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September-XYZX

Games

YearLDThemeGameDivisionRankOvFuInThHuMo
202354Limited SpaceThe Crater Village Gamejam3893.753.774.003.452.943.81

Performance over time

overall score (left axis) percentile (right axis)

Scatterplots

Fun vs Overall

Innovation vs Overall

Theme vs Overall

Humor vs Overall

Mood vs Overall

Comments by September-XYZX

LD54 — Limited Space

Just another random TD by LeReveur 2023-10-03T05:51:36Z

Not a bad tower defense game at all, and thinking about space actually does make it more tactically-interesting than the average game of the genre.

The one huge balancing issue is that the big purple enemies are either excessively tanky or just outright unkillable. Even with the full focus of 6 $1000 towers, I never saw a single one die. Because they're so slow, and your towers seem to always focus on the biggest enemy, this allows for every other enemy to go by, and the game becomes unwinnable by wave 7.

Riveting by N4tticus 2023-10-02T06:27:39Z

Gives me flashbacks to webgames from the early 2010s, in a good way.

One tiny piece of feedback is that you should probably have a labeled delete button, because I kept clicking the X in the corner of the menu thinking it would just close the menu window.

Colorspace by Znurre 2023-10-02T06:17:42Z

Very fun puzzle game, and very smoothly constructed. I only have two real issues which are fairly minor:

It would be nice if the scroll selection looped, so you could keep scrolling in the same direction and cycle through repeatedly.

The learning curve was a bit steep. It felt like I wasn't even out of the tutorial before the puzzles got very tricky. For a future release, it would be nice to be able to select from more puzzles, so you can get more gradual practice.

Game Where You Kick Enemies Off A Platform by hopem 2023-10-02T17:02:28Z

Not the most innovative arcade-style game, but the kind of floaty physics actually give it an interesting new feel, which fits the premise pretty well. The graphics are cute, but there was an issue with stray pixels appearing near sprites, which kept bugging me. My biggest issue with the gameplay was that the hitbox on the fireballs was weird, so sometimes you could avoid being fully knocked offscreen, but sometimes you end up stuck to them.

the mouse who could pick stuff up by rosalievile 2023-10-03T02:36:04Z

The visuals of this are very cute, and just walking around and picking stuff up is surprisingly fun. The world, as sparse as it is, feels very cohesive, and the only visual improvement I could suggest at this stage would be some simple tiling grass texture, just so it's easier to tell how you're moving when you're away from landmarks.

I did notice a few minor issues. None of them were gamebreaking, but they might be good to catch now if you're going to develop this later:

Pressing 'i' seems to make the inventory invisible, but not actually disabled, so clicking above the player character still lets you pick up items even when the inventory isn't showing.

When you click an item to lift it, you can only put it in your inventory. Dropping it puts it back at its original position. However, after removing an item from your inventory, you can place it anywhere on the screen.

Fit the Hole by yikescloud 2023-10-03T18:24:19Z

Actually pretty fun, but I'm still not 100% sure how to play. I know the goal, but I don't know how the points work (why they seemed to sometimes reset to zero at random), or what the bp are supposed to be, even after going through a dozen or so "levels". I'd still enjoy playing it more if you maybe added a couple more objects to it. (I think the fish was the most fun one)

UNLimited Space by Guardaro 2023-10-02T17:22:07Z

To second what Taeghen said about enemies, I feel like it could make this more interesting if the speed limit signs did something, rather than just being boxes to check. Maybe they could slow you down in proximity, or give you a speed boost when you destroy them, or some other way it could influence the "race" time?

Hexed by Tesseract 2023-10-02T06:08:29Z

This was pretty fun. The visibility of it is pretty good and the controls are surprisingly easy to get used to, which were my first two concerns after stopping. The game has a very classic feel, but it works better as a computer game than any theoretical physical version would work. The connection to the theme is very obvious.

My biggest issue with it is just that I couldn't figure out what "premove" meant, and I could never get backspace or esc to do anything. Honestly, this wouldn't have been an issue if it didn't say that on there, since it doesn't seem to be an essential function, but it did bug me a little.

Cabbage World by nikor 2023-10-02T16:43:37Z

This was surprisingly fun to play, even without any clear goal in mind. However, the space did not seem to be very limited. aside from the theme for the contest, I feel like having some boundaries (maybe looping) would make it more interesting to summon new guys. As it was, I usually just wandered in a different direction and never saw them again.

Free The Slime! by Christian Zommerfelds 2023-10-02T16:58:09Z

This is a fairly fresh take on a very classic genre of puzzle. I thought at first that the specific way to fuse the slime would be annoying, but I got used to it in the first few puzzles, and it quickly became intuitive.

The only part of this I would definitely change would be the mechanics of the introductory text, which I rewatched like five times while trying to skip it, because pressing enter just brings you back to the menu without unlocking the first level.

Postcards by oter 2023-10-02T18:00:23Z

This was very sweet, and I actually went back to replay a second time, which I rarely do for Twine games. The use of the theme was very clever, and made me think a lot more about it than a lot of the more literal games.

My one disappointment was that the part about Venice was so much shorter than the other areas. I would have liked to see that expanded a bit, but it does fit the rest of it in a strange way.

Limited Battlefield by GreenwoodDrive 2023-10-03T05:53:35Z

I'm afraid your itch.io page is currently not working.

Fantasy Haven by Arti Dev 2023-10-05T04:59:22Z

Pretty fun, and well-designed. I can see how someone could improve their score over a few games. Maybe this was just on my end, though, but the clicking and dragging was a little jittery, and it often took a few tries to get a character from one spot to another.

Caveat Exemplum Optimus by Jason Shapiro 2023-10-02T18:29:09Z

The depiction of the narrator and the father is very good, but the caricatures in the board room honestly came off as a little mean-spirited in some cases. Not that I think any of those people need defending, but the stuff being exaggerated just felt kind of shallow and superficial.

The stuff with the heart was good, both thematically and mechanically, but the length of the staircase made the margin of error a bit too small. Not that there's much punishment for dying anyway, of course. I also thought maybe there'd be some alternative way to feed outside (some kind of labour exploitation allegory?) or at home, but I couldn't find anything to do at those spaces.

tailandtrails by hdshds 2023-10-05T04:37:55Z

There are like a dozen games in this jam submitted by keysmash accounts which are obviously just someone else's game from months or years ago. I think the people running this need to prune a lot of these.

wordward-draw by fasgfsa 2023-10-05T04:30:13Z

I find it extremely hard to believe this is the user's game to begin with.

rhythm-hell by gsgsdgda 2023-10-05T04:38:23Z

There are like a dozen games in this jam submitted by keysmash accounts which are obviously just someone else's game from months or years ago. I think the people running this need to prune a lot of these.

underlevel by jfdgjfgdj 2023-10-03T06:03:13Z

This game was uploaded on itch months ago, and was clearly made for a different game jam. I seriously doubt that you're this game's creator, but if you are, this game was not made at all in the 48-hour period, and should be disqualified.

asgards-fall by gdsgds 2023-10-05T04:37:30Z

There are like a dozen games in this jam submitted by keysmash accounts which are obviously just someone else's game from months or years ago. I think the people running this need to prune a lot of these.

The Crater Village Game by September-XYZX 2023-10-02T18:30:59Z

@xbolinger3 Thanks for taking a look! This was inspired by other games I've played before, including The Quiet Year and some currently unpublished games a friend of mine created, so you're right to see some resemblance.

The Crater Village Game by September-XYZX 2023-10-03T02:03:33Z

@oter, thank you very much for playing!

I had a feeling the games would stretch pretty long, especially by the standard of a game jam game. The fact that it was half done in about one session is actually reassuring, because I was afraid it would go even longer.

I thought a lot about how to incorporate the End card to balance it out. Having it just drawn once would be a lot more likely to make a game way too short, but I felt like making the ending the player's decision by default would put sort of an unfun choice on them.

The idea of the Major Event Cards is pretty good. Once I do the math on the average number of turns to get to each ace, players could use that to decide ahead of time how long of a game to play. I'd have to think about what events to put on those cards so that it's not really an issue that players are more or less likely (depending on the chosen game length) to get those cards, so maybe they'd be some bonus topic, like aspects of a creation myth or something. Would you mind if I included a version of this idea in the next version of the game, and if so, would you want to be credited in some way?

E: Approximately, for whatever ace you end at, you'll have 10x that many turns. So, if you decide to end on the second ace you draw, you'll have an average of 20 turns.

The Crater Village Game by September-XYZX 2023-10-06T01:49:51Z

@keichits I actually haven't. It wasn't really ready to play until only a few hours before the deadline, and I haven't had a chance to play it with anyone since then. I'd like to, of course.

The Crater Village Game by September-XYZX 2023-10-09T01:33:04Z

Thank you very much to everyone who played! If you had any memorable stories of your playthroughs, I'd love to hear about them

@dining-philosopher I think that idea for drawing two cards could be pretty interesting, and it would also make the timing of each session a lot more flexible. If you don't mind me adding it in the next version, is there any way you'd like to be credited?

The Crater Village Game by September-XYZX 2023-10-12T18:17:58Z

@rongon Wow, it's really impressive to see how cohesive of a story you formed from those prompts. Were those cards drawn in that order, or did you add events non-chronologically?

The Crater Village Game by September-XYZX 2023-10-13T18:38:18Z

@james-laird What you said about wrestling with getting the events to fit is a good point. Obviously, there's a lot of possible events with pretty varying topics, so if you're playing alone there may be ones you just want to skip, but it's hard to draw the line there. Having more than one story develop in parallel, maybe at separate points in time, can also help with that, but that's trickier for solo players. A compromise may be to put cards aside if you can't figure out where it fits, and add it later when it can be combined with another card?

Balancing out the game so that it can be focused, but is still open ended (and also has enough different cards) is tough, but if you have any suggestions, I would be interested.