Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → Prototyke
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | 38 | A Small World | 👥 | The Curator | jam | 401 | 3.33 | 3.44 | 2.77 | 2.88 | 3.66 | 2.78 | 3.16 |
Uh, I managed to get the battery to go outside the ship through one of the walls. I think I died. It went through on the bottom right after being hit by a screwdriver, if that make a difference. It was pretty good though, particularly missing the first day. And with that quality sound effect at the end, I am kind of sad about missing the rest.
I like games that you have to control based on gravity, but it felt like I was magnetized to a surface with multiple other sources pulling too. It honestly felt terrible and the camera was a mess. The concept of a spaceship is a messy gravity zone picking up miners is a cool idea, but I think you just aren't quite far enough to make it really good. I liked the music a lot though, and the backstory gave it a lot more life.
I'm always bad at QWOP/ ragdoll games, but that was a lot of fun. It was simple, but because of that it is one of the most complete ones I have played here. The main improvements I see you could do would be cosmetic: a nicer timer icon would be cool, perhaps an airtank or diving clock or something, and a few fish images, so it would be randomly different between runs.
I really enjoyed this game. The art was fantastic and the echolocation as really cool. I always like games that teach you how to play without tutorials, just increasingly complex levels. Having an enemy and a collectible look almost the same is a bit confusing, but not too bad. Also the ending was cool, but having it immediately close was a bit abrupt, unless it was a bug.
I loved the happy bouncy mood to everything. The animation was hilarious and very fitting. The largest error I noticed was that you have a typo on one of the people. I think the broken car guy. It should be "Doesn't"
Super easy, but also pretty fun. We erred on the side of being too difficult, so some middle ground needs to be found. I think it could be interesting if the volcanoes destroyed a few trees when they fired. It would give it a bit of risk/reward. As it was, I just spammed w and s and L-click until I won. Really fun, but probably it would need a few more catches if it was much longer.
I like the art and that characters animations, although there were a few small issues. When you jumped you would always look left, even if you had been facing right before. Additionally, you had a lot of places that were exactly the height of your character that were pretty annoying to try to jump straight into. Its annoying enough in games to try to jump directly into gaps like that, but I think that was also the cause of the problem that a number of people have commented on having. Whenever I hit my head, when I landed, my feet went an extra pixel or two into the ground. I would then have to make a mini-jump to be able to normal jump. I have no idea what was causing it, but it was pretty consistent. Hopefully you can fix it. I am always a sucker for platformers.
I always like platformers and this art-style is pretty nice too. I am used to a pretty low sensitivity, so the camera felt pretty wild on Windows. Still totally doable though. One big complaint is that the text-boxes use space to advance, but you use 'f' to open it. I think it should be the same button, or allow both. If it going to be a different button there should be something telling you that in the text-box. More of an annoyance than an actual problem though. Also, the grapple module was really hard to notice. I confused it with the battery draining pillars ahead and only went back to look at it after I fell down and noticed it wasn't draining battery. The grapple should also have some minor display that it is about to be used. When aiming up (which is the only time I really used), the camera prevented me from telling the grapple was out. Maybe I am just impatient, but I kept clicking again and it would deactivate and take a second to be ready again. Possibly just a light on the arm that would light on connecting or a different camera angle would help.
I saw someone else had the same multishot bug as me. I lost far too much health frozen in place before I could get it to reset and let me turn again. Besides that it was a great game. The puns were a nice touch too.
I wasn't a huge fan of having to go through the slow text intro after dumping a city in the ocean to see what would happen, but it was pretty fun overall. And thanks for all the effort you're putting into sharing the love
Very unique and very interesting. I didn't see the correlation between some of may actions and their consequences (mostly involving the many insurgents) and has been said many times, a bit more changing on the panda would be interesting, but it was enjoyable and relaxing overall.
I liked the graphics, and the game seemed interesting. Impressive amount of work. Unfortunately, I couldn't beat it. After the button, the game would lag horribly and I would die to the those spiders without fail. I tried multiple times, but at best I could kill 1 before it froze and then I died. The spiders also have a longer range than your wrench and make the same noise when you hit their corpse as when you hit the spider, so it is very easy to think you are attacking, but actually doing nothing. Also, the character comments on loud noises, but none play. Since you have other noises, this may be a glitch for me.
I dislike that as the planet grows, the objects go behind the crust and you can't see them anymore. Even by 1500, I was somewhat blindly placing most of my objects. As others had said, a indication of how it needs to be balanced would also be welcome. All in all though, it was fun and looked fantastic. Good job.
Thanks for all the wonderful comments.
@starspell, This was my first Ludum Dare and we were constrained to 48 hours instead of 72 due to personal reasons, so we missed out on a lot that we wanted to do, including controller support. I have started implementing it, so I might be able to upload a second version in addition to the Jam one for people to try with some improvements for people to come back to play.
@Itpats, Thank you for all the detailed critique. Most of that we realized, but simply didn't have time to do. We had started creating a particle effect for you to actually collect the planets for your exhibit after you shrunk them enough and the score would be related to the quality of the museum, but that is all unfinished. And I agree completely about the bullet mechanic and difficulty. We had so little content we made it hard just so it wouldn't be incredibly boring and repetitive, but it is way too hard right now. We had wanted to have a planet with rings/moons that would prevent you from attacking it head-on to provide a time and a reason to use the pathing, but again, we ran out of time. A quick menu for pre-made paths is a really good idea though. The problems that you brought up about the minimum distance moved for tight controls would be solved by a controller where you could move at a slower speed to adjust distance with more control, so I'll work on implementing that too if/when I get to the controller support.
@occultone, Thanks for all the advise. I think we do have invulnerability frames, but it is probably way too short or it might be buggy. I know our tells and visual cues are pretty lacking, but I believe you become transparent and invincible for 2 seconds after being hit. We ran out of time to balance it much, so all of your suggestions are a big help.
And no, that boss wan't based on Undertale. Although I want to, I've never played Undertale, and I programmed most of it. Odd coincidence.
First game jam for me as well. The controls are really weird and hard to get used to, but really creative as well. I could see you adding an almost DDR thing in the background in later levels to step up the difficulty. The main problem is just lack of content. It is pretty fun as is. Also, I love the name, but I'm kind of disappointed that ctrl+s doesn't actually do anything in-game
I enjoyed this experience, as odd and short as it was. The sound fit perfectly, and up until closer to the end, I kind of feel I got some of the meaning. Although everything is silhouettes, the amount of blurriness/pixelation changes. It looks somewhat intentional, but also really messy. If you wanted the background blurry, making the trees blurry, but the ground a bit sharper would make it fit better. Alternatively, it could become more blurry as you reached that shakey end part. Either might help, but as it is, it looks more like it was sloppy than intentional as I feel it was.
I agree totally with rnlf. I loved the sprites, particularly the little red and green guys. The bigger blue and purple ones confused me though. They didn't seem to do anything- the blue could just be deleted and the pink replaced by a wall and there would be no difference.
The jumping also felt a bit off. I think rnlf's comment hit the problems pretty squarely though. In addition, I felt that the maps were poorly designed for the type of jumping you had. I was constantly hitting my head, and the walls were always at the maximum height, so it was very hit or miss whether I hit it just right to get that double jump. For a game so focused on jumping, a few areas that were more open would have made it far better.
In addition, the squid things shot as soon as you got close enough. Most places, this was fine, but near the very end, you had to have more than 1 hp or you would instantly lose because going up, it would always hit you. There was a similar issue with a few of the red guys on single block that were at the max height of your jump. It was extremely difficult to slam them without them hurting you. Platforming is so skill based, attacks that always hit you, particularly at the end of a level, just feel really cheap.
Also, it looked like there were alternate paths a few times, but I could never use them. Maybe it was not understanding the blue/pink guys, but if you were supposed to go through those, I couldn't
The game is very slow and the method for making the planets is a bit intuitive and poorly explained. Once it clicked, it was considerably more fun, but it took a few minutes. I feel speeding the game up by having more orbs or a faster speed, plus a faster production rate on the planets could help. More detailed in-game instructions would be helpful too, as well as a way to see the initial book again. I didn't get very far, but a few other small things: The renaming is very buggy. The pause is escape, but quit is too. Without a autosave, this is very frustrating, as you instantly lose everything if you accidentally press escape twice. Simply walking over orbs made it difficult to make specific formulas, particularly if there was a crowded section or if they were far away. Making it so you had to click when facing the orb to collect and then show which orbs were currently collected (or even what it would do) might help as well. It did fit your idea well, and seemed a fun concept with some revision.
I've never been a huge fan of sim games, and the other comments really cover the flaws and the lack of content, but I do want to say that I really like the art and the planet design. The whole thing was really cool to play even if it didn't keep my attention very long.
I haven't played a lot yet, but the basic mental math I was doing made it seem that some of the tiers were unbalanced. Per ant, it was cheaper and more efficient to stick with nuts than upgrade to apples for quite a while. I did quite enjoy it though. It was the first resource-dependent clicker I've ever played
I like this game and the frantic intensity it creates. The timer and resource aspect really helps with that. As I see others have said, The space part is way too easy. You can pretty much ignore any resources but food and water and just dodge asteroids. I know that content and difficulty is always capped by the time restraint though. I felt that the health meter should drop quicker, but be replenished more quickly as well. I feel that would make it feel even more risky, without actually making to prohibitively harder.
I like the tiny car racing. Fits into the theme of a small world well. Unfortunately, the controls are a bit annoying and the physics seem bad. The acceleration is too great. It goes from really slow to uncontrollably fast way too quickly. Those games are the most fun when you can race around and just smash into stuff if you mess up. I wasn't able to reverse, if that is implemented, and the poor handling when moving fast made it feel pretty bad compared to quite a few other games, like micromachines other people have mentioned. I feel like you have a solid base that could be way better with some tweaking of physics and controls.