Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → Petunia Games
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 50 | Delay the inevitable | Tick, Tick, BOOM | jam | 950 | 3.32 | 3.43 | 3.37 | 3.56 | 3.60 | 2.93 | 3.13 | |
| 2021 | 49 | Unstable | Unstable | unfinished |
It was not clear at all how to play, you just get plopped into the game.
When you do figure out what to do, it doesn't get much easier. When you select a pylon, the circle doesn't actually correspond to its range, and it was unclear what it was even for. At one point, I put down a generator and a pylon, but the buildings within the circle did not receive any power. The game feels very unfinished.
It is a good idea, but it needed more time I think. The art was cohesive and fit the theme well and the music track never got annoying; which is the risk when you loop it. The UI felt like you had a lot more planned but never got around to doing it, there was lots of unused space.
It got kind of frustrating to find the right combination of items. Maybe if the orders gave you hints about what items you needed to use that would have improved it a lot. A way to keep track of what combinations you have already tried would have been good too, I can imagine if you had tens of items you would lose track easily.
The brewing minigame got very repetitive, and became almost pointless, it felt like busywork. If it increased in difficultly or added variations then it would have gone a long way.
I also had a bug where the scroll bar teleported to the middle of the screen when I clicked on it.
At first I thought I had to hold the left mouse button to clean and was wondering why it wasn't doing anything. The ogre chomping your arm off seemed sort of random too.
So yea, give the player more feedback, and for the love of god, please lower the volume of the cleaning sound.
The idea is really cool, I loved the overall mood and the graphics were great (obviously haha), I wish the card mechanic wasn't as annoying to use though. A few times I messed up a jump and had to redo all of the cards just to get back to try again, it started to get very tedious towards the end. I can't fault it too much though, it's a very unique mechanic that deserves praise.
I would have liked more music, I understand it may have been a design choice given the subject matter, but it felt very sparse and... sort of lacking energy?
A very good entry though, well done.
I'm afraid to say I did not have a good time with this game. The aesthetic is nice, graphically and musically it all works, but the gameplay really lets it down.
There is too much that you can do upfront and it is overwhelming. I found myself randomly clicking on things to figure out how to even start brewing. For a good while I assumed the pictures next to the cauldron were a clue to what items you needed to use, so I just grabbed items that looked somewhat similar to them.
The item descriptions weren't clear enough on some of them, I tried to use the wobbly plant for the first potion and was confused as to why it didn't work, the item description seemed to fit the note, it left a bad taste in my mouth. After that I just tried every combination of plant until I got the right one; this isn't fun, you feel like you're hitting a roadblock every time you make progress.
So overall, it could have used more tutorialisation, and it could have started with fewer items to use from the get-go. It can definitely work with just those small changes.
It says a lot when you're terrible at a game but you still enjoy playing it. This was a really neat concept and it was done very well. It can get quite hectic to balance your health, but that is part of the fun. It's a "one more run" type of game.
The controls felt very tight and the hammer attack is crunchy. That, along with the sfx, made it incredibly satisfying when you kill the enemies.
The music could have used some variation, but it never quite got to the point of being annoying.
The graphics conveyed the game almost perfectly (I had the assumption that the ghost enemy turning grey meant they were invulnerable, but it just meant you had to use the rock attack, I think this was because the regular enemy you need to kill with the rock has a yellow head, so yellow = vulnerable). The sprites were distinct enough that you always know where your character was even though they share the same colour as the enemies.
Graphically and atmospherically, this game is great. It hits those Limbo vibes.
The controls felt off to me though. At a certain point it became less about soaking in the atmosphere and more about fighting with the game to do what you want it to do. I feel like it would have benefitted from a different jump mechanic, being able to adjust your position in mid-air just felt weird. Maybe give the player a minimum sideways jump to make things more predictable or something like that.
It didn't really fit the theme at all, there were a couple of tremors but nothing really seemed "Unstable".
This was really fun. Watching your own demise because you've built too high without fixing the base is both heart breaking and hilarious. The game breeds experimentation through the different items.
With that being said, there were a few items that I never found a good use for; the toothpicks didn't seem to do much, but they could have been used to pierce through gum sticks or something like that. I also never used the chain as it didn't seem rigid enough.
Having to use the scroll wheel to chew and to move the camera was a bit annoying, although I understand why you'd have it like that for the camera (if you're already holding an item you can't really use the left mouse button to move it).
The graphics are fairly basic but they serve the game, you don't really need much more.
There could have been some background music, it felt a bit empty without it.
I agree, the text definitely could be reworked, I tried to make it feel like the player's thoughts, a string of consciousness type thing, but a button to progress would be a lot cleaner, and a lot easier to manage I imagine. It does sort of react to the player's actions in a way, it just spits out text depending on what the game state is, but it's a very clunky system that took far too long to complete.
I made the applications open with a small delay to simulate an old OS, I intended to have a sound play and an hourglass icon to show that; but I didn't have time. I agree though, there is no feedback so you wouldn't know anything was happening.
The initial idea was that the bullet hell sections would be in the "file system" and that you'd have to go through waves of enemies to remove instability, but I just didn't have time to do it, I threw the bullet hell section together in the last couple of hours, and it shows hahaha
The game over and win screens were literally last minute, I needed a win and fail state so I just chucked those screens in. You didn't overlook it though, it just ends.
I am working on finishing this game, and it will be in a much better state. I have learned a lot from this LD and I won't spend so much time on small details next time, I'll actually make a proper game loop.
Thanks for the feedback.
As others have mentioned, it has charm and it is easy to pick up, but it never really goes anywhere from there. After you drop off a few passengers there's not much else to do, or at least it felt that way.
There's a few QoL improvements that could be made; if you miss where to deliver your passenger, you just have to fly around blindly (at least I did because I missed that it sets the waypoint automatically until a few passengers in) until you find the right destination, so a small: "deliver passenger to Goosington" in the UI could have gone a long way. Also, when you do deliver your passenger, it could have been made clearer, there is a text box that tells you, but it is only on screen for a second or two, so you have barely any time to read it.
Allowing the player to scroll the map would have been nice, as it is now you just aim in a general direction until your map shows you what you need.
There didn't seem to be much consequence for hitting asteroids (which was hard to do, they are pretty sparse until you get through a fair few passengers), you can just repair your ship for very little money.
The sound of the ship's engine got annoying very quickly, and the game could have used more music/sfx overall.
This was such a fun game. One of the more "real game" feeling of the jam so far. The art and overall aesthetic was super cute and made things feel very playful. Try to keep everything working could have been frustrating, but it never was. It was a bit confusing at points, but figuring things out wasn't too bad.
Nice entry.
I would have liked some feedback on whether you're damaging the robots, I found myself aiming for different parts trying to find the spot that would hurt them, but it wasn't necessary. Also having way of knowing how and why the robots hurt you would make it a bit more forgiving. It seemed like they hurt you if you got too close, but they also seem to have ranged weapons? It was a bit unclear.
Another thing that tripped me up was not knowing if the cells were charged or not, I assumed that since I could remove them right away, it was instant. Maybe having a text indicator showing the charge level, or not allowing the player to remove it if it's not fully charged would be good.
Overall a good game though, I like not allowing the player to hold more than one thing, it really adds to the stress.
Really nice entry. I am very bad at these kinds of games but I enjoyed what I played. It was unclear what buildings could go on which tile (it's in the description but having it appear in-game would be nice), but once I knew, it was straight-forward. Some way of knowing when buildings were destroyed and why would have been very useful because I found myself putting a building down and not knowing why it wasn't appearing even though my resources were being used.
I imagine if the player put time into this they could uncover a lot of depth and create strategies to rid the island of the green menace.
Yet another great entry. I admire the way you put mechanics and feel first in your games, it's something I want to emulate. That's not to say your art is bad, it has a very unique style, I knew this was your entry before I even read who made it.
As with your LD49 entry, I struggled with the combat, mainly because I forget dodging is something you can do, but I actually finished this one so that was nice.
Overall a good entry, the art was great and the game fit the theme very well. I struggled a bit with the controls (jumping instead of attacking etc), controller support would have been a big plus. It was a bit frustrating at times due to enemy hitboxes and not being able to tell when they're going to turn around to face you (sometimes it seemed to happen when they reached the end of a platform and sometimes not).
As others have mentioned, I was also teleported to the rooftop unexpectedly, it felt a bit cheap but what can you do.
Thanks for the feedback! I'm glad the rush it gives you wasn't just on my end. Originally I had the NPCs run to the exit automatically, but it felt a bit flat. As soon as I switched to requiring you to talk to them it added a LOT to the gameplay and actually felt like a challenge.
I fixed the navigation issues for NPCs, turns out adding things last minute means you forget to update the navpoly hahaha
Thanks :smile:
I didn't expect positive feedback to be honest haha, I appreciate it.
@vidu Thanks!
@lonelyliongames The art was a time sink for sure. I spent waaaaaay too long on it, it's something i'll change for the next LD. 15/20 is not bad at all, the second level is a challenge.
@ironfred Cheers buddy. The level design was changing all the way up to the deadline hahaha It somehow worked itself out though.
@brandless Thanks!
@apostle Yea I agree, I reduced the interaction area quite late on and I had some issues with not triggering things. I chalked it up to being part of the challenge but it could be more consistent for sure. Thanks for the feedback!
@mrscom Cheers mate.
@osh-studio Haha 16/20 is pretty good. It takes a fair few attempts to get past that I think. I wish I had time to make my own songs for it, but yea, it ties everything together.
@noiyy Yup, that was an issue I noticed late on (I made the character sprite about 2 hours before the end, they were just rectangles before that haha), I wish I changed them because it is annoying to lose where you are when things get hectic. Objects collisions were something I should have refined for sure. You have no idea how much I wanted to add shadows hahaha, if you notice, I had some in the first level, but then the sprites got more complex, I had to ditch them because of the draw order. I could have had a separate sprite shadow layer I guess, but I was sick of making art at that point :laughing: . Appreciate the feedback mate!