Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → Trafulgoth
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | Co | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | 32 | An Unconventional Weapon | Box Hammer Heaven Arena | jam | 897 | 2.73 | 2.64 | 2.27 | 2.50 | 2.85 | 2.12 | 2.55 | 2.46 | 50 |
I had a few crashes and found some bugs that allowed be to build things without having any resources to do so. Nice attempt at an RTS though.
It ran fine for me. I didn't have anyone to play with, but for some reason, playing it versus myself was still entertaining, probably because it was so hard.
I played for about 5 minutes and had fun with it. It's too bad that there isn't any sound, because I think that would add a lot to the game.
OVERALL: I decided on two stars because of an overall lack of feedback (visual or audio). At first, I didn't realize that my weapon had two modes, so the 1's were just soaking bullets and I didn't know why, until I noticed that my bullets looked like 0's and the enemies I could kill had 0's on them. Then I figured out that I need to use the other mouse button.
I found what I think is a bug. If you die and replay the game, your fire rate is not reset, so you can abuse that to get absurdly high rates of fire. It also seems like the enemies spawn at a faster rate (maybe your spawners get duplicated?). It was fun to play like that, but it doesn't seem like it was intended.
INNOVATION: The game is a straight-forward top-down shooter, nothing uncommon or new there. I awarded an extra star for the idea of having to match ammo types to enemy types.
You might think "Hey, you said that was bad in the previous section, what gives?" The bad part was that the idea wasn't communicated to me very well. A little feedback would go a long way.
FUN: This is the best part of the game: once I understood what I was supposed to be doing, the moment to moment gameplay was fun, especially once I had powered up my fire rate. Spray and pray, all day. It would be more fun if the enemies did something more than just disappear when they were killed, but I think I'm beating the 'feedback' horse a bit too much now.
THEME: Logic is pretty unconventional for a weapon, unless you're dealing with computers, in which case it is only slightly less conventional than a machine gun. Still, 3 stars for the attempt.
Nice little text adventure. It was bit easy for me; working the greenhouse seems to be a bit OP. At the end, I had over 300,000 units of sap and 8 trees, lol. Maybe I'm just too good at horror situations, but I had fun anyways.
OVERALL: I played for about a minute. For a compo game, the production values were pretty low. It's a good starting game if you're new to development, though. (2 stars).
INNOVATION: Angry Birds minus destruction. (1 star).
FUN: I happen to know that, in a frictionless environment, the highest power at 45 degrees will produce the longest range. I was hoping for some side scrolling when I launched the goose, but it just landed about a few meters away... (1 star).
THEME: It is very unconventional to use a goose as ammunition for your cannon. Technically, ammunition isn't a weapon, but I let that slide. (5 stars).
GRAPHICS: Sorry for being so brutal, but I would be hard pressed to find a way to make the graphics worse. Maybe if they started flash in eye melting colors, that would be worse. (1 star).
HUMOR: Har har, I shot a goose out of a cannon. (2 stars).
MOOD: There was a mood? (1 star).
OVERALL: The controls felt really weird. I also didn't like that there wasn't a score or any way of ending the game (dying, winning) without just quitting. I suppose that's an interesting allegory; the only way to end war for good is if people just stop. (2 stars).
INNOVATION: I shot bullets at stuff in a [side-scroller? Top-down shooter?]. (1 star).
FUN: No scoring or visual (or audio) feedback made for a fairly unsatisfying experience. (2 stars).
THEME: I had a shotgun and I shot bullets at things. I see how shooting at symbols of peace is ironic, but irony != unconventional. (1 star).
GRAPHICS: I actually quite liked the graphics. Sure, they were simple, but they got the point across and were reasonably appealing, given the short time frame. Especially noteworthy is the high contrast between the foreground elements and the background. (4 stars).
HUMOR: DIE YOU HIPPY SCUM!!! (3 star).
MOOD: I admit that I am not a fan of the 'Mood' category. Most of a game's mood comes from visual and audio elements, and we already have categories for those. A narrative game could also get points there, but that isn't relevant to this game. The best I can do is describe this game's mood as "mildly comical". How many stars should a "mildly comical" game get? Hell if I know, but I gave it three. (3 stars).
On windows with Python 3.3.5 installed, running main.py did nothing for me. Don't know why.
Unfortunately, there are some game-breaking issues with this. Firstly, I have a qwerty keyboard, and rebinding my controls doesn't work. Secondly, when the game starts, there is a button that you need to click on, but the mouse cursor is hidden, so this is extremely difficult. I gave up after about 10 minutes of trying to play this when I hit the first tutorial screen and could get my invisible mouse to click on the button.
OVERALL: I had fun controlling the four characters, although I honestly just used the ranger and put the other guys in a corner most of the time, until the ranger was running low on hp. I think the game bugged out and I lost when my guy still had health and there was no one around, or maybe it was just an example of a lack of feedback. Either way, I don't know why I lost, other than it said one of my guys died. I played for about 10 minutes. The warrior didn't seem to work at all; enemies would just walk through my sword. The mage ran out of mana almost immediately. The shield guy was kinda worthless too. (2 stars).
INNOVATION: I haven't seen the "control 4 characters at the same time in realtime" idea before. That might be because controlling that many things simultaneously is not really possible, but the idea is still novel and led to some interesting moments. (4 stars).
FUN: I enjoyed predicting enemy paths to hit them with arrows. I'm not sure if this was a bug or not, but it turns out that an arrow that has hit a wall and stopped can still kill enemies that run into it, so I used that to make a pen for my heros that were out of ammo and just lol'd at the guys that ran into the trap. (4 stars).
THEME: I have no idea how this is related to the theme. (1 star).
GRAPHICS: Simplistic and consistent, the graphics are serviceable. I'd like to see more feedback and polish effects, though. (3 stars).
HUMOR: There wasn't really anything comedic going on. (1 star).
MOOD: It felt like an oldschool arcade game prototype. The lack of audio really hurts a game like this, though. (3 stars).
OVERALL: I played for about 10 minutes. I never figured out how to get to that boss you mentioned; I gave up and just built myself a little demon-proof fort out of blocks and spam fired on them as they tried to funnel in. I like the audio feedback for things, even if the effects themselves are a bit simple. If you add visual feedback in your future games, I think that will go a long way. In my humble opinion, player feedback is the most important feature to make a game 'pop'. (3 stars).
INNOVATION: I like that this is a platformer that involved you creating your own platforms to jump on. I don't play many platformers day to day, so maybe that is really common in the genre, but I haven't seen it before. (3 stars).
FUN: I had the most fun with the block mechanics. I think that moving platforms yourself and being able to create cover/shelter on the fly was quite fun. It would have been even better if there was more variety, though. (4 stars).
MOOD: I don't really think this game had a 'mood' to speak of. (N/A rating).
OVERALL: Enjoyable. I spent about 5~10 minutes playing. Memorizing which enemy corresponds to which button took a few tries. Eventually, I discovered that you can simply jump over enemies if you want. (3 stars).
INNOVATION: It seems like a fairly normal infinite runner. Matching attack types to enemy types was interesting though. (2 stars).
FUN: I enjoyed the mechanic challenge of jumping over enemies and the mental challenge of associating a particular key to a particular color of enemy. The time-trial aspect also adds to the replayability and thus the fun. (3 stars).
THEME: Allergies are a really interesting weapon, and very rarely used. (5 stars).
GRAPHICS: Simply yet serviceable. Nothing to write home about, but they didn't get in the way either and also did a good job of highlighting the important game elements through the use of contrast. (3 stars).
AUDIO: I really enjoyed the music, but there weren't any sound effects! (3 stars).
HUMOR: It does not seem that this game was made with humor in mind, which is fine. (1 star).
Something is wrong with the link to the windows distribution. Dropbox is giving me a 500 error. Maybe that will clear up in the future, but right now I can' get the game.
I redact my previous comment. The link seems to be working now.