Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → Pennycook
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | 52 | Harvest | Harvest Timing | jam | 676 | 3.05 | 2.63 | 2.94 | 4.02 | 2.79 | 3.08 | |||
| 2022 | 51 | Every 10 seconds | Button Masher | jam | 466 | 3.62 | 3.47 | 3.56 | 4.30 | 4.26 | 3.48 | |||
| 2022 | 50 | Delay the inevitable | Long Live the King | jam | 972 | 3.30 | 2.77 | 3.45 | 4.20 | 3.88 | 3.40 | |||
| 2021 | 49 | Unstable | Unstabled | jam | 1123 | 3.22 | 3.21 | 2.70 | 3.47 | 4.11 | 3.36 | |||
| 2021 | 48 | Deeper and deeper | Shoot 'em Down | jam | 1315 | 3.28 | 2.93 | 2.37 | 3.26 | 3.56 | 2.84 | |||
| 2020 | 47 | Stuck in a loop | A Good Way to Die | jam | 517 | 3.69 | 3.76 | 3.38 | 3.59 | 4.16 | 3.47 | |||
| 2020 | 46 | Keep it alive | Keep It Alive | compo | 1037 | 2.64 | 2.47 | 2.76 | 3.97 | 2.45 | 1.76 | 2.69 | 2.85 | |
| 2018 | 43 | Sacrifices must be made | Can't Get No Sacrifaction | compo | 371 | 3.06 | 2.75 | 2.74 | 3.79 | 2.67 | 2.58 | 3.40 | 2.94 | |
| 2018 | 42 | Running out of space | Shrinking Panes | compo | 383 | 3.34 | 3.04 | 3.27 | 3.34 | 2.73 | 2.71 | 3.30 | 3.13 | |
| 2018 | 41 | Combine 2 Incompatible Genres | untRACEable | jam | 871 | 3.15 | 2.94 | 3.60 | 4.00 | 2.23 | 2.53 | 2.55 |
The graphics and audio are great, and it's really fun to play -- good job!
I think the tutorial could be integrated better into the game, but that's about it. My first attempt was a disaster, as I convinced myself I had to shoot plants to harvest bullets and couldn't reach the upper two platforms.
This is really great. The difficulty curve is just right, and I laughed aloud at several of the text sections. You get extra points for making me run something called "overwrite.exe".
It's a very simple idea, but also a very good one. Adding some very simple graphics (or even just colors) would make it much more visually interesting, but it's a good prototype.
Also, I encountered a bug: it seems to be possible for blocks you deflect to hit other incoming blocks, and then both of them get stuck in space.
Great idea and a neat little game. The use of tetrominoes for the cargo makes it very intuitive.
I think the tutorial makes things look much more complicated than they really are, though; if you take this further, I'd recommend reducing that first graph down to two nodes.
@tero-pulkkinen Thanks for the feedback. What's strange about the controls? It's supposed to feel like an FPS.
Thanks @madar-games -- I'm glad to hear you liked it, and that you made it to the end.
I noticed those two graphical glitches as well, but couldn't work out what was going on within the 48 hours. I'll keep investigating!
@thecommonthug, @artbohr -- thank you both! I'm glad you enjoyed it.
@predominant - Thank you so much!
@ghostgoatsgames, @crastinator - Thanks for the feedback. I'm definitely going to do an updated version of this, and I'll make sure to tweak the movement speed when I do.
@thunderawesome - Thanks for the feedback. I'll spend some time tweaking the mouse sensitivity, or see if I can make it an option somehow.
@vincent-knauss, @nerzal - You're right, the game doesn't actually quit if you play it in the browser. I'll see what I can do about that.
@kurt-roembke - No, thank _you_ for playing it, and for the feedback!
@fork0 - I'm sorry there wasn't more. Maybe one day... Thanks for reporting the WebGL choppiness issue. I didn't spend any time with the web version until the submission hour, and it might need more work. I'll look into it.
@josehzz - Thanks for the feedback! Can you be more specific about the control funkiness? I'm curious whether you encountered a bug.
@josehzz - Thanks for the details, I really appreciate it. You're absolutely right, it looks like I did put the cell shrinking code into Update() by mistake! I should definitely fix that.
I'll see what I can do about the mouse focus issue. Maybe adding a proper pause screen would help.
@folex70 - Thanks! You're right, skipping the introductory dialogue is a good idea.
@lastleaf - Thanks for the feedback. I'm working on the movement speed, and hope to be able to post an updated version soon.
I've just uploaded a post-compo release with a run function. The speed might need some tweaking, but it feels okay-ish to me...
@f1krazy - Thanks for playing. You're right, that's definitely a plot hole! The only answer I can think of is: "Science!"
Moving by shooting makes this fiendishly difficult, and I love it! Like @magmafortress, I found that the best way to get a good score was to hug the wall -- you should definitely think about implementing some mechanic to make this tactic less viable, as it makes things a bit too easy.
The controls are a little awkward: I kept pressing Space expecting it to be the jump button.
This is really innovative and interesting. I think it's a little too hard to tell which words relate to which video, though -- mainly because it requires some trial and error to figure out. Maybe when a video starts you could display its title in the correct font, and remove it once the player has found a matching word?
You should add a note somewhere about how to rotate the character -- I only figured this out by trial and error.
This is fantastic -- great job! Building houses as a weapon is a really funny idea.
I really like the pixel graphics, and the music is good too. I think once you add a timer for the shots it'll be even better.
Great art, great pun, great gameplay twist and even a little narrative at the end -- really good job.
I almost died during the running section, which would have been a shame; I likely wouldn't have tried again many more times, and never would have seen the more innovative space section. Maybe the difficulty of that beginning section could be tweaked a little?
I got the crown! I had a lot of fun with this one.
I think my feedback is mostly technical... I kept clicking outside of the game window by mistake (lock that cursor down!), and I was surprised that clicking on an NPC restarted rather than advanced dialogue. Otherwise everything worked very well.
This was fun. Like @conorod said: the music and graphics are great!
I'm a little confused about what happened when I was playing, though. I was just walking along and then suddenly I was fighting a large version of a smaller boss that I'd died on. I defeated him and it said I won, but I hadn't been into any of the cabins and had only found one memory...
I really struggled to make any progress with the boss. It takes a long time to fall to your death, and there's very little room to learn the mechanics (since being hit even once is enough to throw you from the arena). I think it would have been more fun if there was a barrier initially, or if there wasn't really any risk of falling off until a few of the tiles had been destroyed. As it was, I didn't really get to experience "running out of space".
Nonetheless, great job! The audio and graphics are really good, and it's not a bad game just because I suck at it. :smile:
The spinning camera made me feel sick, too, and I had to stop playing. I think some better indication of which direction you're running in could also help, as it's pretty hard to tell where the character is going to go. Making the characters into boxes might be worth a try, since it would be more obvious when they've been rotated.
As others have said, some sound effects and music would help make this feel more complete. I'd recommend [sfxr](http://www.drpetter.se/project_sfxr.html) and [musagi](http://www.drpetter.se/project_musagi.html).
The art and music are really nice, and it feels like a complete game.
But like @luca1152 I couldn't really work out how to play: even when I'd figured out how to make constellations, I couldn't work out how to get a good score. I think a little bit of text on the itch.io page -- or in the game itself -- that says "Try to make as many constellations as you can" or "Try to make the largest constellations you can" (I don't know which it is!) would likely be very helpful to new players.
I feel like the enemies are able to fire faster than the player, but maybe that's just because I kept losing. Shrinking the visible area instead of the playing area is a good twist on the theme.
Score: 1076
It took me a while to figure out that I was supposed to picking up the clones rather than avoiding them. It's good fun, and the graphics are great. I'm not sure if the score going negative is a bug or a feature, but I like that you're fighting to collect points as they're stripped away from you.
You should look into adding sound next time: even really simple sound effects from something like [sfxr](http://www.drpetter.se/project_sfxr.html) would make this feel much more like a complete game.
Absolutely hilarious. I can appreciate how much time must have gone into writing such funny text for each option on each country! I wish I had my Dreamcast with me so I could play it there.
I scored 750. At first I thought it'd be really easy -- since there are so many platforms -- but I hadn't accounted for the fact you could fall down the cracks. Good job.
I think the difficulty ramp could do with some tweaking: it starts very slow, and just when I thought it wasn't going to get any faster it jumped straight to being too fast for me to keep up!
Brilliant. I wasn't expecting to be able to drive through all the buildings and trees, which made for a nice surprise. The minimap was a nice touch, and I really appreciated the balloons marking the bus stops towards the end of each run.
The music is great, but the lack of sound effects makes the bus feel oddly quiet. Some simple crash and screeching sound effects would make a huge difference.
I really like the chain mechanic, and how it keeps track of separate chains. As others have said, the only thing really missing here is music -- I'd highly recommend [musagi](http://www.drpetter.se/project_musagi.html), which lets you set up simple repeating tracks very easily.
Really great job. The "trap yourself in" mechanic is really innovative, and a great take on the theme. I got stuck at Level 3, but I'm going to come back and try later.
"Your eyes are like warm spaghetti." -- amazing.
Really great job. I agree with @vfabien21 about needing to play each level at least twice, especially in the case of the second mission; I don't think the note prepares you for that sentence structure. I think this could be just as fun if you could see the sentence all the time, or if the note had more of a 1-to-1 mapping.
I managed to drop a box of the wrong color onto one of the goals and it got stuck. :frown:
Also, perhaps it's just me, but I found the white boxes quite confusing. The first time I dropped a colored box onto a goal it turned white, and I thought it had closed -- it took me quite a while to realize that it was in fact just waiting for a white box!
Otherwise, really good entry. Very different to a lot of the other games I've played this time, and very complete.
I made $43! It took me a while to figure out that condiments weren't food and that they needed to go back into Frank's trailer, but once I got past that I started to really enjoy it.
Great job, this is really fun -- like _Overcooked_ with no space -- and it just needs some simple background music to make it complete.
This is punishingly hard: there's nowhere to hide, and you die in one hit! I think the most I got to was 11 pizzas; I probably would have kept playing for longer if the restarts weren't so frequent.
Otherwise, good job! I really liked the music, and the name is fantastic. :laughing:
Spooky! I liked the addition of the riddles to make it more than a simple jumping race.
I agree with what others have said about the delay when you stop running; a few of the times I died I felt like the character was out of my control.
The music is great, and I really like the idea. I played it by myself (:slight_frown:) but I can see how it would be more fun with multiple players.
Is it possible to win? I filled the keyboard with blue but nothing seemed to happen.
I understood what was going on with the tilting mechanic, but it felt to me like it was implemented backwards -- it should tilt _towards_ the side with the most points, rather than away from it, as though both players are placing weights on a scale.
Welcome to Ludum Dare, and congrats on your first entry! You've got audio, you stuck to the theme and you produced something that's fun to play. Great job.
I liked that you really have to run towards the front of the bus in order to stay on. My initial reaction was to move to the back and try and hold my ground there, which didn't work so well.
if you continue working on this, I'd consider making the location of the "SPACE" box less random. If -- for example -- you made it proportional to the distance to the back of the bus, it would help drive up the tension!
This is so good -- I'm jealous that you have so many complete mechanics. I love that the vehicles are 3D models, and the effect that this creates when they turn.
I think background music is the only thing missing, here. I highly recommend [musagi](http://www.drpetter.se/project_musagi.html).
Great game -- I've not played anything like it before, and it's really fun. I couldn't make it past level 3, but I enjoyed trying.
Also, would you mind telling me how you managed to get Unity to fullscreen in the browser like that? It looks a lot better than the default web player.
I got as far as the button. It's simple but fun, and evolves in an interesting way -- great job!
I really like this, and I don't think you need to apologize for the music.
As others have said, I think the only problem is that it's a little too easy -- the waves don't come fast enough, so the screen never really fills up. But the idea is a good one, and I had a lot of fun towards the end somersaulting about the place and seeing how many zombies I could hit in a single jump.
Your itch.io link is broken: I just see a 404...
I wasn't expecting to see a typing game with this theme, but you made it work! I particularly liked how the music started to slow down and the screen started to grow darker as the room shrank -- nice touch.
I had an idea very similar to this, and I'm really glad that I didn't pursue it -- you implemented it much better than I could have! :laughing:
I really like this: the pixel art is great, the music is catchy, and the gameplay is fun and intuitive. I think the only thing missing is some idea of level progression: once I got the hang of things it wasn't very difficult, and I stopped playing because it stopped being a challenge. Gradually ramping up the speed of the conveyor belt, or having the trucks take longer to return, would have kept me playing longer.
Congrats on your first game jam entry! :thumbsup:
I think there's a small bug in the mouse aiming, which you might want to look into. When I was playing the bullets all seemed to fire from the top of the gun instead of from the barrel.
@theseusinabottle Thanks for the feedback! I'm glad you enjoyed it. I fully understand your complaint, and I should spend more time tweaking some of the physics.
@doomshmuck - Can you say more about the controls? Most of my testing was with WASD, Shift + Mouse. Were you using CTRL + ALT?
@Ravarion - Glad you liked it!
@doomshmuck It makes sense. I toyed around with trying to make the sword more useful (it does more damage than the bullets, for instance) but I agree that the risk isn't worth the reward. Thanks again for the feedback.
@relampmarquin, @garygreen -- Thanks for playing!
@naihto - Sorry to hear you had problems.
The speed sacrifice isn't actually a bug, but I agree that it isn't clear... Both "Speed" and "Vitality" can be sacrificed multiple times, halving the associated value each time and stopping when speed = 0 or vitality = 1.
Implementing knockback for the sword is a good idea. Thanks!
@vodish, @vivien-fargette - I'll definitely try and spend a little more time post-compo on making the sword more useful. I should probably make the enemies a little smarter too, standing on the player's head doing nothing won't get them anywhere.
@andrewl - Yeah, in hindsight maybe WASD wasn't a great idea... I left a lot of the controls at the Unity defaults; next time I'll give it more thought.
@snugglehero - I think you're the first person who enjoyed the speed! :laughing:
@generictoast - Thanks for reminding me about the about the sticking to walls bug. At one point I thought about making it a feature (you could even jump while sticking to walls at one point) but since it didn't add anything I took it out. Forgot to fix the physics, though!
10/10. I goobered that genie like I've never goobered before.
I also had fun running around with my arms outstretched like a plane. Truly brilliant.
My biggest problem with this game is simply that I'm not very good at it. :laughing:
I feel like the police are a little too eager to shoot, which makes things very difficult. Even if I managed to stash the body before they showed up, they'd open fire.
My feedback is similar to @imer's; if you're going to keep the firing rate as it is, the player shouldn't have to click to fire. It might be worth exploring a different firing rate, or sacrifices tied to ammo?
Also, being a sperm whale is awesome -- are you sure it's a sacrifice? :smile:
I think you're being hard on yourself -- I thought your writing was very good.
There's a lot about this that I like, but it wasn't obvious to me how it connects to the sacrifice theme. Did I miss something?
I agree with what others have said about the hit boxes being too big; the player should be able to predict fairly reliably whether or not the llama can fit through a particular gap.
It wasn't clear to me why some levels had multiple priests. Is their location randomized? A couple of times I seemed to be able to lead the llama straight up to a priest, and bypass the challenge completely.
I wondered whether anybody would have made a Christmas game. Very funny take on the theme, and great pixel art. Solid stealth mechanics, too -- it can be difficult to hide a character while also showing them to the player, but you nailed it.
I don't know if the problem is my machine, or the WebGL build, but I couldn't hear any music or sound effects. Based on the other comments, it sounds like I'm missing out!
I'm a big fan of the battle system; giving each character a unique minigame is an good twist on the turn-based battle formula. But I agree with previous comments about killing off characters at random. I'd have much preferred having a choice of which character to sacrifice.
Funny stuff!
I agree with @hamsters-actually that more mechanics would be good. My first playthrough I just clicked "code" every time, and there weren't really any consequences. Having multiple routes to a game over instead of just not finishing the game would improve things a lot, I think.
Short but sweet. Good job!
I think i might have encountered a bug, but I'm not sure... When I chose "intelligence" I had to talk to the guy twice to convince him. It wasn't obvious to me that this would be necessary.
Great job! Everything about this is really polished, and the smooth transition between rooms is a particularly nice touch.
My only suggestion is to give the player more ways to recover health. I made some mistakes early on during my playthrough that left me with very little health, and I died shortly after getting the key.
This is really good, and a lot of fun -- great job! The only suggestion I have is to combine the Q and E keys into one key (or bind both actions to both keys). It feels quite unnatural (to me) that you have one button to pick up and another to put down, especially because there's only ever one body to interact with at a time.
Great first entry! Initially I found it very hard to distinguish which parts of the level were traps -- the (very impressive) fire graphics look dangerous, which threw me off. Changing the opening text to say "spike traps" instead of "traps" might help.
As others have said, sound effects and music would really make this feel more complete. I highly recommend something like [sfxr](http://www.drpetter.se/project_sfxr.html) -- it literally takes a few seconds to generate good sound effects, so doesn't take much time away from the rest of development.
I made it 219 generations in the end, although the last 20 or so of those were just me randomly clicking in an attempt to lose on purpose. Does the game get more forgiving as the generations go on?
Great job! The sacrifice system was very intuitive, and I felt that the difficulty curve was just right.
My only suggestion is to make it more obvious in the UI when a divide boon is active and what it's doing. The first time I saw Zeus' cloud delivering cows to Poseidon I got very confused about what was going on! :laughing:
As others have noted, the tile mechanic is very difficult to discover and understand. It might be worth considering providing the player with some more visual feedback in addition to a tutorial -- if a crosshair appeared on the tile that was currently being targeted, it would be immediately much more obvious that the guns are firing at fixed tiles rather than the mouse position.
I think it might also be nice to have the player's three guns shoot different colored lasers... It might just be me, but I found the three overlapping trajectories really confusing initially.
You've done a great job with the graphics, and well done for implementing multiple powers!
It may just have been me/my browser, but I had some trouble telling whether or not my arrows were connecting with the Minotaurs -- having them flash red or some other feedback could really help players when learning to aim the crossbow.
Great pixel art and a really funny take on the theme.
I found it hard to tell how far ahead of the whale I was when I was doing really well, and it's a little quiet (although I enjoyed the "wenk" sound effect). Adding some Jaws-style music that gets faster as the whale closes in might help on both points.
Really impressive graphics for a compo game. It's probably the best example I've seen of how to set a consistent mood.
I liked the idea of the internal dialogue, but at times my eyes didn't register that something had appeared in that corner until I'd already clicked past it. Putting another dialogue box behind it would really help it to pop (unless you're deliberately trying to hide it).
I'm not sure if I reached the end or if I encountered a bug. There was an engine sound and then the screen turned black.
Great graphics and audio! I didn't make it to the end, but got very close.
There seemed to be quite a long delay between clicking on a node and it triggering the next event -- you can still mouse over other nodes during the delay. It might be a good idea to play some sort of animation showing the ship moving between the nodes if the delay is deliberate.
They're so cute! :laughing:
It's a shame that there isn't any audio -- it feels like the only thing missing, and even a simple explosion sound effect could make a lot of difference. I highly recommend [sfxr](http://www.drpetter.se/project_sfxr.html) and [musagi](http://www.drpetter.se/project_musagi.html).
The name works on so many levels. I love it.
The game is great, and pretty challenging. It wasn't obvious to me initially that floating skull would hurt me, and then I couldn't figure out how to kill it (even when I had bullets). I'll be coming back to try this one again later, I'm sure.
I'm a GOOD ZOMBIE.
This is really fun and really polished. Great job! I think the only thing that would have improved it for me is if there was some sort of reward for completing a level using fewer than the allotted number of zombies. That would add an extra challenge and some replayability.
Sorry for piling on, but I also found the font pretty difficult to read. I appreciate what you were going for, though, and you did very well considering the self-imposed limit.
The "STUDY" puzzle was my favorite. The ending was bizarre and I'm not 100% sure I understand what happened, but it made me laugh!
At first I thought the sacrifice count climbing automatically was a bug, because I didn't appreciate that the second purchase added a number of sacrifices per second. Adding a display like the "1 Sacrifices per Click" showing your current rate of "Sacrifices/Second" might be a good idea.
This is really polished and fun to play -- great job!
I really struggled with the first jump between the cross and the bible on the third screen. I tried a few times, but eventually had to give up. I agree with @glimaleite that it would have been less frustrating to start over from the beginning of each screen instead of from the level; I probably would have given it a few more attempts.
Genius. This is a perfect example of how to take a single, simple mechanic and turn it into a genuinely great game.
I made it to about 6 seconds the first time and 149 the second time. The fact that you recorded different Game Over dialogue depending on how far the player gets in the game gets you bonus points from me.
@a-312: Thanks, that's a good point. A lot of the sounds seemed quieter in my offline testing than on the web, and I should definitely pay more attention to this.
@princesschoochoo: Thanks for the feedback! I'd considered throwing in some more random elements or tweaking the constants so that the actions on each day required some more thought, but didn't have time.
@blobo: This is one of the "little features I'm very pleased with", and I'm glad to see that somebody discovered it and appreciated it. Thanks for playing!
@nicksmaddog: Out of curiosity, did you complete it? I'm wondering if it's so easy that it becomes boring before people reach the end. Also, congratulations on the birth of your daughter!
Wow! I didn't expect to come back to so many comments! Thanks to everybody who played and left feedback!
@brian-teng: I completely agree. The original plan was to go a little more "visual novel" and have events occurring to the player character be hinted at through what they were saying to the plant, but I felt like I wouldn't be able to give that idea the time it deserved. If I keep going with this, this is something I'll definitely fix!
@scalphamission, @lepletier, @hoyr: Message received (loudly). :wink:
@kamekai: I didn't know what I was doing had a name! :laughing: I'm glad to hear you liked it, that was one of my favourite lines.
@baby-dino-herd, @jason-woerner, @edz123 : I did consider putting the ending at 100 days, but couldn't resist the urge to tie the ending into the "story". Maybe if you could advance multiple days at once it would be easier to reach? I'll think about this more, thanks!
@synoxgames: Thanks for sticking with it to the end! I agree that something like random elements, or limited actions as @bitdecay suggests, is necessary to help to keep things interesting.
@bradcode: I can see how that could happen... My wife kept coming in and saying things like "What if you had to care for multiple plants?" and "What if you could select a plant at the beginning?" -- being disciplined was really hard this time.
This took a little getting used to, but it's a good idea. I wonder if it might be easier to control if the two arms were mapped to the analogue sticks on a controller instead of the two mouse buttons.
The sound effects are great (especially the drum sound effect) but it's still a little quiet overall. A simple backing loop would make a lot of difference.
This is really cool -- very innovative, and an interesting take on the theme. I agree with @gafled and @camden-obertop sometimes I didn't feel like the flubs were necessarily my fault, but I completely appreciate how difficult (impossible?) it would have been to make this work perfectly for everybody!
I liked the "repeating the struggle" system; if I'd been able to keep clicking through to the next songs, I probably wouldn't have ever improved! Great entry.
I really enjoyed playing this. But it took me a while to realize that the pig wasn't going to fall off. :laughing:
The only suggestion I have is to make it so that the player is constrained to what the camera can see (or have the camera follow the pig). It felt a little unnatural that I could spin off-screen.
Your web link is broken -- 404. **EDIT**: It's fixed now!
The pixel art for each stage of plant growth must have taken ages -- it looks really good! Including the option to speed up time was a great idea, too (although I kept killing my plants through my impatience) :laughing:.
The only suggestion I have to improve things further would be to pick a non-default font next time (e.g. from [Google Fonts](https://fonts.google.com/)). Using a pixel font for the timer and intro text would have brought them up to the same quality level as the rest of the game.
I found the difficulty curve a little too steep for me -- I felt like I couldn't cast the spells quick enough to achieve what I wanted, and so didn't get beyond having one or two undead. With some small tweaks to the difficulty (maybe soldiers don't shoot tombs, maybe there's a limited supply of area-effect spells to help players when they're feeling overwhelmed) I could myself having a lot of fun with this.
I'm only criticising the gameplay because everything else is so good. The sprites are great, and the atmospheric music works really well.
As others have pointed out, this is really impressive -- particularly the 3D modelling work! It doesn't look or feel like something that was created in 48 hours, and you should be very proud of it.
I think the only thing that would have improved the experience for me would have been if there were multiple levels (progressively bigger gardens, or something like that). I feel like I didn't really get a handle on how cross-pollination was working right away, and trying out a few different approaches on some small gardens would have helped me understand the score system better.
I really enjoyed this one. The sound effects are great -- you're a really talented mimic! :smile:
My only complaint is that it took me a while to find the pump(s). Something about the brown on brown made them quite hard for me to see, and the first time my eyes allowed me to see them I still mistook them for trees. :sweat_smile: Making them silver or otherwise decorating the few tiles around them would make them much easier to find.
This is really good -- the music fits your theme well, and the pixel art is great.
I'd highly recommend adding some explanation of the controls to this page. There were two things I found very confusing, and I only worked through them after a lot of random clicking:
1) On the story page I thought "Right Button" meant "Right *Mouse* Button", not "Right Arrow Key"
2) In the game itself, I don't think it's obvious that you can click the seed bag
The pixel art in this is great; the animation when the doctor swings his weapon is really smooth, and I love the way that the zombies fall apart after you hit them!
There were a few bugs and minor issues I stumbled across: - Like @kassilver I got stuck upon arriving at the castle. Is this where the game currently ends? - It was often hard to tell whether I was allowed to move in a particular direction or not. Adding some arrows to the edges of the screen would help players to navigate. - It seems more logical to me to tie the advancing of text to the interaction button (E) than the mouse. I kept hitting people while trying to talk to them. :laughing:
(Also, remember to rate other entries! If you don't, there's a good chance you won't get many ratings!)
This is awesome, and a really novel take on the theme. I really appreciated the attention to detail -- the fact that each ball makes a slightly different noise, and that the super ball makes a satisfying "ting" is a great touch.
Once or twice it seemed like I was being told to click to activate the large paddle while it was already embiggened; I'm not sure if that's a bug or not, but thought I'd mention it.
This is the best game I've played so far! The fact that the Medusa snakes behave like they do in "Snake" is really clever, and you should definitely explore this idea further.
As others have already said, the lack of music and difficulty are the only things that could really be improved here. Once or twice I shot Medusa by accident and I was surprised that there wasn't a bigger penalty for doing so.
This is a great first entry, well done!
A lot of what I would have said has already been covered by others, but a few things that I didn't see anywhere else... I think some sort of "Press Space to Interact" prompt the first time you walk within interacting distance of one of the ingredients would really help. I don't think a full tutorial is necessary, since figuring out what to do is part of the fun.
Also, I kept wondering what was going on with the bin -- is it supposed to sparkle?
Good on you for entering anyway!
I couldn't really figure out what was going on (but I got a streak of 2, somehow...). Still, the UI is really clean and responsive, which is not something that can be said about all of the other entries. :laughing:
@causalpigeon, @thorn: Thanks for the feedback. I've added a list of controls here, to mirror the in-game controls screen. Space and Enter are both supposed to work as interact buttons.
@dmac: You're so close! Only two more steps! What needs fixing in the room?
@justuspan: Sorry about that. The mouse only works in menus, and you have to use the keyboard to interact. Mouse navigation is something I started, but it isn't finished yet.
@magnusfurcifer: Thanks! At one point he moved even more slowly. :laughing:
@dr-v: I can only take credit for the sound effects, but thanks all the same. Next time I'll aim for more content.
@tengusheath, @elizir: Thanks! Glad you liked it.
@typeswitch: You're right. I had real trouble trying to fix that bug. I meant to document it in the game description, and clearly forgot. Thanks for pointing it out!
@mrpiedpiper: That's my favorite part, too! :laughing:
@juansabadoperon: Oho, that's very clever. Thanks, I'll definitely fix that.
@lone-wolf, @landosystems, @gamefriend, @discoreunion: Thanks for the feedback, I'm glad you enjoyed it.
@zombiebust3r: That's a good idea! I'd been thinking about spending some more time on developing this idea, and hadn't considered that I could basically have the same set-up for each room. Thanks for the feedback.
A good take on the theme. It's a little on the quiet side, though, and I think even simple sound effects and a basic music loop would make a lot of difference here. I highly recommend [sfxr](https://www.drpetter.se/project_sfxr.html) and [musagi](https://www.drpetter.se/project_musagi.html) -- it literally takes a few minutes to put together something passable.
The idea of implementing an endless runner in a loop is a really good one, and I like the fact that the same level changes slightly each time around. That's a neat mechanic, and one that you should definitely explore more if you keep working on this.
As others have said, the collisions and physics feel like an extra enemy here. The part where you have to slide up a ramp is brutal (but very rewarding when you finally manage it). :laughing:
I like the sound effects, but some music would have helped. I recommend [musagi](https://www.drpetter.se/project_musagi.html).
Great voice acting and spectacular puns. Good job!
I think the only issue I had with it is that it wasn't obvious to me when the damage multipliers would appear, and sometimes they seemed to disappear before I had a chance to click on them. Allowing the player to purchase upgrades whenever they want would have made more sense to me (although I appreciate that could make it harder to balance the difficulty).
This is really great. I agree with what everybody has said about how innovative it is -- a definite 5/5 from me.
I came here because I saw your GIF, and I thought: "Wow, that looks so cool!". I didn't factor in the fact that it would be so hard to click at the right time, and my attempts were much more embarrassing. :laughing: I think you should definitely develop this idea further.
There were only two things I could think of that might improve the game, although both would have made me feel much worse about myself: 1) A time-based score system; 2) A click-based score system.
It's already a lot of fun, but if there were some target times/clicks to beat I could see people spending hours in pursuit of a perfect run. Great job!
The graphics and music combine perfectly to set the mood, here.
I managed to save Joey once or twice, but if I'm honest I'm not really sure how. :sweat_smile: I couldn't work out whether the tip displayed during the loading screen is relevant for the upcoming day, or not... Did it work once by chance, or not work because of a bug? I'd recommend against showing those sorts of tips if they're randomized, simply because they're so misleading in a game like this.
I am very jealous of your speech blip sound effect. I'd be really interested in seeing a write-up in a blog post about how you managed to make it sound so good.
I'm not a big fan of clickers in general, so I didn't stick with it for long enough to actually kill one of the dragons. But the animations were very smooth and the whole thing felt very polished. Good job!
This is really fun, and the music fits the style of the game really well. Great job!
This may sound odd, but I found it a little weird that "How to Play" was beneath "Let's Roll". I kept clicking "How to Play" and ending up on the instruction screen... Maybe I just need more sleep. :laughing:
I love the pie sprite and the music loop. So much bass! I only managed to complete three levels before I gave up. You were right to include the Easy Mode button. :smile:
Trying to play the web version in the browser gave me a WebGL error. This happened to my Godot game too. If you can, I'd recommend exporting for GLES2 instead, as suggested in the issues [here](https://github.com/godotengine/godot/issues/21957) and [here](https://github.com/godotengine/godot/issues/39002).
I'm so glad I downloaded it. I can't really find fault with it.
It took me a little while to realize what the E button was actually doing. The blobs count as captured even if the loop is still up in the air when the time runs out, which feels a little bit like cheating. :laughing:
But otherwise, this is a really solid entry. The music is great, and the game play was more addictive than I was expecting. Good job.
I really enjoyed playing this, and the fact that the map loops at the edges is a good take on the theme. I think you probably could have done a little more with this idea, though. As others have already pointed out, the mechanic stops being useful after the enemies show up, and the game starts actively punishing you for trying to use it (if something spawns when you try to loop).
I think with a very minor change you'd have something great. If the enemies spawned from the middle (or from the ship?), the edges would be freed up again. You could then even use the looping for mechanics. Maybe you have to shoot some enemies in the back? Maybe bullets could loop as well as the player?
A basic music loop is about the only other thing I can think of that might have improved this. I highly recommend [musagi](https://www.drpetter.se/project_musagi.html) -- it's served me well in previous competitions.
@andrew-hoyer, @swoof: Thank you! I'm glad to hear the jokes landed -- gotta get those humor points somehow...
@smelly-games, @themightytrout, @escortti, @wheybags: Thanks for the feedback! I haven't played a lot of games in this genre, and so it's very useful to know that the player would expect a more forgiving hitbox. Some of the enemies shoot dense streams of bullets by design -- so there are some enemies you _must_ kill in each wave. Maybe I made a puzzle game after all...?
@tanner-shelton, @link270, @andrewkennedy, @garys: Thanks, folks! I've shrunk the hitboxes and adjusted the firing rate of the horizontal enemies such that it's possible to slip between the bullets. It's still hard, but no longer impossible. :smiling_imp:
I'm not sure what to do with the diagonal movement... I put that in on purpose, based on something I've done for top-down RPGs in the past. It might be that limiting diagonal movement for walking makes sense (you can't walk faster by changing direction, after all), but that a ship wouldn't have the same restrictions. I'll play with it and see what feels most natural.
Thanks again to everybody for the great feedback!
@loveapplegames: My hope was that if it was hard, people might keep trying until they succeeded -- inspired by games like Dark Souls. I think I went *too* far, though, and coming back to it myself even I can't get past the first few waves of the jam version. :sweat_smile:
The post-jam version is much more forgiving, and I think a lot more fun... I'll post an update here when I've figured out a good way to host both versions on itch.io.
@smelly-games, @escortti, @wheybags, @tanner-shelton, @link270, @andrewkennedy, @garys, @loveapplegames: The post-jam version is now available, and I've tried to make things more forgiving. I completely understand if you don't want to play the same game twice, but if you're at all interested in giving things another go I'd appreciate your thoughts on whether I've improved things or not!
@prof-suarez, @escortti: Thanks for the feedback! I'll keep experimenting with the size of the hit boxes and general game balancing. Removing the hit boxes from the dead enemies is a great idea (and something I should probably already be doing) so I'll prioritize that in the next round of fixes.
As for the difficulty of later sections... I haven't tested them much myself (because it's so hard to reach them :laughing:) and eventually the waves start appearing in a random order. It's entirely possible that some of the later waves are impossible.
I tried the jam version and post-jam version, but couldn't get very far. Are you supposed to demolish the default drill and replace it with a copper drill to upgrade, or build copper drills on the side? I tried both, but it wasn't obvious to me that either option made much of a difference to how fast I was drilling.
A simple tutorial for the first upgrade (even just a text box the first time you hit 10 copper or something) would really help new players here.
I think a backing track and some drilling/upgrade sounds would have made a lot of difference here, too. I highly recommend the work of Eric Matyas (www.soundimage.org); he's got some great looping tracks available for free, and I find them really useful (often as last-minute additions) for my jam games.
Great game! The animations are really smooth, and the music loop is very effective.
I don't have a lot to add over what others have said, other than that I think the background should scroll at the same speed as the platform. That would give the impression that the platforms were attached to the tunnel, and that the camera is what's scrolling -- as it is now, my mind kept telling me that the platforms were also falling, but at a different speed to the camera.
I really enjoyed this, but I'd be lying if I said I'd truly figured out how the puzzles worked until after I read the "hints" section. I managed to finish 6 levels or so without understanding that the bubbles were oxygen, or that it was blocking the entrance that caused you to lose oxygen. The 7th level then suddenly felt much harder, and I couldn't work out why.
This may just be me, but the hint that says "BLOCK [LADDER] = LOSE [BALL]" could be clearer. The entrance and exit ladder are visually very similar, which led me to think that as long as *one* of the ladders was unblocked I'd be okay -- using different colors or sprites that are more obviously different might help. "[LADDER] BLOCKED = LOSE [BALL]" might also be a more accurate hint, since it's not the act of blocking the entrance that loses balls, but subsequent turns.
Sorry if this sounds critical. The game is great, I've rated it very highly, and I'll be back to play more! :smile:
The movement mechanic is really satisfying. Perhaps this would make things too easy, but I found myself wishing for some indication of where the game thought I had dragged my mouse. Rendering a line between the center of the eye and the player's mouse would still require them to think through the strength of the shot and visualize projection of the line forwards, but would give more feedback and help avoid accidental mistakes.
I made it to about 500m before I let myself die just to see what would happen. :slight_smile:
I'm not 100% sure whether the layering of music is tied to the light or not, but it feels very natural -- and whether it was your intent or not, it really increased the tension and had me racing to the next recharging station.
I really appreciated that there were little things to stumble across while exploring, too. I chased a little fish, found an arch, saw some giant sponge-looking thing...
Top-notch. :thumbsup:
That this is so complete and has so much variety in its level design is really impressive. The animations, pixel art and music are all fantastic. Overall -- great job.
I got stuck in the third level, and only really have nit-picky feedback.
Some of the step platforms seem to be *very* close to the player's jump height, which makes the parts of the game that should be easy more frustrating, and sometimes the game plays the jumping animation twice when getting stuck on one of these corners. The parts of the game where real platforming is required (e.g. bouncing off mushrooms) works much more smoothly.
In the third level, the behavior of the gate sprites was the opposite of what I expected. The gates face towards the screen when they're locked, and towards the player's character when they're unlocked.
Completely blown away by how the audio and parallax work together here to set the mood and convey the story. This is easily the best soundtrack I've ever heard in a Ludum Dare game, and the most effective use of music.
A good entry! The sprites (particularly the asteroids) are well done, and the core game loop is strong.
I think things would feel a lot more satisfying if they felt faster. The ship moves very quickly left to right, but the speed of the scrolling background makes it feel like the ship is moving forwards at a crawl. The slow recharge rate of the rocket contributes to that, too.
Great job! The difficulty ramps up nicely, which I've previously found to be tricky to get right with such little time. Making the apples optional is definitely a big part of that, and it's a brilliant idea -- I've made a note of it for next time. :smile:
Switching between the two screens is a neat mechanic, and I liked that both modes controlled slightly differently.
The dialogue (and tutorial in general) was well done, especially the parts where the player gets kicked back to the title screen. I think I would have preferred if the gameplay hadn't paused while dialogue was showing, though -- I appreciate that timing things such that the player can read all the text *and* the gameplay can continue is non-trivial, but I think it would make the tutorial feel a lot smoother.
Great job!
I really like the aesthetic here, and it's a great take on the theme. I can only think of two things that might make it better.
Things feel a little empty, and I couldn't work out why some sprites would appear from the ship occasionally. (Are they bubbles?). Adding a few collectibles to pick up along the way would give the player something else to do besides dodging the rocks; this would have kept me playing for longer.
Adding a simple looping track -- something dark and ominous -- would be a good way to improve the mood.
Wow, what a great entry! The music and pixel art are top-notch. I really like the death animation; it adds a surprising amount over a regular "GAME OVER" screen.
I found the font selection in the jam version to be a little jarring, and I think swapping it out for a different font in the post-jam version was a good idea.
It wasn't obvious to me in the jam version that the screen border would kill, and the first few times I died by climbing too far down the ladder (which I found very surprising). The post-jam version does address this, but I think if anything you've gone too far the other way -- there's now *too much* text! If you continue to develop this, I'd recommend spreading these first few moments over a few different tutorial rooms. Coming up with some in-universe way to explain why certain mechanics behave the way they do might be a nice touch too (e.g. "If I move enough I can break free!" vs "Spam these buttons to unfreeze").
The main mechanic is really innovative -- great job! Like others have already said, the lack of sound effects is a little jarring (and I think it's made more obvious by the fact that the music is so good :smile:).
The other thing that stood out to me is that death is very sudden, and gameplay continues immediately. Some sort of game over mechanic would help that feel more smooth. Watching the rope retract to the previous location might be a neat way to do that, sort of a "Look how far you've come, also you have to do it again!"
Congratulations on your first game jam! :tada:
The repeating background felt a little buggy to me; once or twice I could have sworn that it reset, and the shifting brown pixels either side of the pipe were a little distracting. That said, bonus points for bravery -- I don't think I've seen anybody else attempt a diagonal scroller!
@knipsch, @mike-burns: Thanks very much!
@qthree: Thanks for the bug reports! I think I've fixed both of those issues, now.
This is my first Godot game with such a heavy UI component, and I wouldn't be surprised if there were more asynchrony/signal/yield bugs lurking in there... and I never even thought to test what would happen if a battle ends in a draw. :sweat_smile:
Thanks @irvia, @zackavelli!
I actually started sketching out a much more complicated battle system based on the concept of balance/stability, but knew immediately that I'd have no time to implement it. I think it might be a good idea, though, so watch this space...
@fabioecco: Yes, the game has two fights and you're supposed to be able to beat them both
@sprunth: Thanks! I'm slowly learning that humour and dialogue are the things that typically score me points, so trying to lean more heavily into genres that provide more opportunities for text. Glad you enjoyed it.
@destroyertech Thanks for the feedback. I was torn on the HP-refilling question for a long time, and didn't leave enough time for balancing. I wanted to implement a retry option for each individual battle, but it ended up being too hard to implement (because of poor decisions made earlier in scripting the fights)!
It should be possible to learn the correct actions for the farmhand... I'll add some spoiler text at the beginning for people who want to see the ending but get stuck.
@marc-jones: You're right about the telegraphing. The intent was that you wouldn't have to *completely* guess, and there is some logic behind the mappings. If possible, would you mind saying a bit more about any dialogue-attack combinations that were particularly confusing?
This is a really solid entry, good job! The goals were clear, and the particle effect makes killing the aliens especially satisfying.
The "Defend yourself" hint in one of the early rooms confused me initially, especially given the presence of the tables on either side -- I felt like I was expected to prepare to defend myself *in that room*. I also tried shooting the table (given the earlier instruction to destroy tables) but nothing happened.
I also think music can make a lot of impact on the mood of a game. For Jam entries I'd recommend using some of the royalty-free music you can find online (e.g. [soundimage.org](soundimage.org)).
I love the aesthetic here, and although I can see you opted out of music you've selected great tracks.
The introduction is really smooth, and everything about the dialogue UI is pretty much perfect. Changing the dialogue each time around is a nice touch, too.
Unfortunately, I'm apparently *really* bad at shooting bottles, and I just can't seem to hit them. I tried a few times, but eventually had to give up. The loading screen/quotation screen after missing a bottle feels really long, and I would have appreciated a quicker way to try again... As good as the dialogue is, it's quite a long sequence to sit through every time.
@ditam I shall play it again!
I'm back, and this time I finished it. :smile:
It's a good message, and it works. I'm glad I came back for another go. But even knowing something was going to happen (or perhaps _because_ I knew something was going to happen) it felt like it took me a long time to get there. I still think the loops should be a little quicker... It might even help to strengthen the narrative, because you could fit a lot more loops into the same amount of play time.
The other thing I'd consider changing (if you revisit for post-jam polish) is the scene you get after shooting a bottle. It _really_ looks like a game over screen to me, and I think that's working against you here. Something that suggested the passage of time instead -- even as simple as a fade to black, then fade to the bar scene -- might help to clue the player in more.
Still, a really great entry. I'm nit-picking because you did such a great job with everything else. :wink:
"includen't" :laughing:
It feels like there should be a way to get to the Coin of Stability in the last level, but I couldn't figure it out.
I thought for sure I'd be the only person to call their game "Unstabled". Great minds. :laughing:
This is a lot of fun, and I like how the difficulty ramps up with the removal of fence sections.
I think you could have gotten away with fewer instructions -- I found that screen a little overwhelming (and actually gave up on reading halfway down). The screen makes the game look much more complicated than it is... in my opinion, all a player really needs to know to start playing is: 1) drag and drop your horses to move them into stables; 2) click the stable doors to release them; 3) collect these things, avoid these things.
The idea is a good take on the theme, but like @chesiq I experienced lots of cracking and popping. I'm not sure whether I couldn't figure out what to do, or if things were made harder by a lack of responsiveness. I don't think my laptop is powerful enough to render your models -- at least not in the browser -- since the cracking and popping disappears if I switch tabs while the game is open.
Do you have any plans to release a Linux build, or a cutback version that isn't so GPU-hungry? If so, please let me know and I'll give things another go...
Really, really, funny. Great job. :thumbsup:
I'm not sure if it was intentional or not, but on my second playthrough I managed to jump into the clouds, then shoot so far to the right that I won the game with a high score of 141k. :laughing:
Wow! This is really something.
The penguin controls are really responsive, and the melting/sinking iceberg mechanic is just great. My first thought upon finishing the first level was "I wish there was some sort of reward for moving the penguins simultaneously", and your answer to that is really innovative.
The twist was unexpected (good!) but it was a little unclear what was going on. I'm still not 100% sure if I ended up in the twist because you'd forced it or if I missed a puzzle solution. I'm also not sure if I experienced everything the twist had to offer.
Bonus points for creating a 3D game that I can actually run in my browser. :thumbsup:
This is a good idea, and a good take on the theme.
Like others have said, I think it's a little too hard. I stuck with it and *eventually* made it up the first few platforms, and the reveal that there's a hidden double jump... :laughing:
Even though the prompt says you can drag anywhere, I kept finding myself trying to drag from the slime. I'm not sure if this contributed to the difficulty (i.e. because I kept being unable to not drag far enough) but it might be something to consider. From what little I've played it seems like the player almost always needs to make the biggest jump possible -- shrinking the maximum drag distance and increasing the multiplier might make it "feel" easier, even if you don't change anything else.
The main thing missing for me is sound effects and music -- it feels eerily quiet. I've had a lot of luck using SFXR and Musagi, and have found a lot of good music loops on soundimage.org.
I know these things take time, and it's tempting to leave them until the end... That's why I recommend to put _something_ in as a placeholder at the very beginning. Even if you run out of time to make something yourself, the game will still feel more alive.
It takes a while to get the hang of it, but once I got going it was pretty cool. I've not played anything like it before -- very innovative!
At the very beginning I found it quite difficult to tell what I was controlling, and my brain didn't want to accept that the empty red circle was orbiting my character. Maybe drawing the orbits would help, or using a distinct shape... Maybe it's just me.
This is really great, especially for a compo entry. The graphics and sound work really well together, and it's a really interesting take on the theme. The foreshadowing of the future mechanics using the bar on the right hand side is really effective, too.
Initially, I found having to press R and Space a little unnecessary and confusing (and I kept forgetting to press Space). Having two buttons made a little more sense once I'd made it to the later levels, but binding everything to Space might make for a smoother experience overall.
@lawrence, @bdiaztobarra - Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed it! :smile:
@0x-void-x0 - You can only delay the inevitable. :wink:
@porcus-pie - That's a really good idea, thank you! The way things are now, most people won't see the different "endings" -- and I'm fairly certain I locked my best lines behind too many moves. I'll definitely do a post-jam build where she quips as you go; I'm sure that'll improve things significantly, even if I don't get around to adding more pieces.
@nem - I tried to mimic old English for comedic effect, and I hadn't considered that might make things less accessible to non-English speakers. Thanks for the feedback. I've been meaning to experiment with Godot's translation features for a while -- this might be a good excuse to look into it.
@wetburritosupreme - Wow! Honestly I didn't expect anybody would play so long :laughing:. All I'll say is that there are a few things you might not have seen... But you've probably seen the good stuff.
@hatmajaster - Thanks for giving the Linux version a go. Downloading SteamOS for testing purposes is a great idea.
@david-york, @aka-black-dog, @jzucc12, @daniel-username, @coatline - Thank you all for the words of encouragement! Knowing that so many people would have kept playing if there were more levels has made me determined to explore this concept more post-jam.
Your itch.io link is giving a 404 error.
The UI is really polished, and this is a really great (if depressing :crying_cat_face:) take on the theme. Good job!
I couldn't tell if I fell victim to a particularly unlucky seed, or not, but a lot of my early choices were identical. For the first few turns all I was doing was using seawater to fight forest fires and discovering new species of tick. Adding some guards againt that (e.g. decreasing the probability of a choice appearing each time it appears) might help.
This is really clever, and the different mechanics work very well together. Good job!
I got stuck on Wave 4 -- I couldn't get high enough, and the little flying imp kept destroying the box tower that I was trying to build up to get to him. Some way to deflect arrows would have been handy.
I might also have gotten lucky, but it seemed like once a few crates started to build up things got quite a bit easier (because the enemies couldn't reach or damage the gate). Maybe punishing the player for letting things build up too high, or clearing rows Tetris-style would help?
The core game loop here is very satisfying, and I had a lot of fun playing this. Great job!
I wish that there was a way to interrupt progress of cooking/filling the bucket, though, as I felt completely helpless as the goblins ran past me. :smile: I'm not sure how much that would impact the balance, but having the progress bars restart at 0 every time you interrupt them might fix that.
The only other suggestion I have is to consider using some pixel fonts. There are some really nice ones out there, and the default Sans Serif font really stands out against the rest of the visuals.
The core gameplay loop here is strong, and I had a lot of fun playing it. Good job! A simple jaunty music track is the only thing that would make this feel more complete.
Like @lokt02 I had some trouble harvesting melons. I didn't realize initially that you have to right click *on* the melon itself, rather than simply clicking the right mouse button while standing near the melon. I think you could clarify this in the controls screen, or make harvesting a little more forgiving. I was surprised I couldn't chop them down -- I don't know why I expected to be able to, but I tried it anyway. :laughing:
There's a lot to like here. The graphics and SFX are top-notch, and the music establishes the mood very well. I felt like the music changed right as the difficulty picked up, too, which was really effective.
I can't really fault it, mechanically... The only thing I'd recommend is swapping the font out for something that matches the pixel art style. I've used [m5x7](https://managore.itch.io/m5x7) for projects like this in the past.
This really does feel like CrossCode, so great job! My only gripe control-wise is that I found it quite hard to attack diagonally (using keyboard + mouse) because I had to hold two directions and click repeatedly. Attacking while facing directly up, down, left or right felt a little more straightforward to me.
I think a few simple sound effects and some looping music would make this feel a lot more complete. I recommend looking into tools like [sfxr](https://www.drpetter.se/project_sfxr.html) and [musagi](http://www.drpetter.se/project_musagi.html) if you want to make them yourself, or a website like [soundimage](https://soundimage.org/) if you want to use something ready-made.
This is really funny, the art is great, and the soundtrack matches the theme and mechanics perfectly. Something about the way that Otakun starts flipping when he eventually falls off is really satisfying, too.
The only problem I had was not really understanding when the spin mechanic was available. It took me a while to notice that there was an icon for it -- drawing more attention to it somehow (like a placeholder box when it's missing, or something?) might be a good idea.
(The website freaked out and posted my comment three times. I have no idea what happened, sorry for cluttering up your ratings!)
Brilliant stuff -- I laughed out loud multiple times. :rofl:
Wow! This is definitely the most polished and complete game I've played this Ludum Dare.
The music and art are both great. No matter where I tried to build different components I never ended up with something truly ridiculous -- the fact that you have such a modular build system and things always seem to fit together is really impressive.
And the title!? Chef's kiss. I wish there was a "Title" category so I could give you more points.
Like a few other folks, I am guilty of not reading the rules before playing. I was very confused when Imp’a-Tient (:laughing:) showed up and started killing stuff.
The battles are quite well balanced, and I appreciated the use of shake animations to make things feel a little more lively. I think if you spend a little time on this after the jam -- slap a pixel font on things, add an old-school _Final Fantasy_-esque menu theme around your buttons, that kind of thing -- it'd move from being really good to great.
I can't get over the fact that this is a compo game! As others have said, this is really _really_ good.
It may just be because I don't play enough games with hex grids, but my brain found it very difficult to adapt to the movement controls. I kept moving in the wrong direction and wasting time. Maybe tank controls would be more intuitive? Having to rotate the rover and then drive forwards would make it more obvious where it's going to go, and also might make exploration feel more deliberate and slow-paced. Or if you stick with QWEASD, an option to overlay letters over the tiles might be a good idea.
Apologies for nit-picking, but I can't fault anything else. :smile:
I played this for ages -- great job! The music fits perfectly, and the particle trail is a really effective way to make the player sprite feel more "alive" than if it were just a static sprite. I was surprised how effective it was, to be honest!
I got all the fragments but couldn't figure out how to enter the passcode... I typed everything in (watching the text entry box getting longer and longer) but couldn't submit anything. What is supposed to happen? I have to know!
I *love* that you took the time to write an introduction to the game instead of just throwing us into the first puzzle. This is very clever, and a great take on the theme.
P.S. Your embedded version seems to be broken.
@jcg - That timer wasn't there during playtesting... :laughing:
Thank you, everyone! I really didn't know how this one was going to be received, and I'm truly blown away by your comments.
Apologies if I haven't played and rated your games, yet. I'm working my way through them, and promise I'll get to them (if they work in a browser or on Linux).
@smilewood, @not-the-loading-screen, @stoickekis, @tinykidtoo: Glad to see the announcer getting some love. He's the real star of the show. :mega:
@caresle, @nate954: Thank you for giving it a chance. I'm glad you enjoyed it. :smile:
@haydads, @ds-nahogara: I think I might have to print and frame these... :blush:
@laurahur: You caught me! I'm a sadist making games for masochists. :laughing:
@olddog, @cookie-chr, @milq: Thank you!
@oadt, @austin-sierra, @appleplectic, @c4ris: Thank you for playing and rating!
@nardandas, @bogden: So... After playing Headcount myself I thought "Damn, maybe I should have done that." :laughing: I'm considering an experimental build that provides feedback to see how it feels... :thinking:
But! I promise that there _is_ a correlation between the announcer's feedback and how well you're doing. The problem is that if you get offbeat the game does nothing to help (semi-deliberately). More information below, if you're curious:
!> The beats you're trying to hit are at 10 second intervals after you hit the button for the first time. The timer does not reset each time you hit the button. There's a [-5 seconds, +5 seconds] window for each button press, and the score reflects your absolute distance from the ideal press: "OUTSTANDING" is within 0.5 seconds, "INCREDIBLE" is within 1 second, "AMAZING" 2 seconds, "GOOD" 3 seconds, "BAD" 4 seconds, and "FAILURE" otherwise. So if you're consistently under or over counting, the score will start to drift.
My best run was a score of 10,200 (10 "OUTSTANDING"s + 2 "INCREDIBLE"s). But that was after counting to 10 about a bazillion times in two days...
@megafuze: Thanks for sharing that tale. :rofl:
everybody: If you're currently only offering a Windows version of your game, please ping me if/when you start offering a Linux/browser version!
@makiyoshi, @borabee - Thank you! I'm glad you found it funny; I'm always worried that the jokes won't land, and very happy to hear when they do. :smile:
This really tickled me. :laughing:
The idea of using time as a resource is great, and there's a surprising number of upgrade options (especially since you said that this was a last-minute effort). I'm not usually a fan of clicker games, but this is very clever.
I think the only thing that would have improved it for me is if there was a win condition. It's definitely possible to reach a point where the player has built enough time generators to stop clicking, and something like a "Congratulations, you saved the game!" message would have been a great reward for my poor fingers.
This feels really polished; well done! The art and UI work together really nicely, and although the pulse every 10 seconds took a little getting used to it's a very clever mechanic and an interesting take on the theme.
I wish that the tutorial had included more examples of how things connected to one another, or maybe just prevented me from buying things in the wrong order until I'd powered up my first settlement. On my first go I tried a breadth-first approach and instantly built a power plant and two factories, which didn't work out so well. :laughing: It took me a few restarts before I figured out how to connect things, and if I'm honest I'm still not 100% sure how the rotators work.
Also, thank you for providing a Linux build. :heart:
Just like in real life, I am not very good at caring for these plants...
But wow, this is beautiful, and really innovative. The 10 seconds feels like plenty of time to pick a tool and make changes, but also fast-paced enough to keep the plant growing at a steady rate. I also love how the art jiggles around -- which I'm sure there's a technical term for -- and the screen transitions are awesome.
Best mood I've experienced so far. 5/5
Good opening dialogue and characters. I want them to succeed!
I got past the first puzzle, but while trying to work out the rules for the second got the message: "Let's just pretend that nothing happened". Is there a way to get the band to start playing again once that happens, or is the game effectively finished at that point?
This is a great idea; a simple but very effective take on the theme.
I'm having some technical issues, which may just be my computer... The game plays smoothly for the first few seconds, but once the ball gets close to my paddle for the first time everything slows to a crawl. When things become responsive again, the ball is moving too fast to play.
I really like the art style here, and flying around in space felt really smooth (once I got used to the controls).
But I agree with what others have said about it taking too long for the aliens to show up. The beginning of the game feels a little aimless -- it's not clear that anything else is going to happen, nor when it's going to happen. Adding a countdown that shows how long the player has to wait for the aliens would really help alleviate that feeling, I think, and instead create a feeling of time pressure.
The core gameplay loop here is really satisfying, and I love the attention to detail: having to open the shop before anybody arrives, and having the music playing through a stereo physically in the game world are both really nice touches.
It took me an embarrassingly long time to realize that I could walk through the checkout counter, and I spent a long time standing there trying to click on it. Some instruction or hints there would be great (maybe the new owner is a :ghost:?).
I think I also encountered a bug of sorts: if you accidentally exit full-screen mode and then come back, the mouse controls stop working properly. I couldn't find a way to fix this without restarting the game.
Really great graphics and sound effects, and I liked that there was variation in the number of steps each task required.
This is largely personal preference, but I think the font you've used looks a bit out of place with the rest of the art. I'd recommend using a pixel font, instead; there are some really great CC0 ones that I keep going back to (e.g. [m5x7](https://managore.itch.io/m5x7) and [monogram](https://datagoblin.itch.io/monogram)).
Really fun -- great job! The colors and shadows are really effective here, and the fact that everybody is an ASCII character doesn't detract from the experience at all.
I agree with @planetbluto that it would be nice to have some feedback when the character dies. Something like taking a second to show the player character exploding/disintegrating instead of immediately restarting would do the trick.
This is brilliant. The mini-games are surprisingly difficult given their simplicity!
I know you didn't make the music, but it's a really inspired choice. It's exactly like the sort of "relaxing" music you'd hear in an office elevator, and it somehow adds to the stress of completing all the tasks... :thinking:
This is really innovative, super polished, and the music is awesome. Great entry! :thumbsup:
I'm probably just bad at it, but I think I'd have had even *more* fun if the prompts were a little more forgiving. I didn't get to spend a lot of time with a green bar.
@stoickekis - Ohhhhh. I think you should put that in the introduction here, because that made a huge difference. I made it to about 66,000 points and 150 BPM the second time around.
This is the most polished game I've played so far. The visuals are striking and very clean, and the colors for the different modifiers really pop.
Am I right in thinking there's only one level? I want more!
Also, I'm not sure if you intended for "NAME OF GAME" in the controls scheme to be a placeholder or if it's a joke, but I wanted to let you know that I found it funny -- if you're tempted to change it, please don't! :laughing:
I'm not a big fan of the genre, but I appreciate what you've done here. It's a take on the theme I haven't seen yet, and (as others have already said) everything feels very polished.
The models and animations are really good (especially the monsters) and the backing track is really catchy.
Great job!
As others have said, the art is great. I think it's a little quiet, though -- have you thought about putting in some placeholder music? I find it really helpful at the early stages, and you can always swap it out for something you make specifically for the game later on.
I had the same issue getting my Godot game to embed correctly, but with a little bit of hacking I was able to get it to work. Details here: https://twitter.com/johnpennycook/status/1576756004061995009
I agree that the game is a little slow, but that's largely the theme's fault. :laughing:
That said, you might be able to make things *feel* a little faster if some of the platforms were moving, or there were moving obstacles... Things only feel as slow as they do because there's nothing to do while waiting for the power to change.
The music loop is great. Establishes a nice chill vibe very quickly -- you should get lots of "Mood" points.
When I saw the screenshot I wondered how you'd possibly be able to run between all those people in 10 seconds... Making this a static point-and-click game was a great move! :thumbsup:
Like @mrwarranty I couldn't read all of the text, which made it much harder to figure out the right sequence.
Brilliantly executed. The UI is really clean, and the way that the numbers pop out towards the player is a really effective way to reinforce the counting.
Telling the player how far they were on their previous guess *and* how close they need to get to keep playing was a great decision, and it works really well. Great job!
This just oozes coolness. :sunglasses:
My favorite thing about it is the lighting. Not being able to see where the walls are introduces an additional challenge *and* gives the player another reason to move around. Very clever.
I had the same error trying to embed my Godot game, but you can work around it by editing the exported JavaScript. Details here: https://twitter.com/johnpennycook/status/1576756004061995009
Ping me if you fix the embed or upload it to itch.io, and I'll come back and play/rate.
I played to the end -- some of those later levels require some pretty precise positioning!
The controls were a little unusual. Even after reading the control scheme here, muscle memory kicked in and I tried to use Space to jump. :laughing:
I also think things are a bit quiet, and the game would feel a lot better with some simple sound effects and music. I've had a lot of success with the following:
- Generate simple sound effects: https://www.drpetter.se/project_sfxr.html - Write simple music loops: https://www.drpetter.se/project_musagi.html - Download CC0 sound effects: https://kenney.nl/assets?q=audio - Royalty-free music loops: https://soundimage.org/
My recommendation is to put placeholders from one of these places into the game as early as possible, so you don't end up with a silent entry. You can always replace them later!
@steelfeathers: Ah, sorry that's not very clear. The seeds count as "a tool" so you have to use C to plant them. There's no animation, but you should see a hole get covered over with dirt when a seed is planted in it.
@antsa: Thanks for the suggestion! I deliberately made this quite hard (too hard), but introducing colored soil would be a good way to (optionally) decrease the difficulty.
@jaonewguy: You're very welcome! Thanks for returning the favor. :smile:
@ra-sio: Thanks for playing!
@melektaus: The lack of visualization for what's been watered is perhaps my biggest regret, and I completely agree with you. I thought it would be an easy thing to add, so I foolishly left it until the very end... When I tried to implement it, I realized the way I'd structured things made it really hard to get the information to the soil sprite, and then I ran out of time. If I keep working on this, it'll be the first thing I fix!
@triangle-point: Thank you for playing! I'll definitely take a look at the player speed.
@harmofish: Thanks. I was pretty sure I wasn't going to finish, but I got there just in time. :cold_sweat:
@torban: Thank you! I spent quite a while trying to make sure everything fit together, so I'm glad to hear that's appreciated. :grin:
@random-storykeeper: Wow, thanks for taking the time to write up such detailed and thoughtful feedback!
I'm glad to hear that the gamepad worked! Out of curiosity, which kind did you use/which prompts did you see?
On to your issues: - I agree about the claustrophobia. My original thinking was that if I gave the player too big an area or too many plants to care for, the days might take too long. But I could have made better use of the screen space and introduced some other things to do.
- Good suggestions, thank you! Adding a harvest sound in particular should be pretty straightforward.
- The original plan was to have the mechanics ramp up over time, with new seeds arriving in the mail as you played. You'd start with the carrots, and once you'd mastered those you'd get some corn, etc.
- I did want the interact button to do more (e.g. getting seeds out of the mail, checking the status of plants). This is good feedback; I could have easily combined the buttons when I realized I wouldn't have time to implement those mechanics, and I probably should have.
- My wife and I argued a lot about how the days should be counted, so I appreciate how confusing this mechanic ended up being... :laughing: I really wanted to include sequences with a 0 in them, which ended up meaning that the day you plant something is Day 0, the day after planting is Day 1, and so on. So if you planted Corn on Day 5, the watering days should have been [7, 9, 11, 13].
Combining your suggestions about the interaction button and the day counting, I probably should have added a way to check how many days old a plant was. That would still require people to work out the sequences and stuff, but without requiring them to memorize so much information.
@random-storykeeper: Awesome, thank you for sharing that. I had only tested with a Steam Controller, so I wasn't sure what prompts would show up!
I hadn't realized that there was ambiguity in "days after", but I can see where the confusion is coming from. The sequence is supposed to describe the number of days after _planting_ on which you are supposed to water, not the number of days after you last watered. "Powers of 2" was supposed to mean 2^n for n >= 0, so the Cauliflower sequence looks like this:
- Plant on Day 0 - Water on Day 1 (2^0) - Water on Day 2 (2^1) - Water on Day 4 (2^2) - Water on Day 8 (2^3)
@frozenfire92: That's a feature, not a bug. The plants have to be watered on different days. The reason they all had the same sprite and gave no points is that you'd killed everything except the carrots!
I'll see what I can do in a post-jam release to make that more obvious.
This feels really polished, and was a lot of fun to play. The pixel art is really crisp, the 8-directional movement feels really smooth, and the soundtrack fits the gameplay perfectly. A very impressive entry!
I like that shooting robots more than once increases their velocity, and I think the bounce mechanic is cool. But I think that they probably move _too_ fast. More than once I accidentally shot a robot into another, setting off a chain reaction of bouncing robots that was impossible to avoid. It made me play very cautiously.
The UI elements are very small, and I'd recommend making them about 5x bigger. With them being so small and in the corner of the screen, I found it very difficult to pick them up with my peripheral vision. They contain important information, so they deserve to be about as big as other important elements (like the player and enemies).
Funny stuff :laughing:
My favorite part was seeing all the different breads, especially the really long one and the (presumably infinite) nested bread. I wasn't really sure that getting the achievement was _really_ all there that there was to it, so I spent a while clicking around (and trying to click that really small piece of bread). Something like a "No, seriously, that's it" would have been helpful. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:
Great game. I played all three levels and had a lot of fun.
I really would have appreciated a jump button. Some of the fences in the second level feel like there's no way around them, and watching the radish jump over them effortlessly made me hate him so much. (If this was deliberate, then very well done. :laughing: )
I initially thought that a race didn't fit the theme well, but upon reflection I can see that you have to _harvest_ turbeets from the other fields to get your turbo boost. If you continue to work on this, I recommend incorporating the number of turbeets you harvest into the score somehow. That might improve replayability, and it'd be more obviously tied to the theme.
This is an amazing compo entry. It's a real shame you didn't get the music finished in time, because with a good soundtrack this would be even better.
The upgrades ramp up very nicely, and I felt very powerful by the end (which is always good)! My only suggestion for how to improve things further would be to introduce more jeopardy, and possibly remove the tomatoes after a few early waves. I enjoyed hunting the carrots down, but nothing _forced_ me to move beyond the tomatoes -- I could meet most of the goals using tomatoes alone, and since they're so easy to kill things didn't feel very challenging.
This is a really good take on the theme, well executed. The BGM is pretty catchy, too.
I agree with some of the earlier comments about how difficult it is to figure out what's going on initially. A tutorial of some kind would really help. Some other random feedback:
- I found a bug where if you left click/right click too fast the tool you're holding with starts to float away. :laughing: - I feel pretty stupid admitting this, but the seed box looks really similar to the order box. I genuinely tried to put the seeds on the conveyor belts several times before I realized what I was supposed to do... - I couldn't figure out how to get my apples onto the conveyor belt at all. I threw them off the screen, but I don't think it counted.
This is a great compo entry. The art is good, the music is good, and it's a complete game! :thumbsup:
Like @bobbo I couldn't get the shop to work, and don't think I encountered any opportunities to earn any gold. I kept clicking "Make mad" but nothing seemed to happen.
One other thing that stood out to me was the font (which I think might be the Unity default)? I personally find it really jarring when high-resolution fonts are used with pixel art games, and I think the overall aesthetic would be more consistent if you switched to a pixel font. I like [monogram](https://datagoblin.itch.io/monogram) and [m5x7](https://managore.itch.io/m5x7), which are both CC0.
Simple but surprisingly addictive! I could see myself playing a lot of this.
I think a tutorial would really help the player to ramp up, here, because it took me a long time for me to work out what was going on with the plant abilities. I was too focused on the middle of the screen to notice the fire meter building up, and I mistook the watermelon projectile initially for a bug.
I also agree with @profan that it would feel much better if you could slash in a different direction to where you're moving. Running back and forth _works_, but I would have felt cooler running circles around the zombies.
This is a really unique take on the theme. Having to watch all the rows of words simultaneously makes this more challenging than other typing games I've played, and the art is brilliant. Great job :thumbsup:
As you noted above, it's eerily quiet. I understand that you ran out of time, but I think you should definitely revisit this post-jam to add some sound-effects and a backing track. It would make a world of difference.
I also think that the difficulty ramps up too slowly. I think I could probably have made it much further than I did (Level 2), but the early levels weren't challenging enough to keep me playing.
Congratulations on your first game! It's very responsive and very fun to play; the sound effects and music are well chosen, and I enjoyed that the music accelerated alongside the ever-accumulating hearts.
As for the RigidBody2D issue... Godot's Debug menu has a "Visible Collision Shapes" option that has saved me a few times. It might be that the collision shape isn't quite aligned the way that you think. If it's not that, my money would be on the heart's velocity being too high -- if an object is moving too fast, it might move far enough in a single frame to jump "through" the object that it was supposed to collide with. I think the technical term for this is "tunneling".
Thanks for the feedback, everyone! I'd thought about tweaking the car physics to make it handle more realistically, but now I think I might leave it as it is. :smile:
@automatonvx Thanks for the suggestion! I agree that a time limit would be a good way to balance the stealth and racing gameplay better.
I'd like to address the tilemap bugs, but everything I've tried so far hasn't worked. Did you manage to fix this behavior when you encountered it?
@automatonvx Thanks, I'll give it a go.
Fantastic dialogue options. I was disappointed to see that I failed -- I definitely picked the funniest option in every case. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:
It took me a while to realize that I was dying because I hit the left side of the screen, and that I had to occasionally step forwards. It's probably me being stupid, but I'd have found a note that it's harmful useful. :sweat_smile:
I thought that the visualization of the beat was easy to follow, and the "Beat Match" statistic in the bottom left corner is a great way to provide feedback to the player. Good job!
As others have said, the graphics are pretty great. Good job!
I encountered what I think might be bugs... The first time through only two meatballs spawned (despite being set to 100) and I won rather quickly. There seemed to be some disagreement between the button prompts and the buttons I actually had to press (but this might just be my Steam controller being weird). Something to check out, anyway.
I too had some timing issues with this one, but I think I got the hang of it eventually. I had fun on the first few levels, but the last one was too hard for me.
One thing to consider adding is some feedback on whether the game considered the key press to be too early, too late or just wrong -- maybe as different colors. That might make it easier for players to figure out what they're doing wrong, and how to adjust their timing.
Wow. This is probably the most complete game I've seen in a Ludum Dare. It's also a really solid game idea, and you've combined the two genres really well. Kudos!
I made a complete mess of my first few attempts, but got a little further once I found the "?" menu. The main issue I had was a lack of resources; the best way I could find to build anything early on was to start destroying buildings, and my mission to protect humanity went straight out the window :smile:. My only other suggestion would be to let the user zoom in and out (on both maps) -- that would have helped me to find the Cargo Hold and the enemies firing missiles more quickly.
This is a neat idea, and the graphics are great. I really like the way that you combined the two genres: it feels a bit like playing a different game with each hand.
Quiet games always feel like they're missing something to me, and I think this would be even better if you added a few simple sound effects (e.g. on jumping, building and clicking). I'd recommend something like [sfxr] (http://www.drpetter.se/project_sfxr.html), which makes great sound effects and is super easy to use.
Adding a purchase price for the next platform and/or a counter for the number of platforms left to buy would help build tension and encourage even more furious clicking!
At first I thought that the reloading puzzle was too simple, but the longer I played the more glad I was that it wasn't _too_ taxing. This is a really good idea, and really innovative; with a little more variation in the puzzles (for different weapons, maybe?) it'd be a game I could see myself spending a lot of time with.
Absolutely fantastic, you should both be very happy with this. The graphics are simple but fit the mood perfectly, and using color as sparingly as you have gives it an eerily beautiful quality.
My only suggestion is related to the controls: it's possible to use WASD/Arrow Keys for either character, which I found surprising. My initial reading of the controls at startup was that each set of keys was bound to the character of the same color. I don't know what your intention was, here, but it'd be good to clear up the confusion -- my recommendation would be to enforce different controls for Mary and Zoey; it "feels better" to me (sorry I can't be more specific than that) and would work better for two players sharing a keyboard.
I *really* enjoyed this; the genres you chose should definitely be incompatible, but you've made it work. I particularly liked that you took the time to add the ability to jump on enemies, even though people will probably only ever encounter it by accident. :smile:
I found what I think is a minor bug: there are a few situations where you can end up with multiple overlapping "conversations" at once, if you are typing commands during some multi-line output.
Adding some sound effects and music is the only suggestion I have for how to improve this game. Great job!
This is awesome. If anything I think it's _too_ fun: you've proven that Rhythm Game and Bullet Hell are clearly compatible genres. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:
This is a great entry. I love the date's facial expressions, and showing the instructions and credits on the menu and check is a really nice touch.
Assigning a score -- based on time, the eventual cost of all the things you smashed, or the date's mood -- would be a great way to improve the replayability of what you already have. I played through a few times and I _feel_ like I did better, but I didn't see this reflected anywhere.
I completed it, and I think there's a promising idea here: part of the puzzle is figuring out what the puzzle is in the first place.
I didn't understand why in Levels 1 and 3 there was a top screen and a bottom screen. If this was supposed to be a clue, I didn't understand it. :sweat_smile:
I like the idea of the calibration screen being part of the game, but I'm not sure how well it works in practice. I found that as long as I kept to the beat I'd kept up during calibration I could shoot for a while, but if I lost the beat it was impossible to get it back.
I got to -263 and laughed the whole time. Great job. :laughing:
It would be nice to have the spikes spaced out a little more, so that they didn't overlap (especially with the red and blue spikes). If you're unlucky enough that several grey spikes appear underneath you, you always die immediately.