Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → TechnoPorg
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | 53 | Delivery | 👥 | Void Scion | jam | 1050 | 3.05 | 3.00 | 2.80 | 2.97 | 3.10 | 3.13 | 2.55 | 3.04 |
This was great! Thanks for adding controller support - this was the first game I played which had that. My criticisms/suggestions would be that the music got a bit repetitive after the umpteenth time, and that some weirder things could have been requested, to add to the humor :) Overall great job, though! You did a lot with what is, on the surface, very little.
As others have said, the graphics were definitely where this game shone. In terms of audio, I did find the trebuchet rotation to be unpleasantly squeaky. Gameplay was more repetitive than some games, but still fun. I appreciate that the skip feature was added for when my shots went horribly wrong!
This game is a gem!
However, I have to agree with the person above me about the difficulty. I just set up an AHK script eventually! Further skill tree upgrades could be desirable.
I wasn't able to reach the ending where I get the royal jelly, as it describes in the description. As a small note on bees, I believe royal jelly is only fed to larvae to make them queens, and not to the adult queen. Bees are fascinating creatures, so it could be fun to integrate more bee mechanics that harness their unique characteristics.
Graphics are gorgeous and fit the theme, the music was fun, and the level of polish was amazing. Well done!
Overall, this was one of the better done games I've played so far this jam! It has a really creative idea, and great execution.
I unfortunately encountered a number of small bugs to do with letters getting stuck that took away from my overall enjoyment of the game. First, a B from the word "Ruble" got stuck in the dish at one point. It's not visible in the screenshot, but it's jittering around in there, and resisted all efforts to be grabbed. Additionally, a letter got stuck between the bell and the screen border (second screenshot), which resulted in 14 accidental rings as I tried to get it out and eventually gave up, since I was fired at that point anyways.
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Your profile says you're not any good at music, but I would disagree. The game music was fun and upbeat! The scribbling sounds added a lot to the immersion, and were a nice touch. The game was full of those little but meaningful things, actually! The bell tone could have been a bit more clear, but the audio was overall a strong point.
The scoring mechanics were clever. I actually didn't love the leaderboard, as I feel strongly about privacy and don't believe that a jam game should be uploading anything to the Internet. However, props to you, as it still worked just fine with the Internet unplugged during my testing.
The graphics fit the game nicely. The background was especially good, in my opinion. Out of everything, what stuck out the most to me was that the IK on the arm was top-notch. Well done!
The "deli" + "very" interpretation of the theme was clever, but I feel like it's a stretch, and trying a bit too hard to be unique.
I would not have guessed that this was your first time using Godot! The game had a great level of polish. You didn't try to do too much, and what you did was well done. Awesome game!
@antti-haavikko Upon further reflection about the privacy thing, I realize your game isn't more likely than any of the others that I've played to be doing unwanted things with my data, so I apologize for my irrational and petty remark.
I mentioned jam games specifically because they come from a less reliable source. For example, Hollow Knight has cloud saves, and, no offense to you, I trust Team Cherry and their professionally published product more than your unsigned jam binary. For the most part, people mean well, though, and if not, that's what an antivirus is for, I hope.
I wish you the best of luck in the rest of the jam!
I really enjoyed how there were two "phases" to the gameplay! That made the game feel satisfyingly hefty. I got this happy dopamine rush every time I completed an order :smile:.
My two criticisms were the lack of a brake on the van, and the bug that if I was already at a checkpoint when I completed my order, I had to leave and re-enter to get it to register. Those were very small complaints, though, and barely took away from the experience.
If you were to develop this idea further, making different kinds of burger orders, with lettuce, tomatoes, etc. could add variation to the gameplay. Really fun game overall, and good job!
I really like how the gameplay had two distinct phases. It made the game feel really complete! Also, you had physical keybinds, which I am very grateful for as a user of the Dvorak layout.
It felt like the jumping could have been higher, as I could barely make it over the fireball, though.
But the art was great, the music was fun, and the gameplay was engaging. Overall, great job!
I love this game! Like others have said, the mechanics are simple but unique and engaging, and it has a fun atmosphere. Based on what others I've tried so far, this one deserves to win. The one thing I would suggest is that the timer only start with the arrival of the first boat, as it's not fair to the player to take away their time when they literally can't do anything.
As many others have said, the graphics are gorgeous!
I seem to be saying this on all non-Godot games, but physical keybinds would be really nice to have. QWERTY chauvinism otherwise forces all of us with alternative keyboard layouts to press buttons in weird spots on the keyboard.
The mechanics were simple but fun. The cart steering was immersive and the shooting mechanics were super satisfying. Slowing time was my favorite thing to do. It gave me such feelings of power!
Overall, really good job!
The tutorial was superlative! Thank you for providing a clear, built-in explanation of what to do! That really reduced confusion and improved the overall experience.
I also loved the mechanic of needing to use unpredictable NPCs to get your task done.
Nicely done! This was the most chill game I have played so far. The art felt "warm", for lack of a better word, and the lack of a timer was welcome! As a small thing, physical keybinds would have been nice, as I use the Dvorak layout, so I ended up having to press keys in weird places.
I'm a slow driver IRL, so I just went slowly and didn't have a problem with crashing :) The game was solid in all departments and well made overall! It felt like "Traveling salesman problem, LD edition". I could have kept going for a lot longer! My nitpicks are that a turning animation for the car would be nice, and the exe has the Godot icon in the file explorer. However, I would play this when fully released!
Pretty fun! It would be nice if it used physical keycodes for people with alternate layouts, though.
This was a stunning game. Thank you for bringing it into the world.
In terms of graphics, the particles at the center of the player character were a simple but beautiful effect that I adored. The nature art had a cozy low-poly style that I also loved. The inside of the hospital was a bit bland, but the story was the really captivating part of the game. You did a great job with it :heart:.
The balancing was really well done, in my opinion. My game was too easy, and others were too hard, but this one posed a good amount of challenge without becoming frustratingly difficult, and I thoroughly enjoyed mastering the platformer mechanics to get to the end.
The audio was nice. Nothing extraordinary, but it meshed well with the mood.
One thing I would caution about is that delivering joy to the woman near the entrance to the hospital makes you lose some of your jumping power, which I felt like quite a loss. You don't want players to resent giving joy. Perhaps it could be balanced differently, the story could make it more appealing to do so, or another mechanic could be found.
Additionally, if I may make a suggestion, you might want to opt out of the humor category for ratings. That's not really what this game is meant for, after all.
Amazing job!
I'm not a strong gamer, so I gave up before I mastered the learning curve of the controls. It reminds me of worlds like that Ender's Game, where there's a strong de-emphasis on up and down as part of the overall tactical mindset. The graphics were really well done, especially for a 3D game. Keep up the good work!
Nicely done! The music adds a lot to the silk road trader vibe. I got this happy dopamine hit every time I completed a level. Graphics suffered a bit in comparison to gameplay, but I was so absorbed in the puzzle solving that I didn't notice after a few minutes. The mechanics were simple but enjoyable - the best kind.
The lack of a proper end screen is one little thing I didn't like. Great game overall though!
This is a cleverly disguised puzzle game! I quite enjoyed figuring out how to shoot through the little crack.
A few small criticisms would be, the ability to turn the orientation of the ship in place would have been nice, and some more complex AI for a few types of sea creatures, even one that just pathfinds in a straight line to the player, would have added some more challenge and *depth* to the game (pun intended :smile:). Additionally, the graphics were pretty simplistic. Even some hue variation in the cave stones would have gone a long way.
The audio was fun and really fit the mood. Level design was done well, and the checkpoint system complemented it nicely!
Overall, great entry!
This is a really well-implemented game that I wish I could be good at. I'm not much of a gamer, so I found it too challenging to complete, but I do feel that the asteroid density could be decreased somewhat. It's still among the better games I've tried, though. Well done!
Windows build is fixed now.
@xamora The link to the theme is to deliver souls to the god at the end, through the sacrificial altar.
@m0zrat The intended gameplay path is that you follow the cobblestone trail from your spawn point, walking around the map and defeating the enemies you encounter, then upgrading your spells at the gargoyle shrine you encounter, before confronting the final boss and discovering the ending at the altar that appears when you defeat it.
@christian-zommerfelds Thank you for your feedback! We appreciate your taking the time to play our game.
We sincerely regret the lag - we ran out of time for extensive playtesting and just stuck to the area around the path. We believe the issue comes from having collision shapes on every mountain and water tile, and we will be sure to give more care to performance concerns and quality control in future jams!
An indicator of the direction for the player to go would definitely be beneficial for this short jam format, as we have heard it's fairly unclear what to do at the moment.
We'll make our next game even better!
@firespike33 Sorry about the lag issues you were experiencing. We had attempted to mitigate them by disabling certain tilemap features, but we unfortunately did not do our due diligence in testing every corner of the map.
Did the crash you encountered arise when using only the spear on the boss? We had a tester who discovered that the melee attack on a dead enemy causes a crash, but we would like to tease out all possible edge cases to figure out where we went wrong.
@antti-haavikko Wow, thank you so much for that writeup! Yours was easily the most detailed and constructive review we have received so far. I'll answer on behalf of the team.
The enemy and attack balancing were definitely the biggest things wrong with the game. It causes us so much pain to not be able to tweak a few numbers and re-upload it... We ran out of time to finish an enemy spawning mechanic, so we chose to only place a few, which we now realize was not the right decision to make. I had seen how many games were criticized for being too difficult, so we went too far in the other direction.
With more enemies, the attacks may become more distinguished from one another, as they fulfill the purposes of AOE damage, single-target melee, and long-range pierce respectively. Right now, though, in one-on-one combat, spamming the spear is all one really ends up needing.
>"nice blends for going from tile to another"
Like this one?
grassdirt.png
Despite spontaneously skipping school on Monday to get the game done, we still ran out of time to implement everything we had originally planned, nice tiles included! We were overly ambitious in our original vision for the game :) The second game jam we end up doing should go much more smoothly, not in the least because we'll have more than 2 months of prior game development experience going in. You're not wrong in thinking the game was incomplete. There was more we would have liked to put in, but overall, we got the important stuff, and are proud of what we created!
In terms of the more technical details, sorry about the frame drops and the crashes. Those always take away from the experience of a game. We had disabled the water tile animation to try and smooth out performance, but some other lag-inducing aspects of the game slipped through the cracks. We have since developed a much faster water animation shader, but it's too late to put that in now. The crash you encountered is because when the boss is hit quickly enough, the hit animation is played after the boss is dead. None of us were good enough gamers to discover that bug :smile:.
I would respectfully disagree that a restart button is necessary, in the context of the jam. Players are meant to walk around the map, defeat the boss, then finally experience the cutscene and end the game. The game is currently not going to be replayed extensively, so we directed our efforts where they would make more difference for the average player.
I'm not going to lie, it's hard not to take the criticism personally after pouring so much into the game, but at the end of the day, I recognize that it's only through honest feedback like yours that we're ever going to improve, so thank you again!
If you don't mind, I would really appreciate your opinion as a more experienced game developer on whether continued work on this game would be worth it.
Have a great day!
@dreamerflow The intended message at the end is that you delivered the souls to the evil god, who then took your soul as well. Sorry if that was unclear!
@dreamerflow You're a blood sorcerer with dark magic, so finding the evil god is "winning"! There is no good god, but when you deliver the souls, you have accomplished your goal! I hope that helps. Sorry for any confusion; please let me know if you have any more need of clarification.
5/5 in innovation! This game reassures me the AI takeover is far from imminent. Good for you for having this quirky idea and just going for it! Nicely done.
I liked the world map with all the levels. That was a cool setup. Nice bouncing sound, too! A few criticisms I would make: - There were no physical keybinds. I use the Dvorak layout, so I had to press weird keys to use the controls. - I couldn't figure out how to beat the Canada level. I got to the emergency shutoff and couldn't do anything. - There could also be more of a description of the game.
Still, congratulations on getting it done, and I hope you do end up developing it further, as hinted at in the map!
Physical keybinds would have been really nice.
I would suggest opting out of the Humor category, as that's not what this game is meant for. It has a really powerful and moving concept, and I was really touched by it. The platformer mechanics were weak, sure, but that was secondary to the important emotional aspect. Thank you!
I enjoyed this game! For only being made on the last day of the game jam, it's quite well done! There were a few small nitpicks I would make, though:
1. Physical keybinds. It really sucks for people who don't use QWERTY when you don't have them.
2. The river moved a bit slowly. I found myself getting pretty impatient by about 150 meters. If it scrolled at the same rate the salmon can swim, that would be great.
3. There was no audio. Even a generic water splashing loop would have added a lot to the game's immersion/mood.
Sorry if that sounds harsh. I'm trying to give constructive criticism, but I did genuinely like the game, and I don't want to make you feel bad. Awesome job!
My favourite thing about this game was the audio. It was nice and simple, but it really fit the mood, and didn't get repetitive at all, not a track which was obviously looped.
As well, the mood came across really nicely, and the map was my favourite part of the art! A little player indicator would have been nice, to show where you were.
The rowing mechanics were innovative, but also frustrating.
Overall, nice job!