Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → ryguydavis
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | Co | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | 38 | A Small World | RASHLANDER | compo | 62 | 3.91 | 3.78 | 3.02 | 2.83 | 4.16 | 3.07 | 3.62 | |||
| 2015 | 32 | An Unconventional Weapon | Adventure Lamp | compo | 17 | 4.17 | 4.15 | 3.61 | 4.05 | 4.32 | 3.67 | 3.27 | 3.60 | 30 | |
| 2014 | 31 | Entire Game on One Screen | Galactic Goat | compo | 240 | 3.53 | 3.64 | 3.03 | 3.75 | 3.94 | 3.00 | 3.32 | 3.10 | 54 | |
| 2014 | 30 | Connected Worlds | Get Set | compo | 425 | 3.33 | 3.36 | 3.26 | 2.44 | 4.08 | 2.76 | 3.28 | 47 |
This was very, very good. The graphics were excellent but to be honest I was mostly taken in by the rich story. It could easily have veered into trite but you managed to completely avoid ham-handing the dialogue. I was truly touched. Thanks for sharing it.
Very nice. I love the Game Boy Color feel. I want the controls to be a bit snappier, but minor note there. The mechanic is definitely not that new, but it is implemented very well. I love the simple animations, especially the hair. I would definitely play more of this if it were updated post LD weekend.
Hey, thanks for playing! The use of competition theme is in the story and setting. The game takes place in the space between two words (industrial and natural). In other words, the worlds are "connected" by your escape route. I would have liked to make this more obvious but time constraints forced me to cut a beginning scene which would have made it more apparent.
I like this a lot for what it is, but sadly it isn't very much yet. I would love to see what you have after a few more days of work. The visual style and movement were fantastic. Unfortunately there just wasn't much to do yet. I also noticed that once you killed all the little creatures nothing seemed to happen and it just felt like a big empty room. Again, I would love to see this after more work.
Very solid game. I'd love to see lots more levels with some attention to the occasional overly difficult level to get rid of bottlenecks. I want to see this on mobile platforms. Everything was great. I'm blown away at what you were able to accomplish in so little time.
I really like this. It could make a pretty good mobile game with some extra work. Great use of theme, too.
I had significant trouble with lag, which made the game pretty difficult to play. I also found the colors very hard to look at. I managed to touch the planets a bit and shoot at people, but there was no way I was going to hit anybody. Props for doing multiplayer for LD, though.
I really enjoyed this. It's a shame you didn't get to finish the way you had hoped, but as it is I am really impressed. I want snappier controls and maybe a bit more contrast in the art, but otherwise I had no complaints. Great work.
Great idea. It was a bit hard to play. I had a lot of trouble with the jump button--it worked only about half the time, unfortunately. Even when it was working the game felt pretty difficult to control and not terribly user-friendly, which was a shame since the game itself looked very interesting and I wanted to see what it had to offer.
Took a few tries to figure it out, but it was pretty fun once I got the hang of it. The moving HUD was frustrating, since I wanted to see how much of each resource I had at the end of my turn and had to memorize the stats before choosing an action to see the effect. Overall it was very charming and I quite liked it.
Wow. Just wow. Gorgeous, smooth, moody, minimal, and yet extremely complex. I see you have updated the AI, which is good. This version was unbelievably hard but still worth the play. Overall very solid.
I almost quit after the first play, but once I realized that you can go back to the living realm it became very interesting. Nice use of the theme. I would have liked more macro goals, it seemed to boil down to "run back to the portal and collect health."
Great graphics, strong mood, and fantastic execution. Like many LD games, it got way hard, way fast. If you want to take this further in the future I would figure out what lessons the player needs to learn and give it to them in small bites before doing anything complicated around new ideas. That said, I really enjoyed this. Excellent work.
I really liked your energy rope idea. I think it might play better if the player snaps to the grid so it does not get stuck on corners. The game was a real challenge, especially with the lighting effects. I liked that the energy crystals glowed in the dark, because it felt more fair that way.
Well, I agree with your notes--it's definitely rough around the edges. And yet I played it longer than any other LD game so far. It felt clunky but I was very compelled to take all the cities, and eventually won. It needs some TLC, but overall it was a pretty good experience. Solid 48 hour work.
This was really fun. I played through a few times because I realized there were much larger planets I had not been able to collect yet. There's a need for more polish, especially for moving objects/camera movement, but that did not detract from the game too much. I had a great time playing.
After a while I played this just for the candy. Very, very funny. I would have liked check points and fewer difficult/frustrating jumps so early in the game but overall it was quite nice.
Great concept. The first time I completed a level was surprising and delightful. I was impressed with the number of levels you were able to create in such a short time.
Nice game! It took a moment to figure out the relationship between population and fuel, but I figured it out in a couple levels. The visual style was great and fit very well. I had a little trouble with the camera, too--I would have liked a restriction on how far away from the sun is allowed, just so getting lost didn't seem like an option. Minor gripe though.
I really enjoyed this. The previous-plays ghost mechanic is always fun and the addition of a dying message is even better. Good choice on keeping the ghost transparency down. It's really cool how the ghosts turn into a river and you stop seeing the individuals until the end.
This was really interesting. A little difficult to know the goal and direction throughout, but the range of things you can do with the aliens was really interesting. Loved the animations. I think the controls could have felt better, but overall were fine.
I really really enjoyed this. Unicycle platforming is really a special idea, and you executed it brilliantly. This is just an all around great experience. Side note, I would speed up the curtain transition a bit (it was a bit tedious).
Galactic Buddies indeed! I wasn't so sure about this when I saw a wall of text at the beginning, but you sure sold me on it with the humor and concept. I think I would have preferred sounds from bfxr for computer noises, but the ones you have were properly game-jam charming. The gameplay was great and I would have like to play more but I was unsure how to keep the engine stable. Overall high marks from me, great job!
Hey, this is good stuff. I know it's just in concept state, but I can see where you were going with this and I think it's great for what it is.
Really really great mechanic here. I've had similar thoughts before but never managed to take the ideas to any place this interesting. Cool stuff.
Just as a start, I LOVE Twin Motion Games. It's been a few years since I've seen you guys around. Good memories :)
So I reeeaaallly wanted to like this more than I did. Everything is great, but I was deeply held back by how slow the progress bars were. I actually looked away while things were loading. I think if the speed was double or tripled it would be very engaging. The concept and execution were great. Glad to run into this!
Wow, you got a perfect score out of me. This was truly phenomenal. I loved everything about it.
I really enjoyed this. The idea was great, the art was well done, and I enjoyed the probability puzzles. I would have liked some simple sounds, even just something from bfxr to fill it in. Still, I enjoyed the play through very much. This would make a fantastic app (since that seems to be the best place for boardgame style videogames).
Love the idea. Definitely a concept I could see people playing on their phones. I'm not really drawn to the visual style, but that might just be a preference thing.
Love the direction you took. I'd love to see this kind of game more often. As it is, it's very frustrating and difficult to get lost in the experience because of punishing moments or looking for pixels on the screen. Overall the idea and execution is really something remarkable for LD. I want to see more of this kind of thing.
I liked the level design quite a bit, though some parts seemed unnecessarily punishing. Overall I enjoyed it.
Man, I really love your style. It's really about that simple. Great work.
This was pretty great. I spent a long time wandering around because the world was so compelling. The controls were really awful--being locked to the diagonal grid just did not work for me. That said, I still have a great time and thought the concept was really amazing.
This is really well put together and clearly tapping into something interesting. Others have already commented on the gameplay so I'll just note that I agree that I had no reason to jump right now--but I really want to! Really worth the download. Great work.
What a great set of mechanics around the crates. It's tough doing a multiplayer game for LD since most people are playing alone, but I can see there is something pretty cool here.
This was great. Really consistent with the rest of your portfolio. I'm really impressed this was a 48 hour game. Get some audio in there, it'll be extra great!
As far as the sickness problem, I'm wondering if the key is the background. Try changing which direction it's moving, or have it move at the same rate as the ground, or have it not move at all. I think one of those will be helpful.
This was really compelling. I so enjoyed playing. It did ride the line between disorienting and frustrating, and I think tipped over into frustrating a few times (especially finding exits)--but I think the amount of this shows it was still worth the frustration.
I really enjoyed this. The concept and overall execution were great, but the controls really made it difficult to get into. I LOVED the little person's animations, they were fantastic. Would have loved to hear it with sound.
I liked the art and platform feel quite a bit, though I wasn't too enthralled by a standard "collect all the things" platformer without a new mechanic. Overall it's very well put together. The mechanics and level design just didn't live up the the rest of it, which was quite good.
I'm really in love with the pixel art. I think a different layout with more paths and perhaps some A* pathfinding would have improved this, but it was still pretty enjoyable. I got a score of 9, which started to get pretty darn hard.
This touched me. Thank you for sharing your heart in this way. You've hit a rare chord in the video game space and I applaud you for it.
"The goal was to make the player fear Red dots, while most of the time encoutering Yellow one"
I totally got that. Most people you run into in life sort of bump into you. But occasionally someone can really hurt you. I thought it was brilliant.
Thanks.
Now I feel all warm and fuzzy. This was great! I cannot believe you chose to animate things for a LD game. So impressed with what you were able to make in that time.
Excellent little game. I really want to see more depth of gameplay since what you have here is so solid. Beautiful movement, visuals, and sounds. Everything was really well fitting.
Something about your mechanic of controlling everyone RTS style in the most clunky fashion made this very interesting, ironically. I didn't want to like it but found myself playing for quite a while. Definitely super unique.
I would really like to see a slower paced game using the same deformation system. The game mechanics are so tough and somewhat difficult to understand, but the sandbox they are sitting in is SO interesting. I especially love the world wiggle at the end. Great touch.
Really, really good. It's easy to believe there's a much larger game there. I would be really excited to see a later release of this.
Nice mechanic, well executed. Amazingly simple concept for how engaging it was.
I loved how the world insisted on surprising me. The mood and interactions were really great. I found the controls really difficult, which was a shame. I played with the mouse, but I don't know if the gamepad would have been any different.
I really got sucked into this. It was a joy to play. I love the color scheme, the voice acting, the music, the level design, the story--it really came together into something quite special. I played through the whole thing and then wanted some more. Bravo.
Some much smaller and less important thoughts: I think the text box between levels could do with a opaque white (to fit the rest of the aesthetic). The transparent black didn't seem to fit. Also, I finished 2-6 without too much trouble, but it had noticeably more moving parts than other levels. It could be improved, I think, with just one of the micropuzzles removed.
Nice concept and great play on words. It really lends itself to interesting puzzles. The movement was a little stiff but did the job.
Those darn cupcakes! Really funny concept and great take on the theme.
I am going to agree with dalbinblue on this. It's tough to even get to a stage where you can submit, especially the first time around. I think I failed at two LD's before I even got to the submission page. Congrats!
I also noticed the feet collision and thought it was a pretty cool idea. It did take a minute to figure out the controls. The movement is slow enough that it's easy to miss at first. I think that's what the first comment was about.
What a great little package. It looks like a small experience and then unfolds into an intricate labyrinthine spaghetti. The cool part to me is that in concept it's just a simple maze game, but instead of putting the doors on the edges of the screen or in visible locations you put them in the middle of the room and in less than obvious places. Really changes to feel from something known and predictable to unknown and fascinating. Also, the music was excellent and well above game jam par. Overall really excellent work. My one gripe--why are the slime shadows vector? Those beautiful pixels..
@jebouin Yeah, it looked purely like a gamejam "focus on what is important" decision. It's such a minor gripe it almost wasn't worth including.
I had a lot of fun with this. Nothing like a gravity physics toy with destructible terrain. Really pretty, too. I found myself playing with this for quite a while. I think it's quite a solid entry.
You weren't kidding, this is a hard one. I think you might be a bit hard on yourself saying it's "hard but unfair" as it is merely a different proposition. It is hard to get players motivated to continue playing a hard game just for a high score--I think the appeal of highscore tables fell off decades ago--but you can always breadcrumb people along by sprinkling in new mechanics as they progress. They'll keep playing just to discover what else is in the game.
Anyway, I wanted to say the super fast shower of asteroids felt really cool and the music was a great thumping time. I'm glad I didn't miss this one.
Hah! That was incredible. Great story, slick art, and most importantly *that gravity*. Really wish I could vote right about now.
I really love your game window. The circle window + radial level design was really fantastic. I would have liked to see more of it, but I just couldn't play for long without finding unpassable areas. The first cold area, for instance, had too many elements and the puzzle became punishing rather than difficult because of the bees. In the future, you might consider not including two new elements in one room, especially if one of them kills you. It looked like you had a LOT of really cool ideas (radial level/gravity, temperature, jump height variance, time pressure, etc.) but because they all came in at more or less the same time they confused each other and became difficult to learn. I think separating them out would help a great deal.
Also, the intro made me laugh out loud. Really funny fourth wall stuff.
Great concept! The drawings were fun and quirky. I really like the idea of trying to manage walking while avoiding those panicky little people. There might be a few too many ideas flying around for this to be immediately accessible, but once I got the hang of it the game became rather interesting. Reminds me of QWOP in the best way possible. My biggest critique is your submission page. Where are the pictures for those beautiful hand-drawn graphics? A quick png or better yet a gif would do wonders for your number of ratings.
So at first I was totally against the straight shots on a radial planet. They definitely make fighting the ground enemies very hard. But for anything in the air, it turned out to be really interesting. I'm wondering if the game would be better without the ground enemies at all. Just some thoughts, but minor ones. I like the music very much. The death was also great--music stopping and spinning of into space was actually quite satisfying. I would be very interested to see more with the missiles, almost like missile command mario galaxy. Hmmm.
SO. CUTE. I love this. I love the brothers on a little island build a fort theme. I love the precious music. I love the depth of field. I love the voice work. Wonderful. Thanks for letting me experience this. Really well worth your 72 hours and my 5 minutes.
Excellent theme interpretation! I love the normal life problem meshing so well with standard line-of-sight mechanics which help me appreciate them as if they were totally new. The deadpan supermarket music was so appropriate and really set the tone in the best way possible.
My only two complaints are minor and sort of a given in such a small dev window. The first is that the movement is kind of jarring. People here are saying "animations" but I think that could be a bit misleading. You could keep everything exactly the way it is but simply slide characters to their destinations with an equation like x = x + (targetx - x) / 10. This is up to your taste and interpretation, of course. The second critique is that the game gets pretty hard pretty fast. I would have two or three levels with fewer moving parts before players have to contend with that level of complexity.
This one is getting high marks from me. Really great job everyone.
Great little game! Loved the look and the concept (360 missile command? Yes please.). I didn't feel like it got too hard too fast. In fact, without more content I wouldn't want it to go any slower as it would risk becoming predictable. Some more polish or enemies would be great. I notice some people are mentioning sound--if you don't already know it this is a fantastic tool for quick sfx: http://sfbgames.com/chiptone/
Really fun seeing a game in the Motherload genre. I play these things to death. It's actually fascinating seeing you take it even farther into "casual" which is great because this kind of game can get overwhelming pretty fast. I beat it, which is a surprise to me as LD games tend to be fast and I don't want to sit playing them too long. The game sort of pulled me in. I wish the controls weren't so floaty/slidy. The art and presentation suggest it would work better with faster movement or snapping to the grid (maybe a soft snap, which you slide into place fairly quickly). Either way I didn't want to slam into pixels quite so often and think the experience could be improved with another pass at the controls. Overall I had a great time and as a someone who has poured way more time than is healthy into digging games such as this I give it a great big thumbs up.
I would love to play but rar files are a no go. I tried to convert to zip using a web converter but it's saying the zip is corrupt.
I'm not sure how much more I can add that I don't see in the comments already. Overall I liked this and it got a pretty good rating from me. It looks like a good proof of concept that could use more work on the basic systems like combat. I seems like if I ever engaged in combat I would be stuck doing that endlessly with no option to disengage and begin moving again. I think once that kind of design work is figured out you will have a great little game on your hands. There is certainly lots of promise here. One feature I would like to see is more boards/worlds. Either hand made or generated is fine--I just want more opportunities to explore the movement system and find optimal paths through the terrain (which was a really interesting part of the ruleset).
Obviously the art is a great strength for this entry. The font choice, background, card design, etc were all very well done. I also liked the timing mechanic for the battles, which is fairly new for card games as far as I know. I think the area that was lacking for me was the core design, which seemed pretty shallow. I think that's more a product of 48 hours than it is any lack on your part, though. I think I would lower most of the numbers to single digits, just for clarity. Right now it's a little hard to wrap my head around the state of the cards because the numbers are too big. Last thought--I really enjoyed being able to buy and open packs. Made me smile. Great work on this!
Wow you killed it. What a great entry. The visuals and audio mesh so well and go way beyond gamejam standards. I think they kept me playing longer than I otherwise would have. I wish it had been a bit harder, to be honest. The aesthetic would have set me up for "hard but fair."
Great use of greys. I especially appreciate the washed out look. Goes super well with the audio and hits dystopian despair right between the eyes.
Also, this was a game MADE to be a gif. It screams "play me, play me right now" on that itch storefront.
@samlo Fair is such a weird balancing act. It's easy to make things hard and it's easy to make things boring, but finding the balance between is really tough. I think what this has going for it is the packaging signals "this is not casual" so as a player you go in prepared for it. I actually was disappointed by the ease at which I was going through levels, since the packaging suggested it would be a bit relentless and arcadey.
Wow, I'm impressed you learned JavaScript, figured out music creation, and ended up with a playable game in just 48 hours. Great choice of a mechanic. A more complicated concept would be difficult to finish in such a small time window, given how much you were learning. I also really like the upgrade system between levels, it changes a very basic premise into something with an interesting meta. I'll join others in saying a lack of other enemy types was missed, given that upgraded damage was an option.
That hard mode though. What level can you get to on it?
Overall it looks like you had a marvelously productive weekend.
Planet gravity is just so much fun. I found myself thinking "oh no I missed!" and then realizing I would orbit all the way around anyway. Great use of that mechanic to make a puzzle structure. This could get really interesting with more puzzle elements.
I know people come fishing for their own reviews, but you should check out my game, it's like your game's evil twin. Normally my games are just as packed with cute planets, but for some reason I am on the other side of the fence this time. On that note, the planet is super cute. It needs to be a sticker on someone's laptop.
@klekky I agree about unfair deaths, they are never good. I have been working over the past week to design away from those, so hopefully fewer surprise explosions in the future. Thanks for playing!
@jebouin Thanks for the great write-up. I agree, I think learning to move is the strongest part of the game, which is why I didn't add too many bells and whistles. The post compo work has been pretty specifically focused on avoiding that "crash 10 times before feeling any reward" thing that happens before you're used to it. I'm glad you feel like coming back after being punished so much by my silly game.
@jupiter-hadley Thanks again Jupiter! Your videos are a highlight of LD.
@eveningwayward Oh shoot! Thank you for the heads up about the source link. It has been updated and works correctly now.
@martenscedric Landing on obstacles is one of my favorite parts!
@redpanda Agreed. Hard is one thing, but unfair is a different story. The current version is much more generous.
@spaceman I know, that explosion sound :( I'm working on it.
@secret-tunnel Yes, RASHlander :) I am open to anyone else telling me the name is no good, but overall I think it's better to get a visceral reaction than none at all.
@adrisj7 I know. It's fun to be reckless, but it's not currently rewarded. Maybe the goal should have some sort of timing bonus so that you can legitimately speed your way through. Thanks for that feedback, it was really great.
@automatonvx Yes, the clinky bits are just to enhance the shadow effect in this version. In the post competition version they play a role with certain upgrades. I think you were right on with your hope that they would restore fuel.
@papaver ...what?? First try? He deserves huge props. Thanks for playing!
@glimaleite Thanks! I agree, totally.
@bwalter I was going for something visceral, but it might have been a rash decision.
@hdteav Unfortunately and fortunately retro is pretty synonymous with stupid hard. I'm working on better mechanisms to make it seem worth it. Thanks for playing :)
@adamalexander It's amazing how setting a limit like fuel makes simple tasks suddenly more engaging. Thanks for noticing and playing!
@dracominer I wondered how to signal gravity better, too. It's a tough nut to crack.
@samlo Yeah! The explosion is two circles, both grow at more or less the same speed, but the second circle cuts into the first one. Took my 5 minutes, ironically.
@dragon-coder This made my day, thanks.
@morrilet I love the little plink sounds and the rocket particles, too! Spent more time on that than was probably necessary, haha. Thanks so much!
@symmsaur It's really a strange effect, isn't it? There's something about a sort of "famine mode" that's interesting. I'll keep that in mind.
@nbilyk Haha I said it was hard..? Let's just call it a roguelike.
Definitely an enjoyable read. I would have liked consequences to my actions as there seemed to be no point to choosing one thing over another. Great idea and funny, quirky text. I liked that my decisions were averaged out in the end, but that seemed to be just a taste of the consequences I was looking for.
-I enjoyed the big reverb on your sound effects -so much- -The animations are on point. Excellent use of squash and stretch. Clearly you know what you're doing here. -Particles look fantastic. Shrinking rather than fading is beautiful. -Controls feel excellent. It's always my fault if I die (played with a game pad). -Reload mechanic is solid and well implemented. The limits feel good. I know when it's my fault I fired too fast. -The faces are hilarious and give big personality to the game. Great touch. -The bullet is incredible. Physical bullets that push everything around, including the player. Genius. I love that it looks and sounds like a racket ball. Like, love love. Definitely my favorite part. -Environmental puzzles were a great addition and a pleasant surprise. I would love to see more of this.
If you continue work on this little gem please let me know. I want to play more. High marks from me.
Sorry it took so long--I've updated my comment with my feedback. What a great game!
Wow, this was something else. I found myself lost in this game for the last 40 minutes or so. Definitely one of the longest play sessions I ever had on a Ludum Dare entry. It really made me think deeply and I feel like I learned something about gravity and complex gravity systems. The physicsy voxels were a great touch. It was a lot of fun seeing particles bouncing around and it made the world that much more believable. The lag was pretty bad at times, so I think it could use some optimization. Really cool game, though. I thoroughly enjoyed my time in your little VR world.
Wow. Really awesome concept, well executed, good sound track, immediately understandable, and a beautiful marriage of genres. My favorite game so far. This is not a once-and-you're-done kind of game.
My only critique is that I think for readability you need to have every game object lerp to their new positions. I know classically turn-based games are cool jerking from tile to tile, but (A) 2018 and (B) there's so much moving on the screen it's difficult to get a sense of velocity from one turn to the next. Lerping would solve that problem nicely, I think.
I really enjoyed this and will be showing others. Great work!