Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → Penguincat
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | Co | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2014 | 29 | Beneath the Surface | New Dawn | jam | 245 | 3.40 | 2.93 | 2.93 | 3.36 | 3.47 | 3.22 | 2.14 | 4.00 | 100 |
This was an interesting entry, I like the concept. However I'm not sure I like the execution; running around left and right on the surface to collect resources isn't a fun mechanic, and the limitation of only being able to build in a straight line downward takes away a lot of the fun of these types of games. I also don't like how I have to keep reassigning employees; I wouldn't want to be in charge of such lazy people! I think it was a neat idea though, and I liked the graphics and the overall mood.
Amazing graphics, great music, and very relaxing to play. If only it were longer! I'd love to be able to explore that city in a future release, maybe with some more complicated puzzles along the way :)
This was a lot of fun, and the graphics were great. I especially love how the sound effects have a musical/rhythmic quality that matches up with the music, that was a really nice touch! My only problem was the interface, I wish spacebar would just toggle the view back and forth rather than having to hold it down, and I wish I could select any number of tiles to be mined out instead of having to micromanage it. Also I don't understand why the goblins just wander around aimlessly when there's a mine order waiting. The game also froze after playing for several minutes. But otherwise it was pretty good, and surprisingly fun given that I normally don't like tower defense. Nice work!
Loved the animations and the music. You guys executed the concept really well - it was short and sweet to play, and nicely polished. :)
This was interesting, though I got stuck at the part with the arches that light up. I think the interface could use some improvement, those combination locks were too small, and the overall art direction was a bit bland. But the overall premise was interesting.
The graphics were really nice - awesome lighting effects in the dark levels. The gameplay got a bit repetitive, especially in the middle levels, but still, good solo entry.
Nice take on the theme! It's a rough life as a carnival salesman, though - fired on day 2 :\ It was a bit hard to restock without losing a ton of respect each time; I think I saw an upgrade that would let you keep more resources at your booth each time, but never got enough respect to buy it. Still, pretty fun game, and the music and graphics fit the premise perfectly. :)
This was pretty good, except I don't like how you lose control over the character when dialogue is popping up (even in the Post-Compo version). Also sometimes the game stops responding to my input. But overall this was well put together, nice work!
In spite of the limited mobility, this was a lot of fun to play - really made me feel like I was towering over the city in a mech! The voice-over audio was good but got easily drowned out by effects. Although it didn't fit very well with the theme of this LD, I'd definitely like to see this expanded into a longer game, with greater mobility, more missions, and new weapons!
Awesome concept! The gravity adjustments were kind of finicky sometimes, but other than that it played really smoothly, and there was a nice progression to the values that were introduced. One of the best and most interesting puzzle platformers I've played so far! I'd definitely like to see it expanded into a larger game.
Pretty cool, love the art! Gameplay is a bit simplistic though, I didn't really feel like the worm was a serious threat.
This was pretty good! The gameplay was pretty simplistic, but oddly that didn't bother me as much as it usually does. The music was really nice and peaceful, though it didn't quite seem to fit the game, but I think it was the main reason I kept playing. The sound effect when a door is unlocked was very annoying though. All in all it was a very relaxing game to play.
This was pretty cool, I really liked the look of it, the sound, the atmosphere, the mechanics, and the controls. In fact, basically everything was great! The only problem was I ran into a bug where one of the crystals just refused to transmit the light it was receiving, so I couldn't progress further :/
This was pretty cool, but the voice in the intro was very loud and annoying, and couldn't be skipped.
Fun concept, though I don't recommend playing it while eating! The instructions could have been more verbose to explain the mechanics better, and the after-hours minigame doesn't have much to it beyond the initial humor so it could be made shorter, but otherwise it was very well put together. Nice work!
I like the aesthetic, but there isn't really any gameplay or challenge to it. I think it's a good start though, if you add some challenges and multiple levels that present new challenges and new abilities then it could be a fun little game.
I like the overall concept, but it definitely needs some gameplay/challenge in order to be fun.
This was pretty fun! It's a cleverly designed little puzzle game, and pretty addictive. Though I couldn't stand to play it for too long because the sound effects were really annoying. But overall it was much better than I expected going into it, nice job!
very nice visuals, but nothing else. There's no gameplay. It's not a game without gameplay :(
An interesting idea, though the character movement was odd, and the view panning controls were backwards.
I would've given this an even higher fun rating if the glitchy jump over that first pit hadn't caused me so many restarts! The art and music were absolutely great, though, and after the first room navigation got a lot easier. The limited light/bullets made for a nice challenging and added a lot to the game's mood. I'd love to see more of this character and world. Great job!
This was a pretty neat concept, and that light effect is really cool! The only downside is there's not much gameplay to it; there should be some threat or challenge besides knowing when to turn back.
I really like the art style, it's sort of like Minecraft except not ugly! However, once I got to the red button, I tried pushing allll the buttons on my computer and nothing happened, so I don't know if this is a bug or what. So there really wasn't any gameplay, just a bit of walking and reading and admiring the nice art. But it did catch my curiosity and made me want to see more, so it was disappointing (in a good way) that I couldn't!
Major nostalgia points! Loved the Zelda-y graphics and gameplay, and the music was awesome - I'd definitely buy it off bandcamp if you ever put it up. It didn't fit the theme of this LD much, but I still really enjoyed it.
The art and music are great, and I really like the premise behind the thought-reading, it kind of reminds me of the idea from Watch Dogs of hacking into peoples' stuff to uncover their secrets, except you're "hacking" right into their minds! I'd really love to see a game take this idea much further. However I got stuck after I explored and talked to everyone, maybe I missed something or there's an obscure puzzle, but the hints weren't helpful at all. I think a game with this concept would have been better suited by a focus on interacting with interesting characters rather than puzzles.
The controls are a bit awkward, not only due to keyboard input lag but the combination of moving with keyboard plus clicking on blocks to mine is unintuitive. The biggest problem for me was blocks take too long to mine; there's no value in wasting the player's time making it take so many clicks to break through each block, it should just be one click, or just break the blocks when you walk into them with the keyboard. I also think there's a few design issues like for example showing a darker spot on the tile when there's a pit under it makes the pit pointless, in practice it's no different than an unbreakable block because once the player sees that those blocks have pits then he's not going to mine them anymore. Maybe there's new stuff introduced in later levels that make long mining times or pits make sense, but unfortunately I got bored before I got there. However, I really liked the graphics and music, and what little story there was at the start had a nice bit of character to it, so I think you could easily turn this into a fun experience with some tweaks to the controls and gameplay, and maybe adding more story/background elements to discover along the way to give the player something more interesting to dig for than virtual gold pixels :P
I agree with some of the other comments that the game starts off a bit slow, but once it hit its stride it's pretty fun. One of the more unique games I've seen in this LD so far :)
I couldn't find much to do in the game as-is, but the delve/reveal past options are neat, and it seem like an interesting setting to explore. I'd like to see more in a finished version of the game.
I liked the story, though after the ending I still felt like some things were unresolved, and there were some grammatical issues along the way (mostly in the use of past tense). You did a great job with the unsettling mood. This is one of the more interesting takes on the theme I've seen so far.
This was a lot of fun! Although it's very minimalistic, it's very good at what it does. And of course, that music was great! I also love the silent movie feel to the text. The only downside is it's very light on content, it would be cool if there were more complications and choices along the way, especially randomized events and a wider range of strategies, because as it stands once you figure out the best order to do things in then there's not much reason to play it again. If you expanded this into a deeper management game, I'd probably be quite addicted to it for a while!
A very nice mood, but there didn't seem to be much gameplay to it.
Nice platformer with some fun dialogue - including the optional books! The art and audio fit the story well.
I like that you make the screen darker to represent how much oxygen you have left, that was a nice touch.
Awesome graphics and fun gameplay. It'd definitely benefit a lot from some music and/or sound effects, but in the meantime, given the art style, I've been playing it to the Tron Legacy soundtrack. It's a good combo!
The art is really cute, and I like the premise behind it. There's a few bugs though, including the laser sometimes not working, dead blocks sometimes still stopping the laser, and also when a block is right up against one of the blue laser emitter things the block isn't damaged by the laser that should be coming out of it. It also takes too long for blocks to break, I got bored quickly just waiting around for the laser to go through. The other big problem is just that the puzzles don't really feel like puzzles, there isn't much challenge to them. But I think this game could be fun with some improvements, it's a nice concept.
@Katamori: As a specific suggestion, I think a great way to add more complexity to the puzzles is for the player to have to place or move some or all of the laser redirecting blocks, and then come up with a variety of ways to interfere with that so the player has to consider many different factors to figure out where the best place to put the blocks is. I think with a few ideas like that to spice things up this game could work really well!
This was a cool concept, and it was pretty fun. I really liked the mood and the music, and the art was fitting too. However, 30 days seems way too long given how simplistic the game mechanic is; in order for me to not get bored before 30 days goes by, I'd need the mechanics to be deeper or to change up over time. But otherwise this was a great entry, well done!
I loved the ASCII art and the "hacking" puzzle. Short, fun game - nicely done!
I like the puzzle nature of it, but I felt like the story didn't have a good enough hook to convince me that it's worth it to keep going once I got stuck.
I like the concept, though I found the top view more disorienting than useful, but it was a neat idea to include them both. Could use more variety to the gameplay though, it didn't hold my interest for more than a couple minutes.
I love text adventures, but unfortunately this one was so unresponsive that I couldn't progress, even after reading the Help info. The writing could also use some editing. Might check it out again if there's a post-comp update with some fixes.
I like that you expanded on the "fish food" mechanic I've seen in similar games by making the bubbles dangerous and making the fish get slower as well as bigger. Didn't play long enough to take over the whole pond, but it was pretty fun.
While I applaud your effort to stuff as many stereotypes into one game as humanly possible... did you really have to kill all the penguins??! :(
This was pretty cool, it built up a nice creepy atmosphere. I wish that the menu wasn't accessed with Esc though, because that also exits fullscreen in the Web player.
Loved the music and the art! I'd love to see a bit more story to complement the great atmosphere of it.
I really like the overall concept, the art, the music and sound, and the gameplay is pretty solid too. My main problems were that the differences between each level were too small; it should ramp up more quickly because it feels too much like playing the same level again. I also don't like that it restarts from level 1 when you die.
This is awesome! I really love the concept of this game, and I declare this the best music of LD29! The art was really good too, though I think the enemy ships were more detailed than they had to be, since you rarely see them up close for long. There were a few minor problems though: I would have liked to see higher mouse sensitivity, larger field of view, and more difficulty (I barely ever took damage). Also the minigun seems overpowered, and there seemed to be too much ammo everywhere. But obviously these things are hard to balance in such a short time; what you managed to pull off is very impressive!
The music was really great, and I liked the art a lot (both in the intro and in-game). The levels felt a bit too easy for me, apart from the final boss, but I was impressed by how much variety you put into the weapons and the enemies in so little time. Nice!
This is such an amazing idea, you make me want to write my own game-making AI! I love how effectively it created a creepy atmosphere. Playing it (and knowing it was made by ANGELINA) made me feel like I was inside the mind of that AI from Harlan Ellison's short story "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" and it was going to murder me horribly at any moment, lol! It ended up getting pretty decent ratings from me even though I rated it as if it were made by a human. It's mainly the creepy mood that carries it, since the gameplay is very simplistic. That random spaceship though... it just doesn't fit. You should teach ANGELINA that spaceships don't belong underground! :P
This was really great! It was very atmospheric and relaxing, but it had a decent challenge to it as well. The music was really good too. I found a couple of spelling mistakes on the credits screen: "fighted" should be "fought", and "graphisms" should be "graphics".
I like the overall style, but the controls were too frustrating. There's also no actual gameplay or challenge besides wrestling with bad controls, which is not a fun kind of challenge.
The stealth mechanics were really fun, I'd love to see this expanded into a longer game (with a more involved story, too! it got off to a nice start here)
This reminded me a lot of Wind Waker (which I loved). It was pretty well put together, though the sound effect for the crane got pretty annoying. The graphics are great though and the the game plays nicely. For 48 hours it's quite impressive!
I really liked the concept, and the graphics were well done too. It could have used some sound/music though. The only real problem I have with it is that it's very short on gameplay; it mostly consists of reading some dialogue, not really getting to make any choices in that dialogue, and then the single mechanic is to pick a suspect, which is all too easy. But besides that, I enjoyed it, good work!
The graphical style is great, especially the snow. So far I haven't been able to rescue anyone, but I've gotten close a few times - it's a nice challenge! The story was surprisingly effective given how brief it was.
A neat idea, but for some reason the frame rate was super low for me and made me feel nauseous so I had to stop playing it. For reference I was running the Windows version on XP 64-bit.
Fun game! I didn't see a benefit in buying the weaponless tower segment, but if the segments were different prices that could make for an interesting compromise between wanting to build the tower a.s.a.p. versus waiting until you could buy more helpful (and expensive) segments. As it is, though, there's still an interesting choice to make between arrows/cannons each time, and the dynamics change nicely once larger waves start showing up. Nice work! :)
Given that you went with a story-driven game rather than a platformer, the story could've used more variety and interactivity - but it sounds like you lost a lot of time dealing with collision detection before going this route instead. The idea of being trapped in an elevator that only leads down would be a good premise for a scarier story :) Still, good job making it to the comp deadline! Hope to see you submit again next LD.
I loved the concept, though unfortunately the messy controls and gameplay got a bit repetitive. Arrow keys were definitely easier to use than the mouse. The art and mood were great, though, and it'd be cool to see a more varied landscape and different challenges for the colossus to advance through.
The mechanics were nice in concept, but a bit buggy in practice - the grapple doesn't trigger very reliably, and my character kept running into some kind of invisible walls. I did like the wall-sliding/jumping, though, and the twist in the story was neat.
I agree with Armanky that the one-hit-death is a bit harsh. Letting the player take a few hits would've made it more enjoyable, but it was still fun. Nice choice of music.
Really nice atmosphere. The ending was a little confusing, but the snippets of story throughout (when you fish or smoke) were great.
Nothing too new as platformers go, but the art and the bucket got bonus points with me for nostalgia :P Fun little game.
It's a nice idea, and it's pretty fun for a minute or so. But the bags of money are really out of place... I'm not sure if that was supposed to be funny or what but it would make more sense if you were collecting something that plants need, like pockets of water or nutrients. It could also use more of a challenge, like if whatever resource you're collecting is used up over time so you have to balance following an efficient route to the surface vs going out of your way to collect more nutrients/water.
This is my favorite LD entry that I've played so far! I'm amazed you managed to get so much into it in 48 hours. I adore these kinds of old school RPGs, and I love the feel of the graphics, and the atmosphere of the text descriptions. The combat plays nicely, too. The controls could definitely be better, and it would really be something special if you could have put in a nice atmospheric 8-bit tune to set the mood during exploration and/or combat (the intro music was appreciated though!), but besides that it's perfect. Oh, except, I want more of it!
A nice old-school style game! The sound was kind of annoying, and the music a bit repetitive. It also doesn't suit the theme very well besides the name. The main problem was that the missiles would often not explode exactly where I clicked, and would sometimes completely fail to explode and just keep going into the sky. However I really liked the look of the game and the way the incoming enemies would change paths.
Who doesn't love a good old fashioned lazor fish??
Really fun concept! The AI does a great job of acting suspicious. High score: 14, but I might come back for more later :)
The monster's sensitivity to noise seemed a bit unbalanced - early on it would show up as soon as I tried to pick some berries, but then later, when I'd made quite a bit more noise, it would have no response at all. It's a neat concept, though, and I'd like to see it fleshed out more, particularly with your char having to provide for their family. As others have mentioned, the UI would benefit from the same awesome art you used in the rest of the game :)
I like the premise but I couldn't figure out what to do; it could definitely have used some basic instructions on the controls and gameplay.
Nice graphics style and mood - it got particularly creepy when people started crowding around me - but a bit too abstract for my taste. I would've liked a clearer goal to head towards. I never found a way under the city, and it takes a long time to explore the whole place given the player's walking speed.
Nice concept, but I actually think your levitation bug is a much more interesting mechanic, you should just roll with it and make that the central mechanic of the game. Just come up with some backstory about telekinetic powers or something :P
Thanks for your comments!
@Katamori: Keep exploring and talking to NPCs. Once you have a better idea of what happened to Mark, you might find a use for that ID, but then again, you might not even need it...!
@donan: The chase can be tricky, there's a bit of randomization to their spawning so it might take a few tries, but there's also a bit of strategy and timing to it.
@gsmartin: We based it a lot on classic adventure games, so point-and-click was our first choice. Sadly in 72 hours we couldn't really afford to put in alternate control schemes, but we're glad you liked it otherwise!
Olivia here! I'm pretty new to level design, so LD's been a real learning experience. I was hoping we'd have time to make more of the buildings useful/interactable, but since we had to cut some content I should've shrunk the levels to compensate. Thanks for the feedback!
@Simon: I know, I did try to implement that but I ended up having a strange bug with it and I decided I couldn't afford to spend time on that so I left it alone. I agree it would have been much better, but there was so much other stuff to do in so little time.
@jomomomo - What part did you get stuck at?
@Pinktreeleaf - If you were able to get into that shop, the NPC inside can help you. Alternately, if you have the ID card, you can find another way to where you need to go, but both options require that you've found out what happened to Mark.
@Pinktreeleaf - sorry, just realized which shop you meant! You should try talking to some of the NPCs by the front of the Muni building.
@GmacktheGunny: Thanks! We're really glad you enjoyed the game. It's great to hear that the mood came across well.
@noom: Without knowing where you're stuck, the best advice I can give is to try talking to everyone. If you let me know where you're at I can tell you a bit more :)
@HybridMind: Did you try the door or talking to the kid after you'd talked to the un-branded Protector?
Fixed some audio bugs, everything should play correctly now
@HybridMind: Sorry to hear that! We haven't been able to replicate a bug like that so far, but we really appreciate the info. The best advice we can give is to ask the unbranded Protector about Mark straightaway, and afterwards try finding a use for the ID card/talking to people without leaving the area.
@DrPrettyPatty: If you talked to Cob in the repair shop, he should've given you a hint about where to go. The building he mentions is in the northern area - someone near the big gate can tell you about Mark :)
Thanks everyone, we're really glad you're all enjoying New Dawn!
We're aware of the bug where the choices sometimes can't be selected, haven't had too much time to track that one down. The lack of pathfinding was due to a lack of time, but we'll be adding that into a post-LD update soon. We've already made some post-LD improvements to make it easier to find the right NPCs to talk to but we'll be doing more of that. The world size was due to expecting to add more content than we ended up having time for, which will also be fixed some time post-LD.
The choice bug mentioned in my last comment is now fixed in the Post-LD version. I've also added pathfinding around static obstacles for the player's movement. See the Post-LD section in the game's description above for details of what's different in that version.
Thanks for the kind words everyone!
@Loneshark: Nice find, that was definitely not intentional! It's meant to be a strict choice. I've fixed it now in both versions.
You should really just include SDL2.dll with the game download, nobody's going to go out of their way to find that on the internet just to play a game with no description and a screenshot that's nothing but blue.
Some of the writing felt a bit heavy-handed to me, but the plot was intriguing, and the awesome soundtrack really added to the mood. Couldn't unravel the mystery on my first try but I'll have to play again. It would've been helpful if the houses had been slightly different shapes or shades to distinguish them, and if I'd known how many days I had 'til Kate's birthday (maybe if the "day" counter in the upper right were a countdown). Other than that, I'm impressed by how much writing you put into the game in 72 hours!
This is pretty nice, but the graphics were a bit blurry, it looks like you used anti-aliasing. When using low-res pixel art it's best to go for a crisp look than to try to smooth it out with AA, IMO. The gameplay was a bit simplistic too, I would have liked there to be more challenge. I did like the relaxing music though.
I was expecting something a little more QWOP-y, so on the one hand, it was nice that you could run so easily, but on the other hand, hitting that sequence over and over again got tiring pretty quickly. As it stands, there's not much motivation to push past that and finish the marathon. I'd like to play this again when it's more fleshed out with the other features you mentioned.
This would be a nice concept if there wasn't that arbitrary time limit on typing; apparently you have to type at like 1000 words per minute in order to play? I'm a pretty fast typist, but the requirements for this game seem to be inhuman. Perhaps you made the mistake of tieing the timer to the frame rate rather than actual time?
This was really great! I'm amazed you managed to make a Warcraft clone in 48 hours. It's missing several important features of course, but it's still quite impressive. Also, that music was awesome! I played it twice, and beat it the second time. For anyone having difficulty, the key is to make enough gatherers in the beginning to get your economy going early enough. There were a few quality of life features that would have been nice to have, mainly a better interface, and some things could have been sacrificed in order to have time to add that (for example I never made siege units, they weren't really necessary). But overall, this was really well done, nice work!
Pretty cool, but I would have preferred if the movement controls were relative to the player's facing (i.e. W always moves the player forward), and an aiming reticule to replace the cursor. The movement was also very sluggish which made it difficult to dodge. I really like the atmosphere and backstory though.
Really cool concept, I just wish it had been longer! I lost one of the masks in the last choice before the end of the game, and I'd been hoping to see what would happen once I lost one, to have to make it through some tough choices with fewer options, but there wasn't any more to play. If you expand on this game any further I'd definitely be interested in playing it.
Fun concept, with really nice graphics, though it'd be nice if there some audio and a bit more to do. You mentioned not having time to do more the diamonds, and I could definitely see them leading to something pretty neat post-LD - maybe collecting them lets you purchase upgrades (dig faster through stone, give advantages against enemies, dig upwards, etc.). Given the timeframe of LD, though, this is a nicely polished game!