Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → TheMonsterFromTheDeep
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | Co | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | 42 | Running out of space | Warp Tunnel | compo | 182 | 3.65 | 3.76 | 2.81 | 3.50 | 3.23 | 3.15 | 2.33 | 3.21 | ||
| 2018 | 41 | Combine 2 Incompatible Genres | Harvest Rune | jam | 399 | 3.61 | 3.50 | 3.40 | 3.68 | 3.35 | 2.81 | 3.09 | 3.33 | ||
| 2017 | 40 | The more you have, the worse it is | Defense 2160 BC | compo | 325 | 3.40 | 3.42 | 3.25 | 3.02 | 3.52 | 3.19 | 2.42 | 3.28 | ||
| 2017 | 39 | Running out of Power | BugsTD | compo | 489 | 3.00 | 2.72 | 2.18 | 2.35 | 2.86 | 2.10 | 2.37 | |||
| 2017 | 38 | A Small World | Worlds Project | compo | 164 | 3.57 | 3.21 | 3.84 | 4.34 | 3.45 | 3.31 | 3.55 | |||
| 2016 | 37 | One room | Dungeon 2.0 | compo | 98 | 3.76 | 3.90 | 2.70 | 3.54 | 3.66 | 3.13 | 2.45 | 3.37 | 100 | |
| 2016 | 36 | Ancient Technology | TrainStack | compo | |||||||||||
| 2016 | 35 | Shapeshift | Defective Wiring | compo | 28 | ||||||||||
| 2015 | 34 | Two Button Controls / Growing | Fellowship | compo | 474 | 3.24 | 3.12 | 3.58 | 3.26 | 3.09 | 3.10 | 2.65 | 3.08 | 68 | |
| 2015 | 33 | You are the Monster | Bitworm | compo | |||||||||||
| 2015 | 32 | An Unconventional Weapon | Little Universe | compo | |||||||||||
| 2014 | 31 | Entire Game on One Screen | Peaceful Night | compo | 934 | 2.82 | 2.45 | 2.38 | 3.50 | 2.76 | 2.38 | 2.12 | 2.39 | 61 |
It's a pretty cool idea but kind of difficult simply because there are so many sub-pixels on the screen.
This is a great idea and I love the game! It can be a little difficult to compare all the different stats, especially with the hero constantly selling things, but it is still a cool idea!
I really loved this! It's very creative and fits with the theme in a cool way.
Very nice! I like this game - the graphics are crisp and fresh, and the personality of the game is kind of funny. I think it would be awesome on mobile!
On my computer, the process will start but the window won't show up.
The music is nice, although it's too bad that it hides the shooting sound effect. I think it would be nice if there was more variation to the game (the enemies never go after you, only your base, so if you have the right upgrades nothing ever gets hurt).
I like it, and I think the bomb graphic is pretty cool. However, the click detection seems a little off - sometimes I have to click multiple times.
It seems like a good game, but it really is ruined because the wall jumping doesn't work right. For me, I have to face towards then away from the wall to wall jump, and it is really quite difficult.
This was a great game! I really loved the way the screen expanded. Some of the jumping was a bit hard, but still fun.
Pretty good! I especially liked the music and I think the concept of getting new skills and stuff from chests is cool.
I like this game. It's like Bloxorz but with snow and variation.
It is a fun game, and the graphics and sounds are really great. However, I think that the control for aiming is a little awkward - it can be kind of hard to kill the fireball skull enemies (I died before I could find out if there were any other ones with ranged attacks)
This is a pretty good game, the concept is solid, however, not being able to hold down the arrow keys breaks up the flow.
This is a fun game, but the player graphic doesn't really match up with the rest of the graphics.
This game is a lot of fun and the sound effects are nice. I think it very well represents the situation.
I have fun with this game, but I think the disappearing sections should be an option, because it really takes away from the experience of fighting hordes of donuts if you are killed without honor in the dark abyss.
I like the game, although some of the bugs just kill the experience.
I like this game - it's a lot of fun and the graphics and sounds are awesome. That said, mouse controls would make it even better.
Yeah, you're right - that's why I included tools that can be crafted - some of them go a lot faster.
Thanks! It actually doesn't take that long to get to other dimensions (~30 secs of gameplay) but of course, you have to know how to do it.
Yeah, the maximizing issue was something I couldn't really do... For you not being able to break stuff, it may either be because of my inefficient graphics (can really lag the game) or maybe the cursor was simply too far from the character (you can only break blocks up to a certain distance away)
@QuexD: thanks!
@TriSquare: Yeah, I wish I made the resolution scale up - I don't know what was going through my head when I made sure it remained constant.
Hmmm... I really wonder what's keeping all you from breaking blocks. It could be really bad lag, but I don't think so... Any block where the cursor is black should break in no more than 2 seconds.
@alyphen - good advice. I would have loved to add a basic tune, but I had absolutely no software for writing music, and I assumed that it wouldn't be too bad without it. I definitely am not going to go for something as ambitious next time, I just really wanted to make a sandbox for my first LD for some reason.
This is a great game - I really love the interesting puzzles (although I couldn't get past the second puzzle)
Pretty fun! I like the concept.
I really like games like this, and the graphics were great. I liked the sounds, but I thought a level transition effect would be nice (packaged with the teleportation and death effects) and the music was too silent and didn't really match the volume of the other sound effects, which was kind of annoying.
This is just so awesome. The last level was very difficult but was worth it for the backstory. The audio and mood is simply superb.
This game is very cool. It is also incredibly difficult. It took me a long time to do the fourth level.
This game has a good concept presented very well. I found it to be rather difficult. The graphics and audio create a nice mood.
The game kept breaking: http://cubeupload.com/im/2Npy9c.png
This made some of the levels really sad - I beat the third level without ever knowing what it really looked like.
The first level took a long time to beat. I think the second one was actually easier. I beat the third one, as I said, without knowing what the heck I was doing.
The graphics (when they work) and the music are really cool. The gameplay is also pretty cool - I like freeze-time platformers. This one is also unique because you can have multiple guys at once.
I like the base concept, but as others have said, switching between modes can be a little clumsy. The graphics and audio are pretty good.
I really like the feel of this game. It just sort of has a nice atmosphere. The only real thing I would want is a way to regenerate health, but I get why that's not there.
This game is sort of silly and I like that. However, I don't see any way to get the time bonus and I kept losing the hand off the screen. I'm not sure how, seeing as how the hand wraps around...
I'm afraid I can't hit the play button either... I'm running the Windows version on a Windows 7 Lenovo laptop.
Side note: the screen is also too tall for my resolution (1366 x 768). I don't know why. :/
Well, I can at least play the game now. I'm afraid it's still a little hard to figure out how to work it - for example, I built (from what I can best tell) a Lumberyard and a Power Plant, yet I still can't seem to produce any wood. :/
It seems that the button hitboxes are a little off - for example, to open the different building tabs at the bottom, I have to click near the bottom of the button. The button to close a building's settings also needs to be clicked near the bottom left. :/
Also, for some reason clicking a building selection that is empty will close the game.
However, I do really like the graphics and the sort of zen mood - I think if this game was a little more obvious in how it is played it would be really cool.
I'm not going to vote quite yet - I want to figure out how to play the game before I judge it. ;)
This game is awesome! The graphics and sound are all really cool. It would be nice if there was music when not inside a level, but it's no big deal.
In fact, the only problem I have with this game is that there is so much cool stuff that I don't have enough motivation to figure it all out! :D
This game is a lot of fun. However, it is too large for my resolution (1366 x 768) and so the bottom part of the window is sticking through my task bar.
I also thought taking a screenshot of the game when it closed is a good idea... I'll have to use that next time.
I don't know if this game is working for me... I start at Lvl 0 and I can't seem to change it. :/
For some reason it was very difficult to click the start button and level select button. I also couldn't tell when I had clicked correctly or not.
Once the first stage ended, the game just sort of stayed there. :/
Cool idea though - sort of like binary Guitar Hero.
Very cool atmosphere. Gameplay is a little repetitive but interesting.
I am not ever going to make it on the leaderboard. ;)
The sound effects in this game generate a really cool atmosphere. I like the base idea of switching your controls but I think it would work better if I could drag a control over one currently equipped and the game would automatically switch them.
This game is really cool! It has a more complicated story than I would have expected, even for a jam entry. The music is simply awesome and contributes really well to the overall atmosphere of the game.
My only complaint is the slow walking speed, as others have mentioned. It makes some parts of the game rather tedious.
I like the fact that it uses cheep-cheeps. It's sorta simple but pretty charming.
It took me 250 seconds to beat it. Oh well. :D
I like it. It's simple and there it doesn't take very long to play, but it does take a while to master.
Fun game. The perk system is pretty cool. The music fits very well with the gameplay.
This is certainly a interesting concept. From what I can tell, however, based on your Github repo, it isn't very fleshed out.
I think if this was developed a bit more, it could be very cool. Right now it isn't very developed and so there isn't much to say. :/
I think the music was good for this game. It probably would have been more interesting with slightly better graphics, but I'm not really sure what would look good here ;)
Really, the problem I had was that the game was too large for my screen (1366 * 768) and this made it hard to click on the pink empire to conquer them.
I am very bad at this game. :)
It's kinda silly and I like it. It just needs to be less cynical. :)
At first I didn't really get what enemies were supposed to do. Once I figured that out, this game got a lot more fun. :D
The only real problem is that it sticks out the bottom of my screen, so it's really hard to tell when I can go down a platform safely. (My screen resolution is 1366 x 768).
The fact that it had an animated cutscene at the beginning was simply awesome. I also thought that the Santaur jokes were pretty cool. :)
Yeah, when doing the whole building thing I originally thought it would be pretty boring. But it turns out that even with just five buildable objects there is still a lot that can be done!
A little cheat: holding down the mouse will automatically build new blocks when it touches them. This works really well for the jumping-lava-gap-span-thing.
Yeah, the music was a rush job... I made it using BeepBox (beepbox.co) and just figured it was good enough. :)
The game music is slightly more complicated than the menu music - the menu music is something like a 4 or 8 second loop or something.
The first four levels were supposed to be the introductory levels. I'll say that number four wasn't very easy, but I thought the other three were moderately beatable. ;)
The point of the level design, of course, was to be very tricky and creative. There are three things you can build: solid blocks, bridges, and spring-jumper-things. So, of course, the first thing I did with the introduction of bridges is make it so that a bridge had to be un-built - this was the first real little trick. Level 4 brought more of these - for example, the player has to jump over one of the pre-built springs such as not to be launched into lava.
I really did want to make the controls less of a mess, but I really didn't have a good way to - the camera tracks the player, and that's really that. I don't really know how that could be improved - suggestions would be much appreciated. :) The controls are slightly less frustrating if you use a little trick - holding down the mouse button. This means you don't have to aim *and* click, you just have to aim.
@Masuno: I really don't know what happened with the theme. I could swear that the first day it said "One button controls" in the little box on the website. In fact, my original idea, as I said, was to have a SINGLE BUTTON that sent the player back in time. No other controls. Maybe I was really tired? (Like, really tired)
Of course, I'm not really expecting to get a high score in the theme anyways. I figured that would happen once I later learned the theme was actually two button controls.
Or you can pretend that there are actually two controls - build and destroy. :P Yes, it isn't two *buttons*, but it is two controls!
...
In general, I may be updating this game in a post-compo version that improves a few things. I am incredibly NIH, and as such, I will never use a third party library for Ludum Dare, but I will definitely work on optimizing my stuff.
If I do release a new version, I will attempt to do the following things:
-Make controls easier / better
-Make difficulty controls (different speeds)
-Improve game play consistency (less lag)
-Fix small bugs (level select screen)
Ah - so if the camera sort of had a little lag behind the player (especially in gravity) it would be easier to play?
I'm still not sure what to do, then, to make the controls easier in terms of horizontal direction - as the player only ever loses horizontal velocity when touching a wall.
Right now, it still is very easy to do those vertical jumps if you know they are there simply by holding down the mouse button where the object will appear - the object will be automagically built as soon as the mouse touches its little box.
Yeah, one Windows computer I've tested it on didn't work.
I'm still looking into the issue with the audio exception - however, it's impossible for me to know if I've fixed it or not.
If it doesn't work on your computer, can you please give me whatever information possible about why it failed? It may be due to something simple, like the wrong version of Java, or something more complicated.
Nice twist on the Simon Memory Game. ;)
I like the atmosphere in this game. It's sort of like a strange arcane technological mashup.
This game is really awesome! Although it can be really frustrating, it is actually possible to get better at this game, unlike truly unfair games. It did take me a long time to beat the level before "Now things get really difficult." After that I quit. :P
The sound effects were really quiet on my computer. I'm not sure why. :/
The intro, death screens, and speed meter thing were all nice additions. ;)
Pretty good game. The graphics and sound are clean and polished. It is also a nice little challenge to get all the eggs before being caught by the corruption.
This is pretty hilarious. :) I'm afraid that I'm pretty bad at it but I still like the silly concept and visuals.
Welp! That was tough. :)
It took me forever to figure out that greenhouses produce air.
They *are* the ones that produce air, right?
This is a pretty good base concept, it's just hard to enjoy because it isn't very easy to figure out how to play. I think a few things, like a tutorial or instructions, would make it a lot better.
I also think it would be good if it was possible to destroy buildings.
Overall, the graphics are good and the gameplay is okay, it just isn't very intuitive. :)
I'm afraid I couldn't get this game to work. When I downloaded the exe, it didn't have a Data folder, and thus wouldn't run. Neither Google Chrome nor Firefox would support the game in-browser.
This is pretty cool! The graphics are a little silly, but I think they're charming.
My high score was about 750. It's a challenging game!
The only real problem I see is that for whatever reason, it doesn't fit very nicely on my monitor (1366 x 768). It fits horizontally, but sticks slightly out the bottom. I think I just have a weird monitor size.
The controls are a little clunky but make you feel like a pro. :P I like the graphics and I especially like the music.
This is certainly a cool game! It took a little bit of tweaking the settings to get it to run on my computer, but I'm glad I finally got it to work. I think it would certainly be more interesting with a little bit of music, but the overall gameplay is actually pretty intriguing.
I have to say it really screws with your brain when your most basic platforming control - fixing an overshot jump - is no longer available to you.
I can't really rate this game fairly because it's lagging on my computer, so I won't vote. Sorry. I think I have too many tabs open or something but I'm unwilling to close them. :)
I really like the graphics and music. They create a sort of cool atmosphere. However, I think that it simply isn't very engaging - there isn't really a lot going on. I'm afraid I didn't beat the first generation because with the added lag its a little too slow to really bear.
From what I can see, really, the only real problem is that there isn't a whole lot of variety in the gameplay. As I said, I never got past the first level, so I am probably missing out on at least a few things. And, as stated, this is a first-time entry. If this game was packed full of content, I would certainly be very impressed. ;)
I think that this game, overall, is pretty good, especially in the concept. Fish feeding games are surprisingly fun, and this one fits the theme pretty well.
So, TL;DR: This is a good first-entry game. ;)
The concept behind this game is pretty funny. I, of course, lost most of my cheese because I kept helping everybody. However, the happiness was up, much to the surprise of the adviser. The graphics and music fit well.
The art and music is pretty good, although the gameplay is sort of hard to really get a grasp on. The music fits very well.
It's pretty hard to catch the arrows. The graphics were pretty good, although the reinforcements sort of don't fit with the rest of the guys.
I'm not really sure if buying extra guys really helps. The greedy goblins don't seem to do anything, although the ogres are good at catching arrows.
I really like the base concept of this game. It is sort of like a combination tower defense and RPG. However, it is not very fun to play because it is sort of hard to control.
The main two problems are that it is not very intuitive to control the direction or movement of the player, and that is isn't very easy to tell what is selected when planting something.
I think the stopping/starting mechanism of player movement simply doesn't really work because it doesn't give you quick and simple control over the player's movement. The other main problem is that it is difficult to select the direction of movement by rotating.
The only other real problem is that sometimes the camera blocks the view.
In terms of a first entry, this game is actually really awesome. It has full 3D graphics and a map and storyline. The only problem is that I think it doesn't really work with this theme - the theme of two button controls sort of was the root cause of the control issue.
In fact, this game probably would have been pretty easy to control if you had stuck with only the growing theme.
All that being said, I do still like this game simply because the idea is really cool - as I said, a combo tower defense / RPG, which personally I think would be pretty awesome.
The graphics in this game are a bit absurd, but the audio is pretty good. I think really the biggest problem I have is that whenever I lose it takes me back to the main menu, and then I have to reach over to my mouse to hit the play button again. It would be nice if it just started you back at the beginning again.
This is a fun simple little game. The beginning with all the plants growing is an interesting mechanic - the player has to decide how many plants they want in the later parts of the game. Too few, and it might be hard to avoid obstacles; too many, and the player may become trapped.
This game is charming. :) I think the mood is pretty unique with the lighthearted music and the various art styles.
I think I beat the game, but I'm not really sure... I beat the fourth or fifth level or something and it took me back to the menu. That means I won, right?
This is a pretty funny interpretation of the theme. ;)
Well, I couldn't figure out to eat breakfast, even though I took the toaster tarts. I guess that's why there's a playthrough.
This game seems pretty well written. Maybe I'll have to finish it sometime.
That was pretty fun! I like the wind sound effect. I also really like the fun atmosphere of the game. It all seems sort of silly, like it was written by a vengeful campfire.
This game is very charming. :) I just love the hilarious concept of a wizard firing electricity at a endless stream of chickens.
It's not all that exciting over a long period of time, but with a little polish it could be pretty awesome. :)
This is a cool idea and I really like the music. I did find it sort of confusing and hard to control, but I think I could get the hang of it with a little practice.
This is a cool game but very difficult. It's pretty good for nine hours though.
This game is incredibly awesome but at the same time too difficult for me to play it all the way through. I think the main thing it could do with is some clarification as to what the goal is - for the first two or three minutes I was just pounding on the a and d keys before I realized it was a rhythm game. Once I figured that out, I started really enjoying it - the music is really well made.
This is a cool little game. I'm afraid it's a little hard because the controls are a little clunky for some reason - probably the "lag" that other people were mentioning.
This is a great game. Great music, great gameplay, great mood. Thanks. :)
This game was kinda fun and silly.
It isn't particularly exciting, but it's certainly something different.
I liked it. :)
I like how you took the concept to a sorta cool place - I didn't think there would be many ways to use the concept of "you have to fall to fly" in a puzzle game for different stuff. However, I sorta felt like the main player graphic didn't really fit.
@TheCain: I forgot to mention that P can be used to go back to the level select. I did mean to implement arrow key controls for the menu - I think they were broken or something. :| Anyways, thanks for the suggestions - I realize that the controls are a bit meh. :/
@Tex Killer: I have no idea how to fix that. I have gotten that error for some other Java programs I have done before but I don't know why. :/
I really like how when you shapeshift you explode :D
It would probably be better with audio, but it's still pretty great. :)
This is one of my favorites so far. It's simple and its intuitive, and it makes good use of the theme. Some intense music would go really well with this. ;)
The graphics are pretty cool. I wasn't able to figure out how to actually *hit* the bad guys - I've found that instructions somewhere are always a good idea. ;)
This is a good use of this theme - I personally find the theme kinda lame and you did something cool with it.
This is cool. I'm not exactly sure what to do, and I sort of forgot that the knights had to be stopped from approaching, so I lost. :) The art is really good though and the music fits.
Pretty good game! The graphics are okay, although the enemies don't exactly match the 3D models, and the axe is much less detailed than the trees.
Sadly I didn't finish the game because I used all the trees on the campfire, and then I couldn't build the boat. :(
The music is pretty good and the sound effects do actually kind of make it tense. Eventually I found the scream to be quite hilarious though :)
The tree car was a lot of fun :D
Overall nice job!
I think this has a great concept, but I think some aspects of the gameplay may need to be re-thinked.
The main thing I think is that although the not-firing-while-intersecting-something is an interesting strategical mechanic, it made the game much slower as all the catapults would get stuck inside each other and be in a stalemate until some moved away.
There also needs to be some disadvantage given to retreating players, as otherwise it is basically impossible to catch up with them in time.
The other two big issues I had were that the camera did not try to center on the player, which made the field of view very restricted when on an edge, and also that sometimes when waiting to get a rock after intersecting it would immediately fire with lowest strength.
I also think it might be beneficial to increase the speed of all the tanks, at least slightly, as movement is very cumbersome.
Overall I actually do think it is a very fun little strategy game, but I think it's simply too slow due to the factors I mentioned above.
This game is incredibly simple but a very good game for it. There consequence of throwing the spear makes strategy surprisingly complicated. In terms of gameplay, I'm not sure exactly what could be done to make it better - this works really well as a simple game. The only thing I would suggest is trying to add sound.
I couldn't tell if it was possible to lose, which makes the gameplay seem rather boring, as there is no consequence for taking no action. The art is nice but I think given the simplicity of the gameplay it would be good to have several different sprites for wheat, just so it would feel less robotic.
The graphics of this game were cool, although they looked sort of disconnected at places. The music was absolutely awesome.
The game design itself is an idea I've sort of seen before, but was really well pulled off here. I couldn't get past the last level, sadly - I tried two different methods, but I simply don't see how to a) not die and b) get the first door activated with time enough to get through all three.
This is a pretty cool little rpg! I liked how there was quite a variety of zones - it certainly made it more interesting. I couldn't get past the ballista - it completely destroyed me.
It could certainly do with some sound, but I'm sure you knew that already.
Graphics could obviously be upgraded, but they certainly worked well enough as to not detract from my enjoyment of the game.
I did find two glitches:
- Exiting the shop in the desert sends you back to the main village (I don't know if this is intentional)
- The crossbow enemies could go offscreen, (like, where you couldn't move) and then it was pretty hard to kill them (although I think normally they came back onscreen if you moved away...)
Also, for some reason it seems like I could only buy the aloe vera if I had the bow equipped. I'm not sure what the intended behavior is here...?
But as a first entry, it's definitely pretty good - and although it's a bit bland, it's not a bad game.
As others have said, the atmosphere is really cool and quite unique. I'm not sure though if there's any gameplay - I understand that it is a "walking simulator" but that being said was it originally meant to have other mechanics?
In any case the walking animation is pretty well done and the crumbling animation is something I haven't seen before.
Well, I'm not really sure what to think about this game. It certainly seems like it is going somewhere, but I don't think it gets there very well. :/
The graphics were not particularly pretty, but I tend to forgive that because graphics are not really the most important part of a game, to me, and I can still enjoy a game even if it has less-than-optimal graphics - so I'm not going to let the graphics factor into my overall review of the game. Certainly they could be improved, and I encourage you to improve them if you can - but they are perfectly acceptable for a Ludum Dare game.
The main problem I have is with the gameplay. I absolutely could not get past the first minute or so without getting stuck or dying, and that is due to a few things:
- The controls were rather difficult to remember, so I simply had to restart so I could look at the controls. This problem would be solved with simpler controls and a help menu so that controls did not have to be memorized.
- It did not seem that attacking worked particularly well. I could not attack the first enemy with the melee weapon, and so I was killed.
- The game seems rather glitchy - once I finally got past the first enemy, I fell and didn't die but couldn't see my character. At this point, I quit, because I didn't feel like restarting the same game yet again.
Basically, the overall problem is that, due to the accumulation of all these small problems, the game forces the user to basically restart whenever something new is introduced. This is terribly discouraging to gameplay and makes the game incredibly frustrating for the player.
For future games, my main recommendation is to focus on making sure the gameplay is good. This can be very difficult - but just try, and also remember to implement features that prevent the game from being destroyed by something so simple as not knowing the controls.
I really like the mechanics of the game - the music and graphics are great too. The only real problem I have is the controls - I accidentally hit the wrong key (x or z) multiple times and it was really frustrating, especially because it is something so simple.
Sadly I didn't play to the end because at one point I got stuck and accidentally reset the whole game instead of the level, and I didn't want to play through the whole thing again. :(
This game is incredibly difficult - the first round itself is almost impossible. After that, they are mostly pretty easy - except for the pink guys, which are very very difficult to deal with due to their density. I actually had a lot of fun while playing it due to the amount of difficulty despite the rather simple graphics, but I'm afraid I couldn't beat area 3 and I didn't want to try again. Have you actually beaten your game from start to finish? It really is a challenge. In any case, I think the one easiest change that would make the biggest difference is changing the background color of each area. Even with the simple graphics, this would really make a difference. I would, of course, also suggest using sprites and stuff, but that can be difficult for your first entry. I also think it would be nice if there was a way to tune down the difficulty, or if your guy had a faster firing rate. Overall, I think it is a fun game due to its difficulty - but I'm not sure that that is what you were going for.
Very nice graphics and sound!
I think the main issue is, as somebody else mentioned, the progression - once I first saw the beam, it was like 10 seconds before I basically had to either die or portal away.
I think that if the beam was slowly creeping up on you from the beginning it would be much more tense and maybe more fun. I guess there could also be difficulty levels as well.
Overall, the game is one of the most polished games I've seen - the graphics, sound, and gameplay all fit together very well. The only real problem is that the difficulty is not necessarily well tuned, but I think with a little bit of play testing that could be easily fixed.
I like the graphics and the music, but trying to control the ship actually gave me a headache. It seems like it can't turn very well - normally I would expect the ship to turn when I press the right and left arrows, but they actually do not change the ship's velocity...
I like the art style of the witch and the forest - the child sprites don't seem to match it, however. :/
The parallax effect is also really cool.
The main problem is that it eats up a lot of memory, apparently, so I couldn't play it on Firefox and there was some lag on Chrome.
Aside from that, the one thing that I think would improve it is some matching sound effects.
Nice and simple, but lots of fun. The graphics and sound effects are fitting, although a few more sounds might have improved it a small amount.
I didn't really understand what any of the upgrades where supposed to do - some explanation would be a good addition.
The rounds with the red guys where really hard when they moved quickly - I think that that's kind of unfair, as it is possible depending on their spawn rates to be completely screwed - although maybe that's the point? ;)
Overall, it's a nice retro game and the difficulty is mostly fitting.
My first score was 33310, which I guess is not completely awful. It's a really fun game - reminds me of space invaders and the like.
It was interesting how the strategy started out as shooting first and avoiding later, and then transitioned (at least for me) into avoiding first and shooting later.
The concept as a whole is so absurd that I just love it. :)
The graphics are great and fit in perfectly with the game concept. The music generated a nice atmosphere and did not get repetitive.
This game is basically probably the best get-the-highest-score game I've played as of yet.
This game isn't particularly interesting - but I'm not sure if that is a judgement on the game or not.
Sadly I just don't think there's enough there to properly give it real feedback.
It certainly is a tower defense game, so there is a strong base to build off of, and there are a lot of places you can go with it.
I'll just list things that definitely need to happen to make it a more complete game:
- There needs to be more than one tower
- There needs to be more than one kind of enemy
- There needs to be variation in the waves
- Tower upgrades (or similar game mechanic)
Of course, all of these things are obvious, as they are central mechanics to a tower defense game - so I guess I'm not really helping you. Sorry. :(
Other feedback I have:
- The cannons do not always render correctly when they rotate - I would suggest looking into making sure your image libraries work correctly. ;)
- I don't think you are allowed to use the textures from Minecraft - I guess there's no explicit rule against it, but the rules do suggest to only use assets that you have the legal right to use, and I'm not sure if you do... (I, of course, wouldn't really worry about it too much, but if you want to work on this game in the future, be sure to create new images)
Finally, please do not load images from the external Rsc folder - if I cd out one directory higher, and run the program from there, the files will not be found. Some Linux systems run Java programs like this by default (that is, the working directory is not the location of the jarfile) so your program is not cross-platform.
What you should do is package the resources into the jarfile - this is pretty simple to do, simply change out your image loading to use [Main class].class.getResource() in the ImageIO.load() statement.
Not a bad idea for a game. It's too short to really see where it might lead to, but at least the concept is solid. :)
The music was really awesome, in my opinion - probably some of the best music I've seen in a game so far.
The main criticism I think I have is in the graphics - they are mostly just fine but I think the doors don't exactly match the tiles, and the pirate character certainly doesn't match the rest of the graphics - it also appears the pirate character is somewhat blurred, which degrades the overall appearance of the game.
I'm kind of sad that you canceled the post-compo update, but I understand. I always say I'm going to do extra stuff with my Ludum Dare games, and then I never do. :P
@Steven Miller I did actually think about adding a battery-like meter but I'm afraid I had more important things and ran out of time. I also did later realize that the traps are really hard to see - this is probably one of the biggest issues of the game because it basically breaks it. :/
Some of the puzzles (for example, level 10) are, in fact, pretty bad - it's possible to randomly drag all the cars on and instantly win.
@negativegeforce I guess I didn't actually think the puzzles were very difficult - that one is relatively simple (you can look in SOLUTIONS.txt if you want to see the answer) but it has to do with the fact that you don't always have to use all the cars (I guess I should have made that more obvious in the instructions...)
I guess really the main difficulty from the puzzles is that ya'll are reverse-engineering the process I went through to design the puzzles, which was basically "place saw traps until the thing doesn't explode." I will say though that the general strategy (I would assume, I don't actually know...) is looking at the different pieces of the level (e.g. traps, hills, broken tracks, etc) and trying to figure out the way to get the train to interact with all of those correctly.
It often involves thinking of what pieces could be destroyed to connect other pieces that shouldn't have been connected before and ordering everything to do so.
That is, of course, for the human-designed levels - level 14 and 15 were not designed with the same intent (although I think 15 originally was, but it later came out to be incredibly difficult) and they just involve trying to figure out an order that will move the train without blowing it up.
@dvdking I started to realize that especially when hitting "next" twice to get to each level - but I didn't want to just get rid of all the silly stuff I added in so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@smilewood Yeah, I really wish I had made the traps more clear. One thing I thought I could do was add a red exclamation mark over the traps whenever they were active, but sadly I never got around to it. :(
@KevKeyOnFire that's actually one of the sort of "puzzle" mechanics that is kind of hidden - the train starts out slightly farther when it has more cars, which can actually change how it interacts with the track. I don't know if this is good design or not, so I'd love to hear more opinions.
@eevee Level 7 is an interesting one. The solution actually appears to not be a solution at first, because the train stops at the broken track until the fuel car runs out...
The raw resolution of the game is 120 x 90. I'm not necessarily good at higher-resolution pixel art - I think my highest-resolution Ludum Dare game is 480 x 360. I did sometimes think it would be better to show more of the track, if possible - do you have any idea of how I could do that?
@nanimono That's interesting to hear... the traps are actually mostly supposed to be seen as a tool for destruction rather than an overall hindrance - basically, most of the traps are actually used to destroy a special part of the train. I guess a better way to do it would be with specialized cars or layouts or something that activated the traps so it could be more easily determined by the end user - but I'm not sure. Actually, maybe the best way would be to activate traps whenever the user pushed the spacebar or something - that way they would have exact knowledge of when to activate the traps. Do you think that would be a good option?
@blinry the traps are saws, and if you look carefully they come up out of the ground at a specific interval. The best way to think of the puzzles with traps (which would be the reverse of how I thought when building them) is that the traps are built to destroy specific cars - so basically don't build a train to get past the traps, build a train where a car will need to be destroyed after one event (such as a weak track) and before another event (such as a hill).
@invader:
The only code that's running at 100% speed is the drawing code (i.e. it redraws as soon as its done drawing a frame) - do you think that could be causing the problem?
@invader
Thanks for the insight. You're the first person to observe this problem in any of my games, which have all been built on the same sort of framework thing for the past 3 events, so I'm surprised nobody else has seen this before.
In any case I'll be sure to fix it by the next event. :P
@ZYXer - thanks for the info! Nobody has mentioned that problem yet.
@joe40001 - thanks for the scores! I'm not sure I would consider my game that great, but I'm glad you at least liked it that much. :)
The main strategy in this as a puzzle game is to think of the traps as a tool to break a car. Most of the levels then become pretty similar - you try to set up a train that will make it past the broken track, and then will get broken in a way that will allow it up the hill.
The graphics and sound are really nice but I'm afraid I simply couldn't figure out how to play.
The main problem is that there is no clear indication of when each character is doing something, and I can't tell how to initiate a particular action - all my characters always starved because I couldn't figure out how to get them to eat.
I'm sure if I could figure that out than this game would be a lot more interesting, because it certainly has a solid concept - but I just can't play it properly in its current state. :(
This game has a lot of cool pieces.
The graphics are mostly pretty good. The only thing is that they are not completely consistent - the floors / walls / red box in the rooms do not really match up with the character and the external buildings.
The character animation itself is pretty good.
The sound gives it a really cool atmosphere. It very much generates a feeling of being stranded on Mars - this giant planet, with only one human on it, and absolutely no idea of what to do.
The atmosphere is sort of destroyed by the ending, but I thought the ending was good and clever nonetheless. ;)
The problem is that the game broke a few times - the first time I played it, something weird happened (I don't remember what...) and the second time, the door to the outside flew up through the ceiling. But the third time, everything worked out great! :D
And the intro text does break on some resolutions - you may want to look into that kind of thing in the future.
I like the graphics a lot - the fish look pretty cool. I also really like the music - it sort of reminds me of Spore music, which is one of my favorite games. The main thing is I'm still not exactly sure how to play even after getting a score of 300 (at first I thought the rocks were things I was supposed to eat or something) so that's my main problem with this game. Overall I like it quite a bit.
I really like this game. The graphics are really great - I especially like the smoke effect. I also thought that the dialogue was basically the best dialog I'd seen in a game in a while - especially with how random the ending was. It also has the unique quality of being literally painfully realistic.
This is a cool little game. It isn't really all that difficult but it's still nice to play.
The graphics are some of the best I've seen - completely consistent, well animated, very unique style.
The music is okay but gets repetitive. It seems to fit the atmosphere pretty well though.
The ending was fitting with the rest of the storytelling. The sarcastic nature of the dialogue is entertaining.
Sadly I don't have a GameBoy so I can't have the full, true experience. :)
However, playing it on the emulator I can say it's really quite a neat game, especially considering the fact that it is written for an obsolete platform...
The graphics look really good and the sound, although not very complicated, does actually add a lot to the game - hearing the increasingly frequent beeps makes the game feel a lot faster than it would without the sound.
Gameplay itself is very simple but provides a nice little challenge - given that it is a GB game developed in only 48 hours, the gameplay seems pretty complete. The only thing I would worry about is if there is a max score - I imagine if the game keeps getting faster at somepoint it will be impossible to go father - or is the game set at some maximum rate, so at somepoint the player just has to keep jumping quickly until they fail?
Overall, really good job. :)
The art is cute and the variety in the animations certainly adds to the atmosphere. I was not particularly good at it and I died a lot in hand-to-hand combat.
I think its difficulty was sort of artificially increased, at least for me, because I found it really hard to tell when I hit an enemy. If that was fixed somehow (e.g. there was a particle effect or enemy healthbars or something) then I would probably have more fun. :)
The only other thing that I think would be good is sound effects / music.
Cute game. The graphics are really nice and the sounds and music are great.
I sadly did not get to see what happened with the Kraken because I decided to rescue everybody instead - and the game only gave me credit for rescuing "at least some of them" :P
The gameplay is simple but very solid - the only thing is it doesn't seem as though there are any real consequences for anything (from what I could tell). However, the sailing does provide a very real challenge, and just a sailing simulator is not that bad of a game due to the interesting gameplay it provides - so I will say that the enemies do not really need to do anything.
Overall it's a pretty nice game - definitely one of the most polished games I've seen so far.
This is a cool little game. It's a simple concept so it's easy to pick up on but it's complex enough that it takes a large amount of strategy to really win.
I think it would be greatly improved by some variations in the messages (like, for example, I thought it was pretty great when it said "Unfortunately, your spouse was one of the deceased")
The only other improvement is if it had sound.
Also, I don't really know why, but after I reached the planet, gameplay continued? And after it did, I reached another planet, and gameplay kept going...
I really like the art style. I'm afraid I don't exactly understand the story - what "codes" are really supposed to be, but I guess that's supposed to be the mystery. The main thing I wish is that there was a third option with the text message - right now basically all endings are the same, but it would be interesting if there was a third option to do what the aliens wanted.
This game is quite fun! I really like the music and the graphics. It is difficult - I couldn't get past the lasers. Really, the only problem I had is that I didn't know which buttons to push for the artifacts - I didn't see that it had letters underneath them in the little box. That was kind of annoying, because I thought that "figure out the powers" also meant "figure out how to activate your powers" which would be incredibly annoying. Overall it's a pretty great avoidance game - it's just that I think it would be good to make it more obvious how to control the artifacts (or maybe that's just me?)
The graphics and sound are absolutely fantastic! I really like the atmosphere - the music is perfect and fits wonderfully with the wind.
My problem is I couldn't stay on the map for more than a few seconds. :(
The controls are certainly problematic - they were way too sensitive and I also couldn't really tell exactly what they were doing.
The other problem is that the plane moves way too fast for me - I needed to just slow down so I could stop flying off the map, and also so I could get used to the controls, but there was no way to slow it down very much.
I also think I would be more patient with this game if there was a way to reset - it simply takes too long to get through the intro for me to try it again. :(
If the controls were fixed, this would be a very nice little game! I'm glad others were able to play it - I'm sure it's quite fun - but the combination of the controls and my lack of video gaming skill makes this unplayable for me.
I liked this game. I haven't actually done any BF stuff before, so this was a nice little experience. ;)
I think that the Hello World program is in the wrong spot - the two methods for Hello World are either brute force all the characters using long strings of +'s, or - if you know BF well enough, you can use more advanced multiplication and things to make it smaller. I don't think anybody new to the language will be able to do that by level 2, so it's kind of just a bad placement for that level.
I couldn't get past the 6th and 7th levels. :(
I think the main thing that could improve a game like this is story - basically each challenge is part of some new thing that the company needs to do.
I think a more unique UI would also do it good - basically some kind of really cool looking IDE thing (my personal opinion is that it would be good in pixel art).
But it's certainly a good idea, especially for this theme. :)
I thought I had figured out the passcode as a time - that is hours:minutes:seconds, and hours were minutes and seconds were hours, so I thought it might be 111215. (I thought the second hand was pointing towards 11). I suppose this was wrong, but it may be why the puzzle was so hard - it relies on rather arbitrary facts.
Some of the notes were hard to read.
Overall, though, not really a bad 'Hotel Escape' game. It just isn't quite clear how to win. ;)
Graphics are pretty great, although the floor didn't quite seem to match everything else.
Audio is simple but works well.
Gameplay is difficult, but still fun. The dogs seem kind of difficult to deal with - it took me quite a few tries to beat the second level.
More of an indication of damage might improve the feel of the game.
Very strange game. The music is pretty great, and fits very well. I didn't really understand the losing condition.
Very nice game. Good audio, although I think graphics could be slightly improved. Reminds me of "This is the Only Level." I died 17 times.
My only real criticism is that the Newton level seemed unnecessarily difficult for some reason - I'm really not sure how to fix it. I think the problem was that missing a single jump could make it so that the level had to be restarted.
The graphics in this game are absolutely incredible. However, it's really really difficult - I could never make it past wave three. I'm not sure what could be changed to make it easier - maybe I'm just really bad at this game. :P
The only other improvement I would suggest is music.
Fun game, but at one point I got stuck and could only move vertically.
This is a nice game. It's sort of like Flow, as I'm sure you're aware. It's one of the better puzzle games I've played this jam, although I got stuck on the second level for quite a while. :P
It was hard to click on things, and then eventually the meters simply stopped going down, even with Big Brother there... so I guess I won?
It's an interesting idea, but I think the execution needs some work.
Audio would be an improvement; my main gripe with the graphics is that the resolution of all the pixel art is not the same, which in my opinion looks seriously unprofessional.
This is a cool game! The puzzles aren't really that hard, although I did get stuck on one at the end. It's simple enough to figure out how to play and what to do without any instructions, so that's good.
The music is fitting, although it sounds somewhat familiar - does it come from somewhere else?
The graphics work, but it feels like there is something off about them - although I can't describe exactly what. I think it might have to do with a contrast in the level of detail on the graphics and the room itself.
It took a long time to figure out how to build blasters, which was a bit of a problem. It was also impossible to get multiple security people on multiple intruders, which was rather annoying. Aside from that, though, this is a solidly built game. Sound would be an improvement.
This is actually one of the more entertaining games I've played. However, I found that the most successful strategy was to hide in a corner where enemies don't spawn and spam bullets at anybody incoming. My high score with this strategy was 565.
Other problems: Red enemies didn't always spawn - seems like a glitch. Also, my game would sometimes randomly lag, and I'm not quite sure why.
Rather difficult, but not unfun. I could never get past the second round.
Graphics and music are good. This has probably the best vector graphics I've seen so far this Ludum Dare.
Cute game. Music is great. Graphics are good, but the style is somewhat inconsistent.
Using dead enemies was new, and was a nice game mechanic.
I got all 300 points. :)
This is a pretty nice little game! The puzzle mechanic wasn't very difficult, but I'm guessing if it was, it would be almost impossible, due to the fact that it would be hard to know exactly what was going on.
The graphics and music are absolutely incredible. The only real improvement I could see is adding some animation to some of the background elements.
I also think that some kind of reset feature would be nice. I had to restart the game several times because I missed the platform with the cube.
I'm not entirely sure how the gameplay could be improved - as I said, it wasn't particularly difficult, but keeping a mental map of the game world for a more complex puzzle would be quite a challenge, and would be incredibly frustrating (at least for me). I suppose a more complex puzzle is the only option, but extra graphical hints would probably have to be implemented to make it fun - e.g. arrows that show which direction a lever will rotate the world.
Awesome game. Only one level really had me stuck, and the puzzle mechanic behind it was awesome. The music was very good.
Audio would be good. Gameplay had a few issues. First, in the physics game, it was random whether I was able to push keys simultaneously or not. It was also possible to cheat by going outside the box. Also, it said I lost at one point, but allowed me to continue playing...?
I didn't really understand what the point was of the biology minigame.
It's also not really clear what causes your madness level to increase.
I think the art is actually pretty fitting, although some parts could be slightly improved. In some cases, it didn't seem like there was a good way to set off a trap. However, I did think it was a fun little game.
The atmosphere in this game is really unique - it seems to me like somebody narrating their own adventure, with all their own music and sound effects. It's really cool.
However, I couldn't really understand how to attack - it seemed like whenever I tried I simply got hurt.
Jumping, as others said, is pretty broken - it's linear instead of quadratic, and is really hard to control.
I feel like a little bit of variation in the graphics would also really help.
Music and sound, of course, would also be an improvement.
Nice game - quite fun. On easy, I scored 10250 points without trying too hard.
Music was done well and matched gameplay quite nicely. I found that early on, the collection noises matched up with the beat of the music naturally, somehow.
This is actually one of the more entertaining games I've played, simply due to the fact that it is simple and has a clear although arbitrary objective.
Music, as I always say, would be an improvement.
I think that most of the graphics are good - they have a consistent style - except for the powerup graphics, which could probably be improved.
The AI worked well, which is what really sold it.
Overall, very nice first gaem. ;)
Collision is way too buggy - I cannot get past the first level, because I always run into the higher platforms and cannot climb on to them.
Gameplay is nice and simple, but works. Could use music.
Main problem was in incredibly unfair and frustrating level design. This mostly came in two ways: tight vertical confinement with enemies, making it hard to jump past them (see: level where sandwich says "That was cold!") and places where it was necessary to jump somewhere and then jump away, but jump height was too high.
This game is not particularly fun to play due to the amount of glitches. :(
However, I will say congrats on making a good UI - that's something that a lot of first-timers don't do. :)
I hope you had fun with your first LD and will participate again! :)
Very cool take on pong. The AI is incredibly difficult to beat. Graphics are very nice - I especially like the trail. Music would probably be an improvement.
Oh - it does have music! My bad! It's merely that the web version is rather broken on my computer. The music is actually pretty good. :)
It's very difficult to target the creatures due to how they move, and once a creature is missed, the game screws up my mouse movement (by holding the mouse in place until I release it), making it really hard to actually hit them, even though I should be able to if it were merely a test of reflexes.
Otherwise it's a pretty fun game, but this targeting issue just makes it frustrating. :(
This is an incredible use of the theme and of the RPG format. Music was awesome, and graphics were pretty good - although I think the pencil sketches did not necessarily fit with the rest of the game (although I'm honestly not sure where I stand on this point).
The game ended rather abruptly without really a clear description of what happened - maybe some of the other endings are different, but whichever one I got was rather underwhelming.
Overall a very interesting game.
Very nice little puzzle game. Some of the puzzles I had to resort to basically shooting in random directions, but for the most part it was pretty good.
Music and sound effects are very fitting.
The pixel art is some of the best I've seen. However, this game was incredibly frustrating.
First, the controls seemed really slippery. I'd often find myself falling off a platform that was off screen because I'd jumped too high and was still moving left from something I was doing before.
Then, whenever I reached a new part of the level, I would always die, because I would choose the wrong path at some point. The only way to get up safely was to memorize the path - and because I could only get up that high every once in a while, this made it very difficult to remember the correct path.
This game might work as an Impossible Game-type-game, but the problem is that death comes too quickly - that is, in a game like the Impossible Game, it feels rewarding to try again, as the music is well synced and it feels fun to hit all the blocks, but in this game it's merely frustrating, as there's no real reward for retrying. (Hopefully I explained that well - it's kind of hard to).
So I got this error until I used @ursagames' solution: "Context3D not available! Possible reasons: wrong wmode or missing device support."
Once I got it working, though, the concept seemed pretty cool. I didn't do very well, but it was fun, and I think with a bit of trial and error I could figure it out.
Graphics are good. The background audio had some noise at the end of the clip that sort of seemed weird.
This is a pretty great idea. The main improvement, I think, would be some sort of enemy AI - as I don't have anybody to play with.
This is a very cool puzzle game. The graphics and audio style are very consistent, and make this is a very solid entry.
It's cool to see an actual multiplayer game made during a Ludum Dare. Music is fast-paced and very good. I also love the graphics.
I've never seen 3D pixel art before - that was really cool. Seems to be a very polished game.
The graphics and audio in this game are basically top-quality - they have a consistent theme and work well. The core concept was also a really cool idea.
Really, this is a very solid base for a game - the only problem is it doesn't go very far.
The only other problem I had was controls - I was not expecting the default controls to be arrow keys, as WASD is standard for a first person game (especially one where space is jump - it's almost impossible to play a first person game with arrow keys and space).
I've interacted with everybody, but it says I need to collect more votes... I'm not entirely sure what to do.
Otherwise, I love all the meta in this game. It's quite funny.
The camera movement kind of makes my head hurt.
Best mechanic I've seen so far. The only real problem I encountered was that sometimes when entering codes, I was too close to the keypad, and I couldn't move backwards to enter the full code. It was possible to escape by pushing 'Escape' and then 'Resume,' but it was rather frustrating for such a simple UI mechanic.
Otherwise, very nice game - I especially liked the way that the music volume varied. The music itself was very fitting.
I couldn't really figure out what the first objective wanted me to do, so that was kind of a problem. After that, though, it became quite a bit better.
I'm not exactly sure how to win - I thought my room was pretty good-looking from the door, despite the fact that it was rather messy behind the cupboard.
I'm not entirely sure what I'm supposed to get out of this, so I didn't really enjoy it that much. The intro worked very well, but after that - nothing happened. I suppose that may be the point, but I find it to be unsatisfactory.
Most of the artwork is really good, except the prisoner does not match the rest at all, and feels out of place.
Movement seems to be really slow. If this really is meant to convey isolation, I believe movement should be faster - in real life, I can walk the length of a bed in a second.
Good idea, but the ball gets stuck much too often. Being able to move around (like you can in the original breakout...) would solve this problem. Music would also be good.
Interesting idea. I wasn't too engaged, and the parts where I had to click all three options seemed kind of pointless. Maybe I'm just not a fan of interactive fiction.
The music in this game is absolutely awesome - it's really engaging. At the end of the game, I felt like I had played through a long adventure, even though it really didn't take that long. Great job on the mood (which was also helped by the graphics).
Gameplay, however, was very frustrating. The transition between pages inflates the difficulty artificially - I oftentimes found myself completely losing a song because I got off sync at the beginning of a new page.
Aside from that, I found the up/down chords hard to play, especially when not very well isolated - it required me to move my hand off the keyboard and back on to switch between these chords and other notes, which was really frustrating.
This game has a lot of potential - it really just has a few small gameplay flaws.
I think it could use more SFX, and some of the graphics could be slightly improved. Gameplay was challenging but seemed balanced - although I couldn't beat anybody past the second wizard.
The music in this game is pretty good. Sadly, the levels got way too difficult way too quickly - it took me quite a few tries to beat level two, and I have no idea where to even start with level three. It's a good puzzle game, though.
Very nice interpretation of the theme. I think that the main way to improve this game would be to have the workers interacting in various other ways so that the core game mechanic would be more complex.
This is great. Sadly I could never get more than like 5 kills. I think aiming with the mouse would be an improvement - at least for single player mode. I didn't have a chance to play with multiple people.
Graphics are charming, and audio is very fitting. Attention... fight! indeed.
It's too hard to get the necessary item from a locker. I lost simply because I couldn't get what I needed.
It was also unclear that every individual tile was a different part that needed to be checked separately.
I don't really understand what I'm supposed to do, but otherwise this is a pretty solidly built entry.
Nice idea for a game. I think higher stakes would have been an improvement, but I had fun anyways.
Interesting game - It's a shame that it can't really be played with only one person.
I think that the controls on the accusation screen could be done better - I accidentally submitted because I didn't see how to change what I was choosing. Mouse might be a good control here.
I like the art a lot. The controls were a bit clunky - sometimes I couldn't exactly tell what I had selected. I also felt like there wasn't really any tension - although this might have been because I sort of didn't get that I needed to have some money at the end of 15 days.
Pretty good concept. I have two main issues: a: once an edit was made, it was impossible to change it again, which means that if one was screwed up, it was impossible to fix it and b: it was hard to read the options for editing as they intersected with the newspaper text.
The other thing is that it wasn't very clear exactly what you were supposed to be doing - I thought that the point was to side with the Brotherhood, but it appears that that was not entirely the case? Essentially, the game is less fun without a clear objective.
The controls were incredibly difficult to figure out. That was a big turnoff.
However, once I did figure them out, the game was pretty fun. Difficulty ramped up really quickly, which was a shame.
The graphics are awesome. It could use some audio, though.
Music worked well. I think slightly better graphics could be an improvement. Also, it took too long to restart - it was hard to get back into the game after dying.
@Tortoise:
Yeah, I thought about turning off the fire audio, but I didn't, because I suppose I like to cause my audience pain ;)
@Piscythe:
That was what I was trying to fix in terms of balance. As you can see, I basically failed. :(
@MrErdalUral: I've noticed that, thanks for confirming that it's an issue.
@Zettlekasten, @Aurel Bílý: It sounds like you guys are having lag issues. That's a shame. I did test this game on my slowest computer (well, aside from my RPi), and I didn't have any issues. I suppose that's something to improve in the future.
@Aurel Bílý: I honestly didn't think about twin-stick controls. That's a really great idea!
@jramell: Thanks for the feedback - I was worried that there were too many skills to keep track of. They really all do very similar things - the only ones that really do much different are some of the magic skills, which can attack multiple enemies, and the slime arrow, which can make enemies fight for you (although this happens to not be very useful...)
Not bad, but the invisible blocks are incredibly annoying and unfair.
Art is good, music is good. However, this is not a fair game. It is absolutely impossible to know where enemies will spawn in, and with bad luck, you will get completely trapped, no matter what you do.
Wall jumping was rather hard. Collisions act somewhat strange sometimes.
However, the graphics and music all work very well.
Very cool idea, but somewhat slow to play. If you are trapped and don't have any bombs, the game should end. Audio would be nice. I thought graphics were just fine, except for the fact that pieces could tile better.
This is a very good game. Has some of the best 3D graphics I've seen in a Ludum Dare game. It is rather difficult, but it's not too frustrating - although I would like an option to restart the level I am on instead of the entire game. Music fits and works well. Overall, this is a really great game.
Art is good, music is somewhat repetitive, gameplay is very hard. The controls were kind of slippery, which may have induced some level of artificial difficulty.
The graphics, I think, are perfect for the atmosphere. However, without any sound effects or animation, it is really really hard to tell what is going on. For example, I can't tell if the gun even has any real effect, so I didn't really use it.
Graphics are okay, music would be an improvement. Some enemies were I think impossible to dodge. Overall, though, it's a good first entry, and there's a lot where this could go in the future.
This was actually pretty fun, for some inexplicable reason. I also enjoyed all the great jokes - "freckle past a hair" especially. Normally I would say that music is an improvement, but I honestly am not sure what sort of music I would like in this game... Overall, it's pretty great. :)
I really like the atmosphere of this game, although it was very difficult (at least for me). Fits the theme very well.
This is a pretty great game. It's just incredibly difficult after the first few levels. But the graphics and audio are great - especially the voices.
I love the visuals, and the music is absolutely incredible. However, I couldn't make it past the first light after the first windowsill - which was really quite frustrating. I think this game should be slightly easier, especially considering how serene the rest of it is.
I absolutely love the graphics and the music, but there was simply no difficulty to this game. I could never really get hurt, no matter how hard I tried to. I never took damage from the bats, and I only took damage from the other birds like once. Maybe there's something wrong with how it runs on my computer.
@Chaoslab: I was running it on Windows 7 - my resolution is 1920x1080.
One of the coolest 3D environments I've seen in a Ludum Dare game. The music is absolutely incredible and creates an awesome atmosphere. I do wish there was more of an ending, but it works well nonetheless.
Very strange. However, it doesn't really seem like it's very easy to actually hurt enemies, because that requires putting paint of the correct color in their path - but in order to run away, you often have to change direction a lot, so you end up creating blobs of paint essentially normal to where they need to be. Also, even if they are in the right place, they are often the wrong color.
However, I do think that the concept is solid, and the music fits pretty well.
This is a pretty great novelty game. It's hilarious that it's possible to make what is technically a puzzle game out of filling up a room with junk.
All of the parody names were pretty great too.
Sadly though this game isn't particularly engaging. It's only flaw! ;)
Seems like a solid base, but it's really unclear how to play - I could never figure out how to get machines to do anything. Collecting resources is also rather slow, considering how many are required to build anything.
Fun game. Great artwork and sounds. I didn't really understand at first that crystals were acquired through fighting the boss, but once I figured that out it became pretty fun.
I didn't really get it. I think it's not a bad idea, but right now it isn't done very well.
In any case, the audio and graphics both didn't really seem to be very consistent - I think that better audio / graphics would really make a difference.
The audio in this was pretty charming - especially the guys laughing.
However, it was pretty difficult. I'm not entirely sure why - I think that it has to do with the fact that your fire rate and movement are both slow and you only get two hits before you die.
Also, for some reason, sometimes when I try to restart (by pushing space twice) I will immediately be dead, and have to restart again - is there some other way I'm supposed to restart?
Phone games are always interesting to see in a jam. This one is not bad, but it's pretty repetitive and is not very difficult. First, the spaceship just kind of teleports everywhere, which is somewhat strange feeling. There is only one enemy type, and they don't do anything but give out points.
However, it's certainly a good start for a game - it simply needs more content. Music would also be good, and would make the game much more engaging.
I like the concept, but it has quite a few flaws.
First, it's really hard to aim. The second player's controls are also really difficult (at least for me). Also, the game apparently doesn't detect when it wins, which is kind of a problem?
Also, the instruction menu was glitched out - the instruction panels were overlayed on the controls, so it was basically impossible to read them.
I really can't understand what I'm supposed to be doing. I managed to get through the first day by giving two people wine and one person a tomato salad, but I don't really know why that worked. It isn't very clear what they want by their speech bubbles.
Great take on the theme, great music, great art. One of the more entertaining games I've played. Apparently I'm not too good at making arcade games (although that's what I made for real this time around, so... :P)
The only real problem I have is that the controls are really difficult to use effectively. I ended up just using bread because it was too difficult to try more complicated constructions.
Very cool idea. However, I never figured out what he wanted in terms of grading. I suppose I would have to look into the algorithm to really understand.
Aside from that, very cool game. Audio could potentially be an improvement.
Good graphics and audio, but it didn't seem to have any ultimate objective, and there weren't really any consequences, it seemed, for being slow. However, it's a really great starting point - gameplay was simple yet fun once I got used to it, although I think if there was some sort of goal the pipes would have to be rearranged at somepoint.
This is not at all bad for a first Ludum Dare entry. However, it has one huge, huge flaw: the fact that the player has lives. There is absolutely no need for this, and it makes the game incredibly frustrating - I simply gave up after I lost, because there was no way I was going to play through the whole thing again.
Audio is good. The gameplay is pretty fun, although the puzzles weren't particularly puzzling. I enjoyed it (up until I lost).
The graphics seem well-made but the walls look kind of strange for some reason - I think it has to do with the tiling being slightly off or something.
Overall, though, this is an awesome first entry! I hope you participate again! :)
Seems like a cool game, but I can't get very far. Either I get killed by the spikes, because I don't know which direction they're going to go and can't run fast enough, or I get killed by the rotating room.
A very good puzzle game. Most puzzle games are too hard or too easy, but this one is just right. Graphics fit, music fits. It's all pretty good.
Very difficult. It was also hard to set things down in the vertical direction, which may have contributed to the difficulty.
Increasing tempo music is absolutely perfect. :D
I found this game really difficult for some reason. I didn't really understand how the change mechanic worked, and it seemed like it took way too long to build food. Otherwise, it was pretty fun - I just wish I could figure out how to do better in it.
Good concept. It was almost impossible for me to figure out how to destroy the red boxes.
I really like the idea, but I couldn't really figure out how to play.
First, the graphics weren't very clear - I could never tell if the teacher was looking or not (or even if they ever did).
Also, I couldn't really figure out how to pass notes succesfully - At first I didn't even know there was a power meter. I think the UI could be much improved.
I also had issues with selecting what actions I should take.
I like how everything is hand-drawn. It's a nice touch.
Interesting gameplay - very easy to understand. However, I'm not really sure if there's any strategy - you basically have to guess correctly, or you lose.
I really really want to get to the ending of this game but it keeps crashing. I've gotten as far as the picture where the man is sitting in the corner with the question mark necklace on the ground.
The art is really really good and the sound is done well. I just wish it didn't crash so much.
This is pretty cool. It really needs some sort of tutorial though, because I seriously could not figure out what to do for a long, long time. Also, for some reason early on it seemed like warehouse workers would simply stand still outside the warehouse and not move...? It didn't really make sense.
I think it would be nice to be able to assign workers to jobs - right before I lost, I had built a bunch of farms and then started building more temples so that I could support a new worker population - but all the new workers were going to my farms, so my QoL continued to decrease when that wouldn't have been a problem if I had been able to assign them to the temple.
I like the raw mechanics of this game, including the fact that bullets go around the globe to kill you. That particular mechanic contributes a sort of puzzle mechanic to the game, which is nice.
My main concern is a lot of frustration with the game - most of this comes with control problems and glitches, but some of it comes from unfair level design.
Part of the problem with the controls is due to the basic game design - the arrows control angular direction, which is basically the only option, but I often found myself using the spacial direction I wanted to go, which happened to be the wrong way. Perhaps this could be fixed by keeping the player still at the top of the screen, and having the world rotate...?
The other problem was that jumping did not seem to respond correctly - the first level with the jump boost I lost several times because I went up against the wall, and tried to jump, and couldn't maneuver past the wall, even while in air.
There were also several glitches. I got stuck in walls multiple times. One time an enemy started flying where I couldn't shoot it. In all cases I had to restart the level, which often meant re-doing difficult things for no reason - in a game with difficulty like this one, restarting better be due to player error and not due to the game being broken - because otherwise it's simply not fun to play.
Finally, although I think most of the difficult is at an acceptable level, the cyclops spawners level is, I think, simply unfair - for me it might well be impossible, as I can seriously see no way to beat it.
If some of these issues were fixed, I believe I would enjoy this game several times better.
Nice game. I can certainly see how it could result in quite a bit of strategy, but the problem is that it simply goes too quickly - if enemy countries start taking over your stuff, it is really hard to beat them back, because usually most of your troops will be dead. This, is of course, where the strategy of "centralize your troops" would come into play, but there usually isn't enough time to really analyze the situation. It just seems like strategy is overruled by being aggressive - I won in about one minute simply by attacking straight up to the enemies' generals.
In any case, though, I think part of the reason it is so hard to think about strategy is because there are no real graphical representations of anything. Troops should probably have a graphical representation - this would allow the player to easily visually figure out whether they could take over another country or whether they should try to retreat. Animation of some sort would also help - troops should move and fight - but I'm not quite sure _when_ the animations would take place given that actions technically don't happen until the five seconds have passed, and at that point the player needs to be able to see the updated state - probably the best way would be to spend about three seconds or so showing what was happening during the turn. (This would also help players see what the new layout was going to be, and maybe help them develop strategy).
This looks like a really solid start to a game! My main feedback is that I can't really tell what any of the tiles in the interface levels are, so I don't know if they are floors or walls or death traps, which makes it kind of hard to play.
Small unimplemented feature: commands longer than the screen don't wrap or scroll.
Finally, I have this to say: "If you're happy and you know it, illegal command if!" :)
Overall, I really like this game. The graphics are awesome and the music works well. The main problem was that it wasn't at all obvious what I was meant to do - I had no idea that I could actually use the shovel by pressing down, so it would be good to say that once you get it. Aside from that, though, I enjoyed this game - it's very polished.
This game is very well put together. The art style is cool and the music fits really well. The mechanic of having health and currency as the same resource is unique and interesting.
It seems as though weapons are not very balanced - bombs and heat-seeking missiles are both very powerful, and it's not particularly hard to win with either of them. Melee mushrooms are a bit harder to use, although I imagine that with enough spamming, it could still be relatively simple to win. I think it might be good to introduce more difficulty (as well as increasing difficulty) somehow.
Side note: your 'cheat sheet', I think, is mixed up - mushroom three appears to be a missile while mushroom four appears to be a bomb, but the cheat sheet lists 3 as a bomb and 4 as a missile.
@frodewin: The NPCs will randomly build a number of huts proportional to their current population. They require trees to be present in order to build huts.
@init-py: Thanks. :)
@Zeriver: yes, the NPCs will sometimes throw coconuts at each other - although they do no damage. :) I'm glad you enjoyed it, although I doubt you could keep enjoying it much past ~3 minutes, as there's really only like three things the NPCs do
@holgk: No, I actually haven't heard of Sim Earth before. :) I'm also not sure if I would consider my graphics "modern" but if you do, thanks I guess :P
@cerno-b: I agree that it would be nice to have goals of some sort. One of my original ideas was actually somewhat similar to what you suggested, although I didn't know if I could make it fun.
@tweedle: I really like the popup idea; as you can probably tell there isn't a lot implemented yet but if I do end up expanding on it I think I will include that.
Thanks for the feedback on the music - I always just throw stuff together that I think might sound right and I'm always interested if it actually fits the game and how other people like it.
@shaolin-dave: Glad you enjoyed yourself - always my primary goal, even if my game is only fun for a few minutes. :) If you have any recommendations on how I could make it more obvious what is happening, I'm all ears.
@linus: I can explain the problem with the fish: they are meant to lose health if they are outside of water, and for some reason they detect as outside of water when they are right on the edge of a boundary. (Also, if there is land between two bodies of water, they may attempt to swim between the bodies of water, and lose health as they travel over the land). So basically it comes down to poor implementation; there is no true "fish life mechanic" because it's broken. ;)
Yeah, it might be good to put in a tutorial. I thought though that it might be more fun to try to see what you could get to happen - sort of like those alchemy games where you combine the different elements to see which ones make the best combos. Maybe though just a basic introduction to the controls / idea of the game would be good.
@automatonvx: Thanks for the feedback.
Yeah, all the animals merely move linearly from point to point - I would like them to follow more circular arcs, as that is how their directional movement works. By the way, there aren't any dogs - the only animals are pigs, cows, horses, fish, and sharks, but I can see why their graphical representations are not necessarily unique... :)
I think it would be great to have a version fixed more on the gameplay. Maybe someday I'll make a post-compo version. ;)
The colorful things in the bottom left are just decorations: flowers, shells, pebbles, leaves, fissures, and lilypads. They have no effect on gameplay.
Thanks for the feedback on music - really appreciate it.
@Flaterectomy: Glad you liked it. I certainly agree in regards to sound effects; yet another basic thing that I sadly simply didn't have time for. :(
@Lipsch: More content is certainly, I think, the best thing I could do for this game. Thanks for the music feedback; I certainly like to know if my music works out well.
@BoudDeSit: :)
@evan-minto: Thanks for the feedback. I think I finally get what you guys have been saying in regards to a more goal-oriented system, and it certainly sounds like a good idea.
I think this game could be pretty fun! In its current state, however, it is too easy - I haven't played against humans, but against the AI, the strategy is basically to hold down one directional key and spam the spacebar, and I imagine a similar tactic will work in real multiplayer as well. I think to remedy this there should probably be some sort of limitation on ranged attacks, so they can be dodged more easily.
The only other problem I saw was a control issue that arises from the circular nature of the game - when the player is on the bottom of the world, sometimes I press the wrong key because I'm thinking of the spatial direction I want to move while the keys control the angular direction. I'm not sure if there's a good way to fix this, but it might be worth looking into.
Not bad. Music is pretty great. My main issue is with the controls - the planet would never rotate where I wanted it to, and every time I played I eventually lost because the planet was spinning so fast that I lost total control.
The bugs did not seem to provide much of a challenge; I could mostly just wave around my mouse and be fine.
Nice game. Sound effects are some of the most interesting I've seen in a Ludum Dare game; I usually don't see actual recorded sounds. I think some of the animations could use extra frames - some of them look a bit choppy.
In regards to the gameplay, it appears that it's basically impossible to survive if you don't immediately start watering the first cheese. This seems a bit unfair, especially for players just starting out. Past that, the main problem is that the game is very repetitive - the only way to win is to water plants, sleep, hide from cat, repeat. I'm not entirely sure what new variety could be introduced, but that's definitely the main point to improve on.
Also, kudos for making successful rotary controls. Several other games have confusing controls because the player moves, not the world, but this game doesn't have that problem.
My basic opinion of this game is that the goal is rather boring, but flying through space is kind of fun, so it doesn't necessarily matter that the goal is so mundane. I have some other feedback though, namely: - I don't understand the combination of voxel models and non-voxel models - perhaps it's simply a graphical style I dislike; not really sure - Gravity does not appear to actually be gravity - from what I could tell, the character is just linearly pulled to a planet, but gravity is meant to be a force, which makes this game feel rather wonky. For me, this problem seriously detracts from the fun of the aforementioned flying through space, and is probably one of the reasons I didn't enjoy this game as much as I could have. - The rope is a bit glitchy; I know other people have mentioned this but it just makes the game feel less complete/professional/something - The controls. Other people have mentioned this as well, but the controls also cause serious problems with how much I enjoy this game - sometimes I couldn't get off of a planet because the character would not aim the right direction. Perhaps simple third-person camera controls would be better...? - This is an insignificant issue, but it is possible to fly through the sphere surrounding the game world. The fact that the sky is a sphere also means that the stars don't necessarily move how you would expect - they basically shouldn't move at all with regards to the player's position, only their direction.
As it were, while I was playing, I also developed this (highly subjective) opinion: I believe this game could be incredibly effective as a puzzle / horror (?) game - basically, confronting the player with being truly lost in space - disconnected from the rest of all humankind. This would mean changing the music and graphical style to be much less cheerful - this thought, in fact, is probably one of the reasons I disliked the voxel graphics. But flying through space and staring at the stars off in the distance did create this sort of feeling of isolation, and I think if the game was specifically constructed to do that, it would be a really cool experience.
Of course, that would be completely changing your game from what it is; just something to think about. In its current state, it's not at all bad; there's just a few small things holding it back from being truly enjoyable. I think the most important changes would be fixing the controls / mechanics (including gravity) and giving it a slightly less trudging goal; perhaps just a bit more open-world-ness would be good.
I really like the graphics. Could do with a bit of music. The problem is that it is simply way too difficult - I couldn't beat it a single time. It seems like a lot of the time you will necessarily be hit by a particular enemy at least once, meaning that you basically have to be perfect for all the enemies that you can avoid. In particular, I have no idea how to get past the second or fourth enemies without getting hit, or in general any of the enemies that throw projectiles.
Fun little game. Reminded me a bit of Harvest Moon. I really like the graphics.
My main problem is that it doesn't really seem like there's a real reason to bother with anything after flour - it takes so many resources to make bread that I think it must be faster to simply sell flour (and stone and wood) then to spend lots of time and resources to figure out how to get a good price for bread before even being able to start making large profits.
That was quite the experience. The noise effect is a bit irritating, but I found that it became less bothersome after I got the audio working. The audio itself was really well put together, I think. The abrupt ending was also a nice touch.
This game has a very good art style, and I think that the environment is very well put together, even without sound.
However, I find it very frustrating that the main challenge of the game is literally just fighting with the controls. A bit of inertia the car is definitely good, but I feel like there is simply too much inertia, especially when combined with fixed aim. I think even a simple challenge like "the enemies shoot at you" would be better, because I did not find this game particularly fun.
The controls also had some small glitches - near the beginning of the game I was for some reason unable to reverse direction. I believe it was related to the fact that I was using mouse clicking for shooting instead of space.
I think that the main thing to improve this game is to add more mini events. Basically, have the core system of the game be the flying screen, and then every so often something will happen - right now the controller will run out of batteries (?) but there could also be other systems going down or perhaps you run into aliens or perhaps you get a mission where you have to do something during the flying stage (like you are given tractor beam privileges and you have to collect a small asteroid).
I don't know if all that would entirely go so well with what is apparently a high-score game, or if it's in line with the current game's goals, but I think it's at least worth consideration.
I would certainly like to see what this game might turn in to. As it currently stands, I have to say that the red boxes are kind of harsh, and it would probably be good to use a calmer color.
The other big thing is making sure that the game expands to fill the window, or at least expands to fill part of the window.
Also, it's impressive that you documented your code. I've never once added any real documentation to any of my Ludum Dare source code, except for small snippets about things that I might want to know about during the event.
I like the music and the graphics. The gameplay is mostly okay, although there are a few small problems: - The controls are kind of hard to use. An option to use space for jump would probably be good. - It is possible for a flying enemy to spawn in right as you are jumping over a gap and block you, causing you to fall through no fault of your own. - It is possible to get stuck between a flying enemy and a wall / floor / spikes, which will almost necessarily kill you.
Well. I'm not entirely sure how this game works, and I think that that is it's biggest problem. The main thing is that I'm not quite sure how to prevent the grid from being destroyed, and that is a significant problem seeing as how it is apparently the primary goal of the game.
So most of my playtime (at least 4 minutes) was spent running from the 'innocents,' which was basically a zombie apocalypse simulator, so that was kind of fun. Although it quickly became laggy. It also appears that hitboxes have some sort of problem, as I was ostensibly not taking any damage until there was a large swarm of enemies.
This was a fun game. It's seriously interesting thinking about the strategy of the game, especially when your opponent is in a really desperate situation - because they can kill any guys you have near them by using a significant portion of their energy, and then you have to use your energy to get your other guys back across the board, which is quite a bit of energy.
The start of the game certainly was slow, but I didn't find it to be a huge problem.
This is a nice idea. I think the main improvement that could be made would be having some way to know why certain pictures get more likes than others, so that it's possible to try to take good pictures - and then have some way that those pictures can be ruined, such as if a bug flies into them at the wrong time.
For example, my highest rated picture was a picture of the other pictures behind the boombox, which is not really what I would expect - I would expect the cat / plants / trees / butterflies to do good, and only some of my predictions were correct.
The mood is super. Graphics are minimalistic but they work well. However, including more variation among the hallways would probably be a good idea.
My first game only lasted for about 10 seconds, which kind of seems like a problem, so making sure the monster spawns a good distance away would help.
Having the player build a ship is not a bad idea, although it would have been improved by a) having the ship somehow effect gameplay and b) allowing the player to upload an image / use one through a URL, so that it would be possible to jump right in with an arbitrary image as the ship.
Aside from that, gameplay is pretty straightforward - although it would be nice to be able to take more than one hit, because it can be seriously frustrating.
Minor things: if you die and there is a powerup on screen or next level text (e.g. "Level 3") it will not disappear when you restart.
Not so bad. It's kind of confusing exactly how each thing works - I think explaining that the power nodes have a range in which buildings around them are powered would be helpful.
The main problem is that the game is very unfriendly to beginners - there's no way to remove or disable power nodes, so if you build a bunch in the earlier stages in order to consume more of your total than you will suddenly have a bunch of power outages but not have enough money to buy new generators. So then you are reduced to having to just wait out the early game until you can get more generators, which takes a long time because you can only earn a few hundred dollars every month.
I think that the concept, overall, is not bad. However, I think there needs to be some sort of way to find an outlet, because it seems like pure luck. I found a charger by 5%, which understandably took quite some time, as there is only one store. But it took until 2% to find an outlet, and it seems very possible that I might not have found one at all.
Aside from that, I would like to know what all the buildings are that don't sell things. I think an improvement would be to make each building have some sort of relevant graphics - perhaps not to the point where you could distinguish the cellphone store, but at least so they would look like buildings.
To me, it seems like the difficulty curve is off a bit. The game starts out pretty easy, and then suddenly there are many many more robots than there were previously. It's also quite hard to target the gray robots in particular, as there are often other robots in the way...
The only absolute problem that I could find that has not been previously mentioned is that sometimes you can't actually see a robot because it's behind something, and then it is very difficult to shoot it.
Not a lot to say, honestly - but the core concept looks good, and I think it really could go somewhere.
The main problem currently that isn't merely a bug in programming is the sockets - I often am pushed out of a socket on the opposite side of where I want to be, and when I start walking I go straight back into the socket, which is really annoying.
@ryte2byte: Thanks for the feedback.
I am absolutely terrible at camera controls. They worked well when I started programming the game - they just activated without clicking, but that became a problem once I started working on the UI so I "patched" them so to speak. Something to fix in a post-compo version.
The turret UI is something I noticed shortly after the compo finished. I believe it's something to do with the button hitboxes.
And yes, you did finish the game. There's no fanfare for either winning or losing. :P
@ciobeni: Thanks for the feedback, although I'm sorry you weren't able to see the whole map. That takes away quite a bit of playability.
I would agree in regards to the UI. Thanks for the comment on the graphics - I'm definitely interested in what people think of those.
I believe I will need to implement alternate camera controls given the number of people that cannot seem to access the current ones.
Please note that the map will not pan unless the mouse is somewhat near the edge of the screen, which could be a source of some confusion.
Okay, I've built a new version with camera controls based on arrow keys: https://github.com/TheMonsterFromTheDeep/BugsTD/releases/tag/v1.0-arrow-camera
@HuvaaKoodia: I assure you that I was most certainly thinking about a thematic gimmick. It just happens that I didn't have nearly enough time to implement one.
In fact, my original idea was to have no specified path - the enemies would follow a path through your buildings (like Desktop Tower Defense). Then, grid squares would "run out of power" - and the towers placed on them would no longer work.
@EdwingGameDev: yeah, for some reason I couldn't build the "new" HTML version, so I didn't put it up. Maybe I can try again..
@LuckyFeathers: Thanks for the tips on making music / sound, but I already have methods - I simply didn't have time to mess with that.
I also didn't really have time to make multiple enemies, but I certainly did consider it. However, there were more pressing matters...
In order to shoot the enemies that travel the furthest, the enemies simply keep track of how long they have been alive and the towers shoot the one that's been alive the longest. But this is bad, because it means towers will prioritize enemies from the longer track over those on the shorter track, which is the exact opposite of what you want, because the shorter track enemies will get to the exit first.
Thanks everyone for the feedback! I have to agree with most of it, and perhaps I will have the motivation to make a post-jam version at somepoint. If anybody has specific recommendations for new UI / controls, I would love to hear them.
@mad-fizban: I'm surprised you're the first to mention this! I noticed it sometime after the compo ended, probably when trying to upload a web version, and it seemed like more people would be bothered by it.
Perhaps nobody used the 400-cost tower, given that it's honestly probably the least effective.
I like the core concept but man are the controls crazy. The camera spins like there is no tomorrow and it's almost impossible to get it to point such that you can actually see the tanks shooting at you. Trying to move up the ramps on the "big" arena is, in my opinion, a fool's errand.
But! I had fun nonetheless. My main gripe aside from the main game controls is that 'P' (as well as the 'Quit' button when you push escape) should take you to the menu, not exit the game completely, in case you want to switch arenas or read the instructions.
Also, I'm not entirely sure what "hover jump" is supposed to do, as it never actually did anything for me.
Graphics are good, audio is good. I'm not entirely sure if difficulty is fair, although I only played once so I can't necessarily make a claim on that. However, I did run in to a bug (so to speak) that I would say is rather important - I managed to push my toolbox off of the screen, where I could no longer access it. This obviously makes winning quite a bit more difficult. If this is indeed a feature rather than a bug there should probably be a warning somewhere.
I like the idea for the game and it's very close to playable, but it's just so hard to find the white boxes that it's very hard not to lose.
A really nice touch I liked was the boxes that were stacked that allowed you to get on the roof. Made the game feel a bit bigger.
I like the game thus far. At first I thought the sandstorm mechanic was pretty clever, but it quickly became annoying, as it forces you to just sit there in order to not lose the game.
It seems somewhat difficult to navigate - there is a relatively big map and not a lot of information to help the player find where they need to go for quests et cetera.
I think my main complaint with the graphics is that they simply aren't complicated enough - which is basically unresolvable, as it is virtually impossible for a single person to make a large set of models during one game jam. But it certainly would be nice if there was more variety to the buildings and especially the terrain.
I also think that the player walk animation could be greatly improved (i.e. to always face the correct direction), but, again, as far as I'm aware that's quite complicated.
Overall, though, this game is not at all bad, given the apparent amount of stuff packed into it.
This game is very difficult, mostly due to the fact that you can't really tell how much power you are going to need at a given date, so it's difficult to decide when to build certain power plants.
It also seems like I can't ever make enough money to actually build more power plants, so my output drops out of range and then I lose.
Perhaps there is strategy that I am unaware of, but currently it seems like there is some sort of balance problem.
An interesting game. It kind of feels sort of clunky, given that your guy will just walk into a wall until you turn the correct direction.
I think my main complaint is that sometimes that path waits quite a while before even letting you continue (it will stay spinning in one place) which seems a bit unfair as it disrupts the balance between energy / boost.
Crashes for me every time I try to run it. (Windows) The most information I can seem to get about why it may have crashed is "The thread tried to read from or write to a virtual address for which it does not have the appropriate access."
Perhaps I simply don't understand the horror genre, but I fail to see how I'm supposed to be able to play this game in one try. It seems like the only way to get through is to memorize when and where the monsters are, and that kind of takes away most of the tension for me, as then the monsters don't present any threat once you have learned all of their positions.
The sound effect for the monster is pretty cool.
Overall I think this game is pretty good. It suffers quite a bit from the aforementioned bugs, and I also got stuck between my vehicle and the wall practically every time I exited it, which was quite frustrating. Given that it has no visible entrances or exits, perhaps I should be able to exit on the other side when I'm too close to the wall?
Aside from that, it's somewhat difficult to tell exactly when I can absorb an orb, so perhaps an indicator of that would be a good addition.
The lasers look pretty awesome.
I certainly like how the game looks and I think it is very promising. However, I don't really understand what challenge or strategy there is to it.
All I did was charge batteries on the bottom row and put them in the bottom engine, and after doing that for a while and wondering if I would get to do anything else the game said I won. It's not particularly exciting, as there's not a whole lot of strategy to simply moving three objects around.
I have one particular gripe with the controls: oftentimes when a battery was done charging / uncharging, I would be anticipating it, and so I would click to grab it - but then it would automatically equip because I was near it, and so I would throw it instead. This is kind of frustrating, although I don't know quite how to fix that.
I like the atmosphere in the game. The music is pretty good and fits the gameplay and actually affects how it feels.
It was a bit annoying that I forgot the controls for picking up the battery in level 2 and had to kill myself to go look at the instructions again. Just adding "Use F" to the mission log would have fixed that.
Speaking of Level 2, it says "return the power pack to where you found it" but it actually means "put the power pack on the engine."
For some reason, the first time I tried playing, another robot had spawned in on the first level. I suppose this might be the droid that your description refers to?
Pretty good; a simple little game. There are a few problems that I found while playing: - The stool simply gets in the way and makes it hard to plug wires back in. - It can be very difficult to pick wires up off the ground, especially when they're moving. - The green wire had a blue end..? I'm not sure if this is intentional.
Quite a unique idea for a game. It's not particularly fun in it's current state, as there isn't very much that's entertaining - but I could see this being quite funny if there were more options and more absurd pictures, so that for example you could have Clampy have to justify why "1 + 1 = 3" is in a specifically mathematical senior thesis.
For the most part, I really like this game. Most of the puzzles (that I was able to reach) seemed well-designed. The graphics look great and the tutorial is really well-done.
However, as others have said, it is very annoying to have to re-do the whole game after screwing up a level. This essentially ruins the whole experience, as it makes playing more of a chore than entertainment.
The music is okay, although I'm not quite sure that it necessarily "fits".
I honestly can't tell if I'm connected to the main server or not - I know I can connect to a server running locally, but I have no idea otherwise.
If I understand time zones right, there is supposedly somebody who has a session right now, but I can't see anybody on what is ostensibly the main server.
I thought I'd try the post-jam version to see if it would connect to the server, but it didn't really help and the collisions are actually significantly worse...
Things I do like: the music is good and the way lights light up is pretty cool.
I finally got a chance to play multiplayer, and it was quite fun. The collision issues really do become a problem, though, especially near the end of the game.
At one point it was, I think, 2v1, and it was quite unbalanced. I'm not really sure how to fix that, though. The other problem is that it's very difficult to tell who is on what team - some sort of team color would be a good thing.
It's also kind of unclear exactly how the combat mechanics works, and it's quite easy to exploit them e.g. by coming up through the middle platform while the other player is in the charger. (Sorry. :P)
But it's very very fun as a two-player game, and it would be even better if some of the bugs were worked out.
This is a pretty good game.
The graphics are by far the best I've seen this Ludum Dare. The sound effects are great as well - the background noise is very unique as most Ludum Dare games use music.
The main problem I see with the gameplay is that there really isn't a lot of challenge that can be implemented - right now it's basically just "platform your way to the exit with a time limit" which is a legitimate game but isn't particularly interesting and kind of wastes the whole "you can hide from the rain" thing.
The other problem I saw is that some parts of the "death pit," so to speak, in the second level do not appear to be water at all - they appear to be completely dry ground, and it's frustrating to jump on one and lose.
I'm afraid I cannot necessarily give helpful feedback as far as gameplay is concerned, as there is no obvious direction that the game should go. The most I can suggest is that, if the upkeep of the generator is the main role of the player, it should be more involved. Perhaps they are an engineer monitoring the doctor from another room, and they have a whole series of tasks complete.
Instead, I'll point out things that already exist that need improvement: - The generator animation is essentially fine given a more cartoony artstyle, but right now it does not loop smoothly - it's shape suddenly jumps from one to another. - Similarly, the sound effect for the generator does not loop smoothly.
Now for opinions: - I honestly think that the graphics are unimpressive. Although most of the equipment in the background looks okay, the human characters are, in my opinion, ugly. I believe that the reason is that they are too complicated - for example, the arms do not need to be spaced away from the body. This looks weird due to the resolution of the models. Instead, place the arms directly against the body, and make the body 1 voxel wider on either side. Hopefully that makes sense; I've never really done voxel art but I believe that some concepts from pixel art apply. - Something I didn't immediately notice that is actually a really nice touch: the light level going down while the generator is unpowered. I like that. - Finally: more things need to be animated. The main problem with the graphics as they currently stand is that they are too static. But this is also tied in to simply expanding the role of the player - more things will be dynamic the more the player interacts with them.
I hope my (admittedly harsh) criticism is helpful in some manner to you, as otherwise it's for naught. Congratulations on your first game.
The graphics in this game are legitimately impressive. I'm not entirely sure what the actual point of the game is, although I did figure out how to get all of the resources - which honestly seems too easy, as all I did was park the train next to some trees and Z back and forth until I got trees / flowers / deer.
But the graphics look so professional that were this game given more ..gameplay, I think it would be something very seriously good.
I like the added mechanics to classical tower defense, but it's simply so difficult! I was able to get through the first level, but then I didn't have enough power to win the second level.
Aside from balance / easier difficulty levels, though, the only problem I had was the menu/help screen - I don't know where to put my mouse to find the help messages, so it's actually difficult to learn how to play the game, which is not really a good thing.
The graphics stood out to me as not necessarily all matching - more specifically, I'm not sure that the character sprite really "fits" with the rest of the graphics.
The main problem insofar as gameplay is concerned is that the camera doesn't really let you see a lot, which makes the controls a lot harder to use.
I really like the atmosphere change during endgame. It's very cool.
For the most part, this game is pretty good. However, there are a few problems: - The game seriously needs to be able to be full-screened. Clicking outside of the game into another window happened multiple times, and is seriously detrimental to gameplay. - The difficulty meter seems pretty meaningless. At the end, when there were about 7 guys shooting at me and I had no ability to recharge my health, the difficult registered at 3. When I was fighting just one guy and there was nobody else on the ship, it registered at 7. It doesn't really make sense.
Also, there was barely any challenge up until the very end - it went from a maximum of about four guys in one place to about seven. So it seems like the spawn rate gradually increased for most of the game, and then just shot up at the end. Which was a bit silly.
As it were, there should probably be more than 10 levels of difficulty as 10 is pretty easy to reach. (And, as previously mentioned, apparently I lost during a difficulty of 3, which seems a bit strange).
Overall, not bad. The graphics are good and the music is relatively sophisticated for a Ludum Dare game, considering that it's not chiptune. :P
The main thing is that it's kind of strange to have to sort of figure out where to go and what to do given the low light levels and limited lifetime. I couldn't figure out how to get past the first level - I know that there are terminals and keycards and all this but I can't tell which doors need terminals or which door goes with which terminal or even which doors I should be trying to go through, and then I die before I can even see if a terminal I activated opened any doors.
So perhaps some sort of maps or something that could at least give a hint towards where you're supposed to go could be helpful (as long as some challenge is still there, of course).
As others have said, the line of sight effect is pretty cool.
Even if you don't want to implement a healthbar, I think some visual effect for lower zombie health (e.g. they lose an arm) would be a good idea, as it wouldn't give too too much away but it would make the game more fun.
One potential problem I see is that there is no indication if new batteries even spawn in, so I don't actually know if this game can be rightly qualified as a high-score game, because if new batteries don't spawn in than you necessarily will run out of power...
The main problem I had was that sometimes I would be wandering around forever without any zombies or batteries, and then suddenly there would be a bunch of zombies and I would find some batteries, and then it would become silent again - I don't know if this is intentional, but it is kind of boring because there's nothing to do while there aren't zombies on screen except to wander around, and the world is honestly too uninteresting for exploring it to be very fun.
So. The first three levels are won by holding down the up arrow, and the last level is won by centering the car in the left grass then holding down the up arrow.
I believe there needs to be something else other than static obstacles in order for this game to present a good challenge, such as perhaps having all zombies chase the car with the player having to shoot them (and maybe using your gun slows down your car because you have to aim, or some similar disadvantage).
As it were, the arcade mode is super hard because it's hard to steer around a zombie without doing a completely horizontal move, which can't be done because the horde will quickly kill you. So basically, I think the current game mechanics do not necessarily work for an arcade game.
It's hard to get used to the gameplay of this game - it's easy to slip off of platforms and it takes a couple of tries to get past some of the longer ones. But it is doable, so it's altogether actually a pretty good runner-type game. However, I do think that it would be possible to refine movement in some way so it feels less slippery.
The main problem is that it's super frustrating mainly due to the timer at the beginning. When you die after four seconds three times in a row it's really annoying to have to wait 6 seconds to even get another go. (Especially because you have to wait one or two seconds after you die to hit the restart button...)
I found that jumping wasn't actually very useful, because it's so hard to actually land on a platform, and even if you do land on a platform, you almost always fall off immediately after you land because it's hard to get oriented.
I also would like to be able to change the difficulty without restarting the game, to see what some of the other difficulties are like.
As it were, I'm not even sure if a difficulty of 6 is possible, as I only got to 27 meters running basically straight.
Not bad. Core gameplay is there. There needs to be some strategy to placement in order for the grid to actually be a useful part of the game.
The building controls are kind of clunky - selecting a square and then clicking build is inefficient, which is kind of annoying when you have to build a few things at the beginning of the game in order to avoid losing, because it's hard to build everything fast enough.
As it currently stands, the game is pretty easy - build a bunch of coal things while spamming the "sell energy" button, and then upgrade to oil, and from there on it's so easy to get energy that the game only lasts about one more minute.
I like the basic idea of the game - it could very well be a good fast-paced puzzle game, but it controls really poorly. First, it's a big problem that I can't move diagonally. But the other problem is that it is very difficult to tell where you actually are in relation to the coins, which is important because if you miss one single coin you basically lose - for example, it's easy to start moving horizontally when you think you're lined up with a coin, but then lose because you weren't actually horizontally lined up.
This game is a pretty solid platformer. There are a few small problems: - The graphics are a bit cluttered, including both the foreground that sometimes blocks the player but also sometimes it's hard to distinguish the background from the level. Also, for some reason the foreground and background have more illumination than the level..? - The disappearing platforms in the second level can be difficult to jump on, but that might just be on my end. - It's pretty unclear how you are supposed to defeat the boss, and although just shooting at it worked, there was no visible indication that it was working until the very end.
Overall, though, it's pretty good.
Not a bad start for a game, but in its current state it quickly becomes repetitive.
The ability to aim the gun is not particularly useful, as it will always be aimed under the horizontal, and usually close to where the mech is.
Sometimes the mech would stop moving and point in the opposite direction, which is kind of annoying.
This is awesome. A fast-paced puzzle game. Although it certainly seems possible that sometimes it gives you an impossible level - I'm pretty sure this happened on my second playthrough but I can't say for sure.
In any case my main complaint is with the graphics - they're mostly pretty nice but they don't all exactly go together. That is, some of them look more.. realistic (?) than the others. In any case, it doesn't really hurt the gameplay - just something to think about.
Aside from that, my only criticism is that points are not really a huge motivation given that attempting to get them could very well cost a player the game, so perhaps there should be some alternative motivation for collecting points (such as, perhaps, holding back corruption for longer? Could allow players to build up points in the early levels so that they could have longer to think in the later levels)
The original game is pretty hard, and I definitely agree that the newer controls make a lot more sense. Overall, it's a pretty solid arcade-type game: it looks good, the music is good (although the sound effects are a bit... interesting) and it is relatively fun.
However, it appears that resetting is broken: whenever I try to restart, the game seems to start on the wave that I lost on, which is Wave 3.
The game wasn't particularly hard, but the anger level was made more difficult by the controls being rather clunky - I often died on the first staircase because for some reason my guy wouldn't jump when I hit the arrow keys.
A similar problem occurs in the yellow level - the section where you have to wait for two platforms to appear is very easy to miss, and then your chances of finishing the level are basically destroyed but you aren't killed, so it's easy to keep on trying unsuccessfully until the clock runs out, which is kind of frustrating.
Finally, the power meter felt sort of out-of-place anyways - it doesn't really tie in to the main theme of the game, although the platforming is basically oriented entirely around it which is kind of a strange dissonance.
I liked the bow sound effect. It was very satisfying. I'm not quite sure that the music fit very well, but it's not bad music.
The gameplay is certainly a start, although right now it is too repetitive and honestly probably too easy to be particularly entertaining. More difficulty (that isn't just "add lots of enemies") and more weapons and more variation in enemies would be good additions.
I also think that the graphics are a bit inconsistent - the player appears to be holding a sword, but then he shoots a bow? He also doesn't turn so that the bow is facing the direction that he's actually shooting, which is another small improvement to make.
This is an interesting game. Although I only played against myself, I found that running out of power was often the killer. One strategy, I think, is to build up super tough defenses (so the enemy is forced to build powerful tiles) and then just try to get positive power and wait it out - although this might lead to a stalemate.
Come to think of it, it might be possible to force the other player to lose - e.g. by building up super strong defenses and then sitting there, making their only option to try to take over your base, but they won't be able to because to do so would cause them to lose all their power. (This is probably only possible if you're playing as player 2).
In any case, it's a good idea with good graphics and if it was playtested a bit and rebalanced to make sure it was fair I think it could be a pretty good strategy game.
A very strange game... even after playing through most of it, I'm still not entirely sure what exactly it is I'm doing. Apparently I want to avoid being touched by the electrons, but then I also need to kill them to win.. so I just end up running in circles shooting at the electrons and picking up the drops of the previous ones.
When I filled all three bars on Level 11, the game simply froze.
Also, I don't see why you would ever use the pistol, as the machine gun really has no disadvantage and is much more effective at getting the bars filled up.
The ship does not control very well at all. I found it basically impossible to actually steer, and I could never really pick up a health pack. It's also somewhat hard to aim, even if you're just perfectly still - you rotate too quickly to actually line up with enemy ships.
I think mouse for aiming might be better.
I like the basic idea for the game, but it just so happens that I can't actually pick up health packs, so the fuel for health mechanic doesn't actually matter.
Maybe I'm just bad at arcade-type games.
The main thing I don't understand is how to tell when a wire will give me power vs. when it will electrocute me. This is seriously important, because basically every time I played I would get a bunch of wires in a row that would all electrocute me, and I would almost never get more power. It basically seems like it's all luck, which kind of takes away most of the point of the game.
I do really like the idea of having less power = more speed, as that creates an interesting situation in regards to difficulty - you want to stay at high power so that you won't miss wires and consequently be more prone to missing more wires. It just kind of makes sense.
I like the mechanic of the back shield. I actually thought that the ship generally turned sufficiently fast - fast enough to avoid some lasers but still also collect orbs. The only thing that I found too slow was shooting - it is very difficult to aim given how fast the enemy ships are moving and how slow you can shoot. It really isn't possible to predict that far ahead to aim properly.
I also think that the music does not really fit, and more sound effects in general would be good.
This game has a mostly solid concept, but numerous problems in implementation. The first is control-related: controls are hard to use and often glitch out, which is game-breaking especially in critical moments. The second is related to spawn rates - while playing, I once had only one battery spawn in at the very beginning of a life, which quickly disappeared, and condemned me to lose that life without any chance of getting it back. Rates need to be normalized in some fashion so that the game is never responsible for you losing.
My goodness. This is an incredible achievement for Ludum Dare, even for a relatively large team. I kept thinking that there was no way there could be much more to the map, and then a whole cave would show up and I would be shocked once again.
And I didn't even get to see probably a third of the map, as I only managed to collect 6 eggs (although I saw two more -- one which I didn't bother trying to get because I guessed that it likely needed the jump boots, which I hadn't acquired yet, and the other I saw shortly before I died on my second playthrough).
It would be nice if there was a way to not die so easily. The birds are really annoying and somewhat difficult to kill, especially as the male character. And, as the male character, there's no easy way to heal unless you head back to the forest.
The knights are also super scary, especially given how fast they move. My first playthrough, with the female character, ended abruptly once one saw me. I was actually pretty tense while wandering around them.
The only actual problem I could point to thus far, that isn't just a result of game-jam-syndrome, is that the male character's projectiles do not go anywhere near your cursor once they travel more than a few feet past your character. I'm not sure if this is intentional, but it really makes the weapon more of a long-ranged melee weapon than a ranged weapon.
The other thing, which I hate to criticize, but just to point out -- is that although the textures look pretty good and impressive for a game jam, they certainly are a bit too simplistic / repeating / basic for a more official game. I don't know what your plans are with this game, but if you do want to flesh it out into a much bigger game, I would suggest doing some touchup on the graphics, simply to make them slightly more modern (although, obviously an indie team can't match actually *modern* graphics). The main area I would focus on is on the edges of things. For example, the tunnels are just a brick texture on a polygon which shares an edge with another polygon that has a rock texture. That would look a lot better with a modeled entrance to serve as a transition.
Of course, I might just be patronizing at this point. I'm guessing ya'll know how to make good graphics, because this looks good, especially for a game jam. The fact that there is such a large map with, like, realistic looking rocks / cliffs / caves is really cool.
And, just to mention it, the audio is also really awesome. Although the music doesn't quite fit when you are in the dungeons, it works great when you're in the forest. And the sound effects on both characters are already there, which is really cool. It's honestly a little surprising to see a game jam game that not only has character "voice" sounds, but that has those sounds for two characters!
This is a cool little puzzle game. My main problem, which may be more of a YMMV thing, is that trying to wrap my head around everything is a little overwhelming. Perhaps there should be an easy-mode, where one of the two sides is rotated 180 degrees, so its easier to reason about.
I would say that the game's biggest flaw is that bots really are quite unpredictable. I can't really see any way to make sure that all my factories are being utilized, and in fact all but two of them ever got any use.
I also feel like there's something wrong with how the economics in the game are presented, but I can't quite put my finger on it, so I'll just say that perhaps they should be given a little more consideration.
I like the concept of the game and would love to see where it is going, but given that it takes me several minutes to get up the first few platforms over the lava, I was unable to finish it. As mentioned by others, the platforming is way too difficult, and the player should have much less inertia. In fact, platforming generally is a genre where the player is given pretty fine control (i.e. being able to control path of jumps), so it's pretty unintuitive to have one that is so difficult to control.
A nice little snake game. The art is good, although I do believe that the biting sound effect could perhaps be more effective -- it just doesn't quite seem to be the "right" sound effect for the snake model in the game.
My main problem gameplay-wise is that the bounce angle is not particularly intuitive, and I think that this is because it sort of relies on what the player is doing at the time of collision (i.e. where they are trying to steer).
The thing that's really awesome about this game is that the clicker, as a mechanic, contributes hugely to the story. The most significant way it does this is - (spoilers, which, yes, I think is a necessary warning, simply because this story is really cool) - by unlocking a whole bunch of progressively more awful things in rapid succession once things really start to go south.
In a similar fashion, the news bar, and how it updates, and some of the titles, are really good mechanics and keep the story going.
I'm afraid that I don't have a second player around to play with, but I believe I got the gist of the game from testing it out alone.
The core concept is a good take on the theme, and makes a lot of sense as a multiplayer game. Interestingly, there aren't a whole lot of games that involve competition for negative items, despite that it's a pretty effective mechanic.
The music works well, although I could see it becoming repetitive at some point.
The graphical effects are all very effective. However, they legitimately made my head hurt a little -- and if that is a common symptom, perhaps the effects should be toned down a bit.
I also wonder if perhaps the game would be benefited by a mechanic that let you drop your curses? Or maybe one that let you shoot them at the other player? Just ideas, as, again, I didn't have a second player to play with.
Really, though, the only thing that I think would be particularly beneficial would be some sort of single-player mode or online mode, as those are both more convenient than local two-player splitscreen. Of course, they are also both significantly harder to implement.
Overall, good job.
@jonathon50: Thanks for the information. I'm ...guessing? that maybe I only compiled it for 64 bit Windows? Sadly I'm not entirely sure how to test any future compiles I make. Although if it's an OpenGL compatibility problem, I have no idea how to even start figuring out what might be happening...
Perhaps I shouldn't be using OpenGL if I don't have the means to debug it. :P But it has worked for me on my computer, my brother's computer, and my animation teacher's computer, so at least it isn't entirely broken.
@jonathan50: The thing that's strange is that I'm not really using very high OpenGL in my project. If I had to guess, I would say that it probably is lower than or equal to version 1.4 (I was originally going to use shaders, but I ultimately ended up not doing that, and I'm not using modern OpenGL at all--no vertex arrays) so it's strange that it wouldn't work.
But maybe I am using something that is too high level.
@jonathan50: Thanks a lot for all the info. I hope it wasn't too much of a pain to go get the new drivers. :P
@SirPumpy: I'm afraid that what you've discovered is also the main problem with the game: It is ridiculously unbalanced. The game is nearly impossible unless you decide to build a row of arrow towers, and as soon as you do that -- and then augment them with cannons -- it becomes impossible to lose.
@furiouswitch: Thanks for the kind words. I certainly would not place this anywhere near the top games of this Ludum Dare, simply because gameplay is so thoroughly broken, but I'm glad that you had fun.
@differentname: Good suggestion. I'll definitely act on it if I ever decide to work on this game further.
@abcdef65g: Thanks for all the great feedback. I agree with respect to the UI -- did not think about it at all during the jam.
As it turns out, C is not really all that hard to use for a game jam. I put together a component-based game library, and writing the components themselves in C really is not very difficult, because C supports most of the features you need (i.e. basic imperative programming). On top of that, I also have a generic list library that I use, and that is enough to basically accomplish everything I need to do.
And yes, the animations are probably my favorite part of the game. I'm still far from a great pixel artist, but I am trying to improve, and doing all these animations was super fun and super rewarding.
I like a lot of this game. The core concept is strong and everything works well together. Currently, it is simply too easy!
I ran into two potential problems: First of all, at one point, when I was planting trees, my computer started making error noises -- and I'm guessing this means that I was planting seeds where I couldn't. Later, while planting seeds, the game simply froze. Perhaps I had too many trees.
Also, if there was audio aside from the aforementioned error noises (you left the voting category open), I didn't hear it.
In contrast to others, I found that the graphics are not bad. They have a consistent, cartoon style that isn't often seen in Ludum Dare. Although, I wonder if vector graphics might suit the style better...
In any case, the idea is solid, although I find that there are a few problems with the game as it currently stands. - Collisions with trees feel a bit strange, simply because they are perhaps *too* "realistic" -- i.e. trees don't form quite a solid straight-edged wall, but that's how one would expect them to be in a game. - The spiky walls have no discernible differences from the trees, except for that collisions with them do not suffer from the same problem. I'm guessing that there were plans to use them that were simply scrapped? - There is no graphical hint on the first level with a door that the door can only be opened from one side. - The second level with a door is completed simply by walking underneath the entire map -- is this intentional? - Until I started writing this review, I was not entirely sure that the last level is a win screen. In order to make sure, I looked back, and sure enough, it does spell out "You won." Perhaps it should use a more contrasting tile type, because as it currently stands, it mostly just looks like a forest.
The audio cues are pretty great. Switching around the arrow keys is a cheap move. ;)
I would say that perhaps the controls could be improved, somehow. I took most of my damage while entirely sober, simply because controlling a character by turning with the arrow keys is generally a real pain. I would guess that there would be a way to have better controls (such as mouse-based controls) without sacrificing the drunk mechanic. Perhaps have the character move towards the mouse pointer when the left button is held down, and simply apply small errors to that? And then, of course, reversing the direction would make the game quite a bit more interesting, because the player would have to position the mouse cursor opposite the direction they wished to go.
I don't know. Just something to think about.
Oh, also: It would possibly be a good idea to use some sort of vector graphics, or at the very least really high resolution bitmap images (something like at least 256x256). The curved / diagonal corners look a little weird, because they're being scaled with anti-aliasing and blurred slightly. They don't actually look too bad in this game, but they could be improved.
It's certainly an ...interesting game. ;)
I was a bit confused as to what exactly the different guns were supposed to represent. Best I could tell, I was simply picking up new guns when my old ones ran out of ammo? It would be more interesting if there were guns with different kinds of firing patterns, etc, and if they had to be acquired through means other than just spawning in.
The other thing is that this game is really easy. Best I can tell, difficulty never really increases, or if it does, it increases so slowly that I didn't stick around long enough to find out. Which, of course, made having three whole lives a bit excessive.
I like a lot of the art, especially the main character. Some of the pixel art in the background doesn't quite match, which is perhaps something to fix. The voice lines are entertaining and make for good atmosphere.
The thing I find a bit strange is how difficult this game is. I died on the first jump a dozen times. Sometimes it seems like I would clear the jump by a considerable distance, while other times, even jumping from the edge, I would completely fail to get across. Is there a delay on your return to normal speed after fans are removed? Otherwise I really can't explain it.
The graphics in this game look awesome. The music is good, but audio would be much improved with sound effects.
I would say that the main problem with gameplay is that there is apparently no way to heal, and because you are practically guaranteed to take damage at some point no matter what fighting style you use, this is a bit of a problem. The reason I say this is because I never managed to survive long enough to purchase any of the items.
This is an interesting game. There's not a whole lot to do, although a little explanation would be helpful, but I did eventually figure it all out.
I also expected that something would happen at 42 lightyears. The problem is that the game as it currently stands doesn't offer much after you get in the right routine -- simply stay around 10 energy at all times, and you're basically good to go.
I suppose that that is perhaps part of the experience -- being out in outer space, with no real end in sight, but I'm afraid that most players will end the game at one time or another, simply out of boredom. That does not invalidate the game as it is -- just something to think about if you do in fact want to make something that people will want to keep playing.
Although, I suppose I could see myself coming back to this at somepoint, simply because there is something in the experience of playing it.
In any case, good job.
This game perhaps begins at a too difficult level. Keeping track of five quickly-changing stats as well as a whole slew of somewhat entangled actions is pretty difficult.
The graphics in this game look pretty cool, and are of a style that I really haven't seen in Ludum Dare.
Perhaps its largest issue as it currently stands is the really unclear interface as to how to input the window size. I'm not even entirely sure why this is necessary - it appears that resizing the game window works fine, and because it has a minimum size anyways, you might as well just pretend that the user had chosen the minimum size. (There's also other things you could do that would be better, such as reading the user's screen size and choosing window size based on that).
There are two other things that would be improvements: - Audio - Simply more varied gameplay and larger arenas, although this is likely quite a bit of work
There's some interesting mechanics in this as a tower defense game -- namely, your tower-building resource is the same as the resource you're trying to protect, which, while perhaps not an entirely new idea, is certainly an effective one.
The main problem as it currently stands is that there is very literally no strategy -- all the player has to do is keep building towers and they will win.
Given the game's story, I think one interesting way to go might be to make it so that your towers are run by characters that need payment, and the player can try to undercut their pay at the risk of having them defect.
Overall, this is a solid foundation for future work.
The biggest problem, which is immediately apparent, is that mouse sensitivity is waaaaaay too high. I turned mouse sensitivity to its lowest setting on my computer (Windows) and the game's mouse sensitivity was still a bit higher than where I might have liked it.
The difficulty curve of story mode is really high. The first two levels are super easy, (at least once I figured out the mouse thing), but the third one is so hard that I could not even get to the purple hammer. I always was either killed by the enemies or by the orange wall.
One thing that's a bit strange about the game's graphics is that there is still occlusion culling, which is somewhat counter to how one would expect wireframe graphics to appear. However, I suppose this might be for the best, because seeing everything on screen at once would probably be too difficult. But maybe the terrain shouldn't have occlusion culling? I don't know. I guess I would just suggest perhaps looking into twiddling with the graphics, because I think it might be possible to get a pretty unique and cool look, which I guess this game already has.
My other note on graphics is that the arms on the character look a bit out of place or otherwise strange.
I do think that this game looks pretty good as it currently is. And I don't just mean graphics -- I mean that all of the stuff that already exists (environment hazards, etc) seems to work, and I think that this could be made into a pretty good platforming game.
The game concept is solid, but is really brought down by the controls.
I found it near impossible to pick up gifts most of the time, and I can't really think of a good reason why. When you're not holding a gift and there's one in your view and pick-up range, it should simply by automatically made pick-upable (i.e. highlighted with the white glowing effect), no questions asked. Instead, however, I often have to move my cursor to just the right spot as a gift jitters between selected and unselected.
Actually, whatever changes you made in the post-compo version made the whole thing a lot more manageable, and my suggested changes are likely not needed.
This is a pretty good game -- solid concept and execution. As it currently stands, there are two main problems: - The hitbox issue that I previously discussed with you. I'm pretty certain that it exists, and it's killed me quite a few times. - The spike and boost graphic both look pretty bad on my computer. I'm guessing that they are pre-drawn image assets? If so, they are not nearly high enough resolution, because they look like pixel art (that's been blurred, because apparently they're being scaled with AA). If possible, it would also be good to use a vector-graphics type approach -- if LOVE supports, for example, something like a fill circle method, that would be a good way to draw the boosts.
Aside from that, the main improvement would be adding sound of some fashion.
I can't really seem to control this game properly -- that is, I can never sate the cat's desires, and I have no idea what I'm doing wrong.
Sometimes it seems like maybe I have to drop the item right on top of them -- but then the game prevents me from doing that, and when I place it next to them, they just don't move.
Perhaps I'm not using the right items, but it's kind of unclear, because the bubbles that the cats have do not correspond exactly with the items' appearances. Some of them, like the pill, are obvious, but I can't really tell with the other ones.
Interesting idea. Seems like the game could be more aggressive (such as by specifically targeting projectiles in order to hit blocks) -- I basically just left the blocks alone for the whole game, and then died because switching is a bit clumsy.
As it currently stands, it doesn't seem to really have an arcade feel except for in graphics and perhaps sound.
Cute art.
Would do with an explanation of what exactly this is, because I couldn't figure out really what was going on until reading some of the comments.
Part of the problem is that it really isn't necessary to built a huge line of dogs, so it's pretty simple to just collect a few treats, catch the dog, and then repeat, and build up the score without much danger.
This game certainly looks interesting, but I'm afraid that I have absolutely no idea how any of it works or really what's going on. I managed to get to the room in the top that I believe other users are commenting about, and I couldn't really seem to accomplish anything? I'm also not entirely sure what effect the dialog has. And when the boss switched from the circular guy with the volcano, the camera got really zoomed in or something, and it was basically impossible to see what was going on at that point.
I do really like the music. But I'm afraid I simply am baffled by the rest of the game.
Also, a note on pragmatism: simply due to the demographics of the Ludum Dare community, I would recommend perhaps supporting changing controls. I know it's a pain (I have never implementing control settings in my Ludum Dare games) but most of the Ludum Dare community probably uses keyboards that do not mesh particularly well with the default controls. Although, thanks for making the spacebar do jump. That was really helpful.
The music and graphics are good and the gameplay works, for the most part. I'd say there are two problems: - When you hit a platform and are forced through it, you sometimes unavoidably take more damage (i.e. when you go through a platform at the bottom of the screen and then into a gap). This seems a bit unfair. - I'm pretty sure the game will sometimes generate terrain that unavoidably will take off a heart -- namely, when the section with a wider top platform and thinner low platform is followed by one with a particular slide at the beginning. If you jump, you hit the next platform, and if you don't jump, you also hit the next platform.
It was originally unclear to me exactly what the bar at the top was supposed to represent, among other things. I had to spam click the gun and see what happened in order to figure it out.
I don't know. In general I just don't think I really understood what I was supposed to be doing. I shot the bad guys and everything, and I guess that it makes sense. However, it is sort of unclear when you take damage, so perhaps that was my problem.
The one piece of perhaps useful information I can give you is that I personally find the graphical style to be less than optimal for one reason: it mixes resolutions of pixel art. I find this sort of thing to be distasteful, and although I am less than skilled as a pixel artist, I think that one of the generally agreed upon conventions is that it does not mix resolution levels. But that's mostly just my opinion.
Awesome looking game, plays well. Main problem is that I don't really see any way to actually escape the security guards? Like, you're basically guaranteed to have to run into them in order to escape.
This is a pretty good concept and is pretty well done. The graphics could potentially use a little touching up in some places, but are overall fine.
The only place I might be a little cautionary is that I'm not entirely sure if the situation gets worse at quite the right pace -- that is, once you make one error, I'm not sure if it's easy enough to recover. It should be relatively easy to recover from just one error, and should only get particularly difficult after two or three errors.
Of course, I don't have quite an accurate idea of exactly how much difficulty each error causes as it currently stands, so perhaps take this advice with a grain of salt.
This looks like a pretty cool game -- the graphics look good and the sound, even if not custom, is chosen well. I'm afraid, however, that it's basically unplayable on my computer -- it lag spikes like clockwork, basically freezing for a short period every second or so. These lag spikes seem somewhat to correspond with a repeating error message in the console: "ERROR: Sprite::set_frame: Index p_frame out of size (vframes * hframes). At: scene\2d\sprite.cpp:206"
The atmosphere is really awesome, as previously mentioned.
My main gripe is that I really don't get what I'm supposed to do. And that, despite this fact, I managed to win, because the game basically told me (?) what to do with each of the symbols.
If it was more clear what influence the player actually has versus what the game simply does by nature, I think that would help.
A fun little game. The gameplay is solid and straightforward, and the game plays pretty well.
One thing that might be fun is the ability to choose what kind of gun to use, although that's not particularly necessary.
This game looks absolutely incredible. Most of my criticisms have been covered previously and fixed in the jam version.
I would like to point out one problem with respect to graphics (that is fixed in the jam version) that I haven't seen anybody else mention, which is that the smoke particles are difficult to distinguish from the enemy projectiles, given the fast pace of the game. I'm guessing you already knew this, which is why it is fixed in the jam version.
And, in an effort to be informative -- my problems with enemy feedback extend beyond most others' -- I had absolutely no idea that it was even possible to kill enemies (until I re-read the description), because I never managed to do so. This is of course exacerbated by the fact that there are a lot of enemies that spawn in, so it's relatively difficult (especially if you're not very skilled, like myself) to shoot at one enemy long enough to kill it.
Not bad. My biggest complaint would be that jumping is a little awkward and unnatural.
It's cool to see somebody using Unreal Engine, given that it can do some really interesting stuff. However, if I'm not mistaken, you are using the default Unreal Engine character model thing? If so, I would definitely recommend replacing it with a custom character model -- although making a character model during Ludum Dare is not exactly a simple feat.
A pretty simple, but effective, concept. I couldn't figure out how to use the refueling buckets, which poses a significant problem unless the game can be won without them. (As it were, I failed to win, which leads me to believe that refueling is a necessary part of winning).
Minor nitpick: I also didn't notice a way to quit, which is a slight inconvenience.
A cool take on the tetris genre. The main problem is that it's really unintuitive to place tiles. The main thing that would help is to *always* show the tile being placed, perhaps as an outline, or perhaps showing its intersections with current tiles in a different color.
My main suggestion is to do something to make it easier when switching which candy is the best. I found that I often missed the first one in a new "round" because I was working to interpret which candy was the new best. Just giving the player an extra second or two would be enough.
Of course, the game, as it currently stands, is pretty easy. It's pretty easy with a touchscreen, but I actually scored higher, I think, when just using the keyboard, because it's actually faster to do than with a touchscreen.
I don't know what could be done specifically to make it harder. I did miss a few candies, although that was mostly either that I simply didn't choose one (when the best one switched), or, once, while using the keyboard, my selections were lagging behind my brain, and I was selecting the number that I should have pushed for the previous set of bins. But it was overall pretty easy, so looking into difficulty might be a good idea.
Interesting game. My main problem was that, on my first playthrough, I spawned in right on top of the antivirus on the third level, which was pretty inconvenient.
@call-me-nutty -- Oh shoot - I completely forgot to add those to the zip file.
I'll get right on that.
@call-me-nutty : Okay, so I've uploaded a new release that has all the required DLLs. Thanks for letting me know about that problem so soon, otherwise almost nobody would be able to play my game. :smile:
@call-me-nutty: Thank you for all the feedback.
I do understand exactly what you are saying in terms of the "giant wall of bullets." A lot of the screens I tried to design more strategicially, however, there was one that I explicitly built with the purpose of making the player take damage (i.e. the one with all the blue ships).
There are several other screens with the same problem, though, that were not meant to be that way, and that I am somewhat less happy about.
The final boss I'm afraid I only had about an hour to try and balance. It is supposed to have a period between ship-spawning that corresponds somewhat to which ships it spawned, but it certainly isn't perfect. If you're lucky, you'll get an easier set of ships. I know this because I did manage to beat it.
Player feedback is definitely the biggest weakness of this game. I wanted to add knockback, particle effects, etc..., as well as a player health bar on the top of the screen, but I never really got around to it.
But, I'm glad you liked it!
@admiralspacekraken : I was certainly aware of that, which is why I gave the boss some bullets that it shoots as well -- in my experience, if you are too close to the boss, it's basically impossible to avoid the bullets it shoots.
However, I didn't test that particularly much, and I am aware of a problem with my collision detection that means horizontal-ish bullets often aren't detected.
So if you can win that way, well, I would say it's officially sanctioned. :wink:
@johnyf : Yep, a small player hitbox is a standard thing in bullet hell games, at least from what I've read. :slight_smile: And yes, it's intentional that you can shoot faster if you can hit space fast -- the relevant line is https://notabug.org/TheMonsterFromTheDeep/warp-tunnel/src/master/src/player.c#L142
@holdmeimscared @shp @djibess I am so sorry that the audio is so loud. It isn't really louder than anything else on my computer, so I never would have anticipated that problem.
@gerox: I believe there's a bug where the ship will sometimes get stuck on the bottom of the screen. I have no idea for sure, as I never encountered it during the Compo, but while watching someone else play it some sort of problem like that did show up.
@linus : Thank you for the feedback! I know my games are prone to crashes, as my last one apparently crashed for one user too, but I've never seen a crash on my computer, so :shrug:
It really should be possible to do a native build for Linux, especially given that everything is actually written using pthreads versus a real cross-platform solution, but I simply never got around to figuring it out.
Health is certainly something that could be improved. The ships do, in fact, vary in max health, usually to make a level easier -- although most of the time, they are at their *maximum* max health. An extra health bar above every ship would probably improve the game quite a bit.
@frodewin : I'm not sure what you mean by fixed size -- the game scales up when you scale the window up.
I'm glad you enjoyed the music. :slight_smile:
And yes, you're right with respect to collisions being off -- they're raytraced, but only in the vertical direction. So if a bullet comes at you with too much of a horizontal component, it won't hit you. (This also applies to your bullets hitting the enemy).
Very creative use of the theme. The ways that the tribbles are used as part of the level are pretty interesting -- like the one where you have to make a whole bunch of them so they stack in order to jump high enough.
I would like to mention that I really appreciate that you get to restart at the start of the level versus the whole game like some Ludum Dare games -- probably let me play longer. :slight_smile:
I couldn't figure out how to beat level ten -- it seems like the one jump on the upper left over the sawblade is impossible.
Graphics and audio are good.
Overall, a very nice game.
I like the atmosphere, and the graphics and the sound. They're all very nice and work well together. The colorful particles when the planets explode are really nice.
But wow. The ship has so much momentum that it is essentially impossible to steer. The only way I could win was by barely tapping the movement controls and by spamming the shoot button. Otherwise, I would run into a planet simply by virtue of not being able to accelerate away from it.
For the same reason, many of the levels actually become easier if you can get lucky with how the universe shrinks. That is, if the planets close to the worm hole don't crush together, the shrinking of the universe brings you closer to the wormhole faster than you could yourself.
In general though, solid game. It just needs tweaking of the player momentum.
Same problem here -- division by zero.
@stepan-shabalin -- I did. :/
I considered downloading the project file and running it that way as I already have Godot installed, but it would take quite a while over my slow internet. :/
Perhaps I can do so overnight, or something.
Interesting game. There doesn't seem to be a whole lot that you can actually do -- I ended up spamming tomatoes and the first action, which was the only one I could afford.
The graphics are nice though, and the music is fittingly melancholy. So good job there.
Sadly I don't have an XBOX controller to play with, so this game was perhaps harder than it could have been.
Switching up the colors was a neat trick.
The core mechanic of the game is pretty neat and is used in some pretty creative ways. Having the pointer act as both a time limiting factor as well as a tool that you need to actually beat the level is pretty interesting.
It took me a while to beat level 2 because I didn't realize you could stand on the pointer.
A lot of the challenge of the game comes from the player not exactly knowing if doing something is actually possible -- e.g. on level 3, I didn't know that I could make it to the bin-switcher before the pointer deleted the red cube. This also applies to the boss level. I've never really played a platformer where I didn't have good enough intuition about my movement to not know whether a given jump was possible, so this was new (to me, in any case).
Overall I enjoyed it quite a bit.
Wow. This is a hard game. I couldn't get past level 3.
I honestly think that the "you have to turn before you can move" aspect is more frustrating than anything else. It is especially a problem because moving away from one enemy in one direction means that another enemy can simply shoot you along the other axis, which is usually how I died.
I never really got the chance to use some of the special kinds of tiles that were placed on screen (i.e. the bombs and the mirrors) simply because I died too quickly.
All that considered, this is a solidly built game -- just not one that I can really play.
I got the larger jump and went back and above the wall, but when I went to the next level the game got sort of glitched and I couldn't seem to effect it. That is, my character was not on screen at all, and nothing I did changed anything. Here's a screenshot:
Error Screenshot
To the point that I could play, I enjoyed the story and how it was told. Otherwise it was mostly a solid platformer, although the level with all the cubes is somewhat difficult to get past because it seems like if you take the bottom path you can't jump up high enough to get to the door?
One relatively trivial piece of feedback I have is that the "next level" door says next level even when it takes you back a level. I guess "next" is somewhat meaningless in a branching game but it still is a little strange.
Man. This is a hard game. I never beat the first level -- one single time, I got twenty people, but then I died.
I think the controls just need to be better. I'm not entirely sure *how* to make them better, but my two primary sources of death were a) trying to jump, but running off the edge of the platform by accident, and b) pushing down but missing the platform and going straight into lava.
I think the main thing that would help is if pushing down wasn't necessary. I think the best way to do that would be to reduce the jump height, and then perhaps give the player a double jump. This would result in better control, I think.
I like the overall atmosphere of the game. It seems pretty polished, aside from some small glitches with the jumps that happen sometimes.
A pretty polished game. Graphics are pretty good, although the different scalings of pixel art can be a little jarring. Some of the sound effects seem a little strange (like the point-picking-up one).
I think my main problem is I was confused on a few points: - Can you kill the first large butterflies without bombs? - Is the enemy with 1500 health the final boss? I was taken to the home screen immediately after fighting it, but it may just be that I died twice.
Speaking of dying twice, if you are killed and there are bullets where you respawn, you basically lose immediately no matter how many lives you have left. As mentioned by others, invincibility frames would help.
There was one bug -- some of the large flower bullets stopped moving after the "running out of space" box disappeared, and they simply stayed on screen for a while until despawning. Also, z to shoot didn't work on my computer.
Overall, a good, solid game.
Nice game. Music and graphics are good and which items match which monsters is intuitive. However, it would be nice if the difficulty ramped up a bit slower at the beginning -- I only ever managed to clear two cages before losing.
I tried playing this a couple times and got absolutely crushed every single time. There simply seems to be no way to keep up with the enemy -- by the time I can afford a single tank, they already have four tanks and ten normal ships.
I have absolutely no idea how in the screenshot you could have gotten 1279 crystals. That's absolutely nuts.
The only other problem I encountered was that sometimes your fighting ships would fly off the screen where you couldn't move your camera (i.e. to the top and to the left), and then there was no way to re-select them. I imagine they got destroyed? But why would they even be allowed to fly off of the map?
It's a solid game otherwise. All the gameplay is there, is just needs more details (like displaying ship stats on screen) and a way to win.
Nice game. The art is great; the music is a bit repetitive. It would be nice if there was a way to move the cloud without going all the way to the other side, but when the cloud is smaller it is possible to dodge the enemy bullets, so I guess it isn't super important.
In fact, by the end of the game I had gotten good enough at dodging that it wasn't particularly hard. Perhaps a larger variety of enemies that required slightly different strategies would be good.
In any case, I had a lot of fun and really enjoyed it. Definitely one of the best games I've played thus far.
Simple but effective. I agree with respect to the game become easier over time, but the main thing I found was that waiting for the planet to spin all the way around, when it was going slow, was somewhat annoying -- especially when you get two of the same color right after one another (I just had one stack for each color, so I had to wait for one whole revolution every time I got two in a row).
When I saw the screenshots, I originally guessed it would be some kind of match-3 game -- I wonder if a mechanic like that might help with the problem of decreasing difficulty? At least, some sort of mechanic that ensures the largest radius of the planet stays relatively constant.
Fun game. I like the parallax effect on the stars in the background, and the little ships you get following you around are pretty neat.
I totally didn't get how this related to the theme until I realized that the white boundary was actually shrinking, and shortly after, I lost. :shrug:
Well done. There are a few slight issues: - The boxes often don't line up, which means you can be caught on the corner of a box when trying to move horizontally; this just feels a little weird. - It's possible to be completely trapped -- my third run through, a giant wall got built up in the middle almost immediately, and then when trying to get out of one hole another one formed right where I jumped, so I was screwed no matter what. It might help to have some kind of logic that won't form a hole immediately where the player is -- that is, it could place the first two blocks, but then wait to place the third block until the player has had a chance to escape.
Overall, though, everything works and the multiplicity of both hazards and scoring methods make the game a little more interesting.
The concept is solid, but it has a few problems. The primary one is that the collisions can be really awful -- from what I can tell, if you are in the pixel *next to* a circle, you die. As such, I couldn't beat the fourth level.
The screen glitch effects are neat, but don't seem to have much purpose -- by the time I got to my third death, I would just kill myself until I could restart without the glitches.
Additionally, some of the corridors are super narrow given that you die when you run into walls. The character doesn't really have fine enough control to move in halls very well.
Cool game. I couldn't figure out how to beat level 2. I do have a question -- am I not allowed to merge planets that are inside the radius of the black hole? At first I thought it was a glitch -- there was no way to select the planets inside the black hole because the black hole would be selected instead. Later, however, I couldn't merge two planets *across* the black hole, so I thought maybe you weren't allowed to intersect any part of the black hole (even though planets are already inside it)?
This is pretty good! Although the graphics could use a little detail (and maybe material tweaks?), they are there and look good, and the music, although not made for this game, was chosen well.
One possible improvement: it would be nice to be able to cancel invisibility, given that is prevents you from attacking.
Well, I think I got through the whole game, after accidentally killing the fish person. The game seems pretty polished, but I feel like the combat system is seriously lacking. It's pretty difficult to hit the enemies, and it's practically impossible to avoid being hit, especially in close combat, which means I was only able to kill a couple of enemies without enabling Waifu Mode.
One of the better puzzle games I've played this compo. A lot of the puzzles were really neat, although I simply built a ladder on the very last one.
I like the music, although the jump sound effect is a little out of place.
On the title screen, the character is scaled bilinearly (or something), which looks a little strange.
Sometimes the game would lag spike for a second, which was a little strange, but didn't affect the overall gameplay.
Arcade + RTS is a very interesting combination, and not one I've seen thus far. I found it somewhat difficult -- I tried to split my guys into groups, but didn't do so very well, and the towers often spawned on the opposite side of the map from where my groups were, which is probably due to me not making enough of them...
An "easy mode" could just be making the time you get for each tower be a bit higher. :slight_smile:
It's horribly annoying that the blocks will stop allowing you to move them once they go inside the ground. This single problem is probably what prevented me from being able to get past the fourth puzzle, and to usually fail at the third puzzle -- simply because I have to be very careful to not accidentally clip the ground and immediately nuke my chance. I think they should either not be allowed to clip the ground at all, or allow movement at all times.
It's especially annoying, because it takes about thirty seconds to get all the way back to the third puzzle, which is essentially time spent waiting.
I do think the concept is solid. Some of the other puzzle-platformers I have played require a lot of attention to both the platforming part and the puzzle part, which can be really difficult, but here it's just focusing on the puzzle part which I think might actually be the better way to go.
I feel like the main problem with this game is that it's super unclear what causes the different blocks to move. Sometimes I would shoot them and they wouldn't move at all, and sometimes they would move perpendicular to the direction of the bullet, etc...
I feel like there should be some way to deal with the dark gray boxes aside from running from them. Once, during a box shower, they covered all but one spot in the screen, and there were too many blocks in the way for me to move there.
I often wasn't aware when I got the laser gun and wasted it. I don't know if that's just my fault, or if there would be some better way to indicate the start of a turn.
I appreciated the DHMIS reference.
A good start to a game. A solid basis for gameplay, although I ran into a couple of problems....
I think the main problem is the hitboxes -- they really mess with trying to get any kind of resource.
I think I might have ran into a bug -- one of my farms would give me a couple hundred food every time I harvested it, while the other ones would only give about twenty or so.
Once a zombie showed up, the game simply froze, although it was still consuming about 15% CPU.
I didn't see many of the other characters -- several of them, including several zombies, were trapped in the ocean, which was a little strange.
Also, it somehow managed to use 1.8 gigabytes (!) of RAM, which is kind of a lot for a simple game like this. I tried looking at the source code to see if there were any obvious problems. The only thing that looks a little suspicious is retrieving an audio file (and creating a thread) every time a sound plays, and also requesting a subimage every time a sprite is drawn (which would probably involve a lot of allocation and copying).
It's especially strange to me because I've *written* really inefficient Java games before -- namely, my second Ludum Dare game, which loaded a copy of a sprite's appearance every time it created a new instance of that sprite -- and that game only takes up about a tenth of the RAM this game does.
As it were, the audio didn't seem to work on my computer.
Overall, I did *like* the game. But it has a lot of bugs, which seriously detriment from the experience.
I tried pushing the "Join Match" button and it disappeared, but nothing else happened -- sadly I don't know if this is because there were no servers, or if the game is just behaving weirdly.
Is there any kind of an indicator whether the game is looking for matches?
In any case, I might try again later.
Sadly I haven't played any tamagotchis, so I can't really judge the Theme too accurately. I do have to say that the health and food indicators are not very clear--it seems like when they're empty, you don't immediately lose--you lose after some amount of time. This means that once the bar is empty, it isn't really clear when the game will end, and you kind of have to just hope that you'll make it in time.
@towerofnix : Thanks for all the kind words. I'm glad that the jokes went over well--I wasn't entirely sure if they might simply become tiring, given that there's something of a joke under every single item.
As it were, I didn't intend for the tutorial to be humorous at all, really, but I guess some of the parts, especially the parts I wrote closer to the end of the jam, would probably match the inventory descriptions closer.
In any case, I was definitely going for something of a Harvest Moon feel based off of the single Harvest Moon game I've played--I tried to match music but especially some sound effects, and if it at least felt similar I'm pretty happy about that.
@Frodewin : I guess that's another clarification I can add to the description. :P
I honestly have no idea what might cause it to crash. The only issue I'm aware of in the code is some alignment issues, but I believe that if they affected your platform the game would crash almost immediately.
@lightblub : I mean to make a Linux build at somepoint, especially now that I have WSL, but I'm afraid I haven't gotten around to it yet. (Incidentally, I would also love to try to port it to Emscripten). And I definitely agree with respect to polish--I would love to have knockback on enemies and the like.
@Kalavecy : I'm afraid I didn't have time to implement any sort of selling functionality. So, yes, you kind of just collect swords until you decide to quit.
@Flameo326 : Thank you for all the kind words. I have certainly considered doing future work on this game, however I have a bad habit of abandoning my Ludum Dare games. :P
@comenoha : Glad you liked that mechanic. I didn't want to do it at first, because it didn't seem like it would go too well with the Theme, but I decided to just go ahead because it seemed a lot more fun than the other ideas I had.
@ZaneDD : I wouldn't necessarily call it innovative, but I'm glad you found it that way. :slight_smile:
@Articulated9 : I should have made that clear -- certain parts of the tutorial won't advance unless you complete the actions that they want you to complete.
Later, it goes back to using the space.
Sorry about that.
@linus: Yep, "talking to the scientist" means walking up to him. I'll add that to the description.
@Alex13 : Yeah, there's probably improvements I could make to the music. I think it sort of fits the "Harvest Moon" feel, but I also feel like the bell notes are a bit off-key, which is weird, because they were very purposefully written on-key.
@Sokuaisushi : Thanks for some details on what I could do to improve the music. If you do want to play without it, it turns out you can simply delete the file "music.wav" from the "snd" folder. ;)
@Lost Dutchman Software : I certainly considered having a longer delay, but I believe fast iteration is good for a Ludum Dare game, which people want to play relatively quickly.
@nardandas : Yeah, the slime damage condition is really weird. For some reason I couldn't get it to work quite right, and I also didn't have time to implement particle effects or knockback, so there definitely is not enough feedback with respect to combat.
@cristiano.m.garcia : I do eventually rate the game of everybody who leaves a comment on my game, although generally I prefer to have received some constructive feedback. :)
A very strange game with a lot of different mechanics. Nonetheless, I thought it was pretty fun. However, I don't really understand what most of the sniper upgrades do -- especially things like weapon level and bullet size, given that it seems like the only thing you're doing is clicking on enemies who are insta-killed. I also didn't manage to get really any of the blue ball upgrades -- it was really easy to click on it my accident, although I suppose that's just part of the gameplay.
In any case, I like the sheer strangeness of the game, and it does actually work pretty well.
Nice! Drawn To Life plus a twin-stick shooter. I had quite a bit of fun.
The one useful thing I can say is that I'm not sure what, exactly, the purpose of the color-changing is. The extra cognitive load (or whatever) of keeping track of colors is actually more effort than simply spamming the shoot button.
I would have to agree with @Avon. Each day, after taking off 150 gold for the wastes and an employee, there doesn't seem to be enough money to pay for enough beer to earn back the same amount of money the next day. It's also not clear why sometimes you seem to lose money?
I liked this a lot! It really has the space atmosphere down pretty well, and I think with a little more content it would really have the "alone in space" atmosphere down pretty well. As such, the only thing it really needs is fleshing out.
In fact, as it currently stands, the game was pretty easy once I figured out that you could convert food to all other kinds of resources: it means that landing on planets is not really necessary, and because you can use 18 fuel to escape any enemy, it becomes pretty straightforward to just click the "wait 10 hours" button and the "plant seeds" and "convert" buttons and win.
I like this game. However, I think it might be just a little too difficult. It took me almost no effort to finish the first three levels, but the fourth level is incredibly difficult. The main problem is that the enemies respawn so quickly that you don't really have time to shoot the ball, and when you do, you almost certainly miss.
The fifth level has a similar problem, but I managed to beat it on the second try.
I'm not sure what the note about QWERTY keyboards is about -- my QWERTY keyboard worked perfectly fine. I think it's neat that the ball slows down whenever a word shows up to give you time, which especially works well with mouse controls, because you have to take your hand off the mouse to type.
I think either a highscore or a win condition would be a nice addition.
I also think difficulty levels would be interesting, as I found it a little easy.
I think that the main thing this game suffers from is a lack of clear instructions -- I had absolutely no idea what I was supposed to do, and reading through the description didn't help. After I figured it out, I still didn't entirely understand the combat mechanics, especially with respect to the ranged enemies.
The graphics are nice and consistent and the music works well.
I really like this. The combination of specifically the Ikaruga genre is actually really clever -- if it were a combination with a normal shooter genre, this game would be an absolute nightmare, because one would have to fly out of their way to shoot the enemy ships, which would inevitably lead to crashing into a wall. However, in this case, you can simply dodge the ships by switching color and shooting at them when convenient, and it all works out very nicely.
I suppose that does lead to this being more of a flappy bird game than anything else, but I think it's more fun than the original flappy bird. :slight_smile:
This is one of my favorite concepts this Ludum Dare -- super awesome use of the Theme. However, the controls have some serious problems.
It's so incredibly easy to try using a spell, and fail because the action wasn't performed quite correctly, that I have to actively focus and put time into making sure I'm making the correct mouse gesture. This adds serious frustration to the gameplay, and is also why I can't get past wave four without losing a significant amount of health.
Simply allowing the player the whole screen to aim would be seriously helpful, and I don't see how it would be unfair in any capacity.
I'm not entirely sure how to play this game -- e.g. what exactly the red cubes do -- but I suppose it's a workable concept.
In it's current state, the main problem it has, I think, is the controls -- the cart has a lot of momentum and doesn't turn very fast, and it's pretty easy to just fly straight into enemies.
This is a pretty great game! I managed to die a lot on level 2, but none of the other levels, and I was rather surprised when it seemed to change layout.
The use of "text-based game" is really clever, and I really like all the "U [did such and such]" puns.
I have to say that the exploding weapon seems a bit overpowered -- killed Z in about 3 hits, but also insta-killed me twice on level 2 when enemies used it at super close range, because I was hit by something like 10 bullets at once. I think a cooldown on damage would mitigate that, or you could just leave it in as something to watch out for.
Very nice game. I faced some frustration when I couldn't quite figure out what to do on a level, but I eventually got through the whole game.
It's not entirely clear what opens up the pockets to shoot the enemies in, which would be nice to know.
I'm not entirely sure that the flying enemies that require three (?) rebounds to kill are exactly fair -- if their AI worked and they didn't get trapped in the middle pocket, they would be very difficult to kill.
I got through the first level three times and then got killed almost immediately. Some way to tune the difficulty, or at least not have to re-do the whole game on every death, would be nice. (I tried pushing 'X' on the menu screen and it doesn't seem to do anything).
Perhaps that's just part of the genre, but it certainly makes it more difficult to rate the game.
This game is really polished, and, I imagine, pretty interesting. Sadly I can't seem to get farther than slightly through the second 'level'.
Neat game. I managed to find both secret combinations, although I'm not quite sure what the one for D is (I just got it accidentally at the end).
I think an improvement would be to make it clear what your score is based on, so the player can put more strategy into getting a higher score.
Very cool combination of genres -- I have to say it definitely fits the theme. :slight_smile: Seems very difficult, mostly because there doesn't seem to be much enabling you to predict enemy movements and attacks, but maybe I'm just not paying close enough attention to their movement.
It's pretty cool to see a game written for a retro computer. The game itself was challenging, as others have said, but I believe that the challenge is mostly deserved, given that it's a Flappy Bird game. The one gripe I have is with the spaces--I got tripped up quite a few times by needing to type spaces, which I think is partially because they aren't indicated very well. However, I imagine that it might just be hard, psychologically, to switch from typing letters to typing spaces and back.
Neat game. I had quite a bit of fun. It's a little irritating to have the time increase by five every single win -- it makes the game take a lot longer.
I'm also not entirely sure that visibility is working correctly -- my first game did not have too many asteroids, but by the fifth game there were a lot -- and about the same amount between the 1 visibility ship and the 3 visibility ship.
I think it would be neat if the cards you played actually increased your stats by that amount, or something to that effect -- sometimes I would not have any need to play a card, because I already had enough stats, which felt like a waste. (Although incrementing your stats could make the game a little too easy...)
The main thing I feel is missing is some kind of progression. You basically get all the best cards as soon as you want them, because there is no apparent limit on money, and neither is there any kind of limit on how good of stats you can get on the beginning. Some sort of ultimate goal would, I think, add a lot to the game.
I really enjoyed the sound effects, especially the card ones. They were really neat. However, I might just have strange taste. :slight_smile:
I think I understand the game pretty well. However, I couldn't manage to get anything to happen on the second level, even after mapping out the whole thing in Notepad. I must have mis-mapped it.
I think that's the problem--there's really no way to get anything done without mapping out the whole level, which takes 16 moves, and is really tedious, and it's pretty easy to not even map it correctly, which just means that it's kind of a chore to get anything done.
I think the concept is good, but I don't know how the actual gameplay could be done in a way that would be fun.
@__init__.py : I would agree that showing the graphical interface at the same time as the text-based interface would work better -- you could even, e.g., have it in the background of the text interface, with something like a cracked-screen graphic or something similar. That might be cool.
I think this could be a pretty cool game. It's main issue is, as previously mentioned, balance. In the first few rounds of the game, I couldn't afford enough money to not lose a few lives -- although perhaps that's because I didn't skip enough rounds. But now it's run through about 20 rounds or so without me buying any new towers, simply because the bomb towers are really powerful.
The other problem is that the clicker part suffers seriously from diminishing returns -- every single building just does +1, but usually in a clicker game you can buy better buildings that do more so that it is feasible to get a reasonable rate of resource generation.
I also spent a lot of time getting a mill and apparently it doesn't do anything?
The other criticism I would have would be with respect to graphics -- it's not a big thing, mostly a personal opinion, but I don't think that it looks very good to have multiple resolutions of pixel art in a single game. This doesn't really affect this game too bad -- just the buttons at the bottom and the toolbar at the top -- but it is something to keep in mind.
Also -- just out of curiosity -- is there a last round?
I played both (?) versions -- the one with recruiting and the one without recruiting -- and I think they both suffer from opposite problems: without recruiting, it takes a really long time to build up any sort of substantial force. With recruiting, it is almost trivial to build up forces in the hundreds of thousands.
However, it is a solid basis for a game, and the imbalance is not actually my primary complaint.
By far, the thing I found most annoying was several deficiencies in the command line interface. First, sometimes I would enter commands when the game was expecting me to press enter to advance a line of text, and then I would have to re-type those commands. Second, the game would say things like "you don't have enough men" or "you don't have enough gold," but wouldn't tell me how many men or gold I did have or, at the very least, needed. Finally, when upgrading, the game will not tell you that you don't have enough gold until you've already chosen the number of workers, which is really annoying.
But I did play for something like 40 minutes, so I did have fun.
I don't really understand the gameplay. The only way I managed to get killed was by driving into the red zone at the edge of the map -- the enemies didn't seem to do anything at all.
I like the graphics, especially the warp effect.
I think the camera controls could be improved -- primarily, it's really annoying to have the camera move when your mouse is in the corner, when you're trying to click on one of the thrusters.
This is neat! And for a game made in five hours, this is pretty cool!
The shooter-puzzle really works well with this kind of two characters puzzle.
I do have one complaint: On my keyboard, the delete key is really far from both other sets of controls, meaning that I basically have to run with the blue square before focusing both by hands on the shooter so that I don't die.
Of course, it's something of a pain to have customisable key controls in a Jam (I certainly don't!) so that's mostly a nitpick.
This is a surprisingly workable concept, and I kept playing for a couple of minutes even after seemingly unlocking everything. The main things I didn't understand where under which conditions multiple blocks would break, and what exactly the different kinds of cannon balls did. Aside from that, I had some fun with this game.
The cannon balls you shoot when you have none left kind of creeped me out. :wink:
A good start to a game. I think the main thing, as has been said, is more player feedback. I couldn't exactly tell how to harvest crops or even plant them, largely because of a lack of feedback, and because the fruit-falling-through-ground bug made it hard to know if I was really harvesting things correctly.
I believe your character, and perhaps the hoed ground model, would look better with smooth shading enabled.
Better camera controls could also be a plus. With a third-person view, it's kind of expected that you can see what is behind you, but it doesn't really work out that way in this case. A first person view might actually be better for this specific game, but I couldn't say for sure.
Super fun game -- really addicting. I ran into the same bullets-on-ground bug, but I also once saw bullets moving with an enemy that were not attached to that enemy by any path of bullets (there was blank space between the enemy and those bullets).
Seems like the best strategy is to isolate an enemy and then pump them full of bullets to get all the combo points. This, sadly, is how I eventually was killed. :P
This seems more like a tower defense game with a fishing minigame than necessarily a fusion of genres, but it does work well. However, on my second playthrough, only about seven fish spawned in and then no more showed up.
The only criticism I really have is with respect to graphics: it isn't too noticeable in this game, but it suffers from a stylistic choice that I personally feel is undesirable: multiple resolutions of pixel art, which often doesn't look too good.
@Roka Josh : No, I'm playing on Windows.
Not bad. Right now, there's not a whole lot to do, and there doesn't seem to be a win condition, but there's certainly a solid foundation here.
The main criticism I have: - It's really annoying to use the keyboard to build things. It's not so bad here, because the icons at the bottom remind you which buttons to push, but I think it's just something to avoid. Or, at the very least, I think an option to change the keys would be good. - I think the graphics could be improved, but, of course, this is just a Jam game.
I do think that the whole planet mechanic is really cool, and I especially like the minimap in the bottom corner. Wrapping physics like that is difficult.
@HS_Dave : I ran into the same tile-respawning bug three separate times, twice with fuel and shield tiles and once with capacitor and shield tiles.
I like the space graphics, as well as the background sound -- very neat.
I encountered an issue with the capacitor: I couldn't seem to match tiles fast enough to charge it up, even when not flying.
I also don't know if this is intentional or a bug -- but usually tile matching games don't let you keep switched tiles if no matches were formed.
I think the main thing that this game is missing is instructions. I have no idea what any of the numbers in the bottom mean, or what any of the bumpers do, exactly. At first I thought I was supposed to try to destroy the bumpers with hearts. I'm still not sure what the bumpers with skulls do, as I didn't manage to destroy both of them without dying.
Nice game. Gets pretty challenging in the later levels, as typing "jump" repeatedly is kind of difficult. I think one thing that makes it harder is that, at least for QWERTY users, "jump" is typed entirely by the right hand, which makes it slower to type repeatedly.
A checkpoint system might be kind of nice, as right now the basic spiel is "repeat the level until you memorize it," which would become worse if you also had to memorize when to crouch or not (as right now you can basically just crouch the whole time). If the command were "checkpoint," it would actually take a while to type out and be something of a tradeoff. :wink:
Anyways, neat combination of genres. Real-time platforming and text-based controls are definitely not the most compatible.
I'm not entirely sure what's happening. The DESTROY command appears to work, but MOVE does not (i.e. `MOVE c0 BY 1 0` does not work, nor does `MOVE c0 TO 27 75`). `SURVEILLANCE MOVE` does work, however.
I'm afraid I can't really rate this game, simply because I can't really play it. If you want me to leave a rating anyways, say so, but I can't really give much useful information.
I do think it might be kind of fun if it worked -- but I'm afraid I simply don't know.
Good concept, but man, the controls are impossible. Every time I tried to take the first left turn, I would end up with so much rotational momentum that I would end up backwards. Then, every time I tried to turn right, I couldn't turn nearly fast enough.
As such, I didn't manage to make it past the finish line ever, or unlock any of the other cars.
I'm afraid I can't really tell what to do to win? I think I activated all four nodes, and then the resources in the top-right corner ran out so I died.
But this game is really polished -- good graphics and gameplay.
The title music offends my ears slightly with the way it goes almost completely silent at places.
The sounds don't work for me. I played a couple of levels -- not bad. I also suffered the end condition problem.
The primary feedback I have is that maybe the fires move too fast -- they move the same speed as the player, which makes it actually kind of difficult to jump over them. Maybe they should move slower in the earlier levels?
Also, I'm not entirely sure what the "survival" aspect is. I think expanding on that mechanic could be interesting, and could influence interesting level design (if you had to go back and forth to different areas in order to survive).
I liked this, although I'm a sucker for any game that lets you play music. :slight_smile:
It feels a little slow in the beginning, but is certainly fast enough by the end. The only complaint I have is that, especially in the beginning, it's really hard to jump over the platforms -- it's really easy to land on them.
I think this game would be especially neat with background music that complemented the player -- although I suppose that might be difficult, as the player's timing is not as exact as in pure music-playing games.
That was pretty good! I nonetheless have two complaints: - The price increase is so steep that you're basically forced to just do dry runs until you get enough money for more stuff. I don't know that that's really necessary. - There is no way to destroy things you have already placed, which means that sometimes you might not be able to put jumps where they need to be. (Luckily, all of my jumps sort of just magically worked out).
The only other thing I'd like to mention is that for some reason, the level isn't always repeatable--my character would sometimes get killed on certain places, and sometimes not.
Overall, I really enjoyed this game. The gameplay works, even with the problems mentioned, and the graphics and music are good.
I think the option for larger bars would be nice. The problem, especially, is that it's easy to start typing for a wizard slightly before they get in the box, and once you realize that your first letter went through, you've typed the second letter and then there's not enough time left to retype both letters.
I think this game is a pretty neat idea. Turn-based bullet hell is a very interesting mechanic.
However, I do think that the game suffers from two problems: - It is possible to be completely trapped at the start of a floor, if you check the wrong side of the room first and bullets show up that you can't get around. I think the main fix to this would be to show the walls, as previously mentioned. - There doesn't seem to be a way to get away from the goblins, which to me seems to mean that goblins could easily trap you similarly to the wall problem. Maybe it should be possible to see where goblins are at all times? Or maybe they should be killed by bullets--I managed to get one in the same square as a bullet, but nothing happened. It could be an interesting strategy though.
In any case, even in its current state, it's actually pretty fun--I played through quite a number of rounds, but eventually started running into a lot more goblins (I don't know if this is a bug, but the first ~10 times I played I didn't run into any goblins on level one, while eventually I saw one almost every time).
@lightblub : Good to know. I thought I might have been mistaken with respect to the bullet & goblin situation.
A nice little puzzle game. I agree with respect to the controls -- they simply aren't as precise as one would expect from a platformer.
But the foundation is solid, and could easily be turned into a full-fledged puzzle game.
That was pretty funny. It's a little difficult to tell exactly what causes corn to grow, but it's easy enough to get it growing so it doesn't really matter.
Probably the best improvement would simply be audio.
This is pretty neat. I think my main criticism is that every time you miss a word, you inevitably miss another one, which is kind of annoying -- I think I would prefer if the game just judged you on whether you put the spaces where it was expecting. After all, the game doesn't actually judge you on what words you create -- even if you create a word that is technically correct, the game will still mark you off if you didn't put the spaces in the right spot.
I enjoyed the graphical objects that would appear after typing nouns, especially the "big monster."
Also, the beat does not exactly align with when you want to press space, which is kind of irritating given that it's a pretty prominent beat.
Fun game. I like the variation in levels and I appreciate that there's different music for each one.
It took quite a bit of kludging to get this game to fit on my screen, as Godot apparently tells Windows that it is DPI-aware...
In any case, I had fun. Multiple times I failed to pick up something because the "You found a [blank]!" text tricked me into thinking I had picked up something.
It seems like there wasn't really enough food -- I only found one in both my playthroughs -- I died of hunger the first time and won the second time.
Something that would be really neat is autocomplete for the command window, especially because typing out things like "Male Orc" is kind of painful.
I like the concept, but I'm afraid I can't seem to get anything to work right. I've tried cutting down trees and mining rocks, but it seems like neither works: the character starts the attack animation, and then won't stop and won't eat.
If these are simply bugs, and you have time to fix them, I would be happy to try playing again.
I can give one other piece of feedback: it's really hard to do anything when you have to memorize six keyboard controls. At the very least for the crafting part, a graphical interface would be much nicer.
@Aszu : I did briefly try playing again. I found that it takes really really long to harvest any resources, which I'm guessing means that by the time you build a boat, or anything really, the enemies have gotten far enough ahead that you can't really beat them.
I still do really like the concept though - it adds an extra tradeoff to the race, where you can spend your time either on getting closer to the finish line or on attempting to improve your "speed," so to speak.
This game starts out nicely, but quickly becomes tedious and boring. I think it's really just a matter of not having enough content yet to really have a whole, fun game -- there needs to be more progression than "buy bait and spam the cast button."
I did find one bug -- somehow the first time I went fishing I ended up with -1 bait.
It takes wayyyyy too much grinding to get anything done in this game. I got all the way up to level 60, and still got killed very quickly when entering the area leading up to the boss. Perhaps this is simply because of the sheer quantity of enemies that spawns in.
Aside from that, I enjoyed this game. It has a surprisingly large world with quite a bit to do.
This was really fun. Simple, absurd concept; great execution. I think the only improvement, gameplay-wise, I can think of is adding some sort of indicator of your goal, because I'm not entirely sure where it is in the desert map.
Also, a bug: On my first play-through, the gun that said "press 2" and the gun that said "press 3" were switched -- pressing 3 switched to the "press 2" one and vice-versa. I don't know if this just has to do with the order they are picked up -- my second play-through (of the same map) had them in the right spots.
A good start to a game. I'm very intrigued as to where the tower-defense + dating-sim might go -- it could be, for example, the way to level-up towers, or maybe if a tower feels neglected it could choose to stop working. I think that would be pretty funny and certainly very unique.
I did only play the 1.01 version, so maybe I missed a couple of things. But it was fun nonetheless, and with future work could be pretty neat.
Neat game. Very difficult, but seems to work okay.
I think my main complaint is that it takes way too long to fall around the world again. I would fall off the edge a lot, and have to wait a couple of seconds before I could try again, which was really frustrating.
The hitbox on the enemy projectiles is also somewhat difficult to get a feel for. Sometimes I could dodge a bullet very closely, but other times I would be killed when just in the general vicinity.
Just so you know, your Google Drive link for the Windows version doesn't work -- when trying to download the file, Google Drive blocks it and says "you can't download this because a virus was detected."
I played the web version, and I must say, it's quite strange. I never really got the hang of the controls, even after trying quite a bit. It seems like they are almost random in whether they will work the way I expect.
Seems relatively fun, aside from that -- a mad scramble to get to the top of the hill. However, given that it's just "survive as long as possible," it gets somewhat boring.
Very interesting choice of genres to combine. I played around three rounds of this game, and I think my main complaint is that there are certain balance issues. My first playthrough I got through 16 rounds, my second I got through about 4, and on my final playthrough I lost at round 96. It seems like the strategy of "spam troops" works pretty well, but aside from that it's rather difficult to come up with a strategy -- thus my compliant about "balance".
After reading other people's comments, I realized I was supposed to play with a controller, which explains why I had some difficulty with the controls. But in case you want feedback on the keyboard-and-mouse controls:
The camera is kind of unintuitive, given that it kind of swings in a circle around your character in accordance with your cursor, but I did get more used to it as I played further.
The primary problem with the keyboard controls is that, for some reason, W doesn't work on the player character to jump, which means that you have to switch between using WASD and ASD + Space or between WASD and arrow keys. However, ASD + Space is really the only option, because Q is so far from the arrow keys.
Finally, the controls felt kind of slippery -- but again, I got more used to them.
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Aside from the problems with the controls, I liked the game. It looked pretty good, and I did manage to beat it even with the problems I experienced, so I imagine it's very playable.
My only question is how exactly the green things work, because it seems like on the first level I would shoot them and they would become "invisible" for a fraction of a second and then come back and start moving again.
I'm not sure I like the mechanic of requiring the player to stand on the blocks to move them -- it really makes it difficult to have any control over the blocks at all, especially when trying to e.g. rotate them. Perhaps it simply needs some tweaking -- currently, the main issue with the mechanic is that it's simply really difficult, as a player, to pull off.
Additionally, I encountered problems with the controls: - W should be supported for jumping, so I'm not switching between arrows and (Space)ASD. - There's no way to control the character jump height, which makes landing on a piece in time to be able to control it pretty difficult.
Neat game. I think my primary concern is that it seems really difficult to really get a handle on how to play well vs. not well.
My main strategy was to just point the thing somewhere until it turned green. This happened to work on both stages 0 and 2, although I can't seem to beat stage 1.
The replay feature is really neat.
First, when I started the game, the window was glued to one half of the screen and so I missed all the buttons on the left, and I had to put my computer in Tablet Mode to force the game into fullscreen. (I'm on Windows 10).
And then I think I must have encountered a bug, because Tim came over and then the screen went dark and credits played, and then I switched windows but I heard music so I switched back and the game was still going and I had gained $50.
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In any case, from what I can tell of the gameplay, I think this is kinda neat. There certainly seems to be something of a story. I'm not entirely sure what, exactly, the player can do to influence the story -- I imagine that the primary strategy is to buy a tiny bit of food every day (but, I couldn't, because I spent all my money right at the beginning).
I think the hand-drawn graphics are interesting, especially because you don't seem them much in games or in Ludum Dare.
I should say I was properly apprehensive of the creature -- I really didn't know what was going to happen, so I think this game really sold the creepy well.
I think two added options for the player would be really helpful: the ability to leave the room before the zombies broke the door, and the ability to reload the gun.
I'm not entirely sure what the losing condition is? Also, it seems like the collision detection is somewhat broken -- lots of blocks didn't break when the puck (?) bounced off of them. Also, the puck really liked to get stuck with low vertical velocity, which was kind of frustrating.
I think breakout + sports could be interesting, but it would need more work.
A very cool concept. Very well executed, as well. I don't in particular have any criticism, although I have to wonder if it's possible to get so long that you can just form a continuous wall, blocking all enemies. (I didn't manage to do so).
I really like the music -- although I can't tell, given that you've disabled the audio category -- whether it was made as part of the jam or not.
This is really neat. A tower defense game where you have generic upgrades that can be applied to any towers is interesting and unique.
Strangely, after my first playthrough, I have to imagine that the best strategy is to lose lives in a controlled fashion in order to get the extra cards. I might try playing this again sometime, as it is very interesting.
I did find it to be somewhat difficult. Almost whenever I upgraded a tower, I would immediately be fighting the enemies that match that tower, which was bad luck on my part. However, it might have something to do with the progression of the game nonetheless.
I do have one complaint, which is that after an enemy was shot a bunch I couldn't tell what towers would be able to shoot it. Perhaps enemies could become targeted by all towers once painted? Something to think about, in any case.
Also, it might be nice to know the number of enemies for the next round before starting it. Before the final round, I created a new tower with a backwards shot upgrade, which turned out to be absolutely worthless for fighting a single enemy. But that's just one nitpick.
Overall I really liked this game. The graphics, although not fancy, are more than good enough, especially when considering the paint splatter effect, which works very well for this game. The card mechanic is innovative and interesting. The audio works well enough in my opinion.
This is awesome! It has probably the best use of the theme I've seen. It's also horribly difficult, but I did eventually manage to beat it after much cursing. Easier difficulty options could include more life or a longer shooting range.
This game is really polished and really fun.