Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → tiar
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 57 | Depths | Revenge of the Ocean | jam | 799 | 2.89 | 3.06 | 2.65 | 2.71 | 3.10 | 2.78 | |||
| 2021 | 49 | Unstable | 👥 | Genomancer | jam | 1036 | 3.30 | 3.25 | 3.73 | 3.25 | 2.94 | |||
| 2018 | 43 | Sacrifices must be made | 👥 | Vikrifice | jam | 177 | 3.83 | 3.61 | 2.93 | 3.82 | 4.19 | 3.62 | 3.44 | 3.70 |
I don't really like visual novels, but that was pretty good I guess. The sounds were nice. The story was kinda undeveloped and there shouldn't be options available if the player just selected them a moment before.
It was kinda fun to play because of the planets, but on the other hand those planets made some things less intuitive, for example why bullets were flying away from the planet when the gravity should keep them near the planet? That made shooting enemies much harder because bullets were flying away in a straight line, missing enemies that are a little bit away from the character. Also those enemies doesn't kill us. And controls are hard to use to be honest, why didn't you add arrows for an optimal use on keyboard? That shouldn't be that hard. Still, the game has some potential; if it was polished a little more, it would be much more fun to play.
I love the audio of this one. And humor. But it's too hard for me... Pedestrians are stupid, walking around without looking, and there is nothing you can do when you see they are going in your direction: no slowing down or anything else. You just watch them being killed. :/ It would be better for me if I would be able to just play it without a lose condition, because it was a little too tight for me for my 5 minutes experience in the game ;) But overall I liked it.
Very Portal-like in terms of humor ;) The theme is actually pretty realistic which means even more creepy than the other, less realistic games. Actually in medicin you probably need to make those decisions (but not in transplantation I think, there are queues). I kinda liked it.
I guess my comment got lost; well, I'll try to replicate this. The first time I played it I got eaten by the evil spirit because I tried to stand in the corridor and spell at it. Well, it didn't work out. I honestly thought it is some kind of a "game-movie", that is that the experience was exactly that: you go through the dark corridor, you meet the spirit, you try to fight, but it is just laughing in your face at your poor attempts. But after reading the description again and even some comments, I realized I should be running away from it (and I figured that if it were a movie you would make the eating part a much more enjoyable to look at). So I made some progress, but... eventually I just got lost in those empty rooms and stopped playing.
Details I like:
- you can see the evil spirit while it can't see you
- the intro
Details I don't like:
- every room looks the same
- there is too dark sometimes to distinguish between new dark room and a black wall (#truestory)
I guess the things I don't like are just a thing in this genre of games and I'm not the right audience. But still, I think it can pretty easily get from scary to boring if you're not careful. (Although the moment when I was hiding in a corner and the evil spirit walked in the distance make my heart skip a beat, for sure).
It's not really a puzzle game, but pixel hunting game: you need to stand in the exact place and put the exact amount of force or time to the Space bar to neither fall down nor stick yourself with spikes from the ceiling. Not fun, rather frustrating. Especially when controls overall are sloppy, you slide on your feet (probably AddForce() instead of rigidbody.velocity? Not that I'm an expert on that matter ;) ). I didn't like the experience, I'm sorry. But on the other hand, I'm not good at platformers anyway. But... uhh, the first half of the game I was wondering why I had to put so much force on my Space bar to be able to jump on another platform (I was falling all the time and I couldn't jump on the higher level of the platform); on the second half I understood why you made that mechanic, but I still hated it. As someone else said: it's hard to get to the exact sweet spot of the jump force. My team actually made a platformer too and one piece of feedback was that we shouldn't made progress depend on the longest jump you can make; I feel like you could take that advice to your heart, too.
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I could probably make it... eventually. But I've tried so many times that I don't really want to try it again. It doesn't depend on my skills, it depends on floating numbers calculations errors to determine whether I managed to fit into that 2 pixels spot or not. (I probably sound very frustrated right now, and I am, just look at the picture :P ) But really, collision-dependent objects should have the size and a texture that resembles the collider.
On the good side, the piece of wood is cute and I like trees firing up when you past through them. I also think the mechanic with the past self of wood is promising, why did you put there those spikes though? ;) I liked the messages, too, they were funny.
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I felt the need to skip days without skipping people. Although I haven't realize at the beginning that I can skip people ;) Game was very interesting. I like that you made all resources have different shape and different color even though they are all very desaturated. I instantly knew which is what I need. I wouldn't remember them just from the shape because of the pixels.
Hey, so the thing is, this game is fun. I really really liked playing it. The only thing is the graphics... I had a very hard time trying to orientate in the environment. Everything is too close you the camera. Everything has roughly the same color (good thing enemies are red though!). Walls are pixelated but seems to be done in the wrong way (pixels are changing constantly). When shooting, bullets covers the view. Probably it depends on the player's orientation skills, but... I knew where I was (fortunately), but often the only things I was seeing were walls. If it was fixed, the game would be just amazing. A little Portal-like - did you referenced to it (consciously or not)? I didn't rate your game on "Humor" since I didn't know what to out there. Oh and regarding graphics, first I was playing on web (if that changes anything) and second I see that you added chromatic aberration to the edges. That's a nice addition, I can admit. And graphics doesn't really look bad, it just could be much cleaner.
Congratulations on finishing such a nice entry on time :)
I like it a lot! I played two levels already and just lost on the third one, but while I had some trouble understanding what's going on and how I lose health but now I can manage just fine, so I'm going to play more. I gave you 4.5 Overall and was pondering over giving 5.0, since it was very enjoyable. I take it that the controls are much smoother on desktop version, though, because the web version was unreliable in terms of jump for example. But I noticed a lot of web versions are kinda laggy. Btw as a comment for your level design, I got lost on the third level (for now), but all the other ones (I mean 1. and 2.) were easy to navigate.
I'm sure it would be a fun game, because... I've played it already ;) Just with a different title and different theme. Alright I checked it: I have it on my smartphone right now, the theme is "connect buildings to make an electronics net" or something like that. So the idea is not really innovative, only the blood through pipes is novel of sorts. Maybe try to expand on it into another direction (not necessarily pipe-connecting game, but something else)? Maybe try to implement this into a fps or a rogue-like game? Something that could use blood through pipes as a game mechanic, not just a reward after solving a puzzle.
This is really nice to play. I loved the puzzles. But there is one thing: I solved the first one and then i died on the next level. And then I had to do it from the very beginning. I really miss checkpoints and and easy level navigator. It would help tremendously. Right now I can't really play it more and I'm not so happy about it because I would have to solve the same problems I solved before and the only challenge now is to not click the wrong thing by mistake. I will probably do a chore of playing through the first level because it's a very nice game and I want to go to the end. The puzzles were very good. At first, it was easy, and then it got harder (I was pretty sure I was stuck on the end of level 1 but then I realized I can just sacrifice one more person ;) ). There is also the fact that the it's hard to distinguish between pressure buttons, especially the purple ones just look grey. It would be better if they had more contrast or were just plain purple/teal/orange. But overall, thank you for your great game and for giving me the opportunity to play it. Nice brain exercise.
I think I've found the bug @svntax was talking about: I got stuck in the same level and I tried a lot of things and one of them was swapping characters when one of them was on fire. Let's name characters A and B. I jumped with A into fire and clicked Space. A disappeared. I clicked Space again; B was deactivated (as if A was somewhere around). I clicked Space again to unblock B. I jumped into fire with B and clicked Space and then Space again; B died, but the level didn't reset itself (probably game didn't think A is dead).
Btw I got stuck in this level and I don't know how to proceed. If you want, you could make let's plays/walktroughs or just screenshots with hints, especially if you know the game is hard. It will help others play it to the end without getting stuck. Usually with professional game you don't need to do that because level design is (in theory) good enough to not require such things. But because it's a jam it's understandable that there are some details missed and strangers coming to play your game could get confused even when you think it's easy, because you made this game and others didn't.
I won't rate your game today since I played only two levels, but I like it for now, so I'll try again to beat this level tomorrow.
Thank you @fzillo, @antoine-vion, @kornel-meszaros. We're happy you like it! @fzillo it's great to hear that the walkthrough helped you. @antoine-vion - you need to just keep trying ;) I'm myself very bad at platformers so progressing is rather hard for me, but I should play through my own game to the very end, right? ;)
@xphere Thank you! We hope more people get to the end, too, but we haven't realized earlier that levels are so long.You can put your ending choice here: https://www.strawpoll.me/16978464 so we know what ending is more often chosen.
@keshav-sharma , @ratatosk777 , thanks!
@subtlydramatic some of our team members had a first game jam a month ago, it just wasn't the LD jam. It was my first time though :)
@hannaesthetic - thanks for such a long review! You are exactly right about the big blood sacrifice being too quiet. On the other hand, groans of the poor animals being murdered in the exact moment wouldn't really fit into the game ;) We save all the feedback to use in our future games and in the post-LD edition of Vikrifice!
@firebug don't worry, our viking is peaceful and didn't want to make any harm, they just faint, like in Pokemon game ;) Regarding the animation... well it's not the only thing that didn't work out, there is some more information about what was meant to be but unfortunately got cut out because of time constrainst and mistakes, just check out my feed, the post called "Vikrifice: cut content" is the one you look for.
@hugonun @nekonyo @narudgi thanks!
@flashviper yes, the hearts are your lives. You don't need to replay the whole game, just the level. I'll try to update the description to be as clear as possible in that matter. And thank you for your nice words and support :)
Great choice with this sf asset pack. I'm not sure but was it there said that you needto use Space to gather resources? I "died" a few times because of I pressed every button on my keyboard and couldn't find the right one (the biggest one ;) ), I even thought for a moment that the game was made for game console controllers. The game is very ambitious. I hope you'll make the post-LD version.
The game is very cute. I liked the experience. On the other hand, it's not really a challenge, you just make a lot of "happy accidents" (as Bob Ross said) and hope for the best (and usually get it). It's very nice, it's just not exactly a game, at least not a game for adults; I guess it could be suitable for children though, considering the non-violent content and playful theme.
(sorry, cannot remove :( )
This game is awesome. I like the movement, I like the effects, I like how coherent the whole game is, I like the gameplay. It’s just fun and I’m going to play it more now. One of the best entries for sure.
Only, why didn’t you add a webgl build as well? If you build with Godot and publish on itch.io, it’s just a few clicks, no problem at all, except you need to make sure you save as “index.html” and zip everything up after exporting. And that way I’m sure more people would be willing to try it out, too.
Pretty cool, though also rather difficult. One never knows from which direction the next danger comes!
It says it cannot find the page :( Are you sure you published it already? (Also a little tip, add your game link to the post, otherwise it's more tedious to find it, because one has to go through the profile).
@platyp - try playing with "Immortal player" (check it in the main menu of the game, at that dark screen with game name), it's kind of like a test mode but you can explore building up your abilities and genome without fearing death.
@jamesgames1000 stop the boat, then start fishing, the fish will come to you.
What is a better question is to how to fish for the crates? They sometimes seem to try to escape (sinking through the ground)... Once I saw it coming to the boat. Once I fished it successfully. But controlling the boat is difficult, and especially situating it over the crate is quite challenging. Every light press of a button moves it quite far in that direction.
It's a good idea for a game, though, and fishing is nice. I was keeping one copy of every fish without selling it on purpose to "collect" all of them. But I couldn't collect the special crates - they sunk through the ground and I don't think there is a way to get them now, so I don't think I can finish the game.
Not sure if it's related to your issues with Itch page before, but I don't see a way to play it now? (Not here, and not on itch) If it's a webgl game, you can put it here on the page too, btw, it no longer needs to be on Itch.
On Android and on Linux (in webgl), I only see a very bright version of it, so I don't see enemies, only the well and the coins. The Android version is on a tablet and the browser is very new, so I'm not sure why it doesn't work properly. That's a shame, because it looks pretty nice on screenshots.
It's a pretty neat idea. The only problem is, it becomes an idle game pretty soon, and it's not really a deckbuilder the way I understand deckbuilders (for example there are no mechanics to trash the card, and it would not be really beneficial either). Also it wasn't really clear what's the difference between getting an iron surrounded by soil, or getting an iron card. Or maybe that iron was just money, too? Anyway, it was still enjoyable for some time, very good job for a game jam.
I nearly managed to win in the Hard mode and I did manage to win in the Normal post-jam mode. I don't really see that much difference tbh, especially since the Normal mode has those tiny guys (which are difficult to aim to) and the big pink ones (which are harder to move and are bigger so they have bigger collisions too). I didn't really like the fact that after shooting something off the camera you had a bigger chance of something coming to the camera again because one of the monsters got a higher speed, it's like punishing for doing a good job. And I really disliked the green guy at the end, it seemed like it didn't react to my shooting at all (if it did, it was way too little). Whether he was within or next to the camera, it was pure chance, and me trying to push him away caused me to not pay enough attention to the other monsters. And the other ones were worse now that Cthulhu was taking so much space since they were colliding not only with walls but with him too.
I really liked the humor and the art, but got really frustrated playing it. Great job on your entry and on rising my blood pressure. (I'm not even joking! I still gave you high scores though, they are fully deserved).
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Got to the end! With 80 points left. But it did feel close at times, especially since the negative numbers really rise quite a bit while the green one seem to stay low.
It's weird to have "Game over" when I won, though. I mean technically it is true... but it's it something that's said only when you lose? (I'm not an English native speaker, so maybe I'm wrong).
Good job on your entry!
I feel like this would work better as a 2D game. Also lack of shadows from the moving objects - which do hide the main character - makes it difficult to see whether you'd be protected in a specific place or not. If the shadows were there, every tiny speck of light would signalise danger, but without it, it's surprising when they catch you (especially on level 2, yes).
Also it's pretty funny that the guards notice you immediately but don't notice the huge blocks moving on their own. But it's a very nice concept to combine the moving blocks type of puzzles with a stealth game.
Wow, it's really great! I liked the artstyle and the gameplay. I had a bit of trouble with controls - the jumps were very high and then slowly coming back down, which makes sense in that environment, but it was difficult to avoid the fish. Also in the second level you get spawned and end up on a level where a few seconds later you're killed because that's were the fish is swimming. Also I got stuck twice on the shallow water areas there (on the very left; I thought I'd be able to jump out of the water and I don't think I was?) and there were fish swimming there, too. And the idea for the time to stop when you fix the pipes is great, but I would also stop the water bubbles, otherwise it kinda still gives the feel of time not being stopped/slowed down? I only realized it later when observing the fish.
But it was quite a nice platformer concept (even sent it to my friend from outside of the game jam to test it out). Great job on your entry!
I really like the art!
Not sure if you're aware, but your game page on Itch got quarantined: Zrzut ekranu z 2025-04-10 08-45-07.png It's probably because you created a zip file wrong: your zip file with a source code and resources also contains a zip file with the source code and resources (so it's a zip file within a zip file).
I like the art, but it's very difficult to figure out in the game what to do, what would happen if I do something, and even how to move from one place to another. I know that there is a way to go form a boat to the background, but it seems pretty dependent on where I'm standing; and the route from a tree trunk to a rock (second plane) to the top of the road sign (first plane again?) to the hill on the third plane is very unintuitive. My gameplay was mostly clicking things that seemed out of place and seeing whether something happened or not... and I still couldn't figure out how to interact with the fishing rod. Eventually I just didn't know what to try next, so I stopped playing. Looks like a nice concept but it would need some kind of quide to finish (more than a finished image; maybe some kind of outline for all the objects you can interact with using a mouse at that moment?).
You can look at how Oxenfree marks the paths since it's a similar concept. (Though I suspect you knew how to do it, just didn't have time and it's just unfinished, which is understandable for a game jam game. Oxenfree still seems to be a good inspiration for that type of game, though).
Great job on your entry! and I see it's not even a Jam but Compo. Nice work! I quite liked the depth meter showing the progress. I was a bit annoyed at the health mechanics though - I see you already fixed the hitboxes but it still feels a bit unfair. I assume it's because the fish disappears as soon as the hitboxes cross, so we don't actually see the ship and the fish touching (having a timer for a second or so and only deleting the fish after that could fix it, maybe?). Also it happened even if I tried to capture the fish, and the fish was right below me, so the losing health sound instead of the capturing fish sound was quite disappointing. On the other hand, the fish that I bumped on the side were not even possible to capture; if they were still a bit below me, then trying to capture them required moving in that direction, because the sonar placement/direction and the movement were tied together. Maybe having the sonar follow the mouse would be a better idea? In any case, nice artwork and the entry looks quite polished (especially with a manual, progression system, audio, main menu and whatnot... heavens know I decided to just give up on every "unnecessary" feature like main menu or audio because who needs them, amiright? So yours look quite complete in comparison).
I really love the style, but I'm not sure where the challenge was - clicking on every point seemed to be the best strategy, everything else was costing more points, more time and more distance. Was I misunderstanding the game? I was just clicking first on the closest point, then I went to the bottom right, then top right, top left, and bottom left, visiting all points in a straight line, and I won.
On the other hand, I really love the design of the interface. It really gives off that retro computer systems style.
@akinat0 ah, I get it. I had the exact same problem, except with a much easier solution, since it was just a few numbers in my case. I noticed that it's too easy to kill the enemy while my game is a bullet hell so in theory having to survive a certain time is part of the challenge. I increased it, and then it turned out to be so long (and boring *and* difficult), that during a submission hour I changed it again to much lower values for the stronger enemies (and people still found other bugs I had no idea about...).
In that case, I can imagine how it was supposed to work (finding shortest routes that don't cross the mountains too much etc., like in real life you'd plan a route), and I think you did a great job. It's really difficult to get the balance right in such a short time so it's understandable. The gameplay clearly is there, the lines have different colors for the steepiness of the slope I assume, so I can see what you were going for.
It's a really cool concept, but I feel like there are some issues with balance. First, the corruption happens so fast that you can only just discover the first depth - or, well, the first time I played I didn't know it will happen so fast so I lost on depth 0 (before I figured out that "can't place the building HERE" also means "not enough resources" I had diggers and had to wait before I had food for them...), on the second run I managed to get to the depth 1, but then the corruption happened immediately afterwards (six (maximum number of) digger workshops is only *slightly* faster than the corruption) and I had not enough lumber, and couldn't gather any, so I couldn't have any food except for what I already gathered, so the game was lost anyway. Also I think that the first time I played I would get 2x per lumberjack and the second time I would get 3x? That was surprising.
Have you used an asset pack? The game seems really polished and seems to have lots of assets for a game jam game made by two people, is one of you the main artist and the other coding? If yes, it's a great job on art as well! I really dig (hehe) the low-poly style.
Would be awesome if there was a way at the end to see the whole mine to admire your mining skills. Art is amazing, the story adds to the experience, I didn't read the wall of text but the pictures were enough to tell me what's going on (also I am familiar with Carcassone and Dorfromantik). Very solid entry. Great job! I really enjoyed playing it. It feels very polished. I failed at 45 but mostly because the reddish mushrooms were growing... well, quite a bit, and I haven't been paying attention to the number of tiles left. I'll probably play again. (Btw on Itch if you edit you can add a tag "ludum-dare-57", and then below there will be a textbox for a LDjam url, and that would give you a widget on top of the game with the link to this page and your game will appear on the list of all LDjam games on Itch).
I love the atmosphere and the idea, but I got stuck very early on: Zrzut ekranu z 2025-04-09 11-43-51.png - I assume I should either 1) draw the next set of cards (to get a Jack) or 2) put some other card there (since two challenges should be good enough according to the manual), but I don't seem to be able to do either of those. The slot doesn't get the outline like others when I try to hover over it with a card. And clicking the card, and then on the slot, doesn't work either. I don't know if I misunderstood something or it's a bug.
In any case, the art and atmosphere are great, and I'd love to talk with the Rabbit more and learn more about the experiment.
I love the "You got spaghettified" game over text! I feel like the controls could've been snappier/easier to use, but I guess that was the point. It looks really good, and it's a cool concept, especially with the increasing gravity. I was only wondering what score should I give you for the Theme because I *feel* like space is deep by default (evokes similar feelings like deep ocean or deep underground) but I *think* it's not. Decided to go with the higher score though. Really nice entry, good job!