Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → Sean
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | Co | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | 37 | One room | Bouncing Balls with the Boing Boing Boys | jam | 520 | 3.24 | 3.51 | 2.92 | 3.47 | 3.18 | 3.20 | 3.13 | 3.02 | 100 | ||
| 2016 | 36 | Ancient Technology | DYSCOVR | jam | ||||||||||||
| 2016 | 35 | Shapeshift | Purity | jam | 55 | 3.98 | 3.92 | 3.86 | 3.71 | 3.94 | 3.92 | 2.56 | 3.87 | 100 | ||
| 2015 | 34 | Two Button Controls / Growing | Go On | jam | 362 | 3.48 | 4.05 | 3.93 | 2.97 | 4.00 | 86 | |||||
| 2015 | 32 | An Unconventional Weapon | BeatBopper | jam | 601 | 3.11 | 2.96 | 2.37 | 3.04 | 3.00 | 3.04 | 51 |
| Year | MiniLD | Theme | Game | Rank | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | 66 | YOU MUST CONSTRUCT ADDITIONAL RTS GAMES | CODENAME: PAWN | |||
| 2016 | 65 | Youth | Perfect Attendance | |||
| 2016 | 64 | Nintendo 64 | Super Spaceship 64 |
Sean leaves an average of 37.6 feedback comments each event.
Deceptively challenging and interesting game; at first I was completely lost and thought it was too random, but I once I realized that there needs to be a flint next to a square in order to place other types it made a lot more sense and I did a lot better on my second playthrough.
The music is nice too!
Very polished and mechanically interesting, though I found it a bit tedious to play. Like others suggested, a more fleshed out version with more story elements could be really cool!
It's a decent concept, but because simply touching the walls crushed you, it ended up being pretty frustrating. It would've made more sense to only kill the player if they're touching both walls at once. Like the other comments mention, the physics were also kind of unpredictable and floaty, so the only way I managed to progress was by carefully arranging a couple blocks in the center, then jumping on them and hoping for the best.
Nice effect on the menu screen btw.
There are also 3 different fullscreen buttons (one on Ludum Dare's site, one on the itch.io embed, and one in the Unity webgl export). You should probably try to set it up so that you only need one.
The art's nice and and it seems like a good start, but the controls and player physics made it almost unplayable for me. It's much too floaty: the players fall at a very slow rate, and slide around a lot when you try to move left/right.
Kudos for doing local multiplayer though, this is the first one I've seen this LD!
A weird but cool entry! I sort of felt like I had no idea what I was doing, but none of the customers complained so I must have been doing it right. I did find the font choice made the customers' text a bit hard to read though.
This was a great entry. I really liked how the theme was used to inspire the setting, gameplay, and presentation.
The ending felt a little rushed/anticlimactic, but the content you do have is impressive given the time frame.
The lack of time spent balancing unfortunately shows: I found it very easy to get from the village to the ruins, but died fighting against the robot on all my unsuccessful runs (btw, the game crashed whenever I died). On my winning run, I only got past the robot because I had the strange device and sidestepped the fight. It was still fun to play though!
Very minor nitpick: it would've been nice if the cursor was blinking at the end of the last statement instead of in the top-left corner.
A nice little platformer! It ends kind of abruptly, but it was decent while it lasted. My major complaint is that I felt like there was a pretty big disconnect between the cutscene and in-game art styles. They both looked good on their own, but they didn't blend very well in my opinion.
The puzzles were nice, but as mentioned in the other comments I found that the ghouls were kind of a nuisance; they weren't particularly interesting to fight and there were so many of them that it distracted a lot from the core gameplay (though it did make for a good moment at the end: "Oh hey you won, now you get MORE GHOULS TO FIGHT").
With some polish and a heavier focus on the puzzles, I think this could be a much better game!
I was expecting a fairly simple run-of-the-mill platformer, but this was actually really great! The puzzles were deceptively tricky (they weren't so challenging that they were frustrating, but they often made you overlook an obvious 'catch' on your first try), the little jokes and references were funny, the music was good, there was non-terrible voice-acting, and it had a decent amount of content without overstaying its welcome. Very solid entry in all aspects.
Misc. notes:
-I was bit annoyed that you couldn't attack and move at the same time, but I appreciate that it was probably easier to get the mechanics working without having to worry about the player moving around mid-swing
-I liked how the menu selection doubles as a simple tutorial
-The passive aggressive dialogue from the caveman in the first screen is funny, but it seemed a bit weird that he says it even if you already smashed the blocks
-On the first puzzle where the background transitions from cave to outdoors, it's possible to jump over the walls on the edge and get stuck
-The randomized block paintings are a nice touch
This was a clever puzzle game, though I had to refer to the solution guide to get through it.
This is a great entry! That stark menu intro being timed exactly to the music was such an especially good start to the game. It's a minor thing, but it really gives a great first impression.
The level of difficulty seemed just a tad too high. It seems like you need to drink water every other turn, and since you get more thirsty when you take a break to eat I found myself stopping often to drink, eat, rest, then drink a couple more times to offset the thirst from eating and resting. Even though it does make sense that the other stats would change when you take time to fix one of them, I feel like it put an unnecessary level of strain on your resources.
The instant death events were also kind of annoying, it might have been a bit better to have the chance of death be based on your current stats (i.e. if you fell down the mountain while well-supplied and healthy, just have them the player lose some supplies and get tired instead of dying).
These are just fairly minor balance complaints though; overall the game was great!
Interesting concept, though it was (by design) frustrating to play and so not actually very fun. Great implementation of the theme though!
Adding some keyboard controls mapped to the handheld buttons might make it a bit more accessible, took me a little while to realize I had to use the mouse to play the game.
The graphics/UI need some work (especially the coins location, I couldn't find it for the first little while), but this a decent little economy game.
I had a bug when I was playing fullscreen which made it so that all the stores were blank and I could only ever see the town background. There are also 2 different fullscreen buttons (one on the itch.io embed, and one in the Unity webgl export). You should probably try to set it up so that you only need one.
So stylish!! This is one my favourite entries I've played so far, both in terms of presentation and mechanics. The music's really fitting too. I'd be really interested to see this one expanded into a longer game.
Minor issues: The WASD + E controls seemed a bit clunky, it might have been better suited to a point-and-click interface, especially since that's how the in-game computer worked. I also had a bug where I launched the network program multiple times and then couldn't move or close the old ones, but the upload still worked so it didn't break the game at least.
It didn't feel like there was any challenge to the game, but it was so chaotic that it probably wouldn't have been as fun if it was challenging anyway.
Nice pun btw.
Solid entry! I had a couple collision issues in areas with the boxes though and got stuck in the ground at one point, so I didn't get through the whole thing. The hitboxes on the little burrito slugs are also pretty unforgiving.
Unusual choice of controls btw, is there any particular reason you went with "L" and ";"?
I'm not really sure why ghouls are so intent on putting out your fire, but this is a cute little game!
I noticed that you sometimes seem to be able to jump in mid-air after hitting an enemy, but couldn't figure out if that was intentional or a bug since I couldn't do it reliably. I did manage to kill 8 in one jump though!
There are also 2 different fullscreen buttons (one on Ludum Dare's site, and one in the Unity webgl export). You should probably try to set it up so that you only need one.
Cool concept, and the visuals do a good job of conveying the etch-a-sketch aesthetic.
I would've liked if the "cursor" moved a bit faster though, on some of the puzzles it was really tedious just navigating to the right spot.
It's a good start, but I found that relying on the physics to determine the javelin's angle made it much too random. On some throws, the javelin just starts off pointing downwards so it doesn't really matter how fast you go.
There are also 3 different fullscreen buttons (one on Ludum Dare's site, one on the itch.io embed, and one in the Unity webgl export). You should probably try to set it up so that you only need one.
P.S. There are no ratings on the games for this Ludum Dare (see here for why: http://ludumdare.com/compo/2016/06/08/well-this-is-awkward-2/) which is why there's no opt-out.
Really great entry! The graphics and environment design were really pretty, and I loved all the little details that helped make it feel dynamic like the physics-enabled vines and animated leaves (I'm also a sucker for nice palette swaps). I'm surprised you had time to do so many extra details like that full intro sequence and the little leafy robot on top of the rest of the work!
The controls were fun to use, though I'm glad you made it so that getting hit doesn't penalize you much; if I had to restart at a checkpoint every time I got hit this would have been waaay more frustrating.
I never managed to find the last heart, but I had a really good time looking for it!
Gorgeous artwork and animation! The film grain and vignette really help to sell it too.
Minor complaint: it took me a three tries to get a perfect date because I didn't realize that you had to interact with the picture multiple times to straighten it; that might've been more clear if it went to a new incorrect angle instead of going back and forth the first few times.
Great entry! The concept and graphics are rock-solid, and the remixed soundtrack and different goomba "species" were really nice touches.
The actual platforming element felt a bit rough. It was surprisingly difficult to jump on goombas and hit bricks, and the collision was wonky enough that I found occasionally myself getting stuck in walls and falling through bricks. Those are fairly minor issues though, with more time I'm sure they'd be fixable.
A lot of people seem to be commenting that it doesn't fit the theme, but I disagree: Mario's pretty ancient by video game standards!
The art is nice and it's an interesting concept, but I found the controls to be kind of bloated. I feel like you could probably have dropped the throwing mechanic and just had the player auto-pickup and auto-drop ore/bars when you walk over them. It seems like this game has a lot of potential though!
btw, there are 2 different fullscreen buttons (one on the itch.io page, and one in the Unity webgl export). You should probably try to set it up so that you only need one.
Really cute entry! I though it was a little weird at first that you only get 4/6 exhibits, but in retrospect it sort of encourages you to retry on ones you've already done and come up with a new description. The only thing I'd suggest as an improvement is to add some simple audio.
I feel like it should have been a bit longer in order to let the player establish a strategy. If the choices actually do anything, this would make the choices a bit more interesting and you could've made it about balancing the level of devotion and famine in the community. If they don't, the added length without any change in outcome would help to sell that you're just killing people for no reason. Overall, it's a nice simple entry though.
Also, minor complaint: I found it kind of weird that the sacrificial scene had a whole bunch of people regardless of how many you had left.
Like a lot of the other people, I thought the game had crashed as soon as I hit play, but while I was in the middle of writing a comment it started working. I think you need to add a progress bar or something to show that it's loading and hasn't just frozen.
The artwork is nice, but the controls are very difficult! I think it might have been easier to play if up/down just controlled your speed, and left/right controlled your angle instead of tying the speed to the angle.
Nice entry! I found the painting part to be really frustrating though, because everything else is button mashing I pretty much always picked a colour accidentally when finishing the previous step. My high score was 18620 points.
I think you mixed up the buttons btw; The PICO-8 "O" and "X" buttons are usually mapped to "Z" and "X", not the other way around. It's still a bit confusing that Z is O, but at least X is X!
Nice physics mechanic, though it's a bit complicated to use. It might be a bit easier if the extend/retract buttons were mapped to the mouse or at least to different area on the keyboard so you could play it with two hands instead of one.
It seems like there's no reason to wait until the player manually resets after they hit something. You can't do anything to recover, so you might as well reset automatically. This would also make it more accessible for people who glossed over the instructions and might assume the game is stuck when they die.
On that note, I really appreciated that each pole checkpointed you; it would've been an easy thing to overlook but the game would've have been intolerably frustrating without that!
From a game design perspective, the first sconce is really misleading: if you miss the ground plate, you walk around the corner and see a closed gate and a conspicuous white block on the wall next to it. Most people in that situation are going to assume it's a switch to open the gate. The actual puzzle isn't hard to solve, but the way in which it's presented easily leads the player to the wrong solution without giving them any idea as to what they're supposed to do. If it was placed on the other side of the gate, it would probably fix the problem.
Great visuals on this one; I love the robots in particular. Unfortunately the gameplay feels a bit clunky. The screen transitions are cool, but I think they would've been better suited for more self-contained areas. In particular, it seems weird that walking into the wall alcoves in a hallway triggers the transition, since you're just going to walk back a few seconds later. The lack of checkpoints near items was also really frustrating, and I often found myself having to repeat areas because I got caught on the way back.
If you're doing a post-jam version, hopefully you'll be able to fix the fps drop, because I bet it would feel a lot more playable without it!
Very solid and polished entry! The mechanic is simple, but fun and well-executed. Cute graphics too! It seems like it'd be perfect for a mobile port.
Nice entry! I would've liked to see a bit more animation at the end (e.g. have the bricks move to form an actual pyramid) but it was pretty great nonetheless!
My high score was 28 ('glorious').
Great concept! I really like how the in-game mechanics literally reflect the game world, both mechanically and through the story.
I think it might benefit from a slightly more direct tutorial though; it took me longer to figure out the basic mechanics than I would've liked. I may have missed it, but I don't remember it ever pointing out that the position and value of the tile you're standing on are shown at the top of the hex table. I imagine someone without any programming experience would find it even more difficult and would need a bit more "easing in". Then again, I might just be bad at hexadecimal math :P
Overall, a very clever entry!
I found this one veeeery obtuse, and couldn't really figure out what to do in the 20 or so seconds I could play before losing. It seems like it's a tower-defense/roguelike? Maybe?
I think it would benefit a lot from a tutorial of some sort!
The concept, the visuals and the puzzles are all great, the only area where I wasn't totally sold was the audio. Amazing entry as usual!
Amazing pixel art!
At first the little "You can do it!" message was cute, but it never went away and actually covered up a couple of the platforms in one of the puzzles.
It would've been nice if the checkpoints saved your progress when you walked past them; there were a couple times I fell and had to redo section because I forgot to save, especially when I was on my way back from hitting a switch or getting a powerup.
This is hands-down the best entry I've played yet!
It's a decent start, but you should probably have given the sling a maximum length or something to prevent the player from just spinning the egg fast enough to hit the chicken without releasing it.
It's a solid start for a roguelike, but there doesn't seem to be any end goal or difficulty curve. If you're planning on doing any post-jam updates, adding more variety as you get further into the game would go a long way towards adding replay value.
I played up until the third module "puzzle", but it got stuck on a blank blue screen when I messed up. I was going to retry from the start because it was an interesting story so far, but waiting for each line to finish before advancing was going to take too long. It would be nice if you could click to advance text immediately.
Great audio and atmosphere. It's rare to see a voice-acted game for Ludum Dare which isn't grating to listen to! There were a couple minor English errors, but it's still well-done despite that.
I found the audio log placement a bit annoying: they're placed near the end of sections as a reward, but they get cut off when leaving the area so it forces you to stand around doing nothing if you want to listen.
Using WASD to move while holding E is also kind of awkward, it probably would be better with a toggle to grab things instead of holding the key.
It looks like a good start, but the lack of variety made it get boring fast. If it were fleshed out more, I'm sure it could be an interesting game!
Also, I found that sometimes it got stuck on a blank screen and you had to click on the area where text would go before it would progress.
Simple but well-executed. I was a bit surprised to find that the level was the same every time and got bored pretty fast. Maybe if there were checkpoints it would be a bit less tedious?
A tip for people getting stuck on the columns: hold up instead of pressing it and you'll bounce on the top of each one. It still takes some luck to land the first jump, but once you do you should get past all three.
This is surprisingly complete and polished for a jam game!
I didn't really understand what the purpose of having two weapons was, and I found that the jumping mechanic kind of just got in the way since you can't effectively hit people while you're above them, but other than that there's not much to criticize. Great job on getting so much done!
It's a decent concept, but like others have said it's very tedious. The "overcooking" also seems way too sensitive; it's especially annoying to fail after having spent so long working on a single tablet.
Also, I tried doing a quick run where I didn't put any marks before baking and ended up with a 68%. That's some pretty lenient grading for 0% of the work!
The graphics are a bit simple, but it's a cool concept.
Bit of a tonal whiplash at the end though.
I found the gameplay a bit boring, but art and audio were nice.
There seems to be a bug in the intro section which makes it so that you have to click twice for each dialog prompt.
There are also 3 different fullscreen buttons (one on Ludum Dare's site, one on the itch.io embed, and one in the Unity webgl export). You should probably try to set it up so that you only need one.
I tried playing a couple times, but both times slipped off the platforms and fell forever.
This looks like it could be a decent game, but I think it would be substantially improved with a bit more polish.
Great little puzzle game! The relation to the theme feels a bit loose, but the puzzles were really well-designed. They challenging, but not so challenging as to be frustrating and did a really great job of teaching you what you did wrong on previous attempts.
btw, your game page doesn't quite fit in embed on the Ludum Dare site; I'd recommend editing out the line breaks in the generated html file or moving the buttons to the top so that people can see the "fullscreen" button right away.
The artwork's pretty nice too!
Nice intro and menu design, but I found the platforming to be kind of floaty.
btw, the controls should probably be included in-game as well as just in the game's description; it took me a couple minutes to realize you could double jump.
There are also 3 different fullscreen buttons (one on Ludum Dare's site, one on the itch.io embed, and one in the Unity webgl export). You should probably try to set it up so that you only need one.
Great game! The illustrations are gorgeous, and there were some good jokes in the "talk" battles.
It seems like you can sequence break by just walking up to where Konia should be. On my first playthrough, I only fought mePhone, then Konia, and then the end cut-scene was triggered.
Like a couple other people mentioned, the 3D overworld feels a bit disconnected from the 2D fights/cutscenes, but overall a great game!
The game was far too difficult for me to enjoy it (I was just getting frustrated), but I did listen to a few tracks from the soundtrack as you suggested, and they're great! It's really impressive how much quality music you managed to put together in such a short time.
Kudos for using your own engine btw! Although I didn't enjoy the game, it didn't seem to have any noticeable technical issues which is quite an accomplishment for custom engine games.
There's certainly a lot more content than I was expecting, but as a lot of people have said the controls felt pretty wonky. I also found that the sound effects and music weren't normalized.
It's a decent start though, good job!
I didn't quite understand the mechanics and found myself winning by using trial and error more than I should have. It looks like it could be interesting if it was a bit more clear what was going on though.
Given that you opted out of every category, I can only assume you intentionally linked to a 404.
I found it far too easy. I never needed to use the turtle form, and got bored before I was ever in any danger of losing.
I liked the use of rotoscoping, it gave this a really unique look! The audio could have used a bit more polish though, it felt a bit at odds with the visuals imo.
I tried to figure out the chassis stuff, but eventually found it was easier to navigate by launching through the air with chainsaws. It seemed like sometimes parts would just de-attach mid-air though, not sure if that was supposed to be happening or not.
Seems incredibly polished for a jam game, great job!
It was a decent platformer, but it'd probably be better to just give the player regenerating fuel - it seemed a bit weird to have infinite flight since it removed the need for the platform shooting (which had more potential for interesting puzzles imo). The sound effect for the flying was really annoying too, because it just played a single explosion on a loop instead of being a consistent noise.
It's a nice start, but there really wasn't much to it. Having said that, it's probably better than what I would've been able to put together at your age!
Nice graphics, but I found the game to be a bit boring.
One thing I noticed was that the check for which shape you are seems to start at the the very top of the hole graphic, despite the hole being a little ways further down in the texture. It tricks you into thinking you have a split second longer than you actually have.
This was a cool entry, the difficulty felt really natural since it got harder to avoid things as you got bigger, but still had plenty of opportunity to recover if you lost some pieces. However, I noticed that you could just spam right-click to make the squares pulse without any delay in between. This felt like a bit of an oversight.
The music was good, but I found that the sound effects had a tendency to drown it out (although that's partially because I was spamming pulses).
Like a lot of other people commenting, I had issues getting the controls to "click" - every time I switched to the bat, I instinctively wanted to keep pressing the switch button to make the bat flap instead of going back to jump.
Other than that, this was a great game! Nice graphics, cool music, and I loved the way you used coins as currency for continues; that was a great way to add some incentive for picking them up beyond an abstract points system!
Great little puzzler! It was fairly short, but I'm sure it was tough to come up with puzzles for an idea like this.
I would recommend taking down the web version though; I tried it initially, but it was very very broken and some people might not see your recommendation to play the standalone versions.
Made it to wave 11!
It would've been nice if there was a bit more interactivity with the actual shifting mechanic, but overall it was a pretty fun game.
Not really my type of game, but definitely a well-executed entry!
Very polished! The combat felt a little a little tacked on though; there wasn't really any connection between it and the rotation mechanic.
Having said that, the enemies' projectiles were actually pretty cool.
Great entry! Very satisfying shooting mechanics. I did find it a bit too easy though; I never felt like I was in any danger of losing, and only lost due to a bug: I played to 141 kills, but after the dialogue showing the new shape (the cross) I wasn't able to switch shapes or fire anymore.
If you're planning on any post-jam updates, I would definitely add some background music to heighten the mood!
There's a surprisingly large amount of content to this, though that also made it confusing since there was no map and the level is very visually repetitive.
I also ran into the bug which let me just fly around as the walrus after leaving the water area.
A decent little rhythm game, though it was kind of annoying when shapes would overlap with each other.
A nice entry for a first, but it was far too difficult imo; it seems that most enemies kill you in a single hit before you get much of a chance to do anything.
This is one of the most adorable games I've ever seen! Even just moving around was fun, and the contrast made the narrative even better.
Loved every aspect of it!
The artwork in this is great! I especially liked the variety of transformations for the defeated opponents.
My main criticism is that it's pretty repetitive, though that's kind of inherent to the gameplay mechanic. Maybe it'd be better if the player's spell glyph was randomized each time?
A nice little story, and a good use of the theme!
I particularly liked the use of repetition, and was especially grateful for the highlighted text showing what had changed.
Great pixel art, but the game seemed to be pretty buggy. Dead robots had a weird habit of continuing to move around, and the machine gun would just stop firing occasionally.
Lots of potential here though, could be a great game with some audio and a bit more polish!
I like the visuals, very LIMBO-esque.
This was pretty tough; took me a couple tries before I got past the first level, but once I did I managed to get through the whole game.
I felt like the player didn't have enough speed, especially in the weaker stages when you can't really clear the enemies out. Maybe you could make the speed inversely proportional to the bullet output? It'd probably be a good idea to show the player's lives in the UI somewhere too.
The music was great btw!
Wow, this really took me by surprise! Definitely one of the best games I've played yet.
I agree with the other comments that there should be a bit more feedback so you know you hit/missed the beat, but other than that this felt really polished!
Great entry! The shooting was really satisfying, so it was kind of hard to be patient and play it properly!
Interesting mechanic. It'd be neat to see what it looks like in a full game.
P.S. I got a "failed on size" error whenever I tried to do the octagon spell.
Really cool visuals, would've been nice to see a full game with this idea!
Well, this is a game.
As near as I could tell, there wasn't any penalty for just mashing buttons instead of trying to actually hit them at the right time, though I might have just not understood it.
The levels being procedural was impressive! I did find it annoying how you could kind of stick to a wall mid-jump though.
It's a nice game, but I found the browser popups used for the "level complete" messages to be pretty annoying.
Crashes on launch:
Running Panda3D from "D:\Games\LD35\windows_build\panda3d_build"
Fatal Python error: Py_Initialize: unable to load the file system codec
ImportError: No module named 'encodings'
You really nailed the visuals!
I was confused as to why you separated the interaction and mouselook though. Was there any particular reason you didn't just use the center of the screen as a pointer?
I couldn't really make sense of this. I didn't know what I was supposed to hit and what I was supposed to avoid.
Definitely one of the best entries!
I had low expectations because I thought it would be too similar to Super Hexagon, but it was actually pretty good! The music was great and even if it's conceptually similar it does play quite differently.
A bit of constructive criticism: sometimes when the colours transition, both the background and the outline colours are the same for a split second. It'd be good to avoid that if you could, since it can make it hard to see the next shape before it's too late.
Very confusing, but a cool twist on the simon says style of game.
Really great pixel art in this one!
Definitely would've benefited from some balancing though. The initial form felt really underpowered, but as soon as you got an upgrade you could pretty much just breeze through the rest of the game up to the boss, at which point it became really challenging again.
This was a neat little game!
If you're planning on doing any post-jam edits, you should definitely add some nice sizzling sounds! Adding some rotation to the pan physics might make it a bit more challenging too.
Really cute game! The art was cool and I especially liked how the background music transitioned into the fight music.
I was a bit disappointed that there weren't any enemies which required you to switch between forms or some simple puzzle mechanics (I mostly just spammed the turtle-stomp), but that might be asking for too much from a game jam title!
P.S. A minor bug I noticed was that sometimes trees around the edges of the screen would pop in and out when I was walking around. My guess was that this was because their visibility is based on the player's position instead of the camera, which has some delay to it.
Overall this was a great little game!
At first I thought there was a bug which was causing me to die randomly, but then I realized that you have to destroy every incoming object and you lose if any get through. You should probably add that instruction somewhere!
Interesting idea, would've liked to see a bit more interactivity though.
P.S. Remember to change the subsystem from console to window for release builds. Here's an SO question specific to SMFL on the topic: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/21181748/is-there-any-way-that-we-let-the-window-appear-but-not-the-cmd-in-sfml
I agree with suggestion to add colour to the shapes - I immediately forgot which shapes corresponded to which terrain.
I felt like the shapeshifting didn't really contribute much because it was too fast to be able to switch between them in time. I found that I was mostly just sticking to one shape and treating everything else as an obstacle.
It's an interesting concept and there seems to be quite a lot of depth to it, but I found the actual gameplay kind of boring.
The menus were all shifted halfway off the screen for me when I ran it fullscreen. Also, the overlapping geometry of the gate makes it harder to see the correct shape sometimes, which was kind of annoying. Other than that, it was a decent little game.
I was really surprised to hear voice-acting in an LD game!
I only managed to make it to around 400m, but this was pretty fun.
Interesting idea; it was a lot more challenging than it looks!
This was a great idea! I had a lot of issues actually trying to play it though. Using the gamepad didn't seem to work that well - I could move around and hit the action button, but I couldn't hit "down", and trying to press the buttons in the pottery phase often caused double clicks.
When I switched over to keyboard I could play properly, but when I tried to install the first client's upgrade I got this error message:
FATAL ERROR in
action number 1
of Draw Event
for object o_db_stock_install:
trying to index a variable which is not an array
at gml_Object_o_db_stock_install_Draw_0
Interesting idea, but I feel like it would have benefited from a more streamlined level design. It was really confusing and I found that I kind of just ran around randomly.
Cool game, although I didn't understand the mushroom cloud bit at first.
Surprisingly fun! It'd be nice if the challenge level increased over time though.
I noticed that when you lose the game, it just throws an error and quits. Here's the error text:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "C:\Python34\lib\site-packages\cx_Freeze\initscripts\Console.py", line 27, in <module>
File "ScarySnake.py", line 112, in <module>
File "ScarySnake.py", line 44, in message_to_screen
NameError: name 'font' is not defined
Other than that it's a good first effort!
Neat little game. I felt like the cannon was kind of useless in comparison to the laser though.
Really nice!
btw, there's a small typo in the instructions
Starting with the idea of tarot cards was cool, but most of the cards seemed to basically just act as regular projectiles which was kind of disappointing.
It's kind of hard to rate without a second player, but seems like it could be fun. The tank controls left a little to be desired though.
Great! This is probably my favourite entry I've seen so far.
One minor issue: The mouse isn't locked, so if you play on a dual monitor setup there's a tendency to accidentally click outside the screen.
It's a nice idea, but I found the controls to be fairly frustrating.
It's a shame you didn't get more done. This looks really promising!
Little unfair, but overall pretty good considering the time spent.
LD37 — One room (62)
Shadow Fencer Theatre by ShuddaHaddaLottaFun 2017-01-02T17:35:00
Great entry! The physics were really fun to play with, and the concept is solid. It isn't a particularly inventive use of the theme, but the game itself is fun, the designs are great, and overall it felt very polished. The audio was an especially nice touch (though the levels could have used a bit of editing; I had to turn my volume way up to hear it).
Ring of Fire by dollarone 2017-01-02T17:10:00
The idea behind the game was cool. I'm not sure if I was ever playing against other real people, but it's definitely an interesting concept.
Before I knew that it was multiplayer, I was a bit surprised by the enemies moving in real-time. It has a lot of the hallmarks of a roguelike and I expected them to be taking turns only when the player moved. Having it be real-time also caused some issues with the controls I think: if it were turn-based, the expectation would be that pressing a key would move you one tile, but because it's real-time, you can accidentally move further than intended if you hold the key too long (which is quite an issue when that single extra tile is a one-hit-kill lava tile!).
Of course, doing it turn-based wouldn't quite work with the multiplayer concept, so it isn't exactly a trivial problem to fix, haha!
Tomb of the Glitch King by KappaIX 2016-12-18T13:59:00
Great entry! This is fairly simple game, but you've used the mechanics quite effectively. The audio was a great mood-enhancer too.
I feel like the player and background sprites could have used some more work. The contrast on the level is very low making it hard to see the layout properly, and the player kind of looks like a cyber Finn the Human. The player's sprite also seemed to be significantly taller than their hitbox, which made some of the puzzles feel a lot more difficult than they actually were. The glitch effects on the other hand were all really nice!
STEREOJO by ChuiGum 2016-12-17T21:55:00
Nice entry! Like most people are saying, the walljump being finicky made some rooms a lot harder than they were probably meant to be, but other than that is was fairly fun.
The illusion mechanic is pretty interesting, but I have no clue what the connection to "one room" is; it honestly seems like an idea for a different theme entirely that you just went with anyway! (I suppose that's why you opted out of the theme voting, haha)
Hamsterical Nuts by mirta000 2016-12-17T21:48:00
Nice entry! The hamster animation is pretty good, but there is quite an artistic disconnect between the hamster, the enemies, and the room itself. They all seem to be drawn with wildly varying styles.
1 biT Strike by SamuelSousa 2016-12-17T21:10:00
Not particularly original or relevant to the theme, but a solid execution of a simple concept!
The Chinese Room by Pierrec 2016-12-17T20:04:00
This is a very clever entry! Controlling a Chinese Room-inspired robot inside a literal Chinese room made this possibly the best use of the theme I've seen.
I did manage to "win" eventually, though I get the feeling you're intended to play multiple times in order to complete all the objectives (I only managed to get the location, identity, and survive). The length made it get quite repetitive, and the thought of having to play another dozen times trying to figure out how to trigger the other paths was demoralizing. At one point (when you're prompted to prove who you are) it feels as if you even know that's the case; that moment definitely feels like "HAHA NOPE! Now you have to do the whole thing again!"
Tedium aside, it's an interesting game and well-worth playing a few times!
Lost in pandation by deepnight 2016-12-17T19:17:00
This is a fantastic entry!
I found this to be tremendously well-balanced. I died quite a few times before beating it, but every time it felt like I had learned an important lesson during the run and managed to do better the next time. The only death that felt a bit unfair was getting caught out in a blizzard while already low on heat: even if you have supplies, sometimes it just takes too long to get them to the fireplace in time.
There's so much depth in such a tight package of mechanics, and then on top of that the pixel and art and background audio are great too! Definitely one of the best entries I've played.
Some minor criticism:
-I froze to death while in the air, then landed and stood back up while the UI stayed put. Very very minor thing, but it seemed a little weird when it happened!
-Dropping an f-bomb when you get killed by the enemy seemed a bit unnecessary. This game is pretty much "E for Everyone" in every other way (it even stars a cute panda)!
-Some sound effects would nice and add to the level of polish.
-It's not a great use of the theme: the central area, the generator, the cable car, and the battery dispenser all felt like separate "rooms" to me.
The Princess Trap by David Cookie 2016-12-17T18:29:00
Nice entry considering the even shorter than usual dev time! Incorporating the theme by limiting the view was a clever way to make the most of your resources, though it does unfortunately make the game get repetitive fairly quick. One of the best parts of tower-defense games is when things really start to ramp up and the enemies and defenses visually get increasingly chaotic, but you don't really get the same effect here.
Xenopunch by Pietro Ferrantelli 2016-12-17T17:54:00
This is great! It's not particularly innovative, but definitely one of the most polished and fleshed-out entries I've seen this LD! The audio in particular was really well-done.
Some criticism:
-I feel like the first wave should be shorter. I appreciated that you didn't have to start from the beginning when you died, so the length of later waves feels justified, but the first one went on so long that I was starting to wonder whether the game was bugged/unfinished and I'd seen everything it had to offer.
-Playing with a MOBA-style keyboard layout was a bit annoying; I think this would map really well to gamepad controls.
Nice entry!
MFBFS by pixelpotions 2016-12-17T00:15:00
I think the concept of a "souls-like but just the boss fights" behind this is pretty solid, but in addition to being a bit of a tenuous connection with the theme, the boss is far too easy. I died a couple times at the start while getting a feel for the controls, but once I caught on to the fact that you can just roll towards the pillars it was a breeze. With better balancing, I could see this being a lot more fun!
Perspective by akirassasin 2016-12-16T22:59:00
It's an interesting concept, kind of reminds me of Fez, but I feel that the lighting doesn't provide enough information for a player to effectively navigate a 3D environment like this.
I also fell out of the world pretty quick, haha!
Dethroned by Devastus 2016-12-16T22:26:00
This is definitely one of my favourites gameplay-wise. The sprites are well-done (especially the snazzy title animation in the intro), the audio does a nice job of complementing the feel, and the game had me playing for a lot longer than I would have expected.
Criticisms:
-I think would be a lot more interesting if instead of simply having a UI overlay, the directions you need to press were actually worked into the animations taking place. I found that I rarely did anything except look at the one spot on the screen that displayed the next arrow to press.
-Checkpoints: making it to wave 48 and then dying doesn't make me excited for having almost won, it makes me incredibly frustrated and annoyed that I'm going to have to do all the early fights again, except even easier this time. Giving the player the ability to restart from 10, 20, etc would reduce a lot of the tedium, while also giving them some intermediary goals to work towards (starting at 0 and being told you have to get 50 is a bit daunting!)
-The theme feels a little forced; it kind of seems like you were hoping for "upgrade" and then went with it anyway, haha!
-It seemed like RNG was a bit too important. The only thing that determined (for me) whether I could beat a late-wave enemy was if I lucked into a long combo instead of a measly one or two hits on my turn.
-There 2 different fullscreen buttons (one on Ludum Dare's site and one in the Unity webgl export). You should probably try to set it up so that you only need one.
Overall, it's a great entry!
Roomba Rampage by PeachTreeOath 2016-12-16T21:28:00
A surprisingly fun entry, though I wasn't a fan of all of the silly environment sprites; I think I would have preferred if the game had been played straight and you were simply a roomba cleaning up a normal room.
Having the zoom magnification be an upgrade was an interesting idea!
Networking™ by erikiene 2016-12-16T21:01:00
It's an interesting concept, though the execution isn't as solid as it could be. I feel like if you had more time to work on this, a good place to focus your efforts would be in trying to force the player to struggle through conversations rather than let them simply walk away without any real consequence.
It's certainly a nice effort for a first game though! I think you did a good job of capturing the "feel" of an intolerable networking event; I was looking for an exit almost right away.
btw, there are 2 different fullscreen buttons (one on the itch.io embed and one in the Unity webgl export). You should probably try to set it up so that you only need one.
Galactic Petting Zoo!!! by BoneDaddy 2016-12-16T20:25:00
That was certainly an interesting one, haha! The intro audio was a bit obnoxious the first time around, but the multiple "intro" screens and other sound effects were pretty hilarious.
In the room without an animal, I was kind of expecting that you had to progress by petting the room itself, and was a bit disappointed when I couldn't figure out if there was any way to progress.
Was there a reason for the second floating hand outside the room in space btw?
Taffer by Daedolon 2016-12-16T19:13:00
A solid effort, though I'm not really sure how it relates to theme?
It was fun to play around with the physics for a bit, but unfortunately I found the main mechanic of keeping the torches lit to be fairly boring.
Having said that, this is definitely impressive for a first ever attempt at a game jam!
FUNRiDE! by SUNFURY 2016-12-16T19:01:00
This is pretty great! I only played against the bots, but I'm sure it would be fun in the local multiplayer mode too.
The music was really fitting and well-done as well.
Some criticism:
-The feedback (for the mouse, at least) felt a little bit too loose. Obviously not having full control over your character is part of the fun, but I actually found it really hard to figure out what was even going on because I couldn't tell if clicking did anything at first.
-The UI was very minimal, and could definitely use some improvement.
One Room Hotel by NightShadow0 2016-12-16T18:48:00
Interesting entry! It was fun for a little while, but I found that the balancing was very heavily weighted against the player; if you messed up once or twice, it was very hard to recover because of how many elements were dictated by RNG. It also seems that the only way to keep the business afloat is turn away cheap customers and shower lions and pandas with television sets. It's a bit weird that the mechanics unintentionally encourage you to be discriminatory!
On the tv note, I also got tripped up by the fact that activities were consumed on use. It seems strange that you'd be buying single-use tvs, haha!
It does seem like a pretty solid base for a hotel management game though; nice work!
Vaultum by SkullPixel 2016-12-16T18:23:00
Interesting concept, though I found it very difficult to get more than one or two enemies.
There are also 2 different fullscreen buttons (one on the itch.io embed and one in the Unity webgl export). You should probably try to set it up so that you only need one.
Chamber Talk by invi 2016-12-16T18:07:00
This was a pretty great entry! Took me 11 deaths to get both endings. The artwork (although there wasn't much of it) was really nice, and the jokes were mostly funny.
The connection to the theme is fairly loose, and I would've loved if there was a bit of audio though; just a simple background track and a nice smashing sound when you lose would really punch this up a bit in my opinion!
Oni 'Room by madlee 2016-12-16T17:29:00
Played till ~400, but it seems there's little reason to do anything but spam the attack button and use the arrows to occasionally change direction. I never felt like I was in any danger of getting hit.
Void Inc. by Erkberg 2016-12-16T17:22:00
I think one major flaw with this game is that it does a poor job of enticing the player. Most clicker games make sure to always have multiple goals that the player is highly aware of and working towards, usually giving them lots of small but not particularly effective ways to increase their resources. In this game, aside from the boss in the last stage, I found that I was rarely working towards a goal and simply collecting resources because I knew that I'd need them later.
Other than that, it's a fairly solid entry.
Room 007 by Lancelot Gao 2016-12-16T16:32:00
This is adorable! The art assets are simple but effective, and I feel like you made great use of the limited number of interactions. There could have maybe been one or two more puzzles, but the game ended pretty much right when I was starting to feel like there wasn't anything interesting left to do. It was a really nice take on the theme as well.
Great entry!
Karate Basketball by SeaDads 2016-12-16T16:11:00
This is incredibly well-polished. Getting a live commentary that A) works, B) isn't cringeworthy, and C) doesn't sound like it was recorded in a tin can is really impressive!
With a few more mechanics, I could imagine this being really fun as a local multiplayer game. The incorporation of the theme isn't the best, but other than that this is a great entry!
Neon no Nakama by SimonHutchinson 2016-12-15T19:11:00
Can't say it was particularly fun or interesting gameplay-wise, but worth playing if only for the music!
At first I kind of like how the lights continued to act as physics objects after they started following you, but once it got to the maze sequences, that started to interfere with the game a bit. Occasionally they would get caught on a wall and suddenly slingshot outwards a few seconds later. If they hit you while doing this they could even send you careening out of control!
btw the web embed ~just barely~ doesn't fit in the viewport and has a tiny vertical scroll. You might want to scale it down slightly to make it fit or add the fullscreen button.
Nobi Sword by matthewpalaje 2016-12-15T18:54:00
Nice entry! I really enjoyed the cartoony aesthetic and the gameplay idea is pretty great.
One major issue I had with this game was that it was never clear whether your sword was big enough to hit enemies or not. I think this could be fixed if instead of making enemies a one-hit kill, give them different amounts of health have the size of the sword affect damage. That way you wouldn't feel as if you have to hunt down as many tiny enemies as possible and instead make it possible to take down a larger enemy with a few more hits if needed.
The traps were also a bit hard to distinguish from the rest of the environmental obstacles, but that's a fairly minor issue. I'm also not really sure how this applies to the "one room" theme?
If you haven't played Slash Quest from a few LDs back (theme was two buttons/growing), be sure to check that one out. It did a lot of cool things with a similar core mechanic!
Chrome Room by Palarus 2016-12-15T18:20:00
Nice entry! The core gameplay mechanic is interesting, it's a very polished experience, and very well-suited to a mobile experience.
The first dozen or so levels kind of felt like they didn't have any design effort put into them ("it's square!", "now it's a pentagon!", "now it's a hexagon!"), but I was happy to find that there were actually a decent number of intentionally-designed levels and new mechanics introduced along the way.
However, I think my main takeaway from having played this is that it doesn't really succeed that well as a puzzle mechanic. Beyond two or three bounces, players can't accurately predict how the ball is going to behave (our entry actually relied on ball-bouncing as well, but we tried to embrace the chaos that comes with it!). Because of this, completing levels rarely felt like solving a puzzle, and more often than not it was just a matter of randomly stumbling into a solution through trial and error.
Please don't take that criticism too harshly though; it's more of an opinion on the viability of the game being taken beyond a prototype than on its quality. It's obvious that an impressive effort went into making this!
The randomized backgrounds were a nice touch. I did find that once I got to more difficult levels, it was hard to refine a route because having the level fade-out and fade-in with different visuals meant you couldn't really use visual landmarks aside from the actual walls, but the effect itself is very appealing.
Conștiență by Uliana Galich 2016-12-15T17:35:00
This game was kind of a let-down to be honest. The mechanic of having new objects appear based on what you examine is an interesting way to present a narrative, but instead of using this to its full effect, the player only gets the barest hint of a story before having it all taken away for a ham-fisted twist ending. Sorry if this sounds a bit harsh, but this is about as emotionally effective as saying "Imagine a sad thing happening to a person. Isn't that tragic?"
On the technical side:
-I ran into a bug immediately on my first attempt: if you walk over to the poster and then examine it, the table appears on top of you and you can't move (I assumed this was game-breaking since I hadn't really seen what the game was going to be and restarted because of it)
-There are 2 different fullscreen buttons (one on the itch.io embed, and one in the Unity webgl export). You should probably try to set it up so that you only need one.
Rhythm Rink by shillingburg 2016-12-15T17:10:00
The visuals are well-done and I'm digging the overall aesthetic, but found the gameplay a bit boring unfortunately. Can't say I felt compelled to play for more than a few seconds once I got onto the beat.
Still a nice entry though!
The Dash Club by bigbuggames 2016-12-15T16:58:00
Interesting take on the rhythm genre! The floor switching in particular was a neat feature.
One thing that sort of threw me off is that I was never quite certain whether I was supposed to be on the blocks when they reached the last row or when they left the last row. The gecko being able to stand in-between blocks made this a bit more of an issue; in a more standard rhythm game I think the player would pick up on the correct timing faster since they'd be constrained to the grid.
Overall, a nice entry!
One classRoom to teach them all by Mikel 2016-12-15T16:32:00
Well that was a strange one, haha!
The idea that instead of trying to eliminate enemies you have to herd them was interesting, though the physics could definitely be improved. The challenge had a tendency to come from enemies getting stuck on the level geometry, rather than getting outsmarted by the AI.
Nice entry!
Breach Lockdown by DesignerNap 2016-12-15T16:20:00
Nice entry! The visuals are well-done (couldn't run at a reasonable framerate on my computer unfortunately), though I found the game very frustrating to play. I'm glad you did a video walkthrough - I felt I got a much better feel for the work you put into the game through that. Having all the different endings was a nice touch!
13 jellyfish by Four Quarters 2016-12-15T15:01:00
This is amazing! By far, one of my favourites from this LD.
There are a few things that could be improved: I'm sure a lot of people would appreciate a more detailed explanation of how to play, as it does take awhile to figure everything out on your own (showing fish through gameplay sprites but food through UI threw me off a bit). Having a few unique interactions between the characters would have been cool too (though the amount of work you've already put into this entry is already impressive).
I also noticed that it bugged out a bit on repeated plays: the music stopped and occasionally no sprite would pass by when there was a warning the navigator had to avoid. I was playing the web version though, maybe this isn't an issue in the desktop build.
The gameplay was really well-balanced (I only just barely managed a win on my fourth attempt), the sprites and animations were gorgeous, and the music was great. Pretty much an all-around impressive entry!
Fox in the grange by DevForPizza 2016-12-15T14:18:00
The sound effects were really tough on the ears, especially the explosion! Sorry, but I couldn't really stand to play it for too long because of this.
(it was also a bit too fast-paced for me)
Hotel Z by ajmalr 2016-12-15T14:02:00
This is certainly well-polished and I was on board for the idea as it was presented in the intro, but I found that the game bit off more than it could chew. It's kind of hard to call it "one room" when there are 4-5 distinct rooms in the level layout, and the idea that you were controlling multiple characters seemed a bit unnecessary and only served to complement the large level layout.
What bugs the most is that there doesn't even seem to be a good gameplay reason for these additions! As near as I could tell, the best strategy seemed to be to take the standard gun character to the top-right and ignore everything else. The zombies didn't seem to spawn at a high enough rate for them to do much damage in the other rooms, and you could pretty safely camp the zombies spawning in that room indefinitely.
The music, sprites, and post-processing shader were all nice, but can't say I enjoyed this one unfortunately.
Apricot Drop by Nixxor 2016-12-15T13:46:00
This is really cute and the music was a nice touch, but the performance was really bad for me. It was probably running at ~15 fps at best. Might've been nice to be able to turn off the post-processing (especially the motion blur).
I also noticed you could clip through the ceiling by standing on the couch and accidentally launched the apricot out of the room by dropping it there.
ｓｐｒｉｎｇ ｃｌｅａｎｉｎｇ by 01010111 2016-12-15T13:34:00
This is adorable! The soundtrack in particular made the whole thing a very pleasant playthrough.
One major criticism: I didn't realize I had to go back to the charging station to end the day at first. I actually was about to rate and move on when I saw that people were clearly commenting on more than what I'd seen and gave it another shot. I'm glad I did because this turned out to be one my favourites so far, but I'm worried some people might make the same mistake.
The One Room Experiment by Siegfried Croes 2016-12-15T13:14:00
Interesting take on the theme! It'd be cool if the idea was taken a bit beyond just a visual effect, and the fact that it's all just one room was worked into the gameplay a bit more (e.g. make it possible to lock a tile and use this to get over otherwise impossible areas).
I found myself wishing the transition animations happened a bit faster though; it was pretty annoying having to wait so long between each move, especially given how small the room is. I also found the game to be a bit too difficult. The monsters weren't really a threat, but the jumping was finnicky enough that I had to restart quite a few times.
Great entry!
The Chamber Scrolls by SamH 2016-12-15T12:55:00
Impressive use of PICO-8! I'm surprised you didn't choose to go for the dev-mode mouse input; I think having that at least as an option would have definitely made it feel more like a point-and-click.
The actual puzzle design wasn't particularly great (it got a little bit pixel-hunty) but I'm sure the tech side of things is what you were focused on anyway :)
Freeze & Crush by levubivenatus 2016-12-14T23:22:00
Haha, well this certainly isn't a particularly deep game, but it's fairly well executed! I had fun with it.
Some criticism:
-I got the impression that all of the objects were shattering in pre-defined ways. Obviously it would have been more work to make the shattering dynamic, but it would have been interesting if you were able to smash things multiple times to break them into successively tinier pieces.
-There weren't any colliders on the pillars
-There was nothing preventing the player from jumping outside the level and falling into the negative space
-Enabling the time freeze cancels out any trajectories (i.e. if you shatter a pot then freeze and unfreeze, all the pieces fall straight down instead of continuing to fly outwards)
One Room Personality Test by columhiggins 2016-12-14T22:56:00
The choice to go for FMV piqued my curiousity, but I can't say I found the content interesting.
From a technical side, it was a bit strange to have some of the narration presented as video and some of it presented as voice-over with very clearly different audio quality. Similarly, having wildly varying lighting in some of the video was also weird. It gave me the impression that the content hadn't been planned out properly beforehand, and was recorded in multiple sessions in order to fill in gaps as needed.
The Milu by ayame9joe 2016-12-14T22:44:00
The artwork in this is very nice, and it has a very relaxing feel to it. Unfortunately the translation is holding it back for me: There was a line near the start of the English version which hadn't been translated, and there were quite a few strange word choices (can't say I've ever heard someone use the phrase "a fit of pique" before). I wish I was able to play it in the original language; I don't think I was able to appreciate the effort that went into the writing having only played the translation.
Falling Tower by xbcw 2016-12-14T21:38:00
Interesting idea, though it wasn't fun enough to keep me playing for anywhere near 100 floors. The artwork could certainly stand to be improved, and the controls felt very floaty: there was so little friction that walking around seemed more like sliding on ice.
A Claustrophobic Nightmare by loveapplegames 2016-12-14T21:01:00
It seems like a decent start, but the gameplay isn't particularly fun and there doesn't seem to be any sense of balance. I tried all three levels, and in all three the player simply gets overwhelmed within seconds.
Btw the mute button doesn't seem to work (at least on the menu, the snoring keeps playing).
Sorcerer's Room by hugofock 2016-12-14T20:12:00
Interesting idea, but the aiming controls being opposite the actual was kind of weird. My guess is that it's meant to represent winding up and releasing, but it feels out of place with casting magic spells.
There are also 3 different fullscreen buttons (one on Ludum Dare's site, one on the itch.io embed, and one in the Unity webgl export). You should probably try to set it up so that you only need one.
Pico Factory by caranha 2016-12-14T20:01:00
This is mechanically pretty solid, but unfortunately, I personally did not have the patience to find this game fun! As a couple people have mentioned, the controls could definitely stand to be improved. It might have been worth it to just go for the dev-mode mouse input and forego all the tedious cursor movement.
Reckless Redecoration by qbicfeet 2016-12-14T19:30:00
The spritework is nice and I'd be interested in seeing a more fully-fleshed out version of this concept, but as it stands it's a bit underwhelming.
I have a feeling that it would have been more interesting if instead of having multiple variations of each furniture piece, more time was spent on the puzzle aspect (I assume the variations are actually worked into the gameplay though, since others seem to be having trouble dealing with the second client's wife).
It was also a bit annoying that the double-height furniture always started one square below where it should in order for you to place it.
I hope you plan on continuing this one beyond the jam; it does seem like it has potential!
Captain's Room by Nicolaigd 2016-12-14T19:04:00
Nice entry!
I'm a big fan of your take on the visuals; the connection to the theme is a bit of a stretch but the lighting did a great job of communicating the isolation and cramped feel of the boat. Top marks on graphics/mood for sure!
On that note, I would've liked to see a bit more perspective in the environment. The boat had an interesting pseudo-3D effect to it, but the landmarks were all fairly static. I think you could have really pushed the pseudo-3D by having the layers offset slightly based on their distance from the boat.
Some criticisms:
-It felt a bit strange using an orientation based compass with a fixed view. I think it would have made more sense to use directional markers on a circle around the boat or possibly a minimap style interface.
-The little text pop-ups showing the captain's thoughts were a nice touch, but could have probably been used more effectively if there was more of a narrative and a conclusion beyond "you found the things, thanks for playing"
Moving In by impbox 2016-12-14T18:37:00
Really great entry! I haven't made it through all the levels, but it's fun enough that I'm probably going to come back to this one later. As many people have already pointed out, having the NPC shout out your mistakes was definitely a nice touch.
I think a good addition would be a "target moves" for each level. It'd be interesting to see if people can come up with more efficient solutions than the developer can!
A couple of the layout requirements bugged me though:
-desks needed a space free in front of them in addition to a chair. It seems a bit silly that you wouldn't be able to get at the desk from the chair!
-both fridges and lounges need an open space in front of them, but it doesn't seem like they can share this space
Spell Bear by torcado 2016-12-14T17:19:00
Nice entry! The laser beam felt like it was going to be way overpowered, but you did a really good job of balancing its power with the lack of mobility + accuracy that comes with it.
The amount of content was just about perfect as well; it ended only a level or two after I'd gotten a triple laser and started to feel like the rest of the upgrades weren't going to matter anymore.
It's a bit simple overall, but also fairly polished and hard to find much to criticize. Well done!
Chest Quest! by Jamie Rollo 2016-12-14T16:45:00
The visuals in this are great, but the gameplay felt very clunky to me, mostly due to the controls. It's sort of halfway between grid-based movement in the vein of a roguelike and free control, which ended up causing me to get stuck halfway between tiles when trying to change direction.
I also feel like there wasn't much attempt to incorporate the theme: the room itself doesn't really have any special properties or feature prominently, and there isn't much reason to see the different levels as one room.
On a positive note: the controller rumble was a nice touch to give the hammer smashes more impact in the absence of audio!
visje by TomBoogaart 2016-12-14T16:17:00
This is really cute, but it doesn't really seem that well-suited to a desktop game. I feel like it would work a lot better as a mobile title that you check once or twice a day. There simply isn't enough content for me to feel compelled to keep it around on a desktop. Maybe it would also work if it ran in small window in the corner of the screen?
A couple minor criticisms:
-I wasn't sure what was going on at first when it prompted for a name; it probably would help to say "enter a name" or something similar there.
-Having the fish explode in a cloud of blood is a bit dramatic for having underfed it!
My Friend Bubba by TijmenTio 2016-12-14T15:55:00
This is a really neat entry! One of the best uses of the theme I've seen yet, and cute to boot!
Unfortunately I found that mechanically, it was kind of annoying to play. The gameplay ideas are all interesting, but the block stacking almost never works, the combat (the nerf battle especially) is really dodgy, and even the crayons can be hard to line up properly with the wall.
The visuals on the other hand are great. The cartoony look and bouncy physics of everything all fit together perfectly!
Btw, I played it with a gamepad, but when I briefly tried playing with the keyboard I found that the player character movement was messed up, and I could only move very slowly. Possibly a bug related to starting the game while a gamepad is connected?
One Room Dungeon by Trasevol_Dog 2016-12-14T15:21:00
Nice entry! The variety of the tilesets and the enemies is probably my favourite part.
I did find it a bit too difficult for my tastes, and on my best run only managed to get to 2-2/3-0/4 (this level notation is really confusing btw!). Once the chain-chomp enemies show up, I start taking hits every level and it just goes downhill from there.
I found that having the health pickup be a consistent factor of the room layout made the game a lot more tactical. If they spawned randomly, the player would just have to avoid getting hit as much as possible and hope for the RNG to help out when needed, but being able to rely on a single health pickup in every room meant you could choose when to play it safe and when to tank a couple hits and go for the pickup in the next room.
The visual effects are great as usual too!
Spellbound by ijzm 2016-12-14T04:05:00
Nice entry! The music was particularly good, and it was a good incorporation of the theme.
Some criticism: I didn't like that you could only shoot one fireball at a time instead of putting it on a time delay; It got kind of annoying having to wait so long every time you miss a shot.
The torches being the key to progress in the water segment wasn't made clear at all. I don't think I would have know what to do if I hadn't accidentally shot one when trying to hit a ghost.
Room 753 by local minimum 2016-12-13T21:33:00
This was very creepy. I'm glad there's a "mood" category, because I think that's the best way to explain how this game succeeds; I wouldn't say it was particularly "fun", but I definitely enjoyed playing it!
I found that the layouts were a tad too confusing at times. Obviously the repetition and feeling of being lost is meant to be a part of the horror aspect, but I did feel kind of guilty for running around randomly and lucking into the solutions by the end. I was going to suggest that it should start out with less teleporting and glitching to ease the player into it, but realize that a less jarring intro could just as easily make people think that the game has no real content and quit before it starts the puzzles. It's a tough problem to solve!
On a more minor note: as someone else mentioned above, it would've been nice if the ending was a bit more involved. I was kind of expecting for the last elevator to open into room 753 instead of just cutting to an end screen.
Other than that this was a solid entry! The screen glitches, the rare flickers of silhouetted people, and the sound effects especially did a good job of hammering home the atmosphere. I'm not sure if this was intentional, but I noticed that when I stopped trying to puzzle my way through areas and just rushed it instead, the little thump in the move animation started to sound like a heartbeat. Really bumped up the feeling of stress!
The Archwizard's Room by uheartbeast 2016-12-13T20:47:00
Nice entry! The spritework and audio are great. The interaction felt quite polished; I had a lot of fun just hopping the wizard around.
It does unfortunately feel a lot more like a prototype than a completed game: It only takes a couple minutes to kill all the enemies and then there doesn't seem to be anything you can do but wander around. I also never once found a need to use the fireball spell; the diagonal attack gave the player a huge advantage over the enemies, and they don't really have an opportunity to surround you.
Having said that, this is still a really solid entry, and I'd definitely be interested in playing an expanded version.
I was a bit confused as to why it's mouse input only; the diagonal attacks mean you can't just use the arrow keys, but I have a feeling this would play really well on a numpad or WASD + QEZC!
Homes under the Hammer by Tijn 2016-12-13T20:29:00
Nice entry! I found the main mechanic to be confusing at first; it took me awhile to realize that it was kind of like playing minesweeper, but once I got it the game made a lot more sense.
The audio in particular is great. I find that doing sound effects with voices usually ends up sounding wrong, but it works really well here!
Bug report: you can click the "buy and renovate" button multiple times while the game is transitioning, causing you to lose extra money before starting the level.
Tangent by rxi 2016-12-13T19:37:00
Solid entry; simple, but elegant! Some of the visuals seemed a bit incoherent (why are computers transporting you in magic bubbles? why can't a cat fit under a door when the tip of its ear is ever so slightly above the threshold?), but overall it was cute.
One major complaint: the area which introduces the transitions based on position instead of the computers has nothing to indicate or force the player into moving forward to discover the new mechanic. As it stands, it relies on the player walking to the other side simply because they have nowhere else to go, and I imagine some people are just going to stop or get stuck there. I feel like this mechanic should be introduced by having it in the middle of an expected puzzle solution so that you can't accidentally miss it.
It'd be interesting to see if you can actually construct a single 3D "room" by layering the different areas based on transitions, or if this game exists in some weird impossible space!
Non Euclidean Room by NuSan 2016-12-13T19:00:00
Really clever use of the theme! The overall style is great, and the transitions through the portals were really smooth. I have a feeling that if the geometry and general premise didn't immediately give it away, you might not even realize you're teleporting!
A couple complaints: The sketchy effect being just a static screenspace overlay felt a little rushed (I found it drew too much attention to itself and away from the world), and the puzzle aspect of the game seemed a bit linear (though I can't really criticize you there - I wouldn't even know where to begin when designing puzzles in a space like this!).
Other than that, great entry!
Line Them Up by Geti 2016-12-13T18:34:00
This is amazing. Connection to the theme's a bit tenuous, but it's really fun! I kinda suck at tetris and so I only ever managed to make it about halfway, but I spent a lot longer playing this than I thought I would.
A bit of feedback: I found that having a small maximum ammo count detracted from the fun. I would often get a good streak going in the tetris game, but would end up wasting quite a few shots because I didn't switch back and forth often enough. I also noticed that you're missing the "image-rendering: pixelated;" CSS rule, so even though you've got a bunch of the other ones Chrome still blurs when it upscales the canvas.
Quieting the music when you tab out was a nice touch btw!