FoonLudum Dare ExplorerUsers → Tom Gardiner

Tom Gardiner

Games

YearLDThemeGameDivisionRankOvFuInThGrAuHuMoCo
201430Connected WorldsBounty of Corruptioncompo733.834.072.472.833.764.033.133.4355
201429Beneath the SurfaceFlesh Huntercompo833.864.002.762.853.903.952.653.4071
201328You Only Get OneDungeon Darknesscompo1633.493.452.812.473.603.182.913.0391
20132710 SecondsEscape the Undergroundcompo433.903.492.803.284.223.732.853.4674
201326MinimalismBarren Universecompo264.054.093.653.413.843.683.103.5798

Performance over time

overall score (left axis) percentile (right axis)

Scatterplots

Fun vs Overall

Innovation vs Overall

Theme vs Overall

Graphics vs Overall

Audio vs Overall

Humor vs Overall

Mood vs Overall

Comments by Tom Gardiner

LD26 — Minimalism

Potato by Dmitrix 2013-05-04T19:41:00

Simple controls, fun little game, although the game seemed a little slow (maybe it's just me?), not dropping frames, just... slow.

SimpleWorld by householdutensils 2013-04-29T18:40:00

Rather buggy, blocks would suddenly become invisible, otherwise I'd enjoy this :)

The Journey of a Blob by pirate-rob 2013-04-29T20:31:00

Absolutely brilliant! The level design is fantastic. The only thing lacking is audio but in a way it's kind of relaxing

The Vale by Tyro 2013-05-02T20:25:00

I really like the melancholic music, very eerie

Minimal Hero by Kimau 2013-04-29T20:42:00

Pretty good once you get the hang of it. For ages I was wondering why the hero was only jumping tiny amounts - I didn't realise I had to drag it sideways before up!

Life & Minimalism by WiseGAMER 2013-04-30T23:10:00

Manly tears ;_; no, really.
Very touching and inspiring. I'm gonna go out tomorrow and make someone happy (or at least try!)

Fog by Noah Ratcliff 2013-04-30T19:51:00

I saw a blog post of this before they all had to be entered - I told myself to keep an eye on this one, so glad I've found it!
Very peaceful, quite relaxing, I definitely enjoyed this one a lot

Minimalistic Potato by Crynix 2013-04-27T10:13:00

If this doesn't win I don't know what will :/

M-G by dotteri_thecatwolf 2013-05-03T21:30:00

Played for at least 20 minutes (probably the longest I've played any game here yet!) and could only get a score of 35 :c Very fun, and very simple - Perfect for a minimalism theme :D

Invertigo! by unusualcadence 2013-04-29T21:44:00

Best music in a game I've found so far :D I really like the change between funk/disco to dubstep, it works really well (not forgetting the gameplay of course!)

Comic Sans: The Game by FloatingGhost 2013-04-29T13:43:00

I'd like to play/vote, however I get the following error message (I am running on version 1.6, maybe it's that?):

Could not find the main class: ludumdare.LudumDare. Program will exit.

Type|FACE by TriBeard 2013-04-30T19:41:00

Very hard, as everyone else has suggested, making the difficulty curve smaller would vastly improve this game, however good nonetheless

Barren Universe by Tom Gardiner 2013-04-29T21:35:00

@KilledByAPixel: I do think the door was a little overkill - I added it early on and just kept it in without thinking about it. I appreciate your feedback, and seeing as this was my first Ludum Dare I'll know how to improve for next time, thanks :)

Wow, this feedback is just far too overwhelming! Thank you everyone so much!

Barren Universe by Tom Gardiner 2013-05-12T14:08:00

@Jeremias Thanks, I will most likely add the arrow (or something like that), the time restraint definitely seems to be a recurring problem. The flickering tiles is something Game Maker doesn't deal with too well... It's happened in the past but I didn't think anything of it that weekend because I was using a graphics card which didn't have the problem (I can see it myself now though...)

theseus.f by belickim 2013-04-29T21:00:00

Looks very nice to play, I especially like how it shows the route you'd taken (and how it blocks the rats from moving). Very very good

Mini-Malicious - when the bit bugs byte by multitude 2013-04-30T21:23:00

Simple yet absolutely hilarious! The voice over adds a ton of humour to the game which I haven't yet seen in any other game I've played so far! :D

Digital H by winesays 2013-04-30T19:18:00

I had no idea what I was doing (I knew to use both left and right mouse buttons) but either way it was VEEERY good!

Blanket the Earth by EricTheCoolDude 2013-05-02T16:53:00

Great game! I managed to get a score of ~20000, but took 1184 seconds. What's your personal score, so I know what to compare to?

Drug Hunt by kill0u 2013-04-30T23:31:00

What on Earth did I just play?! xD
Pretty good, I don't actually know what to rate down :L

Edward Was Human by geepit 2013-04-29T22:06:00

Favourite game so far - Many others are far more advanced (ie. 3D, randomly generated, etc) but this is perfect!

Line Surfer by FrozenCow 2013-05-02T20:11:00

Worked fine in IE10!

LD27 — 10 Seconds

Red alert by graytest 2013-08-30T18:56:00

Brilliant concept, never seen anything like it so far. However sometimes a zombie spawned on top of me and I lost :c

Solitude by rxi 2013-08-26T02:50:00

Just brilliant. I love the music! (and everything else about it ._.)

The Unbelievable Adventures of Kamil the Cat by blackcode 2013-08-28T18:00:00

Fricking hilarious, especially the "HNNNNG" :L Highly rated!

Bubble or Nothing by Yoni 2013-08-27T11:33:00

Everything was brilliant, except I didn't hear any audio (I didn't rate audio for that reason)

Bubble or Nothing by Yoni 2013-08-27T11:33:00

Also, using IE10 x64 if that helps

Polarity by Matthew Brown 2013-08-26T14:08:00

Plays very well, I just don't think I'm very good at it :L (My score was 8820)
I really like how the sound effect when catching/destroying the orbs fits in with the music, makes the game much more enjoyable

Canvas10 by Naked_Samurai 2013-08-26T14:38:00

I got a blank screen after a little while, but while it lasted it was good, and somewhat relaxing.
Like TheSambassador said, it would be awesome to see what other people drew (but then you know what people on the internet are like...)

Final Glow by Yword 2013-08-31T16:09:00

Once I figured out what to do I thought this game was just fantastic. Although, I like finding out what I have to do, it feels rewarding when I realise what I was doing wrong

Boom in 10 by okmmjyygv 2013-08-28T14:24:00

Nice! I didn't once have to use the slow-motion though... If you're making a post-compo version with more features and levels, that would be even better!

Naskea by Ninquo 2013-08-31T16:22:00

Games involving maths is great, really pushes your brain to think fast. I was so close to finishing multiple times, I just couldn't get it! But in the end I finally cracked it in 9.52 seconds

The Red Button by GreenyUk 2013-08-26T15:18:00

Saw your comment, thought I'd try your game. I love difficult games where you can quickly respawn, loads of fun, I got to level 8 before "giving up" (Don't you worry, I'll keep trying until I complete it!) and quickly deciding this was my favourite game so far :D
However, the music was kind of irritating after a while, and sounds VERY familiar to "Better Off Alone" by Alice Deejay... Hmmm...

Tehurn by Choupom 2013-08-27T12:04:00

tehurn.com?
Good game, but needs balancing

Mr. Sushi! Order Please! by pythong 2013-08-26T13:53:00

Hilarious!
My high score: 172 servings, 223 seconds, chained 8

Defense of the Zorion by RobProductions 2013-08-26T19:25:00

My final score was 377 after the first game, is that good or bad? :L Great game, I like it a lot except I find I never seem to have enough time between waves, as there is quite a bit of distance between rooms

Time Flies Straight by mrspeaker 2013-08-28T15:17:00

Good lord, this is amazing!

LD28 — You Only Get One

Infinite Fame by bitslap 2013-12-21T15:27:00

If a highscore of 2 wasn't enough, why not include a raging fit as well?! :L
Very fun, I kept on trying, many many many many times, and got to the end eventually...
Graphics were both really cool and distracting, argh!

Space Wreck by primaerfunktion 2013-12-21T16:36:00

The frequency of something going wrong, even with minimal speed is highly irritating, however, apart from that, it's a very good game!

Destructoblast by Doctor Broccoli 2013-12-17T17:31:00

Nice! I really dig games where you can hold to fire and get upgrades changing the weapon, just a shame it doesn't have any music :c

Who ate all the pies ??? by DustyStylus 2013-12-21T15:47:00

Had no idea what I was doing but the voice over was hilarious and the music was fun to dance to ;P It would probably help if there weren't so many options to choose from (or at least make there more/better responses)

Doubt by rxi 2013-12-17T16:53:00

Graphically amazing, as always!
As others, I got stuck at the deja vu part, and I wasn't sure how it was linked to the theme, but a great atmospheric game none the less.

Dodgy Ball by Random Seed Games 2013-12-17T12:00:00

Glad to see I'm not the only one who made a game requiring controllers and more than one person :D
I really enjoyed this game, very fun!

The Hotdog Parable by SunShiranui 2013-12-21T14:53:00

This has been possibly the most addicting game I've played so far this Ludum Dare! If you developed this further I would probably buy it!

Shadow Night by ParaPup 2013-12-17T16:39:00

As others have said, the lack of mouse locking is a bad thing, plus I wasn't entirely sure what I was doing.

Great job on learning Unity though!

You Only Get One Gift (for christmas) by Bw2801 2013-12-19T20:30:00

Wow, this is actually quite an impressive game! I really like the puzzle aspect of the game and I actually messed up levels a few times. It was a little bit easy though, and the controls could have been improved slightly, but for your first Ludum Dare it's very good, congrats :D

Space Escape Catastrophe by Liam :D 2013-12-16T17:42:00

Great idea! I love the concept but it gets a little repetitive after a while, I got over 1,000,000 points and still going strong, so it definitely needs to be more difficult in that regard. It would be good to have something like asteroids hit the ship every once in while that take a bit of repairing, maybe?
I won't vote for audio since there was none

parallelsync by 0x0961h 2013-12-21T13:31:00

Brilliant concept, although slightly too slow paced for my liking (not to say others don't like it though). Sometimes block placement was slightly pointless (but it's the random generator's fault!) but otherwise I really enjoyed it.

There Can Only Be One... Ninja! by JeeshusChrist 2013-12-18T11:01:00

Woo! It seems we have both made a multiplayer game for gamepads :D
Very fun once you know what's going on!

You Only Got One Shot by SleepyStudios 2013-12-18T11:03:00

It's nice to see lots of multiplayer games this time round, awesome!

Bursts by sam1373 2013-12-21T14:19:00

Extremely addicting, fast paced and loads of fun!
The sensitivity was quite high, and the cursor was a bit hard to find, but other than that, great game!

The Golden Bomb by cy4n 2013-12-20T16:28:00

Wow, this is indescribably fun! I just can't beat the grey boss (also known as the final boss after the other final boss... God damn it, fooling me!) The trickery you played is actually quite hilarious, so the humour is definitely rated very high ;D I'll be keeping this is my folder of fun games!

Hammerfall by Supernaught 2013-12-17T12:23:00

Wow, loads of fun, I thought it was amazing!

Dumb Waiter by KamikaziUk 2013-12-21T13:44:00

Seriously?! This game is funny as hell, I couldn't manage to get more than 6 pieces of crockery, but still really fun none the less. Some plate smashing sounds would make it just hilarious!

YOGO swat member by severus 2013-12-17T16:00:00

Loved the idea, but obviously with more time it could have been even better (not saying it was bad, it definitely wasn't, I really enjoyed this game :D)

Surface Climber by korfi 2013-12-20T16:52:00

For some reason there was no audio for me

You only get one! (match) by Fenixin 2013-12-17T15:49:00

Concept is absolutely amazing, but your lives don't reset to 3 once you die the first time, and the items on the screen are quite hard to see in some cases (ie. in Australia the boomerangs were hard to see).
The arcade style was brilliant though!

30 ducks, 1 Stone! by sadiquo 2013-12-21T14:01:00

*Spoilers*!
I noticed the dark patch at the bottom of the water, but at first I thought it was just a glitch, how wrong of me!
Good game, just needs some sounds

One Hot Potato by Tomski 2013-12-18T20:21:00

Yet another multiplayer game I've found this Ludum Dare, which is awesome! Surprisingly a lot of fun to play, even if there are a couple of bugs. Shame you couldn't get network MP working to a standard you were happy with :/
Mine too is local multiplayer ;)

Lumen by Nelien 2013-12-21T13:54:00

Wow, absolutely amazing. Very calm and relaxing, it's definitely a good job I had my headphones on, as the ambiance was fantastic. Just a shame there weren't more levels.

Cmdr. Yogo by rnlf 2013-12-17T16:19:00

This is a brilliant game, I swear I spent half an hour just trying random seeds to kill the president :L
Random-ness like this is great for a game like this (even if there are uncompleteable levels)

YOGOTANK by CodingNickNick 2013-12-16T16:47:00

Not really sure how it relates to the theme, but I found it surprisingly fun and the graphics look great :D

You can only get peace by Before Light 2013-12-21T15:58:00

Very odd, but nice and calming, definitely. I wasn't sure what to do at first but then I realised I needed to hold *all* the meditation keys, not just one at a time :L

Leaf Alone by BruceSlater452 2013-12-21T17:49:00

443400 was my highscore, but no one else has put theirs yet D:
The particle effects were actually quite good once you look a little closer, and the arcade-y feel adds some great replayability! Great job!

Javel-ein by managore 2013-12-17T15:24:00

Very nice looking, would love to hear some music, it would add a great atmosphere to the game, especially if it was just ambient music

111 111 by Brian 2013-12-17T16:42:00

What on Earth?! :L
Is there only 1 (aha!) level? or am I doing it wrong?

Only One Cookie by Pyrofoux 2013-12-21T13:17:00

Very fun game, could just do with a bit of music and/or sound effects!

Minus by Tyen 2013-12-21T17:37:00

Less = more. The music was delightful!

U-OGO by Darkcoder 2013-12-21T15:10:00

It would be very enjoyable if it was ever so slightly more fast paced, dying seemed rather slow. I quite enjoyed realizing what I had to do, and upgrade systems are always fun :D

PUSH by Patacorow 2013-12-21T17:30:00

Argh, it took soo long, but it was definitely worth it. One of the best games I've played so far this LD! Just needs more levels now ;)

Maverick by Madball 2013-12-21T18:23:00

Took a little while to realise what I was doing, however, once I got going it was quite enjoyable! I really like the asking/persuading system you have implemented!

LD29 — Beneath the Surface

The Woods by tinyworlds 2014-04-30T19:35:00

I like the art style and the colour palette you used, and I really like the atmosphere it creates along with ambient sounds and the falling leaves. However it seems rather short. I managed to get the bunny to follow me, but maybe there is more?

I am a Mole by graebor 2014-04-28T19:41:00

Really like the simplicity of this game, it's actually quite zen like

Wormhunter by Thorig 2014-05-04T16:22:00

A little bit short, but I really liked the graphics and the simple, yet effective use of audio.

DeepStep by AlbertoSM 2014-04-28T19:50:00

Rhythm games are awesome, I'd like to make one myself
However, I wasn't entirely sure what I was doing, even though I had instructions.

GroundBreaker by Figglewatts 2014-04-29T17:28:00

Do you know what really annoyed me about this game?
The fact that I played it for an hour without realising! This awesome game is incredibly addicting, and I only lost because I got a bit cocky and tried to collect too many ores before returning to the surface

Sea's Bounty by jayemjee 2014-04-30T18:44:00

I actually quite like the concept of slowing down as you have more treasure, especially with a time limit.

Ocean WildLife by belva1234 2014-05-04T17:38:00

I know it's supposed to be dark, but I still had trouble spotting where I was going. With that being said however, I really like the graphics, and the music was very fitting.

Within The Skin by Stratovarius 2014-04-28T20:13:00

Eeeurgh, this is disgusting... Just what I like! I only managed to get 79 points though (I've no idea if that's a terrible score or not) because they moved so fast

Harvest Doom by Mark Venturelli 2014-04-30T19:43:00

I wish I could play more of this game, but it starts to run slowly after a while (I've found this always seems to happen with HTML5 games made on GMS :c).
The graphics are really nice though and the gameplay would be fun too if it weren't for the lag problem.

Light Eater by Cawrtz 2014-05-04T17:09:00

Took a while to realise what the potions were for, but quite fun overall. I didn't vote for audio because there was none, however with some sound effects this would greatly improve the mood.

Rojan by Junber 2014-05-04T16:35:00

While strangely addicting, the randomly spawned enemies sometimes hurt you straight away. Everything was a little hard to see on the MS Surface level, but still quite fun regardless

Descent by camlang 2014-05-04T17:24:00

I really like the graphics style, and the animations aren't as bad as you think they are. I like how you haven't included the health bar, it makes the game feel more immersive. I'm terrible at the game, I really want to try and finish it, but I'm not sure how.

Beneath by Stepperz 2014-04-30T06:46:00

Reminds me of pixel dungeon, if that's what you were going for? Really enjoyed it!

The Mole You Know by Mandlebar 2014-05-04T16:14:00

I got the hang of it after my first game, but I only managed to get 100 points, I can see that no one else has posted their highscore D:<

Infection by InfectionTeam 2014-05-04T16:52:00

The graphics were amazing, I like the twist on the tower defence theme, and annoying addictive. I will likely continue playing this after the compo! :D

BENEATH the SURFACE by soy_yuma 2014-04-29T20:27:00

Love challenging games, and love the simplicity of the graphics. Spent way too long on this one!

LD30 — Connected Worlds

Blue Screen by varun 2014-09-02T16:58:00

Takes a while to get used to, however I really like the wireframe graphics! I'm not sure if the difficulty was a little to high though

Linker by Stals 2014-09-02T17:47:00

Nice concept, but I found it a little difficult. I really like the art style and music!

Galactic Bonding by alvarop 2014-08-28T17:58:00

This is great, I really like games where you can just spend hours trying to beat your highscore (and other peoples', seeing as you used the GJ API, which is awesome!)

Between Two by Zekronz 2014-09-01T15:20:00

Very nice game, I like its simplicity and the music is great. Some of the puzzles got easier as the game progressed (however I can understand that they were probably to introduce new mechanics) but still, a fun game!

The Wild West And Its' Living Fossils by toinfiniityandbeyond 2014-09-12T07:20:00

Thanks very much to everyone that liked the music! I have loads more on my website.

Anyway:
Sorry I didn't get to stream your game, I ended up being quite busy over the past week. The game was great and well polished, but like other people have said it needs to be balanced a little better. I guess I could also compliment the music too ;D

Musical Trade Route by ceosol 2014-08-29T15:54:00

The concept is brilliant, but the graphics could look a lot better. I think the game is actually quite fun but if it were more polished I'd be excited it to play. Good job!

Close Your Eyes by nonetheless 2014-08-29T16:29:00

Graphic style is amazing! I love its simplicity and the colour scheme you chose. The puzzles actually got pretty difficult by the end.

Stanley Squeaks and the Emerald Burrito by Two Scoop Games 2014-08-29T16:10:00

Sound effects were great, the little guy was adorable. However, I think the theme could have been a bit stronger, but I see it there nonetheless. Very fun apart from the short length, and I'd love to play a longer version.

Protect Both Worlds by Perjoka 2014-09-12T07:30:00

Sorry I didn't get to stream your game, I ended up being busy over the week. With that said, I really like tower defense games and I find them rather addicting, and this was a nice twist on what we're used to playing. Very fun but like other people say it gets overwhelming quite fast (who necessarily said that was such a bad thing?)

Pulley Planet by Patacorow 2014-09-02T17:34:00

Possibly the best game I've played so far! :D
Graphics, sound, and overall polish was great, you should totally port this mobile!!!
I'd say the only downside was that I was very confused in the first few rounds, because I didn't quite understand the explanation.

Invaduhrs by bigbadwofl 2014-09-15T20:59:00

Really enjoyed the graphics and audio, well polished too!
To improve all you need to do is add some variety (eg. more attackers/defenders) and it would be awesome! Possibly the performance too, as it became unplayable once I had about 160 biodiversity points

LD34 — Two Button Controls / Growing

Ascending Roots by TimBeaudet 2015-12-17T23:47:00

While I can't vote because I didn't submit myself, I want to comment on my thoughts as this is a very interesting game.

The level design is amazing, I can't fault it apart from the sharp difficult spike after the first couple of levels (I forget what the suddenly difficult level was called). I also really liked the music and the sound effects, it made me feel strangely nostalgic and actually made me feel like I was on an adventure, something not even many AAA games can pull off for me these days (actually, they very much bore me, so great job :D).

The graphics were good, although I feel like there are points where tree roots could have been more obvious (there was a level I was stuck on because I didn't know roots were there).

In terms of programming and polish, quite a lot could improve this game to the point where it's really fun to play and makes it more immersive. There should be an option for fullscreen mode, it's slightly harder to play without this as the laptop I'm playing on has a relatively high DPI than what I'm used to, meaning I also didn't really appreciate each pixel as much. The player's movement should be more fluid, and move slightly faster. At the moment it just feels slow to play, and the difference between movement should not be so obvious (eg. walking, then movement suddenly stops and starts climbing down a tree). I think adding a camera to the player would also help with the immersion, smooth following the player as they move around (I'm aware that because of this you wouldn't be able to see the entire level to solve the puzzles, so unless you added another key to show you the whole level this point could basically be ignored).

The game crashed at some point during the gameplay, just as I was ascending one of the trees near the end of a level (I think I may have gotten to the top of it and landed on the ground before it suddenly crashed). The log it produced was not helpful at all:

---------
Crash Log
---------

On: 12/17/15 23:22:56
By: C:\Users\Tom\Downloads\ascending_roots\AscendingRoots.exe
Type: UNKNOWN

Stack Trace:
-----------------------
-----------------------


Overall, if the game had more polish (I love me some polish, I stupidly add polish before the main game mechanics most of the time...) I personally would definitely rate this game between 4 and 5!

(I hope most of these points actually made sense as it's just a kind of rambling of thoughts)