FoonLudum Dare ExplorerUsers → Recher

Recher

Games

YearLDThemeGameDivisionRankOvFuInThGrHuMo
202456Tiny CreaturesTiny Skweek plays Breakoutcompo2553.103.083.422.412.752.472.70
202455SummoningKoballd Crawlercompo3.874.123.753.123.123.253.62
202354Limited SpaceUnlimited spacecompo3292.892.643.282.522.833.233.02
202250Delay the inevitableCat Fragmentatorcompo4993.073.113.923.832.533.442.71
202149UnstableUnstable Isotopescompo4003.203.223.203.772.291.552.21
202148Deeper and deeperSnake Matchcompo7233.042.793.223.432.502.252.15
202047Stuck in a loopLoops in poolcompo5133.003.033.672.922.431.942.44

Performance over time

overall score (left axis) percentile (right axis)

Scatterplots

Fun vs Overall

Innovation vs Overall

Theme vs Overall

Graphics vs Overall

Humor vs Overall

Mood vs Overall

Comments by Recher

LD47 — Stuck in a loop

Time Surge 2: Clean Up Time by HitchH1k3r 2020-10-10T14:35:04Z

Nice idea, though you are not the only one to have it for that theme.

I failed a great number of times, but the game gave me the incentive to not give up and make it to the end. It's always satisfying to see one more green door lowered when you are taken back at the start, and one more, and so on.

It took a little time for me to understand how to use the "Mop", but it worked.

Shaders are fun, but it does not help to understand the specificities of objects. You have used the same rainbow-funny shading for all the time-related elements of the game, though these elements all behave differently :

- the Chronotoxin, wich makes you loop back in time, - the Chrono Core fluid, which prevents objects to go back in time, - The Chrono Core repair, which blocks the Chronotoxin propagation.

And the fact that we see these three game elements all together, at the very beginning of the game, does not help to understand. I do not know what better visual solution you could have used, but I am sure there may be one.

Music seems to strangely distort itself some times. Is it made on purpose to represent time distortion, or is it a problem performance related to WebGL ? Sometimes the game lags a little, but that may be my computer.

Just for fun, I put some Chrono Core fluid on a Chrono Core repair unit, and when the game looped back, the repair unit was not here ! The Chronotoxin propagates nearer to me, and I could have been stuck. Hopefully, I had just the time to remove the fluid. Is that a bug ?

Anyway, the game is great, and it is the entry on which I spent the longest time, so far.

Dante Slumbers by Jimbly 2020-10-09T16:57:13Z

Lovely story and original mechanics.

As others said : it is a good idea that rocks only lower your ranking, and does not make you lose so you have to restart the level. Because the ship control is quite difficult.

Would have been even more fun if you could go upper, to catch some ring high on the sky. And maybe even in spaaaace. You have to avoid big planets and asteroids.

At It Again by johnbrynte 2020-10-06T21:01:22Z

+1 to the fact that the ability to kill lizard is not obvious. +1 to diagonal access to the ship, which is not obvious either.

Nice idea. It reminds me of Minit, and the game concept of "collaborate by yourself".

The floating visual effect on the wall is weird. I don't think we need that.

At which moment can I become my own grandfather ?

Looping for lööps by Steffo 2020-10-18T22:26:44Z

Very cool music. The best I've heard in Ludum Dare Entries so far.

It's a fun idea to control a cat and the factory buttons at the same time.

I managed to go quite far, but I had not the incentive to retry more times, because of the lack of checkpoints. It's a little frustrating to have to restart from the beginning.

LoopFrog: An Amphibian Odyssey by hgcummings 2020-10-26T23:00:40Z

Nice rework of a classical game. Same as @macmist : I tried to escape by the road and died. Then I realized it is more logical to escape to the grass.

Angriff by Literally Void 2020-10-05T16:49:13Z

Nice game and very fun idea. It's a great pleasure to fire continuously at enemies.

But we do not always understand why we die (my own grenade bouncing ? The explosion of an enemy ?)

I do not know if it is possible with the game engine you used, but the arrow keys makes the total web page scroll up and down. This is totally unpractical. Use the javascript function `event.preventDefault();` !

WASD keys has not this problem, but I don'use them because my keyboard is not QWERTY and it always messes up this crappy WASD.

An interesting improvement would be a smarter pathfinding for the enemies.

EmojAvoid by kevinworkman 2020-10-04T22:48:57Z

Really simple, really short. But I like the idea of using emojis. And you grouped them by theme, so that's fun.

"level design" could have been better, though. With more difficult moments at the end.

I would have thrown some stars and ratings to you if I knew where the button is ! I am not very accustomed to Ludum Dare interface and menus.

Looper by shashwat 2020-10-07T10:28:56Z

I saw some other games using the same idea. But there is a twist I did not see anywhere else : the "semi-oriented" mirrors that sends the ball on an angle between a diagonal and a straight line.

And the idea to make a loop is also quite original.

The level design is excellent. Usually, in that sort of games, you just follow a path by rotating mirrors, you get wrong one or two times, but you finish the level without really thinking about it. Here, some levels were really interesting, and I needed the solution for two of them.

Nice graphics, but annoying and repetitive music. I know that sound is important in game, but I prefer no sound than a 5-seconds music loop (ha ha ! "loop").

The ball movements make some glitches when bouncing on mirrors. Not a real problem for playing, but it makes the game less "pretty" and less "fluid".

Pip's Journey by JemSmith 2020-10-07T09:43:22Z

The best LD47 game I've played so far, even if it's not really related to the theme.

The pixel art graphics are nice.

I absolutely love the universe, the idea to make chess pieces alive, and the fact they team up together.

(Spoilers below, don't read below if you want to discover the game by yourself).

The "neutral village" is very interesting. They choosed to not participate in the fights, but they are still annoyed by the white pieces. Their own convictions tell them not to retaliate, but they wonder about that choice. A philosophical approach of non-violence.

The dialogue of the neutral pawn lumberjack is the same before and after he gives you the axe. That's a little too bad. He could have said something like "thank you for having chased the white pawns".

The violet ground at the end looks like you did not have time to draw something better. Am I right ?

I finished the game without killing the king (he was asking for mercy !!). I moved my pawn upwards and changed it in a queen. Was that supposed to happen like that ?

Maybe you should try this game on Kongregate : https://www.kongregate.com/games/FractalSunrise/knight-errant?haref=HP_FRB_knight-errant . It's the main idea, with less story and less graphics, but the enemy pieces can move.

Thank you once again.

Anne's Topological Adventure by schsam 2020-10-05T22:49:31Z

Nice ideas. It gave me the incentive to search "Klein bottle" in Wikipedia.

On the last level, I saw the bed. But I also saw a hole, and I thought it would lead to some secret bonus. Well, it just makes you start over at the level 3. I suppose that's the joke about "stuck in a loop".

My kid liked the game too, and terminated some levels.

Loop Something Something by mbrezu 2020-10-10T20:37:38Z

The sound and graphics fit perfectly for this kind of game. +1 to all the people who were confused by the block who seems to be placed "behind" the crosshair.

The main idea is great. But it lacks all the "side-things" you could expect in this kind of game : achievements, statistics, quests, more bonus, more special tiles, tweaked game modes, ... Without any of these, your game is very interesting, but during a limited time only.

Temporal Objects by LemonLimeLife 2020-10-12T20:07:58Z

That's quite stressfull to move along the moving platform while looking at the fireball to prevent it to make a loop while thinking about what to do next while not looking at the other fireball otherwise it won't advance and you will bump in it.

I made to level 3, but not further.

But I like the atmosphere, graphics and music.

Detachment Undone by Gossian 2020-10-10T20:55:09Z

I always have the feeling I click exactly on a spiral, but very often it is not catched.

Same thing when I catched one and I try to put it on another spiral. I always have the feeling I put it on the right place, and very often they do not merge.

Very frustrating.

Beautiful graphics, but that's the only interest of this game. Sorry.

Guntasy by bigwhiteshogun 2020-10-12T13:15:33Z

A little too hard for me. And the fact that you start all over when you die (no card kept, no weapon, all the robots come back) made me try only twice.

+1 to don-tnowe who told that aiming is hard because of the smooth camera.

Overall, a nice platformer/shoot game. The hard passages where you have to jump+dash are fun. But then, you fall in a hole that brings you back to a place you were before and you have to redo a part of your way.

+1000 to you, who correctly handled the key mapping. I do not have a qwerty keyboard, and every time I see that controls are "WASD" I curse the entire world. In you game, the direction keys are still "WASD" even if the letters "WASD" are not on the usual places.

Nice graphics too.

Infinity - 1 by Potato Imaginator 2020-10-05T13:31:38Z

The game logic and the levels would be exactly the same if you displayed the game map only once, with the trick that when you go completely to the left you are teleported to the right, and same for up/down.

Anyway, the idea to repeat the displaying is fun.

I would have liked a "restart level" button. Just to avoid restarting the whole game when you get stuck, and to have the feeling of success to green-light all the levels at the same time.

More levels, and more difficult, would have been greatly appreciated.

Age of Amperes by JHax 2020-10-06T21:22:08Z

Nice idea, but it seems the level design does not exploit all its potential.

All the levels are quite easy. So I went directly to level 15, I beat it by using only half of the arrows, and the electrons used half of the paths.

The game displays in a window too high. Despite my (quite) big screen, I had to put the navigator in full-screen to seel the whole height.

bloTT by MiniBetrayal 2020-10-09T15:52:57Z

I understood that the level changes a little at some times, but I totally did not understand what changes and when.

Anyway, I moved randomly here and there, and eventually managed to get to the bomb.

Weird game. I think I missed the point. But that was a fun moment.

And I like the fact that you win by exploding yourself on a bomb. Totally unjustified, so it's fun.

Loops in pool by Recher 2020-10-05T07:52:53Z

Today I will make a little video on twitch or youtube, to explain how it works.

Just to help :

- make a vine loop near the fountain (but not connected to it), - check that the mud is removed inside this loop : the ground inside should become gray. - use the button "2" (special power) on the tiles between the fountain and your loop, to build a tiny loop that will connect the fountain and your first loop. - the water should flow. - continue like this.

You can not make loop by using the border of the map.

Loops in pool by Recher 2020-10-05T14:42:44Z

Thank you to all for your feedbacks.

@evogengames : you are right concerning the need of point and click controls. The problem is that it is not implemented in the Squarity engine for the moment. I will add it as soon a possible, hope I can do it in a few weeks.

Loops in pool by Recher 2020-10-05T22:32:01Z

As promised, I added a youtube video to explain the game mechanics. Excuse my horrible french accent. You are allowed to mute the video sound.

Loops in pool by Recher 2020-10-06T19:07:55Z

@shp : Yes, I wanted to do a true tutorial, where you would be guided in doing your first loops and you would understand when to use the special power of adding vine. But as you may have guessed : lack of time.

Having no tile borders was made on purpose, so that you have to visualize tiles by yourself. Now, I realize it was maybe too much.

If I ever continue this game, I would split it in many levels, and the first ones would have tile borders more marked.

Loops in pool by Recher 2020-10-07T09:52:14Z

@paer-strandberg : the preview would be a good idea. I will think about it.

When you lose, there is a little message on the log text, on the down left of the screen. It tells that you do not have enough mana to exchange tiles, and that you have lost. But you are right on the fact that the message is not very visible, and there is no way to replay again, except reloading the web page :-) .

@kevinworkman : you are right. We need some tutorial and a better learning curve. Maybe, for the first levels : a smaller map, no diagonal vines, add some pre-built loops, add some nearly-built big loops, ...

Loops in pool by Recher 2020-10-09T15:58:03Z

@jimbly : the final score is simply the Pool mana you have when you win.

As a reminder : - Exchanging tiles : -1 mana - Spinning tile on water : -4 mana - Adding a green line : -10 mana - propagating a little part of water : +1 mana

@naali : contrast is a good idea. I did not have time to draw some decent and contrasted vines. So they are just green lines.

Loops in pool by Recher 2020-10-12T13:23:26Z

@zacharieg : they create grey background to show it's a closed loop, and that the last thing you have to do is bring water next to it.

Also, you can not exchange a tile if it is a frontier between a closed loop and the mud. So, I had to clearly show all the closed loops, to help people undertand why they can not exchange some of the tiles.

@someone : you are right on the lack of mana display (though the fountain becomes darker when you begin to be short on mana), a clearer display of the grid, and the ability to select a tile with a click. I will improve Squarity (my game engine) so that all these things are possible.

There is no "official" restart button, but technically, if you click on the bottom right button, named "envoyez le code", it reloads all the game code and makes you restart.

Loops in pool by Recher 2020-10-18T21:54:13Z

Congratulations to @steffo and @kack3y for finishing my game.

Sorry about the french buttons. I thought it was not really a problem, because these buttons are about Squarity (my game engine) and not about the game itself.

You do not have to use any of these french button to play. But I agree it may look confusing.

English version (and english documentation) should come quite soon.

Loops in pool by Recher 2020-10-26T22:52:19Z

Thank you for you feedbacks.

I updated the game engine, to make python error messages visible when the game code is crappy.

It does not change anything to this game. But if it doesn't seem to work, try to do Ctrl-F5.

One last day before the results !!

Level2 by zacharieg 2020-10-18T22:15:14Z

Nice music. Too bad you did not authorize to rate it. Music is so rare in Ludum Dare entries !

The game is a good idea. But a little too hard for me. Actually, I did not even manage to get the first power up. And the fact that you have to rewalk all the path to try once again did not help.

Trials of the Twisted Timber Land by Enad96 2020-10-19T21:27:53Z

I liked the sound effects very much !

The battles are unclear, you do not see your life points, nor the enemies life points, and you do not realize when you hit and when you are hit.

The game has a little "Legend of Zelda" feeling.

Stuck In A Deck(Web Available) by dadiaogames 2020-10-04T23:03:47Z

I liked the ludum dare simulator.

But I did not understand how to play the first game. I clicked all the buttons, all the cards, nothing significant happened, except for the "shop/deck" switching.

Stuck In A Deck(Web Available) by dadiaogames 2020-10-05T06:37:32Z

Looks like I played an unfinished version. It works better now.

I agree with Phlip45 : a simple event log would help greatly. And I am still not sure there aren't any bug left. I got the cards "books" (pay 3 power to earn 2 search). I tried to use it : my power did not decrease and my search did not increase, whereas I had enough for paying.

Shoobeat - Control a spaceship using a programmable loop of actions by MTabasco 2020-10-19T20:54:08Z

I like these kind of "programmation" games. That would have been even more fun with more instructions : "loop-while", variables, "if-then", etc.

I confirm the bug concerning the buttons and quantity of authorized symbols. It totally confused me because I saw only the quantity of shields, but after some retries I could build a suitable program.

I am not sure, but there may be another bug. The ship does not move exactly the same distance each time the program is on an arrow. After some loops, there was a little offset to the left, and I missed an enemy ship which I hit the previous times.

Really beautiful and "ambiant" graphics. And nice music too.

Loop Deleter by Zachary Barbanell 2020-10-05T11:42:46Z

Simple rules, combined to a masterpiece of level design. The rule "no move when many moves are possible" looks weird, but is well exploited. And I love PuzzleScript.

Really cool. Thank you.

Donut Island by odedro987 2020-10-06T10:26:48Z

Hard but fun.

That would be easier (and maybe more interesting) if you could push corpses by yourself, rather than having to fire on them.

Then, you could walk on a corpse and push it in the middle hole, while firing at the opposite side, on an enemy that stands on the border.

Also, the shotgun is pretty useless and it made me lost. All the enemies have low life points, so little guns which fire fast are more efficient than big gun which fire slow. I would prefer a laser or a minigun, if you have some.

Nice graphics and music.

VHS Loop by Sayuri 2020-10-19T22:00:55Z

The main idea of resetting the level is funny (though already used in other games of this edition). The level design is very good. You succeeded in making interesting levels with quite simple game rules. That's one of the hardest thing to do when designing this sort of puzzle game.

The controls are not very well managed. You keep a key pressed, and it acts a first time, then there is a pause, then it acts many times. It's like you type text. But controlling a character in a video game is not supposed to be like text.

The purple square are not explicit enough. You do not know exactly when they start to become blocks. Is it just based on a number of turns, or is it based on your position which triggers their transformation ?

Dwarven Delve by fronwewq 2020-10-21T20:38:17Z

When you make a match, the enemies & diamond replacements is not clear. You should do it in two steps. First, remove the current enemies/diamonds and display empty tiles, then replace and display the new enemies & diamonds.

As many others said : I can not tell when you can push and when you can't. The game description only says : "F to push, when possible". So, there may be a reason why I can not push, but I don't see which.

I thought you were obliged to do a match on each push. But that's not it. You can push without match.

Overall idea is nice.

LD48 — Deeper and deeper

Watery Crave by Zathnic 2021-05-13T12:56:55Z

The difficulty is well-balanced. The people who manage to make it to the end really deserves it and I suppose it grant them a really great feeling of satisfaction. It was too hard for me, I stopped at the last checkpoint. Many thanks to @ausstein who shared the playthrough, so that I can realize I was not so far from the end.

Air control is a little frustrating, but it's a good idea. It gives you a continuous alternation between the stress feeling while in the air, and security feeling while in the water. Exactly as a fish would have (I suppose so).

It is also a good idea to have put hurting spikes in the water after some checkpoint. It modifies the gameplay you initially established. At start, you alternate between stress-air and calm-water, then you alternate between stress-air and not-so-calm-water. A nice evolution.

I loved the sound when the fish comes back to water after a long time. She takes a deep "breathe". Very funny for a fish.

Nice graphics, but as others said, the difference between spikes and safe blocks should be more marked. Also, I find the dark shader a little too dark.

The Greed of the Dwarves by CocaPasteque 2021-04-28T18:01:14Z

The most important thing to do with a clicker game is to correctly balance all the stats and the options. The main fun in this type of game is to try to min-max your actions to increase stats faster. Sorry, but your game fails at this, because we just have to buy some forges and click a dozen times on the mine to get to the next level.

Anyway, the music is cool, graphisms are great, and the way our final score is announced at the ending is very humorous.

I tried to find the secret ending by rummaging in the source code. I found some achievement managing (which does not seem to appear in the game) and some graphical assets of unused levels, but nothing more. It may be really secret.

@ all_the_people_who_had_difficulties_to_place_structure : you just have to click on the lighter green squares.

Jet Racing 4 by Reactor-Scram 2021-05-03T21:40:43Z

It needs one little info in the introduction, to tell that Ctrl is the key for handbrake, that lets you turn faster. I am not accustomed to driving game and did not realize it immediatly.

The activation zone of the checkpoints could be a little bigger. I sometimes pass near a checkpoint without activating it, while I still have the impression I stayed on the road.

I would have loved to destroy something when bumping in the bushes (either my car, or the bushes itself). But we just pass through. Too bad.

I made a little track but did not find how to play with it.

Space Trench Miner by notime4games 2021-05-13T23:22:00Z

Nice mining game, with all the mechanics you would expect from the genre.

The cost of the first upgrades and the time required to mine seems well balanced for me, even at the start.

I would have loved more content : more type of upgrades, more block types you could encounter when you go deeper, a final objective, ... But for a compo, it is already great.

Graphics are nice and reminded me of Starbound.

There is a bug with the grappling hook. You can sometimes encounter it while you are digging. And it is especially annoying because if you touch it, it cancels your run.

I got also a weird bug when upgrading, but I can not completely explain it, so it may not be reproduced : I had 3117 credits. I bought my last upgrade. But the money showed was still 3117. Then I came back to the main game menu, and the credits showed 617.

When the robot has only one block under and, and when it is not correctly placed, it does not dig the block. It's a little annoying when you have bought many upgrades and you just want to drill faster and faster.

The launching animation is a little confusing. I thought I could click somewhere to choose my destination, or I had to click at the right time to correctly land on the planet. But it is just a non-interactive animation.

Diacombs by aeveis 2021-04-26T22:23:32Z

I was hooked and couldn't stopped until I won.

graphisms are very "moodesque", but I got a little confused because sometimes they flip automatically horizontally to fit their match. I thought at first that there was a difference between an object flipped and a not-flipped one.

Music is soft and fits well with the game, but it ends up being annoying.

The enigma on the fourth screen, with all the simple diacombs is very well-balanced. It looks scary and full of combinations. Then you understand little by little how it is structured.

Every time I changed screen I thought there would be a way of cheating, by bringing diacombs to the new screen. But every time, it revealed impossible, or just useless.

Let's call this puzzle type "soko-merge" !

Chess Hellevator by BoxedMeatRevolution 2021-05-01T13:56:56Z

It is not the first time that a game is inspired by chess pieces, but this time it is really well done.

The elevator man and all the rest of the atmosphere is really "horrifun".

I liked the last level (even if it is easy), because it pushes the game logic you previously stated to the limits.

The jokes are ... joky : Hell-pawns / hellspawn, Hell-evator. Ha ha ha.

I was a little confused by this phrase in the explanations : "Bonus moves are very important for clearing later levels, so use them wisely.​"

I thought that "bonus moves" was a sort of bonus that I could accumulate ot use it later. So I spent a part of my first try to search in the interface a indicator of accumulated bonus moves, without realizing that it was an "extra turn" that is used immediatly.

Overall : a great game.

Graverobber by Daniel Alhadeff 2021-05-01T14:41:46Z

Nice graphics and "dark/fluorescent" theme.

Combats seem difficult, because your attack makes you rush, but on a too long distance in my opinion. I was always afraid of ending behind the monsters after a rush, so continuously rushing-backing-rushing-backing etc.

I too noticed the bug found by @chrisap , but it is not too annoying.

It was a great moment of fun, but I did not see any more points in the game after digging and killing skeletons. So, I may not have reached the end of it.

The score should not be named as dollars. I thought I could spend them on a shop or whatever, but it looks like there is nothing of that.

Conventionnally, in video games :

- money (dollars or other) is expected to have an interest in the game, to spend them somewhere - XP is expected to have an interest too, to gain levels and increase any stats - score/points is not expected to have an interest, it is just to compare you with the other players.

Elevator Ninja by Loig 2021-04-27T21:54:49Z

Sound effects are great, and the stupid and absurd death of the two friends at the beginning is also very fun.

The rocks "48" is also weird and fun, and made me die the first time because I thought it was a bonus.

I did not managed to reach the end, partly because of lazyness to restart at the beginning, partly because I fell on the left side at the beginning of the spike part, and the good path was on the right side. I imagined I would have to learn the complete good path by trial and error, and was not motivated enough to do it.

I did not understand immediatly what was the big brown shape above the hero on the second part, then I realized it was just his backpack.

"Ninja !!"

Snake Match by Recher 2021-04-26T09:21:13Z

Just to make things clear about the specificities of the Compos :

- The source code is embedded in the game (that's python !). When you click on the link to the game, there will be a text zone on the left side, containing the whole source code of the game. - The source code of the Squarity engine itself is available on github : https://github.com/darkrecher/squarity-code - There is also some documentation that may help you to create your own game in Squarity. But it's kinda messy for the moment, and all in French : https://github.com/darkrecher/squarity-doc

If you find the game too hard or too long, you could explore the source code a little, change the appropriate values, and click on the button "Exécutez" in the middle of the screen.

Have fun !

Snake Match by Recher 2021-04-26T19:17:20Z

Thank you all for your feedback.

As usual, I wanted to add many more features, other patterns of blocks, and other types of blocks (with 2 lifepoints, with gravity, ...) but had not time to do it.

@ty : well, that was just bad luck. Or maybe bad equilibration of the game. :-)

Snake Match by Recher 2021-04-28T06:09:04Z

@aeveis : when the snake is too short, you have to "rewind" it (push the button "1" many times). You come back home and you have to start a trip from the beginning, but you keep your XP and your level. So you can gain more XP and increase the snake length.

That's not clearly explained in the game that you can do several trip to level up, sorry. With some interface showing the XP and the curent length, it would have been better. Lack of time, as usual.

@boxedmeatrevolution : totally agree with you. The line limit for the scrolling should be upper. I realized it while testing, one hour before compo ends, and was too afraid to change anything in my code that would have created some bugs.

I guess this could be a skill the snake would earn when leveling up : "the snake ultra-vision", which would make the scrolling limit upper.

I will try to develop it further, by adding skills, power, achievements, interface, etc. I just don't know when.

Snake Match by Recher 2021-04-28T06:10:30Z

@daniel-alhadeff : Thank you ! The squarity engine is my big personal project. Don't hesitate to join and make your own game with it.

Snake Match by Recher 2021-05-13T10:10:25Z

Thank you for all your feedbacks.

@zathnic : I didn't know there was this previous theme. Maybe it will come up later, with another formulation. Like : "combine 2 incompabible genres, then add frogs and flying platforms.".

You are right about the incentive to do more matches. That's what I wanted to have with the XPs. Matching gives you way more XP than eating fruits, so you level up faster. But it doesn't work really well and you end up going deeper end deeper just by eating fruits and looking automatic random matches. I need to work on the game mechanics. Add some spells/powers to the snake, etc.

@kooky : Thank you. The undo key was really necessary for me, when I was testing the game. So, I just realized if it's useful for me, it may be for the others.

Dungeon : Developer's Away by efeckk2 2021-05-06T19:54:39Z

Nice game, I was expecting some tricks about the fact that the developer is away. Something like bugs made on purpose, that you would have to exploit to advance in the game. But it seems there is no such thing. I must admit I was a bit disappointed.

I liked the sprite to change room. It totally assumes that you didn't have time to draw a real door or teleporter.

Diggy Diggy Dwarf 2 : Deeper & Deeper by Rujum 2021-05-13T14:13:33Z

Beautiful graphics, but the game in itself is quite short and has few contents in the mechanics.

Some people said it lacks a tutorial. I do not completely agree. I would say it just needs a little more feedback on what is happening :

- a detail of the lost/gained energy and dirt you get at each turn, - little hearts above the dwarves to realize immediatly they have health, - icons telling you have unlocked the solid hull and the double dirt production, so that you do not wonder if it can be unlocked many times, - etc.

Also, written subtitles of the story elements you get when you go deeper would be appreciated. I am not a native English/American. It's sometimes a bit hard for me to understand spoken english, especially when the voice has music and drilling sound in the background.

There is a bug when you pick a dwarf, then click on "end turn" without placing it. It stays attached to your mouse cursor and it is difficult to put it back in a room. I managed to do it by clicking everywhere in a panicky way.

I got to -210 meters, then realized I will not have any more than digitized voice I am not sure to understand, so I stopped.

Nice game and very nice graphics, but I would have wanted more elements and more stats/resources to handle.

MagiCave by SrRinio 2021-05-07T21:30:44Z

Nice game, with great graphics and music.

There are many details that generates a lot of frustration, though :

- As said many times, the bonus hitboxes are too small. We are always in a urge due to the boss. That's part of the game, ok, but this urge does not give you the time to calculate precisely your moves and jumps to grap a one-voxel sided bonus.

- The boss has no animation when it is hit. We are always wondering if our fireball did something useful or missed.

- The delay between pushing the shot button and the fireball effectively appearing is too long. This is what gave impression to many players that we have no complete control on the hero. You can add long cooldown after a fire if the gameplay needs it, but not before. Unless for specifically heavy weapons like Doom's BFG 9000.

- The yellow tiny light that is following us everywhere is annoying, and is continuously confused as a yellow bonus.

One last thing, that concerns only a few people, but it includes me : please, please, please, when you use WASD as keys, (or just AD), connect your game events to the KEYCODES, not the LETTERS. The French (and other foreign) keyboards do not have these keys at the same place ! It completely messes up the controls.

into the past by ty_ 2021-04-29T23:13:30Z

The "recall" mechanic recalls me (ha ha ha) of this previous game, made by deepnight, who win regularly Ludum Dares : https://deepnight.net/games/memento-xii/ . Maybe you should try it. It's also about history, mood, atmosphere and loneliness.

I liked your game, we should have more like this. We do not know if it is biographic, autobiographic or completely invented, and that's also what is interesting with it. Some mysteries.

About more technical concerns : when the white shine-lines appears to show an interactive object, it is difficult to know exactly where to click to use it. I often try to click in the center of the lines and miss it.

Thank you for this game.

HELL deep is your love? by Villanelle 2021-05-06T22:32:03Z

This game is well polished. I love the sprites, the color choice and the music. I was quite bad at it and dit not make it to the end, but it was really fun anyway.

If you are petrified, you can remove it by doing left-right-etc. (I did not realize it immediatly, thank you for telling me during my live).

I loved the sprite of the hero when he crouches. It looks like he is grabbing a coin on the ground.

We need some weapon to kill all these furious beasts. Or maybe a jetpack...

Pimble! by PirateHearts 2021-05-03T21:24:35Z

Great and fun tweak of the classical breakouts. As other said, it would totally work on touch screen.

The actual balls are a bit difficult to grab with the mouse pointer. I would have loved to be able to get them easier, so that I could throw them at a higher speed, and see many balls bouncing everywhere in the game. It would have been a pure moment of joyful brick destruction.

Rewarding the player for breaking multiple bricks in one throw would also have improved the gameplay.

Thank you for this idea !

Falling Rock by David Horning 2021-04-27T16:46:09Z

Yes, it looks like evolving in a "work in progress" sign. Simple and fun.

I would have loved some air control, to add some variety. And it could still be a one-button. While on rocks, the button is used to set the jump power, like it is now. While in the air, the button is used to go down a little faster, as if the character was going down on the rope.

I would also have liked the display of my highest score. When I die, I have to very quickly look at my depth score, before it is replaced by the depth of the next game.

Watch Your Step by Kooky 2021-05-13T10:48:41Z

Very interesting concept, that could be related to "Heave Ho" on the Switch. I really like it when mechanics are very simple, and the quantity and arranging of simple elements provokes an "emergent behavior".

The rules about the leg are simple. As you said in one of your previous comment : the leg goes to the right, and bounces when hitting a platform.

But with enough legs, this simple rule really gives the impression that the creature is walking. Laying one leg after another, in a rolling movement.

I agree with previous comments saying that control is not easy and not immediatly understandable. But while I was typing this text, I looked back at the game. The creature has now about thirty legs. It advances alone. It learned from its previous failures. The numerous legs it decided to have, one after another, give it the capacity to pass obstacles, further and further.

My own personal and "deep" opinion about your game is that you should completely remove the controls by the player. A pure idle game. You watch the creature walk by itself. It does not need the player. It is alive. It realized by itself how to survive longer and longer in the hostile world where it has been placed.

I made a high score of 3037 when controlling it. I let the creature live by itself during about 20 minutes, and it made a high score of 3178. The creature is better than me, and is completely independant. It does not want to be controlled.

LD49 — Unstable

Doc. Noggin by Mr_Field 2021-10-06T21:51:15Z

The sprite choices are a little WTF. On one side, the teeth, syringe, pills and microbs suggest a medical world, which is consistent with the game title. (Maybe I am inside a body I have to heal ?)

But on the other side, there are fuel cans, moving fires, levers, blocks, and stars as background. It may be hard, but you should try to find "medical" equivalent to all these unrelated objects.

Level design looks sometimes strange. Some levels seems to be really big, but you only have to explore a little to find the exit. I do not know if it is made on purpose. It may be a good idea, because it suggests that you're in a world bigger than what you are able to realize, like a body if you are a micro-organism.

It needs a scenario, or at least some explanations. What is this strange grey-ball-character I have to get ? Why is the world "unstable" ? What a I supposed to do here ?

Even with these little drawbacks, I was hooked and could not stop until I won the game.

(Spoiler alert) : I really liked the mechanic of coming back accross all the previous level.

Music and "special effects" are great.

Thank you for this really cool game !

Akameis by BJakubowski 2021-10-05T17:06:07Z

Technically and visually, it is really beautiful. Voxels are cool, and I like the fact that you can see the previous level below. It makes the tower more realistic.

About the time management

However, the turn-based/real-time logic is hard to understand at first, and cancels the interest of many monsters.

I did not immediatly realize the voxel-thing on the top right is a sort of hourglass that indicates the time before the next automatic turn.

The green monsters do not move when you move in real-time (by using the space bar), so you can dodge all of them easily. But at the opposite, the arrows move at the same time of the hero, and also with the automatic turn. This combination is rather illogical. And you often have to wait automatic turns for long seconds, to dodge some arrows that passes by.

Either you use a complete turn-based logic, like the game D.R.O.D., or you use a complete real-time logic, where every elements move at its own rythm. But mixing both is weird and unpractical.

About the hammer

- I thought I could break scenery objects with the hammer, in the hope of hidden bonuses, but scenery are unbreakable. - If you push "Z" without any direction, you smash the ground under you, making you fall and die. - I tried to smash the ground under skeletons with the hammer, but each time I got shot at blank point, because of the weird turn-based/real-time logic, and the fact that there is no visual information indicating that a skeleton is about to shoot.

So IMO the hammer is useless.

About the rest.

You can't go back to the main menu when you click "how to play", and I had to reload the whole web page.

Arrows stays in place when you restart after dying.

3D is cool, but if you can not turn the camera, it is sometimes hard to see where objects are, or what is behind other objects. In an early level, I stupidly died because I did not realized a bomb has no floor under it.

Sorry for this "hard" review, but all these tiny buggy details makes your game quite painful to play, and gave me really little fun.

Aimless Wizard by pvp 2021-10-13T21:33:02Z

Nice idea and nice "aiming instability".

However, your game has a little default common to many games : there is no collision between monsters. As you turn around them, they all pack together in the same spot. Having lots of monsters is not much dangerous as having only a few. And when you hit the pack spot, it's an XP jackpot.

I would have implemented collision handling and lowered the monster generation rate. It would have increased the feeling of being overwhelmed by your enemies. Here, they just feel "immaterial" and not so harmful.

Some clear delimitations of the game area would have been appreciated. It's a little annoying to plan fleeing to the left and realizing you can't because you bumped into the invisible border of the world.

And maybe add more randomness to the target movement. They straightly move in the 4 directions or the diagonals. That would be funnier and "more instable" if they moved in any direction, while changing it progressively.

Anyway, I liked this moment of monster genocide and reached level 8 !

Volatile Defender by azagaya 2021-10-07T10:58:30Z

Simple but original concept.

I did not want to look at the tutorial at first, and did not realize you could look back whith the "space" key. It may be a good idea to tell this action in your game description.

I like the fact that robots destroy bonuses when they walk on it, it adds some strategy, with choices like : "I should keep this bonus on the ground for later, but I take the risk to have it eaten by a robot".

IMO, the hero is a little too slow to move from one tile to another, and the bonus lasts a little too short. It generates a little frustration because a big part of the bonus advantages are lost, as you fire in the void while moving in front of your next target.

Really great graphisms and music. The best I have seen for this Ludum Dare, so far.

Unstable Isotopes by Recher 2021-10-04T06:40:08Z

Thank you @untitled-studios !

Yes, it may need some more equilibratings between energy costs and energy gains. It may also need some special option to prevent you from spending all your energy when there is only two heavy isotopes left, far from each other, and you have to merge them.

I made a tiny update this morning, to add the game restart function when you have no more energy. You have to use the button "2".

Unstable Isotopes by Recher 2021-10-04T09:01:37Z

Thank you @fonkin . I will think about other ways to calculate energy cost/gains, and maybe some little bonus, like if you send a lot of neutrons to the same border, you may get specific things.

One last tiny edit, not in the game itself but on the page. I checked the "do not rate me in audio", because there is (still) no way to play sound with Squarity.

Unstable Isotopes by Recher 2021-10-05T17:15:33Z

GG @pvp .

Squarity is the game engine I have developped for one year. You code in python, you quickly draw some sprites, and it makes a 2D grid-based game that you can share and play directly in your web browser.

Evolutions and features come very slowly, but I am still on it.

Unstable Isotopes by Recher 2021-10-08T10:04:33Z

Thank you very much for all your feedbacks. Special thanks to @douwe-ravers concerning the appreciation of the game engine. I am coding Squarity, and I try to spread it by showing game examples.

@itzemii : If you want more energy, you can modify the source code in-place.

Go into the big text zone on the bottom left of the web page. Scroll down to skip the game description. You will see a line with the instruction `START_ENERGY = 20`. Put a greater number. Then, click on the button "Exécuter", on top of the page (French text, sorry). And that's it !

This is one of the strength of Squarity. You can directly tweak the game, or completely change the whole logic, right in your browser.

@malcolm : There is some kind of workaround for this.

Go back to the text zone containing the source code. Scroll down a little, and you will find the line `import random`. Add a new line under it, with the instruction `random.seed(42)`.

Click on the button "Exécuter". You will start a new game. When you finished it, click the button again. You will restart a game with the same level sequence.

To have other levels, just modify the "42" with whichever number you want.

Unstable Isotopes by Recher 2021-10-09T14:53:14Z

Thank you for this detailed feedback @polymathld , and thank you for complimenting my source code. I try my best to write beautiful python.

You are right, it would be cool to have pre-made levels, with a specific amount of energy at start, and with at least one specific solution. Not too much energy, otherwise there would be way too much possibilities, and the player may find a solution just with luck.

Sound effect is one of the feature I want to add in Squarity, I just don't know when. I need to think of a way to define the sounds. Pointing to .mp3 and .wav files would be the easiest solution to implement, but it would be hard for game programmers to use. Because not everybody knows how to produce sounds. I think I will search for ways to create and store simple 8-bit sounds. Some basic sound editors may exist somewhere. Or I can just end up with bare musical notes : one tone + one duration, and so on.

See you next time !

Unstable Isotopes by Recher 2021-10-13T15:49:45Z

Thank you for all your feedbacks.

@vidim888 : great thing to find a "motion twin historian" here. Not all of their flash games are dead, and some could be resurrected, but it may be a hard process. Motion Twin was also the initiators of the open-source language HaXe. But I guess many of the HaXe creators left Motion Twin, and the company does not contribute to open-source as much as before.

I followed them almost at their early beginnings : Natural Chimie, Hammerfest... I would so love to have access to "Jama Jama", a game on their now-dead platform Frutiparc. It was a nice puzzle game, with very clever and "atomic" elements. If I only had the description of these elements I would remake the game in Squarity.

@mordrick : don't hesitate to try Squarity, and to join our Discord (the link is in the page of the game). For the moment it's mostly French, but we welcome English speaking people, of course.

I now have 21 ratings, so it's ok for my game and I am really happy with it. I made to this in a shorter time than my previous ludum contributions. I will now try to play and rate the games of all the people who commented mine. Though I can not promise I will manage to make all of them.

Cheers !

Destructo by JPGFG 2021-10-10T10:58:47Z

Nice sounds, nice graphics and nice 3D-iso with "minecraftish" blocks.

The move works like a teleportation : you can go to a tile at a distance of two, even if there is a huge gap of void between you and the tile. It's a little too bad, and decreases the consistency and strategic interest of the game. A little pathfinding function would have solved this.

It looks like there is a delay between the money and XP you earn and the values displayed on the interface. It should be indicated immediatly after you killed a monster, and not at the end of a turn. I read the previous comments and it seems you have to pick up the gold dropped by a monster, which I did not realized. But it also seems that the last earnings of a level (when you reach the exit) are not counted. In short : the handling of XP and gold earned is either buggy or not easily understandable, and I totally get lost into it.

As said in other comments : the complete randomness of block destruction may cause levels that you can not finish. But this randomness is quite cool and is a great application of the theme. So I would just add the possibility to rebuild blocks (it may cost golds). This would solve the problem while keeping the game coolness.

And of course : more monsters, more weapons, more attack patterns (bow, fireball, cone of clod, bomb, ...), more terrain types, more unstabiliy events, more loot, etc. But you already know that.

Uns' Table by Cirdan 2021-10-04T21:39:15Z

I love the word game in the title.

It is sometimes hard to guess from the description which object must be brought to Uns. (I tested all the consumable objects for the "savourly ingredient"). And it's sometime a bit long to get the object you want.

Is the object you are holding changes the fights ? A sword increases the chance of not being hit, an armor absorbs some damage, ... That would be cool. Also, we do not know how the level of the character affects the fights.

Decommissioned by T90. 2021-10-10T16:17:35Z

Well... I'm not sure we could really call it a game. Or maybe I missed something.

It's a great story, there are many little details in the plot that let you imagine a lot of things, about the characters, the machines they are using, the environnment, the reasons for their actions, etc. The ending is also a great opening to whatever you could imagine.

I can't say it is not a game at all, because I operated the machine by myself and I took the place of one of hte character. But it is more of a mysterious story than a game.

Maybe with more content and more parts in the story, that would have really made a game.

I liked it anyway. Keep up on this path and try to make more of this on next Ludum !

The Madness of Larry Donovan by The Lame Brain 2021-10-20T15:47:07Z

It's a little hard, and relies very much on luck, depending on wether early or late you find the piece of picture.

I managed to take 4 of them, then horribly died from two pink demons or whatever.

I like all the mental-illness things. It's a good idea.

The texts said by the hero and the demons should be written on bubbles, above them. I could not read any of the demons sayings, because I was watching them to try to avoid them, and did not have even a microsecond to look at the lowest part of the screen where the text was.

It would have been good to explain more clearly how the paint cans work. I thought they were only one-shot, so did not want to use them until I realized they are "infinite paint cans", and you can use them to cycle through the quantities of color you put on yourself.

This painting idea is really strange, but I liked it. I also liked very much the monochromic designs, with color changing at each room. It reminds me of "Sortilège", an old game I played 25 years ago on my TO7-70 (a computer with cassettes). You can see screenshot of this game here : [http://dcmoto.free.fr/programmes/sortileges/](http://dcmoto.free.fr/programmes/sortileges/)

Overall, a nice and weird game. Thank you !

Orbital Cascade by PolymathLD 2021-10-08T10:00:35Z

Great game. A nice tribute to Asteroids, Lunar Lander and all of the kind.

Controls are hard, but that's totally assumed in this sort of game.

The GUI is quite messy. Writing "status" next to a bar graph does not help. The status of what ?

I took some time to realize the status is the health of the Earth. I suppose it decreases when a satellite escape from the screen and crashes on the Earth, and it regenerates with the time. But I'm not even sure it works like that. It seems to randomly increase and decrease.

Also, if it works like this, what about burning satellites which you can't destroy ? Do they make the status decrease ? If yes, it's rather unfair.

The spaceship health bar is shown on several little ship. It looks like you have several "discrete" lives. But in fact it is a continuous health bar splitted in 5 "mini-health bar". That's quite uncommon. And the visual difference between an empty mini-health bar and a full one is not strong enough. It's hard to quickly take account of your whole current health, whereas it's the most important thing in the GUI !

As some other people did, I played the whole game with the mouse button pressed, so this feature is useless. Do an automatic metal collect, or add the necessity to aim a satellite with your mouse.

I like the initial radio communication, to set a plot and to explain how to play. Just one thing : you choosed silver as the metal collected from satellites, to express it is valuable and to justify the fact that the player is paid for that. But then the player beams all this precious silver to the earth to have it destroyed in the atmosphere. What a spoil ! It would have been more consistent to tell that the player collects scraps, destroys them, and then the human on earth are so happy with it they instantly pay the player.

Apart from these little drawbacks, the graphics are really cool, the sound is good enough and it's really fun to play. It gives this incentive of "just one last play to see if I can get more upgrades".

Congrats !

Parcel Panic by PKZinpo 2021-10-16T18:43:35Z

The difficulty of the game, that many people felt, would not be a problem if it was brought gradually. It may be a good idea to use all the suggestions in previous comments to make the game easier, and removing as the player progresses.

- lower global speed (player movement and energy loss). - parcels and energy bar stays longer on the ground, then you make them stay shorter. - the parcel destination is directly marked on the map and does not go away. - then the parcel destination is indicated on the bottom, as it is now, but it does not go away. - then the parcel destination goes away. - then some parcels may be heavier and slows you down when you carry too much of them (instead of decreasing your energy faster, which you don't really realize while you play). - then, why not making it more difficult than it is now ? Remove the letters on the buildings ! After all, you know this place by heart now.

The possibility to cycle between the parcels you own may also be a good thing. So that you can optimize your deliveries. To keep track, in your own memories, of the parcels destination, they could look different. Like in the reality.

I really liked the small world where you are. The road to the left is here to show this world is inside a greater one, but you know nothing of it. It increases the microcosm effect. While playing, I felt like the local hero of the quarter, the person who everybody knows, and who is useful for everybody.

I really like the fact that you put different building types. A, B, C, I, J and K are clearly house of rich people, with fences to be protected from the others. D, E and F looks like middle-class houses. G and H are big buildings where all the poors pack themselves. Even in a small world like that you can make appear social differences, which is an interesting idea.

The post office may not be a good idea. It suggests that this small world has contacts with the outer world. I would have put a more local building : "the janitor desk" or something like that.

An idea comes to me while I'm writing this comment. You should have different types of parcels, and use them as collectibles in the game. You could have a menu where you see the list of all the collectibles you gained, and read their descriptions.

You could have parcel types that clearly shows that the expeditor and destinator hate each other, and other that shows they love each other, or many other feelings.

Here are some ideas :

- a letter with a heart drawn on it, - a present that looks really expensive, - a postcard that you can read, - a letter whose address is written like : "old dork Jack", - a parcel with white powder on it, - a beer pack, - a parcel that smells shit, - a dead animal, - a bullet, - ...

As you play a game, you could imagine and guess the life of all the people in the microcosm, as you learn which type of things they send to each other. How would you feel, as the local delivery hero, when you end up knowing everything of all you neighbors ?

When a game starts, you could randomly choose some specific situations, that the player would discover progressively : a rich house that sends parcels with white powder to all the middle-class and poor buildings, two middle-class neighbors that sends normal parcels at the beginning and then hate parcels (bullets, dead animals, ...), expensive presents sent from a poor building to a rich house without any returns, love between a rich and a poor, ...

Whoa, I realized I totally tripped on this game. That was cool. Thank you for your game. Do what you want with all these weird ideas.

The totally-safe-and-explosion-free Heist by Fonkin 2021-10-04T20:30:21Z

Nice game. You added some perspective feeling with the top half of the hero that can traverse walls, but it introduces a bug. The bullets starts inside the wall, and are instantly cancelled. You can not fire when you stand near a wall.

I liked the guards that spawns after you picked up the bionite. It adds a real importance to the fact that you get instakilled when you hold the bionite.

It needs an ending. Spoiler alert : nothing happens when you finish all the levels.

At the last level, there is a heart floating in space. Is it possible to take it, or is it just a decorative troll ?

Paper Route by OllieOA 2021-10-06T20:17:13Z

I encountered some bugs as other people said. But it was not too much annoying.

It is very frustrating to have McLudum giving you so many newspapers at start, and seeing nearly half of them immediatly lost, because the carriage can not hold them all.

I did not managed to get past level 2, but I'm not good at this sort of games.

There seems to be a story with your father, that's always good to add this in a game.

Nice game, even if I'm not skilled enough for it.

ecosystem except there is no equilibrium and everyone dies probably by parafactual 2021-10-09T14:34:49Z

I love the concept, and I also love all the clues revealing that you may have realized the game in a sort of urge :

- the main title - the url of the game : "i-cant-think-of-a-name" - the ludum description : "…actually that tagline doesn’t really make sense anymore." - the in-game description : "I didn't have time to write a good tutorial, but I do have examples"

This game is totally experimental and raw, which I love too.

In case you do not know it, you should visit the site codingame.com, where you will find plenty of bot-coding games, to compete against other people. And maybe you should also test the old text-mode video game ZZT, which has its own level editor and its own programming language.

`dup random` is scary. Don't do it.

Thank you, and keep up experimenting !

Unstable Core by Fluorescent 2021-10-10T15:25:18Z

Hard to understand what to do at first. I was concentrated on keeping the danger level under 3, so nothing was happening. You should have not called it "danger level", because intuitively, you try to have its value at the lowest possible. Maybe "core level" or "generator level" would have been better.

The text explains you have to get that level to at least three, but even with this info, my intuition was to keep it the low. Then I realized things were happening with a danger level 3.

- Generators seems useless : they kept green during my whole game after I put all of them to green. - Turrets seems useless :I charged ammo in it, to a total of 225, and it did not decreased. - I did not see any monster.

Either I was very good at playing your game, either some announced features are missing.

As previous comments told : the blueprint design is nice. But you should have used two different colors for the unpassable walls and the passable doors. One part of the ship is especially strange : at the north east of the medic bay, there are two adjacent corridors, thus an unpassable wall with walkable area at each side.

Also, if you choosed blueprint graphic style, why not push the idea to the max ? Why the turret, the core, the escape pod, and etc are "real drawings" ? Maybe you should have tried to draw them as blueprints. It may be hard to make a blueprint that would undoubtedly look as a core or as a turret, but hey! that was your initial graphic choice. Try to assume it.

Nice game overall , but it needs more GUI and visual feedback, instead of textual explanation about features that I did not see.

LD50 — Delay the inevitable

CABBAGE DEFENSE by frozenfire92 2022-04-08T12:20:03Z

Nice and beautiful game. Graphics and sounds are well-polished.

I agree with all the points said by @vitor-milioni : more crop spaces (we could have to buy them in the game), repairable and upgradable turrets, more crop types.

I did not understand the heal calculation. It occurs at each new day, but the quantity of HP healed is never the same. Is it just random ? It seems I heal more if I do not move during the night, but I am totally not sure of it. Some explanation on healing would have been appreciated.

Growing a special crop that would heal you when you use it would be really cool. So that you would have to do a choice between money and HP.

Complete randomness on the seeds you get when a crop has grown is not a good idea. I was frustrated not to be able to plant cabbage after my first harvest. Maybe a seed market, where you would exchange two wheat seed for one cabbage seed ?

I never saw the knights stealing my plants, I just read it in the comments. I suppose it could be a strategy to not harvest one plant and let a knight go away with it, in order to save some hero HP and turret HP. I did not took time to test it.

Thank you for this nice game !

Descending by pev 2022-04-12T16:21:34Z

It reminded me of the first Populous games. I loved removing the earth below the enemy people and watch them drown stupidly.

I'm not sure to understand why, but if you put soil on the borders of the game area, people will automatically walk too far and fall in the water. If there is no soil on the borders, people kindly turn back when they reach the borders. So, we just have to be careful enough to put lands everywhere, except on the two border columns.

As others said, we need a score. I would say that just telling how many times we managed to survive won't be a precise calculation. If you can last for one minute with only one people, you should score less than if you last one minute with two people. Maybe granting one point per second and per people alive would do a fair score calculation.

Just to be fun and cruel, I would have loved to see the drowned people floating on the water surface like dead fish, then slowly going to the depths of the water.

Nice game. Needs more mechanics to have the incentive to play and discover it for more than 10 minutes, but nice game anyway.

I love the sprites from Pixel Frog, thank you for having made me discover this artist.

Brickroll by adrianafitz 2022-04-09T14:29:52Z

Aaaand that's one more carpal tunnel to replace !

Anyway, the idea is great, the ball powerups are great too. I just wished there was other mechanics or strategy than frenetically clicking where the ball will land. Maybe some power-ups for yourself and not for the "enemy" : auto-build, stronger bricks, larger pad, ball power-ups dispelling, ...

Nice start, but too short. More please ! Achievements, quests, story, bonus, things to buy !

Sir Blocksalot by jhandsy 2022-04-10T22:05:32Z

Beautiful pixel art. This is what pushed me to test your game. The retro sound is nice too.

I can confirm there is a visual bug. hammer_visual_bug.png. When you die as you are holding a tetris piece, it is still displayed on the screen, but do not count as real blocks.

We really need an explicit feedback at the end of a game :

- show some score (how long have we played). - fix the bug and remove held blocks. - completely clear the boards. It's really weird that we keep rocks and bushes of our previous game. It would mean our high score of the current game depends on the previous ones.

Currently, we sometimes don't event realize we started a new game. The knight is put back in the middle of the board and the castle is healed, that's all. It's really too bad because it removes the incentive to play "just one more time to see if I will do better". I'm sure I would have naturally played about ten more games if there was a clear separation between each game.

It's hard to guess if the tetris piece we are holding can be put on the ground or not. And when not, it's hard to guess which part is blocking. Very often, I was clicking at random until I found a place to put my piece. Maybe the red squares that shows where your piece will be could change color to indicate if there is free room or not.

Anyway, nice game. Thank you !

Card O''Clock by Bastienre4 2022-04-12T21:35:57Z

The simplicity and depths of the mechanics reminded me of Arcomage. Your game is a sort of "one-player Arcomage against the time".

Like many other people, it gave me this feeling of "just one more game". It's simple and efficient.

I like the fact that at some moments, we have to think rapidly, and at other moments, there is nothing to do except waiting for a slot to become free. It provokes continuous switches between stress and idle, which are emotionnaly fun.

I may be wrong, but I had the impression the cards "bank -> timer" and "timer -> bank" do not work, except during tutorial. When I put one of these cards, I expected the bank value to change (increase or decrease), but it does not happen.

Don't know if you remember me, but I raided you on twitch while you were creating this game. :-) .

Well, let's go, "just one more game".

Get Out Me Dungeon! by BlooAlain 2022-04-15T21:47:19Z

Nice catch on the "Dungeon Keeper" theme.

Graphics are really cute.

When I want to move a room, the drag-drop does not immediatly work. I have to click a first time, then re-click to do the drag-drop. I don't know if it is made on purpose.

I would have loved to level up my creatures and my traps to a level higher than 3. That would give more choices : do I buy another room and another creature, or do I level up an existing one ?

The user interface is not always clear. The logo on top of the screen, showing the degrees of mastery of the heroes, are not very clear. We guess there is one logo per trap type, and that they are in the same order than the buy buttons, but they are really too small to be distinguishid. I was always looking at the order in the bottom to have the correspondance.

I'm still not sure of how to interpret the trap modifiers +2 / -2. Does "+2" means an advantage for the hero or for the dungeon master ? In short : should I put at the beginning the traps modified by a +2, or the traps modified by a -2 ?

I would love a second episode, with a 2D game mechanic. Dungeon would be a grid, with many treasures on a border. One or more hero would spawn from the other border, and they would each have a different behavior (a trap type they love/hate, a preferred direction, ...)

Thank you !

The Gardener by GullynGames 2022-04-15T13:14:35Z

Nice game in the genre "resource gathering and tower defense".

Shooting debt collector with vegetables because of mortgage, why nobody thought about that plot before ? It's fun and serious at the same time.

There are many types of terrain, enemies, resources and turrets. That's a fair quantity of game contents, which deserves more polished graphics. I guess you had no time to do more, but the plain squares representing grass, sand, water and rocks are really too bad.

There is a little annoying glitch : the tile just below a resource is empty, but is not passable. Sometimes I thought I could go between those two rocks, and not. I had to harvest them to pass through.

There is another glitch around the house. Some tiles looks empty, however we can't build or plant on it.

Unpassable zones are a good idea. You should add in the map some dense resource patches, to force the player to harvest them to pass throug. Also, you could circle an onion zone with dense resources. So that we would have more a feeling of accomplishment when we manage to reach these precious onions.

UI could be improved in some ways :

I was expecting a selected tile to be deselected when I reclick on it, but it does not work. The only way I found to have no tile selected is to click on a resource tile, then harvest. When I'm exploring or thinking about turret placement strategy, I feel better when no tile is selected (call me weird if you want).

As @Itskdog said : only one click on a resource should be required to harvest it.

Executing a new harvest should be blocked while a harvesting is currently being done. When I'm harvesting my dozen potato tiles, I often miss some of them, because I execute my harvests too rapidly.

Overall, a really nice and complete game, which gave me a great moment of fun. Maybe you should continue working on it !

Meteor Power by UkuleleFury 2022-04-06T11:39:08Z

I agree with @lako , the interface suggests you that a level could be "finished" or "won", but it seems there is no such thing. We have to try to get the highest score, and that's enough.

I did not believe the robots could make giant jumps until I clicked on a top platform. I like how they manage to path-find, wherever you click. It makes them more alive and more "independant".

Like many other people said, controls could have been simpler. Click on a robot to select it, then click on a destination, or click on two stations to connect them. Click on another robot to change selection. That's all.

The stations seems to be powered off or powered on, but I couldn't determine when. It does not seem to depend on wether it's connected or not.

Nice music and graphics. The background deserved more variations. These two moons infinitely copy-pasted looks quite weird.

Thank you for this cute game.

Super Crusher Fighters by Vectrex28 2022-04-11T10:18:51Z

Like many other people said, the UI to place crates is a mess. I guess it can be understood when you have time to, but not when a crusher approaches you. I got used to the UI by learning key combinations by heart.

- To put/remove a crate : the key combination is X-Z-X. - To change crate type : the combination is X-up-wait-what-which-button-is-it-no-not-that-one-oh-sh*t-I-died. Then, the selected crate type is kept between two games, so you can now place the wanted crate by a classical X-Z-X.

I would have chosen this key mapping :

- up : jump. (isn't that natural for a lot of games ?) - X : put/remove normal crate - Z : put/remove super crate

I didn't finished the game. It was too hard and too frustrating for me, because of all the problems previously told : messy controls, buggy teleporters, no possibility to immediatly restart a game.

I didn't manage to figure out the cat movements. It does not seem to always follow the same wall. I would have loved to take time to understand it, but the crusher and the lack of pause urges you to try random things fast, instead of recover your calm and think about the behavior of the game elements.

In this game, we have to be fast and have good skills in agility, and at the same time we have to be intelligent and find tricks to solve the puzzling levels. This is a horrible cocktail that rarely works in games. Your level design looks really good, and I'm sure some levels are really smart and well-polished. But all your efforts are spoiled by the frustration of having to be agile and intelligent at the same time.

Maybe you could fix that by clearly choosing the type of each level : some are fast and skillfull, others are calm and need reflexion. The calm levels should have a very slow crusher (or even no crusher at all).

To sum up : I did not really enjoyed this game. But I remember having played Antenna Antics at the previous Ludum Dare. You seem to regularly create NES games, and you begin to have a graphic and gameplay style of your own, which is interesting. I will definitely play your entries of the next Ludums, and I will try to find the time to test your previous entries.

See ya !

Fire Hazard by Fupi 2022-04-05T22:24:22Z

456.16 seconds and one carpal tunnel !

I took a little time to realize there was 3 plugs and not just the one in the middle.

I also took a little time to realize the fire meter decreases quite fast when nothing is plugged. So it's really useful to sometimes remove all the plugs, wait some seconds, then plug all you can do.

For the sake of my carpal tunnel, I would have loved that the game could be played with 4 keys (one for each gun type), and not just the mouse.

Having only 3 plugs and 4 type of monsters is a good idea, which keeps you on a constant stress. You are always wondering if your current plug config is the most optimized one.

The monster characteristics (speed, frequency of apparition) are well-balanced and really different for each type, so that you know how to deal with them.

The tutorial is quite confusing, because you "inevitably" lost it, and it does not learn you so much. I would say it's better to remove it.

The "lore" is totally WTF (why are you in a company, why do monsters look like this, ...) so it's great.

Funny little game overall.

The Great Filter by T C 2022-04-18T10:38:05Z

Nice game and beautiful graphics.

The intro image is a really good idea. It's a perfect compromise between a real intro in-game that would have taken too much time to do, and simple text dialogues in the game description that would have not pushed us in the story. All the elements in this image contributes to build the "game lore".

As many other people said, the UI has some glitches. Here are some improvement propositions :

- Selecting a first ship, then a second one does not refresh the ship info on the left. This is the main UI glitch thas confused us all. We have to deselect the first ship, then reselect the second one to have a complete updated UI.

- We can deduct which ship is currently selected by the green-lighted hexagons around it, but it is not clear enough. Especially when ships are packed. The selected ship should be explicitly shown on the map, for example by coloring its hexagon borders with a light green color.

- You don't need to describe empty space. We know what an empty space is ! It adds some useless UI showing/hiding when we move our mouse cursor near a ship.

- The ability descriptions tells : "targets enemy ships". You should add : "targets adjacent enemy ships". One little word that would greatly help the new players who discover the game.

- Ranged weapon seems to be blocked by game elements, but not the movements. (Or maybe only the movements of one or two ships among the three, I'm not sure). It has to be made clear, or at least explicitly told somewhere.

But these glitches are not so important, compared to all the cool things in the game.

The character design and their abilities/weapon immediatly makes us understand the behavior type of each ship : a short-ranged tank, a middle-ranged fighter, and a multi-purpose wizard.

The difficulty and game speed is progressive and let us discover the game aspects one by one.

It was really fun to hat-twirl these nasty enemies in the void !

Having the ships starting with no full health is a really good idea. It forces us to use even the first planets, and we imagine the ships had to suffer previous battles (one more little dose of game lore).

I love the character animations in-game. Wraith is moving his/her strange eyes, that's cool.

It's too bad that there is only one ship animation for every of their actions. Are they supposed to act the same when they attack someone and when they harvest a planet ? That's strange. The Gunship animation is particularly confusing, because it fires everywhere. At first, I thought the "Blaster" attack would touch all the adjacent enemy ships, but that's not the case.

Please, show our score at the end-game screen ! I was quite proud of my game and all my heroic actions, but I can not tell you how heroic they was, because I do not know my final score.

One last thing : Why is it called "The great filter" ?

Alchemy by Rustywolf 2022-04-12T16:24:12Z

This game is a tribute to the "RTFM" acronym, which is amazing. I like the fact that you have to read the recipe and remember it by yourself. In every actual games (and also in many apps and many aspects of our lives), everything is guided, tutorialized, repeated, hinted to the max. In this game we have to learn instructions by heart, and it is frighteningly original.

This obligation to learn by heart perfectly fits with the alchemy theme, where everything is mystical, magic formulas must be pronounced exactly as they are, and knowledge is transmitted by ancient means, without hard-disks or internet or whatever.

About the UI, it could be a good idea to highlight the interactive object that the mouse cursor hovers on, and the interactive zones could be a little bigger than the object itself. It would remove any doubt about the fact that some objects are either not working or we are not selecting them properly.

The demon manifestations are mysterious, the recipes are cryptic, the atmosphere is dark, all this deserves a 5/5 on mood. I totally imagine an ancient guild of alchemists relaying themselves in this laboratory, containing this demon for millenaries. They may have forgot the demon origin and how he could have been sealed in this place, but they still perform their duty and transmit their knowledge from generations to generations.

I made it to the level 3, but the recipes needed too much speed execution for me. Anyway, I loved this game. Thank you !

Degrowth by Cryptomnesic 2022-04-05T20:58:37Z

There are explanations when you put the cursor on an icon or a value, but even with that, I cannot understand the global game mechanics and I ended not being able to remove any building.

Also, I cannot determine if the game is real-time or turn-based. Does the game situation changes when you wait a little time ? (citizens going away, power supply reorganizing, ...)

It's a nice idea, but the game is unclear for me.

Degrowth by Cryptomnesic 2022-04-05T22:47:45Z

Thank you @cryptomnesic and @mibehu , I managed to end the game.

I understood a little more of its mechanics, even if I'm totally not sure of having understood all of them. At the end, I was mainly clicking on a random factory, then all the empty residences, and so on.

Colony Defender by Henrik Ganard 2022-04-18T18:00:42Z

At my first try, the game ended abruptly while there was still escape pods going to the exit, and there was still humans in the main base. Did it end because of a limited time ? Because the main base was destroyed ? I don't know.

At my second try, all the escape pods I sent went through the exit, there was no human in the main base. Only turrets were left. Once again, the game ended abruptly without any reason.

I was imagining these last humans, inevitably lost inside their turrets. I wanted to see them fight to the last of them. Not for surviving, but to make sure the escape pods would leave in safety, and for revenge, and for honor. I wanted to see the main base finally destroyed by all these evil enemy ships. But I had nothing of that. The game just ended and I was disappointed.

You could have displayed some story texts each time an escape pod goes to the exit. For example when you save 60 humans, the text tells : "all the families who have children have been saved". Then, after 200 humans : "all the civilians of the base have been saved". You could also add some ironical text. After the first pod escaped, you could display : "All the richest people of the base are safe, they are happy and they thank you !".

I thought escape pods could be attacked, so I built turrets all along the path to the exit, but it was unnecessary. Escape pods can only be momentarily blocked by enemy ships.

That would have added more depths to the game if escape pods were vulnerable. Then I would have to make more difficult choices : "Do I launch a pod now, as I'm not sure they will survive ? Maybe I should launch it later, but the situation may be worse, or the base may be destroyed."

The attention I had to give to escape pods was quite limited : when the button "escape pod ready" is available, I click on it.

I read the previous comments. People who spammed lots of turrets because they have lots of coins missed the purpose of the game. We have to put as fewer turrets as possible, in order to save as many humans as possible. However, even with this game mechanic, the coins are still earned too fast. Very early in the game, we have so much of them that we don't have to make the choice between turret types. We always choose beefy and expensive tier-2 missiles.

The 3D is beautiful and well done, but is totally not used. The game mechanics just use a 2D board represented in 3D. I put turrets inside rocks, and also turrets colliding other turrets. Maybe these bugs would not have happened in a real 2D board.

Your game is built on an original and frightening idea : the choice of sacrificing humans in turrets, to save other humans. It's really interesting. But I'm sorry to tell you that your game misses lots of opportunity to force us to make difficult choices, and to have emotions and empathy toward those humans to save.

Hyper Kremlin Bros. II Tournament Edition by Samps 2022-04-08T21:42:18Z

A game with an "engaged" plot, which is a good choice.

I agree with @skleembof : it's hard to evaluate how the game configuration will be after one move, and nearly impossible to anticipate two moves. I ended up pushing blocks mainly at random. Tile graphics are not very clear and do not help.

It's like in the board game "Labyrinth". You can more or less anticipate the next game configuration, but not the next two ones.

The intro screen reminds me of Tetris. So I was expecting more references to this game.

The psychedelic and shakey visual effects are well done, but not really adapted to the game and the theme. I often misclicked the arrows because of the rotating effect, it was quite annoying. Maybe some Putin-related effects would have been better : dolphins, rifles, shirtless... (these are memes related to him).

I was wondering if the game wouldn't be better with simpler tiles. Instead of big tiles with/without walls in the 4 directions, you could use little tiles which would be either a full block or an empty square. Then you multiply the board by 3 in width and height. Block pushes would be more predictable. Maybe Putin could move two tiles at each turn, to balance the fact that the board would be bigger. I think it's worth a try.

Anyway, I liked that little moment of fun.

Cat Fragmentator by Recher 2022-04-05T17:20:16Z

Thank you for your feedbacks. Sorry about the lack of sound. For the moment, Squarity can not play any sound. But I will try to improve this as soon as I can (I make games with Squarity and I develop the engine too).

Cat Fragmentator by Recher 2022-04-05T17:28:44Z

Some tips and tricks to have higher scores

Every time a cat image or a cat fragment image is laid down in the area, your get the following points :

(number of square of the images) * 10 - (number of borders)

For example, an uncut image of 3x3 gives you : 3x3x10 -3 -3 -3 -3 = 78 points.

If you cut this image in two, you get an 1x3 image and a 2x3 image. The score will be : 1x3x10 -1 -3 -1 -3 + 2x3x10 -2 -3 -2 -3 = 72 points.

So, it is better not to cut image when you do not need to. In particular, the first images should not be cut, because they will be put on the ground in every cases.

You get a bonus of 100 points if the game ends because the hard drive is full. Try not to be bumped by falling cat images !

Your score is decreased by one each time you fire. Do not shot at random.

Happy fragmenting !

Cat Fragmentator by Recher 2022-04-09T09:29:52Z

Thank you all for your feedbacks.

Happy to know the cat pictures are enjoying most of the players.

@frozenfire92 : thank you for the interest you have in Squarity. There are many other games listed here : [https://mstdn.io/@recher](https://mstdn.io/@recher) .

There is also a documentation explaining how to create yours, but it's only in French for the moment : https://github.com/darkrecher/squarity-doc/blob/master/user_manual/main_page.md

I plan to participate to all the upcoming Ludum Dares, by using Squarity. I also have to improve the engine itself, but it takes time :-)

Cat Fragmentator by Recher 2022-04-13T07:31:35Z

More "thank you"s, for more of your feedback.

@fifut : yep, that's my engine, and I'm trying to improve it months by months, but it's hard to find time.

@lmb : I thought about it. I would have chosen to keep the graphics category if I had other images made by me. But I realized the background image (the hard disk) is not by me either. The uss-fragmentor is made from the logo of "Defrag" (the old windows app). And I'm not expecting a great rating from graphics, so I just opted-out. Thank you for the advice.

Cat Fragmentator by Recher 2022-04-13T08:17:47Z

Who, opting-out totally changes the calculation of my "ratings received". It looks like a bug.

At this current moment, I should have : (17*5+16) / 6 = 16.83 ratings received.

I opted-out from the category "graphics", which had 16 ratings. But the calculation still keep these ratings.

So, I currently have (17*5 +16 +16) / 6 = 19.5 ratings received.

Well, looks like I will have to test some more games to be sure to have a score at the end.

Cat Fragmentator by Recher 2022-04-18T10:48:41Z

Thank you for your feedbacks.

@theinkskeleton : I thought about a sort of "special power" that woul grant you invulnerability and wall-pass-through during a few movements, so that you could evade from hard situations. But I had not time to implement it.

Having sound would be really great, I need to implement sound functions in the game engine Squarity. It's on my gargantuan task list.

@natpat : Congratulation for this great score ! And also for the word "cat-hartic". Ha ha ha.

Row disappearing would have been a good idea, but I could not decide the precise game mechanic of it. If I just remove full rows, it would be quite unfair because all the uncomplete rows would stay forever. Maybe removing quickly the full rows, and less quickly the uncomplete rows, but I did not know how I could clearly show this mechanic. So nothing is removed and each game is quite short. I'll do better next time !

Keep It Warm by Fifut 2022-04-09T16:32:47Z

Inevitably dark and frightening. I liked it.

It's the kind of minimalistic and emotional games that Anna Anthropy would like. (Not sure if it interests you, but I'm a fan of her).

The particle effects of the fire and the chimney are nice, and suits the global graphic style of the game.

Is there a way to go on the second floor and get the books and table that are in it ? I did not find any stairs nor ladders.

Also, thank you for having compiled the game on many platforms, especially the web. I try to avoid downloading and executing random stuff from internet, even if they are games.

Deity of Jigsaw Puzzle by BigFantasyTree 2022-04-08T23:01:20Z

It reminds me of those games where you assemble spaceship parts and go fight or harvest meteorites. Here is an exemple of one : http://www.polygonpi.com/?p=1298

The concept is great, but would really need some balancing/buffing/nerfing. When I feel a game is to hard, I start to wonder if the problem comes from me and my lack of skills. But this time, I would say the problem comes from the game equilibration.

- too much variety in the joint pieces. - durations too slow. - not enough chests on the map.

All these problems have the consequence that there are very few possibility of puzzle piece assembling. My high score is 22 days, and that's really poor. It's terrible and frustrating to see all the pieces I have in my inventory, and to konow I can't use them because they do not fit. It's also frustrating to see all the pieces I managed to put on my core piece, then to realize they are all disabled because the only piece that connects them to the core just disappeared.

You have the beginning of a great idea. Find more tricks and more mechanics to exploit it at its best, and you would have a complete great idea.

You still deserve a high note in Innovation, because having a new idea that failed is better than having no new idea at all.

CinderWoods by kirypto 2022-04-14T16:58:58Z

The idea of this game is simple and great. I somewhat had this feeling of "just one more game". But I could have it even more with some UI improvements.

As @Yellowscope said, the game is tile-based, so the movements should also be tile-based. The hero should occupy only one tile. When I press a key, the hero should move exactly one tile in the specified direction. For the difficulty balancing, you could add a little movement cooldown between each moves, if needed.

Sometimes, my position is exactly between two tiles. When I hit the space bar, the resource is not taken, and I stay blocked.

cinderforest_fail_resource.png

The problem is solved by just going a little up or down. But in the urge of building barriers and evading fire, I have no time to handle these movement glitches. These glitches would solve themselves if the game was entirely tile-based.

It's hard to lay barriers where I want to. The barrier is put in the direction I'm facing. Usually, I place barrier between me and the fire. So I have to move slightly toward the fire. Sometimes, this little move makes me step on the next tile, and exactly at the same time, a fire is generated on that tile and I die. Laying barriers should be done by pressing the "B" key + the direction key where I want to lay it. So that i don't need to make a slight move. This problem is more or less related to the not-entirely-tile-based thing.

The fire spreads quite rapidly, which is a choice of difficulty that I have to deal with. But the fire spreads without any warning. Very often I was at a distance of one or two tiles of the fire, and it immediatly spread to the tiles where I am. It's rather frustrating, it gaves me the feeling I died because of unluck and randomness, not because of lack of attention. Maybe, some seconds before the fire propagates to a new tile, you should show little harmless flames on the tile. So that I know I have to quickly go away of it.

Speaking of fire, does it spread diagonally ? It seems so, but I'm not sure, as it's really fast for me.

The sound is great, and we all love Whilhelm sound. But the sound played when a barrier is laid is too long. Hammering noises that lasts about 2/3 seconds, whereas we sometimes lay more than one barrier in one second. It sounds weird and it can break the concentration.

The score calculation is well-thought. It is quite simple to understand, but it can provoke an "emerging behavior", where we are driven to contain fire as much as we can, to have more clean tiles that generate points, instead of just running away to survive as long as we can.

All right... Just one more game, even if the movements are unpractical... See you next time !

Loading... by pixel-fabian 2022-04-11T17:09:05Z

Nice frenetic shooter with a weird and uncommon scenario.

The little gnomes inevitably remind me of the South Park gnomes who steal underpants. While I'm at it : what are gnomes doing in a computer ?

The starting interface is great. You're not the first one to have this idea, but that's still a nice idea.

I agree with @antti-haavikko about the bullet limit. It's a stupid concept that had the right to exist only with old systems which had memory limitations. If you want to limit the fire rate, add a cooldown (more or less long, as you wish), but no crappy bullet limit. This bullet limit thing just resurrected traumatistic memories I had when I was trying to beat the jelly-eyes boss in Super NES Demon's Crest... Sorry, that was unrelated.

I did not realize killing gnomes lowers your score. I learned it when reading other comments. I thought the only disadvantage of gnomes was that they block your shots while dying, so I payed attention to kill them with only one bullet, but that was stupid. Maybe you should explain the gnome mechanics in the game description.

There is too few features in the game to give me the incentive to play longer and beat a high score, but these 5 minutes of crazy data-shooting were pleasant.

LD54 — Limited Space

CrystalLine by graebor 2023-10-07T20:45:51Z

Score 1882 !

This is totally the sort of game I like : puzzles, logic, a 2D grid. It's not a Match-3, it's a "Match 2²" and I love the mechanics and the concept !

I thought first that the combo would work only if I matched the same color twice, but it works with any colors.

About balancing: maybe destroying all the elements of one type when doing a combo is a little overkill. I used this special power a lot, and did not feel the game was becoming more and more difficult. I even thought I could continue like that forever (I was wrong, I filled all the game area).

This game concept needs more depths: special objects, special powers, quests, scenario mode, etc.

Oh, just one little bug: when I bump into a border, it still triggers the crystal generation. For example, I pushed left arrow as I was completely on the left, I did not move, but a crystal appeared.

Best LD54 game I've played so far. Thank you !

Chargez by bentglasstube 2023-10-17T23:10:11Z

It's like a space pool.

At the beginning, I made efforts to push the balls out of the circle. It works, but it's not much rewarding. It does not give any points, and while you push one, 3 more arrives. So, I just used the same strategy as cagibi: rolling around.

At the end, I just died on purpose, because I must admit it was becoming annoying. No new special balls, no specific challenge, the difficulty was not increasing that much. Anyway, I spent a nice little time !

Best music of all the game I tested for this Ludum Dare.

I played HTML version on a desktop. The window does not resize and it was really too big. The game switched automatically to fullscreen at start, then I removed it, then I wanted to put it back and it didn't work.

In short: there are still some bugs about the graphical layout.

Little Cart of Junk by auxC 2023-10-15T09:09:26Z

It was very frustrating to grab an object and not be able to put it directly in the cart, but it's part of the game, so it's OK. I loved throwing away all the unwanted objects that blocked my cart. It's quite fun seeing them flying through the whole screen, even if I'm terribly bad at aiming precisely to make them land safely on the cart.

There are nice ideas on the variety of object types : different sizes, shapes and weight. I loved the ice cube which are very slippy. Understanding why you would need ice cubes is beyond my intellectual capacities, but anyway...

It's a little too bad that we only have to put the needed objects on the cart to instantly win the level. We don't have the feeling of bringing them back home, like a true post-apocalyptic scavenger would do. And it would have been the occasion to reward good players who are able to put many objects on the cart, opposed to less good players who would have to make more trips to bring them all back.

I won the second level completely by chance. I was painfully putting objects on the cart, then it rolled over a phone pole, which was the last needed object, I won. But I totally did not deserve it.

Nice idea, need to be readjusted.

The Cauldron Coven Coalition by Sarah 2023-10-14T14:36:37Z

Nice game, but there aren't enough mechanics specific to tower defense games to make it really interesting.

We end up placing all the witches near the hut, as it is the place where they are the most efficient. I wasn't even thinking of the strength and weaknesses, because all the witches were firing at the villagers, so there always was the strong witch among them.

UI is a bit harsh as many other people already said it. Having to survive a whole night is a good idea, but everything is dark in the game and it is really hard to distinguish which witch is which (ha ha ha, sorry). To add confusion, some trees are hiding parts of the paths, and you don't see what witch and villagers is behind.

Nice game, I loved the graphics and visual effects. It was interesting enough to make me want to win it (I did at third try), but it needs a really big polish on UI and clarity.

I Do by Togis 2023-10-08T09:52:44Z

Very original idea, with full of nice details and tricks.

Spoiler alert: Uncle Bob is definitely not a good guest. Either unhappy because too far from the bar, or drunk and bothering everyone.

It's a nice idea to have the list of guests presented in a guest book.

It would have been even more fun if the resulting logs were presented in the form of a wedding guestbook. You could have texts like : "I love your wedding, I was happy to talk about Space with Eloise. (signed : Filip)". At the end, Uncle Bob vomits on the wedding book. Lol !

My best score was +18. I could have played some more if there was a random mode, with randomly generated guests.

The distorded wedding theme is hilarious. I gave 5 stars on Audio just for that !

Mousetropolis by Likirus 2023-10-09T19:15:06Z

The game mechanics need to be more detailed in the description. I had to browse the comments to realise housing is the most important : it reduces crime AND increases income as only housed mice pay taxes.

Knowing this, here is the strategy:

- build things so that there are absolutely never homelesses, try to have positive income of food and water as much as you can. - you don't need any police. - when no more room, upgrade everything. - as mices arrives, gradually replaces house by food and water, to keep positive incomes. - you end with homelesses and the game ends, but you can be proud of your score.

I made it to 1014 mice with this strategy.

It's nice you learnt 3D while creating this game, but this sort of games do not need 3D at all. Just draw your buildings on a 2D grid and that's all. It was even a little annoying, because the giant buildings hide the view of the elements behind.

Totally love the "mouse voice acting".

Overall, I had a fun little time imagining these mice trying to survive on the raft, with less and less space.

Spaced out by Marcus Otterstrom 2023-10-07T15:16:56Z

I like the idea and the "raw" graphics. It's like Tron, but with bullets.

There is a weird bug or feature that sometimes makes the score increase after you die.

I thought the wall targets were here just to warn you that a bunch of enemies will appear from that point, But no.

This game has the incentive of "come on, one last try", which is a very good sign.

If I Fits, I Sits! by cheesepencil 2023-10-15T13:43:00Z

Nice and simple. It took me some bad tries to understand how it works. (Pushing arrow keys stops the cat, and not moves the cat).

It's a nice idea to have the cat coming from left or right, and to have some cats that are already small. It adds a little variety.

This could totally be a mini-game of Wario Ware or things like that.

Nice graphics too, especially the "back" of the cat.

SpaceRaft by Bytomancer 2023-10-19T23:19:36Z

Nice game, but I would have loved a sort of "continuity" from one level to another. Something like you get resources or money, to add more rooms and elements to the ship, upgrade existing ones, etc.

I took some time to understand the red rays are not lasers, but indicators to tell you where are the enemy ships.

I only made to level 3, because the game crashed at that moment :cry: . But It felt like the difficulty did not increase that much from one level to another. There are little enemies at waves 1 & 2, big enemies at waves 3 and that's all.

That was a nice moment smashing enemy ships !

(One last thing: thank you very very much for handling the keyboards with "key codes" and not characters ! I don't have a qwerty keyboard, and I always get afraid when I see a game with WASD controls. And for your game, there was no problem at all, thanks to the key codes).

Tetryian by Yskuma 2023-10-12T22:20:41Z

There are already games like this, where you have to place the upgrades on your ship, but you added a really nice twist : the upgrades have tetris shapes.

I did not completely understand how all these elements interacts. I guess the generator is here to provide energy to all the components, but it's not obvious. It looks like my shield was regenerating at the first mission, but not at the next ones. Was it because of my new ship configuration ? It's not really explained.

I don't know if there is an end. I managed to attain mission 3. Was it good or not ? How many different missions are there here ?

Prof Delespace and the Golden Record by cagibi 2023-10-19T21:56:44Z

I really loved the humor, the coarse language, the Bretagne-like planet and the fifty kilos of butter.

The enigmas are well-balanced. It take some time to solve them, but not too much time. (I was helped by a friend, though).

Music and graphisms are nice.

Maybe the second enigma with the pentaminos would have been more practical if we had more space (ha ha) to put the shapeships around the game area. It's a little hard to think how to place them when we have no other choice than stacking them on the border.

Mechanizyn by Lincolnsalles 2023-10-16T20:57:39Z

Would have loved to play more levels.

This game could become a sort of Flappy Bird, with an alternance of stressful moments when you have to fly in difficult passages, and calm moments when you land to recover your energy. Maybe a sort of "Flappy-bird-MetroidVana" ?

It also reminds me of Bad Mojo, an old and weird game where you play a roach, wander in garbage, kill a spider by pushing a cigarette on it, etc.

Keep up the work !

Unlimited space by Recher 2023-10-02T09:09:17Z

@2thegamechanger : when you press the button "1", the status is written on the text zone at the lower part of the screen. You have an exemple in the screenshot.

For example, when you see that in the status:

👽 🇽 🇾: (-13, -26)

🏁 🇽 🇾: (7, -22)

It means you are at the coordinates (-13, -26), and you have to go to the coordinates (7, -22). So it's to the right, and a little to the down.

If you are not sure of how the coordinates will change, you can make a little move in any direction, then press the button "1" again.

Unlimited space by Recher 2023-10-04T07:10:19Z

@martin-bousquet : you are completely right. But the current version of my game engine does not allow to write some text (even simple text) in the game screen itself. So I have to put it in the log.

I will improve my game engine, I promise !

@marcus-otterstrom : congratulations, you win and retired !

Unlimited space by Recher 2023-10-04T07:10:19Z

(deleted message because duplicate of the previous)

Unlimited space by Recher 2023-10-08T08:23:55Z

@siberpunk01 : it's a little hard to understand because most of the informations are given in the logs and not in the game. I can't (for the moment) display texts directly in the game.

I'm afraid a tutorial would be even more confusing, because it would add more explanations in the log. Maybe I could do a sort of auto-play for the first client, where the spaceship would automatically pick and deliver one, but I'm afraid this would be confusing too.

One interesting solution would be to display an arrow in the game showing the direction of your objective. I'm not sure I'm allowed to do that during the Ludum Dare. I made a compo, with quite strict rules, and I guess they would break if I modified the game after the deadline. So, I will certainly add this arrow after the rating period.

I added a coordinate example in the game description, that's the only thing I can do for now.

Thank you for your feedback.

Unlimited space by Recher 2023-10-08T11:14:21Z

Thank you very much @bluedandelion and @likirus , for your reviews and for the support about my own game engine. I definitely must continue to improve it. Some small details like a fullscreen mode by default would reduce the mess in the UI, and the English / French confusion.

Your comments give me the incentive to continue. Now I just need to find spare time for it !

Unlimited space by Recher 2023-10-09T22:07:40Z

@henk : one more feature I need to add in my game engine: showing smooth moves or smooth scrolling when an object moves from one tile to another. I'm working on it (almost)...

@ellaris : showing coordinates directly on the game screen is planned, for the next version of the game. Also almost working on it.

We definitely need more content: more alien types, more sceneries, more emojis, etc.

Thank you for your feedback.

Unlimited space by Recher 2023-10-14T14:11:18Z

@hinesite : Thank you very much for having remarked the global game seed trick ! That's one of the first thing I implemented in the game. Unlimited Space must be really unlimited ! And thank you for finding my game engine cool. I hope that someday, someone other than me will use it to participate to Ludum Dare.

@bentglasstube : Thank you for being indulgent (and charmed) by my clumsy UI. Ambient sound would be a great idea, but there are two barriers to it :

- Squarity does not allow to play any sound. I'm working on it (almost)...

- I do not know anything about music and sound. The most significant thing I did about it was me shouting "PAW" in front of a microphone because I needed a shotgun sound for a very old game I did.

Unlimited space by Recher 2023-10-15T20:35:45Z

@cagibi @bytomancer @jdemattos : Thank you very much for all your words of courage. It's nice to see people starting to get interested in Squarity, and the fact that every elements of the game is directly accessible (tilesets, config and source code). That's important, to give an incentive to players to explore and modify these elements.

A significant part of the compo time was used to browse all existing emojis and find the appropriate ones for each extra-terrestial types. So I'm happy this emoji thing has a nice impact on people. I was inspired by Captain Blood, a French old video games from the 80's where you meet aliens and have dialogues with them through a weird interface full of symbols.

@cagibi : I took a very quick'n dirty decision about camera. Maybe the solution would have been to gradually move it so that the player can see what is in the front. But the "graduality" would have been square by square. Not sure it's a good idea. Camera handling in 2D video games is a big big subject. Just for your information: https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/scroll-back-the-theory-and-practice-of-cameras-in-side-scrollers

Hell Space Ltd. by hinesite 2023-10-16T15:56:36Z

Completely weird and WTF. I loved it ! Especially the sound of launched people ! A curve showing the preview of the people trajectory (at least at the first levels) would have been nice.

People are a little too "sticky", but I guess it's part of the game rules. I ended like this:

Screenshot from 2023-10-15 23-38-29.png

Neon Barrier by noagard 2023-10-08T14:27:45Z

All the basic mechanics of a good tower defense are here: multi-target towers, missile towers, weak and fast enemies, strong and slow enemies, etc.

The walls do not look the same between the first level and the next ones. I wondered if there were multiple wall types, but it looks like not.

Levels seem to repeat, but I could not evaluate if it's the exact same repetition, or if the enemies are stronger. It's confusing. The game should either finish explicitly (with a congratulation message or something), or tell explicitly it repeats with stronger enemies.

As Robert Li said, I would have loved to continue a little more on each level. We don't need to be able to upgrade the towers. Just more waves, and some bonus walls given to the player after each wave. I wanted to build a long and harsh path to those dreadful enemies.

Project Minima by BlueDandelion 2023-10-08T21:25:53Z

This type of game is too hard for me, but this game is quite well done.

I love the floating hair of the hero, the weird-looking NPCs (we understand they are scientists even if they really look weird) and their depressed dialogues.

I'm not sure, but the mines which move in a round seemed bugged. I saw one of them moving slightly out of its initial paths. It was as if the center of the path circle suddendly changed, while the position of the mine did not change. I tried to reproduce the bug but couldn't do it. Sorry.

A nice and convenient detail: the "periodic" spikes are correctly configured, so that at the start of a level, you do not have to wait for them to disappear. It's really important, because we want to retry as fast as possible just after dying.

I didn't see how the theme is supposed to fit in the game, but that's not a real problem.

Project Minima by BlueDandelion 2023-10-09T07:28:10Z

@bluedandelion : it's not really a problem that the game is too hard for me. I know I'm not good at these cray platformers. It's a good thing to make these games for all the fans who love them.

It may have been an illusion. I'm absolutely not sure there was a bug. Let's assume that if I'm the only one to mention it, then there is no bug.

Sheep Birder by ellaris 2023-10-15T17:48:44Z

I'm not sure, but I had the impression the description of the upgrades only comes at the second or third map. Maybe they were there before, but I did not see them.

The birds are really hard to control at the first map, and I was about to abandon because I thought all the maps would be painful like this. This risk would have been decreased if I knew at start what the upgrades do.

One more thing about the upgrades: tell how much points it will cost before we select it. They do not all increase at the same rate, so I did not remember which upgrades I bought a lot, and got confused.

I like the idea of "white plague", because sheeps are white as well. It's fun.

An upgrade to buy bigger boats would have been cool.

There are little birds and big birds. I don't know if it's important or if it's just for visual variety.

I reached map 10, then I must admit I got a little annoyed and stopped.

Crime Critters (Rob the British Museum) by Pen Island Games 2023-10-19T23:09:56Z

Excellent idea ! I made more than 2 million dollars.

The collaborative work is also an excellent idea (though I was all alone to test the game).

It's cool to have objects that needs to be handled carefully. And the placement in the truck can also become strategic. Don't lock yourself in the truck while putting objects inside !

Graphics are really cool, perhaps the best graphics of this Ludum Dare I've seen so far. The objects are well designed, so that you can immediatly guess their values from their aspects.

There are also nice ideas of "traps" : doors that opens from only one side, lasers, etc. We need more of these, and more that needs collaborations.

Slideworld by XRy 2023-10-03T19:15:59Z

The concept is nice. It's a good idea to have a "hero", even if it behaves like a 1x1 square in the game logic.

Did not pass the third level. So, the "level design" looks quite good.

There is no music and no sound, so maybe you should opt-out for this rating.

Did you made this game by using a derivative of PuzzleScript engine ? Graphisms looks like it was made with puzzlescript.

Had a nice time testing this game. Congratulation for your first contribution.

Claustrorush by Neon Kuroasa 2023-10-12T22:53:11Z

My score: 7798

The graphism and the colors are very well done.

I took a little time to understand that the dashes against the wall are made with the up arrow.

I liked very much the mechanic of the narrowing walls. You have to keep them as far as possible, but at the same time, when they are near, you can climb super fast by spamming the up arrow.

The level randomization is also a good idea. I don't like these super-meat-boy-like platformers where you have to learn your moves by heart. In your game, each try is different.

Overall, a very cool game !

Pocket Universe Snake by TheLastSlowpoke 2023-10-04T12:01:18Z

Simple, fun and nice. Congratulations !

I love the intro animation, where the grey button turns to reveal the game area.

Maybe it would have been easier to understand what happens if the world was displayed as a real sphere, with some dezoom to show it entirely.

It reminds me of this game : https://sokyokuban.com/ . It's a non-euclidean soko-ban.

Homework Havoc by BuyMyBeard 2023-10-07T23:31:48Z

The idea of searching information in various docs remind me of a Zachtronic game, where you had to read "zines" to find ways to hack things.

But you drove the concept to another dimension, with this limited-space table. A really good way to exploit the theme ! It's terribly frustrating to put some papers on the keyboard, knowing that you will have to move them just after. I love it !

I thought the dates on the papers would have been useful, to know how to reorder them. But not that much. Each paper looks quite independant to the others. That would have been fun to be obliged to reorder them to recompose a crucial information of the lessons.

Next version with texts and question generated by ChatGPT ! (Or not...)

Space Limiter Warp Drive by 2TheGameChanger 2023-10-05T17:08:31Z

The idea of getting close to the danger was already used in some shoot'em up, but it's a nice one.

Mouse controls seemed random for me, so I just used keyboard and it's OK.

A little intro screen would be useful, instead of just having the game immediatly starting. I was searching for the description, which is not on itch.io and only on the Ludum Dare website. And while I found and read it, the game was playing, which is really confusing.

The different combinations of the bullet paths should cover all the game area. When you go down right, you never get hit. That's a bit dumb, because you don't get any score, but it would be better for the gameplay to have the feeling that no place in the game area is 100% safe.

Defrag by henk 2023-10-12T18:02:56Z

A very original idea, that deserves to be polished and more exploited.

Maybe a game mechanism where a file, when it is correctly merged, is completely removed from the defrag zone, because it goes to a safe and stable space or something.

I'm not sure the added/removed block positions are predictable. I had some block removed and there were in the middle of the file, and the game did not warn me about it.

Also, it's quite frustrating to be obliged to use two turn when you just want to shift a file part for some tiles. You have to put it in a complete empty part, then put it back to the shifted place.

And, as said in other comments, each game is a little too short because not enough space.

But really, the idea is fun and original, maybe I will think about it to make my own version of the game.

LD55 — Summoning

Koballd Crawler by Recher 2024-04-15T23:24:01Z

Thanks for the comment @alanbrook. Just to be clear: all the levels in the game can be won (but there are only 3 of them ... )

Whatever by TikTak Gacha 2024-05-02T19:25:17Z

I love this game. It's so cute and so nice. It's fun that we can arrange the puzzle in a way that is not the expected one, but still produces a consistent image. (put the red rectangle on the left and the black square on the right).

Good luck, I hop you will continue to do jams in the future!

Larrys ducked-up adventures by Fatz 2024-05-01T20:19:40Z

A nice idea. There is a little bug in the UI. The number of bread you own is half cut at the top left part. So I did not notice immediatly what was it showing, and did not notice it decreased by one when I tried a summonning. So I got rather confused that summonning pools worked, then did not worked.

The laser ducks are really cool, but sometimes they don't immediatly fire their lasers. I guess they have some sort of cooldown. That would have been cool if it was visually shown. The charged laser ducks could glow, for example.

The ponds could have a different aspect if it summons a bomb duck or a laser duck. I wanted to prioritize laser ducks, but I couldn't because I couldn't know the pond type before paying a piece of bread.

So, overall, there are some lacks of feedback in the UI and the game, but it was really fun seeing my duck minions killing all these monsters. (Their design reminds me of the game Alien Breed).

Dungeon Internship by Dams333 2024-04-15T23:12:12Z

473 points!

I like the book and runes that seem completely cryptic at start, then have more and more logic. The only illogical and confusing thing (but maybe it was on purpose) is that the last rune, the one to select between left/right is reversed. For the arms, it's left/right, for the legs, it's right/left. I was alwasy wondering if I should use this rune while I was creating my monsters.

I was also a bit confused by the "book UI". I started clicking on the bookmarks but it has no effect. Only after, I noticed the arrows to browse the pages.

The creature designs are great, but the arms and legs are a little too small and many of them look alike. It was often quite hard to get their creature type. The transparency of the currently summoned creature doesn't help.

It was a nice and funny moment. I felt like creating my character for a game, then trashing it to create another one, etc.

A bird dabbles in Source-Destination summoning by Crow Person Justin 2024-05-01T20:37:46Z

I love puzzlescript! Some of your level were really well designed and took me some hard minutes to solve. Especially the one with the two birds that I had to "desync". There is a nice balance between easy and hard, to give the player the incentive to try "just one more time" and to see "just the next level now that I solved this one".

LD56 — Tiny Creatures

Fate of the Dice by Joror 2024-10-19T07:30:01Z

It's not the first dice game in the world, but this one is really well done, with good balance between the units and the attacks.

There are some unclear things in the UI:

- I did not immediatly realise I could see a description of all the actions and of all the dices in play. When you put your cursor over a dice, you see its actions, but when you move the cursor to the actions, it often passes onto another dice, which displays another serie of actions. I don't know how this could be solved in the UI, but I got a little confused at first. - The ranged attacks are described as "1~>6". I thought it was an attack ranging from 1 to 6. But it's an attach of strength 1, at the range 6. The "1" of the strength should be put at the same place than it is on the other dices. - It's not very clear, in the description, which attacks applies on one enemy and which applies on multiple enemies. We see it during the fights, but it could be better if we could know it before. - Speaking of fight, a replay would be very nice. I guess it was hard to implement it in one week-end, but it could really help us understand what happens, which dice does what, how do they attack, etc. - I'm not sure to have understood the healing process either. It looks like we can not heal twice a same dice, but later on I had a dice with two life points, I don't remember how I had it. (I didn't have any healer at this moment of the game). - The choice of dice at the end of a match is not very clear either. It's written things like "3 x Choir Bard" and you get only one. There is also this visual glitch already mentioned.

But even with those unclear details, I had a fun moment and won the game. I also loved that you choosed a theme with angels & demons, instead of the so-dried fantasy theme with elves, knights and other sh*ts.

We want more! More dices, more fights, more moves, more game boards, more special powers, more cute little sounds, etc.

Pollinator's Path by voidraizer 2024-10-10T20:54:41Z

It's a nice idea. As most of the people said, nothing tells you that you can draw multiple successive paths in one level.

There is a level (maybe the 6th or the 7th), with spiders only, on which you can cheat. I drew a path at the complete top of the frame, I passed all the spiders, even the ones that were supposed to block me.

It's fun to see the bee moving as she was epileptic, just because I'm not able to draw lines without doing shaky micro-movements.

Beetle Brigade by bentglasstube 2024-10-15T22:54:19Z

Hey! You created your game engine too. That's great!

It reminds me of the board game "Labyrinth", I love the idea. It's just a little annoying to have to hit Enter every time my beetles die while I was building the path. I wonder if the game would have been the same with no beetle at all. There would just be a timer, telling the player how long it took to create the path (then, if you want, you can add a nice animation with beetles taking the finished path).

Are there levels where we are obliged to change the path while the beetles are moving? It happened to me a couple of times (especially the level 12 which doesn't have enough horizontal tiles). But maybe I could have been smarter and could have created a "static" path.

By the way, here is my victory screenshot.

Capture d’écran du 2024-10-16 00-42-20.png

Paawns by Ace17 2024-10-24T21:38:39Z

Some little explanations on how to play would have been good.

I took a little time to realize I had to use the right button to order my units to move.

The tiny ants are totally useless. You just have to move slowly the big firing beetles. They progressively destroy everything, because their range is higher than the aggro range of the enemies. I killed every enemies without losing a single unit.

A tiny worm's life by angry-cyboot 2024-10-24T21:27:08Z

The idea is not really original, but it's a nice game. I wasn't able to see ants or birds. I only saw moles and unpredictable earthquakes.

It's hard to anticipate avoiding enemies, because the vision range is really short. So, we have the feeling that when we die, it's just because of bad luck.

Creepy Crawly Mansion by frozenfire92 2024-10-15T19:13:23Z

Lovely graphics and mood.

The lightmatch minigame seems buggy. I broke my match, then nothing happened. I didn't get the next match, nor the "game over" screen. I had to refresh the page.

I really couldn't understand what makes a match break, and I wonder if it isn't another bug. Sometimes it seemed to break while I did nothing.

I retried on Chrome, I did every stupid things I could with the match (moving the mouse very fast, going out of the screen, hovering over lightened candles...) and couldn't manage to break it.

Despite these little confusions, the mini games are quite easy to understand and nice to play.

I would have loved a little more lore and consistency: who imprisoned the hero? Why? Does the hero escapes? What is the recipe for? etc.

It doesn't really fit to the theme, but who cares?

Overall, I liked this game and had a nice moment. Thank you !

Rogue Creatures by Hare Software 2024-10-24T21:58:00Z

Nice game, but the strategy is always the same at each level: try to pack all the enemies in the same place, then turn around them.

The Seven Guorts by JCoMcL 2024-10-24T22:06:02Z

I managed to open the Boss door and that's all. No explanations, no precise goal, I don't even know if I saw everything what I could see in that game. Sorry, but I don't even know if I had fun playing it.

Shadow of the itty-bitties by Kaish 2024-10-10T21:54:06Z

Really great tiny games, with lots of creepy tiny creatures. I did not immediatly realized the tribute to Shadow of the Colossus.

The mood is really nice, with old-timer computer look, the music, the colors, etc.

You already know it, but there is a little bug with Firefox. The cut-scene images doesn't display.

And the ants seem a little "buggy" too. Sometimes, they don't move from a point to another, but they just move from a point to the same point, so we just see them glitching a second.

I loved the end too, but I won't spoil it. I just incite you to play the game until the end, it's not that long.

Pill Sub by Nikolas van Rus 2024-10-13T09:34:46Z

The idea of a pill inside a patient's body, instead of a classical spaceship is really cool.

I took a little time to realize we can swap the tool. We are not obliged to puth them back in the place they were.

The graphics are really nice, with little details like shelves, screen, etc. But the walls should be more visible compared to the rest. I banged myself on the wall at the lower floor, because I didn't even realize it was there.

It was too hard for me, I did not save the patient, but I see some people made it, so I guess the difficulty is well-balanced and progressive.

Anthill by Tesseract 2024-10-12T15:31:49Z

I trained myself in the sandbox mode, then I tested the normal mode. I tried numerous times to survive more than one minute, I never made it and it was really frustrating.

Some water falls immediatly at the beginning, you have very little time to move your queen in a safer place.

... safer place which is never really safe, because water flows in the earth.

The few grubs I managed to create were instantly destroyed, because any little drop of humidity instantly kill them.

Anyway, even if I managed to protect them more, they take too long to transform into an ant.

The ants dies very quickly too. Because they are always going up to evacuate dirt, and they die in the rain.

I tried to dig a hole, then block it with dirt to protect me. But then, all the other dirt I ordered to dig were not done, for some obscure reason. I ordered to put dirt in an accessible place, so that the ants would finally dig the ordered holes. Nothing happened (and I still had ants).

The UI really doesn't help to understand what is happening. You can't make the difference between an immobile dirt square and a dirt square currently moved by an ant. You can't really predict what the rain will do when it goes in the earth.

I started with a very good intention, because I love these sort of building games with creatures you don't directly control. But at the end it was very frustrating.

Maybe, just with some little more time before the rain starts to fall, it could help.

Anthill by Tesseract 2024-10-13T11:46:20Z

@tesseract thank you very much for the strategy tips.

I may retry the game in some days, if I find time to do it.

Field Trip by InitialPosition 2024-10-13T18:35:33Z

A tiny puzzle game built on a 2D grid. This is totally my type of game.

The visual and sound atmosphere is really great. That was a really nice and pleasant moment.

However, the aspect of the swarm doesn't fit with the rest. I would have made it with pixels the same size as all the other objects, and these pixels would periodically glow white/transparent, as the current swarm does.

I would have preferred the possibility to restart from the last level I lost, instead of starting from level 1 with 3 lives. In some games, it's interesting to force the player to restart from the beginning. But here, it's a puzzle game, there is no real use to make the player solve again a puzzle already solved.

I made it to level 10, maybe I will have the motivation to go further.

I quickly looked at the other things you made, and I realized the website NewGrounds still exists. This is nostalgically reassuring. I will certainly come back to it later. Thank you for this too.

Field Trip by InitialPosition 2024-10-15T19:16:58Z

@initialposition Oh, I didn't realize the levels were procedurally generated. It's quite impressive! I wouldn't even know how to generate levels that are all guaranteed to be possible. Cool !

Tiny Skweek plays Breakout by Recher 2024-10-07T15:44:13Z

Thank you. The arrow keys are useless (I should have put a little message telling that). I can't hide them, because they are part of the generic UI of the Squarity engine.

Well, I should be developing the feature to hide unused buttons, as I'm the person developing Squarity. But you know how is life.

Tiny Skweek plays Breakout by Recher 2024-10-10T19:47:08Z

Thank you DashVirus. Yes, it's been a couple of years I'm working on this game engine. I just hope that some day, other people will be interested in it and will create their own game.

Tiny Skweek plays Breakout by Recher 2024-10-13T11:50:47Z

Thank you very much for all your reviews, and thanks to the people who went to my Twitch channel while I was testing your games.

@euler-moises , I love your comment. Just one little thing: the correct word is "une bonne adaptation de Breakout/Arkanoid", and not "un bon récit de Breakout/Arkanoid". It's fun to see this sort of word confusion.

Tiny Skweek plays Breakout by Recher 2024-10-19T08:52:38Z

@prunus-padis : I plan to add sound on the game engine, in a undecided future moment. I should have added one confirmation click at the beginning of the levels after the first one. It would have removed the bad surprise. I also wanted to add multiple lives, etc.

Once again, thank you to all the people who noticed I made my own game engine: @dashvirus , @euler-moises , @initialposition , @chrisbeck , @prunus-padis , @zirrrus , @lussard-studio , @levi .

It's the main reason why I participate to Ludum Dares: to show my game engine, to test it in "real conditions", and to have the hope that some other people will use it to create their own games. Feel free to join the Discord (the link is in the game page). I promise I will write an English version of the documentation.

Tiny Skweek plays Breakout by Recher 2024-11-06T21:03:37Z

Aaaand one last thank to @thelastslowpoke , the last person of this Ludum edition who has been impressed by my own game engine.

The adventure of developing this engine continues. I hope there will be more features for the next edition.

See ya !

Zombies Ate My Fruits by smiley405 2024-10-17T21:22:24Z

A snail throwing a "shoop-da-woop" laser from corn is a tremendous idea, even if I don't know why.

Those pico-8 games have a specific and pleasant look and feel.

However, the ammunition management is quite confusing and maybe a little frustrating.

You accumulate ammunitions, so you are always asking yourself if it's worth using one at a specific time and if it ould not be saved for later.

When we die, we lose a part of our ammunition, but we don't know how and what we lose exactly. Sometimes the corn falls to zero, sometimes we the corn is replaced by an apple, sometimes we end with nothing at all. It's strange, and it doesn't help in finding answer to the "asking yourself" aforementioned.

But overall, I had a nice moment and I finish the game!

Cute Animal Jigsaw-like Puzzle by Kobato Games 2024-10-24T21:44:39Z

Simple and pleasant. I would have loved more puzzle images, maybe with an increasing number of tiles.

Goobers: Escape from Lab 8 by maymay 2024-10-18T22:05:59Z

Funny, original and nice !

I just didn't understand how to get the ending screen. There was the exit door which expected 5 goobers. I send all the troops I had in my hand, but it failed. Anyway, I loved the progressive exploration, the food management and all the reproductions.

That would have been nice to show somewhere the reproduction combinations, while I discover them one by one. I had a hard time finding the opener, because I was trying combinations, forgetting I tried them, retrying them, etc.

The poison seemed useless, but it was really useful to get rid of some stupid goobers.

I loved all the "narrative environment" too: the posters, the notes, etc.

Ant save the Queen by brainles etertainment 2024-10-13T09:14:11Z

It's a nice game, but the mechanics need a good polish to have something more interesting.

The turrets blocks the enemies and the enemies dont hit the turrets. So you just have to build 2 turrets blocking the 2 passages to the queen, and some little around here for the rare cases when an enemy spawns near her. Then you don't have to worry at all about defending. A little sad for a game supposed to be half tower-defense, half-exploration.

The pathfinding seems a little clunky. Sometimes the ant wants to make a big turnaround, and sometimes it get stuck in a little corner whereas the destination was 2 square away, with an easy path leading to it.

The resources received when digging a block seems too random. Visually, some blocks seem to give more gold and other seem to give more stones, but it's not really what happens when we dig them.

Sorry, I was not courageous enough to find the larva, because the world is quite big and it's really slow to dig the blocks (a nice additional mechanic would have to buy an ability to dig faster). But I find a golden text with your names on it, that was nice.

Just for the "lore" and the "immersion", other resource names could have been used. Like: stone and food. Because ants don't really care about gold.

Autopsy Center Simulator by Roroto Sic 2024-10-17T21:04:21Z

It's really nice to have a game which engages you to "read the docs". I read it too rapidly the first time and did not realized the days about the spiders were cumulative.

Sounds made with spaghettis or your mouth are great. But the ambiant humming tends to be annoying over time.

It's a creepy way to use the LD theme, I loved it !

I expected different sorts of liquid, with different colors and ways to escape from the organ, but single type liquid is cool too.

It deserves other "levels" (body to autopsy), with more types of insects, more docs, etc.

I had a great moment playing this game. Thank you !

RPigG by WeirdBitGames 2024-10-18T16:53:37Z

A really nice idea.

As it was already said, there are, either bug, either some confusions with which effects happen when. I still don't understand what the rain exactly does. Sometimes it seems it's twice the effect, sometimes once. I also passed on hearts and potions with my life not at the maximum, and it did not raise.

The different weapons are also hard to evaluate. We can't really see which is the better between the one we have and the one we found in a chest, so we are always hesitating.

About the chest, it's no use asking if I really want to take a shield or a heart. Of course I want!

Anyway, even with those bugs and confusion, it was a nice moment. I failed at the first time, but I really wanted to win, so I started a second game.

What about making it two dimensional ? There is a grid of tiles with effects. Some of them makes you turn left or right. You spin a grid or a column in a sense or another.

Thank you for this game!

Viral Nexus by Nimolas 2024-10-15T20:41:30Z

Nice graphics and idea, and nice way to use the theme.

I would have liked that arrow keys worked to move in the world. The middle button is not very convenient. The start button does not work after I played once, but I just had to refresh the page.

It would have been clearer to separate the processing power in 2 distinct variables:

- the resources, used to generate nanites - the processing power, you need to have 2000 to win.

It's not clear how the resources are generated. I guess we have a little of them regularly, and we can get more each time we send a nanite to a processor node. But I'm not sure of this.

There is no real use to connect to all the processor nodes. You get the same benefit from sending 100 nanites to a processor and from sending 50 nanites to two processor each. A cooldown on the processors, or processor with limited resources, would have added more incentive to connect to more of them.

The file bases are really particular to manage. A captured file base generate nanites, but nanites who goes into it do not walk backward. So, when you capture a file base, it is strongly advised to connect at least 2 paths to it, or nanites will die into it.

File base don't spawn nanites when no paths are connected to them. But if you are unlucky, a firewall spawns just next to a captured file base. Then, nanites spawns from the base and get burnt in the firewall. You can't stop them.

Firewall randowny spawns on existing paths. So I just cheated and created a big zone of useless paths. Then I could chill while creating my real paths. Because the firewalls would all fall in the useless zone. Below is a screenshot of the end of my game.

nani_nanites.png

Overall, the game is a really nice idea. But there are multiple details to improve in the game mechanics, to reduce bad luck, cheating and unfairness.

Maze Bat by oliver_day 2024-10-17T21:34:35Z

It's cool and nice, but it's just a labyrinth.

The way you used ascii characters to create sceneries is cool, and it makes a nice atmosphere. But some sceneries look like wall with a slightly different color, it's a bit confusing. I took some time to find a path in the first level because of that.

We just don't know what are those yellow circles we have to pick, and what is this final blue circle we have to pick/open.

Creature Stealer by Lussard Studio 2024-10-16T20:14:54Z

I never managed to hit or capture the creature in the park, though the one in the garbage can was really easy. So, I did not discover much of the game, but even like that I saw some little problems.

The net in the hand of the hero is always drawn behind the other paper objects, even if it is supposed to be at the front.

Every time I see a game with WASD I'm afraid, because I don't have a qwerty keyboard and I'm wondering if it will work or not. It worked with your game. Then I pressed the "E" key to open the trash can and it didn't work. I had to switch my keyboard to qwerty to make it work. It's the first time I see this: some of the keys work as expected with my keyboard, some others not.

2D/3D style with a camera that can't turn is a good idea. Except when there is a tree just in front of the camera preventing you from seeing anything. Then the creature in the parks repeatedly hits you and goodbye.

I loved the music, though. It's the first LD56 game I play with such a polished music.

Life Of Our Body by Jeiji 2024-10-17T21:56:04Z

Thank you for giving us access to the 3 levels at the start. I was totally unable to finish the first and the second.

The first one is a little messy, all the blood cells are blocking themselves, and the pathfinding is not very accurate (but maybe it was made on purpose). I managed to get 5 or 6 oxygens, but not much. Maybe my strategy was not the good one, or I'm not multi-tasked enough.

The second one is quite frustrating. The view is "too much zoomed". I don't have the time to see enemies approaching me, and I inevitably bump in an enemy coming from nowhere.

All 3 ideas are nice, but it really needed the possibility to adjust difficulty or the allowed time.

Stick Racing by Prunus Padis 2024-10-16T19:08:58Z

I usually don't like car games. But this one is so cool. I had hard times finishing the 5 laps, and I made it!

The idea to scramble the paper when your car gets bumped too much is great.

Indeed, the physics are not very convenient. Maybe the car should not be "reoriented" that much when hitting a wall. Many times, I was exactly perpendicular to the road, and it's hard to make a quarter of a turn, because each time you bump, you come back to the perpendicularity.

Thank you for this original idea. 5 stars on graphics, just because.

Sublime Slime by kscerri 2024-10-10T22:24:06Z

The starting idea is nice, but does not look well-used. The towers have all a quite big range, whatever the location you place them, they can shoot. So, there is very little interest to move a tower once you placed it. Not a good thing when the initial idea is a tower defense where you can move a tower once it is placed.

We don't get more slime while we kill monsters. I placed all my towers at the beginning, then I just watched what happens. The current game mechanics does not invite you to do more things after the initial placement.

There is no progressive difficulty in the waves of monsters. It looked like all the type of monsters were all arriving at the same time. Usually, in that sort of games, you put easy monster at the beginning, and you add harder and more numerous monsters progressively.

Sorry, but it was not that fun, but I'm sure it could be with a little rework. Keep up!

Tiny Heads by DashVirus 2024-10-10T21:31:04Z

I love the idea, most of the constraints are quite "logical", and we learn them little by little.

But sometimes, I felt like I wasn't trying to find the solution with a smart method. I was just randomly moving the elements, untile something cool happens.

It would have been useful to tell us the number of the current level. I guess I made 10 or 12, but I can't even tell you because I'm not sure.

There is a little display bug. I had to put the game full screen to be able to see the right and left parts.

Some of the first levels could be "cleaned". There is one on a 3x3 grid with 3 white flags. It would have been simpler to just have a 2x3 grid with no white flags.

Merci beaucoup, à la prochaine !

Two Types Of Kids by upint 2024-10-10T22:45:00Z

Great idea. We really have the feeling of someone walking, when moving the steps.

It's a little confusing at the beginning. The full-screen button doesn't work, we don't know if we must or if we must not squish the ants. By the way, it's a really cool idea to let us the choice squish/not squish.

Maybe you should fix the typo in the title: "Tow" -> "Two". It will definitely help us to realize we can choose between squishing all the ants or not squishing them.

The leaderboards are confusing too. It would have been better to have two leader boards. One for the squishers, another one for the not-squishers.

I did not understood either when the leader boards appear, and why it does not appear just when I click on a button, like in every other games.

I really love the sound effects, especially the fact you made all of them with your very own mouth.