Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → stuntddude
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Hu | Mo | Co | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | 38 | A Small World | Transistor Soup | jam | 110 | 3.89 | 3.72 | 3.79 | 2.96 | 3.32 | 3.20 | |||
| 2015 | 34 | Two Button Controls / Growing | ICECUBE | compo | 263 | 3.52 | 3.62 | 4.00 | 4.38 | 2.55 | 1.79 | 2.71 | 57 |
I love that a jam game uses audio in such a wonderful way! It's a very relaxing experience, one of my favorite entries I've played. My only criticism is that one of the sound effects for discovering plants (the chiptuney one) was a lot louder than the others (the chords). It could probably use to be made a little quieter and/or the chords a little louder.
I can tell it's a 3 hour game.
This game crashed on startup the first time. Not a big deal since it worked thereafter, but something to look into.
The controls (rather, the control - as already pointed out, it could be achieved with just one button) are a little unwieldy, but nothing some adjustments couldn't fix. The good items and bad items frequently spawn too close together, making it very hard or even impossible to hit one but not the other. That might be an intentional part of the gameplay, but for me, it made it feel a bit less dependent on skill/strategy and a bit more on luck.
Also, a very minor thing, your icon could be better - why not use the hand sprite as an icon?
For the first minigame, the dog sprite not having crisp pixels is kind of an eyesore, and the food items frequently spawn at the exact edges of the screen (more often than would be expected from random chance if they are spawning with a randomized x-coordinate).
For the other, the controls feel a bit too touchy, the explanatory text is wrong (the mouse buttons are the reverse of what it says), and I'm not sure what the powerups even do, but I'm pretty sure if I press RMB once, it exhausts all of them simultaneously.
Also, if you hit the dog against the floor or ceiling enough, he starts spinning. I don't know if that's intentional, but it's hilarious, and actually kinda fun.
Many people have pointed out that the game is too difficult, but I don't think that's really the problem. I've played a few brutally difficult games this LD that were really fun because of the challenge. This game doesn't suffer from legitimate difficulty, it suffers from poor controls. In particular, the ship turns far too slowly and with far too much momentum to be of any use trying to turn around in a tight corridor; by the time you've turned all the way back around, it's too late to avoid slamming into the far wall or into the ground. Poor physics isn't doing you any favors, either - frequently, when you land on the pad to complete the level, you don't stick, you just keep sliding right off.
If you gave this game decent controls and a better level, I suppose it could be fun, but then, why would I ever play this over the hundreds of 3-button rocket control games that already exist?
I could sit around all day just listening to this stuff. All the broadcasts talk a bit slow, which can be frustrating, but your sense of humor is great and this game as a whole is hilarious. FRUP grows ever greater!
Two criticisms that I'll mention now that I didn't before: I would like to be able to flip freely between stations instead of being taken to a random on when I click the arrows, and I feel like it takes way too many incorrect truthifications before you get put down (after all, FRUP must continue to grow ever greater, and even a small mistake can go a long way to creating unrest and distrust among the unoppressed populace!)
Brutally, unforgivingly hard! I think this is the most fun entry I've played so far, and the only one I had to repeatedly tell myself to stop playing so I could rate it. It's crazy addictive trying to beat my high score, and I'm sure I'll keep coming back to this after the jam to wrestle with it.
I only have two minor criticisms: first, some of the graphics are weirdly aliased, and don't look as smooth as they could, particularly the light target things. Second, some sound effects would be a nice addition to the music.
Aside from that, it's just awesome. My best score currently is only 17, but I'll keep trying for a better one.
Also, I second both that this is a great potential mobile port, and that I'd love to see a video of someone really good playing this game.
Thanks everybody for the feedback! I'm going to continue developing this after the jam, and am planning to address a lot of the suggestions: two or three more mechanics (probably including moving/falling platforms and buttons), more carefully thought out puzzles, and sound effects/music (I already have some cool sound effects and just need to code them in). I'll definitely rebalance the platforming level to be less cut-throat and make the growing/shrinking a bit faster, as it currently requires too much waiting. I've also started adding some simple animations for things like death and springs to make the game look better. This compo was probably the most non-stop fun I've had in a weekend, and I look forward to participating in more in the future.
For this Ludum Dare I've seen a lot of games that make inventive use of two-button controls, but I've also seen a lot of games that are severely hindered by it, and this is no exception. The game feels very much out of the player's control, which is never a good thing, especially for an infinite runner. In particular, phasing seemed to take a frame or two before it went into effect, which means that letting up on the J key and then quickly pressing the K key threw a dagger more often than it let me jump. The enemies also seem to enjoy popping up where it's nearly impossible to hit them or jump over them, mostly generating right on ledges that I have to jump up to, so I'd have to start dashing and then throw a dagger at the right moment in mid-air, which again is made harder by the sprint control being slightly unresponsive.
This is a fun game. The controls are touchy indeed, but I suppose that's the point. The controls are challenging, but not at all frustrating - when I lost, it was always obviously my mistake and not the game's fault, which in my opinion is exactly how controls should be. Once you get into the rhythm of quick taps, it's hard to stop playing! I enjoyed the chill space ambiance, some sound effects would be good too.
And since games like this seem to invite competition, I will brag that my high score is 28 :P
It's not immediately clear what the criteria for death is (I had to look at the other comments before I realized it was the petals, which, while cool, could use to stand out more. It gets easily lost against everything else going on visually). It's also not entirely clear that you're growing at all until you look at the text at the top. You seem guaranteed to run into a certain percentage of the rockets by design, meaning you make it about the same distance every time you play. If you could make it more feasible to dodge the rockets, and perhaps added a way to get health back over enough time, it could be a lot of fun trying to beat your own high score, but I don't think the mechanics are there yet.
On a positive note, I like the programmer art. It's oddly charming.
This is a cool concept, having to balance your growth rate with the time you have remaining and the cost to add lice, and it's straightforward enough to figure out, but after a few rounds I'm still not sure if the strategy makes itself clear. Is it just a matter of growing as much as you can, figuring out the optimal time to start placing lice, and then placing lice until the game ends, or is there something more to the strategy that I'm missing? An interesting challenge, none the less.
Also, a small thing, I'm not sure why anyone would play without fast-forward, so it would make more sense to me for that to be the default.
This game comes close to being interesting and meaningful, but falls short because the gameplay is woefully lacking. I can walk back and forth and do some things, sure, and it's really a beautiful little world to walk back and forth and do things in, for sure, but there's no coherency. Why do things have the effects on your health bar that they do? Are the three different worlds correlated in some way? It seems like things deplete my health more quickly at some times than others, but I'm not sure, because nothing at all is made clear to me. What purpose does the workplace or the cabin serve in the gameplay? In fact, why go anywhere at all when I can alternate between the computer and my bed and have the whole thing done in a flash? It feels like there is some interesting idea struggling to be conveyed here, but I have no way of knowing what that's supposed to be.
You've got the aesthetic nailed down pat. The game looks great - the art is wonderful, and the little details (from the time of day to the way that the skyline slides away as you walk to the cabin, as well as the background audio) make the whole thing fit together in a nice way. The world of the game is engaging, but the game itself just isn't.
I accidentally opened up 3 copies of the game at because it took about a minute to load and I thought it just wasn't starting. When I closed them all, the audio was still playing, and I had to go find the process in ProcExp and kill it before the audio would stop. Not a fun time.
Note: your link says "Web" but goes to a download for a Windows executable. You might want to change the link name to make that more clear, since most people will see "Web" and expect something that runs in the browser.
This is a cool idea, but the gameplay gets tedious pretty quickly. After a while the mowing starts to feel like an actual chore. Also, the collision physics are extremely janky. Being teleported to the side and having my velocity reset when I run into a rock is not a good experience, it's very jarring. I also got stuck on the rocks and couldn't move until my mower ran out of gas.
Also, there's no audio, so you should remove that category from your scoring.
If this game had some sound and consisted of more than indiscriminately plopping trees onto a bare planet (maybe some more scenery, or something that prevents me from spawning a tree in the middle of an ocean?), it could build a great atmosphere. What you have so far is a charming start, but there just isn't enough here to keep my attention for more than a minute.
I admit I turned off the audio for this one. I don't need to hear that...
This is an excellent game concept, and I knew I was in for something charming from the title screen with the growing vine animation, but it still needs a lot of work in terms of its execution. Some things I noticed:
- mirror rotation control is odd and unintuitive
- using a popup to display stats is really weird
- frequently, the light bounces in a blatantly wrong direction (and it isn't even consistent based on the angle!), which makes the puzzles feel frustrating and arbitrary
- the wood walls don't stand out from the background, and I didn't realize they were obstacles at first (and hardly even noticed they were there) until a light ray hit them and stopped
- there's no way to know what direction light is going to come in the window until you hit space to let it play
- sometimes light rays fail to detect the mirrors and go straight through (a collision bug)
My suggestions:
- fix the collision and make light rays always follow the law of reflection
- remove the needless restart-and-wait cycle by replacing it with a real-time system where updating a mirror or prism instantly updates the ray trajectory
- fix the disparity in art quality where some assets look great and others look bleh
You should also remove the audio voting category in accordance with the rules, since you used sound effects from pre-existing sources (as noted in the credits).
Not sure about the sound, but otherwise I like this game.
So it's basically just Prisoner's Dilemma: The Game? Nevertheless it's very polished and well put together, despite being perhaps too simple. Good graphics, good sound, and functioning multiplayer is hard to pull off all in 72 hours.
-1 for using javascript alert messages as a menu, though. That's a special brand of evil.
This game might be good, but I shouldn't have to restart 5+ times to find out! Some explanation - any explanation at all - would help immensely to avoid the needless repetition required to figure out what's even going on. And once you grow the colony to a stable size (after several restarts and a lot of waiting), there's no particular reason to continue.
Also, a small bug, sometimes the game places a building on a different tile than the one I clicked on, including sometimes on top of other existing buildings.
I'm not sure what it is, but something about screwing up and watching my little cube get a layer of dirt thrown on top of him (and sometimes the physics glitch out and the cube flies of the screen when it happens) made me laugh out loud every time I lost. Not many games can do that, I think! I like how the dirt bounces at each level, and I think some cheeky sound effects would go great with that.
It's actually rather cool that you can move around on the title screen, because it gives you time to figure out how to move before you start, although it's not very obvious that you have to click "PLAY!" to start, because it doesn't look like a clickable button. It's also cool that the high score persists between play sessions, not a lot of jam games do that.
The movement mechanic is surprisingly fun at first, but gets boring pretty quickly because once you figure out how it works well enough, you can pretty much keep going indefinitely. I think making the game gradually speed up or adding some kind of obstacle would turn it into a much more fun challenge.
This is a prime example of why "Two Button Controls" was a bad theme idea. These controls are *horrible*, and make what might otherwise have been a pretty fun game completely unplayable. I would have better feedback for the other aspects of your game if the piss-poor controls didn't completely domineer the gameplay.
This game is very pretty (everything from the glowing particle trails to the little details like the font choice and the game over screen overlay feel well put together, good job on that), but the gameplay is lacking. I had to read the explanatory blurb on this page before I could understand what was going on, and even then it wasn't immediately clear what was a resource and what was an asteroid, it took me a minute to figure out the difference. And the mechanics themselves feel kind of arbitrary. There's no particular challenge or intrigue, and I can't really say it's fun.
Will play and rate this when I have access to an OS/X machine in a few days.
The funniest entry I've played yet! This game took a really long time for me to complete, but it was worth it for all the flavor text. Naturally, a jam game of this scope will have several issues, some of which I noted during my playthrough as I came across them:
- occasionally info text appears in the wrong order when moving to a new area
- solutions to some puzzles make no sense whatsoever (esp. the waiting room one) and require either a walkthrough or a brute for exhaustion of all possible actions available to you
- I got the Sid dialogue again while in the principal's office after going out and back in again (a bug)
- no explanation of engine features (e.g. clicking on objects to see what you can do to them, which I found out by accident), which would help with some of the puzzles, though I would suppose this is more the engine's fault (along with several other quirks I won't mention here because they're not specific to your game)
- the dialogue in many of the areas doesn't change after you escape the principal's office, even though it no longer makes any sense (for example the people in the detention room, or the food's flavor text still being about breakfast if you go back home, or being able to re-trigger the opening dialogues by interacting with the alarm clock)
- The navigation can be confusing - for example, there is at least one place where going east then northwest, or west then northeast, both take you to the same place that is completely different from where you end up if you just go north, and the layout seems to make no sense physically
- using anything on Sparky prints nothing (presumed bug)
- I can't close the fridge in my house (presumed bug)
And in general, a lot of what is or isn't implemented seems arbitrary (for example, the compass exists and can be picked up, but can't be used in any way or even looked at), which seems like the probably work of a deadline crunch.
Still, I liked this one a lot! The writing was consistently fun and hilarious and it never got old trying to pick up literally everything I could see (or trying to kiss all the people, when the only one who accepts my kiss is the homeless man - bless his soul). I'm looking forward to seeing what you do with this in the post-jam days.
For the wrong order thing, I think it was actually one or two rooms near the beginning when I visited for the first time (but I didn't think to write down exactly where, darn! I may try to track them down again).
As for the wacky solutions, I admit I haven't played many text adventures, so it may not be my place to criticize. If it's fair to assume that a player will look up a walkthrough if they get really stuck, then I suppose it's not so much of a problem. And don't get me wrong, I did thoroughly enjoy the wackiness, I just thought there could be a few more hints as to what to do.
There's not a lot to this game - it sort of feels like you submitted it when it was only halfway done, as for example there are several obstacle sprites for each of the first two levels, but only some weird black noise for the third and fourth (which made it unclear what they were supposed to be - I didn't know they were ice and a pirate ship until I read the description). That may have even been a bug, but I'm not sure.
Getting to see the different worlds is interesting, but there's just not enough gameplay to justify it.
The "Web" and "Windows" link both point to a download for a Windows exe, so you should consolidate them into one link that says "Windows".
The points counter is pretty pointless (pun intended), since it both resets in the middle of the game after losing a level, and also carries over between playthroughs (so you can rack up points by playing the first level over and over again). Also, the audio plays over itself every time you restart, which is hilarious, but also really loud after several resets.
Other than that, it's a fairly well-made platformer, with nice minimalistic graphics. A good entry for just 5 hours!
Oh no. This game is confusing and scary and a little bit broken, and it totally messed me up. I'm so sorry. I fucked up. Oh god.
more.
On another note, the movement is a kinda broken (it's easy to get stuck if you run up against a wall, and it's possible to run *through* the house from the left). Being able to run underneath the trunks of the trees is kinda weird, as is the text appear beneath the trees as well. I'm not sure if the opening text "Z - Start | X - Drink" showing up repeatedly near the end is intentional, but it feels like a bug.
You might also want to disable the audio voting category, since it seems like your game doesn't have any (that or my setup is somehow broken).
Nevertheless, I think the game delivers its point as intended, so major props for making something actually meaningful.
This game is pretty hilarious conceptually, and I'm generally a fan of idle games, but there's just *too* much micromanagement going on here. It's hard to grow your business when you spend 90% of your time just trying to keep poor Quentin alive! In addition, the keyboard controls are unwieldy (a proper GUI would be a huge improvement), and it's unclear how some of the mechanics work. For example, when I assign an employee to eat or drink, do they keep going for a set period of time, or until their bar is full, or until I assign them a new task, or what? At what interval does it deplete resources? When I interrupt their eating or drinking to assign them a new task, do they immediately pick up the task, or wait some predefined amount of time before doing it, or wait until they're done eating or drinking, or what? These things are obvious to you, because you programmed the game, but they're completely opaque to anyone else, and I certainly never figured them out myself because I was too busy frantically trying to micro-manage everything else to stop for long enough to pay close attention and experiment with the mechanics.
I really don't dislike this game as much as it sounds like, but it does need a real GUI and some adjustments to the mechanics to make it more fun.
I only got a to play a few minutes before my computer flaked out on me (nothing to do with the game), but I liked what I got to see. I really like the atmosphere that you built with audio and visuals. Trekking from fire to fire, chasing the north star (it's the north star, right? I'm not good with astronomy), was immersive and evoked a real sense of wonder, which is something not many jam games achieve. Figuring out how to connect up the constellations was a surprisingly fun puzzle mechanic that I haven't seen before.
I really only have three complaints: firstly, that it wasn't immediately obvious what direction I was supposed to go. I didn't realize the first time around that the opening dialog wasn't just flavor text. Secondly, the lack of an in-game menu to free my cursor and exit feels like a form of user-trapping. And third, your game runs like a pile of bricks. Maybe that's just Unity being Unity, but there's gotta be something to do about that.
A bit late for me to be pointing this out this time around, but it might help in future jams: the Ludum Dare rule allow you to continue optimizing the game (or fixing bugs) and updating the download link after the submission deadline, as long as you don't otherwise change the gameplay.
Nowhere near as good as the art makes it look at a glance. I'm not one to mince words, and this game is really, truly terrible. I mean it.
Firstly, the font is horribly broken, and it makes the "options" screen (actually a tutorial screen, there are no options at all) virtually impossible to read.
As for the actual gameplay, there's not a lot to like here. The audio is too abrasive and all but gives me a headache, the 800% screenshake takes about a whole second to become really obnoxious, the controls feel horribly janky and oversensitive/undersensitive depending on your upgrade level, the collision is inconsistent (am I supposed to be able to walk up the ramps or are they just poorly conveyed half-height platforms? Who the hell knows!), there are doors that you can't actually go through (why are they even there???), the absurd amount of repetitive spam-clicking and kiting it takes to kill a single enemy makes my wrist hurt, and being constantly swarmed by those tiny little buggers that get stuck in walls and become increasingly frustrating to hit as you "upgrade" (a.k.a. become larger and slower and get a shorter jump - exactly the opposite of what I wanted) is the opposite of fun no matter how you look at it. It is supremely annoying.
Add to all that the fact that nothing in this game really seems to make any sense (why am I collecting the blood of these blasted zergs? What is going on with my health bar? why does my upgrade counter seem to go down to 1 and then back up to 4 if I don't collect enough blood in time? Why does the boss register damage at some times but not others? It all feels like an unpleasant fever dream), and you get a wholly sub-par experience. Maybe if you had more time to flesh this out into a fuller game, explain what's going on better, and fix what's broken, it could be something truly fun, because the core mood isn't bad in and of itself, but as it stands, the execution fails on almost every level. The only thing I can really praise about this is the art, and even that is betrayed to a degree by the overzealous screenshake and the constant motion-sickness-inducing tilting.
I can't vote for you as sadly I didn't finish my entry, but I really hope this places in at least one category. There are a few flaws with the implementation (the smoke particles sometimes rendered on top of other objects and covered up important things I needed to see, and the damage that the player takes can feel rather arbitrary) but the mechanics are solid and the game is just really dang fun! Makes me wish I had more levels to play through, and I'd love to try out the grappling mechanic in a level with more open space. Often the biggest challenge in a level was being able to swing a box around without running it into a wall, or otherwise having trouble fighting in a confined area. A post-jam version of this would be awesome.
Some issues:
- There are some issues with movement, like not being able to move diagonally and getting stuck on objects because the hitboxes aren't where you'd expect them to be. - I'm not sure if this is intentional, but you can shoot the enemies that move down the screen repeatedly as they fly by, and the ones you shot will stay dead the next time that group flies by. That allows you to cheese some of the timing-based sections by just killing all the fly-by enemies. - You can get to the tree without trapping yourself, in which case the monologue about being trapped doesn't make much sense.
The strongest point of this game imho is the use of simple narrative to deliver a complex message. Despite the fairly short buildup, the ultimate decision has a lot of weight behind it. It's tough to make a genuinely reflective game without being hammy or pretentious, let alone in just 48 hours. But this game does just that. It really *means* something, and I think that's worth a lot.
The core mechanic is awesome, and really satisfying, but the controls are a bit buggy. Moving left/counter-clockwise caused some weird movement issues, including getting permanently stuck in place if I ever tried to jump while holding the A key. It's a bit too difficult to escape the 3 planets at the far right side of the map (I thought it was impossible for a while), and it isn't entirely clear what the goal is - until I unpacked the jar and looked into the game files (while looking for the source code), I didn't realize the things I was collecting were rocket parts, or that I was supposed to travel back to that one piece on the center planet that I couldn't pick up. That could be fixed with more readable sprites, or better explanation, or both.
P.S. If you change the `dl=0` in your download link to `dl=1`, it will download straight away instead of taking you to a web page.
A neat take on a common genre. The upgrade system provided some extra depth compared to the typical iteration of this concept, though I do wish the upgrades were explained better. There are some quality-of-life features I also wish I had - send all (so I don't get repetitive motion strain from all the right-clicking :P) and the ability to set up supply lines, and the ability to zoom out - but the basic features and mechanics are all there and they all work well, including the all-important tutorial (oft neglected in Ludum Dare). The one main thing I think could be improved is the difficulty curve. Two of the levels - the one where you conquer the world, and the one where you're conquering other solar systems (I think) - were far more difficult than the rest. I stopped playing at the latter of those two, but it still kept me entertained much longer than most entries. Overall, very solidly put together despite the fairly ambitious mechanics and visuals. One of my favorites so far!
P.S. After reading your response regarding the auto-send mechanic, the rationale makes sense, though I do think being able to zoom out and see all the action at once might reduce some of the tedium while still keeping the frantic multi-tasking feel.
@timeracers
Sorry for the late reply. Ignoring the two NOT gates on the right, the circuit is an [SR NOR latch][1]. The output of the bottom NOT gate feeds into the input of the top NOT gate, and the output of the top NOT gate in turn feeds the input of the bottom NOT gate, creating a stable loop in the circuit. If you put two more NOT gates onto each of those wires to prevent the signal from moving backward along the wire from one gate to the other, the circuit works like you'd expect:
Screen Shot 2017-04-28 at 2.43.57 PM.png
In a future version, I should probably add a less cumbersome way to create a one-way wire, and/or find a way to make it more obvious what direction current is flowing - maybe something like Minecraft's redstone, where the brightness of the wire decreases the further it gets from the source? I'll have to think on it.
I also realized when I was recreating your example that latches don't work correctly. I'll upload a new version in a few hours to fix that bug. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flip-flop_(electronics)#SR_NOR_latch
@yirggzmb Ouch! I made a stupid mistake without testing, so the bridge part doesn't show up on the first level like it's supposed to. I've uploaded a new version to itch.io that fixes the problem.
@occultone I'm not familiar with Avast. Maybe it doesn't like runnable JAR files with native libraries inside them or something? I'll try packaging .app and .exe versions in a bit, maybe that will help.
@rockhoppergames Regarding post-jam direction, rather than choosing one direction over the other, I think I can do both. The basic plan is:
1. Provide a gentler introduction for typical players. Mostly this involves redesigning early level progression to guide the player more strongly toward correct solutions, like in a conventional puzzle game. I don't foresee this being a drag on electronics nerds, since someone with a lot of prior experience will be able to blow through the early game in just a few minutes - about long enough to get comfortable with the game's conventions and UI - and it would be easy enough to add a feature allowing advanced players to skip the tutorial stage entirely. 2. Add increasingly more complex levels to the game later on. This is easy enough - the reason the jam version stops short is because I ran out of time to add more levels. 3. Add solution metrics (e.g. number of parts used, footprint of circuit, etc.) and leaderboards. These are a crucial part of the game's design that just didn't make it into the jam version.
In other words, as much as I'd like to think I'm making a truly original game, I'm really just ripping off the Zachtronics formula and using it on a smaller project. In any case, I certainly appreciate getting feedback on something other than the lack of a clear button ;)
@philomory Wow... if I could give your comment multiple hearts, I would! You've just given me so many good ideas to work with, you've practically done more for the game than I have :P
It's a promising start, but seems unfinished. The inventory system is obviously inspired by Minecraft, and would benefit from some of its features, such as placing one stack onto another to swap them, or being able to place down one item from a stack at a time. Placing down half the stack instead doesn't seem to have any benefit, and just serves to make crafting frustrating. Also, because there's no way to drop items out of your inventory, there's a genuine risk of running out of inventory space and making it impossible to complete the game because you collected too much stuff.
The game makes no attempt to teach the player, and the only way to progress is to follow the guide step by step, at which point it's less of a game and more of an exercise in following instructions. Even just adding tooltips to the items would do a lot to improve this. Some items are easy to discern (logs, pickaxe), but others are completely baffling (a green lowercase cursive letter 'b'? oh, that's used to make cloth) and impossible to guess what they're used for without reading the guide. Additionally, I think the difficulty curve of the game is too steep, and bad RNG in the world generation (i.e. not finding fiber right away, because bushes don't visually indicate what they drop) can make it virtually impossible to survive past the first minute or so, leaving you in a position where you're essentially standing around waiting to die so you can generate another world and try again. It's a race to craft the first few items in time, but after you have a tent and campfire, there's no more challenge, and the rest of the game essentially turns into a fetch quest.
I noticed a few things that seem like bugs. First, the character's center seems to be slightly to the east, meaning they can only interact with things to the right. Not a big deal but kind of weird. Two rocks generated in the same square in one of my worlds. And it's possible to use the stone pickaxe from anywhere in the inventory without degrading its durability.
The way tiles appear as you wander around looks great, but unfortunately you don't see it much, because the game's systems discourage exploring any farther than you have to. The winding patches of stone, the variety of trees, patches of water, and the particles hanging in the air all make for a good-looking landscape, but also suffer from not being seen very much. That said, because exploration is somewhat discouraged anyway, I think you could have pushed the theme a bit by making the world even smaller without affecting gameplay much. The visual effects on the fatigue, hunger, and warmth bars as you approach death are a great way to create a sense of urgency. The patches of light and dark in the screenshots look cool, but aren't present in the game.
Writing this comment as a list because it makes more sense that way:
- Tiny white text with no background is basically impossible to read. Even the text of the game over menu is hard to read against the background. Thankfully none of the text seems to be necessary - Hitting buildings doesn't always destroy them, but *does* always stop you in your tracks, making the physics feel sticky and making the destructive mayhem less satisfying than it otherwise could be - Ability keys are laid out in an awkward and seemingly random way - Text on protestor signs is also tiny, and hard to read if you're avoiding protestors like you presumably are supposed to - The control scheme is just... what even? - Shallow political commentary but oh well, the game is fun - Hilarious to see a crowd of protesting giants bowling over buildings to get to you - Sound effects are on point - Blast ability seems to be very inconsistent in its effects - Graphics need a lot of work. Much more than proper character models or variety in buildings, I think this game needs visual effects for the different abilities and their effects
Interesting concept, but there's not a whole lot going on. Getting to the top seems to be more about random trial and error than any clearly established mechanics or careful decisions, and the ducks - despite ostensibly having very different personalities - all had the same few lines of dialogue. As a result, it feels a bit more like a comedic novelty than a fully fleshed out game.
Doesn't really function as a game, since there's no way to know anything about how the outcome of battles are determined, and therefore no way to know what you should be doing. The interface doesn't try to helpful in any other capacity, either. If a player attacks a planet and loses their fleet, they're given no information whatsoever except that they lost. There's no way to know how the battle played out, how many troops the enemy has, whether their attack had any effect on the enemy troops (let alone the extent of that effect if it exists), etc. This is generally the worst way that any game can begin, since the only thing it teaches the player is that none of their actions have any effect on the game world, and that when they fail, they won't be told why, and therefore won't be able to improve. Coupled with the lack of any compelling visuals, audio, or narrative, the game in its current unfinished state provides no reason for anyone to want to play it.
tl;dr you, the programmer, certainly know how your game works mechanically, but nobody else does, and if you make no attempt to communicate anything to your players, then you're the only one who will be able to have fun playing your game.
@cosine actually, after playing the post-compo version, I realize it already addresses most of the problems I had with the game. I should have looked at it before commenting in the first place. Sorry.
It's an interesting concept, but the execution is lacking in some ways. The ability to drill through quickly sideways, which allows the game to be completed in as few as 15 seconds, is interesting, but seems accidental rather than intentional, and it seems kind of arbitrary when the game chooses to flip the world vs. when it doesn't. I also wish I wouldn't get moved so far when the world flips. It's not clear why some cubes are colored green and yellow, as they all seem to behave the same... visual variety, I guess? It would be cool to be able to play randomly generated levels, instead of just the same one over and over.
It's a shame this is Windows-only, as cross-platform builds are one of the selling points of Unity... still, I love Zachtronics games and this looks super interesting, so I'll play it as soon as I get my PC working again.
Proper review after playing the game for real: basically, I really like it. It has all the elements of a good Zach-like. But I do have a few criticisms:
- The instructions aren't written very well, so it can be hard to figure out what they mean at first. "Hidden boolean C checks if current command is to be executed" sounds like out-of-context word salad unless you already know what the "hidden boolean C" is all about. The explanation of control flow would likely have been better without mentioning a "hidden boolean" at all. - Not being able to reorder commands isn't a big deal now because the programs are all so short, but it would be a real pain for larger programs. - Due to only containing a few levels, most of the commands go unused. - I'm not sure why there's a countdown between levels. I already verified that I'm ready to start the next level, so why make me wait? - Clickable UI elements should - I want more levels!
I'd love to see a post-jam version of this that adds more levels and possibly more features. I had a lot of fun trying to figure out optimal solutions, but in the end my scores were 2, 2, 6, 4, 5... clearly not all optimal! Maybe I'll have to revisit it later.
This is pretty cool. While it sometimes feels like too much of the outcome is based on luck, the ruleset makes the interaction between the different tiles really interesting. I kind of want to see if I can write a program to play this optimally.
Also, I beat your high score. Screen Shot 2017-05-02 at 8.00.31 PM.png
I whipped up a bot that plays greedily, making the move that will result in the highest score next turn, and it already does pretty well most of the time:
greedy bot.gif
That's a fairly typical game, but because the bot can't look ahead (and therefore can't strategize), it's very sensitive to luck, so the score varies wildly, from under 5,000 to over 10,000, depending on RNG. Next step is implementing minimax, and then optimizing to hopefully squeeze out an extra round or two of look-ahead.
@japes Sorry it took me so long to get back to this. I would have left another comment sooner, but to be honest, it hasn't gone so well. I implemented minimax and expectimax, but got discouraged when neither of them were able to do much better than the greedy approach. I don't know if that's because they can't look far enough ahead, or because they're just not the right strategies, or because I coded something wrong. I don't really know what I'm doing here, as it turns out. Still, [I put the code up on GitHub if you're interested](https://github.com/Stuntddude/HexBot), but fair warning, it's a bit of an undocumented mess.
It's written in C++ using SFML for graphics. I saw some absurdly high scores when it was picking each next piece at random, but since implementing your tile bag algorithm for fairly picking pieces, the highest scores I've seen are in the 9000s range. And the highest score I've gotten as a human is still only 8948.
I do want to finish the bot, but I'm struggling with some hard-to-diagnose bugs in it right now, and haven't done much with it in the past few days.
The OSX download page gives me an HTTP 403, though the other pages seem to work fine.
Proper review: I kind of wish I could fly just barely faster than enemy bullets, instead of just barely slower. That's my only complaint. It was easy to get started and figure out what was going on even without instructions, because the all the important interactions in the game are illustrated visually. Once I did get started, it was a ton of fun and felt great to play on a gamepad.
I tried to do something similar for a previous jam and wasn't able to get it to work the way I wanted. I'm glad to see someone give this concept the attention it deserves! I ran into a couple bugs: first, the AI bullets appear to rotate in a weird way sometimes, like the sprite is offset away from the bullet's center before being rotated, and second, the audio begins to glitch out after a while and then goes silent altogether if you play for long enough, like the program is running out of sound channels or something. And I do think the control scheme is a bit awkward/unintuitive - I wish I could change the cannon power by holding down the button instead of tapping furiously until I give myself a repetitive strain injury. But overall, it's a lot of fun.
I'd like this game a lot more if there was a way to play it without all the lengthy animations. The puzzles are good, but I can't stand having to wait around so much. It's a waste of time, and tends to ruin the enjoyment. The puzzles are what make the game fun, and the long animations only serve to get in the way and distance the player from what they really care about. Fast mode is a step in the right direction, but it doesn't go far enough.
Well, telnet is certainly an interesting way to write a cross-platform game. I ended up playing this 3 times. The first time, the game bugged out and I got stuck in the right margin on an early level and had to restart. The second time, I was interrupted by something I had to do and got timed out while I was AFK. The third time, the game bugged out again and I got stuck on a later level. I decided to quit trying, since I had gotten pretty far and it looked like the gameplay wasn't going to change for the rest of the game.
As others have mentioned, there's not much to this game. Each level has the same solution: walk to the last dimension and then back to the first, picking up any creatures you can along the way. The only substantive change between levels is the number of dimensions and what the creatures look like, and the lack of challenge and variety lends itself to boredom, and can feel like you're doing a chore rather than playing a game. The controls are weirdly unresponsive (probably due to using telnet as the medium, if I were to guess). The portal hitboxes seem too large. And, for some creatures (especially the cyan ones on the first level), the number can be hard to read due to lack of contrast with the background, at least in the mac terminal - I suppose colors may be different for other platforms.
Still, the game's written text has a great sense of humor, and gets full points for that in my book.
That wheel noise was really annoying. I agree with some other commenters that creating weird creatures was the most interesting part of the game. It honestly might have been more fun to be able to mix and match the DNA and see the results immediately, rather than having to sit through the incubation period to see whether the creature you created was interesting or not.
I've seen a lot of cringe-bad twines, but this one was seriously well-written. There were inevitably some typos, and I ran into one screen that was broken/unfinished (image below). Also, I think the link-reveals were overused in some places. It seems like overkill to click on the same bit of text several times and have it only reveal a couple of extra words each time if you're not using it for dramatic effect. Overall though, I really like this one. I'm a sucker for crushingly depressing stories, and this one surely hits the mark. You captured the oppressive mood perfectly.
Screen Shot 2017-05-15 at 9.22.12 PM.png
Controls are broken for me. I couldn't walk to the left, and if I pressed two directional keys at once the game would freeze me in place (this is on OSX, if it matters). Two more small suggestions:
1. The text disappears too quickly in the opening cutscene. A good rule of thumb for that: try reading the text slowly out loud, and if it disappears before you're done reading aloud, then it's too fast. Though in this case, it might be better to just give the player control over when they want to advance to the next line of dialogue. 2. The text that says "[T] Press to skip" should probably say "Press to continue" instead. "Skip" implies that you'll be missing something (presumably a cutscene) if you move on, so players will think there's going to be a cutscene to watch, whereas actually the same animation just keeps playing indefinitely until the hit 'T'.
Finishing cutscenes rather than implementing collision because you think players won't notice... and it turns out they actually don't... I'm pretty sure you've reached peak Ludum Dare ;)
The game ought to have another key bound to fire. Using modifier keys without providing a way to remap them is an iffy proposition in general, since they are not in the same place on every keyboard and they're likely to cause conflicts with keyboard shortcuts on various platforms. For example, on a macbook, using ctrl with A+D is awkward, and using ctrl with left+right is impossible because ctrl+left and ctrl+right are used to switch between desktops. It's also not intuitive - not many people would think to use ctrl, most people will probably try the spacebar at first.
Overall, the gameplay is pretty fun, but the sound effects really grate on my ears.
Great game feel. A lot of fun to play, and manages to be very difficult without being frustrating. I didn't mind flying through the same chaotic section over and over, because shooting turrets and frantically dodging bullets is inherently satisfying. One of my favorite entries I've played so far.
I don't have much to say about this, except that it's good fun. My only complaint is that it would be nice if the level restarted faster after the planet leaves the window.
You need to fix your hitboxes. I've been whacked by a guard when I was visibly way outside the range of his radar (which I can only assume is some form of pointedly useless radar and not vision because it goes through walls), presumably because the hitbox is larger than the visible portion of the sprite. The "whack" screen could use to be quicker, as most players will prefer to get right back into the action and don't want to have to wait around for no reason. The text between levels disappears too quickly (rule of thumb: it should stick around for at least as long as it takes for you to *slowly* read all of it out loud), and should probably be skippable. Also, your title screen does not look like a face. It looks like a butt with eyes.
Other than that, it's pretty good.
Interesting concept and nice visuals, but the core gameplay isn't especially interesting. The winning strategy seems to be the least interesting one (spin around the planet counter-clockwise and transport the maximum amount of each resource each time), and it's not very clear to see how strategy even affects the outcome. It's pretty much a matter of just spinning around the planet until everyone dies. Still, I think an interesting strategy game could be built on this premise, but the mechanics and game balance would have to be changed or expanded upon.
Nitpicks: the sound effects cut each other off, when it seems like it would make more sense for multiple sounds to be able to play at once. Also, you can't use `cmd+q` or the menu bar to quit the game on OSX, and it seems to trap the mouse for a random amount of time when you first start the game.
The itch.io link gives me a 404 page.
I didn't get as creative with by farm as some other people did, but I still found this fun. It's got a lot of content for a jam game already, and I think it could easily be extended to have an even longer progression. I also thought it was very well paced. It didn't drag on for too long or introduce things too quickly. And it looks very cute and friendly, which definitely makes it approachable. Aside from the issue with the camera not zooming out quite enough, it's a good automation game.
The upgrades are kind of fun, but I think the game overall is in dire need of better game feel (or "juice" as others have called it). There's almost no feedback when anything happens, which makes the action that's happening seem very distant and detached. A bit of knockback, a few visual effects, and some better sound effects would go a long way. That said, I do think the enemy AI is a bit arbitrary, and it's not really possible to play strategically because of how the level is laid out. There's no benefit to climbing on top of the platforms, and eventually enough enemy spawners appear that no matter where you stand, there will be enemies falling on your head that you can't shoot.
I didn't really understand the mechanics at first, but was able to figure them out quickly enough. Adding a bit of text saying "New Acquantance:" or some such when the new acquaintance's picture comes up might make it more clear what's happening, as would keeping it on screen for a bit longer. I suck at memory games, but I still had fun with this, especially laughing at my obituary after I died of social isolation. Good sense of humor and tongue-in-cheek social commentary in one... I like it!
I want to play this, but arrow keys not working in the editor is a deal-breaker.
@spaceman I'm on OSX 10.12, using the desktop build V1.2.1. The up arrow works in the terminal, though - in fact, if I press the up arrow while in the editor, it seems to be captured by the terminal instead, and causes the previous command to be displayed there.
This is just the kind of game I'd love to see more of in Ludum Dare. It's rare to see a game with such an eye for beauty and penchant for emotional impact. I normally nitpick the heck out of games, but other than the weird walk cycle, I can't find anything to complain about here. There's an impressive amount of polish for a jam game, the soundtrack is stellar (or planetary, I guess), and the story gives me a lot to think about. Very well done overall.
P.S. the mac version works for me without any problems.
It's fairly obvious this one is unfinished. I love the art style, but there's no gameplay to speak of. This seems like a classic example of spending too much time on the little details and not having enough time left to pull everything together into a working game. However, there are also some details that needed more attention, such as making it visually apparent what objects and UI elements are interactive. And I do wish the camera wouldn't trail so far behind.
The concept is awesome, but the gameplay isn't good yet. The game progresses too quickly to be playable unless you already really know what you're doing, and having menus pop up in your face literally every few seconds is not fun. It would be nice of the head menu was always present, and the organ controls would probably be better as a combination of click-and-drag to move, and buttons on the edges of the organ's outline to expand. The visual cues for which organs are healthy could use to be a bit less subtle, there should probably be a clear visual difference between clickable and non-clickable status effects, and hotkeys for common operations (like healing the current organ) would be nice. Also, sometimes multiple bits of music play over one another. With a bit of rebalancing and less obnoxious popups, though, I think this game could be excellent. It's an ambitious project for a ludum dare, and the game so far is impressive despite its flaws.
Also, the download on itch.io is marked Windows-only. You might want to change that.
I wrote out an entire helpful comment before realizing that you basically submitted an existing engine demo as an entry. ★✰✰✰✰ to you for wasting my time, and ★✰✰✰✰ to Mike for still not having a way to report games on the new site!
It's not really clear how anything in the game works - what causes the level to change, why I can survive a worm touching me sometimes but not always, why they turn red and dash forward occasionally, what significance it has when they do, why they bunch up in the corners, whether it matters if they reach the bottom corner and disappear, or even what the ultimate goal is.
The concept is great, and it's impressive that you managed to implement it in just 12 hours, but for me the input lag is a deal-breaker. It's only about a third of a second (and jumping is instantaneous), but that's long enough to make the controls feel really indirect. That's the only thing getting in the way of me really enjoying it right now. If you manage to fix the input lag, @ me. I'd love to give it another go.
This game starts out great - movement mechanics feel good (except that the mouse sensitivity is way too low and there's no way to adjust it in-game), the guns are satisfying to shoot, and the art style is a treat - but it has an achilles' heel: the ammo despawns way too quickly. As it stands, the combat scenarios mostly consist of running away from large crowds of enemies as you gradually whittle away at their numbers. Because your weapons can't clear out enemies very fast, you're always on the retreat. That creates an interesting power dynamic, and it means that when you kill an enemy and it drops ammo, you usually can't pick it up right away because there's a mob of enemies already on top of it. Normally, that would be fine. You have a sweet triple-jump after all, so you can kite enemies all over the place... except that because the ammo drops despawn almost immediately, there's never enough time to kite enemies away and come back around to pick up the drop. 9 times out of 10, that leads to you being locked in a room with no way to reload your weapons and no choice but to commit suicide. It seems like a minor thing, but unfortunately it's a complete showstopper that leads to the game being basically unplayable. Which is kind of sad, because otherwise it seems really cool.
A fun concept, but the orthographic projection makes it difficult to tell which key you're under, and therefore where you need to run to when a key starts to come down. I couldn't manage to wrap my head around it, so I never got very far. Also, the camera really freaks out whenever the game-over screen appears.