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Team Ex-Sword-Stential

Games

YearLDThemeGameDivisionRankOvFuInThGrAuHuMoCo
201532An Unconventional WeaponEx-Sword-Stential Crisisjam1053.813.633.893.894.473.923.913.7375

Performance over time

overall score (left axis) percentile (right axis)

Scatterplots

Fun vs Overall

Innovation vs Overall

Theme vs Overall

Graphics vs Overall

Audio vs Overall

Humor vs Overall

Mood vs Overall

Comments by Team Ex-Sword-Stential

LD32 — An Unconventional Weapon

Eye Rush by asobi tech 2015-05-09T00:45:00

Hey, Asobi! This is Taunia. :)

Your game development is certainly getting stronger, and you've done a lot better in terms of comfort, control schemes and movement associated with gameplay. You've both simplified and complicated strategy with this one -- you really need to move your eyeball cluster around in order to do the most damage, and that in and of itself is a challenge.

The only thing you really need to work on is graphics. I know that they are not your strong point -- and that's okay! You've gotten a good foothold here with the Gameboy-styled pixel art but your text needs to be easily readable from your peripheral vision -- make that your new rule of thumb. You also need more contrast in terms of your enemies as they're flipping around, especially when you're going to have moving stars in the background.

For a shooter, that is naturally moving quite quickly for what it is, you need to keep aware of what parts of the game are moving and which are not -- the eye can only easily track so much at once, and you don't want to overwhelm players with too much movement with similarly-colored objects.

All in all, it was very comfortable to play and I felt it fit the theme very well. Something about shooting eyeballs in space was also very funny to me, so I enjoyed that too. :)

You did REALLY well this round. Do more games in this style. Perfect it. You have a knack for it.

Ice Story ( koori monogatari 氷物語 ) by Christina Antoinette Neofotistou 2015-04-22T23:00:00

Nice art, music and SFX :)

ICE CREAM by little_polygon 2015-04-21T17:53:00

I spent a while trying to dodge everyone lol, until I figured out I was supposed to run them over XD which makes sense with the theme. Awesome game :D Really like the looks and the cool 3d sorcery you got going on.

Billy McMath Solves Problems by Manky 2015-05-08T00:51:00

Hey there! This is Taunia. :)

Okay, so, first of all -- I am horrible at math. I'm not even ashamed to admit that I clicked "NO!" faster than the Unity plug-in could process it.

That said, I was undoubtedly, entirely, completely entertained by this. In fact, the gameplay almost took an auxiliary back-seat to the amusing story, the quick but articulate (in terms of visual storytelling) sketches and the amazing audio/voice-overs.

This was basically a really long cut-scene with math-related QTE's, but by golly was it ever a super entertaining really long cut-scene with math-related QTE's. I began really loving the character and his situation, and looking forward to the result of all my hard work solving elementary-school-level math problems.

While not entirely innovative, it met the criteria for the theme, and certainly had a really big heart and soul. I found the MSPaint graphics to be really expressive, believe it or not.

Great job, guys! :) I had fun!

Velo-City by TeamEagle 2015-04-21T17:39:00

I loved controlling the ship, and seeing the buildings and obstacles grooving to the beat is awesome :D Really good game, wish that I didn't have to input my name every time I crash to play again, a quick restart button would have been nice, and maybe remember my name by using playerprefs.

Now... I have no idea what is the unconventional weapon D: Seems like it doesn't have anything to do with the theme at all.

Dischord by Wefiends 2015-04-25T08:09:00

Brilliant idea :D Great entry!

Dictator by Tanner 2015-04-24T21:12:00

I had trouble with the speech recognition, it wasn't quite working, I had to repeat kill lots of times and it would only work randomly one time or another.

Fathom by Joe Williamson 2015-04-21T09:31:00

This is brilliant! Such a great idea :D fun puzzle!

Drums of the Dead by plams 2015-04-22T23:08:00

Nice Entry!

Guardian Shield by longshorts 2015-05-11T18:53:00

Hello, Longshorts! :) This is Taunia.

This is actually really solid for a compo entry. Very well done. The graphics are very clean, you've implemented the idea of "movement in space" very well, but I can't help but feel the game is a little on the slow side. I kept wanting to push the ship to the top of the screen (and ended up getting hit by things beyond the field of view) because I wanted the darn thing to hurry up so I could smash into more asteroids.

I like the idea that you need to harvest gems. I also initially thought that the gems would restore my shield faster. Perhaps you could balance out the difficulty of the game by creating different enemy hazards and upping the travel speed? I could see this game being consistently challenging if you took the time to really balance it, especially when the point of the game is to run into things, wherein most similar games the point would be to avoid things. It really throws you off to begin with, but in a good way.

This is a good, solid foundation for something bigger. You've done really well. The only thing that's really missing is some good spacey background music. :)

Slam Jam Bakery by DragonXVI 2015-05-11T19:07:00

Hands down, one of the (if not the) best compo entry I've played so far.

While the entire idea of using a jetpack to mobilize yourself in a game is not a new idea, you definitely took a new spin on it with the Jam Gun, being that it shoots an amorphous blob that you can kind of fudge (lol bakery pun) into small corners and use it to jam (lol another pun) up the works.

What else can I say about this? It was fun to play, it fit the theme, the graphics were VERY well done, and the audio was stellar. The mood was good. The audio was good. High ratings all around.

I think the only thing that bothered me was the controls. Not necessarily aiming the Jam Gun, but utilizing the Jam Gun to jump. For some reason I couldn't get the Jam Thrust move consistently, and that created a bit of annoyance, as I'd jump high, turn on the Jam Thrust and end up shy of the platform by maybe 2 or 3 pixels. The general platform controls were fine, and actually quite smooth -- the Jam Gun related controls just need a bit of spiff and polish.

Add a few more levels and mechanics and you've got yourself a finished, marketable game. Great job, you guys -- and SO impressive for a Compo entry. :D

Beep Boop by CJ K 2015-05-11T19:20:00

What I like about this game is definitely longer than what I felt needed work. The controls were very smooth, I liked the minimalist, old-school graphics style and the tonal audio/SFX. I also enjoyed the gameplay mechanics immensely.

However, as an individual who is notoriously bad at platformers in general, ending up back at the beginning every time I failed a jump was intensely frustrating, and caused me to stop playing even though I wanted to continue with the levels.

For a game with mechanics such as this, you really want to make sure that the player, at minimum, ends up back at the beginning of a new "section" of puzzle/platforming, and not farther back than what they've already completed. It can make things tedious and wear things rather thin, and you want to make sure that the game doesn't get stale. You want to make sure the player is either a) experiencing something new or b) overcoming an obstacle they haven't mastered yet, in order to keep things moving.

Other than that, this was solid. :) Good job!

ERR by LukeZaz 2015-04-23T04:39:00

Interesting, but it was quite slow for a long time indeed. Could have been better with faster respawn rates from the start.

Gravity Gunner by Perjoka 2015-04-21T22:12:00

I like the lowpoly looks of it :) The gravity gun presented some weird behaviour at times, but that's expected from a 48 hours entry I guess XD cool to see a unreal engine game in the compo

The War Dog by Xinelu 2015-04-25T06:41:00

The idea to use a Dog as weapon is not so innovative, and about the Audio: Honestly, your music doesn't fit with the aesthetics of the game, you tried to create a serious atmosphere but unfortunately you failed, poor vst quality, very very poor arrangement, try to improve the envelopes and velocities with midi instruments in the next time, I liked the musical idea but you should improve this, and finally where's the Sound Effects of this game?

The revenge of the little garlic by borgi 2015-04-21T19:03:00

http://puu.sh/hm0dz/e4ccd5e927.jpg
My vampire got stuck on the door :(

Dinos Vs Volcanoes by Hambone 2015-05-08T08:52:00

Hello, Hambone! This is Taunia. :)

There is a lot of potential here to be more than just a PvZ "clone". I really liked the idea of having to collect certain types of minerals to build a certain type of volcano, and have that sort of science-y aspect to it.

That said, there wasn't any in-game instruction on what to gather to build what volcano, what each volcano was and how effective it was against each dinosaur. For a PvZ-style game, knowing exactly what item does what is a very important part of the entire idea -- otherwise you just end up putting pieces down haphazardly with no real rhyme or reason, and that can break your game.

I agree with another commenter that the entire mineral-gathering part of the game could most certainly be an entirely different part of the game. It doesn't have to be like collecting sunshine -- in fact, you could probably make a game with gameplay completely independent of a PvZ-style game and it would still be entertaining. I'd play it.

Roll Initiative by Lynx 2015-04-22T17:51:00

Cool idea XD Kind of hard to play though

Oh Sheeeep! by marinalucio 2015-04-21T08:09:00

It's an awesome game for a first try! :D Really Proud <3

White Night by VictorL 2015-04-21T09:16:00

I don't quite get it, but it's pretty. xD Apparently I killed it, but I don't really know what it was, or how I did it.

Word Smith by nevet 2015-04-21T09:19:00

I didn't quite manage to play :( Was by myself here, tried to check how the battle worked but the hits didn't seem to be connecting, or at least I didn't see any player feedback that they were.

Woody Wu by jstzwd 2015-04-21T09:21:00

I can't quite predict where the poop is going to land :( Needs some sort of power meter or something to help me know what I'm doing. To me the shots felt quite random.

Not My Panties! by Karai17 2015-04-22T17:16:00

Couldn't play, Got this bug:
http://puu.sh/hn2DF/326bbcf658.png

Cutest Weapon by rzfmzn 2015-04-21T19:10:00

Weird controls, felt weird to move around and to shoot (I had to come back to this page to see what was the button to use the cat). I'm still not sure what is going on with the weird ghostly figure, I tried throwing cats at it to no avail.

Joe by Chris Olsen 2015-04-21T09:15:00

Beautiful art, had a hard time trying to do the hug-leap correctly, died a lot.

Le Baguette Man by Kahztein 2015-05-10T21:42:00

The only really detrimental thing about this entry is the music. I'm saying this first because it was the absolute first thing I noticed. It was like sandpaper on my eardrums. Audio can make or break something like this. This was a game about a french dude. If you're making the audio, why not go for something more like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6BuZOYboZM ...?

^^^ This is what I think of when I think "La Baguette Man" -- even a rudimentary 8-bit facsimile of this sort of music or even some free-use french accordion music would've suited it just fine. I have NO IDEA what that music was. It was like brain gravel. I left the audio on to hear the SFX. Those were fine. Then the audio got shut off.

The problem with the audio being the way it was, it really ruined the mood of the game. Literally, things like music and sound can really amp up even a simple platformer like this one. It's VERY disappointing, because you guys had so much potential for a very pleasant soundtrack that would compliment the rest of the game and you didn't do that at all.

That said (and I'm sorry if I seem very negative about the sound, but it just makes me go "??????" when I see an obvious (and easy) opportunity thrown away that brings down other aspects of the game), the gameplay (while a bit floaty) was rather fun. I enjoyed the croissant bombs -- the aiming was a bit sticky in terms of the croissants hitting the terrain, but I understand that calculating trajectory is challenging and perhaps not something you had time to figure out. There were also other sticky things, such as run-jumping, and collision with enemies, but the jumping itself (while floaty) was playable and enjoyable. I actually really liked the fact that he hung in the air for awhile before coming down. It seemed to fit his character.

The graphics were also very good. You did a stellar job, PyxelEdit -- especially for a compo entry. You can recognize what everything is, and your overall color palette is very simple/well-used in terms of the sky and terrain.

One thing you guys DID nail was the tutorial. That is basically a perfect Compo-Game-Jam tutorial, that many people usually don't manage to fit into their game. Good work! :D

Overall -- this is a solid entry ... but only if you turn off the audio.

Le Baguette Man by Kahztein 2015-05-12T05:11:00

It's okay, Kahztein. You did your best. :)

If you're sure you can't create quality music in a short period of time? You don't have to have any music at all. People will, of course, say you need music, but the players will still be able to get the most out of the main parts of your game and enjoy it just as much without it. :)

Nimble Forge by matestinha 2015-04-22T16:41:00

Fun idea, most of the combinations I tried would result in nothing though, but understandable for such a short time XD

Ex-Sword-Stential Crisis by Team Ex-Sword-Stential 2015-05-07T09:28:00

@uvwar:

I saw my opportunity to take revenge and I took it. ;D

Terraform Junction VS by Jwatt 2015-05-07T09:25:00

I've never understood things like poor multiplayer facsimiles of the road-building tool from SimCity.

Isn't it great how when you leave negative, nonconstructive feedback on someone's entry they can come over to your entry and leave equally negative, nonconstructive feedback?

At least I can write dirty words with the roads.

Terraform Junction VS by Jwatt 2015-05-12T03:31:00

Hey, I voted your game fairly. I gave you several stars in some categories. I always vote games fairly and objectively, no matter how bad their developer's PR.

You shouldn't assume things, you know. It's bad form.

SHROOMS by duon44 2015-04-21T17:44:00

I like the looks of it :)