Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → suimisu
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | 36 | Ancient Technology | Solar | jam |
I like this handdrawn look:) Great deductive game, even if I didn't get if there was a deeper system or just trial and error. Maybe you could put the artifacts in the screen, so you now what you already have got. Also do the effects stack if you got multiple with the same effect?
Good job! Had some classic gameboy vibes:) Tick too loud sound on headphones, but it supported the feeling in the pyramid nicely. I think some more info / lore / story about the temple would be cool.
My only problem was the already mentioned repeating of already solved puzzles because you died somewhere and not getting the idea behind some puzzles and bruteforcing them.
Man I should have read your description more carefully. It took me way too long to understand that I have to look up to charge:D. Great hard game and I had a lot of fun to try to get a pattern for destroying the monster. I was only missing the possiblity to duck under some projectiles.
And I had the feeling that I could only destroy the blue projectiles with the blue light? Or does the others have a similar effects?
If you want to extend the story / theme you could stay with the greek/roman mythology and do something like the labours of hercules fighting medusa and other mythological beasts. And maybe some more interaction between different light or even combining 2 lights for a new effect in the later levels.
About the sliding bug, I got him only once but it felt like pressing multiple buttons causing this bug.
Had to test it on a slow pc, so I had similar interaction problems. What's the purpose of rain and the love hearts? Smite kinda worked as "Drop stone correctly on the pyramid".
It would be interesing if you could interact more with the slaves, if you look into further development from my perspective:
- Keeping them happy enough?
- Defend from raging slaves
- More Explanation
- ...
Otherwise you have maybe a little lack of gameplay. Another alternative would be to focus more on the mechanic of placing the cubes correctly.
The visuals are great, it's funny and I like the idea of additive movement causing havoc and chaos between the players and I think you got a well rounded game (graphics, mechanics, audio, ...). Only the physics / ragdoll behaviour weren't polished enough:
- Sometimes I had the feeling to be randomly above the ground
- Trigger for beggar cut scene too small, pushing back the player and losing the cat prince (already mentioned)
- Random death at the stairs when not jumping on them
- It felt impossible to catch a rotating cat prince (he wouldn't drop back on the vehicle even when moving forward)
- I didn't really feel the impact of the dropping roses?
- Sudden speedbursts, losing the cat
If you work that out it would be more smooth and an really great multiplayer game. Maybe you could also extend the idea with mechanics like Octodad / Mount your friends for keeping the player in the game.
It kept me going for a while, really addictive puzzle game, great job. I found it easy to understand since you can just press play to see the effects of the different pieces (teleport only working when the ball can keep the direction). A theme or story around the puzzle and you're good to go.
What you could improve:
- visual indicator which pieces are fixed and which are my own pieces (removable)
- clearing piece selection (back to cursor only) if you right-click in empty space
- picking up removable puzzle-pieces to place them at a new position
- background-music was too repetitive for me
- theming (replacing the black background with neat visuals like an old temple door, pyramid room, rune stone)
Bugs I found:
- Pyramid 2 Level 3, one of the red balls jumped between the maze and the black background instead of following the route
Great animation and awesome look of the city. I had fun playing it for the short time and it was well rounded. Maybe you could work on that you get more information what's ahead/above of you and get some variation in the obstacels. The only thing I missed was some background music.
I like the idea of being dependent on the strength of your fire with your movement. It gives a platformer a new complexity. For a platformer it was a bit too slow for me, but you could speed up the movement but the fire will lose more strength with higher speeds and restricting your movement.
Alternativly you could go more into the puzzle segment and make the level smaller, keep the speed and make more puzzles about the fire (spots that need light to open a door...)
Great mechanics and good work on the low pixel art. It kept me going for a while. Is there a rule how I can build the plant? Sometimes it didn't let me connect things.
I also I had a bug that it did not transition from the intro text to the actual gameplay or is the waiting time really long?
@TerraCottaFrog I could shoot (with sound) but it stayed for ~30sec. I had just started the .exe again after my first session.
About the building rules, that's what I have recognised while playing. I tried to go 2 blocks left/right to get the sunshine, but that was not allowed. So next time I have to plan better:)
@onyon yeah it's really clunky :D I would have loved to give it more life and more interaction (closing doors, fighting with the monsters about spots for benefits instead of just point fields).
And the feeling to have a finished game is really great so I think that will motivate me for the future jams:)
@MyIsaak yeah I think it would really need some introduction level with an easy maze and explain some interactions. Thanks a lot!
@TerraCottaFrog yeah I didn't found a good way in time to move the ray and player simultanously and giving the player some leeway when trying to change the ray direction. Thanks for the feedback!
@Alphish Thanks for the long feedback:) the idea behind it was that you'll always accumulate solar energy by default but slowly. Dependant on the amount of your energy the ray will last longer/shorter, so you have to decide if you can go really deep into the maze with the sunray or if you have to clean up in the front first. But you're right, it probably charged too quick. And there were only 2 fields: Bonus points (1000) and sunblocker-fields so you couldn't spawn camp with your ray.
The problem is that I couldn't implement elements in time which would give the player reasons to charge up to max (like destroying the summoning circle of monsters) or go the short route for targets which give extra solar power, so the player has to think more about when and where to shoot.
Really fun idea playing with music:) I needed some time to get it but my tribe kept me going, really nice animation with the dancing. I missed some variation in the needed music pieces (often joy+fun, fear+sad, ...), so maybe more different events?
You could also expand into more modern ages later if you succesfully lead your tribe and add more emotions / music instrument melodies and new needs for the tribe if you want to develop it further.
Also sometimes I felt like the melodies didn't play but maybe that was because of not starting with joy/sad.