Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → Spica
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | 56 | Tiny Creatures | 👥 | Billions must bite | jam | 243 | 3.86 | 3.57 | 3.50 | 4.18 | 4.57 | 3.68 | 3.95 | |
| 2024 | 55 | Summoning | 👥 | POLLY | jam | 515 | 3.62 | 3.24 | 3.84 | 3.16 | 4.74 | 2.50 | 4.09 | |
| 2023 | 54 | Limited Space | 👥 | Hanabatake | jam | 379 | 3.76 | 3.39 | 3.40 | 3.41 | 4.46 | 4.10 | 3.95 |
Darkness mechanic is really good, although I had hard time distinguishing one key from the other! Dodging minecarts was fun. Overall mood and theme is just right, but inventory system did feel a little bit frustrated (is it ok that I drop a key near another key and suddenly I only have 1 key left?)
Easily one of the smartest takes on the theme of the Jam! Gameplay wise I had a bit of trouble with all my cookies lying on the floor until I got used to the controls, then there were a few glitches with stomach level not displaying properly or vomiting animation not playing, or not being able to earn more than 10 score (am I doing something wrong?). The overall feeling is pleasant, as I did try to replay a few times in order to test out different game scenarios. Kudos for the humor aspect of the game :)
Nice compo entry! Here are my observations:
- good implementation of "limited space" theme - gorgeous penguins - cute sound effects
I notice in this work the same problem we've faced in our Jam entry and everyone was complaining about that. It's the "unfair random" issue. In your case, there are quite often cases when baby penguin will appear and no matter how good my reaction time is, some stray orca will already be on it's way to kill the poor baby and there is no counterplay to that! That made me really sad because I tried really hard to save everyone. On the other hand, you made the act of saving so engaging that feeling sad about a failure is the indicator that your idea is going in the right direction, all that it needs is some fair challenge.
Thank you!
I found it funny I could drive backwards just fine without any speed penalty :smile: Interesting and challenging concept (like really challenging, the car is too fast for this road). Good theme fit for the Jam
Really simple game with a cute character design (I mean it, while being minimalistic as hell it felt really cute and alive). Interesting take on the platformer genre by prohibiting jumping and giving wall hack instead. And the ending... that was unexpected and really pleasant! Short but powerful experience. Good entry (but please, add music next time!).
This is sooooooo addicting! Really nice entry! Wish you added a "pause" button though so I can take breaks sometimes :smile: (or did I not notice it?)
I think the strongest point in this game is that I could play it with my friends offline, which kinda made the whole experience more fun and interactive. We had no clue what was going on but did our best to roleplay and go DEEPER. Not sure if there is any timer on the "introduce the code" levels (maybe there is but we didn't notice somehow?), but in case there is no such thing maybe that would add to the tension. Feels a bit unfinished, but you've got the spirit!
First of all, I was really impressed I survived a bite of a shark! Even several bites! Next I tried to gather some wood and nothing happened. I was terrified by not knowing what to do next by only realizing there is one more in the south direction of the screen. Quite sad the game just ends there once you build the raft, but I think the game fits the theme
Wow! That was fun enough I got sucked in for a while! Really nice looking game with simple yet addictive gameplay. I would be honest I had no idea what those powerups at the end of each level meant (that's what I call them, but they usually just teleport me to another level), but I just went ahead trying stuff and managed to enjoy killing mobs.
If I were to critique one thing, that would probably be the enemy AI. Shooting guy seeing me through the walls and trying to shoot was acceptable, but a massive group of "creatures" (how do I call them?) sometimes were stockpiling behind a wall so that whenever I need to pass through they would just rush at me at once and kill instantly. Not sure if you didn't have time for this or what's the reason, but in case you're new to this and are looking to explore cool enemy AI that would fit your gameplay, I suggest looking up steering behavior guides! Just learned about them myself recently and was shocked how simple yet effective this thing is! (But I didn't get to implement it in my game haha).
Thank you for the nice game!
Wow, that's the second grandma game I'm playing on this Jam! I wish I could see the grandma sprite here! Anyways, the idea is really funny, but I think the game could benefit by fine-tuning the growing complexity. While I was just learning the controls, there were already billions of packages outside and they broke my house without even me participating! Those are some reckless delivery drivers!
And yeah, the bug when multiple boxes become one box when I try to pick them up is also reproducing for me (I see on the GIF it's supposed to blast them all at once once you click the throw button, perhaps I did something wrong, sorry).
Thank you!
Very well executed puzzle! Level 9 and 13 really made me think hard. The only small thing I didn't quite like is loud sfx compared to the bgm. Otherwise a really good game!
Thank you for reminding me of my childhood times! What a great puzzle! Struggled a little bit with the apartment layout, but I started getting better at the game after doing smol levels inside the main level. Chill game, just as advertised :)
Am I supposed to move at supersonic speed? In case that's not intended, you might've forgotten DeltaTime in your movement calculation script :smile:
@falestress @iron-head @viktorthegreat @jcmonkey thank you for your feedback guys! Sorry for being greedy on the tutorial, guess we really couldn't release our first game without an oopsie :D Hope you still liked the rest of the experience!
@festishin thank you for your feedback! Looking in retrospective, we've definitely made a big mistake by not spending enough time on shaping the gameplay loop idea right when the Jam started. We've got a bunch of feedback on what in particular felt underwhelming or frustrating, but if you could give a more detailed feedback on which aspect of the gameplay sucked for you, that would help us grow on our mistakes. Thank you!
@verttixpertti thank you for the feedback! Exactly after the Jam finished I stumbled upon a Switch "Suika Game" and there was a quite similar mechanic with "queue of items to put" and "map with interactions" and it was all visible on the screen the whole gameplay loop. medium-011f2a88ef860374c3d6c9a69b3e608a.jpg
That's when I realized we made a mistake :smile: We'll know better next time, thanks for playing!
@verttixpertti lol, weird coincidence indeed! My friend sent me the link to a VTuber's stream saying "limited space btw" and then it just clicked with me!
@verttixpertti thanks for sharing!
@helen sometimes you have to plan in advance where to plant what in order to not get stuck! Blue flowers don't like to stay near read ones, so you're in a dead end. To learn all the synergies, please click on the book in the left upper corner! Try clicking the "restart" button and beat your high score!
@jamesw We had hopes first pictogram in the book would explain rule 1, but yeah I completely agree with collective sentiments in regards to rules clarity. Thank you for writing all your reasoning down, seeing player's perspective is really refreshing, as it's very prone to disaster when you're tunnel visioning as a developer thinking your rules are clear (in reality they're only clear in your head). As for the music, I hope @einsof will take his time to tell you the details. Honestly, we were really hesitant on whether to opt-out the audio category, but since we did all the SFX and drafts for the BGM from scratch, we were encouraged to not opt-out just because we resorted to AI.
Thank you for the feedback!
@johnsensei I'm happy you liked the title!
@binayas we tried to make the randomness as fair as possible, but couldn't eliminate all the edge cases in the limited time frame :sob:. Would definitely like to make the generator more intelligent at some point. Thank you for noticing!
Very good setup with beautiful, amazing art and moody atmosphere.
In case you ever feel like actually finishing the story, I suggest playing a bit with the: - dialogue frame design (Maybe add colored names and show them on top of the text like in all classic VN games), - walking speed (walking is not critical to winning/losing in your game, so might as well make the character faster so that a player can enjoy the actual narrative elements of the game).
Don't be sorry for all the bugs, take it as a valuable experience. Good job!
Really liked the dynamics of the trampoline summon =D
Very fun(ny) one xD RIP to everyone who tried to type "A"
I was following your updates guys once I saw your first post in the feed this jam! Really happy to see the results!
P.S. Just out of curiosity, what approach you used for managing AI of your heroes? I'm stil quite new to a lot of this, so my amateur guess would be GOAP, but please let me know whether my guess is right or not!
@pirey awesome work, thanks for sharing!
Woah, 2.5D! It was fun to just mash buttons and see where summons would take me xD
First of all great game title xD At first I thought I grasped the rules of the game during the second hand... I didn't. But, having narrator talking to me was a very, VERY cool detail that made the whole process more engaging. Good job! Also, I really like the card design
I was very surprised that a lot of people this jam worked around shape recognition mechanic, just like our team did :D
Your execution is very neat and I like it! Condition to not only draw the right shape but also have enough of some element really helps reducing the amount of false positives during recognition, which I think is a really smart design choice!
Still, there were a lot of "What is this?" moments during stressful situations which made the whole system feel unfair, maybe that's because I'm left-handed and shapes end up looking not quite as intended :(
@yogurtthehorse between you and me here, but in our game the hidden pattern for circle recognition is actually just a square xD
Haha that's a very nice concept! Last 2 birbs were too funny xD I can see this as a game that can teach you some trivia about different bird sounds, as well as teach you to draw more accurate strokes, just great!
Reminds me of Akatori
I'm absolutely in love with all the little moving things you definitely put big care into. All those little animations make the game have soul. And just at the moment when I was ready to close the so-called-unfinished game, you surprise me with a bunch of interesting stuff, which felt really fun and promising!
Thank you!
A gacha for "summoning" game jam? Wait, that's smart xD Really liked all the little references here and there. Also, very realistic representation of my luck in gachas.
Love the time put into making each plant shake when walking nearby :)
That last ingredient caught me off guard...
@xer0bot sorry to hear that! Could you please share with me the screenshot of the circle you tried to draw? I tried to make sure it counts even very rough shapes resembling a circle, but there was not enough testing done. You could alternatively try again by re-entering the drawing mode with Q, or even skip the first scene with N to see what's next!
@enver-arco thanks for the feedback! The only motivation for "Q to stop drawing" was to allow for multiple strokes. Do you think that's unnecessary, or do you wish you could exit drawing mode automatically once it recognizes a shape (regardless of how many strokes it took)? Please let us know!
@13x666 @yogurtthehorse just uploaded the mac (intel 64 + silicon) version to itch! I have 0 ways to test the build, so I hope I didn't write any Windows-specific spaghetti that will just break the game. Wish we could just upload a web version for everyone, but apparently custom shaders are not friends with web builds...
On the off chance the build works, be prepared that the actual gameplay is no bigger than what you could see in the gameplay trailer, it's a really smol prototype :D
@alaah thank you so much for recording your playthrough! I've seen new things xD
Here's a summary of what your video gave us
1. We feel bad we didn't give Polly a proper jump animation, we didn't expect it to be used that often 2. We've seen a handful of comments regarding toggling drawing mode with Q. This is a big challenge for us in terms of balancing performance and user experience, and we are considering better ways of handling this mechanic 3. Sloppy scene transitions and invisible walls: something we wish wasn't there, sorry for that! Will definitely improve on that aspect given more time 4. The urge to freeze **everything**: We'll need to think about how to satisfy the need to destroy stuff without breaking the whole world while doing so xD 5. In scene 3 apparently the cutscene didn't trigger for you properly, which resulted in a pretty awkward experience. I thought I resolved that bug... 6. Lack of visual clarity on tree platforms: noted and will be taken care of 7. Girl not moving while on trees: a known bug (unless we explain that she has fear of heights). Out intention is that trees are best climbed with pufelkas, will need to think how to make that more clear.
Completely agree on the lack of stuff. With this short build we basically focused on exploring visual style and testing whether any of the mechanics we have to offer are at least tiny bit satisfying. And in that regard, we're happy with all the positive and negative feedback we've got so far!
P.S. haven't played Child of Light, but definitely will add to my backlog, looks pretty wholesome :D
@kyrio hey thanks for the kinds words!
P.s. legit have no idea how I made keyboard-agnostic controls, I didn't even know it is possible to break that xD I'm kinda curious about your keyboard layout and whether that affects how you position your hand on the keyboard. If you have some spare time, please let me know the details!
Controls are a bit off, but I really like how this game looks, super comfy!
There is a bug where you get stuck in the "zoo" area and can not see character sprite anywhere. What should I do?
I recently bought a board game called Hanabi that involves remembering a lot of information about your cards you can't see, including colors! Your entry reminded me of it! Starting from difficulty 4 it was a bit hard to keep up, but I like memory games like this. Not a fan of stressful time limits, though!
That's your FIRST jam submission? Really strong start, friend! My only complaint is the sensitivity of the controls, felt like I'm not in control of what I'm doing. But the style is there and I like it
Addictive, but becomes too hard too fast!
Very cute game! Managed to get 5 (is that the limit?..) first try
This is extremely fun, easily one of the top 10 candidates this jam
P.S. btw, our artist is curious what tools you used to animate your tiny creatures :smile:
Фиксики! Крутяк!
I really like how they begin to smile once you tame them :smile:
@quintec @sockenpuppe @thisisspy @sabrina-ross @hajpappan @cpaz @iven @ruiqianzhang @lereveur @scrapmetal @dmitrygalias @mateusboga
First of all, thank you so much for liking the concept! It means a lot to our team and to me in particular (because I carry the weight of suggesting the idea).
I am deeply sorry for all the unpolished experience you had to go through... As I mentioned in our [retrospective blogpost](https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/billions-must-bite/me-at-700am-finally-falling-asleep-after-killing-all-the-mosquitoes), this Jam was a painful remainder of how bad my time-management and code writing excellence is. But I take all your feedback very seriously and I'll do my best when preparing for the next Jam. Sorry if I might not be able to release bug fixes for this game though, as I'm currently nowhere near my workstation...
Please do look forward for our future entries! :blush: Love all your comments guys, wouldn't have the will to work harder without them :heart:
Not sure what I did, but the guy got extra big by himself :D photo_2024-10-08_11-59-03.jpg
Jaw-dropping work on graphics (and the intro animation in particular!). Really liked that health is represented in cards, great decision! It was fun to play :smiley: