Shift the Shapes by Larzan 2016-04-20T23:50:00
This is really neat, but the controls are kind of cryptic. If you make them a bit simpler/more explainable you'll have yourself a really solid puzzler
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → samlo
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | Co | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | 38 | A Small World | đź‘Ą | Monolith | jam | 70 | 3.97 | 3.86 | 3.15 | 2.39 | 4.35 | 4.13 | 4.07 | ||
| 2016 | 35 | Shapeshift | Blink | jam | 99 | 3.84 | 3.83 | 3.28 | 3.50 | 4.12 | 3.77 | 2.28 | 3.64 | 82 |
This is really neat, but the controls are kind of cryptic. If you make them a bit simpler/more explainable you'll have yourself a really solid puzzler
So fun man! Made it to round 12 so far
I've played this way too many times now. Love the doritoz
Great music graphics and animations! Game is kind of overly hard though
Hey, that was a lot of fun! A tri-color version of ikaruga's main mechanic seems to work pretty nicely.
Only thing I might add is that the spawns feel a little unfair at times (I got spawned on top of a little too often) and you could easily fix that by adding indicators for incoming spawns at the spawn locations.
Also, since you seem to like Ikargua, you should play my game :) I think we're sharing some similar ideas
Neat little platformer! I love attack animation (screen shake is juuust right). If anything, I wish that the bat-flaps recharged on landing instead of over time, but that's quite minor. Also - this is the first game I've played that did shape-shifting into an animal, which I liked. Good job!
This was a really amazing experience, and it perfectly nailed the theme, thank you for making this
Awesome runner! Difficulty curve is very nice and controls are tight. Appreciate the gamepad support! :)
Wow, that was fun. Superb style, and the music had me smiling from the start. I do wish it was a tad more difficult but fantastic entry!
Nice game! Beautiful art - other people have already talked about the controls so I won't go into that, but I do wish there was some more variation in gameplay/levels!
Wow, awesome game! So simple, but so epic. I really like the build in pacing and the presentation is really tight
Awesome music! Controls were a bit tough. Really impressive you did this without a game engine btw, good work
i beat it
Very neat idea and good execution, but 10 forms is wayyyyy too many. The most unique entities most people can keep in active memory is about 7, which is still pushing it for fast paced games. Still I really like your core concept!
Love the art style, its simple but the palette is pleasant. Great minimal shooter :)
Haha what a fun concept. A bit difficult but not too bad. Personally I thought the controls were pretty great!
Controls seem to have a different amount of delay on different devices? Didn't work well on my laptop but worked fine on my computer. Great soundtrack!
Legit impressed with how well this runs. Played it on my laptop, didn't dip below 60FPS once
Nice! Mining is fun and I like how you have time to prepare before enemies scale up. Lots of room for expansion here
Ahahaha still can't get over the sad ghost
Holy crap this is cool! Love the teleglitch-style perspective. Very eerie, got lost a lot (not a bad thing ;) )
Track 2 4 lyfe
Really impressive amount of content in here! Wish the character movement was a bit tighter
Impressive entry! Really love the vector art and parallax shifting on wall edges. Recompiling mechanic is awesome! Good job!
Very nice! I at first didn't understand that I was supposed to collect the green stuff (but I also didn't read past the controls :P) I love glitch effects and yours look great but it's a bit heavy at low health - the game becomes a bit unplayable before you die. Well done!
Love the screen space effects. Wish the enemies followed you. Great style!
Shape-shifting and color-changing really are the same thing mechanically (switching states) so I don't mind that you're using colors instead of physical properties/shapes. Great concept!
Awesome! Love how the ships have individual lives per type.
Awesome graphics and what a bumpin' soundtrack, but unfortunately I don't think it's very playable. There's too much easing/velocity on the character for a game that rewards high precision, and I'm almost certain I ran into a few tunnel configurations that were unbeatable.
I'd consider increasing the minimum vertical spacing of the tunnels about 2x and implement some sort of difficulty scaling - it's hard to enjoy getting good at a game when its only very very hard from the outset.
I know that probably sounds a bit harsh but the game seriously has awesome style and I'd love it if you did a polished release after LD :)
I really liked the music, artstyle, and Tempest noises haha. I however don't find the game very playable. Certain class combinations are broken in that they can't damage enemies (I got big-normal-wizard at one point and his magic missiles just flew over enemies heads). The blacksmith minigame feels very out of place - the game might be more fun if it was removed entirely. Almost all the games I played ended with a failure of the blacksmith minigame because its way too much to remember 3 different attribues with 9 different key presses. If you do want to keep that, maybe make it so that instead of killing you, nailing the blacksmith minigame just provides a damage boost or something like that.
Overall I think the game is a cool idea, I just wish it was more distilled.
This game is beautiful and hilarious! It took me a little while to understand what I was meant to do though. Overall quite well done!
That was pretty awesome. Controls work quite well, but I wish the boost was a bit more substantial. Nobody does cel-shaded graphics anymore so that was really refreshing. I like the overall backstory/concept behind the game also. Might have actually been better without music? The whole experience felt pretty lonely and mysterious and I felt the music may have failed to capitalize on that.
Great work!
I really liked the art/sound/overall concept, but having to go back to the utter beginning of the game because of a missed jump felt a little harsh. I wish either there was an unlimited number of body changes/mutations (making that the health bar discourages people using your cool mutation system!) or that the game had checkpoints per level. Overall that was a really funny, well put together game though! nice job
Hilarious ending(s). I do wish the controls were a bit different though! Arrow keys to move would feel better because you'd have it separated between different hands instead of the left hand doing everything. Seriously funny though, I played it through twice
Awesome aesthetic and great feel. Really enjoyed that, thanks for making! :)
Wow there was so much in this! What an awesome concept. Great work man! Would love to see you take this further :)
Absolute madness, awesome! Controls and collisions are a little confusing, though. Loved playing the BMO
Whoaaa this is pretty cool. I especially like the viewport mouse controls. Great submission!
Hilarious shapeshifting mechanic! Controls are nice and tight too. Wish there was a little more variation in gameplay
Hilarious game. Loved the music, camera work, and dialogue!
Damn dude! what a shmup! I really like the ammo change idea for shapeshifting, thats pretty cool. I do wish the hitboxes were a teensy bit more forgiving and that the ship moved faster but that has been mentioned elsewhere in the comments already. Love the art style, juice, and overall feel. Have a dollar!
Wow neat game. Really awesome seeing the captain forever mechanic in a shmup! Would like to see you keep working on it! New engines would be awesome, or maybe a horizontal flying version where stuff can come at you from different sides...
Great job!
Neat concept, art style is great. Extremely polished. Would love to see you guys turn this into a mobile game or something
Really love the art style! Really polished. Would love to see you guys take this further!
Nice game! Love the music and intro cut scene. The parallaxed stars look awesome as well. Do the enemies grow over time or is it completely random?
That was fun. I love the ship physics! I wish there was some indicator of enemy health though. Well done overall!
Hilarious game. Sandbox is pretty fun, kind of simplistic. Feels like training mode should be unlimited. Played with my partner and it didn't really feel like there was a good reason for a 2 player mode?
Still, quite polished, ran well in WebGL (I was getting about 30-40 fps on a GTX970), and definitely gave me a good laugh!
Really funny and well written. Wonderful art style as well!
Adorable art style, physics are floaty but I don't think that's necessarily bad. I do wish shapeshifting had a little more impact mechanically than just the kind of ground you can stand on. Good work!
Made it to 30:789! Great twitch-based endless runner. I do wish the difficulty ramped up a bit more gently - it took me about 5-6 tries before I really got how it worked. Nice entry!
Definitely enjoyed playing this, but I wish you guys introduced the shapeshifting first and then the rotation second. I found the steep difficulty curve a tad off putting. Nice audio and graphics though!
Pretty difficult, but soooo funny
Hey, came here from the [waypoint feature](https://waypoint.vice.com/en_us/article/become-a-tiny-world-building-god-in-this-game?utm_source=wptwitterus) you got! Awesome toy you have here, very cathartic and enjoyable :)
Someone likes Devil Daggers ;) fun entry! If you keep working on it, try smoothing out the WASD movement, it's a bit sticky atm
Good lord that was hilarious. Reminded me of Bennet Foddy's games (QWOP, GIRP, etc) but less grueling. I was laughing out loud alone in my apartment the whole time. Best game I've played yet, excellent use of the theme too
This is insanely cool, I've been watching on Twitter for a little while. I just want you to know you've inspired me to make an oscilloscope emulator in Unity
amazing soundtrack! can I download it anywhere?
This was great. The turn based movement made it feel almost like a stealthy roguelike! I wish the difficulty curve was a bit smoother, but hey, jam game. I made it to stage 3. Is there any way to predict the movement of enemies, or am I missing something?
Awesome, very charming game. I love all the hidden secrets, and the purity of the mechanics
Hey this is fun! Great style and a neat mechanic. I wish there was more of an indication of the player's health other than the expression of the planet, it's pretty hard to tell how well you're doing. Neat game!
Awesome game! I played the whole thing, love the ending. It has really really good pacing/difficulty curve! I also really liked the platforming controls once I got the hang of them. If you keep working on it, maybe try making the wall jump a bit stickier (think Super Meat Boy), as it's a bit difficult to get the timing down at first.
This is really fun and satisfying to play! I do wish there was a score attack mode instead of the timed mode. That way I could smash planets all day
Awesome multiplayer game! Really dig the art style
Bantam!
What a charming game! Excellent visual and auditory direction, very nice. Unfortunately, the style of this game was largely dimmed for me by the platforming, which is clunky and frustrating to use, and makes the more execution-based puzzles (like the one where you have to jump onto a bridge to get a crate) very tedious. I got stuck at a gate near what looked like an alarm clock pickup. Would like to see you guys branch out from switch-based puzzles, as there are a LOT of puzzle platformers that use a binary world mechanic like this. Great game, keep working on it!
Really cool little toy! I like the flower sounds :)
Cool concept, but it was really hard to figure out how to play, and the aiming controls seem to rotate the player character left or right instead of pointing him at the cursor's world space position. Really neat concept though, keep working on it!
Hey @izunah! Thanks for the feedback! Yep, I basically spurned the theme this time around. Whoops. Quick tip for you - the health bar is actually the smoke coming out of the ship! If you've ever played Luftrausers, it works very similarly to that. Secondly, the lock on is definitely slow by design. Try and pull the enemies shots away to the other side of the screen and then swing back around to get yourself some extra time! It's more of a game about dodging than shooting :)
Thanks again for the feedback!
@glimaleite ah man, thanks a ton. yep, the camera is low/wide angle because it looks super cool, but also because I wanted you to "feel" the locations of the projectile more vaguely than the pixel perfect flying you have to do in other bullet hells like Ikaruga. To me, the ambiguity adds tension, but maybe it also feels a tad unfair at first.
@ryguydavis Harder! Haha! That's awesome. I actually softened the difficulty a lot right when I first put it up on itch as a bunch of local devs in my city thought it was super hard - mainly because some of the enemy timings will utterly smash you without warning. I'd like to actually make it harder than it is now, but also less punishing/more fair. Thanks for the kind words!
This was great! I love the art style and metatextual games like this are pretty rare in LD. nice work
Fun game. I really like hex tactics game like this. The card system is very cool, but once you understand how the game works it's pretty easy to not make any mistakes
This was cool. Graphics remind me of Kurzgesagt videos. Very nice narrative delivery with how hard it is to win. Good work!
Really fun game! arrow keys plzzzzzzzzz
Great game! Love the overworld view, very neat concept. Excellent atmosphere and music too
Fun game! I got up to about 920 score but I couldn't beat the boss. I like the overheat mechanic instead of reloading, but I wish there was more of a indication that I was about to overheat in-game instead of just relying on the bar which is a bit hard to divert attention to. Awesome art style as well!
Really awesome, super beautiful puzzle game. One of my favorite entries yet. Awesome job!
Awesome game! I like the low poly art style and the spin effect with the motion blur is nice. Unfortunately, I found a bit cryptic - there's really no way to get better at the game other than trial and error, and once you do figure it out it's pretty easy to survive indefinitely
Neat game! I beat two areas (It is super hard! Maybe ease up on the ship's rotation smoothing?) . I like the visual style a lot, I just wish there was more opportunity to see those sweet computationally rendered fx other than dying. If you keep working on it, consider adding an additional mechanic other than map navigation. At least in my case it seems like once you get good at navigating after the first area or so, the only hard part of the game is landing the ship, which ultimately ends up making navigating tedious. I like that obstacles have gravity and can pull you in, maybe add an effect that communicates that, like distortion/lensing or something? Also, how are you doing that explosion effect? Z-buffer abuse with a mask?
Awesome entry! Very neurotic and creepy, reminded me a bit of the end of Inside. I personally felt the controls were clunky, but I was playing in WebGL, will definitely be giving this a try on an android device later! awesome work!