Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → Shanzhai
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | 55 | Summoning | 👥 | Mable’s Realm | jam | 183 | 3.97 | 3.96 | 3.87 | 4.07 | 4.34 | 4.00 | 3.77 | 4.05 |
| 2021 | 48 | Deeper and deeper | Dante's Deferno | unfinished | ||||||||||
| 2020 | 47 | Stuck in a loop | The Magic Hat | jam | 222 | 3.96 | 3.96 | 3.80 | 4.03 | 3.88 | 2.95 | 3.62 | ||
| 2020 | 46 | Keep it alive | Lonely Year | jam | 2180 | 3.00 | 2.56 | 2.76 | 3.05 | 3.58 | 3.37 | 2.04 | 3.05 |
I like the concept, especially with the leaderboards. But there seems to be a bug somewhere: I played the tutorial, went back to the main menu afterwards and restarted the level, I was unable to place any fans. It works fine for the rest of the stages, but the tutorial just wont let you place anything.
Interesting concept, really good idea of approaching the theme. Things I noticed: -When I first started it I was unable to move and had to reload. -The fonts when hovering over animals/costumers are very anti-alias-y while the fonts in the shop are super-crisp and kinda break with the general art style of the game. -The background of the animal shop for me only covers the upper half of what i think was the intended area, so the lower buttons just float over the scene while the upper ones are in front of a background.
I really liked this game. Its cute, the music is nice and teaching the player the general concepts through introductionary levels is really nice, especially given the short time you had to put the whole thing together. I have only two things that bothered my, one less significant, the other a little more annoying: The jumpspeed, especially on springs, seems a little too fast in my opinion, but thats alright. The more annoying thing is that the flame went out the exact millisecond the fan turned on, not giving the player a short moment to take a step back or really realize what just happened. It also feels weird because you have the cute little wind-animation which I'd have used to check whether the flame was touched, like: it actually needs to hit the player to kill the flame which would feel way more natural, especially since you can just walk right through them as soon as the fans are shut off (but the wind-animation is still playing). Those minor things aside: A great game, you should be proud of yourself! :)
So sweet it gave me diabetes. Loved every second of it!
Spent quite a while playing this one (and way more than a few five minutes on the default map :D), it's nicely addicting. Good job! However, I'd suggest to use the default map for a short intruduction on the rules and add maybe a title screen or something since it makes the whole thing look more polished than starting in medias res.
I liked the general style, reminded me of a game I played sometime in the early 00s. However, some kind of indication telling you what will happen if space is pressed. I put down the bucket several times when I wanted to milk a cow. Also, the bucked weirdly floats if the players position is right. Same for the edge of the barn - when standing in the right spot it'll look like the character is floating in front of it. Still a nice prototype though, really enjoyed it :)
This is BY FAR the best game I've seen this jam. I'd honestly pay for this if this was a bigger game. Everything comes together great and I just LOVE the topic, so it really sucked me in. So good <3
Really charming idea, cute music and minimalistic style. I liked the difficulty curve, at first i was like "oh, thats... easy" but when it came to around 120 packets it got so intense a was staring at the screen and pusing buttons like a madman. Sadly, i actually have no idea how to make this better aside from adding way bigger things or putting this into a wario ware-like collection of games.
Thanks for the feedback everyone, I just looked into the code and realized I forgot to uncomment the health- and thirst-decreasing routine after my final test run, so... yeah, it's probably a little harder now and you'll finally be able to die because of hunger, thirst and Montezuma's revenge. Again: Thanks!
@ethan-losten @joe-bustamante
This might be good to know for you guys as well: A Mac-using friend just told me the game fails to load on Safari with a “call_indirect to a null table entry […]”-error. The Problem seems to be on itch.ios side, since the exact same files run on github pages without any problems.
@walkalope yeah i just watched it and was amazed by how long you actually kept playing given the repetiveness of the task. watching you playing actually helped me a lot, since it gave me quite some ideas on how to make this better and more comprehensible aside from the often noted control-thingy. when i made it i just felt it fits the theme of not knowing what to do and the controls (left, right, space) would be easy enough to figure out. to un-boring the whole thing, i guess skipping the intro after the first death or even starting from the beginning of the season the player died in would've been a great way to get the player to a/the good end faster and then just let them explore all the ways to fail if they so wish.
all in all theres i think 8 ways to die: all diffenrent combinations of being sick/hungry/thirsty plus getting lost or jumping off the cliff. the last ones were intended to early on hint the player what the game is about which... yeah, kinda worked, it seems. some other things however didnt work: the water actually isnt poisonous in sommer which the palette change was intended to hint to - but seeing how you thought it was just a palette change because everything looked way brighter in summer, that didnt really work out after all. also i didn't notice the music is too quiet, just matched the volume to that of the speaking-sfx and didn't check how loud everything is in comparison to lets say a song or something. i'll remember to do this next time.
so all in all it was a great watch, i learned a lot for the next game, so: thank you very much for playing it and providing more feedback than i could ever have imagined. next time i definitely will sit down next to my test player(s) and watch them play instead of just letting them play by themself and provide feedback, theres so much to learn by just watching.
a final note on the endings: aside from the 8 bad endings, there are 1,5 good ones: on the first day of spring your uncle (i intended to work a zelda:alttp-joke in but didnt end up having the time left, so it just ended up being an obscure reference) will come back and say a few things on how everything is fine again and he is happy to see you well. fadeout, final scores. however, if the player manages to nail everything perfectly (healthy, no thirst, no hunger, tree level max) he'll also say how he is proud of you. a minor detail that doesn't even get it's own named ending, both are just "the end". theres a few more minor things going on there, but those are the major mechanics.
again: really happy to have been able to see you play the game, thanks a bunch!
Super fast-paced, loved every second of it. the meter-mechanic really pushed me, usually a very safe player, to really go for risky strats. I noticed two things: 1) In the menu, the tips should either be their own screen, vanish after a while or when something else is klicked. Because when you open them and then open up the hints, they are still there and its a chaotic mess. :D 2) The arcade-y sound effect when the player dies is really quiet, i only noticed it when i died for the like fourth or fifth time.
Loved it. The only improvement i could think of are better transitions between the games, it just hardcuts off which feels very harsh in relation to the otherwise very chill feel of this game.
This is the most wtf I've gone in a while. Have a dollar to keep it up and running a little longer.
I'd love to see a post mortem for this one if you have the time, especially to understand how this works altogether, if many people can play it at the same time, how this is set up... so many unanswered questions. :D
There _is_ a Korok somewhere in this, isn't it? =.=
Jokes aside: lovely little game. Gotta look into pico-8 at some point, so far every game ive played made for/in it was ridiculously cute. This one especially really got immersive with the sounds of waves and soft text/typing-effect. A really cozy experience which makes me crave for more. I'll check your other games in a second, hopefully there will be something similar, otherwise i'll just play through "a short hike" again, which to me has a quite similar mood. Love it. Definitely keep going!
I was looking forward to playing the game you guys did this time, buuuuuut after a few minutes I passed this one. I am way too easily spooked and it totally reminded me of a lot of those old jumpscare-flash games that were popular when newgrounds was still a thing. And looking at Erkbergs review, it was probably the right choice. :D However: Audio is great as usual with mood/immersion to match, i love the graphics and i actually cant remember ever playing hide and seek as a video game with those mechanics, so thumbs up for innovation as well. However, since I didn't complete it, i didn't rate overall, fun and theme. Maybe ill find someone who will play it with (or rather: for) me - then ill return to give you the perfect score it probably deserves ;)
Music, art and commentary earn you a solid 5/7 in my book. However, a little more indication of what exactly is what yould be nice. I've never worked at a coffee shop (even rarely visited any... I like tea. ^^") and had a few problems finding out where/how to steam milk. Same with those four colored bottles - no idea whats in there, it was just trial and error all the time. And the little black bags (?) of whatever to the left. If confusion is intended to be part of the experience, I'd suggest to drop a little exposition before the game starts, telling you that it's your first day, you ain't got no clue and the guy who was supposed to help you didn't come in today - with that premise, confusion would be less.... confusing. :D That aside, it was fun. Good job! :)
27.813 is my best time so far. really love the idea and execution of it, not just putting you there, but telling a charming little story first which perfectly fits the tone the music sets. really liked it, now i kinda wished i had done this in 2d :D took me a few seconds to realize one doesnt accelerate/brake by holding the button but by repeatedly pressing it. calling it "switch gears" instead of accelerate/breke can probably avoid a little confusion there :)
@tad nope, i had to repeatedly press it with every button press accelerating a noticeable step - to change speed from the initial regular lane to the red one takes two presses for me. keeping the button pressed just changed speed by one step and stayed that way. (played the html5-version on chrome, using wasd controls)
great idea and execution, making the level loop is... well, now that ive seen it it seems like an obvious thing to do when thinking of this jams theme, yet id have never thought of it myself. genius. that aside, i _love_ music, sounds and art style. actually, this might be the best game ive played so far this jam (the now second best one was also made in gms... maybe i should look into that thing). ill definitely try out your other games and keep an eye out for you at ld48. keep it coming, guys!
I really like the general idea - so much that I'll look up Blek right after I wrote this. I didn't vote for graphics since (if I understood correctly) you didn't create them yourself? That aside it's a good game. The lack of sound actually didn't hurt, the old-school graphics gave it a "my machine has no sound card"-type of feel which I personally enjoyed. A little more explanation would've been nice though, I played through it and am still not sure why sometimes I can destroy an enemy while at other times it just destroys me. Probably has to do with the side I attacked from? Or is it depending on whether or not I have collected the loot before?
Thanks for playing everyone!
@roberto-nascimento-almada @lees-pac @chaoseiro People told me that that quite a few times by now - in my head I expected it to be a surprising little thing for the final stage being a vertical scroller and while throwing it together near the end of the jam it totally made sense to make it "a little" more hard. For me it was "yeah a three-level-ghost should do the trick that's AWESOME"... but it turned out to be kinda stupid, especially with the player not being able to see the whole stage and therefore not being able to plan his or her movement. I'll definitely add checkpoints to the post-jam-version and maybe even shorten the stage a little (and/or introduce a few stages that are half as long before that one in order to introduce the player to the idea). Thanks for playing and especially thanks for leaving quality feedback, much appreciated!
@funemaker Yeah, sound was (literally) a last minute addition and I'm unsatisfied with it myself - I spent too much time drawing and fixing bugs I somehow managed to put in like an hour before the deadline and... I don't know, it just felt wrong to ship a silent game, so I fired up bfxr and added the first halfway passable sound effects it generated without much mixing or anything. I'll fix that in the post-jam-versions. Thanks for thr feedback, mate! :)
Art so cute it'll melt your teeth - really loved it. However, I feel like the dialogue doesn't matter at all, I started the game over a few times and the dialogue trees didn't change at all regardless of what option i chose. Maybe it's intended (stuck in a loop and such), but it gave me the impression of shallowness which is a shame because the game just looks so incredibly polished. That aside (and seeing you also use Godot *brofist*) you should consider exporting to html5 - it's a giveaway using godot and more people will end up playing your game :)
Looking at your known bugs, i have nothing more to add - ive encountered a few of them ^^" Also i was kinda weirded out by the credits suddenly pulling up when i was checking what things can be interacted with. That aside, i personally would have preferred the art to be either all-comic or all-animated, the mix of both styles feels kinda weird to me. Keeping it to one style probably would've prevented the protagonist becoming one with the pantry - luckily, i found a permanent solution to that problem at some point.
Altogether i like the game, especially for the humor and music (really great job on that one! :)). All thats left to say is:
[Unbenannt.png](///raw/3d6/c2/z/39507.png)
I hands down have no idea how to make this any better. A bloody brilliant game.
Played it, had a great time, for the first time ever got a little motion sick. Then i restarted the game because i read extreme camera mode in the menu and was like "if that was normal camera mode, what will extreme be like?" Then i realized it's activated by default and almost felt a little let down.
Which brings me to my only suggestion for an otherwise awesome game. I wouldn't turn extreme camera off by default because it makes the game way less fun, instead i'd propose keeping extreme camera mode default, kicking the option off the menu and instead putting in a "normal/steady/boring camera mode" thats deactivated by default. Personally, i'd always try to go for opt-in when designing options - it gives the player the feeling of power to go _even further beyond_ or be like "pff, i don't need this!", while opt-out is usually some kind of downer like "me/my computer cant take it, so if have to turn it off :(". So yeah... that's my two cents. That aside, you did a great job!
Experiencing quite a bit of audio delay on firefox. Since i had the same problem with godot's web export last jam, i can recommend looking into this and trying what is mentioned in the latest reply - worked for me: https://github.com/godotengine/godot/issues/16259
That aside: Great game, enjoyed it a lot. :)
Nice entry, congratulations! If you want feedback, here's what I'd change:
- The font (especially with the antialiasing) doesn't really fit the aesthetic of the game art I'd say. I would suggest going full pixelart here (using https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Press+Start+2P, for example). - This also extends to the other UI elements like the timer-container: I think sharp edges and no antialias would really complement the main games art here. - Using Godot as well, I'd use an audiostreamplayer2d for the police sound: When the police is on screen just have the sound play dead center (maybe even a little right when in front but that might actually be a little much - worth a try though), while panning it _slightly_ left when they are offscreen. If you want to go really crazy you could also check the distance of the closest police car and tween the volume accordingly to give the player auditive feedback on how much they are closing in which would be pretty cool. - I'd just go with full seconds in game, maybe opting for showing a more precise time when a job is finished. It being a fast game where you deliver things I thought I was looking at the distance to the location, only realizing its the remaining time after a crashed into something and realizing it was still counting down. I think going for full seconds would mitigate this since in a fast game you probably wont mistake a relatively slow countdown for anything else but time.
But that are just my two cents on how I personally would try to polish the experience a little more. It was still a fun little experience, thanks for providing it! :)
Nice contribution. It's pretty well rounded, so instead of trying to come up with something I'd change about it, I'll just say that I really liked the giant guy. Also, the whole thing weirdly reminds me of a movie about a room and buttons: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIVpAQa2lu4
One hell of a beautiful game, love the looks and the setting, very unique. Since it's Unity, you should definitely do a web export and put it here or on itch.io, way more people will play and rate that way.
A few minor criticisms: It took me a few tries to figure out what to do and without reading this page it would've taken even longer. Some kind of tutorial or a few words from a superior or something would greatly help understanding what to do. Or maybe highlight the buttons in the beginning so the player knows he/she first has to choose how to travel before choosing a path. Or make it so you can also first choose a path and then the ways of travel. The feedback provided by the buttons was not enough to make me realize there a new arrow for path-choosing appeared.
Also, I'd look over the placement of that place since it can block the UI:
Unbenannt.png
Those minor criticisms aside, I really dig it, especially the design and sound of it. Again: Consider exporting for web so more people will play it :)
Wasn't able to finish, but found a reproducible bug: 1. Give the nut to the squirrel, pick up ID 2. Exit screen to the right, then go back 3. The squirrel will have the ID card again and you can take multiple copies, taking up all inventory space
Gameplay-wise, I think it would've been nice to doubleclick to instantly switch between screens, the characters are a little slow. Great art though!
bonewizard.jpg
Just finished this game, 5/5 all around, this is absolutely perfect in every way. Great art and music; fun, stacking mechanics; just the right amount of difficulty ramp and length. The best game I've played so far. I usually try to give some constructive criticisms but I'm at a loss of words here, the only slight annoyance was a room you enter from below shortly after you get the wind wizard that was one of the finnickier ones. Falling down could basically reset you to the room before while dying respawned you in a way that instantly made you fall back to the previous screen where you have to windwizard your way up again. The room looked a little like this iirc:
Unbenannt.png (sorry, didnt take a screenshot)
But that is literally the only very, very minor thing I can point out. Most stunning game of the jam so far, will definitely have a look at the code if you make it available. Also: How do you even work on a pico-8-game as a team? I'd be highly interested in your workflow here...
Thanks for the contribution and godspeed to you!
Great, I wanted to spend the day looking at and rating games, but after playing this, I have to find myself a copy of a game I played back ages ago (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZanZarah:_The_Hidden_Portal) and completely forgot about until I played ~~New Unity Project (3)~~ Spirit Stones's Summon. :D
I'm actually lacking criticism here; balancing has already been named (but in 3 days and by only two people... nah, it's fine the way it is) and the only other thing I'd change to make it stick out more is to make the UI a little less generic by using some art or a font/color that is less intrusive. Also, I'd put the casting costs below the pictures of summons so that all text elements are close to the edges of the screen while everything non-text is concentrated in the middle of the screen. And I'd scale down the Level-Up-UI just enough so that it doesn't interfere with the other UI elements - it'll make it look more like a coherent instead of two different things. It currently reminds me a little of old-school CRPG- or MMORPG-UI where you could just absolutely clutter your screen with windows though, which is a little blast from the past as well. :)
That being said: Very nice entry. Games that makes me want to play more of it (or similar things) are always winners in my book.
Pretty good game, loved the idea and the soundtrack; however, it is a little buggy - trying to restart a level crashed my browser. Since I wanted to see what else you guys came up with I downloaded the windows executable just to find out that it seems to be a general problem since it crashed there as well. Also, I got stuck in a bush once which... fits the theme, I guess. :D
However, those are but minor complains, the idea itself, the artwork and sound design are rock solid. I wish I had a friend around to try the two-player-mode since I really dig the game loop. Great job!
Okay, this is very nice. I love the attention to detail; actually had to giggle when i saw the leaning in-illustration and giigle a little more when i lost my first round and rage ensued. As people before me already pointed out the style is amazing and I'd love to see more of it. That said, I have some (very) minor notes:
- Getting handed a drink and a meal feels like you can use both. Maybe keep the drink on the table from the start and only slide in the meal to not have the drink look like something you can interact with while still keeping the style of the scene. Or (thats probably what you had in mind in the first place) let the player do something with the drink, even if its just a minor thing like tipping it over or something. - The audio loop needs to be longer or maybe have the speakers have a little button and red light on them to turn it off, it gets slightly distracting after a very short time - I'd make the (invisible) borders of the text boxes slightly smaller; text leaves the (visible) text box a little before breaking to a new line - Restarting is kinda weird: You have the big arrow, but the sound indicates theres still text being printed in the background. You cant interact with anything and it really takes a little too long to get control back. I actually thought I had to restart the whole thing before it went back to the game. So I'd either make this skippable somehow or maybe use a loading bar instead: The icon feels very "you can do something here"-ish since its usually used on buttons.
But those little things aside: very, _very_ nice game. Looking forward to your next entry! :)
Great idea and incredible cute artwork (that climbing animation <3). If you look for some constructive criticism:
- I got stuck in the second room because I made a dual-right-dual-jump-grab-summon, picked the summoner up and accidentially moved him into the wall with no way of picking him up and moving him back again. You should always check for "legal placement" of the summoner - The picking up-part was slightly confusing at first because while it makes perfect sense picking something up thats to your right side (thereby understanding you suck them up), the summons are lacking a mouth to the left, which hat me try to pick something up using the leg at first and wondering why i cant pick stuff up. I'd either fix this by adding a second sucker or letting the monster be able to pick something up from the sucker-side (and flipping the sprite when moving left, for example). Also, I'd add some visual or auditive feedback to picking something up, that'd instantly make the game feel way more controllable - Also second room: you have a lot of free space to the left; I'd put the text there instead of its current placement where it blocks the summoning ring-menu (also id put the text on a lower layer than the menu to make it feel like it belongs to the world a little more, having it be on top of the menu is slightly jarring - This might just be me, but I'd absolutely switch what S and spacebar do. Space is usually your action button and having it swich characters felt super-wrong to me personally, especially since S is such an unusual action button. Id rather have (S)witch character - especially since the summoner cant jump, so you wouldnt think of it as crouch or something anyways and spacebar to interact with stuff. - It needs a reset-button in case you get stuck in a wall. :D
Those minor things aside, I think its a great concept which altogether feels very polished, really loved it. Will keep an eye on it in case you guys decide to extend on it. :)
@colourarc Thanks for the feedback! Just between you and me: There is actually a _horrible_ lot of bugs and hacky things going on under the hood just so we'd end up with something presentable in time (the code has an actual #DONT TRY THIS AT HOME comment in it ^^"), so sadly I have to say: I know, but we had to ship anyways...
That said, we've already decided to give the game another free weekend or two for post-jam-polish. I plan to completely rewrite the puyo-puyo-code which currently is a total mess and to finish the whole autobattle-thing (which was literally thrown together in like six hours and is mostly smoke and mirrors.. <<), adding the missing characters shown in the picture on top of this page, adding animations and most importantly the ability to detect and prioritize enemys attacking the base.
That said, I hope we were able to at least give an idea of where we wanted to go here, regardless of bugs. If you do have the spare time, I'd greatly appreciate you checking out the post-jam version once it's done and released. :)
Thanks again for the feedback and good night (or day - whatevers currently appropriate for your region)
@aune Thats a great idea! We're going to do a post-jam-version for more polish anyways, we'll see if we can come up with something :) Thanks for the feedback!
@andriybyelikov Absolutely agree, noted for post-jam-version. Thanks for the feedback!
For a first entry this one is pretty solid. My first godot project was also on here, also on my own and also pretty simple, yet stressful to make; I think we might've had the same experience. :D However, as stated, it's a solid and very cutesy entry that shows a lot of cohesion in its artwork which I really like. I found a minor oversight though: You forgot to lock down the size of the item-nodes in the shop so with the right mouse placement, you can do some shenanigans:
Unbenannt.png
Also, if i were you, i'd make the Moon clickable. Not as a resource to pick up or something, just have it wobble a little like the zombies and skeletons you pick up. The moon is very prominent in most screens and especially in the graveyard and woods its the only non-interactable object so I assume most players _will_ try to click on it at some point - you might as well reward them for trying ;)
That was great. Like, really amazing. And by far the coolest intro I've seen in any jam. One minor thing though:
Picking up the first Sphere for the first time had me restart the game. Why, you ask? Let me tell you my tale:
I thought RB and LB refer to the mouse buttons which wouldve been great with wasd-controls, so I chose to try them. Didnt work. Then it came to me that it probably refers to controller buttons - fair enough, i thought, theres still E and CTRL left. E however is really awkward to press when you have to use wasd to move.
So I held down control and picked the thing up. The moment I wanted to move, the tab closed.
Because CTRL + W closes Windows/Tabs. So yeah, the web build is currently kinda prone to having the player murder it by accident if run in a Windows-environment. :D
Very nice entry. If you're looking for constructive criticism, here's my two cents:
- Give the mouse cursor a nonstandard design to have people instantly know it's part of the game. I actually put it offscreen to not be bothered by it, thinking you forgot to take it away. When it came to summoning it took me like five minutes to realize my familiar spawned at the mousecursor position (offscreen). Alternatively, you could have it spawn at player position and then fly towards the cursor do tell the player this is what is going on here. - You have a nice pixelart aesthetic, but antialiased text; i'd suggest to go with crisp and pixelated instead, it'll make the game look way more coherent. - Highly subjective take: I personally wasn't too much of a fan of the soundtrack; it was cool when there were enemies on screen which is a nice touch, but usually you go for a song that works on its own and add to it in certain situations while to me it felt like you had a complete track and took away from it when there were no enemies. - The movement-audio felt a little off for the movement-speed as well imho. It's cool that its actually the speed of the feet moving, but tweaking both just a bit could make it feel nicer. That it keeps playing (and the feet moving) after not pressing the button anymore makes the whole controls feel a little floaty as well; stopping immediately would make it feel a lot more responsive.
Last but not least: It's Unity, you should provide a web build - way more people will play your game that way.
But all of those things aside, I really dig the concept. Very nice contribution to the jam, congrats!
I've payed for games that were less polished than this one - absolutely insane.
You guys did an amazing job here. Usually I try to give some productive feedback, but this is hands down the best Version of it I can imagine; smooth gameplay, no bugs (so far, still playing), great art and an amazing soundtrack. I actually dig the soundtrack so much I just followed your guy on bandcamp for future reference. Just so you can imagine how much I mean it: I had to _reset my password_ just so I can follow that account. Absolutely worth the time.
Whoa, that escalated quickly. Oo When it started I was_slightly suspicious of what I might get into, but one the world map pulled up... wow. I like the little flourishes of slight camera panning and zooming in on the world map and stuff. Battling is as smooth as it can be and everything looks, feels and sounds (!) great. Very polished. However, the web build stutters for me every now and then, so I didn't get to play very far yet. If you could provide a download so I can 100% this without any hookups that'd be very much appreciated :)
Regarding constructive feedback: I really enjoyed the music _a lot_ (kudos to your sound guy, very mega drive/genesis-groovy stuff; if you have a bandcamp, let me know!), so I actually just hung out on the world map until the song was finished. Which I actually didn't expect to happen. Did you forget to make it loop or is this intended behaviour?
Great sound design and music, even though the latter had a weird pause before every loop, but thats probably due to being a web build. Also I agree with the guy that said the difficulty should ramp a little earlier; if I wouldn't have read that comment, I would've stopped earlier thinking I've seen all of the game. Still a very worthy contribution though, congrats!
I didn't get to finish it (a room full of eye-monsters sealed the deal for me), but I liked it. Especially the beautifully mouthcrafted soundeffects of said eye-monsters. :D
Jokes aside: Solid entry. If you want some constructive criticism: - I'd give some visual feedback the moment the dash is recharged, like a little flash or something; it'll make the game feel way more controllable and responsive - When you switch rooms and are presented with your new cards, choosing one automatically casts the next card. A very minor thing, but fixable for a little more polish :)
Altogether I enjoyed it, good contribution! :)
Very, very solid entry, kudos!
I'll actually keep the tab open to come back to it later and finish it, it's a beautifully crafted game, I really like that you make sure people understand the mechanics. That said, there is one very minor criticism I have: Wizards can't shoot over chasms which (while I understand its important for the puzzle design, especially if you dont want to absolutely overpopulate the screen with walls or random obstacles) players will find out "the hard way" at the first real puzzle room.
It's no big thing and once I knew I instantly adjusted, but I'm the kind of guy who stares intensely at a puzzle and tries to solve it in his head before inevitably falling back to trial and error, so my false expectations lead me to believe this is going to be easy :D
Really nice experience, thanks!
First jam game I've seen to actually feature multiple languages, nice.
I really like the style, but had quite the trouble to actually fulfill the needs of people, since the tooltips (on my 1920x1080 notebook) ended up mostly off-screen, so it showed the name but not much else. I know Dreamspark exists, but that's pretty much it. Also I had to restart the game every time I lost since the Quit Game-Button does nothing for me. :c
I think this game would be greatly benefit from some more signposting. Maybe a glass in the middle of the table so players instinctively know where to put the drinks. Or a short tutorial where the manager or a single guest guides you through the first steps.
That said, I _really_ dig the soundtrack. Very smooth.
I'm not too great at strategy games, but was able to finish it anyways. I'd have played more if there were more levels; just as I got my head around it the game was already over :D
Constructive criticism: Honestly, i think the game is pretty solid. The art direction reminded me of how people in the late 80s / early 90s imagined the internet to be at one point which was really cool. When I saw the main menu i was slightly unsure about how i feel about the font and such since theres a lot of games that care little about the ui and i assumed this was going to be another game with a first-project-vibe, but getting into the game it absolutely came together and made sense. That said, I'd probably have the button-corners be only very slightly rounded since there are barely any round edges in game. Also, I'd suggest redisgning the three capture/spawn-points. The "this is where you can spawn"-point and the "this is what you have to capture"-points are very simple and similar-looking, while the one where you cant do the most important thing - spawning - is the by far most prominent and important-looking one. I'd add an equally big symbol to the spawning-points to have them at "equal weight" (like, looking at them and getting the feeling they are equally important). Also, I'd probably recolor the resources-counter, since white on bright green is very hard to read. I'd suggest going with green on black to lean a little more into the 80s-tech-vibe?
Altogether, I had a lot of fun playing it, looking at and listening to it; a great contribution to the jam! :)
I almost missed there was background music, a slider or something wouldve been great. Fun fact: I had the same "nah better not deafen the audience"-idea a few jams back and it turned out exactly the same way for me. :D Nowadays I just crank everything up - the player usually has multiple ways to lower the volume at his/her end but very little to boost it.
Aside from the audio, I really liked the art even though the main character felt slightly off somehow, but i cant quite put my finger on it. Maybe a little more perspective; then again, that wouldve required multiple sprites and that costs time, so I totally get why it looks the way it does. Gameplay-wise I like the idea and would definitely look into it if you expand on it.
And I like that the player keeps control after killing the boss - thanks to that choice, I was able to clear the room afterwards, even though those credits slightly got in the way. ;D
Jokes aside: Very polished entry, great work :)