My Life is Not Currency by rjhelms 2019-05-01T04:04:47Z
Ha! Hilarious take on the theme. I love full commitment to a bit!
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → TaqoShaq
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | 45 | Start with nothing | 👥 | Cipher | jam | 49 | 4.16 | 4.01 | 3.90 | 2.99 | 4.24 | 3.85 | 4.04 | |
| 2019 | 44 | Your life is currency | Dont Drop The Bass! | jam | 316 | 3.66 | 3.62 | 3.81 | 2.15 | 3.00 | 4.04 | 3.40 | 3.45 |
Ha! Hilarious take on the theme. I love full commitment to a bit!
Ha! Took me a second to figure out you weren't supposed to eat those carrots. Funny concept, nice work!
Nice work! The tone and theme were pretty fun! I ran the WebGL version and it seemed to work okay.
A few points of feedback: 1. If you end up doing another 2D game in the future with similar player character movement, I would recommend going with a rigidbody/force-based movement system. It would smooth things out a bit and make collision detection cleaner. 2. Looks like something might have been glitching a bit with the lighting. As a tip, if you want lighting in a 2D game but the light doesn't project onto anything but the floor, try using a white gradient .png instead! Doesn't slow down your game, and you won't have to deal with Unity's funny issues when it comes to lighting.
Wow, all of theme comments about the art style and polish are definitely deserved! One bit of feedback I have is that it would maybe add a bit more strategy satisfaction if, while you were buying your next upgrades, you had *some* information about your next opponent. Thus, one could make a slightly more informed strategic decision about whether to play it safe with what you have or gamble for a better powerup. Maybe just one or two of their abilities. However, one could just memorize the ten different fights so this feedback is more relevant if you end up implementing a larger set of semi-randomized encounters in the future.
Wow! Very neat. It all works really well together.
I may be dense but I wasn't able to figure out any branching paths besides petting the cat >_>
Nice work! Letting the player kill themselves in the menu is very funny! Additionally, it was a bit un-intuitive to lose my existing weapon if I buy another. Would have liked to switch weapons for the sword/bow combo!
Thanks for doing a WebGL build!
Ha! Took me a hot minute to figure out to press enter to get out of the title card! Regarding the difficulty, it probably would seem fairer if the enemy movements were a bit more predictable (I'm thinking maybe something similar to Crypt of the Necrodancer where the enemies move according to their AI but always on beat).
Alright let's push you over the 20-review line! Nicely done! Reminds me of minit to some degree! I like the idea of losing pieces of yourself, but they didn't really end up impacting gameplay all that much. Maybe something for the DLC!
As others have said here, really well-polished for 72 hours! I had to resist the temptation to leave a comment here on how to make the "gameplay" at the factory more fun, but I guess that was the point! Gives me a real "Papers Please" vibe!
I really liked how the visual were distorting with the player movement and loved the particle systems! Visually stunning!
However, the score text that appears each time you destroy an enemy was a bit hard to read, didnt even notice it until I had destroyed about 15!
Neat play on the theme that powerups at the beginning cost time (which effectively is life!). Additionally, it's nice to see that it's basically a finished product, with no major pieces missing.
My one piece of feedback would be to maybe change up the control system. Being only able to move in the direction one is pointing took some getting used to. I would personally opt for the "binding of isaac" or "enter the gungeon" type control scheme here (though I'm likely biased since that's what I used in my game!)
Nice work!
Alright lets get you over that +20 review line!
What a great mechanic! I was sad to see that it was over so soon! In those few levels you did such a great job expanding on it with a good difficulty increase with each subsequent puzzle. Bravo!
I had the same problem as Sondrian before me, that fire puzzle didn't switch off, and couldn't quite figure out how to move on! Tough without much feedback. That being said though, really nice atmosphere in the opening sequence!
Additionally, the fit with the theme was real nice!
Well done! I liked the music quite a lot! I think it took me a bit to realize what all the different mechanics and different pieces of UI are for. What techniques did you use for the 3D sprite grid? I'd be interested to try it out for myself sometime.
Very fun! I would echo some of the comments about the camera, but keeping in mind that a good third-person camera is always a real tricky art! I'd love to know what techniques you use to get such a clean 3D look.
Very nice work! All the music was lovely, I particularly thought the "blah blah" bassa-nova was hilarious. Turned out to be harder than expected too!
Wow! This was pretty hard! The animations look great, and movement feels good and it seems pretty complete. A few bits of feedback: 1. I would give some feedback when the player character gets hit. Even a short audio clip or a basic animation can really help. I got hit like 3 times by the first enemy in my first try and though I only got hit once. 2. On a similar note, it seemed ambiguous whether or not those regular enemies do damage if you collide with them. Given the current difficulty and how often they attack, damage on their attacks alone would probably be enough. 3. I had a glitch where every once in a while I wanted to double jump and it only let me single-jump.
Again, great work!
Aha! Took me a bit to figure it out! I think my one piece of feedback there would be to make the saplings visually stand out a bit more, to signal their significance. That being said though, it looks great and the attention to detail is nice. I'm not familiar with Godot so I don't know if it does this for you but it seemed like you had sound localization working to give you a good idea of where the enemies were in relation to you! Oh, and very nice music as well!
Happy to end out my night of reviewing with this one! And hopefully this is review number 20 for you!
Really liked the core mechanic! Probably the most innovative one I've seen in LD44 thus far! And thanks for making a webGL build!
The art looks great! Also really impressed for the amount of time you had. I really liked the fact that you need to take a tradeoff you needed to take when taking an upgrade. However, I wasn't sure what the movement curse was exactly supposed to do, the movement seemed to just jitter a bit. However, nicely done overall!
For those who can't get it to work in chrome, try out edge or IE (as blasphemous as it sounds).
Nice work! I like the music a lot. Two main notes: 1. I would try hosting it on Itch.IO to run in the browser there, it would make it easier for others to play (and would save on the troubleshooting some people are needing to go through). 2. The instantaneous death, if intended, is a bit brutal given that sometimes you can't quite see whats coming (you sometimes have things coming at you quickly from off screen, sometimes you are dropping down onto enemies offscreen, etc). I think things would have been a bit more fun if you maybe lost a coin slot each time you got hit or avoid creating situations where it is tough to avoid getting hit.
Nice work! Two pieces of feedback that I don't think were previously mentioned yet: 1. With platformers like this that are so dependent on jump precision, I would recommend a "mario-stlye" jump that isn't a perfect parabola! If I remember correctly, it's a matter of adding upward force while the player while the jump key is still pressed and then removing it when the player is dropping. This gives the player more control over the height jump and gives a "floaty feel" that allows for easier horizontal precision. 2. Since you used unity, try building for WebGL next time! Will make it easier for other players to rate your game since all they would need to do is open a webpage hosted on itch.io or something!
Looks really nice and is a great take on the theme! Surprised to find out its a first jam entry, really nice work! Looks like you used Unity, I would recommend trying out a webGL build, as it saves us reviewers from having to download and unzip.
The gameplay is responsive, and all of the audio/visual feedback makes it very clear what is going on! Was I supposed to be able to spam attacks (I'm not complaining, made it a bit more fun that way actually). Additionally, the end-of-level particle effect looked great!
My one bit of feedback is that it was tough to initially tell the difference between the walls and the bits of blue that do damage.
@jomiak Whoops! That's on me for not testing that out! Thanks for the heads up! Fix forthcoming.
@bitzawolf Should be back up now! Let me know if you have any further issues!
@amerigo-gazaway @jjjjason - We actually did the audio sync manually, without third-party packages.
Basically, since we were only dealing with many different layers of music tracks, all with the same length and BPM, we didn't need to come up with a generalized solution and just needed it to work for one BPM. We relied exclusively on the audioSource.timeSamples method to keep track of where we were in the track, since the audio can get out of sync with the game clock pretty easily. Additionally, since we knew the BPM, we could keep track of at what time the previous beat was and where the next beat should be, which we compare against the player input to determine if the input was "on beat" or not.
Unfortunately this method doesn't work for WebGL (arrggghhh!) and doesn't work if you want to have a dynamic bpm or tracks with an unknown bpm.
@nandon interesting! I thought I had worked that out! Thanks for the feedback!
@euler-moises @masterproject Thanks for the feedback! Indeed, our final product ended up straying from the theme a bit! I guess if your "life" is music and keeping with the music makes it stronger, its some form of currency? Sure, I'll go with that!
Wow wow wow! So much polish on this! Great work! My only criticism was that the game's opening waves of enemies could be a bit faster. Want the first few loops to be easy, but not trivial!
I really appreciate the music, specifically the elegant transition between the day and night music.
Nice work! I think you strike the right balance in how much health you have and how much health you spend while shooting. I do think that the game's difficulty does ramp up a hair too quickly, though.
Nice work! Really dig the retro vibe! I think it would have been a bit more intuitive to have the striking direction be dictated by the player direction rather than a targeting system, but that may just be personal preference.
Ha! Pretty funny game. I liked the art style and the just plain silly speed the game gets to very quickly.
Looks real good, the pixel art is really nice! The units all separately serve separative purposes, which adds some depth! I had a nice time playing this!
Hey I played your game last time! Nice work on this one!
My one piece of feedback would be that the text scrolling is just a hair short, It could be sped up by like 30 or 40 percent.
How did you get that scan-line look over everything? It was something I would have liked to implement on mine!
Impressed that you guys used your own engine!
If you guys further work on this in the future, I would recommend focusing on the communication of the core systems in level 1. When the player spawns in initially, they see a key hole, but no key. Then they see they see two boxes labeled "pink" and "blue" but no indication of how those boxes will help them find a key that supposedly goes in the key hole. Took a while of fussing around (and many resets!) to understand how and why the colors were relevant to the key.
Having the first level completely dedicated to figuring that out would be super helpful, so the player can learn that mechanic without spending a lot of time manipulating the boxes during the trial-and-error stage.
Otherwise, nice work!
Loved that you guys went and actually pulled off the "the game starts as nothing" from an asset standpoint! The first set of audio was genuinely funny to a point where I was sad when it was gone after purchasing the next level! The background reacting to where collisions happen is a really nice touch as well.
Nice work!
Wow this was quite a lot to get done for 72 hours! Funny dialogue, and nice use of the theme. Once comment I would have is that it was a bit tough to figure out what you can and can't interact with in the world, since intractable objects didn't have much visual or contextual hints that separated them from their surroundings.
After a bit of time, I think I got it! This is a pretty novel idea. I think a lot of the comments will have to do with dealing with visual clutter, but you did a really nice job with the layout of information considering this is a jam!
As far as feedback goes, I couldn't figure out how far along I was. A number for the total number of floors would be helpful! Additionally, I think the x5 card was WAY under-priced. It alone got me very far by itself!
Nice work guys, impressed that this is a fully-implemented game with a core game loop, secondary game loop, AI, auto-generated content, multiple maps, progression system, etc. That's quite a lot to get done in the 72 hours!
My only major complaint is about the start of each race. I would: 1. Have a delay between when the race track opens and the race actually starts. It was a bit jarring the first few times to take in all that information at once! 2. Align the player's vehicle in the direction that the race goes. Always took a second to orient myself in the right direction. Either that or always have the race start on a "down" section of track.
Nice work, impressed with the amount you guys got done in the 72 hours.
Unfortunately, I wasn't quite able to figure out the second game-loop. I saw that I was able to dig through some tiles but not others, that my oil (and light) depletes over time, and that some tiles yield materials.
However, I wasn't able to figure out what to do once I got those materials. Was the button next to the money counter in the top left supposed to do something? Open an inventory? For reference, I was playing using the WebGL build. Maybe I'm just dense and missed something!
Otherwise, it looks like you all made a pretty ambitious game for a jam, and seem to have really executed. Nice work!
@james-dunlap Aha! Got it! I think there might have been a hover-over or selection animation on the backpack icon, implying that it was meant to have interaction. I didn't see the sell button at the shop!
The environment looks really nice! Gameplay-wise, I would add a method that allows the player to be proactive about getting more money, rather than needing to wait passively. Otherwise, there isn't much for the player to do.
Ha! Very funny. Frog-fractions-like.
I think I may have triggered a fail state on the flappy-bird portion when my bird didn't hit anything, but it turned out it didn't matter anyway!
Ah! I know you @shunaky ! I played necroblood last time! Cool to see you going for a different genre.
I like the atmosphere and the puzzle core concept, it works well with the theme and is a puzzle style I personally havent seen before!
I have three comments that haven't been addressed above: 1. I think the acceptance zone for merging can be made larger by the "are the blocks touching" logic being done with trigger colliders that are just slightly bigger than their collision volumes. That would help ease the spacebar-spamming. 2. The "respawn back at the beginning" can be a bit brutal for sections where you can't recover from a mistake. For example in level 1 where you need to get over a pit by using some cubes, which you can also lose down the pit. 3. A further-along version of this should probably open with a slightly easier puzzle! It took me an embarrassingly long time to get over that first ledge! Maybe start with a puzzle where you only need to use a single block.
Overall though, very nicely done.
I recognized the art style and general theme-ing and realized I played Iron Syndicate last time! Again, it looks really nice. Also like last time, I'm also impressed on the amount that was finished in the 72 hours this time, as you were able to get three game loops all finished.
Overall very funny! I loved the way the ingredients just flopped down on top of each other. A great example of a something that initially seems like a technical shortcut becoming a full feature.
My one comment would be that it was unclear which direction of the health bars was "good" and "bad". Something that could help would be having the background color of the health bar be something more neutral, using standard health colors like red and green, or having some audio feedback for when a sandwich takes away health.
Hey this is a really clever concept! Really liked the combination of the two genres, and it was a nice use of the theme overall!
Wow, this was really nice! That minimalistic pixel art is stunning! MY only piece of criticism is that the "give gifts" prompt probably shouldn't come up until you have everything? Maybe have some sort of feedback that although you're on the right track at that point, you still need to find something.
Otherwise, I can't think of any other criticism!
Nice work on that audio! Loved the liberal use of the tuba.
Two minor technical notes: 1. When spawning into some of the levels, the light would sometimes show its location in the darkness. Was this intentional? I dont think I would mind a version either way, it just seemed like it would happen on some levels but not on others. 2. I think the plates that trigger the light being shut off immediately would trigger when the mushroom character wasn't quite on them yet.
As a heads up, looks like the web version hangs after the loading bar sometimes.
Pretty unique concept but as other state before me, quite tough!
Nice work! I think I may have won? Was 20 point the maximum?
Two points of feedback: 1. I like the idea that the player sprite keeps getting bigger, but I think the sprite gets a bit TOO big. Already at around 10 points the sprite is taking up most of the sceen. 2. Although it's pretty simple, flipping the player sprite's x-scale when the player is moving left can go a long way!
Ha! Very funny use of the theme right at the beginning!
Pretty impressed with the look and feel of the game in general, nice work for the amount of time you had.
2 technical notes: 1. It would be easier to deal with the oncoming horde when you link a computer if you immediately close the menu when that button is pressed. I died a few times trying to fight with the menu still up! 2. Looks like the character sprite stops moving sometimes. My guess is that it's due to the character's box collider clipping on the square tilemap colliders. I think this can be remedied by making the character's collision box ever so slightly rounded on the corners and setting its friction to 0.
Looks like it no longer hangs, but the resolution is really, really low! Maybe enable window resize, resolution selection or set the default resolution to something like 1600x1200. Tried playing it, but unfortunately it was small enough where I couldn't read the instructions. Will check back in a bit!
Nice work! Really liked the atmosphere, and the shadow effect on the trees was a nice touch.
Two points of feedback: 1. Looks like there was a targeting symbol on the stun effect, but not one on the "revive" effect. It would be helpful to have one on both to understand the area of effect! 2. I think the time between encounters could be made a bit shorter, as there ended up being a good amount of indle time, particularly early on.
Holy moly! This is a very cool concept and has such great polish for the amount of time you had. I really like this interesting take on old adventure games. Needing to solve puzzles by trying out different combinations of characters and understanding their relationships to each other is really novel. Having the secretary be a robot and thus un-posessable was real clever, too.
Two points of feedback: 1. The first door kept playing its opening sound even when it was already open. 2. I think the game threw a few too many characters into the mix all at once too early. Took me a while to figure out what I was supposed to be doing after I got past the first door.
That art and music is really great! The intro screen in particular looks particularly nice!
Just two points of feedback gameplay-wise: 1. Thought the game got a bit too tough too quickly. I would tone down the spawn rate of dangerous obstacles early-on to let the player figure out what is harmful and what isn't a bit easier. 2. I think it would be helpful if there was more a visual differentiation between the candy that can harm you and the candy that you are trying to get. Took me a bit to figure out which was which.