Slim Pickings by ectucker1 2023-01-09T23:06:02Z
Very fun physics, I liked the floatiness. I didn't really understand the grab early on (and I don't think I really needed it), I think some better tutorials-by-example earlier would help.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → Reed Molbak
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | 59 | Signal | Cleared for Chaos | compo | 13 | 4.16 | 4.29 | 3.92 | 4.13 | 3.61 | 3.77 | |||
| 2025 | 57 | Depths | 👥 | Darkest Depths | jam | 268 | 3.75 | 3.55 | 3.65 | 4.15 | 3.40 | 3.39 | 3.92 | |
| 2024 | 55 | Summoning | 👥 | Incorporeal | jam | 406 | 3.72 | 3.77 | 3.41 | 4.01 | 3.29 | 3.27 | 3.22 | 3.75 |
| 2023 | 54 | Limited Space | 👥 | Executive Assistant Simulator | jam | 703 | 3.43 | 3.36 | 3.80 | 4.06 | 3.20 | 3.26 | 3.40 | 3.46 |
| 2023 | 53 | Delivery | 👥 | Hemoglobin | jam | 409 | 3.72 | 3.77 | 3.56 | 3.72 | 3.37 | 3.58 | 2.54 | 3.34 |
| 2023 | 52 | Harvest | 👥 | Harvest Dune | jam | 102 | 3.96 | 3.81 | 3.72 | 4.23 | 3.64 | 3.90 | 4.13 |
Very fun physics, I liked the floatiness. I didn't really understand the grab early on (and I don't think I really needed it), I think some better tutorials-by-example earlier would help.
Really great entry, I love these kinds of games. The art was excellent and the level design was really well-done. One of my favorite games I've played from this jam. I think it was at its best when it was focused on the movement levels, where I was managing several move options and trying to figure out which ones to string together when.
I was playing this in a browser with a keyboard, and as others have mentioned that made things pretty tough. I ended up stopping on a pretty late level, where I think the right combination of moves involved a hover followed by a horizontal scythe-throw and a teleport that had to be done quickly before falling, and it felt like the kind of thing where the controls were working against me. I made a platformer w/ a similar throw/teleport mechanic once and found that a WASD setup w/ mouse aim can be really helpful, but obviously that's a lot of added scope for a weekend jam.
I also found the combat pretty hard to predict, and I wonder if the game needed it at all (maybe enemies are more environmental hazards rather than something to kill). The hitboxes seemed finicky, especially on a couple where you needed to jump followed by melee. I often felt like there was a good amount of chance in whether I got hit or not
My last thought is that maybe the respawn checkpoints could be shorter in some places. There were some cases where it was fun to replay an early challenge I'd mastered, but a lot of the time I'd die on a challenge late in a level, and I wanted to try another approach (maybe a dash instead of a jump or something). When I have to play the whole stage first, it kind of disincentivizes trying new stuff because death is more expensive. This seems like the kind of thing that gets more important the harder the game is, so some of this might just be that I was using a keyboard so it was harder than intended.
I thought this was a fun game, but I wasn't quite sure how the game ended. It might have been a bug or something, but I eliminated all of my player's pieces and ended up just refreshing the page.
Fun idea though, I enjoyed a couple rounds
I thought the concept was really fun, and the music was also really catchy :) I had a really hard time with the controls (I kept going down when I thought I'd go up). I also couldn't quite tell when I would harvest helium -- between that and the controls, I never got to a point where I felt like I knew what I was doing.
Hi there, it was fun! I found a similar bug to what's reported above, where I fell into a hole. The character didn't re-appear, but I could move the camera through the level.
I really love the concept, and I thought adding details about the person's occupation and other life details was a good touch.
I wasn't quite sure what to do at first, I think there can be a better indication about which bodies are dead and alive at the start. I also think it'd be nice to have some kind of score or other indication of progress -- I didn't really know when to stop.
Nice job esp as a solo dev!
This was a really innovative puzzle game, I don't think I've seen anything like it! I had a hard time understanding some of the rules (particularly when you can and can't overlap with yourself...I think it's basically whenever there's a turn, but it wasn't very obvious to me). Nice job!
This game was great, I had a lot of fun with it! I ran into the same bug kosmik123 did so I wasn't able to finish, I think it was the same checkpoint too.
I thought the core mechanic was great, there's a lot of possibility there
Great game, I had a lot of fun with it! I use a laptop with a touchpad, and the grappling hook was a bit hard to control, but outside of that I thought everything was pretty smooth. The music was great too.
It's a good start with a nice gameplay loop. I found that often the house didn't register that the postman was there, so I needed to go back and forth a lot before I could pick up or deliver a package. And some of the walls made the camera jitter a bit.
I had fun with this, I generally like TD games and this was a fun one. I think some of the HP is either buggy or maybe I just wasn't following, but there were times where I was pretty sure I should have lost but didn't take any damage.
Similar to others in the comments, I liked the driving controls and the game itself is just beautiful. But I wasn't quite sure what I should be doing, it seems like it's mainly a tech demo?
In any case, nice job!
I wasn't able to get past the "Choose a delivery" screen -- it seemed like it would always select countries I didn't click on. I was on html5 so maybe there was an issue there.
This was a really polished game, but I agree with the earlier comments about the decision-making. I didn't really feel a sense of stakes or being forced to think through decisions. I think having harder missions early on that would fail without the right combinations could help emphasize the importance -- as is, I was able to succeed without really putting much thought into who I was recruiting.
Very polished! I liked the sound effects, gameplay, and the overall game feel -- it was very satisfying.
I was a bit confused by the package bombs, they seemed a bit unnecessary. At first I thought that I was supposed to shred them, but it seems like they're the same as regular packages? Because it's a bomb with an explosion, I thought there would be some negative effect, but I could never figure out what it was.
I also think that the pace of trucks returning is fast enough that I never really did anything tetris-like with the space. If the packages had a longer expiration, and the trucks were really slow to return, I think that would encourage more play where I would try and pack a truck as full as I could. The way it is right now, things move so fast (and the truck returns so fast) that it seemed more about how fast I could drag boxes into the truck and hit go, even when the truck was mostly empty.
Fun game! The learning curve is a bit steep, and I had a bit of a hard time understanding how the directional input should work when in midair. I liked the puzzle design.
I had fun with it, but it did feel very random. My highest score is one where there just weren't any asteroids in the way -- I almost wonder if it'd be good to guarantee that an asteroid spawns in front of the rocket pretty early on to force players to actually steer.
I never really did figure out the steering, even really subtle movements threw it off and I'd never be able to find my balance again. So my best runs were just the ones where I was lucky with asteroid spawns.
Great game, very challenging but doable! I also liked the music, and the art's very cute
I liked the idea, it was a fun concept. I think some more feedback on the boss would be helpful, I wasn't really sure what was affecting it until I read the hint you posted. And I also had some of the camera issues mentioned above.
I think the space is a bit too limited -- I felt like there weren't enough options to explore to get the hang of a strategy (you basically can't use the market once there are enough enemies, so the choice really became horse + archer or soldier + 2 archers).
Good concept though!
Similar to other comments, I was expecting the loans to auto-pay. Other than that, nicely done. I think it would be interesting to make houses a bit more competitive somehow, not sure what the best approach is
I wasn't able to play in the web version, even maximised :(
Really cool concept! I like the idea of a puzzle platformer where your verbs are limited use.
I found the movement a bit tricky -- I think the floaty feeling was probably part of the intended design, but when you combine it with how unforgiving the core mechanic is (you only get to dash a limited number of times, jump a limited number of places, etc), I found myself feeling like I didn't have a ton of control.
This is the most relatable game I've played in a while 😂 I love the idea of a calendar sim game, I actually tried a similar thing last jam. Very polished!
I didn't really follow the objective of the game -- moving and crashing into things was fun, but I think it could do a better job explaining the objective and connecting your actions with the score
I like the artwork. I felt like the gameplay was a little out of my hands though -- for instance, I could see I was running out of water but I was just hoping that the next node would have some. If there was a way to reason about how to stay alive, I must have missed it :/
I love the art! The beginning's a bit slow, but once I got going I enjoyed it.
Great concept, I had a lot more fun than I would have thought poking around and looking for the best path! My first couple runs I missed the lights at the beginning, but once I saw them I was all set
@jacobingalls nice work! We left the ending for the very end of development and never got to it, so it's just the placeholder text 🙈.
The encounters were a tough design call; I tried to make most of them a bit of a mix (you take damage, but get some food or something), but in practice...yeah I skip them too. I think maybe a choice system could help, where the encounters either let you pick something, or maybe impacts the game in a more neutral long-term way (like, raise the probability of both food and monsters).
Great mood! I agree w/ some of the comments that the fish felt a bit out of my hands -- I tried sneaking around it a few times but couldn't ever progress too far. The mood is really great though, as well as the general experience
Had a great time playing w/ a friend! Love puzzle room games
I also had some issues w/ the screen size, I ended up fullscreening it. I thought the concept was cute, I had a bit of a hard time figuring out what I should be doing though.
Fun game! I think different icons for gold and fuel could help a bit. I also wasn't quite sure how to advance to the next level. I did advance a couple times, but I think it was always because I died.
This was a great concept, very engaging. The mood and minimalism are great
Wow I love the art and the mood! I think the controls need work -- I'm guessing the clumsiness is intentional, but I never really understood what I should be doing or how to improve to e.g. swing over to get a health pack. Some of the larger rocks also came so suddenly that I felt that I couldn't avoid them.
Good doodle jump clone! I'd totally forgotten about it, it's a solid game.
Atmosphere is great! The learning curve at the start was a little too hard, I never really got a good sense of what my character could/couldn't do.
Great atmosphere and polish! Flying the plane is really satisfying.
Because the islands are far apart, there's no map, and the plane moves a bit slowly, I got a bit frustrated towards the end because I had a hard time remembering where to go, and it felt like there was a lot of trial and error. I found a compass at some point, so maybe there was also a map. But the world is super compelling, and I spent a while just flying around.
I think there's also a bug with the color changing guy, I visited him and didn't buy a re-paint, and my plane was just invisible at that point (there was a transparent one towards the bottom, but it never looked full again).
Great atmosphere! I thought the art style was a little at-odds w/ the otherwise more ominous atmosphere, but I think the sounds and darkness worked great together.
I agree w/ some of the other comments that it wasn't clear what could hurt you, and the controls made it hard to hit a couple of the narrower passages.
I think the idea of the sonar is really cool, and it works great w/ the theme of the game, but I think it wasn't all that necessary since it lasts so briefly, and the rest of the screen is already somewhat lit up. It'd be interesting to make the default worse, but have the sonar effect linger more or something, so the player really has to rely on it. I think that effect was best at the last, darkest stage, and really liked that. Also the map/maze was well-designed.
I think the input delay's a cool choice. Without feedback of seeing the ship move, I think more feedback of other kinds would be important, just to communicate something's happening (like, seeing button presses or something). Being able to pan or something would also be nice -- it was a little hard to see the side screens w/ the zoom.
I like the concept, and the art is well done. Getting the pieces to "stick" to the antenna was really finicky, and I started feeling like the game was mostly trial and error waiting to find good stuff in the junkyard b/c at one point I got stuck with some stuff on the antenna that pushed some stats really high that I couldn't get rid of.
@penagwin nice job! The farthest I ever got was 11 :joy:
@ofoof that's really cool to hear! I didn't balance the later stages very much, so I'd believe that it gets pretty rote once you have four runways and autoland (when I was testing it out, I don't think I was good enough to have everything sorted by the time you get autoland, and when you have planes holding it's a blessing and a curse).
Might be cool to have runway "refresh time" or something, so that you're forced to hold more.
Love the concept, and very polished! The timing for stringing words together was pretty hard for me, but overall really well done.
The input system was pretty confusing to me, I couldn't figure out how to consistently send a dash or a dot (it seemed a bit like a rhythm game with the "Perfect"s, but those seemed to happen whenever I hit space at the full bar, which didn't correspond to letters).
I like the idea though, I think it's a cool space to play in.
Cool concept! I worked w/ synth waves for the first time this jam, it'd be fun to see something like this that was half learning tool.
I think it could do a better job explaining the consequences (I think there was a timer? I didn't realize there was one, and I don't think I had any negative feedback, but I lost, so I must have missed something).
The rhythm and sound of the buildings is so good! I kept getting overwhelmed, having way more resources than I could possibly spend on buildings. And some variety in attack buildings could be nice. But I love the feel of the game, well done.
I love the concept (those fire towers were one of the first things I thought of when I saw the theme, but I didn't think of a good way to gamify it). Also the map is beautiful.
I was a bit confused about how to actually hook everything up -- it seemed like I wasn't able to connect e.g. three towns in a line or something. I had a military -> merchant -> citadel chain, and it was hard to see if it was working (I didn't see anything indicating that I was making money, and the military often didn't send troops, so I think something was wrong). The individual connections seemed good, but I wasn't sure if there was a bug or if I was just missing something. Looking at the other comments, it sounds like everything needed to be connected to the citadel.
I liked the tutorial, I just think the game needs a bit more discoverability on those features. I think it'd be fun to do more with something like this, esp w/ procedurally-generated maps!
I love the concept, I was considering something like this myself and then pivoted to planes.
There were a few moments where it felt like there was nothing I could do -- I set up train that I think was on the fastest track to get to route 6, for instance, and as it was about to arrive a train from 6 spawned and they crashed.
Overall I think it just needs difficulty tuning though, and a lot of polish/juice to give the player more feedback. Some upgrades could be good.
I think it'd be good to have more feedback on what upgrades had been purchased (right now you need to sort of count yourself), and more juice behind the damage dealt/taken. Good start though!
Great art and mood! I found some of the platforming was finicky, particularly trying to jump off ledges and such. I also liked the level design.
Nice art style! I agree w/ some of the above comments that it could have used a little more to do (which is always a weird balance with idle games, different people like different amounts I suppose). It doesn't help that itch doesn't like running games in the background if you open a different tab :sweat_smile: