Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → the3rdHunter
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 57 | Depths | River Woods | compo | 153 | 3.44 | 3.64 | 3.54 | 2.83 | 3.12 | 3.45 | 3.44 | ||
| 2023 | 54 | Limited Space | 👥 | You Wouldn't Download A Car... | jam | 529 | 3.60 | 3.54 | 4.00 | 3.72 | 3.84 | 4.59 | 3.43 | |
| 2023 | 53 | Delivery | Delivery Man | compo | 288 | 3.22 | 3.16 | 2.51 | 3.54 | 3.58 | 3.38 | 2.42 | 3.26 | |
| 2023 | 52 | Harvest | Rogue Farmer | compo | 275 | 3.08 | 2.76 | 3.08 | 3.87 | 3.17 | 2.81 | 2.88 | ||
| 2022 | 50 | Delay the inevitable | Digital Pet | compo | 443 | 3.21 | 2.59 | 3.01 | 3.38 | 3.26 | 3.63 | 3.02 |
Fun game. I love having all the past drones littering the landscape of the level as you progress. I like the sprites and the subtle but effective lighting effects help elevate it. I would have liked to be able to hold the move key and have the drone continue to move along, even the pace is slow so people can monitor their energy consumption. Awesome work.
Amazing art style and tone. I think a lot of people will rightfully focus on how cool the art style looks (so amazing!), but the audio design is also really well done. I love the unending ominous drone in the background as you futilely try to bail out the boat. And the inevitable ending is great. Amazing game!!!
Very cool. I like the visual style. Music set a good tone but was a bit repetitive after a while. The text window animating in with each new box as you talk to one person was a bit distracting. And the dialogue sound was overly harsh. The visual style and tone were my favorite parts. Well done!
Oh man. This game is so much fun! I couldn't defeat the final boss. I had one good fight where I had him kind of trapped against a wall and spammed attack for what felt like a good while, but I couldn't get him. The low gravity and constant jumping at that point made the fight extra hard! lol
What really made this game stand out for me was that it's a perfect mix of doom-esque art and tone, combined with the great feeling character controls. It's fun to traverse around the well designed level collecting skulls. I like and applaud the ambitious inclusion of the different abilities/skills you unlock, even though it created some issues that you mentioned you planned to address with rebalancing. I like the inclusion of depth increasing elements like that, especially in the confines of jam game. Awesome game!!!
Not a bad game. There are some bugs in your gameplay code, as the character will occasionally and seemingly randomly loose all forward momentum and stop moving until I press the direction I want to move again. Fortunately there's no pits to fall into otherwise that could be very frustrating. Good job having a variety of enemies. It was a little easy to cheese the large knights, but as mentioned, without the ability to cheese them they would probably feel overpowered.
I'm always a fan of systems that allow the user to select different abilities at a cost. It's a classic element of rouge-likes and I'm happy to see you use them here. Speaking of rouge-likes, I'm assuming you're using procedural generation for your levels, but despite that, the levels felt very similar. Maybe some more variety in your proc gen algorithm would help the levels feel like they have more variety, although just getting an algorithm that produces traversable levels without any major issues is impressive in the context of a jam! Kudos!
The last thing I'll mention is that I didn't really understand what sort of theme you were going for. There's knights and blobs, and your character is holding a bow which feels all classical fantasy. But the character also has tank treads and fires some kind of laser weapon. It was an interesting mix, but it didn't feel cohesive throughout the whole game. For example, the enemies should have had some sort of futuristic element to them if you were purposely going for medieval/futuristic hybrid. As it is it feels a little random. But maybe I'm just not getting it.
Overall great work, and as others on here have said, it's a great starting point that you could build something really interesting on top of. Congratulations!
Love the minimalist artistic style, and procedural generation of islands. This is a super cute, chill, exploration game with a great retro vibe. I'm going to enjoy having this game around, popping it open, and relaxing while collecting some treasure every now and then. It's amazing for a jam game, let alone a Compo game. Really amazing work!!!!
Wow! Great game! The art and music set an amazing tone. Really enjoyed that bg music. The game was simple, but challenging and I kept wanting to try 'one more run' after I would die. It's pretty punishing that you loose all your timestepper charge when you get hit. I would be running after a kunai at the edge of the screen and get popped by an enemy spawning onto the screen a frustratingly high amount of times! But since you warned me, it still always felt like it was my fault for not getting out of the way in time. Lol. Excellent work. One of my favorites I've played so far this jam.
This was fun! I like the retro computer vibe to the graphics. The game is basic, but fun and interesting. True, you can stand outside the circle and just not get hit if your really want to delay the inevitable. But I like the dynamics of the game when played authentically. Turn this into a dodgeball game and I'd play the crap out of it! :laughing:
Cute game. The dinosaur and his blaster are adorable. The sound effects and catchy background music were great. The gameplay felt good and the difficulty slowly ramped up nicely.
The tutorial screen at the beginning mentions not standing in one place too long or else the island will sink, but I stood in one place the whole time and it didn't seem to affect anything. Also, if you're going to iterate on this further, you could try adding some meteors that come down at an angle towards the island, instead of them all coming straight down. It could potentially make the shots and running around the island trickier.
Overall a great jam game! Lots of fun to play!
Great game! I'd agree with others that wind is a little OP. You can just kind of trap the ball in the top corner of the screen and keep it up there forever away from all the obstacles. I like the variety of abilities and the system to unlock them, as well as the achievements to encourage different types of play. Overall I'm really impressed with how complete this game is for a compo game! You could totally release this as a mobile game as it is and it would be more of a complete game then some I've seen. Amazing work!!!
Great job! The cockpit is fun to interact with. It took me a couple lives just to find everything I could interact with. The duration is really short and felt pretty set. Not sure if I never got the hang of it and couldn't survive longer, or it's just not possible. Having all the warning messages the same red style meant I had no idea what emergency I should be addressing first. It would be cool if the problems had different levels of panic associated to them, and then they can get worse if you ignore them.
Awesome work! The cockpit interaction feels awesome. I would totally play a space trucker simulator with that interface!
Awesome work! As others have mentioned, the tutorial screen was A LOT of information all at once, but I don't have any better suggestions of how you would convey all that information under the constraints of a compo game. And more than being overwhelmed at the tutorial, I really liked how much depth all the different interactions offer. Splitting the game up into different levels and slowly adding more and more abilities and thief types per level would help lower that steep learning curve. But again, that's not something that I'd expect for a compo game. You just have to play it a bunch to figure it all out.
I really liked the intensity of the game. It starts to get wild as all those little guys are running everywhere stealing trophies and your attention is being pulled in so many directions. The music and sound effects were great. Not distracting over overly intense when the action started to ramp up. Overall an awesome game! Really enjoyed it! Congrats!
That music is so upbeat. It just makes me happy to be walking along and delivering a parcel. Even when I get attacked by a dog.
Awesome procedural destruction system! I know the aim is to prevent it, but it's kinda awesome watching those meteors chew through those builds and send debris scattering down onto the people running for shelter. The audio is amazing! From the opening voice over, to the shouts from the people, and the poignant piano theme at the end, it all sounded really good. Maybe there could have been some beefier destruction sounds to go with that awesome building destruction.
I really like the tone of this game. It kinda feels like an 80's VHS to me. With the text scroll of over-wrought drama overtop of a starry background. The synthy off tempo background music. The missle command style of the gameplay. So nostalgic! So good!!! Amazing work!
Wow. I had a blast playing this! First off kudos on doing a compo game in a new engine. I like how effective everything is even though it's so simple. The lighting is great. I liked the blood splatters on the zombies. I agree with other commenters that I felt like some sounds for the zombies were missing, but the audio that was there I really liked. The gunshot sounded good even after I had fired a ton of shots by the time I died. So much clicking! So many dead zombies! That was fun.
This is my favorite interpretation of the theme I've seen so far! This game is such a great metaphor for life. I thought I had it figured out early when I was young. I had so much money and so much energy! But that was only because I was young. It all went downhill quickly and I died at 41. Lol!
Like others here I'd love to see this expanded more. NPC's to talk to. Maybe a vista to visit to lower some stress. I like the art style, and unlike some others here I actually like the footstep sound effect. It's reminiscent of Nintendo era stuff. To me its nostalgic and part of the game's charm. Awesome work!
Fun little puzzle game. It does a good job of giving you a small set of limited choices and then forcing you to make those decisions quickly. I liked the pop-up that explained how to combine the boxes that would show up when you clicked the box. I didn't fully understand how the combination system worked (like which numbers to pair as they got higher. The pop up really helps with that, but you feel like you don't even have time to look at it as boxes are flying by and your time is running down. Nice menus, all the graphics are really clean, and the overall presentation was great. Thank you for adding a toggle for the background music!! Great work!
Great game! Love the Game Boy visual style, and the music fits it super well too. The game loop is fun and the level was well done and showed off a lot of different movement rhythms you can do with this mechanic. It felt good to beat. The jerry cans added an interesting mechanic. I'd like to see more items. And some moving obstacles could really spice things ups. Awesome work! Please make a bigger, longer version of this game so I can play it!!!
Awesome compo entry! There's so much great stuff here! The graphical style is awesome and goes really well with the humor. The music and sfx are well done. They fit the tone nicely and are well mixed together. I also am a fan of the structure of the game, with all the mini-games within. There's a little bit of balancing issues, with some games feeling a little too easy (dodge the bottles) and some games feeling a little too hard (avoid bananas), but the overall balance is pretty good which is impressive with so much going on in this game. Super ambitious for a compo game and you executed it super well. Kudos!
Great work! Feels like a classic fps like Wolfenstein 3D or Hexen. The art is great. I'll kind of agree with some of the other comments that the game is a little dark, but I actually kind of like it that way. It makes it hard to see, but it feels a lot like those old fps where the draw distance was really limited. The text in your "How To Play" screen was very hard to read. The black text would blend in with the black cracks in the stone texture behind the text, making some of it unreadable. I'll also agree with the other comments that little bit of clearer feedback as to how hot it was would have been good too. I was never sure how close I was to dying. I know the walls get redder, but with the darkness in the level, I didn't always have a clear idea of how close to death I was and more often than not I would be surprised by the game over.
But overall a really great compo game! I would definitely play more of it!
Haha! The audio is awesome! Love the acapella theme and sound effects! There was a lot of text at the beginning of the game, maybe a little too much. I know there was a lot of tutorial information you were trying to cover to explain all the mechanics of your game, while also establishing the story. It might have been better to separate the two. Give me all the flavor text that sets up the world, then just go over the mechanics in a briefer, matter of fact way. That much text before anything has happened in your game is a tough ask for a player. For example, the first time I played I completely missed what it was that triggered the weapon to fire and was mashing buttons trying to find the shoot button.
And speaking of mechanics, once I understood how the weapons and cooling system worked, I thought it was pretty interesting. I like how I don't have full control over when the ship will fire. It get's tense when you're waiting for that gauge to fill up as an enemy approaches you. It's a great player choice they have to make of when to let the ship fire. One thing I quickly realized was that the green gauge fills up based on button presses, not on distance traveled. So you can spam back and forth really quick, not move anywhere, but fill up your green gauge. I would like to see what the game would play like if it the gauge filling was tied to my on screen distance traveled. I feel like I'd be more likely to have to make dangerous moves near the enemies if I wanted to keep my gauge down, instead of being able to sit safely in the corner wiggling back and forth.
I liked your art style, and I think your mechanics are interesting. With more time to develop the enemies, more variety of enemies, and some power ups, this could be a really interesting game! As it is, it's a great jam game. Excellent work!!!
Great job! I like how crazy it gets once you have stuff blowing up and tons of hands coming your way. Took me a while to figure out that I could build and upgrade stuff, and that added a nice little twist when I finally discovered it. I agree with the earlier comment about balance issues, but balance is always hard when you have so little time. The game is fun and chaotic. Way to go!
Ooo this was fun! First off, I love the shooting sound effects! So funny! I really like the level design. It can be hard to design an interesting single screen map, and I think you did an excellent job of providing an interesting terrain to traverse in such a small space. Jumping and shooting felt really good, well done on the controls. I liked that the slimes were slow and easy to avoid, but that was offset by the large number that would spawn and the fact that one hit would kill you. It made it tense, but when I got killed I felt like it was my fault and not that I was getting cheesed by the game. The fact that the coolant bottles follow you, but aren't firmly attached to you, and you can loose them as you move around if you're not careful was a great idea. It adds an element of tension and stress to grabbing the bottles, avoiding the slimes, and getting them to the reactor. Overall a great entry I really enjoyed playing!!!
Congrats on your first game! I liked the basic game loop, and the idea of trying to max out your partying while keeping everything else balanced. Having all the card influence all the categories means I'm factoring a lot of things into my choices. It was a little overwhelming. I'd preferred it if each card had smaller set of tradeoffs to consider, but others may find that too simplistic, so to each their own.
Great work on getting a completed game done! That's a great achievement!
Kudos on making a jam game in Bevy for the Compo! That's extra difficult! It's unfortunate that the audio is broken since you said it occupied much of your time. I also had the same issues with the missing fonts and empty text boxes as mentioned by others. The controls were unresponsive as well. I eventually determined that I was in control of moving the blue player, but the responsiveness of the player was very delayed. Button presses seemed to be pretty random on if they did anything. I'm guessing there's some issue with the way the game was packaged which is unfortunate. It sounded like you put a lot of effort into all the systems and I don't think I got to experience any of them. Good on you for such an ambitious attempt!!!
The upload has been fixed. Game is now playable. Sorry for the inconvenience!
Thank you everyone for the feedback!!! I agree with all of you. The game not balanced at all. I ran out of time at the end and never got a chance to test it out and get it right. I was just guessing at the game values and I completely whiffed on some of them. Whoops!!!
I'm planning on continuing development of this (after taking a little break to recover from that intense weekend, lol), and I am taking all the great advice on here to heart. Thanks for taking the time to play and review my game!
@smilewood Thanks for the feedback! I agree this game would work well in browser, and I did try to do a WebGL build. Unfortunately the entire game is built around an event bus which it's doing some fancy reflection stuff to do its thing, and that failed and starting throwing errors in the WebGL build. Stupidly I didn't try a web build until right before the end of the jam, and so didn't have time to address it. In the future I'll definitely test the web build earlier, and future versions of this game will be web accessible. But sadly not for this submission right now. Thanks for playing and providing feedback!!!
Great work! The art is awesome. I really enjoyed how the challenge escalated with each twist you added. It really elevated the game experience, and made me want to play a couple more times to improve my score and get better at it.
This game is like a weird artistic meta commentary on games. Trump running around cutting down children with an axe and collecting body parts against this painterly background. I like how you almost always immediately die when you're dropped into the world. And insane numbers of the enemies spawn on those platforms so even when you can make the difficult to time big jump across, it's super hard to get on the platform cause like 30 of the little creepy kids are swarming all over the platform. Awesome stuff. A fitting tribute to the source material!
Cool idea. And super impressive to create that in C++ in 16 hours! As others have mentioned, the text screens could use some tweaking to make them a little more readable. They tended to be on the over crowded side (both the story and the end message). The gameplay was basic, but fun, and the speed dynamics gave it an interesting twist. The graphics and audio were great and very suited to the game. Well done!!!
Interesting gameplay. It would be interesting to see where this idea could go with more development. I agree with dob that it was a little unclear how I was doing in the game relative to my opponent. Clearer feedback would help that. I also took a bunch of shots before I realized that after the first click, you can aim your shot. Some visual feedback would also help with that (i.e. an arrow that pops up when you're in aiming mode), but I understand you can't always get everything you want into a compo game. Overall great effort!!!
Best game I've played this LD. Great mix of humor and fun. Awesome work!
Who thought bucketing up kernels of wheat could be so fun/stressful. Lol! Great work! I like that the game is deceptively simple and seems like it should be easy enough to complete, but it turns out to be trickier than you'd expect. The physics feel good in that I always feel like I'm to blame when I drop the wheat. The audio is also great with some solid theme music that puts you in the right space, and solid feedback SFX cues that are well balanced. I also love the meme = manual!
Interesting game. The music and art create a great atmosphere.
Very polished presentation! Super impressive considering this is a compo. Great work!
Fun game! I like games where you lead gangs of NPCs, even more when they're undead! Models, props and level layout made this feel like it was a stop motion claymation filmed along the top of someone's desk with action figures and plasticine. Except the main toy could bring the dead toys back to life to be their minion, which kicks so much ass! I also had the bug of getting stuck in the mana syphoning animation others have mentioned. Just when I was getting a large enough group of goons that they could actually take some people out! Lol.
Great game. It's like a little pseudo-Metroidvania. I think the fork could use a bit bigger of a hitbox as it looked like sometimes the weapon sprite was overlapping the enemy, but it wouldn't register a hit. Of course, the hit box being that small made it more challenging to take harvest the enemies without getting hit yourself. Loved the retro look with the Gameboy styled sprites and the retro audio effects. There was some audio balancing issues as hitting the leaves seemed to be way louder than other effects. I also agree that some BG music would help make the game feel a little less grindy, but that's a lot of work for a compo game. And that's really a minor complaint considering how long I spent playing the game. Awesome work!!!
The sound is excellent. Great humor and a fun mechanic. My strategy is to group all the asteroids into the path of the planet I want to hit with subtle directional shots. Lol! You have to heard all those asteroids like sheep into the big point planets!
Great work! I liked the gothic visuals and the vibe of the game. Fitting for a game about harvesting souls. I managed to defeat all the evil souls! Then I found out how you can create an evil soul by attacking a human. I liked that. You could build on the core population manipulation gameplay you have here by adding some more unit variety, and by playing with the space in the levels. Cool stuff!!!
Cool graphics. I love that retro 3d look. The game balancing felt a little off. There was zero risk of the waves getting close to the barn, and I'm betting that if I had played long enough, there would have hit a point when I would have gotten absolutely swarmed and not been able to do anything about it. Unfortunately before that happened, I found a gap in your collision mesh to the left of the barn entrance and fell through the world. So I guess the chickens won in the end! Lol. Great compo entry!
Fun game. I spent way longer playing it than I originally expected to as the gameplay kind of hooked me. The scale was a little off when playing it inside the web window, but when I went full screen everything scaled and it was a much better experience. Well done!
Great work! The music is great, and I liked the gameplay mechanics. One thing I would have liked to have seen is to be able to hover over someone I'm carrying and see the list of actions for the corpse. When I was frantically trying to do everything, I'd sometimes forget what I was supposed to do with the person I just picked up. Being able to see the list of actions while I was holding them would have saved me a couple clicks. But that's an overall minor complaint in an otherwise well done compo game!
Nice isometric puzzle game. Definitely something that could be built upon and could get more interesting as more complexity is layered in. Nice variety in level design as well. Each one felt like a new challenge and it didn't get repetitive despite being so simple. Very efficient design!
Cool idea. You're right, it was fun climbing on the giant. The movement controls weren't working for me on the web version, but the Windows version worked fine. The camera sensitivity felt a bit off though. Even though I could adjust it in the menu, I had to drop it down to basically it's lowest point and I don't know how anyone would want it to be at it's maximum. To me it would have been nicer if the camera sensitivity scale was a bit lower. It would have made it easer to adjust and like I said, I don't know who would want it to be at the crazy high end of the spectrum. But maybe that's just me.
Regardless, getting the whole climbing the colossus mechanic into a compo game is impressive. Well done!
I love the graphics. And the typed command controls were interesting, though they took a bit of getting used to. It was pretty unclear where the ends of the levels were. It would have been nice to have a door or some kind of visual cue of where you needed to go. Sometimes it was kind of self evident where to go, but other times I was just kind of wandering around the level aimlessly until suddenly I was in the next level. Overall a very cool game! Great work!
Nice game. It sort of reminds me of the old game Chip's Challenge. As mentioned by others, the music was great, and I never figured out what key 'B' was on the keyboard. I just kept mashing 'B' and nothing would happen.
Great stuff! I really like your art style and the look of the game. Takes me right back to playing Doom era FPS games, which to me, is perfect for this kind of jump scare game. Solid audio that helped set up atmosphere. Very much enjoyed this game.
I tried to not call him Cooking Dada but he forced me to anyways! Lol. That combat on my ultrawide monitor was INTENSE. I couldn't keep both sides in my field of focus. I had no idea what was going on. Then I was suddenly back at the beginning and the cruel charade of being forced to call him Cooking Dada started again! Lol! I like the character art and music choices. Great work!
@pojo79 There was a bug with the player input that accidently snuck by sleep deprived me. Thanks for bringing it up! It's been fixed and all builds.
@reevest2 I added a breakdown of the controls to the description of this page (along with a little spicy flavor text!). You can also find that information in the game in the 'Info' menu, but that's a little obscure, and the controls are a little complicated. So hopefully it will help to have the info in more easy to find places!
@ursagames Thanks for the feedback! I wanted to add some tutorial text explaining how combat worked, but there just isn't enough time in a compo for everything. I think a lot of the game systems and interactions would benefit from some more explanation in game, and I hope to add that in future versions. Thanks for playing!!!
@found-bow-tonight Here's my quick guide to planting! * Start with a patch of Dirt * Use the Hoe to till the Dirt into Soil * Grab the Bag of Seeds (or any other seeds you have handy) * Use Seeds on the Soil * In a no time at all you'll have some healthy, happy plants!
@lisyarus Thank you so much for your feedback! I really liked Hartifacts! I agree with all of your feedback. I had plans for some stuff (systems and story) that I think would have helped with the issues you raised. Unfortunately compo time limits being what they are, I ran out of time to get them into the game at this stage. It's good to hear from your feedback that I'm on the right track with the things I need to address going forward. Thanks for playing and taking the time to comment!
@jason-wilson Thanks for your feedback! I really appreciate it. Definitely some work needs to be done to improve communication about the combat system. In the meantime I've added 'Attack' into the controls instruction list. Hopefully that will help. Also adding more crops to plant (with a variety of growing times) is definitely in the works!
@poietic-ruby I'm glad you liked the game! Thanks for playing!
@thoastbot Thanks for the feedback! I'm glad you enjoyed it! I'll definitely look at changing the bar color to into account what's behind the bard and give it some more visibility.
@jonqs Thanks for the feedback! I agree with the pick/drop feedback. I like limiting the tools the player carries, but if you want to pick something else up, you should just be able to walk over the tool and hit the button to automatically swap it. I'll definitely work on streamlining it!
@cameronpenner Thanks! Inspired by your awesome entry, I'm planning add rail grinds and wall jumps! :D Thanks for the note about the gamepad. Fun Fact: I hadn't tested gamepad input until about 5 hours left to go, and I discovered a mistake that ate up the next 3 hours as I had to redo how I was handling input while at my most sleep deprived. I'm just glad it works at all! Lol! [Tony Crow is awesome!!! Everyone should play it!!!]( https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/52/tony-crows-pro-scyther)
@pazzi Thanks so much! I'm glad you liked it! I'll be adding more animations so that those monster battles can play out in even more epic glory!!! [Slime Crime is amazing! Everyone should play that too!!!](https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/52/slime-crime)
Wow! This game is amazing! I love the music! The art is fantastic. I'm jealous of your glitchy eating effects and awesome animations. But maybe I'm most jealous of your game balance, which feels so good! And new power-ups kept coming that continued to make things scale in a way that felt really good and satisfying. It is so rare to see it balanced so well in a jam game. This feels like a game that's been in balanced through months of iteration and play testing. Amazing work!!!
Great atmosphere and music. I like the difficulty curve. At the beginning I was thinking the game was too easy, but the difficulty ramped up and it got challenging. Always a hard balance to strike in compo games. Well done!
Fun game. Reminds me of old Atari games in terms of gameplay and mechanics. Any game with fish AI gets a thumbs up from me!
I liked the chill nature ambience in the background as I wandered around throwing scythes and lasers at little red demons. I worlds like this game that have an edge that you can find and explore. I found a hole somewhere and ended up behind the collision barrier walking over top of some buildings where the demons couldn't hit me but I could still hit them with my scythe swing. Easter Egg! Lol!
Very cool! I like the core gameplay mechanics of this game. Super interesting! The controls work really well, but the UI could use some polish to make it feel a bit more cohesive and related to the theme of the game (I'm mostly referring to the arrows that connect the nodes here). But that's a pretty minor suggestion in light of how much depth and interesting stuff you have going on.
I'm definitely going to come back to this and play around when I have more time to spend figuring out the puzzles. Dumping all the available growth functions on the player all at once in the opening level is a bit intense. If you introduced one function at all time with a stage that leverages that ability, I'd probably still be playing right now instead of putting the game down until I have more time to invest in getting to know how it all works.
Nice balance on the cost of upgrades. It kept in a steady rhythm with how much I was making per round. Sometimes with the frantic clicking, I would accidently click and upgrade immediately after the round ended. A small "harvesting over" screen before the upgrades screen would give a buffer for the player to stop clicking and not accidently click upgrades. I'm also not sure what the goal was for. It would have been cool if once you make the goal, the wife comes back and wants another more expensive thing. Give something for the player to keep striving for. Great clicker jam game!
I like the chill interplanetary travel. Simple game but it was fun hopping between the planets and dropping stuff off. Great work.
Cool game. Very clean and easy to play. Nailed that bureaucratic vibe with the art, and the repetitive task that you have to complete under the pressure of the omnipresent timer that's constantly ticking down. I really felt like a cog in a machine while playing. I agree a bit with Vladadamm that having a pause between days where you can catch up on the rules for the day would be nice, but I also think the fact that the clock just keeps going adds to the feeling of working under an uncaring bureaucracy. Figuring out your job is your problem, not theirs! They just care about having the mail sorted in time, and if you don't get it done, then you're out the door. Great work!
Very cool game! I love the terminal style with ascii art. It was a bit confusing at first, but with the instructions on the jam page and some poking around I was able to get the hang of it. Except for unselecting a package. It seemed like once I had chosen one to try to load onto the drone, I was kinda stuck with it. Maybe I just couldn't find the 'de-select' key. Other than that small issue I thought this was awesome! Great work!!!
Oh man, I can BEARly contain my enthusiasm for this game! It's FANTASTIC! The art and humor is next level, and I really like the core mechanic. The basic elements of the news effects on the character's happiness and stamp cost were easy to understand right off the hop, and then I quickly picked up the more advanced deck (or letter bag?) building. You can't just fill your bag with good news, or you'll not have enough turns and stamps to deliver enough bad news. My only complaint is that the game isn't long enough! Which really isn't a fair criticism as this game is a good length for a jam game. But I wanted to keep playing, keep building up my deck, and delivering more bad news!!! Amazing work!!!
Great idea. I like the premise and the absurdity of the 'jokes'. I didn't really get a good hang of how to play effectively. I think I was too tempted to flip over all the cards, where I guess I should have been be pulling cards and playing them more blindly, I guess? But the concept was really intriguing and had me hooked. Very cool!
Great game! The graphics are super clean and cute. Solid puzzle mechanics and it feels so satisfying to entirely clear the wagon. I was going to complain about the inability to move the camera until I re-read the instructions and realized that I just missed that you could control it with the mouse. The only thing I would have liked to see would be the ability to press/hold a button to speed up the clearing of the boxes at the end of the round. But that's really a minor complaint about a great jam game. Awesome work!
Awesome work! Super fun. I got my butt kicked the first couple of times I tried playing, but by the third attempt I started to have some success. I also didn't see the shortcut to jump home until way to late (probably why I got killed so quickly the first couple of attempts). Super fun mechanics and a great experience. Awesome stuff!!!
Good job. Solid game. The art and animations are great. The arrows on the map were a much appreciated addition as otherwise it would be easy to get lost.
Like others, I had issues getting the boost to consistently trigger, which lead to some frustrating moments trying to avoid lightning bolts. I also agree that some feedback under the clouds where the lightning bolt is going to hit would be nice as if you're not high enough to see the clouds, there's no warning. I think another nice thing to add would be a timer. Could either be a countdown timer if you want to add some pressure, or just a timer that tracks how long it takes to beat the level in order to give some replay-ability so I can try and beat my previous score. Great work!
The game looks and sounds great. Very polished. The gameplay felt a little lacking. Since you don't earn any currency as you travel between stations, if you spend you cash you're just sitting there waiting for the ship to reach the next station and doing nothing. And the travel between the stations is very long to just be sitting there waiting. As others have mentioned, the lack of damage feedback also makes it less tense, as there's no sense of when you might die. It would be nice if you could clear the interaction popup but clicking off the ship so it's not just on screen all the time. But again, the graphics, audio, and overall presentation was very polished and looked great, and I liked the basic concept. I just didn't enjoy the lack of interaction once I had spent my cash.
Great work! I like the vibe on this game. It felt really good chucking those letters into the mailboxes. But the best was using the orb and launching between islands. The first time I landed a jump from one island to the next was a rush. Even though I couldn't manage 50 in under 3 min, I didn't care. I just loved launching between the islands while hopped up on absorbed leaf power! Haha! Awesome work!
Cool game. Those experimental desert physics are on point! :laughing: I like the art and theme. Reminded me of Outlander for the SNES. The gameplay could use a little bit of additional depth. After I managed to buy the gatling gun, there wasn't much of a challenge to the game. I could easily handle the cars that showed up on screen. I would have liked to see the difficulty ramp up a bit over time. Some more variety of enemies and/or obstacles would have helped, or increasing the distance between shops so it gets harder and harder. But I understand that the scope of a jam can make it difficult to get those additional features implemented. Overall great work! I enjoyed my time delivering packages while fighting off scavengers!
Nice compo game! The graphics and menus are top notch! Very nice work and feels very polished. The gameplay itself is a hectic and crazy. I didn't feel like I was developing any kind of strategy, I was just running around and smashing any prisoners I got near, prioritizing anyone carrying anything first. It made for some fast and frantic gameplay, but it lacked some depth. Which I can't hold against the game too much because it is a compo game. With more time and iteration, I'd like to see some depth added to the gameplay. Maybe variety in prisoners, obstacles in levels, or powerups. Something to vary the gameplay a little bit. But overall, I thought this game was really solid and enjoyed it! Great work! Super great compo game!!!
Cute game. Great character design. Really reminded me of the old era of mascot platformers. Giorgio Beetle would have fit right in with all the other cartoony platformer characters of the 90's. All the art in game was great. It was short, but I don't hold that against a compo game. Great work!
Great game. I like the cute robot graphics. And the puzzles are really good. I eventually got stuck on one of the levels, but I have a feeling I'll be coming back to try and solve it again later. Which to me is the mark of a good puzzle game. Excellent submission!
Awesome game! Overall it feels really good. The game is difficult, but fair in that I always felt like it was my fault when I died or sent a baby spiraling to an untimely demise, and never felt like the controls or game was being unfair to me. Sound effects were simple but effective, and the level design felt really good. Each level felt like a step up in challenge and built off of the things that had come before it. Really enjoyed playing this. Great work!!!
Haha. Awesome work! One of the funniest games I've played this jam. Your opening VO was awesome and set the tone for the game perfectly. The characters are great, from the writing to the animation of their emotions. The game is short, which I can't blame you since it's a compo game. But I would love to play a longer version with more letters to deliver and more delivery people. Great work! Amazing compo game!
Awesome work! I really like the art and theme. Has a great gothic vibe to it. The audio is well balanced and on point with the theme and style. The game feels really nice to play as well. The control is smooth and responsive, the aiming feels good and accurate. I like the slow down focus mechanic. My only complaint is that the jump through door V is a little too tough. I mean this is a jam game and I guess if you're going to add a jump that's right at the limits of what you can reach, it's going to come early. And maybe I just suck at fps and that's why I had so much of a problem landing it. But it took me a lot of attempts to get across. I would also have enjoyed a sprint ability. But those are minor complaints of an otherwise awesome game, made even better by the fact that it's a compo entry! Amazing work. You should be super proud of your accomplishment!!!
I'm a really big fan of the music. It set such a good vibe and was a real highlight of the game for me. I enjoyed the chill (no pun intended) puzzles, and the cute graphics. Super awesome work.
Very cool idea! I liked the theme and I thought the art and audio went really well with it. I really appreciate the tutorial as there's a lot of game mechanics to get into. Like other people, it felt like the cost to repair was a little high, or maybe I just suck delivering packets, lol. I appreciated that you had the story elements of the contents of the packets. At first I was trying to read them, but then I had to ignore that to just focus on getting them delivered. From the comments it sounds like you have lots of ideas in terms of future development of the game, and I'd be really interested in playing a more robust version that's had the gameplay iterated on a little bit. I think there's a really solid, interesting base here. Great compo entry! Awesome work!!!
A Nintendo DS Game!?! That's awesome! As a retro game loving nerd, I am totally blown away. I hadn't heard of DS Game Maker but now I'm going to check that out. You have either opened up a whole new world to me, or a gigantic new black hole for my time. Either way, I am super grateful!!! :laughing: Begrudgingly I have to agree with the other comments that there's not a ton of depth to the gameplay, but frankly I don't care. IT'S A DS GAME!!! That's so cool and an accomplishment to be super proud of!!! Way to go!
The intro made me laugh. Especially the sound effects. The controls were uber difficult. It also felt like momentum wasn't reset properly between games as sometimes when I restarted the level, the unicycle would already be flying in one direction or the other. Overall a funny "impossible to control" kind of game. Good job.
Very cool mellow mail delivery game. The music and art gave it a great vibe. The controls are a little hard to wrap your head around, but I don't have any great suggestions on how you could do it better on a hex grid. As it is I don't think the controls are bad, just unusual and a little hard to wrap your head around. But since the game itself has such a chill vibe, it didn't bother me too much. If I had to speed run with that control scheme, I might be complaining more, lol. Great work! Awesome compo game!
Fun game. I agree with the comments on here that some feedback of when you're getting close to the delivery planet would be very helpful.
This was fun! I have a soft spot for retro beat 'em ups, so I oved the art and theme. I agree with others that the balance could use another pass, but being a compo jam game and considering how polished most of the other elements are, that's not something I hold against the game. The ending also made me laugh. Great work!
@cheesepencil Thanks for playing! Bundle Dumper: Florida Edition is awesome! Anyone who's reading this comment should go [check it out!!!](https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/53/bundle-dumper-flordia-edition)
@castitatis I'm glad you liked the art. I really take that compliment to heart cause I thought you game looked amazing. [The Mailman is great!](https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/53/the-mailman)
@shatteredmindofbob Thanks for the feedback! I should have added some feedback for what the confirm button was, or at least accepted more inputs for confirm so that you didn't have to search around. I'll adjust that in future iterations.
@auxC Thanks for playing! [Paelo Pickup](https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/53/paleo-pickup) is awesome and everyone should check it out.
@cameronpenner Thanks for the feedback! I agree with you that coyote time would be a real nice quality of life improvement that I want to add to the raycast based controller I used. I didn't have time to add it in this jam, but it just makes the jumping feel better that it's a real high value add want in there. And I agree about the gamepad support. I feel like that's an absolute must! [Bad News Bear](https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/53/bad-news-bear) is one of my favourite games of the jam so far. So charming and funny!
@zefphyer Yeah I noticed the typographical errors a little too late to do anything about it for the compo submission. It was the classic 'everything looks good in editor' and then when I did the build, the sizing was off. But I left building until too late and didn't have time to adjust stuff. The menus will definitely get another pass in the next iteration so I can clean that up. Thanks for playing!
@defrag Whoa! You delivered way more boxes than I managed to deliver packets in [Packet](https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/53/packet)! Way to go!!! The box and delivery point placements are predetermined, but each box has a list of delivery points (or next pick up points if it's a delivery), and I randomly pick from those lists each time to give the destinations some variety.
@josh-bothun Thanks for playing! I agree that variable jump height would make the jumping feel better. Unfortunately I just didn't have the time to get that in during the jam. But definitely something I'd like to add if I iterate on this game. And now after playing [Skypost](https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/53/skypost) I also want to add some epic leaps between flying islands!!!
@brineleaves Thanks for playing! I'm glad you enjoyed the minimalist vibe of the game. That was partly by necessity due to lack of time for this jam, but also something I'd been wanting to try for a while. This probably won't be the last time!
@ddesigndude Thanks for playing!!! Next up: making a DS port of Delivery Man!!! :laughing:
@nick-baggett Glad you liked it! After playing your game I want to make Delivery Man: Halloween Edition with 100% more gothic soul delivering.
@geckoo1337 Thanks for the positive feedback! I'm glad you liked the game, even though you're not a fan of platformers. Yeah, 'J' for jump was a little weird. Things got a little hectic towards the end of the jam, and I thought I remembered encountering issues in the past when using space for jump in web browser games. But I realized afterwards that was a separate issue. My exhausted brain betrayed me! I'll fix that in the future. Thanks for playing!
@purpledartfrog The UI issues are the result of me rushing near the end to get the build done, and not testing in browser enough. Lesson learned to test builds earlier. Not that it helps, but the screens look beautiful in editor! Lol! I'll adjust them in the next iteration of the game, but for this jam I feel like leaving the screens a little funky is good. Gotta embrace your mistakes and learn from them!
@glove Thanks for playing! I agree with you that the game would feel better with a minimap or more feedback about the direction you should take. I had a couple ideas for that. One was to have a series of waypoints that the directional arrow would point to, so that way it would be a better indication of where you need to go. Right now it just points at the location of the next package/delivery point and it can be a little misleading if there's a wall you need to go around, or if the path to the next location isn't a direct line. My other idea was to have a button that lets you zoom out to see the entire map so you can see where you are, where your destination is, and what lies between. Unfortunately for both of those ideas, I ran out of time to implement them for the jam. But I agree with you that something is missing there and would help a lot. Thanks for the feedback!
@frogman Wow! That's a crazy high score! Way to go, and thanks for playing! :heart: I absolutely agree with the lack of overall map view is an issue. I had some plans to address that, but I just ran out of time in the jam to get them implemented. If I iterate on this game going forward, that's one of the first things I'll address. Your point about the score and time system is also a good one. As you saw from the code, there's some logic to how much time is added per delivery, but your right in that it's not at all communicated to the player. How time is currently added is very much the 'minimum viable product' version of it, and I'd like to take another look at it and maybe add some more complexity to it. Whether I change the underlying mechanics up or not, I'll definitely add some feedback for how much time is getting added. Thanks for your feedback!
@asieke Thanks for playing! I'm glad you liked it!
@alec-cunningham Thanks for playing! Glad you liked it. I was worried I didn't spend enough time tweaking the map, so I'm glad to hear that it felt good to play.
@fabian-denter Thanks for the feedback! I really liked [Spirit Mail](https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/53/spirit-mail). If anyone needs a break from frantically running around delivering packages in my game, check out spirit mail for a quieter, more reflective delivery experience.
@satacat Thanks for playing! I would have liked to add some way to win the game instead of it just being strictly an exercise in how long you can last, but unfortunately that got axed due to time constraints. I do like the idea of having some sort of way to win condition and I'll definitely look at add that in the future. Thanks for the feedback!
@hakro Thanks for playing! I agree the jumps could use a little bit of iteration. I think adding in logic so the jumps respond to how long you've pressed the jump button. That will make the jumps feel more responsive and less floaty. I will also likely iterate on the airtime durations.
@squeele Glad you liked it! Thanks for playing!
Good work! The art is simple but effective and the tongue in cheek elements are funny ('catnip', 'pigs', etc.) My biggest issue was being unable to find the party before I got nabbed by the pigs. Overall great work on completing a compo jam game! That is a major accomplishment!
Simple but super cute! I love the cute little monkey. At first I didn't get what I was supposed to be doing, but once I picked up on what was going on, it was fun to race back and forth delivering packages. I would totally play an expanded version of this game with more levels and an increasing number of floors and doors to deliver to. And also some bananas to collect. Since Aviv mentioned that, I can't not want to feed that cute monkey for a job well done! Lol!
Haha! This gave me old school Paperboy nostalgia. Except instead of being stuck on a bike and having to avoid everything, you get to unleash havoc as an unstoppable menace in a delivery van! This was super fun and made me laugh. I liked the simple, brightly colored models and the floppy, floating head of your boss at the beginning was a great touch as well. The boss was perfectly menacing and creepy to set the tone of the game. Now you just need to add a stunt course that you get to rip through at the end of the level a la Paperboy 2. :laughing: Awesome compo game!
Beautiful game. The music, sound effects, and graphics all compliment each other nicely to create such a sweet and poignant vibe. My only critique would be that some sort of map would be nice. It wasn't required as I managed to make it through the whole game and deliver all the packages without it, but as it got down to the final deliveries, I was borderline concerned that I wasn't going to be able to find them as I thought I had covered the entire island. If the level was much bigger, I worry that I would have easily gotten lost. So kudos on the perfectly sized map. But the biggest thing that I loved about this game was the vibe. Really great work. Awesome compo game. One of my favourites I've played this jam.
Solid work. Like others, I also didn't understand what to do at first. Specifically I didn't get that the icons at the top were showing the order I had to connect the nodes in. That would have been helpful information to have in the tutorial. But once I understood that, the game was quite fun. I liked the music, which gave the game a chill vibe even as I was frantically trying to connect the nodes. The timer is quite quick, but I liked that as it made the game a real challenge and made it really satisfying when I managed to get further. Really solid game I enjoyed. Great work!
Great effort. I liked the art. The main character, enemies, and buildings were simple, but effective. Thanks for putting in the 'B to reset camera' feature as that helped the playability of the game a lot. Also kudos for getting a series of quests into the game in the constraints of a game jam. Well done!
You asked for how the game could be improved, so here's some of my thoughts on where improvements could be made. As you mentioned, there were some bugs, but I won't focus on them as the solution for most of them is just "fix this bug". :laughing:
First of all, the movement needs a little work. It doesn't at all feel like your driving a vehicle as there's no acceleration or deceleration. Movement is just either full speed, or not moving. Also, you're adding move speed for each direction pressed and not compensating when you have multiple inputs, so your movement speed when moving diagonally is faster than any individual direction.
Other people have mentioned the audio and I'd agree. The audio that is there isn't too bad, but it is very sparce. It needs more variety and some ambience to help make what's there blend together better.
Having the map was a good addition to let me know where I needed to go, but some indication on the map itself of where the next quest point is would really help. You did a good job of indicating where I needed to go in the quest descriptions so I never got that lost, but indicators on the map would add polish.
Additionally some feedback about when a quest is complete would help. In cases where you just need to get to a point (like delivering the explosives to the mine, or dropping off the stuff in the city) it was fine because once I hit the point I had to reach, I knew when the quest was over. But for fighting the boss at the oil farm, or the ambush south of the city, I didn't know when I had defeated the enemies and completed what I needed to complete. After the ambush south of the city, I went back to the base and the quest there just repeated the "It's a trap" dialogue when I tried to pick up the next quest. Not sure if that was a bug, or because I hadn't completed the previous quest.
Lastly, I'd highly recommend adding a way to quit the game. This is a pet peeve of mine, but I don't like it when there's no way to close the app and I have to alt+tab out of an game to quit it.
But overall I think this is a great effort, and you should be proud of what you accomplished in the jam! There's a lot of good stuff to build from, and I would totally enjoy playing a more polished version of this game, delivering destruction with a motorcycle with a flamethrower!!!
Very cool puzzle game. Great art and vibe. I spent a while just chilling and putting boxes into the back of the truck. I have a feeling that being the foreman on a loading dock in real life isn't this chill of a vibe. :laughing: But it makes for a great jam game! Awesome work!
I drove for a long time before I realized that I needed to get off the highway, so I think a little more indication that the off ramp is your target would be helpful. There was the bright flashes of red when I hit walls, so I assumed that was a bad thing, but there wasn't any health bar or other type of feedback that told me how close I was to dying, or if I even could die. I liked the top down look and the procedurally expanding and collapsing roads. Reminded me of the old Micro Machines racing games. Great job!
I like the vibe of Action Matt and Awesomemart! An indicator arrow of where stuff is in the map would be very helpful, as I couldn't find anything. Still had fun though. Good work! Needs more zombie noises!
This game is amazing! I really like how the gameplay ties into the theme of limited space. I love the game mechanics. It's so simple but provides for so much player agency to solve the increasingly complex spatial puzzle. There so much room for skill that you want to play more. It's a great design!
Fun with physics! I was pretty terrible at this game, but it was still fun. Launching objects around and watching them smash into each other is always satisfying. Especially when they're skeletons and bathtubs! :laughing:
Nice little stealth game. I like how the game continues as you're trying to stuff things into your loot sack. It makes it much more stressful when you're trying to snag things close to guards, and you have to quickly fit them into the bag. Good work!
The menus and graphics look great. The characters and level are are well done, and especially impressive for your first time! Way to go! Sound is also nicely polished and balanced with good music. Player movement felt good and the speed was well balanced relative to the enemies to provide a fun challenge.
I agree with points other people have made about the combat system. The range of your attack relative to your hit box makes it an unbalanced advantage to attack vertically from above, which I'm guessing wasn't intentional. Part of me thinks you should just lean into it, and change the sword into a broom. Turn it into a wraith sweeping game! Because it does have a pretty satisfying sweeping feel right now. :laughing:
My biggest suggestion would be that I think you should amplify the feedback in your game. Adding some more visual feedback on the attack hit would help beef up that interaction and make it more satisfying. Feedback on when the enemies are going to attack would let players play more aggressively, and would make dodging attacks more skill based instead of predictive. Add more feedback to picking up the relics, and ramp up the feedback so that when the player picks up the rare relic, it has the biggest, hypest feedback that gets them excited about getting the best relic!
The game looks really polished. This is a solid game. With some more time to inject a little more game feel into the game and flesh out the relic system that you've outlined in your replies, this could be awesome. Great work!
Cool look and feel for the game. Those cats are hard to catch. My first playthrough, I only snagged one cat near the end, then I had no idea what to do with it. After re-reading the instructions, I realized what I should have done. The music, art, and content all work well together for an interesting vibe that I really liked. Great work.
Fun game! I spent quite a while playing. I like the rouge-like gameplay loop of 'loot-a-level-then-spend-that-loot-to-level-up'. The floaty jumping felt good and spacey. I lost some lives to holes that I had no way of knowing were there until I fell into them. Some background art clues of where holes are going to be would help with that. I like the music but miss sound effects, especially for feedback when the laser is hitting things. It was also really hard to know to how and where to use the drone the first time. Some kind of tutorial/prompt the first time would help.
Overall I thought it was really good. Great work!
Interesting concept. Well executed. The menus, audio, and graphics show real polish. The parrying system was interesting and made for some frantic action while trying to parry shots coming from all angles. Great work!
I love the retro vibe. Loved the driving music which fit the arcadey gameplay very well. It took me a little while to get how the game worked, but once I understood it I really liked it. Reminded me of Volfied and Robotron. Well done!
Haha. This game is awesome! I had so much fun playing it. Great idea and use of the theme. I really like that the game is you playing with this bad AI to achieve a task. Cousin Ernie just piles the cars on top of each other, but then he gets 50% of the tips I earn cleaning that mess up?!? No way man! Lol! Great work!
So much retro nostalgia vibes. You've perfectly recaptured early 3D era platformers. It's even more impressive that it's done in your own game engine! That's so cool! One day I hope to submit an LD game made in my own engine...
Music was great. Fun little Pikman mechanic.
This game oozes nostalgia. The soundtrack is great. Repetitive labor style gameplay on a CRT monitor really captures the of early education computer games that you're emulating. It really made me nostalgic. Awesome work!
Sometimes I suffer from imposter syndrome at work. But now, thanks to this game, I know that I am a REAL programmer!!! Lol!
Fun little twist on paddle games. Well done!
Haha. The audio is great. The hitboxes are cruel, but so is life. And just like life, this game ends quickly and abruptly. I like the twist on level 3. Awesome work!
I liked this a lot. It has a super retro arcade feel. Simple gameplay that quickly get challenging. Great minimalist audio that communicates a lot of information very simply. Awesome work!
This game is so cute. The visuals and the audio are all super charming. The gameplay cycle is nice and clean. Super solid entry and very well done!
Fits the theme really well. I agree with others that some kind of upgrade/investment system would make the money have more of a function. I liked the contract system, and how the offers came and expired. Added some tension to getting things unloaded and quickly making decisions about which contracts to grab. Good job!
This game looks great. I love the hellscape visuals. Watching the train roll in, and the passengers slowly make their way over to my booth was great. The audio adds to the atmosphere. It's subtle and cohesive, and effectively communicates the tone without drawing attention to itself. I was often torn between reading the dialogue of the person I was judging, and just reading the area with their life events and basing judgment on that. I would have preferred if I could have seen both on screen at the same time rather than having to choose one over the other. But that's a pretty minor gripe, and I think says more about my patience than the game itself. :laughing:
Overall great work! A fun little game with awesome vibes.
Awesome work! To start with, the game looks amazing. The archaeologist, and all the world elements are dynamic, bright, and cohesive. I thought the game play really started to pick up once you get down to the bombs. I found the camera could be a little tricky at times. I tended to dig myself into a hole in the middle of the stack, and then have troubles finding a good angle to get a view of what I was doing. Being suck inside a giant puzzle you need to navigate to get out of is an under appreciated genre. This reminds me of classics like Intelligent Qube and Catherine. Awesome work! Kudos to the team!!!
Great work. I like the visuals and vibe of this game. Minecraft has made voxels and crafting synonymous, so your models felt like it fit with the theme. The lighting and audio gives the space a suitably subterranean vibe. And I like that you didn't provide any crafting recipes. I true dwarf has no need for instructions! You just feel the smithing inside you!!! :laughing: Awesome job!
Very cool game. I really like your music and audio. It gives the game a chill, tranquil vibe that goes well with swimming in a vast, empty ocean. Your swimming mechanics are unique and cool. They're challenging to get a hold of, but the fact that I was sucking at it felt more like a skill issue on my end, so well done. I didn't even come close to getting the treasure back on the boat, but I enjoyed my attempts to swim and got eaten by a shark, so 10/10!!!
Interesting technique and twist on the theme with depth of field. Very cool.
Very cool game. The gameplay was interesting. It was challenging to remember, identify, and quickly click on the words. And the challenge felt like it ramped up pretty well as the game went on, although I felt like I was burnt more often than not by the words I needed not showing up in time. To me the real strength of this game is the aesthetic and the audio. I'm a big fan of these vapourwave visuals. The little animations on the statues are great, and the kinetic backgrounds you're flying through are sublime. This game oozes style. Great work!
Awesome work! Great looking game. Your main character fish has that perfect mix of ugly and cute that makes it adorable. The lighting is awesome and obviously a big part of your game as it's related to you central mechanic. I like the music track. It's bright and upbeat, and with the sound effects gives the game fun, chill vibe. Overall the package is really polished and impressive especially considering it's a compo game. Way to go!
Neat idea. I liked your art. Switching between the worlds is a cool concept, although it didn't really feel necessary in the level design. My first playthough I was switching between the two worlds a lot, but on my second playthough I just stayed in the initial world as I descended through the maze. It didn't feel like there was much incentive to switch between the worlds and the game rarely forced me to. More dead ends that require you to switch between worlds to get past them, or more difficult obstacles that you can avoid by swapping between worlds would encourage more use of that mechanic. Other people have mentioned the jumping issues, so I won't repeat them here. Overall I think you have an interesting base to build off of, and with a little more polish this game could be something interesting and unique.
Nice idea. I want to try this out on mobile, cause the controls on PC are a little tricky. Or maybe I just suck at accurately clicking on things. Would be cool to have some additional power-ups as well. Like temporary invincibility, or maybe something that clears a column of bombs. Well done!
Interesting entry. The controls were unique. I'm mixed on how I feel about them. They work, but having the mouse be both aim and movement direction can create conflicts when I want to aim and walk in different directions. For the scope of a jam game I was okay with the controls, but on a full game I think I might get frustrated with it eventually. I also would have liked to see some knock back on the melee attack to give it a little more oomph and prevent the need to backpeddle while fighting. My favourite part of the game was the central pit. I liked the visuals of it and that you could see the upcoming levels below you. It did mean that a large part of the playing area was mostly unusable, but again, in the context of a jam game I think it was fine, and it did give the game a distinct look. Very theme appropriate. Awesome work!
Haha! I had a blast playing this. As an game dev, all the bits of programmer humour was a big hit with me. :laughing: This is also the most interesting take on the theme I've seen. It's a clever way of mixing 2D and 3D together, and I really like the world you've created. The game is a little rough around the edges (like when I would jump into the bat and it would shoot me through the floor of the stage), but the game's heart and charm more than make up for the lack of polish. I think this could be a really interesting idea if you built more game mechanics around being flat and rotating space around you to solve puzzles, traverse levels, etc. Great work!
Cool little puzzle game. It was straight forward to understand, but also had enough depth that I had to think about each of the puzzles, and the solutions weren't super obvious right away. I also liked the added complexity from the moving tiles, and ones that required multiple hits. I also really enjoyed the soundtrack, and was sad when it didn't loop. I was getting into the funky groove while I was blasting through the mine. I think you have a solid foundation to build upon here. I could see this being really fun with more levels and more tiles. Great work!!!
This game was super fun. I like the puzzle platforming and restricted movement mechanics. My favourite part of this game is the level design. In the condensed time-frame of a game jam, it's hard to make levels with interesting puzzles, never-mind having multiple branching pathways through those levels like you've managed to do. That is impressive! I could see myself playing way more of this game with some fleshed out mechanics, graphics, and depth. Great work!
Well done to create a mini-Metroidvania during a compo! I'm a big fan of that genre. Collecting abilities that give you more access to the map is just such a nice feeling natural progression. And I like that you've randomized the location of the abilities on each run to give the game more replay-ability. I liked the character designs, although the attack animation could be a little faster, and some destruction animations for the enemies would make killing them much more satisfying. But I understand that getting those levels of polish into the game is time consuming, and hard to do during a compo, especially when life gets in the way. Great work!
Awesome game. I liked the vibe. The audio was a nice mix, with unobtrusive sound effects. The gameplay is simple but effective and fun. The lighting is great. Looks good, makes sense thematically, and I liked how it gave a natural evolution to your gameplay systems as it gets darker. Once you're in the deep depths it becomes a different kind of game. Very cool! Great work!!!
Well done! An interesting take on the theme, and a cool interpretation of the therapeutic method. The visuals and the music give the game a unique tone that I enjoyed. Great work!
Fun idea. I like when a genre framework is used in a non-traditional way. I like the idea I had to rpg battle the book to try and decipher it. I also really liked the music, and of course how could you not like the "AXEL!!!" :laughing: Now I want a longer version that goes through the entire book!
Great work. This is a solid game. The graphics and audio are really polished. I liked the background synth music. I wasn't the biggest fan of the controls. I felt like I was always turning too much. But maybe that's a skill issue. The basic game-play loop of head out to collect things, return to hub to invest what you've collected, and repeat is a solid formula. I would have liked to see things evolve in the world a bit. Like more challenging obstacles, or maybe some enemies you need to avoid. But there's only so much you can get done in 48 hours. Overall a really solid game. Congratulations!
Good effort for the time involved. I liked the player character animation. It's so cool how you can communicate the idea of the walk cycle with such minimal pixels. I also thought the levels had a good progression in terms of introducing gameplay concepts, then building on them in the following screens. Great work.
@immortalfox Thanks for playing! I'm glad you enjoyed it. I didn't get to do as much testing as I would have liked to, so I'm not surprised to hear the game balance is a little bit off. I really enjoyed making this game and I have a bunch of ideas I wasn't able to get to, so I might just have to keep working on it and make it into a full game!
@sicosiber Ooo. Now I want to add online multiplayer!!! :laughing:
@boboneoone Thanks for that feedback. I forgot I had the display locked like that. I'll leave it as is for the ratings, but I'll definitely address that issue. Thanks for playing despite the issues!
@dingbat Good point. I'll definitely think about how I can address that. Either giving the player some warning of upcoming obstacles, or maybe zooming out a bit as the speed picks up so you can have more time to react. Thanks for playing! I'm glad you like the game!
@minidavid I hadn't heard of that Microsoft Edge Surf game before, so I had to check it out. I see the similarities, and now I want to add ramps and krakens to this game! :laughing:
@dhim Thanks for playing! Yeah I realized I made a mistake with the screen sizing, but it was after the deadline so I'm going to leave it as is for now. With compo games, you have to embrace your mistakes and imperfections! Also thanks for linking and pointing out the LD57 repo. I'll definitely use the badges and and some topics for discover-ability! Thanks for taking the time to include my repo and share that with me!
@cameronpenner Aww shucks! Thanks for the kind words! I'm really happy with how this game turned out. I agree that it's the best jam game I've made thus far. Things went really smoothly, and the project came together well. I'm glad you enjoyed and pointed out the level design! I was stoked when I thought that up and tired it out for the first time, so I'm glad to see it appreciated. Thanks for playing!!!
@cammyrnn That boat destruction animation was super fun to make. I wasn't sure if it was gonna work while I was drawing it, but as soon as I saw it in the game I was super happy with how it turned out. I'm glad you noticed it and appreciated it! Thanks for playing!
@ntmalichi I'm glad you enjoyed the game. I'm really happy with how the controls turned out. I've been having fun playing around with it and thinking about how I can build on it, especially with two-players in mind!
@mcramon Thanks for playing and commenting. I am looking forward to how I can develop this game's visuals and audio without the constraints of the compo on it. In only 48h you do have to stick with a lot of first takes, and 'good enough's. :laughing: But I am a big fan of a lot of what I did produce for this jam. I like my two little voyageurs and I want to continue to build their world! :canoe: :evergreen_tree:
@atsh Thanks for playing! I'm glad you enjoyed the art and music. Like with most of my compo games, I had ambitious plans to add a lot more visual stuff, but deadlines hit before I could get it all done. But even though I didn't get everything done, I thin this is one of my best looking compo games, and I'm really happy with what I did manage to get into the game.
@pincushion It is deceptively difficult. I didn't have enough time to playtest and balance the game, so it's way more difficult than I intended it to be. But I feel like that's just the way my compo games go most of the time. It's the compo curse... I'll know I've reached the next level as a dev when I make a compo game that I have time to playtest and balance. :laughing:
@nnmbzr Haha! I'll admit my game is difficult, but I still think it's fun to play. If I had made shores deadly, it would be so hard I don't think it'd be fun anymore. The game would just be downright masochistic! :laughing: The one idea I did almost do is to make the shores bouncy, so the boat would bounce off the walls and potentially into rocks. But I never got around to adding that into the game. Besides, the game is already difficult enough with how in the way all the rocks are. I don't think the game needs more hazards until I get the gameplay a little more balanced.
@freamdev THANK YOU FOR NOTICING THAT!!! Seriously! That you brought that up makes me so happy. I thought I could get that done quick, but then it ended up eating a huge chunk of my Sunday. Afterwards I was thought that no one was even going to notice all that effort. But it did get noticed! YOUR COMMENT MAKES IT ALL WORTH IT!!! :laughing:
@jtap Thanks for playing! I really enjoyed making this game. I'm glad you had a fun time playing it!
@dylan-shumway I'm glad you liked the game! I was pretty happy with the way the victory medals turned out. I find their chest out, epic posing hilarious, and I'm glad you enjoyed it too!
@t-c Congratulations on making it to the end of the gold course!!! That is impressive. I have no defence for how difficult it is! :laughing: I wanted to iterate on the water visuals so it would give you a better idea of the current direction and strength, and I also wanted to do a balancing pass on all the courses to make sure they weren't super difficult. But I didn't have time for either of those things. So I totally empathize with how unfairly difficult it is! Way to go on sticking it out and fighting through all that to the end! And then there's a bug that it just says you got the bronze after all that effort. Oh man. I'm so sorry!!! :face_palm:
@xpoho Haha! I've heard that from a few people that their experience playing the game really mirrored their first time in a canoe. And it's usually about how they ended up just going in circles. :laughing: I'm glad I've managed to recreate that experience so authentically in my game! Thanks for playing!!!
@patatje It's awesome how many people want to try this game out co-op because I did not think of that at all while I was making it. :laughing: I'm glad you liked the level design. I'm super happy with the way it turned out.
@nomus Thank you for the compliment on my end screen! The art in your game IS AMAZING! One of the best looking games I've played this year. It means a lot that such a talented artist enjoyed something I made! :smile:
@mrantoinest Thanks for playing! I'm glad you enjoyed it. I honestly don't know how I didn't think of having a co-op mode earlier. Seems kinda obvious in hindsight, but it didn't occur to me until people mentioned it in these comments. But I better tweak the difficulty first because having two different people working together to steer the canoe is not going to make this game any easier! :laughing:
@fluffyou Thanks for playing! I'm so glad people are having fun playing the game, and turning it into a co-op game. That must make the game super difficult, but that's so cool! :laughing:
@very-dark-lord I'm glad you liked the game. I agree that the game wasn't very on theme, and that's why I opted out of ratings for theme. Thinking about depth gave me the idea of doing a downwards vertical scroller. And then the canoe came in because I was thinking about the deep woods. Then I started to make this game and it kinda took on a life of it's own. So I see the theme in the inspiration behind the game, but I agree that it's not very clear and that's why I opted out of the scoring.
@island-jam-2-group-3 This game is really hard! Even getting bronze isn't very easy. Way to go! I'm glad you enjoyed the game and had fun despite it's difficulty.
@very-dark-lord I don't know if I'd say I'm super skilled at my game, but I managed to get through it! So here you go! :laughing:
https://youtu.be/6MsIibLryI4
@ludumcor Thanks for playing. I'm glad you liked the game, and the level layout! I was really happy with that part of the game. Unfortunately all the paths lead to bronze right now. All the level ending flags are the same object that I copy-pasta'd and I forgot to update the value on the object. :face_palm: So there's a bug where all the flags give bronze. I'll fix it once the rating period ends. I like to keep the version I made during the 48hrs up until ratings are over. Even with bugs. :bug:
@very-dark-lord Makes sense why you thought the signs were just another danger as everything else in the water is an obstacle to be avoided. As I iterate on this I'll work on how I communicate that. Maybe have some more overt in-game stuff about difficulty paths and branching, and keep the signs out of the water so you're not worried about hitting them. :thumbsup: Thanks for the feedback!
Fun game. I like the different take on forced scrolling. I like the sad faces the enemies make when you kick them. Like others, I found the timing on the kick mechanic really hard to hit consistently, especially on a keyboard. I feel like I might have had a bit more success with a gamepad. I could see myself playing a lot of this if I could consistently hit the kicks. But I could not get far in the game at all. :laughing:
This game is great! It really hooked me, and I enjoyed setting my heroes off on a run and watching them delve into the dungeon. It was a cool combination of dungeon crawler and auto battler. The power up system was good, and each one gave a tangible improvement that made a difference. My only complaint is that I want more! I want more power-ups, more dungeons, more heroes, more everything! Awesome work!
Fun game. The art looks great. Super well done. Your sound effects are good and non-intrusive, but the lack of background music is noticeable. The game-play is fun and unique. It was a real challenge to get past some of the obstacles. I eventually got stuck in the same spot as @andrewkennedy. But I'll echo what others have said, and that with some more content and polish, I could easily see this being a game on Steam. Great work and congratulations on your first compo!!! :heart:
Haha. Fun interrogation game. I like the recap of everything you did to the poor suspect. My personal favourite was "make him shoot another officer". That is an EXTREMELY bad cop! :laughing:
Very cool game. It looks great. The mix of 2d and 3d is cool, and the lighting gives it a cool vibe. The audio work is great. The echo and reverb on the sound effects give it a good sense of being in a tunnel, and the dynamic music is effective and well suited to the theme. Very cohesive overall. I liked the basic mechanics of the game, although one thing I would have liked would have been the ability to pick up items once they're deployed. On more than one occasion I accidentally deployed a bee box somewhere I didn't mean to, and then I was stuck with that choice. The ability to move the boxes, or maybe destroy them to recoup some of the cost would have been nice. Also some kind of indicator as to the area that a bee box covers would have been nice as well. The part of me that loves min-maxing wants more feedback so I can strategically place the bee boxes in optimal locations! :laughing:
Great work! It's a very polished and well put together compo game! Way to go!!!
Very cool. I feel like I toured the trench. I like the facts that come up as you descend. I wouldn't have minded even more of them. Also awesome that you used a scale and accurately represented what would be around at each depth. As I was playing I was wondering if that was what you were doing, so I was glad to read that was the thought behind it. The sonar effect is cool. I like the tension of how you can't quite see where you're going till that ping goes off, but by then it's probably too late to react. It added drama as I was going further and further down. And of course, the ending was great. Maybe not accurate to what's actually down there, but it gives your game a satisfying narrative climax. Great job!
Awesome work. I love the atmosphere of this game. The graphics and audio give the perfect ambience to a creepy card game on a train. It's so immersive and dreamlike and easy to get caught up in. Calm and yet spooky. I want to explore more of this world. I want to see it expanded out. I want a whole train full of weird old ladies to play card games against! :train:
Good job. I enjoyed whipping around space. It wasn't until my 3rd play-through that I finally realized I had lives and I was loosing them by crashing into the moons. :laughing: I was just having fun rocketing around and didn't understand why I was randomly getting game overs. It was fun!
Cool entry. The parallax scrolling of the walls is excellent. It looks amazing and gives a good sense of speed. The title screen is also suitable epic. The way that title slams in sets a great tone for the game. I also liked the particle effects on the enemy fireballs, and the devil sprite was awesome. I managed to make it down to Satan, but he promptly kicked my butt! Awesome work!
Damn I love this game. This is art! It's like if Lucio Fulci made Atari games. The star is great. The monsters are awful and I hate the sound of them. The visuals of hell are painterly and beautiful. The soundtrack builds so well and fits so perfectly. I love the feeling when you're falling and you're hitting just that right wiggle of back and forth to not hit the ground. This game is all about getting into that pocket. The only thing this game needs is the Nemesis system. I wanna know which shitty bug ate me on the last run so I can taunt them as I jump over their stupid ass on my next run! Get outta this star's way, planets gotta explode!!!
Congrats on making a game! You should be proud of what you accomplished. You asked for honest and critical feedback so I'll give you what you want. (Most of what I'm going to say has already been addressed in other comments.)
Pros: The art and vibe is very good and cohesive. Your UI is good and the game looks nice. I like the use of the theme. Digging into a suspects testimony to get to the depths of the truth is an interesting interpretation.
Cons: Music is too simple and overly repetitive. Listening to it over and over again in a loop really makes this apparent. I also agree with people who have expressed confusion over the UI buttons. It does feel like the two questions at the bottom are supposed to be clickable options, but only one is. I also had issues trying to trigger the end of the interview with the suspect. I'm not sure if I just had to ask questions a set number of times, or if the button to advance to the accusation part was finicky, but felt inconsistent and hard to trigger. But my biggest piece of critical feedback is the lack of player agency. As I mentioned, the idea of digging into a suspects testimony to find the truth is an interesting interpretation of the theme, but I don't think it really plays out in gameplay in any meaningful way. You don't have any options to pick how you interrogate the suspect, or to help you dig for more information. You're just given all the information and then you have to mentally dig into it to figure out the solution, but I'd rather that digging was represented in gameplay. Like if you had more options in terms of questions to ask the suspect, so you can choose what information to dig into, or something like that. Right now it doesn't feel like the player has much to do other than click next until you make a choice at the end.
I might have written more about the cons than the pros, but don't let that dissuade you! You asked for critical feedback and I wanted to give you stuff to work with and think about. You should be super proud of what you accomplished! The game has a lot of charm, a lot of good qualities, and you made it in only 48 hours! That's a major accomplishment!!! Way to go!!!
What a charming game. The art and audio are excellent. Such a cute little fishy guy! I immediately got attached to them and was going to do whatever I could to help them! The controls feel good, and the game feels fair. Whenever I got hit or died I felt like it was my fault. I liked the idea of the last stage, but it needs obstacles. After the challenge of the previous levels, it was a bit of a let down to be able to win just by basically holding right. But it was worth it to see that happy fishy face on the end screen. Great work!
Amazing art. What else is there to be said about it? It's absolutely beautiful. It's too bad about the bugged interactions. I couldn't find a way to get past the backpack. But regardless, the art is just stellar. Great work.