qzqxq

Where is the doc ? by SquirrelSoft 2016-09-01T05:17:00

Pretty neat game, though the punch cards and blackboard diagrams were really difficult to understand at first; I'm still not sure why some rows are missing the number 4. I am also stuck on level 4, I can't figure out how to keep both doors open at the same time.

I don't like the current punch card system, for a few reasons:
-It's difficult to remember the correct ordering of the numbers. I could get paper and write it down, but why not have some option to display all of the documentations that you've already seen?
-I feel really bad if I make a mistake on entering the dots, because not only do I lose a card, but I also might have to start the level over. When it comes to puzzle games, I don't want to start the entire game over because I've already solved those puzzles. A suggestion here would be to have some small number of punch cards for each level, so you have to figure out how to do each level with the fewest number of cards or something. And if you run out, then you restart the level, not the entire game.
-In general, the punch cards are no more than complicated levers/buttons. It would be cool if there was some more unique mechanic with them, or else they might as well be buttons that you can't press until you get a key (documentation) to use it. However I might be completely missing something big here, so let me know if that's the case.

Out of the few levels I did see, I liked the design, especially the part where you have to trap one of the guards inside a room. Good work!

Father of Time by dkdwrek 2016-08-30T06:24:00

We beat the game. It was fun, but the level design could have used a bit more work (it is kind of annoying to just wander around until you find the crystal). It would also be good if there was more variety in enemies or attacks or something (the levels felt pretty much the same).

(PS: The compass in the top right was a bit tricky to spot).

Elsa, Caster of the sun stones by GrassWhooper 2016-08-30T09:06:00

Some comments/suggestions:
-You already know this, but the graphics style is all over the place. Just using a nicer font and actual bars instead of the scrolling bars for health would probably make it look a lot nicer.
-In my first playthrough, I fell off the bottom of the map, and I was forced to restart because I kept falling.
-In my second playthrough, I got a game over screen without knowing why (not sure if the time was up or if I ran out of lives or something). Conveying this sort of information in some way would be good.
-There's a lot of momentum, which made the platforming sections very difficult.
-The options menu doesn't seem to work?
-

Elsa, Caster of the sun stones by GrassWhooper 2016-08-30T09:09:00

Oops I accidentally submitted, here are some final thoughts: There are a lot of good ideas here, but it gets confusing when everything is mashed together (there are like 4 separate health bars which aren't well-distinguished). If you could focus in on one or two mechanics and really flesh them out, I think that could make for a really fun game. Overall, good job!

Force of Wheel by qzqxq 2016-08-30T08:01:00

@SMASH BASH That's a very good idea. I think the randomizer is working as intended, but it's just that true randomness doesn't actually feel random.

@novotmike There are 4 minigames (push the other player off, collect 5 squares, do two laps around a track, and king of the hill). But now that you mention it, it's probably a good idea to guarantee that all minigames are seen in any given match, so if we work on this some more we'll put that in.

Imphenzia_AncientTechToReturn by imphenzia 2016-09-01T06:14:00

I absolutely loved the music and attention to detail in terms of sound effects and animations. The actual gameplay was a little light, but the memory challenge is quite fun.

Only one issue: There seems to be some bug where approaching a chest diagonally causes you to search it twice in a row. This broke my first playthrough, because there was a chest placed next to a tree in such a way that I was always forced to search it twice, no matter what angle I approached from. I knew that this chest contained an item I needed because I searched every other chest on the map, heh.

I also read your postmortem and watched the timelapse, and I just have to say that I am very impressed. :)

Miky the Inuit by publicidadeba 2016-08-30T08:45:00

The game looks great and the music is quite good. I played through once and have several comments/suggestions:
-It would be nice to be able to skip or fast forward the opening narration/rules text, it felt like a long time waiting.
-The inventory menus look beautiful, but there was some weird behavior. For example, selecting a resource and clicking transfer would cause the first instance of that resource in the menu to transfer, not necessarily the one selected.
-Also, it doesn't seem like there was any button to bring up your inventory. This was pretty annoying.
-It would be nice to have a running count of the number of each resource you currently have. The game looks like it wants to be about exploration and survival, not memorization.
-Similarly, it would be nice to have a minimap, maybe only of the content that you've explored. I got lost for a while and couldn't find the house I was storing everything in.
-Maybe I'm just dumb, but I never realized that I was supposed to store everything in the house: I originally didn't see the arrows next to the house storage menu, so I thought that I was supposed to store 12 items in the house and 12 items in my inventory (and 6*4=24). I then lost the game as a result, only realizing afterwards what I should have done.
-The body temperature mechanic was very good, it did a great job of conveying the urgency of finding shelter.

I assume that you are already aware of a lot of the things I just said and didn't have time to implement them, because this looks very ambitious and you clearly know what you're doing. Overall, I liked it!

Helepolis : Make It To the Siege by olkeencole 2016-08-30T05:57:00

Pretty fun, although some of the game mechanics were a bit weird/glitchy (it was hard to tell what was safe to run into and what wasn't). Also there are some small polish issues (wood things turning into stone things, both "Game Over" and "Victory" being displayed at the end).

But overall this was a good amount of fun (fun enough to play a bunch of times).

Ancient Tower by nerdenough 2016-08-30T06:59:00

This was quite fun. A few suggestions:
-I feel like the A/D/space control scheme is fairly nonstandard when it comes to platformers (arrow keys+space feels more natural), so it was difficult to get my bearings at first.
-Jumping while running off of platforms seems kind of finicky, a lot of the time I would just fall off when trying to jump, which was annoying.
-The health should really be represented by something nicer (and/or more consistent with the style) than a text number.

Things I liked:
-The tower getting thinner as you ascended was a very nice way to indicate progression.
-The enemies shooting fire were a good hazard; it was fun trying to keep track of both the enemies and platforms at the same time.
-Difficulty was good; it took me a few tries to beat, but it didn't feel too boring or too frustrating.

Xolotl by SetTheBet 2016-08-30T10:04:00

Very polished and great level design, nice work! Lots of potential ways to use this mechanic.

Some spike placements were a little annoying (I guess if I'm playing a puzzle game, I don't want to worry about jump timings; level 4 was a great combination of puzzle+platform though). I also have to ask: how strict is the timing on level 7? Every time I try to pull the 3 switches and run, I barely miss out, and I can't see any other way of doing it.

Anyways, very impressive job!

Corsairs and Cannons by Zee 2016-09-01T03:02:00

I won on my third try or so, though I was a little confused because I think I only collected 3 of the 4 items listed in the how to play screen.

I quite liked the art style, and the water waves really add a lot to the feel (and the menu screen is great). Some more sound effects would have been nice and probably not too difficult to add; there were multiple times where I wasn't sure whether a cannonball was hitting a turret so having some audio confirmation for that would have been good. This could also have been helped by moving the health bars to appear onscreen.

In terms of controls, turning was frustratingly slow. There were multiple times where I couldn't commandeer a boat before it sank despite being right next to it, since I had to turn to face it before going forward. However, I did really enjoy the commandeering mechanic and different ship types, and I feel like that could be the basis of a really good game. Also, the enemy ship AI felt well-implemented and the battles were engaging, slow turning notwithstanding.

Overall, I had a lot of fun playing this, good job!

Sumer Game by Rico The Jammer 2016-08-30T06:40:00

Interesting idea, but I kind of got bored of it quick. I like the grading screen though.

Soul Catcher by Draakhex2 2016-08-30T06:05:00

Interesting idea, but seems like the only thing you can really do is press the autofill until you get a question you haven't asked, and then hope you don't die when you ask that question. Also it was hard to see the letters on the ouija board, and some of the english was a bit off. I think this could make a fun game with a few improvements though!

Backwoods Culinary Basics by skreeb 2016-08-30T06:35:00

The graphics are really cool, but it seems like there isn't much in the way of gameplay yet (certainly seems like it could be the base for a really fun game).

Chatty by DaleP 2016-08-30T05:47:00

I like the idea of a game like this (and the graphic style was excellent), but I wasn't able to accomplish very much in the game (even when I got a friend to join). I just gave coins and leveled up and then couldn't figure out what to do next.

Good work!

Abacus Fighter by deadpixelsociety 2016-09-01T19:14:00

Nice, this looks incredibly polished and I really like the simple graphics style and music. The game idea is very creative, but I think there are some gameplay issues, namely if you want to prevent your opponent from winning you could continually mash left or right on any given row. Obviously this is not a fun strategy, but I could imagine a scenario in which both players are trying to mess each other up, causing the game to go on forever.

Of course, I haven't actually played it with a second player yet so I might be completely wrong; I'll get a friend sometime and test it out. Good job!

Babel by johnbjuice 2016-09-01T06:43:00

This was an extremely fun and engaging game, and you did a great job of conveying the urgency of climbing. To be honest, I didn't care for the platforming too much because it sorta stayed at the same difficulty throughout and it felt really slippery (also, like the above commenter, I actively avoided the black blocks at first only to realize later that they weren't anything special). I also had the issue where I had to wait a bit before the letters appeared.

Despite all that, I want to reiterate that this was a genuinely exciting and fun experience, so great job!

Nomore by djfariel 2016-08-31T06:41:00

The graphics are super nice (only complaint is that the font on the coins/lives seems out of place), and the music is fun. I really liked the movement: everything felt super tight and satisfying, except for maybe walljumping because there seems to be a small delay between touching the wall and "hugging" the wall. The whole metroidvania feel was also executed very well, e.g. figuring out where to go after getting the double jump.

One of the more frustrating things was how dark the game was: dying because you don't know what's beneath you always feels kind of bad, especially combined with lethal spikes. Also it was kind of weird seeing the bullets flying through the dark; I think it would feel a lot more natural if they faded into the darkness, or if they illuminated a small area around them.

I also wasn't a fan of the blue blob things chasing you around. I think they can make short sections of a game exciting because you have to move fast and dodge (the part where you had to shoot ~6 charge shots at relics on various platforms was very fun), but when they're constantly chasing you, it just feels annoying.

But my complaints are mostly minor polish issues anyways. Overall this was a ton of fun, and I am really impressed with how much content there is!

Dinosty Warriors by PeachTreeOath 2016-08-30T06:30:00

The idea is funny, the graphics are good. It got a little boring towards the end, and I don't really understand why I lost when I did. Is there some sort of health, and if so where is it displayed?

Call of the Ancients by fenwick 2016-08-30T06:15:00

This game was the best ludum dare game I've played so far.

Fear of Magic by pressxtoskip 2017-01-02T23:54:00

I played through to the finish, taking around 20ish minutes.

The writing was very funny. I loved the comments like "you're not trying to win the Turner prize" or the "What would your mother think?" when attempting to take the lusty argonian maid.

The puzzle itself was kind of strange (I think there was a book which gave hints, but I read through it too fast, and when I clicked on the "Use" button again, it would only repeat the last page of the book), though I did appreciate the hints like "you need to wash the wizard's clothes" or "find a location to build the sandcastle". For most of the steps, I just tried combining everything with everything until I got a result.

The interface was intuitive, which was good, and highlighting interactable objects in purple was also very helpful. I got sidetracked for a while because I thought the fireplace wasn't clickable, so it would be nicer if clicking anywhere on the fire would bring it up (or if the fireplace could also turn purple when hovering over it). The same suggestion applies to the windowsill, another location that's not obviously interactable.

The only other suggestion I have is adding sound effects for clicking on objects/turning 90 degrees/other actions, to give more player feedback.

Overall, this felt like one of those old-fashioned point and click adventures in a good way, with great writing and a (slightly surreal) sense of humor. I had a good laugh playing this, and it was fun the whole way through, even if some of the steps were a little finicky. Nice work!

United Parcel Samurai by qzqxq 2016-12-14T03:59:00

Thanks for the feedback everyone!

@Saiodin: Yeah, the checkpoint placement around the secret tunnel area is pretty poor, I'm sorry about that. If it makes you feel better, originally you were required to do 3 double wall-jumps instead of 2. :P

Given that this game does seem to be really hard and people aren't finishing it, I suppose I will spoil the second half of the game: right after you finish the sword delivery, you're asked to deliver a laser gun back to the beginning, so you have to do the entire room again, but in reverse and with a projectile instead of a melee weapon. The level was designed to work both ways, so that's how we incorporated the theme (having one room done multiple times in a different way). We were originally planning to have two round trips, where more spikes were introduced on each delivery for the learning curve, but didn't have enough time at the end. :(

United Parcel Samurai by qzqxq 2016-12-16T02:50:00

@Xwilarg, Yami no tenshi: I think that's because we made it so that you couldn't jump until the entire attack animation is finished. In retrospect, this was probably a mistake especially because it can feel like the game's just not letting you jump. Thanks for the feedback!

We'll try to upload a new version with minor changes like adding checkpoints and being able to cancel an aerial attack with a jump. I guess this technically counts as adding features, so we'll put it as a separate file, but I really want to make it easier if possible; I didn't think this game would be so hard to the point that no one even makes it to the second half. :(

Orbsorber by Casevse 2016-12-13T08:44:00

This was pretty fun! Simple and effective graphics. Controls were fairly tight, and it did feel a lot like Meat Boy as you mentioned.

My biggest complaint is that there's no urgency in any of the levels, so I just used the strategy of staying on the ground and waiting until the green orbs came near me to pick them up. This was effective, but also very boring in later levels, and I stopped after 17 or so. I think having a hard time limit on each level would encourage the player to take more risks to collect orbs and would be more exciting (although I suppose the player's movement right now is fairly limited, so maybe you'd need to have infinite jumps or something). Alternatively, if the orbs moved faster and less randomly, it could be pretty exciting trying to dodge them.

One small thing: I didn't like how if I finished a round in the upper half of the screen, the next round would spawn immediately, because sometimes a red orb would appear on top of me.

Anyways, this is quite a fun game, so nice job, especially with only 7 hours.

Decade by graebor 2017-01-02T22:59:00

I played through once. I have to say that I am really impressed this was made in Twine, of all engines (and speaking of Twine, I'd recommend looking at The Temple of No if you haven't played it before!).

Probably my biggest suggestion would be to cut down the length of the game (or add a fast-forward option, if that's possible). It was pretty engaging for the first 2 years or so when I was trying to get my bearings and worrying about my food/water running out; displaying and constantly updating your power/food/water on every screen really provided a sense of urgency. However, at some point around year 4-5 I got to the point where I could take my hands off the keyboard, so it got pretty boring and I only continued to see the ending.

I did think you balanced the resources/upgrades pretty well, in that I felt I had to make nontrivial tradeoffs at points, so good job with that. Also, I thought the writing, both at the beginning and the end, was well-done and did a great job at setting the scene. If you added some sound effects and a background track, I could easily give this 5 stars in mood.

Nice job!

Vespias: Battle for the pentacle by Xwilarg 2016-12-13T06:21:00

I'm having trouble running this on linux because I don't have the required dependencies and it seems annoying to install all of them. If you could provide a list of packages to install that would be nice (or make a statically linked binary, maybe?).

Vespias: Battle for the pentacle by Xwilarg 2016-12-13T08:02:00

Alright, I switched to Windows and tried this out.

I feel like you put a lot of effort into making a really complex combat system and lots of game mechanics, but not much effort into trying to show the player how it works. So, while I was playing, I vaguely knew what I had to do, but I honestly had no clue what was going on other than that I was shooting at enemies and trying to stay on the center. That was still reasonably fun by itself, though a little repetitive.

I think if you want the player to figure out what the different kinds of enemies do, you need to have more visual feedback (stuff like health bars above units, maybe have units flash red or something if they're damaged, etc.) and/or sound effects. And I know that there isn't much time in a game jam, but I could have really benefited from some kind of interactive tutorial.

Overall, this is a cool idea, good job!

Hamsterical Nuts by mirta000 2016-12-26T04:21:00

Just a note: When I try to download the zip on Google Drive, it tells me that a virus was detected. :(

I'll try to download Firefox, but it would be nice if there was a web version that worked on all browsers.

Hamsterical Nuts by mirta000 2016-12-27T04:45:00

I tried this three times. The graphics and animations are well-done and I enjoyed the lighthearted/silly mood.

To be honest, I didn't even realize that the game had multiple levels until I looked at the comments after my first two tries. I didn't realize that the machine thingy was responsible for spawning robots, so I kept killing the robots, and they respawned, and this repeated until I ran out of ammo. Some visual feedback on this would have been nice (e.g. a robot popping out of the machine and being thrown to its location in the room). Also, speaking of player feedback, I would have liked more sound effects to indicate when I hit a robot or got hit by the red circle things.

The second level seems really difficult, given that I only have 20 ammo and there are 2 spawners and 5 robots, so I'm not sure how to get past it (is there some way to restore ammo?). Also, moving and shooting in general just feel kind of sluggish; I think I would have found this more exciting if everything was sped up 2x or something like that.

Overall, I like the idea, and with some more mechanics this could be really fun. You said in the comments that you're considering making this into an actual game, and I'd highly encourage that!

Hamsterical Nuts by mirta000 2016-12-27T04:47:00

Well, I just saw that you can press R to reload. Boy do I feel dumb! (but again, in terms of feedback, it would have been nice if an R key appeared above your head if you ran out of ammo)

Cute Reign by kawaiineko 2016-12-27T04:14:00

I played through the game once (and I think I got a happy ending?). I liked the visual design and the music choices, which really brought a light, playful mood to the conversations that contrasted well with the ending.

To be honest, I didn't find the story that interesting, but I'm guessing that's because you didn't have enough time to flesh out the characters and plot points. Like, I really do like the idea and the "twist," and the writing wasn't bad; I just think it went by too quickly, so I couldn't really get into it. If you expanded the story a bit (maybe include some foreshadowing to make the player wonder what's really going on), I could see myself really enjoying this.

A small complaint: There were quite a lot of typos, which took a little away from the experience, but obviously this is not a big deal and is easy to fix.

Overall, nice work!

Escape The Room by egordorichev 2016-12-13T06:50:00

Things I liked:
-The ASCII art aesthetic is always cool to see, and the lighting system was a very nice touch, it makes it look quite "professional."

Things I didn't like as much:
-I played the OS/X version, and it was super laggy for some reason. I think it took half a second or more to register each key press. This got too unbearable so I stopped after the first room.
-The shop having randomized prices every time you visit is pretty silly, because I was able to leave and revisit it multiple times to get a low price on each item. If you want to keep the randomness, you could make shops one-visit only or something.

Overall, I think this is a really good start of a game. Right now it doesn't seem like you do much, but with more items that interact with each other or puzzles of some sort, this could be pretty awesome, especially if you use the lighting as a more central mechanic somehow because, again, it is really cool.

Escape The Room by egordorichev 2016-12-13T06:58:00

Oh, one more thing I forgot to mention: the examine mode is cool and a really good idea.

Disco Vampire by MixBulfreak 2017-01-03T01:19:00

I played for about 10 minutes and got a high score of about 20 seconds. The polish is very good, and I enjoyed the graphics/music/sound effects (the death sound effects were great). The overall flavor of a vampire dancing and trying to avoid disco lights is really funny.

By far, my biggest complaint is that the light hitboxes were frustratingly wide: a lot of times I was sure I rolled through but then I'd die on the very edge of the light. If you made that a little more lenient, I think I would have had a lot more fun. I also feel like there were some light patterns that were almost impossible to dodge, though that might be related to the wide hitboxes.

Overall, this reminds me of the VVVVVV Super Gravitron in a good way. They're both very difficult and have instant death, but the hazards are all telegraphed in advance, forcing the player to dodge the current hazards while preparing for future ones at the same time. I very much enjoy these types of games, and I similarly had a good amount of fun with this (though, again, I would have had a lot more fun if I felt that my deaths were "fair", as opposed to "you mistimed your roll by a few pixels"). Overall, I love the core mechanics here, and I think this has the potential to be a great arcade-style game. Good job!

Sam by Reflextions 2016-12-16T02:44:00

This was very well done, and really felt like a complete game, probably more so than any other entry I've played so far. I really liked the overall narrative with the incorporation of the theme, and the writing was solid. Although you didn't make the music, I still have to give props for the music choices throughout, which certainly added a lot to atmosphere of the game.

Some suggestions:
-The stairs were really weird to navigate, especially with how you can go up a ladder without being able to go back down. This resulted in me taking fall damage a few times, which I didn't even notice at first (as spacedoubt already pointed out).
-The coolant part felt really tight with the timing; given that it's more of a narrative-driven game, it was annoying having to do it a bunch of times to figure out the correct path/sequence of door closings.
-I guess this is a personal pet peeve of mine because of Mass Effect and stuff, but the "moral choices" felt kind of cheesy.
-Finally, I'm probably just being dense, but I'm not really sure what was the purpose of the two guys coming to the house flashback. The graphics during this part were cool though.

Again, I really liked the story: I thought it was well-paced and emotional without being too overbearing. And the graphics were very good as well. Great job!

Planetary Tycoon by Nikteddy92 2016-12-13T18:57:00

The graphics are really nice, and the writing is great. I laughed a bunch of times at the scenarios, like the "people think experimenting on life forms is immoral, but good thing Hums don't have any rights" or whatever that one was.

I played it three times, making it to day 4 my third try. I might suggest having "checkpoints" throughout the game so you don't have to restart from the beginning if you want to see the whole thing (I do want to see the ending if there is one, but I don't want to have to go through all of the scenarios again to get there). Alternatively you could have some sort of procedural generation but I assume there's not enough time for that.

Also, in some of the scenarios, I wasn't entirely sure which action corresponded to "Approve" and which corresponded to "Reject", so some more indication of that would have been nice. And I wasn't really sure why a barking sound seemingly randomly played at times.

I do want to make clear that I had a lot of fun playing, and it also looks super polished, so great job!

Creative Space by Jan Marcano 2016-12-27T05:10:00

This game was depressingly relatable. :(

But in all seriousness, I feel like what you were going for (or at least what I got out of it) was conveying the sort of repetitiveness or loneliness that people can feel when they're working on a passion project but have to juggle real-life responsibilities at the same time, and I think you did really well on that front.

Some sound effects and/or music, and maybe animations could have helped with the immersion. Also, I might have liked to see a wider variety of life events so I'm not clicking the same sequence of 6 buttons every day, though maybe that was a conscious decision you made to really drill in the boredom, heh.

Overall, nice job, and also great use of the theme!

Non Euclidean Room by NuSan 2016-12-21T21:31:00

Right now there isn't much to do, but I'll add on to the praise for the graphics style and the mood, which are really really well done. If you added more puzzle-like challenges (maybe some sort of timed puzzle so the player has to remember where things are) and/or being able to walk on walls or the ceiling as others have suggested, this has the potential to be really awesome.

Dungeon Room Speedrun by Dr_V 2016-12-13T09:26:00

This was really fun! The tutorial was excellent, which I very much appreciated. The gameplay was also great, though I did quit out of Beginner because 100 turns is a long time. In general, trying to hit the goals while also preparing for future heroes was quite the intense and fun experience. I can only think of two minor suggestions:
1. It would be nice to have elemental symbols instead of words because I think they're easier to parse.
2. Sometimes I would be sad because my available items would "clump up" in terms of which elements they used. It might be nice to have an RNG that tries to diversify items/heroes a little, if that doesn't already exist.

Great job! And the "click"/"excellent"/"perfect" sound effects were really funny too.

No More Monkeys by lucentbeam 2017-01-03T01:59:00

I played for about 5 minutes and stopped at wave 8. I thought it was very cute, and the graphics and audio were very well-done. As a whole, the game feels extremely polished, from the animations to the sound effects, as well as the arrows appearing above monkeys that are holding toys.

This was definitely a fun experience for a few minutes, but I do wish there was a little more gameplay than just jumping around and trying to fling the monkeys off the bed, as that gets repetitive fairly quickly.

Overall, very nice work! This is quite possibly the most "polished" game of all of the ones I've played so far.

Looking For Heals by JayProg 2016-12-14T21:56:00

Nice! This was really fun, especially near the end with the meteors and fire puddles all over the place. Sound design, boss design, and graphics are all excellent. I loved the extra details like the chat messages, and I really think you should expand on this, there's so much potential in the idea of teaming up with incompetent AIs.

The only complaint I have is that the red triangle indicating the attacked dwarf was sometimes hard to see, so I had three dwarves die to the instant-death attack before I realized I needed to focus on that indicator. I also wish it were a little more challenging, since once you figure out what each attack does it's fairly easy to dodge/mitigate, and the boss essentially uses one attack at a time.

Overall, really nice job! I had a ton of fun with this.

The Coldest Cabin by Brian Mayberry 2016-12-14T04:41:00

I played the game three times and couldn't beat it, is there a fourth set of food boxes somewhere? (or are there things you can interact with other than the food boxes?)

Graphics look great and the winter setting is done very well. The sound effects were also quite funny, though it was a little jarring to hear the brrr every time I left the room.

The enemy snowballs were cool, but they were way too easy to kill and there's no negative repercussions to shooting, so it didn't feel like they had any impact on the game.

Overall, I really enjoyed the mood and the narrative, good job!

I'm no shut-in by Junber 2016-12-27T03:37:00

This looks really cool, but the game crashed while talking to mom on the phone so I can't see more of it. :(

Pixelander by eddynardo 2016-12-13T07:01:00

Game doesn't open on OS/X for me, but this looks really cool so I'll try this on a windows partition.

Pixelander by eddynardo 2016-12-13T07:35:00

Okay, I just played through the first 9 levels. Here are some thoughts:
-The graphics are great, and this is super impressive for <24 hours.
-The gameplay idea is similarly great and has tons of potential.
-The puzzles themselves...not as great. It sort of feels like you cobbled them together at the end, threw in a bunch of objects, and left it to the player to figure it out.
-It was super frustrating being forced to use all of the objects in my inventory before I could start. Sometimes I wanted to place just one or two objects to see how a specific knight reacts to that (or just press space at the very beginning to see what happens when I do nothing, in order to iterate on that), so being forced to also place the other 5 objects in random places was annoying.

I guess in general, I like puzzle games with handcrafted puzzles where you feel smart for figuring out the solution. Unfortunately I didn't really feel that way for this game because a lot of the time I would solve a level "by accident." I think what would have helped is if there were less given objects (e.g. I did level 7 with a single block) and only a few possible solutions, forcing the player to puzzle out where it could be.

Again, I think this makes a great premise for a game, and if you had more time to design the puzzles I'm sure I would have loved this!

Freedom by Cody Hansen 2016-12-14T05:29:00

I had a good amount of fun, and left wanting more levels and mechanics. The final level was especially clever, as combining both the reversed controls and black out made the reversed controls a lot trickier to deal with--I'm pretty sure I died like 7 times in the same location because I kept telling myself to press left, but my fingers kept pressing right. :P

I liked the level design, and it's quite polished, especially given the time constraints. Honestly, I don't really have any complaints/suggestions other than that I wish there was more.

Color Attack by Alarmed Dino 2017-01-03T05:15:00

Nice! It starts off a little slow, but quickly ramps up from there, especially when the enemies that shoot projectiles arrive.

I have two suggestions:
-Within each wave, the first few seconds would be exciting when you had to take out the really fast circles or circles that shoot projectiles, but afterwards, cleaning up the slow circles was kind of a chore and not very interesting. I might have had more fun if the game was more of a constant stream of enemies coming at you over time, as opposed to waves (though this wasn't too big of a deal).
-When I died, I think I had like 50 health and I'm not entirely sure what killed me, so it might be nice to have more feedback when you get hit (e.g. a small sound effect plays and/or a red "-50" appears above your circle or something like that)

Overall, I had a good amount of fun playing this. It's a very simple idea, but executed well, and there's a good variety of enemies/upgrades. Nice job!

This Room is Mine by Ristoretto 2016-12-26T22:46:00

I played for about 10 minutes, but it was pretty confusing due to the large number of mechanics. I am super impressed that you managed to do all this given the time limit, but I would have liked it more if you spent more time on gradually introducing the mechanics one by one, rather than giving it all to the player at the beginning. Another thing is that I don't really have a goal other than "collect resources" and "build things," which is a bit too open-ended and unsatisfying for me; I would have liked some more overarching goal like "escape the room" or something like that.

Some more comments:
-It was kind of weird how you're told to avoid rats, but they don't seem to damage you at all.
-I didn't realize at first that I could only pick up the green squares with the RC car.
-Picking up the green squares was annoyingly slow.
-It would be nice to have an explanation of what the buildings do.
-I'm not sure what the purpose of the cameras is: it seems like the idea is you use them to scout for dangers, except I haven't been able to find anything that actually hurts me (and I don't have a health bar, as far as I know).

I don't want to be too negative, so let me reiterate that I am impressed by the scope of this game! I also think you did a good job with the polish: the camera circle effect is nice, sound effects are good, the pathfinding is good, I didn't encounter any bugs, etc. Overall, though, I think that there's a mishmash of ideas that results in the player not knowing what the purpose is. I think if you really focused in on a few mechanics and built the game around that, it could be really cool (e.g. a horror game where you have to use your RC car to scout for enemies, or a more puzzly game where you have to collect green squares while avoiding mice).

Out of Sight by Nervous Composers 2016-12-26T04:16:00

This was a lot of fun! I think I played it about 8 times, my highest score being around 70%.

Probably my favorite part of the game was how much I got into it. The time pressure was very real, especially with the visible indication of the girlfriend getting closer and closer, and the music selection also helped a lot with this. Basically, I wish you entered your game in the "Mood" category, because it conveys the moment really well.

The main suggestion I have is that it's fairly unclear how to achieve a high score: from the game intro and the title, I assumed that I had to kick the objects under the tables or the bed to hide them, but I'm pretty sure this doesn't have any effect on the score. And speaking of the score, it would have been nice if it scaled more "linearly". Right now, it seems like the score is zero most of the time and only increases once you pass some threshold cleanliness; I used my score increasing/decreasing to figure out what I was doing right/wrong, so if it increased/decreased throughout the whole game, that would provide better player feedback. Alternatively, you could list out the specific tasks that the player has to do, thought it is also a lot of fun trying to figure it by yourself. Overall, this is a pretty minor point though; you did great in terms of visual feedback for the items/posters/bed.

One tiny complaint: I had trouble eating the pizza and drinking the soda my first few tries because I didn't realize that you had to press space. Also, when two items ended up next to each other, it was sometimes hard to pick up the one I wanted to.

Overall, this was a lot of fun and very engaging once I sorta figured out what I had to do. Nice job!

Escape The World by Ajayajayaj 2017-05-12T04:53:17Z

This was pretty fun! Agreed with the others on showing active color, it made the 3-color levels quite a bit more annoying. Another thing that was confusing was that blocks of one color could "push" blocks of another color, but the animation when that happened had both blocks moving at the same time. For example, if you start the first level and press A, then one of the blue blocks moves with the red blocks, which confused me at first. I think it would have been more natural to have the red block move first, hit the blue block, and then both of them move together.

One small nitpick is that you didn't need so many colored blocks in each of your levels: I think all of them could have been made with 1-3 blocks of each color while keeping the main logical ideas. This is mostly personal preference, though - I feel that puzzles are more "elegant" if they express their ideas without any extraneous information, but maybe I'm just being snobby lol. To be more specific, on several levels, I felt like I got the "aha" of where to place some blocks so that everything worked out, but I then had to get 5 more blocks to the end in identical ways, which isn't the fun part.

Overall, I thought the puzzles were quite good (extraneous blocks notwithstanding) and the difficulty curve was perfect. If you added some more mechanics and levels, I could see this being a really great game. Nice job!

Alysson by Jod 2017-05-08T06:58:04Z

I played through the game once and got the "good ending." The story was quite good; it was pretty short, but you did a very good job gradually introducing the more sinister elements as the game went on (I only began to realize what was going on in the supermarket the second time). The plot did feel a little rushed, so it didn't have as big of an emotional impact on me as it could potentially have (the lack of music/sound might have also contributed to this), but it was excellent given the time constraints, especially the part near the end. From what I saw, it seems like you're quite talented at writing, and if you expanded this a bit I think it could be a great game!

In addition to the lack of sound, there were also several typos (e.g. "halway", "dissapeared"). Normally I wouldn't comment on typos, but in a game focused on narrative, I do think it takes a little away from the immersion when you encounter these minor mistakes. This is still really minor, though, and I wouldn't take it into account when rating.

Overall, this was quite engaging and thought-provoking. Nice job!

I Just Wanted Groceries by Jedeen 2017-05-09T08:32:38Z

I played through 3 times, finally winning on the last try. Right now the game is quite short, but I had quite a bit of fun nonetheless! The fact that people would walk towards you if they have line-of-sight made for lots of interesting situations, since you had to quickly find the nearest corner to turn around, all while trying to keep track of everyone. There was also a surprising amount of strategy: I found myself constantly trying to plan which item to get and what routes to take to avoid getting caught. I loved the amount of detail you put into this, like the ending dialogue, the randomly generated items and recipes, and the music.

One suggestion: indicate the other shoppers' lines of sights somehow. Sometimes I found it unclear whether someone was going to chase me since I wasn't sure where exactly they were looking, which wasn't a good feeling.

Overall, I had a lot of fun and also laughed quite a bit; I can only wish there was more. Nice work!

Communitas by hbocao 2017-05-03T03:40:36Z

I played for about 10 minutes. This is definitely a cool idea and gets high innovation points from me, though I wish there was a more definite goal than just "make a cool city" since it feels more like a social experiment than a game right now, not that that's a bad thing of course. Right now the value of building any particular tile is pretty unclear (I can't tell the difference between churches, farms, water pumps, etc.), so I don't really feel like I'm influencing the city by building things. I think I'd feel more invested if I could tell how I'm improving the city so I could strategically think about where to place buildings, or if there were more concrete goals: for example, achievements for successfully collaborating with other people in some way could be cool.

One small nitpick: I wish I could drag the screen to move it as opposed to using arrow keys, as the scrolling was very slow and the map is huge (though I was playing on Mac, so maybe it's just an issue with that).

I have to say that this is really technically impressive, especially for a weekend of coding! The UI is very intuitive and organized well. Overall, good job! I think this could be really great with a few more "game-like" features.

ChronoCombat by omarshehata 2017-05-10T06:37:34Z

I played this with a friend several times. This idea has a lot of potential, though it is a bit rough around the edges right now. I especially liked the mindgames of trying to predict where my opponent would go.

A few suggestions: - It's kind of weird how when you shoot, the bullet just flies off immediately. I think it would make more sense if the bullets moved as you were moving (sort of like in Superhot, if you've seen that game before). - Similar to the above, I didn't know which directions the bullets were moving in because they stay completely still, which made it harder to plan. Having the bullets move while you move would also fix this. - The replay is kind of weird, because you can only view it once and it goes by very quickly; when the game ended, I often couldn't see how I won/lost since the camera was in the wrong position in the replay. I would have liked the ability to slow down the replays, or the ability to play them multiple times. - Right now the map is really big, so you can continually run away from your opponent if you wanted (the fact that the replays are difficult to parse also contributes to this, since it's harder to tell where the other player is). I'd suggest having a really small playing field or a field that shrinks over time so that players are always in the action. - One small nitpick I have is that you can walk through trees and rocks, which was weird.

Anyways, I don't want to be too negative, those were just a few thoughts I had. Overall, I had quite a bit of fun, and I could see myself playing this a lot if it were more polished/balanced (also, this gets 5 stars for innovation; the idea is really cool). Nice job!

Giant Robots by Manax 2017-05-19T05:36:41Z

Nice! I really enjoyed the visual aesthetic of the game. Right now there isn't too much gameplay, and the gameplay that exists is somewhat confusing (what is the probability that your shots miss? what do the different guns do? does it ever end? etc.), but if you added more I could see this being really fun.

Power Department by Cameron Seebach 2017-05-12T04:06:08Z

I'll start off by echoing some others: I really liked the intro and cutscenes! I assume that you filmed and edited everything, which must have been a lot of work, and I think it's really cool that you decided to do this. The writing could have used a little polish, but I appreciated the story that you were going for, and it was quite refreshing to encounter live-action video while playing through Ludum Dare games.

Now, as for the gameplay, I'll say that I only played the first level and got quite bored, so I looked through the javascript to find and watch the rest of the cutscenes. :P The idea of trying to power cities is interesting, but right now there really isn't that much gameplay to keep one's interest after the first few minutes. Essentially, I mindlessly clicked through the first level without much thought or strategy, and the rest of the levels look like the first except N times as large. I think my biggest complaint is that there isn't much variety or strategy involved right now: for example, I might have found gameplay more interesting if there were more possible random events, if there were more strategy in where to place stations, if the map changed over time, if you had a time limit, etc.

Here are a few specific nitpicks: - The grid was very small, which made clicking on cells to make power lines somewhat finicky. - When you have >20 powerlines and you're told that one of them went down, it was really hard to find the one that disappeared. The fact that the powerlines are the same color as the city borders did not help. Also, there is no strategy involved in rebuilding the powerline, because you just click two squares, so this random event doesn't really add much to the game in the first place. - I had no clue how the numbers (revenue, electricity costs, etc.) or the "popular opinion" were determined. Some indication of that would have been nice, and might have also added to the strategy. - Also, a more specific final goal other than "reach some %" would have been nice.

Sorry if this comes off as too negative; I hope that all this can be taken as constructive criticism, and I do think you have an interesting idea here and the gameplay could have been awesome with a few more mechanics. Oh, in addition to the cutscenes, I also loved the soundtrack, and I might need to go download it from your Github now...

All in all, nice job!

Shelton's Detour by Dining Philosopher 2017-05-14T07:43:02Z

I'm also getting an error when I visit the site. :(

Zombies In Space by JesseyCool 2017-05-02T07:16:04Z

Cool game! The first few levels were quite fun as I was trying to get the hang of it, and who doesn't enjoy blowing the heads off zombies? I think it started getting too repetitive for me around level 6 or 7 (whichever one was the second level where you had to kill 30 zombies), so I didn't really have much motivation to finish. I think I would have enjoyed a lot more it if there were more variety in the levels, and if there were fewer zombies to kill per level. 30 is a really large number and there's no reason to force the player to do the same thing over and over once they already know how to do it once.

It took me a long time to figure out how to use the vending machine; I was just pointing at the objects and pressing E and didn't think to press the 0 and 1 buttons for a while. In retrospect it makes a lot of sense, but I think other people might have a similar issue.

Some more nitpicks: -I appreciated the arrow, but it would also have been nice to have an arrow pointing towards the vending machine, or even just having a screen pop up to buy upgrades between rounds. I didn't like how the next round would start immediately after the current round ended, since it was difficult to go to the vending machine in between. -I was confused that zombies seemed to have wildly varying HP; some went down in two shots, while some took 6 or more. Some HP indicator might have been nice. -Similarly, some indication of exactly how much health I have left would have been nice, though that's not as big of a deal as the visual effect communicates it quite well.

Overall, though, I think this is a really solid game, and it's decently polished (e.g. the press R/press E messages were very helpful, the sound effects were good). Also, I really like the "retro horror" visual style, which is really well-done. Good job!

El Escubo's Key Quest by jellonator00 2017-05-16T05:14:10Z

This was short, but quite a lot of fun! I really liked the level design and the mini-metroidvania feel, and there were some cool puzzly parts like figuring out that you could push the blocks around. The graphics were quite nice, from the terrain sprites to the cloudy background, and the music was excellent (probably the best music I've encountered so far this ludum dare).

There were a few polish issues, such as: - There were no sound effects. Sound effects are a really easy way to give the player feedback and add polish, so I was kind of sad that I moved around, jumped, and swung my axe in silence. - The perspective was a little weird. For example, I didn't understand why I couldn't move down at the beginning until after I got the bridge and moved horizontally across a gap (it was kind of hard to even see the bridge in the first place since the player is pretty much right on top of it). It was also a little difficult to judge where you were to avoid landing on spikes. - The box pushing was a little wonky. If you walked next to the box without touching it, sometimes it moved a bit anyways. - The music sometimes abruptly came in and out when moving to different areas. Some sort of fade would have been nice.

These are all fairly minor issues, though. My biggest wish is simply that there was more: right now you have a great starting point for a game, but the mechanics aren't really explored that much so overall it feels a little sparse. However, for a jam game made in 72 hours, this is a really good effort, and I would definitely play an expanded version of this game. Nice job!

All The Way Down by luthwyhn 2017-05-17T06:09:09Z

This was pretty fun! I agree with @xmatos in that I very much enjoyed how I had to think on my feet (the moving sharks contribute a lot to this), but I also died from reaching a dead end. I also feel it started off quite slow and took some time before it got interesting.

I suppose there isn't that much gameplay right now to comment on, but even the idea of a grid-based side-scroller where you move one space every so often has the potential for some really fun and innovative gameplay. I'd be really interested in seeing where you take this: in particular, the simultaneous strategy game on the turtle's back seems like a brilliant idea and would have fit the theme perfectly.

I completely agree that this game is better than pretty much all of Action 52, except for Cheetahmen, maybe ;) I also love the title. Nice work, and congrats on finishing!

D4RK and the Small Worlds by abhimonk 2017-05-02T06:30:32Z

This was a lot of fun! The elevator part was really difficult and took me like 8 tries, but it was very satisfying when I did finish. Similarly, the final boss was very well-designed, in that it took me a few tries but I felt a big sense of accomplishment when I finally won. To be honest, the first parts of the game were kind of unmemorable since there really wasn't any challenge or ramp-up, so I'm really happy I played through to the end!

To be a little more specific, it seemed like you were aiming for a platforming game when you introduced both dashing and walljumping at the beginning, but those mechanics (especially walljumping) weren't really used that much in the part before the elevator/boss, as I made it through mostly just by walking and normally jumping. I would have enjoyed it even more if you put in gradually more challenging platforming sections so there's not as much of a difficulty leap, or if the whole game was just bosses.

The story was pretty silly, especially with the repeated emphasis of "SMALL WORLD", but I did laugh at points, especially the confrontation at the very end.

A few nitpicks: using up to jump felt a little weird, and I would have liked some audio feedback for walljumping and for passing through a checkpoint (also as the above comment says, I didn't see any reason to not restore your health at checkpoints).

The sound/music is really really good. Where can I download the soundtrack? ;)

Overall, really impressive job!

Ant Runner by unit684 2017-05-09T08:07:58Z

I played for about 100 seconds before getting bored and stopping. The graphics look very nice and the polish is pretty good (e.g. I really appreciated the x-ray vision if the ant was covered by a leaf), but there isn't much in the way of gameplay right now. As others have already mentioned, the shooting mechanic might as well not be in the game: if you added some more complexity to it, such as manual aiming or limited ammo or switching between different kinds of bullets for different enemies, I think this would have been a lot of fun. One mechanic I really like in games is multitasking, so avoiding obstacles while dealing with enemies flying at you has the potential to be great. There are lots of directions you could take this in and plenty of possible additional mechanics (as @slowian has already pointed out).

I think this is a very promising idea, and could be a lot of fun with a few minor changes. Nice job!

Giant Steps by Lennart Jansson 2017-05-12T08:05:58Z

(I suppose I've already played your game, but might as well leave some comments here now that judging has actually started. :P)

I think the puzzles are brilliantly designed, hands-down. You do a great job at introducing the mechanics one by one, like basic movement, picking up hexes, stacking hexes, etc., and pretty much every level has a reason for being in the game, either because it introduces a new concept or because it communicates a really neat idea. This is not something you can say for many puzzle games! (even some of my favorites, like The Talos Principle)

I want to give a specific shout out to level 11. I was making my way through the game fairly quickly, but then I got completely stuck on that one, making no progress for at least 15 minutes. After finally figuring out what I had to do, my mind was completely blown and I could only stare speechless at the genius of it all. Levels 15 and 16 also stood out to me as levels that really stretched your mind.

In terms of user experience, I have a few suggestions: - The controls were somewhat difficult to manage; I would keep pressing wrong directions unless I took it really slowly. Though to be honest, I can't think of a better key mapping since 6 directions will always be difficult to manage (some people suggested using the mouse, which might work though it would certainly be slower). Perhaps touch controls on mobile are the best option. - Like many others have said, I think an undo button is absolutely necessary for games like this, where one wrong move can get you stuck and force you to redo all of your work. This was exacerbated by the difficult controls, especially on level 16 where there are tons of places you can screw up. On one level I made it to the very end, only to mess up the final placement, which was especially irritating. - Some way to indicate the relative heights of columns would have been nice. It was a little annoying taking the time to build an N stack, only to realize that I needed an N+1 stack since I misjudged the height. - This has also been mentioned already, but I would have liked some audio feedback when moving around and stacking things. I feel like even mediocre sound effects are better than none, and you could always give players a mute option if you think they might dislike them.

Some of these points, especially the lack of undo button, did make playing the game more frustrating, but none of this takes away from the great level design. You really pushed the basic mechanics to their limits, which I feel is an important part of all great puzzles (this contrasts heavily with our LD game, where we threw in a bunch of mechanics without exploring them much). As someone who loves puzzle games, the level design alone basically forces me to give this 5 stars.

Pieni Saari by JasperDev 2017-05-15T05:40:56Z

This was a ton of fun! The graphics and music are great, and the writing is downright hilarious, especially the chicken god level (I haven't laughed so hard in a long time). I also really liked the ending screen! The puzzle element is interesting and seems like it could make for a really entertaining game; my biggest wish is that this game had more in terms of the puzzly combat since there's lots of potential with that.

There were a few polish issues, like if you die at the same time as you level up, it looks like you survive but that's not the case. Also, it would have been nice to know how much damage each enemy does without having to resort to trial-and-error. However, these issues are more than made up by the great writing and design. Overall, this really feels like a complete game that is consistently funny and charming and doesn't overstay its welcome. Great job!

Around The World in 80 Seconds by Shaolin Dave 2017-05-03T07:16:21Z

I played through this game 6 times and won twice. As other people have said, the art is really good and you made great use of the theme! Right now, I feel like whether you beat the game is somewhat luck-dependent because enemies move around and jump fairly randomly, and sometimes projectiles appear from the side of the screen without any warning and little time to react (or you're currently jumping and literally can't react).

Some minor nitpicks: -If you go up to an enemy and hold right, you get stuck to them and can't get past them even if you try to jump, which feels bad because the player naturally wants to move right (I think this is some common Unity physics thing where you can get stuck to objects if you're holding left/right). I died multiple times to this, so I think it would feel better if you could pass through enemies, or jump over them if you're holding right. -The sound effects were confusing, because it seemed like you had sound effects for all of the enemies, but not for the player! It would have been nice to have audio feedback for player actions, especially for getting hit because the flashing animation isn't that clear.

Overall, I had a good amount of fun, even though it is a short game. You really knocked it out of the park with the graphics, and the game is very thematic (and the title is brilliant). Good job!

Small World by andrewl 2017-05-17T04:57:47Z

Congrats on your first game! It is very small, but to be honest, I had more fun playing this than quite a lot of other larger entries. Who doesn't love infinite sidescrollers?

My biggest suggestion is to work on the difficulty balance. On my playthrough, I got to 17 billion years and got bored, so I stopped. Right now, it seems like there are two kinds of obstacles: - The satellite things, which move extremely fast and are very difficult to react to. - Everything else, which moves extremely slowly and is very easy to dodge.

For me, the gameplay pretty much consisted of watching out for the satellites, and this did get somewhat stale after 10 billion years or so, especially because the difficulty doesn't increase over time. I'd suggest increasing either the speed or quantity (or both) of obstacles over time, and maybe introduce new obstacles every 5 billion or so to keep things fresh. My favorite parts about these sorts of games are when it gets really hectic and your abilities get pushed to their limits, so yeah.

Overall, good job! I appreciated the details like the animations on the asteroids and planets; they really make the game feel much more dynamic.

Little Big Square by emanon 2017-05-02T07:50:45Z

@berkano: As a hint, the ball can pass over black areas without disappearing.

@anarbitrarymustache, @jcheatley: At one point, we were annoyed by this ourselves and were going to make it so you could press SHIFT to slow down your movement, but that completely slipped our minds at the end, so thanks for the feedback! I've actually just gone and added that feature to the flash version, since it's a very minor bugfix (only 4 lines of code). I hope that's kosher with the Ludum Dare rules, heh.

Thanks for the feedback everyone! We really appreciate it :D

Nightwards, Heartwards by Victor Ojuel 2017-05-16T03:45:17Z

This was quite the interesting experience! I was able to get two people together and starting receiving "quests" to go to the edges and corners of the map, but I then started getting very vague quests like "Find a home" that I couldn't interpret, so I stopped.

I don't think I was the intended audience for this game; the writing was very poetic and you clearly have talent, but it was also too abstract for me to appreciate fully. It was a little weird since the characters are quite concrete (e.g. they clearly leave you for being too focused on the mind or the heart), but the location descriptions are all very vague and abstract. There was a similar weird contrast with the quests that just asked you to go to the edge of the screen vs. the more fuzzy quests; I think it would have felt more consistent if all of the quests were of the latter type and the player had to experiment to figure out what was going on.

I probably would have enjoyed this game more if the story was slightly more concrete and I had some goal or narrative to hold on to, as opposed to wandering around and trying to make sense of cryptic instructions. However, all of this feedback is very subjective and pretty much a matter of taste.

On the positive side, I really loved the polish you put into this. The visuals, like the background and the transitions between locations, are very pretty and fit the game well. The music and sound effects also fit in pretty well. The compass and the arrows pointing at the 4 characters are excellent additions: without them, I would have been hopelessly lost. Overall, this really feels like a complete and polished game, so nice job!

The Underventure of Polin by manolo_rei 2017-05-17T04:34:23Z

I played a few times, eventually getting to the centipede enemies before giving up.

The biggest complaint I have is the lack of checkpoints. It was okay when I died at the spikes near the beginning, but after getting quite far into the game, I don't want to replay through everything I already did. If you do end up making a version with checkpoints, I'd be happy to play it all the way through, but right now I have no interest in replaying the first 5 minutes of the game over and over again.

Other than that, I thought it was quite nice! The visuals and music are very polished, and the player character is extremely cute. The part where I had to get past the creatures that were moving back and forth involved some nice puzzly thinking, though it would have been nice to demonstrate to the player in-game that you can click again to let go, because I had already forgotten reading that in the instructions and got stuck for a bit. I can imagine some really fun levels that could be made with this mechanic (and perhaps you did make them, since I didn't see the whole game).

One more small suggestion (it looks like others have already made this point, so I'll just pile on): have a cursor on the screen, as opposed to just a white dot a fixed radius around you, since that would make positioning yourself a lot more intuitive. Right now it's pretty annoying since you have no clue where your mouse is.

Honestly, the lack of checkpoints is a pretty big bummer since I really do want to see the whole game, as it looks great and has some cool mechanics. I did have a decent amount of fun, though, so nice work!

Go with the Flow by Bart Huylebroeck 2017-05-18T03:14:10Z

This is a pretty good start for a game! The idea of controlling the water currents is really cool and has a lot of potential, although I'm not entirely sure how it relates to the theme (are you sure you weren't going for "Control the environment, not the player"? :P)

My biggest suggestion right now would just be to expand the game and/or make it more challenging, since right now the levels all feel similar and it doesn't feel like there's much to it other than basic movement. Some other thoughts: - I'm not sure what's the purpose of the fish, especially because they doesn't even count towards your high score! Maybe have each fish collected decrease your total time by some amount, or give you some other bonus. - Similarly, I don't really know what the boots are for. It might be more interesting if hitting boots or walls decreased your health or something like that, since right now you can beat the game just by directly dragging from the octopus to the exit. - Some sound effects would have been nice. I feel like even low-quality sound effects are better than nothing at all, since it really improves the polish by a lot. - There was a delay between the exit fully charging up and switching to the next level, which felt unnecessary. - (very minor) It was weird how you were taken back to the intro level when you finished the game, as opposed to the title screen.

I will say that your graphics are great and look very polished, so great job on that. I really liked the details like the kelp moving around in the background, as well as your ink spreading out.

Again, I think there are many directions you could take this, and the core idea is super interesting. With some more mechanics, this could be a ton of fun. Overall, nice job!

Planet Nanadoo: Quest for the Powered Fruit by MrTroy 2017-08-14T00:42:23Z

I played this twice. The first time, I got really lost after wandering too far away from the base, and ended up running out of power (I think I might have gone out of bounds or something, because the natives stopped spawning after a while). The second time, I managed to find the beacon and win. Overall, I had a good amount of fun.

Here are some miscellaneous comments I wrote down while playing: - Sometimes when I was away from the base, it was difficult to tell whether I was moving (this was especially true in my first playthrough when I went very far away from the base). This was because there weren't many trees, so there was no visual indication of me moving. A minimap would have helped with this (and would have also helped with being able to navigate back to your base). - It felt inconsistent when enemies would attack me. Sometimes I would lose 25 health the frame they touched me, other times it seems like they wouldn't attack me at all. Also, if I stand completely still, enemies walk up to me and attack, but it seems like they never attack more than once; it's weird having an enemy standing next to you and you not taking any damage. - The sound effects were also inconsistent. There was a sound effect for putting down a fruit but not for picking up a fruit, for example. There was also no sound effect for getting hit by an enemy. - I would suggest directly telling the player that the beacon locator is located near the base and they should find it first. This would have saved me the frustration of my first playthrough. - Also with the beacon locator, I didn't understand how it worked at first. Originally I brought it to base and waited around for a bit, thinking something would happen. It also doesn't help that the antenna is relatively small compared to the rest of the locator; why not just display a giant arrow? - A possible bug: I died while holding the beacon, but respawned back at base, still holding the beacon. I don't know if this is intentional. - Diagonal movement seemed to have a different speed, which felt strange. For example, if you're holding a fruit and move horizontally/vertically, then you move much faster than the enemies, but if you move diagonally, then they catch up to you. - It was really difficult to aim with the zapper. Also, I wish that if you moved horizontally while being chased by enemies, then they would eventually end up on the same line as you so you could kill them with a horizontal shot, but that didn't happen.

Most of these are small nitpicks that didn't detract too much from the overall game. I do want to say that I really enjoyed the art style, and that despite the aiming difficulty, combat was also fun. This is a really solid game, so great work!

Shut Everything Down by Skosnowich 2017-08-16T08:44:57Z

Nice! My favorite part of this game was the design: the tutorial levels did a great job at ramping up the player, and the levels were a great mix of puzzle-solving and timing challenges. I do wish there was a little more, but what you have is already quite good, and I'd prefer a few really solid levels over a lot of mediocre/repetitive levels any day. The narrative/backstory was also solid.

I did encounter a few polish issues: - Sometimes, clicking a square would not do anything, and I'd have to click on it twice to actually get the robot to move. Not only was this annoying, but in a fairly strict timing-based game this killed me quite a few times, which was really frustrating. Unfortunately, I can't seem to reproduce this issue, but I'm on Mac if it matters (I dunno if you encountered this). This is by far the most annoying thing I ran into, because it made the game feel a little unresponsive: the rest of this list is mostly minor issues. - Right now, if you click somewhere and decide you want to move in the opposite direction instead, the robot can only change directions when it's aligned with a square. It would feel more responsive if the robot immediately changed directions instead of potentially waiting a half second. - I died a few times on the second level, and whenever I did die, the tutorial text would appear saying "Good job!", which was a little unfortunate. I'd suggest only showing it once, or having a question mark that you can click on to see it again. - The WASD camera controls felt unnecessary. I kept forgetting to use them because I expected the camera to follow me by default. One possible suggestion: you could have an automatic camera following the player when the player is moving, and have WASD manually move the camera if the player is still and wants to scout ahead. This might also feel kind of weird, though; it's possible that the most user-friendly option is to remove WASD entirely and have a pure automatic camera (I doubt players will be hindered by this, since you generally only care about what's near you at any given moment). - In the last level, I missed the pop-up because I was spamming right click to get next to the moving robot. Agreed with @somnium that it was not the best place to put a pop-up. - Dying feels strange because you immediately get taken to the beginning of the level. Some sound effect and/or short animation when dying would have felt more natural.

Also, I personally really appreciated the tutorial text, since it's nice to know exactly how the mechanics work, and you did a good job of explaining things. I can see why some players can find it a little too wordy or unnecessary, though.

Overall, I really enjoyed going through the levels, which were all well-designed. The controls didn't feel as polished as I would've wished, but that didn't prevent this game from being a lot of fun overall. Great job!

Fluffy Racer by pfeyffer 2017-08-11T07:23:42Z

I had a lot of trouble understanding what was going on at first, and the intro text was not nearly enough to explain how things worked. As others have said, this could really have benefited from a tutorial level.

Once I started figuring out what was going on (e.g. you can attack unicorns to decrease viciousness, you can place unicorns on shields, etc.), it turned out to be pretty fun. It's a pretty interesting optimization puzzle, although right now there aren't too many options: you only have 3 possible things and there is a hard constraint on your health not going below 0, so I felt it wasn't too hard to make the "best" decision. Also, I would have liked if repairing or replacing cost some fixed amount (maybe increasing each time you used it) instead of half your current amount, because right now it almost feels like what you do in the early game doesn't matter (if you do well at the beginning, then it gets neutralized when you have to repair a few times, so whether you win somewhat depends on how lucky you get at the end).

One possible suggestion: I might suggest showing the player what's coming up in the near future, so they can potentially plan better. This could also mitigate the randomness a bit and add more strategy.

I also noticed some bug where if you take a unicorn and move it into multiple claws, then multiple objects end up spawning, with some overlapping each other.

Hopefully this doesn't sound too negative. Overall, you have a solid, creative mechanic, and I love the visuals, which are really well-done and polished (and the unicorns are extremely cute). And the overall premise of petting unicorns is just great. Nice job!

Take Me Home by Fengol 2017-08-12T08:49:35Z

You have a pretty solid prototype, and I'd be interested in seeing where you go with this. I can definitely imagine some really hectic FTL-like game where you have to manage all the parts of your spaceship while dealing with various hazards. One potential idea (inspired by your lights): what if turning off the lights made the entire ship black, so you could only see in a small radius around you? Something like this could potentially make for an interesting trade-off.

Running out of time sucks, but I think you have some good ideas here that could be turned into a really fun game. For future LDs, though, you should prioritize adding gameplay so it doesn't get pushed to the end.

Power Ring Facility by Herman Chau 2017-08-17T06:53:26Z

Nice, this is a pretty creative mechanic, and the levels displayed a variety of interesting applications of that mechanic. It was pretty fun overall, but my number one suggestion would be to add sound effects: I died a few times because I mistimed when I would collect a ring and pressed space a few frames too early, which resulted in not jumping. It's much easier to react to a sound effect than to a visual cue, so I would really have liked some beep upon picking up a ring. Also, right now this charging mechanic is pretty hard to distinguish from "standard platformer, except collecting rings gives you your jump back", so I kept trying to jump while on the ground and was surprised that I couldn't. I think sound could also have helped with this: if there was a quiet buzzing sound whenever you were powered up, it would be more clear when you could jump than with just a circle vs. pentagon indication.

The levels themselves were good. There is a gigantic difficulty jump between the 1. and 2. levels, but after I died like 30 times on 2.001 I slowly got the hang of it, which felt very satisfying. Even though it was difficult, it never got too frustrating, so great job on that. I also liked the part on 2.002 where rings constantly shoot up out of the ground and you could slowly gain height: I confess that it took me about a minute to realize I could do that, so it felt like a nice little puzzle.

The minimal graphics style suits the game very well, and it looks extremely nice.

If you expand on this game (and I hope you will!), I'd suggest emphasizing the power mechanic more, instead of just having the difficulty coming from platforming like in 2.001. There are plenty of hard platformers out there, but I feel like you could make something really unique based on this (for example, what if there were some puzzly levels where rings don't respawn, and you have to cleverly plan out your path to finish?).

All in all, this was a really solid game and I had a lot of fun playing it. Great job!

Displaced by oberynmartell 2017-08-11T05:28:30Z

Some things I liked: - There was some good visual polish, like the ceilings of houses disappearing when you entered, and the sand effects. Also the dialogue boxes. - Like others have said, the sandstorm was interesting.

Overall, though, there doesn't seem to be much to this game other than walking around and trying to find things, which is not that fun, especially with a giant desert and no mini-map or indication of where to go (disclaimer: I only played for around 10 minutes before stopping). Also, this could really have used some sound effects. Overall, it seems like you aimed for something really big, and it's pretty hard to do something of this scale in a short game jam. The story was decent, though (at least what I saw of it), and I did like the Firefly references. :P

I also have some minor nitpicks: the walking animation looks a little weird, and sometimes I would stop holding down WASD but the character would continue walking for half a second.

I don't want to be too negative, so let me say that I am very impressed by the amount of content in this game (like the amount of dialogue, and things like the psychological experiment), and this could be something really awesome with more work. Good job!

A Black Screen by qzqxq 2017-08-01T09:52:52Z

@jake-hyman, @jonathan-whiting: If you're using Chrome, you can enable flash by clicking on the "Secure" in the upper-left hand corner and going down to "Flash" and clicking "Always allow on this site". I think that might be why you can't see it. I'll go add a note to the itch.io page.

A Black Screen by qzqxq 2017-08-22T08:52:10Z

Thanks for the comments, everyone, I really really appreciate all of them.

Some notes/replies: - I was a little scared that the maze level would be overly frustrating, and my apologies to those who really didn't like it (like @mrtwister heh). I left it in because I thought all the other levels were a little too similar, and thought this would be an interesting, different kind of challenge, so I hope you can all forgive me. :P - Based on the comments, it also looks like I was too conservative with the difficulty of the last level and could have made it a bit harder. Maybe I'll make a level with 4 stars and 3 saws and see how it goes, lol. - @mortus Thanks for the detailed comment! Yeah, each LD, I always look forward to the games with high Innovation scores, since they generally have some really creative ideas that you wouldn't see anywhere else. - @sarrixx That's a really good idea, I think I see what you mean and I agree it would have been really helpful on that level. - @joebeard That's really interesting, sounds like a pretty cool class. And thanks for the comment, I'm glad you enjoyed at least some of the humor. - @somnium It's interesting how many assumptions game developers make of players, and comments like this are helpful for pointing out the incorrect assumptions I made, so thanks! On a related note, when I got a friend to playtest this, he thought it was a 3D game at first as opposed to a top-down 2D game (which is why I added that note at the beginning of the first level).

Again, thanks everyone for all of the feedback! The peer judging has always been my favorite part of Ludum Dare, and it's always helpful reading what others have to say. And I dunno if anyone will see this, but if anyone reading this wants me to play their game and leave feedback, let me know. I guess judging ends soon, but I'm always happy to give feedback whenever.

Island of Revolution by mikethewayne 2017-08-13T20:20:08Z

I played through once and won, mostly thanks to one of the banks giving me an amazing deal (like $1000 for a 100% chance of getting $2500 per hour). I thought that I would lose for sure because my power was at 0 for more than a minute, but I see now that you didn't implement the rebelling, so maybe it's impossible to lose right now?

I thought this was a really creative interpretation of the theme! In terms of gameplay, I enjoyed the variety of things going on, which forced me to constantly pay attention to the map while also planning on raising enough money for the flight. It's pretty hard to make an RTS-style game in such a short period of time, but I think you did a pretty good job.

Some other things: - The list of 9 instructions you have is way too much to take in at once. However, the in-game help screen was extremely useful, so kudos on that. - For some reason, the police seizing assets pop-up kept appearing when I clicked on units on the map (and I think it even appeared when I clicked on the help button). I'm not sure if this was intentional (and I still don't completely understand how seizing assets works), but this was pretty distracting. - I would have liked a clearer indication of how I was losing power (like maybe having numbers periodically appear over riots/protests that indicate how much power is being lost). I think this would have added more strategy to the game, since you can plan better with more information. - Similar to the above, it was very unclear what the newspaper campaign did. You said that it slows down the decay, but it would have been nice to see some indication of that. - Sound effects would have been nice. - The forest was clearly dark green, not brown. :P

Overall, this was quite solid, and if you added more mechanics/balance I could see this being a really creative strategy game. Nice job!

Dance On The Wire by foodzilla 2017-08-11T05:53:35Z

This is a really cool idea! As you mention, there isn't much to the game, but what I've seen so far is quite promising. The visual style is neat and the music is nice to listen to, and with some more mechanics/levels this could be a really fun, innovative game.

Some feedback: - The tutorial is a little confusing, especially with the "different square junctions behave differently" part at the end. In fact, I beat the game without realizing that the red/green switched if you moved along the red area, and only just figured it out after going through the tutorial a second time. - The second level is really long. I died close to the end, on the second set of brown circles moving in a circle, and I was pretty frustrated to have to start at the beginning of the level, especially because you don't move so fast. I'd suggest putting in checkpoints for long levels, or just having a series of short challenging levels. - In general, I think the red/green/blue areas are sort of small and a little difficult to make out (this also ties into me not realizing how the colors worked at first). If you made that more visible somehow, I think it would really help with making the game more clear. Also, some indication of the timing to press the keys would be nice (maybe just in the tutorial?), since I also had trouble with that at first.

Again, I really like the idea, and I'm very interested in seeing where you go with this. One random thought I had was that this might be cool as a competitive multiplayer game, where you have to keep track of where you opponent is going, but I don't have any specific ideas on how it would work. Anyways, nice job! And sorry to hear about the AC, that really sucks :( Hope everything's better now, though.

Blocks of Power by mortus 2017-08-01T09:45:51Z

First off, this is jaw-droppingly impressive for a compo game. Everything looks extremely polished and you have a cool mechanic that seems really fleshed out, not to mention the enemy AIs and god knows what else is in here.

I played this about 8 times and couldn't get past the third room. I might try again later, because this does seem very interesting and potentially a lot of fun, but right now I feel like there's less of a difficulty curve and more of a difficulty skydive. It's like, first you have a room with another ship that can't even shoot you, and then you have a room with 3 ships, some of which shoot really quickly, and if you lose either your turret or your thrusters, you're dead (funnily enough, I don't think I ever lost due to losing or running out of battery).

Also, the instructions screen has way too much information to take in at once. I understand that this is Ludum Dare and there's limited time, but I would have found this much easier to get into if you had, say, 1/3 to 1/2 as many parts, and used the time saved to make a small tutorial on how to use build mode (a win-win in terms of accessibility). I only realized that I could rotate the building parts on my 5th playthrough or so, because the only indication of that is in small text at the very bottom of the instructions! It's also confusing which parts are allowed to go where (like you aren't allowed to place anything behind the thrusters, I think?), something a tutorial could also have helped with.

Some other notes: - Sometimes when I went into the second room, I found myself unable to rotate until some parts of my ship got destroyed. I'm not sure why this happened. - I also died twice on room 2 because I didn't realize I was in build mode and couldn't figure out why my ship wasn't moving. I think right now, normal mode and build mode look very similar, which is a little confusing. And given how difficult this game seems to be, I might suggest having a complete pause in build mode to give the player time to plan. And maybe just not even have the option to manually enter build mode, and instead enter build mode automatically as soon as you finish off an enemy core. - WASD to control thrusters is very confusing, given that your ship can be in any orientation so that W isn't always up. If you're going to use that control scheme, you should really specify which direction is which key at all times (though I'm not even sure that would help).

Reading back, my comment sounds more negative than I intended it to be, so I just want to say again that this is extremely, extremely impressive for 48 hours of work. The visuals and sound effects are incredibly polished, and the gameplay has so much to it; I just wish that there was a smoother introduction because of how complicated it is. Awesome job!

And now I want to go play some Galaxy Trucker. :P

Space Whale Adventure by Cole and Jordan Studios 2017-08-11T04:54:18Z

The first thing I want to say is: this game feels very polished. In particular, the sound is done really well: the music is catchy and fits well with the game, and the sound effects were very funny and also added a lot.

I also liked the control scheme. Even though it's kind of difficult to get used to, it feels original and made for a fun challenge.

I ended up playing for about 2 minutes and stopping after that because it seems like there wasn't any more gameplay. I guess you didn't have time to add more, but I think it would have felt a lot more satisfying if it showed your score somewhere, and/or if there was some way to win the game, so there would be some closure. Also, 250 power seems really generous, as I barely lost any while playing. You could probably lower it to 20 or something and it could be more exciting that way.

Overall, even though there isn't that much gameplay, I really appreciate all the polish that went into what you do have, so great job! With some more mechanics, I could see this being a really fun arcade game.

The Crown Prince by Baby Dino Herd 2017-08-11T06:36:33Z

Nice! This is a really creative way to approach the theme, and I feel like I should give this bonus points because I'm a math major. :P

I had a lot of fun trying to put the coins together, especially with the exact change in the 3rd level. The guillotine chasing behind you certainly made for a very exciting experience. I also really liked the polish in this game: the music and sound effects were effective, and all the information was presented in a very clear way, with pretty but not overwhelming graphics.

Some suggestions: - The bronze and gold coins look really similar. I think I failed the first level like 3 times because I kept accidentally clicking gold coins instead of bronze. Also, the bronze coin looks copper and the copper coin looks bronze. I would suggest just putting the numerical value of the coins on them directly, or if you still want to keep the color recognition part, I would probably suggest something like brown/bronze-1, silver-5, gold-25, green-100 (green can be platinum or something). - The slowing down/taking your highest coin as tribute mechanism was somewhat interesting, especially when you had to make use of it to speed up in the last level. However, I don't think it's interesting enough to justify the added complexity, because it is quite confusing and non-intuitive at first.

Overall, this was a very creative idea and a lot of fun, so great job! I'd be interested if worked more on this, since I imagine there are a lot of possible things you could do with the core gameplay.

Long Live The Pig by CTTFOW 2017-08-14T09:13:19Z

There are definitely a lot of mechanics to take in at once, but once I understood what was going on, I couldn't stop laughing the whole way through. I have to applaud the writing: everything from the campaign promises to the groups of voters was hilarious and well-written. And I can't believe that it was actually possible to win through becoming a pope-emperor!

The visual design and graphics are great, and the music is nice to listen to. The only real complaint I have is that the gameplay itself feels a little lacking. It's supposed to be a strategy game, but it's hard to plan a strategy when you only have a vague idea of what some things do (like making a campaign promise or spending money on advertising). Also, there wasn't much of a challenge: once I read all the rules, I just picked the policies that workers and youngsters liked and won without having to spend any money on advertising or bribing (if only that's how elections worked in real life... :P). I feel like game balance took a back seat to humor and polish (not that that's a bad thing, given how much I liked pretty much every other part of this game).

There was a small bug I encountered where if you click advertise without spending any money, the "actions planned for today" still has advertise. A few more things: - I wish there was a "back" button on the "Manage Funds" and "Campaign Promises" screens. - It's a little weird how you can't click on the phone if you select fundraising, but you can click on the typewriter. I feel like you should always be able to click anything, so you can see your options.

Overall, this was absolutely hilarious, and I very much enjoyed it, even if it was a little light on the actual gameplay. Great job!

Jupiter II ‒ Survival by Timbaleek 2017-08-22T08:03:07Z

I played through 5 times and never found the mothership.

Overall, I'd say this is a very promising game. I like how you tied both of the "special abilities" (speed boost, flashlight) to your two resources, which really reinforced the "running out of power" feeling. The graphics look great, and I love how you made easy-to-parse images for the backstory and instructions.

So, the biggest issue I have with this game is that I don't feel like I'm ever making progress, and that whether you win seems to mostly depend on how lucky you are. Right now, I'm just swimming around and collecting energy and oxygen, which is reasonably fun and engaging, but I don't feel like I'm ever getting closer to finding the mothership because it could be anywhere. And if I do eventually find the mothership, it's almost certainly going to be because I randomly picked the right direction, rather than because I found a good strategy or was able to deduce where it was, which feels a little bad. Some potential suggestions: - A minimap that is gradually revealed as you move around would have been great, because it helps you plan your future route. It gives a sense of progress because you gradually eliminate where the mothership can be, and if it showed oxygen/energy pickups, then you could leave some behind to pick them up later, which increases the amount of strategy. (The player can do all of this right now, but it would require an insane amount of memory) - Some way of hinting at the location of the mothership would be great. Some possible ideas: - Increase the number of broken ship parts you see as you get closer. - Maybe have a "sonar" power that uses up a large amount of energy and tells you how close you are to the mothership, or what general direction to move in.

And after writing this, I see that @elmismipancho basically said the same things oops. :P

Finally, in terms of polish, I would have really liked some sound effects for moving, using a speed boost, picking up energy/oxgyen, etc. If you added some sound effects as well as some background sounds, this game would have easily been a 5/5 mood for me, because the visuals are already really good at conveying the feeling of being lost in some giant dark ocean.

All in all, even though I never beat the game, I still had fun moving around and trying to survive. If you added a few more features and polished this up, I could see myself playing this a lot. Great job!

Desert Rush by Taras 2017-08-13T23:56:47Z

The mac build isn't working for me, it's just showing the standard Unity blue screen.

Tornado by splashshadow 2017-08-01T07:42:54Z

Some things I liked: - The idea of the playing field being randomly generated over time is clever and interesting. - I really liked the visual polish, like the screenshake and the cows spurting blood when they die. - Refrigerators and cows falling from the sky is super funny.

A few things that could be improved: - There doesn't seem to be a purpose or goal to the game. I made it to the top of the screen, but nothing happened and the game kept running, which was disappointing because all I can do now is wait to drown. At the very least, I would have liked a "You won!" popup. - The houses fall down way too slowly. You could probably speed everything up 5x, and it would be a lot more exciting and more of a challenge. - I didn't hear any sound effects. Sound effects can make a game feel much more polished because audio feedback is very important, and they're not that hard to make, so for future jams I would definitely suggest adding them in.

I think this could be a really fun and exciting game if you had a greater variety of houses and increased the pace; right now it feels very slow, but I can imagine some hectic platformer where you have to plan ahead based on what's falling from the sky. Overall, nice job! Again, I really liked the visuals.

Lost in Translation at Space by elmismopancho 2017-08-11T08:05:14Z

Holy shit, this game is genius. I really wish there was more, because the two minigames you had were both very solid applications of the voice controls, and I had lots of fun with both of them. The graphics were also solid and the dialogue was quite funny. Honestly, it's hard to come up with any suggestions on how to improve this. One thing: I ended up writing all the words down so I could refer back to them, but this could have pretty easily just been in the game, and I think would have made it more user-friendly.

I'm also really impressed at how accurate the voice recognition was. Technology these days, man.

Anyways, this was great. I had a lot of fun the whole way through, and everything was very polished. Awesome job!

PlantingPower by Schnarchschnitzel 2017-08-01T08:02:33Z

I'm having trouble opening the mac version, I'm getting the error "You can't open the application "PlantingPower" because the Classic environment is no longer supported." This looks really cool though so I'll remember to try this when I have access to windows.

Meltdown by Sarrixx 2017-08-12T09:36:55Z

I played this 3 times, losing on the third level each time. Overall, this was pretty fun! I liked how much polish you had with the graphics and sound effects, and that contributed a lot to the tense atmosphere and overall engagement of the game. A few suggestions/nitpicks: - I sometimes had trouble pressing the buttons because I wasn't sure where to aim at. Some crosshairs or other indicator would have been nice (I see from the patch notes that you added that in 1.1, which is good). - The "you're running out of power" voice effects were a nice touch, but got annoying after a while because they kept repeating. I'd suggest having a larger variety of sound effects, or just playing them less frequently. - It was a little jarring how losing took you back to the menu with nothing in between. Even a small sound effect would have been nice. - Right now, it sort of feels like beating the third level depends on getting lucky with the RNG: I thought I was pretty fast, but I kept getting buttons that were 2-3 doors away from me.

Overall, great job on making a very polished, engaging game. It is a very simple mechanic (and I do wish there was a little more complexity), but you really managed to make something quite fun out of it!

Encounters by Valphera 2017-08-15T08:41:35Z

This was pretty funny! The story felt a little nonsensical in a good way (sort of like Jazzpunk), and I really liked the graphics and music. My favorite part was definitely the ghost: it was really unexpected, and also hinted at some interesting backstory.

Some minor things: - When walking, the steps sound effect would play sporadically, which was weird; I feel like it should play at regular intervals. - I won without getting the 30 credits from the person who asked me to investigate the store for ghosts: after getting the child and the fireworks and discovering the ghost, I went to the charger because I realized I didn't actually walk up to it at the beginning, and then I surprisingly won. Some indication of how many credits you have, as mentioned by @saramartins above, would have helped with this. - I also completely agree that it was weird having to get really close to someone to start talking. - There were quite a few grammar/spelling issues. I personally don't take that into account when rating, but in general I do think writing mistakes make games feel less polished. - (this is really minor) The dialogue bubbles didn't actually point to the person who was talking, so I think they were worse than plain rectangles in terms of clarity.

Overall, this was a really solid entry. I enjoyed the surreal/absurd narrative, and I am very impressed with the amount of content, especially in the graphics. Nice job!

Herding Cats: The 400th South Winchester Jr. Semi-Finals with Fiona Pennywhistle by Cercle 2017-12-14T07:10:04Z

This game was extremely funny. I loved all of the effort you put into the voices: at first I felt like I would quickly get bored of the commentary during the puzzles, but there were so many unique and funny lines that it was entertaining the whole way through. Also, the scoreboard narration was excellently-written. Sometimes I feel like games can try "too hard" to be funny and end up just cringeworthy, but the humor here avoided that and was well-done. The funniest part for me might have been when the 10th place person was listed as "deceased", it was just so absurd that I couldn't help but break down in laughter.

The puzzles themselves had a cool mechanic, but I feel like you could have done a lot more with it. There were a few interesting levels (like the one with 4 cats in each of 3 corners and each corner having a different color of cat), but most of the puzzles got pretty repetitive after getting the hang of the rules. However, I will say that I never got bored and played through to the end, probably because you only had two levels in between scoreboard commentaries.

One small suggestion: I agree with @draperdanman that some indication of which color corresponded to which directions would have been nice. Even by the end of the game I was screwing it up.

Overall, this was a lot of fun to play, even though the puzzles themselves were kind of unremarkable. The graphics and audio were very polished, and I never would have guessed that this is your first game jam. Great job!

Cohesion by alottabit 2017-12-06T04:39:26Z

This seems like a lot of fun, but it isn't working for me on HTML5, I'm just seeing a grey screen with music playing in the background. I'm using Chrome on MacOS.

Cohesion by alottabit 2017-12-06T05:00:46Z

@alottabit Sure, here you go https://i.imgur.com/Rewd49J.png

I really like puzzle games, so even if you can't get this to work I'll probably switch to my Windows partition at some point to play this.

Cohesion by alottabit 2017-12-06T08:47:48Z

Ok, I ended up switching to Windows and it worked fine.

Overall, I thought this was very well-designed. The ramp-up levels did a great job at introducing the mechanics, and there were some really nice levels later on. One thing I like to see in puzzle games is levels that have a tight solution path, so it's difficult to do by trial and error and instead forces you to think about how to get from point A to point B. I think you had several great examples of that, like levels 10, 15, 16, and 21. I really enjoyed the "working backwards from the end" thinking involved, where you consider the possible final positions of the blue squares. Also, the music is quite pleasant to listen to.

Some of the levels were less elegant, like 23 where you can just ignore the blue square on the bottom and easily finish going through the top, or 19 where it seems like you can do anything you want, and there were some other levels in the middle that felt sort of filler-ish. This is not a big deal, though, and doesn't really take away from the game.

Honestly, my only real wish is that there was more (I'm sure there are lots of possible additional mechanics that could make for some really interesting levels), but even with what you have, there were multiple times where I felt very satisfied for figuring out the solution to a level. And I think that's the most important thing when it comes to puzzle games, so great job!

Keyboard Cats by sungk 2017-12-06T04:54:30Z

This was really funny for the first few minutes, but I got kind of bored at around 1300 characters because I wasn't sure how long it would go and there wasn't much change in gameplay. I'd have two potential suggestions: - Either make the game shorter, or put in more variation to keep the player entertained (e.g. introduce different types of cats that need to be petted in different ways, or different tasks to type the essay). - Make it possible to lose. Right now, it seems like you beat the game without petting the cats, so there's not much motivation to actually pet them. With a few changes, I can imagine this being a really fun hectic game where you have to multitask between lots of cats.

I really liked the cat sprites and sound effects, and the polish was also quite good (like the hearts that appear on the cats), but I would have liked a little more variation in gameplay. Overall, nice work!

Pulse Race by Chroma 2018-08-29T04:02:39Z

Even though there's not much other than the basic racing, I had quite a bit of fun! On my first try I had no idea what was going on and died because I ran out of "energy", but after figuring out what was going on sort of I was able to almost get 3rd place (I think I lost by 1 or 2 seconds :P) It seems like green and yellow are impossible to beat unless you're really optimal, but it was fun trying to keep up with blue.

I thought the use of symbols instead of numbers/letters was really cool, but that did mean I wasn't sure how many laps I had to do, which I think is important information in any racing game. I also don't know if the flashing squares do anything other than restore "energy", it would be nice if this were explained somewhere.

I really like the overall aesthetic, but the background of simple colored squares feels a little flat; I think adding in a little animation or maybe some variation in the colors could add a lot to the visual polish. I thought the sound/music worked very well.

Overall, I just wish this had more features, but what you have is already quite fun and polished, so good work!

Blooming Heights by Jakupf 2018-08-31T08:18:57Z

I had a lot of fun with this! I was apprehensive at first about the giant wall of text, but the gameplay turned out to be quite accessible and exciting (and I completely understand that making a tutorial can be a huge effort). In my first playthrough on easy, I spent too long reading up on all of the seeds and died without planting anything, but after I got the hang of it, I managed to beat all three difficulties without too much trouble.

I thought the game was well-polished overall, with a clean, functional UI and helpful graphics and sound effects. There were a few very minor issues I had, which you might already be aware of, but for completeness I'll list them: - It would have been nice to not have the clock tick down while you're in the shop to let the player read the explanations (maybe just on easy mode?). - Like some people above, I also had trouble using the island repair kits at first (I was clicking on the red squares instead of the empty squares). - There were a few times I had to click the X multiple times to exit the shop. I'm not sure why that happened, but it did cause me to lose once when I had to buy a repair kit and place it in 10 seconds but couldn't stop shopping. - Speaking of exiting the shop, I would have liked a keyboard shortcut for doing that, as moving the mouse over to the X is surprisingly difficult when you're trying to do everything as fast as possible. Maybe also keyboard shortcuts for buying seeds. - (this is a tiny change, but for me would make the biggest difference) Multiple times when playing, I would click on a square to plant or harvest and it wouldn't work because I was too far away. I would have really liked a sound effect for this (or some indication of which squares you can currently interact with), as without feedback I would often click on the same square multiple times before realizing that I needed to move closer.

I would be really interested in playing a more fleshed out version of this game: right now, even in hard mode, I think some strategy like "econ as fast as you can until you have 10ish plants, then only buy repair kits" will always win, which doesn't require the player to worry about which specific squares are falling or run around much to tend to all the plants. I also ended up never using the crystal plant. To be clear, I think what you have is very good for 72 hours, but with some tweaks/additions you could force the player to e.g. strategize on the spot depending on where the land is falling, or plan out where they need to run to get things done, which I think would make for a more difficult but also more rewarding game.

Overall, this was an interesting, well-executed idea that I had fun playing, with a lot of potential for expansion as well. Keep it up!

Dog Science by pockyonastick 2018-08-31T05:13:32Z

I really like the overall idea, it feels quite new and fits the theme very well. Probably the biggest thing I would have liked is some sort of ending or progression to the game (e.g. making the game harder over time), right now it just seems to be an endless stream of 10ish random events, which is still fun, but it does seem like once you get the hang of it you can go indefinitely without thinking too hard. Though this issue could probably be fixed with some balance tweaks (maybe a smaller field to make it feel more cramped, but you can see the next few pieces coming up so you can come up with a plan?).

There were also a few minor bugs, like not being able to move the single dialogue square, and the disconnected blocks behaving weirdly when they fell (looks like @psychead already mentioned these above). It didn't take away from the experience that much but it did make the game feel less polished. Also in terms of polish, it would have been great to have some sound effects.

I loved the graphics and the events/story!

Gardenflow by Grigory 2018-08-29T04:12:19Z

I played with a friend for two games, but we couldn't figure out the conditions for when plants would grow, so it was difficult to really come up with a strategy. The overall idea seems really cool (definitely giving this a good innovation rating) and it's great that you can play online, but I would have liked some more explanation on the details of how the plants work. Also it would be nice to have the game end when someone wins, right now it looks like you just both turn into gravestones eventually. :p

Assault on Crown Archipelago by aurel 2019-05-15T11:02:25Z

I played through 2 (3 if you include the tutorial) islands on the WebGL version and eventually stopped, mostly because the low framerate made it too hard to fight the monkeys (unfortunately I only have a mac :( ).

From what I saw, this game is pretty awesome! There is an extremely impressive amount of content and everything looks great. I enjoyed using the harpoon in platforming as well as just exploring and collecting coins. I thought the tutorials were great and seemed to cover pretty much everything that someone might get stuck on; in particular, I had a lot of trouble getting out of the room you get the harpoon in and appreciated the tip to "climb up" the wall by repeatedly jumping and shooting.

The combat I saw was also exciting and fun. Honestly, my biggest issue with it is that I'm a wuss when it comes to horror games, and the combination of monkeys randomly appearing + the monkeys themselves looking terrifying + the general dark atmosphere eventually made me reluctant to continue exploring. Even something like always giving a countdown or warning of some sort before enemies appear would have reduced the "jumpscare" factor by a lot (I'm probably an outlier when it comes to this though). Though I will say this really goes to show how engaging the game was - definitely 5 stars for mood.

Other minor things I noticed: - I would have liked to have to press a button to drink grog. I got annoyed multiple times by accidentally moving over a bottle when at full health and having to wait around for the drunkenness to wear off. The actual drunk effect is great though. - I would have liked some indication of the total number of coins/chests on each island, which would have given a better idea of how much progress you had, and besides, you already provide that information on the map (though not when you first select a new island, which was kind of weird)

I loved the music, and just in general everything was very polished, like with the battle music fading in/out. Overall, this is a really impressive game, especially for 72 hours, so great job! I'll try to get around to playing the whole thing at some point.

Legend Of the Red Demon by Jimbly 2019-05-15T10:00:40Z

As you mentioned in the description, there is not much to do (I just repeatedly fought the weakest possible enemy while upgrading when I had a comfortable amount of health), but I have to admit that it was still pretty fun doing that. I think you did a great job with the time you had, and with some more content I could see this being a really awesome game (especially if there was a wider variety of upgrades you could buy with health, and if e.g. there wasn't an easy repeatable way of replenishing health to force the player to make more difficult decisions).

I also enjoyed the ending (rot13 spoilers: V fnirq hc gb 200/200 urnygu orsber pubbfvat gb fhzzba gur qrzba. Fb lrnu, lbh tbg zr!), and the whole story/flavor tied in well to the theme. The CRT effect was also very effective at providing the "old game" feel and added a lot to the polish. Overall, nice job!

Trials Of Dice And Decks by DreamingDice 2019-05-14T10:58:50Z

First, the game looks great and it definitely looks like a lot of attention was paid to visual polish, especially in the menus/UI. However, like some others, I had a lot of trouble figuring out the rules and eventually gave up after wandering around for 10-15 minutes because I couldn't figure out how to get the key to the lich building.

Some specific things I was confused by: - I wasn't sure what the physical/mind/skill numbers meant. - I had some trouble figuring out how to use the cards. Eventually I realized that when I dragged them I could put them in the "Card Area", but even then it felt like sometimes the cards would not be allowed to go in the area after trying to drag them in multiple times, and I wasn't sure why. Also, I wasn't sure when/how many times I could press the checkmark on the Card Area. - I got confused by the cards that mentioned "+2 to trail dice". Eventually I got put on trial and it made a little more sense, but it didn't help that it was typoed as "trail" which made me think it was the movement dice. There were also some other typos which were less confusing but still a little jarring, like "role" instead of "roll" or "cheif peasent" instead of "chief peasant". - I wasn't really sure what was happening on the crafting/desert/forest squares. Additionally, it would have been nice to indicate which squares were which type on the map so you didn't have to click on all of them. - Finally, I had no clue how to get the key, which made it impossible to get to the lich.

I also felt that I could just gain life by wandering around the town, so I wasn't ever in danger of dying.

That said, I was very impressed by things like the warning for if you click on the dice without moving: more things like that would be a good idea. Just in general, it would be nice if you had a more thorough explanation of the rules either in-game or in the description.

Overall, I still had a good amount of fun just moving around, seeing what the cards did, and getting put on trial. I think this idea has a lot of potential, and could make for something really engaging with some more rules explanations and maybe some balance tweaks. Nice job!

Mutant Alien Zombie Hunter by coffeecup.winner 2019-05-08T05:01:44Z

I played through this game twice: the first time I got the boss down to 25% health before losing, and then I bought the increased movement speed and double blade upgrades and won the second time fairly easily. (by far the most difficult enemies to deal with were the laser shooting ships because they moved away from you, so increased movement speed helped a lot with that)

Overall, I thought the gameplay was quite fun! It got pretty hectic with all the enemies running around and it was a fun challenge dealing with them without taking too much damage, and I also appreciated the boss fight. The upgrades are neat, though it currently seems a little unbalanced in that 3 health is a very small amount so I didn't really consider that a drawback. With some balance/number adjustments though I could easily see myself having to make a bunch of interesting tradeoffs with my upgrades. I'm also imagining that if you made this into a bigger game with "levels" and upgrades between levels, that would have the potential to be really cool.

Some minor polish comments: - I would have liked a more noticeable sound effect when you successfully hit an enemy. This was a little annoying on the boss because I wasn't sure whether I was doing damage with any individual swing, so I wasn't sure how close I needed to stand (same thing with the enemies that needed 2 hits to kill). - Speaking of sound effects, I felt a little overwhelmed by the "enemy death" sound effect because it's a long groaning sound and plays constantly. Although to be honest, I'm not sure if this was a bad thing. :P - The upgrade tree was a little confusing, in that I didn't realize that buying one of the two upgrades would cause the other one to be inaccessible. This didn't matter too much because I only really wanted (and needed) the increased movement speed.

These are all minor issues though, overall I thought the game was pretty well-designed and enjoyed playing it, so nice job!

Shadow Seekers by Caveman54 2019-05-08T05:33:07Z

I wandered around the dungeon, killed the enemies I saw, and picked up two chests, but was stuck there and couldn't see how to proceed from there. I saw that there were some areas that seemed inaccessible, so maybe I got unlucky with the procedural generation and it gave me a dungeon that wasn't connected?

There was an impressive amount of content in this game and I also enjoyed the artwork and animations! Probably my biggest immediate suggestion would be to add sound effects, as they are very easy to make with something like bfxr and improve the "game feel" by a lot.

I also agree with many of the things other people have already said (movement is slow, not sure what the number in the upper-right corner meant). A couple additional notes: - I liked the voice acting, but it would also have been nice to specify the controls and prices somewhere since there is a lot to listen to and it's easy to miss a line or two of dialogue. - I was able to shoot bullets through walls, which made it pretty easy to kill enemies without getting hurt.

Overall, I think this was a very ambitious idea (procedurally-generated games are really difficult to balance and make fun in one weekend) and while it had some issues, I am impressed with how much you put in the game. Keep it up!

README.btc by Vaclav Kucera 2019-05-15T06:11:19Z

This was really cool! I really appreciated the narrative behind the game and looked forward to reading the README each day. I'll admit the story was kind of simplistic, but it was still effective at putting me in the world of the game, especially for the time constraints of LD. It's kind of funny because one idea our group came up in brainstorming with was "Papers Please except you work at a bank", and this was kinda similar to that idea but executed on it very well.

The visual design and polish (menus, desktop screen) was great and worked well with the narrative.

The puzzles themselves were pretty fun. Like some others said above, I didn't realize until later that you could click on the lasers to rotate them, and I was also a little confused by the squares that cause other squares to become blockers, but overall I was able to figure out the mechanics by clicking around. The "teleporter" blocks were also a little strange because one was input-only and one was output-only, but there wasn't any visual distinction between the two, as far as I could tell. There was one level where I managed to highlight all white and blue squares, so I wasn't sure whether to accept. Finally, I thought some levels were surprisingly easy for their place in the game (there was one later on in the game that looked really complicated but almost all the white squares were already covered and you only needed to rotate one laser to hit the last one). Overall, though, the puzzle mechanics were neat and there were definitely some very interesting/fun ones.

A couple of very minor issues: - I accidentally closed the game at some point when trying to see what all the icons did. An "Are you sure?" confirmation would be nice. - I would have liked a summary of how I did each day. I had no clue how many I got right, and also didn't understand where exactly my money was coming from, so getting more of that would have helped with planning what to buy. - As some others said, the news got very noisy sometimes with a lot of the same things copy-pasted.

These things did not take away much from the game though, and overall, I thought this was great and enjoyed both the narrative and puzzling aspects. Nice job!

README.btc by Vaclav Kucera 2019-05-16T09:23:21Z

@alexfsmirnov I played through the levels again but couldn't manage to find it; my best guess is that I just missed a blue or white square somewhere when I made that statement, so sorry about that! Going through the levels again did give me a greater appreciation of the puzzle design, though. :P

I can see the arrows now, but even knowing they exist I still find them pretty hard to make out - I'd recommend making them a different color or something similarly distinctive.

Patchwork by Herman Chau 2021-04-27T06:58:36Z

Wow, that was a great experience. I am super impressed by all the different art styles (and just how much art there is...), and how all the puzzles and settings intertwined with each other. And everything was just so polished, too.

Great job!!

Diacombs by aeveis 2021-04-30T05:04:37Z

This was a really cool twist on the sokoban genre! I think my favorite challenge was the part where you had to make 4 stationary diacombs in the narrow hallway (of width 2) - maneuvering the pieces around to avoid getting stuck was a lot of fun to think about. The final challenge with the "angry" diacombs was also pretty creative.

I didn't read carefully at first and lost a couple minutes of progress because I thought R would restart a screen instead of the whole game. I see you did that because it made for the neat aha moment of (ROT13'd for spoilers) oevatvat va qvngbzf sebz bgure fperraf, so I think it was worth it. However, it'd have been nice to be able to press Z to undo a restart, since it was a little stressful knowing I could restart the whole game with a single button press.

Also, like @recher above I was confused by the outline reflections at first, but the gameplay is pretty intuitive so it wasn't for too long.

The game did end sorta abruptly right after you introduced a new mechanic (the bell), but I understand that there's only so much you can do in 48 hours - I'd be interested to see what other sorts of levels could be made!

Nice job overall, and thanks for the puzzles!

Don't Splat The Bat! by RubixNoob13 2021-04-30T05:41:12Z

This was a nice arcade-style game! My record is 31136m.

I especially appreciated the polish put into the various parts of the game - the sound effects and visuals made it very clear what was going on, and the UI was clear and looks nice.

Echolocation is a cool mechanic, but I wasn't really sure what the purpose was here since you could still see the rocks anyways. Similarly, I wasn't sure of the purpose of acceleration/slowing down - it seems like there's no downside to just slowing down the whole time. Though there are definitely some small tweaks you could make to use both of these mechanics more meaningfully (e.g. echolocation reveals positions of health bonuses or powerups that are otherwise invisible, or you have some energy meter that depletes when you slow down and recharges when you're at normal speed).

I do kinda wish there was just a little more variety (e.g. different kinds of obstacles or powerups of some sort), but even what you have was still pretty fun. With some small changes I can definitely see this being a fun, addictive phone game. Nice work!

Ixcar'th by Zliebowitz 2021-04-30T04:32:23Z

This was pretty fun! I thought the graphics were effective at conveying going deeper, and the animations were really polished (e.g. the runcycle and attack). The soundtrack was also a total banger and I'm impressed by the sheer amount of music.

It did feel a little weird that there was so much running around in empty space before getting to the "boss" of each level - I get that you wanted to make the player keep going "deeper and deeper", but I'll admit it got a little boring by the end, since there was no variation to the "find the cube and destroy it" loop. The bosses on the other hand were fun and I appreciated the ramp up in difficulty - it felt like I was getting better with each further attempt, which is always a great feeling.

Good job overall!