The Aqua-Eyed Banana by Jerem Watts 2023-10-03T02:08:02Z
I like the soft banana drawings!
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → Seong
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | 59 | Signal | 👥 | Last Writes | jam | 65 | 4.12 | 3.58 | 4.32 | 4.63 | 4.20 | 4.05 | 4.19 | |
| 2025 | 58 | Collector | 👥 | Crystal Tower Luxogenics | jam | 468 | 3.41 | 3.43 | 3.68 | 2.47 | 3.06 | 3.31 | 3.02 | |
| 2023 | 54 | Limited Space | 👥 | Pot Friends | jam | 875 | 3.20 | 3.27 | 3.59 | 3.73 | 3.26 | 3.14 | 3.78 | 3.20 |
I like the soft banana drawings!
Surprisingly fun controls, especially the way you have to slingshot your way around the planet with the gravitational pull. The planet damages you in too quick of a succession though, so you end up dying quickly as soon as you touch it, which may not be intended. It would be cool if the upgrades were explained as well.
Phenomenal mood and innovative controls with a wonderful feel to them. The way that the gradients of colour vibrate as I turn the dials is mesmerising. It feels like I am trying to communicate with a different world across a great distance, and I am only picking up partial signals and echoes that might have been sent out from a long time ago. The characters are so softly sketched and have loveable personalities that make you glad to have run into them. Beautiful work!
Impeccable execution! I adore the writing and the acting here. The nonlinear writing and acting felt responsive to interactions, and the character felt like he was really reacting to my actions. Whoever wrote the script did an amazing job. The television content was utterly delightful, it really had me saying "oh my god, I can't believe they did this" multiple times. Only complaint would be that the TellyBuddy face didn't have a clear feedback for when a specific part of its face was being touched when being rubbed, meaning I wasn't ever quite sure whether I'm hitting the right zones. But even that added to the anxious vibes of the game. I would love to see a full game with the horror aspects more explored. Having to interact with either side of the TV whilst not knowing what's going on on the other side was such an effective mechanic.
Wow, what a serene experience. I had to fix some GPU issues on my end to get the game running properly but it was worth it! The controls are really user friendly, especially the HUD showing the distance to the fireflies which can be relied on on top of the sounds. The grappling and the RMB zoom both felt smooth and enjoyable to use. I thought it would have been nice if the puzzle designs were more difficult. I saw hints of new puzzle mechanics being introduced (e.g. grapple to a cube to get the next firefly that can't be reached otherwise) but it didn't become developed very far. But it's lovely!
The pixelling on the UI elements and the palette selection is so delicious. I really appreciated the UX, especially being able to click windows to move them to the front and being able to scroll using mouse wheel. I think the difficulty could be increased: I didn't face any serious penalties for neglecting payroll, employees seemed to almost always succeed on missions, and clicker clicks were free and powerful so I didn't see the benefit of buying autoclicks or powerups. The UI design is nice enough that I want something like that for actual productivity apps.
Fire gameplay and hilarious writing. "Father, come in! Come in! Come in, Father!" had me cracking up as I blasted heretics into little mince pies -15HP at a time. But the RMB charge attack didn't seem to work for me, it just does the same shotgun attack. Also crosshairs would have been great since it was hard to see where I'm aiming. The pacing was fast and exciting and the shift-to-run QOL feature was nice to have. I think enemies should have less health (might be better if they were one-shot) so that it's quicker to get through the game once you get good, instead of having to linger to take them down before progressing. That would really amp up the run and gun adrenalin rush.
Oh nice, I figured it out: hold RMB lets you charge for a focused shot (I thought it was supposed to be attack with the thing you're holding in your left hand), and being closer to enemies lets you do more damage. Very fun gunplay on this.
2026-04-23 18_03_30-Marsacre.png
This game is the exact opposite of the one we made, but it was also my favourite. Shout out to the artists and the musician, the rat (?) on the radio literally spoke to me.
I love ants!! The art is cute and the ants feel good to move around. Hotkeys for the ants and pheromones to make it easier to draw the trails would be even better. I wish I could see why the ants are starving like a supply requirement, I kept making more worker ants to grab food but I guess they just ended up eating even more of the reserves. Really appreciated the detailed game description on the page as well.
I was delighted by the execution of the idea and it clicked instantly. The gamefeel of flying a bumblebee around was spot on, and the buzzing sounds had me cracking up. The flowers also look gorgeous against the open skies in the field. Very comfy, and I appreciated the clarity of the HUD info about how many bees were active and gathering. I'm a solid B+ Bee, apparently!
Also just a heads up that the Itch link doesn't work.
Crisp and crunchy art and a solid sense of lore. Gameplay feels super clean and varied with difficulty scaling across levels. Audio work is spot on, and it's just a well written game both in terms of dialogue and the game itself. All the little details in each of these elements like lighting, animations, the parallax, the atmos/sfx, all make it feel so polished. Oh my god, it even has a trailer...
@tolviere I agree with you, personally. I simply stop playing a game if I feel that it's poorly designed and thus not respecting my time (e.g. adding punishment to failure by resetting the whole game without saves, for example).
But @orangeoceans had a particular vision regarding sparse player amenities which she felt was integral to the game. While I disagree with this part (we are both very opinionated designers; there were heated arguments over this issue behind the scenes) I think the game couldn't have materialised in the specific way it has without it. I also have to admit it actually worked better than I initially expected, based on the responses here. So I'm both tantalised and delighted by the outcome here (typical of jams), which I'm excited to find has also been the gameplay experience with a lot of the players.
Thank you, everyone, for playing, and giving so much valuable feedback!
Really pretty lighting and evocative atmosphere. The assets and textures fit nicely and moving around feels challenging but fun, though getting to the top of the lighthouse was finnicky. I couldn't for the life of me figure out how how to save the ships and was sort of blindly moving the light around doing my best (random guesses). I felt like a siren leading them to their doom, especially when I fell off the tower and couldn't get back up there in time and had to watch all the ships crash into the same spot. The mechanic of having to find fuel by destroying the ships feels a bit unsettling when you're also trying to save the ships. From the warmth of the scene and the music I gathered it's meant to be cosy, but the writing and the fuel harvesting mechanic felt like it's meant to be dark. That was actually an intriguing combo that made me think I might be in purgatory. With more polish I think it would be a really fun world to inhabit for longer.
I was a bit stressed about having to rely on less visual data for the gameplay but it was surprisingly fun and well balanced. The Portal homage was cute and funny, I especially liked the subtle details in the writing and things like the voice recording speeding up if you finish the game before the robot stops talking. There was a major bug I encountered where if you jump onto the hydraulic press it will transport you to the top of the level at which point all you can do is walk until you fall off the map.