urfbound

Element Smash by midgard 2016-04-18T04:27:00

Cool combo of Joust, Super Smash Bros. and rock-paper-scissors! I love the graphics, really polished and having a wicked GBA vibe to me. I don't know whether it was the idea, but for some reason it reminded me a lot of Mega Man Battle Network (a very good thing :D). I think that the controls were tight and the addition of local multiplayer was a really stellar touch. I like the sound effects a lot too. Only complaint I had was that a bad rock-paper-scissors choice can leave you in the lurch pretty hard. It would be cool if a theoretical future iteration of this game had something that let you control both your shape and your opponent's shape between changes. One way I thought of might be to have items for each shape (green red, etc.) that you could consume to become that shape, or throw at your enemy, and if you hit change THEM to that shape instead. Overall and addictive, fun and hilarious to play with a friend, and overall great entry! Awesome work, hope you do great in the compo. Thanks for your submission! Had a blast playing.

Crops of Carnage by fanatiko 2016-04-18T04:21:00

Great game! I like the originality in the puzzle elements. Really been keeping me interested. The graphics are great and I love the balancing act of keeping your population in check and protecting them from enemies. The sound effects evoke a retro vibe, and they were well done. Some SNES-style music would really take it over the edge. The link to the theme was a little tenuous - maybe to make it a little closer the villagers could be turned into other monsters (e.g. vampires) that would have to be dealt with differently, and still others could be combined into friendly monsters (e.g. a four-square = a giant, a four-in-a-row = a snake-person) that would add to the depth of the game.It would also be cool if the placement of your villagers by gender affected who became a werewolf more clearly. Overall an addicting and really fun game with a lot of polish (I love the attention to detail with the backgrounds and everything). Thanks a lot for your entry! Hope you do great in the compo! :D

Shapewings by eolhing 2016-04-18T04:14:00

Cool game! Great combo of Lode Runner and Ikaruga. The sound effects were a feature I really liked. In combination with the colour use they helped me figure out which shape is effective against which enemies. Big points for the barrel rolls. If you were to keep running with this game, some things I would recommend would be mapping each form to a double-tap in a particular direction, rather than double-tapping to cycle, a crosshair for aiming, and maybe a way that particular forms would give you Ikaruga-style shielding. I liked the ship animations a lot, especially for the enemies. Overall a really fun game! Thanks for submitting! :D

Vial Toxin by GibTreaty 2016-04-18T04:06:00

Cool game! Reminded me a lot of Sub-Terrania on the Genesis (don't worry in a good way lol). I like the inertia behind the character similar to from that game. The level design is great - you figure out really quickly which powers do what, and the graphic design also helps in making it clear. I liked the 16-bit style graphics as well, added to the Genesis/SNES feel I pulled from the whole thing. If you were to continue with the idea I think enemies or moving targets would be cool to have, or maybe combining the powers of the different forms somehow. Great entry! Thanks for submitting a game! :D

Arnold Stallion's Pump or Die by arzi 2016-04-23T15:35:00

Fantastic art style and music! Loved the high quality and varied animation. Only graphical suggestion I would make would be to add layers - some graphics (e.g. the exit gate on level 1) render underneath the player which can be confusing.

I liked the shapeshifting ability and how you charge it, the special forms were pretty funny to me, and again the powers were animated really well.

I like the beat-em-up style, the only comments I would make here would be to tighten up the controls (the player/enemies seemed to have too much inertia and so felt slippery) and hitboxes (which i felt were a little out of whack making it feel like it was easier for me to get hit than to hit back). As for the enemy AI, i noticed that if you stand directly above or below them they can never hit you, since they just walk toward you they will never get on the same y-level. Maybe they should keep their distance in the x until they're level with you in the y?

Overall a fantastic and remarkably polished entry. Would definitely play again and I could see this making its way to a full-length publishable game pretty easily. Great work and thanks for your entry! I had fun playing it and hope you had a good time making it!

Nightshift by Aurel Bílý 2016-04-25T01:54:00

Great enemy design! The art is good and I liked the music too.

Some recommendations I thought of (many are said by others below):
1.) Make the shoot button different from the one that progresses dialog - I missed a lot of the mid-tutorial dialog for that reason
2.) I found it was really difficult to get rid of the orange boxes quickly enough and usually avoided them. Maybe the blasts should destroy two at a time, or they should be grouped together in fours to make them a little easier to deal with.
3.) The whitespace in the character hitbox could make wall collisions a little confusing. I think that it was remarkably well done for enemy/projectile collisions though, so great job there.

Overall had a blast and more than a few laughs playing your game. I love the art, hope to see it again in the future! Hope you had fun making your game, thanks for your submission!

Cherokid by EdoMiyamoto 2016-04-19T02:36:00

Great game! You set the mood really well and use the theme to great effect. Feels like it could really be fleshed out into a multi-hour game. The art is stellar for such a short period of development. Great use of effects like DoF and particles for the leaves hanging in the air - also great job using the graphics to delineate the different areas. If I could make one recommendation that I didn't see below it would be to add maybe one more weapon, and add more enemies into the map, each of which might be vulnerable to some attacks over others. And maybe a defensive item would be cool too. I really loved the flight mechanic. That was a great touch to be sure, I loved the visual effect of the fog. Really great game, I'm impressed how polished it is for only 3 days in dev. Had a lot of fun playing, I hope you had fun creating it! Thanks for your entry :D

Super Jelly Blaster by adcrusher 2016-04-18T03:48:00

One of the funnest LD games I've played! The graphics are stellar from the cursor right down to the font; I love the retro arcade vibe. The instructions are really helpful and capture that old-school arcade vibe as well. The gameplay itself is original and fun. It has a couple of cool touches that I like, for example the fact that you can't drag a jelly over an existing one, and that you can continue from the same level you lost on. The music is great to boot. If there was one thing I would change, it would be to add some features that make it conform to the theme a little better. I get that it would take more time, but one idea I had would be to maybe make it so that combining groups of jellies would make them into new, larger jellies with different properties. Maybe half metal and half regular makes wooden jellies, which can take one hit and then turn into regular ones again. Overall a rockin' game! I had a blast playing it. What a great job for a two-day submission! Thanks for sending it in, hope you do great in the compo :D

A Soul of Clay by fullmontis 2016-04-25T01:44:00

Cool escape game with a great use of the theme! Reminded me a little of the golem arc from X-Files. The art and music were both fantastic, and the game was tricky without having any puzzles that felt unreasonable.

If I could make one recommendation it would be to change the text on examining objects as they are changed by the player - most notably the glass bowl would be a good candidate for this treatment.

Had fun playing your game! Hope you enjoyed making it!

Transformagician by HuvaaKoodia 2016-04-18T04:33:00

Great game. I really liked the stealth aspect. The fact that each monster investigates a particular item type and their AI (which you did a great job programming) made it a very edge-of-your-seat playthrough reminiscent of MGS for me. I liked the graphics. The subdued style and great lighting made it really atmospheric, and I loved the N64-flavour 2D-on-3D isometric view. The only thing I think could have improved the graphics would have been some backgrounds. The music was really well-composed, and fit the theme really well in my opinion. Great job there and I couldn't think of a way to improve it. The mood is awesome, and among the most memorable of the games I've played so far. Thanks a lot for your submission! I had a lot of fun with it. Hope to play one of your games again! :D

Moveless Chess by Beavl 2016-04-19T02:52:00

This one is a lot of fun. A really innovative (I've certainly not seen this) mechanic that incorporates the theme really well! I really like the justification for choosing the AP values for each piece too. Seems really thoughtfully designed (although I'm the first to admit I'm not a chess expert). The graphics are great, invoking a wicked retro vibe. Only thing I would say about them (and a problem I had too) is that some resources didn't scale well (for example, the 'restart' button didn't scale properly on my screen and looked blurry). More levels will certainly bring me back! I had a lot of fun playing this and hope you had fun making it! I bet multiplayer would be fun in a future iteration! Thanks for your submission!

Monkey Bird Escape by Daws 2016-04-18T04:00:00

Cool game! I like the shapeshifting mechanic, the branch and animal graphics are good. Good game fro keeping you on the edge of your seat! Thanks for your submission (also your review)!

Three Body Problem by sarge 2016-04-20T04:18:00

Great game! Really polished for a compo entry. I liked the Lost Vikings kinda vibe. Platforming was fun and put together well. Controls felt good and intuitive to me. Nice combination of abilities and use of the theme as well. If I would make one recommendation I didn't see below it would be to make each form strong or weak against particular enemies - I thought the size of the form might play a part but if it was supposed to I couldn't tell for sure. Overall a great entry - good luck in the compo! Hope you had fun participating, I certainly enjoyed your game :D

Bodybuilding Simulator 2016 by V_V 2016-04-19T03:11:00

Nice music, I had a good laugh at the use of the theme too. I thought it was really funny how your shape shifts as you work out, the graphics made me smile. It could be a little hard to see the enemy coming sometimes but I laughed the first time it got me. Funny game and original too! Thanks for your submission!

Geo Shift by rantt 2016-04-18T03:07:00

Great music, and a well-designed world. The abilities are cool and the controls are really smooth. Great job with the sound effects too. Awesome job for a two-day entry! If you were to run with the idea, I bet adding enemies or boss fights to riff on the metroidvania theme would be cool. Thank you for submitting a game! :D

Shapeshifter X - Ressurection - Return of Zyglox 4K by homeworld 2016-04-19T01:56:00

Cool game! Impressive 3D art for such a short period of time. Good controls and I liked the addition of all the different items to let you change the play style up. One thing about them though is that some of them have some minor graphical issues. For example, when using the machine gun, the tracers seemed to come out of the ground, for a while I thought that was the enemy shooting at me.

One thing I really liked was the ability to use the terrain as a ramp. I tried to land on top of the enemy, that kind of Shadow Of The Colossus combat might be fun in a later iteration. I did find there were some physics glitches here though - whenever the car landed it would spin around and get stuck until it stopped. Pretty minor but wanted to let you know in case you want to iterate the game sometime.

I love that it's one big boss fight, I had a lot of fun playing against the boss and it has a bunch of different phases that look really good and work well. Feels like a classic boss rush stage and gets right into the action. To make a recommendation about the theme, maybe to fit with it a little better you could transform your car to have different power ups on the fly.

Overall a really impressive entry for such a short time and I had a lot of fun playing! Thanks for your entry, hope you had fun making it! :D

Future-Anthropology Facility by JohnGalt 2016-04-18T03:12:00

Really fun game! Great graphics and sound, and really funny to play. I like the addition of achievements, the really add a sense of progression and purpose to play. If you were to run with the idea, it would be cool to chain people together to have many people in surgery chained together at once, or having office furniture for limbs or something. Thanks for submitting a game! I had a lot of fun with this one :D

Dark Moon by MistySoulsGames 2016-04-20T04:07:00

Great music! Good use of the theme as well, I really liked the graphics. If there was one recommendation I would make it would be to add a mechanic that people might group together so you could more easily convert multiple people at once. Maybe you could control a werewolf and corral them toward your cursor or something. Overall a really impressive entry! Thanks for your game :D hope you had fun making it!

Drift Shift by Bailman03 2016-04-19T02:04:00

Nice game! Retro web/snes racer feel, had a nostalgia blast playing it. I like the combination of the classic drifting controls (reminded me of the controls in Super Off-Road) and the shapeshifting theme with the shape gates. Would be a lot of fun with Super Off-Road-style multiplayer! The controls were also really tight. They added a big feel of professionalism to the game overall. To increase that one recommendation I would make would be to update the fonts and layout used in the GUI - they sometimes seemed to render in unusual places (e.g. too close to the edge of the screen) and sometimes occupied too much space. The informational parts of the GUI (e.g. what form you're in) I thought were a shining part of your interface and well-crafted. Great job there. If I were to make a recommendation, it would be that maybe apart from just gates your shape will let you get through, there could be different terrains that certain vehicles were faster on (e.g. hovercraft for water, buggy for dirt, etc.) Then you would have to pay attention both to gates and terrain for changing your shape. Overall a great game and I had a lot of fun playing! Hope you had fun participating - thanks for your entry! :D

HappyNest by Black Horn Studios 2016-04-19T03:06:00

Great game! The graphics are great (the animations are really polished and have a great retro vibe) and the music is off the chain crazy-good. Had a blast playing this one, really creative graphical design and a fun rhythm game! Thanks for your submission, hope you had fun making it!

SUBJECT 26 by MSiddeek 2016-04-23T17:43:00

Polished and moody entry! Great design and introduction to all of the concepts, which are really clever and innovative while making excellent use of the theme. Had a blast playing your entry, hope you had fun putting it together!

Runeshift by demogorgon 2016-04-19T03:02:00

This would make a good card game for sure! I like the graphics. The spinning animations are a nice little touch of polish, and I like that the runes are actually runes. Maybe to help tell them apart at a glance, each could be on a coloured background. The abilities of the runes make for some nice gameplay depth, they seem well thought out and pretty well-balanced for such a short development period. One recommendation to make the game fit the theme better (something I didn't see below) might be to make it so that you could change the terrain under yourself or the other player with runes. This could maybe change their runes, or affect particular ones. Or, you could have 'classes' based on a player creature (human, elf, etc.) that each have different rune libraries. You could transform to better combat your foe based on the terrain they were on maybe (I know that might be a bad recommendation but I always like when people leave me recommendations so I try to do the same for others). Overall a very polished and thoughtfully-designed game I had a lot of fun playing. Thanks for your submission! I hope you had fun making it :)

Court Mage by urfbound 2016-04-18T03:56:00

@ThePaperPilot did you find the same thing if you clicked inside the game window? I find a lot of web games don't work if you don't; otherwise if you can tell me what platform/browser you were using I'd like to know so i can try to troubleshoot - thanks!

Court Mage by urfbound 2016-04-19T11:39:00

To anyone who can't get the controls to work - would you mind letting me know if you use a non-QWERTY keyboard? I think that this may be related. Also, please check the minimap to see whether you are moving as well - I noticed it can be somewhat confusing if you move into a new room with doors in the same places. Thanks for your comments everyone!

Court Mage by urfbound 2016-04-21T22:07:00

@Cerno_b thanks for the feedback! I take keyboard input as keycodes thru the javascript onkeyup event. So my immediate guess is that I didn't put in the right codes to cover all keyboards. Thanks for coming back to respond! Now to test it out myself w/a different layout! :D

Court Mage by urfbound 2016-04-25T02:30:00

@Freank - of course you can! I'll upload it at your site.

Groad by saucygames 2016-04-20T04:22:00

Nice game! I really liked the music and the art. The graphics were well done and the animations were really smooth. The boss and alternate form attacks were imaginative and polished. I found the first boss had some pretty serious physics bugs. It bounced around a lot for me when it was near the centre of the screen. Overall a really polished-looking game for the short period of time to develop it! Thanks for your submission, hope you had fun making it! :D

Druid 5000 by AuthorX 2016-04-19T02:18:00

Nice multiplayer game! I like the use of the theme a lot, and how it's a little open to interpretation in spots. The fact that in spaces running and flying are a little more comparable adds to the tension. A great laugh when playing with a friend or two (I think multiplayer really adds to the 'Humour' value 100% of the time). One recommendation I would make is that each player should appear on a different 'lane' in the raceway to give a better sense of where each particular player is when more than two are playing. Maybe it would also be good if each player had a different track, or powerups were available, so you always felt like you were in the race. I really liked the graphics in your game, and I think the 2D characters on the 3D backgrounds really made them pop. The sprites you made were also great in my opinion. I liked that they also helped drive home whether or not you were in the right terrain too. Great design there.

Had a lot of fun with your game! Thanks for the submission - hope you had fun making it :D

Slime Mold Revenge by Benjamin-L 2016-04-19T02:42:00

Great game! I like playing as the dungeon underdog, that was a lot of fun. Also a fantastic job on the graphics and sound effects. The music really added to the mood of the game and added a lot of polish. If I could make one recommendation I didn't see below, it would be to add a power-up to turn you into the dire slime, and maybe make it so killing multiple (e.g. 3) humans at once added a turn or two to your dire slime time. Overall I think your game shows a lot of polish and professionalism for only 3 days in dev! I especially liked the fonts and layout used in your UI. Had fun with this one, hope you enjoyed making it! Thanks for your entry :)

Vishnu Launch by PeachTreeOath 2016-04-19T02:24:00

Nice game! I like the combination of Kitten Cannon with the shapeshifting theme. Adds a nice strategic element depending on the stage of the launch that you're in. Great job on the animation, too. A lot of attention to detail and the sprites all look really good in my opinion. The polish really shows on things like the bounces when auras change and when you get powerups. One recommendation I would make would be to add to the physics code to change the speed that the sprites spin at relative to their collisions and to make the bouncing seem a little more realistic. One thing that I really liked was the 'power meter' right before a launch. It's not a boring old power bar so that makes you pay attention closely and also looks fantastic. An addicting game overall in my opinion, which really helps. Had a lot of fun playing, hope you had fun making your game! Thanks for your submission :D

Shapeshifting Ice Hockey by LavWa 2016-04-18T02:57:00

Fun game! I like the control scheme and the sound! Impressive job on the AI too.

Shape Factory by David Cookie 2016-04-19T01:40:00

Good rhythm game! I like the music too, and the difficulty scales well. I like the factory signage vibe to the graphics, and the use of transparency in the animations. One recommendation I would make would be to use a different colour for the factory shapes than the character, I sometimes got confused by that. I do like that they are the same colour when they overlap, it forces you to know what the shapes are by the time you hit them. Nice design there! Thank you for your submission! Hope you had fun making it :D

Cataway by justacookie 2016-04-19T01:34:00

Great game! I really like the way shaping the terrain works. It's a lot of fun to make ramps for the cat and launch it in the air. Good job on the dinosaur and cat animations. The controls are really smooth and responsive, and I also like that you don't get to shape the terrain to the whole height of the screen, forcing you to learn to make jumps. My recommendations would go into two categories (don't take them too seriously - it's my first successful game jam entry too! but i like when people give me ideas and so i try to come up with some for those i review for too):

1.) Theme-related: To match the theme better, maybe different kinds of terrain could change the cat/dinosaur to a different creature. Imagine say it changed to a cave, then instead of shaping the ground on the bottom half of the screen, you shape it down from the top. The dragon could turn into a snake and try to jump at you from the bottom. Or, maybe there could be pickups that would change the cat or dinosaur to something else.

2.) Gameplay-related: For the pickups in the air, it can be hard to time your jumps. Maybe you could fix that by being able to change the middle of the screen instead so that you could see the pickups coming a little further in advance. I would also recommend making it so that you can more actively control the distance between you and the dinosaur, like in SkiFree.

Overall I had a blast playing your game, I had a great laugh launching the cat in the air and tripping up the dinosaur. Congrats on your first entry and thank you for your submission! Hope you had a lot of fun! :D

Infinite shifter by Martins 2016-04-18T03:42:00

Cool game! It's been a while since I played a good money builder game. I love the mood of it - kinda like rainymood combined with Interactive Buddy. The graphics are solid and the sound effects are really polished and add well to the mood. If there was one thing that I would change it would be to reduce the effect of the negative money shapes. It's pretty easy to get stuck in a rut if you have too many of those. Maybe some interactive way to deal with them a little better, like the ability to rent a net that would catch x number of negative money shapes for a flat fee. Overall a great and polished game! Thanks for your submission, I was glad to have the chance to play it :D

Morphing Maria by Frozen Fractal 2016-04-25T02:27:00

Great game! Probably the best compo game I've played so far, really polished and creative. I love the art and sound, how they change for each form, and the level design is great. I especially liked level 8. Some suggestions I would make for future iterations would be a score system based on step count, and dynamic elements like enemies that move over time. Being able to start a level over without going back to the beginning is definitely great. Maybe an undo button would help too. I also found that the text looked kinda blurry, not sure if it's scaled or if you're working right from image resources but it was something i noticed.

Did notice one bug, but it can break a level where it occurs: if you are the human princess with a key and change forms at the same cell twice, it seems one of the keys will disappear (this might just be a graphical thing but I couldnt get back to the same cell to see).

Had a blast playing your game and it has a lot of polish! Hope you had fun making it, thanks for your submission!

Grokh's Arena by Cerno_b 2016-04-19T01:48:00

Great game! I love the classic vibe - the sprites and backgrounds are well made and all create the mood well. The music is also well made and completes the aesthetic. Good use of the theme adding the shapeshifting to the player character as their main power, I like that certain forms are better against certain enemies. It's mostly intuitive but sometimes a little tough to figure out - maybe colouring would make it a little easier. Plus then maybe you could change it around, so that like you have to switch to the slow-moving giant to fight fast enemies in later levels. The controls were super tight and felt really professional. I liked those a lot. My only other recommendation would be to add some little tip to make it easier to tell when your health goes up. Maybe a sound effect or flicker on the health bar. Overall a great game and I had a blast playing it! Great work for such a short time. Hope you had fun participating, and thanks for your submission! :D

shape, LeSS by medidog 2016-04-20T04:15:00

Nice art! Scales well when going to fullscreen. Fun and polished entry! Nice use of the theme as well. Great job!

Black Heart by luquio 2016-04-18T03:37:00

Great game! The graphics and animation were awesome. Great mix of features to make the game challenging and engrossing. The sound effects and music were also well made! I liked the little touches, like the screen shaking when you take a hit, and the extra floating objects to keep the screen visually busy without being distracting. If there was one thing I would change, it would be a way to cycle backward through the available shapes, or pick particular ones like with the number keys or something. What a great game! I had a lot of fun. Thank you for submitting! :D

Light Shifter Temple by SengiG 2016-04-20T04:03:00

Nice stealth-based mechanic using light instead of darkness. Pretty tough game, but I liked how the individual skills were introduced one-by-one and built on over the course of the game. Great graphics and sound effects, overall seemed really polished. Great game!

level dog by Remynfv 2016-04-20T04:11:00

Nice music! I liked the graphics as well, pretty out of the ordinary for a bullet hell. When I first read the title it made me think of this old arcade shmup called Hot Dog Storm :P. Good controls and overall seemed very polished to me! Great job on your first entry! One thing I really liked was the period that the character is invincible for after taking a hit. It's just long enough to not be hit again by whatever hit you the first time, great design there. Way to come up with one theme and get it done very well! Thanks for your entry, hope you had fun making it!

Beneath a killing moon by Holtenice 2016-04-23T17:33:00

Great music and fantastic art. Aside from looking pretty and having a unified style, the animations are smooth and don't get old. The style is imaginative and adds to the mood of the game. I like the reverse-whack-a-mole idea a lot.

The only suggestion I would have about the gameplay would be that maybe the humans could be split into different types (e.g. height, colour, dress) that conferred well-understood walking patterns (left-to-right, zig-zag, crossing a particular section of the screen, loops, etc.), speeds, and so on. This would make it easier to predict where they are going to be and add an element of strategy. Then, to build on this, perhaps multiple people could be converted at once, allowing for more damage. Maybe comboed werewolves would stick around longer or move faster or something.

Overall I think this is a really polished game with a great sense of style and mood. Original concept and good use of the theme. I had a lot of fun playing and hope that you had fun putting this game together!

Kiln by ohsqueezy 2017-01-03T02:54:00

Really enjoyed this one! Loved the GB/game-and-watch vibe and neat twist on sokoban. Took me a minute to figure out that blocks could push one another, and another minute to figure out that that was sometimes a problem! :P. Puzzles were well thought out, and I thought the sound and graphics were really polished. As with any puzzle games future iterations could include new mechanics, but I would definitely play a hundred or so of the puzzles like yours without getting tired of them. Great job, hope you enjoyed your ld!

LocusLudi by AcuadoyStudios 2016-12-21T02:49:00

Hey impressive work on the engine and all in 48 hours! I've done that for past jams and I know it isn't easy. I really liked your interpretation of the theme, and I'm glad you're going to continue working on the game. I think that there's a lot of potential in the idea, and it could be a lot of fun with friends to have a virtual room to play games in. One potential bug I noticed is that the first time I ran the game keyboard input didn't work. Haven't had time to dig into your source too much but wanted to make you aware of it. Thanks for your review of my game and your submission! Will be interested to see where you go with it! Hope you enjoy the rest of your Ludum Dare!

Just a normal top-down shooter by dave003 2016-12-21T02:59:00

Cool game! I like the idea of enemies not getting eliminated as you shoot them, and the game stacking the deck against you both with respect to time and the number of times you have died. The spinning ship effect and different colour for ships you lost is also neat. Cool Atari-style sound effects too! Thanks for your submission!

Full House by cablay 2016-12-21T02:55:00

Hey fantastic idea and a great game! The multiplayer brawler was a really great idea, and the health system is really innovative and a great take on the theme. I liked the animations a lot and the music was a great bit of polish on the game that a lot of games (*cough* mine) don't have time to add. Kudos there! The sound effects were also good and it was a lot of fun knocking the tenants out of my friends' houses. If I could make one suggestion to improve the game it would be to add 'moves' that might help knock the people out of other houses (like a punch to add a big impulse on a nearby object) but that would make you more vulnerable at the same time - maybe they would knock you back or work by flipping one of your walls open. Overall a great idea and a big laugh to play! Thanks for your submission, hope you have a great Ludum Dare!

Broken Breakout? by timgarbos 2016-12-17T03:02:00

Really enjoyed your game! I liked the unique twist on Breakout, and I thought that the physics (esp. weight) of the ball and the feedback from hitting blocks and walls felt really good. I also liked the sound effects, that gave really clear feedback on what you were hitting. The only thing I found was that sometimes you got stuck having to drag the room out of the screen to keep the ball from hitting a red block - maybe making the room collide with the borders of the screen would help? Overall I thought that the game felt really polished and a lot of thought went into the levels and the progression of what it teaches you. Great submission and thanks for entering (also - thanks for your review! :D). Hope you have a great Ludum Dare :)

Mutrix by nekoballs 2017-01-03T02:23:00

Really cool game! I love the take on the spot the difference game with the VR vibe. Really good use of space and theme. Had a lot of fun with this one! I agree with the previous recommendation concerning adding more variance, but I really liked the single colours used on objects - I think avoiding complex textures and keeping the graphics simple colour-wise was a good idea. I might have leaned toward variance in shapes? I feel like that would be less confusing to the eye but add variance and maybe a measure of time-suspense in the case of objects which rotate or move around. I think that the eye reset button was a really good feature. Definitely a necessary one that made the game a lot more intuitive for me. Hope you had a good LD and thanks for your review!

I Clean Toilet by Flaterectomy 2016-12-21T02:43:00

Great game! I loved the frantic arcade-y speed of it and simple mechanics. The difficulty ramp-up felt great and the pace also scaled up nicely. I liked how there was a mix of an initial clean-up to get ready for the bathroom-goers and then the panic of trying to keep up with the ones that were coming and going. I also liked that the layout of the bathrooms changed in each stage to keep things fresh. The graphics and sound effects were great! I liked the grossness and variety. Laughed a lot at the aliens. Things I might have changed might include: 1.) Make it so tips could be used to upgrade your kit. Maybe make tools take less presses to clean with, add another locker at the other side of the room, mints to reduce angry faces, etc. 2.) Add more tools you might need as the levels progress, or add a new mechanic to increase the player workload. Maybe you'd need to clean up spills from the floor (and if you didn't, they'd make you slip past a stall that needed cleaning). 3.) Sometimes i started cleaning the wrong stall by mistake when misinterpreting where i was. Maybe if a press of the button made you move back and forth one 'place' to feel more precise. Also on the control note - maybe a button other than E would be good for 'action' - sometimes i found it slower to clean when walking to the right.

Overall really enjoyed your game! Really professional output for the short time, some of the best art I've seen in the jam so far too. Thanks as well for your review. Thank you for your submission and I hope you have a great jam!

Bubble Tea Cafe by urfbound 2016-12-17T03:04:00

Thanks for the review! And yeah totally agree. Feel like this was a good grounds-up and I feel comfortable with Unity enough now to kind of start tinkering on my own time. Appreciate your suggestion - hadn't really thought about lighting on this project to be honest but I definitely can understand how it makes the project look a lot more stock just on those grounds. Thanks a lot for your feedback, hope you have a good LD!

Bug to the Footstep by eddynardo 2017-05-16T03:25:02Z

Hey fun game! I really liked the use of the theme and the puzzley/perfection vibe of it. The ability to flip asymmetric bugs was a great thought and added a lot of depth. I liked the graphics a lot too, especially the use of colour to help you tell bugs apart right away. The UI was strong all over in my opinion, from colour, line weight and location right down to choice of font. I was a fan of your UI for sure and it felt really professional.

I think some sound and especially BGM would go a long way to wind up the polish on the game, and that would be a great target for a future iteration. Some more variety would also spice things up down the road.

The best part about your game was the tutorial. It was really well thought out and demonstrated a clear knowledge of teaching gameplay to your players without pandering to them. I thought that was really professional too, and the UI through the tutorial was really intuitive. It was also a great length. Fantastic job there.

Thanks for your submission, I hope you had fun making it and are enjoying this LD! Good luck and I hope we see you back again in the future. :D

Über Connected by ohsqueezy 2017-05-16T03:17:52Z

Hey thanks for the submission! Really enjoyed your game once I got the swing of it. I really enjoyed the trippy graphics (especially on the characters) and cascade effects. The colour choice was also great and gave the game this sweet mood. The sound effects really added to it. Some BGM would really round it out but overall I thought the presentation was pretty polished.

I think that the weight of the car really felt right, so for the most part it felt like misses were your own fault. The control felt really tight. One thing I did notice though is that sometimes pills would show up that were just impossible to catch no matter what you did, which didn't really feel fair. Maybe there could be a maximum range/time between pills based on the player's momentum, and to increase difficulty the size of the pills could shrink, or the rate of incoming pills could increase more quickly or something.

The only other thing was that I found the very beginning really confusing. Maybe there should have been a grace period with no pills at first to help the player clue in on where the sprite is, especially with the trippy graphics. An intro animation to help them focus on only the car might have helped too; I just found at the very beginning the screen was busy and I didn't pick up on what I was supposed to do right off the bat.

Overall a blast to play and addicting. Really felt polished to me too. Great job on the entry! I hope you enjoyed making it and the rest of the jam! Thanks for your submission and I hope we see you again! :D

Scaleshifter by loveapplegames 2017-05-15T03:24:24Z

Hey neat game, and thanks up front for your review! Hope you enjoyed the bratwurst :).

I liked the graphics of your game a lot right off the bat. Varied enemies and great use of colours. The backgrounds were interesting but not intrusive and didn't clash with the colours of the other sprites. The UI elements were sometimes pixellated.

As far as gameplay, I liked the idea of growing and shrinking the world. I think some fine-tuning would really assist a future iteration. Damage from enemies should probably be less when you outsize them (I figured at first you could just step on them to kill them without being hurt). I suspect grow/shrink tiles are randomly placed - they sometimes stacked up causing you to shrink, then grow again (or v.v.) and consume both tiles. Maybe if fewer were placed and they weren't consumed on use. To the missiles, it felt like their speed relied too much on the player's momentum. A lot of times they would just go sideways if you were strafing so it felt like i had to charge the enemy, back off and repeat leading to a lot of hits. One thing that also might help there is if the player took up a little less of the screen, giving you more room to see the action at the pace it's going.

I liked the sound a lot. Again, it was varied and sounded professional. The menu sounds added a really nice touch of polish, which is one of the things that really differentiates LD games imo. If time permitted adding some BGM would be the icing on the cake.

Thanks a lot for your submission and review of our project! Hope you had a great time and have success with your entry :D

SpermoKart by Erick 2017-05-16T03:32:53Z

hey fun game and super polished for a weekend effort!

the animations and UI were totally solid and I liked them a lot. The colour pallette was super simple too and popped in all the right places. The theme got some lol's. The one track was cool, and something that I thought would add a lot of replayability without a whole lot of extra track design would be couch co-op (obviously given more time extra tracks would be a big plus too). Good job bailing on anatomical correctness :P

I thought the UI seemed pretty solid, they didn't do too much of crashing or getting lost, so it felt like a decent challenge. I laughed at the names they all had too.

By far the best part of the game was the BGM, it was varied and super professional. It added a huge amount of polish to the game and got me amped up while I was playing. I especially liked that there was a win track at the end. I think some more SFX would be a great touch too for a future iteration.

Only other thing i could say is that the controls felt a little floaty in the corners, and could probably use some tightening up. Maybe adding turn animations might help, since I sometimes found the white background added a little to my difficulties there.

Overall I really enjoyed your game and thought it had a high degree of polish. Really felt like a finished game that took longer to put together. Hope you enjoyed making it and are having fun with your LD. Hope to see you again in the future! :D

Of Course I Remember You! by GaiusJulius 2017-05-15T03:49:05Z

hey really liked your game, thanks for your entry!

i was a big fan of the throwback art style, it complimented the point-and-click vibe really well and looked great. I also really liked the sound. The different voice samples added a lot of polish and I'm a big fan of the BGM. Overall really well-polished there. Only things I found could really use improvement were: (1) the UI was sometimes a little unclear about which key to use to progress, in particular the first time I needed the Return key. (2) I think the flashlight mask could be a little bigger and maybe gradiented with transparacy around the edge for a smoother-looking effect.

I also liked the unique gameplay style. It was a great mashup of styles with a unique combination, and I liked how you had to look at the scene but also x-ray the character. The bathroom thing reminded me a lot of Parappa the Rapper.

Had a lot of fun playing your game! Hope you had fun making it and look forward to seeing you back at LD again :D

Cubic Explorer by glitchy-pixel 2017-05-16T03:07:15Z

Hey I really enjoyed your game! The ruleset generator was super interesting and made for a good read. But that wasn't the only strong point of the game. I thought the graphics were really great and added a lot of highly professional polish to the game. The UI was also really solid apart from a few minor typos. I liked the sound effects a lot too, and the addition of the (really nice I might add) BGM was yet another stroke of polish that really assisted the game.

A couple of possible improvements I could suggest: (1) Enemies don't seem to have i-frames even though they do flash, so you can hack them down really quickly. They could probably afford to be a little tougher too. I liked the range of animations on them a lot though. (2) As mentioned earlier in the thread there were a few bugs, although one I noticed is that sometimes you enter doors while not walking toward them (just by getting close enough, as though there's a square hitbox right in front but it doesn't check whether you're walking "north" w.r.t. the camera).

Thanks a lot for the cool and really interesting submission! Great luck on the rest of the LD and on your thesis submission. Hope you enjoy the rest of your LD and we see you again! :D

Sling Ship 🌏 by Quoclon 2017-05-15T03:40:18Z

Hey great game for a first entry, welcome aboard and hope you have a lot more fun and success with LD! Thanks also for your review of my group's project. My ideas on your game follow:

Graphics: Really liked the graphics on your game. The background was nice but not distracting and the planets were varied and interesting. They added a great touch of polish which is a real differentiator for LD games. Some suggestions I would have would be to match the resolutions of the game objects, and settle the colour palette down on certain levels. I found the screen looked a little busy at times. Also, I think that making the player ship a slightly more complicated shape (e.g. a triangle like from Asteroids) might help the player guess the trajectory of the ship when they let go of the beam.

Audio: The sound effects in the game sounded really professional and the BGM is a great thing to have. The little touches of polish always go a long way to set your game apart. One comment I would have here is to match the gain a little more closely - some sound effects were much louder than others (and the BGM), which prompted me to turn the whole thing down.

Gameplay: I liked the difficulty of the game, but there were a couple of things that would make gameplay a little more intuitive and fair. Like many of the above, I think that the tethering system could be a little more intuitive. Many suggested using the center of the planet, although I like the idea of the surface, since your velocity gain can sometimes be more the closer you let yourself come to the planet, adding a risk/reward element. This clashed a little with the limited beam time mechanic however, and frequently I found I ran out of gas because the spin was slower than I expected. In keeping with the gas use theme, I think the beam could recharge quickly when not in use, incentivizing minimum use but not punishing you for the sometimes unintuitive physics. Also, I think that the radius at which you can attach to the planet could be made more clear, as did many previous commentors. Some polish elements you could also add: (1) let the player choose when to launch the ship. Since it launches automatically I was caught off guard the first few times and since I didn't recognize the ship's shape right away I was confused at first what was going on. (2) add a 'restart' button. The countdown timer is too long on most levels and you can become stuck. It's no fun to refresh the page when that happens, and waiting is kind of a pain too. They're easy changes to make a big difference to the UX!

Thanks a bunch for your submission, it's really polished and a great idea for your first entry. Looking through your To-Dos, I really liked the level editor idea and score system. I agree with you on those. A ghost racing system could be fun too. Hope you had fun making the game and enjoy the reviewing! Hope to see you back at LD again :D

Devoured Intellect by BoobMarley 2017-05-15T03:57:26Z

Great game! I loved the art and music. They're varied, professional and add a lot of polish, especially for a game made in a weekend. I also really enjoyed the idea of the game. Reminded me a lot of the voight-kampff test from Blade Runner, but the fantasy twist was funny and entertaining.

Really polished game! Would be cool to see some more levels or something down the line :D

Thanks for your submission. Hope you enjoyed your LD and that we'll see you again another time!