Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → pkenney
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Category | Score | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 🥈 | 2023 | 52 | Harvest | Pomodoro Panic | compo | Fun | 4.44 | |
| 🥇 | 2015 | 34 | Two Button Controls / Growing | PSYCHOTENNIS | compo | Fun | 4.40 |
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | Co | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | 59 | Signal | Speed Signal | compo | 23 | 4.06 | 4.13 | 3.18 | 2.91 | 4.29 | 3.56 | 3.42 | 3.68 | ||
| 2025 | 58 | Collector | Five Orbs | compo | 3.00 | 2.50 | 2.50 | 2.50 | 2.50 | 3.00 | |||||
| 2025 | 57 | Depths | Defense in Depth | compo | 144 | 3.47 | 3.05 | 3.85 | 3.15 | 3.22 | 2.90 | 2.76 | 3.27 | ||
| 2024 | 56 | Tiny Creatures | DNF | unfinished | |||||||||||
| 2024 | 55 | Summoning | Circle Tracer Cookie Defense | compo | 87 | 3.81 | 4.02 | 3.81 | 3.26 | 3.66 | 3.13 | 3.42 | 3.07 | ||
| 2023 | 54 | Limited Space | Too Much Car | compo | 111 | 3.80 | 4.05 | 3.52 | 3.40 | 3.90 | 3.22 | 3.50 | 3.28 | ||
| 2023 | 53 | Delivery | Ghost Pizza | jam | 432 | 3.71 | 3.82 | 3.71 | 4.21 | 3.41 | 3.11 | 3.33 | 3.59 | ||
| 2023 | 52 | Harvest | Pomodoro Panic | compo | 13 | 4.21 | 4.44 | 4.17 | 4.30 | 4.01 | 3.88 | 3.72 | 3.82 | ||
| 2022 | 51 | Every 10 seconds | Balloon Time | compo | 169 | 3.56 | 3.41 | 3.83 | 3.31 | 3.60 | 2.85 | 2.89 | 3.25 | ||
| 2022 | 50 | Delay the inevitable | A Drag on Chaos | compo | 104 | 3.81 | 3.51 | 3.98 | 3.25 | 3.57 | 4.00 | 1.93 | 3.87 | ||
| 2021 | 49 | Unstable | The Amazing Clownzie | compo | 157 | 3.72 | 3.63 | 3.40 | 4.13 | 3.31 | 3.40 | 3.32 | |||
| 2021 | 48 | Deeper and deeper | HyperJack | compo | 249 | 3.70 | 3.70 | 4.04 | 3.82 | 3.75 | 3.20 | 3.18 | 3.14 | ||
| 2020 | 47 | Stuck in a loop | Loop Bouncer | compo | 67 | 3.91 | 3.92 | 3.85 | 4.02 | 3.46 | 3.26 | 2.75 | 3.33 | ||
| 2020 | 46 | Keep it alive | Motobot Defender | compo | 231 | 3.75 | 3.89 | 3.83 | 3.80 | 3.81 | 3.15 | 3.08 | 3.23 | ||
| 2019 | 45 | Start with nothing | Build Or Die | compo | 157 | 3.61 | 3.52 | 3.38 | 3.14 | 3.63 | 2.25 | 2.92 | |||
| 2019 | 44 | Your life is currency | Gravy Train | compo | 37 | 3.92 | 3.97 | 3.87 | 3.08 | 3.68 | 3.48 | 3.90 | 3.68 | ||
| 2018 | 43 | Sacrifices must be made | Slithering Dark | compo | 85 | 3.76 | 3.70 | 3.76 | 3.85 | 3.27 | 3.00 | 2.98 | 3.78 | ||
| 2018 | 42 | Running out of space | A Blob's Life | compo | 14 | 4.13 | 3.96 | 4.38 | 4.46 | 3.81 | 3.56 | 3.53 | 3.66 | ||
| 2018 | 41 | Combine 2 Incompatible Genres | Legend of Zoom | compo | 63 | 3.92 | 4.00 | 3.93 | 4.29 | 3.51 | 2.74 | 3.63 | 3.41 | ||
| 2017 | 40 | The more you have, the worse it is | Dangle Copter | compo | 10 | 4.20 | 4.17 | 4.10 | 4.28 | 3.83 | 3.10 | 3.53 | 3.62 | ||
| 2017 | 39 | Running out of Power | Dashfister | compo | 76 | 3.84 | 4.06 | 3.59 | 3.78 | 3.57 | 2.93 | 3.03 | 3.06 | ||
| 2017 | 38 | A Small World | Rocket Roller Space Polo | compo | 60 | 3.93 | 4.22 | 4.07 | 4.15 | 3.69 | 2.82 | 3.01 | 3.17 | ||
| 2016 | 37 | One room | Don't Eat My Babies | compo | 73 | 3.84 | 4.03 | 3.81 | 3.59 | 3.41 | 3.17 | 3.15 | 3.35 | 76 | |
| 2016 | 35 | Shapeshift | Astro Zoids | compo | 155 | 3.65 | 3.83 | 3.50 | 3.13 | 3.00 | 2.80 | 2.89 | 3.10 | 42 | |
| 2015 | 34 | Two Button Controls / Growing | PSYCHOTENNIS | compo | 16 | 4.20 | 4.40 | 3.61 | 4.08 | 3.46 | 3.82 | 3.10 | 3.83 | 81 | |
| 2015 | 33 | You are the Monster | Flying Purple | compo | 181 | 3.55 | 3.95 | 3.26 | 3.84 | 3.24 | 2.38 | 3.22 | 3.22 | 62 | |
| 2015 | 32 | An Unconventional Weapon | Retroflect | compo | 429 | 3.31 | 3.40 | 3.51 | 3.71 | 2.89 | 2.76 | 1.97 | 2.58 | 61 | |
| 2014 | 31 | Entire Game on One Screen | TURN it UP | compo | 266 | 3.50 | 3.59 | 3.87 | 4.19 | 3.31 | 3.18 | 2.50 | 2.90 | 98 | |
| 2014 | 29 | Beneath the Surface | Splash Europa | compo | 197 | 3.60 | 3.83 | 3.43 | 3.63 | 3.17 | 2.76 | 2.43 | 3.14 | 58 | |
| 2013 | 28 | You Only Get One | Hammer Control | compo | 238 | 3.34 | 3.39 | 3.28 | 3.51 | 3.02 | 2.43 | 2.69 | 2.63 | 100 |
Some interesting stuff here, but superdifficult! I wished that Q would swap with a weapon on the ground. Many times I threw away my weapon to pick up a new one, and I picked back up the old empty one. Also I was a bit unclear on whether the fruit was good or bad. I started the game with bananas one time, but clicking didn't seem to do anything. Stayed away from it and went for the more traditional firearms.
Interesting game - you have the same basic core concept as my game, but a very different take.
My best score was 46 seconds, but every time I died it was because a monster spawned in my face, so mostly I had to learn where not to stand, and still it was a matter of time. I see that this was updated post-compo, so that's a good idea!
Took me several tries to figure out what to do, but after maybe 6 fights I got a KO. Needs more feedback to the user, and a better retry mode than closing the program and rerunning it. Loved the graphical style and the idea was funny.
Ha! Crazy topic and cool style, I spent a while dressing for the first party but I blew it completely. I sort of got the hang of it a little after a few parties, but I missed most of the points.
Leaving a second comment here, because when someone came over and said "So show me something interesting from LD," this game popped into my mind. Gave it another go together and definitely scored a lot more points this time around, having some sort of clue.
Toward the end of this second run I realized you could leave the party... it seemed like maybe you can alter your dress and change who you might appeal to. What a poser. ;) I never exploited this strategy, but I guess it shows how deep you can get into the skill curve of TSAoaAM.
My crude strategy was still to just dress in a generally approval-worthy way and then buzz around to each group while trying not to bump them. I think my chances would improve short-term if I could better make out who is who at the party. I think my chances to learn and get better at the game would improve if it was more in my face than "++!" for example, "Mr Soandso Loves your tie! ++" Or perhaps colored word ballons with "What's the awful smell?" etc, where red loses points and green is good.
However I appreciate that this sort of concrete information may be for the plebians and philistines, and could erode the mystique.
Anyway, thought you might like hearing that your game stuck in my brain after reviewing >100 entries, nice work.
I had fun with this! I kept trying to hit TAB to flip into 3rd person perspective like I used to in Tribes2, to rapidly scan around for the next biggest threat. Any game that invokes rusty old tribes reflexes is okay in my book!
After I got the hang, I lasted 5:30, and my score was 182.
A few thoughts:
- My scariest enemy was the crossbow. Accidentally moving into one was really disruptive. Was there a cancel button?
- I found the most effective way of dealing with then enemies was to butt heads and 'poon them, so that I insta-regrabbed the harpoon.
- The simplistic AI makes it more of "stem the tide" than a strategic battle, but I still think it worked.x
Lots of nice touches here. Responsive controls made it all fun. The squish sound on kills was great, and the tune. Great job.
Great art style!
A well-done escalating puzzle game based on an interesting idea. Three or four levels in I thought it was going to be too easy, but then the difficulty started kicking in.
The font with instructions was extremely hard to read on my system.
This was fun! The way I ended up playing was a bit spammy, and I wasn't sure which type of attack I was doing, or whether I was going to damage an enemy. My weapon could either pass through, or hit them, so I'd just wave repeatedly. Perhaps if I'd understood more clearly then I could have played more carefully.
The screen shake is a nice touch, game some visceral feel to the attacks.
I encountered an error and could not run the game: "AtopADarkMountain.exe is not a valid windows executable."
Sorry. I like the screenshots.
A lot of creativity here. But you did some things that really frustrated me as a player. I felt it was unfair of you to make me jump in the dark and establish that if I messed up I would die, and have to start all over. This established the rules of the game.
Then those rules were broken. I had to faithjump into a brick wall hoping it was secretly passable. Next, you put me next to some spikes, but they also didn't follow the rules. I nearly quit three times missing jumps and having to restart, so it seemed really unfair to make me faithjump and faithspikewalk, risking a brutal restart punishment.
Later, in the bandage area with more fogiving restarts, it was more okay to bend the rules... but you still forced me to jump blindly into a pit to get a bandage.
I understand this was an artistic manipulation of the player and his expectations, and you're expressing the trials the heart may make you go through, and I did play the game to the finish, but I felt unfairly manipulated and abused. Perhaps that was the artistic goal, though.
At any rate, it was pretty interesting and I did finish it all, so good job even if I personally disagree with the treatment.
Very cool - you linked a video on juice as a comment on my game, and playing yours I totally see that you've done a great job at it! It really helps your game stand out.
Cool original concept, good feel, variety of actions to take, nice graphics... you've got a lot here for a solo compo entry!
I did encounter a weird glitch after fighting three guys on an island with a little hill on it, before the cannon section. I got to the end of their island and tried to proceed, but the game kept glitching me backward onto their island, whereas in previous levels it had teleported the boat under my feet. I tried and tried to move forward but could not and almost gave up on the rest of the game. But I finally managed to proceed by going back to my boat and sailing BACKWARDS past the beginning of that checkpoint, at which point I seemed to take damage and then suddenly be in another level with a cannon on my boat. From there I was able to go forward.
The end boss... man, I love that you included an end boss, but it felt really unfair to me. I tried like fifty times. I kept hitting a pole or a box and then he'd eat me. I think that the time it took for the pole/box to come onto the screen, I basically had to already be jumping, or at least my reflexes were not up to the task. My "strategy" was to memorize what background hills were just before the obstacle, and then jump at the memorized position. This was not really a valid challenge, in my personal opinion, though maybe you meant it on purpose as a throwback to certain old-school styles, which I can understand but don't personally enjoy. If I was supposed to somehow stand and fight the shark, I didn't figure that out, and you can blame me for being a dummy.
My final nitpick (and I only nitpick because this is such an otherwise strong game), is that the sharks in level 1 were a bit dull, as you just kind of stop to wait for them. Except for the first time when I didn't know then, if they hit me, it was because I got bored of waiting. I think with a small adjustment something more interesting could have been going on with them.
Anyway, couple of minor flaws aside this is a very strong entry! Excellent work, I'm really impressed by the level of presentation polish on this game.
Wow great work, full package with tons of polish!
Was I supposed to walk back to the beginning of the game to talk to that guy about upgrades? Walking wasn't fun enough for that. Preferred rocketing the next screen of enemies, never went back, if there are upgrade guys later I never made it that far.
LOVE the choice to insta-restart on fail, thank you for not wasting my time and not making me replay the same parts over and over in a jam game.
I felt like the mechanics were really good, but somehow juuust short of being a totally amazing strategy-type game. I did get into some combo hits by shooting further away guys and stacking mult-kills with the return of the rocket fist, but I never really got into the planning+execution feel that I wished for. Not a criticism really, this is great, but it almost reached a really amazing level with the mechanics.
A very unique idea - cool!
Good production skills on this, but man those invisible walls really messed me up. I could sometimes walk into the forest, other times not. I'd throw an axe, and not being an expert I would miss, but then the axe would be lost behind invisible walls. Once I got trapped in the woods and struggled against invisible walls to get back to the path.
Also it would be nice if disabling the catapult had some feedback, sometimes I wasn't sure.
But great graphical style, nice song, cool idea.
Many cool touches, and while the aiming was tough, it was not unfair.
It seemed a little rough that someone could be a bandit, and I pull my trigger, and then while the bullet is in the air he's not a bandit anymore. I kept worrying about it and glancing over at the countdown meter, but I guess that's as designed? Also, WHERE ARE YOU, PERFECT SIX??
Wow, so much about this was just totally awesome... what polish! I played it through twice.
I did find punching guys in the face a little thin, though. Most fights ended up with me standing overlapping them, both of us whaling away not connecting. If I backed up to make my fist hit their face, though, I'd end up with my back to them very often and get hit.
The second time I beat the boss I got him stuck in the corner and he fell right into a kick lockdown.
An impressive game, though. You put a little more into the actual combat and you've got a fun micro-romp through nostalgia town.
All the delays in the wrong places! Made me watch the intro screen more than it let me play, and then launched abruptly into flinching toward the ball which was already falling, and then once I was unhappy with my first line, it was all downhill from there.
Still, a cool idea and a nice graphical style.
I love that you included all of the fine touches from that "art of screenshake" video, they paid off.
But I had some issues. The reload screen takes a really long time. The generation of the Pit is really inconsistent. Most levels simply weren't valid and no enemies would ever come. The combination of these two factors cut down on my desire to replay again and again.
A few tweaks and this could be a blast, though. Nice work on art and sound and juice.
Cool stuff! Reminded me of my old Tetris Attack days, but turn based. Played through the end, nice work.
Nice work putting a whole package together! I wish the alligators were more lively, though. Also ran into a couple of issues; alligators spawned before my eyes, and later I got stuck in a wall and died.
One of those peons dared to defy me!
I don't know whether it was a bug or willful disobedience, but believe me he was dealt with... although some innocents may have suffered in the process.
Regarding your game, I heard it cry out silently for excellent hilarious sound, but that's quite an ask.
Got to this game after clicking on a your name from a semi-sarcastic comment you left on another game, glad I did!
It's a good thing that this game has no directions. At first I was totally lost, but gradually I pieced it together, and it was pretty satisfying to open the box.
Very unusual entry, just what a jam is for. I have to say that the sound seemed to be clipping a bit on my system, which was a shame. Problem could be on my end, but you might need to back the levels off a touch, I dunno. Nice job!
Cool game, played a bunch.
Two thoughts:
1. Something up with the controls. Let's say there's a wall to my right, and I push right until I contact the wall. Then I push down while not letting go of right. I start to walk down, along the wall, never letting go of right. Then the wall ends and I expect to move DOWN+RIGHT. Except I do not move right, despite having the right button held down. I can then let go of down, and be in a state where I am not touching any walls, I am holding down a move button, but I am not moving. This really screwed me up a large number of times in dodging, because I would bump into a hut or something for one instant, and suddenly that direction would stop responding until I released/repressed the key.
2. The autoaim was an interesting choice. Took me a moment to figure out what was going on. It mostly worked fantastic... until I discovered that I could pair with the fact that you DONT SHOOT when there are no enemies around to create the technique I will call "GUNDAR." GUNDAR is when you walk around the level always jamming the shoot button. If nothing happens, relax, there are no enemies around. If bullets come out, they will point in the direction of the nearest enemy (even offscreen) and they will often kill him before you even see him. Once I found this it was hard not to abuse the heck out of it.
2.9. I think I led a guy into a mine and prepared for the awesome... but nothing happened. Maybe I'm wrong and he just barely missed it. Really wanted it to blow him up so I could feel clever.
Fun game!
Supercool, so glad I didn't read the directions.
Controls a bit wonky, I kept struggling against them, first feeling that I couldn't move enough and then suddenly getting unstuck and overshooting my target, which was the only mar in an otherwise sweet experience.
I liked it! It was fun to pick my different upgrades. I struggled to make use of them well once the heavy waves started coming. I lasted until #10.
Took a few rounds before I realized I could hit enter to skip the wait, because the font with the hint was really small.
With a game as unforgiving as this, I always wish for a brisker pace. I wanted the guy to walk faster, but more than anything I wanted the gameoverrestart loop to be much much shorter. This game inspired keyboard hammering while I waited impatiently.
But otherwise a very nice job, cool graphics and sound and polish. I abused walking on the heads of the enemies to avoid having to jump down from the crate, was that as intended? I had no idea it was possible until I did it by mistake.
Good job on the sound and lighting, it creates a real feel. I wandered around trying to find an exit, but no luck.
I also punched a few bats, but after you fill your pocket SPACE uses your one item instead of punching, and I was reluctant to use it so I could punch more. I found I had a healing potion, full health, and then I'd run into bats guarding a healing potion. They weren't aggressive, so I just passed them by in peace.
Was this a piece about discovering the futility of violence?
Cool atmosphere! I would have liked this even more if it was tougher. Nice job weaving the tutorial content into the playing.
Had some fun with this! I was doing pretty well, until I got to the level with a blue triangle and a blue... trapazoid maybe? It had three distinct groups of stars. I started to feel like I wasn't in perfect control of the cannon, like if I hit left-arrow once then right-arrow once, I might not end up where I started.
Two hugely helpful choices you made were 1) allowing R to restart the level at ANY TIME instead of making me watch it play out (you can make the stars dance by jamming R, try it), and 2) the same shot always did the same thing. If either of those were not the case I think the game would be far, FAR less enjoyable than it was, so great work on the small choices there.
You did a lot of things right here!
Most tank games, in my opinion, make the vehicle so slow that it's not fun, while yours was in between a car feel and a tank feel, which I thought was great. Slower would have been boring, and faster gets a bit too hard to control and has problems because you can't see what's coming.
Also some great little touches, such as the brake lights, and the dirt flying out the back when I get moving from a stop. I was going to say the turrets let me out-range them and gimp them all... but then later in the level the turrets did NOT have that flaw, so I realized it was a progression of difficulty choice.
Well done, I love vehicle combat games but the genre is full of pitfalls, you avoided most of them.
A few small points of feedback:
- I think skidding is what takes a vehicles "feel" over the top. Even a tank could reasonably skid on grass. It might seem hard to implement, and it depends on your logic, but I had some luck implementing skids in the past using a "traction limit" and if the "asked" traction exceeds the limit, you give them the full limit, and then only a percentage of the portion above the limit. This creates a slide when turning at big speeds that I think adds a ton of fun to any vehicle game. That's just my opinion, of course.
- I strugged to get through a few tight areas, particularly the final turret on the narrow beach.
- I think battles would have been a bit more dynamic if the map was structure a little differently. Mostly the walls created an open space, so the battle was inside walls, but no walls were inside the battle.
- Maybe it's less challenging, but I like the idea of near misses in this sort of game with leading and fast targets. What if my shell would LAND where I clicked (beyond a certain range) and have an explosion with splash damage?
Anyway, that's a lot of comments, but I wish more people did vehicle combat!
Love the way the kick flings you forward.. I found the kick pretty effective, started throwing my arrow away at the start. But then, I didn't beat it.
I agree with the comments that it's a bit too hard, but it was fun to throw the boomerang around! Found myself holding shift almost the entire time, wishing I was a bit more nimble given how hard it was.
The misty darkness created a cool ominous atmosphere, and I saw hints of bacon in the trees.
But I lost suddenly every time and was not really aware of the attacks on my pig or where to go. I know I let bacon get him, but it felt like I just suddenly was sent back to the menu screen.
I really liked this. Very different, and fun to figure out the puzzles. After about fifty tries I did give up on the end boss. I figured that I had to get up onto the platform to get to the rocks, but I never got above ground level, despite many, many, MANY attempts. I couldn't seem to chain eye-swings together, and the large collider around my body kept... arg. I guess I just did it wrong.
Considering how stripped-down this was, I was surprised how much I enjoyed it.
Interesting concept and some good stuff, but a few snags got in the way of having a lot of fun. Two points of feedback here:
- It took me quite a while to realize I could shoot through the walls. My first five deaths or so, I kept thinking I had to get line-of-sight before I could shoot the monsters. If you do try to get in view to shoot, you're too close by then and you are dead meat.
- The monster AI I think just moves to the absolute-value closest to the player, without regard for whether there is a wall in the way. I know that fancy AI and pathfinding can be a real problem. I cut "walls" as a feature before I even started for this reason, and I *still* spent more time on AI than anything else in my game. My point is that your monsters got totally stuck, and as a player exploiting this was my main means of killing enemies harmlessly, which is no doubt not your intended feature. I think that if you add walls and enemies, you are almost forced to use basic pathfinding. Try Dijkstra's algorithm for a really simple one that is easy to implement and probably would have been enough for this game. A* is the other biggie I guess, but you can use "Dijkstra Maps" to solve the pathfinding problem for ALL the monsters at once.
For the first six or seven games my best score was 4.
But I kind of got the hang of it, plus got a little luck, and together I got a score of 24!
I also found a monster that wasn't the wizard, one time. He was enormous and destroyed me, of course.
I'm sorry, this sounded interesting but it also wouldn't run on my computer. The title screen started okay, but when I clicked to play it closed, launched a new window, and that window was blank forever.
Nice job for your first LD! I think you taught my GF platforming, she was much better the second time level 1 came around. ;)
Some of those maidens never had a chance because a key didn't spawn. And those orange blocks really misled me. Was there a powerup that made them solid for me?
Congrats on completing a full game!
johnfn - Yes! Combo counters with a little popup at the bottom saying "Bank Shot!" and "Triple Kill!!" were the next thing I was implementing if I had time... I really regretted cutting that feature. That and a boss fight of some kind.
To everyone saying they couldn't stand still and aim:
Standing still while aiming is absolutely essential, and it is supported. No wonder you are frustrated, that sucks if it didn't work for you.
When you are not sprinting, there is a "dead zone" around the man where the mouse will make him aim but not make him move. Try holding the pointer closer to him... this dead zone is about 1.5x his shoulder span. I apologize that this didn't simply work out without you even thinking about it, that's on me.
Perhaps people are playing with the mouse further away from the man than I expected. I'm afraid that's not optimal, given how I coded it.
Note that while sprinting this dead zone contracts greatly, but still should allow aiming without moving.
I could be wrong, but I suspect those of you who were keeping the mouse pointer quite far from the man may not realize how nimble he can be. Escaping death by stepping into a tiny safe space based on a lightning-fast decision is the only way to survive the later levels.
This game gets pretty ridiculous by the time you get to level 30!
Very cool, just a bit short.
I escaped, but was there a use for the items? I didn't use one because it makes the guards not like you.
Wow, this was very cool! The story kept me hanging in there through a lot of retries, and it was great that your retry loop was really tight so that it didn't punish me with waiting. Loved the graphics and sound - you really created a mood.
I love the art style! Comes together with the humor really well, and I liked getting to choose mechanics. I'm sure open crates was better, but who can say no to "more gravestones"?
Check out your game because we had the same core idea: throw your weapon, and then have to go get it. Wanted to see your take. Loved it! Played a bunch.
I almost quit at the part where the arrows shoot over a pit with four of the back-n-forthers in it. Just so much waiting in between each failure. But I persevered and had some fun! Loved scoring multi-kills, I think my best was a quad.
This game was excellent, but one fatal flaw ruined my experience. Excuse me if I go on about it a bit, but this has so much potential I feel I must.
The game is quite difficult, which would have been totally fine, except that every time I die I have to sit through an extremely long introduction all over again!
This is game-breaking.
I wanted to replay over and over, but I very quickly lost heart. I was there slamming buttons on my keyboard and mouse to skip the intro, but nothing seemed to work. It actually made me angry that I couldn't enjoy more of your game.
I suggest that no more than 4-5 seconds should stand between game over and the ship flying into the hole again. If it was me, I would have picked 2 seconds. I would have played easily 10x as long, but it felt like more than half my experience was the intro screen over and over. (Yes that means I suck at the game, but you didn't let me learn without brutal punishment.)
Other than this your game is totally awesome, with mood and sound and graphics and tight control and good difficulty all wrapped in a cool idea... I've rated it quite highly but your fun score did get a ding.
Additional minor points of feedback:
- I felt that my own ship blocked my view. This was never actually a problem, but I felt apprehensive that it would be one. Sometimes I rolled just to have a look around.
- Having to click again and again to shoot is a bit of a problem, since your game requires precision mouse control and hammering the button might introduce little inaccuracies in the movement control. But holding the button down to perma-fire the entire game is not appealing either. There must be some happy middle ground, such as firing 4 rapid shots with each click or something.
I hope that's not too much commentary. Great job, you have excellent craft.
Real tough, but should have been possible for me to survive, so it's challenging but fair.
Looks like this LD has two games where you throw a hammer against a snake and then have to go pick it back up!
Nice graphics and concept, but I never got a fluid feel of using the hammer. I had to charge up in advance of a fight, and then leap to stand, then throw. I should be able to use my hammer in the flow of movement, imo. Maybe I just wasn't good enough at the game, though.
Interesting - you had a similar concept to my game Hammer Control! There's another one with a spear, too, called Javel-Ein from the jam, and one with an arrow called Titan Souls.
What an entry. Really amazing. But way too difficult and punishing for my personal taste, so I didn't play that much of it. 95% of my experience was commuting, which is not something I am prepared to tolerate, even for a game this nice. I respect the design decision, though.
What a mind-bender! Nice work on the visuals and weirdo movement controls, it all felt very alien. Out of my way, catlady, can't you see I'm thirsty and the lightningarrow is pointing right through you!?
Impossible until I figured out I had to get metal and make new ships, then still really hard but I started to get it.
I haven't tried them all, but somehow I'm confident this is the only game in the jam where you'll be left with just a head and one arm, dragging your bloody carcass onward. Really triggers the imagination.
Recommend any future immortals go on a quest for the rune of detect traps before undertaking this quest.
Fantastic sound design - wandered around for a while exploring and throwing torches, you really set a mood.
I beat it! It took me maybe like 15 minutes or a bit more.
The key realization was the little green "forward" vector indicator, and realizing the way that my control came completely from that thing, and that I would reset that thing every time I impacted. I didn't pick up on this at ALL for the first three or four times.
You have a very interesting mechanic here, but even better you made it so it was very easy for me to retry when I died, and to experiment. Also it seemed randomly generated every time so it was always a bit of a different puzzle each run.
The best moment for me was when I didn't die, but I did get stuck in an annoying cluster of "friendly" polygons that was more like a prison. Well, I decided to hit "R" the button I can hit to respawn after I die... and sure enough, it restarted me!
So I have to say good job respecting the player's time and having that tight retry loop that allowed me to enjoy experimenting and failing just as much as success.
In fact, I was almost sorry to see the bottom at 256.
Great job.
If I try to think of something constructive but critical to say, I am hard-pressed, but I guess I would say this: I didn't do as much forward planning as I think your game system would allow. I am far from certain if it's a good idea, but if it were my game I would experiment with zooming the camera out a tiny bit to allow for more thinking ahead. If that worked, my next experiment would be to juice up the speed slightly, or at least to add a speed increase choice to the options.
Solid compact little entry, nice work.
Very cool how it got darker the deeper you went, so it was up to you how difficult you dared to make it! And better not forget about that return trip.
I also thought it was an interesting choice to make the enemy hits continue throughout contact. That way instead of saying "oops I got hit" like you do in a lot of games, you say "oh no I *AM* getting hit I better run for it!"
Nice work.
Whao, I expected something crazy from the screen shots, but this was even more nuts than I thought it could be!! A slick, wild ride... well done!
I wish it showed me the number of fish I speared at the end of the level, so I could feel like I needed to ride the wave better just one more time.
Great backing music track that got me in the mood to blast stuff, and you have the graphics and programming here for a nice solid fight into the dark depths.
But I felt that three design decisions held you back, and obviously you might disagree, just my opinion. I hope it's okay if I provide a bit of negative feedback because you *almost* had it:
1. Pace is too slow. Everything should be sped up 4x imo. Player, bullet, enemy.
2. Blind jumps aren't fair. The first thing you taught me player was that it's safe and necessary to do blind jumps. Then you punish harshly for blind jumps, then you make it necessary again. The final moment of playing the game, I had to guess if the correct blind jump was down, or to the right. I guessed wrong and was sent back to the start of the game.
3. No checkpoints is a mistake here, I think. Given the slow pace, and the errors by jumping as players explore, and the way everything is in the same place each time, the from-the-top restart meant most of my experience was repeating already-seen content instead of experiencing new content.
Anyway I don't mean to be harsh, you did a good job putting together a package here. I left critical feedback because you accomplished the hard part of implementing, but the experience fell short because of a few tweaks. Sorry!!
Nice work getting mutliplayer w high scores, though I didn't happen to see someone else playing.
Solid implementation that ran well and had a little of everything, but I felt it was too easy, or maybe too slow. The enemies eventually won by having huge numbers of them but I felt like I had nearly maxed out the killing I could do.
Neat, but not enough danger/reward to keep me going for very long... I did have some interesting puzzle moments trying to get a few leaves down. What I liked was trying to get the leaf, you would create a mess in your wake (or with the other ants) and then you'd have to try to get the other ants to dig out the leaf-carrier and make a path for him.
Can I leave the first room? Wasn't sure if I was just bad, or if that's the whole thing.
Solid SmashTV-type shooter implemented here. Would have loved to see a bit more content, like sound and additional enemy types.
A real brain-bender! Keeping track of everything was really tricky, I got to fingerspaz mode pretty quick.
Good execution, you had a little of everything with graphics, sound, music, a HUD, etc. But I thought the sharks were a little too similar and non-sharkey to keep me replaying.
There was a bug on level 2 where I went off the top of the screen and got stuck outside the game world.
Wow, flying in the dark is nuts, cool touch! Had me on the edge in a good way. Love the style, too, you nailed the look.
Seeing this game is very interesting, because I started from the same core idea! In some ways we made the same game: a side-scrolling space ship flying under the ice on Europa. But in other ways we made the exact opposite game: yours is about moving a straight line to avoid waves, while mine is moving a wave to avoid along a straight line. Give it a try and see what you think of the inversion.
Quick point of feedback - it took me a second to realize I had to hit right to start moving my ship in your game, you could add that to your text instructions in the note here.
I liked this game! Fun and different. The only issue was that the controls were a bit wonky, which made it hard to take risks out of water for fear of getting stuck.
Cool concept! Liked the sense of humor, enjoyed that was both dodging and hitting things in the unusual contest.
Wished there a wave to ride though, I didn't really feel like I was surfing. I liked the little graphics touches you had, like the animated wave thing on the water's surface, and the chunks taken out of the surf board.
Cool mechanic and a nice implementation! I think a few touches of polish would have gone a long way, mostly around shooting the gun and having bullets hit the bats, and also when the player takes damage.
Cool game for such a short time! Controls were something new and difficult to explore. I learned to be very careful, and I tried many times but I never did better than four. Well done!
I tried it because I saw your blog post with the animated gif, and I also made a game about a ship that moves in curves under water, but it turns out they are very different.
All right!! Cool game with a lot of interesting ideas. I liked it so much I decided right off the bat that I would finish it and take notes so I could give you better feedback.
I completed the game, and I had 269 gold at the end I think.
I died just about the right amount, and the puzzle aspects were also spot on in terms of how long I had to think about them. I liked that the "rules" of the gameworld were a bit different than I'd dealt with before, and I had to use a number of tools. I enjoyed the mix of thinking and execution puzzles.
Also I am totally going to google soundhelix because that generated music was quite a nice touch. The sounds were all appropriate as well.
Now, since the game is good, I feel okay giving a bit of negative feedback as well, here are a few points that hurt my experience:
- The spacebar jumped in the game, but it also scrolled down in my browser, taking about 1/3rd of the game off the screen. Thank goodness W also jumped, or I couldn't have played. I hit Space reflexively a number of times, including in the final boss fight when I didn't have time to stop playing and scroll back up.
- Some of your levels had more entities on the screen than your game engine could handle, at least on my machine, which isn't cutting edge but is no slouch. Levels with to many slimes or too many blocks slowed down to a lurching jerky experience, though it didn't prevent me from proceeding. The reward at the end of the game had so many itmes that it totally became impossible and even "not responding"ed by browser, but obviously that was not the end of the world. I am happy to say that the many arrows and handful of enemies during the boss fight did not slow down enough to hurt the experience, so that was fine.
- I felt uncomfortable in the handful of instances where you required me to jump off the top of the screen and not be visible. It was never a real problem.
- I had an unexpected death when I used E to sail on a blockset over some lava, and when I un-E'ed and went to step off, a piece of gold in the lava pushed the block back away from the shore exactly as I went to step off, and I fell in. I experimented with this one more time, and it felt a bit weird the way the parts interact in that setup.
- Lastly, there was one spot in the game where I died maybe four or five times and was frustrated. It was where you are climbing up and you smash some bricks, and there are slimes above you. The third slime up, he falls down on you. I had a plan, but the way he moved while falling, I dunno, it didn't work out how I planned the first three times, and then I did what I thought was the same thing again but that time it did work. My fault, I'm sure, but that was the one and only death that I repeated.
Overall, excellent work!
Yeah, addictive. I don't even play these kinds of click-n-watch games at ALL, but this one sucked me in anyway! I think it might have been the sounds. If there was anything I'd change, it would be the move the menu over to the side instead of having it be an overlay. I left it open all the time and it felt a little bit odd being over the game area. Totally not a big deal at all, just a tiny thing.
You got to Level 38 but only wrecked 94 ships?!? I'm impressed, you must have gotten good at controlling it.
Funny you ask about Android - I've been wanting to play it on the go, too, so I am planning to port it tonight. I will add the link here as soon as it's ready, check back soon! It's my first Android port though, so I'm not sure how smoothly it will go... Hopefully not too hard with Unity.
Very glad to hear you enjoyed it that much.
Folks, the mobile version with touch controls is up and I think it feels good! Please test it and let me know if you have any trouble, and how it looks/feels on your device.
Hope you enjoy your Splash on the go.
Thanks!
I finished the whole game. Nice work, especially for what looks like your first Ludum Dare game.
What I liked: My favorite thing was that you made the surface of the sea active, that you made it get rougher through the game, and that you made it impact my movement. I also liked that you had a complete package that had progressive missions that ran to completion, I stuck around and finished the whole game because you told me there were six challenges and I knew I could complete them. The "big thing" at the end was a nice humorous mystery.
What I personally would have changed: The pace - I would have made everything a bit faster, including the boat, the rope, and the impact of waves on the boat. BUT that is personal preference! I like more arcade-type games, but it's totally fine if the slower pace was a deliberate taste, after all it's a fishing game.
I struggled badly to move on the final mission. There was a flying fish just left of me when I started, but I could not get there. I held down the left button but the ship was stuck in the waves. I'm afraid I never QUITE understood how the waves affected my ship. The final mission for me, I had to find a flying fish to finish, and I spent like 7-10 minutes just holding down the right button, inching along extreeeeeemely slowly.
Still, it was worth it to have the sea get rough, cuz that was my favorite part!
Lastly, a technical note. I ran it in firefox and it kinda worked, but the surface of the sea was not rendered. I wouldn't have known this if I didn't see your screenshot, but I did so I switched over to chrome and it worked fine.
Anyway, a lot of rambling there, but good job making a complete game with some nice touches!
Yeah, shoot, I had the city-not-loading, too. I tried both chrome and firefox, but no dice, sorry.
There's a very cool feel to this game, the sound is great and the look is nice too. It really feels well-polished.
I had a number of misunderstandings about how to play... I didn't realize the colors had to match, even though that's dumb of me!
I finally got the basics, but without the city it was hard to gauge what was working.
What I liked about the game rules was when I made a match, I would lay down a track that would later get in the way for a future match, so the track was both good and bad. Causing my own mess is a cool type of strategy game, so nice work on that. Once things got ugly they could spiral out of control.
Yeah man, where's the game? I want to try it and see how our mechanics compare! Not gonna build from source though, sorry.
This was a really cool idea for the theme, and along with the music and art made the mood come together.
I did get tired of walking places, though, which extra-hurt when I died. Maybe if the guy were increased in speed something like 60% faster?
What a great idea for a game. Really grabbed my attention, and the graphical style totally worked.
I found it to be too hard, though. I feel weird saying that, as my own game is very hard and I like hard games, but I suppose what got me here was that the difficulty came from the momentum of the character. Instead of using a tightly-controller character to solve a difficult challenge, I was fighting against the looseness of the control. Maybe I'm just being a wimp, though.
Still a strong game, but I didn't get past the third level where you have to jump on the individual pixels. Got to the first checkpoint but many dozens of retries I finally gave up as frustration overwhelmed me.
Yeah... What a wimp. Nice work, but I didn't extract the full measure of fun.
Great job! Loved the music and the theme. The only thing that kept me from finishing it was having to start all over from the beginning when I got shot, but I did retry a bunch so it wasn't bad.
Sorry you had a tech issue trying to play my game, I dunno why Unity player would refuse your input but I did see that happen to one guy who tested, he played in Chrome, no dice it ignored all inputs, then he played in FF, was fine, then Chrome again and was fine. Never managed to explain it!
Fun little sim, I built the whole thing up twice and wished I could chop down forests to build some more. The feel was really there, with the art and the gurgling sound.
It would be interesting to see where it could go if you kept working on it. The way it was, life was a little too easy for the oil tycoon, but I could see the parts were there to make it tougher!
Wow!! Awesome gradual unveiling of the content that really sucked me in. Such a simple game would have gotten old but it was growing at a great pace where I wondered what was going to be next. Difficulty was also spot on - just exactly frustrating enough.
Smart design decisions really made the content shine.
Haha what a fun little game! I would like to say thanks to my friends the birds, because without them I don't know, I think I would have lost my island much sooner.
Good job on a fun little arcade game.
A+! This is just the kind of game I like to play and make in these jams. You've got an interesting novel physics combined with simple difficult gameplay that forces you to take it to the extreme. And to get there, you need to bend your brain a little.
Your polish is also awesome, game looked and felt great.
Hyper mode was a sinister addition, love that you added it, though I couldn't hang.
My scores were 23:90 on normal mode, and 7:52 on hyper.
What this game didn't make top 100 for fun?? I need to reevaluate my life.
Hahaha ohh man, that's nuts. I got the body together but the hat was just too much! That's what I get for taking the easy way out and moving the head to the body in phase 1, though!
My main complaint with this game would be the retry button. I am playing the game with my keyboard but you make me move my hand off and over to the mouse to retry, that's a big no-no in a game where you die this often/fast.
Nice little entry though, made me laugh.
Very cool! I liked the interesting mechanic with the tradeoff between moving sideways and falling into the black hole, and the presentation and challenge were both strong!
I didn't win, but I played a bunch of times. The top from Andrea to Alt-Enter for fullscreen really made an immersive experience.
The sound created by the movement was a nice artistic touch that added to the experience. In fact the whole thing looked and sounded very nice, lots of great small touches coming together to make simple graphics shine.
Well done.
Several very cool things here! The tiny graphics are tight, the way you "disobey" the layout fitting on the screen in the traditional sense, and the random generation that keeps retrying interesting all work very well together.
Controls were also nice and tight.
Really nice entry, great job. Only thing I needed was a little more variety.
Very nice visual effects, particularly liked the square confetti stuff.
SO EXCITED BY TITLE!!
So disappointed by platform support. :(
That said, I know you Linux folks are on the other side of that one often enough so I can't complain really. Maybe you could release a youtube video so I could at least see it in action, because I'm very curious.
Interesting but pretty short. There was also a problem that I could see my mouse cursor turn into the clicking-hand when I hovered over things, which made the puzzles a bit off. For example I knew which circles could be clicked on, and I didn't need to use the flashlight etc.
Cool start to something though!
Did you really draw that nice door? It looked great.
Dang I got my truck stuck! Flipped it over once and was able to recover. Second time I really blew it and it got stuck forever, so I never made it to the end.
Very clever idea for the theme and a really nice feel to the presentation. Good job!
Really nice animations and good modeling! That's ambitious to take on for a jam like this. I found the AI a bit too easy, personally, and could have used a little variety.
I played but there was nobody else on, so of course some of the experience I did not get and I had to use my imagination.
But I thought it was very nicely done. The sound was particularly good, and the art was nice. I also liked the controls. It must have been tricky to design them, because there are a lot of scenarios to cover. It took a little experimentation (good thing nobody was throwing snowballs at me I guess!) to figure out the various combinations, but I think you made a lot of good calls on how to use the buttons for things like climbing, digging up, etc.
Nice work!
Very fun. It's a cool simple idea that you made shine with nice cartoon graphics and good sound effects.
I did encounter a technical issue where the sound effects stopped playing around the time the first crab with a shield appeared. A minute after that the music stopped and the game was still fully functional otherwise, but silent.
I think there was definitely a good idea at the core of this game, but the play was a bit too much for me to juggle. I tried a lot of times. At first I couldn't get past the blue lasers coming down, then I went back to it later and tried with a lot more tab-checkpointing, like every time I could bring it to a stop. But I still couldn't get past those narrow green platforms. The guy just slides too much!
My feeling is that the blind play required by this was at odds with the slight soupiness in the controls. The way the camera moved meant I didn't really know where on the screen stuff was, and I didn't have a feel for my own kinematics due to the inertia. The double-jump was juuust wonky enough that I couldn't quite plan out in advance what I was going to do. So rolled together I would leap and then feel lost. Sorry! You were so close!
Platformer controls are tough to get just right for the specific game - I put a bit too much inertia on my own game as well, and regret it.
Fortunately in your game I could play a bit further once I gave up and used the X key. Before that my tactic was to just spam jkljkljkljkl, etc. The battery probably was a weak point in the design because I could always just hit T and reset it, so it wasn't a meaningful limitation for me.
Love that you went after such a tough concept, bold try and good jamming!
Cool game. I avoided blind guessing and gathered clues first. I think a few times I came into the second half of a conversation because I'd found an item before talking to someone, but that's okay.
I suspected the ending but it was cool anyway!
Not a lot of replay but that's just fine for an LD, it was a fun one-and-done and I think I found all the interactions in the game so no replay is ok. Finding the hidden room was nice.
Nice job. Pace of walking was tiny bit slow imo.
Wow this game is really good! It was punishing, but most of the time I felt the death was my own fault and I wanted to keep playing.
There as some nice depth to this game.. The enemies were each interesting and took a little while to figure out, and even then they were tough. There was also a good balance between strategies of keeping the board clear vs sprinting ahead for chests.
I wasn't very good, I only got 5, but I could see myself coming back for another try on this one, it was memorable.
Plus it had a great look and a very nice feel with lots of attention to detail.
Very nice work.
Miners saved, and all upgrades sold out!!
This was good design on your part - such an extremely basic game and you made me want to play it for quite a while with the gradual unveiling. Nice work!
Seems like a great idea but I was a bit lost even after several games. I had a great setup with the monster killing villagers coming in, and got a lot of them. But they just pounded the house down.
I did not get to a point where I knew how to effectively use the room rotation ability of the doctor.
Very nice ambiance and the graphics are very cool. Plus an ambitious game concept based on the theme. Cool stuff!
Tough game, but cool! I got to 18 kills. Interesting how much I had to move the mouse to do fast slashing, I was flinging that thing all around!
Why did you opt out of audio? You have sound effects and even background music!
Wow this was fun and funny, and it had a broad scope with cool art. I really enjoyed this entry, great job with it!
I did lose the fistfight SO many times I gave up though. Guess I'm just not man enough!
Wow, my lady and I had quite a time playing this one. I was pretty terrible at the mixing. Well, and the drawing. She crushed me! A+ job, this was really slick and fun. A strong vision fully realized.
Hahaha crazy and fun! I enjoyed fooling around with this one, some really insane moments. Nice work.
Nice graphics and sound, too.
I like what you've done with such a small scope here, that's good jamming! I liked the challenge. My high score was only 117 but I felt like I could have done much better, which I think is just what you want in a game like this... it kept my trying "one more time."
I think you should have a screenshot up with an impressive high score, since you are the developer, I snuck that into one of my screen shots on my own game but we'll see if anybody notices and takes up the challenge. ;)
I did notice one bug while playing. There's something wrong with the detection of whether the ball went through the hoop. The first time I got it through the hoop, I did not get the fifty points. Then later, several times I did get fifty points when I DIDN'T get it through the hoop. It seems like if I bounce it off the bottom of the hoop sometimes I get the bonus incorrectly.
No big deal though! Nicely done.
I bet this game would benefit greatly from a little juice. The ball was a bit dead. The few sounds it made were a huge help but if it jiggled and pulsed as it bounced around or particles flew out as it scored, I bet it would be a huge improvement in the feel of interacting with it.
This was very cool. I didn't mind the lack of objective, and just enjoyed the bleak atmosphere. I worked on sneaking around the map and exploring the nooks and crannies.
With the feel down, if you get the right objective and balance, you could really have something here.
One technical thing I noticed: if I shoot and hit a zombie out of visible range, I still see blood spurts. So I can kind of probe around at a distance and know where to shoot the machine gun.
Cool start.
Cool idea, I played til my fingers hurt from shooting. I think with the kiting a mass of them, you could have really taken it to another level with a second kind of enemy that had a different pattern.
Sweet graphics!
Wow, you did a lot with one screen here, that's great!
The control scheme was very tight, too. When I got in the zone, a few times I surprised myself by quickly making a set of jumps (for example over the first lava part) perfectly just by reflex. That means your controls were set up well, I think!
I did experience two difficulties. First, the very first time I played the game I started looking at the screen. There was a lot of stuff and I didn't know where my character was. But within a second or two I started to take damage, quickly. I died before I even learned where to look on the screen. Perhaps the ghost should leave you alone in the initial room, and only chase once you pass through the first door. That way a new player can practice the keys and even figure out that he's at the top of the pyramid. Of course this didn't matter anymore once I learned.
The second problem was technical. I tried it in two different browsers, but it happened in both. I kept having trouble getting my guy to fall through the first door. I died many times from the ghost killing me in the first room while I was walking back and forth over the hole and not falling down. Because I died so many times up there, I did not try for the challenge of escaping more than I died - I died WAY more than I escaped. ;)
But those were minor problems and I thought the game was very effective once I got out of that first room. Nice job taking the theme seriously and stretching what you could do!
Cool stuff here, but I think the full restart might be a bit too harsh for an LD. I wanted to see more of your game but I didn't want to re-do the start over and over.
I loved the graphics feel and the character was pretty tight to control, nice work. I played a decent bit and had fun but I would have gone all the way if I could have restarted the same room, or back one room, or something.
Interesting game! I lost quickly the first couple of times, but then I got the hang of it.
I won, but I felt like a cheated a little. I just found a spot where no enemies ever came, and I put my core there. Then I just sat back and watched the stuff go by for a while, and finally the victory screen came up.
The audio was nice, the right level of relaxing.
Oh, and toward the end I discovered I could click on a blue swirl I hadn't noticed before and then on my core and it shot little things that healed me... was that supposed to be central to my play? Once I lost most of my hexes it didn't seem like I could have won if I didn't find that safe spot nobody ever hit.
I took a screen shot of the safe spot in case that was not intended: http://i.imgur.com/Yxvpjmg.png
Once there I did nothing the rest of the game, but won.
Interesting game! I lost quickly the first couple of times, but then I got the hang of it.
I won, but I felt like a cheated a little. I just found a spot where no enemies ever came, and I put my core there. Then I just sat back and watched the stuff go by for a while, and finally the victory screen came up.
The audio was nice, the right level of relaxing.
Oh, and toward the end I discovered I could click on a blue swirl I hadn't noticed before and then on my core and it shot little things that healed me... was that supposed to be central to my play? Once I lost most of my hexes it didn't seem like I could have won if I didn't find that safe spot nobody ever hit.
I took a screen shot of the safe spot in case that was not intended: http://i.imgur.com/Yxvpjmg.png
Once there I did nothing the rest of the game, but won.
Cool - I played this longer than I expected to! I'll confess I didn't finish, though... I switched hands because I got cramped up and then eventually gave up when I had to sneak through the triple tiny saw blades.
You made me feel satisfied when I did get past one by making it so hard!
You also did a good job with the tight platformer controls, which of course is critical in a game like this. The new dangers were unexpected and cool. Particularly nice on corners, and the slight sliding on slopes.
A game this difficult requires a faster retry loop I think. There's a lot of good stuff here, but I kept getting frustrated that I had to switch from the keyboard over to the mouse to navigate back through the menu to restart, and then only get to play for a few seconds.
Nice graphics and the music was nice, I kept retrying because I wanted to see more. So nice job - well put together, just had that one flaw.
Hilarious game, assuming you opted out of all ratings as I don't see any available. But a funny concept, I had fun!
@NicePenguins Ok I came back to do my voting, glad you opted back in, this was a cool entry!
Solid juice on your topdown here - you've been studying your wasteland kings. ;)
One tiny criticism is that the white-projectile-on-white-background thing is a little tricky. Danger should pop more imo.
Since I've played games like this before that just had a lot more features, I didn't get a ton of time out of this one, but I would say you did a great job implementing anyway. Very solid feel.
Cool idea for a game. It seemed complex during the tutorial but actually I got the hang of it pretty quick. I took two contracts I could handle at the start, and one was a success but the other crashed. Cool!
After this it got tricky. Without understanding, I accepted a contract to send a rocket to Venus. Then my rockets said "Rocket has not enough power." Then I noticed that they are LEO and the second rocket LEO/GEO. So that made sense.
However, I later accepted contracts for LEO and GEO launches that were within my load capacity. But still it said "rocket has not enough power."
I was never able to conduct another launch for the rest of the game. I spent all of my profits from the first launch and all of my capital and even went negative, and got my research up enough to have R3.
So I had LEO, GEO, and Moon missions. I had the rockets for those orbit types. I had enough carrying capacity. But still the game wouldn't let me launch, always saying "rocket has not enough power." I did not understand and eventually gave up (after running my business into the ground).
Very cool concept but something went wrong, either I didn't understand, or there was a bug that having a Venus contract in my list prevented me from executing any other contracts.
Very interesting concept, though. I liked the approach and it was too bad I couldn't get deeper into this and reach out to the solar system.
(I did play the bugfix version)
Cool multi-goal game design! Very slick graphics, too. There were a lot of high tones in the audio - the music reached some high pitches and the jump sound was quite long. Personal taste of course but that wasn't my favorite aspect.
Very strong entry with good ideas and execution!
Very nice - a small scope done really well. Had a great mood. The difficulty was just right - it took me several tries before I learned to be really careful and then I was able to beat it just when I was about done. Also, the controls were tight and the enemies predictable, obviously key for this kind of game.
One thing, though... I never realized you could backstab anyone! It didn't make me learn this or tell me (unless I missed it).
Innovative use of the shape and nice nod to the theme. Congrats on a sweet game.
Hello, I'm sorry to say that your web link currently leads to a page that says it is not available! I was not able to try your game altho I was very curious to do it.
@Justin Mullin, thanks so much for your comment! I'm very glad to hear someone took it to that depth. 39 green is excellent, and it means you have the skills to make a real gold run. Spinning it up to 8 is fun, but there is a way to control it.
Here are my tips:
Green play is primarily about turning it, noting where the clear will fall, and jumping to meet it.
Gold play requires you to reverse this order. You have to turn first, and then aftergrab... if able. Move on either way.
You have to come off every turn with the next turn in mind, or else decide instantly at whim.
But I think the game is solveable like a puzzle.
There are only three situations: near drop, mid drop, and far drop. And in gold play there are only two moves: short jump and long jump. Whenever you come off a trigger, you're going to one of those two.
Play for aftergrabs that keep the place clean. So you only make jumps that land you adjacent to the clear. That means you're only ever making one of these four plays:
Short jump, near drop
Short jump, mid drop
Long jump, mid drop
Long jump, far drop
Each one of them has a different aftergrab, but that's all of them.
I brought the game to a full stop and practiced these grabs one gold at a time. Stop, plan, execute, stop. Then I'd chain two.
And I developed a strategy.
I work the corner with short jumps. Any near or mid into another near or mid, I play short like this all day, rocking the corner back and forth. When a long comes, hopefully I saw it coming and made the jump, or else I miss the moment where you can jump long, and I have to play the short jump on a far drop and pollute.
The aftergrab on short-mid also gives me trouble. You jump up to get it and often you lose the gold during hang time. You walk up to get it, you miss it a lot. I'm sure there's a repeatable success in there but I haven't cornered it yet.
For hang time, did you notice the down key? If you hold down, you fall much faster, and that can give you more leeway to jump.
Good luck, if you give it a try I'd love to hear how you do. I'm sure it's possible to beat my record of 12!
Uh oh, mom was NOT happy. She was kinda scary, actually.
I had the invisible font issue with a windows 7 PC and a Radeon 4850 graphics card.
Cool game! I played a while game without realizing I had to pick guys up because of the invisible directions, and then it took me a little more to realize I could carry three at once! But I did some serious ferry work after that.
Nice feel, and the sound effects are a good touch.
My contraption worked as planned on the first try!
Dang it! I got two full guys off the derelict, but unfortunately Mr Green was eaten alive with an almost-full pack. That was probably the best level layout I was going to get, so I couldn't beat your game.
What a mood for such a simple display! Great job getting it across.
It took me a few rounds to learn to play. I assumed my shuttle was safe at first, and that I was supposed to run and shelter there when the monster came around. But my guys panicked and ran away. My last runs I was moving all over the ship and redirecting guys away from the signal earlier and I started to do better.
I enjoyed playing. Graphics were well designed if simple, and the interface was smooth and easy, despite being unfamiliar.
Great design well executed, congrats!
Very interesting what you've done here with one button! Nice work, especially having nice art, sound, and music on the interesting mechanic.
An onscreen score while playing would have been a nice touch.
Wow interesting stuff and cool mechanics!
After a nice little taste I was ready to put it down, but then I went back to it and tried to improve. Fullscreen was a more immersive experience. I played more than I thought I would!
Was there no score though? I really wanted there to be a score, maybe I missed it.
Lastly I ran into some kind of technical issue a few times where it would ignore my keypresses for several seconds. This only happened after going to fullscreen and playing a while.
After doing well then losing while in ignored-input mode, I lost faith in the fairness and that was when I moved on.
But a strong entry that really held my attention and made me think, great work.
Just awesome. Noticed screen shots early in the dev blog and came looking for the game.
I feel funny saying this given the game I submitted, but I'm not really a fan of hardcore precision platformers where you have to make the jumps just right. However you did a lot to alleviate the problem. The nests were of course huge, but just as important the retry loop was instantaneous. I was frustrated at an early set of jumps I kept having to repeat but the ambiance was so strong and the friction of retrying so light that I did keep it at where I might normally have moved on. I had this experience several times - frustration, continuing in spite of myself, reward.
But I must admit that I eventually gave up when I got stuck in a pit where I had to wall-jump through down a shaft with spikes on the side. After perhaps 100 tries I had not yet even touched the final wall that looked like the hardest jump, and so my despair that I would never succeed got the better of my. That and my hand cramp.
I respect the difficult although it prevented me from seeing the rest of the game, which was my loss.
Even the sound was really well done, the ambient background sound really added more than I would have expected, that's never something I think to add to my own games.
What an entry - you're setting the bar a little high for the rest of us here, don't you think?? My legs hurt from jumping.
Bahahaha love it! I *DO* hate flies now more than ever before! In fact I just saw one buzzing around my kitchen garbage and I'm going to take it out to the street as soon as I finish this comment!!
The art is awesome on this, and it's very funny. I played 4 times I think, and my best score was 27.
Very cool mechanics, and excellent graphics. Fun game!
Cool twist on a TD game. I had fun seeing what the various monsters and heroes did.
I think I broke your game after experimenting a bit, check this out:
http://imgur.com/EmjBmBO
Kinda cool, especially getting the upgrades. If the sword swing was just a bit more satisfying, and hitting the enemies had a crunch, it would add a lot to the experience. At first I wasn't sure when I was hitting them, but then I did notice you flash the enemy a bit.
One nice thing about the balance was that you had to be careful. You think you're in control, but as soon as you lose it things can fall apart fast because you get multi-hit to near death quickly in a bad position. Also there was a balance between careful play killing each guy, vs sprinting past them.
I tried to use the screen mechanic to kill guys by moving so they'd go off the screen and stop existing, but I didn't have a lot of luck with this. That was when I got surrounded and ran for my life.
This is a cool little game with a lot of charm! The art, music, and story were all well done and came together really nicely. I liked all the detail - I thought the flashing lights around the poster in the opening scene was a nice touch, for example.
I caught the train four times to see if there might be a different love waiting for me if I did better - but then as an afterthought I let myself fail and I was happy I did!
Great job and good use of the theme.
Wow really tight controls and a great take on the theme here. I had to repeat the same jumps and fights just a few too many times for my personal taste, but that's because I made a ton of mistakes. The checkpoints were huge in letting me see more of the game and making me want to retry to keep going.
Great work!
Great work for just 6 hours!! It's a complete game, and creates a fun feeling of panic sometimes.
I did have a technical issue happen several times. I click-spammed the lasers a lot (they seemed stronger than the guns) and 4 different times the game got into a mode where it was not accepting my input anymore for perhaps 10 seconds. During this time enemy ships would build up and be hammering away at my health. This is how I lost.
Another comment mentioned overheating lasers, so maybe this was actually a feature and not a bug, but I was completely stuck, the gun turret was not even following the mouse pointer. And when it came back alive, it played a giant stack of many laser sounds on top of each other, like something was stuck in the game and they built up, and then suddenly came through. So I guessed it was a bug.
This occurred in the embedded web version in the LD entry page.
Anyway, it wasn't a big deal, I still got to experience the fun! Again, nice work for such a small amount of time.
Wow, really solid title, man! Clever use of the block-smashing idea.
I also liked how you introduced time pressure later in the game, but only after I had a chance to learn the rules. That's a nice design touch.
Interesting game. I got a bit confused - the guys have 2 meters on them, I assume one is life but what's the other?
A little more feedback when they're getting hit would be helpful. I also had a hard time telling the difference between victory and defeat. For example one game I dug trenches straight up then charged. The guys got up and ran and it looked like they made it. But then it said I lost.
Lastly I thought the point was moving forward but whenever the guys finish their task they seem to run back to the start. Or was that something else?
You had some nice sound in the game but I'm not sure you connected it to the most important events the player needed feedback on getting hit, dying, and crossing the line.
Loved the idea and presentation. Good thing there was no barbed wire.
Pretty cool game! That's a shame about the web version, I played it without reading the description and then thought I'd found the bug and uploaded a screenshot to imgur:
http://imgur.com/VL3TJ21
Actually the web version had a second problem for me as well that you can see in that screenshot. It was too tall. This might have been okay because I could position the scroller to see the whole game area (tho that would mean I couldn't see my hearts) except that for some reason when I moved upward in the game area past a certain point it would for some reason scroll my browser window up and you'd see what you have in that screenshot: not all of the game area in the visible window.
One nice touch you had was the way the character gets visibly dark when he's on the verge of death, that really helped especially when I couldn't see my hearts!
You might consider putting the warning about the web version higher in the description.
Awesome job with the graphics!
Wow, cool idea! I liked the triple-tasking. Great sound and graphics as well. Any variety with enemies would have kept my playing even longer. Good work! I'll add an extra star because you wrote your own engine as well.
Wow, that was cool. I love that kind of game, where you use different weapons and face different enemies. And you had so many nice touches. You definitely got that satisfying feel you were shooting for!
I liked the way you spawned the enemies, too. There was a tactical element picking who to target first, and always kind of backing away in panic and saying, "why did I get close to the top again when I knew they were going to spawn!?"
I don't know if it was random, but after I died it felt like the difficulty dropped back a bit to give me some breathing room but didn't send me all the way back to the start of the game. The pace came right back in nicely. If you did that on purpose, nice touch.
There were just two things I was wishing for, which I mention only because you have a great game here done with nice craft! First I wanted some kind of score to feel progress and keep me motivated beyond mere survival. Second I would have liked more contrast in the graphics between the background and the characters. It looked nice, but I lost the hero's position a lot of times, especially when his gun changed suddenly to something an enemy on the screen was also using. If he visually popped more it would have helped. The samurai were just awesome, but their red color also made them stand out well visually, whereas the other enemies I sometimes lost track of.
Great job.
The art was beautiful.
I failed the first few times because I wasn't sure where/when I was supposed to input the arrows, but eventually I figured it out. Maybe an indicator would help.
Thank you for the life improvement. I ride a motorcycle and think this is good safety advice.
Very clever simple game and a good first jam entry, congratulations! Graphics were very well done.
Hahaha, that was a fun time. I played many waves but never got to kill that smiling whale in the distance! Can I get there if I play long enough?
It took me a bit to figure out that I could kill the cats with cannons, since shooting at them from the ship doesn't cut it. I didn't realize I had double jump right away.
The gibs from the exploding cutsies was an awesome touch!
Nice work.
This is an interesting control scheme. I found it tough but that's okay! I think it would have been nicer if the sprites and especially the bullets were a bit bigger. A lot of the challenge was from missing a little and I guess that's what you wanted. But the graphics were so tiny it didn't feel powerful.
Still, a good entry!
Incredible art assets! Gameplay was a bit simple but I think it would really have felt so much better if there was a little juice - for example if the guys got knocked back into a death animation with a flash or something, instead of simply disappearing.
Excellent looking game, though, and nice tight controls on the main character. Also liked the metal track in the background, kudos to you if you recorded that for the jam!
Very clever twist on a classic gaming trope, and a good use of theme. The gag of it all was nicely offset by the dark tone. I got to the end, it was just the right difficulty and length, the narrative was engaging, and the final level was a great way to close.
Tight scope nailed spot on, good job.
I feel like the nice graphics actually work against this game. There's a very cool dark haze over everything that looks awesome and creepy. And there's these nice-looking ghostly forms for the enemies that does a great job evoking some malicious spirits. But ultimately it makes a hard game too hard, I'm leaning forward and squinting to make things out.
The dashing mechanic is brutal. I experimented with it, and I just instadied. I later read that it's because I dashed into the edge of the map. No sweat, that makes some sense but I didn't pick up on that at first, I thought maybe I got killed by a guy I didn't quite see. I tried to experiment with it again later, but the delay on it is so harsh, and the pace of the game means I cannot spare the time to scan around.
I think the dash could be SO awesome. If it was an instant dash that only went a set distance and would never instakill me (unless I dash into an ENEMY of course) then this game would be sick fun. I think it also requires visual feedback on the attack. It's just a shifting of black pixels now, I want a sharp bright-color slash.
So like make the dash instant and give the guy a lightsaber and I'll come back for more! ;)
You definitely paid attention to not wasting my time and having a fast retry loop. Yet I died *SO* fast and *SO* often that even the 3 or so seconds that it took to restart was troubling.
I only mention the negative feedback because obviously you've got some skills here and this game could probably have engaged me a ton more than it did. I needed more visual clarity. More reward for a kill in terms of nice feedback. Faster retry (go play "Ice Man" in this LD for an example of perfect retry on a superhard game imo).
I was very excited about this but it didn't quite suck me in, I'm sorry. I tried a bunch of times to see if it was a newbie hump that I just needed to get past, but even with more tries I still couldn't get over it.
Huge potential here, so a great idea for an LD game.
Cool use of the only-get-1 upgrade mechanic! Also a nice feeling to the combat, which isn't so easy to do.
Solid entry from your team!
Laser dragon for the win! Got to level nine, the winter was a nice touch.
Cool game, especially for the small scope. My lady felt your hitboxes were a little big and felt cheated. I think a more dramatic feel when you get hit would add a lot here, the flashing was okay but I wanted to have a satisfying CRUNCH sound and some knockback for some reason.
The game had 8-way controls, but I had some trouble with them registering so I lived with 4-way. Your difficulty level was spot on, and I couldn't risk input failure - that's a good thing.
Top score 770, but I got careless, I'm sure you could get quite a high score on this one.
Certainly an... interesting take on the theme!
Very slick production! Great graphics assets and animations, cool perspective, and a nice topic.
If I had to suggest an improvement, I would say there's an imbalance between the time it takes to gather 30 people vs the margin of error with the cop. He one-shots you and it's a complete do-over. Killing him is easy, true, but just a small mistake in timing and you're done. The punishment seems out of proportion to the crime.
For that reason I never reached the end, which was a shame. I'm very curious what happens when I feed that strange monster enough humans!
Looks and sounds fantastic. I wish there was more direct control. The jump is a tiny hop in midair, and the side to side movement is mild compared to inertia. I have no idea whether my rockets are ready to fire.
That lack of direct control made it quite hard for me as a new player. I did play local multiplayer and we had to agree to stop shooting each other to explore the movement and figure out how it worked.
But it's slick production and I did have some fun button-mashing.
The difficulty here isn't inappropriate - that's okay with me! Although my own LD game are all a bit too hard for folks and I think I lose some votes that way, so maybe don't listen to me. ;)
But I think a quick reflex-twitcher like this is good if it's hard. The initial moments of learning did confuse me but then I got the hang, and I could see how it puts your brain into that mode on the edge of panic where it's trying to stretch forward and see what's about to happen. Very cool.
I probably would have gotten addicted to it, except for one fatal flaw: the retry loop. Less than a 1-second error instantly ends the game, and it can happen IMMEDIATELY when you start... but then I have to type in a name and then navigate through two levels of menus to play again. I would have played a lot longer if the retry were just a single keypress, and it would remember my name.
My friend was railing on me the other day: "Dude, think about it - the second the player dies, that's his emotional low point. That's the time he's going to decide whether to jump back into your game, or stop playing for either this session or the rest of his life. You gotta make sure you put the effort into making him want to retry and not quit!"
Please excuse me (and tell me) if there was a faster way to restart and I just missed it.
That's a tiny thing though and I don't mean to be critical! You've got a nice game here. Good work.
Ronny, let me throw an idea at you for what the player should have to do to retry in your game:
Nothing.
Why stop it at all? The consequences of death are just that your score goes back to zero. If it were my game, I would have it so that when the player loses, instead of his square turning red, it turns red and smashes to bits that fly off the screen while you show his score briefly. Then a new square is assembled in the center and he's already playing a new game before he knows what hit him. The only consequence of failure is a very short delay for him to take a breath and watch his score reset. Make him hit a special button to NOT just keep playing.
That's a bit extreme (tho not as extreme as what I did in my own game this LD for the retry problem), and a more conservative plan is just pause it and have him hit space.
Check out a game in this LD called "iceman" and you'll see a nice single-keypress retry loop on an ultra-difficult game. That one I did get addicted to even though it was even more difficult, and a huge part of it was the ultra-quick retry.
Cool idea and a nice presentation - good job!
A few things confused me but honestly I liked the confusion, it was part of the exploration process.
Awesome presentation of the levels setting up.
Super hard, and then a time limit on top! But your retry loop was fast enough and with the random content I was always seeing new levels, so I kept playing.
Best score was only 895, so I wans't very good, ha. I'm not even sure that play was my best run, I might have just had the easiest generation that time.
Great presentation and good design choices made the mechanics shine.
I would agree with the others who thought the heavy momentum was a little too strong, but it was fair. Just made it a lot harder.
Intriguing idea! I've seen a few of these game where you can only see one type of danger at a time. I always seem to struggle really badly with them for some reason! This one has some nice features, including good graphics, nice ambient sound, and an extremely fast retry loop that doesn't make failure break your heart.
Hey, this was fun to figure out and had great graphics and sound!
I had a problem on firefox that my inputs would be ignored sometimes, and of course that totally wreck those play sessions. But I think it's just my machine.
There's a hopeless moment in the design of this, where you have made your fatal mistake but it will be several very long painful seconds before that smiling star actually smashes into her doom. I have mixed feelings that this is both good and bad. ;)
Nice entry! Love these tight arcade games w/ new mechanics to explore in a short format. Loved the fast retry and proc gen so it was different each time.
Cool puzzle platformer with a nice mix of metal and physical challenges! Great work and a nice mechanic for the theme.
Hey, there was some fun stuff here, but learning was a brutal roll of the dice, most levels they were on you before you even knew what "you" was! I did figure it out and had a good time shooting some slugs up for a bit. Pretty rough around the edges but a cool idea.
Hahaha got a few laughs out of this one, nice crazy feel!
Tricky little game, nice work.
After a while I got the hang of the delay on the controls, and learned to wind up and smash into things, that was cool.
I rolled a little too hard into the finish on a level and hit space to reset, but it went to the beginning of the game. I played again, and it happened again but later (level shaped like an N), and that time I wasn't going to replay the whole game again.
Totally would have continued on to the end if it let me keep my progress though! Nice work.
WOW the timeslow is such a cool feature! Many very nice small touches of polish here. The red ball ruined my day though, he's right on me so badly, I felt like he messed up the whole dodge feel of the game. Maybe I'm just being a wimp tho!
Very slick game that gave me a thrill.
Great job on the art and humor. I'm not really a fan of the narrative zero-decision games myself so I can't really comment on the fun.
Top score 380!
This game was tight. A great little arcade game with a perfeclty frustrating level of challenge.
Only problem (besides that I can't stop the song while writing this comment) is that I think I broke it. If you place the cheap bombs in the center platform at the right timing you can just stand there in infinite explosions and collect the coins as the guys fall into the explosions. I screwed it up but feel like I could have had an infinite run that way. Maybe not though.
Anyway, I really had a good time with this, great work!
Good theme, but there were a few problems in the implementation.
Besides avoiding the harassers, the player has to avoid getting stuck. Friends are more of a danger than a help because they will block the player from moving, and sometimes get the player completely stuck.
Did you use a box collider on the player? Because I had trouble sneaking around corners without getting momentarily stuck. Perhaps you should consider a circle collider for the player if you didn't.
Another option would be to be able to pass through friends. It's very problematic that you see an opening to get through the enemies and win, but your friends block it.
I was able to win after a few plays, so it certainly isn't impossible, but I did avoid making any friends to make it easier to win.
Last point, I couldn't see any way to retry after losing except to end the program and restart.
Nice music, and unlike some other commenters I thought the graphics were pretty clear about what was what. I think it's just a few gameplay issues that get in the way of the message here.
Good idea and nice try though!
Cool game, harder than it seems at first! The subtly encroaching darkness was a great touch.
I wished I could have seen the lower depths but I was too bad at the game to get all the way down. Difficulty is great but some checkpoints would have motivated me to keep going to the end, but as I got further it got harder plus I had to repeat the entire game every time so I eventually gave up. Dang that spring! But what really got me was those white icy blocks.
Cool entry. Would have been even sweeter replay value with the random generation you talked about!
Haha fun stuff - I liked being my own worst enemy! Clever game design and nice graphics.
Dragon wars! Was I blowing kisses at the dragon?
Good difficulty level, but obviously entry is a bit rough around the edges. Still, there's something here. I tried to cheat your game by hiding in the top left corner above the dragon, but you didn't allow that, good job.
Played longer than I thought I should. Strange trace.
Interesting combination of mechanics! Cool entry.
I think the fact that the guard's line of slight is slightly more than 180 makes the difficulty skyrocket to a too-hard level. It means that you have to wait wait wait and then BOOM inch forward at exactly the right time. Punishment for slight error is full restart.
If the view were a bit less, like 165 or so, then there'd be a bit of a dead zone that you could hide in. Maybe this version of the game would be too easy, I don't know. But it would be more positional. Currently it's very much a reflex thing instead of a thinking game.
Another solution you could try would be to slow the pace of the turning.
Sorry, I did try a whole lot of times and while I could get past the first guard, I never got past the second.
Very nice idea and I think a few small tweaks could open it up for me to enjoy properly.
Interesting idea, and great aesthetics. The color palette looks really nice and the sounds/music were good, too.
There was a bit of learning curve while I figured out what wasted parts meant and how making robots was good not bad, and that the boss was to be attacked and not defended, etc.
But after a game spent learning, I restarted and it got pretty interesting!
Nice work.
Very cool idea. On my windows machine it ran into a few problems, the resolution made me have to set my task bar to auto-hide, and when I closed it it crashed and I had to task kill. But otherwise it ran fine.
I ran into some trouble with the controls. There seemed to be something off about the state transitions between walking and jumping. For example I could run forward and jump, knock into the side of a brick with my head, and hold forward the whole time. When I landed I would be doing the running animation but not moving forward.
I had fun playing around moving the sections and I did try to climb it, but I never made it to the top.
Cool idea, just a little polish would really pick this one up!
Cool adventure/puzzle and a great idea for the theme! The mechanic of the rooms changing was cool, and the controls were just tight enough to match the dangers, well balanced.
Haha, pretty funny and I liked the art. But too bad you can get stuck with no item and the countdown to retry is so high!
Really well put together, gameplay is tight and it looks nice.
Tricky in a good way, played a bunch! Very nice look and sound, too.
Cool original idea, but it just took too much out of my wrist to do all that erasing at panic speeds!
Also, the sound effect of blowing the residue off the page plays very often in this game. But it's exactly the same sound every time, maybe would be great to have two or four versions of the sound and/or modulate the pitch by 1-3% randomly on each play of the sound effect. This will prevent it from feeling repetitive to the player.
Always like seeing Baba Yaga around.
Sorry, I tried for a while but every time it just kind of randomly said "game over, rekt" and I couldn't figure out why or whether it was something I did.
I liked that the skull didn't move exactly with the mouse, but was instead pulled toward it, it made it more interesting than if it was just a "ram mouse pointer into shape" type game.
Wow, really cool main character with original-feeling controls and some nice animations. You skated the edge of floaty jumps and inertia that was just enough to feel good without making it unresponsive. Nice job!
I want to describe a little quirk to the controls that was my #1 execution mistake.
When I wanted to do the critical down+x jump to hover, the order I pressed the keys mattered and I kept doing it wrong.
I would press the keys in this order: run (D) then jump (Z) then (X) followed immediately by (DOWN). But this won't get me the combo, it only triggers if I hit down before hitting X.
If I hit X first I go into the forward-gust state, and pressing down from there does not transition to downward-gust. If that state transition existed I think the controls would smooth out a rough edge that kept scraping me.
I enjoyed playing and I definitely would have played more if there were a checkpoint system. I eventually got discouraged at repeating the old parts again to maybe see more.
Thought about the button order thing a bit more. Your 0.1s window idea sounds reasonable.
But it's such a fundamental action in the game. Any execution trouble is a big deal. What if it wasn't a multi-button combination at all?
You could just have x be forward-gust, and down (only down, no x at all) be downward-gust. Or spacebar or c.
This is a really good metroidvania. The way the level wrapped back on itself had me doubting whether I'd done the right thing, and I was just on the edge of feeling lost but never really was.
Main character was very interesting and the challenges were satisfying. I played until the fight where you have to throw 6 switches on blocks being hit by fire. I tried and tried but I couldn't get it right. It felt too much like the challenge was taking me past the limit of the looseness in the control. I know it was always my fault, but it was tough to get that level of precision out, since the guy is so stateful and the buttons move different amounts in different states.
But part of the fun of it was all those different states of movement and piecing them together. It's a great game that really took me to the limits a lot!
Interesting mechanic, I had fun learning the ropes! Nice art and sound, too.
Haha I didn't even notice "I am death" playing, not until I saw the screenshot.
I beat the game. My favorite part was your way of introducing mechanics through a simple level rather than a wordy tutorial... show don't tell, definitely appreciate that! Another wise choice was the ultrafast retry that didn't even wait for animations to complete.
There was one level that was pretty darn tricky and it took me a while to figure it out. Other than that I felt maybe it was a bit too easy for most levels.
However I think you did a great job, it's an interesting original mechanic and I liked the presentation. I was skeptical of the screen shot at first but I gotta say the game made good on the style. Screenshake also a nice touch.
Well done!
Cool game, the lighting and LOS effect were very effective at making a mood. Combat was maybe a little too simple or slow but the setting was great. Also liked the main character and the way he moved and looked around.
Surprisingly addictive for such a small game... and it looks really nice!
I think if you never jump though you can kind of rob yourself of the fun by just spamming missiles one way and then the other as the enemies come onscreen.
I got the score way up there and then I started experimenting with jumping and shooting down (because the explosion upgrade seems to suggest this is the way to play, since it's no use in the non-jumping style) and suddenly the game was far, far more difficult.
Hey wow, we both made shmups where you reflect the shots back with a rotatable shield! Lots of differences, but built on that same core.
39,667 was my high score here but with some time I'm sure I could do better, which is a nice feeling to get from playing.
I think you did a fantastic job with the bullet patterns. You really achieved that careful feel of sneaking between gaps in the pattern, where my own game ended up someplace different. I especially enjoyed that first boss fight you have.
If I had to suggest something that could be improved, I would say the controls could be simpler. My strategy was to hold down the J key the entire game. I also held down the K key almost the entire game, only releasing it in tiny bursts when I wanted to reposition the shield. This created a problem that I am sure was at the keyboard hardware level about capturing too many keys: If I am hold BOTH j and k, then when I press W the guy will not walk up. So it was kind of complex to execute my wishes in the game. But it definitely has tight precise control required by the challenge, so once I got used to the buttons it was very nice. They were not sloppy, just complex and a bit unintuitive imo.
I appreciated the tiny hitbox in this type of game.
Solid original puzzle!
Very cool entry! I love the style of the art, the sound, and the menus/title text. It really has an identity and it fits with the fast wrecking theme of the gameplay.
I had fun blasting around in the car, and getting run over and smashed. The action is a little on the frantic side so it's hard to track and think about but it was still fun. I wish the car drifted just slightly. It was fun to boost around and the difficulty was about right for the size of the game because I played about 8 times and learned the ropes and then won. The game thought I was all done but I did come back for a little more.
Also, I found a weird bug. You can reproduce it like this:
- Start game, play once and lose. When instructed, press R.
- On the "You are a guy" screen, instead of pressing space to play, press R. Notice it plays a sound and makes the text leap but keeps you on the screen, this is fine.
- Because you like watching the text dance and hearing the crazy sound, press r about fifty times as fast as you can. Use multiple fingers on the key and play it like drums!
- Now press space to play
BUG: When you play now, the white flashes will not be tiny split second effect any more. Now they will last much longer and dominate the experience by blinding you for most of the game. So weird!
Damn this game is good! The controls are super-tight and the art and sound really make it come alive. The level layouts are great, too. So many nice touches, like the room transitions, the varying sizes, and the way you bring us back through the same room three times on our journey to give a sense of continuity.
The first time I played I skipped the first powerup, thinking it was a hazard. I got all the way to the long jump that requires kissing (the room with text) before I couldn't proceed. I also couldn't backtrack.
It was super-tricky to get there in that state because I couldn't kill enemies so I had to lure them onto all the triggers alive, and prop doors open with my head to make the timing. I guess you could say I got the extra-tough puzzle version!
Normally I would call it a session at that point rather than repeat, but the game was so good I wanted to see more so I restarted and beat the game.
Very nice creepy vibe. The art and sound were great.
I was still reading the intro screen when monsters came at me. They looked really nice. I fired at them for a while, then went wandering around. As soon as I found my first potion my gun seemed to run out and I couldn't shoot.
I picked up a few potions while dodging and used them with the number keys, but they didn't seem to do anything. I was surrounded while investigating a floating bed that I tried to use with E, but nothing happened, then I died. I would have retried but the web player crashed my browser.
Despite a few rough edges on play the environment, monster, and atmosphere were memorable.
Oh, and I should say there was a warning about the web player, it's on me that I just ignored it. ;)
Cool idea and style. This was interesting to play around with.
One problem I had when playing is learning about how the meter works. I must move quickly. The effect on the ant that I control is visually subtle, so my eyes are busy constantly scanning, and because I move down they are looking on the bottom half of the screen. But the timer is a thin strip of pixels near the top of the screen. I really was unaware of the value of the timer while playing, and as a result it took me a while to learn that changing hosts only filled it a little. I originally assumed it was a host-death timer that fully reset each time I changed, and didn't know why I was dying.
A few ways to fix that would be moving the meter down, making it bigger, or even better having an effect on my character itself instead of a meter. There could also be a warning as I approach death such as a sound or visual effect. Also making the one ant I control more visually distinct from the rest would help me.
Overall this was fun, you have an interesting system to explore and the challenge level is right. Nice work!
Super-slick art and interesting dodging - nice work!
Aw man as soon as I saw the title, I was like this better be good because there will only be one tanks vs bicycle game in the world and you better not waste it.
Fortunately you delivered! Lots of things come together right here to make the fun, but most especially the kinda-tight-but-kinda-crazy controls on the bike. This is also a really nice use of 3D in a jam game and looks nice.
But it was all about the way a big swerve was an overcommit, that's what all the panicky fun was coming from, so nice fine-tuning there.
Two flaws I would point out: first I shouldn't have to take my hands off the keyboard to click the mouse to restart. This game needs an ultra-super-tight retry loop and the mouse was a real source of friction for me playing just one more time. Second, is there a way to quit? It went fullscreen when I launched and I couldn't find any way to quit. Easy enough to alt+tab out and kill it from windows though.
Nice work, particularly for the 8 hours on a plane that you put into it.
Cool idea and nice-looking art. I felt like I was walking around a little too slowly and maybe my memory is just bad but when I had to go back to re-talk to people a few times I found it too time-consuming for my taste, and that prevented me from wanting to reload a bunch of different scenarios.
Wow this game was awesome! I won with a deathcount of 52.
The theme mechanic was fun to use, and the monsters created a lot of moments of panic. It was really well balanced. The game combined the puzzle of figuring out how to approach the level with the tactics of dodge-fighting the monsters really smoothly.
Controls were problem-free, critical for a game like this.
Solid shooter but a couple of things made it tough: enemies shooting from off-screen, but even more so the fact that enemy bullets didn't stand out that much against the background.
Try using lower-saturation colors for the background and higher-saturation for the threats so they visually pop.
Also the controls were a little loose, I'm not sure it needed the inertia.
Cool dodge-n-shoot game! I like the random generation to keep it fresh, and the art and sound was nice. Duels and upgrades, too, nice scope!
It seemed to be best to just play with right-click down the whole time, but no big deal.
Mood was great, gameplay was tense with fast careful tapping but felt a litle unfair. I played 20 times without seeing stairs, then the next time the stairs were right there.
Loved the feel of just barely sneaking by, you nailed the core experience.
Much cooler than I expected from the screen shot - my top score was 146. Twist was excellent, a new idea to explore.
Wow, crazy tight, demanding platformer. The block throws were very cool, and the mix of puzzle and execution was nice. In the end it was a bit too tough for me, I played a lot but then I gave up at the purple level where you start on the bottom right.
Art and sound were very nice here. The gameplay itself was also solid but needed just a few small things to give me a bit more feedback. At first I was unsure if I was damaging the enemies, for example. It also made me make a few "blind jumps" which is always concerning. Maybe I was supposed to go a different way, though.
I liked the darkening of the player rather than a health bar. It did confuse me for a moment but I liked it anyway.
Wow, a lot of fun!! The constant weapon switches were great, they made me play against the simple enemies in different ways. It was even more fun once I started using the barrels more.
Looks, sounds, and feels really good. Nice work!
Good first time out, congrats!
Very interesting mechanic, but no safe place to try it out and learn. If this game ramped up slowly I bet it would be awesome but man those skeletons were right on top of me from the instant I started playing!
Cool game I played more than I thought I would after my first try! I liked the difficulty, although very challenging. I played a bunch and only got to level 2 ("They're getting stronger").
I have a few points of feedback, but don't take it as negative, overall I had good fun.
- Dude what was my highscore??
- Lot to control. Maybe the wrecking ball was better cut. My strategy was to just hold down space and X for the whole entire game once I figured it out. Still not clear on what Z does after playing
- On very first play, tons of text while also dodging for my life, couldn't read. This was only a problem for 2 plays or so.
- Small asteroids hard to pick out and see while I'm scanning, overall maybe color contrast could be higher on threats.
- Reading my special-queue on the top right was impossible while playing, I can't move my eyes over there so I never looked at it even though it has important gameplay info (this is also why I never saw my score).
- I'm not sure because it was so hectic, but I might have been holding down so many keys, with space + X + 2 directions that when I hit shift to use special it only fired like half the time. Maybe there was another mechanic about why it didn't fire, but I never figured it out.
So in summary lots of fun here but I feel it was a bit more confusing that the content really required.
Also... I loved all the death messages, that's a great touch.
Really good job.
Cool game! The hint to use the numbers to fire was key. Great mix between puzzle and action, and a good length - I beat it before I got discouraged with any repetition.
Pretty impressive for only 11 hours!! I wish there was something more challenging going on, but I liked the game.
I win! 34-29!!
Cool to have both games going on at once... I totally wish there was a cool final showdown though! Nice job, cool concept and I enjoyed the art.
A+ on the mood - the theme, graphics, and sound really work together.
The slow pacing combined with instant death left me a little less likely to go for repeated plays but I definitely got a fun few nights out of it.
Awesome! Your game had a surprising amount of depth to the system. Like the way I could pick up cars to smash the cops, but if I did too much of that I lost victims to feed. I had to adjust my play and try to shake the food out then smash the cops, which was quite a juggling act. Then I learned I could pick up multiple cars.. I felt really strong, it was my fault when I failed.
Well done!
Damn, well done fellas, you nailed it. I really enjoyed the way the whole thing played out, and there were a lot of nice small touches along the way.
I remember enjoying Killer Librarian 1, the puzzle game, so I had to check out the sequel.
I beat the game, it had fun controls and I enjoyed jumping around, but I missed the puzzle challenge of the first one.
Heads up, on my first run I walked off the right hand side of the map on level 2, fell past the level, and sailed off into the void.
Oh wait, I see in the other comments I can throw library cards!
I just played a little more to try them, cool sound.
Wow this game is awesome, the way the action is all implied from a simple but incredibly effective art style is impressive. The sound is also spot-on and really takes it to the next level.
But there is one small design choice that hurts the fun a lot, and that's the complete restart.
The pacing is just too slow, and your death too instant, for that full restart. Once I was playing the same level for the 5th or 6th time I was rushing a lot, and then of course I'd make a mistake, and it was a downward spiral.
Also the bullets are so tiny while all other art is this stylistic outlined form, I honestly didn't even see them the first couple of times.
This is a really well-made game, you should do a post-compo build that has level-restart instead of full restart, I'd love to play it through and see how much there is.
Physics were a bit off, but that gave it a bit of a charm. Whatever troubles I would have had, you mostly solved with the generous checkpoint system. So I could relax and have a good time even though you were messing with me by making the challenge sometimes be *about* how hard it was to precisely control.
I made it to a bit past the "who designed this building" part, but then when I got to the really tough part with floating boxes, I kept having to retry alot. I would have continued one, except then I fell and triggered a very old checkpoint, and that was the quitting moment.
Cool aesthetic. The lurching background took a a bit to get used to.
I think a few of the jokes went over my head, but surely an interesting concept. I got stuck on the planning though, I just wasn't fast enough... and it wasn't even close. I wonder what other things were in store if I could have gotten further...
Ha! This was a really clever take on the theme, I liked it a lot. Nice graphics and controls, too. Well done!
AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGG!!
I really wanted to beat this, but victory was always just out of reach. Crazy experience. The physics was just glitchy enough that it was charmingly infuriating. If there was a faster retry (1 button instead of 2) I would probably still be playing right now.
Wow, really beautiful 3D environment for a compo entry! Loved the message when I jumped out of bounds despite the warning.
Looks and sounds nice, and wow did I do a lot of clicking!
Wow, very slick, and a great feeling of weight that made the axe fun to use.
Loved the look and the core mechanic. The fact that I couldn't see the whole playing field had me running all around like a paranoid maniac! I think I would score better if I started to understand the spawn patterns better.
Oh, and the dash attack was a blast, too!
This concept is great! I scared someone to death once, but I didn't quite understand what I did that one time that was better than the others. I wish there had been a wider array of responses or visitors, but in general it was a lot of fun! I wish there were more levels to play!
Aww yea, take THAT, science ladies!! Fun time, slice art and nice controls. Thought the game was a good length for what it had going on, too.
Top score was 45. I liked the sounds, the difficulty level was just about right, and most of all the turning was a great touch. Good job!
Very cool game! Great take on the theme, nice graphics and sound, and fun to play with the different choices. I managed to get built up enough to completely wipe out the attacker after about four times around.
If I could change one thing it would be that instead of the mouseover popup that blocks the on-screen action, I would have the information be in that empty area on the lower right. It was kind of a drag that this twitching text box was jumping around and interfering with the game screen.
Took me a bunch of tries to get the hang, and I only made it to the second level. I think there's some nice graphics, cool sound, and a fun idea here. But I think it has a couple of small problems that add up to a tough experience.
The #1 thing is the jump. It took me forever to realize that the jump behaves differently when I'm standing in front of a building than when I'm not. When I was in front of a building, the jump is TINY, and it basically is no good for dodging shots (or that's how it felt to me anyway). I was getting beat down hard for most of my time because I would jump to dodge a bullet, but land right on top of it anyway.
Second thing was the lack of contrast difference between foreground and background elements. While the graphics individually looked nice, they didn't combine in a way to alert me, the confused player getting my ass handed to me, of what was important. The soldiers don't really stick out, and even their shots don't "pop" quite enough when I'm in the crazy storm this game drops you right into. When a game has SO much going on (which can be an awesome thing!) it has to take extra care to make sure that stuff sticks out like crazy.
Third thing that made it hard was that there were three action buttons to learn, and some of them had long-hold options to do something slightly different. I hardly got a chance to even sort out what did what because the game was right on top of me. I would advice either more breathing room to learn, or less to learn.
Those small criticisms aside, I think you did some cool stuff here and it has a lot of potential.
I remember your DEATHMETALSLUG game from a previous jam had that same thing: a lot of different interesting things going on and a nice feel, but it was right on top of the player so fast there was no time to even figure out what the heck was going on.
Wow, great job creating a really creepy mood, that was well done. The graphics, the pace, and the sound really came together, and the escalation of tension left me feeling uneasy in a good way. Nice job!
Wow this is great for a first LD: 3D models with buildings that turn transparent, fun vehicle physics, and fantastic guitar music! The rotating front tires were a nice touch on the model, too.
Great work! Just wished there was a bigger map to roam around and see!
Wow, great job! I totally played through a whole bunch of times to try different stuff. My biggest crater was getting the stock down to -$123. A ton of the little quips were clever, and some of the ideas had nice surprise twists, like when I accidentally discovered two extra days in a week and my stock shot up.
On choice you made was to make the guy move fast. Wow good thing! So many games unthinkingly put in slow walking, and then make you walk around a lot. It was a relief that I could zoom around, it kept me willing to try again because I knew I could do it quickly.
Sound effects were such low volume I didn't realize they existed at first, and I had to jack up the audio level on PC to hear them, but I did like them.
Very nice.
Cool game - was fun running and dashing around, but wow was that kid slippery!
Tried to load the web version, and kept getting errors saying "Introscene couldn't be loaded because it is not streamed in yet."
That made me worry for what lay ahead, but I downloaded the windows build and it was totally worth it! The aesthetic is just awesome, the lighting and the models are great and it really all works together for a unique feel.
I only made it 2 minutes, but my lady made it 3 and a half.
Nice job pulling some stock assets together into a slick overall package.
It didn't feel quite fluid enough for a shooter for my taste, but I'm not quite sure in what way... maybe a little too slow for the main character moving I guess, relative to the bullets. Or maybe it was the way the enemies were a bunch of hits.
Still, really solid entry for a first LD, congrats!
Cool, difficult puzzle game, great interface and it looked and sounded really nice. Well done!
If the pacing was slightly quicker I probably would have retried more, but I guess that might throw off the balance which is good right now.
Interesting concept in a couple of ways, never seen anything quite like it! I got as far as the level where Dave starts in a little cave on the bottom right, and has a little gas coming out of him. I didn't know what to do and time ran out.
The intro scene was also good. Poor Dave.
Cool, I loved the waving hands of the victims! The background was also nice and tastefully quiet so I could see the action, but it brought the space to life. Basic stuff, but solid - nice job on your first LD!
Really awesome looking game! The graphics and mechanics are great. Wish there was more of a challenge to it, but I had fun regardless.
Great graphics, the feel was really there. The click and drag shoot dynamic was a little tough to get used to, especially since it shot my single bullet no matter where I clicked. I also wished the retry time was shorter (when I accidentally clicked on the screen and lost my bullet, I wanted to try again immediately).
The game froze a couple times for me, once on the "teehee" screen, and then I refreshed and played again and it froze at the very end when the drones were returning to the mothership.
But again, I really liked the feel of the game!
@Benjaminsen I played in firefox
Nice use of some cool 3d models and good animations. I liked that the character had a variety of attacks... I thought the pace was a little bit on the slow side in terms of the attack actions.
The formations of the enemies that swarmed were also cool.
Hahah well now that was kinda nuts. Made me think...
Fun concept, I wish there was a bit more of a challenge to it, but I had a good time!
I was a little too confused to really engage with what was going on, but I did manage to raise a manor at least! Looks like maybe something cool was happening but I was kind of missing it because I wasn't sure what everything is.
I definitely respect that you tried not to burden the game with a ton of instruction/tutorial, though! Usually I do like to try to figure them out myself.
Also, the old-school cartridge-era aesthetic was well done.
Wow this was really good! Tight feel on the gameplay, great sound, and fun art. All the extra touches made it feel incredibly complete with stages, boss fights, dialogs, and the map screen between stages. My favorite small touch was after the final fight, when it panned back through the carnage of flames and skulls.
Very impressive!
If I had to offer one critique, I would say that sometimes too much of the action happened just off-screen, which was happening most in the final boss fight for me.
Well done, a strong compo entry here.
Hey, this was pretty fun! It was a nice touch to have the spikes-only level introduce that element, and after that I was pretty good at not taking damage.
I beat it without dying on the first play-through, but juuuust barely, so it was spot on for difficulty.
If I would suggest one improvement, it's the camera's movement. The way it lags behind the player's movement means you can't see ahead of you, which I sorta solved by just constantly always using my tentacles, since that can adjust the camera as well. But it wasn't a big problem at all, since I could adjust it. Just meant I held mouse down the entire game.
The tentacles were very nice - the right mix of mysterious and usable. I didn't really notice the bloodiness while playing, though.
Thanks so much for the kind words everyone, I'm really excited people are enjoying it.
@pokipsy I have uploaded a small patch that fixes the bug you experienced with the ball getting stuck, thanks for reporting it!
@fluidvolt the ball will slowly die when you are in the "you lose" state, and you have to press space to get a rematch. The game lets you still whack the ball around in that mode for kicks though, so sometimes it's easy to forget you're in that mode... is it possible this is what happened to you or do you think I have a bug? I have not been able to get the ball dying outside of that state but it's a bug I'd love to fix if you did.
@fluidvolt - apologies for doubting you! I just found the bug where the ball gets dead even when you're not in the game over state.
It has to do with jumping and hitting the ball as you press space to start the new level. If you time it exactly right you can get the racket and the ball in a weird moment where the racket "bumps" the ball that is waiting for the serve as it gets placed for serve, and then the ball starts drifting around waiting to be served, until friction kills its momentum and it just hangs in the air.
I have fixed this in the post-comp version I'm working on, thanks for reporting it!
This was a cool idea with great graphics and sound, and some nice touches. I liked the way the music begins to fade out when you aren't in the spotlight, and the tomatoes are great.
The indirect control over the dog was a cool premise, it was just enough to feel I had agency but difficult enough that I screwed up and threw myself off many times. In a good way.
Well done!
Wonderful, clean simplicity. The art and sound work well together to really nail the mood, and the relaxed pace of the gameplay adds to it. I had to deliberately walk my moths into the spike thing just to hear the soundscape's reaction.
It was such a nice environment that I felt bad having it running in a window on my computer and wanted to go into full screen.
Great job.
Congrats on the double gold medals - a pleasure to split #16 w/ you!
Cool game with a simple but tough premise and clean presentation, but the new player experience is tough.
I didn't read the description on this page, because I believe a game should be approachable on its own. So I was looking for a way to start, not sure if it was keys, mouse, etc... eventually I hit space bar. Then I hit it a few more times and the game started.
In a few seconds I was dead, without even figuring out what the buttons to press were. I looked for a restart, but never found it. So I came back to this page and read the keys instructions.
After that it went better and I started having fun... but I still died a bunch while learning and I really think it needs a restart other than refreshing the browser!
What this game does well is create a sense of OH NO panic as I rush for a mass to keep from dying, and the slightly laggy controls are just about right.
I also liked the game over black hole collapse when you get too large.
Also, on Firefox the "don't get too large or small" text was cut off so I could only see the bottom of the letters. I tested in Chrome and it almost fit correctly but the tops were a bit clipped.
I like this. I've experimented with this kind of left/right directional control before, and what to do about hitting the ground is a design challenge. You flipped that around and used it as an asset - I like how there's no control in the above-ground mode.
I think where this game could use a little tuning is in the feedback to the player. I was a bit confused, is it bad to hit the enemies with my body instead of my mouth, or is that just as good? I didn't notice a difference but it seemed weird to wrap them up rather than eat them. It also created the problem that I couldn't really always see myself score.
So some great mechanics but the way they come together as a game isn't quite tight.
Also, I found a bug. If you go way down to the bottom of the earth, most of the time your face will bounce off the bottom and you're good. However if you fiddle around down there and try to go in a straight line along the bottom, it is possible to get the snake stuck where his head is vibrating wildly and you can no longer steer and have to quit the game. Did it once by accident but then was able to rep.
Wow, slick all-arounder here, it's got nice gameplay, plus good graphics and sound, plus a soundtrack... that's a lot for a compo entry!
Great job. Only nitpick I could offer is that a few times I was confused about when I got hit, otherwise it was all clear and fun. The tutorial was well done, I usually find them intrusive but not in this case.
Unique look and concept! The final puzzle was great, but kind of a tease because then I wanted to play more. But that's a good thing!
I did find it a little tough with the controls. They accept an input to turn at ANY time, but the play space is broken up into these discrete blocks. I guess what I'm saying is I often turned before the corner and got stuck and died and had to retry. If the controls just "buffered" my turn command until a turn was actually possible it would have done what I meant to do automatically and maybe felt a bit smoother.
The final room with all the files was kind of fun to jam out in for a minute, too, and the text being integrated into the game space was a nice touch. Nice work but of course I would have liked to see some more levels.
Well this game was definitely titled correctly! I had this great "OH GAWD" moment in the first two seconds while my brain realized what was going on.
The compo version was like "oh ha that was cute, interesting, and short."
The post-compo version was like, "OH NO GET OUT OF MY WAY, PRESENTS!" I swear I had a defective jack in the box that wasn't moving any faster than the monster at all and my fate was sealed from the start although I didn't know it.
Really nice look boosted up an interesting inversion of a genre, and the it didn't overstay its welcome, it quit while I was still having fun.
Nice work. I think adding some hilarious feedback when hitting the various presents would push the fun up a notch.
Ha, a Davros costume is pretty ambitious, nice work there Stavros.
This game is nuts. Nice soundtrack and totally whacky controls were fun to experiment with. I made it down the stairs but wow it wasn't easy.
One small note, it says press any key to retry but I think only spacebar worked for me.
Wow this is really good for that short time!
I screwed myself my first few games figuring it out, for example by not building the money-generator. But I enjoyed the feeling of having to figure it out, and once I got on a roll I was having a good time.
The compo version, I had some problem with the bullets, they seemed to just kind of disappear sometimes when I thought they should kill the enemy.
I liked it enough that I ran the post-comp build, which was a big improvement. I see now that the enemies sometimes take more than one hit, and that was probably why the bullets "disappeared" in the first game.
Very nice art style and I appreciated experimenting.
My final game I thought okay now I'm gonna win this, I have a nice base established. But there is a nice design tradeoff, if you expand you need more guns but then each click costs you more. So my fatal mistake was thinking I had a good amount of ammo stockpiled and building too many guns without the supporting ammo factories.
Also the art was nicely done.
Wow I'll admit it, I underestimated this game in the first few moments, thinking it would be another slight variation on snake.
But holy cow this thing is sinister to the core. I don't know why but I just could not get over the alien control gap, my brain insisted on misfiring constantly and sending me into a wall or something. 10 minutes in I was like, why am I not learning this? The QM is such a simple idea but holy crap my brain would not accept it even when I was really concentrating.
The ludicrous, useless double vision background thing was crazy, the sneaky mines that look like the background color were nasty, and that 10 minutes left level was completely nuts.
Good job making something so innocent get so weird with just a few small twists.
The level select was a very nice feature to have in this game, and good on you for not locking them until I beat previous ones or something.
Top score was 44 on SNAKE.
If I could make one change to it, I would quicken up the retry loop.
Haha not having faith that I would restart at the same level on death rather than be sent back to the start, and noticing the modest trickle of life regen, I perverted the term "food clock" by milking the final tomato for a whole bunch of regen by just dodging its shots forever while I healed.
Fortunately you made the right call on the restart going to start of level. Still... I only needed one in order to beat them all!
I had fun but I felt pretty disoriented. Especially in the first three seconds while I was getting used to the high sensitivity level and carrots were already up on me. I can't exactly put my finger on quite what disoriented me, but taking the shots especially at the tomatoes I never really got a great feel for it. It could just be that the game was so fast-paced and in my face that my brain had no time to experiment, test, and observe. It was more like RUNRUNSHOOTSHOOTRUN!!!
Still, I had fun and the challenge level was appropriate, which I know is tough to get right in a compo.
Nice job mixing D2 and 3D, also. I liked that approach although did I see corn clipping through the fence in a weird way?
Cool twist on the classic snake, with a nice graphical aesthetic. Not sure if there's a moral message about us all being doomed from the start to die... ;)
Didn't manage to get to the ending but I did meditate several times and I felt myself get better! The atmospheric soundscape and graphics were a real strong point, they made a compelling mood.
Regarding the controls I had some trouble understanding when I could quickly re-press to expand the square again, and when I would have a cooldown. So I wasn't sure how to plan when I saw multiple waves coming. At first I thought I always had the cooldown and some of the patterns were just impossible... but by the end I knew I could often press z rapidly if I was on target.
Still I never got through a meditation without missing at least a couple of those really fast sets.
It was a nice relaxing atmosphere though, and I liked that the patterns were pretty well mixed up.
Great idea and fantastic use of the crowd sounds to create excitement!
I definitely enjoyed it but wow it was pretty hard. I kept wishing that the ball wasn't stopped by my team's feet on the way up, but maybe that's my being a wimp.
I lost every game but enjoyed myself.
Maybe a few tweens and timeslows on the ball getting kicked would add to the feel in a nice way.
Cool combo-theme game! The soundscape is really nice, very relaxing.
I wished there was a "play again" option at the end, I had to re-launch the game a few times to experiment around.
I love that the game offered no explicit instructions and yet was easy to figure out.
These are some cool mechanics, I haven't seen something really like it before. It took me a little while to figure out, but then I got it. The instructions played only one time and I was looking at another window, so maybe that was my own fault!
Fights were fun, I wish it was a little easier to force a battle, I had to track the guy down a lot.
Wow this was really fun, it was just the right amount of crazy. Nice work!
The instant retry was key here, I played a bunch of times.
The comments from the sky were a nice touch. I kind of wished I could see the containers plummet into the sea and that it would be hilarious, but I understand why the screen has to scroll that part down so I have room to play.
Also, good job making the song for a compo!
I remember your previous game, Derelict... you've got a great way of creating these moods that make want to dig into the slower-paced games with nice slow tension.
Although I never got off the Derelict (so close!) in this one I got through a bunch of worlds, maybe 6 or 7. Although I started the game terrible and crashed pod after pod, by the end I was getting pretty good. I think I got through one world without losing a single pod, and I definitely got at least four in a row.
World two was the hump for me, I almost didn't get past it.
The style of the art, sound, and even the text really work together with the mechanics here, it's great design.
I feel all my crashes were fair in terms of physics, I never felt cheated that way, or at least not once I knew how it worked. One thing that kept getting me about the controls was the turning... once you start turning you can pretty easily stop with a tap of the opposite direction. But I think I would have preferred to have it stop on button release instead, so that no keypress expresses a command to stop rotating. I feel like the handling would be more intuitive that way, but I can't be sure.
The other thing I would say is early on while I was still crashing a TON, I felt frustrated the retry didn't start faster once I was past the special text ones. Once I was a good pilot it didn't matter as much, and in a way it may have forced me to slow down and relax so maybe you did that on purpose!
Great compo entry across the board.
Congrats on the strong finish! Looking forward to seeing what you come up with in April.
Cool use of inertia and gravity mechanics! That last level was crazy, I had these wild swings all around the level, feeling barely out of control and screwed by my mistakes 4 seconds before.
I did have a technical issue with the sound. It was playing some kind of loud static and I had to mute it. I won't vote on audio since I know you did have sound effects but I didn't get to play with them.
Wow, this is an excellent entry, the idea is well thought out and the implementation is very strong! I enjoyed playing all the way through to the end.
The dialog screen was nice as well, the sound effect of the talking was cool and the characters were well-written.
A couple of tiny things felt a bit unfair a couple of times, like teleporting into a sudden need to turn, and the way that sometimes the read laser around the outside perimeter is drawn in such a way that it looks like maybe you could run there safely. But honestly there's not much to critique here, it was very well done!
Also the game length and dialog screen durations were spot on for my taste. Great job.
This is a strong all-around game - it looks and sounds great, and I enjoyed playing.
My top combo was 113x. I found that while the gameplay is relatively simple there in one critical design choice that unlocked a key bit of depth, and that's the way the character doesn't simply attack but instead leaps to meet the enemy. This means that I can reposition my character through attack timing, and that makes all the difference because now it's a game about planning and choice rather than simply reactive button pushing.
The music was enjoyable. The melody was infectious but appropriately simple, and the bleak synthesizer timbre was a good fit with the art style, which I took as somewhat apocalyptic. The looping did not grate on me as it sometimes does with short songs.
I also thought the sprite lighting was a nice touch!
I always try to leave a few points of critique, especially for good games, so here are some thoughts on small points:
- There are two sound effects when killing an enemy. I felt like the game was trying to signal some information to me but I never picked up on what it was.
- I didn't really process the lightning, I just got used to the distances.
- For very close range attacks my character did not turn around during an attack, which alarmed me the first few times as I thought I was missing.
- The difficulty curve was nice for learning. Once I got better I enjoyed the hard challenge I had built up to, but when I finally died it was daunting to think of starting over and having to go so long to get back to the hard part. That critical "should I play once more?" moment was weighed down by this feeling and that was my eventual reason for stopping. It's possible I would have played more with some adjustment there.
- There's a *slight* visual confusion that I think is due to the way that the enemies and the "near background" (ie park elements, not city backdrop) are similar in color saturation. This was not a real problem but I wished the main character and the threats visually popped just a bit more.
- When I was in the zone I was in the zone and after learning phase I knew exactly what was going on. I had less experience with misses and taking hits, though... So I ended up in this scenario where I knew what was going on while I was doing well, but then once I made a mistake it would snowball and I would take two or three hits in a row and ask "What just happened?" Escalating crisis is just fine except that I was also somewhat confused. I'm not sure what the fix is or even if I can clearly articulate the specific confusion.
- OK that last point was my initial impression from playing as a player. I went back into the game to specifically test the wiff/get-hit conditions over and over to see if I could get specific... my confusion is clearer now and here are a couple of more suggestions:
- Wiff needs a sound effect and maybe a graphical swoosh, it's maybe the #1 critical event and needs more feedback
- Wiff does not change direction to face the way I press, it should so my mistake is ultra-clear
- Consider including an audible cue such a light click to signal when I am ready to re-swing after a wiff or after getting hit. Maybe a visual glint cue is another way to go.
- After wiff/get-hit consider buffering the input to swing again if the key is pressed while still stunned. This could get nasty if the window is too large but right now I don't think there's any window to pre-press the button. I have to wait for the ready-to-swing state, which is not strongly telegraphed, and then press the button.
- I did not have this input buffer problem with the attacks, chaining multiple attacks felt great actually and I did not feel I had to wait for one to finish before pushing the key for another.
- When I get hit I could use more feedback about the fact that I got hit, who hit me, and when I'm ready to act again. The sound effect is a big start but maybe a bit more.
- The issue with not turning to face the enemy you hit when they are very close was escalating some of my confusion after taking damage. I would be surrounded, push left, my character would swing right and I would go into shock. It's true the enemy on the left would die but I already lost flow with the game on the line.
- It's a good design choice to have the enemy physically back away from the player on a hit rather than just having some invisible re-attack cooldown.
All of that stuff is microscopic detail in case you want it, this is a strong entry and don't take the list to mean otherwise!!
Cute game, and a cool idea to have it so things get harder as you get larger. At first I was sad the pig didn't gradually enlarge, but I liked that you had different sprites for the larger sizes rather than just scaling the pig.
I played to about 1600 pounds to see if I could balloon so large I'd eclipse the kitchen and not be able to avoid the chefs, but I think I was at max size. One fine pig.
I did notice a weird thing with the animations. If I walk into a wall and press both directions so I'm walking along it and trying to go diagonally into it, then the pig's animation frames stop cycling and it kind of slides along. I discovered this while checking out th-- well, never mind.
Right on! This is a nice all-rounder compo entry. The gameplay, graphics, and sound are all strong.
I love the stall mechanic that creates this tension between wanting to fly slow to see what's coming, vs not having enough airspeed to quickly climb out of the way of trouble.
The classic graphics would be good on their own but the TV effect pushes it over the top and really capitalizes.
It's difficult, so good thing you had the quick retry and continues. I wouldn't have played nearly as long if it was full GAME OVER every time.
My brain can't handle inverted flight controls in a non-first-person POV, so I was really hurting for the lack of a flip option. Until I realized I *did* have a flip option and turned my keyboard upside down to play. Of course, then I hit down instead of up and restarted instead of continuing, but only once or twice. ;)
Nice job and congrats on making it in for the compo. I remember playing your old trench warfare game, this one is a nice step forward because it's fully realized.
Wow, seriously? This is a full-featured and very complete game for a jam, I'm impressed!
The voiceover is great. The graphics are very nice, and often a true-top-down protagonist has no character but your art does a good job of avoiding that pitfall. The variety of monsters in both look and feel is great. The mop is a hilarious and fun touch. The end is very satisfying... A complete package!
If I had one nitpick it would be some of the tactics I ended up choosing because of the controls. I would often, especially when walking up or down where I have less sight distance, feel the need to be ready for sudden battle. So I was constantly walking around with the charge-up going. This had a couple of downsides, such as moving slower, not having quick access to the mop, and not really learning to dodge the charging guys as much as I should.
Maybe the whole "hold right click to aim" thing isn't necessary. What if the guy was aiming by default (but not moving slowly) and right click used the mop. Holding left click alone charges the shot.... I dunno, just a thought. The whole thing was great, but I have this feeling there's a slight tweak to the control scheme that unlocks a bit more fluid interaction.
An interesting idea well executed. First playthrough it felt a bit too arbitrary and maybe like it was just a joke, but then I read the description and I started to get better. I still didn't get the special message for being a good judge though, I always made a few mistakes and never just one.
The variety of faces is great, the crimes are often funny, and the conveyor-belt court system with the hammering fist ruling in the absence of evidence was all a nice farce.
Good work.
The sprite art for this game is awesome! I think that it makes a small mistake by having the main character not visually pop more though. The character often disappears from one place and appears someplace else on the screen so in the first few minutes of play it was super-easy to lose track. I think more contrast making the main character visually unique would have been a big help.
But the art really looked awesome!
Gameplay wise I had fun but I did feel like the level didn't set me up to have a ton of options about jumps. Is it even possible to make the jump at the very bottom? I always hit my head and fell in when I tried, every time. The game was also pretty tough about being over the edge... none of that forgiveness about being a bit over the edge that many platformers include these days.
Because I couldn't make all the jumps I felt like I had a bit less agency. The game looked and sounded great, and felt pretty good. But in the end my most successful strategy devolved into very rarely using the jump key, and just constantly mashing the shoot button... which meant I was rarely making decisions. But that strategy was safer because I learned the loops my character would repeat, so I knew where to expect her, and the shooting would clean up most enemies if I just nonstop mashed it. Then I only jumped to avoid the occasional incoming collision, or sometimes to just mix up the action or go for a pickup.
So I think this is a clever idea about how to use the two buttons, that looks and sounds fantastic, but ended up not really capitalizing on the potential of the good ideas and dev skills.
Still, a solid around-entry, just a shame to see the potential not quite click for me as a player.
Nice full-featured entry! The graphics look nice, the interface was clean, and the funky backing track was good without being too much.
I enjoyed the puzzles, although I think the turn-the-lights-on puzzle needs more of a "you win" effect, sometimes I'd hit something and suddenly it was over. I connected least with that one.
I had fun playing for a while, got through the first two complete levels but then the puzzles looked like they were going to stay the same so I called it a day.
Had a good time though - nice work!
Cool graphics and an interesting idea to move around with the recoil and have some hard-to-control flying fun.
One small idea - I found it hard to get away from the edges with the gun, I think maybe if the game world ended but my mouse could still go a bit into a margin so that I could aim back to the center that would really help. I know I can teleport away but it was a trap that got me all the time and broke me out of the zone.
Other than that everything felt pretty smooth, and it's always interesting to see what you can do with some teleportation.
Nice entry!
This game required really sitting down with it, and boy did I ever! I got up to a bit over 500 colonists I think, and by that point I had a strong inflow of all resources.
I think the enemy attackers need more noticeable graphics. I suddenly found I was out of some things and realized a wurm had destroyed all of my oil rigs and that was a big problem for me.
I'm impressed by this game - it was hugely ambitious and you really did a good job achieving a ton of that vision. Of course the balance felt like it could be improved a bit but great job getting so far in the limited time.
I wished I could have managed my hand a little better, by choosing what to discard rather than having a FIFO scheme. It was also tricky to pick all the cards before knowing the rules, and then I had to live with those blind choices for quite some time. However this is greatly mitigated by the ability to get more cards during the game. I overinvested in repair cards early though, and had a lot of dead draws.
I also wasn't sure what happened to my security officers. I found it was better to play them in response to a threat rather than pre-emptively, but only after some experimentation.
More clear enemy graphics, some kind of sound, and maybe a limited life to the pop-ups on the right would be minor improvements.
Great job on such an ambitious entry.
Nice frantic game, I made it to the top and shot it into the bonus hole a few times. The weird shape of the ball made this play different and the jarring screenshake and sharp sound effects all kind of worked together as a style.
Nice work.
I liked the graphical scanline/blur effect, I thought it did a great job of evoking the old-school hardware and fit well with the level of the graphics and sound.
The sound effects were well-executed technically, but from a design perspective I felt like the steady thumping of the "player shoots" sound effect was too much after a while, so I had mixed feelings about the sound.
At first I didn't even realize there was a penalty to getting hit (since there isn't when you're not the smallest size). So I stopped trying not to get hit. I played a while before I realized I was getting larger/smaller depending on whether I took damage. So I think a small tweak is made to convey this, perhaps by having the player start bigger, and maybe making the transition more dramatic for example a few small pieces of debris fall off. As it stands, if you give up early enough on caring about being hit you will never learn.
Nice entry. Dodging those red sideswipers when I got large was tough stuff!!
Love the treatment of the double theme and the fun artwork, great job! Favorite one was hot mess but they all cracked me up.
Wow this game is pretty awesome, I was having a lot of fun playing, but every time I die I have to restart all the way from the beginning! :(
Good implementation of a fun mechanic, with nice enemy design and art style. If I could have seen new content by restarting from the level instead of going all the way back to the story I would definitely have played a lot more.
It's nice work though, and I understanding wanting people to face the challenge of beating the whole thing in one go.
Cool, I don't usually go for rhythm games but the Lovecraft theme and graphics sucked me in. The creepy vibe is there, with the arcane symbols, the slowly growing monster/portal approaching in space, and the music.
Also you had me restart on the current monster in a failure rather than crushing my soul by sending me back to the start of the game, which would have been a ragequit moment.
At first I was sad that I had to focus on the symbols instead of watching the growing monster, but eventually I learned to unfocus my gaze and accept both into my mind simultaneously.
Well done!
Cool idea, and the game looks and sounds really nice! Love the funky bass.
It was interesting how I didn't just have to touch the blocks, but actually smack them hard enough to drive them off course. This made the game more unique, and the slow movement of the ball made for some OH NO moments where I was already too late but watching the disaster unfold.
I think there's one design choice that hurts the experience though, so don't take this badly but I want to offer the suggestion.
It needs a faster retry loop.
It has three delays every time you die and want to play again:
A delay before the death actually registers.
A delay while you watch the score screen.
A delay going back to the main title screen, which was made worse by the fact that I had some glitchy issues with the two-button combo keypress registering to start the game. Sometimes it was immediate, other times I had to jam the keys repeatedly for a few seconds first.
I would prefer the game to instantly kill me and show my score with a single-key instant restart. I would have played a lot longer if it was that way.
The problem with this kind of slowness in the retry loop is that it most punishes a brand new player, who is eager to experiment but likely to die quickly. The developer, who is expert enough for a long gametime, doesn't feel the pain.
That's just a small thing though, nice compo entry!
Got to the final boss but didn't quite have the chops to take him down. Interesting upgrade system!
There's a lot here to this entry, with nice art, sound effects, music, and game mechanics w/ upgrades. Well done getting all that done!
The only criticisms I have are that I don't see a connection to the themes, and I felt like maybe the double-jump let me just run past a lot of the dangers and shouldn't be an option.
(Note: I see another commenter saying the art was taken from Rogue Legacy, but a google image search shows that game has different art so I am voting assuming he's incorrect.)
Game was fun, and it was clear how to play and what to do.
My best score was 26,243, which is staying alive quite some time. Unfortunately the winning strategy, at least the one that worked for me, was to get fuel and then spend it driving in circles by holding down the arrow key. This was the only time I felt safe, and I broke out of that to go find fuel only.
When I didn't do that, I did have fun screaming around the city at 80mph in a twitchy bus!
I would recommend that this game is so fast paced that the restart should skip going back to the title screen and just INSTANTLY replay, although it's a tiny thing.
Nice work for your first LD compo and on such a short time budget.
If I were to work on this some more I would experiment with two changes. First some camera work. I might zoom out at higher speed, and I would definitely at least try offsetting the center so the player sees more of what's ahead than behind. Second I would experiment with a ramp-up time on the responsiveness of the steering control. So like it starts 20% as responsive, say, and then over the course of 250ms it ramps from 20 to 100% responsiveness. This can be a good compromise where it feels fast but takes the edge off the twitchiness.
Nice work, I played through the entire game! Art style is strong, the music is good, and the puzzle platformer mechanics are new and interesting. Great all-around compo entry that hits all the aspects!
If I were to tweak anything, I guess I thought level 3 had a touch too much repetition, and in a few places there were blind jumps required that were okay but other times it was spikesrestartomg what just happened?
Not that I'd remove the instant restart of course - that's always a key aspect in LD games!
Not sure if you noticed but this game was covered in the following youtube video, just happened to see it!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ga8v_B_nUyA
The art style is a highlight here, I love the shadows with monsters lurking at the edge and it works with the dark theme of a strange cube absorbing souls.
I had a hard time really getting the mechanics down. I would charge, and absorb. And that would go okay. But then it wouldn't, and something different would happen, and it would be game over. I absorbed 45 souls, and it seemed like I was making progress around the circle underlying the cube... but I don't really understand even after playing and dying several times.
I liked the look of this game, the textured ground was striking and the shapes were nice. I got four people but couldn't see how to get more. I didn't recall getting gold, but first the banker didn't like, then he said something about having coins, yet didn't follow me back to town like the others. So I wandered a while with the farmer feeling tied down and the banker not talking at all.
Cool concept but I think the slow calm movement speed eventually made it too ponderous to keep searching yet again.
Nice work though, it looks good and the camera's mechanics are interesting.
Wow nice work, this was surprisingly fun! I think I was pretty bad, I didn't get better than a bit over 14k points, but I enjoyed it.
The cute graphics carried it a long way and the sound effects were also a nice touch. All around strong package.
If I could tweak anything it would be to get back into the action just a bit faster after a death. It's great that it has the restart button there, but still the time to push it all the way to the top and wait a bit for the first waves can be longer than the time I stay alive! What's that you say? Maybe I *shouldn't* be pushing it all the way to the top?? Hrm....
This was a fun game and a I played a bunch, but I eventually decided I had a beef with the control scheme.
Can I share my thoughts on the problem/solution?
In my opinion, too much of my thought process while playing was around micromanaging the input steps to change guns: see enemy, then right click, text pops up, move exactly to target gun, then left click. That's two clicks, a precise mouse point, and some text. I even started early right clicking and just watching for enemies with the text still showing.
I think you could smooth out the controls with a couple of small changes, and if you did you could then justify throwing even harder challenges at the player.
Here are the hypothetical changes I was thinking of:
1. Enlarge the selection radius on the gun enormously. Like you can click anywhere on the screen and it will select the nearest gun.
2. Make right click immediately select. No two clicks, no text.
In other words, at any time I can right click anywhere and my selection will immediately move to the nearest gun.
So now I can flip between guns extremely rapidly. When I see a new monster, I navigate the mouse there, right click as I approach to change guns, and left click as the mouse arrives to start shooting. So the mouse moves in a straight line to the target, there is only one click to change, and then I can fire.
Once the player can juggle guns much more quickly, you can start sending more multi-pronged attacks. You could even try to change the enemies so the player wants/needs to switch even during a firefight. Currently once I had aim on a target I always shot it to death. But can you introduce a design element where it becomes worth it to sometimes switch away from a big fight to put two bullets into a monster coming at another gun, then cut back to the main battle? That would be a cool feeling I think.
There's definitely some physical and mental challenge aspect to your current controls that is lacking in what I propose, but I'm a strong believer in making the controls as smoothly powerful as possible and then balancing in-game challenges around that.
Anyway that's a long ramble but hope you found it interesting.
Nice entry, looks and sounds great, and obviously the design got me thinking. ;)
It was a cool feeling to be falling endlessly down that tunnel- I got to 1570 before a run of bad moves got me killed. Nice touch making the square get smaller to indicate health. Good job!
Nice implementation skills with the file upload feature, the scores and the chat! I didn't notice the score ticking up at the bottom the first time I played so that did confuse me, but then I played again.
Nice job on your first LD, you have some potential here because it's a lot of fun to build up speed.
It really, really needs a restart button that is not on the mouse and can be pushed any time, not only at the end. I would have played far more than I did if I could instantly reset the game when I took a hit and lost my speed.
The moment of failure for the player is that key moment where you want to think about how your game will avoid losing them. In this one I feel bad when I get stopped, and then I have to dig my way out by jumping until I get unstuck and start rolling slowly again, and then complete the whole level, then lean forward off my couch to get the mouse and push that button, then I can lean back and play some more. Sounds like I'm overstating it but it's huge imo.
Restart-button rant aside, I dig this entry. The 3d perspective is cool and the difficulty kept me wanting to roll out just one more time.
Cool idea for a variant on the bouncing ball vs paddle genre. It was an interesting twist that you included gravity in your simulation.
I loved the near-miss sound effect, but I could have done with a little less text. You could definitely remove some, for example I don't need text to tell me "ball speed increased" because that's going to be something I'll notice.
If you continue development I think you could stand to add a little juice, go watch that famous "juice it or lose it" video on youtube for many fine ideas! Since there were very few interactive feedback points it felt a little bit sterile to knock the ball around, but that's easily fixed.
Nice first-time entry, I liked the list of things you did for the first time.
I appreciated that you checked all the boxes by including sound, although I see you didn't want to be rated on art and sound... but who cares man, just keep doing those and you'll keep improving!
Gameplay was a solid idea. It was good that one hit didn't instantly send me back to the start of the game.
If I could tweak just a few parameter values in this game I would speed it up... everything. The pace of moving forward, and the pace of swinging the thing there left and right. Maybe increase the gaps between meteors to compensate.
As it is, when I started the game it felt very slow, and when I got my speed up but then got hit I felt really slow... like ITCHING slow, not a pleasant relief from action slow.
That's just a minor tweak though! This is a solid first entry you can be proud of and build on, nice work.
Cool mechanics and a nice chill vibe. Not sure I've seen a game's instructions warn "BE GENTLE" before, but I liked the careful touch required. Soundtrack really added to the feel.
Nice work. My best star was Grade B.
I got 5558.
I am embarrassed to admit the first five or so games I played completely backwards, dodging the goblins and smashing open crates (since that's the usual way to go!) and felt reassured that my character was not getting angry.
After suddenly dying a few times I started to realize I had it all backwards, and that crates are bad, goblin impacts good, and rage desirable!
Also, I learned that goblins sound kind of like cats.
Oh, and the song! Almost forgot to say that it's awesome you recorded a live song on acoustic guitar, nice work.
Wow nice design and implementation, that's a lot to get done for a jam! You had models, various systems, an economy, a shop, sounds... nice work!
Hahaha was that a backpack jar filling with blood?
That was some crazy action, nice work. Sound effects and splatter were great.
This game looks and sounds really slick! Congratulations on a nice level of polish and presentation.
I felt like something was off about the *feel* of the controls, and I found myself being surprised/frusrtated by the movements of the character. I see that other people are complaining about controls as well but not getting specific...
So here goes: I took some notes while I played, about various bugs and design issues with the controls and camera, I hope that you don't take the feedback poorly as it sounds negative... but I only include these because there's a lot of potential here if you can improve the gameplay feel just a bit!! If a game is just bad I do not leave feedback like this okay? Plz don't be offended.
Issue List:
- Can get stuck against wall by pushing into it, this felt especially bad when i missed a jump and was stuck against the wall, not going to fall and die as long as i hold the button, but no way out. Better if character slides down wall imo. In unity change the characters Physics2DMaterial to have friction = 0 and that will do it.
- Camera shift when i change facing left/right felt really severe, especially if i was moving right but wanted to just reposition slightly backwards, so i'd eat a double-shift very quickly, this didn't feel nice. better if camera shift is more gentle and starts after a short delay. You can implement this style of camera movement with a tween that has a nonlinear curve.
- Parallax foreground continues to scroll when i press walk key but am pushing against wall and thus not actually moving, seems like a bug
- Wished for another keyboard key to shoot besides Z, wanted one for my right hand. Used mouse which was okay though.
- Felt weird that I cannot double-jump on the rising portion of my jump but have to wait for the peak.
- Double-jump sometimes happens even if you don't press the button. To reproduce this, try jumping, hold down the jump button until almost the peak but not quite. Now let go. The character will keep going up, and then from the peak will do a double jump even though you didn't say to. You only pressed the button, and weren't still holding it at the peak, yet you still double jumped. This happened to me a LOT by accident.
- Also was surprised to jump again off ground after holding jump key too long in air.
- Also surprised to jump off pickups in the air, but did get used to this.
- Overall moving speed is too slow for my personal taste, I would prefer everything to move faster.
- Enemy AI is implemented to walk toward player on X axis. However this means when jumping over an enemy that it will follow and stay exactly underneath you so you land on its head. If this is intended as part of the challenge then okay, but I found it frustrating since player is not well equipped to deal with landing directly on top of an enemy.
- Slow pace combined with restarting from the beginning meant a lot of repetition
- When you go left the third enemy you encounter is short and totally blocked by the foreground fog. In post compo there are still several enemies hidden by the fog. Maybe intended, but felt unfair.
- Game makes me jump off the top of the screen when I go to the left, that's not great imo.
- Small platforms have hitboxes that extend underneath their graphics, so there is an invisible barrier. This barrier blocked my shots, and also sent me falling to my death from bumping my head unexpectedly.
Anyway, again this game is a nice package and that list of items is meant to be helpful food for thought and not a negative review.
I figured after that list I should get the post-comp version and try it, the addition of the jump sound is nice. It also fixed up the issue with the AI making you land on its head which is huge! Nice update.
The guitar music is pretty awesome and I love the game over screen's discordant version especially, nice work!
YES!! TOTAL VICTORY!!
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pkenney's tips for beating Laser Jump FTW, to be read only after you've played a bit already:
Tip 1: The platform is not your friend. It is your own weakness. Tough up and get used to owning in the sky because otherwise you are doomed.
Tip 2: Immediately and always right click every time you play to zoom out. You need the info.
Tip 3: Remember those thousands of hours you logged playing Tribes video games where you fly around with a jetpack and shoot stuff?
Tip 4: Notice the linear non-accelerating nature of your falling. Notice the falloff in horizontal momentum. Relax! These gentle physics mean you don't need to stay in front of ever-escalating falling speeds nor do you have to counter-act any sideways motion you give yourself. You have more time to think than you might think.
Tip 5: It is critical that you actually aim at stuff WHILE shooting to control your movement. Sometimes you panic shoot to kill and don't control movement. And then you panic shoot to recover your position and don't kill stuff. And then you lose. The way to victory is multi-purpose shooting. As it should be.
Tip 6: Get up near the ceiling but not too close. Learn the rate at which you can fire without hitting the boundary. What is the steady state? Get the feel for shooting at a 45 angle, which allows you to move comfortably left/right while maintaining a relatively stable height and lets you shoot toward enemies.
Tip 6.5: Now that you are near the top and a sky warrior, let the enemies amass into a single blob and kite them left and right. Pass over the horde, carefully aim-steer-shooting to kill the top enemies while controlling your height and passing sideways over them. GOT IT? As long as you have your basics down you should only have real trouble from newly spawning enemies.
Tip 7: OH MY GOD THEY CHANGED ALL THE PHYSICS AND THE RULES EXACTLY COUNTER TO MY STRATEGY!$??
Tip 8: OK I'm'a leave this to you to figure out, but it can be done. I beat both modes. (It does not include standing on the platform, even though you'll want to all over again.)
Only change I would make is to add time survived to post-match screen. I agree w/ tutorial after death and not before, rather strongly in fact, but I also would like to see my score there.
The only other friction point was that early on while I was still acclimating I was surprised that I'd hit the ceiling when I thought I had it under control. My eyes weren't on my head, they were on my target, so it was just a feel thing. I kind of wished there was like a warning track like the baseball guys have that would maybe play some subtle yet not annoying audio cue that impact was imminent but while I still had time to react. I guess that this risks becoming super-repetitive and thus annoying, though.
Fantastic all-around package here, congrats to you and your team.
And sorry about your job, Rich.
I managed only four babies. Challenging to look at all the details on a timer!
Impressive scope for a jam! An interesting strategy game with great graphics, nice humor, and pretty balanced systems. Great user interface with the cards, as well.
If I had to pick one tiny nitpick, I think the short music clip that was cycling was eventually a bit too much given how long I could sit and play for.
Loved the graphical stylings on this one! Also the novel mechanics, I haven't seen something quite like that before.
I died a lot though and wasn't a fan of having to go back through the main menu. I would have preferred an instant restart option. I am glad you didn't restart the music from the top on restart though, that was a good choice!
Nice work guys, look, sound, and feel all there... and you hit the double-theme nicely.
Intense! This thing punches you straight in the face and doesn't relent.
There are a number of strong game design and aesthetic choices here. I love the lack of any instructions, I love the instant restart with zero user action, I love that your previous score is durably shown large for you to see even while playing the next time.
My top score was 28.93 seconds.
This is a very tight package and I approve! If I could change anything it would be to apply a ramp-up to the responsiveness of the movement keys. The speed is correct but it feels like it instantly starts at max speed, so the controls are twitchy, and unfortunately this was a primary aspect of the challenge.
The game wants to be more smooth, I think. If the speed of the movement ramped from 10% to Max over the course of 200ms or so I think it would take the edge off the jerkiness of tiny taps and help.
Awesome entry, though. The graphics and sound really added to the feel.
Played again - a bit over 34 seconds!
Very nice game! The art is really great looking, although maybe it doesn't cleanly convey the most important game info about what is dangerous when I was a new player. But it looks fantastic. The sound is also a nice fit.
But best of all the entire gameplay is an interesting idea and a fun implementation... great job!
There was a fun core here but I felt the lack of sound effects and a visible jetpack. I enjoyed the crazy background and the icon-style graphics, though. Nice touch clearly showing when I got hit, and the skull is a cool tradeoff.
Very interesting concept, but because I moved so slow I didn't have much impact on the battle. I was mostly just commuting back and forth.
Until I discovered a trick - you can build a turret on a wall cell and it will erase the wall. So I set up a few quick turrets where my spawn wall was that guarded my half. Then I built turrets replacing the wall between our spawn zones and my turrets opened fire on their guys coming to their door to get boxes. After that the balance tipped hard and I won.
I played a while and liked it, though! Nice entry.
Tight controls and a nice look made this fun to play! I got 300, which I know isn't great, but I couldn't help taking those risks and squeezing through the tight spots to grab the orbs.
Nice job with your first leap into 3D, too.
Nice job finishing on your first Ludum Dare! A shame you didn't get the multiple arm types idea in time, but impressive that you had art with animations, sound effects, and music... plus a final boss fight!
Two tiny points I'll mention about small design choices: Consider going for more color contrast between enemy and background, here you have green on green. It wasn't a real problem though. Second, the regenerating health seems to "encourage boring" because it rewards me for standing and waiting to fill back up before I move forward.
Slick graphics and a nice theme to have the group of wizards get knocked away instead of having game over right away! My high score was 1657 but I kind of lost it all in a row at the end.
Cool game, plays smooth. It took me a little while to figure out what buttons to press and what to do, and then there was a bit of time until I had memorized what color was which button until I could do it fast enough.
Then of course I hit level 10 and had some more learning to do!
I think my top score was 16.
If I could make a few small changes I would put the controls on the start screen, have someplace that the red/blue/green order someplace to help new players. Something simple, like where your background has the one red light, have three lights in the right order to remind me.
Also since the game controls with keyboard and has a lot of death/restart, it's a constant small friction that I have to take my hand and put it on the mouse to click restart, I would prefer a keyboard command since my hand is already there.
Looks good and plays smooth though, nice one! It was satisfying to get a run in a row, and the little sound effect was a good touch.
This was awesome - very creative, it looks really nice, and the sound and music are great.
It was just a little too much repetition required on a retry given how much instant death there was. It made me feel like I didn't want to risk experimenting except at the very start of a level.
Definitely enjoyed playing though, strong entry!
Wow, the physics really work to create some interesting tactics here. There's this great satisfaction to shoving a wave of same-shapes into a crowd and watching them all blow up. Then you just change into whoever is left standing and shove them into the wall!
It took me a while to get a groove because there's a lot going on. The 1/2/3 buttons were hard to instantly relate to the shape. Took me a few deaths to stabilize, but I prefer that to a slow tutorial.
The nice thing is it let me play slow and careful if I was feeling awkward, or fast and aggressive if I was in the groove. Impressively balanced!
Retry chunk maybe got a little too large after a few levels. A late death was disheartening.
Love the music, it was a great vibe so probably worth going for the jam just for that!
I thought this was a really cool mechanic, and I had a good time playing. My high score was 104, which is all right.
If you're open to a suggestion, I think I could have got deeper in the groove if you make just two small changes to the game:
1) the collider is currently larger than the players graphics. Once I understood this it wasn't too bad, but I had a fistful of moments during the learning phase where I was confused why I died. I tested by just not doing anything after a restart and for me the player dies before he is really "hit" by the other shape.
2) I like the mechanic of changing to a shape to become immune to them. It's tough to really nail it under pressure, but I think I could get there if you changed it so that my "allies" didn't block my bullets. When I change to square, the squares stop killing me, but they still stop my shots from hitting enemy triangles, yet the triangles can come through the other squares to get me. The problem here is that I was "clever" and changed to the right shape, but I get killed anyway because now I can't blast my way out.
Overall I had the most luck with the shape-changing when I was moving around a lot, so it ended up being fine.
I like it - interesting mechanics with smooth controls and a nice vibe especially with the music. Nice entry!
Love it - high score was 2274 but I bet you could get really good at this.
I like the simple graphics and the unassuming sound effects, the mood is right.
I love that it doesn't instruct you, and lets you figure it out.
The only problem I had after getting over the hump is the way things go from totally fine to game over instantly, so there's not so much tension building as I see things spiraling out of control... it's just already over before I know there's a problem.
Very nice atmospheric story puzzle game! Looks and sounds really nice and I liked the mood.
I'll report a couple of issues I saw:
I got a crash when got the painting to do something, here's the error:
FATAL ERROR in
action number 1
of Step Event0
for object obj_painting:
Variable obj_player_treasure.fall_speed_max(100025, -2147483648) not set before reading it.
at gml_Object_obj_painting_Step_0
I also was able to glitch up into the bedroom from the starting room by turning into the mouse, running up the left wall, and turning into the guy then clipping through the ceiling.
Issues aside, loved it!
I enjoyed this and played all the way to the end! The enemy AI behavior stood out, it was a great mix of exploitable and surprising. That plus the slightly mixed up placement kept the situation varied even when I was retrying, which is great.
If you tinker with it some more, it would be helped lots by some juicy feedback, for example I couldn't feel it when I hit an enemy or took damage so the combat felt flat. Even without sound effects there could be a momentary freeze-frame, some tweened scale on the blocks, a little rumble or a quick flash to help inform me and grant weight to hits. My other nitpick is that the menu UI felt like a rough spot you could smooth out. Maybe you can even avoid the need for a menu at all somehow! Could I change shape just by grabbing the pickup, and my old shape pops out as a new pickup when I change? That way I can just walk into things to change around size/shape.
Anyway, nice entry - I enjoyed it!
Wow great job! This was a lot of fun, and it was well-built.
I tested several scenarios to see if I could cheap the game out, but you had it covered. I tried just parking in a corner forever, but no dice. I also tested what happens if I stand on a spawning brick, but you thought of that too!
I liked the idea and I liked the pace. The graphical style was really cool too, the variations of block appearance was a really nice touch.
If could change just one thing I would look at making the collider into a slippery collider instead of a frictiony one. My main trouble was zipping around a corner of a block and I'd get a bit stuck. It was totally not a huge deal, it just threw a kink in that prevent the control from being A+ buttery smooth.
Great work, I liked this one.
Cool game, and the music was great!
I totally got fired though, I couldn't keep up! It was a nice touch to have the reminder on the screen.
This was cool! I really liked the idea of rearranging your shape, and the way that it affected both offense and defense. Plus the graphics looked really nice, and the game had a nice feel.
This is a really solid entry, so let me mention a few tiny things that dinged me while I was playing.
Others mentioned the repeated tutorial but I agree that was the only really big one. I do want to say the tutorial was well designed in the way that it forced me to use the ability to start, though.
Next, I really like the visual look but maybe the projectiles and the hearts could "pop" a bit more - I kind of lost them when the screen got hectic. The projectiles currently have this dark purple which is a very low contrast against the dark blue background, so they're the first thing my eye loses track of when they should be the last. The hearts are also kind of a desaturated fleshy pink and could stand a little more intensity.
Lastly, I had a little trouble making heavy use of the main mechanic. I liked that I was *forced* to by the tutorial, but I would have enjoyed the game even more if I would have *wanted* to use it more. Instead, my best runs were when I used the vertical column to get past the tutorial, and then changed to the horizontal column and played the whole game that way.
I am not totally certain what the main friction here was. I think it was learning... I knew I could push that button and change shape, but because there were three shapes it required a learning phase before I could internalize what shape would come out when I hit the button. There was this combination: In a firefight I was afraid to hit the button because if I did I wasn't sure what would happen, and I might lose control and die quickly and have to do the tutorial again. So I just didn't hit the button. But then I didn't learn the button. So I never got over this really.
I don't know if that makes sense... And I will say that it's not only this game. A ton of shape-shifting games offered three shapes but I had this problem of learning the button 'shift-order' with every one. So maybe it's me!
But I wonder if having only two shapes would let the player integrate it into their play easier.
Anyway that's a lot of nitpicks but it's not to say I didn't like it! It's because I did like it that I put a bunch of feedback.
Nice graphics and feel for a cool idea, well done!
Minor, but if I could change one thing I would make the restart command be on the keyboard like the gameplay instead of changing to the mouse.
Wow, is that stereo panning I hear?! And those explosions are great, I love the effect from blowing up the ships.
This was fun, I didn't get quite to the point where I was effectively hot-swapping weapons when I faced mixed waves, but I was doing pretty good with the basic swaps. I liked that it was a little more than I could handle with the tougher stuff.
Nice entry!
Excellent first compo entry. Cool concept and great look.
The controls could be smoother, I had a lot of frustrating deaths where I meant to do one thing, but another thing happened.
However, the positives of game made up for that!
I did hit a difficulty bump in the second level another commenter said, but I pushed past that and got to the last level. I nearly beat it, but I couldn't quite get there.
Well done!
This one sets a very cool mood - I wanted more at the end. In fact, I'm not sure if I really got to the real end or not... But for some reason that was okay.
Nice work!
Pros and cons at play here.
On the pro side, I really wanted to play this game more. I liked the setup, and the art style. The main character being paper on a stick and the background being scrawled onto a wall, it really worked impressively well. The moody ambient audio was a great additional touch, and I didn't even mind hearing the same vocal clips repeatedly. I had a preconceived idea of where the story would go but I was unsure and I wanted to find out.
However, there was something very wrong with the controls which dominated the experience for me. I was pushing the jump button and not getting a jump. I tested a bunch to identify specifically why, but I could not. I do see that you don't enqueue a jump command if I hit the jump while not quite landed from the prior jump, which I'd recommend. But it was more than that. Something about processing horizontal movement keys seemed to interfere with the jump registering, but I could not ID it through testing, sorry.
But effectively, the space bar only jumped about 60% of the time that I wanted it to in critical moments. Trying to jump-then-move didn't really work either because of the intense inertia applied to air control. So unfortunately, fighting the controls was the primary challenge, and that type of challenge gets me into a state of frustration. Combined with the total restart from beginning, I eventually lost my will.
Still, this game is a good entry. I think this is a great idea for a game with some solid execution on the art style and and a unique vision. You got me hooked and retrying to get to the rest of the story. If you could clear the way for me by streamlining the platformer controls, I would have played to completion.
OK! I was worried with the whole "jumps not registering" thing - what if it's on my end?
So I did go to another computer, and I tested. It does seem that the problem was with my wireless keyboard not registering, as opposed to your game. So apologies for the false alarm. I got much, much further this time.
Obviously I have adjusted my vote appropriately!
This game is awesome. The graphics have character and the feel is on point. And even though it's super-crazy-hard and you keep having to start over, it very cleverly avoids feeling repetitive by changing up the graphics and the weapons. Those weapons!! It's also slick that it gives the weapons twice before cycling, because that lets me acclimate a bit.
So many nice touches in a strong entry here.
I do want to give my one and only complaint though: I spent what feels like about 20% of my playtime staring at the GAME OVER screen. That would be a fast restart time in most games, but I often died in the first couple of seconds here, so that restart time eventually built up to like hammering-the-keyboard-in-rage slow for me if I caught a few bad deaths in a row. I probably would have played twice as long as I did if the restart was absolutely instantaneous. I wanted the difficulty, but the punishment eventually outweighed the crime when I screwed up (aka every time).
It's fair that I might just not be good enough, though.
Great entry.
Unique idea, I had fun flying! Couldn't really get a handle on catching enough to stay aloft for very long, but I enjoyed the journey.
I like this a lot, there are a lot of good design calls, and the art and sound has a nice cohesive feel.
I enjoyed the amount that you let me discover mechanics for myself. When a game is this small, I like when it gets extra value out of letting you experiment to discover the rules as opposed to a hand-holdy tutorial.
Being unable to pass turns to let enemies come to me forced me to think ahead a bit more, as opposed to just bumping dudes, and the weapon charges gave it that classic RL feeling of "should I spend resources here or avoid the fight?" Many rooms I just carved enough of a path through to escape, but in others I would expend resources to clear and then harvest everything. The multiple exits from the room was also interesting - a nice fault-tolerant design that saves you from impossible RNG situations in a jam!
So good feel, lots of good design calls, and nothing that got in my way. Great job!
Is there a real ending, or have I won if I get past the numbered levels to where it just says "the room"? My strongest "build" was with the wand, I really enjoyed that feeling.
Really nice job for a first LD entry! It's easy to make bad jumping physics when you're new to this stuff, and your jump felt pretty solid. It was maybe a tiny bit floaty but that wasn't a gameplay problem because your air control offered the precision required by the tight jumps your level had. This sort of compatibility between the controls and the challenges is essential and you made it work.
I also appreciated that you gave full attribution to the sources you used so that I can see what was your work, vs the work of others. Nice!
If I try to think of constructive feedback, I would say that the first time I encountered a lizard I got killed because I tried to jump on top of it. I think you could consider having the art imply the gameplay mechanics by putting spikes on him.
Great job for your first time, with the intro screen, the story, the game, and the credits it all felt very complete.
Very cool chain reactions! I was totally shocked when my first game was lost, I had a board-spanning position with lots of 3s, and instead of triggering it I turned one more 2 into a 3. Well, then the roaches took their turn, and BOOM the chain reaction was nuts and totally destroyed me and I lost.
Once I saw how quickly I could be wiped out, I got it, and I won the next time. Really fun, with cute simple graphics that are getting the job done, and a proper focus on the one core idea of setting off chain reactions.
Naturally it's hard to balance making the chains go off slowly enough that I can watch and see and understand why, but yet be quick enough that the game doesn't bog down too much. It's a tough balance but I think you picked a good spot.
Very nice, especially for a first entry.
Wow, awesome art, great sound, and tight controls, this is really well done. There were many small polished touches as well, for example the warning sounds when you hit important points such as 90 deaths etc, and the way the icon for your roar ability redraws along with your cooldown timer.
Then there were even some tactical choices, like the tradeoff between waiting at the edges so you weren't surrounded, vs being in the center so that you could actually push the heroes out of the arena.
Very nicely done!
Nice mood with relaxing gameplay and music that's a good match. I checked off more than half the stuff. I did wish the play area was a lot bigger on the screen - I would have fallen deeper into the trance.
Nice art and sound give a unique flavor to this one! Great job... the balance was nice, with constant danger yet it felt like it was my fault when I got hit.
Great work.
Wow great moody art, nicely done! I played a couple of paths, one ended at "goodbye" and the other I was in a room with some colored buttons that I couldn't get to open the door.
The mood of exploration and the snarky humor was also nice.
One thing that irked a little was the slow animation speed of pushing the buttons. The animation itself looked great but when I had to do a lot of experimental pushing it was tricky. I liked that you queued animations, for example searching boxes I was able to clickclickclick past a few (Yes I could improve my patience.....) . The problem hit me most when there were some roman numerals and I thought, perhaps I am meant to click this button 7 times? Except I couldn't queue multi-pushes of the same button, and I was waiting for the animations. This meant I was reluctant to perform additional experiments.
Anyway, didn't meant to dwell on one small nit - the game looked really nice! Somebody mentioned sound in another comment, but I heard only silence. I played the WebGL version in Chrome on Windows.
Very cool puzzle game with a lot to dig into! Great work.
Cool idea to make the intro that requires me to learn the controls. This was very effective.
I killed 46 nightmares for my top score.
Art and sound are very well done. If I could change one thing, I would try to remove the two-clicks and somehow make it work with one click per throw, even if it meant holding down the button (like click, drag to aim, release to throw).
Anyway, nice moody entry!
What a very interesting and well-executed entry! Great work! I checked your entry out because you'd played my game billiard dungeon earlier this year, and I'm glad I got to experience this unique game you've made.
I enjoyed the initial confusion since it's not like other games. I had some shock and lack of understanding at first about why I had to manually pump my heart and blink my eyes, and I enjoyed the way this confusion blossomed into understanding that drove the plot. Like, you never explicitly *told* me what's really happened, but respected me enough to let me figure it out from what the control scheme implies - very cool.
I played through four times. In my final run I was able to get out alive, although I only accomplished one of my other goals. My shortest run was when I was totally honest. ;)
Even after several runs one thing I never understood was the alarm that comes up around the stroke. I don't know if this is hard-coded or if I was mis-operating my lungs. I had a habit of steadily tapping the heart-lung-eye to keep my body stable, but about midway through this fails and I get an alarm I don't know how to fix.
I would have liked to explore this more and play a bunch of times. There's a delicate tradeoff here between an immersive experience and too much repetition... I'm not sure you could have done better but eventually when I escaped alive I felt pretty satisfied, and my feeling of not wanting to repeat slightly outweighed my curiosity about the paths I had not explored.
Overall this is a fantastic LD entry, with really novel mechanics I haven't ever seen before, and interesting mental space to explore. The execution was also spot-on... very impressed!
Nice mood, although I had to turn down the sound effects a lot. I liked the mix of puzzle and timing, creating some pressure. The controls felt easy, graphics look good, and the variety of ghosts was nice. I made it past the upside down room, to the room with stacked sofas.
Interesting take on the theme, and not quite like anything I've played before!
I absolutely didn't notice whatever tearing or sync problems you were talking about in the warning... so no worries there! It took me a little while to realize that I wasn't supposed to hammer continuously, but that it was measure by measure alternating between showing me the pattern and then asking me to repeat it. Once I realized, this felt completely obvious because of course the board with nails was not even moving during the showing measures! I have no clue why I was being dumb about that.
If I could change one thing, it would be to make the hammer really go down all the way to the board so it actually feels like it was driving the nail in with authority. Right now the way it kind of taps the tip of the nail and then the nail goes down by itself, it feels kind of disconnected, like the core action of the game isn't real.
But an interestingly odd entry which I enjoyed - good job!
I completed party of 9! I had really good scores until then, but for the 9 I got in trouble and a lot of guests were quite unhappy. At least nobody died though!
I enjoyed the tone of the emails, which really carried me through the story. Nice connection of the theme to the humor.
Good job!
Randomly recalled your old sector.33 game and figured I'd check out what you made this time around...
Another interesting entry with slick style!
I played like 20 times, and I got both keys and nearly got back to my sweetheart that last time, but I couldn't quite pull it off.
I think this is really solid but would have been great with just a bit more feedback. The animations and everything look really good, but the game doesn't do much to tell me the most important facts relating to the gameplay: when I get shot, when my gun is ready to shoot again, and when I successfully hit an enemy. If each of those three had some kind of audio/visual cue I think I would have had even more fun with it. On a lesser level, I could have stood to have the bullet path line be a different shade for the enemies, and maybe a bit more obviously directional... maybe even being RED after it passes through someone on a hit?
But those are just minor nitpicks on a strong entry. Slick style as always, and a cool action game with a nice take on the theme... good job!
Nice all-around entry, with cool art and slimy sound effects... you even ticked the box on having music!
Pretty tough, I only made it to level 3. If I could change one thing I would put a bit more feedback into getting hit. Sometimes I thought I was getting away with not letting them hit me, but my life bar disagreed. Since endurance seems to be the main challenge, it's really important for me to learn how to avoid getting hit.
Nice work!
Wow, very cool game! My high score was 29.
I liked the atmosphere, and the fact that you let me discover the rules instead of teaching them to me with a hand-holding tutorial.
My favorite part was thinking a bit ahead and ramming myself into a section where I could quickly alternate and scoop up a bunch of points in a row!
Every death felt totally fair, which is important in a game like this. Great work!
Sorry detective, I had to strip out some 3rd party assets, so the original upload was only what I created during the 48 hours. I've re-uploaded including all of my own starter kit code now.
It is making use of this commercial asset, which I cannot upload, but which is available on the Unity asset store: https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/66291
You will not be able to build without that, obviously.
If you take a look, let me know what you think!
Thanks Jupiter! It's really valuable to watch someone play those first few moments live. I wasn't sure whether to include more tutorial, or if the empty space of a few turns was enough for the player to self-discover the rules. I was happy to see it didn't take you long at all to see how it works, but it also helped me understand why a few players were complaining about the harshness of the "you can't move there" sound effect. Always appreciate the work you put in making those vids.
Hey! I remember the unique moods of Derelict and Wellspring Wandered, so I checked to see if you had come back to LD and sure enough here you are with a new interesting experience.
This is another thoughtful game that's a change of pace from the usual - I knew I was in for something different when I had no idea what to do but a slew of buttons and status indicators to explore! You've packed so many little details into this.
Took me quite a while to clear my first ship, well over ten minutes I think, and I got a few demerits on a couple after that. But by my last docking I had the various systems all figured out and was finally doing a bit of multi-tasking. I managed to clear a ship that wanted refueling, resupply, decontamination, course calculation, and repair in a touch over 4 minutes. I was able to queue up drone moves and multitask between that step and the resupply. I'm sure it could be done much better but I felt like I earned my paycheck that time!
No wonder they promoted me.
Whoa! And suddenly I'm back at my desktop.
That was quite a ride; very interesting and really outstanding on making a mood and getting me to be curious about the room. I think I uncovered the rules at just about the right pace, and I really enjoyed the total lack of instruction.
When the lightning flies out of the eye and into the mirror, that's the end, right?
I checked this one out because here in the last few hours of judging I was thinking back on what games I recalled from previous LDs... I remembered enjoying your Sludge City game, and while this one here is very different I'm glad I came to check it out.
Nice work.
Nice controls and animations! This game had one experience to sell and it didn't put any friction or fluff in the way. Nice job getting right to the meat. I liked how extremely clear it was when I got hit, which is critical in this sort of game.
Audio was also a nice bit of cohesive ambiance.
Nice sense of panic in this one, and the mixed art styles and initial darkness contributed to the disorienting feeling of waking in the night to an emergency. The facial animations are a nice touch.
I survived 152 seconds, and learned that you cannot survive a fire by hiding under your bed.
Outstanding for 30 mins! Controls are good, right on the edge of sloppy, which created a good feeling of it being my fault but also never being totally in control. Graphics, sound, and quick retry loop all helped carry the day.
Nice entry!
Nice - another hex-based turn-based game!
You've got a slick look to this one, and some nice complexity that shines in the puzzle-type thinking it creates.
I made it pretty far but after about 10 tries I couldn't solve the one where you have to kill 6 guys (5 rogues, 1 archer) that encircle you in the middle of the room. I came close but I know with 5 turns and 6 guys I need to lure them into at least 1 double-kill and I never figured out how to do it!
Great job making something that really got me thinking. Looking at the screen shots I was ready to complain about purple guys on a purple background, but when actually playing it didn't matter.
Nice entry!
By the way I'm a big hoplite fan (have the atheist achievement) and I am surprised to see people comparing your game to that one. Your pace is FAR slower and more puzzle-like than hoplite, and the multi-move AP system takes it even further in a different direction, as does the multi-moving enemy rogue.
If I could have added one thing it would have been some indication how close to the end I was, if there was an end.
I enjoyed this! It was ambitious to make a game within a game, and have dialog/story as well as the board game. Nice work! I played through to the end, winning the board game on my second time.
In the board game, I got into a bit of cycle, where events would repeat themselves. I adjusted when I used my fireball and the new pattern was better for me, getting two skeletons over to dogpile him.
Very cool, I'm impressed by the number of features and the tutorial content here! I had a really hard time successfully swinging crates around with the grapple to effective deal damage to the enemies, though. I had more luck tricking them into smashing into crates... maybe there was some technique I never quite picked up.
Still, a fun and innovative entry, nice work!
Wow nice entry! Super-slick music that really worked, and nice graphics.
The initial learning phase was pretty rough, and I hit game over about 6 times before I had any idea what the buttons did or why I was losing. I gave up and had to read the instructions and toggle the control mode. After that I lost a few more times before I figured out that you have to stand above something to pick it up.
But once I got over the learning hurdle I was having some frantic fun! I steadily improved as I tinkered with some different organizational strategies. I know there's a much higher score possible, but the best I did was 14,800.
Great job! I remember your crop duster game, you've got a very nice feel for a throwback aesthetic.
Beautiful and really effective art. What a great idea for the theme. I have mixed feelings about the pacing, which had to be slow to draw me into the story, and I respect that. I maybe was in the wrong mental mode, playing a number of random video games in a lit room with the sun up. I think this could have been a different experience for me late at night in a more contemplative and open-ended engagement. I don't ding the game for that, but rather myself. I like that you challenged me that way, but I will admit to the buzzing background noise of impatience in my experience, which I brought to the table.
I believe the game may have crashed on me, although perhaps it was just an abrupt end? There was trouble. My brother was speaking in his sleep. I clicked on a few things. The game was gone. Unsure if that was intended.
Never realized I could attack diagonal, so this game was a lot harder for me than the rest!
I thought the graphics and sound were just awesome.
The movement hops felt really good, but I did have a situation where I had woken something like five monsters but then backed off. Because the monsters move one at a time, and the game forces me to wait for each animation (even those animations which are off screen), then suddenly the pace of play dragged wayyyy down and it felt really sluggish and was tough going. After that I was more careful not to aggro a bunch of guys I didn't intend on killing.
Really slick entry here.
Wow nice classy piano playing, and a nice visual backdrop for the space battle! I had a tough time getting the amount of leading right, but when I did connect it felt good.
If I could change one thing it would be the way I have to click again and again for each shot. It's probably also not right to just hold the button and always fire forever, but maybe some middle ground.
freaknarf - still remember your deathmetalslugs game which was crazy so I was sad to see just one review on your game, so I gave it a shot!
Some feedback:
It's bad that I have to install it on my computer instead of just running it like with most other LD entries. Normally if I see an LD game ask to be installed on my computer, I don't do it and I go play a different game. For you I made an exception, but I bet you lose a ton of players this way.
The game started really really tiny on my screen. I hit alt-enter to switch to fullscreen and then it was okay.
There is some kind of number counting down on top left of the screen, but I can only see a fragment of the last digit because the shadow circle covers the display.
Otherwise, you have a nice interactive beginning to an adventure game here. I was able to walk around and the pathing worked well. I was able to interact with the NPCs and the doors just fine, so you have some systems here which are functioning well. I also liked the art, and the mood.
If there was something to do like a goal, I didn't figure it out. I walked around and spoke to each NPC, entered each room, and at the end I got into the room which appears to have stairs going down but I could not figure out how to go down them.
Overall I think this feels like a promising start but too much scope so you didn't finish. But maybe I just didn't get it, in which case it needs a bit more instruction!
Checked this one out after seeing your comments on a lot of games, including at least one of mine, and realizing that I'd never played one of yours.
Wow!, nice entry! I got to 2 - 1/3 - 0/4, which was the fire zone. I felt pretty tense the whole time, and was impressed by the variety of enemies and environments you managed to get done. There were lots of close calls, especially at one point when I got down to 1 health and there were a lot of bats, which I barely survived. In the end my death was a little bit stupid, as I got caught by a bomb... pretty unnecessary, oop!
The animation of the main character was a cool little trick.
All around this was really well done, so I wanted to share a few of the tiny pain points that slightly dinged me as I played, but I mention this minor level of stuff only because the whole game is strong!
- Initially I wished the control felt snappier, and was bothered by the way the character continues to move after I release the key. However I quickly got used to this and it was ultimately fine. Actually it worked pretty well with the mechanics, and every collision (both good and bad) felt totally fair. But "soupy=bad" is a kneejerk reaction I did have in the first room when testing.
- The ghosts looked a bit too much like the main character, and I often lost 1-2 seconds upon entering a new room figuring out which one was me. I will say this did contribute to a sense of panic though, as I got my bearings!
- The archers had a low contrast vs the background and they didn't really pop out. Their rate of fire felt really fair to me.
- I was slightly annoyed by the way the bottom row of bricks was clipped by the lowest wall, it made it a little harder to read the room, tho not a big deal.
- I was never quite clear on where I would end up after moving a room. Often my starting position seemed related to my ending position from the room before, but sometimes it wouldn't be. Maybe I was still holding the buttons, and it moved while the screen was blank or something? I didn't really test this well, but I didn't understand it.
Again, this was really fun and I especially loved the enemy variety. Those bats were properly nasty, the archers could have been OP but instead were just right, and the chain-ball guy was very cool.
The retry moment lost me, though... Once I'd gotten that far I didn't feel like a full restart from the beginning. Maybe going back to the start of the fire world would have tempted me to push on? Especially if I had a few hints about how much more content there was, or if there was a boss or anything.
Great entry!
Nice work - a lot of content, and it looks, sounds, and feels nice. I was terrible at dodging the projectiles while baiting the foot soldiers. Curse that thief, too!
Wow, what a slick little package! Lots of nice little touches, and I really felt the groove. Nice work!
Fantastic all-around for a compo! Graphics are excellent, as are the sound effects and music.
I died the first couple of times before figuring out that I didn't need to wait by the non-project machines. I think I got confused because my first move was to work on the project, which locks you, and then I erroneously assumed all of the other machines were like that.
Once I realized how to really play I was able to build the machine and experience the end.
Really nice entry! Great evocative mood, snappy controls, and an interesting little set of interconnected systems to toy with. Well done.
Nice work on your first 3D game! I was a little worried by the name, but actually I enjoyed this. I passed the exam on my second try.
Wow, very cool, this is an extremely interesting experience, and well put together. Nice work! I played through a bunch of times trying to change things, but I guess maybe the impact I had was a little low... I think I would have kept going if even the unhelpful changes gave me a little reaction.
Great use of the theme!
This was awesome in the audio, and the theme, and the mood they created together. The narrator was fantastic for an LD game!
The game rules were kind of interesting, but I never quite clicked to really understand exactly what was going on.
I had a fun ride along the way though! Nice work.
Nice job, man! Game is tight with a responsive feel, and there are a variety of challenges to deal with... good job!
Your last game I played was retro rebound and this one is definitely a tighter package, where I jump right into the action and I figure it out as I go. Nice work. Slight parallax on the bg was a nice touch btw.
Nice vibe! That was slick when the lights went out as the shit hit the fan. I was cracking up with the voice work, and appreciated the variety of stuff you threw at me.
Dem lasers though...!
Nice game! I enjoyed the initial moments of wondering what the heck was going on, until I figured it out.
I reached a pretty steady state by upgrading the spring each time to buy time for my other traps... I made it to day 9 without taking a hit, so I guess maybe a bit more difficulty is required. It was a fun experience along the way, though! Nice work.
Very strong entry here with a great polish on the graphics sound and catchy music, plus tight controls and an interesting mechanic.
I never managed to get to 30 seconds, and I think there were maybe two things that got in my way.
Because this game is so excellent and has great potential I'll dive into the problem I had, but this is not meant to say it's a bad game - it's only because it's a good game I go into detail here!
#1 problem I had was effectively using the flip mechanic. 90% of my deaths were jump-jump-gameover I have no idea why. Even after playing for quite some time I still could not explain to you which traps will be destroyed when I flip. There's a lightning bolt drawn as I go, and I think it kills traps near where I leave, but also maybe long the way? Sometimes I thought it killed traps near where I landed, but then I kept dying trying to flip to smash traps so I soon learned not to try to do that. I even stopped playing for the goal a while just to experiment with flip-smashing traps but I still couldn't figure it out. I would recommend that you put a sub-second pause into the game at the moment of trap-smashing so the brain can pause a beat and learn. Or maybe some tighter association between the graphic and the gameplay effect... altho it flashes so fast I really can't tell exactly what it touches.
I also wished the flip was a separate button instead of jump-twice, because I often got a little extra confused because of the effect of the pre-flip jump.
Certain confusions were actually fun for me... for example learning why I cannot just flipflipflip was a nice moment. First I noticed I couldn't re-flip immediately, then I noticed the graphical trail as I ran, then I noticed the little ball. I never figured out the red zone though... sometimes it would expand the map, other times not. Sometimes if I was on it I died, other times I think I survived. Maybe I misread the situation to be confused about that.
Exploring the mechanics was fun, and fortunately you made the smart design choice to have an INSTANT restart which felt totally excellent.
Very strong entry, if you smoothed off just one or two small burrs I think you could really streamline this.
I made a point of playing your game because you helped out that 14-year-old by fixing his bug and building a jar version of his game so others could play it. Very nice of you!!
I enjoyed your game and I thought it was fun for such a simple set of interactions. I beat it after maybe 4 retries I think. My strategy in the final run was to get the tricky keys in the center first, and only after I did that successfully I went back for the early keys.
If I wanted to advise you on a few easy ways to make small improvements, here are some:
1. I found the color contrast between your background and foreground elements was not great, and so it wasn't super-clear to my eye. It's better when you can make important elements "pop" to my eye. The part that needed this the most here was the fireball from the turret guy. A common strategy for this in video games is to use a "de-saturated" background, so that is you have high-saturation colors for your foreground, and low-saturation colors for the background. Most programs allow HSL (hue, saturation, lightness) as well as RGB color picking, so try some experiments.
2. Since you have learned to draw and code your logic, you are ready to start adding more "juice" to your game! I liked how you make the character bounce backward when hit by the fireball, for example. There is a fantastic video on youtube called "The Art of Screenshake" which has just a ton of really fantastic tips for tiny things that you can do to improve your game feel.
Great job!
Heads up - the Win-Post link 404ed for me.
Nice game, tight controls, simple premise, and a nice pace that kept me running all around without driving me nuts. The selfish alien was a nice touch!
Another nice touch was the 2x button right on the title screen, that was a big help.
Great job!
I tried this when I only had about 10 minutes, and that wasn't enough. I came back another time to experiment a bit more.
I definitely enjoyed the vibe, and created some nice tracks. Like the other commenters I was unclear on the goal and it didn't become clear to me even with some experimentation, but maybe that's not so bad if I enjoy tweaking around in there.
Aside from the goal, I think I could have used more direct feedback on the state of things. #1 feature I wished for was the ability to know where in the loop the mixer was. I would have liked the cube to pulse to a larger size as the beat triggers it, or to have a little hat hop along, much like the red light that runs along the beat with a drum machine.
Because many of the musical elements were long-form, such as the echoes synth hit or the sustained bass note, their quantized position was a little less than obvious to me. I could have perhaps used a solo/mute pair of buttons per color, so that in addition to experimenting with the matrix itself I could isolate certain elements to learn and observe more in detail.
The other indirection that got me early on was the multi-step rotation of the cube. If it simply flipped immediately to the destination state I might have ramped up into understanding a little more quickly, as the lingering ongoing changes confused me at the start.
That's like, too many features to request obviously!
I did have fun with this, treating it as both a puzzle and a mood piece, but I didn't get over the hump to truly understanding the computer's wish for my mix. "No green" was not the answer. ;)
An intriguing and atmospheric puzzle box, nice work.
Very interesting mechanic I haven't seen before!
After a moment of confusion about the controls (I tried arrow keys, clicking, and WASD before I realized it was drag and drop), I quickly realized why you have the items snap to the grid and block each other while dragging! Some fun stressful organizing results, with lots of decisions to make about how to organize things.
Nice job!
Wow, cool crunchy feel in this one that runs through the graphics, the sound, and the gameplay!
It definitely took me a little while to adjust. I was thrown off by the fact that the menus to start teach me to use the mouse but then the game is on keyboard. Then I was running for my life for a while.
But after I learned how to sort out the preview arrow and make proper use of my attack, I went on offense and started mopping dudes up!!
I got to the stage for protecting the baby, but it was a little more than I could handle. But I did make it to the end of a >100 second "Survive" level which I felt pretty good about!
Very nice entry, I enjoyed experimenting around with it and having fun.
At first I walked away after letting the plant melt down with no idea, and then finding the PDF and reading it. I got a nice laugh but could not summon the will to actually read/memorize and run the station.
So I played another game. But... something felt unfinished. So I read the manual, and I applied highlighter to the color codes for faster lookup. I figured I would just memorize and highlight the first three or four, and pick easy. Because I'd get the first ones in the book first and rack up a few easy points, see? I'll show this game. I might have even picked medium.
Well upon initiating my day at the station, and testing the sound effects for eating and drinking, an emergency came quite quickly and to my horror it was not one that I'd highlighted or memorized. I did have my PDF adjusted though, and got right to work scrolling and looking, and oh no it's the one where I have to play a whole video game!
Fast forward a few moments later: my leg is stuck to the side of the final pit. I jam the jump button while holding D. Jump jump! I edge up a pixel each time, and clear the level! Crisis is past! I can relax a moment!
Then everything started going wrong. I think I resolved perhaps three more events including hunger, but in the end I could not save the plant.
Oh no, I think I got to the very last room with the final lantern and then died!! It was my 3rd or 4th run and I couldn't quite bring myself to do the whole thing all over again. So close!
Really cool idea for the theme, and the graphics are outstanding. The claw was just about the right pace.
Most of my hits were kind of just clumsiness with jumping. It took me a while to get the correct pacing of the jump down, and even after that it was slight jump flaws that mostly caused damage. This kind of pure execution/timing test as the primary challenge was not exactly my favorite aspect, but since everything else was so strong I still really enjoyed it.
Nice work!
Nice moody piano fits the calm of tending plants. Although before I figured out how to water by reading the instructions I was playing an altogether less relaxing game! ;)
Nice work.
Cool game! My top score was 138 turns. I almost lost right around 100 because the board was totally out of control... but I was able to keep sneaking around to teleporters just barely and then the enemies were combined into large numbers. I managed to sneak in one awesome turn where I hit the X and killed everything all at once. That was definitely the high point, felt great!
I struggled at first to figure out how the attacks worked, but once it was clear I got rolling.
Nice entry with some interesting new ideas in hex gameplay!
Beautiful! This oozed with style. It looks and sounds great, and this all works with the gameplay to create a real sense of being in this alien reality.
The controls were snappy and responsive, and the puzzles were an interesting exploration of the core mechanics. They skirted an edge, risking being simple enough to mentally solve that it might leave the execution a rote chore, but they never quite crossed over. I thought the pace was perfect, and right when I was approaching done the game beat me to the punch just a little, perfect timing to end on a high note.
There's little not to like in this, it's all a real nicely made package. But in the name of feedback here were a few very minor items that I did notice:
The sound effects, while beautiful, were a little bit long. The jump/landing was absolutely perfect, but the harp-based sounds dragged a little. Notable offender here was the C zoom/unzoom sound. Actually by late in the game I was simply holding C the entire time, when this problem was removed. Maybe a toggle instead of a hold? I definitely appreciated being able to play in big-looker mode.
I liked the controls/mechanic enough that I experimented a lot, and I was able to get semi-stuck at the cusp between two planets a few times, where the entity I was fluttered violently this way and that without advancing. I eventually resolved and fell on way or the other. Granted, I was TRYING to do this, and it didn't cause any real harm. Certainly did not interfere with earnest play.
I also created the following situation, which I am supposing you may not have intended: http://imgur.com/3dFS61n
I accomplished that by abusing your somewhat generous ground-check. If you're casting a ray, you correctly give it a bit of leeway which lets me be sloppy with my input. But in this case it creates a possibility of a very slightly higher than intended jump, which I used to (I think) circumvent your intended solution. No problem, I get to feel clever, so intended or not it was okay!
Very nice entry.
I beat the game on my third try. It's pretty tough, but things got better when I stopped using the scout to ferry the heir and used the druid instead. The ability to cross through water without a movement penalty was huge in the lategame, and since the scout's teleport was (wisely) blocked when carrying the heir, the druid was definitely the smarter call. Plus I was getting the hang of the pace, and knew how to utilize the other special abilities - for example on my first turn I teleported my mage away and then my scout, so that my team was properly spread out.
I really liked how you used the theme here. Lots of us made small worlds - but your fundamental design challenge was about the small world shrinking around me, which was taking a step further and I liked that.
I think there are a lot of little things that were sort of rough, but fortunately you delivered enough of an interesting experience, plus had nice graphical styles and sound/music to make up the gap. I guess that my critique portion of feedback would be that the pace of the turns was a little too slow, having to watch the sinking over and over, plus I struggled a bit with the lack of transparency in the mechanics/UI. So for example it wasn't entirely clear to me why I could or couldn't use the druids ability, and at even more basic a level it took me a while to understand the movement system, sometimes it felt like I had extra moves... but eventually I realized you can take partial moves and a "move" action really allots a set of cells you can move, that it's still one action even if you take it in two or three chunks. Once this was clear it was fine, it just threw me as I was learning. I also got a bit stymied with selecting the target for the scout's teleport, because there wasn't really a selection confirmation, so I wasn't sure what state the game was in.
Eventually all that stuff became clear to me, so it was really just with the newb's eye that it confused. I bet if you watch over someone's shoulder who has never seen the game before, and say nothing but just watch them, you'll quickly be able to pin down what misunderstandings they have, though, and that could totally be cleaned up. I do think it needs a bit of love in that direction though.
Anyway, once I got past that bit of confusion and got to the meat of it, I really enjoyed this. Could stand to double the pace personally, though. The procedural generation might have gotten me to play one or two more times even after I beat it, if the pace was quicker.
Nice entry with cool strategy mechanics grounded well in theme and offering several different abilities, as well as cool art and sound - this is a nice entry you should be proud of!
Opinion time! I think this game had a lot of potential, but there were a few overlooked opportunities that made it so the potential wasn't quite capitalized. I spent longer with the game than I might have otherwise, but I wanted to try to put my finger on some specific problems and come up with a few concrete suggestions. Hope this is helpful!
My first reaction was like some other commenters mentioned: omg what just happened? I felt like the elements flew at me too fast.
But I played a bunch more times. The gameover screen doesn't give much info about why I failed, and the restart loop is a little slow - consider going right back into the game rather than to the main screen.
I spent a few games learning which elements upgrade my core. As I watched I think I realized the biggest problem. You need more transparency in the system to the player. I want a different sound effect for when an element affects a different aspect of my planet, so that I know right away if the core was grown vs the crust, etc. I think a little pop effect with a different icon to double-convey this information would also be worth it. This is the most important info for me to learn but the game doesn't do very much to facilitate that. Outcomes of actions should be multiplex-communicated via sound and graphics.
Next the controls were a little tough. After I learned to grow a large core in the initial phase, I made it quite a way with my planet, and eventually it grew to fill the whole vertical size of the screen. After this it was an EXTREMELY short time that I had to click-drag away the elements. I think that there are two problems here. First, does it have to be click-drag? What if it was just "click to bat away" instead? Second, I very often just barely missed when I flung my mouse to the opposite side of the screen to click-drag an asteroid away, and this was frustrating. You could consider being more generous with the click detection. For example I bet right now you just check whether I've clicked on the asteroid. But is the game really a dexterity test, or a decision test? Maybe you could have the game notice when I click anywhere, and if there's an asteroid within a certain generous radius, then I grab it. This way even if I miss by three pixels you can still carry out my intention.
The last big point is about the colors of the elements. I didn't feel like they conveyed the information about what effect they would have, and in fact they often conveyed misinformation. For example the iron is dark and heavy looking, and increases the core. The Mg is a very different look but also increases the core. But the aluminum looks like the iron, but does not increase the core. At least that's what I came to believe, maybe I got that wrong. But generally it didn't seem like the art informed me of what the element would do.
So in summary I suffered from a lack of information: opportunities were there to convey the info in advance, as well as after the fact to confirm the outcomes, but none of these channels were strongly utilized.
I did enjoy playing, but I focused on the shortcomings in this feedback because I felt like I *could* have enjoyed your core idea on a whole other level if I was understanding and feeling more in control.
I hope all of this is helpful, and it's not to say you have a bad entry here, on the contrary it's a cool idea which is why I spent extra time trying to get to the center of what could have been smoother.
A definite highlight here was the art, and the way that the planet changed visually as the mix of things changed, I really got satisfaction when I did have an atmosphere.
I liked this. Pretty simple in scope but it got me thinking, and was very well focused. It made good use of all it had, including the art and the way it just dropped me in with no explanation which I liked. A game of impossible choices...
I would have enjoyed the dialog from the characters a bit more if it didn't overlap and get a bit jumbled. The zooming of the characters toward the camera when I selected them was a nice touch.
Needing to select some framework for choosing, I evaluated everyone logically based on my perception of their contribution to advancing or maintaining society, until you made it personal and then my morals were no longer convenient.
That darn duck! He promised me that if I just got him a conversation with the celebrity that he would take care of the rest. But I got him into a party, and then on the phone-pond with the big man but it still all came to tears in the end. Join the tour indeed...
This was clever, fun, and funny. I played through maybe five times before getting close but not clinching stardom.
No pain points here, everything went smoothly, even if not as Ducky hoped.
Cool offbeat entry, nice work!
What wonderful sounds! This was a real trip. I liked that the goal and control instructions were clear without being heavy-handed, but then the space itself was deliberately confusing.
The disorienting geometry, the weird behavior of the shadows, and the trails left by carried instruments came together nicely. Actually I encountered a bug I rather enjoyed: I got "stuck" with the forward key always applied somehow, so that I could never stop moving. I didn't realize it wasn't supposed to be this way because it happened early, and so I spent a while circling back, trying to snatch the instrument on a fly-by, and then when I missed trying to do a tight 180 without losing my place in the world. A fun excursion but perhaps too overwhelming for the main experience - the bug was resolved when I hit A or D, the strafe cancelled the perpetual forward motion.
I definitely followed my own trail at least once, thinking, "surely this will return me to that eye I seem to serve" but alas only led to folly. LAter, I followed my on carried instrument's shadow, even after I ought to have known better! All to the better.
The only confusion that didn't add value was the specificity of where I had to deposit the instruments - I had placed them TOO close to the eye and they didn't count. Fortunately, there was an extremely clear scoreboard and so my mistake was quickly rectified.
Overall I think you've got about the right length of game for the bizarre experiential content here. Finally, the eye itself was a nice touch, kicked things in an occult direction and made think of being in some alternate Lovecraftian dimension that doesn't make human sense. I only wished the eye responded to my completion in a compelling way.
You've successfully created mind-bender - nice work!!
A very interesting game.
The way the controls worked... normally I wouldn't like it, but in this game it works.
Inputs were a large commitment and you had to get it right. At first and for a while I felt like the feel was too stiff, but over time I came into the spirit of the game, which is not a fluid flow but rather short punchy high-stakes do or die moments with a breather in between. It does not tolerate button mashing! Every time I got loose I died, except very rare instances where I surfed chaos for an instant.
Specifically, the way the sword stopped forward movement, the short jumps, and the way most enemies would be dangerous immediately upon entering the screen all contributed to the feel I'm talking about.
The "commitment-heavy" controls created a puzzle feel to the game which I found really effective and enjoyed. For example the candles... they were really hard. At first. Or actually really easy once you figured out the appropriate way to approach them: one hop over the first flame, pause, swing, you've got time. But then it was candles on stairs. And that candle on a platform you had to jump to near the end of a tough run.
I died many many times, but in the end I made it to my hole I call home.
Difficulty-wise I think it was on the high end of okay - tough but fair once I learned the brutality of the game. Especially brutal, and maybe going too far, was the way enemies would respawn just barely off the edge of the screen if you backtracked even a tiny bit; that one caught me hard a bunch of times.
I think this was really well put together, including the nice art and sound/music too, of course. While normally my own taste goes more for a fluid flow to the controls, I felt like there was a deliberate synergy here between the design of the challenge and the nature of the controls. The game smartly took advantage of what it was, and made a very enjoyable experience.
Very well done!
EDIT: two other things I should mention. First the checkpoints were huge, no way I'm playing this game without them, and they were well placed. Second, with my keyboard, pressing right then jump, and while holding both of those, if I press sword I do not get a swing. Doing the same going left works, but not going right. I assume this is about the key groups on my specific keyboard but I figured I'd mention it.
I think this entry has nice positive aspects, but also a couple of pain points that hurt my play experience.
The graphical style was cool, and my favorite small touch was the look on the guy's face when using the trampoline! Overall a consistent theme and feel; simple in the good way.
The amount of content you got in with all of the levels was great, and it was a nice touch to have the menu that let me skip around to see all the content without necessarily beating it. Great call for an LD game!
Hope some feedback on the pain points is helpful:
The game is all about jumping, but the game feel of the jump needed a more love.
I would have traded a level or two in exchange for a somewhat better feel. I felt your game had the "ghost jump" described in this article: http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/MarkVenturelli/20140810/223001/Game_Feel_Tips_I_The_Ghost_Jump.php
It was especially painful in the wood-themed level with the trampoline. Those first few disappearing sticks where you have to jump exactly and quickly, I fell off many, many times by trying to max my jump, thinking I hit it, but then not jumping.
A few others: penalty for death too disheartening; re-jump from holding space rather than pressing each time felt weird; several blind jumps including one that killed me in fire; restart used mouse but game used keyboard; trampoline got weird when I hit my head on moving platforms.
You have a solid entry here but maybe try just running and jumping over and over in an empty level and being really critical of the feel, you'll get less time for content but it might be a good trade.
Nice work tho - having a few pain points doesn't make it a bad entry, just trying to leave helpful feedback!
I liked this! Took me a little while to figure out what was going on in terms of the controls, but once I did get it I enjoyed the fly-and-shoot feel of hunting down and destroying these ships. I had a bad moment when I pressed the mousewheel to look at my planet but the browser panned the game half off the screen and I got beat up trying to recover. Then I remembered enter was pause! Nice touch!
The free-aim shooting was critical, it would have been way too tough otherwise. Nice work making a cool 3D space shooter here, and the story interludes added some nice character.
The whole thing looked pretty good and the sound and music were even better.
Nice entry!
This was fun! The music sets a great mood, and the art and sound are cool too.
Snappy controls with no issues in game, so a very good feel. I could have used a faster retry loop, as I retried a bunch of times and my first few runs were over very quickly so I ate a lot of the retry early.
Made me want to play one more time to try another combo of shrooms - nice work!
Like your constraint of sticking to the compo rules except team size! That's the spirit.
You created a nice vibe here in this game, the music was a great help setting the tone, and the art for the characters and different locations was nice. I enjoyed that it came full circle location-wise, and the actual ending itself was a nice touch.
Controls were solid, I had a few minor things like I felt the hitbox around the bottom of trees was a little tough, and I wasn't quite sure when I was striking the bats successfully. But having perfect combat/move controls is kind of irrelevant to the game you're making here.
I enjoyed playing through and I felt like the length was just about perfect.
Nice work!
Thanks everyone, for the generous feedback! I have rated and commented on all of your games now.
@navot I appreciate the art critique, and you have a good eye - two of those three objects you mention are the ones where I cheated a bit with the color palette. I'll try to be more strict next time, and maybe I needed less detail on the player and trails.
@occultone thanks for the video! Nothing is more useful to devs than watching somebody play it cold, and I was glad that I got to witness your initial confusion.
@steerschips This wasn't built only on Sunday, I used all the time. Just on Sunday morning I had a hot mess with worse goal logic, and the balance was all wrong. I lost a few hours tweaking everything except the root problem before realizing what it was: the ball was too bouncy. I left this as an alternate mode in the game, so if you played bouncy mode you know how crazy nuts it was. Too random.
Beautiful mood with the art, the wonderful music and the sound effects! It really sets the tone for the story, which I enjoyed at the end.
I'm not a huge fan of fetch-quest type gameplay, and I thought the main character moved a little too slow for the searching required. But the game was short enough that this wasn't a bother - so it was the right length!
The townsfolk provided some nice backdrop for the decision at the end.
Strong entry, and very unique!
This is very cool! My favorite part of course is when the camera zooms in and you find that the next level is inside the ball. The turn to purple theme just before the end is a nice touch as well, which built anticipation.
This is actually a really strong entry with innovative gameplay, clever puzzles, and a strong aesthetic. So while my pain points were minor and I might not mention them for a lesser game, I want to list them even though they're small:
I think there was a slight bit more finesse that could be applied to the physics and the hitboxes. A few times I hit the underside of some lava when I thought I had not. When turning the world, the initial inertia of the ball caused the ball to move in a way that was a little startling and made me not feel as smooth as perhaps I could have.
The sounds were nice, and the ambient ones helped the mood, but I think you lose some feel by not including sounds on the core interactive actions. A small subtle grinding sound for rotating the world, and a bumping sound for when the ball hits things would have made the game feel more alive and real to me.
Anyway, those are tiny things, this is a great entry. Very nice work!
This was fun!
My high score was 45, is that good?
The art was charming, the sound effects lived large, and the game was simple but fun.
I did have a couple of things I wished for:
- Wished bullets were bigger, especially since they swing around and hit myself pretty often. They shouldn't be a dot like the stars, but like a cartoon vlambeer bullet half the size of my head, imo.
- The menu interfered with the gameplay too much. This was often how I lost control of a situation.
Other than that though, this was fun! Great job. My favorite part was how satisfying it felt to nail the arc shots, and I loved the way it was worth it to stop and take careful but quick aim.
Wow, this is an interesting twist on an old classic. I'll admit for the first couple of seconds I was skeptical, but the disorienting view and snap movement ended up really making this entry work well. I got up to 18 points before I took a risk I shouldn't have and lost it! I was like OH YEAH I DID SO GOOD THE MUSIC STOPPED, so I considered that a feature not a bug!
The music was excellent for a compo and fit the game perfectly. I don't think it would have been nearly as engaging without it.
All around strong offering here, very nice considering the super-tight scope. It was very focused and did what it did very well. I actually have no pain points to report in the controls.
I can see why the other commenters want the higher camera angle, but my own feeling is that this is what makes this game something different. Raise the camera and it's just snake, not snake on a plane. At least not THIS snake on a plane.
Wow this was awesome! I played to the end and escaped planet X with full upgrades. I loved the sense of progression as I built up my skills, and every one of them was nice in their own way.
I had a lot of fun just dashing across the landscape and doing quick dodges, so it was really nice that it looped back around. The constant danger but the fact that you had a light punishment for death was a great combo for an LD game. Instead of frustration getting in the way of the fun, the light setback of losing my carried money but keeping all upgrades and ship parts was a really smart choice for LD.
There's just one nitpick I have with the controls: when I'm moving and jumping, and I come to a stop against the wall, if I then hit jump, the guy has some kind of friction with the wall and it disrupts my jumping as he presses into the wall. I wish this hitch didn't exist, because it totally takes me out of the zone of flowing fluidly across the terrain. It breaks my zen.
But that's a small thing, and I still had tons of fun with this. Great entry.
The music is just awesome! Really top-notch for a compo, it sets a great mood for building under pressure.
My first colonies were 3 buildings wide but WOWZERS I could not stand up to the asteroids. Panning the camera up and down to scan for them was a little rough, and I wasn't sure what determined when I would click whether a blue thing would launch.
But I did stop a bunch of them eventually, and when I built my colony straight up in one column I was able to get a solid stream of income and win. I was mixing trying to stop asteroid with simply ignoring them and out-building the destruction.
So a bit of clunk around asteroid fighting but otherwise good look and feel! Nice entry.
Nice consistent art and sound coming together to get a good aesthetic feel here. The main character felt alive, the little sound effect and the size wobble give the simple square good character.
I played to the end of this, some nice ideas about simple physical puzzles.
I have a few pain points I hit that I'll go over - I hope this is helpful feedback:
- The sliding after I let go of the button was tough. It was the first thing I noticed and it felt like my control was loose and sloppy, but then combined with the lack of walls and the pit deaths this became the primary challenge of the game. I think it's not a great feel to have the challenge come from the controls, but maybe that's just taste?
- I didn't care for having to use the mouse to click the buttons. I never figured it out ingame, and had to ESC out of full screen to read the instructions. A button press, or even just bumping into a switch to activate might be worth considering. The mouse served no other purpose. You could also have been more generous on the mouse hitbox, I often clicked, thought I hit the switch, but it didn't register.
- The full restart from the beginning may have been okay because the game was short. But it takes time to operate the elevator and having to do it many times worse me down a little.
None of this means it's bad, it's a solid entry that felt really complete! Just sharing my pain points.
Nice graphics, sound, and humor!
Few tiny things but nothing that got in the way: Shooting the flies felt a little stiff, maybe their hitboxes were a bit too small or something. Retry loop was a bit too long for a 1-hit death, the flies eating me was cool but I wanted to be able to skip by hitting R right away after I'd seen it a few times, and not have the title come back and cover my restart either... I like real real fast retries though, so maybe that's just taste.
In the end I did beat it but I cheated: I ran up the left side and never fought anything.
Cool and unusual game, though - nice work.
I beat this, I think I had to play the loop three times.
Wow, the controls are really weird. The falling speed is so low that the entire game takes on an unusual feel, especially when coupled with the crazy air control. Combined with the unusual animation of the main character, I felt at first like what the heck is this??
But soon I realized that the challenges of the platform jumping and enemies are crazily well aligned with the odd controls. Throw in the sarcastic narrator, and next thing you know I'm not minding the kind of thing that normally would be worthy of complaint, like blind jumps that sometimes are what you need to do and other times are instant death.
This was a silly weird good time, nice work!
Heads up though, I didn't like having to run an installer and almost didn't play. Much better to just have a game exe that I can run, I think you'll lose a lot of people who refuse to install.
I enjoyed this, and I don't even play idle games! Maybe I should try some... because this was a cool experience.
The controls were really tight, too, like if I hammered repeated clicks on something that kicked off a progress bar, you didn't ignore my inputs! You queued them up and I got what I asked for. Very important small touches like that count for a lot in my opinion. Also effective: the camera nudging out as I build in a nice way, and the really clear rotate-icons above the animals. This was all very smooth and well done. Even the two humble sound effects were very effective, and the rising pitch of the "grow faster" was nice.
The art is simple, but I appreciated that every bit of it was focused around *transparency*. For example when I read the description of the pool I was uncertain of exactly which squares it would impact. But when I placed one to test, you delivered the goods by having a small watery particle thing float up from the affected squares. That's just one example but I think you have graphical transparency through to every single game rule as far as I can tell - which is excellent.
I really have just nothing to complain about. The trophy came at the right time in the experience so I didn't feel like the game was asking too much of my time for an LD. The only thing I can even think of that stymied me slightly was my mental model of how the koala would work from reading the text. The word "travels" in the description made me think he would walk around, but this didn't matter as I knew I was unsure so I built him near a panda just in case, and it worked out.
Very strong entry with craftsmanship in all the details!
This was really simple, but I just kept playing! I think you might have some objects you aren't cleaning up, because after I played for long enough the game bogged wayyyyyy down to like 1fps.
The slow fall was fun to play with. I found a secret tactic to abuse: the jumps can be stacked. You can stand touching a 1-high block, and jump but hold the jump key down. You will do your normal jump from the ground, but then as your feet pass the height of the 1-block, you get a second impulse applied, and you rocket upward. Kind of cool, I definitely used this.
If I could change something here it would be the bullets. They are very small and when they touch you there's not a real big effect, so they kind of feel wimpy. I wish they were bigger and nastier.
Wow, this is awesome!
It's very well put together, doing everything nicely, from sound, music and graphics/animation to tight controls and wisely placed hitboxes. Best of all was the clever way the difficulty escalated and the risk/reward tradeoff that kept a very tense feeling the whole way through.
My high score was 2397, and I was being SUPER greedy by the end to get there. I used two or at most three spiders to get there.
There's almost nothing to complain about in this game because all the details were right. I had just one small bad moment, the first time I saved my spider, there was a spraying can and my new small spider spawned and auto-walked right into the spray and died immediately, which felt unfair.
I've got to say again what a nice balance there is in the risk/reward from the multiplier vs the danger of a large size. Strong design choice that made the game.
Excellent entry.
EDIT: Voice lines were good but I agree w opting out of sound given music and effects were not original, but still good choice/usage.
Cool game with great art!
The shift to slow down thing was an awkward solution. I guess it's tricky... you needed to let the player go really fast to get to the other side of the planet quickly, but also to move slowly to fine-tune aim. But maybe that could have been accomplished in a smoother way. Maybe a fast but non-zero rampup time on the rate of movement after I press the key, so quick taps of the key don't lurch instantly, but if I hold it I still get up to max speed really quick. Not sure, but the shift thing needs iterating imo.
But I loved the upgrade aspect and the slick presentation, and I had some fun with this one for a while! My high score was something close to 600 I think. Also the earth face getting more beat up was just great.
Nice entry.
This is a fun little game. Cute effective graphics and a nice song choice even if it's not original content it's a good fit.
I enjoyed the frantic pace of it. The controls had to be very fast as they were, but I felt pretty awkward trying to do the small adjustments. I wonder whether a ramp-up or acceleration period that was extremely tiny but not quite zero would have helped with fine-tune positioning. It can be tough though to get the controls speedy enough for what this game requires but still have finesse.
It was a great choice that you were a bit generous with the defense hitbox, as this definitely made the trickiness of slight adjustment not feel so bad. Good call!
One other really tiny thing: I wish the restart was a keypress, since the gameplay is all keyboard and I restarted a lot it was a shame to have to move my hand over to the mouse and back each time.
So that's some feedback but nothing that hurt the enjoyment. Nice work!
Great job on your first game - it's very charming and made the most of its content. The sense of chaos and not being able to stop to think about my real goal because one more thing was going wrong was nicely achieved.
The ladders were a bit wonky, but I got used to them pretty quickly. It was mainly dismounting them that was awkward.
Although I assume you used outside music, it was used effectively.
Nice work!
Awesome presentation. Along with the eerie soundscape you have a great mood feel going on here, I dug it.
Reconstructing the story was an intriguing idea, but playing it out maybe was a little too straightforward. I did like that you left a sense of mystery at the start rather than a tutorial. But the missing end was a bit of a letdown -- too bad the clock ran out!
If only we had all eternity to make our LD games...
Very nice spooky entry.
Nice work with the terrain generation! I think I see how you implemented it... a clever way to create a nice effect with a simple approach if I'm right.
Throwing the stones was another highlight, and I also liked the way the ammo came from the asteroids.
I managed to get the hang of it, and build a bit of my ship. But I never got all the way. I agree with the other commenter above about it feeling a bit cheap that I can't get around the planet to make a shot. But still, there were shots on the edge of gettable and it was fun to try to sprint over, leap into the air, and still get the shot.
In my final life I had some nice moments of just getting a rock off in time to save my ship and myself.
A game like the that's all about things crashing into each other, it would really benefit a lot from some sound to bring the impacts to life.
Nice entry.
Nailed the feel on this - all those tiny touches were much appreciated! The way the character gets thinner when it hops, the way the blocks depress underneath, even the text at the bottom tween-overshoots into position!
The sound was on point, too, and really made the space feel real.
And of course the puzzles and lack of explicit tutorial were well designed.
Very strong all-around entry! I hammered on the controls after beating it and tried to find some awkward corner case, but everything felt slick. Great job.
This was nice - a cool original idea with a lot of character.
There were some rough spots though, the 12 keys was overwhelming at the start. Even after I learned the basics I still was hitting the wrong keys, unfortunately. I wonder if there was some way to simplify the inputs.
Eventually I got the hang of it. First time I had four docked ships I thought I was doing well, but then I realized you have to undock them and get news ones coming in!
After I had that down too I was able to get to 53 days. I'm not sure if that's any good.
Tough controls and learning curve aside though, this was cool. The station's movement gave it a feeling like it really was in space, and the ambient sound and thrust sound were really great.
The mood was a cool mix of calm and panic!
Nice entry.
Well done - at a glance this seems like a simple combat system, but really there are some nice choices making it work. I think you've realized a very nice level of risk to the enemies, where they are always a threat but I have to make a mistake to get hit. The knockback is also just right. I clear good space and the way the enemies rattle away through boxes and still don't stop is so important to giving me my rightful breathing room.
It's super-critical to balance a game like this on the edge of dangerous but fair, and it's easy to slip. You held the line, and that's a job well done!
The only aspect that threatens the balance imo is the spawnrushdowndead. Even when I was waiting ready to screenscanATTACK the *instant* the level loaded I could still get swarmed by a gang of four and be unable to swing a second time before taking damage. Occasionally I would have a good run but they would nearly all end this way sooner or later.
Actually maybe I wasn't very good - I only got through 7 battles, and that time I did die to an honest timing mistake.
If you removed that one aspect disturbing the balance you could really get me thinking, wow if I'm careful and fast I could never lose, and that's a great feeling. The random generation keeps this fresh, too.
Also very nice art and music, with a good hit sound effect, too. If it got two more sprinkles of juice, I would put one on the player getting hit, and a second by making the corpses rotate 90 degrees to be clearly dead. The color shift was adequate though.
Overall nice entry, again nice work on the combat balance.
Very nice! Novel mechanics that made for a nice progression of just-right puzzles, plus good game feel, graphics, sound and music. It's the whole package.
There's nothing to complain about, everything's on point. Maybe the level transitions didn't need the enter key, which verrrry slightly broke the flow of playing, but that's nothing.
Very enjoyable, I played to the end - great job!
This is a great take on the theme. It's such a smart call to be gentle here and avoid the impulse to add fuel limits or punishments for crashing into my planet or the screen edges. The fact that I could totally relax about all of that gave me the wiggle room I needed to explore what's a fairly tricky but rewarding control scheme.
I definitely did not get to the deft touch you exhibit in your gif, but after a bunch of experimenting and tinkering I did get to the point where I could have a decent shot at intercepting. I had to learn the lessons of not chasing, and not hitting too hard... turning backwards on my own trajectory and jetting into a standstill in their path was my main strategy.
I understood the colored trails pretty quickly, it was a clever idea to use the color to convey time. But the quick tutorial was welcome. I also liked the quick humorous intro before the game which made it feel more like a complete offering.
The sound fit the mood, and although I felt kind of awkward the whole time I have no complaints about the controls. I think it's just tricky, which is as designed.
Great job!
This was fun! It has a great light-hearted fast-paced vibe.
For points of feedback, I wish my bullets were a little bigger so they had more presence. And wowzers those rockets! When I fell behind on the pink ships, I'd have to shoot low to get their rockets, and sometimes I'd fall behind and never get to shoot the ships.
But on the flip side there were some great high points. I felt like a beast when I had doubleshot and automatic, and was just lighting up the sky with a crazy stream of bullets and blasting everything to pieces.
The bombs that threatened the planet itself were a nice design choice, too, giving me a little something extra to worry about.
Really nice job.
Solid game core, and nice "director" job pulling in various assets that worked well together.
I thought there was a good overall pace. The game didn't break down into a totally insane dodging/kiting fest, yet I still felt like getting hit was my own fault. Not an easy balance to strike but I think you found one.
The powerup on the weapon was very satisfying to use, and it was nice to have moments like that time I blew the boss away in a ludicrous superstream of bullets. You were stingy enough with them that it felt special to use at that stacked level.
If I had a pain point it was in wanting a little more feedback around two critical things: getting hit, and weapon heat status. These were indicated a bit, but I could have used more. Something about the heat to be seen right on my guy and not requiring me to look at the bar up top would have been nice... or if there already is that, then something less subtle. ;)
I played several games and had fun experimenting. Great pick on the music, which really fit with your game's mood and personality.
Very nice entry.
Nice tight rage-inducing but rewarding game here. The contrast between the sublime background music when I finally got to float a moment in space, versus the aggressive slamming sound of the game over was on point.
All the deaths were my fault. I was EXTREMELY glad I could hit space and skip the bit-too-slow natural retry loop.
This is great, especially for a first game!
The planet-slinging is a great core mechanic and you've got a pretty decent feel on it here. The puzzles that you've built on top are also very nicely done, and I appreciated that there were obviously multiple solutions, and I could feel clever if I got a cool one.
I beat the whole thing, and a bunch of the levels twice. Some of them were very tricky in cool and different ways. One time I nearly beat a level by slinging around and bouncing back off my starting black hole and falling all the way to the goal, but I missed by like a centimeter!
I'm a stickler for fluid controls, so I always tinker a bit in these games and try to provide a few points of feedback, here are some I noticed for your game:
- I didn't discover the R key soon enough, I was getting tired of waiting for inevitable failures to play out and then clicking the button. I tried the R key at random and it was a huge improvement in my quality of life, especially as the levels got harder. (I had to retry some of them a lot.)
- I would suggest one change to the way the clicking works. Right now I always must click to undo the beam. I'd suggest that while slinging, if I click a second time you check: if I clicked on empty space you release the beam. But if I click on a planet in range you cancel my old beam and immediately go into the new beam. Right now I have to double-click in that scenario and it feels less smooth. This is the ultimate moment of your core mechanic playing out, when I'm chaining slings together, and you want that apex moment to feel smooth. I think it could be polished a little, though I'm not sure my specific suggestion is the best, you'd have to experiment.
Those are small items though, just trying to have feedback here!
I enjoyed playing through the whole thing, it was an original experience with a cool core mechanic and it was very satisfying to solve a level. Great job!
Standout audio on this entry, with gross squishy sound effects, music, voiceover, and quality basic sounds for the jump, whip and that crunchy hit sound.
I thought the game feel of the running and jumping was pretty nice, with responsive controls and effective animation on the main character.
I had two pain points. The art of the hands and the hitbox didn't really line up, with a large visible gap between the hands where you still get hit even though it doesn't look like you ought to. Unfortunately the gameplay ultimately boiled down to judging this hit box: after failing to dodge, I eventually beat the doctor by just never moving, and timing my W keypress to just clip the hand hitbox. I never got hit that way. It was too bad that the really nice feel of the controls couldn't come through more in the best way to win. But I did play a bit with proper jump-whipping too, don't worry!
My second issue was with the retry loop, which was a little bit long after I died a few times quickly in a row as I was learning the ropes. Actually, I hit alt-enter to go fullscreen, and the game registered that as skipping the intro screen, so I went in not knowing the controls. I tried arrow keys which worked, but there up is not whip, so it actually took me a while to even realize I could whip. At first I was just trying to dodge, which got me nowhere.
Anyway, lots of solid aspects here and I had fun hop-whipping around, nice entry!
I beat the blue and the red planet but I never managed to find the other two. I think in the explore mode it's tough because the ship turns to much with each tiny keypress that it's hard to set my course deliberately. I eventually ran out of fuel before finding the other two.
I came first to the red planet and wow it wrecked me hard, I tried many times but could never string together the final series of the last three or so jumps. I went back out to space and tried the blue planet, which was a nice place to learn the ropes. I came back to red, and this time after about ten tries I was finally able to just manage to snag the pill thing before I flew off the platform - satisfying!
Jumping conrols felt pretty nice, which is critical in a jumping-focused game like this. The ability to only change forward speed slowly was an interesting twist that I wasn't used to, so it was fun to explore that aspect, although tough. The horizontal movement took a bit of getting used to as well, since the explore mode taught me that the ship turns when I press left and right, whereas in jumping mode it strafes. No big deal, I figured that out really quickly.
I think if you added a drop shadow to the track so I can see where I'm at with precision even while jumping, I might have had a tick up in feeling under control.
The game could feel more alive with some juice, of course - the jet effect was nice outside in explore mode, but things were a little sterile in the jumping mode. Jets, sound effects, and some way of showing off the speed would have spiced it up.
Fun entry, the controls were interesting, the ship could run away out of control on me, but I also felt like that was my fault and not the fault of the game, which is super-important in a tough-jump challenge. Good job!
EDIT: Forgot to mention, I wasn't sure what to download from google drive. There were data files so I figured the exe was not enough. So I zipped the windows release folder, but it was a 67MB download and included the pdb files.
Great job on your first LD! This was an interesting system to tinker around with, and you had an impressive number of really solid mechanics going on! I enjoyed experimenting around, and once I'd built some stuff, running around trying to keep on top of everything.
The music helped set the right mood, and the graphics were very clear - and no rough spots to report in the controls.
Nice entry!
The spherical presentation is immediately attention-grabbing. A really nice implementation with the 2D/3D mix creating a world right on the cusp of jarring and consistent. The soundscape added to the nice sense of unease.
I got to this point and then I got stuck... I had already turned two push-tiles into boxes and there was one more magnet to fill but I didn't seem to have one more push-tile. http://imgur.com/Y1v2Nxs
Maybe I misunderstood the whole thing! Were the magnets bad? I hit R to restart but it sent me back to the beginning of the entire game, and that was a bit too much to repeat for me.
The push-tile was interesting. Because you could drag it against a wall or set it halfway between spaces, the usual rules of sokoban did not apply.
All around strong entry that hits a lot of points, nicely done!
Nice job on your first LD!
Cool little fetch-quest game, I got myself king of the tiny world. The no-danger aspect made it relaxing to just kind of walk around and see the content. Lots of little interactions with a sense of progress, some cute art, and a timely end. A few sound effects on the pickups would be a nice addition.
Lots of charm here! The graphics had nice little touches like the moving eyes, and the comets and shield and planets all looked really nice. The dialog was fun without going too far, and the hand-drawn text fit with the irreverent content more than a real font would have.
The play wasn't too complex, but the controls were good. The shield was super-easy to swing around, and the planet moved nicely. It was cool how I would get bigger and slower and things would get both more dangerous but also easier to rack up a few eats in a row.
I also liked the progression through the various planets to earth.
This was really only held back by missing things, rather than having anything bad about it. Sound would have really improved the experience a lot and maybe the core gameplay could have used just a bit more going on... I think this was awesome for 14hours, I'd love to see what you could do with 48!
Nice clean design and an original concept here. I was just AWFUL at this game though. I played through four or five times and only got one letter the entire time, an I.
I ragequit when I thought I was going to get my second correct letter, an O, but it was a Q. I also am not crazy about the physical act of playing this game, which is non-stop furious clicking of the mouse.
So extremely difficult but nicely put together, good work.
If you asked my thoughts on how to best make this game more approachable, I would say to quantize the grid. Instead of pixel-level clicking where I have to spam clicks, it could have a visible grid and when I click a cell it somehow indicates the density of pixels within that cell. Perhaps that's going too far afield from the original idea, or too easy, though.
Pretty cool idea - I had fun exploring the way the system works. The network/web physics gave a nice tactile analog feel that reminded me a bit of that game World of Goo, and the overall premise of having to expand to survive was a great use of the theme.
I think the mental space this game put me in could have created an awesome mood, it's too bad you didn't have time to bring in sound!
Would have preferred the tutorial not to recycle when I restarted after learning, but I did die mid tutorial so I suppose that it was good it repeated at least until I totally finished it.
The flow of energy through the system, and the way the nodes change their size and intensity, did an excellent job at conveying the information I needed to learn/play.
Intriguing entry, nice work!
Now this is what I like! A nice core movement-based idea, with strong controls polished to a shine, let loose on a tough challenge. Very nice work.
The movement felt like a fantastic balance of nimble and dangerous, right on point. The boosting and crashes felt nice as well.
The art and sound were also good, and supported the game well. I enjoyed the small touch of the whoosh sound when I changed direction for example.
I came quite close to the bottom a bunch of times, but WOW when I got past like 90% of the way the horde of drones overwhelmed me, and then it was quite long to get there again. But I did retry a lot of times, and got into a zen with it.
Everything comes so fast it's juuuust on the limit, so nicely done. My strategy became to keep the mouse cursor near the ship for fast turning, but my eyes at the bottom of the screen, and just go screaming straight down in flames the whole time.
If I had to suggest changes, I think the drone art is a little hard to scan out at the frantic pace of the game. Maybe the high saturation of the blue background sky made it tougher for me. Red is a good contrast color, but something about it made the drones not exactly LEAP into my awareness like I wanted them to. The art didn't really indicate their direction very strongly either, so it was like I had to watch them for a few milliseconds to track their trajectory - an eternity in this fine game.
Great work.
PS damn that drone that was hiding in the cloud!
This was a cool idea - I was hoping someone did something about political power running out, and this was a good mix of tricky choices and humor. I had a good time playing! I am not sure my citizens could say the same, however.
Enjoyed the graphic styling as well as the humor. Nice work!
MELTDOWN, baby! I have not played the prior entries, but I knew I was going to like this game from the very first screen of the story. I was just afraid the craziness was going to be lacking in the actual gameplay, but NO NEED TO WORRY.
Yeah, sure, this game had some rough edges, but who fucking cares? They almost enhanced the experience. I mean, you play some heavy metal and give me a shotgun, then you put a barrel in front of me. It's not like I'm going to try to jump over it like some plumber, I know what's going on here. Who cares if my jump is floaty or I turn invisible when I'm about to die, or the game stutters and locks up momentarily when the action gets a little too hot? Stairs a little wonky for ya? Well good news - the jump button checks for the key being down, not an actual press, so you can just hold the bad boy down the entire way up.
And let's not overlook that the most important things were covered: I knew when I got hit, every time. And the explosions blew up the ground. And there were ZERO infinite pits (that I saw).
I appreciated that the game was hard enough that it mattered when I made mistakes. I tried to just la-dee-da strut my way through this game but those goddamn flying pewpew eyes made my life hell. After surfing the silver three or four times I decided well then I shall stepwise advance and carefully blast each and every enemy. Yeah well that's why they have the nuclear meter, and did I mention that BEAR FROM BEHIND?
So I was forced into the hectic fray.
The boss was HUGE, and at first I thought his offense was a little underwhelming, then I realized his most potent ability: his sprite layer is set higher than the flying eyes so he makes them invisible!
I mean, I guess you could get that nerd from Shadow G to look into the performance issues, it wouldn't hurt to NOT have the game get lockjaw randomly and have big loading screens, but honestly all the splinters just made it feel more like raw underground DIY punk rock.
Excellent work.
This game did a great job of defying my expectations. The color design is very nice, and the sound and especially music worked with it to create a nice mood.
But at first I was like eh, this is a simple platformer, I've played games like this before, and honestly the controls are a little off for my taste with the jump too high and floaty and I'm having some collision issues getting stuck on the corner of platforms sometimes, so this is just so-so.
And then it started getting weird in a way I didn't expect. And weirder... and weirder... and weirder. And I was really drawn into this mood it created.
I still think some polish is missing from the platformer controls, but it's more than made up for by the subversive weirdness of the whole experience.
Played through to the end and definitely was reacting to the strangeness is a pleasant way. Nice job!
Cool retro feel! The way you could either turn or move forward made for an interesting choice... of course you need to move forward to keep the batteries coming but you also need to turn to fight. That plus the slowness of the attacks made me REALLY want to deal with combat efficiently. It was a commitment to turn and shoot, wanted to do it quickly but not to miss!
It went maybe a little too far in that direction, and things felt a lot better once I picked up a couple of oil cans. I did find it a little disheartening when I just fell too far behind and watched my energy drain out but then got a turkey but no batteries in the final half block I could still move.
But I loved the classic look and sound effects, great job!
Awesome!! I retired early!
This game was a great mashup of a bunch of nice-feeling things from all kinds of genres: a bit of space shooter, a bit of mining, a bit of idle-game style upgrades. The retro feel of graphics and sound was also great, and the simple control scheme was perfect. I appreciated two small touches in the controls especially: first that there is a drag on the player so you do not have to do the old asteroid "turn 180 and counter-thrust" to slow down, instead you can just boost a little and let your speed decay. Second I appreciated the aiming line very much.
I don't know about the intended strategy, but I bored a straight path from the start so I could get up to a high speed from the free-energy zone and launch into the asteroid. I could then get pretty deep by coasting, and I knew I could stay until quite low on energy because I had a straight path back.
The enemies were not a dominating feature, but I think that was a good choice. They were an interesting sub-element to vary things up a little, and their difficulty and punishment felt about right. They were harder to handle later in the game once I had the rocket launcher, which was an interesting inversion of the usual.
There's not even much to suggest here in terms of improvement. One thing I would not have minded was some way of knowing my Y coordinate, because I had bored this path through the rock and wanted to return to it, and once I got the rocket launcher I had blown all the landmarks to smithereens. It was not a big problem at all, but maybe a gradient shading on the background even would have given me some general idea of how far up/down I was.
The only other thing I wished for was that I could press 123 to switch between weapons, because the rockets made the enemy fights tougher (self-damage ouch!). But actually I think it's good the way you have it, because it created a few memorable moments where I limped back out of the asteroid into the sun with like 3.5 energy left, even though I was fully upgraded.
Fantastic entry, well done.
Sorry, I tried to give this a play but nobody was on. I didn't rate because I didn't have the real experience, but impressive that you have multiplayer online and several classes!
This is *really* well put together. It looks nice, and I especially like the shadows and lighting from the robot. The sound effeccts and music are all really great, too. Also, the whole thing is just distinctive, which is great.
I think for my personal taste the overall pacing was too slow for me, but that's obviously not going to be true for everyone. I would have preferred to have regular movement instead of tank movement because it was a lot about waiting for the robot to turn. I wanted to zip around the levels more and tank controls make that very hard, especially when I'm doublefisting (I played single player). I also lost a lot of patience when I solved level one but instead of having to move one item to the end zone, I had to go back and forth six times. For a puzzler it was like, well I already solved it and now I have to go through the motions... I would have strongly preferred to move immediately to the next thinking challenge.
But I can also see another way to look at this pacing: the mood is there, you've delivered, so it's okay to languish and have a pace where you spend some time in this evocative space. I also see that the tank controls delivered a real feeling of being a robot.
So the pacing stuff is not necessarily against the game, just the impression of one guy who likes everything to go faster all the time.
Really nice entry here with a lot of quality.
Love the consistent-feeling classic look. It goes well with the music, sound effects, and even the old-school gameplay/challenge.
The movement was frustratingly sluggish at first, but I got used to it after a bit. I wanted the controls to be more responsive, but then I saw how that's part of the challenge.
So then I was getting into the zone on this. And suddenly it was like NOPE you have to start over from the beginning now. I was stunned. I know that's how it was done back in the day, but for LD it's rough to ask me to replay the entire game up to where I got.
But I did it, I replayed the first few levels again and got back to the same spot.
It's a place where you have to drop down at the start of the level. There's a wall of spikes to the right and at the bottom. So you have to fall, and then cut left. And the one time I managed to get past THAT, I still had some upward momentum and hit the final ceiling spikes at the end. I just could not get past this, and I would have kept trying the fifty tries it was going to take so that I could see the rest of the game, but because I would have to replay the game over and over just to get there, it was too daunting and I gave up instead.
A shame, because this is a nice game with some endearing old-school charm and I would have loved to spent a bit more time with it.
Also: yay jetpacks, and I was never able to drop bombs, even though I tried Alt and right click. I played the web version.
Wow, I think if you can make this game you can make something really good - the art and music are fantastic.
But there are a bunch of small design decisions that hamper my ability to engage with the game correctly. I felt a lot of frustration, and not the kind that I want from a hard game but more the kind that felt like it was cheap.
Since you've obviously got high potential here I want to list the dings I felt, I hope this is helpful not hurtful!!
- There's a hitch when I jump, the character pauses a brief instant before actually jumping, this does not feel fluid.
- The portals are activated by the jump button but they are so finnicky. My friend jumped into the big pit three times trying to activate the portal. I can see you also seem to struggle in your gameplay video with smoothly activating the portal. A difficult platformer is ALL ABOUT feeling smooth, so this is the kind of thing to focus on in your game imo.
- As you know, the zombies feel cheap when they come up and hit me out of nowhere. Especially in the first one second of the game when I don't even know the buttons yet.
- The energy meter is confusing, I still don't quite know what is happening there even after carefully watching it.
- In your movie, the flying guys at the end are clear to see. When I played for some reason on my screen they were ghostly outlines. I thought they were background images and had no idea why I was dying.
So I think I didn't have as much fun with this as the game's potential had, just because the difficulty was based on small splinters in the controls. If I had smooth powerful control and clear feedback on what happened and why, I think I could have really enjoyed this a lot.
So strong marks on a lot of the categories but maybe polish that core more next time!
This is really nicely done. It has a great retro feel that's really consistent across the art, music, and those great sound effects like the crunchy kill sound. So it's retro, but has none of the baggage. The controls felt nice, and I enjoyed the little touches like the intense flash letting me know for sure that I got hit.
The only thing I struggled with was the button choices. It wasn't immediately natural for me to jump and shoot because I'd get mixed up about which button did which. I really wished that the up arrow button jumped, and then I could have had movement on one hand, with a button for shoot on the other. I think then I never would have gotten confused. Eventually I adapted though.
The eroding powers thing fit well with the theme and added a nice game arc and some strategic thinking.
Great entry!
The look of the whole thing is awesome! Great work with the shaders and the color selection.
I liked the core mechanic as well. There were some interesting tradeoffs between waiting for the right jump vs trying to not fall too far down the screen.
I felt a little un-present in the world of the game though, because there was no feedback to what I did. I would have preferred sound effects vs music if there was only time for one, I suppose.
But a nice entry here with super-slick look and a cool mechanic that's well grounded in the theme... great job!
Nice moody piece here, with graphics and sound that work. Enjoyed the stark story and the chance for bleak outcomes if you make the wrong choices. I played a couple of times and managed to get off the planet.
I like how you embraced the dark side of the theme this time around. The sense of something running out can be bad in many types of games but it really works for this one.
I played a bunch, and got to 81 victims (8 thousand-something points), the town was absolutely swarming with vampire hunters by the time I was finally cornered / stopped trying.
I died to the same instant kill from a spawn that other commenters mentioned, but I just avoided standing near the doors and that worked. Not sure I agree the bar depletes too quickly either. It depletes quickly in bat mode, but you have to just use that very sparingly. And the dangerous villagers are really clear because they have the ring of light. It took me four or five losses to get the hang of all that, but once I did I felt like I could basically go infinite if I was careful enough.
The strong elements here were the art and music which created a great thematic mood. If there were also nice sound effects it would have really nailed the feel.
The gameplay idea was good, and I certainly had some moments that got exciting. But there was something a little off about the play experience, and I got a little bored eventually. I think it was a combination of small things: core challenge was a bit too easy, but when I did fail it was instant death, and the core movement of WASD walking around was not inherently exciting.
Another small nitpick: the game is a 2-handed keyboard game, but then I have to use the mouse to navigate the menu system.
So this is a strong entry, it had very good presentation and theme, and the gameplay was interesting to explore even if it had something a bit off. Nice work!
Charming little one-touch game. I wish there was a score counter, I feel like I got pretty far one time! Nice job.
Strong entry hitting all the bases. The audio was particularly good here, with nice sound effects a good background tune. An original concept right on-theme, and I loved how it made for a cool main character!
But I do have a beef: I think it wasn't ideal how you designed the overall game arc though. The level was relatively slow to move through, especially with all the stops to be winding back up. Bats were tricky, which was good, but this meant that I felt like my hp was this resource that was a long grindy loss coming in the future... that is, even if I failed on every bat it would be a long time before my punishment but it would be inevitable. I was worried about this while playing. Then after playing a while, I got a little bit impatient one time and didn't wind up my jump enough to take a series of hops I had in mind, and I fell into a pit and died. I said well this is it, the moment where we find out if I'm finishing the game because I like it, or if I'm quitting because it asks me to repeat long long stretches of play... the game sent me back to the beginning, and I was done.
The game was interesting/fun enough that I would have played to the end if I'd been sent back to a checkpoint.
So high marks for a bunch of really good features, aseets, and design here, but just something a little off in the way you've packaged it up for the player to enjoy.
Wow! One of the things I love here is how different this is from Peach's entry from last time, makin' it work with a large team and delivering some variety, it's impressive.
The game is nice in all the aspects, but maybe what I like most is how it sits right at the edge of being a bit too much for me to plan my moves out too far in advance. So the "planning horizon" if you will is in a real sweet spot. I'd have moments of thinking ahead but also moments of saying "oh geez I better make it happen with some pills now or I'll die!"
But everything was on point, art sound music and design. Great job, everyone!
Aw man, I was really pumped about the style of this game, and when I jumped in I thought the graphics were sweet, and really done in a great pico-8 style, and also that the controls were nice and tight.
I just couldn't quite get on board with the fundamental idea of waiting out the enemy's power meter like a clock. I had some fun with it, but I really wanted to be a bit more proactive. I would have played a bunch more but when the skeletons polished me off and I saw that I had to wait out the cyclops again, you lost me because there was no agency for me to make it happen faster.
If I could chuck spears back with Z, I would have been sold.. but then I guess your whole concept was to try this experiment of the player being too shy to attack! Totally worth trying, but I felt a little too constrained as your player for it to hit home for me.
But excellent execution on the idea otherwise. Actually a lot of savvy little choices, for example the radius shown on enemy attacks so it's super-clear when I will take damage. And I shouldn't forget to mention the solid sound that was adding to the feel.
So strong marks on a lot of the aspects here, I just wasn't your man for the waiting game - no biggie!
*EDIT:*
OK I'm leaving my initial comment because I almost walked away feeling like that.
But I went back for one more test and I realized there is a whole other way to play it!
You CAN be more proactive dealing with the cyclops, even though you cannot attack. Once I figured this out I was able to beat him much faster, and retry the dead a few times until I beat them as well. So I've revised the votes a bit upward and I don't think the waiting game is as bad as my comments above said. But without some care the player, it seems, can fall into the trap of that impression.
This is really nice, with cohesive well-done graphics and sound. The control scheme with delayed action creates a slower pace that is unique, although I'm not totally sure how I feel about it.
Given the slower pace, I think there's a pretty big mistake here in the design, which is making me repeat the same play area over and over. I played two levels repeatedly, then died to the bee because it attacked me before I could charge my gun. This happened twice and I was sent back to the beginning. And not only do I have to replay the same level, but the disks I have scanned already have come back, so I need to go through "side quests" and not just proceed to the exit. Combined with the slower pace of the game... well, it's a tough mix! Methodical gameplay can be fine, but it doesn't bear repetition well imo.
I think there's a really cool sense of unique character to this game and I would have loved to explore more of it. But when I get trapped and my slow-repsonse controls make it easy to die (eg fall in a pit w/ two snails) then it's so extremely disheartening to restart from the beginning. Sorry!
Very strong on the execution side here, I'm sad I wasn't able to really sink my teeth in and explore this world some more.
Pretty cool little run-jump-fighter arena type game with some time pressure. My favorite touch was the Last Struggle mode when you're at the edge of death - I enjoyed surviving through a string of three of these by nabbing a bat a couple of times, and then filling back up on a mob of the human-shaped enemies. Very cool.
Couple of small things that got in the way of me really sinking my teeth into this one:
First, I was quite frustrated by the fact that the way I'm facing is changed by the mouse when I shoot the gun attack, but not when I swing the sword attack. In my opinion if the mouse is used to activate the attack it should control the direction as well!! This was a constant problem because the strategy against bats is to jump away from them and turn around and swing. But turning around to swing was not really controlled with the mouse, it required cross-hand coordination with the keyboard, a frustration throughout the play experience.
Last, what's up with the walls? When I jump sideways into a wall, instead of stopping like I expect, I become slowed down greatly and then drift slowly away from the game, to certain death. I appreciated the R key to restart here! This was my most common reason for death for the first bunch of times I played the game. Eventually I just got tired of dying that way and never went anywhere near the edges.
OK that's the nitpicks!
Overall game was a solid action core, with a few nice flourishes like the dribbling particles emphasizing the timer, and of course my favorite Last Struggle feature.
Nice work, especially for a second LD.
Nice job making something complete on such a short timeline! A nice twist on a classic fun formula, and the core felt nice with snappy controls. I did feel the pickup sound was a bit ear-piercing but it's impressive you had sound at all!
Took me some tries, but I did get up to a bit over 75%. I thought this was a cool simple game, and you kept it nice and quick to play through so I could want to try again to do better. The different sound effects were key in terms of feedback to let me know when I was doing well, nice work!
If I were to suggest one change it would be about adding little more visual impact to the action of gathering a flower, because at first when the flower didn't disappear I thought I had to stay and repeatedly click on one flower.
Impressive that one of the other commenters got over 98%! This is a real test of reflexes.
Fun quick play with nothing getting in the way of engaging with the game, thanks!
Wow - great job! I especially like that you have a nice difficulty curve here. In a few of your previous games I felt thrown into the deep end and had no time to learn how things worked, but not here. In this game I felt like you did it just right, with stuff I could handle easily, then it getting tougher and tougher until it was quite difficult. An example is the progression in weapon systems from the boss.
All around strong entry here with distinctive colorful art, a great variety of enemies, music, and sfx. It's a ton to get done in a compo, congrats.
I didn't defeat the green-spewing volcano boss though. I felt like I had a shot but and even when I got game over I played again from the beginning because I thought I had a shot. But I kept losing just because I didn't have enough energy... I was spamming out damage but my energy would not last long enough, and I never managed to grab any of the energy that shoots out the top during the fight. So I felt like it was sort of out of my hands and didn't restart again for another chance.
If would suggest one change it would be a little bit more feedback when I get hit. It was usually pretty clear, but not as strong a feeling as it could have been.
Impressive all around entry, great job.
Best score 2358.
Simple idea but this was a cool game with a little of everything - some arcade action, 3D models, sound effects, a variety of hazards and pickups, solid controls, and a happy tune. You did a good job of picking a controlled scope and delivering on all the aspects.
At first because the road has 3 lanes I assumed this was going to be one of those discrete lane-switching styles of control, and I was initially disoriented to see that it was a continuous drive-anywhere scheme. So I drove into the side of a building testing my limits. But once I had played a few rounds I actually was glad that it works the way it does.
The only nitpick that got me was how the retry menu is accessed with the mouse, while the game is played with only the keyboard. I would have preferred an instant-retry button right on the keyboard, but this is a minor thing.
I kind of agree with Sputnik that maybe not every obstacle needed to be instant death - for instance I found myself wishing at one point that the traffic cone just discombobulated me or something, instead of being death.
Anyway, that's just other ideas, nothing against the game of course.
Nice work!
Cool game! I liked the art style which was effective, with the simple characters and the layered background making it feel like more than the sum of its parts. The jump sound effect also felt nice and lively and the music was pumping me up.
The game feel of the platforming, I had two minds on... one thought was that it felt fun that it was fast and powerful and a bit loose. But I noticed early that I was slipping and sliding around a lot. But, well, I got through a good chunk of the game and thought, you know what this slipperiness isn't really holding the game back. However, then I got further into the game with all of the precision single-block jumping challenges and I could not do them. I fell into the pit many many times, and eventually lost heart.
But it was great that there were frequent checkpoints!
I think I maybe did something wrong, because I never got the shooting to work. In the second area I wasn't sure about going right vs up so I went up, and I came to a room where the sign said space to shoot. I hit space, but nothing. I tried going forward there but there were enemies, so I retreated and tried going right in the second room. I found a purple powerup thing, but I wasn't sure what it did. I got a little lost and went back to the first room by accident, at which point the background music started playing two songs at once which never went away.
Anyway, not being able to shoot made a few sections tougher as I had to dodge my way past the enemies - a time when the very quick responsive control came is extremely handy!!
You've got a nice all-around entry here, despite a couple of nitpicks.
Being short and not having sound, it did feel like an incomplete experience. But I liked what you did have!
The art style is nice and I particularly liked the animation on the main character. Controls were responsive and felt good.
Would have played more if it was there! Nice work.
I got to the 404 with 105 deaths and one very tired jump finger. And wow, am I impressed! This is just awesome.
The graphics are charming and super-effective at clearly conveying what is going on. The concept of the timer bar being a platform is a very clever use of the theme. The difficulty is really good and curves up nicely as the game introduces additional elements. And whenever I play a challenging game like this I care a lot about the controls, which I have no complaints about... very smooth.
I loved the nice touch of changing the music when I was getting killed over and over, too.
I have nothing to even nitpick about. I guess the only confusion I had was the opening screen, where I assumed I would use the main character to activate the game, and it took me a few moments to figure out I needed to use the mouse.
A+, fantastic and complete-feeling entry, you should be proud of what you accomplished here!
I happened to have two people here and was able to do a for-real couch multiplayer on this. Nice work, it feels really complete, with nice graphics, animation, and even if you didn't create the sound/music it was well-selected.
Nothing really got in the way of the fun here, I feel like it's nice and responsive. Only a few small issues: I got stuck inside an ore spawn by stepping into it right as it came into existence. I also wasn't clear on whether sleep mattered, I initially rushed to bed but later felt like this just wasted time. Lastly, I slightly experimented with bodyblocking the other player, I wonder if maybe there's a degenerate strategy of getting slightly ahead and then blocking the other player's access to their furnace until they lose?
But it's a really strong entry, nice work!
EDIT: forgot to mention, I really don't care for it being released as an installer. It's not pleasant to have to uninstall games after an LD, and my computer would become a giant mess if everyone released as an installer. Please make it a zip file which I can expand to a folder and simply run directly. Many times I cancel the install and don't play the game, so you may be losing players this way.
My top score was 1,684,566 - that sounds like a lot, but I'm not sure! I certainly blew up a whole bunch of stuff that time, but then again I also died kind of unnecessarily at the end so I probably could have gone a lot higher without that blunder.
I like to play without reading out-of-game instructions. Which maybe was not the best call here... I was confused by many things, notably how to make the - and = commmands work, as I don't think they seemed to do anything. "Where are my crazy rockets?" I wanted to know. And sometimes items were cubes, but other times flat panels. Regardless, I sure liked swinging the planet around to ram a nice tall stack of blocks into a rocket and blast them off into space!!
The calm music was a nicely juxtaposed with the explosive mathematics.
I played on Windows and experienced no sounds glitches.
OK I just read through the instructions and tried again - but I did worse, not better! A fluke? Or is that I became too distracted by stacking in a certain way, and lost focus on making use of the rockets??
An interesting entry that drew me in, nice work.
Nice 3D assets - especially for a compo! You created a cool underwater atmosphere.
I didn't realize you were supposed to shoot the creatures with your cannon though, I thought it was more energy-efficient to just avoid them. Obviously that strategy didn't get me to the bottom!! I got to the shark but then I didn't get deeper.
Impressive that you have sound, music and 3D all done in compo, congrats.
Nice work, the art, sound, and music were all well done and cohesive, and the mechanics were interesting. The difficulty was frustrating but I think that was the point! I liked the randomized variation of the obstacles that kept different runs feeling different.
I think there's a bug with dying, twice the game froze instead of going to the restart screen - including the first time I died, where I thought omg this game doesn't have a retry loop?!
Difficulty is pretty on point though, I died a bunch of times getting two or fewer coins, over and over, but getting a few more seems really achievable. I kept my eyes on the collisions and I think I lived a few with a verrry slight overlap so I think you did make those fair, despite what other commenters are saying. For the first couple of games I had a few "WHAT" moments where I hit something and was surprised, but after I got acclimated I didn't perceive cheap deaths which is important in this style of game.
In the end my record was four coins, but I never got a single wrench.
If I could add one feature, it would be what @alxm suggested: a bit of pizzazz around death.
Nice work!
The cloud's movements and animation was spot-on, and it felt really nice to be in that character. I enjoyed hanging around and raining on my flowers and collecting stars. But I never quite got the hang of juggling the four different modes and once I learned not to shock my own flowers (oops not again!) I wasn't sure how to deal with the guy that eats them on the ground, or the rocket that blows up my battery. So maybe there was just a little too much complexity, or maybe I just was bad!
But a cool idea to do this charging multitasking challenge as a cloud-gardner. The lack of sound was a shame but the little animations were all great. Nice work.
Nice job for such a simple game, it feels really good with tight responsive controls, and the music was a huge boost to the feel of playing. The silly theme of the game gave it some extra appeal.
Thank goodness you had those drop shadows though, the contrast of the planes being light grey against the bright blue water, it wasn't quite enough for them to really pop out to my eye, but the darker shadow has a nice pop to compensate.
Difficulty was good, I replayed a bunch of times but never quite got there.
There is one HUGE strike against this game though: It forced me to INSTALL it on my computer. That's a giant no-no in Ludum Dare, and about four times out of five I just don't play the game. I only played because this was your first. Imagine if everyone did this, and I had to go an uninstall forty or fifty games after each LD! Most games simply require a download of a zip file which I open and then run the exe inside.
High score 49, but I made a few mistakes in a row and deserved to lose.
This is maybe too simple a game to be extremely competitive, but it's a fun little entry and a good showing for your first time out. The power bear was a fun idea and I liked the art on the bear. Importantly, there were no real flaws in your execution on the simple game, I always felt like it was my fault when I got hit.
It's also impressive that you got music, a variety of art, and sound effects all in on your first compo! Nice.
Wow great job, especially impressive for a first LD! I played this one through to the end. You had a lot of features, including a lot of art, sound, a cool boss fight and even a dialog system with some story at the end. Great work delivering a lot here.
I felt like the levels of platforming were pretty cool, but it was definitely the boss fight that took it to another level.
If I would ask for one more thing, it would be a little more graphics feedback on the boss when he takes damage. First couple of battle with him I didn't think he was being hurt and that I was supposed to be doing something different.
Also agree with the other commenters that it's a bit of a no-no to obscure my character with the foreground, but it was no big deal and I did appreciate the way the layering brought the setting more to life.
Great job.
EDIT: Omg I just saw from another comment that this game has shooting! I never realized I could shoot, and beat the whole game without doing so. No wonder I had a harder time with the final boss...
So I'll have to add one more to the wishlist: some description of the controls at the start! ;)
This is a great skeleton of a game and could be made a ton of fun, I think! Nice job on the overall idea, the art, and just having so many features and so much stuff in the game!
It really needed sound to give weight to it, and a bit more difficulty. It was really easy to breeze through just staying alive for quite a long time, just avoiding all of the challenge.
Eventually I noticed that all of the scoring items were nestled away in dangerous spots, and started trying to intentionally tackle harder challenges, but I'm not sure that's quite the right formula, it may be better to compel me to face danger rather than merely offering it for me to opt into.
Another element that diminished challenge was the way the just two energy squares would totally replenish my energy. And they were so plentiful. A game like this does have to watch out for that awful doomed-but-not-dead state where I am not dead, and I'm running, and I can see the energy square, but I cannot make it there. Ramping up the difficulty on this game while avoiding that might be tricky.
Anyway - this is a nice entry, but I think it didn't capitalize on the high potential in its core. It could have been REALLY fun. Next time maybe cut a few features to make time for adding sound!
EDIT: played the post-jam version after that. Sound is a helpful addition, one small tip though is that your sound for stepping on the recharge square is quite long for such a really common action. To my ear, I'd have preferred something about 1/5th as long since it plays over and over. The increased difficulty of the post-jam version is welcome!
I recognized the icon in your name, and was like what game was that... then I saw your link to doba chaser and remember coming across it before, it was that stomp-and-kick platformer about knocking guys off the level!
Anyway, Hungry Harry's Climb is really nice. It has a cool atmosphere and a very nice control scheme. With so many controls and variations of terrain they can encounter, you could have messed that up so many ways, I feel... but this was well done. Most of the time the character did what I expected, but of course there were those times where I made one small mistake and slipped and fell way down. I took many falls early trying to experiment to learn the rules, which of course meant I was destined to starve until I could mentally plan correctly by knowing the rules.
I'm afraid I'm not very good at this game though, I never even beat level 1. I would climb and eventually not find a way up, and then I'd have an accident and fall trying to search. So even though the game is really good it created a disheartening feeling of no accomplishment when I kept failing.
But a very cool entry here - complex control scheme well-handled, great graphics and sound creating a nice atmosphere, and some interesting procgen terrain, all tied up with the theme nicely. Well done!
Good job, congrats on your first LD! You hit all the factors, having a complete game with nice clear art, good sound effects, and even a nice pumping bit of background music, well done!
I liked the tactile feel of this game, with the character being pushed around by the asteroids and bubbles, giving a little extra feedback to the feel... rushing toward a battery and "bumping" around the asteroids on the way was interesting a different. I love when a game has a unique feeling to the controls.
Challenge was maybe a little light. I initially had some panic around weaving and dodging through the asteroids. But once I found that I merely bounced around them (and didn't notice them draining my power) I stopped caring entirely and then played on autopilot almost without regard for the asteroids. So maybe they need to crash into the player a little more or somehow be worth wanting to dodge, I don't know.
Your #1 sin is something you shouldn't repeat next LD: you released your game as an INSTALLER!! Many people do not accept installers, and just cancel out and don't play/rate that person's game. I make an exception for first-timers, but you will definitely get a lower response rate. Just imagine what it would be like if I had to go and uninstall 30ish games after every LD!
So nice work with a cool little arcade game that's well rounded and has nice polish especially for a first time! And welcome to LD, but plz no installer releases.
Way more fun than I assumed when I saw a screenshot! Great job balancing the, well, balance.
I upped my fun level when I found the control scheme for me: that was holding down left click at all times and just moving the mouse left/right to move the guy. I felt this game me a lot more finesse than playing with the keyboard, and wow can the wrong lurch hurt you in this game!
After ball caps I thought, well dang there's nothing gonna be crazier than this! But the pilgrim hats were a bit more than I could manage, though wow I came so close.
Really nice entry here taking a simple system and getting the feel and balance spot on. The hat balance, the facial expressions, the loony tilting of the hat stack as it got taller, the interactions with the wall, the way hats could form odd stacks in a desperate bid to reach the sky... it was very nice.
One thing that hurt was the lame-duck situation where I've failed but I have to wait out a bunch of hats that I know won't be enough. I hit R hoping for an instant reload but no go. Not a huge deal but I figured I'd mention it as one small splinter I felt.
Very nice entry!
Felt on beat to me, but then I'm no drummer.
I got wrecked by this game, mostly. My top score was 2800 after a handful of tries on song #1. I was getting the third track going for a while and the game offered me the fourth, and my brain was like sure I guess, and it all went horribly wrong from there.
Thank goodness this game backs off when I start screwing up badly! That was so important to not being totally brainfrozen by it. I maybe would have slightly decreased the break after I dropped back down to two. Like once I had started working on the third, and then lost it, I did want it to back off and let me reset, but not to hang out there for quite so long.
This was really nicely put together. It didn't spellbind me in the amazing way that Hopper did before, but that's too much to ask, and Click's songs were fun, the dynamic challenge was cleverly designed, and the graphics were clear, effective, and nice looking. Great job!
Do you think you could offer a download on a site other than mediafire? Itch or dropbox maybe. Mediafire is such a bad experience - I went to download your game but five browsers popped open with sketchy junk, including one of those fake warnings trying to scam me into calling so they can rip me off: https://imgur.com/a/p7ZMT
(Do not call that number, anyone!)
That window refused to close and I had to task kill my browser.
Want to try your game, but now I'm worried what that site has tried to install on my computer. Sorry. :(
Came back to try this with the dropbox link, so thanks for offering another option and for posting about it so it hit my feed.
This is really good! It's a simple concept but it unfolds into some complex strategic considerations. At first I was playing with trying to minimize the bubble count by keeping them traveling long diagonal paths to the edge of the screen, but eventually I got a better score by just trying to click them all back to the middle as fast as possible and not caring about the count. Of course, I only got to 20.8 seconds that way. I see that another commenter got 32 second, wow!!
Slick visual style and smooth soundtrack coupled with a thought-provoking puzzle and instant retry loop kept me trying "one more time" a while.
Nice job.
Nice work! This game created a very tense atmosphere. The controls made it feel old-school, which was a nice mix with the graphics. The inability to circle-strafe and look around freely made it a tradeoff between movement and examination. In idle moments this didn't matter, but when enemies were around it was a big deal!
The way that enemies were slower but infinitely respawned was a cool design decision. I had to dash through packs of enemies without being totally aware of my surroundings, and it was nice and scary. When I explored the wrong place and had to backtrack, I would come back upon huge roaming packs I had left behind me, creating moments like this: https://imgur.com/Lma2uta or this https://imgur.com/T0F9flw
There was another moment when I thought I was alone and took damage, I whirled around and there were two evil snowmen. Had they just spawned, or were they following me in my blind spot??
There was a cool creepy atmosphere to it all, reinforced by nice work on the audio and a great variety of places and enemies (even if I did deal with the different enemy types all in the same way: knockback attack and sprint past).
I liked the way that stepping on a box created a glimpse of the thing it unlocked. I know I had to remember the distinct graphics of the areas so I'd know where to go next from the glimpse... and for the first few I could. But eventually I reached a state where there were huge roaming packs everywhere so I had to sprint through areas without looking around. And I lost my way and couldn't figure out where to go next. After circling the same three or four areas looking for that side door I must have missed, I eventually got totally surrounded and died.
Very nice entry - a compelling experience that I enjoyed!
@Conrad123 asked for more critical feedback focused on areas for improvement, so I'm going to try to make that my focus. Don't take that focus to overstate negatives though, please. Because there are positives! The game is an interesting idea, has tight responsive controls, decent art sound and music, and most of all it achieves that sense of wild panic I think it sets out for.
OK here's the critical stuff. I played the windows download version.
You have a hard game with quick deaths, so you must take great care with your retry loop. That is ULTRA-important. You make two mistakes in your retry loop. Mistake 1 is sending me back two whole screens. It should be zero. Mistake two is that the gameplay input is on the keyboard but the retry loop input is on the mouse. I want to press a single key from the hiscore display to instantly be playing again in this game, ideally a key that is not used during play so I don't hit it as a "spillover" input and cancel through my score review by accident.
It's such an all-in decision to have deliberately frustrating inputs.
Most games bend over backwards to smoothly translate the player's intention into in-game action. Examples include the "ghost jump" where platformers will still accept your jump input even 50ms after you walked off the edge of the platform, or how colliders will often be rounded so you don't get corners stuck. A game is just automatically more fun by having fluid inputs that translate thought into action easily.
You have gone the total opposite way and deliberately made it hard to make my thoughts into action. It's a design decision you successfully executed on, and your vision for the game. I don't want to suggest you shouldn't experiment. But that's like advanced game design where you're poking me in the eye and saying "isn't that fun?"
Be aware that this design decision creates an initial barrier between the player and your fun.
Given that you set out to make it frustrating, I would have appreciated some other affordances.
For example you could have laid out the up/left/down/right controls with UI elements that were actually up, left, down, and right in their display. Instead they are just a line of text which I have to read.
Here's how it felt: The only strategy that I found that could work was to read just ONE input, down, so that I could stop the car by pulsing this input while I looked at the others. I would be pulsing backward, let's say S. Then I would back up into a bottle. The inputs would change. I would look at the new inputs and read the down input. It says W. Which one is W again? In my brain it that key is "UP" not "W". I am dead now.
A) read the text labels to find "down", B) read the character "W" and C) translate that character to the actual key to press. Maybe it would have been easier for me to play with the arrow keys?
Here is a mockup of what the lower-left boxes indicator might look like if it used no text and the game were using arrow keys: https://imgur.com/tbpD4Z9
Imagine how much faster I could absorb the "what key is down" information, since this cuts out two of the three steps from the current thought process.
OK back to the fair and balanced review. My top score was 100. This was an interesting experience, something different. The art, sound, and music were all nice. I appreciated the snappy response on the car when I did know the keys, and the decals of the breaking car were nice. I clearly knew when I had hit the house and taken damage. I think you achieved your goal of creating a feeling of panic in me, and that's definitely something! I critiqued how maybe that feeling wasn't the right one to go for, but I give you props for achieving it because it's not necessarily easy.
You also had me with a one-more-try feeling because I thought "shit it's just a simple translation of keys, I'll nail it next time."
So a nice entry, but since you asked for the tough love I tried to dig in more to the splinters.
Very nice entry! Nice meaty sense of personality to the game with the AI, his flickering moods, and his (its?) glitchy faces. In the end, my services were no longer required.
I thought the end puzzle was perfect difficulty. That is, hard but doable after a serious number of retries. I thought, when the early version of the AI blew a capacitor trying to keep up, that there might be some future for humanity. But the machine was relentless, and my biological future bleak.
Speaking of bleak, I must convey one significant splinter in the experience. I was playing, and I made a mistake. Or perhaps it would be fair to say I discovered the way something wasn't going to work. And, having previously flung my packages off the side to fail and invite reprimand and restart, I decided to improve upon this by pressing R to see if it might instantly restart. Well, yes. It did instantly restart. THE ENTIRE GAME FROM THE BEGINNING!
However, your game was good enough that I played the whole thing again to get back to where I was, and then pressed on to finish.
In addition to strong puzzling and personality, there were many nice touches. The shader (?) on the faces. The babbling sound as text was displayed. The way I could (upon second play through) cancel past text-babbling instantly with a click. That the heavy box had a different sound effect when moving. That I could shovel multiple boxes quickly into motion at the end of a puzzle without waiting for each to complete its move, yet I could not set multiple boxes in motion mid-puzzle which would have created invalid results. These and others were small details of craft, which I noticed and appreciated.
Very well done!
Nice solid FPS for a compo! You created a good original atmosphere here. Smooth controls and a brutality that matched the spare environment.
I tried a mix of sniping and run-n-gun, although in the end those buzzing flying guys with the guns got me. Dang they were hard to shoot down in the heat of the moment! I was definitely worried if I got a few on my tail.
The creepy light background soundscape was nice, and the buzz of the fliers blended well to announce their arrival and help me orient.
If I could add one thing it would be to have a little more feedback about when I was hit and when I scored hits on enemies.
Beam was a good navigation tool, critical in such an open space.
Nice entry! I didn't really feel rock-n-roll powerful, almost more a feeling from a horror game where I'm on the run rather than a rocket-fest.
Oh man, thanks to that bit of work at the open, immediately after I was done playing this I had to go throw on a taste of "A Grand Don't Come for Free." I haven't heard that stuff in years and years, but it came right to mind.
This was a lot of fun. The mechanics were really basic, so it wasn't like omg what gameplay, but the art was excellent and even more importantly it was brought alive with nice animations and effects and of course that great voice work. It was awesome that you had a nice variety of lines and that it backed actions of both the enemies and the player. Music did a sweet job of keeping the audio on grounded footing without getting in the way.
If I could add one thing it would be a score/distance shown to me on death.
Also, good grief that is a horrifying painting; I hate looking at his face but find it hard to look away.
Nice entry!
My high score was 40:
HaveColor.png
Definitely exceeded my expectations from the screen shot. There is a nice difficulty curve. It start so easy it's basically a tutorial, then comes into careful color differentiation. By the end it becomes about time and the scan sometimes gets a bit frantic. In the 40pt run I was still nailing a few tricky color differentiations but maybe 1 in 5 times toward the end I would brain-blank during the scan and just not see what I was looking for. Couple of times I was even like "yea THAT color, I remember him" but then it would be a memory game of "but where in the grid does he live?"
I lost game one when I was getting into the zone and tried to play quickly. The way the "earned new color" step displays the new color in the "guess this" box, but I lose if I guess it, tripped me up. This meant I always had to be really careful to know which state the game was in, something I wasn't nut about. I hesitate to say you shouldn't show it though, because the colors up top are lined by white and the colors below are lined by black, which can slightly confuse the eye, so I did appreciate the momentary showing of "this is what the color looks like against a white background." I'm not sure how to have the best of both ideas there.
Anyway, I enjoyed my time with this, the design was tight, and it had some nice small touches such as the tweens. I most especially appreciated the "you lost" screen where you get to see what the right answer was and stare as long as you'd like. In fact I really liked the overall graphical layout of the compo version, not so sure I like the post-compo as much, judging only from the screen shot, it feels a lot more severe and less inviting to my eye.
I was surprised by how engaging this mechanic was. Great job!
ADOPTED!
There I was about to give up on video games when my AI alerted me that a new Nuclear Arms game had been released. I proceeded immediately to the download link provided. Cannot be scanned for viruses and may be unsafe? Obviously!
This time there was no destructible terrain, but instead I was able to cause THE most majorly ridiculous traffic cluterfuck ever seen, I mean I was jumping over piles of buses to deliver kids to their loving if somewhat standoffish families.
At one point Shadow G tried to trick me by crashing the game and popping up a dialog to fool me into sending information about Craig Killbane to what was obviously a front of theirs, a false company called "DefaultCompany" here is the evidence: https://imgur.com/a/NJVhY Obviously I didn't fall for it, but maybe this is how they got [STORY SPOILER REDACTED]?
This didn't dissuade me from victory though, and while I will admit I surfed the silver a few times in this game, I kept at it until victory was mine.
Just like in Fallout (obv I mean "of the Mountain King" not that other game) I love the crazy over-the-top story, combined with action elements. It felt good to dash around, I loved the preview of the baby toss which let me feel like a baller by hurling kids all across town square into the doors, and dash-smashing huge busses out of the way like COME ON I GOTTA DO IT BEFORE THE MONSTER FINISHES!! By the end I was feeling like a champ by running past a set of doors and making throws on the move - so satisfying.
You guys always get some difficulty that's on point for the fun action, and wrap it in a great story package. Well done yet again.
(ps I don't wanna spoil the story but can you imagine when that generation grows up?)
I also experienced some technical issues around input playing the WebGL game in Chrome on Windows 7.
I'll provide a bit more detail in case you want to troubleshoot, and then do the rest of the feedback after.
There was a graphics issue with two small black lines that would sort of randomly appear, as seen here: https://imgur.com/a/0iNoM
They were just a minor visual glitch and didn't impact gameplay at all. What was a problem was the way the input would lock me out. I would stop being able to throw shurikens and then the character would stay move-locked in a certain direction, say, moving left and can be stopped by holding right, but you cannot move right (it just cancels the locked left) and if you release it you walk left.
I tested it a bunch, and following the comment by @dragoon I agree with him that both the inability to fire shurikens and the move-lock I experienced were both caused by clicking and dragging the mouse while the click is still down. I could see that sometimes the system would become confused and the mouse cursor would toggle modes from the red shuriken (the game's cursor), the circle with a slash "no" icon (the icon I would expect if I was trying to "drag and drop" an image from the browser but was not hovering over a valid drop target), and the normal operating system default cursor.
I am not sure what the exact issue is, but it was a killer for sure! I lost my first handful of games by being move-locked and unable to shoot in the middle of a fight. My *guess* is that the system was recording the keydown, and then I would drag and release while in the confused-dragging mode, but in that mode the game would fail to register the keyup, and so it would continue to think it was down for maybe 2-15 seconds at random.
OK so I wanted to provide some detail there, but let's move past that aspect. Once I was aware of this issue I was able to just be much more careful with the shuriken, and then I could play the game to the end.
I loved the opening screen, and the art overall is very nice. Although the way the rock and very nice cherry blossom tree have a higher resolution than the characters threw my eye a bit.
I didn't find a lot of use for the sword in combat, but the shuriken was sure nice! I enjoyed the ranged battles against the blue shooting enemies the best. Dodging between their shots while I whittled down the hordes was the peak fun of the experience for me.
I thought the music was nice and the sound effects did their job of grounding me in the game's reality. I liked the animations, particularly the death throes of the aliens.
Nice job, I think you have a nice style on this and a good combat core that could be explored more.
This was a fun game with a basic but engaging premise and a lot of focus on a clear vision. Graphics and audio were both really strong, and the tiny chick had character. His opening line of dialog established character surprisingly well for so few words and in my head I gave him a bit of an attitude, which I enjoyed.
The feel was pretty tight but since this is a game about short intense bursts of high-stakes movement, I did have one microscopic things that I noticed after a while. I felt like a rect collider in a rect world.
Here in this screenshot:
EscapeHatchExample.png
I am holding down the up key but not moving up. I have like a 1px overlap in colliders. I would prefer in this case to "slide" around the corner. I don't know about Haxe but in Unity this can be done by having the character be a circle collider and making sure the physics material has some slipperiness to it.
This arose in gameplay a few times when I was trying to dart into a corridor while being chased. An argument can be made that I shouldn't be off by a pixel in my control inputs, but personally I prefer to grant the comfortable affordance and then have the challenge be balanced accordingly.
That was just a tiny detail and didn't downgrade my experience, but the game is otherwise so tight and focused I figured I would mention it.
I loved a few of the details, especially the animation of the main chick while moving or laying an egg, and the gameplay-critical tiny detail of that little handful of white pixels when the knife-weilder notices you.
I enjoyed playing as a stealth game, but after a few failure loops on a level I found myself probing the tactical limits of high-speed chickening. This was also fun, so not a problem for me; just not sure if it's your intended experience. I found that a critical aspect to exploit is the momentary non-movement of the knife-pig when they first notice you. By sprinting (a key I held most of the time) and making liberal use of diagonal movement to break line of sight, I was often able to rush past. This is just a consequence of the broader restart-then-wait problem inherent to the stealth-with-insta-death game genre, and not specific to this game. I'm GLAD the rush option was viable. Thinking back on it, I only noticed the collider feel issue I mentioned once I switched gears to this more precision-intensive rushdown play style.
Music was really nice, and other nice touches were the "show me you know the buttons" start screen, the pacing of tutorialization, overall game length, and death scene / restart pace. Many subtle things well done here.
Very nice entry, well done!
OK So first thing I did in this game was notice that the left/right move controls were satisfyingly tight. Hrm, okay, I said. Let me test this developer: I jumped, and then just a bit before landing, I hit the jump button again to see if you would correctly buffer the input and make me jump again upon landing. And you did! Altogether I have to give high marks here for the nice tight controls with attention to detail.
I probably could have done without the edge-grabbing, which sometimes screwed up my flow and was nearly never what I really intended, but it was a cool feature to show off your character-controller chops anyway.
I had fun with this, and there were a couple of times where I was alllllmost ready to call it quits but came back for "just one more" or to see that next upgrade. Ended up playing the whole thing and getting to the throne, although my score was only 75 when I got there, so nothing amazing.
Very nice touch to have the post-win runthrough bring a new challenge!
The only critique I can offer is that when playing, I mostly just held down "right" the whole time, and "shoot" the whole time. This wasn't really that much of a problem, but I wonder if there was some twist. Whenever I find myself holding a button always, I try to change the game, either making a more balanced reason not to hold it, or else removing the button and making the game auto-go. This was a very minor flaw only, though.
Another aspect of the design that I liked was that high ground had value because your shots could not go through the terrain but your enemies could. So if you got stuck under and overhang that was your worst moment -- here comes a guy but you can't shoot him until he's right in your face!
Overall I enjoyed the feel and design of this, and the art and sounds were pretty solid.
Nice entry!
There's a lot to like here. Off the charts in terms of looks: it looks great, is really well animated via algorithm in a way the gives a great robotic life to the character, and there are loving little details in the fire, trap doors, machines, and the "grand dump" of everything at the end. I'm blown away.
I would respectfully disagree with the other commenter asking for instructions. It's mere personal preference, but for me and my taste, I appreciated very much that you did NOT provide instructions. In a game where there are just two buttons and a few simple rules, you can seize the opportunity to give the player that extra pleasure of experimenting and exploring the unknown system. I think this is especially true in a physics-based game with a limited set of discrete possible outcomes. The downside risk is confusing the player beyond a reasonable/pleasurable amount and losing them, but I didn't experience that here. It's a risk, but I'm glad you took the chance, I enjoyed the rule-learning period.
My first run score was a bit more in the fire than not. I tried to do better, and I managed to lower that to 37 into the pit. I think there may be a small bug where after restarting the boxes which you succeed with do not become hearts and are not counted. For example: https://imgur.com/a/qoWx5
It's a shame there is no audio. With such an awesome presence in the visuals, it would be a bigger shame to detract with poor audio. But still... it all feels distinctly less real with a total lack of sound. But that's a jam for you - something comes up, and you cut scope, so nice work delivering anyway!
Great job.
(One last thought looking back at the screenshots: this is a 2D game, but it felt more realistic than that, and in retrospect I think it was a big deal that you drew the cubes in various states of angled perspective rather than as rot-locked squares. I played again looking just at this, and also noticed that slight camera rumble which plays nicely with the flicker overlay to give an old-timey feel that fits.)
Oh man, I ALMOST HAD HIM on hard! Lot of fun, after I figured out the basics (like aiming with mouse fer instance). Maybe three fights, then I was able to take him on easy, tried stepping it up to hard but just kept losing.
I was so bad at dodging... and then it felt really disheartening when I was hammering space to get back up and he was standing over me rapid-punching the empty air my head was about to move into, like YO REF THAT'S CHEATING! Then I looked around and realized... shit, there is no ref in this fight.
Also wasn't that good at punching. (Who talked me into this fight anyway?!) The mouse aiming is a cool twist on the original, but I never felt locked in. I think that's somewhat as designed: clearly the arms are intended to make the controls feel awkward.... a fine line to walk design-wise but I think you pulled it off here by having the right humor about it.
Doc told me to use shift to activate star power but I never got it working. Sure would have loved to whirlwind all those arms at his ugly face after all those beatings. https://imgur.com/a/qAxSX
Great entry, lots of personality! Really enjoyed it.
Heads up man, this being submitted in the compo means it was done alone, whereas teams are supposed to go into the jam. Sorry if I misunderstood your comment there. No big.. unless of course if you win! Obviously what really matters is that you made a great game in two days but I thought I'd mention it for next time.
I like ya style, here's an 8-minute FRAPS rip of yer game kicking my ass:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILJZprKm24c
Not my peak performance, but not that far below typical. First two fights on hard, rest on easy. That second easy fight, I woulda shoulda coulda but my hand landed on home row instead of WASD and it took me a few moments to figure out why I wasn't punching.
In retrospective viewing, perhaps I ought to fight at a more measured pace.
Sorry, I ran into some technical issues with this and couldn't really dig in so I haven't rated.
As I moved away from the center, map tiles popped in and out of existence visually, and the graphics didn't seem to line up with the colliders so I was unable to tell where I could move. In case it's helpful, I used FRAPS to record a quick demonstration of what occurred, and I've uploaded it to youtube as an unlisted video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KM8OPcHTDIc
My system is Windows 7 and I played the rc1 build trying both fullscreen and windowed. That video is from the fullscreen play.
Looked like an interesting combat multi-tasker with nice art/sound and a few systems to explore!
Wow, this one drew me in and I kept trying until I got on the scoreboard.
I definitely was a little unclear on a few things early - like I thought the green buzzy things were points I was supposed to get, when they were enemies out to get me, and it took me a little bit to understand the relationship between missing shots, ice, and getting hit.
But wow, once I got it I had a lot of fun. It's tough! You have to move around a lot, but not too much, and you have to shoot the enemies, but don't miss! I decided to cheat the system by sitting there without ever shooting once and letting the swarm build up. In my mind there would be fifty enemies filling the screen and only THEN would I shoot. But the game was resilient to this attack: it only spawned a reasonable number, and then when I did fire my first shot I missed and the ice that was created was ENORMOUS because I'd been hit fifty times by then. Awesome!
My strategy going in later was to AVOID PICKUPS. Those things are like death, because they make you fill the screen with ice. You have to be surgical. I stayed near the center, tried to stick and move. Often I would just take the damage from the last few green buzzy flies instead of attacking them.
As my doom approached on this final good run, it got really tense. I was operating in TINY spaces, and starting to rely on a new layer of rules I didn't fully grasp yet, which is when ice gets deleted to turn into powerups or flies. Never totally grasped that, but I was certainly glad for the space opening up!
So more ice, worse, more enemies, worse, and most surprisingly, more of my own bullets, worse.
I also appreciated the nice animations, art, and sound, plus the responsive control scheme (altho maybe just a tiny bit TOO responsive, when I was first learning I crashed right into ice before I learned to stay in the center).
Great realization of the theme in a well-done action game here. Strong entry.
This LOOKED so metal that I got my expectations way up for FUCKIN' CRAZY to come raining down on me. I strapped in and prepared for the extreme.
In fact, I worked myself up into such a frenzy that I was like "WAIT A MINUTE this engine sounds like a vacuum cleaner instead of a severed leg going into a wood chipper downed an octave!" I drifted, but where was the skidding howl making me feel like I was at the edge of losing all control? I body-checked the enemy car - you know, the one with the awesome funeral art, slamming into them with my skull-adorned armor-plated wasteland-warrior monster machine, but nothing happened. No ca-runch sound, no jutter-slam rumble of power hitting power.
I was tuned to a different channel than the other drivers. I was screaming that kind of cheesy metal the metalheads won't even listen to because it's too far into the whole Dungeons and Dragons warrior hymn viking thing, but they were like rolling down the window to ask if I had any Grey Poupon. Then I drove in the dirt like a peasant and they ostracized me from their society, and I never saw them again.
I want my car sprite to vibrate a tiny hum that increases as I speed up; I want screeches and crunches and clanks; I want shoving and reactions to my actions. I want to feel out of control, edge of my seat, slammed in the face. And I want a couple of the drivers to suck, so when I drive in the dirt I still have someone to tangle with when I get back on the road.
In all seriousness, you have kind of an awesome core here. A killer art scheme, a straightforward but compelling premise of RC Pro-Am + Mad Max, and tight easy-to-pick-up controls. I was having a little fun with the review, but hope I didn't sound too negative. I think what's here is really nice, but it's got this potential to be taken up to eleven that I would have just loved to see. It takes twenty tiny touches and you'll get it there. You should totally grind them out just for kicks before calling it quits on this one.
Nice entry!
Wow, an impressive amount done here, especially for a compo!! I was like wait a minute this is a boss fight with special unique theme music!? Awesome.
The controls were demanding but tight. There was only one scenario where I felt the controls failed me, and that was jumping up into a 1-unit-wide shaft from below. I would move left and right but it was hard to position myself exactly so I would overshoot. Then when jumping I'd catch the corner of my collider on the edge of the wall. No big deal, but I did have to shuffle around and re-attempt the jump a handful of times when I encountered this setup.
Otherwise the controls were solid. This game required a lot of planning because a mistake could easily lead to taking several quick hits in a row. So it was good that the controls were predictably reliable.
I liked the variety of enemies and areas -- again, impressive amount of content! If I could have tweaked one thing I would have moved the checkpoints a bit closer, I feel like a game jam is not the place to ask players to repeat the same content to earn more.
Nice job! It looks and sounds nice, and balancing with like 20 ice creams on top was a pretty wild feeling. Good feel for a nice simple premise, well done.
Really nice job with the art and sound, which really coordinate well with the main mechanic and horror theme. Even the choice to go with tank controls is interesting. They certainly have a big impact on the game, making it harder to change direction to flee from the ghosts, and thus making it more of a commitment to move. Many times I died because the ghost appeared two feet from me and I pressed a side direction, to merely turn in place and die.
This added to the tension and horror since I knew it would never be trivial to flee.
What hurt my experience the most was the full restart. If each portcullis was a checkpoint, I certainly would have played to the end. Eventually though, it wore me down having to repeat the same sections.
But the main thing was that you nailed that spooky high tension - and maybe checkpoints would have ruined that. Lot of really nice elements here, well done!
Always tough for the multiplayer games! You deserve more after doing so many ratings yourself, plus the keynote.
I had a mix of fun and frustration playing this one. I could sense the potential of what it would be like to have a funny mangle of strangers in there undermining and helping each other out. The timed waits were not so much fun with just two players, as the suspense wasn't present. I largely had to imagine "what-if" to see your vision, which is a shame because I bet it would be fun.
The actual play experience with 2 ended up being a lot of waiting. Waiting for players to join, waiting for timers to count down, waiting for the platform to regenerate, waiting for the ghost to move away. I think this was intentional, to give time for sabotage; would have liked to experience that aspect.
The punishment for death was severe: the other bear had to notice I'd died, and jump into a pit or something. Sometimes I'd use platforms and then be unsure if he'd died or was waiting for them to respawn. Poor guy. Think it was you actually so you know what I mean! There was a small feeling of laggy choppiness, which left me feeling a little awkward and resulted in a few extra deaths.
So a cool idea but I guess problematically ambitious. I suppose that's a GOOD thing to try in an LD!
If I could add one thing it would be an indicator of the position/status of the other bear(s), and if I could add a second thing it would be some basic means of communication, for example an "over here" button and a "hang my head in shame" button.
I thought the art was really nice, especially the enviornmental backgrounds. The checkpoint things were a good mix of clear-but-mysterious. The music was also nice.
Nice job taking an ambitious vision and running with it, sorry you didn't get a lot of plays!
I ran FRAPS for some of our play session, here is an unlisted youtube vid of a slice:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4kCS7tvbyU
Thank you, @sirpumpy!! It should be fixed now, sorry for the confusion. Had it in draft mode so it only appeared for me and nobody else. :(
@dimaswift thanks for mentioning the camera, I think it's my camera script that's at fault and not the physics. The camera adjusts position as your dangle-chain gets longer, and I introduced some dampening to avoid a jerky snap when you break your chain. However, I think this introduced the jitter at higher speeds that you mention. I'll have to fix that for any post-LD release I might do!
Wow, I love this community! Thanks everyone for your great feedback. It's exciting to hear that people had fun, and that you liked my little facial expressions in the art. Thanks also to those who mentioned the constant chopper sound was NOT annoying... It's like you read my mind, as I was pretty worried about putting an always-on sound into the game. I also appreciate the critiques of where I can improve, and got several great points here. I've been consta-refrehsing since the contest, as the feedback comments are so addictive and I really enjoy them.
Special shout-out to @peachtreeoath, what a poetic comment. It really warmed my heart to read that.
Now that the dust has settled, I think my view is most like @porcus-pie. I am happy with the controls and core mechanic, but maybe I invested a bit *too* much in small graphical details at the expense of the levels.
Honestly the blurry graphics on the rocks, that's so sloppy, I really shouldn't have let that go out. :\
I have rated and commented on everyone's game, except @reality-blind because your game takes 2 players. I'll try! If I missed anyone else, let me know.
@ronanrorry sorry my game wasn't your cup of tea, but congratulations on finishing your first Ludum Dare and welcome to the club.
Thanks again, everyone.
@jupiter-hadley thanks so much for the video! I can see from the jerky inputs that you played the web version and were having trouble with the cursor passing out of the screen area, causing the input to feel really choppy. I knew this was a potential problem with the web version, but WOW seeing how hard it hit you was really informative. Thanks! :)
WOW! Loved this entry. The concept and mechanics are especially strong. I played a bunch, shipped 18 critters (3 full freights) and burned 81 on my last run. Initially I thought a whole slew of clones of myself was going to be great, but it was too much chaos, and they kept eating my sandwiches. So in later runs I worked closely with a single clone, and tried to stay on top of the incineration of bad units while being opportunistic about shipping good ones.
This was a really strong entry, with nice graphics and a strong idea. Actually several strong ideas: the shipping, the super duper, the blower/sucker, it all came together really nicely into a cohesive interrelated game.
I do want to say I had some frustration with the blower. It seemed kind of random. Sometimes a creature would go flying across the room, other times they would not move at all. I tried to get a screenshot of a really clear case of where I expected a critter to move but it didn't, and I only got this mediocre one: https://imgur.com/7CwdByR
The other issue was that I kept getting guys stuck on the edge of going in. Instead of feeling like a smooth operator, I was usually stymied by a corner blocking the shot. Then I'd come around the side and blow, but he'd blow past the opening entirely. I guess I wished the openings were a bit more forgiving - that would have made the game easier of course, but I wanted the challenge to be about the higher-level positioning and not the jank of the edge case of getting the dude in the door.
I'm drilling into the nuance of the feel only because this is a great game that I enjoyed a lot, and I think it could be ridiculous-level fun if I felt smoother at the controls.
Really nice job here!
Edit: went back to test a little more about the feel nuances I mentioned. Here's a better screenshot of the corner thing - this critter doesn't go in from here: https://imgur.com/a/PziH1 Then the time I'm using the blower and not sure why the monster isn't being moved is here: https://imgur.com/a/JtX3t
Cool thought experiment, but WOW it made me realize that chess is really about trades and threats, and if you are the human you cannot allow a trade so you have to back down from everything. At least that was my little solo exploration. I didn't get a chance to play with another person.
In the end the poor humans were feeling so glum that I let them just use the first move to leap the knight all the way onto the zombie king on the first move! In this world where even the rules are not enforced, the human's first move advantage does outweigh even the mighty zombie power!
Nice art, good basic sound, getting the job done. Probably this idea is too unbalanced to be worth a larger game, so a good idea to explore it in a jam with a small game. Nice entry!
I think I reached wave 21? Nice parts are a cool open almost tron-like environment and some nice SPEED! That horizontal shifting, wow, it's potent.
Heads up, I got confused the first couple of times I played and thought maybe the game froze. Try opening the game and doing nothing (pretend you're reading the UI For the first time). The enemy will catch you and the game will "freeze" because you lost. Really if you hit escape the game explains this to you, but I didn't know to do that! I had to come back here and read up a bit more, then try again.
But, that splinter aside, once I Got rolling I had some fun swerving around and grabbin' gas! Nice work.
Really enjoyed this - made me think. Due to a technical problem on my end I played it without sound, so when I saw that it was my mistake I went back and replayed the first two levels with the sound and was markedly improved from my first tries.
I kept kind of feeling like wait wait no don't start yet, but it's probably better that the game is the way it is there! I wouldn't have minded seeing a % of probes that died, as it was hard to gauge the success level from the time. I was basically listening for fried probe sounds the second play through, which really helped this aspect.
I liked the core mechanic here, and I also liked the presentation and graphics style. Nice work! Diagonal switchback paths were my main strategy after a while.
Well done! This felt really complete with nice art, gameplay, sounds/music, and a story with missions! It was about the right length too. I got sucked in and and enjoyed it.
I did encounter one issue. I got stuck in this corner here and had to reload the game: https://imgur.com/a/0cF8B
It was worth reloading and starting over though! Difficulty was on point, except maybe the final boss who wasn't shooting back at me. And I appreciated the "I got hit" sound effect which wasn't annoying at all, but was totally distinct from the others and really let me know. I was worried enough about the enemies to be careful, and the money-safe mechanic was nice because it put some consequences to dying. I completed the game with $274 in savings for my retirement. Nice entry.
This was fun! The graphics are really well done, with nice little animations and supporting audio that made everything feel grounded and alive.
Loved tinkering with the systems. I never got super far, my best run I probably got through four shipments of food before I lost it. I wasn't very good at the multitasking I guess! My grandson has zero initiative, but at least he's obedient.
Something was sapping my money... I'd collect a bit for food, then get to the telephone, but then realize I had zero! Was I paying my grandson or something? Whatever that one piece was I missed it.
Really nice total package here - sick idea, strong implementation, fun time.
Oh a small technical note: I played the flash version in firefox because I ran into the following problem trying to launch the PC version on Windows 7: https://imgur.com/a/RNxtJ
Looks and sounds fantastic! I also enjoyed the controls, and the way I could zoom around and then stop to apply a gentle nudge. The cool part about that was how I often created worse problems than I solved and things would get out of control!
Then I started abusing the heck out of the quack feature and basically playing it Katamari style, traveling around the edges as a huge blob of ducks!
Nice entry with style and some interesting gameplay.
This was a cool idea, and you did the most important thing right -- it was really good about picking up the object I wanted to pick up. Oh god it would have been frustrating if you hadn't nailed that part!!
If I could tweak one thing I would remove the metallic surface, as I strugged to differentiate three of the colors, and two pretty badly. Def got some of the "wrong hole" sound.
Overall I enjoyed this one. Simple but effective. Nice work!
I played to the end. It exceeded my expectations that I had from reading the description. There are a lot of careful details, which are really nice.
Firstly the mechanics could easily have been as confusing as heck, but they were minimally explained and then tutorialized just the right amount. This was well designed!
Next, I had transparency into the underlying system. When making friends, not only did the bar go up, but the green circle visibly expanded as well. This later had gameplay implications when I was being a poser, but it also reinforced the learning phase and kept things totally clear throughout. The bar alone might have been trickier to see, for example when learning to be the skater, I wasn't sure if just being near was enough, or if there was some spacebar mechanic I had to use - but nope, I passed by another skater and saw the circle expand and knew what to do.
The separate mechanics for each clique are of course the showcase feature. And they are key to it all working. I enjoyed the skater the most, because I'm a fan of unusual movement systems. But the difference in move speed between the furry and the jock was also quite significant, and the ability to hold hands and take a furry with you away from trouble, or to flee danger but use the ball toss to beckon a jock with you, this all mattered in the later stages. The strategy I settled on was to do the furriest first while there was nothing to lose, and then convert to skater because while they are fast they are a little awkward and need room to maneuver. I finished with the jock, who has the fast but simple movement, and the ability to beckon another jock away from trouble, so they were good at cleaning up last.
I don't know what it is, but maybe there is some insight that can make me change up my approach. Once I got decent, I would always switch, do that entire set, and then move on to the next and never come back. It may have been fun to be force to switch more, and hammered the thematic message of being a poser home even harder. Given that my approach was the same once I'd learned the rules, I was glad the game wasn't any longer.
But my favorite detail of all was one I didn't even notice at first. And that is the ghostly normal student which you can only half see. These sub-humans are not in the social cliques I am interested in, and so they hardly even exist! That was a really great small supporting detail to include.
And of course I shouldn't neglect to mention the fun music and how it switched between cliques to reinforce the identity shifting.
It's amazing to me that your crew can make games in such a large group! I still remember enjoying Meteor Jam, and looking back at it I notice there is much but not full overlap on the team members. Makes me curious about your backstory.
Anyway, congrats on an intriguing entry that clearly had a lot of thought and care put in!
What if Minecraft's world fell victim to the Upside Down??
Hiscore of 1998.
Love the juice in this, the music was entrancing and the art was squishy and evil and consistent. I really felt like you made a cohesive world here way above the range a typical compo game can approach. Outstanding!
Of course the concept of the gameplay was not fresh, but that's not what you were after here.
Regarding the nuances of the game feel, most importantly the act of shooting felt satisfying. The randomization of the spray was a really nice touch that gave your excellent visuals some room to breathe. Moving was good when it was nonstop, but there was a bit of weirdness in the deceleration. At first I thought it was simply a matter of decelerating too slowly... but what happens is stranger than that. It seems that the motion glides a bit more past where you let go, then instantly stops. But only once you've already moved for a certain amount of time. I couldn't quite feel out the math.
Also I wished the death of the enemies was a bit different, they seemed to turn away and linger a moment before dying, but it was not instant satisfying feedback when the fatal shot hit them. I was overshooting them a while not realizing quite yet that they had already died.
Lastly on the nitpick list, I fell off the map and had no way to restart better than refreshing the browser.
Coming back to the best part, the art and sound! I can't say how much I like the music, and I especially like that it feels comfortable coming down to nothing, like it wants to be music in a video game, instead of trying to be so "interesting" to take my full attention like album music might.
Loved that the blocks were empty inside, spotted, and rotting/cracked. Later when I pushed the limits of the gameplay, I came to REALLY appreciate the sky-bound sparkles over the stars, and I frantically wove between hordes of enemies.
I really enjoyed this one, and I'm impressed by the look you achieved.
Wowooww this was a brainbender! I loved the look and the different ideas combining like that, great job.
I only got 92 because I'm awful at this kind of thing, but I bet some people that get really good could go on quite a while longer.
Nice entry - art, sound, idea, and execution were all on point!
Thanks to @philippe for leaving the comment about how to get started with the windows build. I was stuck before I saw that, because it said width,height so I was entering two numbers with a comma, like the prompt.
My favorite part to this was the nice hand-drawn art, which was charming and had some nice animations. The monsters looks cool, and I thought it was a nice design touch how they will sometimes back off and come back at you.
My first few play-throughs I got killed by just using attack all the time. But as I learned the rules with dodge and stun, I was able to do much better. Unfortunately, the game froze and crashed on my farthest run. What a shame, because I was getting into it and would have gone further with the experience.
Nice short levels, and another good design decision to have me fully heal with each new level. That let you make the enemies tough, but even if I make a few mistakes I can always get back on track as long as I survive the immediate situation. Smart to avoid the "I'm definitely dead next round" feeling that would come from bringing a sliver of health into a new level.
If I could add one thing, it would be more feedback when I got hit.
Wow this was interesting. Nice graphics and presentation/UI. The story was pretty dark: I don't enjoy my work, and my only outlets for happiness are gambling, drinking, and the vacant consumerism of purchasing items I don't need or even use. Then when I try to just live a balance of work and light drinking with the occasional visit to the casino (like a normal person, obv) the police and mob are both out to get me!
Backed into a corner I started drinking more heavily, doing shady work, let me sleep schedule go to hell. Eventually I descended into massive gambling just to feel something. It's no wonder I ended up in prison.
Nice and compelling entry here, you drew me into the world of the game and created a story!
Nice work exploring a new idea. I played a bunch of runs, my best score was 40.
I started to notice, wow, I haven't got any friend bees in a while. I think the game doesn't respawn all the stuff when I hit space to retry or G. I had to quit and restart the game after I had sucked the map dry of all flowers.
I couldn't quite get the multi-bee thing to its full potential. I experimented a little with toggling on and off the bees but it was tough with everything happening so fast and me getting confused. I wasn't successful. So I resorted to a simpler strategy of just controlling the whole swarm and giving up on some bees but trying to snap up more pickups this way. That was pretty fun. I would have definitely gotten into the zone with it more if the horizontal controls of the bees felt more snappy. It was kind of a huge effort to cross the map.
I wonder if you can experiment with a different control scheme to capture the flavor of your multi-bee idea. I feel the toggle is simply a bit too slow and clunky for the speed of the game. Experiment! It's an idea worth looking at from a few angles to see if you hit on something really fun.
If it was me, my first experiment would be to 10x the horizontal speed and make it so WASD controls the Queen and the arrow keys affect all other swarm members. And then I'd make the queen more visually distinctive so it's ULTRAclear. Then you could be juggling multi controls without toggle, and still have swarm? I dunno, just riffing on it because I feel like you had a cool idea but I didn't get to really experience it at full potential.
Nice entry.
High score 13,738.
Nice job soldiering through on your first LD and getting a playable submission in! It sounds like it wasn't easy, but you made it and got something I can play.
There's some cool stuff here, nice pixel art, music, voice work, various screen transitions including a story and credits, a high score, several kinds of enemies and powerups, etc etc! It's kind of a wild ride the way it all comes together, probably meaning a smaller tighter game was the right target, but you definitely should feel good about hitting a lot of content.
I ran into two small problems: first it took me a while to figure out that Z was jump (I think the instructions said it was A?) and I kept getting stuck on rain gutters. I'm talking about the thing that looks like this: https://imgur.com/a/Ix6GN
I would get stuck on those and be unable to pass, and my life would keep ticking down.. eventually I'd either die or randomly become unstuck.
Other than that I was able to zoom around the city high on drugs and eating garbage, crash some rooftop parties with my sick jumping skills, and try not to embarrass myself by puking.
You can be proud of finishing your first LD!
Top score 9108 distance. You probably blew that away, but I was feeling pretty good about it... the 4-button controls thing was warping my brain HARD. In the end my strategy was to play with two hands, and only think about three lanes. I would stay in lane 2 in good times, and know what fingers moved to lanes 1 or 3 as my outs. Wowzers. I mean, the first few times I played I got wrecked real hard, real fast! The blobs being unable to get hit by the beam was critical to the balance, so great call there.
This looks really nice, and has a tight feel and compelling difficulty -- nice work! I remember your old LD game IceMan, which was also super-slick, tight, and tough.
One thing though, does this game have audio? I tried the HTML5 build in both chrome and firefox, but I didn't hear any sound. A shame because if it does have sound like IceMan did, then I missed out big time.
Great job! You're a master of the slick tough action-reflex game.
This game looks really fantastic. The way the rich yellow light soaks the room is so well done. Also loved all the angry snake/worm statues glaring at me while I stole their legacy!
I had some issues with the jumping - there seems to be a very short but noticeable lag on jumping, plus a re-jump limitation. I think it's reasonable to prevent me from just consta-jumping the entire puzzle away, but it felt a bit raw when I hit the button and nothing happened, and I died.
Nailed it on the atmosphere though - and I shouldn't forget to mention the nice work on the audio which did a nice job of gently reinforcing the overall feeling of the cave.
Nice job!
This was nice, and something different, even if a little unfinished. I enjoyed the voice work and traveling from one culture into another. A few things seemed to not work, for example it didn't seem to matter what notes I answered the melody with, and when the guy asked me if it was okay to leave and I said yes, he said okay bye but was still present in the following scene. Actually I was glad he was there though, and the incompleteness did not get in the way of this being something unique.
Nice work, especially for a first Ludum Dare!
Nice tight game with cool art/style and music.
First few games I was pressing the QWERT buttons but nothing happened... realized I had to hit space for that red line, and also that I had to click the QWERT input option.
I got 5275 on the easy mode. I was on top of things thanks to the steady pairing of QE, and I could handlle three things... space, R, and some QE. Once W was added to the mix I started falling apart.
Nice progression of difficulty for one long play-through altho it was maybe a bit slow for repeated plays. Tough to make it work well on my first play and my third or fourth. I tried hardmode but got pretty wrecked by it after the longish intro phase of bass and drum.
I appreciated that I could see near-hits vs hits, that was a nice touch. The art of the band itself was cool but I could only steal the occasional glance, unfortunately.
Nice entry!
Just short of five million bucks - I guess I lost a few of the kids when I carved the guy at the end up with a knife!
This came together nicely - the story, the voice work, and the fun art all come together well! I dug the skeletal animations that helped me show off my oversized fists.
If I could add one thing it would be a little more impact when I punch the guys.
(Oh also, random, but heads up, I noticed your youtube link in your profile has a typo.)
(Quick note - I notice in the credits you said that someone else made the music. That means this should be entered into the jam, not the compo as that is against compo rules.)
Nice entry - especially for a first LD! There was a fun variety of graphics to the enemies, and they were nicely alien/creepy/monstrous. Definitely played to your strength by having a lot of different ones.
Also cool that you had four totally different boss fights!
If I could change one thing, it would be to have more feedback when the player is hit, like a little flash appear on the screen. The sound effect of the axe hitting the black blinking slime monster was great, more of that kind of feedback when the player gets hit would have helped ground me in the world of the game. For example I wasn't even sure at first if the tentacles were hurting me in the first boss fight.
Nice job! I definitely held space the whole time, but that wasn't a problem imo.
Nice work! The lighting and perspective were nice, and the audio did a job of rounding out the atmosphere. Most calming slaughter ever, thanks to the music?
Mechanic was straightforward but I liked the twists you threw in, with the energy management, and then the light source competing with shooting for energy. It was also a nice decision to not force me to hunt stragglers down, but only achieve a certain threshold of death - I feel like that was a bad trap that you could have fallen into but sidestepped.
I experienced the wall-passthrough bug, here after this moment: https://imgur.com/iGaGk8M
There were enough guys that it was getting real choppy, and then I lurched through the wall into them middle of that crowd of idiots. Let's just say the battle did not go my way after that!
Good difficulty balance, I had to retry a few times but not dishearteningly often.
Nice entry!
I made a 7-feature game but I ended up more than thirteen thousand dollars in debt! Good thing that doesn't happen in real LDs. ;)
Took me a minute to realize what was going on, with the connection between the real world and the game world. Like, I'm inside the game that I'm creating. Or the game I'm creating is changing the real world. It's a cool idea! I think you just scratched the surface.
I managed to open the chest across the river, but not on my first play through. I spent a lot of time coding up shooting but then it didn't seem to happen in the real world. Why was violence my instinct? I could have coded talking instead...
It's brave that you exploring creating some of these other types of games you're less comfortable making, instead of sticking to your action formula.
277! Phew. I guess I feel pretty good about that, although there were definitely some casualties along the way!
I remember your crazy asteroid game from a previous LD, and this is another one with an interesting movement/interaction mechanic. At first I got right up next to the sheep but then I realized this disperses them too much. I started to keep a further distance and I found I could corral the sheep better this way. But wowzers that level with 200 of them! It was cool to see the rippling wave of my influence fighting against their natural tendency to have elbow room.
A surprisingly compelling system emerged from very simple rules here, which is a credit to your design. The controls were snappy, the feel fluid, and the art was very nicely done and felt cohesive. It's a shame that there is total silence, as not having any sound makes the game feel less real and further away, whereas all the other elements were strong enough to make a game that could draw me in.
Very well done!
I sold the allotted amount in 22:23 (altho you can never win).
This game was a real contender for "Best Traffic Jam" https://imgur.com/6MADI44
But I'm afraid that the top traffic-jam honor still remains with another LD40 game called Nuclear Arms 5.
Anyway, I enjoyed this one! I wasn't going to click on my store twenty-six thousand times, or even one thousand, but I enjoyed tinkering with my signs and my sales price and dreaming of opening a second location.
The cars and coins look nice, the emergent traffic patterns were kind of hypnotic to watch while I waited for my monies to accumulate, and everything was clearly understood from the first moments.
I would have loved some audio to make the world I was looking down on feel more alive.
I played the jam version but I see in comments you are adding some traffic interaction post-jam - interesting idea!
Nice entry.
I had to check out your game after I saw you leave a comment on another game where you'd had a problem running their entry so you downloaded their code, fixed a bug, and rebuilt.
Your entry was a cool little experience. Sure, there would need to be more to do to make it a real contender but I enjoyed it. The highlight moment for me was definitely the reveal of the twist. So much of the same thing had happened that the change made me jump a little. Other nice moments were staring at the deer a while, and crossing the rickety wooden bridge and taking in the view.
The art was very nice and this homey little valley worked well. It supported the games message really well that my first feeling was enjoying the nice nature! I also appreciated being dropped straight into the game with no explanation whatsoever. I of course tried WASD + mouse and had zero problem playing. I feel like the "no comment" from the developer regarding what to do and how enhances the message a little bit, because I have nobody to blame but myself.
Nice job! It seems like you had a different initial vision but then when mid-jam you did a good job rethinking it to get to a tight little experience rather than something feeling half-finished.
Nice work! The art, animation, and music are very nice, and the sound effect for the "sudden interest" was cracking me up. Of course the fart was a pleasure to behold.
Controls felt smooth, and game was mostly clear except I did play one game assuming left click was fart and I had to fill the meter before using it, dunno why.
Nice short play length was right on point to showcase without overstaying the welcome. Impressive amount and quality of 3d assets for a solo-compo, too.
Good job!
Simple core mechanic, but well done with nice art and sound, a good difficulty curve, and a short play loop. I played through a couple of times and managed to deliver a 15-crate train without losing any.
I definitely had some moments of panic, and I thought it was kind of funny how the calm friendly music juxtaposed with the violent slaughter. Those bandits must be desperate!!
Nice entry.
Nice art and audio!
I played around a while, of course it's easy to get overpopulation by just always waiting, but I could never quite totally exterminate life. I noticed for example that when a new city is first set up and my bomb is at 0/0 I can kill it in 3 hits. The first hit military goes from 1 to 0. But then the second hit I can't observe any specific state change. I watched the art and numbers, but couldn't see what was quite going on. Then the third hit blows up the city.
Although I never totally understood the rules, I liked the vibe and tinkered around a while with this.
This was really cool. I'm an old Tribes player so I totally love rocket jumping.
I needed the mouse sens way higher, so it was great that you had the option in game. I hit it like 10x and it was what I wanted. However, every time the level restarts or a new one is loaded, that is reset to default which hurt badly since you need to restart so often (or at least I did).
Otherwise, I enjoyed the rocket jump puzzles! Nice work.
A nice simple game that was pleasant and short - I liked it. Tried to see if there was a secret ending if I took none of the items, but I couldn't avoid taking two clocks in the second to last screen. I thought the waves on the beach were a nice touch.
Great job finishing a complete submission in five hours! No matter how small, that's an achievement.
Nice job, loved the painting-style art! I liked experimenting with the controls, and I liked the theme usage... the balloon really did become very heavy and sluggish when loaded up with gold!
If I could add one thing I think it would have been a little animation to the birds to see the art come more alive.
Nice entry that hits all the bases here! Good job.
22,570: https://imgur.com/a/y5wf2
This was fun! Nice job adding a variety of power-down effects to make it risky to take the coins! Invisible + inverted was nuts!! The damage one made it tough for me to know.. should I collect coins at all or not?
If I could make one tweak, I would make the restart command usable from the keyboard instead of having to take my hand off to grab the mouse. Don't want to add friction to that moment where I'm deciding whether to play "one more game!"
Also I liked the coin art and the way the lighting and slight perspective made it feel much more like a real space than pure flat top-down would have. It DID have a flying-into-a-field-of-coins feeling!
Nice work.
I think we have a shark problem! https://imgur.com/3lW1wYL
This was a fun game, liked the art style. If I could have changed one thing I would have made it so I could retrieve the fishing line with another click (or right click) instead of waiting for it to go all the way out and then come back, then I could have felt like a fishing ninja with either a mulit-hit or quick jabs depending on my choice. FORTUNATELY this was not an issue with the sharks, smart call making the line auto-retrieve as soon as it hits a shark.
Nice entry!
Wow!! This is super-cute, a great puzzle concept, and has great audio. It feels so complete and polished! I loved the main character, especially when he would get so full of water he'd pop (yes I tested it, sorry little fellow!). Otherwise he bobbed around so happily to the happy tune. Then his sound going through the tubes was so satisfying.
Really great job on this, I played 16 levels and enjoyed it.
I came to check this out because I liked the animations I saw in some posts during the compo.
And I dig the animations a lot. But wow, it's so much more than that. This entry has a strong vision and all of the details are in place reinforcing it.
I care about my hp much more than in a normal game, so there's a sense of tension. And combat is fast and sometimes brutal. I'm on edge. But the camera has some nuances that raise the tension. I can't run too far ahead without losing visibility, so I have to move in short careful chunks. The aspect ratio and close camera makes it frightening to move vertically. I can't run and gun - attacking prevents movement, so I have to stick and move, stick and move. Use the cover.
The art, music, and sound are all very focused on this mood. I made a mistake, and now there is a corpse to remind me, every rest. It's haunting and tense. I think I'm doing well. WHAM, three hits from a spider just off the screen reminds me of how quickly that can change. Will another villager die because of that? Be more careful.
The first moment when the slavering enemy rushes me: wild panic. I thought I had the luxury of range. No wonder blood drips from his misshapen chin.
This entry transported me fully into its stark vision. Outstanding job.
Few minor nits that intruded: I spawned and backed off from a sudden attack, but happened to spawn right next to the stairs. Entire level gone. That's how I got my first villager corpse.
Was trying to get to the end with five villagers, but I couldn't get down these stairs. Level cleared. Did I miss something? A bug? Or just a grim finale as intended? https://imgur.com/5q4obwE
Last minor thing is there was a bit of chore to that double-check search I did every time, just to make sure I'd cleared a level.
This is strong vision well-supported by every aspect of the implementation. Great work.
Wow! Wasn't expecting turn-based from the screen shot, but I approve! This was excellent and I played it all the way to the end. Difficulty was just about right - let me learn in the beginning, and then tested me with the final boss. I used lightning around corners a lot, took all the cores I could, and used a lot of double-shot early, then quad vs the boss.
I really didn't experience any problems. Everything looked great and played smoothly. The graphics as well as audio were on point - really made a nice space and mood. Then menus/UI are tight as well.
I'm glad it wasn't longer, the last level was about the right place to end it. I would say maybe there was a little bit of excess wandering, I got a little lost on maybe level 2 trying to find the exit.
It was interesting the way the AI hung back around corners. They wanted to blast me when I stepped through to initiate battle, and that made sense. But there were times where they could have pressed an advantage, but I was able to fall back past one corner and they'd sit patiently and let me recharge, heal, recharge again, and then blast them around the corner with lightning. It was definitely cool that they had this aspect, and sometimes the one that looked a bit like the alien face-hugger (2nd enemy you see) seemed to break the rule and charge me, which was awesome.
This is really well done - great entry.
Wow, this is a very cool idea! I'll have to see if I can return to it with a second person, for now I only played it alone two-handed.
It looks super-slick, very impressive. The mechanic is a new idea I enjoyed exploring. It looked really nice when I sliced something off. In the part I saw, it seemed like if I could move past something to get on both sides to slice it, then I didn't need to slice it because I could just move past it the same way with both guys... but then I didn't get super-far. My furthest run I got to the point where the bottom floor takes a plunge downward and didn't last much past that.
If I could change one thing I would make the restart happen faster and via keyboard command. With two hands on the keyboard, it was a friction to have to reach over for the mouse every time I made a mistake, and o/c that friction hits me at the downbeat of having just died.
This was an awesome little core: a novel idea with a slick look and tight controls. Well done!
You nailed a couple of really important pieces here. Firstly, the actual reflection of the projectile feels really good. It's just super satisfying with that metallic clank sound, the change in color, and so on. Second, there's totally a "one more time" hook with this game.
I'm not really a big player of grindy progression games, so eventually the pacing lost me. But I played it a bunch because I kept wanting to upgrade my speed and start dashing all around! I feel like the really fun game that *I* wanted to play was in there, but I had to upgrade 20 levels to get at it. But I totally understand that this is a design tradeoff, and what you get with the upgrade based game is a hook that can really pull the player deep into the game in a way that a "here's everything at once" game can't do.
So nice work, the reflection of projectiles, destruction of ships, the puffs of smoke when projectiles bounce off the top/bottom of the screen, the smokey slow-fall trail from the protagonist, the way the background music rotated songs between plays.... you have done a great job of putting so many small touches into it. And that's on TOP of the whole upgrade system!
Great job.
Super-slick music, great sound effects, and very nice art. This has a lot of character.
Unfortunately my impression was that the controls really worked against me. Since this game has such a high polish in all the other areas, and I think a few tweaks could change the feel a lot, I'll go into some detail here. But don't take the fact that I'm going into detail on the critique side means I think this is a bad entry. On the contrary, it's because it's good that I dive into the area for improvement.
Here is a short unlisted youtube video of me demonstrating my difficulties with the camera and movement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80uplWd4wJg
I'll highlight a few of the issues that I have:
1) CAMERA: The camera is pretty wild in how fast/far it whips ahead of my motion. The most obvious problem is demonstrated at the start of the video, where the main character is totally off the screen. But more generally, the camera was so eager to change positions that I felt it to be very disorienting.
2) INERTIA: It's okay to give a bit of inertia to a character, but I feel it takes too long for your character to get up to speed, and then to get back down to a stop. I had serious control issues. In the video you can see I struggle badly with a basic jump. At the 17 second mark you see an example of where the air control inertia is too high: I have positioned myself near the base of the platform and I jump and then hit right, but the character does not start meaningfully moving right until later than I expect. I fail to make the leap I wanted. The next try, at the 21 second mark, I start pressing right immediately and I do manage to ramp up the air control to get on the platform, but then upon letting go of the controls I slide right off because the high inertia causes a slipperiness. I think I would feel more in control of the character if the time between direction-press and full-speed (or full-stop) were significantly shorter.
3) JUMP INPUTS: At 54 seconds you can see a clear instance of where I press the jump key but don't get a jump. I even get the jumping sound effect! You could consider adding the "ghost jump" idea where if I was on a platform in the last ~100ms or so, you let me jump even if I'm currently not. That way, input lag won't rob me of jumps. At 13 seconds you can see another instance of where I get the sound effect without a jump, this time on the ground. A window of time where you'll buffer a jump to see if I land in an instant is nice to add, so that I don't lose a jump if I press the input a frame before landing.
A jam is time-constrained, but my advice is to spend a LOT of your time just moving around with your character, especially for an action game. Try spending 15 straight minutes right now with your game, just in that zone from my movie, leaping up onto the various blocks. Do it over and over and over for that 15 straight minutes. See if you can stick all your jumps, and if you feel like a total boss. If you don't feel like you're smooth and in charge, you have to start grinding out all that little stuff that really matters in the feel. 15 minutes is *nothing* either, I do this for hours and hours over the course of an LD!
OK I'll stop being hard on you about feel, which again I only do because you have such an awesome game in the other aspects!
I liked your character, your environment, the whole thing felt tightly cohesive in its presentation. There were lots of awesome little touches to the animation, such as the way the character rolls when landing from a jump over a certain height. You could really do something awesome with a handful of feel tweaks to bring me into the game's world.
Hope that's a helpful write-up and not going too far!
Also, thanks for doing your 1-minute rip through a whole slew of these on youtube, that was great to watch. :)
Once a happy way to pass carefree time, now a grim reality. My friend the solider is dead. What good is a gun against such a hidden menace? I set my mind to work and ran around putting up flags, thinking I could solve this with reason. Those were the days before I made a mistake and blew my right leg off. Now I hobble around slowly, trying to convince my wary colleague the medic to take calculated risks. He stares at me blankly over the crackle of the fire.
Only my dog seems unaffected by the grim realization of a casual game. He runs about, and as if to taunt leaps onto a square I agonized over revealing.
All this would be a challenge, but one I could muster my will and human intuition against to overcome. But what truly saps me is the insanity of it. I carefully construct towers of logic based on the numbers I find on the ground, but then I see this: https://imgur.com/G027JNb
Using a precious disarming unit, I clear a mine I was sure was there. I recall the progress meter vividly. Then I remove the flag. Hopefully this will unblock some progress. I step into the newly cleared space - an explosion erupts against my weak flesh, in total disregard of my efforts.
Have I lost my mind from the horrors? I must escape this madness.
...
Great entry! Really transported me.
@Poroh not at all! Glad you liked it. :)
Thanks for adding the non-installer version!
This was a nice little game - not a to of complexity, but cute art, effective sound effects, and some music. Plus nice camera rumble for impacts!
Everything moved really fast - especially the bricks! My best time was 33 seconds, but I think I was kind of lucky not to get bricked.
Nice job.
This is a nice little game. The strategy is not very complex, but the character I play against makes the experience a lot more fun than it would be without him. His fingers tapping, and the comments he makes, along with the subtle music, it all creates a nice atmosphere. I played until I won, and learned I am a filthy being.
Good job!
My top score was 1050.
Wow this was beautiful, it's really a great combination of shader programming and artistic taste, and the music fits great with it! It's oozing with style.
Gameplay-wise I like the rush of the sharp turning and boosting, and there was some great aerial acrobatics possible. My high score though was when I did something boring: just pointed my ship up and pulsed the jets now and then while holding down shoot... this sort of let me go infinite. No big deal though! That just let me take a closer look at the art.
Only thing I'd change would be the effect of hitting an enemy ship. Took me a little while to realize they were getting down down and flying into the water.
Oh, and I liked the way my health was indicated by the shader effect of encroaching darkness rather than a meter or number! Well done, you've got a serious eye-catcher here.
Nice!! I gave it a quick re-play and this time it was much more of a dogfight than originally.
Meta-ness points achieved! Initially I assumed the Swfl. Pot. from the game description was going to be a potion. A swiffling potion I guess? But after seeing it in context in the game I now think it's potential. Um... Sword-flinging potential?
I think I explored all the nooks in the menu system, and I wasn't sure it was even going to have combat but oh boy did it ever! I even got to kill Supersatan (or *a* supersatan, anyway).
Fun little romp through a parody of childhood, thanks. Nice work with the art and charm, oh and the music too. Really liked global monkey, and all the other tiny random nonsense.
Beat it!
It took me a bunch of tries, and a lot of being EXTREMELY careful.
At fist I thought it was a little unfair how they can fire so many stars at me from out of sight. Especially bt the last few guys when they get [SPOILER REDACTED] I was hiding like a sissy behind a wall and feeling that there was nothing I could do. But after some experimentation I realized that while the ninjas have these strengths, they also have weaknesses which a wily player can exploit.
It was a little awkward, trying to shoot 45-degree diagonal shots on the run at an off-screen target. But I feel like instead of this just being a bad part about the game, instead you made it into a puzzle. I am not a huge fan of the controls/display being the challenge, I prefer to make the player strong and smooth to control and them set the challenge around that... but in this case I actually didn't mind it. It was a cool trick of design how you capitalized on the implementation's shortcomings, if that makes sense.
Also, I noticed a nice small touch which I liked, with how if my star would spawn into a wall you defer, and don't even just cancel it, you let me fling it later with a direction change input. Other nice aspects were the clarity of information, and the fact that you let me use spacebar as well as enter, which I preferred. The title screen and associated transitions were also nicely done, and I appreciated the very short retry loop on failure (which I had a number of!).
I think this is a great first LD entry. You threw some implemtnation out there, and then you found what was interesting about it... just what a jam is all about! Well done, and congrats on finishing.
This is a really cool idea and executed with a lot of charm.
I was also really bad at it!
I want to dig into why I was so bad a little, but please don't take this as criticizing the game. Really it's a sign that it's a GOOD game that I got invested in thinking about it.
Here goes:
I was trying to build chains of logic, but they would lead me astray. I may not have understood the rules. For example in this scenario right here the game made the death-peep: https://imgur.com/a/2g1DZ
Does that indicate the person just died? Or did the red-shirt man just discover a corpse that might have been killed several turns before? If it's the first thing I can eliminate the people in the room with me, but not if it's the second.
A second aspect that I was unclear on was the "if two are alone and one is the killer, the killer will strike" rule. Take this example position: https://imgur.com/a/Z4N4w
If I move out of that room and nobody dies, can I cross those two in the room with me off the list? Or do they move simultaneously with me, and won't be considered "in the room together alone" once we all move? That is, I can't tell WHEN that rule is checked in the turn cycle, if that makes sense. I know the display of the move is simultaneous, but that doesn't really indicate whether the logic has an internal sequence and when the check occurs.
If they do move simultaneous with me, I guess what I need to keep my eye out for is this: https://imgur.com/6UCW8RQ
In that shot I'm moving right and as I enter it appears that there were previously two folks alone in a room. I guess I can cross them off? This moment is harder to see.
Knowing I don't know these things, normally I would just test. But it's quite tough to set up a deterministic test here as the player. ...
Anyway, that's just a sample of some of my specific confusions, but again this is a really cool idea and a nice polished implementation.
I'm just a bad detective!
Sorry LD was stressful - congratulations on powering through and submitting something!
Honestly I thought it was going to be real rough to play, given your description of the event. So I was pleasantly surprised. There is some good stuff here!
My favorite part was the projectiles, and how they have an arc and bounce around a bit. This was WAY more fun than simply having a normal straight-shot gun. I enjoyed bouncing a bunch of projectiles into an area by banking them off walls, to clear out a bunch of shapes. The over-the-top particle systems were fun, too.
You hit all the checkboxes: music, art, sound FX, some menu transitions and a story.
There's even all this attention to detail. Like the way the menu items pop larger on mouseover. And the way the gun starts on the ground and I pick it up, instead of me just starting with it. A surprising amount of nice little touches for a first LD!
My score was 2001 and here is a screen shot right before I died: https://imgur.com/6B1NidI
Shoulda used more bombs!
Anyway, nice work. Sorry LD was a hassle.
Oh no, not the belt!!
I tried a few times but I just could not stay ahead of those cats. Things got especially hard with the cat by the low table, which gives a very short time to catch the falling object.
I think I could have improved my performance a bit if the hitbox detection on the falling object was a little bit more generous. It seemed to be quite exact, and if I was zooming the mouse around the screen to catch several objects but I missed one by [what FELT like] a few pixels, then I'd have to reverse motion and try clicking again but by then I'd miss the rest of the falling stuff. Of course if I miss then I deserve to lose, but I maybe could have gotten into the ZONE better if the hit detection was like "you got pretty close, I'll give it to you". Also, omg that red sausage with its narrow vertical space!
I also felt like a "doomed but not dead" state when I had missed two objects early. I wasn't exactly certain I understood how the broom goes, but I think I get one broom per mom-check, yes? It might be better if the broom is ALWAYS there but to use it is a distraction... that way I can always recover but things spiral out of control if I fall behind? Not sure.
Anyway, those are some minor thoughts about what could be changed, but I really liked this. It's a simple system but the art is great and nicely animated, I like the hints of a dark tone w/ mom and dad especially. The music and sound are nicely done. Oh, and it was a very nice design idea to have the laptop, a large visible object with insta-lose... this created a special area for my attention and prevented it from all being the same. The low table was also that way - really had to keep me eye on those two spots!
Very nice work.
Suuuper satisfying to fire the gun. I wish it was as satisfying when it hit someone! Nice work given the time problems, I would have loved to see where this went, it seems like a cool direction.
Sorry to hear about the problems during the jam, and congrats on shipping anyway.
Very cool - I love how there are zero instructions outside the game's narrative. I enjoyed the feeling of discovery and building. I didn't realize at first that you can hold shift, and then move orthogonal as opposed to just push/pull as in many other block-puzzle games. It was cool that this little block-puzzle was used as a base layer for a larger machine-building puzzle, too. An impressive amount of design scope for an LD compo!
I did get dinged by dead ends. First I ran out of a electronics and couldn't make the electronics-maker. It happened because I hit space when I meant to hit shift, and I discovered the battery before the second set of schematics was unlocked.
I really wanted to open the second lock and see more, but after I had built some automation I ran into a problem and trapped myself. Setting up an array of electronics production units along a treadmill, one of them slipped onto the treadmill and ran away from me. It get ran down the line to do the doorway, but there was a control unit there which stopped it from being affected by the treadmill. This also turned the production unit back on, which in turn blocked the treadmill. That caused a pileup logjam and soon my map was crowded with electronic blocks that were meant to ship but were't moving.
At first I underestimated the extreme danger of this situation, and spent some money to dig out a new zone so I could come around at another angle. The problem was I could not get to the units to move or turn them off, and when I moved blocks to get through they would instantly refill with electronics. I tried to time a pair of quick moves, but wasn't fast enough. I hadn't computed the consequences of failure in advance, and that was it.
Here is my final state: https://imgur.com/cxVnp6b
I guess I took your implementation of the theme all the way to the extreme there, huh?
That's a pretty cool game that this disaster emerged from the systems! But it was slow paced enough - which I enjoyed - but slow paced enough that I didn't want to repeat the early game a third time to get to the end. At least, not right now as it's getting late.
I felt like the art supported the game well, and the controls were thankfully smooth, and I was hammering out my turns pretty quickly. It's actually pretty easy for a turn-based game with animations to frustrate me, but you avoided this problem nicely.
Very nice and unique entry here. You accomplished your goal of makes a Zachlike I think. Well done!!
I beat it! This is a tight little game. The concept is clear and self-discoverable. The art and sound effects are a bit basic but have a good feeling of life to them. The controls are really tight. And the concept is introduced, then expanded on.
I liked how I would stop and think through the problem, decide on my path, and then hammer out the keystrokes. The game responded quickly and accurately as I was pretty rapidly smashing in my inputs, and it felt satisfying.
Really nice work!
Nice jam entry here! I like how ambitious it is, it really tries to get to a pro polish, and tackles some really hard gameplay-design challenges.
I liked the slick production and graphics, as well as the sound/music and voiceover. I did run into a couple of odd tech issues, for example once I warped while the lady was welcoming me, and this seemed to reduce the volume but it never came back, so the game stayed really quiet. It also crashed when I exited.
Gameplay-wise you did pretty good, but you ran up against two of the toughest design challenges around.
First, it's really hard to orient in 3D space. This is just an inherent problem with the sort of game this is, and you did an OK job of reducing the problem by locking me inside the sphere and putting lots of objects in there. At some point, if there is enough stuff around, the gameplay stops being Tie Fighter with the orientation problems, and becomes Descent, aka Doom in a spaceship (indoor spaceship?!) which has no orientation issues.
I felt like your game falls someplace in between. I often got really disoriented when I used a lot of thrust, so I adopted a style of strafing and mouse-looking, and trying to keep a sense of where I was. If an enemy did a fly-by I never really got the hang of spinning around with the mouse to track them if it was quick. I felt off all the time: unsure of what was behind me, imprecise in my spinning and tracking. The most confounded I got was when I hit the barrier unexpectedly and got spun around by it, which wiped my mental model of my orientation and left me confused for several moments.
I think this is a really hard problem to solve, and your game does a decent job but not perfect.
I'm not sure what would fix it. Certainly higher visual contrast between the small fighter enemies and background would be an improvement. Some clearer indication of taking damage and from which direction might be nice. You could consider creating some durable scenery by which the player could orient, for example the sphere could be three colors: top mid bottom, just to create a feeling of "where am I?" Even better if this is gameplay-relevant somehow, giving a shape to the game.
But when I wasn't feeling disoriented, I did enjoy the freedom of motion, and I found your controls pretty intuitive, although I mostly only used AD+mouse and a bit of WS. I tested QE but didn't use them.
The second huge challenge games like this hit is what to do about projectile velocity inheritance. I'm an old Tribes player and we know this issue well. If you inherit 100% velocity, your shot never hits an unmoving target where you aim, while if you inherit 0% velocity you can aim at unmoving targets but not in relative space. There is no answer that doesn't leave a player feeling a little awkward in one situation or another... It seems like you went with 100% inheritance, which is imo the right choice.
But it feels weird to aim at the unmoving ships while slowly drifting strafe-wise right, and then miss my shot wildly. After adjusting to the orientation of my movement, I had a huge adjustment phase for my aim. Mostly I tried to still myself before shooting anything still.
I think you may have made your projectiles a bit too slow, though. The amount of lead I have to put on a moving target is HUGE if they are anywhere near me.
However, I did eventually get a feeling for the amount of lead required, and the movement orientation, and it was really fun to start shooting down the enemies in that case.
I took this video of the second time I played through. I think I killed like 370ish enemies. This shows me trying to shoot things with the heavy primary weapon, so I'm trying to line up shots and get the lead right:
https://youtu.be/jZ1X2nq2S38
So you see that eventually I'm able to hit a pretty decent percentage, but there was definitely a difficult ramp-up.
Anyway, I enjoyed this and was impressed by the graphics, the overall package that really felt like a game, the variety of stuff. Nice work!
Very cool - I got 29 but my greed kept screwing me. There was even one time when I was like yeah I'm gonna get a better high score this time because I'm just not gonna be greedy, I mean look how well I'm doing just keeping away from them over here in safeland not , well actually maybe I'll just grab THAT one right ther-- GAMEOVER. Well played, game!
I loved the super-minimalist tutorial. I loved the background audio, which fit super-well with the minimal graphics. The controls were tight and responsive. I experimented with both click-to-move and also a little with hold-it-down but the holding style is not so great when you get super-close to the guy so I went back to click-to-move which is really surgical at times. Very nice.
I also managed to get a x2! I was like wait look at that, very interesting... I tried to get some more but it killed me. An intriguing idea, I wonder if you could take it even further by having that ultraclose range be like x5, but there are also lesser bonuses with slightly further grabs, so sure no problem to get a x2 but let me push it for that x3 and well gee if I'm THAT close might as well go for -- GAMEOVER.
Really a lot to like for such a tight scope, nice design work.
Interesting puzzle machine here. I appreciated the way that information about what parts are available for pickup is changing over time, because this prevents me from needing to plan way into the future.
I found the game rules clear and any questions were easily self-answered. Lots of good small choices in the design, too: The highlight of the destination when I moused over a piece, the very brisk pace of actually driving, the right number of nodes so it was enough but not a chore to scan and plan.
I made it to 3rd on the leaderboard for your home. Oh and a quick note - I see you have submitted this in the compo bracket but there's no source code linked.
If I could tweak one thing it would be the color palette. Yellow ? on white background is a bit too little contrast for text imo, and same goes for some of the block shapes. But this was not a serious nuisance, merely a light straining of the eye a couple of times.
I liked the spare but direct art style, a good mix of abstract vs real, and even better I very much liked the sound effects.
Well done!
Nice tight little game, well done! I like the greybox art assets, I think it fits well with what's happening here. The near-miss time penalty was another interesting choice that created a tension between blasting away and taking time to aim more carefully.
I got diamond on level 1 but WOW the best score on the leaderboard was so much better. Crazy, I wonder how it's even possible!!
Not exactly on target with the theme on this one, but well done nonetheless.
This is a cool idea, and there's a lot of nice little touches.
I have a few critiques on little stuff:
- The gun feels a bit limp. I held the button the entire time. The screenshake on the gun shot is a nice idea in theory, but in practice because I am holding the button all day this screen shake doesn't "feel" like anything, it's just a nonstop pulsating camera, which didn't feel very nice to me. I think this may combine with the way the gun doesn't recoil and shoots really tiny bullets to disassociate the screenshake from the act of shooting.
- The main mechanic of pushing the animals into the grinder to reclaim space is a really cool idea. I like the way it combines the sick narrative with strategic concerns: do I position myself to handle the waves, or to claim space? However I didn't feel like you capitalized on this potential in your idea. When attempting to push animals into the grinder, I found it too awkward. I would push in the few seconds between waves, but the circle colliders (I assume?) would slide off to the side unless I was exactly perfect. I just never got good at pushing animals in, so I basically abandoned the main idea of the game and simply didn't do it. I think the way the grinder "disappears" corpses instead of rewarding me with the spectacle I expected was another small reason I felt it wasn't worth doing. Since you have the bullets blocked by corpses, maybe you should make it so that the gun itself is a handy way to push corpses in. Another way is to prevent them from sliding off to the side so easily when I push them... for example by changing them to square colliders with rotation prevented maybe? Or maybe there is another button to kick corpses a bit. I feel something is needed to make it feel more fluid, fun, and effective to move the bodies.
So cool idea for the theme, fun sick theme, and I appreciated the details like blood splats and other juice, but I couldn't help feeling like this had even more potential. (I played only the jam version).
Oh - also, I totally walked myself into the meat grinder just as it went off, which was a hoot!
Never in all my Killbaning have I deserved a Meltdown like I deserved this one. Your games exist on this impressive knife's edge of difficulty where it's never too easy, but also never so hard that I can't see victory with just ONE MORE TRY. I just can't walk away without winning.
Usually I've managed a win in something like a half dozen tries. But this time... Well, they say that surfing is a demanding activity, and I surfed so much I can still feel the soreness from the tension in my neck as I battled those trashbots again and again. I came SO CLOSE so many times.
The design is dense with good ideas. The larger basic trashbot forces you to learn to dash if you don't want to take hits, and while he seems like he can be ignored when lots of trash is around, he is relentlessly pushing it toward you, closing gaps and boxing you in. Then his buddy comes, with those damned rockets that ignore the trash obstacles! If not for him, you could shield yourself in a trash igloo and ignore all but what's right in front of you. But no. And overall there is a wonderful tension between taking care to avoid hits, and the gradual accumulation of trash on the battelfield acting as a clock and forcing you to play briskly. The end boss has a wonderful escalation of the tension between trying to hit him and trying to clear space to not keep eating the trash-skipping rockets coming at you. (Tho I really wished for a better indication of when he was allowed to be hit vs not, it felt a little raw that this escalated his difficulty so much)
How you find these balances, I don't pretend to understand. But once again your ideas have come together into a blast of a game that really tested me.
That's why, when I finally saw the Wizard's face erupt into a series of explosions, my hands shot up in victory. YES!! I DID IT!!
It was at this moment, in this pose, hands held high and off the keyboard/mouse, that one last rocket hit me in the back and killed me. That's right... no meltdown. Just more surfing.
That would not do, and so I rolled up my sleeves and buckled down to get a REAL meltdown. I had to learn the ways. This was when I figured out how to master the dash to attack the big bots (I could have used a little on-character animation cue to indicate a full charge btw), and I learned that the shadows predict where fists and trash will fall, and must be avoided. I studied my kung fu, and upped my game.
And finally, I earned it -- a REAL meltdown.
I have to say that I've enjoyed your previous entries, but this one steps it up a level in quality. Some of that punk-rock basement rawness and minor technical issues you used to have seem replaced by a growing skill level in terms of tech chops and little details. The art and sound are all working together with the gameplay toward a really cohesive package, and all of the interactions felt good.
I'm not quite sure what the guy says when you speed up and he says "He's so fast! Thanks, _____ _____" But the game is metal enough that I decided it must be "Judas Priest." I also cracked up when Killbane was like "What trashstar?" What a guy.
I think maybe the knife's edge tipped a little way toward the difficult side this time, so I made you a little present:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJ7PcQSOSTM
I ran this but only got a blank screen, even if left for a while. It spins the CPU a bit but I didn't see anything happen. This is on Windows 7. Let me know if there's a workaround and I'll be happy to give it a shot. Didn't rate since I didn't play, of course.
There's a huge amount of charm and polish here, with cute art and really nice sound and music. Really well done.
The sound is also great at providing cues for the various state changes that need to be managed. The art has many nice details as well, for example I love the way the water looks, with the flat layers at first, but then the round circle when I'm cleaning correctly.
I played the compo version first, and hit a wall at level 5. I eventually forced my way through. I'll try to detail a few of the points of struggle, in case that is interesting.
I lost a few times trying to experiment with different modes of scrubbing, trying back-and-forth rapidly instead of around in a circle, for example. Or concentrating in a small area rather than spreading it all around. I didn't really learn much from these experiments, and it felt a little un-transparent to me when/if I was being more/less effective. Eventually I returned to the round-and-round and didn't concentrate on any specific cats, and I finally bulled my way through to level 6.
That rabbit-hole of experimentation aside, the place where I still lose time is definitely the moment where I transition from scrubbing to clicking the clean cats. For example, in this moment here: https://imgur.com/b4XCwJD I have a hard time visually parsing and then hitting the target. It's not that it's unclear or unfair or anything, it's just that this becomes the hole in my game where I leak time. My strategy for handling it became spam-clicking indiscriminately and trying to wait until I had a few extra clean cats to move into that mode. But that might explain why I struggled to get through the full compo game.
I went back to check out the changes, and was able to beat the post-compo version from the start without any game overs. Without really understanding the rules for cats becoming clean I simply obeyed the instruction to use broad circular motions in one direction. I think another nice aspect was making it cat-count based instead of time-based.
This is a cool attention-splitter game that balances a nicely conflicted feeling of relaxing panic. The post-comp version better achieves that mix, whereas by my fifth retry of level 5 I was no longer chill.
Really nice entry.
Very cool. Nice display, and pretty solid controls. I struggled a bit at first with trying to click ON the pieces to bring wire to them, and accidentally moving or rotating components. But later I realized that you should bring them to the adjacent cell and then wires will auto-connect to the components.
I could have used a little more feedback and fanfare for the test run, especially when winning. I felt that I didn't really SEE the events occur, and a win didn't feel as rewarding as it might have. This was especially true when I took a winger on a solution and hadn't carefully thought through but just tested, and it was like zoom next puzzle... my knowledge gained was not locked in or celebrated.
Overall though I thought this had a nice interface, a nice challenge level. I got stuck on some of the later gate mimics, eventually bruted my way through "or from nand" but then I lost heart after that. Part of it was the way the wires drew themselves going into the nand, it looked like it went in three times not two, and without more transparency, or the ability to toggle inputs in a live-test mode, it was all a little hard to see if the layout I'd made was doing what I thought. I could infer it from test runs with some tinkering, but it felt a little more indirect than necessary.
That was more critique-heavy than I meant - I liked this and spent a good chunk of time with it! A solid entry with cool concept that made me think, and a nice presentation.
Nice, tight little game. At first I thought my favorite was the machine gun, but later I came to appreciate the shotgun as well. The way the lava constrained me meant that I would adopt a strategy of not moving much. Enemies shoot straight at me, so the pattern is: crosshair on enemy, fire a burst, then move a few steps orthogonal, and I'm safe. Complex moments came when being fired on from multiple directions, that got intense a few times.
Instant gameover from a single mis-step meant death was watching over my shoulder the whole time. I tested the lava after my game went long enough that I felt I could not commit more time without knowing the rules, so I stepped in willingly and learned the consequences, and played in earnest on my second run. I got a bit north of 200,000 score. The pickup that increased my speed was a startling fright in a world where the wrong foot placement is doom.
Top-down room battle has been done before, but I felt like you did a good job of achieving a nice level of intensity and required care. The art was nice, especially the lava, and the action was really clear, I appreciated the nice fat bullets.
If I could suggest one area to explore it would be in the mechanics of which tiles go. This aspect felt a bit disconnected and made me wonder if a more intriguing experience could be had if the enemies or my own actions somehow were the things that wrecked the floor. For example, a tension: I want to shoot this enemy, but not THERE!
Nice entry that I enjoyed, well done.
Thanks everybody for the feedback!
To @peachtreeoath @goldranger @boltkey - Wow, I'm super impressed you were able to beat it, that is NOT easy. I owe you an apology because the game had a disgusting bug sending you to the game over screen instead of the victory screen. So disappointing. I was wiring up those scene transitions in the final five minutes and I screwed it up completely. I'll put my shame on record, here is the total blunder I made in my haste:
void Update() { if (youWin && Time.time > transitionAt) { SceneManager.LoadScene(LoseSceneName); } else if (youLose && Time.time > transitionAt) { SceneManager.LoadScene(LoseSceneName); } }
It's a stupid copy-paste error, as I had coded and tested the you lose path first, and then added the win condition.
You deserved better for your effort. I have put up a "politeness" update on the itch page which changes nothing about gameplay, but fixes this bug. It also allows the arrow keys in additional to WASD, and an undocumented feature where the user can press R to quick restart, because I agree with @ithildin that it's frustrating to wait for the end when you know you've lost.
It's not the same at all, but here is the screen you deserved to see: https://imgur.com/7xgNKCd
@justinmullin thanks for the in-depth feedback. The algo for moving was something I had to thrash on a bit, so if I can find some time to remember and write down the journey, that post-mort could be fun. The sections of the map disappear when they are inaccessible and you could never get there again.
@winnie33 the color choices are 1 part art but 3 parts math. The trick I used after I had one color I liked was to use HSL instead of RGB in the picker, and keep the saturation and lightness the same, but change the hue. I also changed Hue in mathematical ways: for example taking one color I liked and making two "buddy colors" by adding 50 to the Hue and subtracting 50 from the Hue to move in two different directions by an equal distance. Another trick is to go "halfway" by adding 256/2. Read up on palettes and you can easily start making such "smooth" color sets for your own games!
Thanks again everyone - I've played most of your games, but if I haven't got to you yet I'm on my way.
Really cool idea! I assumed I would play with speed when I saw it, but I ended up winning with care instead. I would carefully choose my next section of climb, use the floor to keep healthy and clear enemies, and then move on.
I enjoyed how I felt a bit awkward with the hook at first, but later came to make some nice moves with it, that felt really satisfying. I remember a nice deliberate overshoot, the turning and flipping around to hook the floor I wanted, and shooting a demon as I came into the landing, like "This is MY rock, punk!" Very nice.
The only thing was that maybe I should be encouraged not to play so slow, somehow. Because I was able to reload and shoot demons a mile away in the sky, I kept doing it because I "had to" since it was possible. Minor thing, though.
Well done on an innovative game idea!
Wow! There was like an immediate "joyous celebration" feel going on here that smacked me in the face right away and then stuck around. Everything worked toward it: the fantastic grooving tune that made me start bobbing my head, and which starts with that awesome long climbing note before the bass drops; the sparkling faceted water that's really interesting-looking and almost dancing itself; the disco ball; the grooving animals with their silly dances and sounds. Everything works in harmony around this feel.
Gameplay-wise I did struggle a bit, and even after a lot of tries I could only get "Disco Inferno" level, which is only second-best. I felt like something was off a bit, and conducted some quick experiments on the first block, and I convinced myself that the mouse click was actually registering about 2 inches lower on the screen than where I was clicking, but maybe it was all in my head. If I could have added an enhancement, I know hands down what it would be: the water, which seems to already oscillate on a wave, would reflect the impact of my click. I'd love that if I could click and see the wave ripple out, as I think it would get me much more grounded in the mechanical interactions. Allow me a second enhancement and I'd have the ice discs pitch a little with the wave, even if it was only cosmetic. Oscillate them to the beat and get those things dancing!!
I also struggled a bit with the way that when 2 discs join, yes their area gets bigger but the outermost perimeter edge I think snaps in a little, so sometimes the act of joining is exactly what drops your dudes in the water.
None of this really mattered because the jam was ON here, and precision tactics were not the point.
Mission accomplished, because I definitely groove out big-time to this one, well done and congrats!
Wow, nice atmosphere, especially with the audio. The mix of working, audio cues, dog barks, and the music, really brought the place to life!
I managed a win, and I felt like the game ended at just the right time. I had experimented a bit and figured out the rules, and was just about to start just repeating my plan each level to get down one more, and I was just starting to feel like maybe I was done when the game congratulated me.
I did have a few graphical issues. Some of the game graphics would appear above UI elements, I grabbed a screenshot of an example: https://imgur.com/3gs53gz
I also felt like I was supposed to be able to use some of the slots at the edge, here is a whole-screen shot: https://imgur.com/1DZkEqX
I don't know if that black zone to the right was intended, but there seemed to be a slot there I could almost build on (I built a farm there on the top layer) and then on the left I cannot select that pile of rocks to clear it.
Nevertheless I was able to make a working system with just the available slots, although it helped that after my initial farming I didn't need to do any more. I had 2 houses, and 3 more slots. I'd do a sawmill + quarry, and then the third would switch depending on what resource became the bottleneck. It was usually wood but sometimes I would demolish the second saw to put a second quarry in.
It was interesting to navigate the tradeoffs between assigning crews to resource creation vs drilling (which consumes). I usually tried to do as much drilling as I could in order to get down to the lower level early, so I could have the rocks cleared out in advance.
It was cool that I felt like I was ahead, but then suddenly the freeze would come and it seemed like I'd just barely made it in time to rebuild without being homeless for a night!
I really got drawn into this one, very nice job!
Very well done. This has a great vibe. The music and sounds are really nice, and remind me a bit of FTL, which is a good thing. I also really dig the art with the floating clouds around the planets giving a ton of character. The art is also really clear in terms of gameplay, which is important in a game like this.
Queuing commands was an essential feature once I had a lot going on, and I really appreciated that. I made it to Sector 10 and evacuated 100% of my population there. The game was a cool mix of intense time pressure and puzzling things out, so it kind of drained me and after 10 sectors I called it quits because I just didn't have another 10 in me!
Strat-wise I definitely focused on pop vs resources, since that was the immediate gameover threat. But maybe I should have built up my tech by being a bit more ruthless? I didn't get too many of the ship upgrades, though I did get the mine/factory ones, and that fed into me getting the ship ones. I did focus early on that +1 ship since that's kind of key, but it wasn't too much of a commit.
Very nice combo feeling of pressure vs planning, wrapped in an excellent and tasteful presentation. Well done, this is an entry you can be proud of!
Very cool! Nice little hex builder strat game. You say I couldn't win, but after a few times losing early and never getting a toehold, I figured out the systems and built a thriving colony. Of course, in the end it didn't last -- new people came, and instead of simply throwing them out the airlock for the good of the many, we decided to let them doom us... but still, the high-water mark of my society wasn't too shabby: https://imgur.com/dV8Wb24
I thought the systems were cool, and the art was really clear and nice-looking. I don't know the term MOXIE but the picture very well communicated what it was all about, which I really appreciated.
Interface-wise the shift for multi-drop was a nice touch. I did struggle with the arrow keys. There were two issues with them: first that arrows + mouse is an awkward body position, which is why usually WASD is also offered. Second, the browser as well as the game both responded to my arrow key strokes, which meant I was scrolling within the game (wanted) but also scrolling the web page down and pulling the game off the screen (very unwanted). This wasn't much of an issue in the early game where I was functioning in a limited area, but later when was utilizing the whole map and scrolling very often it was a real drag.
The sound effects were minimal and simple, but important and good at communicating important game events.
Overall I think this is a really nice entry, especially for a first LD! Congratulations.
Wow, the way everything squished and bobbed and jiggled really made this game feel ALIVE, and pushed the already-good art and sound up to an even higher level! Nice work.
It's very simple mechanically. At first this threw me, because I was seeking to understand the different behaviors of the different types of buildings, as if it were a strategy game. This was fine, and in fact kind of pleasant... I enjoyed that the game snuck up on me with an unexpected turn. At first I was like wait, didn't the picture just change? Then the sound changed character a bit. The gradual descent into a dark place was very well done.
After seeing how it was going, I tried to reverse course and brought it back to a happy place, and then changed direction again and plunged it to the max until it all broke.
You really captured a ton of experience out of such a simple idea, well done.
Elegant and effective! I tackled over a dozen, maybe even close to twenty. I like the spare but clean and clear presentation. The controls were solid, although having both flips was kind of a mind-bender and prevented me from being fluidly in control.
After the first few, I was able to tear through some of them quickly, especially where there was an awkward piece that could only do one thing. But others were still getting me stuck... especially if I was burned by my own assumption about where something "must" go!
The experience would have been enhanced with nice audio of some sort, and I lacked a feeling of progression or a goal to be moving toward. Maybe count my puzzles solved, and begin with fewer shapes allowed but every 5 or 10 you release more? (Or did that already happen, since some of the bigger/awkward pieces only appeared later?) I was unsure if there was a silent goal or infinite.
But those are just additional scope -- what is here is quite enough to entertain, and a solid puzzler that gave my brain a workout. Well done!
Wow this was really well done. It's an interesting idea backed up by strong execution. I usually don't like tutorials but yours was charming and well-paced, I actually enjoyed it! The art was great, the sound was really engaging.
The gameplay hooked me pretty good. I played until level 12, here is a shot of my build not long before death: https://imgur.com/fI6dtQb
There was a nice moment of panic when I got a chest and it overlapped some of my key items! Early in the run I tried hot-swapping during a chest, to change from a sword to a hammer to alter my build to better suit the next monster. I missed by a cell and ended up going with neither main weapon for 3 guys straight! That may have ended that run, actually.
So a few times I was wondering, why not allow the hot-swap with a brief ability between fights, but maybe that's not a good idea, I'm not sure.
I definitely got into the whole inventory fiddling, and felt pretty clever a couple of times when I realized I could re-org a layout to free up a slot in a certain shape to accommodate a particular new item.
Very cool, and very well done.
A fun zany idea, with a cool sense of style and humor! I was a little confused how to do a really good job launching: I watched the video, tried a bunch of times. I was able to do some launches but nothing as high as you did! So it was nice to see the full potential pulled off in the vid.
Y'know what lemme go try one more time...
OK I got higher that time! 74 meters. Before I wasn't re-adding humans after the rocket setup, which had killed a few of them. I don't know how to stack the multiple rocket guys like you do in the video though, since when I send a second rocket, it seems to just kill all the people including the previous rocket guy. Sorry if I'm being slow!
But funny idea and cool style!
Cool entry, and nice idea for the theme.
There were two things that created a problem for me.
First, there is something wrong with the input handling. The buttons for jump and attack only work half the time. This makes it very hard to get into a flow state, especially for combat. There's no code posted, so I couldn't look to see, but I bet this is a case of checking for inputs in FixedUpdate, or else some other squirrely input checking thing. This is the bread and butter of game feel so you definitely should dig into what's wrong with the way you process input. Because the left/right works fine but the attack/jump does not, I suspect you are not dealing well with Input.GetKeyDown().
Second, the "is grounded" check for whether I should be allowed to jump does not interact well with the stairs. I first noticed this problem in the first room, but it was not a big issue: it just meant I couldn't jump on stairs most of the time. But later this was a complete game-ender for me because I got permanently stuck after completing two challanges and had to quit the game.
Here's what happened:
I went through the first room. Took me a while because I didn't know I could attack. I even tried all the keys but no attack. So I spent a while trying to get the boss to fly up and nudge the key off, because I thought that was the solution. I got him up there, but he didn't move the key, he just got stuck. No idea what the solution is. Later I tried random keys again to double-check and a sword came out -- whoops! Then I saw I could fight the boss. I guess the first time I tried the keys, the input processing happened not to work, bad luck.
So I solved the first room. Next I looked at the names of the challenges, and picked speed.
I solved the trial on my second try. First time I got into the pit w/ 3 balls on the way back, and problems with jumping made me stuck for long enough that I died. Second time I did it, but when I got to the sparkle-ball at the end I didn't realize I was supposed to attack it.
I went back out into the main corridoor by running all the way to the left inside the challenge room, which teleported me into the hall. Then I tried the strength challenge, but gave up because it's frustrating to fight when my jumps and swings don't come out when I press the button.
Last I tried the piano. It's really hard not to trigger a key twice when landing on it! I solved it eventually, although there was no feedback that I did so. I went to the right, and saw a lock on the ground and the ball open, so I thought I was good.
Still not knowing to attack the sparkle-ball, I went back into the hall. The door to the speed challenge had stayed open after I beat it, whereas the door to strength challenge stayed closed. So I believed this was the indication I had beat the speed challange. But the piano challenge door stayed closed!?
Now I got confused and went back to double-check the piano challenge was really beat. This was when I experimented and tried attacking the sparkle-ball and learned this was how to claim victory!
Finally I saw the interesting aspect of the game, which is that you can choose what SIZE to be when you complete certain challenges. Very interesting idea.
So I went back to the speed challenge room to hit the ball there, too. Then I would do the strength challenge to finish the game, I thought.
Except that now I was bigger, and I got stuck in the pit in the speed challenge room. I could never jump because the isgrounded check doesnt' work on stairs, and I was on stairs.
Here is the final state where I tried and tried to get out but could not, so I quit:
https://imgur.com/VFlJA8x
So in summary:
You have a nice idea here. Some elements are nicely done. But you have to work out some flaws in your approach to controls, specifically with input handling and grounded checks. You also should probably signal more of the basics to player, because I got lost a few times.
Good luck!
Cool little combat arena game! Environment and enemies looked cool. I wished for a bit more interaction, the intersection of chainsaw and skeleton could have used a bit of oomph and the jump felt a bit weak. But I liked the rising tension of the ever-diminishing land mass as I tried to delay my inevitable toasty doom!
Lots of cool ideas here in this difficult puzzle platformer. I liked the vibe, the art, and the concepts.
The design and puzzles were really clever.
But I want to critique the controls, because they kind of trolled me pretty hard. Is it okay if I unload on the controls a bit? I do this not because I want to say "bad game." I want to say "very good ideas with a lot of potential, but a few tiny choices in the controls that threw up too much interference for me to engage."
I hope this is helpful, and not hurtful, okay? My apologies if I cross the line, I'm trying to point out a few things you could keep in mind next time.
#1 - The Clone Line Problem
In general, it can be a problem when the player has to RELEASE a button within one frame. In this game, I often wanted to surgically place a single clone in midair by jumping up and hitting the clone button. But sometimes I would accidentally get three clones. I'd hit the button exactly when I wanted to, but I didn't RELEASE the button within a split second, I let my finger linger just a split second too long.
The punishment was often severe, as you see in this example here: https://imgur.com/a/ov6fzbp
The highest of those three clones is EXACTLY where and when I wanted it, and solves the puzzle. But it's death by restart for me, because I accidentally got a line of clones that block my way.
#2 - The Clone Delay Problem
There is a slight delay in between when I press the clone button vs when I get the clone. This slight wonk wrecked my ability to fluidly and precisely clone mid-air. An example is the very first tall climb in the game.
In my mind, I wanted a solution like this: I will jump. 70% of the way up I will hit clone. I will produce a clone and then keep rising above him for the rest of my jump height. Then I will land on his head. I will repeat this to do the climb.
However, the clone would come out a little late, and it would come out then at the PEAK of my jump, and push me down. And I would be below the clone, unable to proceed. Game over by restart again.
Sometimes I could compensate for the timing but it was unreliable enough that I found a reliable but super-grinding alternative strategy: I would hit click-wait-space. This would start cloning, wait until it was about to appear, and then jump up. So I would only climb one single block this way, but it was guaranteed. I climbed this way most of the time, and so it made each death that much more punishing. All the time I was wishing I could play what you probably intended, but the delay threw me off so hard I couldn't.
#3 - The Clone's Not-Blocking-Stuff Warmup Moment
The clone can exist on the screen and yet not block hazards. Here is an example of this screwing me: https://imgur.com/a/1qENr7u
I solved the puzzle: Ran out, put a clone down the block out some safe space. But the hazard went right through the clone and although I retreated in time, there is no way forward from here - death by restart. This kind of situation happened to me a bunch of times.
Now, if these three are all intended aspects of the difficulty which you did on purpose then plz ignore me! I might just suck at these kinds of games and you can say "git gud" and that's fair! But in case these are not aspects you meant to have, I wanted to drill into them a bit in case it helps for your next one.
To return to the positive, I felt like you got a TON done here. Five levels of interesting and difficult puzzles, a novel mechanic explored in depth, and a cool art style with some pizzaz. It was also really clever to have the signs come up after I'd struggled, a super-slick touch.
So don't take this too poorly, please - my ratings I left are balanced even if the comment here focused on the critique aspect. This is actually a good entry for just having learnt unity 2 weeks ago!
If this post is something you don't want on here say the word and it's gone!
One more post with a few solution ideas:
I see what you mean about the problem. I guess even the solution you mention to #2 is not QUITE perfect. Imagine this case: I am moving left and have hit clone, the clone is spawning. There is also a danger-blob moving left from the other side, about to hit the clone and pass through it and get me.
This creates a paradox: I want the clone to be un-solid because I don't want to be stuck inside it, I need to pass through it. But I also want the clone to be solid because I do NOT want the danger-blob to pass through it, I want it to bounce off it.
This kind of situation, I usually use Unity's "layers" system. Layers let you say that certain objects should just not interact, and layers can be shifted around in realtime.
Maybe a set of rules like this could work:
- The player is the only object in the game with a layer called "player".
- The clone spawns with a layer assigned called "clonespawning". This layer is set *NOT* to interact with the "player" layer, so that the player will just pass right through it. (Everything else in the game does interact with the player's layer).
- The clone has a check every frame: Am I on layer clonespawning? If so, check if I'm overlapping with the player. If not, then change my layer to the "clonesolid" layer so that I start interacting with the player.
This way, when the clone exists, it is always solid to the whole world except the player.
For the clone/player interaction, the clone is un-solid upon spawning, but as soon as there is even a single frame where they don't overlap, the clone changes to being solid even to the player.
Here are some documentation pages on layers: https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/Layers.html https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/LayerBasedCollision.html
That's 3D but it works bascially the same for 2D colliders.
Also for the problem #1 of the line, I'd probably just make it "left click for one spawn, hold right click to get a line" but that's more a matter of taste. Watch a few friends play and ask them to make just one clone. If they're able to reliably make one vs making a line, then I could just be clumsy. But if the problem is common, consider introducing yet another button (altho too many buttons is bad too!)
Good luck!
Nice work! I managed to save the Earth. Now everyone will know my nam-- But wait... is that more Asteroids!?
I always enjoy experimenting with unusual control schemes, so I liked the fluid crazy spaceship physics here. One problem with these sorts of space games is when the player goes flying off into nowhere, or collides into things, so I think you made a very good design decision to add the outer ring constraining my movement, and letting my just bounce off the sun without too much punishment.
There was a lot going on in the first few moments for me to sort out, so it took me a an adjustment period. I think it was nice to include Mercury as a sort of early warning/lesson to let me see how it plays out before losing the Earth!
One thing that caught me though -- the spacebar shoots, but it also skips past text, specifically including the end of the game. I didn't even quite realize I had lost because I was hammering spacebar to shoot and skipped right through the end!
I liked the graphics and sounds, and felt like it came together in a nice cohesive feeling.
Overall I had fun bouncing around and learning the ropes, then battling some asteroids! Nice job and congrats on a successful LD.
Wow those animations! I mean the pixel art is already really nice, stylish, and cohesive just as a still, but those animations really make it come alive with action. It was a shame the enemies didn't want to throw down because I would have loved to see a pitched battle animated with this liveliness and power!
Wow, this is really something. The music and sound effects create a moody atmospheric background so that the art and prose can pull me into the game's world that much more. I puzzled and debated over choices, fretted over low supplies, and declined to take a few risks that might distract from my important but grim mission.
My only critique was that maybe it was a little long. I felt like I was repeating a lot of content and the game was asking a lot of time for an LD entry, but then as I neared the end I started seeing the arc of change in the towns. So the longer length was utilized for good purpose, but I still wondered if it could be 30% shorter, just personal taste.
I felt like a key design decision that really worked well for you was making me wait. Normally I find that terrible in games, but here it was a strong positive. Watching the tank's travel animation (which was excellent) with the parade of progress-meter dots and the mileage going up while the supplies went down, it was a strong moment. Especially because I was never sure when it would stop and I would face some choice.
Overall I feel like this game had a strong vision of the experience it wanted to create, and all of the aspects were highly focused to that goal. It really works. Great job!
I love how you just throw me in to figure this out. First moment was like "umm okay I have an island and some icons? I move the mouse into the screen, and already the mouseover tip is indicating I can build stone. From there, the system is very self-discoverable, given how complex it is.
There were a couple of things that I struggled with early, but then they smoothed out after I lost a few times. One was that I got into a wood trap: this was likely a false trap, but I had spent enough wood that I had only 3, and the wood-creating building takes 4. So I also hadn't discovered what the "Sell" does.
Part of my confusion around "Sell" was that I thought the money icon was wheat, in an unprocessed form. It took a game where I was stuck on needing "wheat" to plant more fields, and none was forthcoming. I had fields, and even a field that was not next to a farm that would harvest it. I waited, but eventually I started experimenting, and then at some point it all clicked.
After that I was rolling. I didn't do super-duper well. I imagine an island of pretty epic proportions is possible, with proper advance planning and many layers. It's really cool how the highest possible island is conceivably doable, but the timing and the monkey-wrench of the pirates (whether you pay or not!) that would distort your perfect plan, all come together to force you to improvise. All that, plus the way that stuff falling down wrecks you because your mines have to be on the ground layer.
It's really cool how all of these elements come together, and how these problems are rooted firmly in the theme. The time pressure of the pirates coming is also a key aspect creating some tension while I play.
Beyond the design, I found the aesthetics very nice. The music is soothing and just the right amount of peppy to set the building mood, and the graphics are very nice as well.
Overall, a really nice entry. Even as I'm typing I'm kind of picturing that idealized island and wondering if I could build it with just one more go... hrmmm.......
(Three more games later)
Oh, weird, I built to the top of the screen and the game simply shut down. I can rep that from the start by just building straight up -- actually it doesn't happen if I build to the side of the menu, but if I build such that a block ends up behind a button, I run into trouble quickly, but I'm not certain if it's on build, mouseover, or button interaction.
But I did get one doozy of an island going. Right out of the gate with with a 5-slot area dedicated to wood with one layer of food, and then the right-hand side of the island was all mines with a handful of stone markets for money production. I was able to pay off all the pirates until I ran out of room.
Really a fun entry, well done.
So many games focus on the battle elements of Orcs, as opposed to the procedural administration concerns. But there are so many things to worry about as an Orc leader! I never realized it before.
I think it was 52 days that I did on my best run, but it felt like I had a run of good luck, with several BABIES and bards, then even a village.
If I could add one thing it would be for the change in the numbers from a choice to somehow pop out or linger on the screen for a second. I couldn't always remember what my old numbers were, and thus what the effect of the new choice was. Even an up/down green/red under the impacted numbers might be cool.
I enjoyed experimenting around with the systems, and hearing the funny sound effects. Nice work!
Interesting and difficult core control scheme, where I have to fly toward something to shoot it. The enemies are quite tricky, and their pattern vs the movement of my ship created some really interesting dogfights. A few times I could not believe I had snuck through a set of shots without getting hit! WOW. So it's cool the way those systems interacted to create these tricky moments.
The difficulty was a bit tough for me, and then it was quite disheartening to go backward one level and have to repeat each time I died. It took some care and time to destroy the enemies, so I really wanted to restart the same level from scratch. Perhaps that makes the game too short? I'm not sure.
So I had some real highs and lows on this one: at times I felt like an ace dogfighter, and at other times I felt hopeless. An interesting mix!
Interaction of the ship with the walls (Sticky instead of Bouncey or Slidey) was a bit jarring at first, but sort of intriguing too, like maybe there were some tactics there? Since flying at the enemy can be tough maybe there is a tactic of "landing" on the wall to shoot safely, and then flying off when they shoot back?
Graphics were nice and it was clear when I got hit, though I did miss having some basic sound effects to make the game feel more real.
Overall a nice job!
Very nice compo entry here! You are hitting all of the elements: theme-derived gameplay that is well-realized, nice graphics that communicate somewhat complex state to make it easy to understand, solid controls, good sound effects, and fitting music. Impressive -- I enjoyed your past game as well, but you've upped your level here, in my opinion!
I enjoyed this one a lot, and it made me feel powerful and clever to create these complex dodges. You avoided blunders and did not send me back to the start, instead respecting my time by immediately restarting me at the beginning of the current fight so that I was right back in the meat of the interesting gameplay with no reason to quit.
So of course I played to the end. The escalation going into the conclusion was very well-done, and the overall game length was just right for the amount of interesting content you had. Any longer and it would have overstayed the welcome a bit, and you were smart to telegraph "this is the end" in the voice lines.
I always have a bit of a mixed feeling with developer voiceovers, but yours are pretty decent. Sometimes games are SO weird and crazy that devlines work, but a lot of games it's kind of trying to be polished but the lines aren't working. You did a solid job though, and the voice lines did not pull me out of the experience.
I'd usually like to offer a critique to the feedback. There were no real splinters here to speak of, though, and no serious gaps. The only items I can think of are these: First, I would have preferred the smaller ships to be a sprite layer above the main ship, as a lot of times I lost sight of them, yet had to click on them. I'm also not sure it was necessary to make me click on the little ship, instead of anywhere on the cluster, but then I'm not certain how you'd deal with ambiguous clicks on overlapped clusters. Controls were generally very strong, but they were a little bit fiddly due to the tiny and sometimes-hidden click targets. It also took me a little while to realize how to use the mousewheel feature, just input-wise. I spun the wheel and was like "what should this do, it does nothing?" in the first few moments. Pretty soon I realized.
My last point of critique would be that the game is a tad bit easy. I don't WANT to lose a lot in this game, though. Perhaps some kind of second-level difficulty of optional goals that are a bit tougher, maybe? Perhaps some of the littlest ships are a different color and I want to preserve them because the pilots are important officers or something? Then I can ignore and play, but if I want to opt into some extra-fancy dodging, I can? I don't know, but by the end I had found my strategy and just went with it over and over.
That said, the core was compelling enough that I still had fun even if it wasn't super-tough. I very much appreciated the escalation of complexity at the end.
The stand-out feature here, though, was the absolutely excellent predictive transparency, with the lines and circles projecting accurately what the consequences would be. Very well done here. The two mobility circles per ship were also smartly done, and I appreciated that you didn't tutorialize me to death with all this stuff, but just presented clean, clear information and respected my intelligence to figure it out.
Very nice entry, well done!
Very nicely done. The story, though drawn from an inspiration, is a great setting to choose for the theme. The game itself captured me and pulled me into the story quite well, and the way that I had to click through things like turning the chair around, and fiddling around with information panels that really weren't able to save me from the terrible choice, and then making me take the actions I took, well, it really worked very well. The moody ambient sounds was also very well done.
Nice job all around!
Really nicely put together. The art is amazing, and fits well with the chosen music (I assume not original music since you opted out of audio category).
The writing was nice - the dialog and information to work from was hazy and ambiguous, but I was forced to make a decisive choice, so I felt that overall the whole project worked well in service of the theme.
I felt unclear, but hey, I had to make some choice!
A couple of things that hit me in-game as tough: I couldn't read the file to see the content and influence my judgment. I wasn't sure how much to read into the wrench being put in my locker, for example does that reduce the guilt of Kate because she would have had to kill, then sneak into my room to plant the wrench, then go BACK to the murder? Or else sneak the wrench out right in front of me? I wasn't sure how much weight to put on "clues" since it seemed clear I would not have enough info, given the theme. Lastly, I regretted that I couldn't confront people about facts I had learned, for example Fiona about the file, the scientist about the DNA link, the mechanic about the milk and wrench, etc.
I won't say who I chose in the end, but I did think it was nice that you shared the results, and that the results were pretty even!
I was impressed by how well put-together this whole experience was. The claustrophobia of the ship reflected the uncomfortably small amount of information available, and it felt right.
Nice work!
Thanks everyone for the nice feedback! I have now played, rated, and commented on all of your games.
To those who mentioned wishing the gameover screen showed stats -- DAMN BUG. On my screen it does show, but I anchored the text to the top and bottom, instead of center, and as a result it behaves poorly on most resolutions. It's a shame because that's really the "suggestion" that you should play for more than one human. The game only gets tough with larger groups.
I have uploaded a web version which is identical to the compo version but changed that anchor so the text is on the screen instead of on the moon somewhere.
Especially thanks to @birdwards who has only rated a few games, but left such in-depth feedback, really appreciated. I see your game hasn't got that many reviews - so if anybody is looking for a game to play, throw birdwards a review.
@peachtreeoath you know, I'm dumb, I didn't notice our games had in common the "hard to manage a big group, but safer to stay alive with one" but as soon as you pointed it out I agreed. I always appreciate your deep dive.
@logicon211 thanks for hitting my game up even though you couldn't participate this time, looking forward to the next Killbane installment. I was telling some friends about "ADOPTED" the other day, people love that story.
@cerno-b I was unaware of the importance of the windows flag for users of the itch client, it has been updated. If you have further problem with that, let me know.
Reflecting back on this one, I feel pretty good about it, but it's far from perfect - the TAB switching is REALLY clunky, the colliders on the cryopods are annoying, the elevator switch is too small, the monster is a bit lifeless without animations, and most of all the procgen mixes things up OK but doesn't really create truly novel situations. I think a few new interactive elements would be required for this to take on a nice minesweeper-esque puzzle nature.
You should have seen me making all those sound effects in the final 90 minutes. I used frozen celery for the monster-ate-you sound, and then 20 minutes later when it was soggy and limp I flapped it against a cheese board I had been snacking on to make the footstep sounds. Foley is weird.
@logicon211 you're of course welcome to dig through my code if you'd like, but here is how the fog works:
I have a Darkness object. It has a 1-unit square dark panel, with a circle around the square that's got 10% transparency to give the look of a hazy edge while still covering all contents from sight. I have a placer script that puts one down every 1 unit interval in a grid to lock up the whole level. There is also a sub-object to each of these, which is a second haze-circle which "wanders" to a localPosition of Random.InsideUnitCircle. This gives the crawling slithering feel to the edge of the dark.
These Darkness objects all have their gameObject's layer set to a custom layer called "Darkness".
The way they are removed is through a "Vision" script which is attached to the human prefab.
Here is that script... there is a little akwardness in the way that half of it is static. This is because the monster ALSO clears some darkness when it wakes up, and in typical jam fashion I just made another call into this same code but did a minimal refactor to allow it, rather than really extracting the common parts into some other class.
Because there are like ten thousand bubbles and I'm calling the search for them every frame, I went ahead and used the "non-alloc" version of the search, where you pass in a pre-existing array, and the length is not modified, but instead the int returned indicates the count.
public class Vision : MonoBehaviour { public float Radius; private static int DarknessMask; private static int BlocksVisionMask; private static float BlockLeniency = 0.6f; private Collider2D[] seenList = new Collider2D[200]; void Update() { ClearDarknessAround(transform, Radius, seenList); } public static void ClearDarknessAround(Transform observer, float radius, Collider2D[] seenList) { DarknessMask = LayerMask.GetMask("Darkness"); BlocksVisionMask = LayerMask.GetMask("Terrain"); int seen = Physics2D.OverlapCircleNonAlloc(observer.position, radius, seenList, DarknessMask); for(int i=0; i
In turn, when the darkness is told to clear, it checks if it overlaps a monster, triggering aggro if so, and then just destroys itself.
If you're curious about any of that, fire away.
Really well done. It feels like a complete and coherent package. The music fits the sarcastic cynicism just as well as the mechanics!
I enjoyed the lack of tutorial, letting me test by experimentation. Small tight scope like this benefits from that joy of discovery. I liked the simple effective graphics, and they fit well with the crunch static-filled sound effects.
There were times when the spectacle of chain reaction and escalation of screenshake would burst through what was reasonable and run away over the hill, but I kind of didn't mind. Except a few times when I did, but those were times when I had to repeat the same puzzle a few times.
I made it to the puzzle with two arrows near the center, and a lot of bombs creating a wavefront of flame coming at you, and you have to predict the future. The game got me there, I had learned the rules. Or so I thought... I tried this puzzle a half dozen times at least. Then I quit, not ragequit, but just finished my time with it, when I thought "Finally, I figured it out" and I took my final turn assuming I would win, but something I didn't understand happened and I died in the same turn, rather than one turn later, than my enemy. Not sure what it was.
Speaking of not sure what it was, I was a bit unclear on the art of the... turkey leg? Country of Italy? Tornado? Swinging swoosh sword? No worries.
Usually I suggest a small tweak. Here I'm not sure what that would be, it's pretty fully realized. I think my favorite thing you DID include was a solid variety of you-lose messages. I guess maybe after I lost the flame level five times I was wishing for a "hurry up and restart" button? But not hard enough to be mashing my kb.
Very nice entry covering all the bases and creating an experience, well done.
This is pretty great but I also had a really rough initial experience with it.
I was playing in Chrome, and I guess there's a technical issue with the controls in Chrome. I played maybe 15 times without being able to control anything reliably, and stopping maybe three rockets in total. This really put me through the ringer on the retry loop... it's quite a long time between the failed jump that lets a rocket hit the president, and the next rocket appearing on screen. It goes Pres-hit animations, score screen, flag-wipe transition, text tutorial, initial marching, laser sight, and only seconds later does a rocket appear and I have one jump of gameplay experience before looping this again.
Eventually I concluded it had to be that I was missing something - and I saw the comment saying to play it in another browser.
So I played in firefox and I had a far, FAR more reasonable experience. Actually a pretty good one!
The pixel art is just totally great - really charming and communicative. Only critique I can offer is that I did find it a bit hard to pick out the rockets against the busy and just-as-saturated background, but maybe this was intentional as it definitely kept me really tense.
The sound effects and music are great, too, and I loved how it escalated in difficulty, with the helicopter appearing.
The time-slow is a really nice touch, as well -- added a lot to that mixed feeling of realtime/sort-turn-ish, and made it feel nice to line up shots.
Super-slick! (No points off for the Chrome part of the experience, just mentioning it since it happened.)
Very nicely done! The mood is really great, with the sounds and background music/ambiance. But that just did well setting the stage for the real star: the strategy. I was definitely thinking a bunch, and making some tough choices. It was a nice mix of both "puzzling" out the order of operations that would be effective, and also on making uncertain risk/reward tradeoff decisions, too. The outcomes were a nice mix of things often going my way, but then going wrong just enough that I was always worried.
I did make it to the end (normal difficulty) but with only three ships of one ... crew ... each. I think I lost one ship to total starvation, one ship sacrificed to delay the bearlons, and another ship abandoned while scouting.
The food needs are pretty extreme, and I ended up deliberately starving most of my crew so that I'd only need one food per ship per jump. But hey, you know... sacrifices must be made, right?
If I had to critique, I would say that the controls are a bit fiddly, and it took me a little while to adjust to them. But honestly, it's a complex enough strategy game that it's pretty normal and I would say these controls are actually pretty darn solid for a jam, where you haven't had ten iterations with playtesters to refine. The roughest part of it was actually the tutorial piece... I got pretty confused about why I was trying to activate certain ships but could not, and the tutorial "taught" me that there's an order to my ships, which is a lie. I pretty quickly figured out the truth, but that misled me a bit. It's good that you left a tip about how to do transfers, as this was not super-smooth either. But since I did read the tip (there was only ONE after all) I was pretty good to go quickly.
Anyway, a very nice all-around package here. I enjoyed it - nice work!
Oh sure, you come into this world with a cheerful "beep beep!" But we all know that soon enough you'll be playing your part in the the death revue. If you make it a scant 38 miles, be grateful and consider yourself lucky!
Just try to stay on that straight and narrow. Sometimes you'll have someone watching out for you, but the road through the valley is long and difficult, and you don't want to be asleep at the wheel.
What's that you say? Incoming death wall alarm? No problem! Hang on, I'll just adjust that a liBOOMsplat. Oops. And like that it's over. For you at least, and your motorcycle pals. But this semi isn't going anywhere! Who all these fools are that decided to stroll the superslab in their sneakers, I cannot say, but this semis tires barely flinch. Oh boy, a reward? Outstanding, I'll take this one here. How nice! And now it's just OH MY GOD WHAKABLAMMOCRUNCH.
AND NOW YOU'RE TEXTING???
...
I definitely had to make some sacrifices in this one! I managed to jam the prtscr button at what was my peak chaos moment and captured it here: https://imgur.com/V3aZbzb
I had a lot of fun with this one. Never felt solidly in control. Or at least when I did, it was a quickly-shattered illusion. I played the first few times exclusively with the mouse, and had a hard time getting about 2-3 cars for any long stretch. I switched later to a combo kb-mouse game, and by being able to make tappa-tap adjustments on the keys I could better control things.
If I could change one thing I would make WASD work, since mouse is right hand, and arrow keys are also right hand, but I have one left and one right. I'm also not sure the "runs out of prayers" mechanic is necessary, as it wasn't that much fun to be locked out, and the game was crazy enough without it. I may be wrong about that, and it's required to drive the game to conclusion, in which case nevermind!
I very much enjoyed the zany out-of-control chaos, with the theme, music, art, controls, everything, all working to a coherent vision. I don't know exactly where the right level of control is, and I feel like when you chose which side to err on, you erred on the side of chaos. Likely the right call, but there were times where I was like "REALLY?" All in good fun though.
So very well done, this is a nice, fun, funny, coherent package.
Congrats on such a strong finish! Really tough with such a large crew, really impressive.
Oh man, you totally got me with this. I probably went through exactly the phases of thinking that you expected me to.
And then I was like "ohhhhhhh". And then I thought about the theme, and was like "OHHHHHHH".
So you really created quite an experience with a minimal feature set, and I loved it.
If I could change one thing, it would be to leave the last command active on the button so I could spam more. Or at least that's what I thought while I was playing and didn't yet get it, so maybe it's actually important to have that slight inconvenience of having to go face-button-face instead of being able to rapidly hammer out the same command repeatedly?
Anyway, very nice work here. Face graphics and the sound effects were simple but quite effective, but the real star here was your interesting concept and your successful execution in leading me through that.
Your crew always makes some high-ocatane challenging action games, and this is no exception! I always miss it when your sound gets cut because your games are so visceral.
I played a while before understanding the controls fully. That is, I understood how to jump, but not the meaning of the color change. I think part of it is the way the lava comes IMMEDIATELY and I'm on instant freakout. That's great on the restart, and I'd hate to see you add a slow ramp-up phase. But maybe a dotted line that is a bit above the start, and the lava doesn't kick off until I pass it or something? I could have used a sandbox just to learn the nuances of the button presses, before being thrown to the wolves.
After I got the hang of it, I started doing better. But it was definitely tricky as heck. I think something about the space bar is tough for me, in precision jumping games. I may have done better if I could have used W to jump or something. The spacebar is a large clunky button to accurately double-tap, at least on my crappy wireless kb.
Tight brutal action with rapidly switching realities based on a cool core concept, nice art, all around this was very well done. It was just a bit more than I was able to hack, difficulty-wise.
Wow, this game has so many features! TNT, a wide variety of enemies, and lots of weapons! Barbed wire, powerups, treasure chests. And randomly generated battles and rooms, too! Nice.
I liked the art, with the simple but effective drawings that had animations and communicated important state information like the enemy's invincible/stun frames after you hit him.
Controls were snappy. And I really liked the background music and sound effects.
Oh yeah and the blood!
Great job. I had a few issues with learning, for example I didn't even realize to use the mouse and just thought it was a dodging game at first, but I figured it out pretty quick.
It's pretty hard, so I didn't get to the crash. Sometimes you spawn into a room and they are all over you right away. But it was okay because this game keeps me on my toes the whole time.
The restart was nice and quick, to keep me right in the action after a death, but I also really appreciated that the first room was empty, so the enemy wasn't attacking me the second I restart.
Nice job, this was fun.
Highlight here is the wildly open-ended customization system. Wow, you can really do a lot there! I had fun tinkering around with my ship, trying to have some armor but also leave clear shots for the guns.
The battle mode wasn't like super-exciting and obviously the controls there were limited, but it did serve its purpose as a testing ground for the ideas explored in the build phase.
I had the mouse selection issue, but it was weird. Sometimes it was fine. Sometimes it needed a couple of clicks, and sometimes it was nearly impossible to select a piece unless I rotated the camera five different ways. One wing-shaped piece was REAL nasty to try to select. I also struggled to select just the armor to unsnap off a chasis, instead of the chasis itself.
So if you were selling this as a $300 modeling program, I would have some issues. But for a jam entry customization system, actually it is very impressive.
I have a couple of ideas, if a raycast is not working for you, but I don't know for sure:
1. Spherecast instead of raycast, to hit with more margin for error. 2. Cast every frame when there is no selected object, and highlight with a glow the object i WOULD select if I clicked. Then I can learn the quirks of the system more easily. 3. Use some fancy math to select the object whos bounding box comes closest to the line. That is: I can never miss when I click, because I ALWAYS get the nearest object to the ray of my click.
Just a few ideas, but I do think if you're having a lot of complaints, this might be something worth experimenting around with to find a better answer.
Really well done with this editor, very cool tech. I had fun tinkering, thanks!
Wow, this is so totally complete! It has multiple mechanics, multiple enemies, a story, and a bunch of nice extra features like the notes and terminals!
Really well done. I enjoyed all of it, the story, the gameplay, and I felt like the length of it was just about right. Art and music were in sync the rest of the vision of the game and it all came together really well.
Normally I'd offer a couple of critiques but really nothing got in my way... no splinters.
Great entry. Release the frogs!
Very well done! This has a great look and feel, with very nice sounds and little polish details like the surviving ships tallying up at the end. It feels like a nice complete package.
The core design idea is showcased well. You can play but you get wrecked if you don't use the main idea. I did sac my last ship by accident straight into gameover once, but hey that was dumb! I didn't do it again.
I never got past wave 7. I especially liked the small fighters. They could really score a powerful blow against the enemy in the ideal case, but it was quite tough to capitalize on them. A lot of them went screaming VALHALLA into the void and didn't bring down even one enemy. Others would absolutely wreck way about their own value alive. This was a nice mix.
I found it pretty tricky to set up these moments, due to the somewhat unpredictable turning of the ships. I had to more seize opportunities as they presented themselves, as opposed to manufacturing them, or so it felt at my skill level anyway. It was a bit beyond me to monitor the whole fight and instantly react to these windows of opportunity, so I never managed to get past fight 7, I think.
Overall a very nice entry, well done!
The graphics and sound effects really came together here in a wonderful way.
I had an odd experience with the difficulty -- I played probably a half-dozen times getting WRECKED. I think the problem was a combination of having four buttons, not knowing what was effective, and the fights being really short. My fights went like OK here is a fight maybe I'll try WHOOPS, ok that didn't WHOOPS. Game over.
Despite my poor initial performance, I have to say that the controls are tight and super-clear, so it was all my fault. The enemies telegraph and everything, which is huge. I noticed there is no buffering of a jump command, so I drop the input if I press it a moment before touching down, but it's not a big deal since jumping is not a huge element.
During this struggling phase, I got frustrated by the combination of back-to-the-start, and the quite long retry delay. I was grinding my teeth and hammering the keys.
Then I hit some kind of pivot point and started wrecking the cultists pretty good. I guess I just stopped trying to blink-knife them (tho maybe that's also viable) and just got the timing of the blood magic down. I had a stellar run and managed to double-kill twice.
But then the boss kicked my ass.
I came back again, but with a new leet strat: fight nothing and just dash past the entire game. That got me to the boss no problem, with respectable blood levels. I got to the part where he summons the super-cultist wave and that did me in. I feel like I was pretty close!
The game is short enough that I can see why you back-to-the-start me. The long retry loop indicates you underestimate how bad I was when I first picked up the game, though. I was BAAAD.
Throwing both knife, blood magic, and blink at me all at once just kind of overwhelmed me initially, I guess. I maybe would have preferred Level 1, Level 2, Level 3, adding abilities along the way, and with checkpoints. But maybe that's too much scope!
I offered some critique here, but certainly not because it's bad, this is a solid and charming game. Solid tight combat controls, great art and sound, and a unique flair, complete with interesting boss fight, all in a small scope. Well done!
Nice sound effects! Also a funny humorous vibe to it all. I played to the humorous conclusion, but there were many censorings along the way. Actually I felt like I was going to get over the line with a big herd, but then here came a predator. I decided to get clever, and to select a guy to send off alone as bait, drawing the predator away from the pack.... sacrifices must be made, after all! However this was a terrible strategy idea! I forgot my whole pack would follow this guy, so what happened was they all took a detour, which had two terrible outcomes: firstly they went to the predator together like one big lunch, and second the delay in moving straight toward the green zone meant they clumped up and stalled, which meant more cannibalism. I stuck around for the final grim humor at the end, and was rewarded.
On the critique side, I felt a bit confused initially. I had to manually reoirent the camera and guess that the green line was probably the goal. Once I figured that, I was off to the races. Perhaps it was possible to set the camera up initially to more clearly communicate the objective? I don't know.
Nice job!
Nice job hitting all the bases on your first LD entry! You had some art with a style, nice crunchy sound effects, an original song, multiple weapons with weapon-switching, the title screen, score screen, UI timer, it's really a lot of stuff that covers all the aspects of the game. No small feat for a first LD entry!!
I think you've had some good advice above, so I won't go too much into repeating. I was okay with the music, personally. But I will repeat the camera thing, just cuz that's like a huge deal. You went for a more advanced "offset" camera that isn't exactly centered on the character, and that's great, but if you can't do it smoothly you shouldn't do it at all, because a centered camera is much easier and allllmost as good. You can just child the camera to the player and set the transform position to 0,0,0 and boom. Then you only come back and try the fancier camera if you have time to get it done smooth.
So like the first thirty seconds I was brainscrambled by the camera, but after that I got used to it (it probably feels completely fine to you since you experienced it so much). And then it didn't matter anymore.
The triple-jump was an odd choice but I kind of liked it. I certainly USED it a lot, to get up to higher platforms. I think if you have a cool feature like that, you can lean into it and make it a bigger part. Maybe flying slimes?
I don't mean to suggest more scope - you have a LOT of scope and it's impressive. Well done. I'll look forward to seeing what you come up with in future LDs.
Top score 9100: 3 blonde, 2 brown, 2 red -- 3 blonde, 1brown 1blonde, 2 red, 2 blonde
I had it framed as a 3-2-2 and then repeating, with one swap. At that point it was taking so long, that the hard part was not so much remembering the sequence as waiting for the dudes to come and remember where I WAS in the sequence at that moment. A few times I really had to wait a long time!
Then the volcano would repeat. At this point I was up to a chan of 9, then 10, then 11, and I started to feel like the chain was too long and just deliberately picked the wrong guy to see what would happen. I think I got a little luck in having such an easy pattern to recall, though. (Unless that's not random?)
Anyway, that was my run. I found the game really charming with great art that works super-well. Everything was really clear, and looked polished and with charm. Especially the volcano. I enjoyed the smoke coming from it in the title screen and I honestly just watched it so long I heard the song loop!
If I could add one thing, it would be a "correct" sound when I complete the full chain. Also, I wondered what it would be like with a faster pace: The volcano only says ONE guy, and it's the new one at the end of the chain, instead of repeating the whole chain. That, plus code to ensure that if any type of guy is not available he is swiftly spawned. It was really the pace bogging down as the chain got real long that eventually made me tap out, up til then it was fun/interesting.
Game itself was a little bit simple, but that's okay too.
I know the music and sounds weren't yours, but they were well-selected, and worked with the game seamlessly.
Nice job!
I won!
I liked the graphics, they have nice character to them. The sound effects are also nice and solid. A lot of games go too slow, but not this one! You really zoom around, and there were some fun moments there.
But it fouled me up a bunch of times the way I would go off the screen. Walking from one screen to the next, there was a dead zone I had to move through, where I could not see myself. Some of these dead zones seemed to have obstacles in them, and several times I got stuck. I could also jump something like 1.3 screens high when I had the item for hi jump, and lost sight of myself a few times that way. This was just a bit awkward, and not usually a gamekiller, but I did end up having to restart the game 3-4 times because I got stuck. The main place I got stuck was going down one screen and then left. I don't know what's on the edge of that screen, I may have popped up to the screen above and got stuck somewhere... the camera didn't follow me, so I was offscren and unable to get back.
The hi-speed movement and insta-death spiked with total restart was a tough combo, but I kind of liked it in a way. With the game being so short, it was sort of okay to send me all the way back! If the game were longer, I would advise keeping the item you died with, because I had to go to get hijump maybe ten times.
I hope the offscreen stuff wasn't just a matter of my computer being a weird setup. I do have an odd resolution, but I also tried playing in windowed mode, and that was not any different.
So snappy fun movement and nice look and sound, that's a solid entry!
Great moody art of the grim cultist village fit the thematic idea well!
Bit text heavy on the tutorial, and quite slow to play. I wanted to experiment a lot with your interesting system, but I could only try things at a snail's pace so I didn't really dig into the systems. In fact, I never sated my god. When he got mad I sacrificed people, but his anger level never went down. I sacrificed my entire population but two to him.. and he didn't seem to like it.
Another element that made it confusing a little was the way that the resources appear suddenly and all at once at the end of the day, instead of trickling in over the course of the day. It left me confused about what would (or did!) happen when I moved a character from one building to another mid-day.
In general when you have a complex system like that in LD, you want to go overboard communicating the secret state changes to the player. So like a little animation saying "this farm is working!" Even if it's a totally simple 2-frame cycle of the farm bobbing up and down or something, and its speed goes up or down based on productivity, that is enough. Then you have a little "Food "icon pop out each time it kicks out food. Then I can get a feel for your system. The way it is now, you have this cool system but only you the developer REALLY know what's going on! It's vital in these LD games where ppl only play a short time to make that stuff shine through... even at the expense of other features. That's my opinion, anyway!
Nice mood and some interesting complex systems here! Very solid first entry, and it even had music.
Haha wow nice! This one is definitely unique, you have a style of your own.
The first game I felt like I missed a lot, and list to the viper-frog demon. So the second and third runs through, I figured, well 5 points is 5% of my health, but it's like 50% of my damage!
So I went all-in on damage and attack. My third run through I had 40 hp to start, but 40 attack and 40 damage. I one-shotted all three of the first demons, but I know the devil is not kidding when he says he's the big leagues.
I liked the song, but it's a bit long to hear over and over without skipping, so I didn't try all that many times.
I wanted to sell my soul the last time just to try it, but for some reason on that run the buttons for my choices just never appeared? Or maybe they did, but I was looking at another tab waiting for the song, and when I returned they were gone? Either way I could not proceed.
IF I could change one thing, I would have a little line of text saying what the damage (or a miss) of each attack was.
Very unique game, nice work!
The audio cues let me know if I hit or missed (altho even w/out button mashing they did overlap a bit, on the second enemy, he would start talking before my "gun needs adjustment" line completed).
The "missed by 5" is definitely nice, but I would have taken any form of "combat log". Priority is to explicitly state a hit/miss. Next would be to know how much damage was dealt. Lastly the impact of the defense/attack roll, which is I think where the "missed by 5" idea falls.
An example game that has CRAZY complicated D&D-but-craizer combat math, but also has full transparency is Sil. That game, you have to read the manual to know what the numbers mean. But it stands as an example of just how full transparency can make a really complicated system more understandable. After playing it and reviewing the rolls, I really got a good sense of what impact a +1 in this stat or that really had.
Your game here doesn't face that supercomplexity problem, but since my decisions are all about trading off stat points it wouldn't hurt to allow some transparency into how the stats impact combat.
On the other hand, maybe that would all interfere with the enjoyment of the art and style of the game. Maybe the stat choices aren't the real point here!
Love the charming art, and there's lots of it! The simple animations work well, too, I especially liked the parrot. Also enjoyed all the little quips -- Panther's like, "make my day". No thanks! But I guess sacrifices must be made...
I played through twice, and I found a nice strategy for getting a bigger posse, can anyone beat 9 going into the final boss? https://imgur.com/6qCThcx
The ominous music was another nice touch. The game was a nice contradiction: light-hearted art, ominous sound. Cheerful banter, terrible fates.
Nice entry!
Very strong for a first compo entry! You have a nice graphical style that looks good and has a nice retro vibe. The classic-style sound effects also worked well.
The core idea is good, I enjoyed the mix of puzzle and platforming with this unique mechanic, and it fits the theme really well.
I have a few small suggestions for improvement:
- The "Level Complete" sound is a lot louder than the rest of the sounds, and blasted my ears.
- This is a game played with two hands on the keyboard. It was annoying that I had to switch to use the mouse for advancing to the next level, or restarting. This was only a minor annoyance, until I got to the level where I have to throw a block and then jump on it to get over a large area of spikes. The game has never asked me to to do a precision throw OR a precision max-jump before, so I am going to fail several times. Instead of hitting 'R' to immediately restart, each time I fail I have an annoying task to take my hand off the controls, reach over there to get my mouse, bring it onto the screen, click the button, bring the pointer back off the screen so it doesn't annoy me visually, and then take my hand back onto the keyboard. All for something like 5 seconds of game, then I do it again? This is bad and no reason for it. I think in future games, think about the hand position: it's either left hand KB, right hand mouse (WASD + Mouse) or it's all-mouse, or it's all-keyboard. Select one style and never ask for controls outside that style, in my opinion. That means even your main level select screen shouldn't use the mouse, and should have keypress 1-9 or something, I think.
- A few times the spike colliders seemed a little bit too large, just a tiny bit. It's okay to "forgive" the player a little, and lie to them about whether they actually struck a negative object. In general, death/damage colliders should be a little bit smaller than their graphics, and positive/pickup colliders should be a little bit bigger. This seems crazy at first but it just feels better in the action that way. Specifically, I was noticing this on that same long precision-jump over the spikes I mentioned in the previous point. I was trying to jump as late as possible and collided the spikes a few times that I felt I did not. (Usually player is wrong about "not hitting spikes" they really did, but offer a margin of error so they don't have this feeling).
I also want to say you did very nice with the tutorial blocks that show text, and having the fun final level. Those were nice touches.
So a very strong first entry, well done. You can be proud of this one. Welcome to LD, I look forward to seeing what you come up with next time.
This game is crazy!@ It's sooooo hard. I am surrounded on all sides in the first four seconds, and must learn to run or die. I memorized the pattern: turn left and sprint. Try to juke-dodge the two guys in the way and hopefully only take one hit. Kill the next two melee guys + gun guy in the hall and then jump down the pit before the conga line of ten dudes RIGHT ON MY TAIL kills me. No use fighting them.
Down the pit the battle is instant, so I hope you reloaded while falling, that was the most peaceful zero point seven seconds this game has! I hope you enjoyed. Now you have to tight-quarters pulse-strafe these two shooters right on your face while shooting them.
Phew, okay. Now you can breathe for a second. Or so I thought, the first time. How foolish! Actually you better get your ass in gear because all of those guys are about to respawn! I thought I would use the cover to "clear the area before moving in" but that is not in the spirit of this game. No careful pop-n-shoot then stroll through the park type situation here, just fucking pedal to the metal, full speed or die.
So now I sprint out and it's just not worth shooting any guys cuz they'll surround and respawn forever. Better just concentrate on shooting the generator while dodging everything, and look out for the deathpit.
It took me about twenty runs to get to that stage where I had it all memorized and was able to frantically clear the generator just barely.
Ohmygod. OK. Phew. I did it!
FINALLY a new area. Something different that I haven't played twenty times now.
And then I died, and it send me ALL THE WAY BACK>???!! I can't imagine doing four of these straight without dying, and so that's where I stopped.
Super-intense entry. I loved the crazy sci-fi weirdo alien textures and shapes on everything. I sort-of loved the high-octane deathmetal pacing, although it was borderline too much for me.
I would have played more if it didn't ship me back to the very start.
Really intense and unique entry. Looks like your first LD entry, and that's impressive to have something this potent. I look forward to seeing what you come up with next time.
Nice work.
OK I played this for a while. It's great that you were able to make an interesting 3D game for your first LD entry! Well done!
It was kind of interesting to explore the space. My favorite feature by a mile was the leftover bodies from my previous lives. This helped give me a sense of history in the space. Because the space had the same wall, floor, and ceiling tiles used throughout, it was super-easy to get lost, but this bodies feature really helped with that. The best moment for this feature was when I blew open a door and thought I was entering a new area, but waiting for me on the other side of the new door was my dead self. Boom.
Turrets were annoying at first. It seemed like they were either in range and then were way too strong, or were out of range and were way too easy, and took so, so, so, so, so, so many hits that it was just totally impossible to strafe-dodge kill them and totally tedious to safe-distance kill them.
So there's a design flaw with turrets, something is off. But as I played, I realized the turrets also had an important purpose, which was to highlight new areas. If there were turrets, I hadn't cleared it! And believe me I know, because I definitely tried just dashing past turrets, but it didn't really work.
The feature I just downright hated was the random invisible fireball traps. The first seven or eight times they killed me I had no idea what had even happened. I was just walking along, and then I was respawning at the beginning. It was only after I got some of the health pickups and actually survived a blast that I even saw the fireball. I thought maybe it was a bug, or a monster behind me, or something. I really think if you're going to kill me I should get to know something about what happened. And just having random squares that if I step on them, BOOM. If I missed something, like a mine item on the ground or something, that helps me deal with those, sorry, I didn't notice it.
Another negative was the infinitely-looping sounds. Was this a glitch, or intended? A voice said "Zoom Zoom" on a neverending loop. Another voice had a long fancy line, like "Not only am I the final boss, I'm also a nuclear bomb" and he said it over and over and over FOREVER without stopping, the whole time I played. That was not cool. :(
I got into exploring, and I blew up four reactors. That felt like a lot. After that, I died a few times. Second to last time I died it was to a random explosion trap. The next and final life I found a new area but I had little health and it had like 10 turrets, and I was like screw that, because I couldn't take the voice repeating the nuclear bomb line anymore. I tried to dash-run through rather than grind the turrets down, but I got killed and that was that.
Looking at this review it sounds maybe too negative. But please don't take it that way -- for bad games I don't even bother pointing out the tough stuff. But this game was pretty impressive for your first LD entry and I felt like it was interesting enough with the exploration and the body-leave-behind mechanic that I should go ahead and dump out all the little things that got in the way of me digging in even further. The idea is honest takes on the negative side can help you bring even stronger games next LD.
Nice job, especially for a first outing, and welcome to the game.
Excellent compo entry. Charming character, nice touch with the face slowly sliding from one side to the other, rather than flipping the sprite. This made the slime feel rounded in the third dimension as well. The novel mechanic was really compelling, and the way that dying accidentally did NOT yield a splatter was an important strong design choice imo. It created a wonderful risk/reward tradeoff.
So I was on board right away. But my regard for the game went up again once I got to a couple of the later levels where you subverted my expectations by having... well, I don't want to give spoilers but let me just say the non-static elements involved. I didn't anticipate that was coming, but once I saw it I felt like it was an essential evolution of the core.
There was only one thing I really struggled with, and that was the controls for the wall jump. The way I have I to hold rightthenimmediatelysiwithfsioto shit I fucked up and I'm dead again. And again. And again.
I immediately noticed I was struggling with walljump-then-away, but I figured it wasn't important. Then I came to that climb up the shaft in the center of the level in the middle of the game, and I just kept falling and falling and then overcompensating and dying, and back all over again.
I'm not quite sure what the fix is, as walljumps always seem a bit awkward to me. Must I hold the direction into the wall?
That was my one and only stumbling block in this game. The only other tiny thing I could even suggest was the the sound effect for me exploding was like a failure sound. Couple of times my brain said "dammit we made a mistake" and then a moment later "oh wait I meant to do that."
Anyway, this was a really strong entry, I liked it a lot.
Bane to all slimekind, indeed.
Man... I think I've been to this club. Except there was more drinking, the way I recall it.
I don't read the instructions to my heavy metal, so I jumped right into this one. It took me just a couple of seconds to find out what button to press, and only maybe a minute to recognize that the type of crowd member telegraphs what pattern of attack I get. That was pretty cool!
The art is really strong here, as is the music. I found the combination of the two was more than the sum of the parts because they fit really well together.
I played through a number of times, trying to improve my score. It was interesting to try to control the chaos using the varied attacks. Unfortunately my highest score by far was the time I just hammered the spacebar thoughtlessly. I ended up with 170 sacrifices that time.
If I could add one feature to this game, it would be that during the solo the crowd would change behavior and start doing a circular mosh pit, to capture that aspect of a metal show. But maybe that's just a different game altogether! I'd play that game, too.
Anyway, nice job here, you hit the theme, the art, the sound, and the feel nicely. Well done.
The art style is unique and very nice. I liked the story, and I enjoyed seeing the little comic-book style stories about how my attempts to sacrifice myself failed in some funny ways. I also liked the humorous text in the hint screen, which made me want to proceed without looking every time.
I know that "fetch quest" is a big part of RPG gameplay. It's not personally my favorite, so I am not exactly the perfect audience for that sort of game.
But even with that disadvantage, it was good enough that I played it through all the way to the end!
Nice job creating a unique entry.
The visuals are really compelling here, with the nice poly models and these two huuuuuge player giants dominating the visual space, standing over and gesturing. That was VERY cool. The voice commands, existence of "complain" button, and the music were also very nicely put together.
I appreciate that you felt free to use asset packs but then opted out of the related categories. That said, your "direction" or whatever you want to call the skill of putting elements together, was on point here.
I found the gameplay fell a little bit short of what I'd imagined when I saw the awesome visuals. I let my imagination run a bit, and imagined I would be helpless but running around in a battle and able to kind of use stealth. So OK, it wasn't that, which would have been extra-cool. But what you did have was still enough to get me running around in this cool space and getting that feeling of being a peon, which is what you were after.
Nicely done - cool entry here.
Great illustrations to set the mood of the dark cave. I was curious how the story ended, but I gathered a LOT of kids I felt, but still not enough. After I lost, it was too daunting to start all over. As I got late into the game, wandering was quite tough.
I wondered how it ended, by my hand was starting to hurt from pressing the button harder to walk faster! Nice evil touch that the kids ran away sometimes, it's like NOOO don't you know I have a timer??
Nice entry.
I should have mentioned in my comment: When I was playing, I wanted an arrow pointer to "nearest kid" just like you have a pointer back to the statue. Maybe that ruins the "hide and seek" feeling, but it would be so useful.
Oh man, I did a loooot of clicking, and then I left it running while I tried another game, and came back to play with some of the higher-level stuff. I got up to Blood Wizard, but the fact that the only thing it did was more +sac/sec made me less curious to continue to see the rest of them. I was hoping for some sort of alternate kind of upgrades that would add a little more complexity.
But even though it wasn't full of wild innovation or complex mechanics, you had some nice graphics, and strong theme usage. The meat cleaver was a nice touch, too!
Solid first entry, welcome to the compo!
Very interesting entry. I liked the music and sound effects, and the retro look was well-done here. Some basic story, and then on to some nice challenges.
I was immediately curious about the camera, because it's very distinctive. It feels almost like a side-scroller at times. At first I assumed I wouldn't have to ever change camera views, and interesting notion in the 3D world, so I was wondering where you'd take that. But then I saw - middle mouse changes it! I had to exit the game to read that, but no big deal. (Same for ctrl and shift).
The jumping challenges to get the sword seemed designed to challenge my ability to manipulate the camera. I didn't even notice the platforms, looking from certain angles! There were a few times where the camera was off by a little angle (because I'd set it to be off, my error) and then I'd be going along and WHOOPS I fell right off because there was a diagonal aspect to my motion I didn't notice.
It was disorienting, but also a unique element of the game, and I kind of got used to it after flubbing the execution of what I thought should be basic stuff a few times. Once I saw that I had to leap down from the high area to grab the sword, I knew I had figured it out.
If I could tweak one thing, it would be the way that holding down jump re-jumps when I hit the ground a second time. I found I was holding down the jump key to try to get more air time, Mario-style, but if I held it a little too long I'd immediately jump again on touching down, sometimes right off the side. A minor thing to adjust to, but typically games don't check the button BEING down, they check is TRANSITIONING to down, for the initiation of a jump.
Cool little game with nice flair and style, good job!
Fell for the title and wanted to play, but when I clicked the link I got an error: "Refused to Connect"
Sorry! I'll try to come back another time to check again. Didn't rate since I didn't play.
Outstanding entry, weighing in strong on a bunch of categories! The core control mechanic was very creative, and very well done. That's not easy! The graphics were great, and the way snow accumulated made it feel very organic. Whatever discrete chunks there were underlying things in the logic, the fluffy snow felt real. The excellent chuff-chuff sound effects of moving around really sold the snow feel, and the vocal music was sweet and charming.
I did run into one problem: when the game told me to go my own way, instead of just building a snowman I somehow settled on the idea of jumping up then splitting midair to stick the landing just between the overhead spike and the ground. I managed to do it. But trying to do this precision maneuver really tested my control limits and I got a bit frustrated rolling off the edge. This was me being dumb, and generally I felt like the momentum controls were strong, and I enjoyed rolling and jumping over a bunch of pits, and later saved myself with a few nice midair splits anyway. But maybe at very low speeds the character could halt more quickly, at least near edges? The second minor splinter was that I didn't understand the unlocking of gates. Sometimes I built myself up to climb over the top, while other times I unlocked it. I never quite got the rules - I'd be doing stuff, and then click it would unlock.
But overall this was amazing and blew me away. My wife also enjoyed it and was singing the tune after we stopped playing (finish time 14:59).
Excellent entry you can really be proud of, nice work.
You knew what you wanted and you fuckin went after it. Nutjob story, superslick music, nice graphics, disturbing voice acting, and a message that nobody can take home to their mother.
I played a handful of times, and my best time was 32 seconds. I like brutal short runs on a beat-your-time game like this, cuz I'm not about to restart when my best time is 6 minutes, as that means about 5:30 of boredom guaranteed. Not so in Baby Grenade! It gets right the fuck down to business.
I appreciated the tight tight controls. I wished for a jump feature, or at least that what I conclude from the way my thumb kept hitting the space bar.
What I think I really wanted was for this game to be in third-person view instead of first. First is great for aimin' and shootin' but third is superior for that immediate-proximity situational awareness, which would be key in surviving longer in this game. I mean I lasted just fine when I could distract the horde with babies, but after that? I was doomed quickly.
But I'm not sure effective dodging of these ladies was what you had in mind...
Nice work.
What a brain-bender! I nearly gave up a few times, but in the end I completed all nine puzzles.
This did a great job of unfolding the complexity naturally. I didn't really need to dwell much on the rules or use the tab screen, I was able to figure out how things worked just by observing.
The blue cave feel, space-age music, and abstract techno-puzzle feel all came together into a pretty nice cohesive package.
If I could make one small tweak, I'd let the numeric keys select the entity type rather than clicking. But maybe that's just me -- I was making pretty heavy use of 'R' so I was already multi-inputting.
Solid all-around compo, nice work.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!
This is so, so good. And I ran into the same freeze-up bug twice. It was so excellent that I went back a second time to get through the whole story, but I lost track of time in the mines again and got stuck in the loop. I didn't restart the entire game a third time, so I didn't get to the end of the story. :(
The bug happens when the timer goes below zero in the mines. The score mode counts the timer down to zero, but it seems to check == and not <= so it goes deeper and deeper into negative territory, racking up a top score but also locking the game forever: https://imgur.com/a/mVylK6K
That one flaw aside, this is AWESOME. It's got a great look and feel, I'm interested in the story, and in a great way I care more about the arcade games because of my very limited coins. And wow the games are just great.
This is a very strong all-around compo entry that hits graphics, sound, gameplay, and narrative... and the fact that it's so well polished makes the breadth of scope that much more impressive.
A few random notes on the individual arcade games:
- Asteroids is made a lot more fun with your touch of friction, great feel
- Mines was a really interesting puzzle-ish game, and I spent the most time here. I had to explore a bit to learn the rules. Specifically I got confused by the behavior of stacks of boulders: for a while my mental model was "sometimes rocks fall off sideways but mostly they don't" - took me a little while to learn the reason. I never dared to unleash the monsters
Maybe I'll come back to try the story a third time and just not play the mines.
Excellent.
This was very cool. I loved the mood it created. The decision to have almost no instruction at the start was a nice touch, it put me into a mental space of looking for signs about what was happening. The one bit of text about not being able to move more in that direction was essential - at first I thought I was stuck on some bits of ground, but later its true meaning became clear. But without it I think I would have gotten stuck, so I feel you struck just the right balance.
The mood was enhanced nicely by the gentle ambient music, which meshed well with the art style, but there was this cool dissonance between that mood and the tension of trying to back up just so without falling off... that duality peaked for me at the last of the moving platforms that go over open space (ie stepping onto the second-to-last moving bit).
Really unique and well-realized idea, well done!
In the attic, under a floorboard, lies a lockbox. Inside is my collection: Amulets of Yendor and other ancient artifacts, wrested at great careful pains from deep in the most brutally difficult dungeons that exist: those of the modern-yet-traditional roguelikes Brogue and The Ground Gives Way.
So I let myself think I know a thing or two about roguelikes. And when the formula is pulled into continuous-time/continuous-space action games, not all of the elements I like can make the leap. But Nuclear Arms 7 captured a meaningful taste of one of my favorite elements: Build Variety.
And boy did this game need it.
Because I had to play this game an unreasonable number of times.
See, right next to those Amulets is my collection of Meltdowns. And I damn sure wasn't going to miss out on adding one more for LD44.
I definitely would have thrown in the towel if it weren't for the build variety: a 5x speed build feels so different from a triple-spread damage+, or double-rate cooldown/accuracy. Exploring those possibilities kept me going through the grind. I spent around 6 hours across three sessions beating this one.
I had to exploit the little edges: tediously shoot each box in the room before entering; draw the midboss into a pillar so he projectiles don't spawn, clear the spawn list of minor enemies in the boss fight by not shooting her while she's in her easier mode.
It took those plus a nice present and a risky lategame bullet-time to finally, after all that, get me through to that sweet, sweet MELTD--- WAIT WHAT DO YOU MEAN "WINNER"!>!???
Having played 6 hours, I have a few notes:
- Overall a super-tight action package that, with a few exceptions, made me feel like losing was my fault
- As usual, many small nice touches of design
- First store being before the first heal and not after it like all the others was a huge deal: early in my experience I needed the health, but this allowed me to still learn the upgrade system. Later it gave me a boost in motivation to get rolling with the new build, right at the post-death down moment
- Off-center gun was a nice touch that created a strong/weak side and made encounters sometimes feel different rather than symmetrical mirrors
- Ninjas. Oh boy. Important, but also responsible for the ultimate feelbad moments of the game. #1 is "my gun overheated and this ninja is leghumping me while I wait". #2 was the way that the ninja pushes other enemies forward at his speed, so, like, here comes that gunner PLUS a ninja at crazy speed one step out the door gameover. Important, but the only thing that in certain cases felt unfair.
- Overheat was a great mechanic, usually hate it but in this game was awesome. But full-cooldown lock-out felt like too severe a punishment, I think the ultraslow RoF of 99% is already enough.
- Oh gawd that two-triangles room after the midboss. That room was a huge hurdle for me.
- Gunners have really excellent design in terms of range, rate of fire, speed of walking, etc. Nice work, they were really good at being easy when you were in control and playing carefully, but spiking quickly in danger level if you were careless or caught off guard. Great routine enemy that created a variety of experiences.
- Big robots were low impact. They can punch through walls (so can Ninjas)
- Sound was overall strong, great voice work yet again (Jurass-kicked lol). SFX were communicating important things to me that I didn't notice until quite a lot of play: 30 mins before I noticed "room clear" hiss, 3 hours before I noticed "enemy killed" gentle puff. Was looking for both well before I found them.
- I know you didn't make the music but damn it was excellent!
- Story was pretty good although not going to displace my previous favs of yours
- Just loved the variety of upgrades, really made the game. Almost all were compelling. Risky presents were a nice touch. Exploding enemies felt a little underwhelming except in the triangle room.
You really delivered an excellent package again, this time with more complexity, congrats!
Now where's my Meltdown?
Congrats on cracking Top 100 Overall!
This is a tight little action game here! Some old-school brutal arcade fun.
The blood thing works great. It's on point for the theme, looks fabulous in the graphics, and does work as a design tradeoff where attacks and movement are a tradeoff against health, and you can buy it back if you can free up the space to hunker down for a bit.
The difficulty level was over my head. I watched your playthrough and you make it lose easy, but I got my ASS kicked.
I remember your game Mouse and Blade, which was similarly difficult. But that one I could take in little chunks, and advance to see what was next. In this one, you mercifully didn't send me all the way back to the start, but I felt a bit less like I was progressing to new things and so I didn't smash my face against the wall over and over for as long as I did with your earlier game.
What seriously wrecked me were the blue dudes. I just never found an effective counter... although I watched your playthrough after and you're clearly not getting hit by them much at all!
I think the biggest difference is you never miss a coin. I'd be in control, and recharging between each guy, and then I would lose control in one of two ways: either the coin would come and I'd wiff a jump at it and then spend to much time getting to it, letting dudes pile up which leaves me behind on my recharge time, or else I'd get like 3-4 blue guys in a row and lose it. The green guys were slow enough that there was more slack in the system for me.
I never got past the second level (not counting the tuturoial/title, which was very nicely done btw).
So high marks here, the concept and execution are on-point, the controls tight, the graphics and sound really strong. I just wasn't up to the skill level and despaired.
Haha, that was a zany journey! Both of my hands are aching slightly, and it was good to have breaks in between rounds.
This is super-charming, and I found a lot of little touches to enjoy, from the fish hammer to the way the flight music would shift and introduce new elements to mark the transition from one round's section to the next.
I like the way the art takes on a very different feel by having the couple of, umm, dirty specks on it, rather than being a straight color. That's a really effective small touch I might just have to experiment with stealing for my own programmer art.
This game was definitely weird, but it was a wild ride that I enjoyed, and it was just about the right length to feel substantial but not wear out its welcome.
Well done!
Fishhammer Gold!! Congrats!
Very cool game!
The coin-throwing is a nice core action that's pretty novel, and the way you have to retrieve it and have no offense for a while is a great feeling.
The variety of traps is a real highlight here, and gives each room its own feeling and strategy.
The physics might be a *little* too slide-y, but not in any way the degraded the experience. I had fun trying to get close enough to a zombie to combo-kill them with a triple-shot. It was risky to get that close but rewarding when I pulled it off.
If I could add one thing to this, it would be some satisfying feedback on a successful hit against a zombie.
One other thing - I initially thought the candles were a hazard I needed to avoid. Maybe force me to walk over some in the intro room so I learn they aren't?
Great entry!
I should have seen that coming, but I didn't! I did go back and play it the other way though, very clever.
I really liked the gritty lo-fi aesthetic, and I felt like the art, the music, and even the physics came together into a cohesive experience.
I don't think the controls here are trying to compete with super mario bros and that sort of thing. It feels more like the guy from Pitfall went to the underworld. In that regard, I felt like the preposterous horizontal air movement was fine, where in a more "normal" platformer game it would be a problem. The section where you have to run without jumping over that wide spike pit showed me you were self-aware about this, and then I was totally OK with it.
I agree with @repine that the font broke some of that cohesive thing, I don't think you needed anything fancy there, just a more old-school font. Maybe this one for example: https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Press+Start+2P
The plants were a cool mystery that left me wondering and experimenting, but not quite figuring it out (until the game pretty much told me directly at least).
Another element I found intriguing was the treatment of blind jumps. Usually these are a huge no-no in platformers, but here they were used in a more deliberate-feeling and interesting way. The game initially signaled the safety of blind jumps by the chains of lamps or the presence of coins. Later, it started to remove these little indicators that things were safe, and it left me feeling uneasy in a good way that fit with the overall vibe.
I don't know if I'm over-reading what you were up to there, but it doesn't really matter - I think I was pulled into the general vibe you were laying down here, and I dug it.
Nice work.
7.859 on the first and a bit over 22s on the second map was my best.
I loved the idea of this. In fact, the rar file wouldn't unzip on my computer and I even did some self-administered TECH SUPPORT just to play! (Tuned out 7zip was an old version)
Thank god for the R button. It wasn't mentioned by Nikachu, I mean Pikafu, so I went a few times without it and that hurt realbad. Things got much better after I found R: I may have hit "R"it to "RELOAD" a few times out of muscle memory and wrecked a few good runs, but insta-restart on demand was a HUGE quality of life feature that I'm glad you included.
If I could add one thing to the game it would be a sound effect when I kill an enemy. I found myself often taking a quick shot and wanting to turn away and move on, but since I'm required to kill all enemies getting a confirm sound would be a help.
I'm a sucker for rocket-jumping so I enjoyed this one a lot!
Very cool! After I got the hang of it I had a run that got 579 points, and said it lasted 19 minutes, although it didn't feel like that long. Maybe I just was having fun and lost sense of time?
My favorite part is the excellent graphics effects, and the sound and music also really add to the atmosphere. There is a really a cohesive polished look and feel that's great. But the feel of curving around a tunnel just barely not touching is also pretty great.
In the beginning I thought of myself more like a car drifting on a track, and that did not go well. I died pretty quickly when I was jetting forward. I later started to think more like a spaceship that wants to make occasional quick puffs of the jets to adjust momentum, and that's when I started doing a lot better.
I thought I could cheap the game out by reverse-puffing myself down to a crazy slow crawl, and that does sort of work but you have a nice feature in the slow drain of my health that prevents too much stalling, nice touch.
If I could change one thing it would be to make sure the player isn't already crashing into the wall right at the start of the level. The better I got at the game, the more this became my main way of losing health. Testing a bit more, I think the main issue is that the player is always facing and moving straight to the right, whereas the tunnel doesn't necessarily start that way. Just aligning the player with the tunnel would probably solve it, or always starting the tunnel with a short run of straight-right. I only need a safe moment to get my bearings.
Really interesting entry, nice work!
Haha, well done, definitely got a few laughs!
I like how tight and responsive the interactions are -- you never make me wait for anything and lock me out, even if I'm spamclicking through something, you just interrupt the sound when required. That was a nice touch that was really important to get right in this game, and you did.
It was a cool mix of clicker game and F2P parody.
I saved up to get some beautiful legendary eyes to match my awesome hair, and when I finally got there the game did a hilarious trolling on me: https://imgur.com/Sd7i6Lt
Nice entry!
I loved the idea of this, and also the unusual look of the graphics, which were pretty cool. The gentle sliding sound effect was also a nice touch.
But I had a hard time engaging with the gameplay.
I wanted so hard to love this that I'm gonna go nuts here and offer a variety of pointers. I don't do this to suggest the game is bad -- I only put in the effort on specific pointers when I feel like there's awesome potential, so I hope this is helpful and not hurtful OK?
Here goes:
If I could change one thing about this game, I would change the boundary so that it was like a bowl the turns you back into the main play area, instead of an instant you-lose out of nowhere. Flying out of the map is super frustrating and extremely common. I don't think I ran out the timer even once, actually.
The camera also needs some love. Right now it just points forward, but a lot of times I need to be looking down at the terrain. Here is an example of a moment where I feel the camera logic has failed me: https://imgur.com/FkK44Xv
I also struggled a bit to understand the controls, as sometimes I would get stuck out of speed at the bottom of an area. Was that the effect of water? Then other times I would make a sharp turn and go flying off the map. Does holding W speed me up, and what is the point of jumping? Because the terrain is influencing my movement (which I love about the game concept!) it means that it's harder for me to grasp the impact my inputs are having on the game. When I tried to experiment it was hard because of the risk of flying off the map. There was no safe or clear way to learn this game.
The R button, oh boy. Please make it instant restart. The way it spends five seconds to taunt me every single time is a huge downer.
Lastly, the coins seem to have a really small collision trigger, and I think I managed to pick up a total of two or three, and only by boarding by them like 5 times.
So in summary, cool unique look, great idea for what could be a super-fun trick-jamming flow-physics game that I would love, but too many splinters for me to really get into any flow state.
With the right tune-up this could be a killer entry, interested to see what you come up with next time.
Oh wow, cool idea! I really liked the music, especially that little bridge section with the flurry of notes just before it loops.
The illustrations are excellent. It shines the best on the title screen which is a serious eye-grabber. The detailed sprites don't do quite as well ingame, partly because the movement animation is accomplished by rotation, and rotation doesn't always play super-well with detailed pixel art.
I loved the idea of the tongue, and the very unusual interaction of picking things up and flinging them around. It was a cool novel experience! I see you mentioned it as being similar to the driving game where your bendy arms move the cars, but somehow it didn't come to mind as familiar - this experience felt fundamentally different. I think it was all about the flinging, whereas that one was about adjusting or placing.
I did have that initial struggle getting the hang of smashing the intruders, and even after some play I would still sometimes only get a stun when I expected a kill. But on the other hand, it was super satisfying to get a multi-kill by slamming one enemy into another!
If I could tweak something, it would probably be about treasure that lands at the edge of the door. It can end up in a situation where it gets insta-evacuated on pickup, or at least close enough to feel that way. Maybe a minimum window of time between pickup and escape? Or maybe that's just what I deserve for letting it get that far.
Because I did like the way that little lapses build up into harder-to-defend treasure, so my mistakes kind of snowball.
Theme-wise the classic "mimic" was a nice idea, and you gave it a lot of character! The wet doey eyes when it's not attacking is a hilarious little touch to the art.
This is a really unique experience - nice work!
Wow, a very interesting action game with a unique movement system and a cool aesthetic, nice work.
My top score was 255. 85 was my best after a few runs, before figuring out I actually should use the transform feature.
It's a good game but here are a few thoughts anyway:
The tutorial was very nicely done, and important to include.
But I feel it's a lot of buttons to throw at the user. What if you simply deleted the left, right, and crawl features? I never used them after I got the hang of the game, they seem redundant with the "long jump" move.
Then you would have three movement buttons: high jump, long jump, tongue. That's a 50% reduction in movement input complexity but not much loss in player expressiveness.
The design problem to solve then is that they player can't turn around and face left. But since this is a "move right quick because the timer is counting down" game, maybe you can turn that problem into a positive.
You have chosen to go with the "committed jump" - when I press the button, I jump, and it is always exactly the same arc, and once launched I cannot do anything to alter the path.
This is the unusual choice, but there are excellent games that operate this way. My reference for thinking about this is original Castlevania on NES. That game has committed jumps, and also a significant wind-up on the whip attack, which works together to create a tough-as-nails action game that requires always PLANNING one "chunk" ahead.
I think Aging Toads runs into some tricky issues with this commit style of action, though. My problems were mostly around the high jump.
The high jump has a very very long hang time. It feels like it's close to 1.5s. That's a frustratingly long time to be locked out of my controls. I hate to push this button because it feels bad and breaks flow.
There is a second problem, which is about the shape of the jump. The jump is very vertical, but so are a number of the hazards.
Consider this example: https://imgur.com/q0yQ1G0
What are my options? I must press high-jump to proceed. But I cannot press high-jump because I will leap into that slowly-rising quintuple-damage enemy. So I must wait. But I cannot wait, because my life is ticking down. Even if I do wait, the window of safety between when that enemy has left, and the next one comes out, seems to be shorter than the hang time of my jump. So if I'm careful, I am punished: I wait and lose life, then jump and feel helpless for 1.5s, watch as the next bug comes out, have no way to avoid it, and I hit it. Better to just jump now and take my lumps.
The result of this is that I button mash. I play with this algorithm: "spam long-jump and tongue until I cannot move forward. Then hit high-jump once." If I hit enemies, well, so be it, because there was no way to avoid them anyway and stopping to wait just loses even more life.
The blood-drop projectiles can also align poorly with my high-jump.
I am not a big fan of double-jumping, but I would experiment with the possibility of pressing long-jump in the middle of high-jump, with the effect of instantly stopping the vertical movement of the high-jump and going straight into the forward-dash movement of the long-jump. This would mean I can jump up then dash forward to time gaps in the hazards, and I would never feel locked out of the action.
You have a really cool action core here but I think you need just a couple of key tweaks to keep me in the flow state.
The art really works well, with the layers and semi-abstraction, plus the "red=danger", there's lot of nice touches. The tongue feels great to use, and the sound effects and music work really well together.
I went on a ramble with the critique side, but that's because this is a good game with hot potential, not at all trying to smash it. Hope it's helpful.
Thanks for the fun plays, nice entry!
MONO ACHIEVED!
I got to a 150-0 split vs the other god.
He didn't even know what to do with his faith. I won by being proactive... I didn't find the villagers to have a very good handle on what needed doing, so my loop that I won with was like this:
Be doing something all the time Go into rain mode, water all the things, just hold leftclick down and pass over all, filling meters Go into sun mode and do the same Go into baby mode and baby up the town (this was the key piece I missed for a few days) Repeat Totally ignore villager dialogs
That was my winning strat, and got me all the way to Monotheizmation Achieved!
Interesting take on the theme, with the double usage (my faith/life is my own currency, and the villagers are paying for my services with blood sacrifice). I enjoyed exploring the interlocking systems a while, and the graphics and UI were nice, with lively interactions so I could see what was going on.
The system was a little bit too simple in the end, because I could just execute a set script to win, and if you flesh it out I think it needs a bit more in terms of variety of situations.
Nice entry!
Very cool take on the theme! I got 5800 as my top score, but I wasn't sure how to handle a budding hyperinflation.
Graphics and gentle music created a nice atmosphere, and the overall package was unique and interesting.
If I could tweak one thing, I would make it not use ESC to restart. I was playing the web version in fullscreen mode, and ESC gets intercepted by the browser, so restarting got weird.
Nice job!
I got this far: https://imgur.com/DivXUU3
Not sure if that's anywhere near the end!
This was a cool concept. Choosing what to buy at the start was an interesting idea to add, and you had a nice wide variety of choices.
There was a little dilemma in the design, because what's interesting is the choices, but you make them and then play a really long time, and then when you finally run out of hearts it's hard to restart. So the game doesn't really emphasize its most interesting part as much as it could. Maybe there is some way to have several moments where you have a choice like that to make, instead of all at the start.
I also really liked the bouncing projectile, that was another fun element I don't see in a lot of games! It makes for some fun moments.
As others have pointed out, core control has a few splinters like sticking to walls which interrupt me from getting into flow state.
Overall a nice entry - cool variety of upgrades, cool variety of enemies and obstacles, cool basic controls but just a bit rough around the edges.
Fantastic animations, super-lively control feel, and great job with the sound and music.
The gameplay was a bit too thin, and there were a few too many blind-jump situations or maybe just a mismatch between the camera view size and the jump size & move intertia. But those things can be tweaked (as I saw in the post-jam version) but dang that outter presentation layer you have is just excellent.
Nice work!
Wow, nice! The music is great, I loved the bendy synth stuff, reminded me of some old Road Rash music I loved on Genesis.
The art was cute, and the story was fun. Length was just right, and I think I understood what the ending hinted at.
A nice all-around package, well done!
Thank goodness for friendly cactii, huh? So supportive!
Very nice presentation. I know you generated the colors and music, but the use of the generator tool is still to your credit, because the result felt harmonious. The only feedback I have here is that maybe fire could be red, I did not understand it was fire until the end when the text told me so.
I struggled a little bit with the first moments of the experience. There was a lot of instruction on the screen for me to memorize before playing.
Once I understood, I swiftly got wrecked. It's quite a tough game.
The balance felt like this: tower prices go up while tree count goes down, so I cannot build much; meanwhile enemy count increases. The good part about this is that it drives the game away from stasis and moves toward conclusion.
But it was difficult to feel agency. Since enemies fly about and don't follow paths, the usual strategic importance of where to place towers was not something I felt.
The most interesting part of the strategy was the ability to sacrifice the long-term income for a short-term resource boost by chopping down your own trees. I played a game where I chopped down a lot of my own trees right at the start to build many towers, and I had a firm control through the early game, maybe up to 60-70 seconds, where almost nothing was on fire.
But eventually my towers got so expensive and the enemy so numerous that I was still overrun and I got to maybe 130 seconds before losing.
So great presentation, and enough strategic elements at play that I felt intrigued to tinker and try a few different things, which is a great start. With a bit more time to adjust the balance you might have found a really nice sweet spot!
Escaped with 922 - figured if I pressed on, it was a big risk!
I love the mix of different styles, with some risk-taking dialog choices mashed up with the real-time fighting sword/shield. Combat was tense - the choice to not have enemies really telegraph the attack perfectly created a guessing game that was nerve-wracking in an interesting way, but reduced the skill factor.
The music is a solid throwback feel, and the art style is really great!
Well done.
Wow, really strong on the graphics and music! They together nicely with the demon/hell theme, and really sell the overall vision.
I managed to win, and it was really close - I think I won with my last card standing! Cool, simple game. I didn't even do the tutorial until after I played, and I managed to figure it out as I went along, although the numbers on the right confused me a bit and I had to watch them carefully to get it. The tutorial is nice and to the point - I should have used it right away.
Solid scope for an LD compo. If expanded I'd want to see a few more unique elements on the card to give me a bit more to think about as I'm facing various scenarios.
Nice entry!
Hey, I'm sorry, I tried to play your game but I ran into some technical difficulties.
I play on a computer connected to a TV that only supports certain resolutions, and your game's UI elements seem to require a specific resolution or they go off screen and can't be activated.
Here's a screenshot of what it was like in combat mode for me: https://imgur.com/OJ4wDkp
I was trying to play with blind keystrokes but somehow that activated the guard conversation even during combat, and then I couldn't see the enemies I was fighting (more sinners off screen). I tried playing in windowed mode too but even more important UI was off the screen there (the yes/no to "do you want to hire me" which left me locked out of the game completely).
Sorry, I know you need reviews to get to your 20, but since I played so little of the game (just the initial town) I felt like I couldn't rate you.
If there's something different I need to do to get it to run with the controls on-screen, leave a reply mentioning my username, and if I have time before the deadline I'll give it a shot.
I commented here but did not rate since I didn't really get to play. But the graphics look really nice and the theme seems interesting, so I wish I could.
Definitely hit M for some jams! Fun project, of course it could use a bit more feedback in the combat system, but with the clear sound effect and the nice visible health bars I was able to figure out what was what. I got beat to death in the corner by those yellow guys on my first visit, but next time I figured out I have a super-power of punching through walls and I showed them who's the boss!!!
Nice graphics and a groovin' bassline! The span of possibilities and short game time had me try five or six lives. Could be cool if your early choices limit what options you might have later.
Once I got married twice, and no apparent divorce in between...
One thing I wasn't in love with was the popup after each choice that had to be clicked away, I feel like maybe that could be just part of the UI backdrop that I can look at if I want, but am not forced. Then I can fly through a little quicker to test out different lives.
I never broke a million - my top value was a bit over 800k.
Cool little entry!
Pretty simple core game, but decorated with a lot of charm and humor.
I had some issues with the UI anchoring, and the reaper's dialog during the gameplay was offscreen: https://imgur.com/a/UuRyFmt I played on a computer hooked up to a TV, so it has an odd resolution.
If you need a really simple core, I think the "goalie" thing is a nice way to go. I experimented with a few different approaches about where to stand, etc, and there was enough there to engage my brain while the flavor played out.
Nice work!
Very charming art, story, and music!
The way each character had their own thing was cool.
I found it was a little tedious to walk around lost. There weren't a ton of landmarks, and sometimes whole screens of nothing where I couldn't even see I was moving. Maybe I experienced an extreme amount of this because I just couldn't find the last temple thing to get the leaf. I walked the edges all the way around twice, and then exploited a glitch to get outside the map completely and tried to find a second glitch to get into the final area after I gave up finding the third temple. Finally I found another way back into the game area, and I was just about to give up, but I thought NO, I'll try one more wander, but this time diagonal, and I happened to stumble into it!
That meant I was able to complete the game! This is an indication of how charming the characters were, because I was invested enough to wander quite a lot to find out what happened.
I was a bit sad that whatever happened at the end, I didn't really get to see it, I was clickspamming my fatkid magic wand at the boss and then he died but I click a few more times. So if there was any story or whatever, I didn't get to see it.
I found a few issues while playing:
- When your character uses his soul to open a door, he remains the active character even though control passes to another party member the camera does not follow you, here is an example of the party moving into the temple but the camera remaining behind: https://imgur.com/a/Ru43uK6 I almost gave up on the game here until I figured out you need to click to change active member to resolve this
- You can escape out of the game area through these cracks in the edges: https://imgur.com/a/KYg34xX
- You can strand party members who fall behind and go into a corner: https://imgur.com/a/GrLYyPG
Arg I didn't mean to focus on the downsides. This was charming, interesting, and a REALLY impressive amount of scope for a compo entry! You had a lot of characters, abilities, and enemies! You created a large world that I was invested in seeing through to the end.
Nice work!
Real basic but not bad! I like that you realized the time was running out and you pulled it together into something that you can ship, because this is a complete experience with an end, and not something half-finished. I think that's a jam skill of its own!
This is a really interesting game that evoked mixed feelings. I'm going to assume the artistic vision was to deliberately somewhat antagonize the player -- I know it's not an accident because the game is pretty up-front about it, with the character calling it a "trudge" and the stranger taunting me about my movement speed.
It was really well done, because I thought the game was over at the first chunk and the title referred to something like "I just traded my life and I only had about ten years of it left" and I would have said that it was a nicely-done moody mysterious piece, and complimented you on the very nice graphics and sound, and said that the game length was just about right for the content.
But then the game stretched on, and DELIBERATELY overstayed its welcome. It straight up rubbed my face in it! Very interesting. I had a variety of reactions popping up... I certainly got impatient, and was already pushing the shift key to check for a sprint feature even before I got to the part where I was slowed down and had to fetchquest 100 in a maze. The music really saved me here, I don't think I could have gone on without it. I even got straight-up slightly-angry and shouted two rooms away to my definitely-not-interested wife "WIFE THIS GAME IS OVERSTAYING ITS WELCOME AND TAUNTING ME ABOUT IT!"
But I was also strangely stuck. I couldn't bring myself to just quit, as the story's attitude had been on point and I wanted to see what came next.
By the end of the game when it was absolute torture to move, and horrifying to think about mis-remembering which way to go, I was walking through the "park" using diagonal inputs just to make the guy move faster on the screen even though he didn't get to the destination any quicker, and I was like "damn this game did something weird to me."
I think it was all very deliberate, and you got me there like the "boiled frog," one tiny increment of discomfort at a time, when if I'd known where we'd end up I'd have opted out at the start.
So very well done - this is a unique entry, I've played a ton of LD games in my time and there's lots of different crazy approaches people take, but is was a memorable one.
Wonderful, evocative graphics. I like the way the tarot-size cards, the candles burning, and the voodoo doll all evoke the same kind of feeling of mystery.
If I could change one thing it would be the pace. The text rolls out a bit slowly, and the card flips are a little slow as well. I drew the peasant revolt three times in a row, and by the third time waiting for the paragraph to unfold, I was kind of spam-clicking.
I did enjoy the descriptive text, so I didn't generally want to speed through it, just upon repetition.
I think with a little sound and a larger variety of events this could have a really nice atmopshere you could get lost in for a while.
Nice work!
Pretty fun! It has nice graphics that give a feeling of being out in the woods, and the dark thick outlines on the enemies help because otherwise you would have a problem of green zombies on green trees, but with your art style this was not a problem.
I did feel like there weren't that many decisions to make during the combat. I just held the fire button down forever. The movement speed difference between different weapons was a very interesting idea, but for a couple of reasons it didn't engage me. First, I didn't even realize I could switch weapons for like 3 waves. Second, it was pretty easy to just use the fast-move weapon and kite huge groups of them while shooting forever and not thinking about tactics. So why do anything else?
Eventually I decided to make things spicy by trading myself down to 1% health, and then as soon as I used a slow weapon it got GAME OVER real quick.
I think you have a nice core of the right features here, with movement, aiming, weapon switching, an upgrade system, several sorts of enemies, a menu interaction, waves. It's a lot of features to accomplish in a compo!
So overall there was a lot, and all it felt pretty good. But there was something a little bit lacking in the core game interaction of move/shoot that left me on autopilot.
Especially if this is your first entry, really nicely done! Look forward to seeing what else you come up with.
Very cool idea! Dash attack is always a fun mechanic, nice to see a whole combat system based around it!
I had a blast, played through a few times, got myself up to Champion. I liked that I felt like I could have done better, and every time I got hit it was my own fault.
If I were fiddling with this, I might test out a couple of small tweaks to see how they played: the cooldown on my dash is super-important info and can change, so I'd like a really clear indicator; I find the enemies a bit tanky, leading to a situation where I have to grind them down with a repeated loop of actions, especially the shooty guy, I wonder how it would play if they just had less HP; I got hit most often by the bigger green melee enemy, I felt like his attack range was a little bigger than the graphics indicate and I thought I was out of range but got hit.
This is a cool entry, I've played arena-fighter games before, but the dash thing creates a cool combat system that uses the space in an interesting way.
The art, sound, and music were nice, and the crowd comments were a really nice touch.
Well done!
Wow that's a lot of a lot! I'm glad I pushed through, I almost thought stage 1 was going to be all of it all and didn't press on with my business. Good fortune that I did.
Well done variety show!
Nice art style, I did manage to win on my first attempt, but my luck turned and after a replay I lost on the very first pull of the level to the triple-cross!
This was cool! There's a lot of little things going on here.
(UPDATE: The problem I am about to describe is caused by playing on the web in fullscreen, I leave my confused description for completeness but will explain what really happened after.)
I felt a little betrayed by how I died though. I'll walk through my experience:
I figured out the first challenge of dodging the turrets, and was on board. I went to the bottom and got the spring, and while I was down there I was careful not to fall off the bottom of the map since I figured that must kill me.
Then I went back up to the top and learned I could not open the red door. I didn't see any key, so I went back to the bottom but there was no key there either. The only thing left to try was to jump off the bottom of the map, so I did it and was surprised that I could walk around down there, so I went under the wall and found the key.
The the duck area, same thing: had to go off the bottom of the map, but this time I just didn't even see myself when I got the item (read it was a duck in the description), but then I could duck.
So two challenges taught me I had to go off the bottom. Then the third time I went off the bottom when I couldn't find the next item, and poof I instadied. Not having made a clear mistake I called it quits there, even though the game is otherwise fair, and very charming/fun.
UPDATE: I loaded it up again to verify this, and I learned that the problem is that when I go into fullscreen, I don't see the whole screen. There is part of the map on the bottom that I just can't see, but need to go into.
I solved this by zooming my browser out and not playing in fullscreen. FIXED!
I played another ten minutes and killed the guardian. But it's akward to shoot. I either have to right click, or else hit Alt key. But both of these keys confuse the browser in not-fullscreen mode, and move my selection out of the game, meaning that my inputs don't go to the game anymore. So to shoot, I have to hit alt/rightclick, THEN left click to return my focus to the game.
This got awkward and I fell back down after killing the sentry and trying to dodge a turret shot, and then I got hit by a sentry in midair where I couldn't duck. So I figured that was it.
This was pretty charming and I enjoyed the distinct challenges. The platforming was a good tough-but-fair, and I never felt ripped off by the controls except for the gun.
So I know you were not super-happy with your controls, but I found them mostly fine! If there were checkpoints I definitely would have finished, but after getting so close to the end, and dying twice to weird technical issues, I didn't have the heart for a third.
But overall a nice entry, dug the music, liked the sound effects, graphics solid and the controls solid too even if not perfect. A very nice all-around compo entry, congrats.
I loved the turn-based physics and the way I was left to explore the rules on my own. The art is super-charming and very effective, and the sound effects were also pretty nice.
Level 2 was a miss for me because I had to stab randomly out in each direction, sometimes off onto whole blank screens. I would have preferred some indication of where the goal was. After playing, I see from another comment that you can zoom out to see it, but the very nice art style really doesn't look nearly as good zoomed out that far. The large chunky art was a strength, and that one level felt at odds with it.
Level 1 was great though - a nice intro to the mechanics though, with the way it sets you up for that subtle stumble that's easily recovered from, making you realize "on I can't just go up, there is actually gravity here."
And I enjoyed the various little iterations for all the other levels.
Overall a nice puzzler with some cool rules and a nice presentation - well done!
Wow 3 games is 16 hours is really something, congrats. I know they're really smallscope, but I enjoyed the way that you packaged the three of them together in a string. You kept me feeling like I just barely understood, and then as soon as I was acclimating I was onto something else. So it left the whole thing with a bit of an air of mystery. Yet it avoided making me feel panic or stress about the confusion, it was still somehow all a bit chill, perhaps because the punishments for failure were swift but minor.
I think I agree with the comment above that the first game drew my eye up toward the indicator and thus away from the nice things to look at, so I opted out of that part of the experience about halfway through by just rolling around the keys and watching the result. No big deal! I also felt like seek shelter was unfair, but it was pretty upfront about that, and diagonal keys were definitely being inputted by the human over here, but the game wasn't about that.
I think ripping out three small games like this is pretty cool way to spend an LD. Nice work with each, but even more so with the overall presentation of the total package.
I was really enjoying this, and I loved the rough and crazy look and feel to the movement. It obviously takes more effort to make it crazy like that, than plain. I enjoyed the camera shifts, the confusing nonsense of trying to figure out how to RPS properly, and then in training camp (why is that catchy song reminding me so much of a tune from tyson's punch out?) I sorted out how to assign cows to gather, then craft gear, then put the cows on relax, and then deploy them into gear.
But once I had outfitted my entire cow platoon... what was left? How to do proceed to the Great War? I went out exploring and RPSed a few more conscripts, but after that I called it quits.
Overall this is super-charming, it has a unique zany voice, and the first twenty minutes or so really pulled me in.
As far as voting for LD, obviously the time constraint is super important for people who take it competitively, so I'll just drop a star from each score as a compromise.
Nice and very unique entry here.
Pretty cool vibe, I really liked the intro which lets you know something is up.
I also enjoyed how you mostly have to figure the rules out yourself, although this threw me a few times. I was frustrated when I was demonstrating to myself that the game is not deterministic because matching the same thing twice didn't produce the same outcome... sometimes it would work, other times not. Other times it would even DELETE something! Exploring this further, I eventually realized I was up against two rules I wasn't aware of: There is a max of 4 of an item, and there is a period of time of holding after which your command switches from "try to match this" to "delete this."
I think I was trying to dig into the mechanics of matchmaking because I was stuck pretty hard at this spot, and wasn't sure if my attempted matches were failing because they weren't matches or because I didn't understand how to even attempt a match:
stuck.png
So I failed real hard to click for quite a while. After I experimented enough to be certain how matching operated, I eventually broke through that spot to unlock progress, and had a bit of fun tinkering. I think I wasn't quite on the wavelength of the word usage either, so I was pretty poor at predicting how things would match, and was glad the cheat feature existed to tell me what matches, simply so I cold progress.
I guess this kind of puzzle isn't really my thing, then? Doesn't matter - the aesthetics are on point, the air of mystery is nice, and I think you achieved what you were after. Nice work!
I like the ambitious goal of anchoring a sort of familiar purely-abstract game form into something emotional and human. I like the writing and the generosity of spirit that kind of shone through behind it. But the screen was really tall and didn't really fit right on my monitor, and the stats zone below the play area wasn't that easy to see, and this kind of broke the connection between the concepts, and I was terrible at aiming the balls, so as a result I think for me it was a sort of a miss... but that doesn't make this a bad entry, I appreciated the attempt even if it didn't exactly click together for me personally. Keep going for this kind of stuff, because when it works it can be really powerful!!
Very good job at pulling into the environment and straddling the line between text game and graphical game. I stumbled on a few of the puzzles, especially the one that was two words. I resorted to googling one that I shouldn't have had to, because I felt I had already typed it... but I guess I must have had a typo or something.
The way it unfolds with more interaction than initially expected is a really nice property, and I think you've done a nice job of picking an aesthetic you can execute on, and delivering it nicely.
Well done! The ain't no nuclear mutant punch-out, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.
I jumped in without reading the page first, so I didn't know you could shoot for quite a while. I think I almost like the game more without shooting, because once you can shoot the game can sort of lose strategy in favor of keyspamming.
Playing a while without shooting, I have a little feedback.
First on the early game:
If I could change one thing about this game, it is how the restart works. I have to take my hand off the arrow keys, move it over to the mouse, and then in the second it takes me to reorient my hand back on the arrow keys it can already be too late and I'm dead. This got me steamed, it happened over and over. I would change the restart to a keypress since the whole game is on the keyboard except restart, and then I would also make it MUCH FASTER, basically instantaneous.
The early game is also hard - at least when you don't shoot! You need to shield your core, but to do that you need to move in the direction that's most dangerous! This is actually really interesting, but difficult, and so it was GAME OVER, GAME OVER, GAME OVER.
Last thing about the early game, I believe the character has a bit too much inertia when small, and it was a little finnicky to line up with a block enough to snap it. It's like, HERE COMES THE ENEMY but I'm frantically trying to line up, and I overshoot, and it's game over.
Second, on the late game:
Here the game really changes, because I can suffer hits for a while. I think with shooting, the strategy is just to keyspam. But without that, you kind of have these interesting choices about what parts of yourself to use as a shield, and what to pick up. The problem is that I don't know which letters are important. I can't run the process of elimination in my head to see what letters in the field I don't yet have, or what letters in my body I have only one of, vs expendable duplicates.
If I could change a second thing about this game, I would add some graphical indication of that. So in the field, letters I don't have yet would appear different (maybe solid?) and for letters on my body, letters I have only one of (and thus shouldn't lose) would also appear different (maybe the same, solid?).
That would allow me to have moments like "oh look, there is the letter I need, it's guarded by a # but I can slam this unimportant part of my body in for the trade, and then snap up the new letter!"
Anyway, that was a lot of rambling, but maybe maybe something in there is interesting.
Overall I think there's some cool stuff going on in this game, but maybe you haven't quite found the right way to capitalize on your raw material. Still, a nice entry that I had some fun tinkering around with, nice job!
Sprites were on point - slick space ship and creepy monstrous aliens straddling sci-fi and lovercraftian. The eerie background music brings us a bit deeper into that mood, and the sound effects are effective without getting in the way. Controls tight, and the trickiness of grabbing the pickups that fall quickly forces us to take risks, darting through a rain of danger to snatch victory. Only complaint is that it's a bit slow to get rolling which makes for a hesitation to start "one more game".
Best game made in 76 minutes! Well done, haha. Something about it is strangely compelling.
The art for the intro scene really caught my imagination, great job. Overall this is a cool entry, I liked the twist on a classic shoot-em-up, and I had some fun figuring out the right way to snap new pieces on. I usually went for a straight left-to-right line since it seemed to let me kill guys in quick tight bursts.
I was also glad I could just hold down space bar instead of hammering it! I just held it down the entire game I guess.
If I could tweak one thing, it would be to have a faster restart time that didn't make me switch my hand over to the mouse. I think I would have played the game longer except that the beginning is pretty slow... so when I died like the 4th time, I felt like, well, now there's a long restart, and then a long build-up time, and I called it quits.
But nice job - a fun entry with some cool things to think about, and some eye-catching art!
I don't mind a game that subverts the usual expectations, and this game of wandering randomly through a blank screen at a skincrawlingly drudgerous pace might connect with me if it found me in the right mood. The atmosphere is there - the white, with the fading footsteps, and the little washout around the edges that makes far objects seem dim, combined with the wind and the blowing scarf. It's all very nicely done, and it unfolded well... in the start I am guided but develop a feeling like "wow I'd better not get lost in this game, if I wandered I might not find my way back!" And then the game MAKES me do it, which is cool.
So I got to the third fire and spent some time looking for the third trinket, but after three or four failed forays into the unknown, without luck, I simply gave up.
It's a really difficult and delicate balance you are striking here, and I think you did a pretty good job.
Dang, sorry, I downloaded and tried to play, but couldn't get past this error:
cooked-content.png
Because I was unable to play, I won't rate.
:~(
I was all in on this and eager to see where it went.
But my computer does not have a microphone, and the game is stuck at the sound recording part and I cannot proceed.
Bummer, because this is a wildly different experience than many other entries and with this content I'm putting in, I am wondering whether there's some comic payoff at the end where it all gets thrown back in my face or something.
@adhesion chrome on windows. Experience was I would click the record button and the button's state would change, then I'd click done. But after that, the clippy guy wouldn't proceed. I tried this 20 times or so. Then I tried playing something audio through another tab (Youtube vid) in case that somehow got picked up, but no dice.
I really like this, it's a great combination of luck mixed with the consequences of your own action, except those consequences are kind of rippling forward in a cool way, too.
I won my first game, but it was really pretty lucky. I was initially confused, and I think there were two key parts that I didn't get immediately. First, I didn't get that the slots list on the right was a map that I could use to figure out how far and which way a certain thing was. I just thought I had a 1-tile vision and sort of blundered around. Second, I didn't understand that my actions were impacting the tileset. For example in my first game I spent my early days trying to build rat traps even though I had no rats. I didn't realize the rats were tiles, and could be seen on the map.
After a bit it suddenly dawned on me how it worked and I was like "oh cool this is gonna be fun!" I assumed my first game would be a loss, but then I got a lucky spin on day 14 that I didn't really deserve:
slots1.png
So of course I was like well next time I'm going WRECK this game!
But the sword of variance cuts both ways. I felt smart by staying on top of vegetation, but the my mid-game bogged down, I was late getting the others on the team, and suddenly time was up:
slots2.png
That pic shows something that is maybe a little splinter in the experience: It's a bit of a drag to count out the possible future moves, cross-indexing between the goal to view the list, the faces to confirm the order, and then the map to see the spaces away. I'm like "ok this guy can go here, that's 3, then this one goes 2 and that one... okay not gonna work." A second feelsbad is the "nuttin you can do" moment. Like, you have 2-3 moves left but nothing can be accomplished.
Those are probably unavoidable and they weren't a big deal, but figured I'd mention them. In that last screenshot you can see I threw up my hands and just went for it because there was only one useful thing to do.
A couple of times I found myself wishing for a "bonus move" consumable, maybe I could make a certain combo to save a coconut for later and then drink it for a 1 move energy bonus or something.
So I played a little bit more, and here is my best run...
I got a nice early start and kept my slots wheel clean:
slots3-1.png
After that I invested in a beach party, caught a second one by luck, and that let me force a third!
Here I am walking off on Day 10, leaving the island nice and neat:
slots3-2.png
Overall this is really solid! I think it could use some cool sounds to take the interaction with the machine to the next level, but it's definitely the kind of thing that makes me want to take it for one more spin. The gameplay flows really nicely from the theme, and it's such an unusual use of the slots idea, making it really novel.
Great job on your solo outing!
A little rough around the edges of the "buy" screen / gameplay transition, but who cares when the feeling of smacking the zombie is on point! The music keeps it jamming, and while I was initially confused by the double-hit guys once I figured out the groove it started taking on that almost rhythm-game like execution-timing-exactness and I started really enjoying it. It was almost a little too short.. but better to leave too early than to drag on too long. Nice work!
Pretty cool stuff, a nice grooving tune, and the art and gameplay work well together with a slight-goofy slightly-madmax mashup that I liked.
The first few races were real tough for me. Race one I was figuring out the keys and because the car points in a random direction, even though I guessed the controls right I went backwards. The next 3-4 races I was still confounded by the random start direction, and as soon as I fell behind in those first few seconds that was it, I never got near another racer again unless I drove backwards for laughs and some interaction. I also struggled with the walls, because the collider doesn't really align super-well with the sprite in some places.
But, after some races I started getting the hang of the controls, and also got a few upgrades. I learned how critical those first few seconds are and was prepared to be facing the wrong way. I got semi-okay at cornering, releasing gas as I approached the turn, and being extra careful about not hugging the walls.... and I was able to finish in 4th in my best race! A big improvement from "always always last" that were the first maybe half dozen races.
Cool little rally-rumbler with some panache - nice work!
Very cool idea here, and a nice art style and cool sound/music. But it was a little too hard for me, with the combination of how fast the hamster comes out at the start, the very few bricks/etc I have, but most of all how the whole thing resets after I lose a few too many. The best fun of this game is the crazy experiments I can do, but I felt like it was too focused on making me find a proper solution and not about letting me enjoy the experience by doing crazy stuff. If it was a little less punishing (maybe infinite hamster deaths allowed?) I feel like I could have started out by having silly fun and worked my way toward a solution.
But a very cool core idea here, with a nice presentation.
I love the painted background, especially that angry grey tornadofingerpaint looking thing on level 5. The concept here is cool, and the character is a bit stiff (stiff as a board?) but it doesn't get in the way of enjoying the environment and the nice background music. Nice work!
Exactly what it claims to be! It certainly created some nice moments of "OH NO TROUBLE" followed by a quick dodge between huge chunks of enemies. It was really nice the way the terrain made the enemies chunk up rather than glomming into one enormous mass to kite. The guns weren't too varied, but that was okay for such a simple direct experience. Another thing I think you did well was deciding to not block the player's movement on hit, I tested and you can just walk over an entire mass of guys. This seems like a good choice, because otherwise the player could get trapped and have a sort of instant gameover no matter how high their health was at that point.
If I could tweak one thing it would be to add a little pointer to the next gun or something to direct the flow of the action a little more. Also, the resolution of the game was a bit awkward for my machine, and the bottom of the screen was off my monitor a little.
Overall, sure, it's generic but it was well put together and fun for a few. Nice work.
Cool game! I like how determined the miner looks when he is punching rocks and blood is coming from his hand! That guy is hard core.
I think my experience was a bit degraded by a weird technical issue - I could not see any of the text in the game. Here is a screenshot of what it was like on my machine:
cave-notext.png
I played through this issue the best I could. When I got time over and went to the buy screen I would just hit 112233123123. I knew 2 was time from the screenshot in the game description, and 3 was bombs. I feel like 1 was "rock-breaking speed"?
Anyway I got past the coal and got a pretty good sense of how it plays out, pretty cool! I seemed to stall out there, so maybe the items I was trying to buy were sold out or something? Whatever I had to do next I couldn't quite figure out and I seemed to keep ending on the same spot. Then I must have fallen behind the economics because the game went to the blank empty screen I see for game over.
Issue must be on my end, so I won't rate it according to the text problem! Just wanted to mention it happened.
Cool entry.
I really like the mix of the continuous space for movement with the discrete cell-based attacks. It's a really interesting and novel design that I haven't seen much of, and the blend of brawling and interacting with terrain was cool. The system probably has a lot of potential for additional builds -- the first time I got range I was like "WOW this really alters the feel of the game, I wonder else could be done?"
The potions thing was interesting, it was good the way it kept me moving around and forced me to take some risks.
If there was one area that didn't shine that much it was the enemies. They were a little bland, and made a lot of different situations feel kind of samey, and I found myself wishing to be a bit more scared of them or have some variety.
Beyond the interesting design, the aesthetics are on point, too. The song is grooving and the sound effects are great, and then there is nice art, and best of all the movement feels great and all of the interactions have a nice punchy juice without going overboard.
All around very well done.
I won!
Here was my experience:
I was in from the start. So I got up from the couch, went to the bedroom, in the closet there is a bag of change, and I felt around inside for a quarter. 1967! A classic. I put it on the PC, even before the threats. But the threats were still good, an indication of where we were going in our journey together, this game and me.
Then I started th-SMASH. I started the r-SMASH. Wh-SMASH. SMMMMMAAAAAASMASMASH!
There was a period of adjustment.
Even after learning my lesson, I had to learn it again. And again.
I just had a really hard time not pressing "Right Arrow Key" in the followingly pictured scenario:
DontTurnRight.png
So I only got second place finish... THAT TIME.
After my not-turning skills were a little bit better honed, (SMASH!!) I wrecked some dudes stole their shit and finished first, then underwent some of the world's best medical care.
I mean, this game works because it owns it. It walks what it talks, and it talks what it walks.
Charming and enjoyable, well done.
Life-Off Achieved!
Nice entry - a very chill peaceful mood encouraged by the background and silhouette art style which was very effective. I liked that it didn't explain too much, just enough for me to bootstrap and explore the systems myself. Liftoff was at about the right time, when I had explored what the game had to offer but it had not overstayed its welcome and dragged on.
Nice work!
Very cool mechanic and the look, feel and sound all come together for a nice mood. Not a ton to do, but because the environment was nice I explored the dark for a little extra time.
Beautiful art, and the music works well with it to create the mood. Gameplay of moving left/right didn't really capture me but I'm not sure it was important.
Top Score was 25260, I'm sure people will do a LOT better but that includes the learning phase where I died a lot experimenting around. I stabilized on a pattern of kiting a huge ball of the red guys around and picking up dots opportunistically:
redguys.png
Wasn't even using my slash weapon. (Actually I wasn't really sure how that worked, or when I'd get a slash vs wounldn't)
This mass kiting worked for a while, but then the game threw another challenge at me with those small fast guys with the green core. That upped the danger level and for a while I was managing, but then they got me and reset my combo.
Liked the jamming background tune. The swooshy movement trail was super-important, because with the blank background it was the only indication of movement when I was alone on the screen - it was nice and effective though, I really liked it.
Nice grim, gritty mood achieved by this one. Please don't put me in charge of villages, I am not the one to lead them into prosperity. That is the lesson I learned here today.
The art and the sound work well together. The non-english title makes it a bit alien to me, which works well with the icon-only gameplay that had no explanation. When you are in charge of the village, you need to learn on the job.
Or just fail. Like I did.
Very nice moody entry here, with a totally unusual mechanic that I enjoyed exploring.
I didn't mind the slight motion sickness of the unlocked camera. It gave me this floating space feeling that was totally in-line with the game. The music, the controls, the parallax background, everything was working together to create that feeling, and it did make me a bit woozy but it was pretty cool anyway.
What I really needed though was a space compass!
I got lost in space very early, before getting the laser, not realizing modules were inside the rocks. By a miracle of luck I re-found the "base" thing by using the parralax background to determine my absolute movement and taking a lucky guess at which way to go.
That left me petrified of straying from the edge for a while. Traversing the edge of the base, I found the laser, which is presumably also the place to drop off cargo goodies?
Soon after I found blowing up rocks yields cargo, and I think I got how the game works: go out into space, get cargo, chill, bring it back to base, etc.
But as soon as I lost contact with the base another time, that was it. I was lost. I rolled with it, and blew up rocks, had some fun attaching things, found a rocket launcher and some underpants, and was chillin.
Eventually I had some cargo, but no clue how to get it back home. Then I got hit by a rock that scattered my cargo everywhere and that was it for me.
Great atmosphere that's coming through each element of the game: feel, art, and sound, all set up with a nice intro, and working well with the lack of explicit failure state (woulda been a mistake imo to make the ship explode and restart for example). So overall a very nice entry, I just wish I could have dialed into it more by having an indication of the direction and distance back to the dropoff point... if that even was a dropoff point.
I think I would have enjoyed that "head out to space to gather stuff, and then return" gameplay loop, but I didn't quite get there.
Victory!
Wow, great job building a whole card game for the compo! It even has little mouse-over tween-pops, a groovy music tune, and lots of cards and features. Well done!
The strategy had a couple of little holes in it - for example sometimes I would get flooded with defense cards, or my opponent would, and the game felt like it would stall for a bit. And once I got the "everything" ability recurring every turn it completely broke the game because I just picked "nothing for enemy" every single turn and the enemy would never get to take a turn. I think the final fight the enemy played 1 card total and then I just had to click through all of my bandages and rests and blocks until I got enough damage cards to kill him.
But it's impressive to have a strategy game at ALL, and I had some fun moments of feeling clever, like using a split to clear their block before hitting with my sword, or holding back rest cards so I could double-sword.
Very nice all-around entry, congrats!
Top-notch work on the graphics, music, and sound. The whole thing had a great cohesive feel across the board. The controls were also tight, and damn those spacebrains shooting triangle spin patterns!!
I was definitely in WTF mode for a while at the start, with absolutely no idea what was going on. things were flying into my ship, some of it was good and some of it was bad and I couldn't shoot even though I was clicking the gun reticle that wasn't a gun reticle and my ship was growing and shrinking and stuff was all over the place and I didn't know what any of it was.
That slowly decreased, and after about 2 minutes I realized that I can mouse over scrap. Minute three I realized I could release the left click button I had been holding the entire time. By minute four I realized what clicking the mouse did, after running out of bullets forced me to figure it out.
This was kind of fun, but I have a taste for being thrown right into the deep end. Eventually I knew all of the game's rules and that was about when it started ramping up the difficulty.. perfect.
Just when I had kind of stabilized and was in control for a while, then there was the final boss fight, which I enjoyed, and the end. Perfect timing!
Very nice all around entry, maybe a bit overwhelming in terms of input and state to manage all thrown at me at once, but I didn't mind.
I won in 254 seconds. Pretty cool the way the game progresses. I thought I had set up an infinite farming opportunity here:
farming.png
But nope! The game was smart enough to eventually stop spawning green slimes, and started spawning tougher ones that weren't one hit, and thus would get knocked away and cause me to have to chase them. This broke me out of the farming, and made me run all around the map to find untapped areas where greens had spawned early but not been mopped up yet. I ran all around, saw the whole thing, and just about there I hit my 500, which was perfect timing.
Cool how the character progresses in look. Of course fancy animations and sound effects could make the game feel a lot more lively, but that's how goes in jams! I thought you did a good job of covering the basics by having the weapon swing, and I appreciated that I always knew when I was hit because of the flashing.
Nice work.
Wow there is SO MUCH going on in this game, I'm amazed you have this many features in a jam, nice work. It's maybe too much because I understood most but not quite all of what I was up to... I had my little town rolling along, some knights were about to put my construction crew to the test of combat, and then unfortunately I had a bit of a crash:
crash-goblins.png
:(
So I didn't get to see how it turns out. But very cool entry here, with maybe a touch too much complexity of systems for a jam, but really ambitious and nicely done with the graphics and sound effects, and the variety of UI and systems, it's kind of awesome you got all that done.
I DID IT!!
My game also turned out half-finished this LD, so I decided to dig into this one a bit and set my own goal: Combos.
It was pretty easy to get a wood-wood combo, but my real goal was to get a wood-leaf combo catch.
And after a while, I was able to do it, here it is:
CCCOMBO.png
It was a pretty long cast, almost to the corner of the screen, but I've shown it here reeled in on land so you can clearly see it was a combo.
So I had fun with this! Can't rip out a ton of stars on a not-so-finished entry, but knowing what it was going in, I found some fun.
The casting mechanic was a cool idea, and the tempo of the action made it just barely hard enough. It was the right level of difficulty to create a chill fishing mood. Nice start!
(Edit: I want to second the suggestion about that the controls should be on WASD and not on arrows. Arrows are fine alone, but arrows+mouse is not the right way to go imo)
Intro was nicely flavorful with the shaky text, and exploring the system of the game itself was pretty interesting.
I eventually ended up in a stable state of making more than I lost, although I didn't have the perfectionism to go after it quite like @space-wumpus did above (very cool).
steadystate.png
Cool entry with a lot going on, nice work! And very well-rounded for a compo, with music and sound effects as well.
I love the instructions where it tells you about WASD or arrows, very cool idea that fits so well with the overall look and feel of the game.
I had some cool throwback memories bubbling up from this one -- the smileface guy reminded me of playing original rogue on a PC with the ANSI extended character set, where smileguy was your main character, and the cracked tombstones reminded me of the graveyard in NES zelda.
I loved the minimap, a key feature in this game, and I had a fun time exploring and diving deeper. I did okay, but eventually the rooms came to feel a bit repetitive. The arrows were an interesting mechanic, although I didn't feel I had a ton of decisions to make about when to use them, and the enemies were all a bit too much the same after a while: just back up and kite. Eventually I started sprinting through the rooms and not even fighting, which of course eventually led to my death (as it should).
The procgen was very nice, I never hit really bad moments, and it kept things fresh. Nice work!
Nice and moody. I really really wanted a jog button or just a generally faster walking speed. Or a smaller interior. I know the pacing is languid and that really works with the mood, but it became a barrier to my enjoyment of investigating. I got out my cell phone to time the commute, and while I was looking for the stopwatch, I turned back to the game and saw that it said I waited so long it was game over. Wow, I guess I'm the slow one after all? Haha, nice twist of the knife! :)
But really, you got a great mood and I was very intrigued by the story. Nice job.
Very cool system, with the mix of free-typing and dialog choices.
I moved around a bunch, checking things out and having fun, but I got stuck in the tavern. I got coal and a goblet, but I couldn't proceed or leave, as far as I could see. It said the guard stopped me, but then it said there was no guard if I tried to interact.
Overall the feel is nice, but if I could tweak one thing, it would be to clear the text line when I type something no good. The way it is now, I very often had to backspace 10 times to delete my text after making a bad guess, so it was like a small splinter on top of a possibly frustrating moment.
I also tried some abbreviations (l for look etc) but didn't seem to work.
Overall nice job! I wish I had gotten a little further to see what happened...
Disco power prevailed!!
A few setbacks along the way, but otherwise it wouldn't have been an adventure. I was really grooving to the tune, and the art/sfx captured the spirit nicely. Controls smooth, game rules clear, very nice retro arcade gameplay with a few interesting interactions to explore (yes disco does beget disco!).
Very nice entry hitting all the bases, well done!
212, thought it was good but I see a lot better has been done! https://imgur.com/JEj8Yit
Man, nice work. This one hits a coherent light-hearted vibe across all the elements and really comes together. The tune is boppin'. The art is cute, appealing, and clear. That crazy alien... I mean the gameplay fits right into the tone, what is that GUY DOING IS HE CRAZY!!!?!?!! And then *whamp* that sound effect when you get hit, oh my.
Controls were really solid, too. Are there discrete stops to the playfield that subtly facilitate standing exactly on the lines where cars won't hit you? If so nice flourish. Only thing gameplay-wise that was feelbad was when the alien got knocked off the screen and I had to attempt a blind ressucitation. That moment felt like it didn't fit into the whole experience.
Oh wait - one other small nit: given the game is played entirely on keyboard, I found myself wishing the keyboard could restart, instead of having to grasp for the mouse each time I lost.
So very nicely done: a classic arcade trope, then a small twist derived directly from the LD theme, executed on-point with art, sound, music, and gameplay. A very compo entry, well done.
(My wife was in the other room, and I guess I was laughing pretty loud, because she shouted "Someone made a good game!")
Ahh, the skulls on the statline! I tried playing without the instructions at first, and it was an enigma, I was thinking "I did all you ask and STILL you die??" Soon after reading the actual instructions it was many, many haters down the gullet as I got a handle on the basics, and then realized I could use mood manipulation on the human to further maintain control... I found a sweet spot and cruised for quite a while!
The art (great animations!), sound, music, and theme come together into a cool little package here, with a nice dissonance between the sweet tone and the flying bones of my deserving victims! Nice work.
PS the answer is "No."
In LD44 I made a game about shoveling coal into a steam train while you multi-tasked, so when I saw this I had to check out another take on the concept.
But this is just so well executed in the details. The air of mystery in the storytelling, the old man, his shoes, it all just works so well together. The sound effects are great, and fit with the chunky move system. The discrete nature of the state transitions in the shoveling made it feel more physical and satisfying, and the inclines were a great way to ratchet up the tension for brief bursts. The end had a sense of urgency and I saw I had to hit the button, so I only got a glimpse of the final scene, which was somehow fitting.
Very impressive entry, nice work.
I found this one very stylish. The opening movie reel was a very nice way to set the stage, and fit the overall style well. The robot had controls that felt very nice, and while there was a bit of initial confusion I quickly figured the game out (first thought was that I had to push the baby, took some fails to uncover the real objective).
The music and sound really sold the vibe, and also conveyed the important play events like lock-on etc. The randomness of the layout kept the game from feeling overly repetitive, but also created some janky situations from time to time where I felt a little cheated, but not too bad. I liked how there were two failure states, with both the baby and the robot at risk, and they way I had to balance them, especially once there were two enemies.
I didn't beat it. The best I did was get past several segments of double-enemy.
I think there's probably something even better hiding in the raw material you have here, something that feels a little more fair and puzzley that could deliver a more potent dose of that Oh-I'm-so-clever feeling for the player for manipulating the switches to change the map. I caught a few little tastes of it, but some runs went by without me getting any of that feeling. Really hard to sieze that in a gamejam, especially with procgen at play, but I bet with a little more time there's more here to mine.
Overall a very nice entry!
WHAT'S WRONG WITH CACTUS YOU PICKY BASTARDS!!? ;)
This was a wild ride, nice job. It's a delightfully bonkers universe, the first couple of seconds I already understood this was in the neighborhood of Mad Max and I was a nutter in a crazy car. The music was a great way to set the tone right from the start. Then the weirdo food orders start coming, and it's a wonderful mashup.
A few important elements of the game didn't reveal themselves to me immediately, but were great once I figured them out - I didn't notice the specific bullseye targets at first, and I didn't realize the audio weaponswitch was actually saying the name of the food. Once I figured those two things out I was doing a LOT better!
...Side note: Actually it ended up mattering that the voice was saying the food names, because beyond being just a helpful piece of gameplay info communicated on a second channel, it also helped me to understand that it was a cactus and not a watermelon. That became relevant after I went a little too far down a google-hole on that folk song and its history... o_O
My laptop's GPU is not great, so it was getting maxed out when the action heated up, and as a result I think I had a choppier experience than ideal. Still totally playable, but I bet the experience is that much better when there's a buttery smoothness to the aiming. With a bit of lag-stutter to my aiming I felt like my skill ceiling was a bit capped.
The introduction of additional food items was a really great way to escalate the difficulty, and the new vehicles gave progression a nice flavor. I did struggle a bit with exactly what part of my reticle I should be aiming with, and it wasn't always clear to me whether I had exploded a car in the success or fail way. I also found myself looking backwards toward the end of a level for more targets to fire at, and as a result usually missed the level rollover graphic that you have to be facing forward to see. I got the bananawaffle level a couple of times, and once I think I beat it but was looking backwards, though I was back at level 1 before I tried weaponswitching around to check for new food types, so maybe not.
Really cool experience, with a nice challenge to the gameplay through the wobbliness of the targets and the switching of food types, plus this crazy hybrid of post-apocalyptic zaniness that really came to life through all of the graphics, sound, and music.
Great job!
I won! Not easy, but a good amount of challenge where I felt like I was to blame when I died. The controls were tight, but then the "lag" of the knight moving behind me created new and interesting movement challenges that felt interesting to explore.
The music was a standout for the mood, and probably kept me hanging in there for one more try without it feeling empty. I gotta pick up SOME kind of music skills for these compos, I'm always impressed by what people can do while still covering all the other bases, but this one was especially nice.
So yeah - tight controls, cool mechanic, great music, and nice art (esp the main characters and environment), all kept me coming back to try again because I knew I could beat it but just messed up... until I won! A good all-around entry, nice job.
Edit: how come I can't rate you on audio?
Wow this is really well-done. I played a bunch of times, because as I saw problems arise I wanted to go back and start over. I love the way the coffee/fruit needs are not quite in balance, and natural imbalances build up until you are looking at a convey clogged with coffee and devs waiting on fruit.
The graphics are very nice, the mood of the space is enjoyable (the tune helps you a lot there, I know you didn't make it but well-chosen). The controls are good but a bit shy of great imo - I would have wished for a few conveniences such as rotating w/ mousewheel, and an easier way to delete/overwrite.
The theme twist is clever and the overall package comes together into a cohesive entry. Nice work!
Oh man, it's like the Dark Souls of fly-swatting games! The way that swatting locks you out from moving or turning for a moment, combined with the way that there's a dead-spot between you and the swatter so you can't get TOO close, really made for a challenge!
The music was great at increasing the tension and the whole game did a good job of making me feel frantic. Well done!
Hey! Sorry it flipped from fun to pain this time out. I gave the game a try. I'm pretty bad at rhythm games in general (although I remember Parappa fondly) so I didn't score super-well on this. I was doing okay at first, but the way the arrows come in and want me to press several different ones at once made it tough. I think I was thrown off by the way the arrows come from four different directions. I kept inverting left/right in my brain: the things coming from the left want me to press right. It makes sense because they are MOVING right, but somehow my brain kept thinking about the direction they come FROM and not their direction of movement.
But it was a cool vibe, nice idea to have the breakdancing, and the music choice was nice (if you made that then wow nice work!)
Sorry you didn't get as far as you wanted with this one, better luck next time! I think for me, it would also be very difficult to extend the compo into a jam. The effort of the 48 hours already takes a lot out of me and leaves me in a very drained state. I can imagine that coming to the end and feeling bad and then extending it for ANOTHER DAY would really push me over the edge into unhealthy.
OK, here goes: I lovehate this game.
I am going to talk about what I like, but I am also going to critique details in the controls. The critique is not because the game is bad, or because I'm giving a poor rating. Exactly opposite: it's because the game is very GOOD but has a couple of simple choices that really downgrade the play experience for me. I hope you are OK with that sort of feedback, because I mean it to be helpful and constructive, and I really hope it does not come across disheartening or insulting.
First, I LOVE the design. The Doom theme is great, and the art and chippy sounds have this great dissonance between the aggressive/demonic theme of Doom and the peacefulness of gardening. The design of gameplay is also excellent in the way that it forces me to multi-task and trade off between combat and gardening, I just love it. I also think the tutorial is very intelligently done: it leaves me alone in peace for as long as I need to understand several key things, the controls, the flowers and how they need watering, and even the flower-radar in the lower left.
It's a great game in that regard, and I like it.
And now for the pain, and please forgive me as I state my opinion as "fact":
1) Water on Z/C isn't right. I am in physical pain from twisting my pinky around to hit Z while keeping my hand on ESDF. Pico-8 would have let you use Tab, but the game doesn't accept that input. Right-click, E, shift, TAB, almost ANYTHING but Z, X, or C.
2) The camera is not correct. Because the player needs to see the action, many top-down shooters will not keep the character exactly in the center, and instead will shift the camera a little so they can see ahead of where they are going and/or aiming. Bloom does exactly the opposite, letting the player move ahead of the camera. This creates a multitude of problems, and it actually took me some testing and reflection to identify that all of these bad feels came from just the camera:
- It denies a view of the action. Every game, I lost to enemies I couldn't quite see but felt I should have.
- When enemies do come into view, there is only a tiny range of area that I can click into for shooting. One time I overshot the edge of the screen so bad that I closed the browser.
- It lets me flip my aim accidentally, because I can walk right past my own reticle (thus reversing my shooting direction). This doesn't normally happen in top-down shooters (because the screen would move sooner) and it took me quite a while to even realize what was happening to me and why.
Consider the following screenshot, where I have added a red arrow indicating my movement toward the enemies (I know only b/c of radar), and I have marked in red the "play zone" https://imgur.com/znWnf9P Such a tiny of portion of the screen is used usefully, and the rest goes to waste. Most combat occurs in this tiny cramped screen area.
For comparison, check out a video on youtube called "Nuclear Throne's Camera - A Case Study (Unity)" It will show you how you can open up the screen with slightly different camera logic, and provide a better play experience.
That's it! Just two things: button map, and camera logic. But a lot of impact on feel. I actually played this game a bunch anyway, because even in spite of the pain, it has so much to offer in its nice design that I wanted to experience more of how the gameplay developed.
Overall this is a very solid entry, but it could be AWESOME if the feel was on point. I hope it's okay that I unloaded some specific feedback on you. If you hate even seeing this kind of comment, let me know and I'll come back and delete it.
Wowzers, second I saw the guy I was like, "well someone gave this hero a lot of coffee!" He's absolutely vibrating with kinetic energy. And it's no lie. I barely had to do more than glance at the keyboard, and he goes zooming around at 100 miles per hour!
I don't mind. I often suggest people's games should move faster, and I am okay with turbo-get-to-the-action!
I was sort of confused at first, though. There seems to be nothing productive to do with the first day, so I was just waiting around. The night would come and OMG the zombies! They smashed it all. First five or ten games I didn't know the shop was the shop, so it didn't exist anymore by the time I would have learned that. It was just "that grey building" and I would end up alone, protecting a single house by standing still at the spot the zombies favored and holding down "shoot" during the night, and then wondering how the game worked all day.
So I caved and read the instructions. "Shoot the items to buy them!" it says. So there are the items, up at the top of the screen. I shoot them a hundred times, but nothing happens. Oh wait, that is my inventory UI bar, not the REAL items! Back to the instructions and I learn there is a shop, which will open on the second day. That's when I realize the grey building means something special, and so I hatch a plan: TONIGHT I will guard just that one shop to make sure it doesn't get wrecked by zombies, because I will ignore the rest of the town to guard just that! This way it's guaranteed not to get wrecked by zombies! ... It gets wrecked by zombies.
The downside of my speed is that I cannot precisely position myself. There's a zombie - shoot him! Wait, a little to the left. No, not THAT far! Now a little to the right. No! You went too far an you're back where we started! Oh wait the shop is gone, which is effectively game over.
It's actually a nice touch that the sand makes you slow. You think that's bad at first but then you realize that sometimes slow and steady wins the race.
I went round and round like this, until I got a few upgrades and started smashing some zombies a little more efficiently. But honestly? I didn't really mind. Because my hyperspeed hero was zooming all over, blast bullets all over, and I was kind of enjoying it! Those zombies are crazy, because I sure wouldn't be attacking that guy's town.
So overall a really interesting little game, just a bit of struggle getting engaged with the systems, due to some confusion.
Pretty sweet job with the music and sound, too, by the way.
Crazy idea and interface! Got my tail kicked the first few times out until I started getting the hang of it, then I played all the way to 300 chilling to the jazzy bass and chewing a LOT. I didn't make much of the eyes or neck, but later in life I did my share of farting.
Very cool, I liked this and played to the end.
I was drawn in because I like to see turn-based games, but I enjoyed all of it. The intro story was surprisingly good at setting me up and pulling me into the world, and then I enjoyed the chunky tactics of making sure to avoid getting hit by the enemies.
The art is really strong. Especially the animations, and in particular the feed animation. The hybrid main character reminded of Venom, in a cool way, and the story set me up to enjoy the sprites/action that much more.
If I could change one thing about the game it would be the pace of play. The art is so nice, but it's tough to have such a long move animation, and in an empty room it was a bit tedious to cross a large space. Combat could stand to be a bit faster, too, maybe the enemies could take a simultaneous turn rather than each going individually, and you could take the basic attack down to one button by making it so that if I move into a guy it's understood as an attack.
But while the game could play a little faster, I still very much enjoyed the experience, and I felt like it really came together with the art, story, setting, and mechanics all coming together into a cohesive vision. Very nice work!
Really original presentation plus the chunky movement makes this a whole new experience. Nicely done! I found the difficulty pretty high, so I kept losing the third duel, and getting sent back to zero was feelsbad so eventually I couldn't face the first duel AGAIN so I gave up. I certainly would have played longer if you restarted against the same enemy (or even regressed 1) but maybe that would have chepeaned the achievement of winning.
But I definitely had fun. Enemy movement is nice, their offense is brutal if you just stand and fire, and that forces you to use the movement system. The chunk-steps of movement are an interesting twist, and it's cool how you fall down if you try to bust a flurry of moves out.
Lots of nice touches here, well done! Oh - almost forgot, I really appreciated the sensitivity setting.
Nice FTL vibe with the graphics, the red oxygen, and the slowly-spiraling-out-of-control crisis! At first I was like, "yeah I got this under control, I'll optimize my repair abilities by locating centrally in between breaches!" HAHAHAHA "IN BETWEEN" BREACHES! Soon I learned the error of that thinking!
Who built this ship anyway?? And didn't I JUST FIX THAT EXACT SPOT?? ;)
Game is pretty cool, but I wonder what could be done to juice up the feel a bit. Couple of comments in that direction: I did wonder what it might feel like if the game was faster overall - faster movement, faster breach repair, faster crisis arriving... did you experiment with mixing up the speed during the jam? When playing, I also noticed I caught the edge on corners a lot because I was seeking to minimize my travel time, and I was wondering if the colliders are all boxes. Sometimes a circle collider can be nice for avoiding "stuck" moments. Lastly, maybe allowing diagonal movement instead of only the cardinal directions would be worth considering.
Maybe I'm just a speed freak though. I do like to zip around in games.
Congrats on your first compo LD!
Very cool theme, and a nice presentation! I loved how the cards had a bit of snark to them, but also spanned from the mundane to the outrageous. Board layout was really clear, there were nice red flashes on errors that helped me win (altho I was surprised I couldn't play a zero-cost card that made money to pay for my illegal broadcast, which I had to discard from play before I could play anything).
I didn't manage to win, but I played two complete games and was drawn into the systems. I was a bit unsure what victory was made of, so I wasn't sure how to steer my strategy through my choices. Game 1 I just acquired a following to see what happened at showdown, but they did nothing against the GVRNMNT. In game two I played to get to 100% hope, thinking that might trigger the win. That situation is here in this screenshot: https://imgur.com/vr5il5J
I lost just the same, but I was left unsure whether that meant I was wrong about going for hope, or just that a tie goes to The Man. I suppose if I could add one thing to the game, it would be that when I mouse-over the various stats at the top, there was a short tooltip explaining.
Anyway, a really cool vibe/tone to the game, and it plays smoothly in terms of interface. It's not easy to put together a card strategy game for the compo! Nice work.
Very nice! I was initially concerned about the number of controls, but it was not a problem. The game is so peaceful and calm, and never puts any time pressure on you, so the phase where I was awkward at the controls didn't matter.
I thought I was done, and then I spent more time with it trying to create a smoother gradient between a red and blue flower.
pollinate-gradient.png
The graphics, gameplay, and sound all created a very peaceful and moody entry, really well done!
Wow super-cute, right to the point, small breather to learn the ropes at start, difficulty ramps nicely, tight controls, good sound... this is well done across the board.
My favorite moment was discovering that my shield carries the babies back to me, I thought that was a very nice design touch!
Great job.
Hey! Congrats on making your first LD entry!
Turn-based fencing is a very cool concept. I remember playing the Flash Duel card game, which was inspired by an old fencing card game called En Garde, so I was excited to try this.
There was some friction, though. I'm going to provide some feedback that I hope you find useful and constructive.
I see the game comes packaged as an installer. Please consider not shipping that way, since I prefer not to have to uninstall 30-50 pieces of software after LD. Also, when I did go back to manually uninstall this after playing, I could not find it. It does not install under its own name, but instead under the name "Made in GameMaker Studio 2" which took me a while to locate.
That doesn't bear on the game or the rating, just a convenience thing to consider next time!
On to the actual game:
I like the presentation, and the round structure concept is interesting. The way the play goes back and forth between attack and defense mode is also cool. The background music creates a nice tension, and the clock raises that higher, but it's nice you allow me to forget the clock with easy mode.
So I think you have a strong platform for an interesting turn-based battle here with a unique feel.
But you are getting complaints that people are confused. That's super-common for a first LD. In fact, it's more common to have a crapgame or even fail outright, so you're already ahead of the curve there. But confused players is also a very common problem, and I encourage you to really dig into that feedback with an open mind because it can lead to some of the most important improvements in your jamming skills!
I know it's not super-useful feedback to just say "I was confused" so I tried to challenge myself to give you better than that... not sure this is what you want, but here I have typed up my thought process as the player, going through a round against the Easy AI:
---
I'm playing now (yeah I reinstalled it). I start with a feint, and the AI did a breeze. Is that good? Bad? I don't know. I try to judge by looking at which options it left open, but I can't really draw a conclusion. Now I am choosing, and I guess I'll pick remise because it's a turn 2 ability and I'm in turn 2! OK the AI did breeze again. But is that good? I can't tell. Now I will do break because it says turn 3: he did beat. It seems I did well because a heart disappeared -- although the heart is half red and half blue, so it's kind of unclear whether the enemy took damage, or if I did. The move card also said "take damage if you lose the round" so it also hints that either of us could have taken damage. But I guess I'm the one who won because I'm still on the attack?
Next round: open again with feint, and the enemy did displace. I can't tell if it's good. Instead of remise I will try the other turn 2 move, bind: enemy did breeze. I am supposing this was bad, because now I don't have any turn 3 move, only turn 1 strike and turn 2 remise available. Not sure but that seems like probably bad. I'll try remise: AI did breeze. Oh wait I won! So I guess I was wrong that it was bad.
---
I'm sure you the dev are flabbergasted that I didn't understand the state transitions through the gameplay, so sorry about that. :(
Overall I think you have a strong design idea here, because I like the presentation and the structure you have layered over the battle system. I regret that I couldn't understand it clearly enough to really appreciate it.
Congrats again on a successful LD. The confused-player problem will pass - and the very best way to get past it is to watch someone play, either live over their shoulder saying NOTHING, or having someone record a first-sight youtube play where they talk through their thoughts. Not some big streamer, just put your game on a list from someone like Jupiter Hadley.
You really have to witness the confusion to believe it!
Wow a really interesting idea here, and an absolutely fantastic execution on the look and sound. I feel like I would have enjoyed this a lot if the controls had just been a bit smoother. I struggled pretty badly the first few minutes, and I think it was the sensitivity of both the mouse (making it hard to tune my aim) and also the keyboard (making hard to fine tune my position). I think a touch of acceleration on the keyboard controls could help smooth them a bit, I felt like I was "snapping" back and forth between left-of what I wanted, then right-of, back and forth while the clock ran out.
The second thing in controls I struggled with was the pull-back. First time I played, I thought it was kind of like pool/billiards, where I would line up behind the ball, then pull back and shoot. But when I did that, I pulled *WAY* back, and sometimes I fell out of the level and broke the game, other times I lost view of the game because of a wall, but in the times where I did take a shot it seemed like I barely grazed the ball at all or even stopped completely short of it. Later I learned to pre-windup and only THEN approach the ball, but the issue with this method is the suuuuper-slow movement rate you have post-windup.
In the end I did learn to adjust, and I settled on a strategy of going way forward of the ball (but off to the side a bit), and then winding up so I was backed up near the ball, and then inching over to it and releasing. This worked okay and I got to level 4 where I very nearly won.
But I felt like it was a shame, because the game was so interesting, but instead of thinking about the strategy of the GAME, I was thinking about the strategy of the INPUT to the game. I feel like this is a great concept, and I would have really enjoyed it a lot if there was less friction in between my plan and my action.
Hope that's useful feedback! I only go into detail on an input critique like that when I feel like the game has a great idea, so I don't mean it to be too negative. You really hit the target on the look and feel, vibe, and also the game idea, so the fact that I critique the inputs doesn't mean I think it's bad or give a low rating. I just kind of want to play the version with streamlined inputs!
EDIT: Wow just checked and I see this is your first LD, too, nice work!
Wow talk about an essential job!
Cool game. I made it to level 20. At level 7 I was like "pff I got this" and I was simply going around in a circle to each house and disinfecting. By level 10 I was like "umm wow okay I can see why this gets out of control" and responding more directly to problem houses without a schedule. By level 15 I was never taking my hand off the mouse button and frantically running from place to place. I think it's cool how your system works out so that when things are in control they are manageable, but once it gets a little out of control it starts escalating into disaster quickly!
Nice tight controls, the audio was great at conveying both mood and game state, too. Good job!
So, I really liked this. The cuboid canine was a nice start for setting the tone: yo this is a jam game and we're having fun with that. I enjoyed the mechanic, the bone felt nice to throw, it was just the right amount of "gee maybe I better be careful here" without going anywhere near annoying.
The quick bark somehow endeared me to the doggie, and on the last level when I threw the bone maybe a bit casually, there was this moment of OH NO where he cut the corner too short and fell into the lava!! Except wait, no, that tenacious little fellow had like somehow grabbed the edge of the walkway and climbed (?) back up to safety?! I was actually relieved. Somehow it was okay to run out of time and both of us to die, but for me to trick him into the lava would have been terrible.
So yeah, clearly pulled me in.
I also really appreciated the super-quick restart, and the sensitivity option was a nice touch (though the default was fine for me). Level 2 was my favorite, I think.
Nice work!
Cool game with a bunch of features and effects! My favorite thing by far was throwing a grenade.
If I could add one thing, it would be some feedback indicating when I get hit or successfully hit enemies. I was also a little unclear on the distinction between health and energy.
But that grenade sure felt nice, I loved bouncing it up and ba-boom!
Nice use of the mixed media, and animating the sprites with wobbles and tweens looks good.
Ouch sorry to hear that! Must be frustrating after working all weekend. The screen shot looks nice, though. If you get it fixed post in here and I'm sure you'll still get a few post-compo plays and comments. Good luck!
I enjoyed the way the cannon does not shoot in a straight line, but arcs with gravity, so leading the targets was pretty interesting! I eventually found that I did best if I just held the mouse still and got used to the timing of one specific shot, and treated it almost like a rhythm game. Got up to around 118 I think? At one point I found you can live forever: Jump out of the castle and run up to the guys and then hold E, and you kind of "hold" the entire line of enemies... you can even march them right off the screen back where they came! Secret non-violent solution??
Cool little action game, nice work!
I tried very hard to connect with this game, it looks really nice and I'm interested in the theme, so I want to find out more about it. My difficulty was three things:
1) The mouse sens is overwhelmingly high
2) The frame rate is a little bit low, maybe too many particles?
3) The allowed seconds are very short
The result was that I was disoriented, and could hardly get my eye facing a certain direction correctly before dying. Just entering the hallway was a big challenge.
Sorry! I really tried! I played probably 30 or 40 times. I tried to find ways to adjust the mouse settings outside the game. But I'm afraid nothing worked.
If you post some instructions or a version with less sensitivity, I'll give it another shot!
Heads up - I went to try the new version, but I no longer see any game available for download on the itch page. Is it possible you misconfigured the new version when you made the change? I know itch has an option for hiding things that you might have accidentally set.
Here is a screenshot showing the issue: https://imgur.com/qxN2QI2
Much, much better. I got a real taste of what you were after, with the juggling of the multiple overlapping crises, and I liked it. I would personally reduce the input responsiveness even a lot more, I'm still accidentally smashing into walls or over-turning and getting stuck behind a desk and losing time, etc.
But with your latest change its way better than the original, and I like the crazy crisis machine you've made!
Very cool! I love the 3-layer human, and the tutorial was well done to ramp me up into what would otherwise have been a difficult game to learn.
I had several successful surgeries, but also some failure. I think the pacing is nicely designed. The wait time on the regeneration pods is perfect. They are slow enough to bottleneck me, but fast enough that sometimes the body part is ready before I am. It made for a nice tension between "do I wait for the part now, or go back to searching for the next thing I need to replace?"
The clipboard was pretty useless, since it did not check off the fixed items, but I liked it that way. It meant that I had to move around the body exploring for the damage myself... altho maybe there is an even more turbo version of the game where I see the remaining TODO list without blocking my pods, and am able to (and required to!) work even faster. The only splinter that caught me was that sometimes there seems to be a weird offset between the mouse and organ, only rarely, and it snaps into the wrong place. It left me wondering why the surgery wasn't over, but it was because I'd mis-installed an organ.
Overall a really well put-together package. The art and sounds supported the play experience nicely.
Hey, wow, what graphics, and the sound is music is really atmospheric. I was excited to see where it went, unfortunately the game maxed out my laptop's GPU, so everything moved in ultra-slow-mo with a lot of stutter and lag dominating the feel. I felt like I could not really play the actual intended experience so I just left ratings on the graphics and mood, sorry I can't offer feedback on more!
Oh, wow... metal + driving in the mud is definitely the way to my heart!
Great job on the music, especially the evolution of the drums through the sections and the various turnarounds, really kept my head banging without making me bored.
Overall look was very nice too, with some solid models, nice crisp clear track lanes, and an overall nice palette of colors. Title screen with that text bouncing to the music got me all ready to go!
The gameplay itself was solid, but it wasn't exactly the METAL I was hoping for... it was kind of a pacifist mosh pit, with everyone politely staying in their lanes, and the no-touching rules very strictly enforced. When I'm driving in the mud to metal, what I really want is to slip and slide just over the edge on the wrong side of control, roughing up the walls, the other drivers, and myself. This game was not that game, and that's completely fine of course!
I did still enjoy some of the really narrow calls in the lane-switching -- I appreciated the tension of how tight some of gaps were. I eventually needed some more variety to the gameplay, but for a compo this was still nice scope.
And I'm still listening to the music in the background as I write this review and STILL haven't gotten bored of it!
Edit: still letting this song run... if you dig this sort of music, I can recommend checking out the game Jupiter Hell, I'm getting vibes of that soundtrack from your tune.
You really accomplished your goal of creating the moody atmosphere of chill where I could contemplate the puzzles with calm. If I imagine the same mechanics but with an countdown timer of maybe a bomb defusal theme, I am feeling very tense and not appreciating it as much. I really liked the decision to go with the chill contemplative abstract vibe.
The monochrome palette was a good way to emphasize that. And the sound was *almost* just right. I think the concept was right on point, but maybe the actual sound was slightly wrong. It was maybe a little too peppy to my ear. So still good, but maybe a sleepier more synthetic sound with a little slower attack would have had even more harmony with the rest of the experience.
The tactile interaction was nice. I liked the slow sliding movement of the puzzle when it wasn't being interacted with, though I was glad it was very slow because faster rotation would have been too distracting and caused me to lose the geography of the puzzle. I never once made an error in input, and when I was testing to see if I could swap non-adjacent pieces the result was clear ("you cannot").
Gameplay-wise the puzzles were nice. The length was appropriate for the depth, and I felt like you explored most avenues. Because there are only two types, and because the selection must be continuous, it felt like the possible ideas for you to explore were a bit limited. Totally appropriate for the game length and stayed engaging throughout, but I suspect you'd need some extra element to unlock further puzzle-space to explore.
My general strategy was "find the largest existing contiguous already-correct section, almost certainly the best move is to flip at its borders" and I feel like generally this held true. In the 3-move puzzles I generally made move 1 on blind faith on that basis and I never once had to restart. So a new element for an expansion would probably have to invalidate that shortcut.
Really a very nice all around entry, especially when I consider the limited time you had available! Great job on both puzzle mechanics and feel.
43 flags was my best. I loved how hectic some of the intersections got, like this: https://imgur.com/hkXfTyG
It was a very cool idea that played out well. I also liked the controls on the car.. It's always tricky to get a WASD car feeling good because I want to steer at different angles at different times, and while I also felt that stiffness in this game, you had a good match between the turns the track asked of me and the turns the controls gave me. Nice tuning.
The car-on-car collisions were also tuned well. When I hit ... myself ... it was bad but not instantly game-ending. It was in a nice sweet spot of setback. The edge of the track was a little more brutal, and I lost all of my games the same way: clipped the edge of the track with the front of my car and got spun around backwards, then couldn't get righted in time.
But I'm split on it -- on the one hand, if the game was a little more generous with edge-collisions and had some way to build back up lost time, I could get further into the game and have some REALLY crazy car-filled tracks. But on the other hand, the difficulty felt good and forced me to concentrate on driving well, with a good level of punishment when I didn't.
Overall really enjoyed it, nice work!
EDIT: check it out, while I was tying, left the game running and then this happened: https://imgur.com/MYCyKtw
Looks beautiful, plays hilariously. I had some really harrowing flights, as I never quite got the hang of the controls. You can pull into VERY tight loops, but then pulling out of them takes a little while so it felt a bit difficult to predict exactly where/when my loop would broaden, and since I was looping quite close to things, I'd generally crash. My attempts to actually go around the circle were hilariously terrible.
But it didn't matter that I stunk because it was still fun to fail!
This game was a pleasure to interact with all around.
The music was fantastic and had me bouncing, and if I'm picking up what you're laying down, the supermarket level had a version of the song that sounded like it was coming from the far-away store speakers. Nice touch!
The art looked great and was nicely animated. I also liked how the ... targets "popped" their size a bit when I snapped them in a circle.
The sound effects of the angry growls and huffs were great, and the buzzing of drawing a circle was also nice. I think a buzzing sound effect like that is risky because it can become grating, but this one avoided that problem and felt electric without becoming unpleasant.
Gameplay was simple fun that I think captured the spirit of the game. If you were hosting a high-stakes KnC tournament or something I guess you could tighten up a few details.. it seems you can kind of cheese things a bit by drawing huge fast circles. I am also still a little unclear on when/why the circle-draw action gets cancelled. It is when a Caren complains? Or when someone crosses a line? Or maybe they have an interrupting collider on their head? I went back and tested specifically this but was still a bit unclear, and on my initial playthrough I had a general feeling of "wait what just happened?" No big deal, it was still fun, but if I was supposed to understand a specific aspect there I missed it. It also felt like sometimes Carens didn't "pop" and I wasn't always 100% sure which were quarantined.
At first I assumed you had to circle each person alone, and was wondering why I had to wait for "game over" when I had 5 Carens, and wasted one of my 5 circles. But I figured out that I had to quarantine "Carnens vs the world". Makes sense!
Very nice entry with a ton of personality.
9:27 to complete.
Nice game! At first I felt like it was chaotic and random, sometimes even the barriers would just push a ball or two in. But as I got better, I was able to make plans and then execute on them better, and I started feeling the groove more. I had fun!
Looked nice, and felt good to play! Music was a nice touch if perhaps slightly repetitive after a while... but a good fit with the graphical look.
Nice entry - contrats.
Very interesting game. I generally don't appreciate when the difficulty arises from the controls, but when a game leans into it the way this one does, it can work and create a unique experience.
To succeed I had to be careful where I put my eyes when, and the way the the movement keys would switch function when the time came to attack.. it was difficult but it felt like it should be doable. So I kept retrying over and over. Eventually I gave up at the 3-handed other.
If I could wish for one player boon (and I played the compo version only so maybe you did this) it would be a tiny audio cue indicating the state change between when the game is in movement mode vs attack mode. I need a small cue on both seams.
Most of my runs were lost like this: OK dodge 1, return to center, dodge 2 return to center, dodge 3, return, 4, now a conflict between the key to return me to center and the attack arises in my brain, and whoops I didn't get my return movement, now let me press the attack, woops too late I got a movement instead, but because my eyes were over on the attack area I didn't even clearly see it. Now when I do focus back the game state that "should" exist in my mind is different than the game state I see on the screen, and I move to correct that but it's already too late and I start getting hit.
Nothing in the world wrong with that, it's clear that the game wants to overwhelm me with what the right inputs are. But audio cues on that ultra-important state change would power me up. I could also use a "player moved" footstep sound. (EDIT: now seeing that other commenters didn't take a single hit, ha. Each has their own experience I guess!)
The other way I took hits was trying to simplify by not returning to center, but this left me too many 3-moves plus made the muscle memory harder to build up. I enjoyed that the game had this tension about the best way to approach it.
Clearly the game had me thinking through the details of the interactions, which I think is a sign it was pretty successful at engaging me in the gameplay!
Beyond gameplay the art was really nice, the ambient audio was a good baseline for the solid sound effects to sit atop without feeling empty, and I enjoyed the mysterious intro that gave a background context to the fight but left room for imagination. That air of mystery carried over well into the fact that I had to explore a little to learn the game rules at first. I personally enjoy that in small games where that figure-it-out phase adds a bit more to the experience.
Overall a really solid compo entry, nice work.
I just tried the post-jam version and I agree it's lost something in the rhythm that I liked about the original compo version. I also didn't enjoy the change to multi-hit attacks as that created a spammy feeling instead of a rhythm.
I think it maybe has a bug, too. I hit Q during a fight and got into this state: https://imgur.com/bdz479W
From there I could move around, and sometimes the mode would appear to change, but no attacks ever happened on either side and I was soft-locked and had to restart the game.
Regarding my earlier comment about wanting the audio cue: I did get used the certain number of defense moves before attack for each level and fell into the rhythm. It wasn't that part I needed a cue for. I needed it more for knowing what exact millisecond my inputs would start changing their meaning, so that I could better learn and internalize the limits of the margin of error.
The player problem I'm trying to solve is that I had a lot of slight misses (where what I expected to be an attack turned out to be a movement) and I never got a great feeling for it.
NICE.
I did everything including the bonus level. This game was awesome. Cool mechanics with a great mix of planning the solution out in my mind and trying to execute the timing. Art was fantastic, the layered backgrounds made it feel very rich, and not like a jam game. The main character was popping with wide-eyed life, and the tweening used on him took it to another level. The music was enjoyable and fit well, and even better were the sound effects that made the interacts feel strong.
I think you hit everything across the board here, extremely well done. Congrats!
Very nice entry! A cool idea, great setting, nice music to enhance the mood of the art, which captured classic metroid vibes that meshed so well with the theme of being lost and looping.
The gun feels great, fires away with old school turbospam required in some panicked bursts, but then there is also downtime in between fights if you want it. Lots of the art is strong, but the particles of the bullets hitting the wall was a highlight.
So overall the game was really good! Because it was really good, let me dig into two things that caused me a little pain in the experience... but seriously, I'm just going into this because the game is so strong, so I hope this is helpful and constructive:
First the controls: I started with WASD but couldn't find a shoot button friendly with that, so I did invert and play lefty. Been a while. I was rusty with arrows/x/z.
Second, I feel there's maybe some room for improvement in the way combat plays out. These enemies are brutal in the way they come at me fast and with acceleration, do not get knocked back, and take a few hits to kill, and do a lot of damage. It's fine if they approach at the height of my standing gunfire, but I got hit a lot when they came at just-above-normal and I had to multi-shot them on the rise during a jump.
I failed so often that I gave up and my approach to the game became: spam jump and shoot off the screen for a while before entering any dangerous area. If I do aggro an enemy that's not at shot-level, flee wildly and try to gain space or wait for them to come down to shot-height. When I encountered the vertical climb, I extracted each enemy one by one down into the corridoor rather than mix it up with them.
The exploration was great, but ended up a bit at odds with the combat, where I wanted to explore but I did not want to take the risk of new areas lightly, so my exploring became extremely meticulous.
It did pay off in the end though: https://imgur.com/3jTg29Z
On the other hand, maybe I just needed to git gud, and I will say the enemies did their job of slowing me down and preventing me from turboing through the whole maze to figure it out.
So a really solid game that I enjoyed jumping into and playing to the end. Hope I didn't over-focus on critique, because I do like this game. Nice entry!
Verrry slick, from the intro to the art to the music, and all that on top of a great concept and tight controls. I've seen several other "collaborate with past selves in a time loop" games but this one was definitely my favorite so far.
I especially appreciated that the loops were tight, and that I could hard reset. Game did a great job of not wasting my time, which is a big risk with something that by definition forces me to repeat quite often.
I thought I would definitely complete the game, but I did ragequit at the two-elevators-7-seconds puzzle. My frustration on that one came when I had run something like 30 supporting lives to get the weights right, which was fine. (In calmer retrospect, maybe it can be done with only 1 or 2 and doesn't need a crowd?) I had it all set up but then one guy got his head stuck where the elevator enters the shaft, jamming it. BOOM once I havd mispositioned that guy by a few pixels it was game over... A soft reset didn't work because it was already too late, and a hard reset sent me back like 30 precision-button lives into the past. I did the hard reset once but after it happened AGAIN I'll confess I ragequit.
Kind of hope that was the final puzzle because I wanted to see all the game had to offer, it was really excellent!
Just an awesome entry, very well done.
Man.. I bet I didn't need so many lives on that one puzzle, maybe I'll go back and try it again...
(EDIT: The guy at 9:15 in your walk-thru was the one that jammed the up-elevator when I gave up)
Very cool entry, with a strong idea and great graphics/sound/polish to match! I played the whole thing through, and the challenge and length were just right for my taste. It was fun to experiment and explore the rules, and the last few levels were clever tests of what I'd learned. A nice touch was the enemy guards, and they way they didn't require me to input an attack command or threaten me, except to delay me a bit.
Heads up, I did have to go dig up a gamepad because with the keyboard control I could not use ladders, leaving me unable to proceed through the tutorial. This was in the browser version. I went to download the windows version but I didn't see a link on the itch page. Once I got a USB gamepad everything worked fine.
Very strong compo entry, nice work!
I always had this gap with fighting games:
I'd read about how deeply strategic they were, for example from Sirlin, and that would get me excited to play one. But there's this HUGE wall. It's a struggle to even know what my character is going to do next when I press a button, never mind watching my opponent to look for openings.
So you install, let's say... Street Fighter 4 on your windows machine. And you go into practice mode and choose one fat guy and learn a bunch of his moves. Repeating over and over vs the AI. Then you go find a match... And it takes 10 minutes to pair you with someone, and you finally get paired, only to have the game cancel and send you back. So you wait another 5 minutes, and finally a match, and you get wrecked in 1 minute. Oh did I mention you had to install some whole slew of "platform" software just to run this game on windows? And so you bounce off, every time you try fighting games.
They are clearly not intended to be played by people who don't already play them.
So I love that you took an essential fragment of this genre and manifested it in this simpler form for me to experience.
I had a lot of fun with this, and I played until my fingers got tired. I am pretty terrible at it, but after some practice I started getting good enough to really enjoy the 3-move difficulty level.
I definitely achieved a bunch of that HELL YEAH feeling when nailing a combo, and it was super-satisfying to get there. It also felt really cool to build up to that moment through trial and error, better learning the interaction of the timing and knockback of the specific moves in a specific order. And then there was the strategic layer of what order to use.
This puzzle build-up to HELLYEAH pay-off loop was really awesome. Well done!
Because I suck at fighting games there were a lot of small boons I wished for in this game, let me just fire off a few things that I think would have helped me perform better without eroding the essence of the game. Probably just pointing out the obvious with some of these, and you didn't have time:
- I want to understand the hitboxes better. I kept wiffing with cloud kick. The boon I want is a small impact graphic at the exact point of first intersection so that I can better internalize the boundary. In a perfect world, if I wiff and it's close enough, I'd even like to see a "wiff" graphic describing the delta at the min-dist point of the boxes.
- I could use a bit more transparency for the knockback effect of a move, and so perhaps the impact graphic could include a vector component pointing out the size/direction of the momentum it will impart.
- I wished for clearer transparency into the recovery time of a move. The cards themselves did show this, but I often couldn't spare a glance there. I think maybe if my actual character did something like have hand/feet or hat turn to a different shade during recovery it would have helped me with some of the tighter timings. A specific example where I struggled was dragon punch into arcane fist from standstill.
- 1 3 2, 1 3 2, 1 3 2. This was the source of my main feelbad, and part of the reason I struggled when going to 4 attacks. The game needs me to memorize a pattern of button presses but they don't reflect a decision. The main thread in my brain is having fun processing my positioning and timing, but I also have to keep chanting the button numbers to myself. I lost a lot of combos to pressing the wrong number just when things got tight, and that felt bad. Part of the issue is that a move can be on a diff button in a diff round, so my own subconscious would betray me. I found myself wishing that I had a single attack button, and could re-sort the attack cards into the order they would be fired by that one button.
Anyway, I don't mean to emphasize any negatives, because I really enjoyed this game. The peak HELLYEAH moments were really enjoyable. My favorite thing to do was Valiant Foot into Blade Drop.
Great entry - a very clever use of the theme, and overall an awesome package.
Congrats on breaking Top100 in innovation - I had a feeling that might happen!
Nice art and story! I like how you captured the theme a little differently than many other games, and created a pretty full experience here for a jam. The parallax background captured the movement of the train well, and the music was a great touch that worked with the mood. Nice work.
Wow this was really good! The usage of the loop theme was nice, I was unclear what it meant to choose one of the three pillars at first, but it was nice the way the mystery revealed itself later. The shopkeep was also a nice touch.
I did have a few small issues: There seemed to be a problem with parts of the game being offscreen, so I couldn't see the shopkeeps head, and I asumme there was also a UI showing my health and arrow count but I could not see it. Perhaps because of that, in the first room I was trying to learn the controls and shot off all my explosive arrows before beginning the game. Last, I ruined the final boss by pressing E after a bunch of fighting, and got teleported away to an empty room and could not finish the game.
But those few tiny things aside, this was a great experience. The art was really great (nice shadows too!), and the audio was strong across the board. Controls were nice, with the hitch in my step when I shot creating more interesting situations than "spam fire all day and backpedal." It also forced me to choose what targets to go after first and who to spend my explosive arrows on.
Very nice jam entry, well done.
Looks nice, plays smoothly, pace feels like a pretty good balance of waiting vs getting new stuff.
It felt a little linear to me since everything was the same: pay outflow, get +inflow/sec. I found myself wishing for a few other mechanics that could interact and create that feeling like I'm building up a machine or combo.
The writing was imaginative and helped sell the necro thing in the absence of art or sound.
And the "delete all for x2" is a very nice savage twist the captures the LD theme.
Wow, SO moody! The natural parallax from the distant tree/pillars, the volumetric fog, and the way the pink light contrasted eerily with the grey, I really loved the vision and execution of the art here. It nails a mood of creeping from the alien danger. The music and sound was also contributing really strong to this.
I got 259m. Nice entry!
I did it! I made the whole loop!!
I spent quite a while with this, because it has a cool air of mystery about it, and a mix of combat, exploration, and cube-soccer. The animations and models are wild, too, love the mohawk and the unusual walking.
Part of the issues, but in a strange way also part of the appeal, was that the procedural animation seemed to get corrupted over time. After I had been playing a while, my guy would stagger around, sometimes spike way up into the air, shatter into pieces and then reform with twisted limbs. This corruption was another form of challenge, and you did a great job of giving me tools to deal with it, including some really smart choices like: the frequent checkpoints, the killplane beneath the level for when I clipped down into space, and the K key for when I clipped into other invalid areas. In fact, the whole options menu was vital, as it let me set my mouse sensitivity.
I appreciated the short bursts of combat, but I was glad it wasn't the main focus of the experience.
I got to a part where I went up an elevator and got a 7-gate, but my corruption was so extreme by then that I couldn't move forward.. at first. I would get 3-4 pieces together and then clip away, respawning, and my work would be undone.
I actually started writing this review having quit there, but I went back and gave it another shot, and I made it through that darn 7. After that it was a breeze to complete the loop.
If I could tweak one thing about the game it would be the make the cube-kicking a little more generous... maybe have a special "cube kick" layer, and put like an invisible "plow" collider in front of the player so they can herd the cubes slightly easier?
A very interesting and memorable experience, nice!
I played and lost like 5 times before realizing I was a tiny ship and not the planet with the arrows! WOOPS! That little ship is sometimes hard to see.
After I realized who I was, I started doing a lot better. I liked the physics feel, and the way that your best shot is really that first hop, and if you miss and have to try for the next orbit, the danger level really spikes! It was fun trying to set up those quick safe one-shot hops.
Nice job with a cool physics-based control scheme. I think my top score was a 7, but I bet if you were patient and careful you could get a really high score.
The music was just great - small concise pieces that very well captured the mood of each scene. These paired so well with the animated pictures floating in darkness, which felt like pages from a storybook. The music and the pages really worked together. The first time I encountered the scene on the rock in the river, I sat and just enjoyed it for a while.
I also liked the writing, with a little mix of poetic phrases and humor. I think my favorite was "Happiness by intermittence." The opening also told me to "have little empathy" and I enjoyed being left to wonder whether this was an intentional subversion of my expectations or a small oversight. I also liked that you left a little mystery. I have a guess at what the ring of happiness is, but I appreciate that it's up to me to decide.
From a tactile perspective, I liked how easy it was to rocket through the choices. In ordinary life we can only take one path and not explore the others, so I appreciated that it was easy to do so in a game such as this. I went to the book shelf to find the appropriate quote from The Unbearable Lightness of Being, but I think it's up in the attic in a box, 90% read.
Overall delivers so well as a total package. I don't know how to feel about the fact that the music was added after and thus the audio cannot be rated. I guess I wish you gave yourself that extra day and submitted to the jam instead, so that I could give you those stars.
Really cool crazy backstory, and I liked the feeling of jumping around frantically and trying to get the beat going.
I think this game is harder than it means to be. I suspect it "means" to be about the correct level of difficulty, but then ends up too hard because of some really low-level stuff that creates splinters in the experience. Let me go into detail on a few of the splinters I felt while playing, but first let me say I don't mean to dwell on the negative or say it's a bad game. I don't go into detail on splinters for bad games, I do it when I think a game is cool and has potential to be great, but let some tiny things get in the way.
So I hope this is constructive, that is how I mean it to be!!
First, everything feels a little too abrupt. It probably doesn't feel that way to you as the creator because you know all the systems, but as the player it's tough. The green spark is there, but by the time I change direction to get it, it's already too late. Or I'm watching for the spark and checking my wrench health, and avoiding a soundwave, and GAME OVER - what?? With multiple things to track, all happening very quickly, and on top of a core of difficulty, I need more information flow than this game gives me. I need it to telegraph in advance, with a pre-sparkle coming before the spark so that I can change my path and still make it, rather than memorizing the exact timing in advance over two dozen deaths. I need a cue that the audience is about to reach its limit so I know to go all-out, rather than just playing and getting surprise insta-death. Ideally these cues would be both audio and visual so that I can perceive them through the clutter of my attention jumping around. You as the designer understand how all of the pieces fit together, and how often/quick each piece goes, but as the player I am totally bamboozled at first, and the game underestimates how confused I am. Try to put more attention into details of communicating and telegraphing important state changes.
Second, the game is a bit too stingy and brutal with the microscopic stuff like colliders and jumping. For example, I was running right along with the rapper, wrench ready, just as he sparked... and I DIDN'T GET IT?? Apparently I have to jump, because the collider is so tight that it doesn't overlap with me standing. Another example is the top platform, and the way I have to go jump up to get a fresh wrench. The character controller doesn't offer me the usual "ghost jump" leeway that I expect from modern games, and so many times I felt like I did push the jump button but didn't get the jump out. I think in general you want to be more generous to the player about microscopic things like this so that the controls feel "great", and THEN tune the difficulty on top of great controls. The way the game is, the controls feel a little bit stingy, and difficulty does not feel as fun when stingy controls are the source of challenge.
But splinters aside, I had fun with this game, and I found it super creative. You seem to have some very cool ideas, and I think you as a developer can upgrade your skills to be more aware of these details that can subtly enhance an experience, and you'll really start making some top-notch stuff. Look forward to seeing what you do next!
Very cool, I really liked the music, art, and sound. The confusing doors was a nice touch, the absurdity of the head-switching was charming, and the puzzles were over my head. I got to the use of seeds on my own, but not the secondary function of that interaction, so I resorted to the walkthrough for most of the game.
That said, I enjoyed interacting with everything and had fun just wandering around trying everything out. Nice work!
Wow this one is firing on all cylinders, very nice entry.
I played the web-compo version, and I got the black-screen bug after circle 2, so I restarted. Then I got the bug again, and nearly gave up. But I tried a third time, and this time I got to continue past it, so I ended up beating the game.
Obviously the art and sound are really strong here, so great job with that. But what I liked most was some of the really nice design work. Here are a few points I enjoyed about the design:
- Enemies are very straightforward to deal with in isolation, but difficulty arises from the combination: melee enemies make me want to approach cautiously and in a straight line, while fireball guy makes me want to circlestrafe and rush in. This tension was excellent.
- Melee guys had some other nice touches: their hiding was effective about the right amount, saw them if I was cautious but also got surprised sometimes. They break off the chase and retreat after a certain distance, so you don't get a huge megaclump you see with a more basic AI. This helped them cooperate even better with fireball guy.
- Fireball guy made terrain feel more important in a nice way.
- Crows respawning made it so that health was always just a matter of surviving this fight, and prevent the game from becoming a battle of attrition. Attrition games (where you never want to take any hit) can be great too, but I feel like you made the right call for this game and wisely avoided it.
So overall I felt like a lot of very small decisions worked well together to maximize the experience and make for an enjoyable game.
The only thing that didn't really work together with other elements to create interest was the sheep. I also just held down the pitchfork button during fights, and even a lot of the walking around (in case I got jumped). I'm not sure if that's good or bad.
Not much to critique here, this was an excellent entry. Great music, great art, great gameplay, nice boss fights. Well done!
OK I made it to 60 seconds -- I feel like that has to be pretty good because I was doing some really nimble dodging to get there! Took a little to get used to the mouse controls, but after I got the hang of it I was positioning myself with good confidence in split seconds.
Endless runner may have been done many times before, but the controls, 3D dodging, and look made this one feel unique. Nice work!
Graphics, music, and gameplay worked well together here and created a very nice mood. It was tough to eke out a living and survive, I really did feel trapped in the loop! Nice work. The feeling of being close to death all the time prevented me from relaxing and exploring the system, but it did achieve the brutal feeling of barely scraping by that I think you were aiming for. Each fruit was hard-won and yet sustained me for such a short time that I never felt satiated.
I did get really confused trying to play at first, but once I came back to read your complete instructions it was much clearer.
Pretty cool! I got to level 9 before I couldn't hack it any more.
My main struggle was synchronizing the start. Maybe if you gave the first beat for "Free" to the player, it would let them know where the rhythm begins. I had a couple of times where I thought I had it, only to realize the real one started on 2 and not on 1, for example. I am glad to see in your screenshot that you added a "clear" button, because that was something I also wished sorely for a few times.
Nice work for only 10 hours!! And a good level of challenge.
Music upgrade was clearly OP, loved it!
Humor and sprites were on point, and the platforming was solid enough to be a good foundation for the concept. Loved that I not only had to upgrade, but also downgrade my jump back and forth. Tried to cheat that system a few times but I definitely lost more than I gained. A highlight moment was the first time I ran out of currency and couldn't buy the jump I needed, and wasn't sure where it would go from there...
Short, but the right length to not overstay its welcome. All around nice entry!
Nice idea for the theme, creating a new experience and then letting my play with it in a variety of different ways to explore it, all tied up in a nice package with strong graphics. Great work!
Achievement names were a small touch but I enjoyed them, hat tip to Sweet Tooth, and I liked the little remark after the slow-moving pirate about "I am NOT doing that again."
I got this far: https://imgur.com/ou490xI
It looks very nice, and the sounds are solid, too. The concept is nice, and fits the theme, and there is a huge variety of enemies and obstacles for a compo game. Really nice work, in a lot of ways.
The controls are a huge drawback, unfortunately. It's not a problem that I cannot go diagonal. The problem is that I cannot switch direction until after the deceleration of my previous direction finishes stopping me, which feels like there's just a huge lag in turning. To experience this in a straightforward way, hold D to move right. While holding D, press S. You keep moving right, all that is fine. Then release D. You think the character would immediately switch to down movement, but there is a huge delay.
Most of combat was dominated by this delay. Original-Zelda-style combat is about quickly reacting to the changes in direction of the semi-predictable AI, and spiking your sword shot onto them without getting so close you get hit. That very often requires an instant switch of direction immediately before the swing, and I just can't do that in this game.
I know others mentioned the controls so maybe I'm repeating, but I'm a big believer that control feel is the #1 thing in these jams, so I hope the extra detail is constructive.
Glancing at your code, I think the problem might be an unintended interaction between PlayerController.ProcessInputs() and CharacterMove.GroundMovement()
In ProcessInputs you do:
horizontal += Input.GetAxis("Horizontal");
And then in CharacterMove.GroundMovement() you have:
xVelocity = speed * input.horizontal; //... if (xVelocity == 0) { yVelocity = speed * input.vertical; //Set up and down movement }
If you read the documentation for that "GetAxis" function you're using, here: https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/Input.GetAxis.html
You will see a tiny note at the bottom:
> Note: The Horizontal and Vertical ranges change from 0 to +1 or -1 with increase/decrease in 0.05f steps. GetAxisRaw has changes from 0 to 1 or -1 immediately, so with no steps.
So my best guess is that the GetAxis step feature creates a "cooldown" when the horizontal walk is released by your player. That cooldown takes several moments to get all the way to zero.
While it is still not zero, your "if (xVelocity == 0)" check returns FALSE even though the user is not pressing any x-direction movement button. And this is why the player cannot instantly turn down.
My experience is that I hate this smoothing that GetAxis does, and I usually just read raw Input.GetKeyDown. You can use GetAxisRaw instead. By accessing the raw input, you can take more direct control of the game feel and get it just right.
Hope that helps!
Anyway, this one unfortunate thing in the controls aside, the rest of your entry is really strong and well-done for a compo. There's an ambitious amount of scope here, with nice art and sound and design. I look forward to seeing what you come up with next!
(EDIT: I tried the fixed-controls version and it's a lot better. I still think it's a tiny bit mushy and if you are still using the smoothed GetAxis I suggest trying GetAxisRaw, but it's a big improvement already.)
I enjoyed this!! It's different and charming. It has a few raw bits like superjump against certain platforms, some wallclimbing, and sticking to edges a little. But I don't mind, those things make it feel charming.
I also don't mind the controls here, with the air-control style of "instantly when you let go you will lose all horizontal velocity". I know some people don't enjoy that style, but for me once I realize that is what a game is doing (zero momentum in midair) I just switch into that mode of thinking, and I can use it very effectively.
So I found the controls and physics interactions enjoyable.
The mechanics were also cool, and you had some very nice progression of introducing the ideas. One especially nice touch was to have the new enemy type safely encased in tiles where I could observe it the first time I saw it. Great idea!
If I could tweak one thing it would probably be the side-friction onto the walls. I think the character mostly felt fine, but the bad-feel moments I did have were around getting stuck on the sides of walls why trying to slip through a space. I think just setting friction to zero is probably fine, since this is a zero-momentum game anyway!
Nice entry overall, I played through to the end and enjoyed it.
The second I saw the art I rushed to play the game.
I love driving/combat mashups and I love drifting in the mud, and from the screenshot/gif it looked like this game was going to be ***** METAL!!
And it was fun -- but I didn't feel the METAL. I felt like it needed a few tweaks. I'll go a little deeper on what I was hoping for and some issues I ran into, not because it's a bad game but because it's good and could be great.. I hope this is constructive:
First problem is the main design challenge of any driving game: you have a discrete input (keyboard) controlling a vehicle usually controlled by a continuous input (steering wheel). With a steering wheel I can turn a little bit left, or a lot, and express any precise angle I intend. But with a keyboard, I can only press or not-press "D". How does a driving game create the ability for a player to express their intent for turning angle? This game doesn't have an answer, and so what happens is the classic problem: every single turn is at exactly the same radius. Extra-unfortunately in this game, that radius is not well-matched to the radius of the track's curve, and every turn goes the same way: gradually out toward the wall. You can see this problem happening in your gif.
There is no perfect answer to this design problem, but here are three ideas you could try that might improve the feel of this game: Letting go of "W" while holding "D" could sharpen the turn. Or I could have a brake/drift on space that I can tap (and weapon goes to another key). Or at least the car's turning should be TIGHTER than the track and not looser, because then I could use quick bursts of releasing "D" to realign with the track. In this game, I can't press "D" enough, so I always go into the wall which isn't very METAL.
Second problem is the killing. I was pretty excited for it, but I struggled to get satisfying kills. The best ones were purple-box items rocket and land mine, which were both satisfying. I could have used a 10 or 20x increase in how often I can use those features. The smoke screen was always a disappointing pickup because it meant "no fun kills this lap." I didn't find the green boxes worth it, they just slow down the driving for me as well as the Klones, so I rarely got them... perhaps I just misunderstood their use?
Since the weapons of war were so rare, and I wanted to get my METAL combat on, I tried ramming people into wrecks or into the wall. But it was hard to line up rams, and when I did get into position for a ram what often happened is that I hit the wall and died. So I felt a little discouraged to experiment with rams.
Anyway, if I could steer better, drift a little, ram people, and get 10x as many weapons, I think would really get into this.
The basic idea is great, and there's something really special about the badass way it looks and *almost* feels.
Hope that wasn't too much critique! I definitely had some spikes of intense fun with it.
Super moody with the color scheme and audio layers working really well together.
I was very confused at first, and getting shot before the I'd even parsed all the instructional text. So I hit the move key to dodge while I read, but this made it all disappear. I quit and restarted to read, so not really a big deal.
I'm not quite sure if I ever played how I was meant to. I just held down walk+sprint forever, and then left-clicked a box, charged up a powerthrow w/ right click, and then threw it at the guys. I wasn't really sure if I was supposed to also be deflecting their shots or moving in a more complex way, but that strat seemed to work.
It was a little repetitive after a while like that, but it definitely had a very cool mood/vibe and a really unique gameplay.
Played a few times and managed a positive ending. I was pulled into the atmosphere of the game by the ambient sound of the Ferris wheel, the way the lighting made the shadows move as the wheel rotates, and the idle animations. These details were all in the nearby things, focusing me on the conversation, while the far-off things were highly abstracted. I felt like it was really well put together.
My hand of cards seemed like it always wanted me to be snide and evasive, but I guess that was a commentary on the difficulty of dealing directly with your fears!
Nice work all around, and very well polished for a compo entry.
Really imaginative puzzle game. It has a nice presentation that goes beyond just showing the basic game state, to really reflect the idea of the game and emphasize how it ties to the theme.
The first few puzzles were a journey of discovering the rules, which I always enjoy. Then I started being able to reason them through and execute on a plan. I hit one with three red bricks and a not-quite-brick-sized hole in the floor, and I got stuck here.
Maybe I got stuck because I had the wrong solution in mind -- my solution involved carefully balancing the square brick on my round player in mid-air, which was quite difficult. I tried a lot but eventually gave up there. I think partly it was because of playing in the browser, as my frame rate and input responsiveness seemed to bog down a little.
For that plus the sound, I tried downloading the PC version but I got this error from itch when I tried: https://imgur.com/XE1VIUc
Overall excellent, was sorry I got stuck without going further.
Very nice entry!
Very cool concept, and nice presentation. Good use of light and dark to indicate status, and also to call attention to the record even when the screen gets busy. Especially kind was the turbo-slide from last position to new one for the record, which helped me track it in a busy field of bullets.
I stink at bullet-hell games, but I was especially bad at this one. The farthest I got was to briefly hear the "HEY" sound. The controls are full-tilt - they seem to go from zero to full speed instantly, which makes it quite hard for me to micro-dodge. So I have to take my moves in huge lurches, meaning I have to read more of the field. That may be the style you were shooting for, I just wasn't able to keep up!
It was very nice that the game counter-balanced this high difficulty with a mostly-low punishment for failure, since getting hit just put you -1 record instead of gameover or some other brutal thing. I still found myself getting streaks of hits sending me WAY back, because once you get far into the game there are tons of bullets all over the place, and even if you get set back a few steps and some of the guns relax, those bullets they've already shot still exist for a while and so there's a "buffer" to how quickly the game will de-escalate the challenge.
I enjoyed playing around with it and giving it a bunch of tries, though. Cool twist mashing up a few different genres here to create a unique entry here, good job.
Nice job with taking a clean idea and communicating the rules through a nice progression of puzzles instead of text! I especially enjoyed figuring out what the blue square does the first time, and also the puzzle where I thought it would be easy because I had a bishop, but then realized the only path through was on the wrong color square.
Overall a nice puzzle entry, well done.
2416 was my top score. Not sure if that's good, but it was definitely a lot better than my first few attempts! First couple of games I was totally bamboozled about why the game was ending, if it was not because I directly took a hit. Came back to read the instructions and realized I was probably killing my past self.
After that I had a strategy: Take over the left side of the screen, and for the first life just bulletspam to the right while walking up and down. Second life doesn't shoot. I sort of looped back and forth between spammy and mostly-passive lives.
But even then I was a little confused because I wasn't sure about the rules of the enemy playback ghosts. Or were those greyish guys something else? There was a lot going on and it was all happening fast and when I did something wrong the screen instantly disappeared, so it was not easy to learn in this game through experience.
But the action was fast-paced so I didn't mind restarting, and the concept was interesting enough that I wanted to explore it, and the controls were tight enough that I felt like it was my own mistake when I did die. So I found myself getting sucked into "one more try" mode, over and over, which is a great sign!
Nice music, effective graphics, tight controls, and a unique concept -- all around a nice package!
Music is jammin! Leaving it running while I write here.
Had a little friction at first trying to figure the game out, but then I got into it and played until I got a respectable spot on the leaderboard (nice touch).
Friction points on first contact: controls felt backwards and I struggled to activate the option as it did not seem to kick in when I activated it. I still don't know what happened, it just suddenly seemed to kick in one time. Then in game trying to play, it took me a while to figure out at what scale the objects were passing my collision plane, especially the rings. I kept leaping for them too late. But after a while I got better at judging the distance.
None of those issues stuck around after I got up to speed though. And then I found myself getting into the zone. I appreciated the very quick restart, and REALLY appreciated the way the game is not exactly repeating itself every time I play, so it was fresh enough that retry meant "play more" and not "do the exact same thing over again."
Controls were solid, and I enjoyed the feeling of flowing through the different geometric patterns the obstacles came in.
If I could tweak one thing about the game, I think there is room for improvement on the VERY small adjustments. The controls may be slightly too responsive to tiny taps, given that it asks to you to sometimes make tiny movements. I found myself overshooting tiny moves, and the feel might be improved by having a few frames of ramp-up on the responsiveness.
Overall a nice entry that sucked me into playing "one more game" a few times more than I thought I would. Nice job!
Really interesting concept that forced me to (try to) think long-term and in layers. I enjoyed the fact that it doesn't give a ton of instructions, which gave it a nice air of mystery. It was a little too tricky/long/difficult for me to complete, but definitely something memorable! The repetition of action (with accumulated knowledge) captured the theme really well, but eventually became a little repetitive after a bunch of tries.
The art and music also worked well with the vision to give a coherent vibe to the whole thing, too. The darkness and vision-cone did a great job of highlighting the past-selves and their dangerous vision.
Nice work.
Drifting feels great! Started off totally sucking at it, but once I got decent it was just great to drift around curves.
But there is one thing that hurt while I was trying to learn the groove: the ultra-high friction between the wall and the car is SOOOOO punishing. If I brush the wall with a front corner of my car, instead of a little bounce-off jolt, instead that point sticks hard to the wall and jerks my car around 90 degrees so I'm facing directly into the wall. Bumping walls should cost me time, but I was feeling like I could have had a lot more fun if they were a bit more forgiving by having less friction and more bounce.
That one complaint aside, it's a very nice game: great drift controls, tight gameplay-focused structure, a very clean nice-looking presentation, and strong audio. Nice work!
A simple concept but the charming artwork and nice sound effects make it work. The few bits of dialog establishing a character also helped to get me a little more invested before the slaughter began. Lot of ideas for little things that could be added, but it stood on it's own well enough. Eventually my finger got tired and I fell soon after that.
Nice basic but well-polished and charming entry.
This is a cool idea. Couple of small flaws dinged me in the experience, but overall the gist of the game was original and intriguing.
A few things that hurt my experience:
- Dice tray is far away from the place to put the dice, when trying to play fast this long drag-and-drop dominated my experience. It's not ambiguous where the die goes and I really wished I could double-click it. Or at least have the drill and processing right above the tray, and the text above that.
- The game has a LOT of text. Most of it too small to read so I didn't. I think it said "tip" but I couldn't read any of the tips.
- I quickly settled on the algo that the other commenters mentioned: drag and drop pairs, click reroll drag and drop any extra pairs, then click drill then drag/drop high numbers, reroll, drag and drop highs again, new day repeat.
So those are some critiques but I don't want to overstate the negative. The interlocking system of dice and different sorts of machines was compelling. I just needed a little more wiggle room in how to make decisions. Maybe I need to load dice into the drill and the processing, and my choice is about what dice to use where? "This pair of 5s could let me drill down another 100m but that won't leave me any high dice for the processor" or some tradeoff like that.
The vibe was cool, and I enjoyed the music. With just a *bit* more fast-play friendly UX and a few more actual decisions I might have been straight-up hooked.
As it was I did play a while (ran out of money). Nice work on making something pretty interesting and ambitious here.
Daaaaaaamn. I actually had a chill run down my spine when I hit the ending. I was all wound up in the atmosphere of the place, the careful climbing punctuated with unavoidable moments of risky momentum, and the slightly disturbing mysterious narrator.
First few moments with the game I experimented with the grapple, and I thought I was going to be learning to swing around on it. I've always had grapple game on my bucket list, and when I imagine it the player is grapple-swinging to karate kick guys in the face and it's all about releasing the grapple to chain into the next grapple midair.
I tried some nonsense remotely in that direction AND was smacked hard with a large chunk of life loss... and I was like YUP this is a Mullin game, I'm going to be expected to be thoughtful and have a light touch.
And man, it really works. I started thinking far ahead, and rejecting risky plans in search of the safest way forward. I enjoyed the methodical climb and got very alert for the wild swings I had to take from time to time.
I have captured a handful of moments that created a cool thought process...
I stood here for a while, wondering, do I grapple the ceiling? Nah, I'll grapple the floor and carefully lower myself down: https://imgur.com/SVnHpcR
Here I'm being super careful, surrounded by lava and not knowing what lies ahead, how can I choose a spot that will keep my options open?? https://imgur.com/h9Fheii
This is a part of the game that even you probably didn't get to, when I bounced off lava into the mushrooms, where death seemed to have dimmed my light but mushrooms prevented me from dying: https://imgur.com/iHUbfGx
That screen shot probably looks stupid, but this was pretty intense. The voice had just said "the risk is imaginary" so I thought maybe I was *supposed* to have this post-death experience? Anyway, that climb down I could only see dimly for like a 1-inch radius around my character, and it jacked the mood (and yea, difficulty) up to a crazy degree. Vision went back to normal on respawn but wow. Try playing with a tiny ring of light some time, it's wild!
And last example: I thought it was pretty cool that you gave me this invitation to show off what I'd learned: https://imgur.com/sxhFLtR
If I could change one thing about the game it would be to enable fullscreen. It's so immersive, but I had the task bar and window title kind of intruding on my immersion. No big.
Really well done, great physics that forced a style of play that was in strong harmony with the mood. Everything came together to make such a nice experience.
Wow, the colors, the textures, and the audio are so lush, warm, inviting. It's really an awesome atmosphere/mood. I would just stand and stare or listen. I took my time, collected the 3 shapes, and hung out for a bit.
I also appreciated that although the game's mood was low-key, you didn't shy away from a decent walking speed. That let me choose moments to turbo through a backtrack in the maze without frustration, and still let me chill when I wanted.
I did miss that I could get onto the [SPOILER] at the end. I even tried to see if there was an interaction by waiting at what I thought was the high point of the ground is passed, and closely following it a bit, but I guess I didn't find the right trick. (EDIT: I now see that reading the instructions was the trick I missed!)
No worries -- a unique and interesting experience. Very nice entry!
Nice - tense action in a very atmospheric setting.
I appreciated that this game does NOT waste time. It gets started the second you consent, and the retry starts over from right where you died.
Took me a life or to to understand what was going on, but then I got it pretty quickly.
It was an interesting tension about where to look. If I look behind me I can see glimpses of the minotaur right as he gets really dangerous, but then I'm backpedaling blindly, and sometimes into a dead end. If I look ahead of me at where I'm going, I'm getting really paranoid about the monster. It created a nice horror movie just-a-glimpse-of-the-monster feeling.
From the fact that I was rated on time, I didn't really explore the space. I ended up settling on a loop to memorize and run. That way I could run it backwards blind and know I wouldn't get stuck. And just when I thought I had it beat the floor opened up and I fell into a tiny room I couldn't escape -- that sure showed me!!
Atmosphere was really nice, sound was great especially for a compo, and the controls were nice and responsive. Well done!
Unique and compelling art style -- never seen outer space portrayed this way but it works and was visually interesting.
Snappy controls and some fun dogfights!
For critique I'd say that it could feel a bit aimless when it doesn't matter what direction I go -- but the arrow toward fuel was a GREAT feature to include and prevents a lot of feelbad hopelessness because I have a goal.
Nice entry! Add some sound to match the nice visuals and it'll really start coming alive.
You know that old joke about the two guys camping, and the bear shows up and they're gonna run for it, but one guy stops to lace up his sneakers. Pal is like, "you can't outrun the bear!" But sneaker guy is all, "I only gotta outrun YOU!"
In this game you still can't outrun the bears, but there ain't nobody else around. And there are like 200 of them!! Oh boy! They even wear wristwatches to taunt you about how much time they're going to take from you, although I think they might actually be compasses. What do bears know, except killing?
I really liked the 3 orbs system. It let me opt into 2 levels of difficulty on a per-mission basis in case I got stuck (I mean, maybe I should have tried red just to see, but c'mon I got more pride than that)
Really liked the mix of different types of challenge. Some of them were super-intense, and it was good to get a little break with some of the chiller ones that were about platforming or searching, to let the cramp in my hands subside.
Really enjoyed how each of them called back to a previous game in the series! Poor Killbane, just trying to do his thing. He's a sport.
I finished the first time with 2 yellows and the rest green. And yup, you guessed it: the two yellows were the bear levels!
A meltdown, sure, but I had to go back and challenge myself to get a FULL meltdown, so I went back and ran it again going for green on all of them.
The Killjane level, with the bears and the trash, was nuts to get green on. I had to try it a lot, an experiment. At first I thought the trash was a problem because it let the bears sneak up on me. And disoriented me.
But then I discovered the trasholine strategy. Bears can't hit me if I'm in the sky!! I don't know if that's how you intended me to finish that level, but I shot like the first 3ish bears and trasholine-hopped my way through and back.
A couple of small points that dinged me: - The "Press E" on the answer pickup and podium could be a bit more generous. I definitely lost a number of runs to each. I mean especially the answer: hopping up and down on trash thrashing my mouse around spamming E!
- OMG the bear sounds. They are always right behind me swinging, and when I turn around they aren't. But then when I don't turn around they are! I think their sounds ignore the walls, maybe? It really increased their danger level because of how disorienting it was.
After trasholining the Killjane level the other difficult green was Handsome Wizard, the other bear level. I went back and forth on whether to go carefully or turbo... you did a good job of striking a balance where it was a close call and worth trying both. Having no trach to bounce on in this level, I did experiment with running up the walls, but I didn't get very far with it: https://imgur.com/uBH0ovU
Overall this game was really fun! I loved the voice acting, the graphics were great on the enemies, environment, and story scenes, and the controls were tight and action a blast.
Great job, glad to see your crew back in action.
Yeah the bear maze was my favorite, too, a nice intense level that forced me to fight on the run.
That was the level where I was like "finally, I did it!" only to realize I was standing in front of the closed exit holding the green orb because my E hadn't registered on the podium. (To be fair I was definitely doing a drive-by E).
I was thinking about that moment a little more, and what would be the right way to be more generous with the E interactions. Obviously you could just make the collider larger, or convert from a raycast to a spherecast to give a larger target to look at. But there's another trick I'm always using, which is to smear out in time the acceptable moments of getting (Look At + Press E) such that they don't need to happen on literally the same frame.
Looking at your code you do the clear and direct thing:
if (Input.GetKeyDown(KeyCode.E) && lookingAt)
Where lookingAt is set by a Raycast:
Physics.Raycast(transform.position, forward, out hit, interactRange, layerMask)
I have the same pair of checks for jumping in my game. Player needs to press the jump button, and have a raycast decide they are on the ground.
But it SUCKS when you press jump and don't get a jump, so I smear time in both directions to allow for a too-early jump and a too-late jump, and then define a tolerance for each. This is a small thing but it deletes a lot of feel-bad moments from the game feel:
private bool JumpTriggeredRecently() // instead of checking input directly { return (Time.fixedTime - lastJumpTriggerTime) < PreJumpTime; }
private bool StillInCoyoteTime() // instead of checking raycast directly { return (Time.fixedTime - lastTimeOnGround) < CoyoteTime; }
Then the parts in update/fixedupdate that check the input/raycast just set these time variables.
Obviously a jump in a jumping game calls for WAY more focus than the pickup/podium interaction in your game, so not saying you should have this. But it's a cool trick to have in your bag for whenever you are timing a button press with some kind of physics check, and once I started doing this trick I was hooked and use it all the time now.
Really excelling at the mood here. Everything cooperates to nail it: the spare visual style, the synths, the way I'm manually opening doors wondering what kind of game this even is and feeling suspense. Loved the little touches like some of the overhead lights being out, and the bots on the ground.
Entering the final room definitely stop me in my tracks to just look around. The conclusion felt abrupt and I wished it could have been tied off in some way, but what you did create was really effective.
Pacing was well done, too. At first I felt the text was too slow, and at the start of the game I was surprised I had no jump, but after getting a sense of the game I realized both of these were the correct design choice. I liked the little snarky remark about wishing it was a gun, as of course I totally didn't wish it was a shooter, but this was a nice addition to the suspense feel.
Really a well-executed piece here, despite feeling a little incomplete.
Still have fond memories of Radioactive Rumble, so I was excited to try your latest, but the link was a 404.
Sorry if this LD didn't go your way!
Wow the art was great, all the parallax layering and the details really created an environment.
I loved the variety of enemies across the zones. Each looked really distinct, but also played really differently which was nice.
The character control was good, too. The inertia gave me a feeling of flying and created a lot of challenge and care to how I had to move.
The brutal side was how the sword got smaller when I got hit, forcing me to get closer, which led to more getting hit. But a downward spiral to doom is probably right on theme, right?
All of the times I got hit, I felt it was my fault, except one situation: When I was lining up a shot on someone and then the circle of hell changed, the enemy would suddenly "stop" (which really meant accelerate into my face). When I was not doing battle with them, this was a very nice visual effect as the old zoomed away to be replaced by the new. But a few times I was lining up an attack and they suddenly cheap-shot me.
I didn't manage to finish the game. I got to Violence a few times, but always with a few hits on my belt. The violence enemy is a good one to test my skill. The other levels, I can kind of just avoid some enemies so it might not matter if I have the impotent sword. But not so with violence: The mini ball goes out and then comes at my side, and demands combat. But it's not easy to reign in hell, and I wasn't up to the task.
The blue lost soul guy between levels as a sort of healing mechanism was a very nice touch. So much more flavorful than "here's a free heart".
Overall a really strong offering with some great art and atmosphere, and a strong variety of different types of challenge! Nice work to your whole team!
I got to 2105 before I called it quits. But I nearly went bust -- I was saved by a triple banana on the second-to-last spin I could afford.
It was simple but strangely compelling. Yolo was a nice touch, although the chance of winning on a given spin was low enough that I was hesitant to use it a lot.
If I could change one thing I would increase the size -- of both the game overall, but especially of the font size of my money. It was small it was in my browser, and I had to use the magnifying glass app to get it to a comfortable size: https://imgur.com/MVpFetb
The feel was good - the sounds were enjoyable, and the wheel spinning looked nice and although it felt slow at first I got used to it and I think that waiting was part of why it felt a bit compulsive after a while.
Nice job!
Thanks everyone for the comments! The feedback is really a big part of the enjoyment of the LD experience, and I've rated/commented all of your games back at this point. If I somehow missed you let me know.
Watching live play is great, so special thanks to @coleslaughter and the amazingly hard-working @jupiter-hadley
Some really impressive scores here. @justinmullin 4k is great! The combo meter paid off more than I expected, I've included them in games before but it seems like in this one it was really worth the effort. The interesting tradeoff between the easy-but-problematic vertical digging vs the harder-but-sustainable horizontal strategy was something that just emerged naturally from the system. I love how those things reveal themselves rather than get designed in, so I'm really glad the combo system helped to nudge players toward discovering it.
But wow, @peachtreeoath 7k??? That's mind-bogglingly good, you must have really mastered it. I'm impressed. I did wonder if other types of blocks could provide a shape to the level and force the player to do more on-the-fly planning rather than just executing a set strategy. I had imagined bonus gems that pop out which would be crushed by the jackhammer if you didn't snap them up first for bonus points, but I never found time to explore that possibility.
If I could have done a few more things:
As time I ran out I was like 90% of the way through adding little pieces of debris that fly off when you dig a block. I think it could be more viscerally satisfying to dig.
Next I wanted to add a full-clear bonus row of special blocks so that you'd NEVER have an empty screen, and if the player dominated the game it would fill the gap with more work to do (with those bonus blocks letting you get even higher scores).
Lastly, I spent some time practicing in FL Studio for this jam, and had a goal of adding music for the first time. Instead I ran out of time and barely added the sound effects. Hopefully next time! Music is definitely the next big level-up for me as a jammer.
Good luck in the results everyone, hope to see you next time!
Very nice! The graphics look great, and the mix of pixel art and the water/fire being in a different style was an interesting take.
I loved the character: all helmet, and with controls that made me feel their bulk. Nice that I had to stop to use water and couldn't just spam it.
I made it to the point with the purple sparkles that re-create new fire, and after having to restart the 5th time I gave up. The problem was that the restart sends me several minutes backward, which is a lot of repetition for a jam and this in turn made me impatient which made me careless which made me die. Once I entered this downward spiral I lost heart.
I think with sound even this would have not mattered because the vibe and environment are really great, so with that extra sense in play I bet it would be amazing.
Really nice job on the art and the core mechanics. I also enjoyed the mystery of the story, and was sorry I didn't have heart to make it to the end.
And here I thought roblox were some competitor to legos! I would have skipped the onerous install process but you're SO CLOSE to getting the 20 that I couldn't just walk away. Hope you cross the finish line in time!
This was a fun little experience. I enjoyed that I could restart the dialog and test various paths through the short bits of clever prose. I also dug the charmingly severe transitions between environments. It put to rest the question of which is a scarier hell: the spooky creepy gross bug kind, or the one with puppies. No contest.
I was determined to find some glitch to escape Heck, as I could see outside the walls with the camera. But those colliders were too strong. I tried glitching into a superjump by getting stuck between the two signs but that also refused to work.
The best I could do was walk left and right very quickly around this spot here, which triggered a restart to the torture-music and provided some much-needed tranquility:
RobloxScreenShot20210517_235410521.png
Respect for throwing away your usual engines to try out something new, and nice work!
Wow, VERY cool game!
It's a great mashup of dirty monster-blasting action with tactical planning and experimentation. It had a bit of tower defense DNA but with a lot more personality. The upgrades are a killer feature that takes it to the next level and had me reloading back to the start to try out different builds.
Each upgrade was really compelling, although I'll admit I didn't value the health one at first. I was all, "well it lets me restart a level anyway so who cares about camp bonuses?" I learned the hard way when I kept being surprised my front guy was dead so quick...
But the large coverage arcs of range were so nice, and the fast kills from dmg... all very tempting.
I really needed some sound going on, so I loaded up some remix of the doom soundtrack in the background and it fit really well.
I so wished for an indicator on the marine that it was selected. A great many fights went very badly because I went into a downward spiral triggered by accidentally turning the wrong marine. Eventually I figured out that I shouldn't stab the number keys like I would for weapon switching in an FPS, and should just permanently park 1 finger per key and link the finger to the marine in my mind. After I found something that worked for me there, it really helped.
After playing for about an hour I managed to get to the gate at the end of level 5.
Watching your video playthrough, I learned a few things... Mainly that the tiny enemies are not an emergency, even if they are chomping on your dudes. I was probably overreacting to them. Seems better to set up for the larger enemies.
OK one more try, hang on...
Haha nope, still not getting past the gate on 5! Still too many marine-selection errors in the heat of the moment.
The stylized semi-abstract graphics were really effective and evoked a nice mood. The enemy attack animations and the blood splatters from death gave the circles a nice boost of feeling alive. The aim arcs, gunfire, and grenade explosions all fit well into the vibe.
But the highlight for me was the novel gameplay that had me thinking about to get out of getting my ass kicked... and saying ONE MORE GAME.
Really cool entry, great job!
Wow, really great vibe here! The art looks fantastic, the sound is strong, and the music is outstanding. It all really came together nicely into an impressively-polished entry. Gameplay-wise I enjoyed the various upgrades and the space invaders were a nice touch.
Nice job!
Wow! This feels so polished and complete. The art is just great, I really love the various bodies and some of those horrible tattoos had me cracking up.
Whole thing had a great vibe. You really have a clear vision and nailed it.
I struggled initially with where on the hand I was supposed to aim, and then I realized the mouse cursor is still on the screen. Once I started aiming with that I did better. Still tons of errors though! Apparently I'm not cut out for this line of work. I don't know if it would intrude on the experience, but some visual feedback on where/how I missed may have accelerated my learning curve. (EDIT: whaaat I just went back to test again and now I don't see the mouse cursor, I guess I got it into a weird state, maybe by alt-tabbing??)
The variety of the physical actions and the time pressure combined in a very cool way. After I found myself scanning-and-planning my next move while executing the current action I realized this is really well designed.
I know you sourced the music and sound but they were really well chosen and added enhanced the vibe a lot.
Really nice job here.
Cool riff on an old classic!
I liked the game, but I wanted it to be faster. Everything was slower than I wanted... I was hammering the button three times between each leap, and then when I failed the torturously slow restart was so disheartening. Then I would get back in the zone and be having fun again, but always hammering hammering wishing it was faster.
I would probably have played 5x as much if the speed was doubled.
The art style was nice, but the way it changed and got darker as I went deeper, along with the pitch shifting -- just great. I also liked the design touch of the yellow per-warning of the incoming enemies. You gave me that, and then if I make the mistakes it's my own fault that I lost! Very nice.
Overall enjoyable entry, nice work!
Cool stuff, effective art style, a few different enemy types, procedurally generated levels, and various upgrades in shops -- a lot to like!
I made it to the final boss, but lost the fight. I couldn't tell if I was hitting him. The other enemies I got a sound effect and knockback when I hit them, but it didn't seem to do anything when I hit the boss. I was unsure if he was taking damage, or if I had to do something else to hurt him... if that was the case I could have used a "ping" invincibility sound as a hint.
I liked the little green blobs, their leap was a good attack. Easy enough if you are patient and careful, but can get you if you're not careful or if the room gets busy.
Nice entry!
Oh - I never figured that out, and probably never damaged the boss, then!
I thought "WOW this is exactly my kind of game!!" Challenging and interesting main movement mechanic, simple premise, effective art and sound, and (thank you) NO TUTORIAL you trust me to figure it out. I quit the web version and downloaded the windows build so I could really settle in and enjoy it.
So I was very excited.
But I never made it past the second checkpoint. I didn't really mind the over-the-top difficulty THAT much, but I could not handle the slow restart time with that darn camera pan. It got me to a really bad state of mind and I had to just stop playing. Maybe I just died too much, and restart was way more often for me (55 deaths to get the second checkpoint.) I even checked if you posted source code so could modify it to instant-restart myself!
Another tweak to maybe consider is to put the fuel meter on the ship rather than the mouse cursor. If I held the cursor near the ship to see my fuel, then movements of the camera could have a surprising interference as the ship moved away from screen-center (Thus changing its position relative to cursor). If I held it far away and focused on controlling the ship I could not see my fuel. I would have preferred not to even have the cursor at all, and just let the mouse's movement angle the ship directly, but maybe that wouldn't work for some of the fancy flying I saw in gifs above.
So this is a really strong entry, with many good things, I just personally couldn't get past the restart delay to dig in as much as I would have liked, sorry.
(BTW wow those post-comp art screenshots you posted looks great.)
I was thinking about your game again. I tried this mountain biking game and at one point I looked up at the screen to find that I had crashed over 300 hundred times in a pretty short play session.
That game lets you watch some humorous ragdolls of the crash if you want, but also has a zero-delay insta-restart button press that. If you want to get a vibe of it, here's some gameplay vid on youtube where the player is using it: /watch?v=Ls-i4q-kT6Q
Reflecting on the 2 experiences I would say that instant restart did let me play the bike game, and I would have lost heart there too if not for it.
Not sure that's helpful but since it brought your game to mind I figured I'd mention it! I see some parallels between the two games in terms of the focus on an interesting control against tough terrain, with insta-fail and moderately-distanced checkpoints, which was why I compared them.
Nice entry! I played to the ending.
You have a couple of interesting mechanics here with the hiding, and the spiker guys that drop from the ceiling. The tutorial was effective without being overbearing, and I liked how you introduced the most unusual one first, let me learn it. Then threw the second on in, and finally started blending the two together.
By the time I got to the end... oh boy. That final dash under the falling spikes required one perfect jump over a hog and was like threading a needle.
The final section with the different environment that was relaxing and led into the final cinematic end was a nice reward after that final difficult section.
For critique -- I wished up was also jump, and felt the main character's decel to a stop was a BIT slippery for my taste, but not too bad. I also fell through a floor and got stuck inside the wall on a second playthrough doing some testing, I flew off this big drop and landed here and went straight through the floor and was stuck inside: https://imgur.com/ztO10GZ
But you got the most important parts right, like the feel of quickly ducking into hiding, and the important unreliability of jumping over a hog. It was possible, but the hog would usually get you right after anyway, which forced me to engage with your mechanics instead of skipping sections.
Art style was nice, very clean and clear and everything fit well together, and the music was enjoyable. Nice job!
Really enjoyed the dark mood, and how it snuck up and then escalated, gradually consuming the mundane. Was the font hand drawn? I didn't pay careful attention to see if the letters repeated exactly, but either way I didn't mind that was a little bit of a struggle to read. I also think you used some deliberately long speech-advancing delays for a few parts, maybe? The impediments to normal easy for of reading were in line with the game's tone so I definitely didn't mind.
Nice pixel art, especially the night scene in the park with my friend there. The audio was also really nice.
Great job on achieving a clear, consistent voice for this entry.
Nice variety of enemies!
Played a decent amount.. After a few games learning the ropes, I dug in and made it to a megawave of flying biters that did me in, and didn't have the heart to restart.
I liked the controls, although I never got super-fluid with them. On the plus side the character is responsive, has a good non-floaty jump feel, solid air control, and the attack range is nice with a super-clear graphic. The whole playing-lefty thing (arrows + attack w/ left hand) is tough, I'm used to wasd, so maybe that's why I never felt super in the zone. A very interesting element was the directional aiming of the attack. It was essential to the game.
A very nice design choice was the amount of knockback, which made me have to chase enemies down and think about movement, as opposed to just being a run-up-and-spam.
This was a good all around package, with compelling art, solid sound, and a nice music that accompanied the "vile monsters" theme well. Nice work!
Love this kind of short really unique entry, great job! The audio is top-notch: voice tutorial is a great way to make it fun to learn this really unusual system, music fits super-well, and the sound effect for moving up/down levels is nice. Graphics were clear and direct. Game duration was great -- let me play around with this system, have a few surprises and test my knowledge, and then ended without me having any chance to get tired of it: ended while I still wanted more.
Critique-wise I can only offer one thing: maybe the controls could be simplified, I don't know if there is value to moving up/down with the arrows, so instead of the split arrows-and-WS, you could just have left/right move on the level and up/down switch between. Not that this mattered at all in such a short game.
Nice entry! And so different from your soundcloud concert game that I remember playing before, love seeing that variety of types of entries.
This hits a lot of really strong points, very well done.
Art is charming, sfx are crunchy and nice, music is just awesome.
The core mechanic is delightful and right on the knife's edge of F**K THIS and really satisfying. I nearly ragequit several times, but pressed on and made it and it was always rewarding when I did.
The controls are so compelling. They occasionally hit brilliant moments of feeling fluid and elegant. They ask you to make these huge commits in advance, and with zero air control you can do nothing but sit and gape at the consequences of your folly while some signal originating from your lizard brain mashes your finger deeper into the D key to no avail. Glorious.
I probably just sucked at it, but transitioning from drillpath to drillpath across open air was what yanked me away from feeling fluid. You're on the rise and trying to transition to a block above you: drilling up, hit space too early and you brake and reverse in the low block; hit space too late and you bounce harshly off the ceiling above.
I definitely enjoyed my time with the game. I would have spent longer with it if there were mid-way checkpoints or something else to take the edge off how much I had to repeat sections I struggled with.
It's a really charming, unique entry, with a very strong original movement mechanic that's well implemented. And again, bumpin' music. Very nice work!
You got an impressive amount done, and take heart that you made it playable! My head spins thinking about all of the features you completed: the ability to click into units, select spaces, issue commands, cancel back out of the menus, highlight the paths, the turn-based combat system, recruiting the party, map generation... it's just a ton of features, all done to a point where it can be played. Plus all of the very nice isometric pixel art!
Sorry the LD didn't go how you wanted, but it's a badass display of your skills just to get as far as you did.
This shit happens. I've done 19 of these things, and just a few LDs ago I overscoped badly and ruined myself, making my worst game ever.
Calm, chill experience with the nice little sound effects from the dwarves and their digging! I had a bit of fun but I didn't want to manage them for all that long because there wasn't that much for me to do after I'd gotten the systems down. Idle games aren't usually my kind of thing, so just a matter of taste.
You did achieve a nice chill vibe though, good work! The graphics were also very nice, and the little funeral was awesome, great touch.
Haha, had some fun with this even though idle/clickers aren't my usual thing. The voice acting was a big part of it, and very charming! At least, until I installed defense turrets and destroyed the audio of the game. First I had to take my headphones off, but then when there were enough I had to straight up mute my computer. I don't know who those people were I was murdering, but I sure paid the price! ;)
But once I had the machine rolling, the ultimate goal seemed attainable, so I really had to do it:
passing-C.png
By the time I sailed past the speed of light, it was no big thing.
Nice entry! Definitely got me pulled in.
Nice! This is a well-rounded entry with good music, sound, art, and a kind of nicely "crunchy" feeling to the digging. It made gameplay fast and enjoyable.
I managed to get 18 gems, although I pushed my luck a bit at the end and got killed unnecessarily.
At first I thought I was supposed to dig rocks and didn't get any gems for a while. Once I realized gems are also in dirt, I pretty much stuck to dirt and dove down as deep as a I could. My strategy on each level was the same: dig to the bottom the shortest dirt-only path so that I could escape in one turn whenever my stamina got low, and then dig horizontally along the bottom row.
The experience was good but it felt a little too random; I would have appreciated if something about each new screen caused me to change up my strats, like if I could see that some areas were high-reward that I want to get to, or high-risk of bats/caveins etc.
Nice job with your entry!
Very crazy creative controls! Had some fun messing around with them, got to 3328. I never got all the way to really figuring out any valid repeatable strategy, I was mostly thrashing around a bunch and kind of getting lucky... But I was definitely shouting at the screen - GO YOU CAN DO IT ALMOST THERE!
Art is simple but charming and effective. The eyes give it personality and the clearly articulated limbs are nice for understanding the consequences of my actions.
Nice work!
Wow, cool stuff - I would have played longer if there were more levels.
I liked the clever gameplay design. The problem with an FPS having many enemies is that you can't see enough of what's going on to really deal with much (as opposed to a 2D bullethell game, say). And if you throw the player and enemies up into the sky it gets even worse! But then this game dodges the problem by having the slo-mo mode.
The other interesting part was the teleport-to-hit-enemy for finishing them off, and the way that the primary fire action FORCED you to do this, since you couldn't shoot again otherwise. The concept of gaining vertical height from kills was also pretty cool.
All of this gave the game a cool, unique core gameplay. It felt a little bit like a 3D bullet hell, a little bit like a midair FPS with a bit of leading your shot (which as an old Tribes player I really appreciate) and a little bit of a turn-based battle system feel. A unique mix!
For critique points, I'd say the game could stand to have more challenge that I need to think about, to take advantage of the turn-based feel. It didn't seem to matter what enemy I shot when, no specific enemy was really a threat.
Also it was too short!
If this idea were fleshed out more, I could really dig in.
Cool stuff, although maybe not fully realized. Very interesting entry, nice work!
Wow this was really complete-feeling. I mean, it could have had more levels, but for a compo game I think you did the right thing and kept the scope small but the polish REALLY high on the scope you did have. Each aspect was strong: the music, the art, the sound, the controls, the little effects here and there like blood splatter or the shaking when a guy is stuck in a block.
Really impressive all-around entry.
At first I didn't like the structure of the game. During the tutorial I thought "Wow good thing there is an endless stream of guys!" But then in the real game I was disappointed to see I have just 8. Then I got mad that it didn't let me even look at the layout of the level before starting, and I would basically lose the game even before I had a chance to think through. The I got mad again that when I did lose it was all the way back to level one.
HOWEVER... all of that feeling went away when I saw how short the game is. It's true that the structure forced me to lose enough to memorize the game so that I could play effectively, but it was completely fine because of how short it was. That said, if you do expand this to have more levels you might want to consider letting the player see the level and hit space to begin, so that they can form a plan. Either that or make the guys infinite so they can experiment (and score them on deaths or something?).
Anyway, this is a really interesting entry with a unique concept that was super-well executed. Very nice job.
Nice work! Very charming graphics, snappy controls, and the sound and music were strong, too.
I couldn't help cheating myself out of some of the challenge by memorizing, partly because (unless I missed the right strategy!) there were impossible situations where I had to make a blind guess with all ways forward having a 1 distance to bomb, and no way that I saw to do the whole minesweeper "chains of logic" thing.
If I could tweak one thing, I would change it so that when I pick "continue" instead of tutorial, that you wouldn't show me the tutorial anyway.
But it was no big deal, I spent some fun time trying to figure out the rules, and playing around with it. Nice entry!
Great game! I played to the end in 32 deaths.
Almost everything is done right here. I found the lo-fi mashup art style charming and unique, and it had a lot of nice little touches like the text-tilt on reload (more basement punk DYI than a gun animation!) and the motion lines when falling. The sound effects you chose effectively communicated gameplay information I needed, such as "am I wall sliding."
I thought the core gameplay was very well done. It takes a few ideas from downwell and riffs them into a cool new experience. I liked that you made the game more about movement than about the shooting, and didn't go overboard with the enemies blasting at me, or force me to shoot a ton. I think that was the right direction here, since the movement was the cool stuff.
I'm a big fan of games with unusual core movement and good gamefeel, and you did it here. If I could tweak one thing about the controls, it would be that while on the ground (but probably not while in the air) I could have used some acceleration from zero to full speed. When I stopped on a platform and wanted to peek over the edge, it felt really jerky to get instant full speed, and I went flying over the edge a few times. No big deal, though!
The difficulty and length of the game were just about right for me.
All around very nice solo jam entry, look forward to seeing what you do next time.
Cool subversive game. I'm glad I didn't stop at the first ending! The art is lo-fi but I like how you used everything together to convey the changing mood: art, music, and even game mechanics (using different delays and move speeds etc). I enjoy that LD has some normal games but also some very unusual ones like this.
Nice work!
I liked this game!
The controls were very tight, although maybe a little TOO tight, so as to feel sharp. A TINY bit of acceleration might be worth experimenting, here is a good article describing the approach I think feels the very best: https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/MarkVenturelli/20140821/223866/Game_Feel_Tips_II_Speed_Gravity_Friction.php
But these controls are good. Much better to be too tight than too loose! I appreciated the expressive jump that cared how long I held the button, and also the generous air control. The dash felt really good, too, and you did a great job with the interaction of dashing, jumping, and falling. It fit together nicely. Wall climbing felt slightly jarring at first but I adjusted pretty quickly, and I'd say it was well implemented.
On top of this nice control scheme, you built appropriate challenges that tested my skills. This drew me in.
It was a shame the game trolled me so hard. Sending me all the way back to the very start and stripping my abilities made me howl with rage, and after it happened twice I decided I was done. Instead of playing fair, I did this to your game: https://imgur.com/MalqFxD
If you didn't brutalize me with having to repeat the game over and over, I would have probably played the whole thing. It's a nice touch that you offered the ability to customize difficulty, but by the time I knew I needed them it was too late, so they didn't save me.
Ragequitting at restart aside, I enjoyed the game a lot. Star was the high-quality controls with variety of mechanics. Graphics, although simple, were crisp and functional. Sound was also functional, and the music was a nice bonus. The whole progression thing and the bonus timepieces was a nice feature set that took the game up a notch, and showed you really got a lot done.
Overall nice work, although I would have happily spent more time with the game if it wasn't so punishing.
Wow even an epic boss fight at the end! Really nice work!
This is an impressively well-rounded entry. It has an effective graphical style, an interesting core mechanic, nice sounds, and even music. I was surprised to see it's your first Ludum Dare, but I checked on itch and saw that it's not your first game jam.
I mostly liked the controls. They definitely didn't get in the way, and were solid. I'll mention a couple of minor things that I would have appreciated having: I always like when the jump is a bit more expressive by letting me vary the height based on how long I hold the button down. The other one is "coyote time" where you can still jump for a just a moment after you leave a platform. I definitely got bit by that one a few times in this game. No big deal, just a couple of minor feelbads that didn't really get in the way of the fun.
The slippy-slidey inertia, which I don't like in most games, I think I liked here because the character is a ball of wet paint, so I think the charming characterization of sliding was worth the lesser control.
I started out in level 1 by playing carefully and taking specific shots, and moving through areas that still had a lot of dark. But once I started dying to spikes I wanted to get much more coverage before proceeding, so I started experimenting with the shooting controls and discovered I could just hold it down. I probably never let go of the button again, which was convenient but I missed that cool experience of walking through half-painted terrain. I wonder if spikes is really the perfect hazard for this game. Maybe there are enemies that encourage you NOT to paint, like they wake up when they get wet or something, I dunno.
This is a really good entry with a strong core and a lot of charm, really well done.
My best run was Cycle 7 with 27/7/0/2. I encountered the video issue where it was cropped, and I couldn't see the icons on the top row. At first I played using only the light-haze to tell me which columns were active, but after some fiddling with my resolution I found a much more playable setup and from there any mistakes were my own doing.
The ambience here is just amazing, the audio really works well and although the puzzle can get quite hectic with time as the limiting factor, the calm music kept the experience chill. I can't imagine how stressed I'd get with a forward-leaning turbo-song going on.
I really enjoyed this, and I experimented with some different layout approaches. For a while I though that turning immediately out of the port was good, but after there were more connections this really hosed me and I started turning in the middle of the board a lot more, and in my last runs I kind of just turned somewhat randomly to have a variety, which did okay. I wonder if there's a systematic approach.
I made a LLLLLLLLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOTTTTTT of mechanical execution mistakes, landing on the wrong row/column, entering the wrong port, or dropping the cord one cell outside the port. The movement is interesting: the game is a discrete grid, yet the movement is continuous. There's kind of a cool vibe to it, but I certainly would have had more precision with a discrete/cellwise movement scheme. It was interesting how you rounded to the nearest row/column as I moved in the other direction, I heard NES Zelda did something similar. My experience was that I'd move downward to get to, say, row 5, and then turn right. But of course I would try to turn as soon as possible, so subconsciously I was aiming for row 4.5 I guess. And if I hit 4.49, as I turned to horizontal movement, then I would go *backwards* in the vertical to row 4. The discrete movement is interesting, but I wonder how it would feel to change the straight "round to nearest" to include a small buffer in the direction I was last going, almost like momentum. Or maybe this already exists and I was just cutting my corners too hard!
Anyway it didn't hurt because some of the mistakes yielded the "oh NO!" moments that were a lot of fun.
Art was super effective, and again the audio ambiance and mood was just awesome.
I see you have a second Mullin in the credits this time... Does that mean this is a family effort? That's awesome.
Nice entry!
Congrats on the Top100!
The varying synth and the art really came together nicely! The mix of 2D and 3D was a cool effect, and the little smiley-face guy gave some personality to the instructions and story.
Mechanically I liked that I had to lead my shot a bit, which made it satisfying to land my shots, although I had a hard time with depth perception because I didn't have that much basis for scale, until I moved around a little then I got a good a sense from the parallax. After that my shots started landing a lot more. I think I had 42 as my best hit-count, but I was unclear about whether to shoot as much as possible to get high hit-counts, or to pick my shots carefully to keep my accuracy high.
Really unique moody vibe, nice work!
Great vibe to this, it's calming and interesting. I played a while, and got past the run of double-object-type levels. I stopped at the one with a pink circle-wall in the center just because I'd had a good run and was getting tired of things.
I might have played even longer if the restart was paced a bit more briskly. The various graphical effects and audio sounds really work well to create the mood, but that fade-out-fade-in on restart takes quite long and I experienced it SO many times while playing that it dragged on me a bit. Especially when I had to fiddle with the circle-bouncers, which have such enormous swings in output per tiny change in position that they require quite a lot of attempts.
Didn't mean to focus on the critique side, because I really enjoyed this. It was relaxing and fun to play around with, a number of cool puzzle ideas packed into a nice aesthetic presentation that I enjoyed spending a bunch of time with. Well done!
Really cool set of systems that I bet create some fun puzzles, it's too bad you didn't get further since I would have loved to play some more. I liked what was here, cool systems, a nice underground vibe that the art really sells. Nice work, despite not really getting it to a complete experience.
The hand-drawn 2D-in-3D-world art style really worked well, nice job! The mouse sense was too high for comfort but since I didn't have to aim at things under pressure (like in a shooter for example) it didn't interfere with my enjoyment. The musical change was another nice touch that really helped sell the experience.
Story was a good mix of mystery, mundane, and horror.
Nice relaxing experience, and I didn't even have to rake up afterward or look up whether this week is yard waste collection. After some experimentation, I think I like the results best when I don't really drag the leaves around, but stipple them in tiny bursts so that there's less of a pattern to the way the results change colors. Very nice.
Somewhat unnerving music and a background that's either relaxing or a bit jarring stand to remind me that autumn portends winter.
Very basic but I liked the vibe, the art style was nicely done, and I had a little extra fun by skipping the instructions, so I liked that there was no tutorial and I got to figure out what to do for myself by experimenting. I wouldn't have minded if the difficulty was higher, and I even played in Chrome!
Nice job with a small entry.
Tried both versions. The art, sound, and overall ambience is really nicely done. The controls were already decent and most of the frustrating bits were improved with the follow-up version, so nice work there as well!
I could still use a slightly faster restart, and checkpoints would make me push farther into the game (if there were any I never got to them).
If I could tweak just one thing in the post-jam version it would be the collider on the little guy (lemur?) sitting on the ball. It felt a little rough that this was gameover, so maybe the kill collider here could be just a bit smaller:
NotGameOver.png
But overall this was a really nice one, good job!
This chaos is beautiful. I'm trying to protect my lovely equation. The platform is sliding and I don't want to hit the lava. But as I edge away from the precipice I see that two sweet sixes I hold will be replaced by a 1 and a 2, and I cannot allow that. One ill-advised jump later and I watch in complete horror as my two multiplication signs are replaced by minuses. Woe.
The whole idea is nuts in a wonderful way, I love the story of cavemen competing for the best number, it's just great! I definitely picked up what you were shooting for with the async thing. There's this awesome gambling, push your luck, competitive feel that could really be awesome against live humans. And the shame.... oh, the shame.
Loved it!!
Simple but effective graphics, and a very cool concept! It was a little harder than I was capable of, for example the coordination in the climbing room where you have to alternate midjump a lot (at least that's what I think I need to do), so I'm afraid I didn't get very far! It's a shame because I think I missed some pretty cool stuff by not being able to do it... Definitely my fault and not the game's though.
Very cool concept.
Savage and fun with a jammin soundtrack! I played a bunch.
Then I finally got up to the the pachinko part, and past it. And I had explored right from the start, so I knew the risk and I got ready to be careful, and I blasted myself up there, and then suddenly I was not looking at the game anymore because it is not fullscreen and I had clicked outside the bounardies on the browser tab behind it, and when I went back into the game I was already at "Pity". I did not have the heart after that.... although I did try alt-enter and wince hard when it did go fullscreen. :~(
I also agree with @raphiell as I had some difficulty with re-shooting due to the camera smoothing making the margin for mouse expression extremely small, and I also had problems with some shots being duds. Notably a dud when I finally got to that one horizontal bit in the pre-pachinko vertical climb... which knocked me all the way back down to the very start.
So really fun! But I got savaged.
Not that that's a bad thing or anything.
Super compelling entry.
I played the whole thing to the end and I thought this was good, and a really complete experience for a jam with lots of levels, a variety of mechanics, and an ending. I especially liked bouncing on the boing blocks and the sick hangtime that I got from it. I think the level where you have to find the pairs of adjacent boing-blocks was a standout. The animations of each block type doing its thing were another nice touch. Sorry the jam was a tough experience for you.
Jammin! I got 7300 hardmode. Clearly some better typers out there. I kept stumbling on the word euroro- europena- EUROPEAN for some reason!
Cool vibe for sure, and the way it didn't ravage me for any mistakes (and even allowed me to skip spaces) was a nice touch that let me try to go really fast without hesitation or fear, and avoided the feelbad moment of just hitting one wrong key to be gameover. Smart design.
The environment was nicely done, although the gameplay didn't really allow me to look around at it very much, so I'm not sure I took advantage of the eyecandy.
Sound and music really clinched the atmosphere and made it all work.
Nice all-around compo, well done.
This game is INCREDIBLE! The physics are so good!!
I did all of these intuitive things, like grab a ledge with my hands to pull myself up, and it just WORKED. I was really impressed with the core system.
The art style really worked well, and the limbs of the character gave so much life to him through his struggles.
I played until I won, and really enjoyed it. Here is one of my early attempts at shelter, which obviously failed:
earlyhouse.png
The challenge of sheltering from the rain was a great choice. It really forced me to engage with the best part, the physics. I had to make plans at a macro level ("What will my shelter be and how will it stand up to the rain") and at the micro level ("How will I weigh this cross-beam down while I get the stone shingles in place?").
At first I got more complex than that early house, but in the end I won with a MUCH simpler house that I won't show here to avoid spoilers.
I don't know if this game is for everyone, but it was for me.
This is a cool core idea. I liked the way it didn't explain too much, and it was really obvious what I needed to do after a tiny bit of experimenting (I didn't read the instructions on the game page first). I can imagine a pretty sweet game around this core, trying to shove my way through the crowd to put food on the right spot to rebalance things!
If I could add one thing it would be a game over state (pass or fail) that loaded the scene again.
The art style was basic but clean, and the lights on the alarm were a nice touch.
Congrats on your first LD compo!!
Very cool action game. Everything comes together into a nice tight package - the art style is great, the gameplay itself is crunch and feels good, with key details like the telegraphed enemies and the different types of attacks needed. The 8-bit sound and music fit together with the rest, and it all really works. The pacing of the action is also really well done.
Great entry!
JAMMIN soundtrack, and the sfx and art were good, too. I enjoyed this game and played to the end. It wasn't that new for a jumping climber game but it had a nice variety of things packed in, the retry loop was short when I died, and the game ended while I was still having a good time. And also that music kept me grooving.
On the critique side, I did find it frustrating to wait for moving platforms so many times, and I needed coyote time pretty badly, as it seemed my jump command kept getting eaten (perhaps because I played in the browser?). Fortunately the game has great air control, and the puzzles never demanded a run-into-jump, so I always just jumped from a standstill and used air control to complete the game.
Overall a nice little action game, good job!
Nice game! Good core idea, well grounded in the theme, with an impressive number of cool twists on it. The presentation is also really nice, and the sound/music really added to the feel. I also liked the non-tutorial tutorial, definitely a fan of that approach and you did it well.
I struggled a bit with getting frustrated, so I really appreciated the VERY fast restart time. If I could tweak one thing about this game, it would be to adjust your check for whether I am grounded or not. I kept getting cheated out of the ability to jump in this situation:
BallOfChaos-CantJump.png
Here I am standing, but I cannot jump (tested several times by hammering the jump button). I can't see the code but my guess is that you use a raycast down from the center of the player to check whether to allow the jump, but you could fix this by checking multiple rays at the edges of the player. You could also consider some coyote time, as I suspect a more generous control would add to the experience by making all failures feel like my own fault instead of control malfunctions.
I don't mean to sound overly negative because I really liked this one, I just thought it could be even stronger if you smoothed a few frustrations off.
Very nice well-rounded entry!
I may not be the best to ask, since I do compo where the rules are a little more strictly followed.
That said, here's how I'd think about it if it was my game: The bug-fix rule is for discovering "oh no the game can't be played" right after launch, and not for tweaking controls to smooth out the experience. So I wouldn't ship that fix under the bug-fix rule. But I might push a "post-jam" version, make the differences clear, and leave up both versions.
Just my two cents, though!
Props for already finding and fixing it though. Boxcast sounds like a good solution... I may use that instead of double-ray next time!
HEY I DID IT! Now that was some grimy underground punk rock shit, it hit full throttle from second one, especially since I hit Alt-Enter to fullscreen, which didn't fullscreen but instead skipped the explanation of controls and threw me right into the battle before I was settled. Well, so be it! And I stayed unsettled pretty much the whole way through.
And ain't nothing wrong with that.
Nice hectic crazy original action-packed entry.
NOT AGAIN -- LET'S GO!
A lot comes together here to make this work so well. The cheerful metal backing track might be the secret workhorse here, along with the sound effects, that "unnnnghUH" reflects so well how I sometimes feel. Because let's be honest - the game warns you about the lack of brakes but we all know it's really the lack of the gas pedal that gets you the worst!
A great mix here of having to streamline your driving, you are tested both to preserve speed and to safely shed it. I can't tell whether I love or HATE that hill at around 10 seconds. I failed so many times on it, but it also taught me so much. If you made a deliberate design decision to place that nasty "don't skid or else" hill so early to allow the learning to avoid repetitious easy driving, then it was a stroke of genius. Because as much as I HATED that hill, it would have been a lot, LOT worse if each harsh lesson involved 40 seconds of repeated driving rather than 10.
I was into this enough that I pulled out my controller and upgraded from the browser to a proper download, and that's not something I can remember doing before in LD. And I've done 21 of these.
This game hits a really strong "one more try" feel, as everyone above mentioned already. I did eventually get disheartened by the brutal feeling of going up a hill and stalling out. Legit challenge, but so ... well son, I'm not mad I'm just disappointed.
So the math tells me that my best was 1:15 at Zone 5.
But my heart tells me this was my best run here:
BackwardsRacing.png
Such a great entry, well done.
Wow, this is a nice fully-realized puzzle game! It's a cool concept with just the right amount of levels exploring it. Controls are solid, art is nice, and the sound and especially music fit really well.
I definitely hit that sweet spot of planning, sometimes not seeing the real heart of the problem until I smashed into it (hello ceiling-crushes) and then by the time I got to the final level, seeing it all a mile away, and feeling really clever.
Re-Re-Robot.png
The hardest level for me was I think the 3rd-to-last, where you had to clear a high wall and then hit a switch on a solo-block above a pit of shockers. The easy route of riding on top crushed you, so you had to stagger, and it was tricky to even get over that first shocker. I'm convinced something is wrong in the case of riding a diagonally-jumping replay and then jumping off of them early in their jump... or maybe I fumbled the execution repeatedly.
I really enjoyed this entry and dug into it. Felt a bit slow getting off the ground and I wasn't anticipating how fun/interesting it was going to become. I certainly appreciated the do-not-tell tutorial style, but the early/tutorial pacing lowered my expectations for the overall game in a way that turned out to be false.
If I could grant the player two boons, they would be these: In the first, if I hold down space while mid-life I would like to accelerate to the end of time and not have to sit and watch the clock when I don't want more from this replay. In the second, I didn't care for having to hit spacebar after a retry while using WASD. I wanted to have the game start as soon as I hit any movement key. But, maybe that doesn't work for 2nd and 3rd lives, so this might be a bad idea. It was doing something to my brain to have to hit space bar just before complex WASDing and I ended up switching to using the arrow keys so that it was a separate hand.
Controls were really good but maybe not quite perfect. The horizontal movement is very severe. I think that may be needed in some cases, but it felt very jerky even with a tiny tap of input, I wonder if some *VERY* fast but not quite so fast ramp-up from zero to full horizontal speed might take the twichy edge off. Otherwise, the character did what I wanted and mistakes felt my own fault, with the previously-mentioned exception of jumping diagonally and early off a diagonally-moving midair replay, where I felt I was dropped. (Yeah I just tested again and it totally drops you: set a replay to jump at a 45, then climb on and also jump at a 45 from him, you will drop down instead of jumping... I guess you collide into his forward path and are instantly knocked down? Felt wrong and had no feedback about why it happened.)
Anyway that's too much detail: In summary this is a very strong well-rounded entry, great concept with great execution, and the nice art and sound/music to go along with it. Very well done!
Such good use of the assets. The drawings themselves were simple but very evocative, and given the consistency of style throughout, I was really able to buy into the world depicted. The layers multi-layered pulsing background was also a really nice touch.
The sound was equally evocative. The preview from mouseover was a cool feeling of standing before the decision knowing what both meant and then choosing. I must be getting old... coming home from the club at 11pm but then staying up wasting time on the internet until 3am. What do the kids say these days? "I feel attacked?" ;)
You use a lot of synths in your games - are they soft synths, or do you have a hardware vice?
Very cool experience. I cheated and didn't hit the snooze button when I knew it was getting toward the end, and went for a walk in the forest instead. May the real end be so politely forecasted.
I guess every Unity download I've played in the last several LDs has had a sub-folder called "BleedingEdge" in it. Curious that I never noticed it until playing a Nuclear Arms game...
I appreciate that the title was a half. Some will assume you did that to rhyme and [STORY SPOILER REDACTED], but I know it's so that Brodie can say he "didn't miss one." Poor guy. Tell him I got set up for go time on this one with his friend:
NuclearArms-GoTime.jpg
I had a blast with this one! I got off to a most interesting start when I ran immediately away from the first skeleton, which happens to be also away from the first xp orbs, without realizing the consequences. "Gee Craig seems rather pacifistic this time out..."
Oddly that run was also the one where I got my Spine Crushed. I went early and often into barrels and cooldowns, with minors in health and speed, which is an indirect but potent strategy.
After my spine was crushed I had to go back and try a few other approaches. I loved how the different abilities rewarded me for interacting with the mass of mobs in a different way.
Punching is pretty sweet for a while, and it was cool to be dancing right at the edge of danger all the time. Nuclear Fists (or whatever the one that makes the fists huge) was a key upgrade, so sweet. It felt like pure-punching eventually got out classed, but before they took me down I got decent at flipping directions exactly in between the punches so that I could double-punch in the same direction. Only late in the run did I figure out that the general overcharge upgrade also gave me an extra punch?? That could get out of hand.
I also enjoyed the shotgun build, which appropriately asks me to turn and rush right at the mob-blob to be effective. Yeah, just gimme a sec, that should be no problem.... right?
NuclearArms-Turnaround.png
Actually that was the only thing I felt myself wishing for this time out: a reload sound on the shotgun just enough before it gets placed that I can use it as an audio cue to turn around. I missed the window a lot, turning early and then having to bail, or dropping the shotgun just when I meant to turn.
I've never played a game quite like this before. I liked it! I was a little confused why I'd want to NOT be the one doing the action at first. But it didn't take me long to dial into why this is great.
Another really nice entry into the series, gang! Great work.
OK wait maybe I'll go play one more time now that I know the overcharge adds additional punches, to see how ridiculous it can get...
. . . EDIT: I would like to apologize to fists everywhere. HOLY SMOKES. All-in fists build was NUTS. Instead of running and picking off strays I was able to turn straight into a fully-dense mob-blob and cut through it like a hot knife through butter. I honestly thought I might beat the doombot.
Science can continue!
I really liked how you used the theme. The theme generally resulted in hopeless game-stories, where the bad result is inevitable and you just have to try to delay it for a while. But in this story, you captured the theme with a more optimistic take, where the ultimate result can be a positive outcome, even if each minor player ultimately will not make it.
Graphics were nice, the story fit into the gameplay well, and the game was the perfect length where it let me experience a good amount but ended before it wore out its welcome.
It's funny because normally I don't care for the RPG style of "fetch quest" or "lock and key" styles of objective, but for some reason in this game I didn't mind them at all. Maybe it was the turn-based movement and the way I had to be efficient, which meant that even routine walking around has some optimization and thought required.
If I could add one thing it would be a bit of basic sound, just to give the world you created a bit more life.
Nice entry!
Mother's entrance, with the tweened bubbles forming the cloud for her to sit on was awesome. The music serves as a great example of how it doesn't take very much at all to fill the void and provide some nice background, that's a lesson I need to learn!
I got a bit confused at the start, because I though I had to WASD the planet itself. I was watching to see if I controlled a certain monkey or had to push the direction on the planet... then I realized to watch mother instead and it was gravy from there. I probably could have used some audio reinforcement of the state changes (fire start / fire out, powerup gone / restored) but that's totally minor.
Nice job, especially since you controlled scope to avoid burning yourself out (further)! One can certainly go too far all-in on compos.
Got to 36,800 round 10.
First, thank you for being the only Godot game I played that supported fullscreen... and straight from the browser, too! Every other Godot game was a download that opened in a janky unresizable window, in some cases even an unmoveable borderless windows that cut off parts of the display! Whatever you did, it worked really well with my setup and was a much nicer experience in that regard. (Edit: Wow just noticed you also have ESC go back to the main screen, another nice detail!)
In fact the whole game was really well put together.
Very nice background music. I'm not sure it totally nailed the mood, it was a little relaxed for a frantic death battle, but it was pleasant and added a lot of life to the experience. And it never wore out its welcome.
Graphics were really nice. The star backdrop and slightly-shifting camera were import for selling the space theme, given that the controls had no floating drift that's sometimes used to sell "you're a spaceship." But for the dodge-based gameplay, the non-drift was definitely the right call! It did seem like the ship should have its thrusters better aligned with movement though - it was always thrusting in the one direction it never went.
The procedural enemy was nicely done. Visually interesting and relevant to gameplay. I appreciated that the weapons were visibly distinct so that I could choose what type to target. The different weapons themselves were very nice. The red warning mode on the laser was a key design touch, so thank you for that.
Game was a little easy and slow at the start, which was fine for learning the ropes but that stood as a barrier to a "one more try" feeling at the end.
Then I hit a difficulty spike around level 9 and started getting boxed in in more interesting ways. I found myself juggling dodging shots, turning to fire at missiles, and trying to make sure I got out ahead of the sweeping lasers and didn't get trapped. It was nice that the game asked me to plan into the future and multi-task like that.
So maybe there was a more ideal pacing. The objective is also a bit bland, but that's the theme's fault, and you would have had to buck the theme to avoid that I think.
Really good all-around entry here. You hit every element from art to sound to features, and there were zero annoying splinters in the experience, which says a lot about your jamming chops! Well done.
Love how you tackle more narrative aspects of the theme. I still remember enjoying a past game of yours about a stowaway and some distressing mathematics.
This one was a cool exploration of juggling varied preferences, and how much effort it can take to plan to suit exactly everyone all the time. This is a fairly complex setup with a great many icons that have critical meanings. It would have been easy to lose me, but your interface design was very strong and made everything very clear. The tooltips were super helpful, but all of the info was well laid out on the screen. A lot of thought and analysis went into just one click of action! An interesting potency.
If I could grant the player a single boon, it would be to highlight the humans involved in the current day's activity that I am choosing. I feel this, but I also doubt it. I feel it because it was a chore to repeatedly and constantly cross-index the icons. I don't even remember my boyfriend's nam- oh wait it was Evan, but really to me he was just HEART_ICON. So highlighting the portraits could have saved me a LOT of work. The reason I doubt this suggest is that I am not sure how much of the effort you want to automate away. The game should not play itself completely, right? And the effort was the experience.
The music and shifting hue of the selection zone were important because they kept the game feeling alive while I did so much of the cross-indexing work.
I never got everyone to 100% but I did have most of them there or extremely close for a lot of the game. I believe everyone was doing well when I threw my party.
Interesting well-done entry! Congrats!
WOW, this is a really good entry. It's a great high-level thematic choice, and it's executed so well. I assume these are stock sounds but they are well-chosen and well-used, with a special nod to the snare drum as the enemies fill up as a great touch. The graphics are pleasant and really clear.
Is there a bug with the victory condition? My first game, I swear the game did me dirty: My weakest wall was the south where I had one guy left, plus my Crockett. I did not activate Crockett because I got the enemy down to four. They didn't shoot. Then they reinforced, the game said DEFEAT and my guy was gone.
Then in my second game, the opposite thing happened. I was like "well this is it" and they killed my last north-wall defender. But the game did not end, the enemy reinforced and I got a whole next turn. Only after that subsequent turn did the game end.
Here is the situation after the enemy killed my last north-wall defender, then reinforced, and the game has reset my cards and is inviting me to play:
Alamo.png
From that position I fired the cannon north, it failed to clear them below five, and then I lost after this turn.
Possible bug aside, if I could grant the player one boon in this game, it would be to make Bowie more convenient to move. It's tedious to click him around in a circle and have to dismiss the tutorial popup each time, and it's something you do frequently.
Bowie was an EXCELLENT idea though: it's a fantastic part of the game that makes me feel a lot more agency, and blunts the RNG feeling. He also powered up the rifle cards as compared to the cannons nicely. All of the special icons were nice, but Bowie really shined. In fact I liked Bowie so much that I wished he had his own slightly different rifle sound so that I could say "THAT is the bonus shot right there!" Sounds dumb but I would have found that satisfying.
I only played the two runs, and I'm not quite sure why I didn't play more, because I feel like I could win this game if I tried more. I think it takes too long. Maybe it's the pace, or maybe the length? I don't know. The pace feels very nice in the moment, but something squashed that ONE MORE TIME feeling.
Another choice you made that I REALLY liked was to not make death inevitable. It's clear your idea flowed well from the theme. But you made the call to make it winnable anyway, and I think that wasn't an obvious decision, but it significantly improved the game. It would not be nearly as fun to play if it was "see how many turns you can live" which is how many games in LD50 ended up.
Dang, I think I mentioned more critique elements than praise elements, but that is not how I feel. I really enjoyed this game, it's impressively fully-realized for a solo jam entry, and you should be really proud of it. Great work!
Very, very cool presentation! I was feeling some nice inscryption and hearthstone vibes, and those are gold-standard presentation. I played three decks and enjoyed myself a bunch.
The overall package is so excellent that I'm just going to focus on the strategy stuff, but I hope this doesn't seem negative since the game is great:
I think there might be a bit of an issue to work out with falling behind hopelessly. If there were more comebacks and the tension about who would win lasted longer, it would be more exciting to watch the autoplay. (The well is one example that kind of does this already a bit) Fortunately you gave us the space bar, but I wish I didn't need it. I also wanted a little post-run report. I slew a bunch of decks with my best run, would have loved to see a number, but even though we wager coins on the table I didn't see where the ones I won went.
Synergy seemed lower-value than great cards. The 1/2 that grows each time something dies will run away with the whole game! Probably my high point was when I was going to lose to a huge one but welled it.
This is a very cool core, with great polish. The design is getting there and you have a lot of cool cards, but maybe some things still to iron out to REALLY nail the whole package.
Incredible accomplishment for a jam - you should be proud of this one!
What a unique design!
The way the scene changes and shifts the source of income .. how do I explain it? It created pockets of waiting, pockets of rushing, and where those pockets were would shift throughout the game. It would test my memory, since I would plan to buy specific investments and not want to overspend, but also not leave idle capital and miss opportunities.
Early game I wanted to plan my investments mostly around diversification so that I would have a steady stream of income. I don't know if that was even efficient, but it was somehow intolerable to not have the number going up during each scene and I was compelled to fix that!
Later, the game introduced multiple currencies, and different investments (why do I keep calling them that, everyone else calls them upgrades) would allow you to switch between currencies in different directions. At this point the planning got more complex and the loop was so long that I really felt like I didn't want to miss the plan and have to wait for it to come around again, and yet still I would sometimes find myself short for having made an impulse purchase!
The game veered into frustration, which was fine. It certainly never went too far. Interestingly, it was sometimes frustrating to have to sit around and wait, and other times frustrating to have something fly past, and where those were changed over time.
One thing that could have destroyed this game entirely was the fact that it looped one song over and over. Fortunately, you chose very well and this was not a problem at all. Song was a total banger.
The art was great. Super-charming. Loved the absurdity of getting bonked on the head by the milk, and then it's spinning wildly and bounces off the floor, all without spilling. And the cat has a gall to look all shocked when we darn well saw his paw start it all.
It was awesome that in addition to the usual monetary rewards, each upgrade started as ???? and when you first bought it, it added new art to the music video. Such a great touch that tied the whole thing together.
Very well done! Tons of uniqueness and charm about this one.
Highlight here is the enemies each with a varied unique form of attack. Loved the art on the knight, that guy is a terror. But the blob had that great attribute that he was easy in the right position, tough in many positions, and straight-up go-another-way tough in terrible positions.
Unfortunately, Godot opened the game in a very strangely-sized borderless window on my PC, and cut off all of the HUD info I see in the screenshots in itch. I could not see my time or health.
I cleared the level, but then there seemed to be nothing left to do. Sorry if I misunderstood the object. Was I supposed to do something to light each lamp to proceed? I wandered and waited, and restarted and retried a few times. But I couldn't figure out how to progress, or if I was even supposed to, sorry!
Critique-wise, if I could add one thing to the game it would be coyote time for the character's jump.
Some cool stuff going on in this game, I worry that I missed a bunch more, too!
Love the art! And of course the sounds, too. Really captured the variety of humans I [used to] see taking the train.
I was there with my mask off, bare feet, eating a whole giant pizza and lying down grinning demonically at some guy whose torso had become dislocated from his legs, and STILL some dude was like "hey can I get your number?"
My best run was when I managed to take up the whole row with my bag. I offended humanity for sure, and made it to time 350ish if I recall. When I saw cops outside the door, I picked my bag up and then when they left hoped for a chance to put it back down... eventually got the bug from dudes sitting down in the gap my bag left, but I made it far enough that the train was packed.
Really cool, unique experience. Well done!
Really polished look! I loved the concept of designing a board with solid defense yet efficient cooling.
I didn't feel like I was able to fully engage with the strategy because when I open the drawer to read what the components do the game starts pumping really fast and saying "NO DONT READ ANYTHING JUST GO!" and I'm craning my neck stressed out trying to read the text at an angle and enemies run around and shoot me, and I lose. It also takes quite a lot of time to kill an enemy, relative to the value of doing so, so avoiding the enemies entirely also felt right. My best time (3:15) was the run where I just slapped every single thing I picked up onto a random spot on the board with speedclicking, and never killed a single enemy.
So this is a strong entry in terms of the art, and models, and controls, and sounds, but as far as the gameplay systems go, it incentivized me to avoid interacting with them. Which was a shame because I really felt like I wanted to understand more!
I don't mean that to sound overly negative -- there was a ton of cool stuff going on, and with a few tweaks I think this could be something I would sink a lot more time into.
Success!! I made it out with 2221.
I liked the feel of this game. The car was responsive but didn't fly out of control if I got heavy-handed on the controls, and it felt like you were nudging me back onto track a lot, in a helpful way that still left me feeling in control and not on rails or babysat.
When I collided into others, I also liked it! It's not realistic that I get away so easily while they go flying, but it worked really well within the game. The cops caused tension, but the failure states were easy-going enough that I felt comfortable taking huge risks, which was enjoyable freedom.
It felt a bit bare without sounds and could have used a little more development, but you did well designing the scope that you did tackle, and I enjoyed giving it a quick play.
Great job!
Wow, this is just wonderful. The art of the community is really impressive. So many were elegant complete pieces that I couldn't imagine changing. And all accomplished without ctrl-Z, just amazing.
The game itself does an outstanding job of not getting in the way of the art. It is itself artistically very compelling, with the white rooms and sketch-style display. I spent moments here and there enjoying the game's graphics, but it left all the room needed for me to shift my focus and enjoy the art. The way the rooms slide into place was another nice touch. I read it as an indication that the game was loading new content, and it helped me to understand the space was infinite and not to bother searching in any systematic way.
The music was another important aspect that did a lot to create a calm, contemplative mood, and I enjoyed it a lot.
Overall this is a killer entry: great concept, wonderful execution. Congratulations!
This was nuts! Very unique experience, but in the end it was a bit too chaotic for me.
At first, and I was messing around, having fun, enjoying experimenting.
It was slow going for a few reasons, though. The way the shotgun interacted with the floor made it tricky to blast off at the angles the game asked for. The best time to get the shotgun at a certain angle was mid-air, but the refire delay was too long to shoot in those moments. The early section of the game asks you to go up stairs, so it's very hard to make progress and brutally easy to lose it all.
None of that was a big deal in the early game where the punishment for plans going wrong was low, but once I got to the lasers, they shredded me. The barrels before them also were a problem.
Then if you do die, you have to re-watch a really long unskippable cutscene.
So while I really enjoyed the zany physics for a bit, I guess it was too hardcore for me, sorry!
Really interesting game with a cool style, and the music really fit well. So it's a nice entry, but I couldn't hack it.
Wow!! Very cool idea. It's too intense for me, I just can't handle it, but I respect what the game is.
I think for me, it would take a few things getting easier: Car less inclined to flip over (such a frustrating way to lose), gas cans a little more generous on hitbox, etc.
But most most most of all, what I needed was a faster restart. Game is HAAAAARD, and I'm disappointed when I lose. But game kicks me while I am down: wait several long seconds staring at your failed car, then click through one screen, then move mouse to the other side of screen to click through another screen, then take a reload delay, and then move your mouse back to the original location to click through a tutorial screen. :~(
But the game is kind of awesome in a super-painful way. I loved the music, and the tangled wires, and the dark atmosphere. And did I mention the music?? Love how it made the beeping of the bomb into an instrument!
So there was a lot to like here, and if this game had near-instant restart I would have played 10x longer.
My best run I made it just to sand, where my car immediately flipped and I ragequit.
Very potent entry, I lovehated it! That's good work.
Wow! Superb polish to the audio for a compo, both the sound effects and the music that fits the mood of the gameplay so well! Graphics were also nice, and also very clear.
The gameplay itself felt pretty smooth. The controls were a bit tricky, as I found myself trying to time my motion into a stop-and-turn that would align my shot with a target, and I never got fluid at it.
OK I just went back to play again and try to understand my issue better. My problem was rolling through the diagonal.. I'll try to explain: as I approached alignment with a target, I would snap the ship over 90 degrees a tad early so that I could drift past through alignment while firing and strafe them for a hit. This worked great if I released one movement key, and then pressed the second one, producing a direct 90-degree turn. But more often I would roll my fingers through the diagonal, having both keys pressed for a moment. This would round out my corner and cause me to be at a 45 as I passed the target, which felt like I'd overshoot the target before completed my turn to line up the shot.
I guess that's just user error and something I would get better at with practice!
Anyway this was conceptually interesting, fun, and had a jammin' feel. Nice entry!
Me at the beginning: I'm not sure this is actually inevitable, I'm on top of this situation Me at the end: AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH (runs nonstop in one direction hammering jump until it ends)
I did get some asteroids to cross-collide which was very satisfying. A few basic sounds effects really would have taken that feeling to another level.
(EDIT OMG There were sounds! I just had to click to activate them. Suggest you default them to ON in the future! People do not read text in LD games, from my experience. Went back and played again when I realized my mistake, the sounds are good and add a lot)
I liked the way you did the camera, where the world rotates around the player. I have experimented with cameras in that style before and it can be tricky to prevent it from becoming motion-sickness-land. I think it was wise to keep the background starfield still while rotating the world, even if that technically doesn't make sense. It would have been pretty distracting if you did that the realistic way.
Is this your first LD entry? Either way, nice work!
Audio was really strong here, nice sound effects and great music! I also liked how you were able to tell a bit of a story even with such simple elements, like that first strike coming.
Gameplay-wise it was cool to watch my placements take effect and I definitely was eagerly watching the funding go up.
It's a cool little package you have here, so if you don't mind here are a few points of critique: There were long stretches where I didn't really have anything to do. Especially as a new player, the very long stretch between satellite 1 and 2 confused me. I assumed there was something I was supposed to be doing, but had not figured out. So I was spamming buttons and clicking around trying to figure out what I'd missed (nothing - I just had to wait). I'm also not sure I needed the "wave" button to interrupt the action, as the wave-break didn't really mean anything to me as the player.
You already know about the disappearing-satellite bug. This one got my first placement the first time I played, so that REALLY confused me! But after a restart I figured it out quickly enough.
I wonder if some cheaper smaller less-powerful satellites would help bootstrap the early game and give me more decision points?
Very nice job with the audio, and the graphics also captured the mood well. I think with a few extra decisions to play around with I could have spent even more time. Nice work.
First LD? Nice work! Welcome!
I had fun driving and dodging, and making some desperate lunges for the gas. The music had me bopping along and definitely helped set the mood.
If I could change one thing I would make it go even faster! And if I could add a feature it would be some "juice" to when I hit the cop car, like sound effects and a special impact sprite that is shown for a moment.
Controls were pretty tight, which was important in this game. I appreciated the little tilt of the car to show it turning, instead of it just teleporting to the next lane. That was a nice touch. I did notice there is no double-tap allowed to move over two lanes quickly which would have been cool. Some games buffer inputs like that, but not all.
So overall nice gameplay, nice art, nice sound! Congrats on completing LD.
Sweeping the laser effectively was a very cool moment, and the cooldown combined with the relatively short vision distance (thus planning horizon) made it satisfyingly risky to pull the trigger. Your design really delivered on the "pick your moment and make it count" feeling very well.
Critique-wise I would say two things: first I wished there was fullscreen. I played on windows and alt-enter didn't fullscreen. I lost control of about five runs when I swept my laser outside the window and clicked on another program that then popped in front, or accidentally moved/resized the game. Second, I did not find the arrangement of satellites vs buttons on the keyboard to be intuitive. Nothing about "3" says "down-left" to me. This was a constant source of minor brain-friction while playing and I selected the incorrect satellite many, many, many times. If that was your intended player experience - slight frictiony confusion - then it worked! That's a valid thing if you meant to do it. But I would have felt more powerful with a square, for example WESD maybe. Or better yet, have WASD and the satellites are up/down/left/right of the planet, and then you instantly tap into my existing muscle memory, if that layout works for the design. Another idea would be that right-click would select the nearest sat, so I could gesture to switch, and play only with the mouse.
I don't mean that to sound overly negative! I definitely enjoyed playing. The music was great, and the crunchy sound effects were nice. The graphics were good-looking and more importantly very clear about state, I certainly appreciated the glow and turning of the currently-selected satellite, and the nice clear red color when they were disabled. The randomly-generated planets were also a nice touch.
Good entry!
I was really excited to try this as I love roguelike deckbuilers, traditional roguelikes, and first-time LD entries. But my screen is not big enough to play. Sorry! (I didn't rate since I couldn't play)
Cool - please do! Thanks :)
Nice! The voice acting is really strong!
Man, UE is a heavy beast though. 180MB download. Then I have to install DirectX UE pre-reqs. Then it warns me it doesn't like the specific version of my graphics driver. Then it pops up my firewall warning because it is trying to access the network (no idea why).
Definitely nothing to do with your game, but interesting to be on the player side of that experience. I've used Unity but sometimes wondered about UE.
Anyway, nice entry - right on theme, really strong voice acting that hits the absurdity with the right sarcasm but also has that voice quality an announcer would really have, and the other visuals/sfx are nice, too. Good job!
Wow very cool action game! Started off chill enough that I could get my bearings and then ramped up into crazy frantic clicking. Some real nice feel-good moments like multi-killing or using the special and then reclaiming a bunch of coins (the coins/special was a great design).
The graphics were solid and did a good job of conveying the action, the sound effects were satisfyingly crunchy, and the bumping soundtrack added a ton to the experience.
Love your more experimental entries but I also enjoy when you come around to making the occasional action game too.
Oh - and I was glad the autofire wasn't strictly better than spam-clicking. Although I did sort of wear out my clicking muscle, it felt a lot more satisfying to noscope some fool than to just wave my hands around.
Very nice all-arounder compo entry!
I love how ambitious in scope this is for a solo entry!
There are a bunch of cool systems going on here, and the art is very nice.
I did experience a lot of confusion interacting with the UI. I know this kind of stuff can be hard to detect for yourself as the developer, so I tried to screencap specific examples of me being confused.
I hope this is helpful! I wouldn't go into detail like this if it wasn't a very cool entry, so plz don't take this as negative feedback!
In this example I am trying to place my first fort. I am confused because I keep clicking but nothing happens! The message that I need to select a city doesn't go away. As I keep clicking the countdown timer turns angry-red and I am harried. What am I doing wrong?
Empre-Build.png
Answer: I did successfully build the fort, and the message that telling me I need to select is misleading, because it doesn't disappear once I do select. The game has changed state but I have not noticed. My failure was that I did not see the few pixels hidden behind the LVL UI that indicated I was already successful. (I don't figure out that it worked until I restart the game and play again 3-4 times)
In the next example it's turn 2 and the tutorial has told me to select what I should research.
Empre-Research.png
I click Granary. It highlights granary but nothing else happens. It still says I need to select research. Have I selected it? Do I need to hit an OK button? There isn't one, but there is a button called "Dismiss". That sounds more like a cancel than an ok. I spam click granary while the countdown gets angry. My turn ends and I see no change. I guess I didn't research it right. I quit and restart the game 2 more times and experiment with whether clicking "dismiss" does something different. No. I try hitting enter. Oh woops that's the key for End Turn. I never figure it out... until I give up and play on and then a bunch of turns later it says "You researched Granary!" I can't remember if that was a run I hit Dismiss or not, so I still don't know what is right.
In this next example I am trying to expand to a new city:
Empre-Expand.png
It says to click a city (left) and then I do, and it slightly highlights the region. So I feel like I did make a choice. But nothing ever happens. Is it that I couldn't pay the cost? I think the popups in the "select a region" are telling me a cost. I check that I have the right resources. This is difficult in realtime because the resource cost display lists the resources in a slightly different order than the resource inventory display at the top of the screen.
I actually never figured this one out.
But I did play on a bit more and after figuring out that I did indeed build a fort, I was able to raise an army, and while I could not expand myself I did defeat some intruders and expand that way. I guess I misunderstood something really fundamental.
I bet there are things that signal the state changes I'm not following (such as the fort pixels, and now looking at the screenshot, do I see Granary pixels too?), so sorry for not having a sharper eye!
So I feel like I didn't connect with your intended player experience, but I did spend some time with the game restarting and playing around a bunch. I think this is a cool entry even though I struggled, and I see you have a bunch of other interesting-looking games in your history. I'll add you to my follow list and keep an eye out for what you do next time!
Wowww what a jam game! IT's SO complete and polished, on top of an exciting core character control. Even the UI menus have great details and vibe. This is amazing, really well done! I went back to look at your history of games and just from the screen shots and descriptions I can see that you are making strong steady progress in your skills, it's impressive.
I enjoyed zooming around a lot, but wowzers the difficulty was a bit over my ability. I worked a lot just to solve the tutorial! So I really appreciated that I could jump around an experience each of the levels without having to beat any. Great choice for a jam experience.
I could also feel myself getting better over time. I was initial super-disoriented at times, but as I built some experience it got better and my deaths were more due to execution failures.
I....
Succeeded?
Nice entry! Charming art, cheerfully presented sinister theme, and the mid-tempo music did a good job of setting the mood without overstaying its welcome.
I never did find my bootstraps though.
This is great! Tightly focused design and some great art.
I found it really easy and fun to learn what the game even was. (I skipped reading the page until after playing, which I generally like to do). The game is pretty intuitive, but more importantly it's REALLY easy to discover through experimentation. The tweakable-loop core model was very effective at letting me learn the UI, mechanics, timing, etc. Great job of uncovering that and NOT getting in the way of the goodness. Even having a "restart" button press in between iterations would have gotten in the way big time, I think.
The UI letting me pull items out of the timeline and into a card was also nice. Especially with vortex, I sometimes needed to experiment with an effect alone to test its behavior.
The boss also did a good job of forcing me to engage with the game at a deeper level. I had mostly gotten through the earlier enemies by leaving my existing loop in place and just slightly tweaking it. But he forced me to clear decks, set up some early hits, carefully note his position at certain moments on the timeline (thank you, sweep-line UI) to line up the subsequent chain of hits.
I had to go back and play again and try out a different set of cards, and I was a lot more able to maximize my attacks the second time around, from what I had learned in that boss battle. In fact, I had set things up so well on my second run that the boss insta-died on the first loop!
Here is my final setup:
ex-patrol-win.png
Really nice entry, well done!
Wow congrats on the well-deserved strong finish!
Really cool! There's a great addiction loop going on here. The three phases of the game really flow into each other well, and the sense of progression is strong. Art and sounds are pretty basic but do the job well enough.
I did feel like there were a few small quality-of-life issues that got in the way of me wanting to play "just one more time" more than I did. I'll mention some but I don't mean this as a bad review, I just think this is a great idea and a few tweaks could have really pushed it into becoming seriously addictive... that said, here is my wish list:
- Score summary at the end saying something about how I did and what upgrades I got, so I could relax and bask in my achievements for a moment - Font needed to be bigger. I could not read the upgrades easily. This was a very very very serious problem because of the time-tension between healing and reading. A lot of the nuance of the upgrades, the core motivation of the game, I could not engage with. - Needs fullscreen mode - While I felt the time-tension between healing and buying upgrades was a powerful thing and I wouldn't want to lose it, it also created a problem that I could not salivate over the upgrades. I wonder if you could let me READ the upgrades while I'm on the healing pad by just always showing their text and cost. Late in the game it was pretty feelbad to just go CHECK THE PRICE of something or read a new upgrade only to learn I could not afford it, and later lose the game because of the health gains lost while I read. - The mining gets pretty boring and while I appreciate the downtime from the other two tense phases, I found myself wishing it had some kind of unexpected occasional boon that would pop out from the stones, or something else to spice it up from time to time. - The first few rounds of the game are a bit slow, so after a restart it's a bit dull until it picks back up, and this makes it less desirable to click "one more game". I think if you let me pick 1 of 3 free upgrades as a starter on retry that would have kept me more hooked.. or something else to jump-start re-runs.
I hope that's constructive feedback, as I really did think this was a great entry!
Overall this was a surprisingly engaging game for a jam entry, and I fell right into the loop. Very nice work.
I got 17! And oh man, was panic the right title!
That moment when you slightly stumble on the recipe and it restarts, and then just as you almost get it the second time it cancels because something broke, it's CRUSHING. But in a really fun way.
This was super well-done. It had a cool core game loop, a lot of tightly-paced challenge, and it made me want to try "just one more time." Nice art, decent sounds, and a nice little bumping song in the background were nice.
The multi-repair was also interesting... kind of a risk/reward thing, in a few cases I felt like a genius but then other times I would accidentally restart a really slow one like the freezer and be kicking myself.
Really appreciated that arrow keys worked for movement, as well as WASD.
Nailed the panic. Nice entry!
This was a cool mind-bender. I enjoyed that it took me a little while to figure out what was going on, and the way that each screen was a unit. Once there was just one screen that didn't repeat I started to realize how things would unfold, and I had some nice little rush moments after that. Nice touch that it included combat, getting to the exit, and speed-reading! Good variety that hit on the genre tropes of the larger game it hinted at skipping through.
I think I might have mutually-killed the fire-spitting dragon though, because I did die but he didn't repeat... or maybe I missed something in the speed-reading afteward!
Fun unique entry with something I hadn't quite seen before.
This was great, especially in terms of fun-per-scope. Really charming, the art style was nice and the hilarious voice intro had my chuckling. I had to play it a few times over and was decently happy with my 90. Great job!
EDIT omg 215??
So ambitious! Complex system of AI with platformer-pathfinding, fancy UI, a variety of unit types, an economy, nice music, solid art and holy smokes look at that options menu areyoukiddingme. Really impressive amount of stuff going on in this entry.
It did seem like you needed some more polish passes to really achieve your vision though.. the game got quite choppy on me, performance-wise (tried web and download), and strategically I couldn't really find a better strategy than rallying my first 4-5 guys to high ground on the left, and then never issuing another command, which got my village to live forever. It seemed like a trap: if I ever used rally again I would pull all my fighters to one side when attacks are coming from two.
But I still enjoyed playing around with it a few times to explore a bit. Nice touch that falling off the bottom wasn't game over, btw.
Nice entry with many impressive elements, even if the core gameplay was a little rough around the edges.
Nailing it with the AC/DC tribute! This was fun and a really good length. Obviously the music is a high point here, but the art is great, too.
Heads up that there may be a bug: both times I played, after completing the game and circling back to the main title screen and re-entering the first song, it freezes with the bird head-banging but no song, no crowd movement, and the notes never come.
If I could tweak one thing it would be to not have to move my hand to the mouse to click continue in this otherwise keyboard-controlled game. And that ain't much!
It must be really, really hard to convey any information in a game like this where the player's eyes are so hard-locked on the incoming notes. The bird did a good job of emoting, and the transparent scoring data was nice -- both gave me the hints that something was happening I didn't understand. My first run I thought I should do nothing on the _ beats. My second I thought it didn't matter what I did as long as I did anything. It wasn't until late in run three that I realized what the stuff at the top was up to.
But even when I was a bit clueless about the scoring rules I was having fun. And the game did not punish me for my misunderstandings in any way that interfered with enjoying it.
Nice work on a strong well-rounded compo entry!
This was really good! The humor was a stand-out, but the graphics and sound were also strong, and it had nice tight fast controls which were VITAL for such a repetitive game.
I didn't mind going around the loop over and over, and was having fun exploring the mystery. Until it got to be a while and I started dragging. I got the sword and broke the window. But I didn't get past that. I was committed to figuring it out, but two things caused me enough friction that eventually I lost heart and gave up:
- The guy sets me ALL THE WAY back and I have to restart from "get cheese and draw mouse out" and do it all over again. And again. And again. Sometimes it was fine, but other times I would feel like I was just about to test a theory with my next life, but NOPE back to the start. Eventually this wore me down.
- The controls are fast and tight. Except for one aspect: They are really stingy about whether I did or did not pick an item up and don't have any instant indication of whether I did or did not. I don't think it's important to the gameplay that I have to be pixel-perfect with my mouse aim when picking up the sword. I would prefer if you granted me leeway, and when I click the button, see what the closest object is within some distance and grant me some slop to my input by understanding my intention rather than requiring precision. This was NOT a problem at first, but given the repetitive loop + the tight time limit, I needed to be able to move as fast as possible and wanted to feel smooth, and "nah actually you didn't grab that item" kept kicking me in the teeth exactly when I was already feeling low.
Hrm I worded those strongly but actually they were really minor and I only point them out because this was such an overall excellent game!
I sunk a lot of time in and had a bunch of fun.
Really nice job with a super-well-rounded comp entry here, very impressive!
The mood is so good here! How did you do the sound effects? The wind, the rain, the oars in the water, the lighting, each one was really good.
The lighting worked really well across all the sources, the lighthouse, the lightning, and the boat's lamp. The controls felt a bit chunky almost like a turn-based grid-based game, but I think that was probably smart given the challenge of staying oriented in the dark.
All in you really sold the experience of being in the boat in the dark, well done. I did wonder if you could sell the storm itself even better with a little more vertical wave motion... the sea felt maybe too calm. But again you're probably making tradeoffs against the player feeling oriented.
I managed to get home without hitting anything, and the great atmosphere got me into a slow and steady, cautious head space. I restarted just to test what would happen if I crashed, and I like the way you handled that, too.
Really nice compo entry!
This was cool! It had a nice moody vibe with the background music, great art, and the ticking of the machine. It felt really smooth to be moving the papers around and flipping back and forth in the code book.
The 10-second pace was really interesting. It seemed to have pros and cons. It created spikes of urgency and spikes of idle waiting. I think the expression from this time period was "Hurry up and Wait"? If you had not used a 10-second timer, and this game was about cranking out code translations as fast as you could, it would be a really different vibe!
If I could change one thing, it would be to add a satisfying sound effect indicating SUCCESS. I don't read instructions so I just jumped in to play, and for a while I didn't know what I was supposed to do, and the lack of "good/bad" feedback left me stranded a bit. And then once I got the hang of it and started shipping correctly-coded messages, I guess I just wanted the pat on the back of a satisfying "ca-chunk" sound or something. MAybe I just missed it... I noticed there is that UI on the top left, but I never understood what it's trying to communicate.
The ASDF page turning was great for easy controlling, and the option to either click or use space-bar to signal was also nice.
Enjoyable, unique entry, well done!
Cool game! It has some small scope but it does a lot with that scope. I felt the difficulty balance was nicely designed. I had to take some risks and make some tough choices, and even then I didn't QUITE get the plant all the way to the top.
The art looked nice, and it also communicated effectively what was going on. For example, it was really clear when the plant was hit by a rabbit, which was really important to understand as a player learning the game.
The choice to show the rabbits go into little holes, and to have the previous-round rabbits come back, those were both good design choices too.
So a lot of smart ideas in this small entry! I do thin it would be a lot more exciting to play with a few sound effects and some other "juice". I see this is your first LD, so it's a great start and maybe you can work on some of those bonus-type skills in the future! If you haven't seen them, there are two talks on youtube that everybody likes, called "juice it or lose it" and "the art of screenshake." Check em out if you haven't, and you're curious about nice small touches to add.
Nice entry!
Thought my experience with the previous iteration a few LDs ago might set me up for success, but this was tough stuff! My runs were a megafailfest but I had fun along the way.
Such great polish around a cool core loop. I loved the non-tutorial and it was a breeze to just jump in. I think my favorite moment was when I did a break then a harvest, and realized "oops I should have harvested that first to create the empty adjacent space!" That showed me some of the tactics in the layout and I had fun fooling around with that.
Polish was a real high point though, with the nice art and sound, and tight controls. I also appreciated the really attention to detail on having a clear gamestate, like the squares painting which gridcell I'm really standing on. Not easy to make a game with absolutely no splinters getting in the way of the play experience. Nice entry!
What a game! I spent a lot of time with this.
It's wonderfully complicated and complete-feeling. The music set a great atmosphere, the graphics were solid and clear, and the little sfx and flashes were at first confusing but eventually became very good indicators of what was going on.
My first game went well but was a back and forth. I had fun exploring the combo-spells and figuring out what was effective, and the humans were successfully attacking me on multiple fronts, but in the end I prevailed.
Things felt wonderfully tight - should I develop my mana production, or bolster this defense over here?
Then I started to see that expansion of territory and offense were also important factors to consider.
The tipping point was when I started leveraging the multiplier, and combining it with location-independent spells, especially creeping death and the double-energy one.
After I won I was curious how I would do in a second round, leveraging what I'd learned. I absolutely STOMPED the pesky humans:
Mullin-StompedHumans.png
I spent my first turn creating a doubler and got a combination of creeping death and energy production connected to it. With aggressive use of forest-expansion and double-eyes I got map control quickly and used a core with a ton of doublers. My turns, I couldn't even spend my mana and as soon as I got humans in sight they were ripped to shreds.
They did manage to destroy one forest tile and knock out a couple of spells, though. I wonder if a flawless victory is possible...
It's really cool how the order you put spells down ends up dictating what you get, so you need to expand your mind out a bit to think about the final state you want, and then back into it step by step.
Really compelling across the board. I'm amazed you built such a deep system in such a short time, well done!
This is fun to experiment with! Here is a victory with no Ward of Overgrowth used at all:
NoVines.png
I think that the doublers are not actually doubling the Creeping Death, though. But having that many with the doubled watchful eyes still did the trick.
Pesky humans still took down one forest tile though...
Wow! Such a complete system with all of the UI, different organs, different customers, different resources, upgrades, timers, etc etc. It's an impressively well-rounded bunch of scope for a compo entry, and supported with nice graphics (esp the portraits) and sound effects, too.
And most importantly it was fun to explore the consequences of the system. My first run I was dragging it out being careful, but I kept getting jammed into a corner because most of my deals were done at a cash loss. Needed more murder! But then I pushed it a little too far too fast.
If I could tweak one thing it would be the way the menu system works. If I clicked on a tube I sometimes didn't want to do anything, and I had to click "exit menu" but that wasn't intuitive or convenient. Sometimes I wanted to just click into another tube, or even into the same tube to toggle out and back into my inventory.
I was often struggling with "what is my current inventory" so I'd do things like try to sell limbs that were at 100% in the tube but not yet harvested into my inventory, and I'd be clicking "sell" and nothing happening, and by the time I realized what I was doing wrong the timer ran out and OOPS. Or I'd click an empty tube and then "buy" and then I'd be picking but not recall what I already had in inventory.
Must be so hard to get the multi-modal sub-menus into a streamlined play experience in a compo, and I think you did a really good job with it, but it's SO hard that I still felt a few minor splinters along the way on that aspect.
But I enjoyed the dark mood of it all, and really fun to experiment around and see what's what.
Really imaginative and complete well-rounded entry here, nice job!
Wow nice work with a super-short time! You did well to pick such a compact scope and then make it interesting through several different nice design choices: obviously the eye-catching unusual art style helps, but the less-common click-move controls also make it feel more novel than it would with WASD, and even though it's a small play arena I think your choice of a VERY limited visual range gave it a feeling of danger, suspense, and exploration that would have been completely missing if you had the whole arena on the screen at once.
Smart stuff, maximizing the experience of the small scope, well done! And the audio vibe really did well too.
I was very excited to play this because it looks very cool and unique. But I wasn't able to play so I have not rated.
I downloaded and ran the game. It started and I saw the playfield and heard the music, but it did not respond to any inputs. I couldn't even alt-tab out of it when I eventually gave up and tried that instead. Then after like a minute my guy zoomed off the field, it said game over, and some debug info appeared on the left side. I was able to alt-tab out then so I killed it, checked the instructions, and tried again. Similar result except I had to ctrl-alt-del to exit the game even after gameover.
Sorry! Maybe my Radeon 590 was not up to the task. Again, I didn't rate b/c I couldn't play correctly, but I thought I'd drop a note here with the experience in case it's helpful in any way.
Very cool-looking game, was sorry I couldn't give it a proper shot.
Almost! I had the goldfin tuna boxed into the corner of the map and thought I would be able to reel it in, but even with some extra chances b/c it couldn't flee, I didn't quite get there.
Super-charming game with a great vibe, and the core fishing mechanic was well-done, adding a touch of mechanical difficulty and execution without overwhelming the chill vibe. Water was really nicely done and sold me on being in a boat, maybe a small touch of drift when the boat came to a halt would have sold it even harder.
Nice entry.
Good grief this was so much more than I expected it to be at first contact.
During the first culling I interrupted my wife's reading to hand her my headphones and say, "check this out - this crew is SO good at the music and the art and how it comes together." She was appropriately impressed and I thought wow charming little one-screen game here.
Then it was cutscene. Then it was game within game as I entered the phone, and it continued to unfurl from there.
The parents and the pushing from a place of well-meaning that still bristles and the rebellion and the transformation. It all felt like Truth in Art despite manifesting in such a surreal setting.
Really great job.
And did I mention the art and music are amazing?
So cool! My first experience was constantly always dying very quickly and being super-awkward. You were very right to so strongly recommend the gamepad... I could feel that the game had a lot to offer that I was not getting, so I went into a box in the other room and unfurled my gamepad, and the whole experience changed.
Then it changed again when I realized that the direction I push while I press attack actually changes the direction of the attack!
So I went from the earthbound fragile fretter to a soaring demonslayer that never touched the ground.
A wild ride, very well done! Art is effective - both clear about gameplay and also striking a nice mood. Music is jammin and the escalation track kicked the game up a gear nicely. But the real heart of this game is the feel of the complex movement that both opens and closes options and always leaves you a way out, and challenges you to attempt mastery.
Congrats on making a complete compo entry with graphics sound and music, all in a new engine!
The high inertia on the player control was pretty cool - it's unusual and it forced me to plan a head for the slipperiness a little bit!
Unreal Engine meant a kind of annoying experience as a player: I had to install pre-requisites, agree to terms and conditions, and then when the game ran my firewall popped up a warning that the game was trying to export data over the network. That's a lot of overhead for an LD jam, and it's okay if ONE game makes me go uninstall software after, but if everybody did that it would be a very bad experience.
Not your fault, but just be aware that this is the consequence with that engine.
Anyway, nice job with a complete entry, it was fun little game to mess around with and I enjoyed the music, the slippy controls, and the hand-drawn art style. I won, and then I played a few more times until I won without taking a single hit!
NAILED IT with the engine sound.
And at first I didn't like the way the steering doesn't snap quickly back to center when I release a turn direction key. But after playing a bit, I feel like this was actually a really good choice after all. It made it really feel like I was operating a piece of heavy equipment. I found myself planning my turns more and really working with AND against the machine itself.
I got a really cool feel of operating this huge heavy lumbering piece of equipment, and that was really what this game was all about. Small touches like the smoke and the beeping reverse also helped to sell it. As did the 3D model with the turning treads.
And of course that SOUND.
Great job. Probably could have capitalized a bit more on the core by having jobs that acknowledged success and auto-advanced, as opposed to the more DIY menu-driven system, but that just gave it more of the simulator feel.
Really nice work on crafting that big-machine experience.
Wow thanks everyone for the feedback! I've played and commented on all of your games now.
In years past I've entered Global Game Jam and 7-Day Roguelike jams, but it's LD I keep coming back to again and again because of the feedback. So special thanks to everyone who went deep.
I am greatly relieved that a number of you beat day five, but that it was tough. I always worry about whether I got the difficulty right, it's very hard to judge for myself. So shout-out to the mad canning skills of @justinmullin @peachtreeoath @honey-pony and @ghostbomb.
I started making the sounds with less than two hours remaining. The canning sound was my toddler's jack-in-box being sprung open inside a cardboard box lined with foam panels. Then with just under ten minutes left I decided I could rush to add the little can that flies out and spins to add an extra reward for successful canning. I loved hearing that it made it really satisfying.
Good luck to you all in the results Friday!
Made it to wave 15. Wow, something kicked into gear on the enemy side -- or else I set myself up with a strategic weakness -- because I was running so hot that instead of enemies coming to attack it was just raining grain-money from the sky. And then I glanced at something offscreen for a moment, came back, and there was one pulsing enemy in the middle and ALL OF MY PLANTS were dead!! Wowzers, I can't imagine wave 21!
Nice vibe here with several upgrades to follow, and a feel that mashed up bits I've seen in different genres, like a little tower defense, a little clicker upgrade, a little missile command... it was nice!
Amazing job on graphics and polish! Very well-rounded entry. I felt like the collection objective was a little bland compared to all the other cool stuff going on, but it did make me see lots of stuff and explore, so I still definitely enjoyed my time with the game.
This is awesome! It's got great style really well-grounded in the mechanics and the music is so on point for pulling it all together and drawing me in.
The elements shuffle up well so that each situation requires some careful thought, which I really appreciated. I felt myself getting better as I played. One thing I really like is the wide, wide range of the effectiveness of a turn. The floor of a turn is utter failure, and it's common enough. But there are soaring highs on turns that I saw, and I can IMAGINE even much more. Nailing a buddy-toss into multiple pickups and then catching another monkey to spin back around and make ANOTHER pass, it's gold.
My first few attempts I was awful and lost a bunch of energy at the start, but then I learned "Don't be dumb, throw your first monkey halfway to their range so that it's easy to chain the next one!" And gradually I started getting better. I really don't know how that other commenter got fifty-three leaves?!?? I can't even get to twenty!
Since this game was so good, I want to point out a couple of ways that I felt like the game left a little something on the table:
- The ultimate high is chaining monkeys into many pickups and getting a LOT done with one turn (especially powerful after a few failed turns). But the wave-based spawning of leaves worked against this high, and sometimes left my rare great turn spinning with no next leaf to get, which was a downer.
- The z-zoom was of course valuable and necessary, but it was a splinter that I had to use it so much. I kept wishing for an arrow pointing toward offscreen leaves that somehow also indicated the distance, for example by scaling. I feel like if it exactly indicated both distance and direction, I could learn to play with much less of the inconvenient zooming. I also would have preferred the active-monkey be somehow indicated when I'm in Z mode.
And I wouldn't call it a problem, but I could probably have been more powerful if there was some minor graphical indication of what WOULD happen if I pressed space, for example the buddy monkey reaching out or seeing a little trail pointing the vector that I will launch at while spinning. Those things I learned by rote eventually, but there was an adjustment period where I kept being surprised to have grabbed the tree instead of my buddy.
Anyway, I really enjoyed this!
The art is also great, and had so many nice touches that made this feel really alive. The rolling fog, the subtle animation on the birds. Especially well-done was the tree: The leaves, which are decorative, blow in the window, but the branches, which are critical gameplay elements, are snapped stock-still. So smart. The monkeys and tea leaves also stood out really well against the background elements, with their relatively high saturation. And those face/tail animations! Monkeys had such great personality.
Really well done entry, hitting every element. Great job!
Nice! The music, sound, and juicy graphics were all pulling together to create a fun, engaging vibe. I also appreciated the lack of overbearing tutorial - the graphic effects and screen layout made it super-easy for me to just intuit how to play. The carrot's success-hit FX was especially nice, and reinforced the key moment really well. Also liked the sun disco-ball rays that made it feel a little more like a party.
Well done a super-polished entry!
Wow so good! Turn based games are tough, and they risk having this plodding slow feel. But this game moves along nice and quick if I want to input quickly, but also gives me as much time as I want. The polish of the graphics and the interaction is great, and the predictive indicators and attack-range mouseover previews are absolutely top-notch and help me learn.
The game itself is really tense and well-done. The tension between planting, harvesting, and double-damage to clear enemies is super interesting.
And the music was also very nice and well-matched to the mood and pace of the game.
Very well done all around!
Cool vibe with the silly story and unusual controls of the plane and being so low to the ground! I did mostly just cruise on the ground so I think I lost a bit of the flying feel but it was still a fun vehicle to control.
And the "destructible terrain" style of wheat was a nice touch that worked well.
Nice job!
Wow, really complete system with a slick implementation! Very nice job!
I spent a bunch of time with this entry, and became the first farmer ever to grow the mystical plant.
Must be so hard in a jam setting to get so many UI elements working right, but I really had very little friction! Ditto for the balance of the deckbuilding cards. If I had one critique of that, it was that I didn't see the biggest difference between basic/middling/quality seeds all that much, and that once my deck felt relatively complete I didn't really want to add to it and to avoid dilution I cashed out cards beyond the shop's ability to sell me stuff.
But the choices felt impactful, especially in the early and mid game... should I improve my suite of watering cards, or should I save up some gold?
The bugs could be tough sometimes, but always felt fair. I re-opened my mind to buying new cards to shift my lategame deck a bit toward combat, which was a nice late wrinkle.
The art and sound also carried the game really well. The music created a nice chill atmosphere and the way the plants grew with each watering was a great guide for what I needed to protect and push over the finish line.
Overall a very impressive entry, great work!
Nice work, you got a complete game loop here. Graphics were solid and it has some nice touches in place, for example the bobble of the character as he walks, and the little aim arrow and the sword slash. Contextual text pop-ups were also really nice for learning the game and verifying my situation.
Hard to build more than this in a short time! If you did expand, it would probably benefit from a few more upgrades to make me want to play deeper into the game, and some more (or just bigger) feedback on combat like knockback, an on-hit FX for both farm and critter, and stuff like that.
I see that the game has no opted out of audio, but I did not hear any sounds or music. Was that a problem on my machine? I tried it in chrome and then in edge, in case it was a browser issue, but no sound. If you had cool SFX, sorry that I didn't experience them!
I did feel like the pacing at the start is nice and tight - I have to be careful, because I want to blow all of my money on upgrades, but I need to plan so that I have money for my next seed. That's cool. My first game I locked myself out by harvesting my last crop and spending the money on an upgrade, leaving my with zero dollars and no seed -- basically a soft gameover state! Next game I was more thoughtful and planned my economy better.
I also felt that sweet, sweet multitasking a few times. I would be fighting some critters and make a harvest, hit a guy, plant a seed, finish the guy off, then buy an upgrade, and fight the rest. That sort of juggling was sweet stuff, and while I think the game could have created even more of it with the right pacing and more juice, I did get some nice doses sometimes and it was a very nice feeling of juggling priorities in a cool way.
Visual style and use of the colors was very nicely done. I also liked the sandworm feel, especially the way you had control under ground but were committed in the air, where bombs might be falling. It was an interesting and novel movement scheme. I felt like some nice sound effects during the salvage part would have made it much more visceral and really amplified the parts that are already good about it.
The building placement part was a nice break and gave a narrative purpose.
Nice job!
RC Pro-Am is such a great formula, and this is a wonderful riff on it. And what a nice job nailing so much and so well done for a solo entry!
The game felt really alive and complete, with a great core of driving that felt good, and this tower the crop loop over and, then this tower of upgrades and features standing on top of it all. Plus jammin tunes and nice graphics.
I really enjoyed my time playing. If I could have one boon, it would be to be able to navigate the Pit screen with the keyboard, at least enough to switch vehicles, maybe with 1-4 number keys.
Very impressive entry, great job!
Wow! This game has a lot of innovative stuff I haven't seen. The inventory-grid/tetris puzzle mashup paired with the varied growth patterns of the different types of plants.. the tradeoff between growing plants vs not making them too difficult to use, and then managing to keep the lifecycle of seeds vs pots vs plants all in line.
So many unusual interlocking elements. Love seeing a game breaking new ground and mashing together a bunch of interesting ideas. Very cool, nicely done!
The way the music stops dead the instant you die, but leaves the rumbling sound of the tractors... very effective. Felt very cool.
This was a happy fun game, but I felt like there was a tension: the slowness made the game-feel less fun so I don't really want to pick up more flowers. Sure, the game tries to encourage me to risk it because I score more, but there's not a time limit or anything to force me, so I can always just go one flower at a time. So this is a cool core, but I wonder if there's a knot in the middle of the idea, and what you could experiment to untie it and incentivize the player to take more risks.
Cool entry that made me think and feel! Nice job.
I liked the implied (but clear) story that didn't have to get in the way and left a bit of room for imagination, but was compelling. Same feeling about the art style, actually - clear but left room for imagination while still being interesting.
I appreciated that I could explore the system without being tutorialized. Always smart when there an entry is light on content to get that extra bit out of the mystery of figuring it out!
Tending the garden and growing it was fun for a bit, too. I tried jamming seeds into the hose (smoke?) coming out of the back of my ship to refuel it, searching for an end goal, but I think it's just not there, right?
Cool prototype!
Wow, really loved the real-instrument music, so well done and had nice rising and falling sections that had a good balance between active sections that rose to the front of my consciousness and quieter sections that receded into the background... just like a good videogame soundtrack should!
Art was nice, and the shadowy edges of the arena meshed well with the spooky vibe of the mutant cropses, and the sprites were all well done.
I enjoyed the action. It could use a little more "juice" in terms of emphasizing when I take a hit or successfully hit an enemy. But the biggest problem I had was the rolling guy who leaves a cloud behind. Fine, except that I HAVE to kill him. So a lot of my time with the game was waiting and waiting and saying "THERE HE IS" but he would already be gone by the time I could get over there. I struggled badly to find a way to force an encounter, and the end of each wave was quite a long time of me just hoping and waiting and guessing, which really broke the otherwise nice pacing.
But other than that, I thought the action was well done. The theme came through nicely with the tough choice between harvesting my cropses to save them for a big upgrade later, versus spending them incrementally on improvements that I REALLLLLY wanted like faster attack speed etc. So I feel like you nailed the tough-choices thing.
Nice entry with a lot of different cool elements!
Very nice-looking, and the circular track twisted my brain in an interesting way as compared to the usual linear timeline in rhythm games.
So this game was really cool, but there was one problem that prevented me from spending more time with it than I did. I don't mean for this to sound too negative, so I hope this is constructive feedback:
I stalled out in level three because the retry is so slow and the failure is so fast. I counted, and when I fail it's gameover in 2.5 beats. Then I have to wait 16 beats after pressing retry before I am actually playing again. That is 86% of the time sitting and waiting vs 14% of the time playing the game. Makes it hard to get that "one more try" feeling... I would have spent a lot more time with the game if the retry delay was nearly instant instead of so so incredibly long.
Sorry if that was too negative. There is a lot of really good stuff going on here. The background music is sweet, the art and presentation are very cool, and the "OHNO" was humorous and made it ULTRA-clear where I was succeeding and failing. So definitely a cool entry all around.
Jammin! Was disappointed to see myself back at Level 1 and would have been happy to experiment a bit more if there were some more tracks, but it was still good enough that I ripped through the whole game a few more times trying to get a better feel for the timing. I started off making tons of mistakes but then I settled into the groove and was jamming along.
And then I turned off my brain a little TOO hard and ended up here:
TechnoPlants-Oops.png
WOOOOPS!
Nice art, thumpin music, appropriate difficulty, and a headbanging sunflower all came together really nicely in this entry. Well done!
Cool system and I appreciated the detailed status readout in the top left. Dust sound was pretty cool, too. The ship's thrust was pretty strong after a few upgrades, and I appreciated having the friction that slowed me down so that I didn't get lost in space.
I see that this is your first Ludum Dare entry... CONGRATS!! That's awesome. And you made it for the compo, too!
I want to give some feedback on one pain point I had. I don't want to sound overly negative, since this is a small thing. But I think it's important so I'll go deep on why... but I hope this is helpful constructive feedback!
I struggled with what I physically had to do with my hands in this game. I have to use the arrow keys to drive my ship. So I line up my ship. Then I push uparrow for 2-3 seconds to harvest dust and fly to the exit. Then a window pops up but I cannot close it unless I take my hand off the keyboard, and go find my mouse, and then aim the mouse to the button to close the window, and then aim it again to a different place to close the other window. And then I have to take my hand off the mouse and find the arrow keys again. Then I press the downarrow button for 2-3 seconds to fly backwards into the cloud again. Then I repeat.
I do this on an infinite loop and then unfortunately the main work of the game becomes switching my hand back and forth between arrow keys and mouse.
Probably this sounds like a really dumb complaint to have, but honestly I would have paid 25,000 for an upgrade that let me press space bar to close the dialog box, or use WASD to fly my ship. The game would have felt so much smoother and I would have run my loop so much faster, if I could just put my hands on the controls and leave them there.
I remember my first few Ludum Dares, I had to learn all these little annoyances and gradually built up a list of "oh I shouldn't do that" stuff, but only if people pointed them out. So I hope this was helpful. I don't mean it to be some big negative.
In generaly, I think a keyboard game like this should have keyboard UI elements and not need the mouse. But if you must use the mouse, then I think you want your FPS setup with WASD+mouse, and then also allow arrowkeys for the lefties who left-handed mouse. But arrows+mouse is a nono in my opinion for this reason.
ANYWAY sorry to dwell on that minor point.
I thought this game had nice art and good flight controls, and a cool core gameloop that would have built up into a sweet progression if you'd had enough time to add 3, 4, 5 kinds of upgrades.
Nice work and congrats on a successful LD compo entry!
EDIT: I cannot rate your game. Maybe you have opted out of all the categories? If so, here is how you fix that:
Go to your game page. Click the pencil in the lower-right of your game page. Scroll down past the decryption, cover image, and links. Find the "Rating Category Opt-outs" and make sure they are NOT CHECKED.
Cool core concept, and then a great clear presentation with simple effective graphics.
I think there is some dynamism missing -- my double-controlling is more like setting up and then acting, and not quite so dynamic. But maybe it would completely overwhelm to present more fluid situations, in a bad way, I'm not sure.
The batter's lack of air control did feel a bit stiff, however I would say well done on making the angle he hits the fruit at really matter, this gives a lot of feeling of control that is necessary.
Interesting entry, well done!
342, I can't imagine how you're more than doubling that!
Really had fun with this one, nice job! I skipped the tutorial and then lost my first game pretty quick because I didn't immediately understand two things: I didn't realize you could rotate blocks, and I thought the truck would just auto-ship when the clock ran down.
I watched the tutorial after that, and it cleared everything up, but the game is very close to totally self-discoverable without a tutorial, just not quite.
The vibe is really good. It scratches a little of the tetris itch but with a huge twist since I don't have to live with my mistakes, and it's more of a balance between placing very quickly and also maintaining open options. The choice of three packages to place is also a very nice aspect that lets me hold things in reserve while I see how other situations develop.
Music was a nice, art is nice, and the core gameplay loop is really addictive with a nice pacing an a mix of mechanical urgency vs mental analysis. I found myself falling into a real flow state with this one. Very nicely done.
I escaped the Zoo with 4100 pts without reading the instructions, hints, or spoiler.
Very cool to unwind the mystery. I was glad that hints were not on the LD page, and tucked away out of sight for those who wanted them.
Simply displaying "0" at the top-center was a smart move, it told me, "this game has a way to score and you should explore to find it."
Looking at the spoiler retroactively, the one thing I didn't figure out was the flashing/dying ones were how you got bling. I just kind of randomly happened to get some, fortunately. The little heart icon even on non-dying ones was key, as it let me know "yup that is good, do more of that."
The art was nice and made the critters have real character. I caught flashes of real animals but then they'd have a strange twist, worked really well.
Sound is a trippy otherworldly background that improves the experience a lot.
Nice job!
So well done!
This game was a good core idea, well extended by some fun follow-ups, and topped off with phenomenal execution. Controls were tight and on-point. Concepts were introduced rapidly but extremely effectively with no burdensome textual tutorialization. Graphics were really nice, but taken up a notch by that amazing double-transition of decomposing into pixels that swoop away into a swarm and then pop back as the new level in tweened squares, such a nice touch. And the music was really nice too. An all-around very strong entry that hits everything. Great job.
I remember also being impressed by an old game of yours, alien crab in the rotormaze. You make great stuff, wish we had more entries from you!
Very cool concept. I got into character and got myself into some trouble trying to force the jokes to actually make sense, when I should have just focused on scoring to stay alive. That's on me! I did enjoy landing a few nice off color 1-2 punches, but spending points on coherence is not a luxury I could often afford.
I was moderately confused at first. I figured out the state transitions, the color coding, and then the action points. I didn't understand why I was losing action points between rounds or what that heckler was for, so the tutorial video was super helpful. After watching that I started playing more strategically and did better. Then after a handful of plays to learn the ropes, I knocked em dead.
I really liked the vibe, and since you put in the effort for the tutorial vis, I thought I'd make some notes on some things that still confused me after playing:
- Why can't I put this card into my hand face down? It's the first card of the game. I was able to put the next three in face-down but this one had to be flipped before I would go in my hand. TightFice-CantMoveCard.png
- Playing face-down cards is weird. It says "?" but I can see the total so it's not really a mystery, except in the moment of the joke when I may go over 21. I guess I should always play every first joke blind because I can't go over, and I can spend the action points to draw more cards rather than flip for the first joke.
- Small but recurring UI nit: I wish I could right click a face-down card in my hand to spend a point and flip it, rather than having to left-click-right-click-left-click it. (That said, programming this game must have been a nightmare of UI state management and it's really overall very low-friction once you get going.)
- I don't fully understand why I can choose how many jokes to tell on a turn. If I do zero, I was not clear about the consequences and whether I am burning through chances, but I often had to do it if I had, say, an 18 and couldn't play without failing. If I do more than one, I burn cards and limit flexibility, so I only did that when I had the 21 already in hand.
- I was also unclear about the scoring. I got a 20. Then I resolved a heckler and my score was zero. Was that good or bad? I didn't know if I had gotten "nearly perfect" in round 1 and then moved on to round 2 with a feather in my cap, or whether I had failed for not getting exactly 21 and been sent back to the start to try again. Eventually I did get a 21 and saw that it shooed the heckler away and set me back to zero without having to feed him a card. This made me think the reset to zero was NOT bad, and my 20/21 was a good score.
Anyway I liked this and spent some time with it, hope the nit-list didn't feel negative. Wouldn't spend the time writing it if this was not a very cool game.
The robot pose-art was on point, and the sounds were well-chosen to create a cool ambiance. But what I appreciated most was definitely the conceptual theme of the robo-standup.
Nice entry!
Was a little lost at the beginning but then I figured it out after a few tries!
Nice simple graphics were effective despite not being fancy. I enjoyed the day/night cycle that gave a little life to the world, and the little person running to the building, and the little car lights. Good small touches that spruced up an otherwise simple look. Would have loved seeing some nice soundscape rounding out the atmosphere.
I got a 2-car empire up and running. Can't cut it too close and you need a cushion for gas money (or salary?) before you expand, else it's game over.
I ran with two cars for a while until it was steadily profitable, and then I called it quits.
Charming entry.
@weeping-rupee oh hell yes I am interested! Nothing like a vid of a cold first-play live reaction to get a sense of how a game lands. Written feedback is great, too, of course, but those vids like you made are gold. Many thanks!
@epb9000 wow you NAILED it! Totally got the vibe right, that's awesome! Thanks so much for taking the effort! If I can snag some free time I'll upload a rev that adds your music... I'll at you if I do.
Some good background music was absolutely lacking here, so this is so cool.
Really nice! The graphical tiles look great and the procedurally-generated tracks/worlds that result are a highlight for sure. The rest of the entry is really well-rounded as well, with snappy controls, sfx, and music.
My first few runs I died quickly and the time-to-restart felt really long. But once my lifespan got longer, waiting for restart became a lot less of a portion of my gameplay and stopped being a bother. I felt my eyes torn when I scored in the green ball because I had to focus on the map ahead so I don't die, but I also get presented with an overlay with quite a lot of text. I did not dare to read any of it, and merely leaned forward and tried to squint past it to survive.
My first few runs I lost for obvious reasons. Then I got good enough that I lasted a long time. Then I got really deep into a run I was feeling good about and I exploded suddenly. Probably it had something to do with the text on the upper-left, which of course I also never read because I had my eyes on the road. I guess the game has other ways to die, like a timer?
(Confirmed by looking at screenshots, there is some kind of timer. I was not aware of it and don't know if or how I recovered time)
Felt pretty sweet to swing around, nail my jump and land exactly on the lane to scoop up some souls, and then trace a diagonal back to deposit them. A good mix of success and failure in a smooth movement system, all against a backdrop that looked and sounded good. I didn't connect with the text, but that didn't stop me from getting enjoyment.
Nice and well-rounded entry!
Very cool exercise, thanks for showing us what can be done with the AI!
I would say the strong point was the art assets. The music sounded nice at first but wore out its welcome, in my opinion. The dialog had some holes, but pretty that's something I'd expect from AI. (eg I'm sent to the librarian because he will ask me to fetch something, but I open the conversation with him by asking him where I can find some random book I lost? AI felt like it lost track of the thread of the story)
Movement felt a bit stiff, too, but never caused any problems except maybe breaking the immersion of moving around in the nice-looking space.
Overall I appreciated the entry, especially because you went all-in on the AI as a constraint, so a great experiment for an LD, well done.
This is such a great idea for the the theme. I love these work games where you are juggling systems and using the limited resource of time to optimize throughput and crank, and I think you have designed a really great core for that.
The implementation was also solid, handling many complexities and different states with effective use of UI menus and character controls. The sound effects and info displays were also well chosen. I especially appreciated the celebration siren when I delivered and order, it was a great touch and really leveled up the satisfaction of the moment.
For my own personal taste, this game is too slow to capture all of the potential of the core idea.
After learning the ropes on my first couple of deliveries, I hit a trip where I got three 1-packages, I ran an efficient route and I delivered them just right. But I did not get that feeling like "awww YEAH I am a delivery GOD!" Game is simply too slow to deliver that over-the-top feeling of accomplishment.
I guess I experience it as a dissonance: Game makes my brain feel hurried up, but movement is very slow and basic actions require navigation of multiple menus.
I do think it's just taste: some people will appreciate that! But for me I want to play this exact game except the movement is 10x faster, and there are no menus.
That's not to say "bad entry" because this is a really good entry. I just thought the idea had SO much potential if the pace was cranked way up. I did still enjoy my time with it, and I hope I didn't over-emphasize negative stuff here. Well done!
Wow this is so cool! It's a simple core idea that leads to some interesting juggling, both physical and mental. There is a cool multi-tasking between moving the boxes into the truck from my stacks, while also keeping the forklift active. Then I have to think about what to do to move things around during my downtime to set up cleanly to open myself up to opportunities.
Few times I felt like I was heading for losing, and suddenly I'd get the truck I needed to clear a full stack or more.
Very cool entry, well done.
Wild ride! Watching all of my mistakes come back to me later was epic. Very cool idea for the theme, great humorous execution, and really nice art and style. I also had some fun experimenting around with the different sounds. I bet, but am not quite sure, that I could do better a second time, a cool feeling.
Great job!
Bumpin little tune, and it was satisfying to get up to near the top speed! I was pretty terrible at the package section though, wow!
I had an issue at the start, with no sound. I restarted several times, and then randomly I hit ESC and the music started. Is that right, you have to hit ESC on the title screen to being the music? That threw me.
But once I got over that it was very smooth sailing.
Nice entry, and really well-rounded with nice pixel art, and music. Great job!
Wow this was really cool!
I enjoyed the feeling of driving, especially once I got a few upgrades, and I played all the way to my end and still did another delivery and some driving afterward.
I really liked this and it's a very strong entry that I think is fun and well-implemented. But it did also have some issues for me:
- I struggled badly with the text. Much of it is small, and white-on-white or otherwise very low contrast against the background. As one example, I could not read my money on the package/build screen. Some text had high contrast and was not a problem, but for most of the text I gave up on it, such as the delivery list on the right, and the money.
- I struggled with the mini-map. The letters were hard to read, and the icon is a triangle layered below the letters that often made it difficult to tell at a glance which way I was facing. I often went the wrong way.
- I had trouble coming to a stop where it would let me press tab. I wished for a brake. Later I learned to just slam into the houses to stop.
- The menu often felt like an unnecessary interruption of the fun. If I have Franks package, why do I need a menu? I wish I could drift slide to his door, package delivered ca-ching in 0.4seconds and vroom I'm off to the fun again. I think this game is SO CLOSE to creating awesome moments of high-skill that feel really great and stylish/expressive. But it has too many little interruptions of flow and never reaches the incredible high of it's potential.
That said, I really enjoyed the highs that it absolutely DID reach! I appreciated that you did NOT use WASD for the controls. The mouse, being a continuous input like a car really is, lets me be so much more expressive. And drifting into deliveries or just past trees and stuff, it felt really nice.
Strong graphics, sound effects, and music all contributed to the fun of tooling around in the car, and the upgrades gave a sense of progression that unlocked even better gamefeel, which motivated me.
Nice entry!
I am IN for car drifting.
And the peaks of this game's feel are awesome. You swerve around a corner and drop off multiple pizzas in one fluid non-stop screeching arc. It's incredible.
And such a shame that I got to experience it so infrequently. I guess you probably thought I would be a lot better at this game than I was, because I sucked. For every transcendent multi-pizza arc, I had twenty jerky insta-fullstops and five times getting stuck in a corner and another five times fking up which direction to turn when I was reversing while being upside down. There were straight-up 30-second-long slices of my gameplay that were embarrassing mistake after mistake that made me wince.
I did enjoy having to work for the enjoyment, and it made it even more satisfying when it happened. But I felt like the balance was slightly off.
I think the feel needed polish. I think the colliders were too sticky, and should have been a bit more forgiving by being slippery. I should not be full-insta-stopped by brushing my tail against a house, I should bounce off with a jolt but keep 65% of my speed. I think forward and reverse should not be perfect mirrors that invite you to get stuck in an infinite trap, reserve should turn harder. I think reverse should not be so slow and could also be fun instead of un-fun. I think I guess I just wanted to be better so that I could seize more moments of the glorious highs that this game can offer, instead of mostly wallowing in the foulest moments most of the time.
Wonderful game. Just a few tweaks short of absolutely amazing.
Great job.
Such a very well-rounded entry, with pleasing graphics that are cute but can still show nasty, excellent use of ambient sound, a really smooth and nice-feeling simulated office software, and of course a compelling narrative that stitches it all together.
The only addition I could wish for was some way of seeing what use my exfiltrated pictures went to.
I enjoyed this one so much that even when I was sentenced to 20 years in prison for not quite catching the instructions, I started over from the beginning and played the whole game to completion.
Great job on a unique and compelling entry!
@justine-d my first run I got the ending of jail, and the second run I got an ending of working forever, which I supposed was good relative to the alternative. But if there's an ending where I lead some revolutionaries publishing an underground punk zine, I didn't exfiltrate enough to earn that.
Cool entry with a lot going on! Looks nice for sure, so good job putting the assets together even if you didn't draw them.
I like this one but I also felt like it had some rough edges. The potential here was higher than what it accomplished. If it's okay I want to drop a list of issues I encountered... I hope this is helpful feedback and not hurtful. If I thought it was just a bad entry I would not put in the effort, believe me.
1. Colliders are too small. This makes the graphics "lie" to me. I can walk over a heart but not pick it up. I can phase through a tree. Most problematic of all, I can swing my sword and watch is slash through a skellie but actually it secretly didn't connect. I think bigger colliders for good things (get heart, hit enemy) would improve the game feel. Typically, colliders feel best imo when they err on the side of cheating very slightly in favor of the player.
2. Combat feedback is non-existent. I cannot tell if I hit the enemy because there is no flash, no animation, no sound, no knockback. I let a big mob build up and then I had this epic battle for like a full minute thinking "wow these guys take a lot of hits" before I realized "Oh wow the last fifty swings of my sword I didn't actually hit any of these guys!" I think combat could feel a LOT more satisfying with bigger colliders and a bit of feedback (and knockback).
3. Random explosions from something I can't see just confused me. I didn't know what was happening until I alt-tabbed back and read the hints. The damage they did was so small that it hardly mattered, yet they had the biggest graphics and sound feedback. I don't feel they fit thematically with the game (skeletons using mines?) and the game would have been better without them.
4. The damage dealt by skellies was pretty low, and while I'm glad a mistake wasn't instant game over, combat was not as exciting as it could be because it didn't matter if I took hits. This led to me just walking up and spam attacking the skellies rather than playing a game of positional combat vs them.
5. Was there actually a pumkin? The game said it was my mission. I searched and searched but never found one. Was that empty area of dirt on the far right with the tree stump the grave? I got there, and I think it started a battle, but I beat back some skellies and hit that lady who freezes time and blanks the screen a few times, but nothing happened. I ended up confused about what to do.
Anyway that list probably sounds rough, but I don't mean to sound like it's a bad entry. I enjoyed spending some time going around and exploring, collecting hearts, and beating up on some skellies. You included a variety of features and a nicely-bounded scope that felt pretty complete, so well done on the entry!
Lol I was not expecting that! Loved it. Game came with a laugh and a surprise, brought me through a few puzzles and some fun exploration of a physics system, gave me a nice last level, and then ended before over-staying its welcome.
Nice job! I enjoyed my unique style of delivery.
Fun game! I played all the way through to the end, and found the difficulty and length to be just right.
The checkpoints were REALLY important, they let me avoid repeating large stretches of the game, but the way you can't re-use your last one also created a few tense moments of being very careful not to die!
I also enjoyed some of the puzzles that you first encounter in a way you can't pass them. "Lock before Key" is a common idea, but I especially liked the approach used here where it was ambiguous whether it was a lock or a dexterity test. For example I am thinking of the section after the fist major gun-gate where you go up and then there's a long vertical tunnel with falling rocks that MAYYYYBE you could dodge your way through, especially with the i-frames of your first hit, so.... I tried a few times, backed off and figured I'd find another way around. Sure enough, I did, and then after I got through that part, I found myself looping back around through that same vert corridor except now I was going downward so I could get through safely (one way trip tho). Total Metroid echoes with that kind of smart level design that sets me up for an experience, very well done.
Controls initially felt stiff and 3 seconds into the game I though, "wow this movement is not selling me on being underwater at all." But very quickly I realized the game HAS TO be like that, and I got into the world of what it was and didn't mind the stiff yet precisely controllable movement.
Art was charming and clear, an the music was a nice presence.
Well done.
NAILED the aesthetic, great job. The cover art, the slapping music, and those beautiful in-game sprites and backgrounds are all really nice.
Gameplay controls felt solid, and it was nice that I could kill by either ramming or shooting. I think I must have missed how to loop into enough gas to keep the game going. My games often felt like they ended suddenly... even the game where I thought, wow, I am getting so much gas this time, I will live forev-GAMEOVER?!
It didn't matter that much though, because I could just hop back into the fray and keep fighting. I really did wish that I could just restart with the keyboard, and not have to switch over to use the mouse to click through multiple menu screens in this keyboard-only game. I probably would have played twice as long if I could just hit R to restart a new round instantly after viewing my gameover/score. It sounds like a small thing, but I was dying a LOT so I guess that restart loop really impacted me a lot more than the dev getting 666 points! ;)
Overall very nice job. Super impressed by the polish and variety of features here.
I really liked the overall vibe, the graphics and music were nice and made me want to jump right into the game. The fast fluid movement was also nice. The big-commit jump was interesting. Sometimes it really worked and created a nice feeling of fluid, powerful movement.
But other times I felt a bit disconnected from myself and out of control. I couldn't tell when I was successfully hitting the enemy, or when they were hitting me. I wanted to look ahead at the enemy, but also wanted to look over where I was jumping to, but also wanted to look down. I was never really able to fully process the information, and often was surprised that I had an enemy chewing on my leg or when I fell into a hole in the ground.
There's a lot of very good potential here and it could be extremely cool. There's just something left to work out about how the perception and movement flows for the player to really capitalize on the strong idea and well-done vibe.
I played a bunch, though, and enjoyed it -- nice work!
WOW
What an entry. So many things I like about it, and it all really comes together nicely into a great package. This felt like a complete game covering all the bases.
The music was a real stand-out, with strong sfx as well. I was already impressed with the level one theme, but then you topped it with that jammin sax tune on level two, and brought it home with the creepy finale song to complement the blinking eyes and moments of terror like this:
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The character animation really worked well and added a lot to the feel of playing. Controls were solid -- sometimes the box-grab on the corner didn't quite work how I expected (there's a zone where you wiff if you're either TOO far into the platform, or maybe if you start too close and are already overlapping as you enter?) But for such a tricky mechanic, I was impressed that it worked very intuitively.
Levels were tough but not unfair, and the threat of losing all my items made it worth it when I nailed it. I accidentally bounced up into the exit of level two right away in my first play through, and the song/feel of that level was something I had to go back and experience, so I did another play through.
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The fact that I could progress without a full kit also helped take the edge off frustration with some of the blind-faith jumps and other tricky parts. When I fell down the well with the bounce-walls, I was like "COME ON NOW" but actually I nailed the ascent on my first try, another cool moment.
Congrats on this entry, I think it's really good.
Very nice game! Made me think back on some of those talks from Jon Blow where he talks about a designer creating the rules and then exploring variations on them to learn what's possible, and communicating what they've learned to the player through puzzles.
I especially started to feel that way when the dotted-boxes that you are NOT inside could be pushed to pass through most solid matter but not the grey blocks, so you see them from a whole new angle. Very cool stuff that kept revealing interesting new things throughout.
The only splinter I had was the gamefeel of the double-jump, which I never got fluid at, but which became core to some of the puzzles later in the game. The revelation of trapping a dotted-box to walljump off was a cool moment, but the pleasure of those puzzles was slightly diminished by the way that wall-jumping fails took me out of the flow state. Fortunately I could usually jump spam past it.
Here's a montage of the times I got stuck... which somehow didn't actually bother me, just seemed sort of funny.
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Generally the feel was really nice, and the mechanics were intuitive. Respect for not having to use any text to explain anything, I really appreciate that approach.
Nice fully-explore novel mechanic right on theme... well done.
MELTDOWN!
Didn't take me six hours this time, either. I'll admit I was initially worried. Of course I was hoping you'd enter for 54, but, see, my toddler drooled milk into my mouse (don't ask) and it's only been registering left-clicks about 80% of the time ever since. So I figured it would be challenge-mode-plus this time.
Except that you made it a keyboard-friendly control scheme! What could go wrong??
Barrels is what. I got mopped up hard by the barrels. They even taunted me, where one barrel appeared in the center, and then just as I was about to manu- manouv- maneuver (man my French is bad, is that your part of Canada? Did I ever tell you about the time I went to a house party in Montreal and they had converted their living room into a halfpipe? You guys are nuts, I love it) into position to kill it, another barrel popped exactly into the spot left-of-center. I had all the time in the world, but this is a total barrel-lock: every space will take damage, and no space can clear them. Damn those bears!
After some surfing I realized it wasn't the bears, it was those pesky robots. I started clearing them first, and that cleared the way to victory.
Boss had me worried and was a narrow battle, but I did take him down the first time. His trash-fist homage move that limited my space was a lot to handle, nice touch. It totally boxed me in a few times, and if I didn't have some of the defensive mutation (which I ignored my first few runs) then I don't think I could have soaked up the hits to win.
Overall this was very cool, especially after I settled into the pattern of how I wanted to play. In the past I have sort of enjoyed the megaman battle-network formula, but it never fully clicked for me. An example is "One Step from Eden" an indie game that seems like I should love it: roguelike deckbuilder meets battle network. But it's totally overwhelming! I just can't think my moves through, or even multi-task dodging with reading the "next card" and processing what it means in time to act. As a result every opportunity slips by in a blur and I am not left with that so-important roguelike feeling that losing was all my fault.
But I had a different experience with your game. It took a couple of surfs, but I figured out that I can use the 'E' queue menu/pause moment to plan the next few seconds of battle carefully. I even learned that the UI has some limited support for keyboard input, and if you realllly look carefully you can see that there is a selection which you can move around via WASD and activate with return. So I would pause, line up my next few moves, and think "okay go 1 left then drop the barrel, then move up and double-spam." And this would actually work most of the time!
That's really the first time one of these battle-network variants has let me STOP AND THINK and plan, while still also retaining some of that sweet "oh shit oh shit" realtime dodging fun.
Really nice work!
Great foundation for an entry here, but felt like you didn't get a chance to capitalize on where it was going. The music and graphics are nice, and the combat feels solid with the hitflash, knockback, and the nice big colliders. You got that core idea and the polish/control nice. Sorry you ran out of time!
I got to the You Win, and then decided to see if I could delete myself from my own memory. Almost...
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Savage little puzzler, in a good way.
Brutality of no "undo" or "disconnect last block" at first felt like no big deal. A few puzzles later it was a big setback. Later I realized it was the heart of the late-game puzzles. Interesting feeling how that snuck up on me. But it made me feel clever toward the end, when I did some big planning and solved a couple of levels with no mistakes, or just a dexterity mistake.
Usually WASD grid movement with a plan-then-execute paradigm rams me into the frustration of trying to play faster than the animations, which means the game is dropping my inputs. This game does drop inputs if you input them too quickly (try a double-tap or a three-button-roll if you don't know what I mean) but the pace of the animation is such that it was almost never actually a splinter in the gamefeel here, so good compromise between smoothness-imparting animations while still being brisk enough to respect most quick inputs!
I finished the whole game, and felt like it was just the right length. Actually, I probably could have played a few more puzzles if a new element was introduced and the music had a little more variance. Nice core idea and solid execution, well done.
Completed the game, but with only 5 of the apples, 32 deaths, just under a half hour. This game really drew me in. The art, sounds, music, and mechanics all come together into a really cohesive experience -- very well done!
The game does a masterful job of revealing the rules through "oh it must be like that" and not having to explain itself. And I can always experiment through trial and error. Took a few experiments to get down with how moving onto a currently-showing hazard is okay, for example stepping onto a fully-extended spike, is okay because the hazard will cycle away before you step. Snakes were the only tricky bit because stepping into them is NOT okay if you step in toothward, which took a few experiments to get right (did I get it right?)
I know from experience that the timing of multiple "simultaneous" turn-based actors moving on a grid like this are NOT in fact simultaneous, and that different orders-of-execution of the actors can cause certain subtle counter-intuitive side effects... but this game did a great job of sidestepping that problem and making it super easy to pick up and play.
Only timing weirdness corner case I was able to generate was moving into a ladder as a snake was going to bounce off a wall and enter the same space. I think both the level-complete AND the snake-killed-you executed, because I climbed up the ladder, heard myself die, and started the next level with a skull underneath me on the starting square:
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Even the drag-move controls, as opposed to WASD, ended up a nice choice. In these plan-then-execute games I often find the lag of animations annoying if I'm spamming WASD controls to execute a plan, and the mouse-move forced me to be as slow as the animation, which sidestepped this problem, too.
With such nice polish and zero splinters, I really ended up enjoying my time with this game and played the whole thing in a trance. Very well done.
Did you make all the sounds and music, too? I know it's jam so either way is fine, just curious. I rated you for "yes" because there was no credit to any sourced sounds/music. If so, really nicely done, and if not, really nicely selected. They were a great fit.
I really liked the nodes-and-lines art style! I would have enjoyed some additional feedback about the effect of my actions.
I had fun smashing my cars into the others trying to knock them into the water... especially once I got my BUS out! Look out, here I come!
All I needed was a bit of celebration/credit when I knocked "enemy" cars into the water and I think I could have played even more. I never understood what the "percent" was counting toward or why game over came, but it didn't seem like that mattered too much, because I could just have fun either smashing people off, or trying to fill the area with my cars.
I played this blind without reading instructions, which I prefer to do.
Nice job with the music and vibe. Leaving "upbeat" playing while I type comments. I lost the first run, it was a cool feeling to start to notice "wait a minute, is this screen getting dimmer? YEP!" So I started to perceive the risk, and then sure enough, game over.
On my second run I was more careful to keep my pace up and managed to get all of the ghosts.
This entry was simple in terms of the features presented, with just a few button presses and some basic traversal of space driving some variables, but the art music and vibe made a lot of what was there. Nice job!
Wait, reading the instructions now, I see there's a map? I didn't use it, I think I enjoyed the feeling of being lost and not being able to systematically explore that well.
RIP tastosis but at least RTS is still alive! This is such a fully-realized but still jam-scoped entry. Really well done. Everything is here, from the plot to the unit controls/types, great voice work for each unit (plus overall story). Dropped me right into the game, let me explore, gave me some moments of feeling like I dominated and some moments of worrying I was about to get overrun... And then just before anything got stale the game was over.
Just right. Excellent work.
Well THAT certainly ran a wave of chills down my spine.
I knew it was going to be that way, too. Still worked. The atmosphere and the pacing (and the dead .. possum?) got me into the mood. Lulled me into a zone where I can get whalloped and have it pay off.
Great creepy vibe. If I could tweak one thing it would be to reduce the brightness of the flashight hitting the side of a nearby wall, which made the edge of my screen uncomfortably bright.
Nice job!
Great music, with cohesive clear art and sfx.
More importantly, I think you threaded the needle on the difficulty. There was a lot of memorization of moves and special blind squares I had to remember to stand on in certain moments, and there were several times I almost ragequit the game, but the feeling of accomplishment stayed just ahead of the difficulty, and the aesthetics and small levels carried me through the moments where I nearly lost heart.
I ended up playing the whole game, and I thought it was the perfect length. If I could tweak one thing, it would be a slightly-faster restart on death.
Very nicely done.
I lasted for 132 seconds, during which I came to believe the following:
This game is an exploration of the importance of, but also the ultimate futility of, first-strike doctrine. All I needed was room to sit in peace, but if I was not extremely aggressive then my right to space would be trampled. The only way to take a mere sufficience of space for myself was to aggressively and constantly take ALL available space for myself, mercilessly stomping faceless dehumanized neighbors. No friendliness here, friend - we all know where that leads. Instead I will SMASH YOU and take this entire bench, nay entire subway car, nay the entire WORLD for myself!
Until my neighbors-turned-enemies amassed against me in such a large and relentless horde that no amount of frantic aggressive button-mashing could hold them back from smothering my rights and snuffing my candle.
Well, man was made to mourn.
Thank god for that beautiful crunchy sound effect.
Interesting entry - I enjoyed.
WOW those guys are tough stuff! Really felt the theme with my huge body on the tiny screen, and THEN THE BULLETS! Slayed some bomber guys but always boxed myself in eventually.
Cool idea and it was fun to blast away.
Congrats on hitting a checkpoint in time for the Extra so that you can keep your LD streak going, you just hit 10 straight.
I can confirm that the rating-stars are shown for your entry. But I won't rate b/c I didn't play -- didn't have time for trying to be an official pony!
I dig the frantic pace! It's too much going on with too little feedback and too-tiny bullets and too-fast turning for me to care about specific surgical details and instead I just leap into the fray and enjoy the wild ride. The combination of absurdly fast turns and the swinging mace and the overwhelming horde of enemies really integrated nicely. And the music captured that flowy state of play very well. Add to that the quick retry and the fact that the game did not waste time grinding back up to difficulty, and it was easy to play "one more time."
I don't think I ever got very good, but I enjoyed my time.
Nice little distopian nightmare/adventure! I got a few of the endings but I wasn't good enough at dodging to get what I think we all wanted.
Background music and art were enjoyable. The small play area made it worth exploring and since you can only explore some directions in one life it wasn't even bad to get game over except in fights.
Flying felt pretty good. It was "just" a click-to-go-there scheme, but something about the peppy motion and the little wake of circles really sold it being a ship for me, and I found it pleasant to fly around.
Unique entry, nice job!
Top score 65. I started doing better once I realized my health and my sandwich count are different, so I started by standing away from the sandwiches and firing, then once I was almost done I stood over the last sandwich to bodyblock with my health. That way I didn't die until I really had just one resource left.
Simple gameplay, but it's short and quick to retry with cute art, and a jammin little tune, did you make original music? Very nice.
I enjoyed these puzzles. I really liked the music, although the bass did eventually wear out its welcome, I think exacerbated by the high-pitched laser sound which was also repeating a lot.
The smooth-move animation was a nice touch, and it was interesting that I couldn't rotate in place, which had ramifications for how I needed to do my setup. Then there was the timing issue of placing the mirrors and quickly spinning then in the breaks between laser shots. Created an interesting mix of realtime and grid-step puzzle feel.
I made it to 54.5s, just after the square-box mini-boss.
Wow, this had a great vibe! The cycling colors, the shifting shapes, the tight controls and the chunky graphics all really came together nicely. If this had great crunchy sfx it would have really gone to 11.
I think I would have played more if the restart loop didn't go so far backwards on hit, but maybe it had to be that way.
Difficulty was well-balanced though. Game's telegraphing did a great job of letting me see a moment ahead, and yet still created many VERY close calls. There was also a nice non-uniform pacing that emerged... if I stayed on top of keeping everything clean, I could keep it under control. But once I missed one thing, it threatened to snowball.... until I cleaned up again and got back to baseline. Then, the game had waves that were tougher that would force such spikes on me even if I didn't mess up, so the pacing was never flat.
Well done, really nice entry!
Cozy experience with a nice vibe. Music did a lot of work creating the mood to support the story, and I liked the length. I did have one small splinter, I was trying to hit "space" to advance the dialog and skipped past my first choice.
Nice work, I appreciate that there are some of these slower more thoughtful games in the jam.
Wow the audio nails the mood so well! And the mood is well-supported by the gameplay, which does get tense. The art is a great fit, too.
It was cool how the angle changes the situation -- it's safe enough to travel left/right, but much more dangerous going up/down. Sometimes I would charge the eyes in a rush, or a a sweep back and forth. Other times I would stay still and just move up and down a bit like a pong paddle.
Few small splinters I'll mention but nothing that got actually frustrating: just walking, your summoner will get hit with eyes that simply spawn into him which felt a little unfair, when doing a left-right back and forth sometimes one of the summoners would pop out IN FRONT of my shield unexpectedly and take a slew of damage.
I enjoyed this and played to the end, with a few retries needed on level 4. Just the right length.
Great job!
Whenever I play a game with grid movement, and a lot of backtracking, and lerp/animation to show the character moving, I always do a test I call the "three-finger roll." I hit right/up/left in a burst of ultrafast inputs, and I see where my character ends up. Some games just ignore input until animations complete and only process one input. Some games queue one additional input, and process two. I always appreciate it when games, like this one, process all three inputs. To me, it's a sign of craft and attention to detail when you make sure your game remains responsive to inputs despite having turn-based movement and animation. In fact, overall I felt no splinters playing this game.
I spent quite a while with this, and destroyed both main generators. My total level score ended up at 36.
I liked how the maze's challenges ranged on a shifting spectrum from obstacle to resource. Some aspects reminded me a bit of Desktop Dungeons in that way, except here it was a multi-level resource with backtracking, which reminded me in a really pleasant way of this obscure "traditional" roguelike I really enjoy called The Ground Gives Way.
This entry felt really complete, with very strong design and fleshed-out systems and polish. Art and the basic-but-effective sfx totally had it covered. I really appreciated the infinite undo, which I needed on two occasions: once, in a long string, when I learned what the slime's trail does, and once when the shortness of the re-fire rate on movement brought me into an attack I didn't intend.
An impressive amount of scope that feels fully realized here, great job! I really enjoyed it.
Congrats on making something on your phone under heavy constraints! Way to keep alive that nice LD streak you have going. I got the buns in the car in 12 honks.
"This is going so smoothl... Oh wait, is that A LINE OUT THE DOOR??"
10,900 and I enjoyed the experience! Tight movement, great tutorial intro, clear UI/graphics that look nice, and pleasant surprises about combo-actions such as picking up multiple burgers (thank goodness there was no customer-specific ordering!) or leading a customer to a table where you're about to collect (thank goodness there was no need to clean/set the table!).
No splinters, except maybe a very slight one where a few times I wished the corners of the table were rounded in terms of the collider (or maybe the player was a circle) so that I could slip around the edges instead of jolting to a stop.
But so well put together, really impressive entry!
edit: saw that the music was not created during the 48 hrs despite being compo - that music really did add to the vibe! Appreciate you disclosing and opting out of audio. I docked a half-star on "overall" rating for coloring slightly outside the lines there. On the other hand, respect for running on your own engine, impressive, nice web experience.
Nice moody atmosphere! Art and sound, and the way the grunt guys move, it all really works. Shame you ran out of time, I would have been curious to see where this one could go!
Really well done! Game presents me with an excellent "fun-awkward" control and asks me to perform difficult tasks on a tight timetable. The tension is very real -- gotta go fast except that bumping things, overshooting the space, spinning out, and flipping over, are all very real risks that create a fun counter-force to "just go fast."
Really enjoyed navigating the balance. But I do think this game makes one really terrible design mistake... the retry loop is WAYYYYYYY too long, and even requires that I take my right hand off the arrow keys, modally shift from "keyboard controlling game" and reach over to grab my mouse to click a button. And after that, there is even a very slow camera pan, and then a quite long countdown.
Given that A) the game challenges me to break time records which require me to rush but not make mistakes, so you are basically asking me to repeat attempts over and over and over and B) I often know within a few seconds of starting that the attempt is a fail, it's a significant repeated source of heavy friction to have such a slow retry loop. It's 100% fine to have fun-frustrating in the game controller, but I don't think you should have it in the UI. If I were to go for the golds, I think the vast majority of my play time would end up being "waiting for the game to restart" as opposed to fun playing.
I think this entry is very good, and I really enjoyed playing it. But I did not try to beat the medal timers, because of the slow retry. I would have spent easily 20x more time playing this game if I could tap "r" at any moment and be INSTANTLY restarted without UI, timer, or countdown. If you're worried about kicking off the clock too early, find a solution that doesn't PREVENT going fast, such as only starting the timer once the car initiates motion or something.
Anyway I don't mean to over-emphasize that one splinter -- I only go into that so much because this game has such great potential, and I would have LOVED to play this game with fast retry, it would have elevated the game from very good to amazing!
Controls are great, art looks great, and the sound effects carry the vibe and info well.
Great job!
Ok this game... this is the rare sort of game that has jank, but it makes that jank into an ADVANTAGE instead of a disadvantage. It's like punk rock... the raw unpolished edges are what make it fun.
The character controller is kind of loopy, it goes very fast but also has heavy inertia. There are blind jumps, which are sometimes pits full of monsters, and sometimes fine, and sometimes bugs where you fall off the bottom of the screen never to return. There are monsters that lunge out at you suddenly and one-shot-kill you out of nowhere and restart you all the way back at the very beginning of the game.
Usually this would all be feelbads, but instead this game somehow makes it good! I didn't mind being reset because I could cruise/surf the level with my high speed and inertia, and it felt fun. Yes there were insta-kill monsters, but the ability to summon things at any point is also really strong, so it's a savage speed battle of who will kill first! Or dodge if you hilariously get a pebble instead of a boulder! Oh wait, did I just kill both of us because a car spawned, squished the monster, but then tip over and crush me while I was busy fist-pumping at my success?? Yep.
There were some real heart-stopper moments ... I remember one time, I had to use my momentum-laden character to leap across a nearly-max pit only to overcommit and slide right into the attack of a lunging one-shotter... I twitch-spawned and got a boulder that splatted him just in time. Another time a monster was vibrating left/right frantically because he was on a sky platform that had just come into view, so his pacing range was 1 pixel. I couldn't spawn on top of him because the WebUI buttons from itchio were right where I needed to spawn, so right-click opened a context mean in the browser rather than taking an in-game action to spawn. I took one step right to open up some free space, and the monster launched himself right at my face with terrific speed. In a terrible panic I spam-spawned as I dodged. I felt like a matador.
Any game that can create moments like that is GOOD STUFF in my book, so I really enjoyed this entry, despite the fact that it seemingly breaks some of the traditional rules of how things "should" be done.
Well done.
Also, the graphics look nice, and feel cohesive.
Very cool music, and the art style is nice too. Game dropped me into a world I didn't quite understand, and I was running all around just to see what I could find. A lot of different things happened! To the right there was a sort of Zelda-inspired land. To the left, some more mysterious lands that reminded me of when you get outside the bounds in an old NES game. Then when I thought I had seen all there was, I stumbled into a door. Then another, and some stairs. Sometimes I just died instantly (yea I did go north-east, that one was my fault!). Another time I found an angry cloud miniboss.
It was all a little chaotic, but it was fun to explore and had more going on than I expected. This created a nice feeling of mystery that encouraged me to explore for a while, nice!
Glad to see you back at LD!
Great mood, good outer story layer, and the Zelda part was well done. Movement was responsive and the balance against the enemies in terms of having to get in and swing felt fair while creating some tension. The art was strong, in particular the harmonious colors that fit the vibe really well.
I did stall out early in the second memory dungeon, because it was the same enemies as the first, and it's mandatory to track them down and slaughter them. The disappearing guy who makes you stop and wait for him is a bit grindy to exterminate, and while at first this part was great, it did overstay its welcome given that there was no skipping it.
It's a shame because I was curious to push further and learn how the story unfolded and what the next boss was going to be like!
This is a nice, well-rounded entry! Just a small smoothing of grind and I think I would have spent a lot more time with it.
Visual style is great! The flat colors make movement a bit disorienting, but the nature of the gameplay makes this into a plus, where in most games it might be a minus. Nice choice.
The sound also does a lot to add to the strong mood here. Ambience is simple but effective and feels cohesive with the rest of the experience (tho it did have a little "clip" sound when it loops). The few jump-scare sounds on certain words is also a nice touch, had me whirling around a few times.
Thank goodness you had the hints. I had solved the final puzzle but it had not triggered, and only looking up the hints saved me, I never would have re-entered already-done items otherwise.
Oh, I did experience some inconsistency with the game responding to my jump keypress. It would just ignore me about half the time. This was not a problem at all but thank goodness there was no platforming.
I enjoyed this cool and unique entry, well done!
Well done! Nice touches on the game feel. The pickups have a generous hitbox while the enemy bullets give a touch of leeway, resulting in a nice feel that getting hit is MY FAULT even when I'm caged in by bullets.
Music is great and really adds a lot, nice job with that one!
If I could add one thing to the game, it would be fullscreen mode. But that seems to be something very few Godot games have, is that a limitation of the engine?
Art was nice, and the pedestrian names for violent space aliens who ended up impressed by me was funny.
I had fun with the game, nice work!
NO DON'T MAKE ME PLAY! MY STREAK!!
This was great! Such a simple interface and core idea, extended with just the right amount and variety of obstacle to keep it interesting.
I NEARLY beat the final challenge, but lost heart, it's hard to repeat that final level too many times.
It was tense to send JUST enough guys to take something down, but hold as much in reserve as possible for the next assault somewhere else on the map. And the chaos was just enough that it keeps things spicy.
Sound effects were nice, especially given how many times the "spawned a minion" had to be played. It came across as a pleasant rumble of productivity. Art was basic but really cohesive and clear, so it fit the game well.
Very well done!
Brutal, in a good way. Lot of nice tiny touches go into the polished feel of something this fast and brutal but fair, it's impressive.
I kind of stunk at it. I really needed a sound that told me "yes yes, you did just hit that guy." As I was learning the ropes I was often unclear whether I was landing my shots or not.
The initial sleeper is a nice touch to create a down moment that's in-game, lets me gather myself before the next 8 second battle.
The sounds and music were really nicely paired. Gave me that lean-forward-and-dig-in feeling that helped me not mind the difficulty. Very informative yet ultra-fast restart loop was extremely wise, a blunder there ruins the whole game but you nailed it.
Great work.
HELLO BOYS!
Great job with the mood. The dark art, the physics-driven bones, and of course that fantastically creepy audio all really came together. But the gameplay itself also helped -- the short sight distance, the total inability to fight back against the angels, and OHMY that jump from the cymbal-crash stones!! That thing was INSANE! Loved rocketing up at top speed.
Definitely got freaked out and nervous a few times here. And the game didn't overstay its welcome -- length was just right.
Really cool outer surface to this game - the music is great, the art is fantastic, and the intro was really well done. The play of the game handled well, too, but the mechanical core of the card-game rules was missing something... it felt like I didn't have much to drive any specific decision around which card to play. Maybe even something as simple as borrowing from Slay by showing what hand lemon would play next would let me feel like I can hoard high cards for the tough moments, although obviously you'd have to make lemon stronger to counter-balance that.
Really cool and well put together, a strong entry. But had that potential to be a REAL banger with just a bit more meat on the card game piece. Nice work.
DAMNYOU BATS!!!
Fun sounds, and hand-art. Definitely did NOT find the game too easy, but maybe I was playing too timidly. The bats were a little difficult to spatially locate at times, but the fact that they had a really clear sound effect was really really helpful.
I was not able to complete the game, I played a while but eventually just lost heart. Those darn bats got me good.
This was fun! Interesting that I can combine the runes in a wide variety of ways that made the creatures useful in different situations or combinations. It's an especially nice touch that their attributes determine their graphics, so you can SEE that huge helmet for all that armor, etc.
I think, for me, the nonstopping realtime made it a little bit overwhelming, but it also made the game a little more unique and high-pressure. So it's a tradeoff. But it kept me from getting to really explore the strategy as deeply as I would have liked.
My first run, I was trying to look carefully at everything and got totally run over. The next game I just clicked one rune, then space to play, then the summon button, on a loop. I vented all my mana quickly onto the board, and while I still lost I did a lot better that time. Then I started hitting a middle ground, which is where I think the game is most fun.
I started to skip things to dig deeper into the store to find the runes I wanted, and build the guy I thought I needed. I did get burned once when I build a guy with huge armor, and then when he arrives he was a 1/1 and died instantly... Ooops. I read the rules and learned why! Green drops became my go-to and I managed to win by crafting every green-drop I saw, and digging deeper into the store to spend my mana mostly on that.
Art was very nice, especially the dynamic summons, and the music, vfx lines and little battle sfx kept the game feeling really lively.
Nice work!
Really fun! I felt like I was wildly OP compared to the challenge, but the way the game felt to play, and how much stuff was going on at once on the screen, it just felt FUN so I didn't care that I was crushing it. I did have to think through, but once I could stand on (and later create) mana tiles to spam out an army of ghosts/bats/OMGORBS I felt unstoppable!
Played to the end and enjoyed it all the way. Nice graphics, slapping music, fun game. Well done!
No matter how perfect I try to draw the circle, I can't get anybody but starman! Even if I add a cool pentagram like I saw on a TV show. I've heard it's hard to draw a math-perfect circle. I'll keep practicing and try azgain.
Very cool, art looks great, nice sound/music, and the difficulty is right in the sweet spot. I found myself skipping my attention all over and trying to decide where to invest my clicking, which I think is just what you want!
One towner confused me, sitting watching the clutch candle-walking downer, standing next to a full fountain and not doing anything! Traitor to the great tree.
downer.png
If I could add one small thing to the game, it would be a little UI/SFX feedback on the state of the mouse/water interaction (mouseover, filling, done). Sometimes I would put my mouse on the water (I thought) and then assume I was filling, and use my eyes to scan the screen while waiting, only to find I was never filling, so a little confirmation fx would help that.
Nice entry!
Oh wow, that audio is simply amazing. It does so much to set the mood. I think the jump sound is even someone saying "up!" but it also totally works just as a sound, which is just an example of the vibe in the details here. I felt like I wanted a tiny pitter-patter of the feet since I was enjoying the movement animation, but maybe I'm wrong and that wouldn't be tastefully minimalist like the rest of everything here.
That moody vibe from the graphics and audio coming together was really nice.
The gameplay was also simple but man that feeling when you fall down one level too many, and the R button just mocks you. Loved to hate it, and laugh at myself.
What a nice little package here, rich with pleasing details. Well done!
Very nice entry! Really nailed the all-around package. The graphics, sound, music, and the overall gameplay really created a nice retro vibe. But the character controls were well done and fair, and I felt like my failures were my own fault, which was pretty important in a game like this. I'll admit I did do a lot failing! That repetition (darn room with moving blocks and the arrow at the bottom!!) was key to nailing the retro feel, but the checkpoints were totally reasonable and kept me from feeling totally wrecked by fails.
Great job!
Intriguing idea to have the puzzle in the board and then in the rooms. I had fun experimenting a bit, then read the rules, then experimented again with the details of how it the tile icons play out in real life.
After that time getting my understanding, I started to think I wouldn't finish, because of the walking speed, I could feel myself starting to get that feeling of wanting to just speed through a game. But the cool ambient music kept the mood right and I stayed engaged with the game on its own terms for a lot longer than I initially expected I would. Go mood!
I found the light and got all the way to the codex, but then I decided that I would skip the return trip.
Overall very nice entry! Cool system, nice line-of-sight darkness, solid graphics, and a great ambient background, and coming together into a complete-feeling experience.
ps thanks for posting that note about the edge detection, it helped to know that.
@rhill thanks for trying, and I appreciate the feedback about the confusion. I've added a quick description of the most important rules above on this page in case others are experiencing the same. Thanks for mentioning it!
Nice art and audio, the overall vibe really came together!
If I could tweak one thing it would be to make the character a little more nimble, especially the turning speed (to snap off shots). But the character as-is certainly created some nice arcade-style challenges.
Nice work!
NO NO NO STAY BACK NOT THE CRABOhhhnoo. He got me again.
I stink at Shmups. Once in childhood I was at The Mall, and I saw a sign that said "Video Game Tournament Today! At The Mall!" so of course I signed right up, because I loved Zelda and Metroid. I didn't know how they were going to determine the winner, but I had gotten the raft with just the wooden sword, so I knew I was going to do well.
But the game was a Shmup. The winner would be decided by who could get the most points in five minutes.
I was the only player who ran out of lives before the time was up. I'm not sure any other player even died once.
But anyway - I had fun with this one! Jamming tunes kept me in there, and I spent a bunch of time replaying, and pushing further despite my stinkitude. The crab got me, but I learned to get him first.
Eventually I was there with multiple toothbrush fish, and we cleared the zone together! I was doing pretty well in the next zone, too, but then I died and lost my toothbrush fishes, and it got a little tougher as the waves of enemies no longer insta-melted. But I kept trying.
What eventually got me was something about this screen. I kept coming in here with one or two hearts left, and something I didn't realize was a hazard kept killing me. I was just moving through empty space and it would be like, GAME OVER. What happened??
invisi-death.png
I still don't know wh.. wait a second... is that a tiny black poison spike on the ceiling??
spike.png
Gotta be it.
Anyway, thanks, because I enjoyed this one. It actually kinda made me want to experiment with this genre and try a few things...
Nice entry! Solid graphics with lots of fun effects, and a really jamming sound track.
Very cool! Lots of nice features here, bomb-toss, destructible terrain, grapple, tricky enemy combat, and the whole upgrades-and-timer game loop. Art and sound really brought it all together, too.
I was not able to read most of the text because I happened to be playing on a television across the room, so it was hard to engage with the tech tree. But I could kind of guess what stuff probably meant. And other than that, I saw some text go by to kind of tutorialize me, but the game was very self-discoverable without needing to read it.
Actually after I lost, I went back for another round and played even longer all over again. Nice addictive quality! It's very interesting how much more powerful you are when you are on the rope vs off of it. But you want to get off to grab things. This dynamic creates a cool risk/reward tradeoff.
Nicely done!
Me in the first minute: "Why do I need this elevator when I can just drag and drop the guys around wherever I want?"
Me five minutes later: "Oh I see why this elevator is useful now!"
Me five minutes later: "Darn my elevator, why is its capacity so small??"
Good job creating a system the drew me in. Scope was a bit basic and below that critical mass that made this REALLY addicting, but it was definitely heading in that direction.
Nice entry!
Ha!! Loved the flip-world style a lot. The challenge on the platforming was quite a finger-dance to get through, but it stayed just the right side of sane. Failed a bunch, had some frustration, but then overcame.
I did get stuck on the second door. I didn't understand... I thought I had flipped a switch on the thing on the left in polish-world, but I guess not because the door did not open.
Cool concept, well executed. Congrats!
Very cool - maybe every person will have their own experience with this aspect, but for me the time spent puzzling out the next step was just right, same for the overall mission length. I won't give spoilers but the first important step took me a bit because I thought I had done it without a reaction, but fortunately the game hinted strongly enough that I returned to the idea and progressed.
Game was charming and didn't overstay its welcome. Nice well-rounded entry delivering across all the categories.
...
The no-hand-use, quite a constraint, very cool that you've set up tools to make it work. I've tinkered with Cursor a bit lately. It's a mixed bag but it does translate natural language into code changes in a reasonable way. I see people claim they set up voice software and just talk at it, I'm curious what that experience would be like.
Nice tense action game with good chunk game feel! Found myself clenching my fingers on the keyboard.
Nice - first run was spent figuring out the system. Second run I finished off the boss and myself in the same move with Scream of Terror. I think I was awarded the victory -- the screen went dim and I thought I'd lost, but then it dealt me like ten Hopes and I saw the credits.
Game has a nice brutal resource limitation. It's pretty limiting when you are stuck in a battle with nothing but Remembrance, so I felt clever figuring out that a few turns down the road I would be able to maybe-win by venting all my cards and getting the Scream that can deal 2.
I think you got some extra mileage out of the air of mystery while I explored the systems, which is always nice in these small-scope jam games. I appreciated the lack of tutorial.
Nice work! I enjoyed this entry.
Nice job on a solo jam! The optional guitar soundtrack was a very nice touch, and overall the audio set the vibe really well. Graphics really worked well, too.
The pleasant vibe with just a touch of danger combined with the one-more-run mechanics to create a nice game loop. Well done!
Nice!! I hit a hundred before my hand muscles told me to stop.
You're missing some basics like sound, but it kind of doesn't matter. Or maybe it does and the game would have been just that much more intense. But I loved the initial confusion, the OHHHH I SEE, and then the frantic ferrying, and of course best of all the GADDAMIT why did I do that to myself??!
Small scope that hits hard - that's the way to jam. Nicely done.
I collected all the rings!
Not every game ends up as epic as it is in our heads, but in this one I could really FEEL what it wanted to be, even though I only saw the tip of the iceberg.
The rope-swing was very cool. Loved when you had us chain the double.
And nice work making that last screen really hard, but doable. I had to retry just the right amount of time. Obviously some scope issues there but I think you handled it well. Glad you left the ring-count at five.
I enjoyed this! I appreciate the jam entries that are doing something a bit different, like this one.
It was a great vibe. I guess two small things that jarred me out of the experience: 1, the sonar effect is very nice overall but the sound is a bit harsh for one that's repeated so often, and if it were more mellow I think the vibe would be more chill; 2, it's probably just me, but a handful of times I let go of the mouse click to stop and look around at the fish, but the camera had this disorienting recentering effect that ... I can't explain why but it felt like a punishment, so I didn't want to stop very much.
But overall the game drew me in and kept me in this sort of semi-hypnotic state in a very nice way.
The ocean gets dark quick! And is very deep.
Well done!
I won!! Congratulations on your first LD entry! It's a complete little package with multiple weapons, pickups, terrain interactions, enemies with sensible behaviors, and even a climactic boss fight. Great work.
I played just the right number of times - boss kicked my tail just enough that I was eager to retry but the game did not overstay its welcome. The checkpoints were absolutely VITAL to support this feeling. It would be so easy to make that classic LD beginner mistake of not having checkpoints and sending the player all the way back to the start, but you were smart designers and avoided that.
There were definitely a bunch of minor splinters, which is totally to be expected the first few games. I'll give you some notes on them, but I hope this feels constructive, believe me I don't leave detailed notes unless I see potential. That said, if you don't want critique, please just skip this!!
Colliders have a HUGE impact on the feel of any game like this. I can feel that something is off with yours. This should not be a collision, but it is:
Collision.png
This janky over-collision really dominated the boss fight, unfortunately. I learned my way around it, but it was a splinter.
We could talk for hours about colliders, but I'll just say this: simple colliders will get the basic job done, but if you want to shoot for a smooth pleasant game feel you need to be super-critical of them. For example, typically there would be multiple different colliders: colliders for interacting with the pickups, colliders for interacting with the terrain, colliders for physically interacting with the enemy, colliders for getting shot. And so on.
But a good starting point is this: rectangles have sharp corners, and the corner-to-corner is where it feels bad. Especially on the top of the character, getting their jump stuffed because they clipped the corner of their hair. Experiment a rectangle at the feet with a circle at the head.
The key to colliders is to be as generous to the player as possible in every regard. Make the colliders downright unfair in their favor, and then tune the game difficulty around that generosity so that it's the GAME challenging the player, and not the controls/collisions.
Obviously there's a scope limitation in a jam. But check this great video out, which starts with a really really simple shooter and then just adds more and more of the right kinds of juice to it. You can just steal as many of these ideas as possible next time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJdEqssNZ-U
The main piece of juice I missed from your game was some indication that I took a hit.
And that's it! I think you made a nice entry here and I played it all the way through to the end. And if you improved it a bit in those two areas I think it really could go up to even another level.
Look forward to seeing what you do next.
Nice, boss fight in the last two hours? That's how it's done!
Nice art and music with a great variety of enemies and mechanics!
If I could change one thing, I would tweak the camera logic. Right now it moves behind me so that as I move right, my character goes further right on the screen, meaning I can see less ahead of me than behind me.
That was only a tiny thing though. Overall an impressive entry! Loved doing lots of dash attacks into the hordes of nice-looking enemies. I got to the final wave but I couldn't quite hold it off.
(Level 48, 1746 souls)
Wow this was so top-notch. The idea was very cool with multiple design ideas I liked: the create-your-own-problem, an the task-switching between priorities. The art was just fantastic, as was the sound and music. I was really grooving in this one, and falling more into the game without a lot of sense of time passing.
The controls were pretty tight, and I especially liked the choice to have the attack lunge toward enemies and also exhaust a meter, giving me two reasons to be careful about just mega-spamming, but not being too punishing about quick bursts of controlled spam. The walking around was also great. The only aspect of the controls that intruded on my sense of flow state was the juggling between equipment slots. It was probably okay that this felt a little awkward, though, because it created a need to plan a bit and put some tension into the situation.
Only other hiccup was that the sanctuary text went by a little too fast for me to read. (Edit: I also never noticed there was a roll feature)
Really excellent job here, congrats on a strong entry across all the categories.
Wow, you're prolific! I was impressed by how many LD and MiniLDs appeared on your author page, so I watched your 15-in-5-years retrospective video and it turns out I have played two of your games before: the cowboy shooting numbers, and the flying tomato shooter. That's an impressive record you have.
For blocks of Nibiru, I had fun smashing up some tetris blocks. I loved the earth-tone palette that you used for the art, and the colors combined really well with the texture you had, especially the blue circle. Another nice aesthetic aspect was the very satisfying sound of shooting a block.
Gameplay-wise the rounded movement was interesting, but what I liked most was the upgrade system. The multi-ship was cool, and when I had several ships, several speeds, the movement almost became a little different... I was no longer just a ship.
The difficulty curve felt a little wild, it was quite easy for a bit longer than I needed it to be, and then in fact I started messing around and experimenting and not paying attention and at that very moment the game got quickly out of hand and I failed to recover. This was around level 9, though I didn't figure out how to use my bomb.
There was perhaps something here about shooting the blocks to have those above fall in order to achieve a certain arrangement - literally combining match-3 with shooter - which was unexplored.
Oh! And how could I not mention the jamming music! Well I guess it just fit that well.
Another nice entry in an impressively consistent record, well done.
Wow, very slick package here. Nice concept of turn-based soccer on a hex grid with some inaccuracy in kicks, leading to a nice positional strategy game with a reasonable planning horizon but not so predictable you have to compute far ahead. Great concept for the theme!
The layer of nice art and sound with the mystical/demonic characters and special abilities is an impressive layer of additional scope over the top, wow! And all of it worked and was really clear - I jumped right in, never looked at the help, and won my first match 3-1.
I think I would have lost if the AI was a little more careful about not hitting its own teammates. It seemed to play for damage, and I played purely for scoring... maybe a mistake on my part, as once they were two men up it was tough for me. But once the field evened again I won handily, but being REALLY careful with my one fast guy left. Poor Gandalf went down immediately for my side, woops!
Everything here was on point. The only critique I can offer is that the pace is a bit slow. I like action games, and I do play a lot of turn-based roguelikes as well, but those are single-character tappa-tappa speedy turn-based games. This level of 5-man squad turn games feels a little onerous to me, but I can't tell if that's just inherent to the genre and merely a matter of taste. If it played twice as fast I definitely would have gone back for multiple matches.
Overall a very impressive entry across the board. Very nice work!
Wow, this is a really cool concept executed well with a lot of little details. The art is super-charming, I love the snappiness of the controls across all of the modes, and the sound & music are on point, too.
It was a lot of fun to tinker around with this, and I loved the variety of enemies, and the way that things would spiral out of control. I felt a tension between building useful buildings together in a clump, and then as I built further around that it was kind of like trapping me in that area during the fights. Combat felt great, too.
Very strong entry, really well done!
This was a lot of fun! A very nice little genre-mashup, and I dug the cheesy character brought to life with the throwback lo-rez vocal sample delivering one-liners! Great job with the overall style throughout.
The fights were also really solid, with each character having their moves and patterns, and requiring a different approach to beat them! The little old lady blocking shots with her umbrella was a very nice tactical touch.
The music was groovin, and I liked the gritty synthesized sound effects. Although I did wish for a different sound for a successful hit vs a wiff, just for information conveyance.
So this game is really on point. But since you're asking someone to get specific about the controls, and since this game is good enough to be worth diving deeper into, let's do it.
I too experienced some frustration with the controls in my initial moments of playing. In fact I got wrecked in my first fight and felt like it was all off. Starting my second fight, I went away from the lady and just experimented with the controls. I saw how very long I am "stuck" when I punch, and so I stopped playing like a brawler and played more like a "wait for it, counterattack" game. Then I wrecked the lady and only got hit once.
So partly it's adjusting. But I still think something is a bit off. For example, testing now, I am trying this combination of inputs, starting from facing left:
Punch (Begin holding right, indicating I want to turn around) Punch Punch
That's punch-spamming with a turnaround inputted an instant after I begin. In this case I can accept that I don't get the turnaround until after the first punch completes, but the game will actually run the entire combo of 3 punches before turning around.
Thinking back to my first play when I lost, I remember getting up in the mix with the old lady and punching, then I'd find I wasn't quite on the correct side, and my punches were missing -- or were they? kind of unsure since the sound is the same -- and I am now trying to turn around and punch the other way, but I'm not turning when I expect to. I also recall deciding to escape down, but feeling "stuck" in place.
This is all the initial moments with the game, and I soon adjusted. After realizing how it worked, I thought, oh this is a design decision, to make you more careful.
Testing further I see the following moments of loss of control: - No air control - No buffered re-jump so if I want to jump again and push a frame early, I don't get a jump - Hitting attack one frame before landing is also not feeling great (seems to cancel on touchdown?) - There is a stun when I get hit (probably fine, but maybe needs knockback?)
So a lot of windows where you ignore my inputs. Some valid, but consider reviewing each I guess?
Hope that helps put some specifics on that question.
And to be clear: great game, this dive into the controls isn't dissing it!
What craft! Your skill and careful polish achieves a potent feel for both the light and dark. I was softened by doing chores, getting to know and like my cat. Then you artfully took advantage, and left me alone in the dark, and I began to feel tense.
Lots of small good choices: avoiding a tutorial, how far back "death" sent me, the sweep of the light, the gentle highlight of an item I could interact with.
But most of all it never felt gamey, meaning you successfully pulled me out of my normal mode and into yours. Well done.
@Lerg thanks for mentioning that, it's good to know when/why people opt out of playing at all! I've been burned a few times by the WebGL builds, so I rely on the PC build in the heat of battle, but I don't see any reason this game can't have a decent experience in the browser. I'll look into shipping a web version as well, and post at @ for you if I manage it. Thanks!
@Lerg I've uploaded an HTML5 web build that seems to play fine - it's the exact same game, no changes. Hope that does the trick!
Thanks everyone for the great feedback! I'm making my way through all of your games, too, so if I haven't gotten to you yet I'm on my way.
@PeachTreeOath, sounds like you really got into the nuances, I love it! I use that same approach you're describing vs the skeletons, love how you described it. Thanks for diving deep.
@MagmaFortress I didn't realize you did LD as well as 7DRL! I don't know if you recall, but my first LD entry (for "you only get one") was inspired by the moment in Hoplite where I'd thrown my spear and needed to go pick it back up. I emailed you about it and you tried my little hammer-tossing game. That was my first LD, this is my twelfth.
Regarding the difficulty - I agree this one is on the tough side. Normally I back it off a bit more for LD so that all comers can enjoy the entry. But there was something about this one... maybe the memory of NES Zelda kicking my young tail with a room full of those knights. Back in those basement days I call still recall getting the raft with the wooden sword, when I was supposed to have already found the upgrade before facing all those knights! Epic battle. I indulged in a little extra difficulty this time, and I hope it didn't exclude anybody too much. If you saw the 4-headed boss, you saw all the fight rooms.
If you want to force things, there's a secret feature: You can hit spacebar at any time to restart, not just when you die. Since the boss fights send you back one room, sometimes it can be more efficient to just reset if you take a few hits early in the pre-boss room. (Yes I tested and you cannot get infinite heart containers this way... anymore).
@minibobbo didn't have any trouble though, wow! Nice driving skills. The "nubs" on the car were intended to hold extra gear, so I imagined dropping a candle-flame, or bombs, or shooting arrows or a boomerrage from that other hand. Though @niterich kind of blew my mind, he's totally right that Link is lefty!! How did I never notice?
@Logicon211 thanks for swinging by even though you didn't get a chance to participate this time. Looking forward to seeing what's next with Killbane and his Nuclear Arms.
Thanks again, all!
@DDRKirbyISQ I would love to learn to make music for these games. A great part of doing a dozen LDs is that I used to think "I can't do art" and "I can't make sound effects", but now I have been forced to learn at least the basics.
Music is kind of the next big mountain to climb. And it's one I've always struggled with. I can even play guitar, but I have sort of a negative-talented ear, and I don't hear and retain and repeat melodies the way most humans seem to be able to. Whenever I dive into trying to compose music, it becomes a giant timesink that produces a poor result. But I hope to someday find the right strategy to *get started with something*: maybe arpeggios or ambiance or something.
Because I totally agree with you that this game could use some music.
@jupiter-hadley, I always enjoy seeing your take on these games, and I'm always impressed by the effort you put in jam after jam. Thanks!!
Really cute idea! Would never have thought to make a game about hurling molotov cocktails at cute bunny rabbits, except, well, I guess I just did!
I didn't know where it was going at all with all the drawing, though I was having fun with it. I found the place you took it surprising and satisfying. Well done!!
I'm just terrible at rhythm games, so I wasn't able to clear a single level. I got to about 1 minute remaining in each of the first two, and the final one just wrecked me. But I was happy that you included a menu at least letting me try all three!
This game has its own little charm, kind of a nice coherent feeling to the art, and the sound and music interplayed nicely. The controls felt good -- or at least they did when I was on the beat! The pressure to have to move forward as well as dodge and shoot was a nice design touch. I also liked how the game had kind of discrete rows/columns but yet it also had continuous space that the projectiles would move through. Made for some interesting dodging!
I was so bad that getting any "powerup" other than H usually killed me pretty quick, since it threw me off. ;)
But even with my bad skills this one was fun. Great job making the music, too. The second song was my favorite.
"Take that, homework!" I sure killed a lot of assignments. I was mopping the place up, but then I started experimenting with the pencil and it went downhill from there.
I liked the angry expressions on the assignments, how they came in various sizes, and the nice crunchy feel to shooting them. Well done!
Great job with the unsettling mood. The way I was controlling both the victim and the bagman was extra creepy and a really nice touch. The music and sound effects were a great backdrop and the bagman looked convincing. A unique and moody entry!
Nice work, I especially like the charming graphics. The details in the tears are great, the way they fall and then slowly soften and grow. I also like the way the way the position/rotation-based animation actually gives a feeling to the different characters, I was surprised at how effectively it conveyed some of the dog's state!
The control scheme of holding space to change modes was a little awkward, especially when I was trying to dodge the girl's attacks and had to stop to remind myself of which comment type was which button, but no big deal.
Small scope but charming, well done!
Pleasantly oddball! The controls were a massive issue for the few couple of minutes, but I gradually acclimated. Once I did, the highlight moment was drifting sideways with my ass hanging in the wind, sliding along the cambered edge of the track.
The whacky premise was amplified by the goofball sounds and I loved that the cat cubes had little pink paw spots and just wouldn't get out of my way.
I have mixed feelings about the controls, because they were certainly a hurdle at first without me understanding why. Later I came to appreciate what they made possible. I am unclear on whether there is a set of changes to keep the good and shed the hurdle. I have played with car controls five different ways myself, and it's just really hard to create expressive driving controls with digital toggles (keys), since it's inherently an analog activity.
I came to enjoy the feel, though. One thing that did jam me up hard a couple of times was when a cat was right on my spawn point. My final moments with the game I was low on time and spawned on a cat that sent me spinning like this: https://imgur.com/RQt7BX7 I just spun and spawned and spun and spawned while the clock counted down to my game over.
I don't want to dwell on the negative, because although I felt a few splinters I definitely hit some outstanding high notes! You even tickled a few small flashbacks to dodging through traffic in Road Rash on Genesis, a rare feat.
So well done - a cool concept and an intriguing execution with flair.
Really cool charming idea. I thought I was a good blind typist, but after playing this for a bit... well, let's just say I'm kind of glad it didn't show me an accuracy score at the end!
The first few moments flat-out bamboozled me. My immediate reaction was OMG that text is so small! I was lounging on the sofa being casual, and I had to get physically closer to the screen and set the keyboard properly on the table. But later I saw that the text names are quite long in some cases, so a larger font is not easy, tough design tradeoff.
The second aspect I struggled with was eye positioning. I needed to watch the battle to learn the rules (I'm glad you didn't tutorialize overmuch) but I also needed to intently squint at card text to type it.
So there was an initial hurdle, but once past that I started getting better and tabbing around to lanes and trying to get some folks into position for battle with some thought to strategy, rather than just furiously typing everything that came up.
And once I settled in I started digging it! I was cool how I could type text that applied to multiple cards, or access cards from multiple zones at the same time, that was a nice touch.
I eventually beat the whole thing and congratulated myself. Honest by then I was sort of in the groove and probably would have gone on a bit further.
This is a cool concept, executed nicely with great art and a grooving OST that set a nice foot-tapping pace that matched the gameplay. Well done!!
There was a lot going on here, and my initial confusion was made worse by sitting 1 foot further from my computer than my wireless keyboard was comfortable with, ha. But surprisingly, I got the hang of it pretty quickly once the pieces locked into place. I lasted 99 seconds once I got to the meat of the game. The way I had to learn the game well enough to hit the start button before death was on the table was a very key design choice!
Other smart design choices were the slo-mo, and the way I couldn't shoot if I didn't participate in the core movement mechanic. These were huge at helping/forcing me to get past the natural friction of facing a really new and unusual mechanic. Well done.
You tackled a lot here and didn't shy away from the difficult parts, impressive!
Wow, nice job making the three-part system. It's a lot of scope to take on! The chicken, with his gambling and training and fighting, was kind of a charming character.
If you were to expand on this in one area, I would say focus on the feedback. Just simple stuff, like the game popping up the name of the poker hand I got and whether it was -50% or not. And the impact of my training. And whether I won or lost the fight. Basically whenever an important variable changes, there can be some visual thing indicating "oh boy look what YOU did, player!"
I definitely learned to get along without those, but they would totally up the game's feel.
I went all-in offense, and I had to fight captain squid a few times (tho I wasn't sure if I won or lost my fights against him, they just ended). I eventually realized OH I should go shopping! By then I had huge monies and bought lots of upgrade and wiped the floor with him. Then I took out cool cat and I was the champ!
Nice job, I played to the end. It was the right length, had snappy controls, and the art and music were solid.
I liked ducking into the nooks and finding the extra notes, I noticed a red one in the ceiling and figured out how to get that one, too. The beat battles were rare enough that I didn't feel overwhelmed, and the enemies had enough health that I had to worry a little about making enough on-beat hits in a row to take 'em out before they clawed their way to me.
One little detail that stung me a tiny bit was the way the camera is vertically locked to the guy so that when you jump you often lose all sight of the ground. Here's an example: https://imgur.com/dj4sLzw Not a big deal, but it did create a little discomfort.
Only other critique is that I never quite understood the meaning of the horizontal location of the notes, since for example a left arrow note might appear on the left, or on the right. Since I was multi-tasking between playing and platforming I wished the various arrows were lane-locked, so eg left was always on the left, so that way I could hit the beats by only looking from my peripheral vision while focusing on controlling my character. but maybe I just didn't understand what was really going on!
Nice job making a small tight metroidvania that had something new going on, and a sense of style, with tight controls!
37,850.
First noticed you guys when you made IceMan, that crazy jump-dodging flip-upside-down game. Now I make a point of checking out your offering because you reliably deliver a tight, to-the-point arcade action game that's really tough but has a mental layer to the design that makes me think.
I love the way this one lets me create my own problems. I experimented with randomness and systems of patterns, with constant streams and short bursts. At one point I was like "hrm I don't seem to be punished by failing to get blocks!" But then I realized how I quickly run out of space if I don't. I was stuck at about 15k for a bunch of tries until I felt like I had peeled back the layers, and got a more solid score.
Oh and one tiny touch I was glad to see: I don't get insta-gameover if I eat a quick run of hits in a stream. Nice.
I still think I did some dumb stuff that got me killed and a much higher score is possible but that was good for now.
Another really tight package with feel and hidden depth. I was very glad to see you had your sound crew present for this entry, and it came out great. I missed that in the demon-head lane-racer game.
Well done.
Very nice! I knew I had to play this one when I saw the screenshot, because a few years back for the 7-day roguelike challenge I created a game called "Billiard Dungeon" so I was curious to see how you'd approached the same thematic idea.
We went in pretty different directions, which was fun to see. I was really blown away by the art you created for this, especially the rolling sprites which looked just fantastic!
I played maybe 4 or 5 full games before I was like "hrm I wonder what this 'B' button does..." That certainly helped me to get a LOT further! I played until I had looped around through all the levels and was one-shotting dudes, and I considered that beating the game: https://imgur.com/a/vjNesOy
Then I shot myself into a hole to say goodbye.
Overall a very fun experience. The way enemies didn't move meant your game was completely different than mine... in your game it was all about being very careful not to fall into the hole yourself, as that was the most dangerous threat. Because enemies don't move, it's okay to take many mini-shots to get into position for a safe shot to knock them into a hole. It was a lot of fun and I definitely saw myself gradually improving at knocking them in the holes. Once I had looped all the way around the game I had a good feel for it and ran a streak of getting 3 shots in a row that knocked guys in the holes. Almost got the fourth but I couldn't see the hole on the screen to aim properly and just missed (I remembered where the hole was from the prior loop).
Holes being off screen was probably the main source of any player friction. It meant that when I had to travel around the map I had to do it with many tiny-taps instead of bigger shots, and still I nearly knocked myself into a hole. With the many-tiny-tap travel I did feel sometimes like arrr c'mon while waiting for the previous shot to finish rolling, like I wanted to hit the ball again while it was still moving. This was all very minor, but figured I'd mention it since it was the only little splinter.
Overall, I would say that the game was very strong. There is probably an element of chaining multiple shots together and thinking carefully about your "lay" from one shot going into the next, which is the core strategy of real snooker/billiards/pool, that didn't come through here. So maybe if you're expanding you can build the strategy in that direction.
But I still very much enjoyed the core mechanic here, and it the art, sound, music, and just overall feel of excellent polish really supported that core gameplay very well.
Strong entry, really well done!
Very nice puzzle entry here. I played the whole thing, and felt like the pace of introducing new concepts was right on. I had a good mix of feeling like I was smart, and getting a bit stumped here and there as well. The only time the game lost me was the first level with the night, not because of the new move it was introducing, but because I had not really learned the rules about "opposite colors can take" and "you must fill each goal but not have any left over" -- the prior levels were supposed to teach me that but I kind of missed the point. I referred back to the listed rules that once, and I was off again through the end.
Interface was slick and did what I needed, if I could have added one convenience, it would be that I could toggle selection of a piece. Sometimes I felt like I wanted to unselect something I'd dabbled with moving but decided against.
Overall very impressive exploring of an interesting idea -- well done!
Such a cool concept, and I enjoyed smashing my head against this brick wall for a little while, but ultimately I'm too dumb/slow for it. I enjoyed the snappy controls and never once felt cheated. The raw text aesthetic worked well with the numeric concept. I yearned for training wheels: a "current total" column showing where I'm at in each row.
A very interesting and well-done experiment, even if I could only scratch the surface. I think my top score was 22.
OK I tried it once more with the music, and while I was fought a little harder at the end I still only scored 14. I did notice though that in button-hammer-dodging at the very end I accidentally insta-skipped my score view... maybe that should be passed with a spacebar?
Man this is tough, but interesting.
This was cool, I had fun playing around with it. My initial reaction was shock that they aim moves so slow and soupy, but I soon came to realize that this is critical for making you feel like your shots have to count -- no quick spamming of minor corrections!
My first game was spent getting a handle on things and I only got a 2. I knew I could do better though, so I buckled down a bit and got myself an 8. I can see from the comments above though that this does not make me the A-Hole Master after all! Oh well.
Cool idea, and you made some interesting choices that gave it a unique feel. Nice work!
I really like the song a lot. The arrow-pressed was pretty tough, and typically I'm not too good at that type of game. But I will say that there were a couple of points where I got into a groove and surprised myself by hitting some pretty messed-up combos that I was shocked I got right... that felt pretty good! I didn't win, though. I also liked the stylish art on the cars and the arrows, plus the little taunts on the retry screen.
Nice work!
Hey man, I went to check it out but I couldn't find the download link on the page! Am I being dumb? I just saw the description and a nice animated gif.
Took it for a quick spin - the retro art style looked nice and the battle system brought back some old memories!
Very interesting! My first half dozen runs ended really fast and I thought "wtf I don't have what I need, that was impossible." but then I realized the tricks, and after a couple more I got a run with a score of 721. I see that @Jimbly did even better, but hey I felt okay about 721 given my first few runs!!
I felt like there was a delay I never fully understood between the clicking and the doing. Several times I was hammering the card like COME ON DOOO ITTTT. I got accustomed to the delay and started playing cards with the idea that there would be a lag before they kicked in, but I think the game would have felt more potent and alive if the card instantly took effect, or if whatever that delay is was strongly visually indicated why it exists.
But once I got used to the couple of odd things I really started to feel good playing, and I wanted to keep it all on a roll! What finally did me in on my good run was jumping a little too early (was getting jumpy I guess!) and landing on top of a spikeball instead of jumping over it.
Very cool concept and a nice entry, good work.
Very clever twist, making the costs ramp up similarly to the way the clicker economy works! This looked and sounded great, and the feel was nicely solid as well. It was a lot to have thrown at me, but I felt like you kept it manageable... or as manageable as StarCraft can be!
Nicely executed and clever design -- great well-rounded compo entry!
I wanted to try, but the link goes to a 404 page not found. Is it possible you have the itch page set to a private draft instead of a published public page? You can check by going to the game page, clicking "edit" at the top, then going to the bottom of the edit screen and checking the setting for "visibility and access." (I know b/c I made this mistake last time!)
I'll swing by later and check again.
Wow, impressive work from such a young developer! I think back to the crap I was making when I was your age, and what a difference. Nice work!
This game looks really nice, with cool models in a nice environment, some quality trees to give a sense of a real place floating in the sky, and a cool glowing sword trail.
I played a while and I got to the upward level with the staggered canons where you start having to use the sword to progress, here is a screenshot: https://imgur.com/a/KYfH7rN
I got further than that, up to the part where the canonballs start coming in 1-2 combo from TWO low turrets, that was too hard for me! I gave up after that because it was taking a while to clear that level since I cannot swing the sword while also moving (Tho i can see why you made that design choice).
For jump feeling, two small things to consider for next time: 1) if ppl say a game is floaty, you can fix that with increased gravity so the character returns more quickly to the ground; 2) try changing the collider material to have no friction, because in the screen shot I linked you can see my shin is "stuck" on the platform, and I will stay there in midair if I keep holding right, but if you have no friction then this problem goes away.
Anyway nice little entry even though I couldn't beat it.
Look forward to seeing what you come up with next time.
Very cool concept to have the "band vs crowd" dynamic in a JRPG battle format! Unfortunately I'm pretty bad at rhythm games, and most of my games were GAME OVER in literally about four seconds after my attempt to rock began. I tried a bunch of times and managed to get to the start of the vocals once, but I never made it to the crowd's second turn. Ha, yea I'm that bad!
Dug the concept and art though.. wish I could have tried further into the game!
Wild, and tense! I was claiming the center with c4 d4 e4 and whipping out knights and that was going okay. I definitely ran into some trouble with exchanges and a few times it was like WHOOPS I lost a piece and now I have to mentally re-gear for the new situation. I mean, situations change quickly in blitz chess, but they move along a certain sort of a path through the gamespace. This game strangely teleports to new positions in alternate trees in a way that my blitz chess brain patterns were sideswiped by. It was a cool experience!
Aesthetics-wise I loved the crunchy sound effects and found the on-piece timer totally clear and really necessary/helpful. I tried playing on a long train ride, but the color contrast is so low between the dark squares and dark pieces that I couldn't play. I was madly squinting, but it was like the enemy army had cloaking fields. I had to set it aside and come back with more friendly ambient lighting.
A cool idea that I enjoyed toying with. Nice work!
Had fun, and played til my elbow hurt, but I still couldn't quite get those darn meatballs where they belonged. I think my date was feeling a little... disrespected a few times.
Really charming, and things fit together very nicely! Obviously it's all really clumsy but I enjoyed that about a lot. Nice entry!
Cool disco-floor with the shifting colors and the special dance spots, looks very nice. I also liked the way the character's animations for shooting or walking (especially walking backwards) were all disco-dancey. I played without reading the instructions at first, and figured most of it out but not the mousewheel. Then I alt-tabbed over to read them and it was smooth sailing. I played until I got to the special dance-off and wiped out the rest of the dance-hating robot monsters.
Interesting idea, with the conflict between needing to dance to power up and needing to shoot the robots. I think I personally could have used a bit more speed and difficulty across every aspect, but of course this is just a matter of personal taste, and the relaxed pace certainly let me bask in some of the details that I might not have enjoyed as much in a hectic setting.
Nice work.
The art and crazy story gave a nice light-hearted feel, and the operatic semi-metal, even if not made for this jam, was a nice choice to use. Gave kind of a crazy fits-but-doesn't-fit feel to the whole thing that I enjoyed and worked with the whole "incompatible genres" theme is a different way that other entries.
I also liked the concept of drawing power for mobility, attack, and life all from the same pool. Although I enjoyed the flying, and this design encouraged me NOT to do that fun thing, which was kind of a shame.
I did get stuck in the wall one time, here is a screenshot: https://imgur.com/a/8EJSZSz
I had to jet myself to death and start over there, but fortunately that's not a big deal since the game is a short punchy length, which I also liked about it... it didn't overstay its welcome.
The boss fight I think you are working out some bugs there, so no big deal but my experience was I got shoved in the corner and some things happened that confused me and then I died. (Probably what it really feels like to fight the hulk anyway)
Nice entry, slightly messy but counters with messy charm and makes the whole thing work.
Very cool! I managed 2nd place on the normal leaderboards but first place is too far ahead for me to try for.
It definitely took me a few games of exploring the strategic options before I got a handle on it, which I really liked about it. It was enjoyable to mess around with different approaches. At first I had a huge monster set of stuff floating at the end of the chain, but I realized that this limits my income, and it was nice to be forced to take more risks.
The controls were totally fine, and the graphics were nice and did a good job of teaching me the rules if I paid attention. I was glad you didn't tutorialize me a lot with text, but instead just threw me in to figure it out (tho it took a bit before I even understood the basic rules).
Of course I wished for a little more juice and sound effects to make the experience a little more concrete and real-feeling, but that's just a matter of scope. I think you focused on the right things, because those are nice-to-haves and all the must-haves are here.
Actually with the leaderboard there's a nice bit of scope -- that's a great touch because it made me play a bit more by seeing what was possible.
I enjoyed waiting and saving up enough money to launch a multi-step attack deeper into the chain -- a good moment the game's strategy lured me into trying, rather than clickspam.
Great job!
Game is fucking METAL, and I love it! This game has a great idea and huge potential, and enough of that potential is realized to make it a lot of fun. It could be MEGA-fun and doesn't quite grab all the METAL potential available.
The main thing about when I play a badass METAL game is that I want to be able to FEEL what's going on. I know this was done with limited time, and I think you prioritized correctly. But man, if you were able to take it up a level in terms of the feel this would be just fantastic. I want you to take it to eleven!
Two things matter in this game: hurting things and riding a motorcycle. Let's look at both:
You gotta make it so I know when I'm getting hit, know when I hit the enemy, know when I kill them. You gotta make those core interactions come through in FEEL. That goes double in a tough fast firstperson game, for example when I get rammed by a psycho-demonbiker with a huge blade mounted on the front of his motorbike, I would probably notice. But I got hit from the back a few times in this and didn't! I gotta feel that. "SLAM! What the fu--" Not looking at some digits on the screen and saying "hmr professor, pardon me but I do believe we may have taken some damage back there!"
I also gotta feel like I'm on a motorcycle. What kind of motorcycle goes in reverse?! Let's turn to the experts to see how it's done. Let's say you're, to take one example, a leather-clad killer robot from the future who just got rammed by a truck, and you'd like to turn your motorcycle around 180 degrees to give chase. You don't use reverse, you don't even duck-walk it back... you're metal, so THIS is what you do:
https://youtu.be/7_IYeL4LtYY?t=50
I want a button that does THAT!
But suggestions aside, I had a lot of fun with what you DID ship. I got to Arena 2 and almost cleared it, which felt like I was doing pretty good, since it's tough. That was with riding full throttle, none of this hiding around corners & waiting stuff. I did my best when I kept moving, kept my head on a swivel, and didn't circle around to get into any prolonged fights: if I didn't finish a guy off, I'd get him next pass! I loved the variety of the enemies, with some trying to shoot me and those crazies with the lances trying to ram me, awesome!
Very nice entry, well done.
Wow great job making the 3D art and music! I ran the course three times, but still didn't beat snail so I think I was pretty bad. But I liked the grooving tunes, and I had a fun time drifting around the corners. One time after the well up the stairs, I was confused by which way to turn, I turned left and found myself what seemed like just off the course.
I never read the game's page, since I figure the game will explain it to me, but I'm kicking myself this time, because I was hitting the enter key on all quarter-note beats, which probably explains both why my hand hurts and also why I was stuck at Sir Snail!! Ooops, my bad. Kind of made it fun though since I was not very much in control coming around corners so I had to try to plan my racing line a bit more.
Cool idea to mix these two genres, I had fun.
Hi, I'm sorry but I tried this and the link was to a 404 (Page not Found).
Is it possible that you left your itch page set to a private draft, and didn't publish?
Wow, really nice. The whole package comes together: great sound and graphics, tight gameplay, and the challenge level is tough-but-fair with the theme story creating enough suspense to motivate me to keep trying.
I managed a victory, but I think I simultaneously died to the final attack and entered a strange win-and-lose combo state that sent the game a little bonkers. The sound effect of the final attack hitting me carried over into the title screen, where the menu got strange and seemed to move the heart between four slots rather than three, and all of them went to the credits screen.
The boss fight was cool and worked well with the story.
Great job!
A nice moody experience. Times are tough in the bunker, and I have a life-or-death decision, but without very much information. Too hasty, and I will get the wrong suspect. Too slow and we will all die.
I tried to second-guess myself and got the wrong person the first time. The second time I tried to delay and see if I could get more information. But the authorities MUST be obeyed, and I must be their imperfect implement of justice, flawed though I am.
Good work creating a feel -- the ominous music and background art fit really well with the story/mood. Nice entry!
This is a great first entry, and you're getting a lot of solid feedback here. I'm interested to see what you come out with next time after being a little battle-hardened!
This game has a cool idea and lots of good execution in the art quality and snappy movement. But wowzers it totally overwhelmed me. It asked that I memorize 20 data points before I know what they really mean, and it has 10 buttons to press. That's probably too much to expect an LD player to hold in their head going into the start of the game... a lesson I had to learn the hard way as a dev, too!
Gamefeel wise the core control was tight, which is a huge deal. But pay attention to what @Ashtrail is saying about the speed of the bullets, I think he's put his finger on a problem there. I didn't realize it while playing, but I think he's right that if the projectiles (enemy ones!) moved slower I would have been able to plot dodges more, instead of being a reaction thing.
For me, I was shooting and my eye would be in a conundrum: if I look at my ship I can't pay attention to whether I got hearts (meaning a good combo hit) or not. But if I look at the hits I lose sight of what I need to dodge. Consider conveying the information across multiple channels, like a different sound effect for the hit in each case.
So I think you have a lot of good raw ideas and raw skills here, and you put together something that's decent, and straight-up good for a first entry. But you have a little ways to go in learning about the "hump" that a stranger sitting down to play cold has to fight over, and how you can make that smoother. That comes with experience, and you'll be getting it by doing these LDs, so keep on!
Solid work here and looking forward to next time.
I'm a little suspicious of this Bison guy. Sure he's gregarious enough, but, I mean, CAN a black hole fall off a truck?? Something's fishy here...
Reservations aside, I fed some black holes as he requested, and it seemed to have worked at teaching the crowd science. They "oohed" and "ahhhed" with quite some vigor. So they must have been paying attention and learning... something.
Sadly, it was the last lesson they'll ever learn, as my clicker finger wore out and I was not up to the task of keeping us all safe.
Loved the larger-than-life Zoo boss and his wild antics. The cookie of course played second fiddle to the jokes delivered by over-the-top characters, but I think that was totally the right call in the scope-cutting that always happens in these jams.
Nice job, I got a bunch of laughs out of this one!
Wow, I'm sorry that I haven't reviewed your game since you did mine - but I don't have a gamepad!
I definitely like the concept here - of navigating selectively through an endless platformer where the different platforms I hit are controlling a second aspect of the game related to economics. And then the macro-economic conditions affect the physics in the platform -- it's a cool idea!
I struggled with the high-speed pace, though. There was a lot being thrown at me here, and I would have enjoyed a bit more breathing room at the start to observe and learn the rules before things got so difficult. That, or an instant restart button so I could spend more time learning. I spent almost all of my time just trying not to die, and never really clicked with the higher-level economic concepts. (Hrm... was that the game's hidden message?)
Wow art is off-the-charts charming here, and the dog and wolf both ooze personality. The controls are nice and responsive, giving vibrant life to the nice art.
I struggled with the levels as I progressed, because WOWZErs those wolves don't mess around, and the way they could go through shrubs but the dog couldn't left me feeling cornered a lot!
I guess it's that way on the nature shows, too. Animal life looks cute but there is a brutality to the reality of it all.
Very nice entry here, great work.
I liked this! The art and soundscape created a gritty alien place, and this played very well with the strange task set in front of me. The difficulty ramped well, with dog-O's letting me learn the ropes, but by the time I got to bullions I was getting snuck up on and surprised, then I had to whirl around in panic and not fall in my own stew! A nice moment.
I fell in the soup early, so I had a feeling that this was a full-restart game. Buckling down and being careful, I got to the artichokes with a few close calls that were enjoyable. But when I died at the artichokes and went back to the start of the game, I called it a day. I was enjoying myself but for these LD entries it's a little too much to ask me to repeat THAT much of the game to experience the next bit. Yet the threat of full restart certainly added tension, so it's a tradeoff.
The controls were mostly spot-on and worked well. I liked the travel time of projectiles, the movement speed, and the jumps. I noticed that if I keep looking down I flip around which was weird, but didn't really present a problem. I did have a few issues with the shooty-shoots blocking my view when I carried them, for example https://imgur.com/a/TXjqqnb But again not a serious problem by any means.
The punny names were a nice touch, add a kind of odd contrast to the gruesome task performed in this hellscape.
Overall a memorable and interesting entry, well done!
No, I guess I didn't... In fact I even remember thinking, "That guy could use a sound." My impression was I looked, nothing was there, I turned around and was reading the recipe and then I was being attacked. I'm trying to recall sound effects of his that I noticed. He definitely had a death sound, and I think there was another one I experienced mid-combat, too. But I don't recall hearing one before he attacked. Maybe I was just being inattentive though.
This is a great core concept to use for the theme: to set the two genres against each other in a conflict where the player needs to divide their time and attention between competing goals. You even took it a step further and forced me to literally turn my back on the action game to tend to the other genre! Nice.
And the execution is really strong, too. The voxel aesthetic works really well, and the sound is -- well, err, let's set aside the crying baby sound and talk about the rest -- is very nice. I especially liked that dropping the shotgun on the floor made the same sound as dropping the bottle. A clever small joke.
I had about the right amount of breathing room at the start, and I absolutely loved that you didn't tutorialize me at all, and just threw me straight in to figure it out.
The only small thing I wanted to tweak -- setting aside the crying -- was this hitbox for the pickup command, I would have preferred it to be just slightly more generous, I had to be a little more careful than felt smooth.
Overall this was excellent, but let's talk about the crying. I don't know what I want. On the one hand, you have to have the crying. On the other hand, it's crying, which is like a magical sound my brain is designed to find maximally annoying. I *definitely* would have played more of this if it weren't for the crying. My brain was like "nah let's not click the button that opts into more crying" unfortunately.
But that said, I didn't need to play a ton to enjoy this. Very nice entry.
Cool combination! I saw some other clicker-combos, but what I liked about this one was that it was totally playable on both sides at once. I felt pretty smoothly able to operate the ship and the economy at the same time, and I also felt like I really understood everything that was going on.
Controls felt tight, and it looked nice. The crunchy sound effects worked well with the pixelish art, and I liked how the screen got sloppy with particle trails when things got hectic! The curved ship that would rotate in place and spray a stream of bullets was the guy who created the most interesting dodge problems for me, that was my favorite.
Nice entry!
Fantastic job creating the atmosphere. The art, the sound, and the decisions about lighting really set the stage for the mood. The item scarcity was just about right, to where I was worried but never actually had a problem. I beat the game on my first run-through, but I had some close calls of being hunted by werewolves without knowing if a stake would work!
If I could tweak one thing, I'd think whether the rotating as a separate input step could be changed. I understand it's to aim the shooting, but the controls otherwise feel really snappy and the double-tap to turn somewhat marred that feel. I like to play turn/grid games pretty fast though, so it could just be me.
I loved the introduction of the metalish music at the end and the plot changes there, very nice touch to make it feel like a full experience.
Very nice entry!
ohhhhhhh my god this was SO hard. But it had JETPACKS and shooting with leads at moving targets. So the old Tribes player in me had to try to step up, and I gave it a serious effort.
I thought I would never even get past the first boss. But after a lot of experimenting and many many many many tries I finally beat him. Fortunately the next few bosses were SLIGHTLY less difficult. Let's call the three bosses spinner, roller, and smiler. I beat each of them, and then I beat spinner 2. But I ran out of steam after losing many many times to roller 2.
Funnily, spinner was hardest for me, then roller, and simley was pretty easy. But that may be the tribes thing: smiler was about leading your shot more than dodging, and I just summoned my old chaingun skills.
I was upset that I didn't get even an instant of invulnerability and eating a tripleshot could end me instantly. But honestly I think given this game's brutality, I'm okay with that.
I had to dig deep, as this is more execution difficulty than I normally engage with, but there were three excellent aspects of the game that made me want to do it: first there is the very well done aesthetic of informative and appealing graphics and sound; second the controls are very tight so it's all my fault; and third there is a pattern to be deduced with each boss and so it is as much of a puzzle as it is an execution test.
Every now and then a superhard execution LD comes along that has the package to make me buckle down and this was one of those rare games. Well done!
I played the original version, but I still won. I loved the jamming tune, and the nice finale that rewarded me for completing the entire bump quest! This was charming. My wife wondered why I was battling blue hershey kisses so I got to explain to her about slimes.
Yeah the controls were a little hard to handle, but it was also kind of a crazy sort of fun to be out of control and bounce-smashing into everything and trying to plan my movement.
Cool little game that's heavy on charm, nice work.
The art is very nice. The slow ramp-up in difficulty was ok for the first run, but once I died and restarted, it felt like a long time to get back to the interesting part with multi-button combos. I would have played more if I didn't have to wait as long between runs for the fun part.
Loved it! Perfect length.
The boss's extra superpower threw me a little though: sticky-power.png
breaking that fourth wall to shift input focus out of the app felt a bit unfair at first, until I figured out the counter-strategy of choosing "Yes! I do want sticky keys!" and then never stopping shooting. Once I flipped that script on him I did much better.
Very cool with great voice acting, a hilarious boss intro I didn't see coming, and some tight action with smooth controls. Really nice all around entry.
Hey - great to see the Flag of Mullin flying again!
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Real chill vibe with the music and art, and the pacing. I spent quite a while with this, and was consulting the manual many, many times. I think the game was supposed to be much shorter than my experience, but I was so focused on reading the flags from the other towers and comparing them to my rules book that I overlooked two important details at first: that I had received a letter with instruction to SEND a flag message, and that once I did I should light a signal fire.
So that first day was long, and a lot of spyglass-looking and book-checking. I didn't mind because the game had a good vibe. I will say I wished badly for fullscreen. I have a harder time immersing myself when I can't fullscreen. I ended up changing the display options on my computer so that at least I could get it to take MOST of the screen, instead of the about 30% it initially was taking.
Once I got over the hump of that first day, things went smoothly for the resistance. It was pretty cool that first time when I did spot a pattern. I had gotten familiar enough that I was like WAIT THAT'S NOT NORMAL, OH BOY.
Loved the smoke in the distance. It looks visually nice, adds to the vibe and feeling of progress/change, but most of all it makes you stop and think, hrm, are those signal fires or are they war casualties from the violence I am facilitating so indirectly? At first I thought that maybe I'd made a mistake and gotten the other towers outed and burned down.
Nice entry!
I enjoyed this a lot! Was kicking myself for using plural words early and then forgetting which were plural, that was most of my mistakes. Bee helmets! They're definitely talking about bee helmet birthday wine.
Whole experience worked really well. I was pushed a bit and wasn't sure how far I could be pushed. I thought the runtime was just right, but I also know my brain could have held more of this stuff. Interesting.
The opening scene was great, wonderful art and audio too. Nice work!
Some pretty cool platforming here! My favorite part was jamming out to the tunes, hitting the rotating crosses, ok no problem, but then you threw the twist at me and had them going reverse!! It was pretty interesting how much that one difference changed the experience of platforming on them. I got past it no sweat but I enjoyed the challenge spike, particularly since it came as a progression of a previous idea.
I read all of the text the game showed me. When I got the wall that was too high to jump and the game showed text saying this wall is too high to jump, I made a note "will leave feedback that's a bit too much text for my taste." Wowzers so naive lol, by the end of the game's outro it was well established that this is a very self-aware design choice.
I know you have a few people saying the platforming was a bit too difficult, and of course in a jam there is a range of players coming from all sorts of tastes, which is great. But for my own personal taste I would have enjoyed even more of you riffing up and down the difficulty curve with some of your core - I liked the taste you did give and wanted more.
Nice entry with a lot of style!
Dude that lush, textured synth soundscape! Very nice as always.
I'm glad there was no tutorial. The sense of mystery and period of experimentation adding, and fit with the vibe imo. The character art is nice, and the choppy animation has some nice details, for example how the idle doesn't over-use the most jittery frames. Wait... is it randomized? Interesting idea. My favorite frame is the ballooning-chest as he goes into a jump from idle, and if I could tweak one thing about the game it would be to play that even when you going into a jump from walking.
The varied uses of the stars is core to the puzzle-thinking but also creates a lot of execution failures (at least for me) and the need to restart.
I thought I was doing pretty good but then I got stuck here:
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How much did I miss?
Nice entry!
Wow I'm really impressed! This is just so well done!
The core idea is really nice, derived straight from the theme, and then its consequences were explored in all these different directions and permutations. You put so many interesting ideas into play here, really well done.
Then you packaged it up with strong graphics that included a variety, a jamming tune, nice sfx, and a smooth learning curve that completely avoided the need for tutorialization.
I completed the game and got 16 of the triangles. Here are a couple of the rooms I didn't figure out:
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Another huge nice touch was the speed of the character. With backtracking and exploring, and the physical execution of the puzzles required, it would have been easy for this game to be subtly a lot less fun by making a grindy-feeling slow movement speed, but the snappy controls were a pleasure.
Game also prevents you from getting stuck, for example I was worried about the mine in the door in the East Yard, but nope, I needn't have worried. Lots of attention to detail evident throughout.
I saw LD14 on your list and was curious what to expect, and wow - you just nailed it. Well done!
Short but sweet - got to the end! Nice job with the music and the distortion effect. Art was also good. Of course there could have been a little more scope to explore further, but I thought you did a good job tying up what scope you did hit into an appropriate bite-size experience that I enjoyed. Nice!
Love the art style, and there's definitely a core that could become a very very cool entry here. It just needed a little more polish, there was a grindy empty feel from a huge amount of clicking without the game showing me much feedback. I lost before I saw a town, though I felt like I ran a loop and also switched signals the second time, running full throttle the whole way. Maybe I missed it!
Sweet graphics though, sorry I didn't get to experience more of it.
Oh my god that first moment when I was cruising around wrecking everybody with my sophisticated build and suddenly for no reason half my body and turrets got disconnected and went flying off into nowhere my brain said AHH WTF JUST HAPPENED?!@#
And then I was like... oh... right.... this is snake!
I finished this game by the skin of my teeth. I think I upgraded a few health stations and then enemies were a non-concern the entire game, but in the last minute after killing the final transmission tower I bumped something unexpectedly, panicked at the turn in direction, severed almost my entire arsenal and then suddenly had like a pixel of health left. I thought I was all done, but with mad dash for the exit I just barely made it. Phew! Was glad I got to finish!
There's a lot of cool stuff here. The art is great, the voice acting is really fun, and probably the most impressive feature is the upgrade menu system with the dual selection of body-part / turret-type. That menu experience is rich with slick details that really made it feel great to use. So well done.
If I look for critique I guess it'd be the minor enemies -- they weren't quite dangerous enough to be interesting, and I wished the had a little more juice to signal when they were hit or hit me. Their low danger let me turn my brain off a bit too much. BUT it would have been a disaster if they were tuned too far the other way and made the game too dangerous. I did appreciate being able to cruise through and experience the whole experience.
The "leave me alone" use of the signal theme was a great starting point, and the fact that this landed you on snake, love it. Lol at bathroom wall.
Nice entry!
Oh -- and thanks to Alex for the keynote vid. Fired me up at the kick-off, hell yeah.
Thanks so much everyone for the feedback!
@sudocoffee is the world record holder, with @knarf and @justinmullin right behind. I have made a tiny change to help any future speedrunners: 'R' now resets all the way back to Level 1 and zeroes the timer, so that you can abort/restart a full speedrun instantly. I still could not beat coffees time (yet?)!
@rogual (who jogs faster than motorbikes, srsly go check his compo game out and maybe even look at his code) @liam and @tweekus are completely right that the theme is real, *real* weak here. My initial vision included something, but it got cut and I became totally unanchored.
@henk and @justinmullin thanks for reporting the bug. I've shipped a small change that adjusts some geometry to address it. This game groups the tiles into larger meshes in an effort to remove seams that were problematic. But the areas your bugs were in, I had structured them so that seams still appeared and caused some issues. So for example here is the adjustment I made to the corner where the player can spaz out against the geometry, it's just a cosmetic change but it alters the way the mesh groups and fixes the issue:
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The enemy guy has invisible cage-walls that constrain him, so I had to do something similar for him:
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And I found a way to softlock the game in another spot, where the baboon can knock the banana out of an area, and the player cannot climb back up to get it. So I added this one small platform here so that you can:
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It's interesting that all these flaws arose from geometry. I'm not used to doing "level design" per se, so I appreciated that folks mostly enjoyed the level layout.
Except for that one crazy climbing wall a few of you complained about. I know just the one you mean, and I buried my face in my hands watching a streamer fail it over and over. That wall is too hard, my bad. But I've not adjusted that.
@khaotom I've been enjoying Phaser, and I *really* liked LDtk. But it probably wouldn't have been possible to ramp up so fast on multiple new tools w/out some of the AI assistants. I also find the Phaser arcade physics easy to use but the limitation to have only axis-aligned rect or circle colliders was pretty inconvenient at times.
And thanks to @kanity who drew this cool art about the game and posted it:
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Twist at the start was fantastic. I probably got to the last part in a unique way: I was confused about getting past the first part (EDIT: same as graebor), and I still think maybe something is off-screen for me. I was trying to zoom, and ctrl-mousewheel didn't work. So then I hit ctrl-shift-+ but that didn't work, so then I tried ctrl-shift-0 to set default zoom just in case, and poof to my great surprise I was teleported into the battle scene. Later I found that 9 takes me to the second scene. After that, I figured out how to progress through the game normally (just wiggle the mouse and hold the key at the end of the first part, something seems to be happening but I don't know what).
So a wild ride. Love the crazy unique/experimental entries you come across in LD. Again, that first page is a masterpiece in misdirecting my expectations and then subverting them. Well done!
Wow, multiplayer! That's a cool technical accomplishment but I tried logging in last night and then again this morning to see if I caught anybody, but found myself alone. I wonder how that could be solved, where you could have multiplayer yet allow solo experience, I guess bots is the simplest idea? Or some kind of durable state that players can come in and manipulate so that you don't have to cross-over in time with another player? I've done a ton of LDs and only seen multiplayer a couple of times, so definitely an under-explored space. Glad to see you poking at it, and sorry I didn't get to really check how the game works when there are players crossing over.
Interesting.... the player seems to be on a discrete chunky grid when I tap-move or go around corners, but then it appears smooth when I hold the key down. Are you on a discrete grid but with interpolation smoothing it? The projectiles seem to go in a smooth straight line and not be locked to a grid in the same way.
Would have been curious to see this in real action, but even though I didn't really get to dig in here I'm glad somebody is experimenting in this space.
Wow that was really nice! The zip ride down at the conclusion was a great finale, wonderful idea. I struggled a bit with the second-to-last house, I didn't see anything to indicate what controlled the bottom-left door, and sort of concluded it couldn't be that box far away from it. Eventually tried out of desperation before quitting, and then was able to proceed to the conclusion, and I was really glad I got to get to the end.
I think there might be an odd issue with the audio: I experienced the music as having this odd crackling distortion, which I thought was a stylistic choice. But then when I exited fullscreen at the end of playing I noticed it went away. And sure enough -- I hit fullscreen and it crackles, non-fullscreen it stops. So odd!
Anyway, really nice music, audio, graphics, solid platforming controls, a concept taken straight from the theme, and all packed up into a narrative with a satisfying conclusion. Nice well-rounded entry!
This was really charming and had a ton of cool ideas going on! A nice mix of puzzles and platforming, nice art and music, nice design.
There is SO MUCH good about this game, but I did experience some friction with the controls. I wish the jump had a variable power depending on how long I held the button down. And the air control's incredibly high acceleration made tiny adjustments quite difficult. The camera was also aggressive enough to create blind jumps or even take my character right off the screen:
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So I really liked the challenge of some of the platforming, like going on the moving platforms past the saw blades and having to jump. But I felt a bit too much of the challenge came from the controls.
Anyway, I wouldn't even mention that stuff if this wasn't such an all-around excellent game! Loved the progression of ideas through the puzzles, with the different colors, and like I said a nice mix of thinky puzzles and demanding platforming challenges that kept it feeling fresh throughout.
Nice work!
Wow! Very cool moody art, atmospheric sounds, and an interesting and challenging gameplay. There were a few splinters on the control experience - bunch of times I pressed jump and didn't get a jump, and a bunch of times I felt unsure from the art about whether a space was something I could fit into, and the restart screen started to feel way too slow after the twentieth time. This kept me from entering a total flow state, but even despite that I really enjoyed this and spent some time digging in.
At first I believed the game was a bit too easy, but then I met (and eventually overcame!) the Big Fish, and then met (and overcame!) the Red Spikes. Man that fish really got me so many times and it felt great to finally beat him. Then the spikes... it takes a while for the ghostline to sweep around again and I got impatient and greedy and tried to take more than I should have a few times, and got spiked. I was less of a fan of the statue-heads because being blocked and finding out I needed to backtrack wasn't so enjoyable.
Satisfying to win. And when I did have to wait for the ghostline sweep, wow that whole waves graphical effect was really nice. I got past the fish IRKAR screenshot above, and then maybe another level or two beyond, I think.
Lot of cool elements coming together here into a nice entry, good work!
edit: wait, there's torches?? didn't realize.
Cool story about kids on bikes trying to make contact while avoiding authority! The vibe of the music and art fits with the theme, and I liked the walkie-talkie sound.
I didn't quite understand at first that I needed to lock in the lines, and I manually triangulated the first one. Standing on the spot, I then realized about locking in, but the game told me that I needed to move further away to scan, so I had to leave the target area in order to re-discover it from further the way the game wanted me to.
Otherwise a really smooth experience! The bike was much nicer than walking. Nice entry!
WHOA! I loved the music that got sometimes really crazy, and the art with the dithered distances views, and the quick-blink scan-ahead. The whole experience was kind of frenetic and the different aspects of the style of the game really fit so well together. And the experience itself is kind of crazy. Early on I understood some deaths: for example by digging under a boulder and having it drop on me. But it took me a bit to realize how the turn counter works, and that it's restored by worms, so after that I got a lot better.
Then I started to get copies of myself, and the game got REALLY nuts. Was I even supposed to get copies of myself at all? I wasn't totally sure but either way it was fun!
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(EDIT: it's showing the image as broken not sure why! here's an imgur link https://imgur.com/DIg1Q03)
Eventually I managed to get four copies of myself to level 119 where it rains fruit all day and there's a boom box playing music and the whole path down is blocked off by boulders. Is that party scene considered victory?
But some of my past selves were still stuck on earlier levels, so we didn't all win.
Really enjoyed exploring this one. It was just the right amount of nuts.
Cool and unique entry!
Wow you nailed it!! The tech at the room level, interacting with the physical television, plus the puzzles, the in-screen tech of chopping up headroom-style with the graphics background, and the actual on-screen shots with such a variety of charactahs, it was all super-well done, entertaining, and fit together into a really nice cohesive experience that was just the right length, and well-anchored into the theme. Loved it, great job.
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Enslavement achieved! This was a nice short but complete experience. Loved that you had the second type of zone with different art and more wide-open spaces.
The horizonal-only shooting did a nice job of making enemies vary in threat level. If they came from the side it was easy, but up/down approaches could have made them a lot trickier.
If I could tweak one thing, I think it would be the enemy logic. The way they work now, I always just either shot them offscreen before even knowing they existed (or were those corpses I saw already dead?) or else I would trigger their attack mode and then backtrack to a totally safe spot where I could just spam "fire" and then would walk in and die. If the enemies had just a bit more to them, the combat could have been very interesting in this game, I think.
Nice well-rounded entry, good use of the theme, cool pixel art, music, and sound effects all rolled into a nice package with a real ending. Good job!
This experience is a nice little package with a lot of character in the art and story. Length just about perfect. Love the variety of neighbors and their quirks.
But while we're speaking the language of violence.... can I put the jellies on that hook? BZZZZT!!
Never heard of wareware before, interesting. Your English seemed flawless.
Very cool entry!
Wow! This game is so polished and slick! I just love the art and the sound, and the overall feel and juice of it. Every interaction just has so much detail. Really good!
I loved the platformer challenges, lots of tricky moments and reward of satisfaction. The controls felt very nice, especially the nuanced jump control, and for such a complex set of interactions I felt like you made it manageable. One nit is the rounded foot, which of course you must have going up onto the platform (toe-stub no thank you) but then wrecks you on the other side when you're sliding off. Classic dilemma!
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Here was a spot I ran into some trouble. Totally doable, and I did get by it a few times, but a bunch of deaths stacked up here.
Anyway - really had fun with this one! Such a nice well-rounded entry. Well done.
Wow great polish, and what a cool idea! It took me a little while to understand (were these other pawns my allies since they are the same color? what is my objective? what causes the hadouking? etc) After sticking with it a bit and experimenting, suddenly it clicked and I understood what I was being asked to do and what the time pressure was for.
After I turned that corner I started really enjoying it! Next thing I knew I was whipping around and stomping pawns confidently.
For all the great polish, I did wish there was a celebration sound/fx for victory, because they were very satisfying just inherently from the puzzle, so I was ripe to have that amplified to super-satisfaction. Other really tiny things that I noticed were that I wished for a red danger mark on the squares where the pawns kill me.... and then later noticed that there IS ONE! So maybe more prominent? I also could have stood to shave a bit off the restart delay on loss (I lost a LOT while learning the rules, and restart felt fine once I understood the game and lost at a more reasonable pace).
Really nice all-around entry! Polish was slick, art was really nice, loved the hadouking pun/voice, and the music/sfx worked well. You really got me slinging knight moves around with my brain riding the edge of panic because I knew the king was about to get me. Well done.
wow nice work!! So polished for a compo entry, with really nice looking 3D graphics, tight controls, great audio, and a gameplay frame pulling it all together nicely. Well done!
The dome dropping for combat was a nice touch. If I try to critique I'd say that a bit too much of the combat was backwards fleeing while a stack of rocks followed me. I felt like the controls were tight enough to create more interesting combat situations than the enemy AI provided.
I wanted to finish but it was pretty disheartening to lose in like the 4th fight and have to go back to the start, so I eventually wimped out. Sorry :*( I felt like the game deserved more from me.
But such an impressive entry all around! Well done.
I finished the game. Enjoyed the free-ranging controls, the lack of punishment for huge falls, the jump, the insane ability to climb sheer walls like it's nothing.
The rabbit was a nice touch, I diverted myself a bit by chasing him right when I hit a lull. The graphics and the space and the free-flowing movement left me feeling fine about the simplicity of the challenge. The trails I left behind started as a nice visual element but became a very useful search aid toward the end.
How did you create such true-to-life sound effects? They are very nice. The wind blowing, the sheep, the howl of the wolf. I've tinkered with lots of ways of creating sfx but I wouldn't know where to begin with making sounds like that. Did you synthesize them somehow?
Anyway, very nice entry! I enjoyed.
Oh - don't really care and won't change my rating, but I do think a compo entry should have code included.
Very cool and moody - loved the total lack of tutorializing. I went from having no idea, messing around, having a thought as I experimented, and then managing to figure it out and reach the end of the story.
Nice job!
Multiple pleasant surprises that show you really understand how to design for the action pace: first, after the wall of text at the start I practiced the controls and found that I could move right there on the instruction screen as soon as I was ready, and that the action was going to wait for me to begin. Second, after losing several times in a row and getting impatient I hit 'R' even before the score screen loaded and my restart command was INSTANTLY accepted by the game. Appreciated that on the one hand you gave me the breather option at the start, but yet also didn't force any delay whatsoever into the restart loop when I didn't want one.
Flow-wise, playing this game felt like playing an FPS with "invert Y axis" turned on. I just could not rewire my brain that "when I want the car to go down, I should press up." Or, I could when things were peaceful but when I moved into flow state I would bounce back out because my fingers decided to press down to instruct the car to move down. No sweat, that's my fault, git gud.
Graphics were great, and clear, and a great actionstorm rose from intersection of fast-paced elements, trying to juggle influence/control of the players, the cars, the zombies, and the need to avoid each while also getting the lifepips. The impatience of the cars and the way they'd activate on their own without waiting really put the cherry on top and forced me into chaos. Though you didn't create audio, they're well-chosen and fit. Really nice work all around!
Loved the art, and the way the color scheme all really works together. Parrying the needles was super satisfying -- especially when I nailed a triple. I never quite clicked with the scissors, sometimes I could feel their vibe and get it, but I was often early, and then I'd second-guess myself on the next one and be late, and then when they started doing doubles and then stacking with needles I couldn't hang. But I could imagine that IF I could hang it would have felt great.
Nice work!
Well if you ever get trapped under ground, give me a call because I sure got really good at mining in this game! I am a mining MONSTER! At least until I run into those new rocks, anyway.
This was a lot of fun and I played a long time. The core action is super repetitive but it's crunchy and really satisfying so that's okay. The art, the sound, the juice, all working together to make that simple act feel good. And as you add laser and other abilities there's also some variety.
And of course the bigger layer of tech tree upgrades and earning to save to increase your ability to earn and ratcheting up and up... it's a really compelling wrapper for the underlying core action. And it was paced out really nicely.
I liked that the jump from level 1 to 2 was a lot bigger than the subsequent jumps. That gave me time to enjoy learning the game and seeing what was what. Since it was all new I didn't need it to move faster. But then as I got later into the game I was very glad the pace picked up.
You clearly know what you're doing with this style of game! What a great way to take a nice tight core and make the player want to really dig into it.
I played to the second-to-last level before I had to call it, but I spent a while with this one.
Nice entry.
Hey cool, a fun little synth! Just enough param-tweaking to get me playing around with it a bit. My favorite was setting the voice to mono and planting a finger on lower C and dancing the rest around Cm. Would have enjoyed it even more if --- NEVER MIND some further tweaking got it to sound really really nasty and discordant, so just a skill issue.
Nice job! Interface clean clear and with personality. Sound is just flexible enough to sustain a fun session of messing around.
Very cool! The minefield was a good amount of difficulty. I wasn't sure what to do at first, had to do some experimenting, my initial ideas didn't pan out, and then I figured it out. Just right.
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Nice work drawing right from the theme and running with it. The retro vibe is really well executed. Cool entry!
Trippy! I played with this for a surprisingly long time. My first run I was stuck and didn't understand, but pretty much figured out some of what's in your spoilers. I manually restarted and got into a better groove the second time.
I did end up finding two additional stable configurations:
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But I also enjoyed just watching the space move when I was just drifting around, too:
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I definitely felt the lack of control that you were going for!
Cool unique entry.
Nice job creating a really unique entry rich with creative art, audio, and even poetry. I enjoyed trying to go through and remember what sequences I had already seen so that I could see more dreams.
My favorite dream was the... how do I even describe it? The Lovecraftian starfish rapper?
Great work on the variety of musical/audio elements, too. Really helped the game feel alive.
Very nice job!
Such a unique and complicated entry - really nicely done. A lot of the really experimental stuff I see in jams is often half-realized, really cool but left a little incomplete. This one feels like the whole concept was fleshed out and brought to a satisfying conclusion.
On one hand, I really appreciated the spoilers so I didn't get stopped halfway through from my failures, and the cheat key so I could see the final scene. If I were five or six levels deep and ate a game over, I would not replay, so the cheating helped me experience. On the other hand, I am a person who is a bit defective in the ear and it was an accomplishment for me to solve Ode One Out without looking it up. So I did try each puzzle before using the guide. Struck a good balance w the out-of-game hidden-spoiler. Hitting Alt-Tab was a confession.
Really well done, with a core idea deeply rooted in the theme, and taken in an interesting novel direction and backed up with art that both looked compelling and was very well suited to the experience.
Great job!
edit: love the discussion above -- cocreator had a strong vision, I disagreed but tried it their way, worked better than I expected. That's cool teamwork. I've always compoed so I can be unilateral, and thought of team operations as hardmode. Cool to see some of the curtain pulled back, thanks.
Took me a lot of play-throughs but I finally got the good ending! The sleep threw me off - several times I slept immediately before leaving and still lost to lack of sleep. Bolstered that a bit and then was able to win.
First run was nice, with a lot of tension. I kept putting off the extreme choice until it stopped being on offer, and then watched as my own O2 dwindled. I thought I was end up in the EPS-5 shoes: running out of resources and getting a "5w" estimate and nobody would come. But the game was even meaner in punishing my inaction by going into what I assume was an infinite loop of sleep/excercise - science - o2/bat never changing, never progressing the state at all. Eventually I got into the pod for no reason just to end it all. Poetic justice!
Nice entry! Very cool take on the theme.
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Nice entry! The art and music were beautiful, and I had fun working through how the abilities worked to let me solve the puzzles.
I think I had some technical issues with the audio - it sounded really crackly on my system (Chrome on Windows) but I just chalked it up to the rain. That rain may also have made the "jump" tile only sometimes fire, which caused me some confusion about some of the puzzles, but in the end with experimentation I was able to make everything work, and I didn't mind the excuse to spend a little extra time with the world!
It was a nice choice to have the game pretty zoomed in, the way you did. It played to the strengths of the art.
Nice job!
Fuck yes. Part of what's great about jamming is coming across this kind of experimental entry way outside the range. Loved it.
How many are you running at once? I only went to three at the same time...
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You made me want the full version of this game where it's a band of four friends with different-voiced animals and a way to define keyframes so they can have raw approximations of loops and I can create a dynamic tower stack of insanity.
The art touches are great, the range circles, the frequency analyzer, the shaking text. What first caught my eye and made me play was your anim speedrun gif that you posted. Love the style.
Very nice work.
Great idea for the theme. Nice gameplay loop, and I enjoyed exploring the different star types. At first I was a bit nervous, then got used to normal stars, and saw something like OH BOY DON'T SIGNAL THAT THING. And got the 0/3 victory ending. Graphics were solid, but especially good for the space objects.
So of course then I had to reply and rat us all out to the Eye of Space Sauron.
Nice thoughtful entry!
I got up to 32 food but then my hand was tired from a lot of moving and clicking, which felt weird because I could play an FPS for longer without that feeling?
I had fun exploring the system. When I started, I did not understand anything and lost my first game with zero food. But then I figured it out by experimenting, and on my second run I started gaining food faster than I used it. I was able to run usually two "teams" at once, and maybe send out some extra monitors to scan more of the map. It was an interesting design with some ways to interact between the types.
I wonder what this game would be like with really polished controls like hotkeys and clear selection state that would allow for much more action-per-minute, and then threw more at me.
Cool entry! The art was nice, and a very interesting idea well-grounded in the theme. Good job!
I was initially very confused by the first machine, but I had some fun tinkering and then it was satisfying to figure it out. Once I had that foundation in place the remaining two machines were very straightforward to figure out.
You have really charming art and create a nice mood that is reflected in the gameplay and the message together, so it feels like a cohesive package. The background music was really nice - what a shame it didn't loop! Honestly I think you could consider it fair to fix that under the post-submission bugfix rule, wouldn't seem unfair, just my opinion. Just disclose the fix and I wouldn't imagine folks objecting.
Once I was in the third and fourth day I did start to feel like it was a lot of machine-operating for just a small payoff each time, and I could have been more engaged if you threw a surprise or twist in.
Nice entry!
Nice!! Someone has studied their Art of Screenshake, love all the tiny touches. This pic doesn't do it justice but it's what was there when I hit printscr
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You can see a taste of the attention to detail here, but it was EVERYWHERE.
At first I thought this game would just be a nice super-juiced blast-fest but then there were all these different scene changes, wave, rain, upgrade, and then later chill. That outer-level loop was a really nice delivery vehicle for the moment-to-moment gameplay, and breaking it up that way went prevented it from wearing out too quickly. The nice progression of different enemy types also really helped, and then the slick boss fight adding some bullethell was a nice cherry on top to really complete the experience.
All around super nice with great gameplay, art, and sound. Really well done!
Very cool vibe - the lasers, the colors, the nice chunky art, and the music/sfx all work together really well and feel like a consistent purposeful style.
I had fun bouncing the lasers around, experimenting, and solving.
The game was short and left me wanting more -- much better than dragging things out until it gets boring, but I could easily have enjoyed another 2 or 3 levels.
Well done!
Very cool! The puzzles were interesting. The enemies "patrolling" the network was a nice idea that gave a sense of both space and timing to the network. I did get kind of stuck on one where the timing window seemed just a bit too tight, but maybe I was just trying to execute the wrong solution. I wish I had captured a screenshot to say which one.
After I got stuck a bit I went back to my desktop, and tried to see if the restorations I had done unlocked any cat videos. No. Then I went back into the game app to try my level again, but it reset me to level 1 so I stopped playing rather than repeat everything.
But I spent some time with this and enjoyed it! Nice entry, really clear graphics and a good ramp-up in difficulty.
DANG!! There is some brutally fast action in spots in this game. Didn't expect it somehow from the pics, but nice work on bringing it. That room where I got dropped into a toe-to-toe with the first tank I'd ever seen. And that room where the safe-circle zooms around at a full-sprint ripped my face off.
I had a few splinters here and there, like there was a wall that I didn't realize was a wall, cuz it kind of looked like some floor-markings looked, and that almost killed me because I was busy looking at enemies rather than myself failing to walk forward, etc. And I didn't realize for a couple of levels that I could/had-to switch to that weapon (was like boy this sniper rifle sure feels a lot like that shotty, so my fault).
But that stuff didn't matter. There was some fast brutal action here and a really cool art style. Kinda want to try the version of this game that has a metal soundtrack...
Very nice entry, well done.
We have some buildings like this in my home town!
Never climbed to the top of them before, though...
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Very cool look, and nice job on the procgen. The shading was maybe contributing to the difficulty, at least in my first generation which was pretty tall and had a bunch of shadow areas that were tricky. But I was enjoying the space enough to push through the difficulties, find other approaches, and eventually get all the way up to the top.
Enjoyed the time I did spend in this space, largely on the strength of the look and feel of the buildings, so making me climb them was a great way to bring me into close interaction with the strength of the entry.
OMG when I saw the opening instructions I thought OH YEAH IT'S TRIBES and lemme tell ya I got real fired up.
Here's how Tribes goes:
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But nope! It's like upside-down tribes, where you have a gravity pack instead of a jetpack! So I was playing against thousands of hours of brain-wired instinct on this one. But I was really intrigued to see how it went.
And the problem was, this movement system was really fun to experim-GAME OVER Hold on, I mean, I was trying to dig in and learn-GAME OVER wait something is wrong and I'm not sure wh-GAME OVER
gaddammit!! I just want to pl-GAME OVER
So the first feedback I would give is let me play. You as the developer probably have NO CLUE how bad I am at your game. I got my first game over before I even moved! So believe me, you wouldn't believe it. I suggest finding random friends and strangers and forcing them to play WITHOUT SAYING ONE SINGLE WORD. Do not tell them in advance what to do, and for pete's sake do NOT say anything or answer any questions while they play.
I did that early in my jamming days and I learned a TON that I've never forgotten. You just cannot believe what and how much your players misunderstand until you see it with your own eyes, and for me I had to see it repeatedly across several projects and really get a clue.
For example even now I still don't know what causes game over in your game. Is it something to do with that spreading meter at the top of the screen? What causes that to fill? Is it simply a timer? Sometimes it seems to move at different speeds but I never understood quite how.
The second thing is that I kept feeling bad about this moment: hillsmash.png
That's not even the perfect capture, but moments like that kept slamming me out of the flow state. Totally a skill issue I am sure but it was my experience regardless. Can you alter your design so that this is still a fail/bad state, but yet is somehow more fun to experience?
Now the things I loved:
I love new innovative movement systems and this one was a very cool iteration. I think your surrounding design choices could make it shine even more, but that core is really cool. You also have VERY nice polish all around it in terms of the graphics effects. Having fullscreen was huge, and the way you put the tutorial there but non-obtrusively was a nice touch. So many little animations from your team-name intro to the buttons and screen transitions, a ton of care that really feels nice.
I also thought the camera was really well done -- and that is a way you could have easily failed. It's tricky to get the compromises right and I thought you did well there. The projection of your landing is also a really nicely-done smart touch.
So overall really good! I just think you didn't anticipate how much I sucked and needed some space to test, learn, and explore your movement system.
Nice entry!
Wow first entry? Nice work!
Charming space, the layers to the art really worked well to flesh out the visual vibe. I appreciated that you did not tutorialize or explain anything. I did not even have to read the controls list and I figured all keys out including R before you even offered the in-game hint about that (but that one hint was a good inclusion so folks didn't get stuck).
That choice let me explore and learn on my own, and for small jam games I really feel like you want to extract that extra value of the mystery.
I solved all the puzzles and got to the end. The first level with spikes was very nice. I tried some wrong solutions and then there was a nice progression from realizing "wait there's another direction I could be taking this... I wonder if..." and then experimenting and finding out yes it does work! Very cool.
Game was short but with the languid pace I felt like the runtime was just right. You fully explored the mechanics offered, and then you wrapped with a nice visual flourish. Just the right amount.
Well done!
Wow this game is such a cool core idea! The mostly-autobattler with the addition of the archer is a nice design space to explore, and the classic "one of three" end-of-round roguelite thing is a great choice, too. Leaves me some room to explore army builds but constrained to make do with the cards I see so that I would get to see a variety of runs if I played over and over.
But I think it needed bit more iteration and some polish to really capture the potential of the design. The systems are all here and the game is fun, but the lack of audio was particularly noticeable when it's an auto-battler that leaves me mostly just watching -- some sounds would really liven it up and give me a chance to better understand the action by conveying information. But I think the #1 thing is that, for my personal taste, every single element of the game needs to be sped up by about 10x. Everything from the round length to the archer reload-and-fire speeds, to the time-to-kill on units, to the animation revealing the three choices and the time to cycle through phases. Each element of the game is slow enough that eventually my desire to further explore the interesting strategic space was worn down by all the waiting.
That said, I think there's something really cool here. Intriguing entry!
Hahah oh mannnnn
In retrospect, it should have been clear what YAVIKERL was, but my brain is just not wired for that kind of processing, somehow. My wife loves that kind of game but for my I just sit there blankly staring. So doing it under time pressure was really really difficult for me!
I did get lucky with a run that was not so hard, and I encountered easier words that were not scrambled or were only minor scrambled on the first instance of seeing them, and that run I did really well. Then I graduated over my head into the morse code, and lost the signal in the middle of transcribing a ten-digit code, and I needed to exit the typing mode to go back to adjust the frequency so I hit ESC but this just exited fullscreen and I lost my sh1t and ...
Ok, phew. Game is supposed to be hard!
This was a cool collection of mechanics that came together into an interesting experience. The overall look was slick, and the sound was well done. I know this kind of descramble is like popcorn for some people's brains, and I bet they're having a ton of fun with it.
Cool entry, even if it was a little against the grain of my brain.