Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → Scott R Howell
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 57 | Depths | LD57 - Slappy's Reef | compo | 50 | 3.89 | 3.97 | 3.88 | 3.94 | 4.28 | 3.93 | 3.56 | 3.82 | |
| 2018 | 41 | Combine 2 Incompatible Genres | Realtime Strategy Dating Sim | compo | 2.81 | 2.86 | 2.95 | 3.72 | 2.63 | 1.90 | 2.65 | |||
| 2017 | 40 | The more you have, the worse it is | Vertical Screw Up | compo | 524 | 3.02 | 2.91 | 2.89 | 3.33 | 2.69 | 3.28 | 2.22 | 2.80 |
this seems like a decent iteration on cookie clickers, decisions worth making mean it can't be done entirely idle but at the same time the pressure to get everything everything forces snap and in my case often wrong decisions!
The pressure is really fitting with the theme, not just with how many people but also how many messages, seriously good job getting this working in a jam timeframe
I played this far longer than I'd care to admit, but the auto milker and auto feeder don't seem to do anything, in any case, interesting take on the cookie clicker
a lovely feel good game, thanks for this, put a grin on my face to see that cute little fat dude fly off into the world, would have loved to take it on adventures
fits the theme, has impressive mechanics, is fun to play, looks good, sounds good, works good, is good. hot damn this is amazing for a game jam timescale!
I like that it starts with a tutorial sequence, how could anyone resist those coins!? sound effects are satisfying and graphics get the job done, jump is a smidge floaty, being in the air atall feels awkward, the slow down from carrying coins is also really harsh, with some tuning it could be super addictive
ultimately though I found the winning strategy was to sit on the building, shoot some guys, kite the rest away, pick up then run to a deposit pig, only thing which got be was the occasional getting stuck on a zombie
I ran full force into the circle and did the quadrilateral equivalent of flying to the moon
funny concept, enjoyed smashing my keyboard up, something very satisfying about it, but I wouldn't say it was worse, cant help but wonder how someone manages to write all of the stuff for those popups in 2 days, damn!
fun game, played it through to the end and I'd have kept playing it if it had more maps and more buy options, really like the idea of forgoing the wave slog often seen by making the waves simply an obstacle between you and an objective
if I had one complaint I'd say its not entirely obvious when your able to click the buttons, its a pain and almost seems buggy when you go towards the gate, but good job I enjoyed it through and through ;)
sounds were funny, but the menu was kind of annoying. game itself is a simple and decent idea, I liked when someone threw me underpants
the jump is quite floaty, the time to level up is really high and the path finding of the slime makes stairs your worst enemy, I like the art though and the sound effects have a decent effect
love the visuals!
its hard to actually tell where enemies are without first triggering them, making it more of a memory and trial an error game than a skill game, I suppose I'm just faffing up the puzzle of it, also you scared my dog! WOO! haha
I didn't think to consider food and fatness, but it fits the theme, kind of reminds me of that sonic the hedgehog mod where the gold rings are replaced with onion rings
simple, but blisteringly difficult, I got him down to 5 health after a tone of tries, like the visuals, and sounds, dodging feels like it gets you killed as often as it saves
I couldn't quite tell what was going on onscreen, there was shooting, money for some reason, bars, numbers, text, pew pews, squids tangled in sawblades, but the game played well once you got passed the slippery control and has a bit of an addictive property
found myself frantically kiting and blowing away hordes of shrooms, dangerously addictive and fun, really got that feel and polish in there! good job!
@randomphantom the failstate is somewhat a soft-fail, admittedly this is a bit of a cop out, but I figured when they start getting passed you and you start losing power ups you'll eventually hit an unwinnable state, were I to do it again I'd have made it so enemies passing you while their powerup is valued at 0 constitute a loss (perhaps a 3 strikes your out dealio)
@ysty cheers, glad you like it ;)
@william-bundy aye, I had the issue constantly while making it of balance, believe it or not I tweaked it a lot to get it to that point but each tweak made the difference between impossibly hard and ridiculously snowball, in the end I begrudgingly settled with snowball because it allowed the medals to fill the screen, which was the initial concept
@william-bundy I was trying to force a change in play with a different kind of enemy, the tiny ships were meant to be it, as you get your purple up the gap between projectiles spreads and the tiny ships slip through causing an issue, but while I think I was close they didn't fill the role in the end, maybe more of a gimmick boss would have broken things up enough
cheers for all the feedback guys, loved taking part in LD40! Feedback's heard loud and clear, come LD41 I guess I'll try something functional with my audio, always cherish a reason to faff about with the roland, with a win state and more crisp control, see you all at LD41 ;)
brilliant concept, but I think it'd be far better if the tiles had their respective key on them
Genius! The "Depth" of the mechanic is impressive, it only really clicked when I got to the last level that I could and should be reordering the panels, amazing concept, really good work, and I love the graphics too! Cleverest thing I've seen so far this jam!
Love the way the scanner works, could do with some polish for understandability, but its a really clever way to go about it, really nice work!
Good work! the general presentation is wonderful, I dont think you move fast enough to get to all of the rings, and the speed objects come at you at points is too much to react to, but it works, its fun, its tense, and I like the music too, very cool!
Unfortunately it broke in my browser, and I could only ever play 1 round at a time. I like the concept with the sonar, and the atmosphere is dead on though!
Really cool! sprite work is amazing, the concept is novel, good job on the dialog, if I have 1 complaint its that the game doesn't pause when a dialog box is up, so I never did get to read what the obelisks were saying
A lot going on for a jam game, I have to admire the ambition. jumping against walls was a bit stiff, and it wasn't clear what the controls were from the game alone. I also experienced a soft lock on breaking my pickaxe wherein it wouldn't return me to the smelter area. Requires some polish and dev time, but good work for the jam!
Really nice work! An odd mash up of themes to be sure but I enjoyed it and got stuck right in, the graphics are cute, the music and sound are sweet, and the concept is wholely novel!
Was difficult to gain speed, it seems parallel walls are the easiest but the slide drags you too much to make it from wall to wall, and you lose most momentum by being on the ground, if given more time I'd say a level designed to easily get you to speed and then introduce trickier parts of the environment which would sap your speed would be best, that way you can teach the player how to play well, then challenge them to do it when the environment isn't as friendly to you
WUHAY! Fellow fisher dev! This was fun, I love the risk reward play going on, love the seal graphic :heart:
I love this! An intuitive challenge that makes you really focus without feeling unfair. The visual style is lovely and novel, and the sound effects work so well! The music feels more obligatory than in theme with the rest of the game, but thats only a nitpick, really nice work, I'm still playing now, its got me hooked!
HAH immediate facepalm, the slapping noises when he walks for which he was named got overridden when I updated the animation, damn, what a shame, now you can only hear his slappy footsteps when he jumps!
Thanks everyone I'm glad it clicks with people :smile:
@javasaurus yes, there is quite a lot of underwater clutter, and the fish in particular are using a godot's Multi-Mesh Instance, which I don't expect will work (or at least not performantly) without hardware acceleration as it's specifically a gpu feature, the particles are also gpu particle systems, which I expect work similarly under the hood.
I'm glad it could work after all though, I was worried come submission time that I might have had too much graphics stuff to work well in browser
Thanks everyone for playing, I'm glad people enjoy the vibes and feel!
Given I've been playtesting it a lot, here are tips for getting longer better games: you catch fish quickly to get a multiplier going, then catch big fish by doing deep dives. There are far more small fish near the surface than big fish in the deep, so to get the multiplier and crank your time up, shallow dives with a quick underwater boost (jump while underwater) will help you cover distance through the crowds and grab a fish. You also score the fish the moment you dive, so if you think you can get another fish quickly, dive as soon as you leave the water to minimize the time wasted in the air. Running on the water and diving can get you a very quick shallow dive too.
Again thank you so much everyone for playing! I am listening to the criticism for after jam development, I really appreciate it all!
@otsvar thankyou! If it interests you I've not long made a blog post about furthering development, if you think you might revisit the game in future, I'll be looking at improving it over the next few weeks to apply polish where time wouldn't initially allow :smile:
The post-jam blog post is here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/57/ld57-slappys-reef/slappys-reef-the-post-jam-plan
@swooty Cheers, I appreciate the feedback greatly! I know where I went wrong at least, I made diving first, then needed a reason to dive, made it fish, then the entire time I was developing I knew I had to grab fish on the playtests, and I knew how because I'd made it.
I have plans for future development and part of it is expanding the movement, and overhauling the underwater movement and fish, to make it so instead of the fish retracting from the juicey movement, they add to it, I'm thinking expansion of the surface running too to allow for momentum building and a more fish catching friendly torpedo dive, I want to lean into that tony-hawks feel, where your speed and tricks help you score, so the way you are incentivised to play is the funnest way!
Honestly brilliantly helpful feedback, I hadn't thought to compare it to tony hawks, but the idea recontextualizes the design goals in a great way for future development, thank you very much!
@whateverdat Hey glad you liked it, there is a Windows build on the GitHub as a release :thumbsup:
Good fun, plenty addictive to play, and you really nailed that impact which keeps you pushing for more, awesome work!
Pack file is missing, the game doesn't load
Deep Shmup! Love it, good fun, love the sprite work, cool idea on a mix of Feeding Frenzy and R-Type, I like that there is added depth to enemy design than just it hits or it shoots, with stuff liek the sword fish damaging on the front but soft on the back, I do wish you didn't take damage when leaving the screen and instead couldn't leave the screen though.
The mix of the sound and the anteater graphic got me chuckling, interesting idea, because I could see a longer project of managing ant colonies so they grow to produce more ants but dont grow enough to escape the anteater :thinking:
Clever idea and it works well, I could see development of a game like this turning into a rabbit hole if you have more than 48 hours though :laughing: imagine the amount of scoring mechanics it could contain!
Nice audio, the graphics were ok but I really like the sonar effect, when it gets dark it gets really tense, so the mood was strong! really good work on this!
Emotional Depth? Interesting take on the theme, some of the dialogue was funny too, good work!
Love the idea, love the implementation, love the depth that grows out of the mechanic, the entire thing goes from silly game to mind game when it clicks how free you are to pull insane manoeuvres, I only got to 5 stars though! My 1 criticism would be a lot of the deaths feel like dying blind, if you develop it further consider an indicate on the screen for the nearness of death spikes offscreen then I might have had more strategic swings
Really great work for a jam!
Very Cool! I love the little details like the images that only pop up when you first image them making you doubt yourself, I almost mist the dude running at me, and the overall layout of play built tension inately making the scares hit better, really good work, if this got further development I'd advise some kind of building soundtrack as something for players to latch on to, as I did find myself a bit lost and bored at parts wondering if this was all it was or if it was going somewhere, luckily it was and I'm glad I made it to the end, just food for thought!
All in all, great work!
Very nice, a chill romp in the water garden, also I found the glorious ducky, blessed be his lungs!
Nice work, the itch io link is listed as "Source Code" so I almost missed it. The graphics are nice I'm impressed you got it all together for the jam, good voice work too, well done!
Very neat idea, I like how neatly the need for upgrades is just implied by the distance, accuracy? fetch and return time? all implicit, something very satisfying about how that balancing interaction emerges.
I'd say the shooting sound gets overwhelming when you max out, and that the concept would do great with time to balance it, but a great product out of a jam, good work!
Absolutely love the art, the movement is nice too, and I like the slightly meta elements when you can just jump out of the lift and run along the walls to find stuff, really nice work!
Really cool, feels nice, looks nice, the puzzles built around the core mechanic are clever and build your knowledge over time, sweet and to the point, really nice work!
Cool stuff, likes the easter eggs, really nice interpretation of the themes, got me hankering for Elite Dangerous Scanning again :laughing: good work!
Neat game, railguns are insanely powerful, good sound work but I feel like a little more enemy variation and animation work would go a long way
Neat concept, captured a Blight Town vibe, if given more time I could see a bit-crunchy retro vibe carrying a deep mysterious delve, really good work!
Love it! Feels like the seed for a longer game, there's a decent feel of polish to it, one of few games this jam I've wanted a 2nd play of, awesome work!
Right off the bat, love the sprite work, love the colour choice! The bot wasn't amazing and the game was lacking some feedback which made figuring out what was going on a little confusing for a few seconds, but if you had more time to stretch this out to a submarine themed sh'mup then having verticality be both health and opportunity to split paths it could become something really cool!
Absolutely lovely! At first I was like "hm, are the drills making music?" and by the first couple sections I was engrossed, especially when I realized the minecart sound fits with it too, very neat, I got a 17 minute complete time, I loved it!
Unrelated to the game real quick If anyone can't get it to load, I've been having problems with newer Unity games loading on LDJam but that Itch link worked just fine!
On the game, rolling sound effect wasn't looping very well and at first I thought it was a bug. The rolling control feels ok until you hit an obstacle, then you can never regain enough control to continue playing. EXCEPT when falling straight to the goal, finished in 20 seconds :sunglasses:
Oof I drowned in the last stretch, like the graphics, everything feels nice, enough going on without being crushingly difficult, giving me Crash Bandicoot underwater level vibes, really good work!
HAH! I really suck at this, but the concept got an immediate chuckle out of me, and I love the squirrel, good work!
I like the mechanics, there is a little bit of jank to getting used to them, but ones you've got it its nice to use. good job!
Ah a shame I can't enjoy this knowing only english myself, art looks good from what I managed to luck click my way in, and that is a lot of writing, I may not be able to read it, but I can respect the effort put in
This is certainly one of the games ever made.
There was a lack of feedback and coherence. The first game made it feel like a puzzler and it was an alright introduction for such, but the platforming was unusual, and then the shooting a bit awkward. I'd say the game could do with more implicit feedback, small audio cues, or some response from the environment from your input, so the player can tell whether their sprite is simply moving, or is interacting with something.
Cool, I like that even the audio bar is digetic! It did take a stroke of luck for me to understand that the colours referred to shapes that behave differently whent he sonar hits them, but clever ones you see it happen, really nice work!
Love it! Hooked me in, I stayed engaged for all 3 endings, what a charming nugget of game, good job!
Premise got a chuckle out of me, decent challenge in the gameplay, good work!
I like the graphics and theme, and the dialog is nicely written, the themeing feels like the goofiness of lethal company meshed with a decent story teller. The game didn't lock the mouse in though making looking around a bit bothersome, I also broke the dialog a few times by looking up during dialog, would have liked something more to come from looking up as you first action int he game. Great work, I wish you good ratings! :smile:
Simple but it scratches an itch, easy to just sit there idley playing, like the sound effects brought me a grin, good work!
Doesn't load for me, I've seen other games with this issue with the Unity web player, where it loaded on itch io but not on ldjam
Spacebar stopped working a couple of times, and that first screen is very unforgiving, I like the graphics though, I wish I could have played with the concept more but I just kept losing rapidly
Neat game, the presentation lets you sink in easy, I could see myself soaking in a game like this for a day!
Unfortunately player would not load for me, using Chrome, would be interested to know if its just me, or if other people can play on other browsers?
I like it visually, functionally its a bit weird but it feels good to play, it has the issue of minesweeper though, in that there are always luck scenarios, well done though looks and plays nice!
actually fantastic fun, I could play this for hours! great concept, great execution, well played!
feels good except for a few jerky moments of the camera (perhaps a sensitivity slider), the music also rang in my ears a bit, but a cool concept and I kept playing it for a good while
Was fairly easy to pick up and try, got the hang of it with a few moments of fiddling, turn based stealth aren't exactly incompatible but good job, it'd be quite an enjoyable game given a few more levels
Aye I would have added more dialogue options were it not for getting stuck for 6 hours on an engine issue :'( The Tech count at the top hints to the fact I was going to implement upgrades and such (you earn tech for successive perfect answers), but I simply ran out of time, thanks for playing everyone :)
Fun and feels good, only complaint I have is that the audio almost killed me, big butt warning to headphone users, aside from that love the viscera and wish I could do more with the base between rounds
holy crap this actually gave me the willies while playing, damn good job on the monsters and on nailing that silent hill vibe, everything helps to nail down that horror vibe, the foreboding atmosphere, the objective requiring you to scour even knowing freaky blobs are hiding anywhere, the clunky swapping mechanics making combat a real struggle, good job, absolutely fantastic especially for a ludum dare, hot damn!