Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → udo
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | Co | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 50 | Delay the inevitable | Geometry Survivors | jam | 560 | 3.61 | 3.73 | 2.65 | 3.28 | 2.67 | 3.32 | ||||
| 2021 | 48 | Deeper and deeper | Unearther | compo | 412 | 3.50 | 3.50 | 3.60 | 3.35 | 3.47 | 3.65 | 2.37 | 3.50 | ||
| 2020 | 47 | Stuck in a loop | Loop Cultist | compo | 187 | 3.65 | 3.19 | 4.03 | 4.15 | 3.93 | 3.93 | 4.19 | |||
| 2019 | 44 | Your life is currency | Dungeon Buddies | jam | 172 | 3.82 | 3.65 | 3.67 | 3.69 | 3.30 | 3.68 | 3.59 | |||
| 2018 | 42 | Running out of space | Space Box Rescue | compo | 50 | 3.95 | 3.85 | 3.44 | 3.85 | 3.82 | 3.57 | 3.57 | |||
| 2017 | 39 | Running out of Power | BatteryUnknown's PowerGrounds | jam | 31 | 4.18 | 4.14 | 3.48 | 3.96 | 3.18 | 3.88 | 3.65 | |||
| 2017 | 38 | A Small World | Small World Resort Manager | compo | 96 | 3.77 | 3.72 | 3.22 | 3.59 | 2.63 | 2.83 | 2.63 | 3.00 | ||
| 2016 | 36 | Ancient Technology | Archeotech Digger | jam | |||||||||||
| 2015 | 32 | An Unconventional Weapon | Murder Hat's Great Escape | jam | |||||||||||
| 2014 | 31 | Entire Game on One Screen | Snowma'am | jam | 679 | 3.00 | 2.68 | 2.76 | 3.57 | 3.57 | 2.88 | 2.21 | 3.04 | 59 | |
| 2014 | 30 | Connected Worlds | Killbot's Last Adventure | jam | 280 | 3.37 | 3.04 | 2.87 | 3.36 | 4.09 | 3.68 | 3.47 | 3.35 | 85 | |
| 2014 | 29 | Beneath the Surface | Planet Improver | jam | 297 | 3.33 | 2.67 | 3.37 | 3.51 | 3.58 | 3.42 | 2.34 | 3.83 | 93 | |
| 2013 | 28 | You Only Get One | License to One | jam | 216 | 3.19 | 2.58 | 2.54 | 3.33 | 3.58 | 3.24 | 2.35 | 2.71 | 54 | |
| 2013 | 27 | 10 Seconds | Robots Save the Day | jam | 115 | 3.51 | 3.21 | 3.50 | 3.52 | 3.62 | 2.96 | 2.65 | 3.32 | 100 | |
| 2013 | 26 | Minimalism | Geometry Wars (Multiplayer RTS) | jam | 20 |
A very simple idea nicely executed. After repeated tries I gave up on Classic mode - the random fruit distribution makes this more like a game of chance. However, I liked the Quick and Arcade modes best. Good job!
That was excellent, very entertaining! Thanks for making this :)
Ahh, the joy of committing shotgun-powered mass murder in the evening! This was way more fun to play than it should have been. Is it normal to run around with negative health or was that a bug?
The game start is problematic, since you have to click on the content area AND THEN start to play the game immediately with the keyboard. I think you should either insert a longer delay there (or a "play!" button), or maybe make HTML page focus on the flash element automatically (should be possible with JavaScript). If you could find a way to fix this, the game will be awesome!
On the whole, I liked the idea and also most of the execution. The sound effects are good and the music conveys the urgency pretty well. I like how the browser's reload button was incorporated into the game play. Good job! :)
Server is up, but I don't see the game itself after the connect screen.
It took me a while to figure out I had to reload the page after I die. Also, having to click into the game pane before you can do anything is suboptimal. That said, this has potential. Maybe Nyan Cat should have a comeback :)
Hey, you should change the link title from "Windows" to "Web"! :)
That was hectic ;) I love this idea of switching between the overworld and underworld characters! It's a little to fast for me, but I'll keep trying! When I reach Game Over though I need to reload the page to try again. Is that a bug?
Such a simple concept and yet so much fun! :-D I've been suspecting this for years, now it's official: my timing sucks...
Very nice concept. I'm not sure if my actions always had a consistent, measurable effect, but it sure was fun lobbing these bonbon things at the bears and whatnot ;)
That was great fun to play, a classic idea well executed. The graphics are amazing and the soundtrack is pretty fitting as well. I only wished there was a way to skip the intro text when you're repeating a level anyway. Other than that, flawless :)
This is a difficult one. I like the overall concept, and I think portraying the journey of life 10 seconds at a time is a great idea. The execution is very creative and a bit weird, but it grows on you after a while. However, the gameplay itself is where the weakness lies. I almost quit because of this. All in all, it's a good compo entry with a lot of potential. Keep up the creativity, and congrats to your first LD! Looking forward to seeing you again at LD 28! :)
I had fun playing this! The fox animation, the graphics, everything came together nicely. Great work!
At first it took me a while to get it (dummy me), but then it was really fun zooming around, battling counters assisted by my past self. Very cool concept and execution. Kudos!
"You already signed the waiver. Let's do this." I loved the intro, very nice. The gameplay itself was also very nice, though I couldn't get to a goal of any kind and the story suggested there might be a way to win this. Anyway, great work!
Thanks for making this :)
I had a lot of fun! Great work!
This has potential, however I've been playing against myself now for a while, but nobody dies, nothing is happening. Also, one cannon shoots faster bolts than the other...
The mood in this was incredible.
Apparently I have a very bad sense of time, since I always either die "honorable" or a cheater ;)
Great work!
Those graphics are adorable!
High Score 5449. I loved this, so extremely simple yet so addictive. Thematically this would have been right at home at the last LD too when the theme was minimalism ;) Some basic sound effects and/or music would have made this game even better. And maybe a way to curb the repetition a bit when starting over after dying. Great game though overall!
I have the feeling this is getting more difficult on an exponential scale! ;) Very cool concept though! Some sound would have made this even better.
Simply a great game. This was way more fun than it should have been... red innards everywhere! Awesome job on the physics engine, and the music was epic, too.
Was really nice trying this out. Was to incompetent, will try again later :) Great work!
Arrrr! That was fun! I'm too slow for any of the non-tutorial levels though, it's just mega-hard. A keyboard option would probably help, too, since I kept getting stuck while mousing around. Anyway, great concept, great execution. Awesome!
The amount of action on the screen was insane! I had a wonderful time trying to survive... How on earth did you do all this within 48 hours? That's godlike!
Very nice, I love games with a story! Even the comic cut-scenes kind of work for me, they're a bit like Manga-meets-Rage-Comic. Gameplay was pretty fun overall, especially the jump&run and the shooter modes were pretty cool.
This was very fun to play. Especially graphics and music were excellent, gameplay was also very smooth, nice story. All in all a very good entry!
Very nice concept, I liked the gameplay style overall. More detailed 3d models would have made this even better. Overall, very nice!
That was an interesting experience. This game really shows you how short 10 seconds can be (especially since it's not enough the read the text on the first run). A bit depressing, too. Great job! Very unconventional.
This is simply, jaw-droppingly amazing. This would easily have been the best platformer I've seen on this LD, but then you went ahead and made it multiplayer which is awesome. Great job!!!
Simple and fun :)
Very cute! However, the controls are so wonky it's kinda difficult to really play.
Congrats on your first LD entry, that was uncoventional and fun! I can confirm it runs fine on OS X, too. Good job with the music and I liked the unusual flow of training/racing...
10 seconds or no, this was enjoyable and fun! :)
I installed the C++ runtime, but the game still won't start. There's just an empty window...
I totally envy the cleanliness of your code! Very good job! :)
Power-Uppp! Great idea, like walking the branches of Yggdrasil :)
Very nice adventure game. Little typo there in Centroid Park: "claustrophobic" spelled wrong. I didn't solve it yet after about 15 min of trying, but I vow to come back! Good job!
I really liked this concept, especially the bad things that happen when you do things to save that guy. It would have been even better if you had more time to make the gameplay smoother (I can relate). I'm not sure about the music though, did you really make that soundtrack yourself?
This was really fun. A bit too hard for me, but then again I suck at navigating mazes. I really liked the second-powerup idea, kind of like a bullet-time mechanism. Excellent!
Gonna come back to this one and finish it :) Excellent work!
Sadly, the game stopped forever after 10 seconds, which in itself might be the truest expression of the theme I've seen yet. But I think it was a bug ;) Anyway, what I saw was pretty nice!
I played three people at once - I won! :-D
That was a fun retro experience, reminds me of the Olympics games for C64
Wow, that was surreal. Thanks for making this, as weird as it made me feel at times ;)
I loved playing this. On the first attempt, I got stuck in a corner though, but after that everything went fine. Nice work!
I hate it when people use dubious download services to distribute their games, but this one is especially egregious. Please drop 2shared in favor of something that will actually let me download without having to sign up for something :(
It's a fun idea, I would have loved to play more than two levels though!
I can sympathize, this is what happened to my last LD entry as well. Still, keep it up! See you around next time :)
Such a simple concept and yet that was mightily cute!
My second balloon made it to 13 years. Until it died. I probably shouldn't have any children. Ever.
Doesn't start for me on OS X Mountain Lion. Bummer.
This has real potential. It's kinda difficult to judge, but this could be expanded into a very cool strategy game.
Is there a way to flag or report this to moderators?
I love the art, the concept, and that Bob is a box! However, despite trying very hard for quite some time I didn't even come close to working the entire list in 10 seconds. Maybe I missed something or it's just not possible (for slow people like myself). Great work though.
This was wicked stressful! Awesome idea, very nice execution. I'm just not fast enough though, almost everybody died! It's a good thing that I went into research after med school, much quieter this way ;)
This game is amazingly well done. The graphics, the concept, the gameplay itself - just very very good. Why no music, though? Or at least some sound effects? In any case, this was probably the most fun LD27 entry I played so far. Commanding the robot horde was very cool.
That's a really great take on round-based strategy gaming. Sounds would have made this even better (or, possibly, sound just didn't work on my machine). I'll be playing this for a while now :)
Overall I liked the premise of Time Lord very well, nice platformer idea with the time powerups. However the Lord keeps getting stuck around the edges of the platforms which is very distracting. With a little more polishing, this could be very nice. I especially liked the dark and moody background.
I loved the graphics and the general concept of this, and the physics angle was also pretty cool. However, in practice the 10 second delay did make the game less fun to actually play. Maybe "packet loss" would have been a better paradigm than "relativistic delay", since that can be varied due to the situation the drone is in. For example, at the outer areas of the station, packet loss (=delay) could be minimal whereas near the reactor core it would be bigger... Except for this, Distress Signal is clearly a very well done game. The atmosphere was also very engaging.
I had an insane burrito time. Thanks! :)
This was so much fun, and the little nucleus character is so adorable! Very well done, congratulations! It's the best puzzle game I've seen on LD 27 so far. However, I found a bug: when in level 10 you press "menu" and choose level 10 again, the screen simply goes white. Also, I think the 10 seconds concept could have been featured instead of time as a general concept. BUT: this is an excellent game. Very, very good!
Well done! As "the time is running out on you" jump-and-run games go, this was actually pretty laid back and fun to play!
Very fun jump&run, nice concept and execution, especially considering it's a compo entry. I just wish the screen area was a little bigger, but other than this: very good job!
Wow, thanks Reicher! :-D
Reicher: I haven't played it (yet), but people told me before this was kinda like that.
RHY3756547: ah, you had the sad ending... :-D
Thanks a lot, I'm glad you liked it!
wtfrara: you're absolutely correct, that was suboptimal. I noticed that too as I was testing, but forgot to change it.
tompudding, thanks for your feedback. I know the levels are pretty easy, I wanted to make sure people could play it through in a short amount of time. More and more sophisticated levels would be interesting, I'd be down with that.
noddy2006: it's right there in the help text ;) but I understand why people are confused by the facing aspect. Originally I had "facing" enabled, but decided against it later during development.
Larzan: that's strange. I developed this on Chrome. What version/OS?
It's a solid concept and the game runs very smoothly. I wish the screen was bigger though! A bit of sound effects would have made this even better. I think it's great to finally see some more JS games at LD. Keep it up! :)
Okay, Gun Jousting should from now on be considered A Thing! It was a lot of fun to play, though a little bit more consideration could have gone into the game's structure (like, what happens after the joust round). Making your own music and sounds would also have been awesome. All in all it's a pretty fun concept!
Hey, another Hacker News person! You should post your entry in the Show HN thread!
Overall I liked this very much. However, since failing at the multitasks brings you right back to the beginning, I eventually gave up... Great concept, however.
I loved the graphics, so moody! Overall the gameplay was enjoyable, but the player character hangs near the edges and generally behaves unpredictably. This entry would have been even better with some sound effects thrown in!
Oh no, I commented on the wrong game, so sorry. The dangers of many open tabs. There doesn't seem to be a way to delete a comment. Anyway, here's the right one:
I'm not exactly sure how this was meant to be played since it seemed very slow on Chrome/Mac. Anyway, the heir and king graphics are very well done. Can't say much else about the gameplay though.
This is a great idea that could have used a bit more polishing. But the game itself is solid. A little bit of sound effects and maybe some visual effects as well would have made this even better (maybe use CSS transitions to do something when the tiles change).
One of the few entries I managed to actually completely play through :) Execellent!
You're right, we had similar ideas, but execution is very different :) For example, you made way more content than I did! Very nice!
Wow, this is a difficult one. I'm not sure if walking through the "zones" and turning them dark was the goal, but in the end I deleted all the memories and the individual was reincarnated - so I guess I won? ;) The game was at times beautiful (the swarming memories) and moving (at the end they tell you what you just deleted), but I'm not sure I get this whole religious angle and from a logical perspective: why is it called reincarnation when everything about that person gets deleted? I really don't understand how that makes sense, but maybe that's sort of the point..? Anyway, it was interesting and the game is certainly creative!
That was great fun, thanks for making this!
This was simply beautiful. Atmospheric and intense, mesmerizing. I didn't quite get the ending (you just float and then nothing), but in hindsight the whole thing felt like the character was dying. The cat companion was great because it made you feel less lonely, but in the end you couldn't really interact with her. This all feels very metaphoric. Again, nice work!
So simple, yet so difficult! I'm not sure how it fits the theme (maybe because you'll only get one try?), but well done!
Very moody, graphics and audio are well done, especially considering this is a compo entry!
This was amazingly fun, thank you! :)
I loved this one very much, very nicely done! I always wanted to manage my own cult... er: church :)
I really liked the concept, very neat idea with the equations - and it's one of the very few Java games that will actually run on OS X. Good job! :)
Doesn't run for me on OS X Mavericks, seems like a version conflict: Exception in thread "main" java.lang.UnsupportedClassVersionError: core/Main : Unsupported major.minor version 51.0
Very minimal, yet the fights can get pretty interesting. I love dungeon-explory stuff and I enjoyed playing this :)
That was fun, I enjoyed the minimal graphics. Very cute :)
The web player doesn't work on my system (OS X Mavericks, both Firefox and Chrome), it just displays a flickering buffer. The music sounds pretty good so far though :) Will check back later!
@Kroltan: yeah, sorry about that. I forgot to upload the extractor model. It should work now!
Thanks for reporting that, I've been having trouble getting fonts to work. I hope it's fixed now. Try again!
> It seemed strange that there was no way to renew the licenses, so you can never rebuild units.
That's the point: you only get one! :)
Hey mize, now that's what I call feedback, thank you! The camera control is ...unfinished. You can rotate and pan by holding down the left or right mouse button respectively. The post-LD version will have some refinements there.
> I wanted a bit more of what's already there.
So did I, ran out of time, so I made a "how long can you survive the onslaught" mode just to get the thing shipped in time. I want to do missions and more complex game play.
Again, I'll probably make post-LD version for people who are interested. I hope that's not frowned-upon here as long as I take care to label it accordingly?
@ovenchips: I ran out of time to make actual content. I wanted to make little missions and a mini story - and the code has the infrastructure in place for that - but then time was up and I needed to upload something that people could play. "last man standing" was sort of the easiest mode improvise, as it took just a few minutes. I want to make a post-LD version that has actual missions you can win.
@Inso
@dray
Yeah, sorry. It seems my domain expired and I forgot to renew it. The link's updated now, it should work
I saw this on Jellycakes' twitch stream and had to try it out. It's so much fun! Thanks for making this!
That was fun :)
This is probably the most fun one I've played this LD! Great work!
My index finger now hurts. Well done :)
Nicely done! This also illustrates it's a good thing I didn't become a member of the coast guard... what with those people dying on my watch and all.
Wow, how did you do all that in time for the compo? This is simply amazing. Congrats on a job excellently done!
This was fun, and the graphics are awesome! Well done!
I'm in the same boat as you - started on something completely and then abandoned it as I realized it wasn't going to work out. Congrats for not giving up and delivering something impressive given the time constraints, and a compo entry no less!
Bed! I liked the minimal graphics, even if you say they're just placeholders it's part of the charm.
Well... that was... different :)
Very nice idea, and I totally loved the bugs!
I love the simplicity of it, and it sure feels "juicy" :) Powerups would indeed have been great. Very nice job!
I liked it. At first I thought there wasn't a lot to do, but then I discovered you can dive. Good job!
This was a pretty solid entry, though not on theme regrettably :/
I liked the atmosphere on this one.
Now I know what an angler fish feels like :)
This is one of these concepts that are really simple but have a high replay value. In other news, I discovered I'm a really slow typist...
This is simply amazing! And way too hard to keep them alive for long ;)
I loved the visual simplicity of the game. It would have been nice to have some kind of transition effect when teleporting and placing the cubes - but then again there is an amazing amount of work already in this game considering it's a compo entry. Well done, sir!
A JAR download isn't really a "web" version ;)
I loved the guitar soundtrack and the audio in general, more people should make their own sound assets for LD I think.
The visual style is also promising. You should complete this post LD!
Wow, that was simply amazing work, very well done black-forest people!
I love this game, very very cool idea indeed with the microbial setting and the semi-permeability :)
Interesting, surreal yet mundane. Not sure it's a game at all, but artistically interesting none the less.
Even though this isn't on theme, it's very very beautiful.
The web version didn't work at all for me, but the Windows version did. Well done, I enjoyed the gloomy atmosphere.
This one has potential, I liked the idea and the graphics. The controls were very difficult to handle though. Good job!
I loved the puzzles, though going back to the beginning after death is frustrating - especially since it doesn't take much to die quickly ;)
Quite simply excellent!
The "Fun" rating seems woefully inappropriate with this kind of game, but if you interpret it as "engaging" I'll give it high marks there as well. I get the underlying message, but I also feel dirty for having walked through this ;)
On the technical side, since the download is just for playing in a web browser anyway, why not host it somewhere so people can play it directly?
The Flappy Bird of breakout games: everything with just a single button/action, I love it!
OMG, everything has hair, the trees have hair - those graphics are simply amazing. What did you use to draw all this?
Controller didn't work for me - page loaded OK, but when I hit "surf's up", nothing happens. (iOS + Safari or Chrome)
What an amazing game, very well done - even though its connection to the theme is tenuous at best... You should totally market this as a mobile app! Hail Hydra!
After the casually dismissive comment you left about my game, I really wanted to dislike this one - but I can't. It's pretty damn good.
Very fun to play, and it has a lot of heart/atmosphere. I would have preferred the content viewport to be a bit larger, but that's probably just because of my big-ass screen ;)
This is the first time ever I've seen someone use PDF as a platform like this - good job!
I liked the concept and the graphics very much.
That was fun! At first I walked up to the other penguin who said "click" but I was empty. Maybe it should say something else in that case... Anyway, good work!
I loved the atmosphere and the graphics especially. You should definitely work on that post-LD version. Some visual visual and auditory feedback would be nice when you run into things, in fact all object-to-object interactions should be a little more dynamic in my opinion. Anyway, good work!
Yeah, I made sure there isn't an uprising against the Loyalists anytime soon. Hail Hydra!
Holy shit, that was awesome - and by awesome I mean psychotic! Well done!
When it starts, I get this error:
MyCheckGLError() : gl.getError() : 1281 : INVALID_VALUE stack=MyGetStackTrace@http://andymar.99k.org/js/utils.webgl.js:194
MyCheckGLError@http://andymar.99k.org/js/utils.webgl.js:209
Love_Graphics_Step_Start@http://andymar.99k.org/js/love.graphics.js:250
MainStep@http://andymar.99k.org/js/main.js:401
MainRunAfterPreloadFinished@http://andymar.99k.org/js/main.js:547
PreLoadImageFinishOne@http://andymar.99k.org/js/main.js:487
MainOnLoad/img.onload@http://andymar.99k.org/js/main.js:470
But then the game starts anyway :) there's a black rectangle next to the boat though, that's probably where the error is.
This was more fun than most games I've played so far (including my own). Very nicely done!
Cute little droplets! Good job :)
The web link doesn't work :/
I had way to much fun playing this! I feel like I might have been a better A.S.S. if there had been keyboard shortcuts... well done, guys!
This has a great atmosphere, well done :)
Any chance of doing a post-jam version?
That was fun, well done, especially considering it's a compo entry!
That was probably the best game I've played this LD, well worth firing up Windows for! Only the mouse pointer was a bit sluggish, though that might be due to me running it in a VM. Everything, the graphics, the music, the animations, it was perfect - and all that as a compo entry!!!
It's just CSS, there is no shader.
Hey guys, thanks for the feedback! If you find yourself in an unwinnable state you can start over by pressing R.
Thanks! Heh, I was aiming for Rogue-like with the Killbot interface, but I take it :)
Thanks gre. I kid you not: the audio is all me making silly sounds into the mic and for the background hum I used an old fan :)
Hey, thanks for reviewing. Yeah, some areas had to be left unfinished due to time constraints. Your guess about the elevators was right, you should be able to change strata (I'll look into it).
If you reload, most the game state is preserved, but again due to time running out after one day of coding the Killbot dungeon restarts from scratch. That's OK though, if Killbot's dead a new one is required, but if you left it alive, it will just restart at the beginning.
You were right, there was a bug in the elevator code, it should be fixed now.
Well, since I already wasted 2/3 of my time on another game before making this second attempt, yeah, some tradeoffs were made ;) I don't think it's that badly paced though actually - but seeing how few people actually make it to the second part is kind of discouraging.
Okay, hang on, I'll try it myself...
It does work for me. You'll probably have to clear your browser cache - browsers have a nasty habit of storing Javascript files forever if you don't force them to reload.
By the way, I didn't think of it at the time but the term "depth" was a bad choice of words. In that context it means "thickness". It does not influence how many strata there are.
Ha, that was fun! I liked how the attacks happen in rhythm with the music.
Installing pygame on OS X was kinda painful, but this game is a neat idea. You should totally flesh it out into a post-LD version!
Shame this is for Windows only, but I still wanted to leave a comment saying that these screenshots look very very nice :) Maybe you could post a walkthrough?
Checking in from France.
Very nice idea. I can't actually see my name on the map where it's highlighted, but I suppose that's because I overlap with another user.
I wasn't able to access the shop (OS X, post LD build). Is it supposed to just pop out on the right? Maybe you should add a keyboard shortcut to activate the shop or something.
Nevertheless, this is one of the nicest LD games I saw this time around. Good job!
Couldn't get it to play, but those screenshots look interesting!
I quite liked the concept and the graphics. If you were to improve it, I'd suggest showing the user more feedback about the UI actions that are possible. Sometimes the controls were in a weird state and I couldn't figure out how to get back on track. Great work, especially for a Compo entry!
Very nice concept. A little hard on the usability, though the interface is very promising it takes a while to understand what's going on. Impressive for a compo entry, too!
I like the graphical style, and the game idea definitely has potential. I wish there was more going on than hopping from world to world, but it's a pretty good compo entry overall! :)
I loved the two mirror worlds, such an interesting mechanic! Very well done!
It's hard to figure out what's going on in cyberspace at first, but then it becomes quite fun :) Well done!
Loved this, minimal and fun :)
This is a solid compo entry. In the beginning I couldn't tell whether I had died or moved on to the next level ;) Good job overall!
Chrome marks this as a malicious download and when I start the exe regardless, I get a message saying that this "is not a valid Win32 application".
Damn that was fun :) Well done, Scotsmen!
Boy, I don't know how to rate this. I love how you used the LD name as references :) There is clearly a game here, graphics and music are okay, but no source code (the link that says source leads nowhere), no info on how it was made, nothing. So this is essentially a Jam entry, right?
Nice work, I loved the game mechanic, and the general atmosphere created by the dispatch messages and the music!
Nicely done! I love the particle repellant effect. Gameplay's a little too hard for me though ;)
That was amazing, very well executed. I loved how the idea of different ledges evolves during gameplay. Fun!
Hehe, we won! :D very nicely done!
Very well done! I loved the graphics style! "If you can dream it, you can do it" :)
This one has been on my to-do list since I saw the first screenshots on the blog. Very well done! :)
The art looks amazing on this, but I can't get it to run right (Firefox or Chrome on OS X, Unity plugin installed). The music starts playing, but then I see only this:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/sp5x003cqrklef6/Cryunreal-providerbob.png?dl=0
I like the idea a lot, it had potential. Since you mentioned team problems and running out of time, from my own experience with programming projects: maybe you are just too many people. You'd be amazed what can be done with just two people (or even one, for that matter).
Easily the nicest game concept and mechanic I've seen so far. Very, very impressive, especially for a compo entry!
This didn't work for me on Firefox (OS X), I kept clicking the start button but nothing happened. But it does work on Chrome :) very nice idea, should should develop it further.
The amount of work and craftsmanship that went into this is absolutely amazing. The only thing "missing" would be a graphical ending, as opposed to just scrolling text. But otherwise, this is damn near perfect.
Loved it. I almost missed how to move the ship, though. And that black screen is really the end?
VEry solid entry. I would have loved to get a better visual of the fighter in action (other than just sitting in the cockpit). It feels a bit unfinished, but with a little polish you could make this into a very nice space shooter! Also, what's the deal with the concept art? Did you make that too? It's pretty amazing :)
Nice idea, but I think it's too difficult right from the start: the screen is full of fairies right away! Or maybe I'm just too slow ;) I'd suggest slowly ramping it up instead.
Very nice idea! I loved the teleportation sound ;)
Easily one of my favorite entries so far. Very well done, amazing!
Thanks for making an OS X version! Playing this is a bit like meditation, I like the atmosphere and I love the idea of playing a drone/alien who thinks in very long time spans. I couldn't reach all the outer planets, if they do exist I wasn't patient enough ;)
Hey, I can't play this since it's Windows-only, but I just wanted to say how immensely cool those screenshots look!
"Connected Worlds LD48.exe has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience."
Bummer after spooling up my Windows VM for this and sitting through an installer. Couldn't you make a version that runs on other platforms?
Played the web version, very tough. I have to admit that in the end I chickened out and used the walkthrough :/ Very nicely done!
Congratz on your first entry, good job! Though you wrote that mouse sensitivity has been reduced, it's still crazy sensitive (at least on my machine, OS X).
Very nice, I had fun playing (web player works, by the way). It's a little hard to figure out how to survive in that primordial ocean or whatever it is, but it's fun :)
Well done, this has potential. :)
Very cool graphics, nice atmosphere. I'm never sure what to rate the audio where people didn't make their own, but you certainly chose well.
This is insane :D I've got that melody stuck in my head now... Not bad for a first try!
Oh look, a police box! ;) I liked this little story!.
Very nicely done, and it wasn't slow for me on Firefox. The only "complaint" from my side would be that the connection to the theme is tenuous at best, but otherwise it's a very cool card game :)
This is promising, I would check out a full version if you decided to do it. :)
The controls are very hard, and I think they might be a bit buggy as far as aiming is concerned (on Firefox, OS X), but I really like the game's concept. Well done!
Kaboom! I won! Not quite sure why, but it was fun :)
I remember seeing the art on the blog before, so excited to finally play it :) Very nicely done, that was a lot of fun!
Oh, f*ck, that's what I get for testing only in Firefox. Sorry! Yes, you are supposed to be able to move while the "intro" text is being displayed.
I think I fixed it - hopefully. Please let me know if it continues to not work.
Hey thanks Colapsydo :) What happens in the core, are there any error messages? When it says something like "ejecting 3..2..1" the next screen should load automatically after a few seconds. Let me know.
Colapsydo, you were right, the core was bugged. For starters, Killbot wasn't being displayed correctly. I also took the liberty of slightly changing the text of the last chat option so it's more clear that you have to select it to move on. Let me know if that helped!
liquidminduk thanks. You just have to talk to the second cultist :)
FlashRocks: thanks, that's extremely nice to hear. It cost me a lot of sweat, nerves, and caffeine to push this out. And it's not actually what I had in mind for the game - originally I wanted to have real arcade action sequences in between the scenes, but time was running out... Also, I wanted to have REAL puzzles, the ones I put in are just kind of an excuse for the absence of actual puzzles...
adrenalinehigh_Jam: thanks :) When I went to bed on Monday, I was so exhausted and disappointed with my game, it's nice to hear that people actually like it. To be honest, you can see content quality degrading as the game progresses...
The music was actually done first (at least most of the pieces), on the first day - before there even was a real game. I kept listening to it as I programmed the levels.
I know, it's slow. Partly, that's intentional, it's supposed to be kind of a relaxing walk-through. But I can see how that's not everybody's style. And the timing is definitely off, I just didn't have the time to revisit the scenes and tweak them.
I don't think you did anything wrong, it was just awkwardly coded. I fixed the dialogue flow in that scene so people shouldn't get stuck there anymore. Hey if you hadn't reported the core I wouldn't have realized there was a graphics bugs, too!
> I can't resign to the idea that it was the last Killbot adventure.
I know what you mean :)
Boberro: finish the Cubot conversation, that'll get you to the next screen.
Freudian: thank you, this means a lot to me :) No, there are not really any alternate endings - except on the last screen where you get a choice between killing Yog or continuing in his service.
mechabit: yeah, that was the intention :)
I know, the text timing is off, but I'll leave it like that now.
parahunter: Well thank you for your brutal honesty. There are some points I don't understand which make me think you might not have tried very hard to actually play the game. Or it just wasn't for you, that's fine of course.
Tutorial, what are you talking about? The _two_ keys to use at the beginning are both mentioned in the text above as well as on screen in the game itself. All the other things have context-aware hint texts. As far as the "too much text" is concerned, didn't you realize most of that screen is optional? All you have to do is dial the gate, done. How much you choose to interact with that scenario is entirely voluntary.
And pray tell, what are the browser-related issues you found, exactly? Because if you let me know, I'd like to fix them. But merely saying how I should have done playtesting isn't very productive.
blurryroots: thanks, it's very much appreciated!
Remember folks, if you encounter any bugs, I'd like to hear about it! :)
psychomonster: not sure if you missed it, but the game goes further than the white dimension, right? :)
Nicely done, especially considering it's a compo entry! I prefer my islands without a volcano, too.
I played this actually for a long time, and probably will again :) It's one of these games with a simple mechanic that just works, I love the row-based production planning mode!
Nice job, definitely worth thinking about giving this some audio love and polish post-LD.
Addictive and fun, extremely well done! MURDER!!!
Hah, that was hilarious, and amazing art, too. Good job!
Wow, this was simply amazing, and considering it's a Compo entry this is wonderfully polished. Very very very well done!
That was fun! I still couldn't score above 0 in the end though, but Mom and 50% of the children were pretty happy ;) Loved the voice work.
Wow, this was pretty hard. But excellent job and great concept!
That was very well done, even though it took a bit of figuring-out what was going on. Nice job!
The "Web" link should be labeled "Source", there is no "Web" for this entry...
This made me exceedingly sad. Good job on the very very touching short story and the game overall (it's very unforgiving though, if you jump over just one tile it's all over). Don't know what to say except: very well done.
My favorite entry so far, well done!
OMG, I loved this. Thank you for making it!
Loved the humor and the mood on this one. *Callous End*
Nice idea. I actually wished I could draw outside the figure a bit.
Very very cool. I loved the creative use of the theme with the zooming dungeon. Such a simple idea, so perfectly executed.
I love it, so simple and fun, yet it's got great timing and is very engaging. Great job on your first LD!
Wow, a game where the only possible action is to propel yourself into a black hole, that's wonderfully bleak, hehe. :D
Hehe, that was excellent. Very well done and nicely polished.
This looks very interesting. Any chance of packaging it up so people can just download and play without any fuss? I think that counts as a "port" and would be allowable by the rules...
Very innovative concept - what I couldn't figure out though was why more than one hand is necessary? Also why does pressing C only work sometimes? Anyway, well done :)
Congratulations on your first LD game! This is a very cool concept, I just wish it had some audio - it's difficult to figure out what's going on sometimes. It's also pretty hard, I think gradually increasing the number of bees would have been better. Good job, keep it up!
Wow, I really loved the mechanics of this. Great idea!
Congratulations on finishing your first game, your first LD, and in fact your first programming project. I really liked the atmosphere and the mood in this one, but couldn't really figure out how to play it (nothing happens when I type stuff into the prompt). Anyway, keep it up, looking forward to seeing your entry in the next Ludum Dare!
Got out, good job! Just wish it could have been longer. Good job on supplying your own music, too! Congratulations on your first LD!
That was a lot of fun, I actually played against myself :)
Mwahaha, loved it! There's a lot of luck involved though, sometimes they are sawing or rocketing at you from very close by :D
Simple and fun, I liked it - especially the upbeat audio!
Sorry, I can't play this (looks interesting though). "Web" doesn't usually mean just a download link - if it leads to a Windows exe download, label it "Windows".
Good entry overall, I liked the idea of harvesting in the face of adversity :)
Very cool! I wish I had a gamepad, though. When the ball gets stuck in the middle, I bet there is a gamepad button to launch it again...
I loved it, everything was pure torture ;) I didn't get to fulfill my objective though because I couldn't figure out the phone. I dial the number on the sticky, but keep hearing the dial tone and nothing happens. Phone is plugged in to the modem, IPCONNECT.EXE is running. What am I doing wrong?
Hm... maybe I got the number wrong a few times, will try again! But yes, I had Y pressed and clicked on the hang-up button between tries.
That is very kind Gins, thank you. However you may judge the final result, I think the points I made in the blog post are the best advice I feel qualified to pass on (regardless of context), and there is no question in my mind the game would have profited immensely if I stuck to them :)
Everybody I'm sorry, it just didn't work out this time. However, I do take exception with the statement that the Killbot games didn't have content either. They were complete games, with stories, and endings.
I got all the money bags! :) It's a very well designed platformer, very playable and polished considering it's a Compo entry. Pacing-wise it would probably be a good idea to not restart the level entirely, so you don't lose progress you already have - but then again I'm really bad at platforming so other people probably didn't die as much as I did ;)
Holy shit did I have fun playing this, very nicely done! <3 The secret to winning on any difficulty level is to spam artillery though, while the AI tries to do a balanced build from the looks of it.
Excellent job on the audio as well, and kudos for composing music within the time constraints of the Compo!
I disagree with @kosmo about the speed, it's well paced. When you play on the normal speed setting, things are quite manageable.
I have to admit something upfront: I usually don't rate games that use pre-made assets, because I honestly don't know where to draw the line between what was done for LD and what came from somewhere else. Several comments here seem to suggest that hunch was correct. Again, this is not because I'm super critical, it's just because I have difficulties judging these entries fairly.
*However*, after reading the disclaimer, I now have a way better understanding of what @Geckoo1337 created here, and it's exceptionally good. The gameplay is fast and snappy, well paced, and the shader is just perfect. Kudos also for the sound and the general atmosphere, very well done! <3
That was great! There's a bug that stopped all sounds from playing after a few minutes, but I just kept playing. "Exoskeleton"? It's more like a giant death robot! This was great fun to play, very good job indeed for the Compo!
I think this is the first entry I've seen written in PureBasic, very cool
That download DEFINITELY doesn't work on Mac. You shipped a Windows EXE and Windows DLLs. It's not a problem (I have a Windows machine now, too, yay!) but just FYI, those two platforms are *not* compatible.
About the game itself: I really liked the idea, and the simplicity of the design. Unfortunately, I'm very bad at this kind of game, but it felt a little too difficult for me ;) I didn't get very far yet, but I'll try again tomorrow when I have more time!
I feel this concept is promising. Instructions or a couple of short tutorial levels would be great.
At least at the beginning of the level, maybe there should be fewer types of mana, so getting more types of mana as the game progresses might be a cool mechanic. If you're up for it, I think you should give your idea of combining several elements a try, in a post-compo version. Let's say you need 4 different types of mana per purifier, and a running purifier then feeds a new type of mana into a new location. You could then combine several of those secondary mana locations with another purifier to get a third-degree location and so on :)
Thanks for trying it out! I didn't realize the spawn cap was still in there, it's now 50 people per harbor, as it should be. I couldn't reproduce the problem with the research timer not showing up. Using the desktop version would probably solve that.
That's very unspecific. What happens when you try to research? Like I said, if you're not on Chrome, I'd advise using the downloadable version.
@stoogebag when they say "rest" that means rest at a hotel, when they want to go to the restaurant they say "hunger". It's not always clear which tourist said what, maybe that was the source of the confusion (if two of them say something, one bubble may be on top of another).
I'm not sure what's up with the research bug, I can't even reproduce it right now. I switched some things around, but until I can actually reproduce I'm afraid it'll keep happening. Did you play the web version or the downloadable one?
About the negative consequences: I had pollution and night club unpleasantness planned, but I ran out of time to implement it. This game came together very late, and it's kind of a shame that I didn't do the Jam, because adding cool features wouldn't take long now...
Thanks to everybody who tried the game <3 I gotta work right now, but I'm going to play the games of everybody who commented here tomorrow at the latest!
Thanks for trying it out. People keep reporting problems with the research system, but I haven't gotten a description out of you guys on what actually goes wrong. What happens when you click on the research menu item? Does the research window open? If so, what happens when you click an option there? If nothing happens, are you sure you have enough money? After you select a research option, do you see a status message about it in the log?
Thank you @furazin, I see you went for mass tourist appeal and money with your 3 stars and 535M bank account :D
I agree, Small World Resort Manager is quite polished (although by far not the most polished Compo entry I've seen this time around), however the downside is that I didn't get all the features in I wanted...
While I'm not usually partial to "progress quest" / tamagochi-style games, I did like the simplicity of the design and the look of this one very much. Very simple game, well executed :)
I love the ambitious idea behind this. Small issues not withstanding (for example, I got stuck in the menu during the game and had to restart), this was really fun. I liked the true Newtonian ship controls, and the overall atmosphere was very enjoyable, too. Not sure if the music is yours, but if it is: good job as well! You might want to consider doing a more complete post-Jam version. Also: OS X and Linux executables would be great.
This looks amazing! The itch.io link doesn't work though...
I loved this game! Although I didn't get to plant that last tree before the big bad butterfly ate me ;) It's amazing what you did just within the space of one weekend, especially the soundtrack (kudos for offering it as a separate download, too). Very moving, simple game. <3
Loved it, congratz on making this for the Jam! I noticed on the Mac version, the Sphinx area has a very choppy framerate, so I couldn't complete the game (on a recent-ish iMac, Apple hardware just sucks). But even on my beefy Windows machine, areas like the compass puzzle were very sluggish.
Having enjoyed the original Witness very much, I liked the puzzle style in this game as well! Nicely done! :)
I laughed my ass off the entire time, awesome voice work and script, really loved it! And I'm married to the job, too, no matter how great a dessert she is ;)
Not much else to say, it's great as it is. At some point, there was a bug that caused the Small World Agency to appear twice in the notebook, but no biggie. UI-wise I would probably gray out the topics you cannot ask a witness about after clicking the "ask sth from the notebook" option.
Excellent job, I felt Police Quest made a comeback there! <3
I played hot seat multiplayer with myself :) There is a lot to like about this game. Maybe the UI could have been a bit more intuitive, but it did the job. Playing against myself ended in a bit of a stalemate even though one faction took control of the neutral factory it was pretty hard and lengthy to actually overcome the enemy. Overall very promising, looking forward to that post-compo version! :)
Edit: after thinking about this for a while, an idea to make the gameplay more dynamic would be to add a secondary objective to the mission (other than just annihilation. For example, if the map had a reactor in the middle, and factions had to hold that ground in order to get an energy boost from it, that might add another interesting layer of depth.
Tesla Model S - the game! I loved it, a simple concept cleanly executed. FYI, under OS X you can only exit the game by pressing Escape, the standard key combo for the OS doesn't work.
@CMLSC I have never done this before, but I just can't help myself, I need to leave a comment about your comment. I apologize in advance for being so negative, but something about it just rubs me the wrong way, it just seems *massively condescending* to me.
First off, I noticed several comments during this LD where people post links to immensely well-known videos as you did. I suspect there are very few people who like to watch videos about game design and yet *for some reason have not already heard* of Extra Credits (the biggest channel about game design on YT) or, to pick another one I noticed a lot, Vlambeer Games (who speak at every considerable indie conference).
I feel it's necessary to point out that not every single deficiency in an LD game is because the creator didn't know any better and needs information about why implementing certain features is a good idea. I'd argue that in 90% of cases it's enough to point out what you think is missing in a game, without it being necessary to introduce the game maker to the concept of that missing feature.
It's very likely that you never intended it to come across like this, but to me it did.
Yes, I did really think I would make it :D Loved the game, very well done! The only improvement I can think of would be that the player should probably lose more height after a collision. Wonderful, excellent job! :D
Kudos for stepping out of your comfort zone and making a game type that is unfamiliar to you :) I'm not much of a clicker player, so I didn't play ultra-long, but it worked fine as far as I can tell :)
I just don't know how to rate this ;)
I haven't played completely through yet (maybe 70%, gonna finish it in the evening), I just wanted to leave some feedback about how much I liked this game. Very very well done! The "repair, fix, mend..." klicker was brutal to overcome on a touchpad though. And I haven't yet figured out how to solve the riddle where you need to shake you head, maybe trying it with an actual mouse will help or I'm just too dense to understand it right now. Anyway: great game! :)
This is absolutely brilliant! It reminds me a bit of Fidel Dungeon Rescue (I'd recommend everyone check that out) in that you cannot cross your own path. Little else to say that hasn't already been said, very good job indeed. I'll be back to play this some more over the next days! :)
Thank you! You can use the arrow keys as well, just not for strafing. :)
Thank you Shepsy, I remember you killing me several times :D Yes, the turn and movement rate is framerate-dependent, but the cooldown timer for shooting is not. There is only so much I could do in the time I had, but that's definitely something that should be corrected.
@Boxfort they're not invisible, they're probably only behind a wall at the time
So judging from watching people play it on live streams, I think what throws many people off is that you can only see people if you have a direct line of sight to them. If they're behind a wall, they disappear. Maybe in some cases that's coupled with the fact that, if they have a bad connection, their characters will move in big jumps instead of smooth movement.
Oh, and it's possible for people to spawn directly near an active player, I should probably fix that at some point...
I love the idea, and good job on the graphics! I couldn't QUITE figure out how to play though, maybe you could give a more detailed introduction, I'd be happy to come back and try again. So when I go to the merchant screen and buy something, nothing seems to happen. I don't know whether I successfully bought some critter food or not. Likewise, trying to drop food on the critter didn't seem to do anything... What am I doing wrong?
Pretty good level design, and the monologue is superb :) I loved the general concept of mining machines taking matters into their own hands after the meatsacks are gone. If you're doing a post-Jam version, add some sounds, that would really make this game shine. Good job!
I really want to try this, but the access runtime thing throws an error when after I click any of the two buttons on the main menu. Unfortunately, there is no detailed error code on this:
runtime-error2.png
I tried it on a Windows 7 and a Windows 10 computer, same result. Could you look into this?
I was too slow... dammit all those things that need replying! Good job considering you did this in 4 hours! :) Are those actual quotes from people or did you write them? Hard to tell the difference between reality and satire sometimes...
This is very solidly crafted, and it's amazing how much content you actually managed to cram in there, especially considering that it's a Compo entry! Some minor usability gripes not withstanding, it's enjoyable to play. I think if you added a few more effects and did one more polishing pass on the graphics, you could put the game onto a store for money, otherwise pretty much as it is.
I second the motion for a Post-Jam version :) The music is superb and I like the graphics style a lot. A lot could be done with this idea of being only able to move in the dark...
I absolutely loved how this game looks, I associated it heavily with Dungeon Keeper for some reason :) Some bugs not withstanding, all of you did amazing work, you could easily expand upon this and publish it outside Ludum Dare.
I'd love to see this finished :)
90+ reviews given in a very short amount of time, without leaving a SINGLE comment anywhere
@Gulyasarni66 wow, I honestly don't know where to start. This is wrong. You're gaming the system. Not only are you propelling yourself forward at the expense of others, what's worse is you deprive the people who are unlucky to get you as their reviewer of the honest feedback they could have received. I don't think you're a bad person, but you need to understand a few things here:
Everyone worked hard on their games, they deserve the same attention to their game as yours got. You have a FULL MONTH to rate games and get rated yourself, there was absolutely no reason to pull this stunt. This is not just a one-way platform for you personally, it's a community. People rely on you having actually played their game before you rate it! By simply faking reviews you are nullifying a part of what they accomplished. You would not want anybody to do this to your game, so don't do it to others!
The goal here is to make an awesome game, to level up in experience, and to meet new people who are into the same things.
@Gulyasarni66 thank you for understanding, and I think it's awesome that you are going to fix it. <3
I liked this idea, and the artwork is adorable :) my bad for first thinking there was a bug, but in reality I was already in level 2 :smiley:
Not bad at all for 2 hours of programming, works as advertised! :) ...and has got more to do with the theme than many of the other things I played so far :wink:
The performance of this thing is astonishing, good work on your engine. It does work as an exploration/mood piece, although I hope one of these days you'll make one with more ...active gameplay :wink: In the meantime: stay spikey!
This is wonderful, exceptional job on the puzzles, the graphics, the design. well done! I'm not even close to done with this yet :smiley:
Thank you for reviewing it Tegu! I have added some stats to the "level over" screen post-compo to make it easier for people to see where they fall.
I think it's okay to sometimes have a "breather" level that's easier than the one before, but overall I think you're right. Puzzle design and flow could be vastly better. In the end there was not enough time...
@deadmandomi Thanks bro (literally) :smile: Yes, more (and better) levels wouldn't even be that hard to do, one more day would have made a huge difference here. That said, the levels are simply in text format, maybe I'll release something that takes advantage of this post-compo.
Thank you for the feedback @mistersdevelopment - yes, in hindsight the difficulty of level 4 is out of whack. Thank you for not giving up, you're one of the very few people who made it.
thank you so much @nam-nguyen and @iballs - I'm still conflicted, maybe I should have done the Jam, one more day would have worked wonders...
thank you @gimbalock !
@radow I know exactly what you mean about the balance between imitation and experimentation. Thank you very much for your feedback.
@flower thank you :smile:
@cheetahcat a day more would have made a huge difference, though... that reminds me: still gotta post the timelapse!
@iamsodarncool Thank you for the detailed feedback! Yes, I thought about more mechanics, but I suddenly ran out of time on Sunday, that's also why the difficulty curve is a bit off.
About the music: at first I just exported each instrument from Logic Pro into its own track, because I wanted the game to mix them down dynamically. However, due to limitations of web audio, I never got this to work without horrible glitches. So in the end I took the song and mixed down/baked a couple of versions of it, literally in the last few minutes before submission. But yeah, limitations to the audio portions are mostly down to the fact that it was a rushed "fix" in the end. I forgot to mention in the description that I used howler.js, which is a pretty minimal web audio playback library.
About the "engine": there is pretty much none, it's really just Three.js (which is a webGL renderer) and some very minimal glue code I've kinda been accumulating during the last LDs. It's available on Github as a starter package, but I'm hesitant to post it before it's properly documented. What the starter code does is taking care of the boilerplate to set up the scene (apart from some things that I didn't use in this game, like my own pathfinding lib and such). It also doesn't yet contain the effect pipeline I used in this game.
So my philosophy is pretty much hacking this together for each LD, which of course isn't very sustainable. But in the end, this isn't a very complex game either (have a look at the js/game.js file if you're interested, it's a horrible mess, but apart from the levels file js/levels.js this is pretty much the core).
I think I'll make a proper write-up later.
Thank you @jupiter-hadley :smiley:
Hehe @rexpeppers we will see, I'll have a look tomorrow :wink:
Thank you @g12345, as we talked about in the IRC channel, the difficulty thing is ...difficult :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: Obviously, this would have been a lot smoother had this been a Jam entry (or with better time management), however, I'm also very surprised about the difficulty perception of different players. Something I'd have to seriously think about in a broader context if I were to make a post-Compo version...
@aurel300 sorry it wasn't your thing, but in my defense it was only a Compo entry ;) I already talked about the level design stuff and such... To be honest I personally like the graphics, and I disagree: I wouldn't want this to be in "crisp 2D"
@wrenpirate I learned something important about difficulty making this game. My guess is it all comes down to whether people have experience with these kinds of puzzles or not. Those that have, find it too easy. Those that don't, tend find it too hard. deadmandomi is my little brother and I know he played games like this before, and aurel300 I know from the #ludumdare IRC channel (which I keep plugging!) and I was far, far too dumb to solve *his* game :smile:
About the music, it was supposed to be better, but there's a whole story behind this salvaged version of it in the Post Mortem...
@wrenpirate heh, sorry for the torture, I swear I didn't make this to aggravate people :laughing:
I like how physics-y games such as TSSIROOSBCOTPB can add a lot of depth using very simple mechanics. Also, very humorous and certainly atmospheric even with simple graphics. Well done, @tsjost :end:
This was the best story telling, best mood, best music, best overall game for me this LD - by a long shot. There is very little to say except that you did a monumental thing here, in an incredibly short timeframe. The voice acting was stellar, the scripts were funny and compelling. And most importantly: you managed to tell a very touching story using nothing but everyday elements.
Just saw this in my feed, so cute! Great job on the game and especially the artwork! <3
Very well done, team! This is so polished, I would suggest you just put it onto an app store for mobile as-is. Very good job on the graphics, the sound design, it's funny, and programming-wise feels very smooth. Well done!
Congratulations on your first game, looks very promising! :)
There is no Mac or Linux version. It looks like you're using Unity, so you might want to just use the built-in Mac and Linux exporters. Also missing: the source code
I love how my uncharacteristic attempts at preparedness and planning turn out to be completely futile: "Fortunately, you brought the external battery, but the moment has passed." *Life lesson: learned*. And _still_ the aliens didn't take me on board. Well, at least there's still Derek. "I swear I would totally call you tomorrow, but... you know. I'm sorry." oh, come *on*! Maybe the LD scale should include a category for realism :laughing:
Heh, a twin stick shooter, I'm *really* bad at these :smile: It was surprisingly fun to play, simple and well executed. I kept shooting myself from behind :laughing: I can definitely see how this would be fun with two people collaborating.
I didn't know Lib Gdx existed. How was the experience of making a game with it?
"Special" mode all the way!
I have to say, that's very nice for a Compo entry. I played it on the web emulator, it went fine, but I'll definitely save the image and try it on a real C64 later :smile: reminds me of my actual youth, not just the computer, but also the horrible first programming job!
I'm not the person who initially found this out but I feel compelled to weigh in anyway...
> "It’s not allowed to make another shoot em up for a jam?"
This is *clearly* not the issue. I think people were confounded by the fact that you did not disclose what you made for this LD and what was pre-existing. To be fair, I think you did nothing wrong as far as the rules go. You absolutely are allowed to use *anything* pre-existing in the Jam.
The problem here is that there is that neither the rules nor the submission form say anything about declaring what was part of the Jam and what was not. This is not your fault, and clearly most of the people who voted for this do not care one way or the other (in my experience people don't even care if it's Compo or Jam, at least that's what I heard several streamers say).
Personally, I do think this entry is a bit misleading, but at the same time you can't really take someone to task for not adhering to unspoken rules - and rules that most of the community doesn't care about in any case. I do think there should be guidance to the effect that encourages people do declare this more clearly, and to make them opt out of any categories where they didn't make any content, but again that's just my personal preference.
#youdidnothingwrong
The honor system breaks in ways that cause lasting damage if things like these slip through. Morale as far as the rules go has already not been stellar to begin with recently, and letting something like this pass through just furthers the impression that LD is an anything-goes free-for-all. However, the ratings are now done, and even if this entry was removed it wouldn't matter all that much.
The way to address this IMO is systemically. Let's introduce voting ring detection, a system to flag abuse, and I'm also quite fond of @Sol_HSA's idea of having two voting rounds in the future: one where all games a ranked, and then a final round where only the top 100 games are voted on. This would prevent stuff like this (and worse) from getting through without anyone caring.
I also think if we re-introduced a proper victory screen like we used to have, people would be more likely to notice. The fact that this ranked #1 and #2 on pretty much everything *and nobody even noticed* should alarm everyone.
I won :smile: This was cool to play, I enjoy these types of games the most on LD. Excellent job on the music, it made me feel extra retro-y. Overall I enjoyed the mechanics, if you want to make a post-jam version for itch.io maybe, make a couple more cards and add some animations you'd be all set. I'd certainly play that.
A question about the rocket launchers: since they can be countered with flares, is - given the choice - building a laser always a better option?
Screenshot from 2019-05-10 22-07-55.jpg
Thank you for exporting a Linux binary, it works :smile: ^
The turrets somehow shot me through the door :stuck_out_tongue:
Well done game, plays very smooth, graphics are excellent. Audio is a bit low. I like the indirection between currency, health, and energy. If you decide to make a post-compo version, I think there'd be a compelling case for power-ups also working in the same way, for example shields or a specialized attack.
What might be worth a try, gameplay-wise, is a version where you select a "focus" ability (for example health regen, weapon energy, other ability) and as long as it has the focus, it regenerates from the "currency" pool. That way you could put an almost arbitrary number of abilities in there for the player to manage.
Anyway, well done!
I liked it :) I would advise going for basic sound effects, you can even make reasonable once with just a mic to your mouth! I liked the gameplay, the evaluation you have to make between shooting and looting, and keeping enemies away as you prepare to board. Sometimes, the "board here" sign gets stuck in space for a few seconds after a ship is destroyed, but otherwise it playes pretty much flawlessly. Good job!
I wish this had audio, especially gun and decompression sounds ;) I liked playing it, surviving another MomCorp attack felt strangely satisfying. It wasn't always clear to me whether crew deployments to a certain station were having any effect or whether I was doing it wrong. After a while the progress indicators stopped working (or so it seemed), no idea whether the stations were actually detroyed but I don't think so since the guns kept firing and the shields kept regenerating. Another thing I didn't quite understand was the money kept counting down until it was gone.
Also: why did you opt out of Humor? It's one of the *rare* LD games that *could* actually be rated on that category :laughing:
At first I had no idea what was going on, just giant moving pixels in my face :laughing: Good word! You nailed the aesthetics, the artwork is very consistent. I can't really explain why, but I do feel disconnected from the controls a little, maybe there could be some more immediate feedback on the rabbit as it moves? No idea. Again, good work, especially given the Compo constraints!
I'm really bad at arcade shooters, but I enjoyed this for a while. Took me a while to fully understand what's going on :laughing: It's very competently made, music and sound effects are tasteful. A well-made entry that captures the theme! I think I'll give this another go after I rated some more games.
shellshark.jpg Loved it! At first I wasn't entirely clear how the battle mechanics work, but it became clear very soon. Add some effects and sound to it, you could easily put this on a mobile app store.
This game is certainly unique and the concept is quite novel. Apart from the obvious UI issues, I wish there was a better way to show users how it works, because the time until I finally "got" it was quite a few tries. But that again may be due to the UI. If you could, for example, just select a curve from a menu, that would help clear things up in of itself. Well done, it's certainly outside of the box. Sadly not on theme, and I honestly wouldn't know how to rank mood or humor here (so I didn't).
Any chance of a macOS or Linux build?
@yngvarr thank you for your feedback. About teleportation, its only limitation is line-of-sight, so in a more fully fledged version I'd have worked with walls and obstacles a bit more, but hopefully the level design should give you a sense of "many ways to accomplish this" - and if a few of them feel a bit exploity, then that's not necessarily bad in my opinion :wink:
Thank you, @dollarone :smile: looking forward to getting out of work today and try all you peoples' games!
Thank you very much @roidz - I'm afraid this version won't work on phones, but I agree maybe this could be made into a real app... :heart:
@gcttirth thank you! Yes, I do have a problem with making good decisions about difficulty curves :wink: That's why it's so informative to watch people play on stream
@ldjsq yeah, decisions and sacrifices (probably) have to be made :grin:
Thank you, @adam-clayden
Small world @zax I was just about to try your game :laughing:
@dorkulon thank you for trying it out! Actually, I should probably have explained the controls a bit more. Because you can play the game fully with either keyboard or mouse, you don't need to switch between them.
@ithildin thank you :smile:
Yes, now that I think about it, you probably *can* zombify a monster from a previous level :laughing: good catch!
Atmospherically dense, the sound track very much contributes to the eerie feeling. Strangely, the web build wouldn't launch for me on Chrome, but worked fine in Firefox thankfully. The exposition at the beginning is well written, but could maybe be shortened a bit (plus there should be a way to skip it, so restarting the game isn't a pain). The final "Goodbye." felt impactful. Good work!
The amount of polish in this game is astounding. Assuming you also did the music and the sfx yourself, this result is quite an accomplishment. There was a little bit too little depth for the duration of the game, but considering that this was made during a game jam, that's really not of much consequence. Excellently done!
This was a surreal experience :laughing: A Mac, Linux or web version would have been nice (not sure if GameMaker actually does that or not) because surprisingly it didn't run very well in my VM. Overall: a bit buggy, but it was fun! And enjoyed the animation work as well.
I came here because you posted to the IRC channel, but then vanished before anyone responded to you :smile: So... yes, I agree with you, the interface and design language are pretty clear. However, that doesn't mean @saering is necessarily wrong. This game is extremely unforgiving and it's not always clear what you're supposed to be doing or how you're doing. I would describe the experience like this: it's like you're suddenly in an advanced level of a game where you really wish you'd have gone through the tutorial levels first. For example, it's not clear to me - even after going through several attempts - whether I was actually making decisions about the state of the game board, I was too busy trying to hit Z on the beat.
I do think this game does have a lot of potential, the problem is just that it has no (perceived) difficulty curve :smile:
I knew this game would make me sad ;) I don't have the original hardware, so thank you for providing an HTML5 port! This game is an outstanding technical achievement, and a touching bit of storytelling. Thank you for making this!
Could you make a macOS, Linux, or webGL build? I'd be interested in playing this :smile:
Great, now the old dude is swimming in monster souls! :) well done, the music is quite relaxing, which oddly fits the atmosphere of the game since it's not too stressful. One thing I would suggest is to tweak the difficulty a bit, maybe slow down health regeneration, or even get rid of regeneration altogether. Then the only source of health could be monster drops.
Well that was depressing :laughing: What I really liked about this game was the polish: the graphics, the soundtrack, the sound effects, the flow of the game - really well done! I wish there was a little more depth to the game mechanics, but if you wanted to do a post-jam version that seems easy to add. You could then easily put this on an app store if you wanted.
I love this kind of game, well done! Not sure if there was a victory condition, because after I subjug- ...liberated all the planets, nothing really happened, but it matters not: this was a fun one! The attention to detail is astonishing for a Jam game. This could easily expanded into a fully-fledged "Solaris light" type of game.
I'm confused. How do you interact with the flying envelopes (or anything else, for that matter)? It seems like pressing space bar does nothing, yet they clearly seem to respond to my proximity by displaying a red dot, right?
Very well done, especially considering that this was done as a Compo entry! One thing I would change in a post-compo version is to add more immediate feedback to the user interface, to make it more clear which elements can be interacted with. Otherwise, I think this is pretty much ready for release, just add a few more levels and you're done :slight_smile:
I laughed so hard playing this, well done! I liked the cute little sounds everybody makes all the time. I do wish this had a different control scheme though, maybe two keys for rotation or something, but that would also change the difficulty of course...
Where is the source code?
The graphical vibes are like South Park meets Prison Architect, which I like :smile: The character can be a bit hard to control at times, and in the beginning it's not clear how to interact with people until you get pwned by robbers :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes: Congratz on your first LD game, well done!
Got ending C! :heart: What a wonderful realm of magic and eggdogs, very good job on the art and the script! I wouldn't mind playing an entire adventure in this setting :laughing:
Just saw this on a stream. Is there any chance of maybe making a macOS or Linux build?
Sadly I can't rate games this LD, but I absolutely loved this concept. Neat and minimalistic, and just one JS file without dependencies - very nice!
Hey @timbeaudet and @tsjost, nicely done! And thank you for providing a native Linux executable, runs like a charm. I really like the low poly look, and the chill simplicity of this game. One thing I wasn't certain about when playing was if there is more content in city parts where I hadn't built a bridge (but I'm guessing the city is endless anyway). The one thing I would change is, as @adroitconceptions already said, the camera rig.
@adroitconceptions regarding Linux executable: most Linux file browsers don't like launching executables (notably: Gnome). As far as I know there is nothing that can be done about it from the perspective of people shipping you binaries. Perversely, I think Gnome file browser *can* launch *Windows* executables because it thinks they are "documents" that can be opened with Wine. I didn't have any issues running the game though.
@adroitconceptions can you point me to a Linux build on Unity that launched fine for you? I'd like to see how they did that
@adroitconceptions I stand corrected, you are absolutely right.
@timbeaudet it seems like TB builds on Linux are tagged "ELF 64-bit LSB shared object" whereas the Unity executables are instead "ELF 64-bit LSB executable" as it should be. Seems like a compiler switch issues maybe?
As usual, I like your take on the theme :smile: I especially enjoyed the mole faces and the splattery mole death animation. I think when a mole escapes, the player should lose life points or something, that way the highscore could be more meaningful.
Thank you for your feedback @bereg! I agree, it is possible to solve the swapping puzzle through trial and error. If I had another day, I would have added more content which would probably improve the gameplay flow considerably.
@tero-pulkkinen thank you! Player going outside the screen sounds like a bug. What resolution are you running at?
@blubberquark thank you, yes that is kind of what I was going for. I wish I'd have had more time for more puzzles and machinery...
Thank you @tjm good points. It's definitely uneven regarding difficulty and puzzle design. If I hadn't run out of time, I would have made at least one more type of machine where the "swapping star" made more of an impact, like you said. And/Or alternatively do something special when you align three stars, analogous to the orbs...
@dystoth thank you. I have done story-heavy games before, this is kind of the opposite. Who is your character? Why are they here? Where do they want to go? What is even going on? Who knows :laughing:
@celuloide thank you! Yeah about the sense of objective, it's actually a lot darker than that, because you spend your time running around and re-arranging those loops to (maybe?) get somewhere, but if you make it to last reality there are no more doors, no more artifacts, just endlessness...
@obi-one thank you. If it's any consolation: while I do think the looped world idea is good, I have *SO MANY* regrets regarding puzzle and world design, things that in hindsight should obviously have been done differently. That's the curse of Ludum Dare, isn't it, you're kind of stuck with the decisions you already made, because there is literally no time to go back and change things. But I also find it liberating. And there have definitely been Ludum Dares where I literally had *no idea* and ended up not participating, or ones where I had so little of the game done by the end that I chose not to submit.
@dmitry-mozgin thank you for trying it out. I realize it's not for everyone, but it's still valuable feedback, especially regarding the puzzle mechanic the game kind of leaves you to your own devices (but hey, time is limited during Compo).
@alaah wow, thank you! The ending is a bit obscure, yes. I chose the Omega character to hint that the journey ends there, and the other symbols on the wall are worlds you already visited. So you did pick the "right" one, it's also the first symbol and the only one in that uses a capital letter, I was hoping people would be drawn to it. There is only one ending by the way, you didn't miss anything.
Had I had more time, I definitely would have done at least one more puzzle where you pick stuff up and drop it on another artifact, to illustrate what's possible. Since the pickup-symbol is used only once it probably feels a bit random.
> gedit is probably what you mean.
It was Geany, actually :laughing:
@wouter52 I'm not sure there is a lot you missed, it's actually a lot more shallow than you think :laughing: For what it's worth, you're at the end: all of the symbols on there lead to places you've already visited (the pyramids indicate which world will open), except one symbol that you haven't seen yet. You can then pick up the new symbol and use a pyramid with it to open a new world. As you step into that world, the game ends.
So far the post-LD version is identical except for the starting world. I'll try to make some time for better puzzles this week, and I'll post that in the description.
@neragoth thank you so much!
If I could go back to the first day of the jam, the puzzle mechanic(s) would be slightly different. Truth is beyond the positioning of the doors, there is no other puzzle where the horizontal alignment of the strips matters. It confuses a lot of players, and I completely understand why. All the other puzzles are based on the vertical alignment / stacking of the strips.
In hindsight, I probably should have taken one more day to make this design more consistent, but I had to go to work on monday... :neutral_face:
@eldelhas thank you, and you're right the issue with providing a tutorial is that the game itself would basically seize to exist. I was hoping that exploration of the rules could be part of the gameplay without being tedious, however, I do realize that didn't quite work out as well as I had hoped.
@baylej thank you! But I swear it's not an endless game, you could probably speedrun it in about 30 seconds :laughing: About the timelapse, I enjoy watching other people post their timelapses as well, and I think it's a great way to communicate how people go about making their game.
@thooom thank you! Yeah I don't know what to call them either :laughing: worlds? layers? strips?
@kuro thank you :smiley:
@eldar thank you so much! You are completely right about the puzzles (and I think @seanarooni had a similar experience but quit much earlier), they are the main regret I have about this LD. I should have spent more (or any) time designing this "on paper" before starting.
The problems here come from several choices that probably didn't work out for most players:
First I wanted people to explore the puzzles, let the game be its own tutorial. For example, explaining how the pyramids work beforehand would probably nullify a big chunk of this exploration. However, I don't think I created enough affordances for this learning effect to be enjoyable or meaningful.
I also had more devices/puzzles planned but I ran out of time. The choice was essentially more polish or more content, and I basically chose polish.
Second, because I ran out of time I couldn't do more levels/layers/watchamacallits. This means it's easier to mindlessly bruteforce. And in the end, I'm afraid, the effect on many players is basically "okayyy, whatever" instead of "oh that's neat".
I have designed puzzle games for LD before where these things were solved in much better ways, I think. As I said before, maybe I should have chosen Jam instead of Compo, but I had to go to work on Monday...
Overall I'm not unhappy with this entry, but I do agree there are shortcomings.
Good question - I've been at that point several times, post LD, with an idea that I liked and I decide "screw it, I'm making a real game out of this", but it somehow never works out... a major factor is that life gets in the way, and serious projects are incompatible with my job :laughing: I'm not a game developer in real life. I've been dreaming of becoming one, but I don't have enough financial runway to not end up homeless (and 2020 put a big dent in my plans there). Right now I'm living vicariously through @timbeaudet, somehow he pulls off what I can't (yet): working a day job, doing indie dev on the side, streaming it every day. What's your perspective, @eldar?
I think this is a typical experience as far as hobby/indie game dev goes @eldar . Especially the part where you describe how you put everything in your first game, hoping it will take off, I heard that so many times. I'm probably the wrong person to give advice on this, but from everything I've seen and heard, the most reasonable way forward is to release games often and regularly. Only after a few of these, *maybe* consider a larger project. The reasoning being that you need to build an audience first, and also train your gamedev muscles.
So you've got a feavorite genre, I think you can use that to slowly build a following. It's better than me, because I'm all over the place :laughing:
> That said, I don’t think I’m particularly good at gamedev
I don't think that's true. You made several games for LD, and they work pretty well as far as I can tell. You're probably deficient in the same way I am: not enough practice. But that can be fixed!
I had a very short run of making a game roughly every month (for like 3 months) together with a friend of mine. It was pretty great, although a bit stressful, and I wanted to make more polished games (ended up doing nothing instead). I think he got discouraged by the utter lack of feedback or interest. That's probably what kills most of us hobby devs, because it leads to a lack of motivation.
Yeah commercial viability is probably not a realistic goal :frowning2:
@vphyre thanks for trying it out, sorry that it wasn't for you. I saw that you didn't get very far, and that's fair, because it *is* a little confusing.
@eldar
> learning from other people’s mistakes just isn’t my strong suit
That's also one of my problems :laughing:
What you said about the oversaturation and audience rings true to me. I think at the tail end of popularity (where we both probably are tbh) there are more people making games than people playing them. With that comes the realization that your first few releases are going to be basically just for yourself. But I do think that even niche developers with a *regular* output eventually reach an audience. The question is just whether one can stay motivated that long and where the personal cut-off point is for giving up.
> Anyway, didn’t mean to overtake your game page with the discussion about woes (real or perceived) of indie gamedev!
Honestly, I think that's part of LD, exchanging experiences and making friends. I still periodically drop by the LD IRC chat because I found so many like-minded people there (even though the place is a bit deserted nowadays).
@ptsnoop haha, you're not wrong about concepts being abandoned too quickly, time just ran out (48h can be really short :laughing:). Don't think of it as a game, think of it as a loosely held-together assemblage of puzzle demos that don't quite work but has a weird amount of polish applied to it :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:
> it feels like there’s a lot you could do with those,
I agree.
> Surprised that the cultist looked so dejected to make it out of the dungeon though!
Maybe because once they made it out, there was just an empty wasteland waiting for them.
Originally I wanted to incorporate story into the game through things and characters that would tell you little things as you walked by them. Had I been better at time management, I'd have included that alongside more actual puzzle content. But since the story didn't make it in there, I left the ending open as well. Honestly, I think it kind of works overall, because the player can just concoct whatever story they want in their head and it'd be almost certainly better than what I would have come up with :smile_cat:
I loved the voice lines *so much*! "Just follow the loop and you'll be fiiiiine" :laughing: I also got the line that says the world is really changing when you're not looking, which was another possible LD theme. I did get stuck once, so thank you for providing F1. Really not much else to say, I really liked the atmosphere.
The game does run fine on Wine under Linux by the way.
I liked the idea very much, good job on executing it under Compo restraints. This has potential as a little mobile game for example.
What I would do differently: the difficulty should just ramp up during gameplay. Don't let people select it upfront, just keep decreasing the distances (or better: speeding up the loop). I also think the game should restart immediately after a failure without going through the main menu. Instead of a "how to play" button you could just display the buttons in a corner during gameplay. Add some effects to it and ship it on mobile! :slight_smile:
It took me a few tries, but I have escaped the cycle of violence!
Well done! I especially liked the attack sentences of the demons, and I loved how together with the items this makes a compelling statement about everyday life and society grinding you down bit by bit. UI-wise it's a bit hard to figure out, and survival does hinge on what items you get (same as with many deck building games), but other than that I wouldn't change anything about this game. :slight_smile:
This is essentially the game-equivalent of a fidget spinner :laughing:
I do like the graphics, looks quite polished actually.
Little to say that hasn't already been said, I really liked the idea, and the vase mechanism felt really good. I liked how you increasingly need to work with the vases in order to survive, and the game does make you feel like a horrible (but flawed) monster. I'll bookmark this and play some more later :slight_smile:
A simple concept, well executed! I saw this multiple times in front page posts and had to check it out.
I liked how polished everything is. It's great that there is a tutorial in the beginning. The music and the endless rounds of cooking soup fit the theme very well, and thematically I liked the multiple loops the character is stuck in: from job to job, from day to day, from round to round, from soup to soup.
What I would do differently: not much. The UI could give a bit more feedback when you interact with things, it doesn't feel really "tactile", but then again not sure it needs to. Again, well done everybody!
Simple but nice graphics, very atmospheric, well done! I recently played a game on Steam called Subsurface Circular, which this reminded me of. I like dialogue-driven, emotional games :slight_smile:
When I tried playing on the phone, it didn't do anything for my courage, which means either I did it wrong or it's an accurate simulation ;) Not sure telling my wife I don't want kids counts as "running away from my problems as usual" but maybe that's accurate too :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:
This game feels complete, not sure what I would change or add. Quite a feat for a Compo game!
PS: thank you for making a Linux executable
The best action/arcade-y game I have played so far this LD. The web version wouldn't load for me, and although the Windows version did run fine under Wine, there was no sound (not sure if the game has sound or not, I couldn't rate it).
Not much to say about the gameplay other than that it was well executed. Simple, tight, responsive. Really nice execution of the looping mechanic, good job!
I almost washed out until I realized the puzzles repeat every time, very nice use of the theme! The music does a good job and the graphics, while being simple, work for me overall.
What I would do differently: there are too many graphical styles, for example the floor and walls don't really fit with the items and so on. I also think an indicator showing how many puzzles you solved and how many there still are would be quite motivating.
Overall: good job!
I'm so bad at platformers it's not even funny :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes: I enjoyed the death-cascades I sometimes brought myself into: falling down, bouncing on spikey drones a few times, then dying :laughing:
The graphics were great, I also especially enjoyed the overworld loop. Nice work! Hard to believe this is your first game jam!
Nicely done! The game does run well on Linux under Wine, btw, but a web build would probably make this accessible to more players.
Very small bug: In the first level, round 3, it says [< ^ <] on the top of the screen, but the rules are actually [< ^ >] I'm also having difficulty controlling the character in the last (endless loop) level, not sure if it's intentional or not, but fits the theme either way :laughing:
What I think could be improved: at first I didn't understand whether I had failed or succeeded. It becomes clear quickly, but more optical feedback would have been nice in addition to the comment line.
I also learned to dislike the screen showing the rules before the level starts: more than once I clicked to make it go away faster and accidentally dashed to my death as the level then actually began. It also feels like a punishment to sit through the start screen on every round, which again is probably intentional, but if it wasn't for that screen I wouldn't have pressed F1. Overall I think the game would be understandable without it.
Again, very good job, this is a well-produced entry!
Great job! :heart: I really enjoyed this, excellently done. Very cute graphics, and overall a very nice idea for a puzzle game.
I encountered an endless looping bug (how appropriate for the theme! :laughing:) in the hexagonal spider web with the six spiders: one of them ate me, but the level didn't end, they just walked back and forth with my corpse (could have been a race condition because two spiders overlapped and ate me simultaneously).
I found it! :laughing: I really like this concept, and I wish there were more physics-y games around in Ludum Dare. Playing this evoked thermodynamics very well, this concept of why two sides of a container reach an equilibrium, and in this case you literally got to play Maxwell's Demon!
One thing that I wish was more developed was the inner loop for trapping particles, but off the top of my head I don't have a more concrete idea either.
I also saw this was your first LD, so I just wanted to say welcome and I hope you had fun, and looking forward to the next one!
Wow I had not known Conway had died :( Very cool idea making a game based on his game of life.
A minor bug: even after you reset the level, you can still use the undo function to get to previous states.
One thing that struck me was that I was kind of brute-forcing my way through the levels. That's probably because I'm really bad at planning (which is also why I suck at Chess). I wonder how it would feel if you showed some indicators of where the growth will be next round(s), although that would probably fundamentally alter the difficulty of the game.
Man, this idea is inspiring. I sort of want to try and make an XCOM-like based on cellular slime growth now :laughing:
This game does not run on stock Ubuntu due to the GlibC 2.32 dependency. It also doesn't include a Cargo.toml file to build it yourself. Anyone trying to build this on Linux should create a Cargo.toml file in the project root and add the following lines to it:
``` [package] name = "the_loop_bad_rusty_lnx" version = "0.1.0" [dependencies] coffee = { version = "0.4", features = ["opengl"] } rand = "0.7" ```
After that, you can "cargo build" the project, and the executable will be in "target/debug/the_loop_bad_rusty_lnx". Copy it to the project root and start via Terminal (important, since it's the wrong file type to start from a file browser).
Congratz on your first game!
Not sure what other feedback to give except: build on this first thing you did. You got your programming environment all set up, just keep on making things. If I could make a suggestion: implement Asteroids next. It's limited and fun to do, and most important game dev concepts are in there.
Screenshot from 2020-10-10 11-32-17.png
PS: this is the first LD where I noticed *a lot* of people using Linux, seems there has been a massive shift during those last months...
I had the livestream on in the background sometimes during this :laughing:
I dig this style of game. Some minimal sound effects would have been nice, but considering how little time there is in the Compo, I think it's good that you added graphical polish instead (like a tutorial and some animations, and of course the UI in general). I especially liked the events/blockers, they added a nice atmosphere and kept the game fresh. I do wish there were more player cards though.
Good job! :heart:
I don't have an Oculus Quest, so I'm using the video for this review. Let me know if that's okay, if not I'll happily remove my rating.
First off: great work, you got a lot done in just 48h! The style, while super simple, is completely coherent. I can't judge how hard it is to get going with the Oculus dev kit, but yeah I like the completeness of the result. The music was well done, too.
Now the most outstanding part: the writing. Excellent work on the narrative, I also enjoyed the sort-of depressing humor :laughing: While I disagree with the philosophical message to a degree, I think it's awesome that there's a Ludum Dare game that even has one. You not only made 20 minutes of entertainment, you made a statement that communicates something personal.
> * It really just needed to make you think.*
@conrad123 it did! My imagination went a bit tangential to the narrative, but a thought I had at the beginning of the game: If there was an AI assigned to watch over every single human forever, it might come up with "tasks" to keep us occupied. Clearly, the tasks in the game are everybody's definition of hell :laughing: But... it would be trivial for an AI to generate better tasks. A rewarding existence tailored to everyone's individual tastes. There is clearly a point where this type of final "society" stops being torture when the experience becomes more engaging - especially if the AI never tells you it's all a simulation. If the AI *then* told you what it's doing, would that remove your sense of meaning?
Wow that was depressing, existential, weird, I don't know how to feel about this story. Was the moral that all the baggage I keep carrying around is actually "me"? Interesting take on the idea of freedom, might be related to how "determination" works in Undertale.
Loved the graphics, the mood. No idea how to judge humor though...
Well done @dietzribi!
Loved the turtles :smile: The movement mechanic was really getting on my nerves a bit, but with a little tweaking this can be a fun little endless platform faller. Needs more turtles :laughing:
Hey, this runs under Wine on Linux :slight_smile:
When I was trying this out I wondered if you had maybe seen Sebastian Lague's ant-based algorithm adventures on Youtube? Maybe it was even an inspiration for this LD, but just in case you haven't seen it, here's the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-iSQQgOd1A
Hm... it does require 3D acceleration, but nothing too fancy. What's your hardware and OS? How much lag is it? When you hit the [i] key it shows you frame frate and CPU load, how much are you getting there?
I added an option with (graphics to low) does that help? It disables post processing but makes the game way less pretty.
@tjm thank you for you feedback! The goblins move to the right first, when they hit an obstacle they turn around, and when they hit a rock, they push it. Unfortunately, there is a bug that causes goblins to reset their state after the player uses the undo function, but time just ran out in the end (barely made it into submission hour). Winning and dying in the same move is a more serious issue that I'll have to fix, thank you for reporting it!
@vexorian thank you! You can't attack goblins. When you end your move in the same field as the goblin, you die. I'll have to test the goblin jumpyness problem...
@caeonosphere and @triastase thank you for trying it out!
I am so sorry about these bugs, I think I fixed it now. The worst part is that I think I introduced these when patching the previous bugs on Monday. :frowning2: I should have taken more time to make sure I didn't break anything.
Thank you @conrad123 yeah time is very limited. The reason why I didn't put instructions in is that I thought figuring out the rules would be part of the experience of playing the game. Because if you already *know* how to play the game, there really isn't much entertainment left! The level progression - while it could have been done better - is designed to show you the rules one by one.
Thank you @justcamh for taking the time to play it on stream! I agree with your assessment that the level design doesn't do a particularly good job of teaching a player the mechanics. That's definitely a thing I want to change for future LDs, because I made the levels in a rush. And regarding animation and special effects feedback, well, time ran out :laughing:
Thank you @ptsnoop and @staircase27a.
Difficulty curves in puzzle games are complicated. Having made several puzzle games for LD, it's always the case that some people find the ramp to steep and others find it too shallow. I do stand by my decision not to post instructions on the game page though, because this exploration that the player is doing (is forced to do?) should be part of the content.
@ptsnoop I have used similar highscore things in past games. At the end of the level, the game makes a POST request to a very simple PHP script, with the level name and the number of steps. In return, the script tells the game about all the other attempts it received so far.
PS: just saw that the PHP server script wasn't part of the source on Github, so here it is: ``` header('content-type: application/json'); header('Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *');
$steps = 1*$_REQUEST['steps']; if($steps >= 3 && $_REQUEST['action'] == 'finish_level') { $bucket = $_REQUEST['level']; $hist = @read_data('hist', $bucket, 'stat'); if(!$hist) $hist = array(); $hist[$steps] += 1; ksort($hist, SORT_NUMERIC); @write_data('hist', $bucket, 'stat', $hist); }
print(json_encode(array('result' => 'OK', 'h' => $hist))); ```
@notan-lemon thank you very much for your feedback. Obviously we disagree completely on the movement counter. A lot of complex puzzle games have performance counters, look at all the Zachtronics programming games. The very few people I actually watched as they played the game were actually encouraged to experiment, **because** of the counter ("can I do it in less..?"). I disagree strongly that the counter is generally detrimental.
> *(If you see someone having 100+ steps on the scoreboard, that’s me)*
I feel that's fine though. My intent was not to pressure anybody. If it was, I would have put in a requirement to solve the level in X steps or in X time.
I have to admit this feedback got me thinking a lot, because I often put these counters into my LD games. Over the years, they have been received very well so I never gave them another thought. This is the first time I'm considering an "opt out" button for my next game.
> *I feel like this game has good potential to be intricate in an interesting way, especially with the white laser. I’d love to see what you can do further with it.*
None of my LDs have been developed into actual games, few have even seen post-LD versions. I am tempted sometimes, but I usually chicken out when it comes to making them into real projects. The nice thing about LD is you try your absolute best for like 48 hours, and then you're done. Either the game is brilliant, or it's so-so (like this one), or it's a failure. Any of those outcomes are totally fine. That's what I like about it.
I know, I know :slight_smile: I'm just curious how other LD participants perceive this, that's why I described my perspective. There was one puzzle game I made for LD a while back where I was really on the edge of making a full game, and I sometimes regret that I didn't...
@notan-lemon I just stumbled across your puzzle game by accident, and I just want to say: it's an amazing concept, very well done!
I really liked playing this, and I think I'll come back to it. Simple, but so well executed. Feels really smooth, clearly a lot of time went into polish and details. The music was awesome, too. I forgot how rewarding Breakout becomes when you hit multiple things :laughing: And the Space Invaders element was a lot of fun, too. Very well done!
Thank you for providing a Linux binary! For some reason, the itch.io web links don't seem to be working for me on this LD in general.
Do you remember that infamous Peter Molyneux cube clicker game? My first association here was that :laughing: because yours if already better. I do like the clean design and the clear user communication.
I think having audio cues would have helped the general game feel a lot. You may be reluctant to do this because it seems so cheap, but throw some mouth sounds or sfxr files in there, it'll be totally worth it I promise!
The levels are procedurally generated, right? It did look like it to me, I played maybe 20 puzzles and it seemed there was no new content. You could have "tricked" me into playing longer by making it seem that I was actually descending further, maybe using a timer-based high score counter or something like that.
A timer-based scoring system could be combined with, say, a slight alteration to the lock/key element that allows for dofferently colored or shaped keys. I believe these two features would make the game "complete" without seriously expanding the scope too much, because it would inventivize players to solve mildly challenging coordination tasks quickly
But that's just like, my opinion :wink: I don't want to sound too critical. I enjoyed this game (didn't know how to rate the Humor though so I just left it off). The time constraints of the Compo are savage and that's part of the appeal!
I managed 34 fish collisions, is that a lot? :laughing:
I liked the aesthetics and the music here, if this was an endless game with a couple more interactable things in it that could certainly be a very relaxing experience.
It is seriously impressive that you made this for the Compo!
Things I would improve: - This game is subject to escalating income. After you (or the AI) get the initial upper hand, there is no coming back for the other party. Maybe the costs should ramp up, too, as a catch-up mechanism? - I didn't really need to upgrade anything, just spamming miners was enough. They're too strong :laughing: - The no-man's-land in between doesn't seem to do much besides providing a delay for units to pass through. It would be cool if parties could place obstacles there (I tried but always got the red square)
I had fun playing this, and I wouldn't have minded a second or third mission!
I had problems running the macOS version, but running "chmod -R 755 ObeliskOSX0.2.app" on it fixed it.
I loved the clarity and simplicity of this design, VERY well done! I also love the fact that you made a procedural roguelike for the Compo, that's really outstanding. I think I played about 5 runs, but the problem for me was always running out of HP. I couldn't really use the active abilities to great either, although I didn't see the one that does more damage until it was too late :laughing:
Obelisk is a game I'll definitely revisit after rating is done, just to see how far I can get!
I loved this game very much! Apart from the puzzle design, you also did a nice job on the graphics. Well done!
Screenshot from 2021-05-18 19-21-58.png
Why did you rate so few games yourself? This deserved more attention!
For some reason, the ZIP won't extract for me :frowning: and the "HTML" version is really just a Windows download. I would have liked to try this out
I'm not quite sure if there is anything left to do, but it feels like I've seen all the content (on the messageboard)? Was there a clue hidden in the moefall game? You say the game is unfinished and it certainly looks like it, **but** Moefall on its own would have been done pretty decently I think :slight_smile:
Pretty sure at 10+ minutes and 340 jumps I'm not speedrunner material :laughing:
I have to admit I really got into this game as I progressed, which is rare for a Compo game. The level design is absolutely on point. This is a thoughtfully designed and precise game. The green bouncy stuff was especially fun! Well done!
I liked playing this against the AI. Balancing-wise I got the impression that luck is the biggest factor, and the AI did seem to do pretty well by just playing random cards. I'm not sure I used the shop "correctly" as far as strategy is concerned, but forfeiting the entire turn for shopping seemed steep enough (more so than the money cost of the cards) to stick with the occasional TNT and Pickaxe replacement. Well done on the (CSS?) animations, this game is smooooth! I would have enjoyed a bit more theme-dependent graphical elements, but I loved how clean the UI is.
Saw this on HonestDan's stream, it's simply amazing what a good team can accomplish over a weekend :open_mouth: Especially good job on the art, well done!
I f'ed up the Jupiter photo :laughing: This gets a :heart: just on account of the Pale Blue Dot alone. I wished this had been a bit more interactive and branching, but I enjoyed the experience. Chilling and inspiring end. Well done!
Hey, this runs on Linux under Wine :laughing:
I had fun playing this! Not sure if there was Audio or not, but it didn't play for me.
I liked the graphics and the general concept. On my first run I died because I ate too many asteroids, on the second one I made it all around the blackk hole (I think) but then got eaten by it. Is there a win condition that I missed? If not that would be very on theme!
Thank you for making a Linux build :smile:
This was fun! Took me a while to get used to the tank controls. Really unforgiving :laughing: but I guess that's how it was back then. Well done!
Hey, a game with a Linux binary and it doesn't look like you used an engine! Kudos! :slight_smile:
I liked the graphics, the atmosphere felt nice. With just a little bit more polish, say some dialog options in the overworld and some enemies that actually shoot back in the dungeon, this would have been a self-contained little adventure!
We all know how it is though, time pressure during the Compo is brutal. I have to say though the game is strangely fun, and the gun has a satisfying sound effect. I feel this has potential for an entertaining post-LD version!
An actual console game I can run natively on Linux, very nice! I did enjoy playing Shenzhen I/O a lot :slight_smile:
First of all, congratz on making this within 48 hours! There are some things I would change though: - While in general the UI works fine, the code editor itself is kind of obstinate, especially when it comes to inserting or removing lines. - Despite the "levels" having a didactic progression, I still think the learning curve might be too steep. It might be worth considering to start out with 2 or 3 instructions, and then getting to know the other ones later. - There is some weirdness with the interpreter, I was often not sure whether this was my fault (probably) or bugs manifesting. This was especially tough in the beginning, where the example program wouldn't even run: no feedback, no stack action, no output.
I did like the fact that the editor does input checking in real time. The weird machine language kind of reminded me of some of the Advent of Code ones :laughing:
Oh by the way, if there was audio, it wasn't playing on my machine, don't know :shrug:
I wanted to post a screenshot of me being in zone 10+ but I can't seem to manage :laughing:
Very nice work Tim, I agree with the person above who said it's a typical "one more try" kind of game. Also love the voice work by @tsjost, when he goes "VROOM" I feel like getting out of the car and try pushing!
Seriously, a one-use powerup that enables a manual push would have been a good idea for players of my skill level. Also, a hiscore table would have been nice. And the game could use more environmental details, sure, but what's there is pretty. I love the "past attempt" ghost feature! It would probably help to have some indicator that shows whether you can even make it over the next bump with the speed you got, but then again that would take away the instances where I scream at the screen to make it creep forward just one more meter :smile:
@mindexpositions thank you! It's true there are probably too many particles, I added some code that tries to skip unnecessary animations when the CPU load is too high, hopefully that will work on less beafy computers. Thank you for the suggestion about the random movement, but I quite enjoy the death trap mechanic :laughing:
@daniel-klautsch thank you for your kind feedback! I nerfed the blue spiral shooters a little bit, they fire less often now.
@pepnou You need to collect the bright blue boxes in order to gets items. When you kill enough enemy geometry, you'll also get a level-up screen where you can boost yourself :smile:
@0x-void-x0 thank you! <3
@chocolat-endive thank you for the feedback! Yes, I know, I didn't do an angle-based controller for the player, just never got around to it, and I feel it would be cheating if I changed it now. But I can *prove* to you that I know the Math because the enemies do work that way! :smile:
Damn about that level up & death bug, I saw a streamer running into it as well. I guess I'll have to fix that...
@renge right? I couldn't imagine a situation where you WOULDN'T want to keep firing!
OMG @yngvarr that's amazing, very cool, thanks for the recording! :smile:
True, grenades are just the bomb's shittier cousin, sorry about that...
@welliton thank you for trying it out! I noticed the spawning problem as well, sometimes they spawn too close to the player, they're not supposed to do that... But yeah everything in this game is way too random, you get very good runs and very bad ones.
@xeke-death Thank you for playing! Damn, I just looked at the code and you're completely right about the healing bug, it should be corrected now. (It's debatable whether the "heal up" box should even be there, since there is also the way more useful "healing potion" but it would be too much of a change to take it out now.) Yes, the "alive with 0HP" issue happens because damage is actually a floating point value, but your HP gets shown as a rounded int. So if you got 0.1HP left it shows you 0HP. I'll leave that in :smile: Yeah that bullet time bug is bad but I don't think it falls within the scope of bugs that I should fix without making a dedicated post LD version.
Thank you so much for playing it on stream @elysiagriffin seeing how people actually play the game is the best part of LD!
@ksimaster wait, your controls didn't work? How did you even play the game then? What happened?
@mrjoshuamclean thank you for playing the game on stream, I completely missed it! But I saw your entry on the hiscore list so I looked up the VoD on Twitch :laughing:
You are completely correct about the item pickups breaking the flow. This was mostly due to time constraints, because I re-used the level-up screen which at least has different options to choose from (whether those are necessary is another point).
And yes, the black holes are insta-kill if you get sucked in :smile:
Thank you again for your feedback, it's much appreciated!
@ptsnoop Thank you so much for the feedback! At first I thought I left the mouse wheel zoom code active by mistake, but testing it out right now that doesn't seem to be the case? Is it possible you activated the browser's zoom by holding down CTRL while scroll-wheeling? Or did you get the effect by using the mouse wheel only?
@ptsnoop yeah that makes sense. It's the browser's behavior, not the game's. I can't influence that (I think?) I mean I could limit the canvas size to make sure you can't emulate a very large screen with that technique but I'm not sure it's that critical :laughing:
Wow what a massive game! Nice job, especially on the artwork and the music! Gameplay-wise it's a bit daunting at first. It's good that the game has documentation, but I really think these text should have been included where they're needed (for example, on the construct-a-building screen, explain what each building is for right there when you click on it. Issuing direct orders for resource collection feels a bit like busywork at times, would there be a downside to drones just doing these on auto?
It's a very ambitious design, good job to everyone involved!
Very nice work, online multiplayer, your custom engine, well done indeed! No notes :smile:
No engine, just plain HTML, Ultima graphics, love it!
A tutorial would be nice because it took me way to long to figure out what to do. Maybe mouse-over hints could describe the UI elements? I think the beaver and the counter should appear on the square you place it on, is it a bug if it doesn't do that? It would be convenient to have some kind of indicator which squares are going to flood next, although that would probably alter the gameplay :thinking:
An enjoyable game, well done!
Very nicely done, I also appreciate the Pratchett quote in the beginning :smile:
What I liked: Amazing graphics, really good production quality overall.
What I think could be improved: minor things really, for example I would reduce the delay on retry and level end. Also on level 8, I had already learned how to bait the enemy and level 8 itself was beatable without doing the bait maneuver as told by Death. The music is appropriate but there is not enough for a longer game like this.
The chess mechanic works *VERY* well in this game, especially the enemy pieces add interesting dynamics that allow the player to try different solutions.
Best in the Mood category for me this LD yet! Very very nicely written, atmospheric! I did all the upgrades to both the hab and the rover, and now I got nothing to do on day 30+, which is probably on topic :smile: Is the game done at this point or should I continue exploring the planet? If it's done I choose to leave our explorer behind at this point, choosing to believe that they'll eke out a decent living on that rock.
Very nice game idea! I especially loved the graphics and the atmosphere! The disasters were also very pretty to look at :smile:
There are two things that I would suggest for a post LD version and they're somewhat related:
- The UI (and the game in general) does not give you any feedback on what you need to do and what you can even do to interact. The only feedback it does offer is the production formula on the huts, but it's not very intuitive. I don't even know if people have to be within my radius to affect them with a spell? I can seemingly combine any number of cards when I cast a spell but: *should I*, except where the card has a x2 effect on other cards?
- There should be animations that show what's going on. People gathering resources or working on something? Show a status icon with that resource above their head. Animate the effects of my spellcasting! Also, there should maybe be portents of disaster *other* than the doomsday progress bar. It would also be nice if people randomly panicked and screamed at the shaman to "do something"
I think this has great potential, it just needs a little bit of UI / animation love.
@makerart I know exactly how it is :laughing: