Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → Tom Francis
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Cm | Co | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2010 | 19 | Discovery | Scanno Domini | compo | 62 | 3.25 | 3.19 | 3.31 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 2.42 | 2.33 | 3.90 | 7 |
I like the idea of trying to make a sort of creature, but for a long time it feels like the rules are totally random, so there's a lot of trial and error. If there is a set of rigid rules for what makes 'an alien' I didn't figure it out, but the few times when I intentionally made a kind of face and it was right were satisfying.
Really nicely presented, and a simple concept that's easy to grasp and to play. The controls are great: lots of games are about rolling a ball around, but not many let you control it with this much freedom.
Until I read you blog after playing, I didn't realise I was supposed to be finding a path to the exit: I was just dashing straight there, and moving fast enough that the blocks beneath me didn't crumble as I went over them.
It's not a bad thing, because it's actually still fun that way - the levels get narrow enough that it's not always trivial. I think with the ideal balance, both would be an option: discover the path tentatively to be safe, or dash to the exit if you think you can make it.
The name confused me - for a while I thought I was supposed to be uncovering letters in the levels to reveal the name of something, and tried to touch every tile on a level. Discover the Way would have explained the concept.
Anyway, good job getting it all done in the time!
Nice looking and fits the theme very well. Found it hard to judge exactly what I would collide with as I moved, because of the perspective, and when I eventually got stuck it was because I couldn't fit through a corridor for some reason. Nicely done for the time allowed, though!
Interesting stuff. I didn't totally understand who I was or what I was doing, but the strange names and cryptic dialogue did evoke a curious world. I played the fishing and bug catching mini games, but I couldn't find Death's Den anywhere in the south east, so I'm not sure I saw everything.
Impressive considering you only really had one day.
Super brief and not massively interactive, but the sprites are lovely and you definitely get points for being able to throw a plunger at a rabbit.
Holy shit. Well, this puts everything else I've played so far to shame, including mine. Beautiful little game, genuinely entertaining and funny and not just 'for a 2-day game'. The fact that you got it so thoroughly finished in that time is pretty amazing.
The management aspects manage to be fun and occupying without being overwhelming, fussy or stressful. That low level of self-management your dudes have is both a smart game mechanic to avoid feeling like you're babysitting, and a good approximation of a real dynamic in the subject matter: us nerds *do* forget to take care of ourselves when we're focused on something, but generally not to a fatal extent.
The research topics are really funny, and the steady flow of cash from unexpected sources is a fun way of picking up the pace.
Is there a win state at all? I researched everything, bought everything and hired all ability-5 scientists, but if anything special happened I missed it. On a technical note, it crashed pretty hard when I quit - started taking up 3GB of memory and had to be process-killed in Task Manager. Not a big deal though.
The only thing making it a 4/5 rather than a 5 for me is that my choices didn't feel very important or personal - I seemed to succeed pretty much whatever I did. That's fine for a cute and quite casual game like this, but that's where the room for improvement would be.
Great job.
In that screenshot, I have failed to avoid detection.
Here's the readme, don't know if I can edit it back in:
Scanno Domini
A game about scanning stuff and then shooting it and becoming it.
Firstly, I am sorry about the tutorial.
Secondly, the game runs at 1024x600 but it won't try to change your monitor's resolution.
That may make it a little shrunk on high res monitors - I'll get a variable res version out,
I just didn't have time to look up how you do that in Game Maker.
Thirdly, press R to restart! Can't believe I forgot to put that in there somewhere. As you
may notice, you do come back from the dead if the coast is clear. But there's something of a
defect in the AI where they'll sometimes stand over your corpse for evermore, contemplating
what they have done.
Fourthly, the full controls are:
Left Mouse: move (hold to steer)
Right Mouse: shoot (hold to keep shooting)
R: restart (note to self, make sure you mention this in-game)
Esc: quit
Fifthly, there is a goal, of sorts. Try to kill everything. You'll find there's a bit of a
difficulty spike at a certain point, and there is a small acknowledgment for surviving it.
That's all, though, no boss or story or reward.
Sixthly, there is a sort of knack to moving in one direction and firing in the other. Click
far away, right click at your opponent while you travel.
Seventhly, there is a fairly major bug I didn't notice before submitting. Other than the
various possible crashes, I mean. You'll know it if you find it.
That's about it. Let me know what you think on my blog: http://www.pentadact.com
Thanks everyone! Yeah, difficulty spike is a bit broken at the moment.
Hadn't thought about it, but you're right - this would have been kinda cool for LD18's theme of Enemies as Weapons.
Alex, thanks for letting me know - I'll get a bug fixed version up (with resolution/screen size options too hopefully) in the next day or two.
Thanks for the detailed feedback! Yeah, bot tracks were on my to-do list but I didn't get to them.
Tutorial messages used to follow the player, but I got really irritated with them obsuring schematic messages and the like once I got scanning. Didn't have time to come up with a graceful solution for dismissal, so let the player wander off if he wanted. You're right, though, they should probably stick around longer - always hard to judge when you know what they say :)
The patched version I've just linked should fix that crash.
Nice job! The feel of digging through the rocks is satisfying, and the scanner focus adjustment is a really neat mechanic.
I forgot the controls you list here when I was playing, and the only one that isn't explained in-game is that you have to manually activate the scanner - it sort of looks like it's already working but hasn't found anything. So for a long time I didn't realise i had to press Z. Oddly, I found all but two of the diamonds through blind digging. More fun once I figured out the scanner, though, and a good fit for the theme.
Ha, great idea. The physics seem surprisingly good - wobbly stuff has a tendency to spaz out in a lot of games.
The ability to link your dinosaur and dance with others is ace, but I did want a bit more interactivity to make it personal.
Good job overall! Wish I knew how to do cool web backend stuff like this.