Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → rjhunter
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | Co | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2014 | 31 | Entire Game on One Screen | Hunt the Pixel | compo | 817 | 2.94 | 2.69 | 3.43 | 3.80 | 2.55 | 3.14 | 3.30 | 2.75 | 88 | |
| 2014 | 30 | Connected Worlds | Connected Worlds | compo | 1221 | 1.84 | 1.45 | 2.13 | 2.03 | 2.16 | 2.48 | 1.68 | 2.04 | 57 | |
| 2013 | 28 | You Only Get One | Title Unknown | ||||||||||||
| 2012 | 24 | Evolution | Evolving Words | jam | 14 |
Right now the game is English-only, but I would like to add support for other languages after the competition.
Some languages will work better than others -- for example, Chinese would probably be a completely different game!
The length was about perfect for an LD entry. Long enough to get a feel for it, short enough to play quickly and rate other games. Good level design and progression.
A little bit of sound would have gone a long way, and it would have been nice to turn "attack OR jump OR move, you only get one" from a frustrating limitation into "just part of the game".
The game didn't really work on my machine (low-end Mac). I heard the (cool) music, and some of the terrain, but movement was wonky and slow. I think I need a better computer to play these fancy modern games!
Lines of poetry as levels - that's a very interesting idea. I found it hard to see the specific colours, and I had to move very slowly and carefully to understand whether I could match anything.
The sound was minimal and a nice fit for the poetry. (Although remember that the LD48 compo rules require you to make all the sounds during the hours of the competition.)
Good, engaging game – I played until the end (although I didn't *quite* make it to the happy ending).
I love the art, and in particular the difference in art between worlds. I don't think it was too short -- in fact, I think it was about the perfect length for this kind of competition!
Some sound would help a lot! Also, I found the controls a bit slippery.
Suprisingly fun, once I figured out where the game started. (I spent ages trying to open the doors and follow the road before I figured out that I was meant to go off-road through the forest!)
The music was nice and gentle, which didn't quite suit the middle part of the game (the desert shooting).
I couldn't get the Mac OS version to work. MacOS applications are normally bundled into a special folder called "*.app" but all I saw was a Windows-style "*.exe".
I think your game is Windows-only for now (but I'd like to see it when if you get it on the Web!)
I found the game very hard!
I initially thought the white envelopes were the main thing to pick up and that the grey spikes were instant death. Once I figured it out it got easier, but still too hard for me.
A little sound would have gone a long way -- even a couple of SFXR bleeps.
Good job!
I played an earlier pre-release game where the worlds were controlled separately. Controlling them all at once seems much better.
The music was pretty cool on and epic sounding, but seemed a bit out of character with the retro arcade theme.
Good job! (especially good for getting something playable up early)
Wow, crossing your eyes as a gameplay technique? I don't think I've ever seen that before. Interesting idea!
I found the game very difficult - maybe because I'm not used to crossing my eyes.
Wonderful. Genuinely fun – simple enough to understand, challenging enough to keep me interested.
The tutorial and speech make this feel very polished, too.
I didn't have enough patience to finish the game, but I wanted to say: Amazing cutscenes :-)
Playable, easy to grasp (easier than I thought, since the "how to play" screen scared me with all the controls).
I never really felt the need to switch weapon -- the blaster was plenty for my needs. I could just hide somewhere safe and keep shooting!
I like it!
I found it started a bit quickly -- I felt a bit flustered while I figured out what was going on. I'd like to see this developed further.
Simple. Fun. Feels surprisingly polished considering most of the graphics are just squares!
(very hard on a trackpad, though, but these kinds of games always are)
Wow, my brain melted from that.
I had to turn the difficulty way down to even have a chance. So much going on at once! I'm just glad I don't suffer from epileptic seizures.
I like the idea that another commenter mentioned -- building up from smaller and simpler levels with bigger sprites to make sure the player has the hang of it, working their way up to the tiny-pixelled madness that we see today.
(Platform note: On Mac OS X, the game loaded and ran but the keys didn't work in fullscreen, only the mouse. I had to use Command-Option-Shift-Escape to force quit. The keys worked fine outside of fullscreen.)
A complete point and click adventure seems like a big task for 48 hours. Well done!
It took me quite a few tries to uncover what happened to the fighter's brother. Quite satisfying when I did, though.
FYI, on my system, the text boxes are overlapping each other (see screenshot at https://www.dropbox.com/s/4hnldofx5rct7a1/Screenshot%202014-12-16%2014.59.10.png?dl=0 ) so I couldn't read all the intro text.
Superb entry.
I was stuck on Level 3 for a while, but I got there in the end!
(I couldn't figure out Adam's password or what to do with `spare_computer`).
I can't download the game at the moment (docs.google.com is throwing 500 Internal Server Errors) but if I can download the source I might try compiling it on Mac OS X for you.
Well done on the idea A solid "small" game that looks like strategy/arcade but is really a puzzle game in disguise. And the audio! Great music (as simple as it is) and SFX.
I beat the 66gp contract once I figured out the stamina recovery mechanic, but now I'm stuck on how to develop the "swimming" trait. I imagine it's something do with surviving under water for long enough, but I can't figure it out.
I'd love to see a Mac port.
Both the Google Drive links seem to be broken for me (500 Internal Server Error). Maybe try hosting somewhere else? I look forward to playing an LD game on Android.
The Google Drive links are working now so I got to play on Android :-)
I found that controlling "multiple stones" was interesting and different, although sometimes got confused about which stone was "active".
The level design progressed nicely, although I didn't finish anywhere near all the levels. I couldn't get past level 4, but then again I'm not very good at these kind of puzzles anyway.
Some audio would help the game a lot.
Good job!
Fabulous entry.
Brilliant interpretation of the theme, slick execution, hilarious text.
Like many people here, I struggled with Level 2. Level 3 was a breeze, and Level 4 was hard but not Level 2 hard.
Also I know you said you fixed the typo but the version I downloaded still says "W and D". I wonder if, co-incidentally, space+D might be a better choice of control than space+S. For consistency.
Great job all around!
Smooth controls, good restart time, cute and engaging art. Feels very polished! I like the little touches like how explosions burn the snowy trees.
The random level layout was sometimes a bit frustrating, and the AI would often get "stuck".
If you continue to work on this game, can I suggest adding powerups?
(Also I think this is the first Mac-only game I've seen in LD!)
Clever idea, cute graphics. Interesting use of the theme!
It wasn't until I read the walkthrough that I understood where the second rune had come from (I didn't spot it initially because there was a spooky skeleton coming at me!). I'd have liked the runes marked separately (or maybe have new ones "shine" until you pick them up).
I'd like to see this idea fleshed out in a post-competition game.
Cute. And a brilliant interpretation of the theme :-)
(I'm sure there's a way to include lwjgl native libraries in such a way that no extra commandline parameters are needed -- fauge's "Sumo Si" <http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-31/?action=preview&uid=40489> uses lwjgl and works out of the box. Maybe fiddling with resource paths?)
Beautiful polish. The learning curve is pretty harsh, though. I think I would have "got" it faster (and enjoyed it more) if my first goal had been a small number like 7, and only growing to 34 once I'd mastered the techniques necessary for matching it up. (My game has a similar problem with random goal selection.)
Great job!
That "easy" mode was.... not easy. I wanted to see the end -- the boss with the Entire Game on One Screen!
Wonderful visuals -- a great example of bang for the buck.
I think it would have been much easier with keyboard controls (heck, it may well have been easier with a mouse instead of the touchpad I played on).
Superb work!
"Generic Platformer" seemed to end abruptly, with no finishing screen or visible boss. Was that intentional or did I trip a bug by going over the top to the switch first?
I was hoping there would be more interaction between the game and the "cheap peripherals", but I guess that might have been one of the things that lost out to time.
Great name. I liked the art (although the smooth-scaled pixels were a bit distracting).
This game actually felt *more* responsive than Joust (at least as I remember it).
I didn't realise that the screen wrapped around until I'd been playing for a while!
Gorgeous graphics, great play with light, and beautiful (if perhaps a little incongruent) music.
I'll have to rate the playability based on the 72-hour version, but I'm glad you kept going with this -- the post-compo version is *really* shaping up.
I thought for a while the controls were sideways-WASD. It took a while to realise they were relative to the pointer. Innovative, but confusing.
I think there was a bug in the door opening/closing code -- I kept getting stuck in the room just before the shop :-(
An interesting interpretation of "entire game on one screen"!
I had a go at running the game from my Mac -- I noticed it was Java and I thought I might be able to grab a copy of the platform-specific LWJGL libraries and put them in the jar. It didn't quite work with the version I downloaded, but if you've got a matching version, you might be able to port to Mac and Linux relatively easily.
On Mac OS X, I'm getting an error on startup:
Exception in thread "Display" java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Width (0) and height (0) cannot be <= 0
I've pasted the stack trace into a gist here, if you're interested: https://gist.github.com/rhunter/155cbe454ceaad5859ed
An interesting core mechanic -- I'd like to see it built out a bit. Perhaps split into levels or additional "special" tiles.
I also got stuck with an unwinnable hand -- all water tiles on the board, all water tiles in my hand :-(
(I ran this on Mac OS X with Wine.)
I tried running the game on Mac OS X using Wine, and it worked! No audio, though, which was a shame.
The game itself was quite fun (although *way* too hard for me). I'd like to see a post-compo version of this with sound and music, and maybe progressive levels (the terrain gets modified less at the start of the game, ramping up to the crazy levels it is now).
A fairly loose interpretation of the theme, but an enjoyable game nonetheless. It felt very polished -- the minimal aesthetic worked well indeed with the smooth animation and the little dancing particles.
In a nice change from most LD platformers, this was actually about my skill level -- the early parts were a little easy if anything, and I actually managed to complete it (although the penultimate room did stick me for a while).
Fantastic work all around.
There's no good place to be homeless, but the people in this city seem to be a lot more ... humane than many places I've seen. Everyone you ask for money at least acknowledges you, even if they don't give anything.
Wow, super-polished. A simple game with great music!
I could do with some "punctuation" in the game's pacing -- maybe a burst of harder (faster/more) enemies during a song's chorus or something.
Top effort!
I love the voice acting, although there's so much going on at once that the words get a bit lost.
Hilarious game concept, and well-executed too.
Fun writing (even if it was a little uneven at times), and nicely paced -- often hectic, but always with some breathing room.
The "silly" enemies (like the nuclear cactus) and the gameplay remind me a bit of Llamatron.
Excellent work!
Superb interpretation of the "one screen" theme.
The game itself wasn't *super* fun but the idea and the graphics were great. I would have liked a *little* bit more differentiation in audio between the two screens.
I spent some time trying to figure out how to reply to the boss, and thinking the command prompt window was just a nice piece of interaction detail.
Wonderful work.
I look forward to playing this game... but the Mac zip is busted :-(
I can't unzip it with any of the tools I have to hand. Seems like it's been cut off at the end. It's 11,199,324 bytes, is that what you uploaded?
Interesting idea for the controls, but working the controls was ultimately harder than the game itself. Most of the time the controls just distracted from the "real" game :-(
I also spent a while on the first level trying to figure out why my claw wasn't gripping the little block -- all the blocks looked "detachable" to me initially.
The inner game was actually quite fun, and I managed to stick through to the end. Good work with the level design.
I'd love to see another version with more traditional controls (perhaps automatically animating the indirect controls to keep the "claw machine" theme).
Wonderful concept for the story, and I loved the humour in the text.
If you work on this further, I'd like to see more direct visual feedback on trade and planets (colour/icon/bar/animation).
I'd also like the planet names that appear in the link screen to be links or at least colour-coded by race, since I often found myself asking "Wablegarble? Where is *that*?" and spend a while clicking around trying to find it. (Coincidentally, clicking around trying to find something happens to be the entirety of my game.)
Good work!
As someone who has sunk many hours NetHack (not to mention editors like vi), I found using the jkl keys for firing direction a very confusing experience. The stuff on the screen is all characters and my fingers are where I'd have them for NetHack, but the bindings are all off (except for l, which is right as expected).
I managed to make it through the whole game almost exclusively firing right :-)
Fantastic entry. Superb polish, too, especially for the time allotted. Configurable controls, in-game tutorial that responds to the configured controls, beautiful lighting...
I found the "big reveal" a little bit too obvious for my tastes, but maybe I'm just cynical (or I uncovered clues in the "wrong" order).
I never did find out what was in storage... I left it for later when the character said "I have a bad feeling about this", talking about a locked door in the corner of the map :-)
Fantastic idea. Well-executed learning curve -- even though I'm a numpty and can't keep a rhythm to save my life, I didn't feel too lost.
Good work!
(The Mac download seems to be corrupted, by the way -- none of my unzipping programs can open it.)
Simple and fun. I'm normally terrible at these kinds of games, but I managed to survive for several waves of this one :-)
Quite fun indeed! Could use a bit more UI (whic powerup is active right now, for example) and a teeny bit more feedback when you hit people (eg flashing).
Good music, good sound effects. My wrist hurt from playing on trackpad for too long!
Way too hard for me, but what *gorgeous* graphics.
The music was pretty amazing too, but it got a bit repetitive. The high-pitched sound (violin? rusty gate?) would have worked better if it only showed up once in a while instead of almost all the time.
(I was frustrated by the controls, but I see you've fixed that in the post-compo version. Still just as ridiculously hard, but now it feels like a hard *game* instead of hard *controls*.)
The darkness, the derelict screens, and text like "still working" all contributed to a build a pretty solid atmosphere.
The darkness was wonderful for mood and visual effects but really got in the way of gameplay a few times (like when the first upgrade station is nearly invisible because it's near the edge of the screen).
I found the music was too quiet for the sound effects.
I mostly liked the level design (apart from some of the long retry times). The game feels surprisingly "big" given the 48 hour constraint.
Great work!
Now that's something a bit different!
It took a while before I got past the first level, and it was initially frustrating because each time I failed it took a long time to get started again -- and I had to learn a whole new set!
If you develop this further, I'd suggest picking a small fixed set of letters and gradually expanding (maybe even keep track of how well the player knows each letter).
Some letters were quite easy to spot (C, O, W, L) and remember and some were easily confused with others. S, M, N in particular were super hard.
The piano scale for each correct letter was a nice touch.
"An entire game about one spleen."
Hilarious interpretation of the theme. Interesting twist on the match-grid style of game. I found the game very easy the first time around, and very hard the next -- I guess I was at the mercy of the Random Number Generator.
The only LD game about internal organs that I've played so far!
Hilarious idea. Cute graphics.
It locked up a few times for me and I had to reload the page. I did get there in the end, though!
I would have appreciated a little bit of audio -- you could go a long way with just two sounds: some wing flaps when a bird moves and a "coo" sound at mating.
Oh, and what a brilliant title for the game :-)
I'm looking forward to this game, but the Mac download seems to be corrupted -- none of my unzipping programs like it. Is it meant to be 14,394,916 bytes or perhaps more?
Just in case, I tried using Wine to run this on Mac OS X. It didn't work :-(
My Wine setup doesn't have "Microsoft.Windows.Common-Controls".
Good fun, even without the audio. I got to level 9 :-)
Even some super-basic sound and music would help a lot, but I feel like the gently pulsing waves of enemies would be a good match for a moody, liquid music. Try Earslap's web-based musical instrument Circuli if you haven't already -- it's super easy.
I found the "SHIFT" control a bit hard to work with -- I kept pressing the wrong button. I think I would have found it easier if SHIFT (temporarily) turned off the "turn to the direction of movement" and the cursor keys moved in the same direction regardless of whether SHIFT was on or off.
Excellent first entry! I look forward to more :-)
I'm on a Mac OS X system with Wine installed. I wasn't able to run `ld48h31.exe` (it died with a page fault) but `ld48h31_gtfont.exe` ran OK (no music, though).
Game-wise, I liked the surreal theme. It seems like the mechanics didn't get as far as you would have liked, but you still made a "winnable" game even with a late start :-)
Worked for me on Mac OS X!
I LOVE the intro animation. The game itself is a bit hard for me but it restarts relatively quickly so I still played a bunch of times. I eventually made it to the boss (once).
At one point the game crashed with an ArrayIndexOutOfBounds exception: -1 on PlayState.update (PlayState.java:262).
Great music! A pity that some people haven't been able to hear it.
Here's how you can fix it.
The problem is that the File("src/ScreenOSMusic.wav") specifically looks for a real file on disk (in a real folder called "src"), not a resource that might be in a jar.
Two ways of solving this:
* Keep the code as-is, and supply the WAV (in a folder called "src") alongside the JAR instead of inside it.
* Keep the WAV in the JAR, and swap your File and FileInputStream code for a call to getResourceAsStream(). Resources might be files on disk, or they might be parts of a JAR (or theoretically other things).
Also, your game works on platforms other than Windows (I just ran it on Mac OS X), but not everybody likes RAR format archives. You could get more people playing your game if you link to a ZIP (or better still, just link to your JAR directly since a JAR is actually just a ZIP with particular files in it).
Smooth take on the theme. The items were great, too ("What the heck is a Sanic?"). I found the responsiveness a little sluggish sometimes -- I guess it was the time it took to roll into a ball. Amazing amount of level design (including reuse) for a 48-hour competition.
(Oh, and challenging without being *quite* impossible. After 23 minutes and 111 deaths, I finally made it to the end!)
Very good "level design" (if you can call it that in a game like this). Warmup rounds, then introducing the new characters gently before using them in full force.
I beat it eventually, mostly by sticking close to the walls and being suspicious :-)
I felt the traps were a bit too brutal -- invisible, no warning, instant death, all the way back to the start, player has to remember where the trap was. Still, I did eventually get through so it's not impossible :-)
The controls felt smooth and responsive, although it was a bit weird to move my hands to the mouse for opening locks.
A little audio -- even just a couple of dings and pops made in cfxr -- would go a long way.
Good work!
Interesting puzzle, a beautiful use of light and line-of-sight.
The "normal" and "expert" modes almost feel like different games. I think I liked the "expert" game better, but the "normal" version served as a tutorial for me :-)
The music was a great fit for the game, although I do wish you'd chosen to compress the music before distributing -- 168MB takes a long time to download here!
Overall a very good work. Great job.
Congratulations on making a game in such a short time!
Although your game is listed for "Windows", I downloaded it anyway -- and luckily, it's really a Java app that works fine on Mac too (and probably Linux)!
A wonderful interpretation of the theme. More "art" than "game", but I'm totally OK with that.
Lovely cheerful graphics.
I found it hard to get around the track but I guess that's the point, right? :-)
On Mac OS X, double-clicking on the .love file throws the following error:
main.lua:7: module 'class.Obstacle' not found
If I add the class folder to the .love file (which is really just a zip with a special layout), everything works nicely. As a bonus, it's easier to distribute the all-in-one file :-)
As far as the game itself goes, I found it quite fun. The comparisons to Flappy Bird and Super Hexagon are fair, in aspects, but it's interesting to see how the concept of not-quite-instant-death changes the feel.
Simple but very suitable music.
Reminds me a little of the classic Unix game "robots" (except real-time and with graphics). Because of this, and because the fire stayed on the screen, I kept expecting the robots to crash into the burning wreckage of other robots.
I would have like a bit of audio, too.
Lovely graphics!
Good level design/pacing -- the first few levels worked well as a tutorial.
The in-game button controls are a great idea but I found them hard to keep straight.
Amusing graphics and story :-)
The demons felt invincible! I must have been having some success because the wave counter eventually said 3/8 -- I didn't realise I passed any waves at all.
The fractal landscape is brilliant, and the graphics and animation manage to pack a lot of punch with just a few pixels.
I didn't feel like I was giving or taking damage, though :-(
Superb music. A pity there weren't any sound effects to go with it, because it was pretty hard to tell whether I was doing damage or taking damage or what.
An interesting take on the theme -- and I didn't get the title reference until after I'd finished the game and come back for scoring!
Interesting idea!
I got stuck on the "Be Patient" level for ages until I figured out that I could stand on air for a while, like a cartoon character running off a cliff :-) The next level stopped me in my tracks, though.
I found the music a little too quiet compared to the sound effects (or the sound effects too loud compared to the music).
Plenty of variety in the level graphics!
A novel concept.
I found it very hard, and was sad when there was no win/loss recognition. I had to make my own game :-)
Hilarious explanation text!
I was *very* confused until I tried the full Web link. After reloading once or twice, all of a sudden it was clear why I was so confused -- not all the graphics had shown up initially! (imagine playing without the ghosts)
Once I got the game going, I could appreciate the game. I even completed the level!
I liked the art (when it loaded), and the idea of the game.
The indirect controls were challenging -- I had the most success with waiting until a character wandered close enough to their goal on their own, and then nudge them to trigger a pickup.
Good luck with the next version!
I (eventually!) made it to the end. I kept getting stuck with not *quite* enough keys, but I persevered until I figured it out.
Great level design!
One suggestion I would make is to make the transitions between "rooms" feel a bit more... transitional? Right now it feels like the player is transported to the top, rather than walking down stairs to the same room. If that makes sense.
Good job, overall!
Interesting and novel control system. I had to go back to the game description and re-read the controls, so on-screen hints or a tutorial would really help.
For a game with death at every corner, it took quite a while to restart the level (wait for "bluescreen" restart, clicking through all the folders...).
On my machine (Mac OS X) with trackpad, the pointer in the game moved a *lot* slower than the real pointer moves in the rest of the system. I think this might be a Unity thing, ignoring system mouse sensitivity and doing its own.
Great job!
Even though it's labelled "Windows" and is a RAR format archive, it works fine on Mac OS X in Google Chrome *through a web server*.
shotty456, seriously, repack as a ZIP and upload it to (say) itch.io -- it'll let everyone play it easily.
Once you've uploaded it somewhere like that, edit your entry so that instead of a MediaFire link called "Windows", have an itch.io link called "Web".
Everyone wins!
"Colour is everything" bonus theme :-)
Very different. Very hard to start with (although it got much easier once I figured it out). If you develop this game further, I'd suggest building up the complexity a little more slowly. Maybe starting with one colour, then adding another, then the third.
I eventually finished but mostly from building stairs of red platforms at hitting the attack buttons almost constantly.
Fun!
Interesting game!
The different pilots' personalities came through very strongly in the voice acting, and that was marvellous.
I would have liked a big more feeling of "time passing" while the fighters were out on a mission, and maybe a bit more guidance on what to do (it took me a few clicks before I figured out what the game was about).
Good work!
Well-executed simple game. More challenging than it looks.
The music building up at the same time as the gameplay gets much more fast and frantic.... amazing. It felt like the stakes were very high!
It would be nice to have instructions displayed on-screen at the start.
Good work!
A fun, though very difficult, game. Nice interpretation of the theme!
If you develop this further, I'd like to see something to visually convey the "security screen" concept -- perhaps a border around the play area that looks like a TV monitor.
Good work!
I couldn't get past level 4 (the one with lots of holes but only one snowball) — it looked impossible, so I wondered if I missed a mechanic (like picking up snowballs).
I really liked the music.
I compiled and ran on Mac OS X with a few changes. Only one of them wasn't already mentioned in the README.
* Clone source
* Rendered music manually vmml to wav
* Renamed assets to include .dat
* Edited Makefile to look for GFraMe in Darwin folder instead of Linux folder
* make RELEASE=yes
Hehe, my entry was initially meant to be something like "Where on the Screen is Carmen Sandiego" -- it looks like you got a lot more of the investigative stuff than I did!
Lovely graphics, smooth interface... and I like the sinister undercurrent that had me asking "...wait, are *we* the bad guys?"
I didn't get the connection to the theme until I read your description in the comments. Perhaps a couple of in-game word changes ("My fuel levels", "IG-BOT is travelling to...") might have helped make the connection.
Fun game anyway, good job!
Very interesting! I'm pleased you kept working on this, I want to see where the story goes.
I sometimes felt a bit railroaded (commands not working when I wanted them to, or they worked but interrupted the story). I'd prefer feedback like "command temporarily unavailable" than either of these outcomes.
Keep up the good work!