Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → ubershmekel
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 51 | Every 10 seconds | Nuke Tech Experiment Labs | jam | 199 | 3.89 | 4.03 | 3.67 | 4.08 | 3.01 | 3.96 | 4.39 | 4.11 | |
| 2022 | 50 | Delay the inevitable | I don't know how to code | compo | 300 | 3.45 | 3.43 | 3.81 | 4.12 | 2.68 | 3.91 | 4.12 | 3.39 | |
| 2021 | 49 | Unstable | Unstababel | compo | 322 | 3.38 | 3.32 | 3.27 | 4.08 | 2.77 | 3.00 | 2.96 | 3.10 | |
| 2021 | 48 | Deeper and deeper | Where is Bob | compo | 576 | 3.27 | 3.33 | 2.95 | 3.43 | 2.79 | 3.19 | 4.33 | 3.20 | |
| 2020 | 47 | Stuck in a loop | Don't Go | compo | 114 | 3.79 | 3.39 | 4.52 | 2.74 | 4.40 | 3.54 | 4.01 | ||
| 2020 | 46 | Keep it alive | Egg Rocket Unicorn | compo | 490 | 3.47 | 3.24 | 2.88 | 3.39 | 3.03 | 3.63 | 3.70 | 3.88 |
What a fun, wacky ride. The only gripe I have is that the doors look nothing like doors. I played through this game twice just to be sure I got it all. I loved the alien animations, loved the enemies shooting a million bullets, and the quest was just funny. Thank you for this!
I got stuck on the third level for quite some time until I found a machine that walks the whole board. In general it feels like I'm guessing more than really designing a solution. But it is a pretty cool thing to try and turn the game of life into an actual game.
I got to level 6 or score 6 and I suspect it's unpassable from there. Is it? The platform seems too high up above the fire man. Anyhow, I had a blast, great platform game with a lot of fun challenges on a nice learning curve. One thing that caused me anxiety was the camera - it made me a bit uneasy when it moved after my dude stopped, and also when I looked left, the camera went left, and I still wanted to see what's going on at the right. Thank you for the fun mario-like!
The concept of defending a whale was cool! I don't know why you chose this control scheme instead of "up" as thrust. I also made a lunar-lander like game, but you can see the alternate control scheme there. Also - it felt like I was moving so slowly in this game, and if I held the thrust for too long, I would be too fast and fly off the map. It just felt hard to control. I also didn't know if I made any progress after every level, are there levels? Does something change after I win? Anyway, a really cool concept! Thank you for the cool whale.
Brilliant. I tried my darndest for about 10 goes to excel at these professions. Learned my lesson. One bug I'd like to report is that in singing, the X and Z icons are switched, you currently need to sing X when you see the Z character.
Where's the source code? Currently it links to the same location as the game itself...
Took me a bit to figure out how to fish too. I eventually was able to catch 2-3 in survival mode. The look and feel of the scene is gorgeous. I wish there was just a bit more to do, like maybe if some fish gave you a fight for more like 10 seconds, and you had to play with the rod too. Either way, thank you for the lovely view and mood.
Nice moody art. I wish I could see more around me so I could better navigate and move around. Would have been cool to see more creative traps that attack the companion, or giving me more tools to actively protect the companion.
This game got me so frustrated, right to the brink of giving up. And then I made it through. Perfect job on the difficulty balance. I feel like this was a platformer-puzzle game because of the way I had to figure out techniques to keep the egg in place. The frustration in a seemingly simple task reminded me of QWOP. Really good job. I enjoyed Unbroken Shell a lot. This is the first game that I see has an idea similar to mine - protecting an egg. Though my game is very different. I think the music was a bit meh, mainly for lack of reverb and a bit too rigid rhythm, but other than that - the vibes and atmosphere were great.
Wow, this is an insane amount of content. I loved all the minigames and their little evolutions. I ended up with 41,672 fame though I could have probably gone further. I just kind of tapered out and thought I'll try to go big or go home. I especially liked that some of the games were literally hackable. Like the "click the path to F" game where you can spam to win.
I enjoyed collecting different kinds of wood. The music was eery, the art was effective, but I got bored. At one point - the fire didn't go out yet, but I think I lost. It said that I survived but my friend did not. So I don't know if that was because the fire went out or a bear got to him or not. But the game wasn't communicating with me to keep me engaged for long. So I don't want to try again because I feel like I'm blindingly and aimlessly collecting wood. A progress bar for the night might help.
The concept was cute. I loved how logs were save points. The fire looked good enough. The ground and platforms looked meh. The one terrible thing about this game was the controls. You should use make sure that every game loop iteration you're testing for every button being down or not and reacting to that. A bug that caused the controls feel broken was that I could sometimes jump but could not change directions mid-air.
This was fun! It felt like the moment I had one wasp - the game was over. For some reason there were times where I thought I clicked a bee and sent it somewhere but the bee didn't go there. A stronger visual indicator for bee commands might have helped. For example I would consider showing a line when a bee is headed somewhere. Also maybe dragging that line from the bee instead of clicking would have made commands easier to issue instead of the left/right click thing.
The bullet time slow motion was awesome! I found it tough to manage the mouse and WASD! The star power-up was cool too, it felt really powerful. I didn't know what hardmode did, but I kept using it, and it was hard. I wish I could move a bit faster. I always felt like I can't make it across the screen fast enough. The art was cool! All the characters were cute and on theme.
Loved the bunnies, carrots and whatever that vegetable I was throwing was. Felt a bit like Mario 2. I wish I had a better way to protect the high ground. It felt like I had to choose, and had no real chance to fully defend.
I wish the controls were a bit tighter. Specifically I'd rather fall than cling on to clouds. It also would be nicer to see the walls that block me into the game area. Also - it might make it feel a bit more that I'm in control if I could see further out, then I could navigate away from crows.
The art is spectacular. On the gameplay side - it seems I just need to repeat left then right as fast as I can for as long as I can. Did I understand correctly? There isn't any rhythm to it, just send as many attacks as I can?
Just noticed this mechanic is kind of like the game Ordia. Not sure what to call the genre though. I guess it's a platformer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZ-L4gmbCDw
Loved the music and art. The vibe is soft and serene. I wish there was more texture to the water so I could tell whether or not I'm moving when I can only see water and no land. For some reason my first playthrough never ended. The food kept resetting, there were no more islands.
Another thing that could be better - clicking felt tedious. This is a relaxing game, just follow where my cursor is without clicks.
The sound was excellent, soothing, great guitar. The visuals were beautiful. I enjoyed this a lot, I had two kids around and they were in love with the bee and finding out what's the next color mix going to be. My computer slowed to a crawl shortly after the first few flowers. Minor bugs were that hitting "P" never felt good, I don't know if it's a toggle, or that I have to keep it pressed, it always did something different. Another minor issue was that it was hard sometimes to pollinate with the color mixes I wanted because the pollen expires which was a bit of a bummer.
mygarden.png
A lot of text. Way too much for my attention. The gameplay itself felt beyond me. But perhaps this is more interesting for folks that are into alcohol recipes? Maybe I didn't understand?
I got 33 points after 146.55 seconds. This was fun! I would have liked a bit more wood, and more ghosts, so I could really fight more often.
Loved the balloon physics. It got interesting when I realized the wasps were slightly following me so I could hang out low, then quickly climb up to pounce on them from above. Good job. I managed to score 511 before giving up.
Cool concept. I got really confused in the first few levels, I just didn't understand how to play. I eventually figured it out. Then there was a giant map which got me overwhelmed with balancing out where the megaphone and radios are. I wish it was a bit more zoomed out, or I had a minimap or some other way to know how many of each item I can reach.
Also, the giant map has some dark squares that are walls, and some that aren't. I was having trouble navigating it.
In regards to sound - I wish it was a bit less chimey dingy or perhaps it would have been nicer if it weren't so repetitive. It got hard to hear these over and over.
Overall this is a neat puzzle game concept. Thank you for it.
Loved the concept. So much potential! I only tested by myself for now. Bouncing the balloon felt a bit too random in its direction. The balloon often just fell right next to the hitter or just rebounded on the person that just hit it. I understand that's part of the challenge, but I guess it might have felt more interesting if the balloon flew even higher, even faster, and there was more "leg-work" needed. Just get the balloon flight a bit nicer and you have a real fun maker here.
Cool concept. I think the fire stopped dying after about a minute of play. Perhaps a bug? Also, the axe controls felt odd, is it a toggle that triggers axing for a few seconds? I felt like I wanted every axe to be a click, or alternatively every click will turn the axing on and off. But why would I ever not be axing?
The art was fantastic. I loved all the characters. Oddly enough, I was dead confused, and completely clueless during level 2. I just didn't realize a knight could break a rock. Then when I figured it out - the rest was just too easy. I liked the mechanic of the bishop going diagonally. I guess if there were enemies around it could make it even more interesting. Good job!
Loved the fire character. This is a tough platformer! I was close to giving up during the first level. I did give up in the second level when I couldn't see where I was going. With the "Want to be the Boshy" games, getting punished by invisible things at least has a comedic pay off. Here, the lack of vision makes you want to go faster, but you can't because it's too dangerous. So these two competing pressures caused me frustration. I'm not sure if this is a bug or not - was the ice cube supposed to prevent me from moving? Either way, great concept, and I did enjoy the one level I was able to pass :)
Interesting setup of the UI. I got a bit bored with so much text, but I did have fun seeing my symptoms rack up. Is it strange that I kind of liked to lose? Kind of like how you can enjoy violence in games but not real life, so it felt good to get sick in the game. Strange. Thanks :)
I wish I had an "up" button to go faster. The first 6 levels were too slow and boring for me. I did like the power-ups, and the swarm mechanic was interesting. I would have liked to see an infinite version of this game where you see how long you can last when it keeps getting faster and crazier.
I made a few mistakes in the tutorial that got me confused. Like using left click instead of right. I did get it the second time around. The concept was really cool. I got frustrated with the pathing of the balls, but I did like how I can use the bad pathing against the red balls in the last zone. Thanks for the cool game!
The visual art is fantastic, the music was a bit annoying for me. The game mechanic was hard, my memory is terrible. But I was able to make it to round 11. Thank you for making this. This was the most interesting application of the theme I've seen yet.
convo-11.png
Cute game! Sadly, I immediately killed myself on the first try because I couldn't see monsters, so I just kept shooting. In general I felt like I died more from shooting too much rather than by being attacked. I think this would be a lot more fun without the shots taking away power, or maybe if they took away a lot less power.
This felt like real Zelda combat, and got pretty hectic. I would have loved to see a tighter sword swing, that feels more like the character is holding the sword. It would have been nice to also not walk so slowly with the jugs in hand, I don't know why that felt a bit icky. Also jug collisions seem to be not necessary and tangled me a few times.. The art was generally beautiful, except the ghosts felt a bit out of place. Overall it was fun to play! Thank you.
@symnel @electric-blue - thank you! My kids did enjoy it. The boy even gave it multiple play-throughs.
@ironygames - I was definitely going for something that would be challenging for kids, but perhaps easy for grown ups. The idea of the egg cracking based on velocity, or falling off based on angle - would be really fun to explore. I think it would be even better if I could make the difficulty dynamic. Eg if you broke the egg or it fell off - you don't lose, you just go to an easier timeline.
@commanderstitch - lol
@rjerez192 - thanks for the feedback. I'm pretty weak as far as art goes, and I didn't know the engine before starting the project. I was a bit let down by Phaser being geared towards pixel art and not handling SVGs well. I hope to get better as an artist/designer!
@darriasart - there is an alternate ending you might want to check out :) I added clues to the description.
@lalada - nice! Thank you :)
@mehrdadsh - thanks :)
@sneakycocoon - check out the clues for the alternate ending. I do wonder what you mean by sideways movement. With Lunar Lander controls, you need to precisely control the angle of your ship to really go "up". It is a control scheme that not everyone likes. I'm going to assume that's what you meant. Please let me know if I misunderstood.
@plopmenz - this game was too easy for my 6 year, and too hard for my 7 year old. So I tried to balance it around them. What age of kids did you see struggle?
@snory - that's excellent feedback ❤️ thank you. On the acceleration, seems to be you're not the only one who felt that way.
@jk5000 @goffmog @malai @gaminghamster @yolziii @clement-k @senokos @jessefreeman - thank you!
@kevinworkman - a cool thing is now they want more games with other characters. This Ludum Dare got me real inspired.
@adamcyounis - thank you for the feedback! I'm pretty bad with drawing, but comfortable with code. The game indeed has a small amount of content. I suspect you didn't evaluate the game as one designed for kids. In general the different perspectives and criteria you could use for judging make LD metrics hard to be precise with. I hope to level up the visual fidelity for the next one.
@sheetcode - I was thinking hard about the amount of rainbows to eat. The game has very little content because I didn't employ any map editor, just code. So the amount of rainbows was a way to buy more time for users to experience the control mechanic. In hindsight, I think maybe less one row would have been a better call.
@martiansteve - thank you. I'm glad you liked the sad ending.
@blobo @hakro - awfully positive and nice of you to say, thank you :)
@alex457 - Thank you. I planned a laser dodging level, but ran out of time. Seems this game was not viral or more widely interesting, so I hope I can get more content in the next compo.
The concept of running away from something like a dark void is really cool! It was hard not seeing where the thing that's chasing me is when I'm in first-person view. The sound was a bit crazy, I don't know if it was trying to encourage or discourage me, but it was a big soup of voices. What I loved the most was the bright rainbow colors. You really know your graphics. With a bit of gameplay polish, this could be really great.
Relaxing. I wish I could do more with the cells. I kind of wanted to use them as brush strokes. At the end of the day, I wasn't able to create much with it. But your voice is amazing. Thank you.
I love tower defense games, and this one had me confused at first with what the mansplainer does. After re-reading the instructions, I was able to win. This was a cute concept. The only thing I would like to improve would be the readability with what's going on - sometimes it wasn't clear if a character was shooting or not. Either way I enjoyed it. Thank you!
I apologize, I kind of just busted through without reading much, but I did get to the end. I am lord of the groundhogs now, and I killed the dragon with the shield. I guess I'm not the audience for these types of stories. I kind of played the memory game here. I actually do like D&D with friends, but I think the game would have been more fun with some sort of reward. Even some sound effect when I click the correct option would have been more carrots for me to eat along the way and keep me engaged. The art style was very nice, and sat well with the story telling. Thank you for the game :)
This fit the theme very well and I like having knobs that I need to figure out what they do. Though at one point, it felt just frustrating forgetting which knob does what, maybe if the telegraphing of which spinning star I was affecting was stronger, it would have been less frustrating. I had a lot of good vibes in this techno party, and in general the idea of causing the lines to dance like another existing dance is a cool, and interesting direction. If the music was slightly less repetitive, and maybe had a more varied bass line, I think I could have played for longer. I think this was a unique idea and I did enjoy it. Thank you for the game :)
I loved the art style, and the following snakes was an interesting spin on the genre. I was curious what would be the optimal strategy for filling the field. With that said, snake is still kind of just snake. I wonder if there could have been more interesting things happening to keep my interest. Still, it was a delightful spin on a familiar classic. Thank you for the game.
This conveyor belt puzzle is incredibly polished for compo. The challenge curve was perfect. Every time I felt perplexed or bored, the next solution and interesting mechanic showed up. The art style is beautiful and fits with the theme perfectly. The music was a great fit as well. Thank you for the game!
The level was a bit too simple, and the game itself felt too linear, without anything really interesting happening in the mechanics or the story. Would be cool to see more stuff. Maybe I missed something?
The UX was a bit confusing at first, I didn't understand what were the upgrades vs downgrades, I didn't realize that it was a double-edged-upgrade system because the buttons weren't clearly buttons. The difficulty curve, I'm not sure if it's 100% calibrated yet, there were levels that were super-easy, and sometimes super-hard, even though the variation was not too high. In general it felt like the game ran out of content after 1-2 levels.
The only thing I wished for here was more variation, perhaps a way to get that goal would have been to make the downgrades and upgrades more extreme. That way each level wouldn't feel exactly like the previous.
The art and audio was awesome, I loved it, really got me in the tron mood to kill robots. The sword animation was legit fire. Would be cool if you developed this further. Thank you for the game.
The vibes were great here, I almost felt like I was in a mini-game in Bioshock Infinite. The music sat very well with the task, and the environment art was beautiful. The task of connecting people's calls felt like a grind, but potentially not in a bad way - if the story that's being told was a bit more compelling, or if there was something more rewarding to the core gameplay loop. I feel like with this concept, you can go very far with a good story. I would leave to try this out with a fleshed out story. The textual instructional material was ok, but maybe the pins needed to be spaced out a bit more, and even have some more color coordination than just the wire, to avoid news like myself from completely misunderstanding. Also - when I die - it would have been nice to have a very specific message like "that wire wasn't the right PAIR" or something. Still this was an extremely polished game for a jam. Very well done. Thank you for the game :)
Falling down and finding mushrooms was really rewarding at first. Going from 100% move speed to 200% feels good. But then 200 to 300, is not as good. And the unpredictable motion of the bullseye made me feel like it was hopeless up until ~500% when I got the bullseye. Even then, when I won, I felt like I didn't deserve the win, it was just luck. The concept itself seems like it has potential. And it did bring back memories me of that N64 game, Pilotwings which was a lot of fun. Thank you for the game!
This was a really literal take on the theme, and a cool one too. I liked controlling the marble, even though it felt like it was accelerating a bit too much at times. The only big thing that I wish this game had was some sort of scoring system, or something that evolved while I was playing. Like if it were to accelerate, or different colors of blocks would show up. When I died, it felt like I hadn't done anything, because I didn't have a high score to beat. And because of the loopiness, it just felt too repetitive. But again, the concept was super theme oriented and unique. Thank you for the game :)
I loved the chill music :) I didn't know about `if(!0)` so I used `if(>1)` instead. This game got a bit easier once I just used all my `if` statements as vertical separators. Once I figured out a mechanic that I could exploit, it kind of took away from the fun, though then the game felt a bit like "Among Us" in that I was starting to suspect numbers, and clear them. The problem I had I guess is that I wasn't incentivized to be more creative with these barriers. It could have been nice to unlock different statements like maybe just start with `if` and earn the `while`. Once I figured out how to do level 2, I jumped to level 10 and beat it easily.
A bug, or maybe something I missed was I didn't know how to get back to the levels menu after I win or lose. I had to refresh the page.
Also, I wonder what more mechanics and depth you could add onto this. The idea of having a bad cell, is cool, and it is interesting trying to find it. Like maybe different values behave differently. Maybe some impostors do a specific kind of change of number - like maybe some reduce the value of others? I'm really curious where you can take this. Thank you for the game :)
I kept dying right after getting up to the moving platform via the fan. It seems I can't leave the screen to the right or left. Maybe I missed a control or game mechanic? Please advise.
As far as platformers go - the controls didn't feel very tight, and the hitbox/bounding boxes were a bit awkward too. Would be cool to see if you can make it a bit more polished. Thank you for the game.
Too bad this is all there is! The art style is beautiful, and the storytelling was funny and interesting. Even the effects were pretty good. Too bad there isn't a game there yet to play. Please keep working on sharpening the game building skills here. Maybe find another programmer, or another coach to make sure you're on track with building a game.
Lunar landers are usually boring because the controls are too simple. The binary star system was super interesting, I think you barely scratched the surface of more interesting gravity schemes. I would have loved to see eg a teleport, stronger rockets, heavier planets, and just more gameplay around the gravity. A blackhole might be neat too. The art was charming, the sound felt real vintage and arcadey. I had a lot of fun for the short play. I did find one bug, when I was on the last level and died right on the body of an astronaut and during the level reset, that astronaut didn't show up, so it was much easier to win. It was actually a pretty lucky bug because I was really struggling with that last level. Because there was so few levels, I assume you didn't use a tile editor like https://www.mapeditor.org/ so please check it out if it helps. I would have loved to have more levels with a more gradual difficulty curve. Thank you for the game :)
It took me a while to figure out the cards based controls. It felt like these could have just been buttons. And in the end the gameplay was just to go to every room, investigate, reset time, then go and do the things. This felt a bit not rewarding, as though it's just a grind. It's a bit strange that just a short 5 button adventure could feel like a grind. I loved your voice narration and the audio overall was cool. The mood was a strong sci-fi one. I was happy to win at the end, so you got that challenge level right. I think it would've been better to auto-play the audio logs, so it would feel like the thing is actually happening, vs me reading about what happened in a journal. Just to make it feel more alive. But the concept from a story-telling perspective was fun too. Thank you for the game.
Everything visual about this game was beautiful, I can't believe you drew so much art for this game in such a short time. The spell mechanics were interesting, but somehow fell flat as far as strategic depth. The biggest problem I have with this game is that none of my actions actually felt rewarding, it was almost like an aimless walk around the board. When I say rewards - there are many things you could consider - a currency, a sound effect, a particle effect, an item, an upgrade, pretty much any thing of consequence would level up the experience and give it more meaning.
The audio was good, and set the right mood, and the although there were a few bugs with dragging cards around, there was nothing game breaking. Just a bit more practical game design, and investment in the results of the interactions would go a long way. This is a pretty promising entry, I believe you'll do well in the competition and I look forward to seeing a more polished card game here. Thank you for the game.
This was a cool typing game. I wish it would have either told me my wpm at the end - or even better - if the words would tell a story about the ants I'm hiring. The art style was simple, but cute and effective. I cared about those little workers. The craziness of having multiple words to take care of was effective in causing me to worry and just chase words as fast as I could. Sometimes it felt like the wrong word was picked up, that's probably because of my mis-typings. I wonder if having backspace as a feature would be useful. Either way - it was pretty cool. Thank you for the game.
The minimalistic visual style was actually awesome and fitting for an AI-gone-wild sci-fi thriller story. It was beautiful. The music was cool, though in that short amount of time it somehow managed to get repetitive. The mini-game where I had to move cubes around was cool, and a surprising turn of game design. I was a bit disappointed when I didn't get any other mini-games. In the end, it seems like all I had to do was visit each room twice. I understand this was made under time pressure, so if I ended up feeling like I wanted more of this content - you did a good job. The flash-light effect was awesome, and the story and mood were fun. Please get more mini games, and also beef up the story a bit. It looks promising and already is fun. Thank you for the game.
I enjoyed getting some musical ear training in this game. I wish I got some points, or some progression. I know the theme is being stuck in a loop. But does that mean I have to not be rewarded for my efforts? The idea of being literally in a loop, did actually work a bit towards the sense of everything being repetitive but in a more interesting way than just a simple line that never ends. With that said, I expected something to happen when I got back down to the bottom. I did enjoy this game, and the music, while annoying, it did get me hyped and in the mood to kill zombies. Maybe consider less treble effects, and a bit more melodic and harmonic tones in between the vibe setting tension parts of the music to give the ear some rest from the tension. Thank you for the game!
I loved the level design and the difficulty curve. The art was a bit distracting, I'm guessing this is mostly programmer art, it was very clearly telegraphing everything, but it felt just a bit too scribbled. I wish there was some sound and music, it definitely felt a bit too quiet when I played. But I did have a lot of fun with the challenges. Thank you for the game :)
The art style is neat. I wish there was some kind of twist or reward during the gameplay. It all felt mind meltingly mundane. I think that was the goal, but I'm not happy about it. Maybe the goal is to make me reflect on how boring my life is already in real life? You got me. Anyway, thank you for the game :)
I'm not sure what I'm missing. It seems that I create fake news and choose who to give it to, and sometimes it gets shared, and sometimes it changes people's opinions, but I rarely figured out if it did change an opinion. Perhaps it would help if there was particle effects or a border around opinions that recently were changed. I just couldn't understand if I was making progress or not. The idea is kind of cool, and relevant especially nowadays. It kind of reminds me of the game Jones, which was a game about getting an education and a job, but it was just a very mundane simulator, kind of like this, but it got a lot of fun out of simple things. This seemed like a game with a lot of potential if the mechanics were a bit more refined. Keep working on it please :) Thank you for the game.
This was a fun spin on rhythm games + platformer games. Reminds me of when I was in first grade and played Mario Teaches Typing, which was not a platformer but you would type letters and do the platformer things if you typed the right letter. So as far as rhythm games go - this was not satisfying to match the rhythm for each beat because I didn't know when to hit the space bar. It was satisfying to learn the "song" of each level, and figuring out how to beat the current challenge. The characters and art was unique, cute, funny, and very clearly telegraphed what I needed to do (except for the spacebar timing). The amount of levels, and the difficulty curve felt perfect. You really taught me how to play in the first few levels, and got me into doing the complicated stuff of the last levels in a way that flowed well. I was always challenged, and interested.
The music felt a bit repetitive, which is a bit of a surprise for a rhythm game. Maybe you should have played a bit more with the bass, and varied the chords a bit for different levels. Or muting some instruments some times, to make a longer loop that doesn't drill into your brain as consistently. Regardless of that, it was actually a cute and memorable song, and I enjoyed the game very much. Thank you for the game :)
I couldn't figure out the over-powered berry combo and kept losing. Is there a way to sustain life on such a harsh planet? Am I just supposed to eventually die, always? I was kind of hoping to find a berry combo that would give me a lot of life, and make me feel good, and explore the world. The controls were ok, and the art was simple but effective. I just wish I could have figured out what it was that the game really wanted me to do as far as mixing.
The shadow of myself being the zombies was a cool effect which made me think about where I want to go, to make for an easier path for my future self. Nice trick!
Thank you for the game.
That music was funny :) The tilting kind of made me uncomfortable. The art style was fun and unique. As far as the map design - I wish there were more levels and maybe a speed-runner friendly route, feels like you kind of have to take a roundabout path. Thank you for the game!
I remember playing Icy Towers, it was a lot of fun. Initially I thought the bouncing off the walls was just a glitch. But then when it turned out to be an actual mechanic I was dazzled. This was very hard. I fell about 150 times, and I got through all the levels at least once, they started repeating themselves. I wonder if I'd kept going something would have changed, but it was already hard enough. It actually hurt my middle finger to use the up key so precisely. Thank you for the brilliant mechanics and level design!
This started out feeling like Contra, and ended up being a Mega Man. The levels weren't broken, which is surprising considering how complicated they seem. The power ups got me excited. And the enemies were just intelligent enough to pose a threat without slowing me down too much. The boss fights were cool. The controls were tight. The only issues I had were with the maps not telegraphing what was going some basic things like picking up items. The art was fantastic the mechanics design was awesome. I just had a blast, thank you so much for the game.
The biggest complaint about this game I have is that it doesn't respect the time of the people that are trying to play it. I lost all my progress, that I had to kill myself 30 times to get, because of the "hit ESC" moment in the middle of the first level :( Also in the first part of the game, having to use 10 bodies to survive the fall was a bit excessive, 3 dead bodies would have been enough, I think :)
As far as mechanics go - the dead bodies thing was cool, but did you need me to die 10 times before I could leave the first ledge? I personally like very hard games like "I wanna be the boshy" but you need to earn the player's trust and show very good mechanics and level design for the game to be fun once you go into the troll-game-designer territory. I think this game and concept has potential, and your visual and audio art was pretty good. So I would love to see this game with more polish. Thank you for the game.
This is probably what a Frog Fractions RPG would play like. I loved the different sound effects and music. You have a knack for the non-sense slapstick jokes. The art visually was nice too. Nothing made sense, but that's kind of what you were going for, which I respect. I don't know how I feel about there existing over-powered strategies like the diaper in the first section. I kind of wanted to have more things to do, more cards, more of those scenes, and more impact from the decisions I was making. I beat it on the first go, which was probably too easy. I did want to play more, and I did beat it. So what I'm saying is you did a good job, I just want more :) Also, please do music, I know you can probably beat box too or something :P
Thank you for the game.
I survived 3 rounds and killed 11 mages. The graphics were super cool in a programmer art way. So psychedelic and matrix-tron-like. The mechanics of the battles were a bit awkward. It took me a while to figure out how to fight. I still don't understand what is the time rewind mechanism useful for. Is it to somehow cause mages to step into their own spells? The narrator and character design were engaging and cool. Though I'm not sure if I played through all of it. The evil mages got a bit repetitive with their behaviors. It looks like you did a lot of work to make this unique angle of a mage battle, and it definitely feels wizard-like. Thank you for the game.
Controlling the bodies is a really cool mechanic and I wish there was more stuff to do with it. You can try https://www.mapeditor.org/ Tiled for editing maps and tweaking them. I think you could have done giant jumps, activating traps, and other tricks with the bodies. I didn't like that the bodies went away after just 3 deaths, I think, I kind of wanted to see the madness of many bodies. The art style although minimalistic, it really did the job well. The high contrast visual with the synth audio music really gave it like a noir platformer feel. I'm amazed that this is your first game. Congratulations on finishing something that is fun to play. Please do actually develop a few levels that rely on the interesting body control mechanic, it would be really interesting to see. Maybe I would actually reconsider the button mapping - I'm not sure if my left hand was the best for controlling the thing that can die rather than the right hand. The hitboxes or bounds of the shapes sometimes were also iffy. If you have fake platforms - then do many of them, not just one, please, because the troll effect actually just seemed to be a bug. Otherwise - really cool concept. Thank you for the game.
The main gripe I have is the sound that plays when I die - it's like a big bad spring goes off. But otherwise - this is a tranquil game, with a lot of replayability, and fun. When I first launched the executable - I had no idea what to do - I thought I control the little white square for some reason :P
The dead airplanes chasing me did make me think a lot about where I want to fly and how, so it even smells a bit like there's strategic depth to this game that I've yet to figure out. On top of that - the visuals are simple, clean and pretty. Awesome stuff, I had a lot of fun. Thank you for the game :)
The camera moving with the character collecting ice was a bit disorienting. The controls didn't feel very good, I still kind of felt like I was aimlessly floating in space. The high risk of completely flying off into space and losing, versus the small reward of yet another planet's worth of ice, made the experience a bit more anxious than fun and rewarding. The art style was kind of cool, and the idea of collecting ice was cool too :) I do not know really the connection to the them though. Thank you for the game!
I think the music really hurt the experience. It was a bit sharp, and came in and out at times. I think the instruments were a bit too strong on the treble side, you should try and master game music to have a balance of bass and melody. Maybe a few more variations of the loop would also help it not feel so repetitive. About the game mechanics - something about them felt like a cookie cutter pattern match. Usually these programming games have something that's more motivating and rewarding than just reaching a flag. I think the puzzles themselves were good for the genre. I think I got up to level 8. Maybe there are more cool mechanics after that? Either way, it was fun for a bit, thank you for the game.
Why is the song question unskippable? It's so long and making a mistake there you have to sit and wait for a minute. Did I miss the skip button? The audio design here with the music, the boos, and the awwws, was AWESOME. I got a good game show vibe going, and the visual art was on point too. I wish I could play more, but I was not going to wait for the song to finish again. Pretty cool game, thank you :)
@yangying thank you for clarifying. I didn't get that message at all. If the goal was to exemplify the grind of the gamer - then maybe the text itself should have been more on the nose? Eg "So you want to be a PRO gamer? Pass this quiz" and add more fluffy questions like "how do you get good?" with answers like "play more" and "get a sponsorship" etc :)
The audio was very loud and sharp. I would recommend putting on headphones to test it before shipping. A technique to make sure the loudness levels are correct is to take a popular very well produced song. I like to use Despacito, you can use Bohemian Rhapsody. Maybe some even crappy music would have taken the edge away from these sound effects that felt like they were punching my ears. As far as gameplay goes in a board game, I was a bit confused because my inventory was in pictures, but the store had textual item names. That's about as far as I was comfortable exploring in the game. I think it could be a cool board game if you fix some of the rough edges. Thank you for the game.
Thanks @pixel-maniacs it's a finished level. It's just very hard to understand your surroundings. I would recommend trying to draw a map. I need to squeeze in some more ways to boost the confidence and ability of players to understand what's going on.
Actually - how far were you able to get?
Thank you good folks so much for letting me know how far you got! I should have added way more little floating sound points along the way to help anchor where you are. Kind of like the snakes. I might add a few more and mention them in the change log.
@simone @rakowu the "stuck in a loop" theme connection is the spawn reset cycle, and the abusive "please stay" relationship with the narrator. There is an end to the game, if you manage to get to the top right, you'll find the final sound event you don't want to miss.
Also for folks that have already gotten frustrated - I've added a clue to the last spoiler - a map image: https://dontgo.netlify.app/assets/tilemaps/platformer.png
I feel the concept has potential. The idea of playing against myself, which was my initial impression, was interesting. But it's just a good paddle, and a bad paddle with inverted controls, which just wasn't rewarding compared to the punishment of controls being inverted. The art was simple, but it fit the arcade style. I didn't figure out how to navigate the top-level game board selector. I enjoyed the air-hockeyness, it really shined through. Thank you for the game.
I'm not sure if it was a bug or not, but I think on day 4, I had nothing to do and essentially I was stuck. Either way - the art was on point, and the game definitely sent a message that resonated with me. I liked how I could very quickly do the routine once I learned it. I wish there was more content, and more of those "oh this is life" moments. Please flesh it out a bit more, it looks promising. Maybe I missed something? Thank you for the game.
I had so much fun playing that I had to play this twice. The mechanic of being reborn is interesting and I think you barely scratched the surface of what you can do with it. I wonder how you built the levels. Everything was super blocky, and I suspect you did not use a map editor like https://www.mapeditor.org/ or https://deepnight.net/tools/led-2d-level-editor/ and I don't know if that's on purpose. With a map editor - you can probably create many more maps to play much with much more ease and speed. This game was a bit buggy and very ugly, but super charming and fun. Thank you for the game!
Wow, the idea is really cool. A map that changes every time you loop through it. The changes were so subtle, that they somehow made me a bit upset. I wish the controls were a bit tighter, sometimes a jump would not register, and in general the character just doesn't feel like it moves correctly. But the concept was really cool. I kind of gave up after I got the green card.
The art was beautiful, the level design was interesting. I wish the placement of stuff did not reset, it was just frustrating. There were moments where I felt I solved the puzzle, but the grid and hitboxes just made me lose. I think this was a really good submission and I wish there was a but of snap-to-grid, and a few bug fixes. I can definitely see this as a successful game you can extend. This game is somewhere in between The Incredible Machine, and the Piggies angry birds game. I especially liked the levels that allowed me to solve them in multiple different ways, so I felt unique and clever. Thank you for the game!
The mechanic, and the idea were really interesting. I like the environmental message. But I wish there was something I could do once I was stuck. I felt really trapped and helpless, especially when I was stuck far from the crabs. Perhaps another mechanic that would allow me to set myself free would have been nice. Even just a timer on being stuck would be better than a forever debuff. But I did really enjoy the concept, thank you for the game!
I really like side scroll shooters like this, butt the controls were a bit too slow, and the enemy attack patterns a bit too repetitive. The rocks were hard to see sometimes, and I didn't realize that right-click activated the laser, some visual clues for that would be cool. The art style was impressive, and had some beautiful parts to it like the backgrounds, the enemies, and the particle effects, though the watch-ship itself just didn't feel like it fit in thematically with the rest of the game. I personally had to click way too many times it felt, and got tired, but the enemy waves and difficulty level felt like it was on a good curve. The curve for how powerful my weapons were felt a bit too flat. Pretty fun game, thank you for it :)
The visual art was fantastic, the characters are really cute and wacky. I wish the game mechanics had more of a risk-reward trade-off. The fact that I can always hide under floor made it so I didn't have strategic decisions or resource decisions to make. It was too easy. But the concept of haunting and hiding is cool, and this game felt like it could have a lot more depth added to it and it has potential to be even cooler. Thank you for the game!
The game mechanic of recording actions and replaying them was fun, and super fit the theme. The level design was delightful, and was interesting through out the whole game. Hard to believe this a compo submission. Brilliant. Thank you so much for this cool game.
I didn't quite understand what the loops powers were for. The idea of selecting ingredients to match a person ordering food is pretty common, but I did like your darker take on this. For some reason, the challenging orders felt like they were just hard because the UI was needlessly complicated. I think it could have been cool to see stuff like longer combos, much more varied colors, and less of the having to squeeze between the very tightly packed purple. The fact that I could mess up an order for lack of micro precision just didn't feel too much like fun to me. But I did like the art style. Thank you for the game.
This is so hard. My brain melted on level 8. The loop busting mechanic, and elements seem to offer a ton of depth for interesting puzzles. I was engaged, and challenged. The biggest flaw in my experience was the learning curve. The level texts really had to explain what to do, and I still didn't get it until a while into the game. It was impressive that the space of possible actions was open ended enough to keep me going around in circles for so long. Often puzzles become just a brute force task. This was interesting and fun. Thank you for the game!
The awesome part about this game, is the transition from being clueless to figuring out the controls. It's a real awkward way to drive, and I often whiffed. Which reminded me of Rocket League. I feel like the concept is a bit limited, and I didn't finish the game wanting to try more level concepts. So the game was interesting, but the feeling I got was that there isn't potential for more depth. But maybe I'm wrong. Either way, this was a really unique game. Thank you for the challenge!
I always knew counting is hard. But not knowing whether I need to count kills or sightings was even harder. The art by itself was cool, and I would have loved to experience all these cool visual effects and different bullet stylees. The synth wave vibes you created were amazing! I'm just so bad at counting I died at -300 and got too frustrated to keep playing. Still it was a lot of fun to look at. Thank you for the game.
This was quite a text adventure. I loved how I felt like a real conspiracy theorist, connecting the dots in a deep conspiracy. I felt like it took a lot of clicking to get through, and it was a bit hard to understand what my goal was and how to reach it. When I got the aha moment, it was a bit too late in the game loop. It would be nice if there was some sort of sense of progress in the game. You absolutely nailed the theme, it felt truly deeper and deeper! Thank you for the game.
I was able to drink from the mug, and when my boat sunk for the second time I gave up. The art style was cool, but I wish I had a bit more sense of purpose while playing. Maybe sounds would have made me understand better if I'm progressing or not. Thank you for the game.
The characters were cute, and this might've been more fun if I had an extra person here with me. I thought for a moment that this was a co-op digger game. It could have been fun to have a few more levels. But it did give me a nice nostalgic digger vibe, so thank you for the game.
The visuals were pretty and the sound design was really cool, I definitely felt under water there with the varying jet sounds and bubbles. I wish there was just a bit more to do or see while I was going deeper and deeper. I got to 600 and something and it felt like there wasn't anything else for me to see. Was there? Did I miss it? The control scheme was a bit surprising because I kind of thought the outline was where the jet will be coming out of, but I did get the hang of the controls pretty quickly. If there was just a bit more reward happening while I was going down I might have tried to go even further. Thank you for the game.
I couldn't get this to work. I tried using my high pitch and low pitch voice. It seemed like mostly the bird goes up when I talked, and down when I didn't. Your art style is super cool, high contrast flying above trees and cows had a great vibe to it. If there was one thing that was toughest though it was the strange hitboxes. The fun part in flappy bird was that even though it was hard, it felt genuinely fair and tight controls. So when I died in flappy bird it felt like it was my fault, which is fun, in this game, it felt like it was the game's fault. Still, thank you for the game.
The technical visual effects in this are INSANELY GOOD for compo. The lighting, shadows, particle effects, glowing things, it all looked really cool. The WASD controls alongside just having a dash attack caused me to become disoriented at times. The controls were responsive, but it still felt like I lost control multiple times when playing. I wasn't able to kill too many monsters because the strategy to do that just didn't seem to work for me, I kept getting hurt by foes that I failed to shake off. Maybe also consider limiting the range of the boss projectiles to allow for an attack and retreat strategy. Still it shows a lot of potential and depth that I even had fun trying many times to get as far as I can in the combat. Thank you for the game.
The models were cool, but I understand they were outsourced. I personally loved Heroes of Might and Magic for the base building and cool art, but this game only had the map movement and battles :/
I feel the most important thing for me in a Ludum Dare game is to get a sense of the gameplay, and you didn't quite get there as far as defining a game loop. It's more of a walk around the map and fight. Please focus on one mechanic and polish it as much as you can, so we can play a game. There really isn't time for multiple different mechanics in such a short game jam.
The map model was a bit too high into the camera at times, the pathing was awkward on the map. There was no AI for the enemy, though that was actually thing for me to fight myself. I did enjoy the walk through memory lane. Thank you for the game.
What a brilliantly fresh take on lunar lander! I enjoyed learning the difficult controls, and working my way up to dominating space. After I bought everything I closed the game, I hope I didn't miss anything. This game also reminded me a bit of good old Subspace which was a nice multiplayer space ship shooter. The scope, polish and balance of the game is spectacular for a compo game. If there was one thing - I wish the game gave me some reward for fighting the baddies, like maybe one of them drops a golden rock? Either way - it was a pleasure, thank you for the game.
The idea here of having a small unit of troops entering close quarters combat is cool. Having control over where to go vs where to shoot was interesting and somewhat challenging for a bit. For some reason it didn't feel like there was action, or strategy to be found. The game loop for me was just to slowly inch up against one enemy at a time, and I didn't feel like it was thrilling during the fight either because it was just me backing away while the enemy chased. I'm not sure what's missing, but this game might play better in a scenario where you're being chased by the purple circles, and have to use the maze to your advantage to run away. Maybe. Either way the concept was cool, thank you for the game.
All I did was jump right at the start of the first level and got this error...
Error
plycommon.lua:40: attempt to concatenate global 'urightCorner' (a nil value)
Traceback
plycommon.lua:40: in function 'oneOfCornersInWall' plyjump.lua:30: in function 'bhv' game.lua:149: in function 'updfunc' main.lua:74: in function 'update' [C]: in function 'xpcall'
Once I got past the error - I actually kind of enjoyed the game. The controls are BUSTED, super strange gravity that goes up slowly and down quickly. But it was all broken in a charming way. I actually had fun jumping around and shooting maggots. If there is one thing that would have made this even better for me - it would be having no latency for when I fire a fireball - it just feels like I'm not the one shooting when there's that bit of delay between the key down and the actual fireball showing up. Still it was fun and a bit interesting to navigate the maze and maggots. Thank you for the game!
I got to level 3. I'm not sure I quite figured out the controls. It was an interesting idea to let me play with the rope momentum using a shotgun. I felt like the enemies were too small, and the obstacles too surprising, maybe I was moving too fast and impatiently? Also it felt like it wasn't too rewarding when I passed a level. And I didn't really understand why I died when I died. The concept itself is super creative and cool though. Even if it were without enemies I would have probably had fun gliding down and shooting things. Thank you for the game.
I made it 220 space things in. The bullet hell was fun. I enjoyed getting chased by the silly ships. It was cool to see the future space levels that were in orange. I mean it was cool at the beginning, and then it became really noisy and hard to see the red folks. Perhaps the future levels need to be darkened? Also, I think there's a bug where I can collect more than 3 hearts, but I only see up to 3 hearts. This game would be awesome with sound or music, not too heavy sfx, but just something to get you in the deep space vibe. The game played nicely, thank you.
I generally love tower defense games, so this was interesting for me to analyze. I kind of adored the art style of the dwarves, and wanted them to win. The mana indicator was a bit hard for me to figure out, and the tutorial was overwhelming. But the idea of setting up traps is very unique and cleverly executed. I think this game has potential to be an interesting puzzler/action game. If there was a bit more of a sense of progression - which is key to tower defense games - unlocking cool abilities or towers, like the beast, then I would have probably tried a few more loops of the game. Don't show me all your cards too fast :P Thank you for the game!
After 1048 seconds, dying on jungle world 3 was more a gift than a punishment. This game is SUPER hard. The hardest part is staying focused for so long. I feel exhausted after focusing on this little grey character spinning on a giant grey map. Please bring up the contrast of everything. It's already hard enough to escape getting hit, but my eyes were really tired just tracking my own body. Why do the levels have to be so long too? I guess if I was better, it would have been ok to complete this game in about 10 minutes. But the loop of shooting, scooting, rinse and repeat got old, and then the actual game became how long can I focus without blinking. I really liked the control scheme of slow shots with one mouse button and faster movement with wide shots with another. It was interesting and the enemy design was cool. I just wish I had a chance of playing this to the end with shorter levels. Thank you for the game.
This game was pretty spot on for the theme. Falling deeper and deeper into the pit. Only bummer was the dead-ends were a bit rough. I guess that's ok for an RNG based game. The falling experience was exciting, and it was definitely tense and fun playing. I can't wait to see what kinds of upgrades you'll add alongside the green plus. Thank you for the game.
Spot on with the theme :) I didn't like having to click or hit ctrl so many times. But I did like digging around the monsters. I felt like it's just about getting lucky and finding more shoes, that's the only strategy to getting a better high score. I wish there was a bit more skill involved because dodging the monsters was pretty easy. Especially at the fire stage, it felt kind of pointless, like the game was killing me and I lost control which wasn't too cool. Otherwise the mechanics worked well and I did feel like I'm digging straight down. Thank you for the game.
my-grid.jpg I played way past when I got bored. I wanted to make a million dollars but everything slowed to a halt around when I got to bus upgrades of $28K. Usually I really enjoy this sort of game. The problem is this one has no strategic tension. Every action feels pointless. I wish there was more of a cost to my actions, and something to get me thinking on what I should do next. The visual itself was great, and it was fun seeing the buses path. Thank you for the game.
Edit - btw I do love MiniMetro!
This was a sweet experience. The giant money sign in front and center of the UI, the tediousness of carrying only one item at a time, and the pointlessness of ladders, kind of detract from the simplicity of the cool multiplayer experience. Just being in a place with a few folks that are building something 2D, would have been cool by itself. So it's interesting to see that you added more mechanics that somewhat took away from the experience. The music is just super relaxing and chill. Overall I had fun, thank you for the game.
Wow, I had a 37 minute session here. Got the level 3 pickaxe, level 2 bag, level 2 light. I initially thought it was 100% boring (hah!) but in the end I got in this loop where I was excited to discover new rocks and how deep can I go. It was a real balancing act between the resources health/money/pickaxe/battery which kept me busy and interested for longer. I do wish that I could have dug upwards, or had a way to place a block, it felt just a bit too easy to get into situations that I literally cannot get out of. For example - one time the elevator went up without me and I was stuck forever underground :( Still though I had a great time exploring my underworld of gems. Thank you for the game.
space-dwarf.png
By the end of it, my ears were really hurting. But I guess that's the cost of going 10 million km into space. At the start of the game I enjoyed figuring out the economic tension between the data/gold/distance mechanisms. At one point, pretty early on, the game kind of felt broken. I couldn't see my ship anymore, it was just a thin line of pixels, and they were always shooting at one enemy ship at a time. I didn't even figure out what the enemy ships were doing that was problematic. I guess I got too rich too fast. Though I did enjoy being rich, and "breaking" the game, in the end, the zapping noise of the laser is what made me feel like I should quit. Maybe I should also clarify that it did feel cool to break the game, kind of like throwing cards in the air. Thank you for the game.
This was a cool game. It took me a bit to figure out what to do. I think I might even try again to beat it later. I really felt like an exorcist for a moment there. The challenge curve through the level felt difficult but the controls were so tight that I always felt in control. The art style was functional, unique, and interesting. I wish it was a bit better telegraphed that the generator pushes the elevator down - in general - don't explain the game, make the game explain itself better. Twas a great experience. Thank you for the game!
The character and environment art were interesting. I liked how abstract and clear everything was. The game was a bit short, and I wish that I didn't get stuck on walls. They story was cool, seeking out a flower was rewarding. I guess if this game was light on content, I kind of wanted a better punchline than to just walk out of the screen with the flower in my hand at the end. Was a fun few minutes though, thank you for the game.
Lol, thanks! I'm still working on this. I just published to see what it looks like. Please check back in about 1.5 hours. I hope to improve a few things.
Wizarding is a cool theme, combining keystrokes to make spells is neat. The fact that the spell is made of 2 characters - X vs O, made it feel like they are opposites and I'm concocting a good vs evil spell in different ways. Even though technically it's just letters, somehow it felt like I was "combining" magical bits. The coolest part was the mobility and the easter egg under the map which I would have never found without your guidance - was cute. I wish there were more mobility tests of my skill with the wand. Perhaps you should have chosen between the animal manipulation and the mobility stuff to reduce scope but add polish? Either way this was fun, thank you for the game.
The art fits perfectly with the action. The difficulty curve and level design was perfect. The mechanics were interesting to learn and I had a great time playing. I saw the sax frog and just wanted more levels! Some of the bubble controls felt a bit hard to understand even near the end, but it was still fun to mess with. Please make more levels! Thank you for the game.
The art is beautiful! From the characters to the environment, all the pixels got me in the zombie escape action vibe. Even though you didn't make the music - it was a good choice for the battle and exploration phases. I got frustrated with having to kill zombies because there was so little ammo, and they just were so harmless, it felt wrong to kill them. Have you seen "I Am Legend"? I felt like I'm the bad guy in this game for some reason. I felt like I really wanted more ammo, more guns, and another zombie type. The game really sets up an appetite for more. It would actually be fun to fight a ton of these simple zombies if there was more ammo in abundance, there should be some better balance between ammo boxes and zombie count. Still, I had a lot of fun, the gruesome scenes were painful in a beautiful, horror movie way. Thank you for the game.
I got up to 100 points. The melody made my ears bleed and I think you did that on purpose. Naughty. The game was really hard in a somewhat interesting way. I just couldn't be bothered to go down slowly, but diving was way too fast. So I ended up toggling dive and no dive. I wish I felt like I had more control over the bird, in some intermediate speed. And I wish that gold didn't kill me when I wasn't diving. It just feels like the risk-reward in this game is a bit misbalanced towards pain. The drill-bird was cute though :) Thank you for the game.
The drawings are so pretty! I felt the characters were moving very slowly, to the point where it was more like a slideshow than a game. And the message was a bit in my face. Maybe don't send me back so far when I die in such a slow moving game? Either way - the art seems like a huge talent of yours. Maybe draw comics too? I would like to read them. Thank you for the game.
The audio, visual atmosphere was awesome. I felt like I was playing a dive mission in Half-life 1 or Quake 1. The mechanic of diving and getting different kinds of ore, was interesting for exploration, and I enjoyed learning the map. The tediousness of some parts was frustrating for me. Specifically the first set of upgrades took 3-5 dives at least which felt a bit too repetitive, and also there was no hint of what might be in the future. For example, even if there were 2 kinds of ores there one that was $1 and the other $2, it would have made me more curious earlier on to discover more. If you fix the earnings curve issue, I would have totally been hooked enough to play through the whole thing. I quit after I got my first gold. Still - this is an amazing eat of engineering and art in such a short time - thank you for the game.
The visual and audio art style is simple and charming. The biggest problem I had was the rope was so finicky that it felt like it had a mind of its own, the controls weren't tight enough, and it made me uncomfortable in navigating the map - especially thinking of how I'm tossing my guy around. If the rope was a bit tenser, and simpler, I think this could be an awesome puzzler. I also just enjoyed exploring the map and seeing the funny stahp sign. Thank you for the game.
This game was pretty cool. Lots of upgrades and interesting platforming challenges. There were a few times that my jump key stopped working for some reason. There was one time that I got to the double jump upgrade but missed the hook upgrade, which felt bad. In general it feels awkward to have a limited amount of lives in such a hard game. Maybe limit the amount of lives for normal difficulty and above? As far as level design - it was easy to get lost and feel unsure which way is the way forward. Otherwise the art was very readable and I understand everything immediately. This platformer seems like it would a lot of fun to dive into if I only didn't have the few bugs that got in my way. Thank you for the game.
Screen Shot 2021-05-04 at 10.34.19 PM.png
I played for quite a while! This game was super interesting to me. The art reminded me of the old ninja Shinobi game. The music was ok to start but in the end got annoying. As far as gameplay goes - I never felt like I was getting better. I think there's something wrong about how attacking downwards causes the character to jump upwards, it made it needlessly frustrating to stun some of the ninjas and bombs. Attacking sideways was way more fun somehow. I did really enjoy getting deeper and deeper up to depth 10. Really cool arcade action. Thank you for the game.
It was fun sniping the characters. The mood and vibe were cool. You did a good job putting it together. By the end, I wanted more content. It was just fun to try and get those colorful blobs. Do please try and get something more in the theme next time - maybe the people could have been on roller skates and always tripping over themselves because they were unstable? Still, it was a fun experience. Thank you for the game.
The music got a bit repetitive. Maybe it just took me too long to beat the game. I wish I could spawn horses faster and make the game even more chaotic. It was fun to break the stable. Thank you for the game.
There was a strange progression going on. Where at first I chase spiders, then I get too big so I have to leave the screen to see the spiders, then I got so big that I could eat spiders without even seeing them. The vibe was fun. Would love to see a bit more depth in this. Not much connection to the theme either. The music was hype inducing, and the spiders moved eerily. Awesome job stylistically. Thank you for the game!
spider-head-3x.png
The controls were a bit wonky. Usually in angry birds you see a preview of the path your balls will take because otherwise it feels like guessing. I still enjoyed this game. As far as level design goes - I would have loved to see more chain reactions, the last level with the ramp was really cool. Thank you for the game.
I found the radiation source. Wow, that music was hyping me up! Definitely got those Zelda vibes from the sword swing and room transitions. Learning the bat and goop monster patterns was fun. The dude's head is so disproportional, like he has a massively wide mushroom-toad head when looking up and down, but thin head when looking left-right. Generally the art was whimsical and fun to interact with. Though the theme connection was a bit weak. Thank you for the game.
What a fun little platformer. Oh my god that rhythm stage was TRICKY! It took me a while to figure out how to even progress, then I there was another "aha moment" where I understood that I only needed to be in the black dimension for just the one moment I land and re-jump. There was a bug when I was riding the monster that caused me to suddenly show up in the middle of the pool and die. I think for some reason I wasn't able to jump off of the monster either and had to walk off. The theme was there, it definitely felt like the black dimension was broken and unstable. Maybe one thing I would have wanted improved is some musical effect for the different dimensions, just to shift the mood. Though maybe that would also sound busy with all the switching going on. Really cool platformer level design. Good job. Thank you for the game.
Woot! Fun game! Reminded me of the "N" ninja video game. Gosh, I wish the hitboxes made more sense (I died from spikes and ghosts that seemed far away), and I wish that every time I hit the jump key it would actually jump. Something about the ledges isn't implemented correctly. The last level took me 10x the time the other levels took. Real big challenge curve bump there. But overall the game was great, I had a lot of fun mastering the parkour technique. The sound effects were hilarious. Thank you for the game.
I got up to 139 seconds. I wish something would happen while I was working the machine. There is a rhythm that I got into which was kind of nice, but I felt I didn't get rewarded for it. The UI is kind of spread wide, so I have to look left and right all the time. But the concept felt interesting. I never thought about manually operating steam engines before. Thank you for the game.
I don't know if I'm bad at this game, not smart enough to play it, or just that it's impossibly hard. Maybe I'm missing a trick. I had a periodic table open. It always seems like there are an infinite amount of options for me to manipulate the letters, and I never got closer to my goal. I just couldn't solve anything really. But damn those characters are cute, this game is polished with nice music and great art. I just wish I could play. Thank you for the game.
I had to hit the button multiple times to get the cube to move. This strange delay made it impossible for me to control the cube when it turned pitch dark in the level with the long winded path back to the green button. If all I had to do was count the button presses - I would be fine. But preventing me from moving quickly, made me frustrated because I just didn't know when a button press would result in the blob moving. Aside from that - there's a lot of nice vfx you put into the game. It's got a simplistic aesthetic, but still the laser is pretty, the motion is pretty. Would be great if it only moved a bit more responsively. Thank you for the game.
me.png
Highly polished, unique concept, and emotionally charged take on unstable relationships. Awesome. The music was really good, I wanted to hear more of it. The sound effects were excellent too except for the good exchange ding, it felt a bit too sharp for something that happened so frequently, maybe it just needed a few variations to it. Strange how I could relate to these emoji faces. I'm close to 40 years old, and by now I've entered and left many relationships, so this was a bit therapeutic, kind of made it feel normal. Thank you for the game.
I made it to level 13 on the first try but was so frustrated that I rage quit after that. I initially felt like the controls were swapped too but got used to it. I think a subtle but masterful choice you made here was to make the cargo both circles and squares randomly, so it always feels like the cargo is behaving a bit differently. It was a lot of fun mastering the controls. I didn't enjoy the dead-end level design troll situations, and I wouldn't go again because it felt like each level was a huge amount of work. I think I would have kept going if it didn't reset to level 1. I was already upset when I goofed the 5 minute limit on level 13. The sound for the thrusters worked great, the ding for the cargo unloading was great, but the sound when I get loaded a new shape was way too loud and sharp for my ears. The character design for the space ship was adorable. Real masterful game making here. Please be a bit easier on me next time :) Thank you for the game.
You are on unstable dude :P Seriously though this game got me creeped out. Good job on the vibe. It felt deeply unstable and uncomfortable. Those mask things scared me every time. I was hopping like crazy. I don't know if this was a reference to the Star Trek "four lights" thing or not. But I felt it. It was fun doing those aerial maneuvers, trying to save blocks for later. At some points I was doubting myself if I got lost or not. My only complaint is that I wanted more. I mean, you obviously had some story-telling itch in the credits, so perhaps if the ghosts were to say something, or if there was a line that would show up when I die, explaining the lights or the situation. But the game worked very well as minimalistic as it was. Awesome experience, I almost forgot to mention - the sounds were terror inducing. Thank you for the game.
After a few attempts, my highest score was 5886 and I only ever got down to about 50 cards. At this point I felt like my only strategy is to use as many cards as I can each round because leveling up Arcana is deadly. I was ready to give up because I felt like my strategy was correct but I still kept losing. Reading your comment:
> the game is pretty easy once you discover few tricks
I was trying to find more ideas, but didn't come up with anything. Luckily, I tried a few more times and finished the game with 21,215 at Arcana XXI. There is quite a bit of luck in this game, I just had a few really bad runs. You really got me counting numbers, thinking about card usage order, and strategizing. The cards felt a bit like the game "Reigns" which was really good. I felt like there were many cases where it was simple math of how many reds vs blacks I put down and it didn't even matter what I did. But all the special cards like "discard random" and "shuffle remaining" really brought depth to the gameplay that got me scratching my head. Awesome work on the card game design there. Thank you for the game.
haywire-17.png
I got to wave 17. Too bad the tab needs to be in focus for it to run, as I would just let it run while I do other things. Right now it seems I've overrun the enemy with one of each kind of tank. This was a fun concept. I really liked searching for the recipe and thinking up a conveyor belt strategy. Looking at the screen, I now realize that I could ship tanks to any border, but I tried to get them all out the same way. Very cool concept, I don't think it's too connected to the theme, but I still had lots of fun. The music was lovely too, really got me into a factory mindset. Thank you for the game.
This game was pretty fun at first but I guess I'm not good enough, or not the target audience. The upgrades felt too expensive. I could only afford them if I also gave myself a handicap, but the levels were getting harder anyways, so it felt like double punishment. I only discovered that mousewheel changes weapons after I died with the machinegun and not using it, and now I don't have the energy to go through 3 levels from zero just to see how it works. If only I got rewarded a bit faster, e.g. with shorter levels, or cheaper upgrades, I think I would've played much more.
I shot walls a lot, this game requires some marksmanship. The Pac-Man Gungeon combo was really cool. I loved shooting through walls to get to the coins and surprise enemies. Really cool job on the game design there. Overall it feels like there are a few knobs that you can tweak to make this an amazing experience. Thank you for the game!
Wow, this game started so fun. The character art is hilarious the way it moves and flips. The narration was on point. What a great tutorial. I got a score of 1497 on my first try. I just wanted to die by the end of it. It all kind of felt the same, and moving around didn't really have an effect, I just had to aim the mouse at the rocks. I think a steeper difficulty curve would have made this game much more replayable. I see so much potential here. The game controls and art just feel great, all you need is a bit of a better level and system design and this is a legit fire game. Thank you for the game!
Whoa, that was pretty hard to defeat the beast! The first time I saw the dragon it was a great change of pace. The first time I got defensive structures, I didn't realize that the arrows were following my mouse. The music was a bit too 8-bit compared to how nice the art was, though it was good music that was connected to the action. Overall it was a good challenge trying to figure out how to save the offensive pieces, and how to utilize the big gap on the right. Great design with a minimalistic mechanism. Good job. Definitely fits in with the theme. Thank you for the game!
>Music: Bosca Ceoil
>Sound Effects: Zzfx Online
>Sprites: Piskel Online
If you didn't make the music/sound/sprites, then I think you might have to withdraw from the graphics and audio categories for the compo.
YEEEET! I beat the game. Good job making the last level a recap of the skills we learned, and it was just the right difficulty for me to get it on the first try in time. The music was great. The characters were lovable. What a fun duo. Reminded me of Blip & Blop. I liked the puzzle aspects. The connection to the theme being an unstable bro was brilliantly executed. The pixel art was all beautiful and clear. I had only one point where Red was kind of stuck in a corner but I got him out after fiddling for a minute. My only critique is that I want more. Like instead of "yeet" also yell "cheese" and maybe an "excuse me" from the bystanders when you nudge them. Thank you for the game.
I got 2 million points by flicking and causing objects to fly up to the sky. Neat concept. I wish it was a bit clearer what we're doing and why. Why is it bad that the tower is stable? What does it matter if we build a smaller tower? Still it was fun to mess with physics. Thank you for the game.
Thank you all for the great feedback. I apologize to everyone and @jackaljk that had trouble with the menu. My excuse is that I had to build the UI with just a physics engine, so it was hard and time consuming. I did want to add more buttons to make everything more obvious.
I saw a lot of people try to stack pieces on the black bars, which is odd to me. In hindsight, I shouldn't have left those bars there. When I went to delete them, I realized that you can buy the little red square and then can't cash out without putting it on the black bar. So I either had to fix the UI, or live with the black bars for the jam.
Interesting that a lot of folks have a different experience with how fiddly or broken controlling the blocks is. I think this is caused by folks either being too zoomed out, not grabbing objects from their top, accidentally pushing objects into each other, and just their level of patience to gently drop objects instead of trying to exactly manipulate them onto each other. I also noticed that some folks choose to use the hardest blocks to stack, and sometimes they even succeed.
@squimmy I didn't really know what to do with the endgame where you have a ton of blocks. In a way I hoped it made you feel like Scrooge McDuck, swimming in all your blocky riches.
@doomshmuck - I played the game and beat it on mobile and on PC. Most of the dev was on a PC with a mouse. I wonder if folks falling in love with balancing on the black bar is my fault or just something that makes the game hard. Once you purchase the big blocks, I hope it becomes clear that you have a much wider base to use.
@zwodahs - sorry I capped the game at that height. I didn't know how to make it so the view was limited, to prevent newbs from getting lost, and still allow pros to go even higher. I even originally planned for a leaderboard, but couldn't make it in time.
@zarkonnen - that is indeed a spring. You can see a few anti-fiddle techniques: Here's a video of me speed running the game, I can currently reach god in just under 3 minutes: https://youtu.be/h_yXaXWugsc
Thank you @cirno @the-jahn @nebiros @binroot @ollieoa @weenie-walker-games
Most of the themes kind of played the same. It was a fun mechanic. And the different theme vibes were cool. I didn't understand how to not lose to the on/off level. The sound effects were cute and campy. I wish there was more of the actual theme. Thank you for the game.
That music was nice! Great beat boxing, melody and bass. It was fun trying to balance myself on the rope. I didn't really understand what I'm supposed to do with the cannons firing my way, it seemed I just have to ignore them. I wish there was a little more to do than just hit left and right to balance. For example, maybe I should have had obstacles that require me to lean to some direction? Still, twas fun, thank you for the game.
I did not realize I could fix towers the first time around. I also didn't realize the towers cost money, because I could put down seemingly endless green towers. I lost at wave 10. Then I made it to wave 32 with $3500, that's when I got bored and gave up.
The betrayal mechanic feels a bit tedious, like I have to babysit my towers. The end result is that long-range towers are bad. If there's one thing that I would improve is that the cool thing about tower defense is how you place different towers and how their effects stack, e.g. one slows, the other splash damages, the other has a fast fire rate. If your towers are different, aside from range, I couldn't really tell the difference.
Still was fun to kill dots, and the graphics were really nice and clean. Thank you for the game.
The music was a bit sharp and chirpy for my taste but still pretty cool. I was a bit confused and frustrated by the game. I wasn't sure whether or not I should learn the pattern of the electric floor, or try to avoid it. The fact it seemed kind of random with sometimes a quick double burst, and sometimes a long burst, made it just unclear. Even though I got to the end of the game, I didn't feel like I used the "look up/down" mechanic, I just kind of tried things. This idea seems to have a lot of potential. I would recommend to make the obstacles better telegraph their intent - one that always kills you, and one that has a consistent death-notdeath cycle. That way, I would spend more time making choices instead of researching the timing. The art style was cool, the robot was neat. And the game itself played real smoothly. Great job. Thank you for the game.
@m-a-t I turned into a brick in the same spot! Maybe it's not a bug? Maybe the designer is telling us we were in heaven all along and our destiny was to become a brick? So all the things we were tossing were lost souls? Maybe it was just a bug...
Anyway, this was a challenging and fun platformer. It was tricky for me to aim the blocks precisely, and it was hard to pick up the right block, I had to build and rebuild. The heaven and hell storyline was cute, I wish there was more to it than I saw. It was just fun to discover these little talking circles and their odd opinions. I wish there were more of them and a bit more closure to the end. Thank you for the game.
Damn amazing puzzle game. It was a perfect difficulty curve for me. Took me 22:07. Really had me thinking hard and confused. Somehow you got me thinking that I figured it out, only to have to back-track and rethink the process. At first it seemed completely impossible, which made the "aha" moments extra fun.
Once I knew what I needed to do, I already had a ton of useless letters, and they often got cut/copied/glued without me actually putting them there. Maybe it would be better to only let the action happen when I'm holding on to a letter or when I mouseup in the activation area?
The sounds felt nice and crunchy, like the game was really doing the work to do what it's doing. Good job on telegraphic everything, I didn't read any tutorial and was able to figure it out. Thank you for the game.
bridge.jpg
The art is really cute. I love Wall-E. The tank treads worked very well. In general the controls were awesome except for the fact that I have no idea what I'm placing where, and I had to spam to win. I think instead of limiting the number of blocks - you should totally embrace the "climb the junk heap" aspect. It is unique and fun. Maybe you could add a level where you have to climb up from the ground floor up to the 4th. Maybe add more oomph to the treads, and a jetpack. Maybe only the robot can throw trash. Just thinking how you can really amplify the trash aspect. Still, nice spin on the theme. Thank you for the game.
Visually, this game was really exciting. The letters and music were spooky. The music was tense. The sound effects were nice. During fullscreen I didn't see the counter at the bottom right for some reason. Then when I did notice it, I realized that it was just a counter until the next sonic boom or level passed. I was wandering around with no letters when I beat the game, took me a while to realize that white rectangle meant victory. The game was pretty fun, especially when I realized I could spam bullet time to understand my surroundings. I only wish there was more of a sense of progress, some bar, or some indicator whether I'm winning, losing, or passing levels. It just kind of felt like I was killing these letters for no good reason. Still it was fun, thank you for the game.
I still don't fully understand why it wouldn't shoot sometimes. The game concept does have potential though. Pretty cool switching back and forth between mobility and range. Thank you for the game.
Took me a whole minute of frustration to figure out I need to click the "play" text. Doesn't seem like a button. I was just mashing WASD and the mouse.
After I got into it, it was pretty fun! I would recommend using "keydown" events to move the character. When you use "keyup" then the game feels unresponsive, like there's some kind of lag. To prevent unintended double-pressing, you can have a boolean like "hasPressed" which becomes `true` on the first `keydown` and is set to `false` on every `keyup`.
Still was nice to figure out the pathing for each level, a fun challenge. Thank you for the game.
Sheesh! I was sure it was going to be impossible. But then I discovered that I can spam-click and even sometimes go through lava for a short amount of time until I land on the platform. I did end up winning after a few minutes of experimentation. The music was very moody, and dark. The "unstable" aspect was crystal clear. At first I thought the random motion would be too annoying, but it kind of felt like winning the lottery when finally there was a path I could take to victory. Cute frog. Thank you for the game.
At first I just fought the monsters without building anything. Then I stopped fighting the monsters and spammed build all around me. Then I started fighting the monsters again, and used the build key as a jet pack. Pretty versatile mechanic you got there. I'm not sure if I played the game the way I was supposed to. But I got up to 89 max-height. Was that good? There was no way to tell in the game. Still it was pretty fun. Nice concept. Thank you for the game.
shape-wars.png
shape-wars-2.png
I could not click to collect the treasure at the bottom left in the first level, I already collected 4 other treasures on that map :/ The concept of exploring to find treasure is cool. Maybe adding some animation and sound fx for when you collect treasure would make it feel more satisfying. Thank you for the game.
I was pretty sure I figured this game out and that I'll never lose. Then this wave came....
invaasion1.png
invaasion2.png
invaasion3.png
invaasion4.png
invaasion5.png
I'm a sucker for tower defense.
I tried random towers. When I realized that towers die when aliens touch them, I thought I'd make a wall with the cheap towers. But that turned out to be wrong, I needed more firepower.
I made a [sheet comparing DPS per cost of units](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1MSVi8jfXR7vL3eK1gPRnOWmNDLUYOxdvMTD4kqV2F6E/edit?usp=sharing). That got me to the 560 score. Then I tried a purely long-range M29 strategy. That sucked, because of the low fire rate I only made it to 220. So I went for a purely XW2 strategy, as they have the highest DPS per dollar with the #2 range in the game, and the #2 highest fire rate. Making a line of those got me up to 650. And I don't think you can go much further than that with the current game.
It would have been great to have a 2x and 4x speed modifier. It got a bit boring to wait out sometimes. Still, I had lots of fun. Thank you for the game!
Can I beat the game? I'm not sure if the coins keep spawning or if I can actually win. It was fun exploring the maze and different ways I could die. I did a double jump somehow at one point. I wonder how that worked. If there was a counter that showed me how well I did, it might've kept me around a bit more to try and beat my score. Still it was interesting. Thank you for the game.
R for restart and ESC seem to freeze the game for me on Windows 10 and Chrome. There's something about the attacks I do that makes it feel a bit like I'm not really hitting the enemies, like I'm waving the sword in the air. Maybe it's the sound effects or the animation? Otherwise the art was really interesting. I kind of enjoyed not grabbing the hour glass and just running around. Thank you for the game.
I wish I had a pee counter so I could know how good I was and maybe compete against myself. So many clicks down the drain. Thank you for the game.
It took me ten attempts at playing before I realized I was supposed to bite the human. I was trying to bite the mosquitoes and the mantis, and was losing very quickly every turn. After I reread the instructions and found out I can bite the human, I got to 42 points. This is a pretty hard game. And wow the art is beautiful. The game definitely packs a moody punch. I still don't know how I'm supposed to avoid the preying mantis. So I guess I wish the mechanics were telegraphed a bit more clearly. Still it was a fun challenge. Thank you for the game.
Wow, you implemented a ton of achievements. It was pretty cool to see the different types of monsters. My score was 134, wave 13, 155.5 seconds. The second time I played I couldn't see my score because I clicked it away before I saw it :(. Still it was a lot of fun. I wish I had more weapons and upgrades so I could wreak more havoc. Still, really cute characters and art. Thank you for the game.
floor6.png I got lost a bit at the start. I couldn't find the doors that were near the bottom of the cave or the sides, I only saw the doors at the top. But when I figured it out, I felt like there was really no time at all for anything. Eventually my strategy became to ignore single enemies and only fight doubles and I made it to floor 6. Is there more content if I try to make it further? It feels like I need a lot of luck to get far in this game. The art style was cute and fun, and I really liked how the attacks felt solid, consistent, and varied. You really nailed the slasher vibe. The sounds felt good, and added to how crunchy and alive the attacks felt. Really cool game, thank you.
I made a shelter! Woohoo! There was something really satisfying about this game. Fetching the wood, finding water, making a fire. It all just played out well. The controls were strange but so responsive that it felt effortless. I wish I had something to show for it, like a score or something. I wish I could make a boat and explore the world. That's compo, make just enough to make me curious. And I'm curious. Thank you for the game.
Thank you folks. Your feedback is much appreciated. I've been constantly refreshing to get more.
@xcarl @auxiliarymoose - thank you. I didn't want to show the number on the bar because the game was already pretty explicit about the effect of each card, so I wanted to give it some mystery and suspense at least around the "do I have enough money" dilemma. Not sure if that's a net positive experience though. I think humans get more excited for poker than chess.
@maxr00 @billnotic @jyumonji @m11 thank you! I'm really happy y'all liked the sound effects. It was the absolute last minute thing I implemented and luckily I had some great talent in the house (kids were having a playdate).
@tygrak thank you, the new leader made it to week 17 :)
@dindotjs I hope that someday I make a game that shows enough promise to take it further than the game jam. That hasn't happened yet so 🤞
@crishnate - I was thinking of things that are inevitable or that feel inevitable, and came across this idea of impostor syndrome at work. Then I thought a card game with metrics could be a good way to build the experience. So the balancing of the cards was because of the JAM theme for sure. Now that we're after the jam, and after I played so many games in this jam that were balanced against the player, I think I would rather have a way for the player to win. Delaying the inevitable is just not fun enough without a glimmer of hope to break through.
@zah thank you.
@rowlna I would say the gameplay style is inspired by Slay the Spire. When you say "clicks or swipes" I'm guessing you mean the "end turn" button should click, and a card should woosh as it moves or gets picked up. I should've added those SFX, thanks for the pointer. This is the first card game I'd ever made.
@oadt - yes! I wish friends had a bigger role in this game. I also wish I could reward players for maxing out some metrics.
@daniel-username @sdelay thank you. It was a familiar story for me, so I'm glad you liked it.
@bentglasstube Congrats on the new kid! I hope it didn't cost too much mental health or money and that my choice of card balance didn't offend you. I'm not sharing this game at my workplace because of the potential implications.
@blockerz thank you! I wish I had time to make and balance wacky card effects. If the game does well in the jam, I might work more on it in the future.
@ikelucas - this is a compo entry so it was in 48 hours, with kids and other tasks I had to care for. So I'm extra happy to hear you're impressed this got made in time. Thank you. It definitely is influenced by Reigns, though I was trying really hard to channel Slay the Spire, it came out as really Reignsy. The kids are happy to hear you liked their voice acting too, thank you.
@caudatecoder - I subscribed. That's awesome. Thank you for the review and for posting the video. When I was working on the game it was very hard to know which jokes would land and how. Seeing how you were interacting with the game, and noticing the silly bits, was delightful. Thank you.
I definitely got the "delaying the inevitable" vibe here. Though I didn't see the point in it. The people escaped whether I pushed the blue away or not. There was no score. It just felt like I couldn't do anything except delay the inevitable. While I commend sticking this hard to the theme, I wonder, where is the tension? So it felt a bit more like an interactive movie than a game. Cool concept though, and I did have fun going through it the first time, and it did make me think. It kind of feels like life on some level. Thank you for making this.
While most games have artificially balanced their mechanics to make the player suffer and inevitably lose - this game feels naturally difficult and fits with the theme nicely. I could balance at most 6 balloons before I lose my cool and they start flying down on me. The music wasn't really my cup of tea but the art was pretty cool, and the physics felt like hitting real balloons. Good job. Thank you for the game.
natures-delay.png I think I broke it on my first try. I just put some fireball and lightning on the left, and the tsunami took everyone away on the right. On the second try the invaders got me after 62 days. Cool concept, it was fun to mess with. Thank you for the game.
What a cool spin on the theme! I worked pretty hard on not waking up. It felt like I made it a few minutes in. And I have nothing to show for it :(
I wish there was some kind of timer that showed me how well I held on. Pretty cool concept. I liked the game within the game with the cat. It was quite the frenzy to keep up. The art was pretty cute too. Thank you for the game.
I really enjoyed this game! I was sure that I was going to live forever for a while there. Strange how the game ended so quickly. One moment I was making millions and suddenly it was gone. Maybe I shouldn't have gone to 10x. I don't think the "money in the bank" was the right metric to show at the score screen. I want to know how many grains of sand I moved! The music and sound effects were hypnotizing, got me in the mood and I felt like these were my little ants. Thank you for the game.
bookbugs.png
I don't think they'll ever find me here. Gosh that sound of the bugs moving is disturbing. The odd piano playing was pretty tense too. Very strong mood you made there. I was definitely uncomfortable. It was kind of cool building barricades with the books when the bugs were chasing me at the start. But then they couldn't follow me around the corner. So I was safe. After time 150 I decided to go and check on the bugs.
bookgbugs2.png
Look at them. Sad little creatures. I decided to get closer.
bookbugs3.png
The sound that plays when I lose was worth the death.
I wonder what would've been the smallest possible tweak to their AI to make them chase me even when I go around the corner. Maybe make them move in a random direction for 2 meters every 10 seconds? I guess teaching them a path finding algorithm would be better. Still, it was quite the experience. Thank you for the game.
I think I was supposed to attack the people with fists and the spiders with feet. I made it to the third wave, but then it was beyond me. Cool concept, though. It would have been nice to see a bit more depth. Thank you for the game.
It took me 4 playthroughs where I felt confused until I realized that I needed to first eat the media folk, and then let all the police I could through. Even though you kind of explained that in the text. I didn't realize there was a threshold that I needed to pass with eating media people. The way the penalty mechanics were described at the top right in text was what eventually helped me figure it out, but it was a very subtle cue.
These thresholds felt a it arbitrary, and hidden. It's funny how you did explain everything in the instructions, and I did read it, but I still didn't get it. We really need to visualize for the players what's going on during the game, or they can easily get confused. I think I goofed that for my game too, which also has a few different metrics that interplay.
Pretty cool art though, and the concept was interesting. I wonder what's inevitable. Is it that dictators fall, or that dictators rise to power. Thank you for that question, and for the game.
I don't think this game had much to do with the theme. Level 1 I loved the dialog sounds, on level 7 I felt the level design was brilliant, then around level 10 it was a bit repetitive to hear the same dialog over and over again and it was unskippable while the clock was running. Level 16 was super hard, a very tricksy ending mechanic you threw in there. I managed to beat the game in 12:16. There were a few really fun puzzles. The controls were tight, and it was delightful to discover the new kinds of depth and interactions that this mirroring mechanic provided. Thank you for the game!
There's a certain balancing act between control, luck, and frustration. I felt that it was hard to move my cookie without touching the walls, and without a yellow circle spawning above me and pushing me. I was able to make it to the third screen on one occasion. But most often, a yellow circle blind-sided me and threw me off track. When I did make it to the third screen, I misjudged my speed and hit the wall because I did not stop myself in time. All this to say - I wish I had a bit more control in this game to make it through. The concept was cute. Thank you for the game.
dragon.png
That was hard! But what a blast. I really hurt my pinky playing this and ended up using my left hand for arrows and right for shift. I wish the right shift key worked like the left. The art was fantastic. The difficulty level was perfectly challenging. I just had a lot of fun. That "aha" moment when I realized I can go higher by aiming the fireballs down was epic. Thank you for the game!
Took me a while to figure out that I need to drag the items onto the map. It was a bit hard to figure out what to do. I kind of wish that I could wreak more havoc. Why just $10? Still, it was a pretty cool concept. Thank you for the game.
Lots of "Reigns" vibes here. I love the detailed "kill" animation. I made it to day 22 by killing whoever was fuming. The "rude" vs "welcome" choice always seemed random, I didn't know what to do to make them happy. I guess that was the case for a lot of these choices. I wish I had some sort of signals that I could learn from. Maybe they were there and I didn't figure it out. It was interesting to try and find them. The music was pretty ominous which fit the vibe. Thank you for the game.
Pretty cool! I had a similar idea, except I made it a card game. I really liked playing with the cat and choosing what to drink or eat. Too bad I could only make it to file 86. Very sad that the intern had to die. I had to choose whether or not to die petting the cat or working. I chose working and now I regret that decision :( Thank you for the game.
I made it up to 194. It was a bit tricky to know when I could jump between the platforms and when I couldn't. Maybe make the visuals more clear for the next one. It was fun to save myself from the water, though I didn't feel like much was changing as I was playing, so it got a bit repetitive. Still I was glad I got as far as I did, and it reminded me of Beauty and the Beast :) thank you for the game.
What a cute art style. I made it to level 12, and am ranked #22. Cool to have a leaderboard :) I felt that at this level I was barely able to click to drag fast enough from the belt. The music was cool and creepy, the monster was scary, yet cute, the body parts were clearly labeled, yet interesting. You really nailed the art style! Thank you for the game.
Pretty cool concept. I love the idea of simulating hate politics. I wish it were a bit easier to understand what was going on. I felt likeI was gambling a bit, and I wasn't sure what were the consequences of my decisions. Like, am I trying to get my vote to sit well with all the people, or just to align with other candidates? If the game was a bit easier to understand, this looks like it could be a lot of fun. Thank you for the game.
This has been my favorite game up until now. It's a brilliant interpretation of the theme, and the auto-save mechanic is super interesting. I loved the moment I realized I have to kill myself asap because I fell down a well. I think there are probably more tricks you could come up with to expand on this. Starting off with the ending cinematic was also really cool, I was really motivated to get the wanker. The level design was excellent, the art was great, the music was cute, I just had such a great time I played it again just to explore more of the environment. I suspect it's possible to break some of the levels with a clever wall-jump, but I wasn't able to execute it. Really big props to you for such a cool entry. Thank you for the game.
The puzzles and concept were cool. It was so painful to wait before I could move. Especially considering how long the last level is, and how unforgiving and unpredictable the timings are. I did really like the idea of observing and figuring out a path, I just wish I could hit a key to make it go 8x faster. The art and music were pretty good too. Thanks for the game!
YOU WIN! Hah! What a funny little game. It was super tricky to figure out the enemy pattern. The bullet's hitbox is so big! I had to really zig and zag hard. But in the end it was worth it. Quite tricky, and I like the map design. Might be cool to make the hitbox a bit more obvious and make a few more levels. It was fun and just the right amount of difficult. Thank you for the game!
The last level was not as hard as the one before it. It was so tricky to aim the laser and move the blocks around. What a tough but interesting concept! I think this could be a lot of fun even if the game was not on a strict time limit. E.g. if the game just measured how fast I did it and rewarded me for faster solves. Still, the puzzles were great, and fun, thank you for the game!
Edit - actually I wonder - did you intentionally prevent diagonal movement? It generally is a common bug, but I suspect here it was a tasteful decision because of how blocky everything was designed. Interesting choice!
I laughed out loud. The animation that shows up after beating a level, where the monster eats the floor above me, is just beautiful. It's like every level I beat is a big win thanks to that animation. The writing was funny, the art was cute, and the level design was great, except for the ceiling fans >:| I had a blast going through this, definitely one of my favorite entries this jam. Thank you for the game!
What a calm and soothing little island. It's so pretty. I got 45 sheep on first try, 61 on second try, 62, then peaked at 77. I wish the last 3 cycles weren't just me watching my sheep die without anything I could do. I wish I could have gotten more parts of the temple built but I didn't figure out the strategy I guess. Thank you for the game!
Took me 587 seconds to make the egg sandwich. I like this interpretation of the theme. I also felt the minigames at one point became a nuisance. The hardest part for me was figuring out that "make a sandwich" meant to place the toast on the plate. I like the idea of distractions - I wonder if there's a way to make distractions some how affect the 3D game too. Real interesting concept, thank you for the game!
409 kills, 26 deaths, 37 fire extinguishers. Wow, I had a blast! I think I played for 30+ minutes. It was so fun to circle strafe around goons, and shoot everything up. The money was coming in so painfully slowly, I felt like I could never afford anything. I ended up buying 2-3 health, an uzi, a shotgun (sucks), a damage upgrade, and a rifle (best). I wish I could afford the bigger guns. Also, it was unfortunate that when I picked up a key, the money that was on the floor was not auto-picked up. Really good job getting these Doom and Diablo vibes into a game in such short time. Twas really fun and action packed. Thanks for the game.
Thank you for the kind words. I'm glad you enjoyed it. @mudlee The voices were either recorded live or generated with AWS Polly.
@owlycode thanks for the report. I had that experience too. What's happening is that you click-down (press) on the button, but click-up (release) outside the button, which cancels the click. That's how most buttons work on the web (including this comment's "publish" button). This is a bit surprising, especially with the way the sounds work. I might make the click-down sound a bit more like a "tap" sound and the mouse-up sound more strong, because it feels like a bug. So you can tell when you really clicked it.
@olddog I added spoilers to the description above - what you need to do is to tap on the side of the button to *push* the button to the hole.
I have some data to share. The average level reached on the first try, depending on the control group (n=38 unique players based on ip address):
* positive: 6.5 * sociopath: 4.375 * threat: 5.8 * hot: 5.75 * negative: 6.0
So I guess people like encouragement, and prefer not to kill people.
This golem and the game felt really slow. But that made the orb throws more impactful. I had a lot of fun figuring out how to use the orb to get where I wanted. I was initially confused, I thought there was some bug because I couldn't see where my orb went after the swap. When I finally understood the mechanics, I enjoyed this crude navigation experience. The music was great and it helped a lot to set up the timing for the final level. Overall this was a unique and fun experience. Thank you for the game.
That took me like 25 minutes to get to zero bugs. I'm not sure why I felt I needed to get there, but this game was just the right amount of hard that I got super frustrated, but still felt motivated to go for it. I still can't believe how often I can't go anywhere, and how often there's no path to a bug. In a way, the cruelty and frustration were a bit of a motivator. I wonder if this game would have been as fun if it was less frustrating. I loved the nostalgic ascii gibberish art. Thank you for the game!
What a cool game! I made it to B16. 10 seconds is so frantic. The levels were really punishing. I kind of wish all the pillars and walls had circular corners because I kept getting stuck on them. I enjoyed looking forward to cool upgrades. I would recommend improving readability of your game assets, they looked cool, but I was confused. Even though I read "RoF" as "rate of fire" I initially was clicking like mad, I didn't realize it was auto-fire. I didn't understand the purple snake was a bad guy, I didn't understand the orange was a bad guy. In general I kind of had to learn everything about the game by trying because it wasn't obvious what was going on from the art. Still it was a lot of fun and great action. Thank you for the game!
lol! What a crazy, wacky, genius game. This reminds me of old 90s video games that were the same interleaving of action videos with button presses. Real fun. Though I don't know if I it would be fair to judge your audio, and graphics. Still, I had a lot of fun. Thank you for the game.
Wow, what a masterpiece. The visuals were so sad, cute, and purposeful. The characters were great, the environment was interesting. The level design was just the right amount of difficult. Y'all had an amazing team there! I wish I knew more about these umbrellas and their nuclear woes. Thank you for the game.
I got 900, 620, then 2380, but at that point the game got real slow and awkward. Maybe there's a memory leak or something? I really liked getting upgrades every 10 seconds. What a fun concept with cute characters. Thank you for the game!
I wish I could see my score on the game-over screen. So I could tell if I'm making progress. Is there an end-game? I was kind of running around killing monsters or blocking them with roadblocks, but that didn't seem to do much. I think I got through a few cycles, upgrades my build speed, fire rate, and ate. I think I would have played a bit more if it was clear that I'm playing towards some goal other than surviving. Still it was interesting having to switch between building, shooting and fleeing. Thank you for the game.
Very clever concept. It was stressful! What a clever way to combine minesweeper with a military bomb squad sense of urgency. The music is great, and fits very well with all the stress of the situation, though I ended muting it because it was too stressful. I think my high score is 22,450. I really like this minesweeper take. I wish there was an easier way for me to get out of those situations where it's a complete gamble. But I guess that's minesweeper and sometimes there's no choice. The art was very well done too. Thank you for the game!
After 5:26, and a score of 216, I think the game isn't changing, so I guess I beat it. It seems it's best to leave one in the tank and have one soldier roam about. Pretty cool concept! If there was a bit more evolution in the gameplay, with different enemies, or an objective for me to reach, I think I could have played for much longer. The art style was cute too. Thank you for the game!