Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → TROGDOR 20X6
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 57 | Depths | Submerged | jam | 356 | 3.65 | 3.21 | 3.02 | 4.02 | 3.55 | 3.15 | 4.05 | ||
| 2024 | 56 | Tiny Creatures | Waggle! | jam | 907 | 3.13 | 2.67 | 3.61 | 4.15 | 3.07 | 2.98 | 2.76 | 3.09 | |
| 2024 | 55 | Summoning | The Book of Summons | jam | 324 | 3.80 | 3.32 | 3.77 | 4.54 | 4.37 | 4.31 |
Should probably use more of the page space. Should allow you to remove items. Nothing happens when I summon things? No clue what the crystal ball is about. Based on your description I'm missing a major game mechanic. I see one random tower in the middle of the screen and nothing I do seems to affect that.
Very cute aesthetic and sound design. Some issues. I went left instead of right early on and didn't understand why J didn't shoot anything, thought it was broken. In some areas (like the first x), you can get awkwardly stuck on the walls. Sometimes it seems like the dino dies for no reason.
Decently fun. I liked the graphics and audio, and the end credits music apparently. It was intuitive enough that you almost don't need instructions.
Would be nice to have mouse/keys as alternative menu controls. Just have them all work, I think. I really like the subtle heat effect. Scoreboard is neat, I was surprised. You should be able to opt out, though. Animations are very cute, and I like the buildable human graphics. It might be good to have a max number of humans, so you're forced to use them as you go. I would like to be able to walk through the altars. Very fun once you get the hang of it!
This is the best looking game I've played so far, and I also enjoyed the cute sound effects. Don't see much to fault. Only UI improvement I can think of is click detection for the demons you just summoned and the summoning book. Several times I would summon a creature, immediately try to click the demon, and just go back to the book. I'm not sure if there's an invisible hitbox that you can't click around or what, but I'd suggest : if you click straight on the model that model is selected, otherwise if you click on empty space you can use the larger hotboxes or check cursor distance or something.
I like the graphics but I can't always tell what things are supposed to be. I'm surprised I got through so many demons. I didn't notice the pen at first, which is a very important item (I thought it was a wand, and it blended into the background). I think it would help if the items had tooltips (or just redraw the most confusing ones).
Definitely would help if it was a little easier for a game jam. A bit too much chained moon logic, I think. I got stuck as early as needing a minty drink. Some quality of life improvements: don't destroy an item when it's failed, just play an error noise, maybe auto-collect and don't allow duplicates of imaginary friends in inventory. When dragging into a box, if you're a few pixels off, allow for snapping to the closest box instead (several times I dragged an image to be centered over the box, but my cursor wasn't technically over the box so it snapped back).
I liked the art well enough, and I liked the custom audio. The narration could've been a bit faster, I think. Text could be bigger.
Game reminds me of Cultist Simulator.
Not sure why I watched the final animation until the end. I think the game is solid but I'm not sure about the theme. It definitely just feels like Lemmings.
@donamougou Yes I noticed as well. I anticipated there'd be some difficulty in the players trying to read my mind, effectively, but not by enough. I didn't want folks to miss the content I worked on, but I also didn't want it to be so easy it didn't feel like a game. But I at least tried to allow for brute forcing by some amount.
I promise there's a tenuous clue for every single rune/summon, and that's only thanks to putting in that bare minimum effort. It's hard to think of good clues since that sometimes means more assets you need to do (how do I make it clear what this rune means? by making 3 other summons with that same property? by just telling them outright like the others? etc), and it feels like you're wasting precious time just sitting down and thinking instead of working.
Would definitely help to have even the smallest sound effect, borrowed or otherwise. I also wish the game managed to get expanded a bit more, as I normally love idle games, but this was a bit short. You could reuse different colors of assets to save time, and maybe have it so each unique victory summon costs more each time instead of requiring a restart. Found a "bug" where you can't summon from the 13k without maxing out the previous demon. Despite you opting out of the graphics, I'm surprised you got the style so consistent. Very easy to understand how to play.
For some reason my favorite part is displaying so many foods in the fridge. I think this game would heavily benefit from even the most basic sound effects.
Not a bad idea but the physics are a little hard to work with. I think you need to cheat the physics somewhat so that the rocks snap more strongly, almost as strongly as if they were attached to your cursor. The pull is too weak, you can't run at full speed while carrying a rock. It was much easier to just trick the enemies into running into rocks instead.
Also, somehow hit a bug where I got stuck in a wall, and no esc key to get out of it:
bug1.png
The tutorial was missing animations for me, at least. Not sure why the magic minions didn't seem to do any damage, and I didn't even realize at first. Best strategy seemed to be to farm rats while ignoring enemies entirely. I liked the art style. I think the rat killing could be more snappy. The controls were a little awkward having to hold down E while moving around (both WASD and arrow keys were a little awkward).
Would be nice to see enemy health bars or the total blood collected.
A little disappointing there was no pay off, though :(
Unique puzzle mechanic, I've not seen it before. Good foresight with that undo button. Cute worried spider. Pretty tough though, a skip would be nice.
I found the use of pheromones to be an interesting addition and even a bit ambitious. Seems very well polished, the only obvious bugs are the beetles. I also ended up making an RTS like, though they're still so different. Seems it's hard to balance them within such a short time frame.
At first I thought I killed them with that wheelbarrow and made them disappear from existence. Very relaxing music and like the artwork, though a bit lacking on content I think.
Surprisingly good graphics. Funny intro and music. Controls weren't intuitive straight away for me. I was able to clear the first jump without birds (there were a few jumps like this), so that may have added to the confusion. Some of the puzzles were more difficult than I expected for a game jam. I think it can be hard to judge whether you're missing something or just not placing that bird platform just right or bad at jumping. Maybe some snapping to grid could help with this. Not sure. Overall enjoyable.
Seems a bit easy. Thought esc paused the game but apparently crashed it? Would help a lot if you could spend those green globs for upgrades I think. I liked the blurred out green sticks and such, reminds me of the minigame from Spore.
Controls could be smoother, I feel like it should control similar to as if it was completely grid based. AKA, digging down should result in immediately falling down instead of potentially hanging on an edge. Think Motherlode type movement.
Levels should progress automatically without a level select. Mouse is a little unwieldy, though would probably be too easy otherwise. Cute graphics.
Such a unique game, really cute art, and adorable noises!
@mabirus Thanks, I didn't mean for it to sound this way. I've rephrased it a bit. This section was meant only to be optional so folks knew the intended mechanics, because in a game jam you can't always tell if you've encountered a bug or are just missing something. Some things are intuitive only to the creator.
I think I like the idea but it seems like it's just a lot of tic tac toe over and over, meaning there's nothing new to motivate me to play the game. For a tic tac toe game it feels pretty clean.
Confusing at the start but that's part of the fun. Like the art and sound. Seems like the difficulty ramps up a lot at the end.
Should have the entire unit box clickable instead of just the money. Should definitely aim to add any sounds. I promise it can add a lot for very little time spent. The placement coloration lies to me sometimes. Seems you just keep buying big goblins and use no strategy. You just have to pack them in as densely as possible.
Really could use sound. Even recorded. I didn't realize I used up my potions without a sound effect. Took me longer than it should have to figure out that was a cauldron. Walk speed could be faster. When you walk away from the host notes, they should automatically close. Otherwise you can't close them. Really like the graphics!
The gameplay is actually slowed down by the automatic free upgrades. I spammed past them at a certain point. I do like the weapon effects. The num keys should work for numpad as well.
Graphics are a little flickery and it'd be nice if the ants didn't teleport. Took me a bit to realize you could dig and collect. You should be able to click through the death screen since you do a lot of clicking. I definitely felt motivated to finish. More health would help a lot. Hard to see the ants and speed past them on return trips, even when you've lit up a corridor. Easiest strategy was digging down and lots of blind runs to reveal the map location. Overall liked this game.
@henk When I shuffle left and right rapidly over a few blocks the edges will flicker. Mostly noticeable on the dirt blocks. You see glimpses of white. I'm using Chrome on Windows at 100% zoom. I've seen something similar in my own games, and now that I'm looking at your level.png, it's definitely Howard's white coat that's bleeding in. The easiest way to fix this is to add some padding to your tile textures. Snapping the camera to pixel coordinates has also fixed this for me, though this is hackier and less robust.
Very enjoyable puzzle game. A good number of puzzles and variance. Starts off nice and easy to let you learn. Maybe bake in how the controls work with just some hint text or some simple graphical changes for intuition. I would've liked to hear slightly more sound effects, like the sound of them marching and turning. You could limit the arrow numbers for extra challenge, or suggest a par. At some point I think I won despite a beetle dying, not sure if that was intentional. A slowdown option would be good for when your solution isn't working right. A victory screen would be nice.
Cute game, but had to zoom in on the page to actually view the whole game screen. Very impressive how much art was created!
The font is a little rough to read. The game seems to launch you right into it and is quite a sensory overload. It wasn't immediately clear to me which ants were mine. I think the menus for controlling the ants could use some reworking, even if all you do is make it so you order 10 at a time. Somehow I won, though.
Doesn't seem to work embedded. Maybe that's an ldjam issue. Weirdly long load time. I think a bug keeps it stuck at 20%.
The net weirdly appears behind other items. Hit boxes also felt off to me. Really like the aesthetic. I think the levels could maybe loop around to make the seams less intrusive, though I understand that could be difficult depending on the engine.
Tutorial should better indicate that you need to move everyone past the truck to proceed. Characters are a little sticky. I think it would help if, for example, when jumping into something while walking into it, they weren't so sticky. AKA friction is too high. When you force the other characters past the exit when you aren't controlling them, I don't think it triggers the exit and so you don't pass the level even though everyone is through.
I like the aesthetic a lot, though.
Menu graphics are offset unless I zoom in to 80%. Some typos. I didn't experiment with the dead bodies at all since it felt hard to experiment or plan with those. Maybe if there were safe rooms or some of the bugs had glow in the dark eyes or something. Flashlight can see through walls if you're right next to them, which is confusing. I like the sounds and was able to get through eventually, though.
Pretty simple but effective. Very cute aesthetic. I would recommend adding any noises though, it's very impactful without much effort. I did hear the one plop noise, though. The musings from the elder lint were enough to encourage me to finish the game. Overall I like this.
At the start I thought the shotgun was set of claws and you were playing as a velociraptor or rat or something. Very good sound design. A confusing start, I wasn't sure if you were meant to explore or if it was a defence game. Didn't help that I wandered into the woods. Needs a pause option, especially if I want to take notes while playing. Should color the rats for pickup or something, since they blend in with the ones chasing you. Invisible wall was jarring. Rats start to become less scary and more annoying. Easy to get lost due to fighting. Wasn't sure if I won at the end when I got back to the furnace. Hard to find the notes.
Beautiful art style, but wish that there was more to the story!
I'm surprised how much the performance dips from time to time.
The minotaur is appropriately intimidating.
I like the music at the end.
This is very well polished, love the unique art style. I managed to unlock everything.
It did take a moment to understand, especially at the very start. At first I was unlocking things at random but then eventually as I narrowed down the list I would just focus on getting as many extra dice as possible before one final swing. That seems like the ideal strategy.
Anyways the mood is awesome, well done!
Pretty fun game!
Is there a limit to the depth? I thought for sure I'd see a victory screen at 1000 or 1024 or something.
I think things are well balanced making you have to hit a ball to collect the resources. One small tweak I might consider is slowing balls down so they have a maximum velocity so you can catch up with them more easily.
I like the ball particles indicating what a ball contains.
It can be a bit laggy though. I like the music but it staggers quite a bit even at the very start of the game.
Good job!
Hey got to the end.
Of course as others have mentioned reminds me of the Motherload game. I like the ship and what appears to be Paint graphics. And the sounds are nice too, did you record crushing a soda can yourself? The little random geysers were nice.
A bug or two. Digging in the tutorial didn't work for me, but the main game did. Also I somehow got stuck but that only happened once. Dirt digging animations keep playing even after you walk away.
Some gameplay stuff that I think could improve: flashlight should be more generous in size and duration, probably the graphic could fade off instead of being cut off, if only by using dithering at least. I think it'd be nice if there was a little indicator of how much something was worth when you picked it up or what your current haul was, to get you excited about gems, etc.
I made most of my money in that one area shallow enough where you can still see without a flashlight, filled with tons of gems for some reason. Barely made any money in the darkest areas.
The music goes pretty well with the setting, and the gameplay concept is solid I think.
And good job including a pause since a lot of games forget to include that.
For controls, the arrow keys don't seem to affect the direction of shooting. And when using the numpad it would be nice if the diagonals worked as well. Your ship also pauses movement when hit which I think should be avoided.
I ended up mostly letting enemies group up since it was hard to kill them that fast. I still shot gems into the collectors though.
Either way, good job!
I like the appearance. However as others have mentioned it seems far too difficult. I think any number of improvements could have helped, such as reducing costs, autoaim, higher scrap yields, lower health or slower mines, different spawning, being able to pick your rooms, etc. At least it's frustrating enough to encourage replay.
@ian-mcd Oops, thought I disabled that. I had a shortcut for debug mode to allow teleporting around. Thanks for telling me!
Loved the look and feel of this game. The music worked really well as well.
I kept getting worried the criminal was going to run out on me.
Initially I started writing down clues but admittedly at a certain point I started just asking folks I hadn't talked to in a bit.
I definitely noticed the safe opened at some point. I don't know how they were so fast though!
Loved the music, made it very cozy like I was playing Terraria.
The beginning panicked me a bit since the oxygen bar was going down while I was trying to read the instructions. Also ended up not using the light at all.
Small issue where your sub momentum can carry you out of the buy menu. I think the game should full pause, especially if folks want to step a way for a bit.
I liked the little ballast and throttle visual.
Overall fun game, I managed to get the treasure at the end. Good job!
Very interesting idea and execution. Sometimes I'll skip on a downloaded game but the screenshots were intriguing enough to draw me in.
I'm guessing things were prerendered?
Awesome job, though the initial ending really surprised me.
Oh, one bug I guess. I could click JOY before it was visible.
@malte-hedenstrom There is a secret good ending. Some words hidden well in the back tell you how.
Definitely appreciate the Bioshock aesthetic, though meant I was expecting an entirely different game.
The mood is so good I really assumed I was doing something wrong with the number of rubber ducks there were.
Very impressive graphics obviously. Though every now in then things would freeze as a shader or something loaded in (like when turning on the flashlight).
Is there an alternate ending? I definitely wanted to summon Cthulhu.
I like the overall aesthetic, and that's a lot of tile art to make in two days!
Some tiny improvements: Could highlight unread dialog in some fashion. Could also allow you to skip the text blurbs/dialog after some elapsed amount of time.
@0x-void-x0 Looks like you click several times on the ore you see and they disappear. When you clear them all out they respawn.
For this specific type of game I think there are a few ore clicker games you could get inspiration from. You can do a lot with just seeing a big number go up that lets you buy upgrades to mine tougher ores, etc.
Definitely like the Obra Dinn aesthetic. Performance dips randomly though, I assume from something loading in.
Some more tutorialization would be good. I'm still confused how you use the bucket to drain water for instance.
Still, very good mood and theme.
I got to the bottom of level 2 but was pretty confused what you do from there and eventually just died. The platforming for that level was already kind of difficult, seemed like the jump button didn't always work, especially while sprinting, though fortunately you could avoid jumping most of the time anyways. Since you can't jump off the crate things in the very first area and no midair jumps are allowed, I'm assuming you're only allowing jumps while within some kind of hitbox. Might be good to allow some kind of 0.1 - 0.2 second buffer for that as an easy fix.
I like the glitchy textures from the first level the most. And I think I like the overall concept. But it wants just a tiny bit more polish.
Nice work!
I couldn't make it to the end, seems a bit difficult. Makes me wonder if there's any chance there's a machine specific bug affecting gameplay speed or something. I only got past the first upgrade spot past the leaves and that was hard enough.
Still always impressive to attempt a 3d game, and cute intro.
Oh, one bug you may want to be aware of. It seems like you have special intro music that doesn't play for me unless I replay the cinematic.
Random error popup: TypeError: Cannot set properties of null (setting 'onclick'). But game ran anyways.
Thought restart was broken, wasn't clear that I had to click that button.
Definitely would love some sound effects. Even just recording your voice. But like the sprites.
Short and sweet, cozy game.
I liked the motion blur from switching between stages. That's a nice polish. I also thought it was smart to have the lights represent an area that's in all layers.
There was some strange bug where, maybe in fullscreen, I would click away to write notes and if I clicked back after some time the whole game reset me to the start. Meant I had to play the game twice to see the ending.
Definitely nailed the old newgrounds aesthetic, including the viscera and terrifying yells.
I would've definitely liked to see some kind of gameplay. Some way to feel I actually earned all those arms famous people kept giving me. I think even simple button mashing could've added a lot with the bonus of feeling the same pain as your character.
Oh there was one bug where you could dig early and wear down your arms as well, which made it seem even sillier when I got donated a new pair of arms without having even set a record.