FoonLudum Dare ExplorerUsers → TurbulentWinds

TurbulentWinds

Games

YearLDThemeGameDivisionRankOvFuInThMo
201740The more you have, the worse it isA Spark of Lightjam5653.463.073.523.733.97

Performance over time

overall score (left axis) percentile (right axis)

Scatterplots

Fun vs Overall

Innovation vs Overall

Theme vs Overall

Mood vs Overall

Comments by TurbulentWinds

LD40 — The more you have, the worse it is

Crunch Time by gelisam 2017-12-25T19:01:23Z

This game ticks me off. It's hard. It's frustrating. Its unfair. That is why I'm giving it 5 stars for mood. Never have I ever felt more like Dilbert in my life. Having go move back and toss out a ton of progress you had just made because of a simple mistake at the start. Good gameplay, debatable. Some people will like it, other will not. But for mood it is perfect. Whether the game was designed this way or not, the punishing mechanics really do make you feel like a corporate slave who only moves back with every step forwards. And when you do accomplish something, you are simply handed another task.

It would be awesome if on a extremely difficult level, your boss would force you to start over as soon as you finished by making a slight change on the first bit of code.

Pretty good! Unclear, cruel, pointless. The perfect atmosphere for a corporate game.

Some Seriously Screwed Sheep by PixelFormedStudios 2017-12-07T23:00:22Z

I am a sucker for a good sheep game, and this is better than 99% of sheep games on iOS. This is nice, I want to see a full version get released.

Farming Sim LD40 by pebkac 2017-12-08T20:28:24Z

I like this, but color maybe?

Sofra by dietzribi 2017-12-13T00:13:28Z

Literally brilliant. I have no words.

Gold Elixir by brgarnet17 2017-12-08T20:17:00Z

I don't really get the gameplay. It would be much better with some graphics showing the effects of the different options as it would really help the player understand the game. Also, as a side note, you want to rate other peoples games to increase your Smart Balance so you can get ratings. I like this as a minimum viable product but as a full game it is lacking polish.

Steam Paralysis by Nammflow 2017-12-05T20:30:28Z

Wow, a simulator of my life!!??

Rucksack by karln 2017-12-05T20:38:21Z

Very nice! Reminds me of Zelda!

Rucksack by karln 2017-12-05T20:49:03Z

@Beege1 I agree this was a lot like the Trail too!

Grammar Dystopia by Xarras 2017-12-06T23:03:36Z

Very creative game! Would be awesome to see an Orwellian take on this! It really brought back memories of 1984 for me!

RE-SANTA by Thygrrr 2017-12-09T04:22:48Z

Wonderful! I can't find any flaws on first inspection!

The Legend of the Bikini Armor by Sun-Wukong 2017-12-07T22:38:21Z

The game did not work. The enemies appeared and disappeared, glitching around randomly and there was no way to progress through the cave. I came upon a wall that could not be jumped over and was unable to continue progressing.

The art is great and all, but try to have a minimum viable product before focusing on graphics.

I don't know if the bugs are just me or not, so please reply if I am being stupid :D

The Legend of the Bikini Armor by Sun-Wukong 2017-12-07T23:08:15Z

@sun-wukong I am using the Windows build. I just downloaded it again but the issues are still present.

The Legend of the Bikini Armor by Sun-Wukong 2017-12-07T23:30:31Z

@sun-wukong I think I have the second latest release for my drivers. I will remove my ratings, since they are based on a issue only I had.

Six by CodeChomper 2017-12-06T23:07:07Z

This really needs a delete button for the code (sigh, I bet there is and I'm gonna sound dumb again). Other than that it was perfect!

Glutton's Heaven by klekky 2017-12-06T01:12:43Z

Great concept and execution!

Phaeria's Mine by AVAVT 2017-12-13T21:33:11Z

Fantastic

Chicken Tender by misterstripey 2017-12-06T01:05:53Z

This game is wonderful as well as it's music. I am going to bookmark this and send it to one of my friends; he loves a good chicken game.

ImmuneControl by jkniest 2017-12-08T20:13:46Z

I liked this overall, but I don't get how it fits the theme.

Winter Sleep by cenullum 2017-12-06T14:27:03Z

Overall, it was pretty dang good! However, I would like to see some animation, and the movement felt sort of strange for a bear.

Too Many Chooks by Schu 2017-12-06T01:14:59Z

Very cool game! I would love to see a more fleshed out version with the different chickens' eggs having differing movement paths or effects!

Re:Tileation by Akusan 2017-12-07T22:21:52Z

I enjoyed this one however, there are a few problems.

The floor sometimes feels like ice and is super easy to slip off of into the spikes. It took me quite a while before I figured out the shooting mechanics. The cursor speed is insane, I had to turn my DPI down to practically nothing to play.

Overall, I really enjoyed the gameplay!

The People's Army - a lite rock paper scissor TBS Game by Zapakitul 2017-12-05T20:17:50Z

Very nice game! One of my favorites so far!

House a lovecraft inspired game by LERPish 2017-12-08T20:51:13Z

I would have preferred a .zip to a .rar since I had to go grab an extractor just to play but it was really good overall!

Webshop Live CMS by leffe108 2017-12-07T22:17:03Z

I came back to try this game again so I would have time to leave detailed feedback and not just rate, but it is now not working in my browser :(

Here's what I remember from last time I played:

It was pretty confusing to begin with, but as I progressed I began to understand how the game works. It was creative and innovative, really something different than the norm.

I would like a better indication of when the people are becoming bored as it seems to be pretty hard to tell.

Overall, great game!

A Spark of Light by TurbulentWinds 2017-12-05T12:56:10Z

@stencilchris I was hoping to have a better goal done in time, but I had a ton of school work. I probably only had like 6-7 hours to get this done.

A Spark of Light by TurbulentWinds 2017-12-05T13:03:48Z

@seththefirst Yes, I am not that happy with the movement script, I really should have spent more time on it.

A Spark of Light by TurbulentWinds 2017-12-05T20:25:35Z

@raed That is an interesting idea. I was planning to go back and figure out what exactly I did wrong in my movement scripts this coming weekend, but that concept is something I will not be able to resist playing around with!

A Spark of Light by TurbulentWinds 2017-12-06T01:01:25Z

@hillexed I was using lighting to accomplish the glowing effects and from what I know about Unity, it would be extremely difficult to implement that. I am creating a list of stuff to look at trying for the weekend, so I probably will pull up the old manual and try to find a way to accomplish that.

A Spark of Light by TurbulentWinds 2017-12-06T01:28:54Z

@misterstripey and @sherwood I love that idea. Gosh dang it, don't put these ideas in my head or I will not be able to resist staying up all night and putting them it :D!

A Spark of Light by TurbulentWinds 2017-12-06T01:34:32Z

@misterstripey Unfortunately, I did not compose the music for the game which is why I am in Jam not Compo. I will be ready next time though, I am working on neutral network to compose music for me!

@cercle I am really upset about the way the text came out too! TextMeshPro, the plugin I use for text broke right after I had the UI looking as good as the game and I was forced to use this hard to read mess as a last resort :( The texture for the game floor to tell how fast you are moving is a good idea, but I feel that would hurt the art style. However, that is a good point to bring up, I am think something along the lines of a minimap?

A Spark of Light by TurbulentWinds 2017-12-06T02:08:24Z

@forrest If only I had you with me when I was coding . . . I have been playing a lot of games today and mine is definitely lacking in the actual gameplay department. Someone had a great idea to add a monster that hunts you down and sucks your light, which I am totally going to work on over the weekend!

A Spark of Light by TurbulentWinds 2017-12-07T00:04:52Z

@videojames I really do need to be clearer in the directions. You lose light to the black squares (-1 light per black square shrunk to nothing), and the walls close in faster, the greater your light. Less than 1 light and they begin to retract at a proportional rate, the lesser the light, the faster the retraction. The black squares have a radius in which they subtract light from the player and the glowing orbs.

A Spark of Light by TurbulentWinds 2017-12-07T00:24:46Z

@videojames Yep, pretty much, remember, the more you have, the worse it is! :D

A Spark of Light by TurbulentWinds 2017-12-07T00:42:56Z

@pinneh Thank you! I really screwed up the replayablity side of things, but hopefully I can get a black circle that follows you throughout the game sucking down light quickly to add to the tenseness and the gameplay factor done on the weekend. Sigh, and to think I had 7 hours left in the Jam and I did nothing :(

I was going for something like "The Plan," check it out on Steam, it's something you will always remember.

A Spark of Light by TurbulentWinds 2017-12-07T19:45:06Z

@colossal-gnome I am going to be updating the instruction in the description soonish as it has been a bit confusing for a lot of people. The lack of a defined goal really is a big issue with this, I agree.

A Spark of Light by TurbulentWinds 2017-12-07T22:09:49Z

Thank you guys so much for your feedback, it is helping immensely with my "I wish I had thought of this" post-jam build :D

A Spark of Light by TurbulentWinds 2017-12-08T19:54:24Z

@blubberquark It is a cross-platform standalone or at least that's what Unity told me. But you should be able to use Wine.

A Spark of Light by TurbulentWinds 2017-12-08T22:44:22Z

@sugiuro I like to use the default exit button -> Alt + F4

:P

A Spark of Light by TurbulentWinds 2017-12-08T23:31:52Z

@sugiuro That made my day :D

A Spark of Light by TurbulentWinds 2017-12-09T03:54:04Z

@racso

Zooming the camera is a great idea! I am currently working on a version with all the feedback and that definitely is going into it!

How do you feel about a minimap to solve the positioning problem?

I get what you are saying with the randomness aspect. I'll update the spawning code to have an area around the player where nothing spawns (in the post-jam build of course).

The slowness aspect of the game should be fixed by the addition of a "hunter" a black sprite that follows you, draining light (if you are in range) throughout the entire game.

Thank you for your wonderful feedback!

A Spark of Light by TurbulentWinds 2017-12-09T15:14:59Z

@serpentworks-games I actually tried out having the walls leach light, but the flowy movement makes it very difficult and frustrating not to be killed by them. After I do some work on movement, I will definitely give that idea another go!

A Spark of Light by TurbulentWinds 2017-12-09T15:16:06Z

@racso Changing the threshold sounds pretty cool! I'll definatly try that out!

A Spark of Light by TurbulentWinds 2017-12-12T20:31:16Z

@snipera

I did not sign up for music because I just found some fitting free to use music online. Right now I am working on using Magenta to create a AI that writes game music for me so I can do that category next time. I can't wait to get it working, its gonna be sooooo cool!

The bright circles have normal colliders only. That is an amazing idea to just have triggers for them (might have to rework somethings though)! I'm gonna have that in my PostLD build!

I definitely will check it out!

A Spark of Light by TurbulentWinds 2017-12-21T00:48:52Z

Anyone who is still following this thread, I would absolutely love it if you could check this out for me: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/a-spark-of-light/$71462

A Spark of Light by TurbulentWinds 2017-12-21T21:31:26Z

@jordgubben Oops, I must have screwed up the upload on the original. Unfortunately, I did not keep a save of the source for the Jam version so I am unable to fix that issue by rebuilding.

A Spark of Light by TurbulentWinds 2017-12-25T18:36:17Z

@gelisam

I completely agree with your comments. Thank you so much for your honest and constructive feedback! I will definitely be checking out your game! On the topic of music generation, I guess it will be kinda like bfxr. I just want to make something I can give samples and let it run without worrying. If I pull it off, I will make it publicly available.

I addressed the problems you talked about in my post jam version which I hope you will check out:

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/a-spark-of-light/$71462

Gold Mania by Re-Markable 2017-12-08T21:01:47Z

Unfortunately, I could not play due to .rar file format. It would be nice to have a .zip as well.

Greedy Dungeon by daul 2017-12-07T00:23:11Z

I am going to be harsh in my feedback. Because I love this thing. One of the very few games I have played for much longer than I needed to in order to rate them. Only about 2-3 other games of the over 50 I have played are this good. That being said, there are a lot of issues.

The biggest problem is the attacking. It is difficult to strike where I want and the combat does not have much depth. I find it much easier to avoid fights than to engage. To fix this:

A. I would love a parry/block system. B. Faster player attack. C. Lower enemy count with slower attacks (there needs to be a buildup in the animation and sound to alert the player that the enemy is attacking so they can parry or dodge, Dark Souls is a great example game to play and analyze for this)

Secondly, there needs to be more content.

A. Enemy variety is a must B. More weapons C. More health items (that you can save for later)

Third, I want a shop system so bad. It would be great if you collect a ton of gold and bring it back to the wizard dude to get upgrades, health, weapons ect. Also, the gold needs to have a bigger impact on gameplay (the slowdown needs to be more noticeable).

Finally, there is no incentive to fight enemies. I just run by them as I am punished for fighting (on that note wider doors would be good, I got stuck sometimes, slowing me down and causing me to die). You need to add a weapon drop or something to make fighting a good deal.

This was one of my favorites so far and has a ton of potential!

Greedy Dungeon by daul 2017-12-07T02:10:42Z

@daul I will definitely be coming back to this one! I already have it bookmarked (I got Biology tomorrow so I need something to do :D)!

The Carrier by Pixel Shade 2017-12-06T23:59:54Z

I would love an "exploration mode" where you have unlimited life and respawn at the last pad. A much smaller difficulty curve would be nice (my high score is 1896 after maybe 20 tries). I don't really understand the map, as the first time I played I was able to access a huge number of areas but now I am confined to the starting two pads? The art style is great and this is mostly just me being making excuses for sucking :D I do love the movement script as it is much much better than most games like this, adjustable sensitivity would bring it into another level though. Sorry about me seeming negative, I just like to point out the stuff that I would like to see changed, but the game overall is amazing! Great game!

The Carrier by Pixel Shade 2017-12-08T14:06:35Z

@pixel-shade Keep me updated on when the improved version is going to come out. I would love to play!

Chaos Dart by Elodeon 2017-12-09T04:15:42Z

Pretty good! Few things:

1. Mechanics were unclear (stamina for example)

2. Map was confusing (it jumps around and would benefit from a minimap)

Crawl Control by TristanF. 2017-12-08T20:04:21Z

Pretty neat! The only issue I had was with the menu. It took me more time to figure out the buttons to move through it than play the game.

Fog Eater by Skeletonware 2017-12-05T03:08:04Z

Very good! Reminds me of The Final Station and Zelda.

Late Night Chef by DosWosh 2017-12-08T20:54:05Z

Unfortunately, I could not play due to the .rar, it would be nice to have a .zip as well.

Late Night Chef by DosWosh 2017-12-08T21:13:43Z

@doswosh Thanks a billion!

Space Crash by nikchernyakov 2017-12-07T15:46:06Z

This is a solid entry! I would like a lives system though as I often skimmed a block on accident (perhaps more forgiving collisions).

BoatAfloat by StratosKakalis 2017-12-08T21:01:53Z

Unfortunately, I could not play due to .rar file format. It would be nice to have a .zip as well.

Grim Reaper by Lamossus 2017-12-08T21:12:37Z

Unfortunately, I was unable to play due to the .rar file format. It would be nice if you also included a .zip option.

Grim Reaper by Lamossus 2017-12-08T21:17:22Z

@lamossus Thank you!

Yottaman by Racso 2017-12-09T04:11:54Z

I enjoyed this game! However, I do have a wishlist:

1. More enemy diversity and more mechanics (such as a second attack that can put out fires but does something else bad)

2. Clearer mechanics. I didn't really get what made my power go up. I would love a graphic that shows what is happening under the hood.

Other than that it was good!

Fast Frontier by Ohmi 2017-12-08T20:19:58Z

Not bad for a first entry. Concept is there but the game lacks polish.

No Move No Die by ZhangZhibin 2017-12-05T02:55:00Z

Very nice!

Don't Get Hangry by SniperA 2017-12-12T21:14:29Z

Since you left amazing feedback on my game I will leave a ton on yours as well!

I don't have much talent for art in Unity and I started out with simple pixel art like yours (though yours is much better than what I could pull off). The biggest tip I can give you about your sprite art is to draw big. When you load up your game, look at how the sprites are blurred and fuzzy (except for the bullet, it looks a lot like on I have seen used in a lot of game dev courses). This is because you drew them small and did not upscale them in the actual drawing program. It is totally fine to draw in small resolutions like 16x16 but you need to resize them to higher resolutions like 256x256 to preserve detail. Unity does a poor job of upscaling on the fly (pretty sure the blur has to do with MSAA) so it often looks much better if you bring your assets to a higher resolution in the drawing program.

It definitely takes a lot of time and practice to get the hang of making decent enough looking art assets (honestly if this was your first try, I'm impressed). My recommendation is to find a friend who is an artist, find a good source of assets, learn how to use various filters and such like in programs like Gimp, Photoshop and paint.net to change random images from the internet into pretty good looking pixel art, and learn as much as you can about shaders and lighting. Shaders and lighting are your best friends, when properly used they can make a 4x4 sprite look awesome.

Learning as much as you can about visual design will help your games look awesome. Constant style is another big point I wanted to bring up. Basically, make the assets look like they were made by the same person, through editing or such like.

Ok, on to the gameplay. Overall, it is a solid platformer, movement is strong (you already know about the platform issues so I am not going to cover it), and has a good minimum viable product. However, there are a few key issues. First of all, there is a lack of enemy diversity. I assume it had more to do with the art side of things than the programming side, but at the very least the enemies should have different attack patterns. For example, maybe the blue ones can fly or something. You get the point. Spawning was an issues for me. I feel that I shouldn't have enemies spawning right next to me (trigger around spawnpoint maybe that stops spawn script when player is in a certain radius). Also, I didn't really like watching the enemies pop into existence, perhaps use a sprite to signify a spawn point or have them drop in from outside of the player view. I like the food idea that was good. The lack of a goal kinda hurt the experience for me. I felt like I should be going right to a endpoint but there was just another wall. Probably having the player start in the middle would set a more survival/exploration type mindset.

Ok, time for some wonderful resources to help you learn more about Unity. Be sure to check these people out as they will bring your code, art, sound and gameplay to a whole new level.

Brackeys - https://www.youtube.com/user/Brackeys

All around great dude. He has pretty good programming tutorials, but I mostly rely on him for the art and music aspects.

Quill - https://www.youtube.com/user/quill18creates

Want to bring your programming skills to another level? He's your dude. Seriously, he covers how to program a ton of different and difficult game types that foil many beginner Unity users (I should know. 4 attempts trying to make an RTS failed, then I found him. Got one done in 3 days).

Extra Credits - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCODtTcd5M1JavPCOr_Uydg

Watch them. They are awesome. Extra Credits is run by a bunch of insiders on the gaming industry, artists, animators, programmers ect. They also have a ton of different side shows like Extra History, Extra SciFi, and a couple others. The Extra Credits people are amazing. Gameplay is their thing. Just watch all of their videos. You will learn so much about what actually makes a game good and such like.

I just hit the word limit. Dang. That's crazy.

Don't Get Hangry by SniperA 2017-12-12T21:17:06Z

Continued:

Plugins to use:

TextMeshPro

Fixes the crap text in Unity

Post Processing Stack

Makes everything look great if you use it right

Resources:

Do the tutorials on Unity's site.

Read all of Patrick Felicia's books and follow along.

If you would like me to look over your actual source code and see if I can give any tips or tricks (I don't really know, you might be a lot better than me), I would be happy to!

If you couldn't tell, I liked the game! Nice work, it reminds me a lot of my first!

Psychoserker by Arya 2017-12-07T00:37:46Z

I like the game so I'm gonna give you a full run down.

Pike is OP. Enemy spawn rate needs to increase with time, I spent more time waiting for people to spawn than actually fighting. You need to look at some standard keyboard/mouse mappings to fix that control scheme. I felt no reason to use any of the drugs. They were not incentivized and there was no stats bar in which to see their effects.

Overall, one of the best entries I have seen today! Good game!

High score: 29 (I ran out of people to kill and no more spawned after 5 minutes of waiting)

Scrooge the Cat by clayzulah 2017-12-06T01:38:01Z

This game was great! My only issue was that the default mapping to the shift key constantly caused Windows to pull up sticky keys.

Voxel Mob Arena by Bartosz 2017-12-08T20:08:31Z

This was a pretty nice game! However, the browser version was unplayable with anything other than the pistols as the FPS dropped to 5-10.

The Amazing Game 3.0 by DjeyCreations 2017-12-08T20:26:40Z

The online version never loaded for me.

The Amazing Game 3.0 by DjeyCreations 2017-12-08T20:59:52Z

@djeycreations Edge

Crazy Trucker by Matthew Foley 2017-12-05T20:43:30Z

My favorite part was going as fast as I could and spamming space to fly over things!

Interview at Cacophony by Christoph 2017-12-07T22:25:59Z

Creative, reminds me of my Music classes: "Now, did this piece contain a harpsicord?"

Unicorn Fart Jam by BeardedMoose 2017-12-05T20:17:18Z

Pretty good concept and execution! I just didn't have anyone to play with . . .

Tiny Empires by Jack Maxwell 2017-12-06T01:48:48Z

Very interesting and I will be bookmarking this to play in Bio :P

Don't get drunk by tulipekoni 2017-12-08T20:24:32Z

I like the concept a ton and the execution of the graphics and gameplay is great as well! However, the only thing it is lacking for me is content. I don't see a way to reduce the effect and there is not much in the way of variety. But this is a LD game so I get that its really hard to fit that stuff in. Nice game!

Don't get drunk by tulipekoni 2017-12-08T23:31:10Z

@tulipekoni I am interested to see where this goes. Tag me if you do an updated version, please :P

Don't Grow Ego by Sherwood 2017-12-06T01:24:44Z

Extremely clever and the art style is phenomenal!

Crystallone - False Stars by forrest 2017-12-06T01:46:39Z

Great game overall, only thing is the controls are a bit strange as @Lawrence said!

Conversations by hillexed 2017-12-06T01:09:44Z

Very interesting, probably one of the more creative entries I have seen. I would more complete directions on how the games works and what you do, even if it is just in the description on this page. Not too much though, the confusion adds to the game's charm!

riskREWARD by Siepiau 2017-12-06T23:10:29Z

I did not care for the movement personally and the game was very sluggish in browser (~15-20 FPS), I bet your optimization guy got eaten by a bear just like mine :D Overall, a solid entry that could do with a bit more polish and shine!