to perform nicely.
Cute graphics.
Wow, stunning polished graphics. I figured out the disco puzzle without any problems, but I'm a little embarrassed to say I couldn't catch the rabbit (brings back memories of Super Mario 64). Great atmosphere - all round amazing game for a 48+24 hour effort.
Awesome use of the theme - after a bunch of rounds the swarm got evil-hard for me, which I guess is my own fault for picking off the easy to hit ones and not letting them breed :)
I usually like this style of game, but I can't say I really understand how this mechanic will work for a puzzler. The existing levels seemed very easy, and without building a few I can't determine if there is scope for it to become interesting. Maybe once the creature can 'evolve' and there are creature vs. creature battles it might work.
Good fun driving the beastie around !
Great atmosphere, and a smart idea for a platform puzzler. I like the simple scrolling parallax "2.5D" effect. I found riding the platform tricky due to constant tiny collisions ... you might want to use one of the common methods to prevent that (tweak Unity's physics settings, or make the platform+player behave as a single object when standing on the platform).
Amusing, but hard to predict. I guess I need to play more to get a better feel of the likely winner in each round.
For those playing on Ubuntu 12.04 (x86_64), you'll need to:
$ sudo apt-get install libsdl-mixer1.2 libsdl-ttf2.0-0
Depending on your system, there may be other libsdl libraries you need too .. follow your nose based on the error.
Love the graphics, and the interesting spin on a side scrolling (non-)shmup. A shroomup ? Could just be me, but the collision detection for the large 'cherry' mushroom seemed a little unforgiving.
Really playable - I like the atmospheric music and the player sprite animation too, simple but effective. The 'autocentering' mechanic works really well for a quick little challenge like this. Agree that the trippy screensaver background doesn't fit the rest of the game, despite maybe being a bit of fun to make technically. I also found it weird that the jump sound seemed to trigger at the apex of a jump rather than perfectly synchronized with the button press - you get used to it, but it seemed a bit wrong at first.
Some nice textures, and ran very smoothly. Beautiful opening screen (great font !). Ghost sprites were a little dodgy. Only vaguely on theme, and an FPS isn't all that innovative .. but a little more technically challenging than most entries, which is impressive. No sound ?
Wow, great entry. Excellent graphical style. Wall jumping is always fun. Love the demo-scene-esque scrolling text with instructions and the panning zooms +1 techpoints for good looking auto-level generation.
Wonderful clean, crisp graphics. Great game, I love the way you've subverted Tetris to become "anti-Tetris". It's reminiscent of the "Block Star" minigame in WarioWare Smooth Moves, but with more scope, since the tower can just keep going up (till RAM is filled, I guess ?). Recording for replays adds a great social aspect to it ... (I can see the comments now "OMG how did you manage to pull that off without it falling !". I expect we will see videos of some of the crazyiest tallest towers being built sometime soon. I've got to practise a little before anyone is allowed to see my replay's :)
Physics of spinning platforms felt nice. No sound ? Couldn't figure out the goal or winning condition.
Great graphics ... very clean. Good details on jumping animation. Playablity was decent .. (double jumping, etc). It's a platformer, in the least innovative sense. No sound ? Very loosely on theme ...
Love the way you fit time in for a quick game of chess during the timelapse :)
Entertaining, quite humorous, particularly for fans of interactive fiction.
Unlike some others I felt the controls were actually pretty good ... I quite like the "only just in control" feel. Background music started off good but got old very fast ... maybe a longer loop with more variation would have helped. I love (pun slightly intended) the cartoon style background graphics. One suggested improvement would be to make the character sprite match the style of the backgrounds better. I got up to level 3 or 4 (lost count), reasonably good fun.
A fun toy ... I could envisage some more complex levels here with a required score threshold in order to advance to the next level ... this would add some challenge. No sound ? From the source I can see you had lots of interesting plans ...
This game shows all the beginnings of a great idea ... shame you didn't get time to polish it and package it. +Innovation points. Clear goals/scoring/levels could be worked into this in many ways, and with bugfixes it could turn into great game. Potential bugs: Seemed to slow to a crawl once there were lots of blocks on the screen, and two blocks got stuck suspended in mid-air at the spawn area because I dropped them in fast succession.
Excellent use of physics. I don't think I've ever played or heard about a platformer where the levels are _all_ unstable physical objects ... very innovative. It feels great to play ... reminds me of running/jumping over rocks in a river as a kid. Graphics were very basic, but I can see lots of time went into good level design instead No sound.
Great steam & machine animations on the title screen, nice clean graphical style.
Nice concept, reasonably original. Even had time to include a tutorial mode .. very impressive !
Amazing pixel art ! Tricky sort of isometic sprites + 3D (+tech points). Nice retro sounds. Took a while to get the hang of things without instructions, but once I understood the way the limitation of peons worked it was easier (eg if you have too many buildings of a type you don't need the peons may still busy themselves there, rather than moving to work at the new ones). Fairly well balanced considering the limited time for testing. Could get a bit harder (increase baddie spawn rate) as tower gets lower ?
My score: 1:08, ~8300 (clicked accidentally and lost the exact score)
Cute sprites ! Great, detailed levels ! Excellent sound ! On theme ! Funny ! Plays well ... tough but not too tough. Great little game.
I'd never used Silverlight, but it runs well despite requiring a quick install. Physics engine was had a very good 'feel' ... game was challenging but achievable. I think there need to be some other element introduced to make it a bit more 'stressful' ie a block number limitation, or a countdown to an earthquake. Other contestants also made physics based tower building games, but it's not a classic genre of game, so I'd say it's slightly more innovative than the norm. No sound ?
Hey, nice clean graphics, pretty textures. Good sound .. effective and not annoying. A fairly unique sort of game .. a bit like minigolf, but moving up inside a tower. There is some considerable effort in level design here too. Took me a little while to get the hang of it, but once I did, it's a pretty fun little game. +Polish points for a level editor, even if it is tricky to use :). I did notice a bug, where you can accidentally fall _inside_ the bottom tower in level 6.
Nice idea for a game. Probably needs some levels, to ramp up difficulty. Some audio samples of the control tower radio messages would be cool (as long as there is a mute button too :) ). Interesting choice of framework, using Processing ... was thinking of using the Javascript port of this myself. I wonder how fast this game would run with Processing.js ??
Great backstory :) Very cute animations and nice clean graphics (although owl and "T" sprites could have been made more interesting). Gameplay was a little too hard .. I think you need a rule to ensure that the owls and "T"s aren't too close together, otherwise it's essentially impossible. Would love to see the little character in some other games in the future :)
Controls seemed a bit sluggish, but a great idea, and pretty innovative.
I like the hand-drawn graphical style. Mouse control for angles/power would have been better. Good enemy death sound.
Those are some funny looking owls :). Quite a different feel to most physics engines. Very nice. Cute sprites. Impressive non-rectangular collisions +tech points. No sound ?
Reasonably nice quality tile graphics. Gamplay was a bit dull ... not enough challenge ... not sure what the expected strategy was. Still, like the concept. Crashed for me after 5 min play. No sound ?
Good sound ... guitar loop was catchy and actually seemed to get funnier as it went on rather than annoying. Not trivial, but not impossible to get the hang of either. Good use of theme. Describing it as "Rampart-style" gives away that this idea is not 100 % innovative, but it was pretty well executed. I would have like to have seen the computer player actually fire on screen.
Simple action puzzler. Would have liked to see some more complex levels ... but wouldn't want to have seen the pug deprived of it's peanut butter yogurt.
A dizzying postmodern deconstruction of the modern tower-themed video game.
Really cool idea ... looks great in 3D ... +tech points. Fairly innovative take on this style of strategy. Good use of theme ... there were indeed towers in this game. I think with polish, and some extensions, this could become a really fun two-player RTS ... eg, apart from the stuff in your readme and obvious bugs ... I'd like to see visual cues to make tower selection and aiming a little easier, some more scary creatures. Not sure if creatures can destroy towers/tubes yet, but that would make sense too. In two player mode, each player could build a separate base which included "creature spawning towers" ... Blizzard better watch out, their Starcraft 2 launch could be overshadowed :)
My game eventually ended when the gun turrets grew and grew to engulf the base. I think there is a bug :) (I'm sure you knew that already ). No sound ?
Nice work on the hexatile engine ... +tech points. Can't really score the graphics too high if they were placeholder graphics ... no sound ? Worked pretty well ... did require some strategy to beat the AI (I lost the first time, until I understood that it was about encircling and cutting off from resources). You appeared to live almost entirely on toast for 48 hours. Good job !
Nice simple background music (it's great how a simple beat can change the game feel). Good that you had sound (too many entries leave out sound) and a title screen. Funny, crazy little game ... rough but amusing graphics. Also nice to see there is a clear goal / completion criteria (I haven't finished it yet, but I haven't tried too hard).
Wonderful graphics (in the classic Hamumu style .. we expect no less :) ). Sound is better than no sound (would have preferred some less intrusive samples for arrow shots etc more like a low 'whoosh' than an beepy sound). Smart strategy game, nice use of various classes. Pretty well balanced difficultly. I like the way the owls will pass treasure to each other. Loosly on theme. Overall, a very professional entry. Amazing effort for 48 hours.
No sound ? Very innovative. If I could give a 10 for innovation here I would. The ugly owl graphic was funny, but lost points for graphic quality. Maybe some funny sounds and some wise cracks in speech bubbles from the owl would add to the 'fun factor'. Really smart idea for a game though. You should improve it, polish it, and get it put on the OLPC XO laptop ....
Nice textures, good feeling physics. Shame you didn't get time to implement the logic for the winning condition.
Great soundtrack ! Big points for humour, funny sprites (if a bit rough). Game was tricky .. maybe an easier starting level (less objects, slower objects) would have been good to begin with. I like to feel like I'm winning a little before being punished.
Wonderful, wonderful graphics. +Tech points .. the effect of wrapping the level around the tower is really neat, even if it has be done a few times before. No sound ?
Gamplay was quite nice. Good balance between gravity / jet strength. Liked the particles, and the shiny 3D sprites. Nice, not obstrusive sounds.
Nice sounds. Great idea .. a controlled demolition game. Graphics were simple but functional. Would have preferred not to have to _drag_ explosives / shields into place, but rather just click to place.
Nice graphics (good backgrounds, nice clean sprites, shadows !). No sound ? Good effort for a two hour hack. Not super original, but nice catapult animation.
Very nice pixel art. Simple idea, but it works. Good use of theme. Maybe some different plane type (helicopters, blimps ?) and some birds to dodge would keep it more interesting (or maybe I died before I saw those sprites ?). No sound ?
Nice graphical style, pretty good music and sound. Building casinos for production was an amusing touch ... but I initially placed them thinking that the enemies would go inside and gamble :) Probably needs work on balance, seemed a little easy.
An excellent _LD11_ entry ... :) Creepy atmosphere. Not sure about a 'natural language' text adventure ... there are conventional commands used for most interactive fiction, and while "n" may be more boring than "walk to the north, pretty please", for players that are familiar with the standard commands using them makes playing the game a whole lot less frustrating ... I guess that's why they became popular since the Infocom years. I guess I should have browsed the source to figure out the commands ...
It seemed like the workers had more trouble getting up to higher blocks ... I think imposing some sort of ramping up of the difficultly combined with better resource limitation would make this more of a game. I think your "no plan" strategy of creating a working system (aka a sandbox or 'toy') is often a really good way to start a game (worked for me in LD11) ... you just need to be able to tweak that system to add some clear goals and balance/difficulty increase afterward.
Great music ! Interesting strategy game ... you have to play you cards right :) I can see quite a lot of effort has gone into constructing devious levels, providing tips etc. I got the "Tower" card ... nice use of the theme. Would look great with some detailed tarot card graphics.
Funny graphics. Good job on the background music, really helps create the foreboding atmosphere of a little bird taking on a big tower (with resident crystal crushing owl). Would have liked key repeat to work differently ... felt a little "turn based" even though it was supposed to be realtime. Oh, and birds fire eggs out of their butt, not the front :)
Always like it when entries have some acoustic background music ... adds a nice handmade feel to the game. Also like the fireworks when completing a level ... makes it all the more satisfying. Nice title screen graphics. A fairly complete entry. Tricker than it seems once you get past the early levels.
Same bug as others encountered. Just gave me a dialog saying "Find the dark tower". Nothing more. So sad when packaging issues stop the whole show.
Excellent graphics ! The mummies hiding in little towers made me laugh. Difficultly ramped up nicely to begin with, but then seemed to flatten off ... my mouse had got tired before I was properly challenged. Background music is fairly generic, but sounded good enough that I left it on for ~ 20 waves. Simple concept for a game, not entirely unique but additions like the magic (the fireballs ARE fun) keep it a bit more interesting. Great entry.
Very cute, including dialog. You have an interesting diet. +tech points .. always impressed with 3D. Like your SVG to OpenGL Poly loader ... I've tried this for 2D level design before but found the SVG rotation/translation matricies tricky ... I'll be studying your code more closely in the future :)
Wonderful music. Interesting and fairly unique take on a tower building game. Simple but functional, clean graphics.
Wonderful sound !! Reasonably good use of theme. A guy climbing a tower ... guess that passes. Graphics were a bit flickery.
I see you played a quick game of Mondrian, my LD11 entry toward the end of the 48 hours :) ... I award a blatantly biased "5" for timelapse !
Great glitchy background music, very cool. Impressive 3D and physics ++techpoints (I'm inspired to learn how to use Ogre for sure now). Fun game, sort of like Jenga, but different.
Great retro sounds. Couldn't figure out what to do (arrow keys and ...?). I guess figuring out what to do was the point ... so I guess I lost.
Really enjoyed this, reminded me of the old MS-DOS Castle that was one of my favorite games as a kid. I finished it .. was hard until I got the bow. With a few more levels, a few more monster types, some locked doors with keys and maybe one or two more weapons, this would essentially be better than Zelda 1, and almost match Diablo. I'm only half kidding. A few bleepy sounds would have been nice, maybe a PC-speaker intro tune, and for when the harp is played. Thanks, I had a great 10 - 15 mins fun.
Nice particle effects, but didn't quite understand the gravity behaviour, or the significance of two different coloured planet types. I like the way you handled one vs. two player games ... computer players till a key for that player is touched. The background sound is cool, but for longer play periods would be just too much
Cheezy graphics, but I'm guessing that is the point. Minimalist, in the sense that it does strip one element of the RPG genre down to it's bare minimum. This reminds me of one of the early games in the "Alone in the Dark" series ... it pretty much amounts to choosing attack or heal. Once you get enough XP and hit points, attack-attack-attack seems to work just fine, out to infinity. Increasing difficulty in monsters would make the progression harder. I'm not a huge fan of the 'hardcore' DnD-inspired RPG (although I do enjoy some roguelikes and some 'softcore' RPGs like Zelda) ... this game pretty much illustrates why.
Considerable achievement to get a game like this going in 48 hours (despite the bugginess). Graphics do the job (minimal, fit with the theme). It's tricky to determine the killer. Maybe a 'clock' running while each alibi is replayed would help in correlating each sequence of events. And maybe colour each character differently. More of a thinking game than a "riotous fun" type game, but sometimes thats just what I want.
Heh ... extremely nostalgic. There was much LOLing here. Reminds me of the days playing Alley Cat in 3 colour CGA under DOS. Great sound, and with more levels would could make a fun puzzle game. I got stuck on level 3 ... I'm convinced it's a bug. The scale/rotate transition on level restart sort of breaks the illusion that the game is old skool. I really enjoyed my short time playing it.
Great concept, very smart puzzler. Worth developing further ... just make some more levels.
Nice idea, (I've never actually seen a third person Elite). Enemy shooting sound was nice, and touches like the starfield effect & particles looked good. I found it too hard to dock to any distant planet ... the whole 'realism' in space travel thing (too easy to overshoot) meant I couldn't get much out of the game. Maybe a "distance X parsecs" type display for planets would help, so at least you know when you are getting close and need to start firing the retro-rockets.
Graphics were okay for a simple RTS. No sound ? AI was a bit whacky. Not very engaging as a game ... going minimal with units & auto-resources has sort of taken the strategy out of real-time strategy. 48 hours goes so quickly doesn't it ?
Controls didn't work very well for me. Seemed to run a little slow ? Concept is nice though, and could work nicley with more development (ie more levels, fix the controls, make some better sprites).
Shooters are usually fun, but not very innovative. Despite the theme, more than on enemy type would have been nice .. not enough variation (or did I not play for long enough). The origami background was pretty, included some nice particle effects, and the gameplay/controls were good and responsive for a shooter. No sound ? [rant]Would prefer a zip rather than an installer; in fact the whole package smacks of crapware since it also installed a "more fun games" link ... I'm all for promotional opportunities (indie games need all the attention they can get), but maybe just put your URL in the title screen .. we can type it in or Google "piddlepup games" if we want more.[/rant]
Decided not to actually vote after reading the comments about the music. Try again next LD ... I'm sure you can produce something brilliant within the rules.
Nice complete package - impressive that you got multiple tracks, cars etc into it within 48 hours. I didn't play the two player game, but I can imagine that it would actually be quite fun. Gameplay actually reminds me of some of the events in "Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games" on Wii, strangely (I've no idea how that game is selling so many copies .. triple-franchise power I guess). I'd like to be able to push while the meter is still going down, would make the play a little more fluid. Graphics were okay, but could use some tweaking. Sound was okay, but the menu switching sounds could be toned down a little.
Funny sounds, funny opening graphics, nice clean in-game graphics. Simple but effective gameplay. I would have liked the dialogs to require clicking on their buttons rather than just the whole Window ... more realistic to the difficulty experienced in a real dialog box attack :) But maybe that would be less fun, I dunno.
Title screen made me chuckle. Although it required a little strategy, gameplay was not engaging enough to keep me battling master after master (but I've never really been a fan of Magic the Gathering-style or Pokemon battle card games. I guess this is why these games have many spells and counter-spells ... to keep it interesting). I get the sense that this was planned to be a bigger game, since there are some unused sprites in the package ?
Extra points for drinking brown grapefruit juice from a jar.
Good gfx, good fun. I could see myself playing a longer version of something along these lines.
Hard, but rewarding. Still would like it to be a little more forgiving. I ended up using my Wacom tablet rather than the mouse to draw minims, and *finally* got the hang of it. Nice sounds. Extra points for using Workrave (I should have done that) and dead novelty language like Perl :)
Shiny spark graphics were nice. Sound is simple, but does the job. All very minimal, which fits the theme. More levels would have been nice, since I never really got a sense of all the 'rules' for this realtime puzzler (eg Level 3 seems to have totally different style of gameplay and rules to Level 1).
Some difficulty installing / running (see your 'final' post). Nice concept, graphics were nice and minimal, but too easy. Way too easy ... needs to ramp up the difficulty more quickly from the start.
Nice, funny idea, fits the theme, but the actual gameplay didn't really seem to work well for me. I used a techno track with a strong beat, but pressing shift just made the scrolling thing jump around a lot. Graphics were technically impressive, and the sound was nice since I chose it :) Integrating the musicdb.py script to be launched by the actual game (some users are shy of the commandline) would be nice too .. but hey, I know all to well how hard it is to do _everything_ in 48 hours :)
Gosu was too much of a pain to compile for the linux verison, so I had to use the Windows version. This is already quite very professional looking game, and it is a considerable feat to have produced it all, from scratch in 48 hours. The radial levels are a nice idea (Super Mario Galaxy inspired maybe ?). Sounds are good, graphics are great, and the control scheme is minimalist, so loosely fits with the theme. I haven't finished it yet, but I intend to.
Sound was "Excshellent!". The graphics were minimal, but I don't like the colour scheme. Scrolling intro screen and between level USA map was a nice touch. Controls were very responsive.
Cute game, very nice sound. Graphics are clean and suitibly minimal. Something about the gameplay needs a tweak, to make it faster or give the user more 'control' (maybe tunnels through the sliding blocks, and more enemies ?). It's a slick little package, and a wonderful achievment for 48 hours, but in the current state wouldn't keep me coming back for more. I couldn't crush enemies from above as Mo, but I maybe I wasn't doing it right.
Fun to play, great sound (while eventually annoying, it really builds the tension), fits theme. Nicely packaged.
Looks like you designed a game for "Cooperative", but the "Minimalist" theme won :). Nice sound, decent ambient background music. Nice clean graphics, the lines fit the theme, even if I would prefer something with a little more detail for a game like this (think the pretty levels in Lemmings). Obviously, more levels would be great ... I'm not sure about the long term prospects of holding player interest without the introduction of some more devices (in addition to doors), maybe even addition 'special powers'.
Bonus points for running Folding@Home, as seen in the timelapse !
Nice feeling, very evocative and emotive. I played once, adding pebble, fire, tears and log. Did I win ?
Great little game. Fast, fun and minimal. Dodgeball-esque. I like the fact that you can sustain multiple hits before dying, and that hitting a ball "reflects" it and changes it's bouncing pattern, effectively making its trajectory a little harder to predict after you accidentally hit one. I also like the powerup which turns the grey balls blue and lets you eat them. Sound was good, and fit the style (sfxr ? nothing wrong with that). I would have liked a death sound rather than just "silent pause -- fade-in gameover". Some nice GL work in the source.
The tandoori chicken looked really tasty.
Wonderful game, good fun, quite innovative. Like others have mentioned, some audio would be nice. I love the little touches like the way the outboard engine moves independently to the boat.
Strangely, would run under Wine but not under Windows XP in a VM. This could be the foundations of a decent platformer, but is obviously a tech demo at the moment. Very playable. Looks like the PSD approach to level design could work out. Seemed a little sluggish even on a fast machine ... overhead from bitmap collisions ?
Pixel art is awesome .. I like the black and white asthetic too. Gameplay fits the minimal theme, and it's basically fun, in a "single minigame from Warioware" kind of way. Sound was decent (although when it comes to reverb, 'less is more' if you are playing a pixelated game). I would have like a a little 'death' animation upon tank collision, but I can see that you ran out of time. Probably worth putting in a few hours more to make a finished minigame (lives, score, "You died" losing sprite).
Great pixel grahpics, fits theme really well. Fun puzzler, worth further development with extra levels etc (in fact, I'm almost tempted to make some). Sound was bold, but slighly annoying, maybe tone it down a little ?
Before I read the journal, I thought this was a joke entry or an "I give up" entry. But the journal makes up for it. Cage's 4'33 is certainly art, but it doesn't mean it fulfills a lot of the needs of the audience ... overall most people would enjoy some other type of music more. This doesn't mean it's "bad", just that more people enjoy music with more sound in it. Your game, KeepRunning has some similar elements to 4'33; the development process and thought behind it is wonderful, but overall it lacks most of the things other games have, making it less generally enjoyable.
---
PS, my best score, subverting the goal of keeprunning to be killquickly:
$ time ./keeprunning
^C
real 0m0.028s
user 0m0.021s
sys 0m0.001s
Liked the minimal graphics, the 'physics' were interesting, but didn't seem all that important to actually play the game (moving seemed mostly optional). The simple goal didn't seem all that challenging. Eventually crashed on me.
LD33 — You are the Monster (9)
You! Are the monster by panda 2015-09-10T07:16:00
Pretty cool - I do agree with @ripter, an easy mode where the monster doesn't change clothes would be a good intro level. It would also be cool if you could get a second statement from a person for the same scenario, so even if you thought you couldn't solve it initially, you might be able to use it as an extra clue.
Gorgezilla by Jelinib 2015-09-10T06:39:00
This is super fun and amusing, great job ! It feels like all the good bits from Rampage, without the spongy controls that made Rampage a little frustrating at times. Would translate well to mobile.
Boss Fight Simulator 2015 by ZXeno 2015-09-10T06:32:00
Actually pretty tricky, but I felt compelled to try a bunch of times since I was often sooo close to the next level. I feel like the melee attack was a little underpowered though, given the limited range and the amount of damage you take while using it.
Free Me, You Idiots! by GBGames 2015-09-05T22:54:00
Great concept and pretty funny :) I didn't read the instructions and initially had difficulty figuring out how to gain followers, but after the reading them I persisted and beat the game. One thing that would make it clearer would be if the player has some insight into the internal game model (eg, a faith meter on villagers), so it could be tuned as a resource management game rather than "click to Cause Doubt" many times and hope at some point you turn them. Along these lines, seeing "Call" rings radiate from the tree would add some playability.
Maybe this idea could be rolled into "Stop That Hero" ? Turning farmers into goblins :) ?
One-monster Elite Monster Rescue Squad by rustybroomhandle 2015-08-29T06:03:00
Looks great, and all the content makes it feel like a pretty lively and fleshed out world. Love the 'collection sound' too - familiar, but that's why it works. Gameplay-wise I felt like it should have been a little more challenging - maybe some of the villagers occasionally turning on the spot, and more regions where there are closer calls and more careful timing required. Kudos for using the experimental Unity Editor on Linux ... fingers crossed it becomes officially supported in the future !
NessImpostor by maccam 2015-08-27T08:36:00
Fun idea, great use of sound effects and nice clean graphics - great job !
You need a Hug by TiByte 2015-08-27T08:27:00
I liked the funny music, but the volume seemed inconsistent. Probably one of those usual HTML5 audio issues.
Karapo: A Tale of Bear Humorism by davidcollado 2015-08-25T08:52:00
Wonderful artwork and amusing, sometimes thought provoking banter (which I assume was the intention). Unsure if I missed some of the potential interaction or if it was intentionally un-gamey, but I liked it all the same.
Last Chance For Bernie by Tijn 2015-08-25T08:44:00
Awesome concept, and fun trying to guess what "Marius" will do. Comment from the two year old watching: "Like that song !"