Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → Tobius
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | 59 | Signal | đź‘Ą | SIG_NULL | jam | 725 | 3.06 | 2.82 | 3.70 | 3.62 | 3.54 | 3.02 | 2.62 | 3.02 |
| 2025 | 58 | Collector | đź‘Ą | Curious Collectors | jam | 277 | 3.64 | 3.44 | 3.53 | 4.13 | 4.27 | 3.92 | 3.86 | 3.57 |
| 2025 | 57 | Depths | đź‘Ą | Voidwood | jam | 85 | 4.08 | 3.87 | 3.79 | 4.40 | 4.31 | 4.03 | 4.20 | |
| 2024 | 56 | Tiny Creatures | đź‘Ą | Fallen Angel: A Larry Chin Mystery | jam | 235 | 3.87 | 3.39 | 3.16 | 3.42 | 4.25 | 3.77 | 4.03 | |
| 2024 | 55 | Summoning | đź‘Ą | Ethereal Transport Academy | jam | 400 | 3.73 | 3.40 | 3.53 | 4.34 | 4.48 | 3.78 | 3.44 | 3.80 |
| 2023 | 54 | Limited Space | đź‘Ą | Shattered Spirits | jam | 420 | 3.72 | 3.36 | 3.53 | 3.46 | 4.59 | 2.78 | 4.03 | |
| 2023 | 53 | Delivery | đź‘Ą | Deliver Us From Evil | jam | 633 | 3.54 | 3.38 | 4.00 | 3.89 | 4.32 | 3.67 | 3.90 | 3.66 |
| 2023 | 52 | Harvest | đź‘Ą | Hearty Harvest | jam | 442 | 3.45 | 3.29 | 3.45 | 3.97 | 3.59 | 3.50 | ||
| 2022 | 51 | Every 10 seconds | đź‘Ą | Moirah's Manor | jam | 985 | 3.09 | 2.80 | 2.86 | 1.94 | 4.07 | 3.79 | 4.26 | |
| 2022 | 50 | Delay the inevitable | đź‘Ą | Time Wyrd | jam | 1294 | 2.88 | 2.88 | 2.35 | 3.16 | 2.71 | 2.17 | 2.72 | |
| 2021 | 49 | Unstable | đź‘Ą | Meowsician Manager | jam | 962 | 3.36 | 3.03 | 2.75 | 2.07 | 3.98 | 3.44 | 3.90 | 3.57 |
Silly, fun game. I really liked the setup, backstory and mechanics of the game. I don't think 4 key presses worked for me, and the reps didn't really register well after the tutorial (or I was doing something wrong I didn't understand). The sound effects definitely need to be toned down though as they are piercingly loud and shrill. Didn't really seem to fit the theme too well, but I could kind of see it.
Great game, fun to play with a good amount of polish, really impressive. Felt like it really captured the feeling of being a healer in WoW so you hit the mark there for me. The theme was decently applicable but since we all lived it wasn't REALLY inevitable, haha.
Overall the game was easy except for the final boss where I ran out of mana, but still won in the end. I actually let level 2 or 3 play on its own and we won without me doing any healing, so a little balance could improve it. Still good fun though!
I really enjoyed the idea of the game, that delay was brutally initially but them you quickly learn to try and adapt to it. Kind of feels like a realtime puzzle game. It did feel a little inconsistent to not delay releasing the key as well.
I'd be interested in this as a puzzle game, it would also be cool to have the delays be more dynamic. Like the more times you press "D" the more delayed it becomes, etc.
Really clever mechanic for a game. It's like playing a hidden role game, but by yourself, and was surprisingly fun. I think understanding how to play the game and how long the guests have to live could be a little better conveyed to the player, and would be my suggestion as for what to work on next if you want to continue working on this game after the jam!
Excellent game, felt really well polished and "rounded out". There was good art, music, story and gameplay. All on theme! Not sure what more I could ask for from the LD entry.
As far as critiques, the only one I have is that it would hard to understand what exactly the effect was when getting a 4 match. Did the different icons mean something different, or was is just themeing?
Really like the idea of async multiplayer like this. The gameplay is simple but seems to be well made with decent assets and sounds. It was pretty laggy on the old laptop I used to play it, though that's not likely the majority of your audience.
Fun and decently well polished. I played it on my phone and it worked great, though it was a little off center for me. Pretty easy overall, but still satisfying to play. Really enjoyed the music, pretty catchy! Nice graphics in the game and on the LD page as well. Well done!
I would like to see more variety in the "puzzle" of the game, maybe sometimes the wires go horizontal, maybe sometimes they criss-cross, maybe sometimes you need to cut the wire at a particular location instead of with a particular color?
Cute, innovative game. Liked the art and theme of it. My one critique was that the feedback around what story to tell didn't really make sense enough to inform me how to improve my story telling.
Fun! Liked trying to figure out the different dance moves but man did that dance floor get packed quickly. I liked the art and the music was alright (definitely fun and chaotic). I definitely appreciated the "open-ended" puzzle-ness of it. Good job!
One improvement would be to make it easier to keep track of your character via a more distinct appearance or highlight. Unless that was part of the game, it just didn't feel great to lose myself like that, haha.
Fantastic art and music, solid gameplay, and good writing. Overall a really good game. I laughed out loud at the full speak ending, that was great.
Not super important, but an easy quality of life change for this game would be to make everything use A/D or even left/right click for all actions. However, if you plan to add more moves / actions that would be less important.
Really liked the feel of the game, very stressful seeing the sun get close! Enjoyed the simple / straightforward mechanics of the game, but with a new twist it felt like. I like the resource collecting and crafting bits as well. The visuals are great, I love the "sun tendrils" as it gets close, really well done. I would absolutely love to play this on my phone, so let me know if you ever publish this for html or android.
Really cool concept, I love the idea of a player driven procedural dungeon. The AI writing was enjoyable as well.
The actual game felt a little flat though, I think making the AI options more "drastic" or "impactful" would go a long way to making this into a full game. Nice work!
Very polished brick-breaking platformer shooter with excellent music.
Really enjoyed the combined puzzle + platformer aspect of the game. I think the controls worked very well and everything felt good with regard to shooting and moving in the game. It was also fun to kind of "think-through" the level before you started, trying to map out where and when you needed to shoot each color of blocks.
Fairly innovative, level based platformers aren't anything new, but doing a sequenced color block puzzle was something I hadn't seen before. I also think the setting of a steampunk temple security system was unique as well, I don't think I've seen that before!
Good use of the theme. Solving a level in 10 seconds is one of the main "types" of games that came out of this theme and I think this game did it very well. I think the looming threat of the giant spring, and timer was a good way to keep the theme a clear focus of the game.
Fantastic graphics, probably one of the best I've seen so far. The characters, levels, UI, lighting and effects were all wonderfully detailed and polished. Even the "outside of the level" background looked great. The animations were very well done too, I would say visually this game is ready for release.
Great music. I love the electronic soundtrack and the music composition was really enjoyable. Sound effects in general were good, though I don't recall hearing any sounds for moving / jumping I may have just missed it due to the music. I would suggest having either a different instrument in the same melody to change it up between levels, or a few different songs to cycle through to break up the monotony of the song though.
Crisp and polished wave annihilation game with cycling power levels.
Pretty fun, I really enjoyed the "enrage" mode, you felt really powerful and it was enjoyable to try and survive in the normal mode and line up the enemies for maximum destruction as that timer counted down to the enrage mode. One critique is that I felt like my shots didn't aim quite right, it was always shooting the ground too close instead of where my mouse was which was frustrating.
The enrage mechanic was fairly innovative to put on the player, usually that sort of thing you see on enemies instead. Good thinking with that idea! The rest of the game was fairly typical however.
Great use of the theme, using it as a cycle timer is one of the more unique interpretations I've seen! I would've liked to see more of the theme integrated into the game as well, with maybe an extra large wave of enemies that spawned every 10 seconds, or another type of power-up that spawned every 10 seconds. Just wanted a few more ties to the theme to really make it shine.
I didn't find the game particularly funny. This entry doesn't seem a good candidate for this category.
Decent job on the mood. I did feel like a robot on the edge of space killing endless waves of robots. The laser effects and noises were very sci-fi and played into the mood well. I would've liked to hear more noises while moving the robot or when destroying the other robots, though maybe because we're in space there's no noise? I think some sort of "drop-pod" or other visual/audio cue for where these waves of robots are coming from would help the mood as well.
Fun and whimsical "flat"-former with randomly changing controls and abilities.
Pretty fun! Trying to collect the fruit while avoiding enemies and hazards is always a great time. Having to adjust to the randomly changing control scene was definitely interesting and kept me on my toes! The different "modes" were each surpisingly different feeling which was pretty fun as well. One critique is that there wasn't great feedback on whether enemies were taking damage. I felt like I shot them alot and they didn't die, which was a little disappointing. I also didn't like that there was no way to heal (at least that I could find).
Good innovation here, using similar game-styles in this way was really smart. The level designs worked for all modes of gameplay surprisingly well! I've never seen a game that transitions between those gameplay styles like this before, very well done.
Great job with the theme, changing controls schemes every 10 seconds is always fun and I think you pulled it off well. I would've liked to see more things in the game tied to every 10 seconds to really double down on the theme, but because the game itself was sort of changing already every 10 seconds, it might be fine without it.
Adorable, well executed graphics. Everything fit well together and was just perfectly fruity. I would've liked a little more color variation and contrast. Maybe some green kiwis and shadows / outlines would help that. Overall, very well done.
Cute audio, I liked the melody! I think it fit well with the art and gameplay as well. I really liked the two different sountracks! I think it would be a great improvement to even have slight variations of the melodies for the different game-modes to really enhance that experience of swapping between game-modes.
The whole thing is pretty ridiculous its funny. Some of the different game modes like the gold one actually made me laugh! Because the sort of implied humor though I didn't find much humor in the game itself.
This game has got a definite "whacky-cute" vibe to it. I really enjoyed the mood of the game, it was all a bit absurd and cute and fruit.
Fantastic rythm based puzzler, loved the beat compositions once they started going.
Dodging the lit tiles was super fun, I really appreciated the "pre-lighting" to warn you where they would pop-up that's great game design. Choosing which beats and therefor puzzles you would add each round was super smart and really kept me engaged in the experience. Trying to think about what combinations of beats would be easiest to survive was really fun, though I wish I could've seen the other active patterns when I was making my selection.
Exceptionally innovative, I've played many rythm games before, and games where you had to dodge lit tiles, but putting them together in this way was really creative. Especially because it seems like such a "no-brainer" idea to make this game (because the combination is no natural), I've never actually seen it done.
Perfect fit for every 10 seconds, using music is a natural fit for this theme. I also believe the "collectibles" appeared every 10 seconds though I wasn't 100% sure of that. That would be a good way to incporate the theme more if it isn't already.
Really nice graphics here as well, the glow effects on the tiles were pretty and fit well into the game. I couldn't tell if they were actually providing illumination on the character or not, but it looked light they were lighting up the area. Character model was cute and anmimated well, I think the roll animation was slightly off in that it "hitched" right at the start and end of it, but overall well done. The tile pop animation and the graphic effects of getting hit by a tile was really good as well.
Great beat selection and combination. I felt like every choice I made created an enjoyable melody. My one critique here is that the start of each level the song would kind of half-start and glitch for a second for me. It would be nearly perfect if it looped 100% between levels.
I liked the collectible sound effect, though I will say it did detract from the melody a bit. The only half-decent idea I had to improve that was to instead play the "chime" noise, on the next "beat" of the song, and only play a short "ding" or "distortion" right when you picked up the item.
Fantastic mood, I felt like sort sort of weird DJ making beats. It could've used some more ambient noise or "club" dancers in the background to double down on the DJ / dancer mood.
I really like the direction you took the theme with this. Having to plan out every 10 seconds of a battle is a great idea!
I like the "timeline" mechanic that you used for planning your attacks, but I didn't understand why it would matter where I put my attacks on the timeline, only in the case of moving around a big obstacle would I ever need to move those attacks, and it didn't really seem necessary to do so. I also didn't realize you hade to click on the timeline initially, but that may have just been poor reading on my part.
I think the animations, visuals, and environment looked great and fit together well. It was a little difficult to understand where in 3d space everything was clearly, maybe some sort of "dimming/blurring" for things further away would be helpful. The large meteors helped ground me a little bit, but I was constantly having to spin around each ship to make sure I understood where exactly it was going in the 3d space.
Overall gameplay I was left wanting, I could definitely see this being more fun with other options than justs "attack" that made more use of the timeline mechanic. A blast that took 4 turns to charge up, or a speed boost effect for example would really add a lot more intrigue to the game.
I liked the take on the theme, restricting the players actions to every 10 seconds is a really neat idea. I think it mostly worked in this game, though there were definitely a few times where I had my plan figured out sooner, it would've been nice to either skip the remaining time, or have something else for the player to do to fill the time in those cases.
Graphics are simple and straighforward, reminds me of those classic games I loved playing that came with windows, good nostalgia there for me.
For gameplay, I like the programming aspect of it, the click to select and click to place wasn't intuitive to me but I was able to figure it out pretty quickly. I liked that each instruction was in a limited supply, definitely adds another dimension for designing the puzzles. One minor issue/critique I had was that placing an instruction on top of a coin caused the coin not to be picked up. That surprised me and made it impossible to complete the level.
Theme was done well, in the "group" of solving a puzzle every 10 seconds but in a way I hadn't thought of! I think it also fits well with the theme of driving. One idea would be to have a relay mode where you need to hit a sequence of spots every 10 seconds to double down on the theme a bit more.
I thought the game play was fun, and the driving controls worked well. The drifting didn't feel 100% correct in that I wanted a little more control of my car while drifting, but I think that's also an area for players to grow more skillful.
I don't feel that the replay of you failing added anything positive to the experience of the game, it just made the experience of failing more frustrating. I really enjoyed the replays when you succeeded though!
An enjoyable, fast past experience. It's just missing a win condition and a tutorial.
Enjoyed trying to fulfill the orders as fast as possible, though sometimes it would generate an impossible to complete combination of ingredients. I would've like to see some additional reward for finishing dishes early or having some "goal" to work towards.
Definitely reminiscent of Overcooked, but having each ingredient show the countdown on it, and having such a short rapid-fire sequence of request definitely gives it a different feel.
Theme was well represented in the hectic gameplay, though I felt like there could have been some more "every 10 seconds" included in the game, like more customers lining up, hazards appearing, ingredients swapping places, etc.
The 2d graphics in the game were fantastic, definitely gave a me "fast-food" vibes. Clean and vibrant. I think the 3d model for the character looked decent and was animated well, however they looked a little out of place next to the furniture and the 2d foods. The furniture looked nice, but could've used a little more contrast from the floor.
Good sound effects and cute music. Well done! I would've liked a little variety in the music track to keep it from getting too repetitive. Having the music pitch up when the timer was close to finishing would be a nice way to add some more urgency and variation to the music.
The banana peel was funny, but other than that, not much humor in the game other than the general craziness of it all but I feel that fits more in Mood.
I definitely felt like a short order cook, scrambling to get orders ready for my customers. So well done on the mood here. I think adding either ambient sound effects like customers murmuring, doing dishes, honking horns would add to the mood nicely. Adding sound effects unique to the different ingredients would also help in the same way.
I would maybe suggest changing the "turn-in" to a drive-through window instead of a counter as well, as that fits better in my mind. Not a huge thing though either way.
@alaah Thanks for the feedback!
Does reading the Controls and Objective sections on this page help?
What specifically was confusing or would benefit from being explained by a tutorial?
@willoxs Thanks for playing, we appreciate the the feedback!
I agree, we could definitely do a better job of guiding the player. As a puzzle/mystery game we weren't sure how much to do though as helping the player too much would get rid of the challenge. Maybe if we helped introduce the player to the first puzzle and how to solve it, that would be enough to get the ball rolling?
As far as lighting, was the whole game too dark for you, or just certain areas? We tried to use lighting to guide the player toward their first objective, but it sounds like that may not have worked as well as we had hoped!
@willoxs The game is overall pretty puzzle-y, but I am happy to give a hint to get you started! For the first door you encounter with 3 buttons, there is a hint for how to open it down the right hallway on the wall. All of the puzzle doors have hints somewhere in the level, and one of the items you find will lead you to those hints if you are having a tough time finding them. ;)
@jag Glad you enjoyed the game! We really appreciate the feedback! Which version were you playing WebGL, Windows or OSX?
I know the WebGL version had weird issues for some people on different browsers that the Windows and OSX versions didn't have.
Great take on the theme, in the group of "do a thing every 10 seconds", but splitting the game into 2 parts was a refreshing idea! I don't know if there was anything else that played up the theme beyond the harddrive breaking every 10 seconds, but one idea to include the theme more strongly would be to have a special power-up or enemy appear every 10 seconds as well.
Art was well done, reminded me of a Putt Putt style game, or Earthworm Jim for some reason. It had a great aesthetic and everything felt cohesive. I think the animations looked great, like the wiggling of the disk head, or the jumping of the character.
The gameplay was fun, but had a much higher barrier to entry than I was expecting. I think a future release might benefit from having the player first do each of the activities by themselves for a short period before having to do them both together. I don't think I made it more than 2 enemies for my first 15 tries, but once I got the hand of it and understood everything I was looking at / doing it became a lot more fun. I enjoyed the "parry" mechanic though it didn't feel perfectly crisp when executing it, there were somes times that it felt like it hit early / late (though I'm pretty bad at platformers so it could just be me).
Good job embracing the theme! Doing a different mini-game every 10 seconds really feels like a theme-filled experience. Its hectic and fun.
The music was enjoyable and playful, well done there. Maybe adding 1 variation, or simply pitch shifting it programmatically every once in a while would prevent it from getting too repetitive.
Art was cute, could've used a little more contrast in games like the "save the people" but overall looked good together. A simple improvement to the art would be to add very minor shading and highlights to give some dept to objects like the vegetables. It doesn't take too much time but makes a big difference.
Overall it was fun, though I felt all the games were lacking some cue to let the player know they were doing the right thing. For stacking boxes specifically, playing a chime each time you made a new stack would be great! For the save the people game, the "game design" of it was a little off as the best strategy was always to run into the lava to reset the level and then go "up" the screen and then back down to reset the game again. As simply waiting would cause people to get trapped in the lava you couldn't save.
Fun: Had a good time playing this, it was well balanced (maybe a little too hard) and I felt like every turn I had to think and plan what I was going to do in order to reach my goal. I think one thing that would've made this game more fun is a more lenient lose condition like 2/3 strikes. You could then give the player a bronze, silver, gold medal based on how many strikes they had when they won. Losing outright when you had just finally got a decent setup going is frustrating.
Innovation: The fog of war and lighthouse tile were unique, I have definitely played other games similar to this one but I don't recall having this much fog of war, and thus a lighthouse to clear it. One way to make the game more innovative would be to double down on the fog of war and have certain building that don't clear the fog, but gain resources from it.
Theme: Excellent use of the theme, the core of the game was about harvesting resources, and everything in the game helped facilitate harvesting. One idea to make the game more thematic would be to add more mechanisms to improve harvesting like tile upgrades, or boosts to harvest more per turn.
Graphics: The graphics were neat and consistent throughout the game. I think changing the road tiles to be a "+" shape (or ideally a different shape depending on whether it was next to other roads) would look a lot better than filling the whole tile with the stone brick pattern.
Audio: The melody of the song was okay, but the sound the instrument used was very shrill to me and made it difficult to listen to. I would suggest using a softer / quieter instrument for such a simple song, and add more sound effects to the different actions the player takes in the game.
Fun: Running around trying to survive and kill the goblins while collecting items was pretty fun! I liked that there were melee and ranged enemies to switch things up. Howerver, I think the Tamagotchi mode needed some more instruction / feedback as it didn't seem to matter what I did and there wasn't any feedback other than the big X, which wasn't very fun.
Innovation: I found this game idea really unique and innovative. I love the idea of raising a hero and then doing little RPG dungeons with it. Very cool! One area you could continue to innovate in is the combat system, dodging and attacking are pretty common ideas so maybe try and include some of the Tamagotchi elements like happiness and hunger in the combat system (maybe as buffs?) to change it up a little.
Graphics: Both the Tamagotchi and Exploration graphics were cute and nicely done. I would've liked to see a more consistent style, or some consistent elements between the two however.
Audio: I didn't have any sound for the Tamagotchi section, so adding some simple button press noises would really improve that part of the game! For Exploration, the song melody was nice, but on the WebGL build it sounded very loud and distorted, which too away from the experience.
Fun: Had a pretty good time playing this, it was super satisfying to harvest a huge field of corn and just rake in the money. I also really liked the obstacles that would sometimes appear, changed up the game a little bit for that lap. One improvement in this area would be adding more varied gameplay, either by adding more obstacles, opening / closing different parts of the track, or somehow adding incentives for changing up how you were playing the game. Maybe the crowd could hold up signs that say "WATER ME" and you'd get bonus money for using the watering truck that next lap.
Innovation: Probably the most innovative game I've played so far this Jam, who would've though racecars and farming would work so well together?! If you wanted to keep innovating further, I think the driving/vehicle stats would be the place to do it. Maybe let me get a wider harvester instead of just turning sharper.
Theme: Fantastic use of the theme. Harvesting was front and center as the main way to progress in this game. One way to make this game more thematic would be to add more time spent harvesting, instead of always switching between the 4 vehicles. Maybe the plants could stay for 2 laps of harvesting instead of 1, to just give the player more time harvesting.
Graphics: Very polished and well-done graphics, this game honestly looks like it's ready for release based on visuals alone. Extremely well done on the main art, menus, and "ambient" graphics. The water effects and harvesting effects were a nice touch as well. One small improvement would be to add some additional movement to the crops and structures to make them feel more "alive" compared to the crowd.
Audio: Great music track and sound effect usage. Every area of the game I expected sounds I got them. I don't recall hearing crowd cheering noises, so that's one thing I think could improve the audio experience.
Humor: The concept of the game is just hilarious at the outset, and the different structures I think played into that humor well. Adding some more Formula 1/NASCAR references, or farm humor would go great in this game.
Fun: Trying to figure out where to use items and what to do next was very fun! My only complaint is that it became very "samey" by the end of the game, and I would worry a longer game would end up not being fun because of it. However, if the story was good enough, I think it could hold up just fine.
Innovation: I think the setting and premise for the game was pretty innovative, but the gameplay itself was fairly common.
Theme: The theme was a little weak in my opinion, while you were harvesting organs from the monsters, it felt like the core of the game was exploration and puzzle solving more than harvesting.
Graphics: Excellent gameboy graphics! I felt like I was back playing the original gameboy, very well done. The art was all top notch and fit perfectly together. The only critique I have here is that the hallways were pretty empty / similar. A little decor / decal here and there would go a long way.
Audio: Good songs and sound effects, fit really well with the game and were enjoyable to listen to. The menu music was a little startling, partially because the transition was so abrupt.
Mood: Creepy mystery atmosphere was really well done. The whole game felt very "wrong" and eerie. I think the only critique I have for mood is that there was no real threat of dying / losing. After the first two monsters didn't put up a fight, I felt a little safer than I should have.
Fun: Definitely some fun to be had here, placing turrets and growing crops are both fun activities. This could be improved with upgrades / unlocks for both the farms and the turrets. I think the balance of the game also made it too easy once your trigger your first fertilization frenzy.
Innovation: The theme complemented in a unique way with the turret defense. One way to make this more unique would be to have the turrets behave in a more unexpected way than just shooting the bugs, maybe they put out clouds of bug killer in areas or shoot fire.
Theme: Good use of the theme, including the fertilization frenzy really upped how much theme was in the game.
Graphics: Simple, clean graphics with some details. I think the difference in heights looked really nice.
Audio: Enjoyable song loop, it didn't really fit with the game in my opinion, but it was still enjoyable. The rest of the sounds were okay, a bit jarring at times.
I was unable to click on anything, but it was kind of neat walking around! Spooky!
Being able to attack enemies from far away, but with something that walks on the ground was fun. Adding more puzzles / levels that require using the hellhound different would make the game more fun.
The hellhound ability, and the fact that it upgrades was innnovative. I would make the game more innovative by making the hellhound a persistent character in the story as well.
Strong theme usage with summoning the hellhound, a summoner enemy, and being summoned to hell. Focusing more on the act of summoning could make the game more thematic.
The animations for each character looked good while playing the game. The falling animation sprite for the player was cute. Smoothing the lines in the art to reduce pixelation would make the game look more polished.
The sound effects for summoning and jumping gave more impact to those core gameplay actions. Adding even a simple background music track would be a big improvement.
Choosing when to play cards and when to save mana was fun. One way to make the game more fun would be to give the player more decisions to make.
The look of the game was innovative, 3d/2d parallax background on rails was new to me. One way to make the game more innovative would be to have a different resource for playing cards than just mana.
Summoning creatures to fight for you was very thematic. To make the game more thematic I would've liked to see more emphasis on the act of summoning instead of just focusing on what was summoned.
The background and foreground looked great, I really liked how the knights looked as well. Removing the semi-transparent panel behind the cards and splitting the clouds and sky into separate parallax layers would improve the look.
Really good sound track, catchy! Sound effects for all attacks, summons and interactions were good too. I would've liked an ""end turn"" and ""turn started"" sound effect as well.
Enjoyed collecting the cards and using them, felt like a different take on a turret defense game. To make this more fun there needs to be a little more strategy in how you defend against the demons. Instead of having a wandering angel, an angel that can lower how much damage a demon does but doesn't do any damage themselves would add more strategy.
I thought the different rooms in the house, and being able to click on each one to view it was innovative. To make it more innovative I would give trade-offs to units based on what room they are in.
I thought summoning angels to fight against summoned demons was very thematic. To make this game more thematic I would suggest maybe some sort of summoning ""tome"" that thematically is how you use the cards you collect.
I think the environments in the game looked very good, and the lighting fit well. While the angels and demons looked good on their own, they would sometimes overlap perfectly and hide how many units there were. Maybe add a slight offset to each units visuals (but keep collisions the same) so they they don't perfectly overlap.
The music was well done, and the fighting sound effects fit the game, the voice lines were cheesy but enjoyable. Adding a few more sounds for collecting the cards, and using them to summon an angel would add some more polish to the audio.
@jason-shapiro We just published builds for mac, windows, and linux if you want to give one of them a try!
I found that being able to destroy multiple enemies at once was fun. One way to add more fun would be to make it more clear how each ability worked.
Being able to slot in a new attack during a level was innovative. One way to make it more innovative would be to make different combinations of abilities also have an effect on the game.
I thought the monsters being summoned was thematic. One way to make it more thematic would be to make the player also summon creatures instead of casting spells.
The sprites were very detailed and had a good consistent color palette. The game itself was very small and looked "squished", adjusting the viewport for the game would have improved the graphics.
The music looped well, and the attack sounds were a good arcady noise. Adding death noises for each enemy would improve the audio of the game.
Really clever use of bugs as the tiny creatures, I love that they each had a purpose and I could imagine building lots of interesting puzzles with this system.
In order to cross the bridge I had to only use 1 stick-bug to make the ladder and then use all 4 to make the bridge. Which I think that's a clever level design, but I would save that for a later level once the player better understands the basics.
One improvement would be adding a restart button for the level. In a finished game I would expect there to also be a "death floor" in the water that automatically restarts the level.
Great entry!
@dubiousduck Yup! I missed a couple settings in the project to make it scale correctly, should be fixed now! Thanks for the feedback!
The music, shooting, and monster sounds were good. I also liked that holding down left click kept firing!
One way to improve the game would be to give the player some sense of progression. Even something as simple as increasing the rate at which the monsters spawn or the amount that spawn over time or after a certain number of kills would make a big difference!
Great entry! The art was cute and I loved the 3d models of the Randimals. The game itself was fairly fun and I loved the different dice abilities!
One way I would improve this game is with a simple music soundtrack, even a basic melody made with free tools online can add a lot to a game!
Really great entry! Loved the concept and the gameplay was very intuitive (though challenging). A really clever take on a puzzle game.
One thing that would improve the game for me, is more visual distinction between the buildings. While I liked their design, I think the game would be a lot more visually appealing with different colored building.
Good entry! I liked the quirky character writing, and the premise of the story.
One thing that would've improved my experience would be getting a random item from defeating enemies. While looting chests is always fun, being able to get a random item from defeating an enemy adds a little more variety to the results of the battle. You never know what you're going to get!
The environmental assets and buildings look great together, and the RTS style building / base defense worked well if not a little easy.
One way to elevate this game would be to add a simple background music track, and simple sound effects for the units. I see that you opted out of audio, but even if you don't create the audio yourself, having audio is a great way to add some polish to it!
Good entry! I really love the graphics, and animations. Very well done.
One thing that would improve this submission is more ambient audio and audio effects. Even a simple pass of music or sound effects would really elevate this game.
Excellent entry, I loved the animations and the vibe. The way the music got more tracks as you got further down was a really nice touch as well. Overall great sounds. The candles marking where you died is a great touch.
Nitpick: I sometimes got stuck in a “loop” where the character would bounce exactly back to where I started. I could break out eventually but it happened quite a bit.
One thing that would improve this game for me, is a slightly bigger field of view. This game already requires pretty quick and precise timing, and the field of view size doubles down on that. I was able to beat it in 8 tries, but man did I feel claustrophobic! Haha.
One thing you could add if you keep working on this game is more things to run into with different effects. Maybe there is sticky goo that you have to tap rapidly to break out of for example.
I really liked the game loop: go into the mine, try and find ore efficiently to mine, send ore back, leave mine, smelt, sell, repeat!
One improvement I think would make this game better is a little more "chance". Even something simple like each time you mine an ore, you have a chance to NOT use a charge of your pickaxe, or when you mine an ore there is a chance it doesn't disappear would allow for more exciting moments while playing, right away! Adding in something like the two suggestions is great too because its not super time consuming to program either, perfect for a game jam!
I loved the art and animations in this game, expertly done! The whole aesthetic of the game is very heavy and well put together. I felt like I was watching a little animated short from Pixar or something.
One thing that I think would improve the game is some art or animation differences for the rotten teeth to reinforce the sound cue. I found it difficult to distinguish the sounds all the time but I love the idea of having to figure out which teeth to clean and which to avoid.
Cool game! I really like the art style; it reminds me of a jigsaw puzzle. I also like your use of depth as the main mechanic for "hiding" stuff, very on theme.
One thing that would improve this game for me is some way of showing which items you've already found in the scene. I liked the tracker at the top, but within the scene itself it would've been nice to have the item either removed, outlined, or otherwise colored differently.
Another idea that would "punch up" this submission but is a probably more work is making the scene animated. Adding small animations to the scene would really add another level of intrigue to the game, and further distinguish this from a typical "eye-spy" type game.
Nice job implementing high scores!
One thing to make this entry stronger would be some way to click the rock better. Maybe sometimes there is a crack on the edge of the rock you can click to break it faster, or something similar. Adding opportunities for the player to adapt or adjust to the game increases engagement.
The art and sound were well done and made me feel like I was running a colony of dwarves, especially once you got a few dwarves going. I like that there was some variety in the dwarf sprites too. The AI for pathing and digging seemed to work well too, which was impressive.
One change that I think would improve the game is a way to locate your dwarves, as they would spread out and become difficult to find on occasion.
Fantastic entry. The art is some of the best I've seen in LD, well done. The bit you chose for the writing is excellent, and it made me laugh every level. I appreciate how you slowly introduce the player to the puzzle of the game, the progression of levels was really well done. Each getting slightly more complex and building up different tools to solve the puzzles. The arm sprite was also just goofy.
One improvement would be to add some small animations. I think those would make the game "pop" even more, and might be a worthwhile trade-off to adding some of the later levels (though I don't know how long it took you to create each level).
Really well done though!
Well done entry, the gameplay was simple and clean, and the effects and music really made it a great experience.
One thing I think would improve it is a more consistent application of the charge mechanic. (Or maybe a better explanation). It seemed as though the charged “attack” only exploded sometimes and I was having trouble trying to figure out when the explosion would trigger.
The UI graphics were well done, and I liked the visual indicators for the torpedos.
One thing that would improve the game for me is a better indication when a torpedo hit an enemy. Unless I was just missing the entire time I played, I didn’t feel like there was a clear indication of a hit. Despite the torpedo going directly through the enemy blips. Since destroying enemies is a key part of the game, I would suggest focusing on that feedback mechanism more.
Good entry! I really liked the combination of platforming and swimming, that was clever! While the animations did have issues sometimes, I thought overall they looked good when they were working!
I think that zooming the camera out slightly, or adding more "leading" elements to help guide the player through the level would improve the gameplay a bit, as it is now it feels a little claustrophobic and hard to see where you are going.
Additionally, even if you opt-out of sound as a rating category, I would highly suggest using some free sound effects and music in the game. They add SO MUCH to the experience, that I always recommend including them even if you don't have time to make them yourself. (Just make sure you still opt-out of the sound category in that case!)
Excellent entry! Really well-done atmosphere, I loved the implied story as well, very cleverly done. The music and sounds were awesome as well, great voice-work!
One thing that would improve this entry would be some sort of built in hint-system. Maybe some way to interact with the intercom or an internal dialog you could optionally progress to get hints would basically "finish" this game in my mind. Great entry.
Excellent entry! Really well done level design, it introduces the player to the mechanics cleanly, helping build their confidence to understand the puzzles and how to beat them. Sound effects, visual effects, and the overall art were well done.
Nitpick: when choosing a new direction the character with wig out quite a bit, haha.
One improvement I would make is a slightly better introduction to the “hidden” or “spawning” elements. I really was confused by them at first but once I understood that elements could appear I was on the lookout for them.
Other than that, I would’ve liked the levels to be designed to encourage more bouncing! The bouncing is fun, and seeing the character bounce around is really entertaining so I would encourage you to build more opportunities for that into the levels.
Edit: A link back to your LD page is missing on itch! You should add that as I found this game browsing through itch, and I had to lookup your user to leave feedback!
Well done making a rage inducing platformer! It was in fact, rage inducing! The title music will haunt me as I play the rest of the games in the jam, haha. The controls were the biggest unique factor to the game, and while they appeared to behave normally, the quirk of them being relative to the position of your character really through me off until I adapted.
One way to improve this game would be to add a simple "swimming" animation to the turtle. Even separating the flippers from the shell, and adding a simple up/down animation would go a long way to making the game feel more polished.
Good entry, I like the game loop of collecting gems and using them to get more gems, while also avoiding foes. I also like that putting in more gems could get you different enemies out. The music and visuals were great and fit the underwater submarine atmosphere very well, nicely done!
One change I think would be good for the game, is using the mouse to control the direction the projectiles are shot instead of the keyboard. I found it really difficult to move and shoot (which if that's the goal please ignore this feedback) which didn't feel satisfying to play. If you want to keep the difficulty of moving and shooting, I would suggest splitting up the movement and shooting keys. e.g. WSAD would control movement, and IKJL would fire projectiles. You could then use SHIFT or something to swap between shooting gems and harpoons. I think this would eliminate the frustration I felt trying to control the shooting while still keeping it somewhat challenging to control.
Nitpick: Your diagonal movement doesn't appear to be normalized so it goes faster than left/right/up/down.
This was a great entry! Well done!
For me, the strongest part of this game was the visual consistency and quality. Everything felt cohesive and was done well, there were animations, and opacity usage, effects, etc. Really great job on the attention to detail for each of the visual elements.
One improvement I would make to this game would be to start the minigames off easier. One less tone for the music, one less candle for the candles, etc. Give the player some confidence that they are "doing things right" and let them see their success early. I personally thought I was playing the game wrong or didn't understand something when I played, but I was just bad at the minigames, haha!
One nitpick was the top area scrolled. Is there a reason you didn't want to show the whole hallway? Even if the people were smaller, you could keep the icons the same size and I think it would be easier to understand that people are still there once they are off the starting screen.
@dhim We really appreciate you powering through! Sorry you had such performance issues, we (unsurprisingly) didn't have much time to optimize the game. Thank you so much for your feedback about the controls as well, maybe we give an option to invert the controls?
If you're comfortable doing so, could you share your computer specs? That will help us make sure more people don't run into performance issues if we keep working on this project.
- On your Mac, choose Apple menu > System Settings, then click General in the sidebar. (You may need to scroll down.) - Click About, then click System Report.
The idea of building up different types of muscle on each arm is really clever. I also liked the sort of "rock paper scissors" of fighting once you had multiple types of damage available.
One idea to improve this game would be to either condense the training part to allow the players to choose all 7 days worth of exercises or to add more choice / variation between the training days. Having to go back and forth between the bed and the workout equipment (while fictionally makes sense) isn't super fun. The choice of which workout to do is fun, so give me more time picking which works out to do! Alternatively, if you want to teach the player that rest is important for strength training, maybe adding 2 legs to the game, and having a chance to damage an overworked muscle could be interesting as well.
Excellent entry. The humor of writing was very well done. I really enjoyed the frantic pace that the button pressing got to toward the end, it was a good ramp-up. I also really enjoyed that all of the "meters" in the game were reflective of the true fiction of the game and not just numbers. Well done!
One suggestion to improve this game would be to add some animations to the various obstacles, or alternatively add some alternate color schemes or sprites so it didn't look so "samey" as you progress. If you don't want to spend a lot of time doing more art, using a color palette shader can give you a quick and easy way to create multiple colored versions of your assets for a little variety.
Great game! The art is fantastic, I loved the animations you did with the fill, it really made the scenes feel alive. The text scroll was very cute as well, I enjoyed the few text effects I saw as well (like the Ha Ha Ha). The "minigames" you had were also pretty fun, I would've liked to see those in all the story paths.
One thing that I think could improve this game is adding diegetic sound effects and music. When the story told me there were different sounds I would've loved to hear them and think it would elevate the experience a lot.
Very solid entry though, great work!
Good entry. The visual style with animations, lighting and particles was well done. The design of the puzzles was good as well.
One thing that would improve the game would be making the earlier levels easier, to introduce the player to the mechanics. The timing windows for when you need to change directions are really tight which made me feel like I didn’t understand the game or how to play. Even the first levels I failed many times because I couldn’t make those turns precisely enough.
Additionally, I would’ve liked a more distinct noise for each type of interaction the light had. That would add another level of polish to the game without being too difficult to implement.
Great entry! The art was well done from characters, to backgrounds to icons. The puzzle mechanics were also unique and interesting.
The running animation at the beginning looked great!
One thing I would suggest to improve this entry, is more focus on designing cleaner early puzzles to help the player learn the mechanics easier. Make fewer levels overall and improve the quality of each level instead. I found it a little tedious to solve the puzzles, as once I figured out what had to do, it was a lot of clicks to accomplish it.
Additionally, I would’ve liked some small audio feedback for each tile interaction. The paper plane was very cute though! Do more of that!
Good entry! I really liked the multiple different mechanics you were able to include in the game: jumping, rope climbing, glow sticks, latern, etc. I can see a future for this game were you make some interesting puzzles using those mechanics you have today.
One improvement I would suggest for the game is adding a little more guidance in the level design to help guide the player towards the end. Small glowing lights, or specific images can key the player in on where they need to go, or where they are trying to get.
I really like the idea of the game, the programming made sense, and I thought the lootbots looked good.
One improvement would be adding an objective or collectible close to the entrance, so the player can get a sense of success early to encourage them to keep playing.
Additionally, adding a simple music track or sound effect for the lootbots moving would elevate the game a lot!
I like the design of the card game, I thought it was fun and like I had some options for how I’d like to try to win.
One thing I think would improve the game is more clarity on the card interactions and discarding. It took me a couple attempts before I understood what it was trying to tell me.
I like the design of the card game, I thought it was fun and like I had some options for how I’d like to try to win.
One thing I think would improve the game is more clarity on the card interactions and discarding. It took me a couple attempts before I understood what it was trying to tell me.
Good entry! I liked the coin collecting and payment aspect of the game, that’s a neat idea to change up a typical golf game.
One thing I would’ve liked to see in this entry is a better indicator for the shot. I couldn’t really get a sense for how the ball was going to move, which made the game slightly random but still fun.
Good entry!
One part of this game I really enjoyed was the sound effects and the coin bouncing effects. They added charm, polish, and challenge to the game all at once.
One thing I think would improve this entry is more challenge, or a way to fail. It looks like you maybe intended to include that with the bats, but in retrospect I would suggest shortening the level and use that time to instead add a health bar that is damaged by the bats, or a "stun" mechanic if you run into an enemy. That will engage players more by giving them something to have to work around, and learn how to overcome.
Great premise, I liked trying to dial in the signal. I also liked the "dashboard" that told you what systems needed attention.
One small improvement would be a small progress bar to indicate the player is doing something while making repairs, it wasn't obvious to me until I waited around for her to eventually stand up.
The music track was great, well done! I also liked the variety of mischief miku would get up to. Kept me on my toes!
One improvement would be a simple sound effect when clicking on things or when different things would happen. Like a disconnect noise when the wifi goes out for example.
@hammy275 thanks for the feedback! I agree, the repetition gets old, which is why we added the autocomplete, but maybe that wasn’t explained well. We can add a better explanation/cue for that.
Otherwise, I’m thinking maybe it would be cool to give the player an upgrade that allows them to always broadcast a particular signal? That way you could always have one active, or adjust it to suit your needs.
We will think on how to make it less tedious! Thanks!
@kenoshka thanks for trying the game! Yea overheat ended up really strong. It was a lot harder to make enemies and design levels than we thought so they didn’t get as developed as we would’ve liked.
Glad you thought there was some potential, I definitely want to try and make a few more enemies and levels now that the core is done, and see if we can build some more unique situations.
This game is a super cool idea, the voice acting and audio editing is such a great play on the theme.
I unfortunately couldn't figure out how the audio editing worked, so I couldn't get through the 2nd tape. :(
Could definitely use more explanation, even on the LD page to help people like me that don't know how that works.
Excellent game, loved the design, simple mechanics, and great writing.
One improvement would be a little better visual hitbox for the car, I found it was kind of tough to tell where you would hit things even when paying full attention to it.
The art was great, the map, the characters, and the "overlay" visual effect worked really well. I also really liked the sort of mini-game esk nature of trying to deduce the monster.
One thing that would've improved my experience is some music and sound effects. I would also suggest adding a simple black outline to the white text to make it more readable.