Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → TheHermit
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | Co | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2013 | 27 | 10 Seconds | Rebound Recon | compo | 158 | 3.54 | 2.98 | 4.00 | 3.70 | 3.05 | 3.15 | 2.00 | 2.96 | 73 |
Nice! I appreciate the little touches like the plot summary (though its kind of hidden in the tutorial) and the text on the gravestones.
One odd thing: I don't know why, but the mouse controls were really sensitive - I'd move the mouse a centimeter and my view would spin halfway around.
I got a libudev error when running the packed linux executable, but thankfully I've been messing with Node-Webkit for my own stuff and it worked with my version. 32-bit/64-bit issue maybe?
Technical issues aside, I love the possession mechanic. I did feel that it was annoying to sit and wait for the slime to get back into jumpable range in the last level.
I really wanted to see more possessable creatures and mechanics. I mean that in a good way - I wanted to play more.
I loved how the 10 second count-down became more than just a countdown but actually controlled elements of the arrangement of the level.
This game makes me think of some sort of inverse/frozen bullet hell. The graphics are very simple, but little bits of polish like the moving circle becoming an ellipse in the direction of motion, bouncing, etc give a very polished impression.
I liked discovering that I could pick up speed by bouncing against the outside, and that I could make some shortcuts by intentionally colliding with bits of the maze to make a passage.
For your list of browsers: it didn't get past loading on Opera, due to an issue with window.requestAnimationFrame.
Worked fine in Chrome though!
The controls feel a bit weird - sometimes I ended up stopping even though I was holding forward. I'm not sure if that was intentional or not.
There's a very interesting gameplay dynamic between creating the resources you need to continue and actually going forward, especially because of the delay between shaking the plants and the bubbles settling.
@OldPeculier, yeah, I played your game earlier and noticed that. I like this particular type of idea a lot - giving the players what amounts to a supernatural control and perception of something that would otherwise be impossibly complex.
Thanks for all your comments everyone! I'm working on an updated version right now based on these suggestions, but I don't want it to interfere with the judging. I'll post a journal entry about it when done and host it separately.
I liked the idea of this puzzle-game but I'm not sure the 10 second limit helped the game play. The issue is that it was very random how many pieces you'd actually need to close the path - if you started with the core next to a wall, or in a corner, it made a huge difference (and one time I started with the four end-cap pieces in my inventory).
I also did the no-coin thing the first time I won. I also found the hidden billboard.
I ended up making something very similar, as OldPeculier mentioned on my entry. I really like this kind of mechanic - there's something transcendent about being able to pick apart something very complex.
That said, even putting aside that bias of mine, this is a very polished implementation of the idea. The one thing I'd say is its pretty tricky to go back and make a minor adjustment - I found myself shifting back the time of a deflection bit by bit to erase one I had done just a bit wrong a few milliseconds ahead, since I didn't want to reset the level.
I had some odd problem getting it to recognize it was typing. I was able to eventually get it to work by clicking away and then back on the flash window, which cost a few seconds.
Given how hard it is, it'd be nice to have a 'Try Again' button that generates a new word.
I enjoyed this a lot. Good to see more canvas games. I did have one technical problem though - the in-game cursor was offset compared to where my mouse was, so I could only shoot to the right. This was fixed by me resizing the window to the canvas. I was using Chrome under linux.