Bounce Block by Josh Ayres 2018-08-13T03:43:06Z
What are the controls?
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → Teo Miklethun
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 49 | Unstable | Nice Work, Nimrod! | jam | 714 | 3.55 | 3.50 | 3.75 | 4.50 | 3.55 | 3.65 | 2.58 | 3.42 | |
| 2020 | 46 | Keep it alive | Game of Life+ | compo | 105 | 3.93 | 3.77 | 3.84 | 3.56 | 3.46 | 3.66 | |||
| 2018 | 42 | Running out of space | Rigid Flame | compo | 124 | 3.78 | 3.83 | 3.80 | 4.20 | 3.40 | 3.41 |
What are the controls?
To make a metroidvania in only 48 hours is crazy impressive, so nice job!
The art style is very nice, and the gameplay innovative, but it kinda feels too luck based to me. Still though, nice job!
I just get a black screen whenever I try to play it
Great job, your game has amazing game feel! This game seems very easy just looking at it, but when you actually play it, you realize just how hard it gets.
I got someone who sold negative paper? Is this a bug, or am I just missing something? 2018-08-15.png
Regardless though, sweet game!
The art and music are both great, and the gameplay's quite a challenge to keep em alive... I'm not actually sure how you're supposed to win though...
The art and music are both great, and the gameplay's quite a challenge to keep em alive... I'm not actually sure how you're supposed to win though...
This game is just so charming that any gameplay problems wouldn't matter... but yet the gameplay's pretty good!
Fun game! The difficulty curve might need a little bit of smoothing out, but overall good gameplay and mechanics.
Fantastic puzzle design, especially considering the time constraints.
It's hard to make a creepy atmosphere in such a short amount of time, but you did a good job!
So impressive! I love how you have to manage the space in front of and behind you. It adds up to probably the most unique infinite runner game I've ever played. Great job!
The lag's a little bothering, and the music could be improved, but overall, amazing job!
Great game! I wish there was a sprint or something though.
Amazing job! One of, if not the best ld42 game I've played. I got to level 15! Please balance the game a tiny bit more, polish it up a bit, and release this as a full game!
Awesome game with amazing art! Great job!
Great game! I get stressed out by time limits, so there was a mode without one. For example, it could start out in a full board with random tiles and you scored based on how many moves it took you to get down to 1 tiles, or something like that. Still, awesome concept and execution.
Awesome job! This is a great example of a few simple mechanics working very well with each other leading to a game with a lot of depth!
Awesome game! I love the screen shake and the other little things that make it just feel good!
Amazing game, probably the best ld42 game I've seen so far! Everything from the visuals to the audio is so polished, and as soon as I saw the idea, I knew I had to play it. I actually did a similar concept but in a completely different direction. That being said, it was sometimes annoying getting stuck when it felt like I shouldn't have, so if it's possible to make the trail not solid for a little bit longer, that seems like it would help a lot (Or if the trail solidifies only when you exited a certain radius of it, make that radius slightly bigger. It might also work to make the trails not solid from below, or if you have upwards velocity.) The biggest issue I found though, was that if you jump straight up, you can skip many of the challenges. I'm not positive that this is unintentional, but it seems to make some levels trivial. I'm not sure how to fix this issue, but I think it's worth considering. Again though, excellent job!
Easily the best atmosphere of any Ludum Dare game I've played so far! As for bugs, it seems that gravity keeps effecting the players y velocity even when they're on a wall. I look forwards to seeing where this game goes!
Great game. The graphics were especially great. One thing that I think could be improved is the pacing. It was much too slow, and much too easy for most of the game. If the monsters could eat bigger chunks, or there were more, that would be a great improvement. A bug I found was that a bullet stayed in air for some reason. 2018-08-15 (1).png Overall though, great job!
Really cool, especially with the level generation. That being said, some of the levels seemed to be wayyyy to hard , with nearly instant death. Still, any level generation in 48 hours is impressive. Besides that, I'd just recommend making it so you're just facing where you move instead of it taking one move to turn and another to move. Overall though, great!
The wait after each move before you can make the next is a bit much, but the music and everything else is amazing! Great job!
@connell I know, I'm not saying it shouldn't be. But take a look at other turn based games with similar movement, e.g. snakebird: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJJa3hMbs4s or rust bucket: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HOUkehuX2A These games are both turn based, but almost immediately after you make a move, you can make another. You don't have to. Theoretically, the player could just wait forever and nothing would progress. But the player SHOULD be able to execute as fast as they can think, and shouldn't be arbitrarily restricted by the animation time, and the few frames directly after when movement isn't allowed. If the player knows what they want to do exactly, the execution of that should take almost no time whatsoever.
Like minesweeper: -Addicting -Clicking shapes -Revealing space -Hurts my brain
Not like minesweeper: -Minesweeper's incredibly frustrating when you mess up -Minesweeper has no plot -This has pretty colors
Nice job! I really like the music especially!
I love all the animations, etc. that make this game feel polished!
This game is a masterpiece of design. The controls could be tightened a little, and it probably should have some music, but the core game play is infuriating but genius (although recovery is too difficult)
I think there's a bug where you can't leave the wall for a second. Other than that, I think the controls are a little clunky, the screen shake is a bit much, and that it could use some polish, but overall not bad.
The controls are a little floaty, and the camera's kinda all over the place, but the rest is great, so keep it up!
Cool game! The grid feels a bit big to fill up, but it's still fun to play.
I wish the cups were more stable, and I think there should be a bigger penalty for cups that drop, because I found that the best strategy was to just spam cups. Regardless of that though, really fun game, and very good physics.
Great game! It's an adorable little platformer that knows what it is and what it's trying to do, and does it very well. It's polished, but it still has that "made by one person with love" kinda feel.
Great game! The jump particles seem to repeat eventually, and I think the music shouldn't restart whenever you die, but besides that, great job!
Love it! Often felt a bit like trial and error instead of puzzle solving though, but still the art is amazing, and the character reminds me of Vivi <3
Very cute game! That being said, the game play is kinda grindy, so I think there should be some way to save your game. Overall though, good job!
I wish it saved after each level, but the atmosphere is amaaaazing, and the music's great!
Awesome game. Truly sooo much fun. That being said, I wish the player moved faster, and I wish the hit boxes were a little better. In addition, I think winning gives you a "you lose" screen, which is an easy but very important fix. Overall though, this entry was amazing! Keep it up!
Not the greatest game play ever, but it doesn't need it, the atmosphere is where this game shines.
I'm not entirely sure. I might have the pressure plate order found in some different way than with audio queues. For example, in the starting room, there could be something subtly hinting at it Alternatively, if you wanna keep the audio puzzle, you could have the pressure plates have a different sound when it's incorrect than when it's correct. As silly as it sounds looking back on it, since the pressure plates are so hidden, without a sound coming from the pressure plates that weren't correct, I wasn't even sure they were part of the puzzle or just a strange variation in the floor.
@dangogamedev No problem! Still, even without that, it's a great game, especially for 48 hours!
I love the game! I feel like the mirror mechanic could have been taught a little clearer, but once you get the hang of it, it's a challenge, but fun!
Nice game, but I feel like winning just requires getting lucky with how the balls hit you though. Is that right, or is there more skill to it than I realized?
I'm not sure why it's a snake, as you can't run into yourself, and I wish it moved just a little bit faster, but overall, great job!
The gameplay isn't really that compelling to me, mainly because the anti-virus range seems much to small. That being said, the viruses lead to some amazing proceduraly generated platforming/maze solving. If you were to make this into a full game, that's what I'd focus on. Great job overall though!
Very steep difficulty curve, but very fun and amazing sound design!
Great game! I want an entire game made out of the escape from the planet's gravity mini-game!
Amazing game all around. Your game is so good that I would be incredibly surprised if you didn't win anything. It's almost hard to believe how quickly you made something this impressive. That being said, some music would do wonders.
Great game. The cars sometimes flipped upside down though.
This game is sweet! I would never think to put 2048 in 3D!
@winnie33 Thanks for the feedback! I first had the trail never disappear, but play testers said they didn't like it. The reason I think it's more fun this way, is because without it disappearing, you're encouraged to star as still as possible, which isn't very fun. With it disappearing, you can use the movement, which is the most fun part of the game in my opinion. To make it more likely you'll run out of space, I added a combo system (destroy a bunch of ships in one blast, and you get a score multiplier).
@tombus I used jukedeck. It's awesome for quick game music, and the rules explicitly state "Content generators are allowed."
@teo989 Very fair criticism, I was in the middle of adding more enemies when I ran out of time.
@sthor726 Thanks for the feedback! That's an interesting idea, and something I would certainly test, but unfortunately as a consequence of the collision detection system that'd actually be pretty hard to do at this point. More enemies will hopefully be coming, but I just ran out of time.
@stefan-jovanovic What bugs are you talking about?
@jamison Thank you so much for the feedback. The multiplier does indeed go up beyond 2, but only after a long time. Given more time, I would have balanced that better, but right before submission hour I realized the way I calculated the multiplier lead to some easy ways to exploit and get large scores. I over corrected, but have since gone back to make it more balanced (uploaded 3X mult starts at 10 kills). And yeah, that problem of encouraging waiting time is the reason I added the combo system, but that certainly didn't fully fix it (especially in it's uploaded state). What else would you recommend to fix that? Should I make the trail disappear faster, or do you have any other ideas?
@awix Thanks for the feedback! What should be improved about the music?
@maksim-chugunov Yup, you got it! Originally you could only blast by pressing space, and you'd make 1 circle, but then I realized that holding space to make as many as you want was more fun.
@titos2k Thank you for the feedback! There's a combo multiplier whenever you get multiple aliens with one boost. Do you think making this combo multiplier easier to get and more substantial would fix this problem?
Fantastic level design and a great mechanic. I'd recommend removing the move count entirely, or perhaps only unlock it after the game is won without it.
In chrome it won't seem to play (the controls appear at the top of the screen): 2020-04-22.png In edge it works slightly better, but it seems many UI elements are broken: 2020-04-22 (1).png 2020-04-22 (2).png
I would really love to play this game, so please let me know if there's a better browser I can use.
I actually ran into a few soft locks in the post jam version.
1) Whenever I crafted the white flower, my camera started glitching up and down, meaning I couldn't interact with anything. 2) In combat if you run out of seeds there's no way to get them back like you can in the normal gardening. 3) In combat once my flower dissapeared into seeds before it could do anything, every turn, no matter what flower I used.
That being said, no other game in the jam so far would have been nearly compelling enough to get me to retry after all of these issues. So fantastic job on the characters, art, and everything else wonderful about this game!
One of the most innovative game of life based games I've seen so far! It's nice seeing a bunch of other people also making games to honor conway. :)
Excelent entry. Great mechanics, and wonderful presentation. My only recommendation would be to remove the rounds system. I'd try to make harder puzzles with as few elements as possible, but make it so that if you complete a round, you're done with the level. It was pretty tiresome to restart whenever I failed, or worse, to realize that because of my previous setup, the next round would be much harder.
Without a doubt some of the best puzzle design I've seen this jam. Really great job on leading the player through your mechanics. In "fun with a friend" there seem to be some strange interactions that occur when the two characters enter the same square or get sufficiently close (at least strange interactions visibly). I'd recommend adding a simple animation for when this occurs to make it clearer what happened.
@chloeofarroyo It's a flaw in my level desgin that it seems that way, but it's actually just that the configuration in the second level is stable, even if you add a cell. The solution is therefore to remove a cell.
@chloeofarroyo Thanks, that's really helpful feedback!
@chloeofarroyo Thanks! That's really useful feedback!
@le-slo Thanks for the feedback! I absolutely agree that the weakest part of this game is the level design. Unfortunately I didn't have much time to work on that aspect, which made the difficulty curve terrible. I'll be sure to change undo to Z if I make a post-jam polished version. I'll also try to see if I can make a much simpler introduction to the idea of altering the game state after the first iteration.
@tesseract Thanks for bug report. I wasn't able to test on Linux, so that's really helpful!
Aesthetically great, albeit a bit simple on the gameplay front. Overall though, really nice entry.
Loved the style and presentation. My only advice would be to try and give stronger signals to the player about what they need to do to prevent the king from dying. It was only on my third go around that I noticed the hunger and health meters for the king.
Great game. The aha moment at the end was great, and well lead up too. I'm not sure if level 6 is as hard as was intended, however.
Fantastic entry. Really nailed the presentation and the core gameplay loop. Every time I died, I felt like "hmm, I think I know how I could do better the next time", and so I felt compelled to play again. That meant that this game took the longest of any this jam before I felt like I was done with it.
That being said, there are a few minor isses in my mind:
1) In case you're not aware, there's a bug where if you land on a corner after jumping with the mushroom, you can get stuck.
2) The controls felt very weird and took a while to get used to. My guess is that this is because the grab and throw buttons were not the same, but I'm not entirely sure.
3) The reaper probably shouldn't collide with food. Likewise, I found that about 2/3rds of the time I threw food at the furnace while it was full, I would have prefered it to go through instead of bounce off. Since a big part of the gameplay is moving the food, this should feel as smooth as possible.
4) I assume this came down to lack of time, but I think the game could really benefit from a win condition.
What a delightful and highly polished game! Out of curiousity, how is the "total" calculated. I had a total of 160 organisms, but the "total" score was 306.
So obviously it seems that scope was a little to big for this one. Understandable. But there's A LOT of potential here. Using celluar automata like this to make a challenge is such a great idea, and for the amount of time, very well done.
The real excellence here though, are those relatable file names, featuring such beaties as: -furrest.png -twee.png and my personal favorite -thicc.png
Only things I'd suggest is to (a) make it so that if you press left while pressing right, then let go of right, then the game will take you left and (b) make the speed controllable, so it feels like there's a risk/reward to going fast.
Super cool game! Pretty fun to play through, love the aesthetic. One thing I'd recommend changing is to make it so that any teddy bear will calm the protagonist down, just because when we first became anxious we went back to the last teddy bear not knowing when the next would be and nothing happened.
Really neat concept! I love isometric games so that's always a plus. I liked the way the game introduced the mechanics by showing rather than telling, and it's always fun to have an optional collectable if you want an extra challenge. The main thing that made the experience less fun for me was the small window after you fall where inputs don't seem to be accepted by the game.
@evileptic @substain
Thank you for your feedback and for bringing this to our attention! We've uploaded a hotfix to address this.
@d3kryption Thanks for the feedback. Was this glitch on the "bugged on some computers" version or the "hotfix for some computers" version?
As a huge fan of the big boo fight from SMW, Nitrome, and biblically accurate angels, I think this game was made for me. Completed the whole thing and it's by FAR the most time I've spent enjoying any game jam game ever.
It's really fun to use the magic abilities in the game world, and it's cool that you can use your abilities for multiple purposes, like inside and outside of combat. Combat almost feels nice, the one thing I'd suggest adding to make it a bit better is just like a red tint on an enemy when it's hit with a fire blast. Giving the player confirmation that the enemy did in fact take damage goes a long way in the feel of the game.
Very pretty game, there's a lot of content for something made in such a short time! It was fun to play through as well! If there was any one thing I'd say to work on for a post-jam version, I'd tweak the movement, jump, and dash speeds as well as gravity a bit until they feel nicer to control.
Really fun concept. Love using gravity to move things. It'd be cool to add blockers or something to prevent the solution of shooting at the right angle below the level, rather than going through it.