Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → toboggan
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | 45 | Start with nothing | 👥 | I Have No Mouth, And I Must Create Blocks On All Sides Of Me | jam | 9 | 4.39 | 4.23 | 3.97 | 3.78 | 3.68 | 3.50 | 2.50 | 3.33 |
| 2018 | 43 | Sacrifices must be made | Alms Crown | compo | 19 | 4.12 | 4.12 | 4.00 | 3.45 | 3.91 | 3.52 | 2.50 | 3.95 | |
| 2018 | 42 | Running out of space | Hiding Spot | compo | 24 | 4.07 | 3.75 | 4.11 | 3.78 | 4.03 | 3.76 | 3.35 | 4.00 | |
| 2018 | 41 | Combine 2 Incompatible Genres | MIDINIGHT RUN | compo | 3.35 | 2.71 | 3.07 | 3.07 | 3.14 | 3.66 | 2.50 | 3.07 | ||
| 2017 | 40 | The more you have, the worse it is | One Matter | compo | 85 | 3.84 | 3.62 | 3.90 | 3.12 | 3.90 | 3.32 | 2.02 | 3.71 |
Really funny and well-executed. All of the homages felt as good as the originals. And it looks great. I played Loan Shark the most. Aww Chute reminded me of Ganja Farmer, is that the reference? Also, is Cardinal an homage? I assume but don't recognize it. It's satisfying.
it works well! surprised this hasnt been done already tbh :)
would be cool to store the high score in a future update!
Really cool! Some suggestions / notes: - Larger text, or autosizing the dialogue panel to fit its contents, so its not so bare - Probably should use separate keys for closing dialogue panels and floating - Pressing "C" doesn't seem to do anything for me - I really like how the death respawn is startling but also instantaneous - Tag the itch upload as being for windows so i can download it in the itch app :)
Wow. This is really beautiful. I love the music and sound design. Easily the best thing i've played so far this jam. Doesn't feel like a jam game. Every choice feels carefully made.
The only suggestion i'd make is more contrast between the walls and floors. For a while I wasn't sure why i couldn't walk into certain tiles. In hindsight, why are there walls? Isn't the absence of a tile the same as a wall?
@stevenjmiller oh, that makes sense! don't mind me. :)
p.s. 'hindsight' wouldve been a good title too.
The jelliness of the player square was cute, it reminded me of Thomas Was Alone. Also very TWA in that it felt alive despite being so minimal. Interesting use of the theme too.
So good! Works really well, and interesting way to take the action element out of the game and still keep it interesting and not too slow or easy. Really enjoyed this one and spent more time with it than i expected to. :)
Super lovely art! Pleasant music/sound design too... but wow, super hard! Wish it was less coordination-based and twitchy, and more about solving the puzzle at hand. I felt frustrated that the same key (down) was to pick up and drop individual bunnies, so I would often try to pick one up and instead would drop one. Anyway, awesome job!
funny idea! works well with the theme. as much as its nice to have the top-down view to follow along with, it kinda feels like cheating. like... as unpleasant as it is, it feels like the true game is _having_ to make sense of all these viewpoints.
stuck on 6, but i'll come back to it. :) this is really cute!
I win! That was awesome! The art is very nice, super solid colour choices. I like the puzzleyness of it, and the controls felt fair. Sound and music were both ok, but not as special as the art or game design imo.
Windows version runs ultra slow for me for some reason, but the browser version worked well.
Looks impressive and was fun to play. I like the chaotic amount of racers and the amount of wipeouts. I wasn't too fond of the controls... the floatiness is cool but I wish the handling was tighter, more like the old star wars racer games. Sound would be cool to add eventually obviously. :)
p.s. You should hide the cursor. Clicking on the UI deselects the chosen UI button and doesn't click on the button. The only way to get out is to manually close the game and restart.
really lovely colour palette. cool game in general. :) i wish that trying to move into a piece didnt kill you, feels unnecessarily punishing to me...
Really nice concept! Looks good too. It works well and doesn't feel cramped if you self impose a one-hand-only rule.
Some thoughts - I wish there weren't lives, and I don't think high scoring suits this kind of game unless it's procedural / endless. I also think it would be a better game if it were procedural than being level-based. Lastly, I wish it was more musical and harmonized in interesting ways. I hope you work on it more though, it's really cool.
Fantastic music! The art is exceptional too. I appreciate the brutal one-hit-kill difficulty and even though I fumbled a lot with the controls, it felt like it was my fault when I died. Anyway, astonishingly polished, really great work.
Browser version framerate crawled a bit for me here and there, but not surprising with so many entities on screen.
Really gross, but nice art style. Fair use of the theme.
Looks great, nice post-processing. I appreciate the subtle tutorializing. Would be cool if the arrow keys were an option too, thatd be my preference. Pretty rough controls/physics. I didn't notice any clues when bridges were about to break or feel like i had time to react.
Beautiful art style! Really tight and consistent. The "Space - Menu" text sticks out the only not nice thing in the game. Everything else looks great.
Awful sound all around lol but cool gameplay and use of the theme. :)
Any chance you'll make a windows build?
ah the counts are in the same font as well it seems. i'd change that, just because your handwritten stuff is so much more special.
Really nice use of the theme. I enjoyed the minimal aesthetic. The music (what i could hear of it, not using headphones) sounded a little busy/distracting.
It'd be nice to be able to use WASD/arrows to move. ALso you should tag your windows build on itch so that i can download it in the app. :)
@flubz maybe try pitching the music you have down to 50-75%? it would pitch _and_ slow it down, which i think would be good. its an easy way to get "twice the music" for half the storage space.
also, i just wrote this pseudo tape wow code for my game, it could be cool for this if you're interested. :)
``` float increment = 0.015f; if (pitchUp && t > 0.98f) { pitchUp = false; } if (!pitchUp && t < 0.02f) { pitchUp = true; } t += (pitchUp) ? increment : -increment; audioPitch = Mathf.Lerp(pitchMin, pitchMax, t); audioSource.pitch = audioPitch; ```
This is excellent! Looks great, super satisfying to play and feels complete. not like a prototype for something bigger or more developed.
Incredible art, it looks so good. I love when enemies look sad, like they're not happy about being a threat to you. Cool idea and design too.
Really stressful! Wow. The art is great, and really nicely restricted use of colour. Definitely nails the theme.
Solid game! Really pleasant colour palette and design. It'd be cool if there was some kind of animation when the groups of 3 disappear (maybe they fade to white then to transparent).
Can confirm it plays well on android also. :)
i love the music, very nintendo. I think I got stuck, it didn't seem to be progressing for many minutes... Funny game, either way.
Creamy post processing, looks good. Funny and creative. :)
The character art is cute. Could use some tuning. Above all, felt like the jump was way too floaty and not fast/heavy enough. It makes the game feel less exciting and fun to play.
Some more variation would be good.
I love this one. Got stuck for a while because i wrongly assumed i could _only_ eat the skulls, that the other pieces were tools for getting the skulls.
It's really elegant that each thing to eat is in effect a level. This probably sufficiently explores its possibility space, but I'd want to play more if you think there's more levels to be made.
p.s. I had to hold the undo button for like 5 minutes when i realized the solution to the last skull. great stuff.
Very nice art.
Artwork is very nice! It's a bummer when you get stuck on top of the vortex and continually take damage, it doesn't feel fair... The controls often didn't feel fair to me in general. Otherwise a cool game, and good use of the theme.
Nice art! Would've maybe been cool if the intervals got shorter and shorter, to really emphasize the theme but also increase the difficulty over time.
Really cool! Feel like you should only be allowed to fail so many times. Otherwise you only have to keep one of the games going (which is trivial for most of them).
Very very very beautiful music. I love it. Interesting application of the theme too.
The only thing i would suggest is visual differentiation between the black squares and the walls. At first I wasn't sure if being close to the walls had the same effect as the black squares... Not a big deal obviously. Anyway, nice work!
Beautiful game! Would probably do exceptionally well on the app store / play store. Really nice colour palette (including the variants). Music is really good too.
I don't really have any critical feedback, it feels like this succeeds at everything it tries to do. :)
Very good idea, well executed! The art is excellent. Using a font that isn't Arial would've been better i think. Nice logo. :)
NEVER AGAIN haha
Really enjoyed the sense of humour here. I usually don't like games that try to be funny. :) Also I'm into exploring surreal/absurd spaces in games in general, so this was cool.
So cool! Really good game. Once you get the hang of it, it's really intuitive and the levels were fun to read and plan around. The only thing - Why are there lives if you can just continue from the same level?
fun/funny game. :) Would be cool to support keyboard controls, would be my preference.
Felt like i lost the main character instantly every time. Might be nice to make them a really bright colour and everyone else a dull colour (or something), to make them easier to follow.
i like this! i would play more of this. i do wish it was a bit harder.
Solid game! Enjoyed it. Gets hard fast. I also had the sticky keys issue, would've been cool to be able to change the mapping, and to play in proper full screen. Good job though.
Not surprised someone else brought up Rubik's cubes, it's what came to mind for me too. You start to find the right layout, then you have to mess it up to get the other pieces in place, and then you feel a looming sense of doom. Or at least i did.
Absolutely gorgeous art and sound design. Excellent work.
Really cool idea. It could do with some superficial polish and the controller could feel better, but IMO this is a great idea and set of consequences and is worth making into a 10-hour game.
p.s. Nice touch building the tutorial into the world instead of UI prompts.
Reaaaally nice art! Not just the cell-shaded thing but the character design is so goofy and good. I love it. The music and sound is great too.
The game works well, though its a bit unpleasant once you have 2 or more friends tethered... Would be nice if movement stayed fluid and you just had to worry about not falling off the platforms (or getting pulled off by a friend who fell off the platform).
p.s. any reason you opted out of the "Graphics" category? I would've given you 5 stars. :)
@11tomi12 i did not! it's a free asset on the unity asset store by Vinicius Marques (incl model, animations and controller script). here's the link:
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/?mkt_tok=3RkMMJWWfF9wsRojvavLZKXonjHpfsX66uolW6axhIkz2EFye%2BLIHETpodcMScdrPK%2BTFAwTG5toziV8R7TFLs15ycYQWhTk#!/content/28647
@jjjjason ouch, sorry about that! i shouldve put in a warning that says you'll start over from the beginning. There's a somewhat new game+ reason for that feature so i should just disable it until you've completed the game. it also doesn't save your progress, which is bad. i'll patch that eventually.
also, the game's a bit unfair as its hard to judge distance with an orthographic camera. i might redesign some levels with that in mind.
the controls are pretty floaty/bad, but they'll probably stay that way. i'll add controller support though.
@huitre yeah sorry! didn't make it in time. its on the to-do list - i'll patch it with a bunch of updates sometime in the new year.
i'll tighten the jumping to make it more responsive. i'm also going to bail on the inertia when grounded so it feels more precise.
@shinyogre yeah the movement is aligned with the camera. I prefer that generally, but especially here so that holding two adjacent directions (i.e. up and right) will reliably make you walk diagonally in line with the level geometry.
@netherlab my thinking was the more realities/timelines/dimensions/etc, the worse (harder) the game gets. But the worseness/difficulty isn't really emergent from the moreness, it's forced in the design... so it's not a great use of the theme, tbh.
Thanks for the encouraging words and the criticism, I appreciate them both!
@flubz thank you! yeah the control scheme is tutorialized the very first time you play then never again, which isn't great. definitely something i want to fix in a post-play+rate update (along with proper controller support and some other improvements). :)
This is stressful! haha in a good way. Nice colour palette. Not sure if you intend to work on it more, but it would be cool to have different layout options. Perhaps it would be nice if the monsters were substantially bigger than friends (even 2x) so that you can more clearly/immediately differentiate them and so the monsters are more imposing. :)
Really cool! The ambient sound design is excellent, and the art style is so good. Feels like Hyper Light Drifter was an influence, but not that it's derivative of it. It really looks great. Didn't like the shooting sound or the music personally.
i laughed in a room by myself. good work.
impression after 15 seconds: "the more you have, the worse it is... for your enemies?" impression after 1 minute: "ah i see! this is worse for everyone!"
I liked this! Felt like it was a bit slow for a while, like a lot of levels repeat the same core idea. Levels 13 onward were really good though. The difficulty was a bit all over the place for me. I like the trivial final level thing. :)
Didn't like the input layout, would've really liked to use arrow keys instead. An 'undo' button would have been nice, especially in the later levels (not just reset). The music was nice.
Cool art for the boss animations. :)
Really great work as always. :) Very strong concept, well-explored.
Ahhhhhhhhhh i feel terrible. I made it out on my third try. Really excellent mood and tone, the audio and art style are really cohesive.
Beautiful art and music, really lovely. It was super laggy for me in places for some reason.
Really cool and ambitious! I personally find it extremely stressful and would enjoy it more if it was turn-based somehow and i had time to think and strategize carefully. Not a criticism though, nice work!
Really cute and funny and well-executed! Dunno if its possible to save data in Pico-8, but it'd be nice if it tracked your high score...
Really excellent idea and execution. It'd be nice to have a full screen option to get fully ~immersed~. Also itd be better if falling offscreen at the bottom killed you and the level auto-reset. Anyway, really good and fun and amazing that no one has done this before (AFAIK). Great work!
i like the minimalist aesthetic, reminded me a bit of Dissembler in that way. i feel like it could give the player more feedback in general, as it took me a while to understand what was going on. I also think that if you try moving in a specific direction and can't, that shouldn't be counted as a move. anyway, cute game! :)
Nice! Generally not a fan of procgen puzzles, but a bunch of the ones i got were still pretty satisfying (a lot of very trivial ones too of course). The idea of the tiles falling after a certain amount of time rather than after you walk on them is interesting, makes you have to consider a solution and efficiency in a refreshing way (not just for the sake of finishing in X number of moves or whatever). Good work! :)
This is good work. I have no notes.
Really lovely art/aesthetic... I got stuck and unsure how to proceed (playing the jam version), but i enjoyed what I played. The white text against white backgrounds made the UI hard to read in places, some shadow or a different colour would have been nice.
Cute! and good. Being able to undo individual moves would be nice.
Great art and cute/playful ideas! The music is basically as good as music gets. Really lovely stuff.
Looks good but hard to read. Itd be easier to read from a higher perspective, whether or not that's what you want. :) Anyway, works well, could stand to be faster (at the non-speedup speed), I feel like Tetris' base speed was faster than this at least...
For better or worse, I got to the end! Really nice artwork as always. :)
extremely weird presentation (both the art and music), but reeeeally solid puzzles! like, great.
Really good as always! You get so much character out of those 5x5 tiles, by far the best-looking puzzlescript games out there, and solid creative concepts too.
i enjoyed this way more than i expected to.
The art is really consistent and nice. I don't understand the appeal of making the player spend so much time waiting though...
Really nice work! Super polished. The art and music are really strong. These types of games are too stressful for me, but still, well done. :)
nice game! i like that it started to become puzzley, and wanted to play more of it :) itd be nice if you could remap the keys, because "E" feels like an awkward choice to me, rather than something lower on the keyboard like spacebar...
Really excellent art! Plays ok. I wish there were more incentive to move around, like if your shooting range was shorter or something... Anyway, nice work!
@mikee MalwareBytes i'm guessing? Unity games have been getting false positives lately... :(
@croze If the rectangular cube falls, you've lost. I can give another if youd like!
@touchme Glad to hear you enjoyed it! thats a bummer re: unintended solution to 12, i'll take a look. I intended to add some feedback when you try to move or turn and can't, but i ran out of time... I'll take care of it in a post-jam update.
@fadex eek, i didn't know! thanks for telling me. FWIW, "c" is an alternate button for "Crouch" and the controls can be remapped in general in the opening dialog, if you're up for it.
@drunkardwolf thanks! yeah i used MagicaVoxel :)
@le-slo thanks! at least 3 puzzles have unintended solutions, which i think is why you got the 'same solution' on a couple of them... anyway, gonna work on this one some more and i'll definitely want your help playtesting if you're up for it!
@stevenjmiller yeah i was torn about that decision! i considered just handing it to the player more directly, and that may well have been the better choice. I do plan on extending it, so thanks for the encouragement! :)
@antoined73 Thanks for the kind words - I'm really touched that you would interpret it as being about autism, though that wasn't my intention. I see it as generally being about mental health, introversion and self-care... but any interpretation is valid :)
About the music, it was made using the Native Instruments Massive VST, which can produce some really rich sounds for a digital synth. It's probably my favourite VST. Lastly, I hear you that the difficulty curve might be aggressive, I would perhaps draw it out a bit in an expanded version of the game. Thanks for the feedback!
@tekugare this is very helpful feedback! you dont need to do the spacebar/side-step trick until level 7 or something, level 3 can be solved without it. Either way, evidently I need to reconsider the difficulty curve and the way moves are introduced. Thanks for playing!
@icxon nice job beating it! and finding many unintentional solutions :( hehe anyway it's a bit late now, but you can press "z" to undo individual moves without having to restart the whole level. either way, thanks for playing!
@aeveis @randomphantom really appreciate the thoughtful feedback! i've started planning an expanded version of the game, so this is all really helpful.
@manimal Thanks for playing, glad you liked it! Of course, here's the FLP: http://toboggan.work/tmp/fetal-position.flp
It just uses Native Instruments Massive VST and the stock limiter.
@vekstr Hmm no that's strange... I'll look into it, thanks!
@glock00 Thanks! i think the pulling factor would make it bad for mobile. I dunno. It would probably just be an onscreen button to toggle pull, but that still sounds awkward.
@glock00 Oh huh, that could be ok! Like, tap a tile to automatically walk to it, or drag your thumb to pull... Hm.
@bbapps could be a good twist! some kind of metaphorical, physical manifestation of your mental state. hmmmm
Hell yeah. Cool puzzles and i love the music. Really strong stuff.
A few people took this approach to the theme (Orenji-Shima, California Jane), and yet they all feel very different, which is neat.
All three of you didn't include an undo option too gahhh :(
This was starting to get good at the last level :) I'd like to play more of it, if you end up making more.
p.s. level 6 can be beaten without blocking the water, maybe you dont mind but jsyk.
Really fun! Feels good to play. :) Itd be nice if the music didn't restart everytime you fail a given level, it would be less jarring. Either way, good game!
update: just finished! gets real good at the second water level :)
this is amazing work! the puzzles are very well designed and sequenced. the art is beautiful too. this is really great.
There's a lot of good stuff here! The art is solid, and the jetpack approach is fun. The heart/health relating to the camera zoom is a neat approach. Small bugs and kinks aside, i really enjoyed this. :)
Cool idea, I wish there was a key you could hold to speed it up, like in Tetris. Also feel like the holes in the walls couldve been better off slightly bigger and more forgiving.
Really excellent work, super polished! Seriously amazing that this was made in such a short time frame.
I don't like the timer feature, or end level scoring in general, they're a turn off to me as they feel like artificial noisy content. This is just a personal complaint about casual puzzle game design in general, I know many people are fond of these kinds of features. Lastly, an undo option is IMO a bare minimum quality of life feature for these kinds of games, hopefully you'll add one in an update.
I appreciate the in-game logic/justification for the restart system, that's a nice touch!
Re: end level scoring, the coins could be an interesting idea if collecting them was a noticeably harder/different solution than just getting to the end without them. However, it always felt like they were on the main path and no harder to collect than it was to finish the level, so i don't get the design choice.
Anyway, again - really awesome work, and some solid puzzles. :)
Yeaaa i always look forward to your game :) This one is really cute. It's definitely hard to read the heights of the tiles, but with a little fiddling it's really not too bad. The crate/box logic is very satisfying.
It would be cool if you could walk onto an egg (breaking it obviously), then you could have a puzzle or two where that's hard to avoid. And speaking of which, you might already know but it's possible to walk onto an egg when its on a crate... I assume that's a bug? It lead to an odd but interesting solution to level 16.
Anyway, great game as always! Level 21 was awesome.
The art is super nice :) Played for a little while and maxed out the stars and it didn't seem to be going anywhere from there / felt like i could go on forever. Is there a way to win?
I made them all! It was pleasant. :) Nice work.
Ooh i forgot to mention you can use "+" or "-" to switch levels. Progress isn't saved, I didn't manage to get that done in time.
@stevenjmiller Thanks! Yeah reading the level layouts is hard - i tried to design around it but it needs work. What do you mean by "outline for blocks"? I was thinking maybe I could tint the block colours differently based on their height...
@antti-tiihonen haha yeah it's super goofy movement, but I think i'm ok with that :) Thanks for playing!
@justcamh aw thanks so much! i'm really glad you enjoyed it. Sorry to hear about the lost progress (see the first couple sentences in this msg). Also, I hear you about it being theme-weak, that "sacrifice" just ties into the game's theming, not its mechanics. This was just the only idea I had that I wanted to make/play, so i went with it. :)
@justcamh oh and fwiw it was not conceived at all before the event, but i was planning/hoping to make it a sort of "spiritual successor" to my last game, _Hiding Spot_, regardless of the theme. So in some ways you could call that preconceived. :)
@spixbird you can do it! it all comes down to whether you enjoy being stuck or not :)
@shulololo definitely! i have some more ideas for it that i'd like to explore. thanks for playing!
This is awesome, really great work.
Very cute and good and funny and sad.
thanks for playing everyone!
@gamefive it was made using puzzlescript :) https://www.puzzlescript.net/
this is excellent! definitely wish you could use enter and backspace. also to be able to see/access the rules while you're typing would be nice. really nice job tho, the art is nice.
loads super slow for me for some reason? on windows.
cool game! is there a way to make it full screen? the art is very good. also, really nice tutorial! super polished.
funny idea, it really made me feel like wow, so here I am, doing everything I can. also, you should tag the platform (windows) on itch so people can download it in the app. :)
nice art and fun game, but i was confused about the scoring until i read your notes about it here. it would be nice if there was some kind of visual clue in game that hitting the sides of the screen was making you lose your points.
anyway, i'm enjoying getting better at this :)
fun game! looks really good, runs smooth. at first I thought i was trying to defend the three heart containers, because they're objects in the court. maybe just keeping those in the UI would be clearer, but anyway, really tiny detail. great job!
@JeffChen true! feels like it would be harder? it works either way. :)
@pinkemma thanks and yes, agreed! i plan to introduce more dynamic variation in the gameplay in a post-jam update. :)