Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → vandriver
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Category | Score | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 🥇 | 2014 | 30 | Connected Worlds | Wedding Simulator | compo | Humor | 4.72 | |
| 🥇 | 2013 | 26 | Minimalism | LOOP | compo | Mood | 4.54 | |
| 🥈 | 2011 | 20 | It's Dangerous to Go Alone! Take This! | RELIEF!! | compo | Humor | 4.00 |
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | Cm | Co | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | 32 | An Unconventional Weapon | Get Gorgon! | compo | 243 | 3.53 | 3.33 | 3.77 | 3.93 | 3.33 | 2.87 | 2.26 | 3.85 | 47 | ||
| 2014 | 30 | Connected Worlds | Wedding Simulator | compo | 575 | 3.19 | 4.06 | 3.44 | 2.48 | 2.94 | 2.71 | 4.72 | 3.20 | 55 | ||
| 2013 | 28 | You Only Get One | SLIMEPILE | compo | 14 | |||||||||||
| 2013 | 27 | 10 Seconds | Anachroma | compo | 365 | 3.25 | 3.36 | 3.50 | 3.58 | 2.64 | 2.50 | 1.89 | 2.67 | 41 | ||
| 2013 | 26 | Minimalism | LOOP | compo | 4 | 4.25 | 3.88 | 3.63 | 3.77 | 4.32 | 4.34 | 2.48 | 4.54 | 55 | ||
| 2012 | 25 | You are the Villain | Sixxy the Puppy | compo | 82 | 3.58 | 3.56 | 3.31 | 3.04 | 4.22 | 2.88 | 3.20 | 3.25 | 51 | ||
| 2012 | 23 | Tiny World | The Moth and The Menace | jam | 41 | 3.63 | 3.37 | 2.63 | 3.84 | 4.00 | 1.94 | 3.73 | 3.13 | 36 | ||
| 2011 | 22 | Alone | One Final Trek | compo | 17 | 3.79 | 3.07 | 3.57 | 3.29 | 4.00 | 1.00 | 1.86 | 3.54 | 2.00 | 44 | |
| 2011 | 21 | Escape | Snake Plissken: Surfin' U.S.A. | compo | 135 | 3.23 | 3.54 | 3.23 | 2.77 | 3.54 | 1.00 | 3.62 | 2.00 | 6 | ||
| 2011 | 20 | It's Dangerous to Go Alone! Take This! | RELIEF!! | compo | 19 | 3.69 | 3.50 | 3.33 | 3.81 | 3.18 | 2.63 | 4.00 | 1.75 | 18 |
the dashing was a blast. what would have made this twice as fun and worthy of multiple plays would be if there were ways to maintain a single dash throughout the entire level. if that is possible, i couldn't figure out how. but the dash-crash-dash is visceral fun.
i'm running windows so i grabbed the v2 zip and there are duplicate file+folder names for every folder causing all kind of overwrite errors. i'm not the most savvy with these things, but is there something i need to do to be able to extract it other than individually copying each folder?
basic graphics, awesome gameplay. i dig it
getting those dumb animals out of pits was likely as frustrating as real cats. this was aces, though some of the screen transitions were frustrating to deal with especially climbing up.
this was entertaining, but having to replace 12 items on every failure of the last level was kind of annoying. i did beat it eventually, though! also i couldn't discern what value moving things around had after the first couple levels. was there any?
haha, you and i had a similar 'going' theme. the puzzles just start to get interesting when you ran out of time! quite unfortunate.
i played with this for way longer than is probably reasonable. hilarious and i only stopped because i got the line break bug after some spaaaaace screaming.
haha, thanks guys.
the collision really is awful - it was the last thing on the list to refine and i just couldn't get it done in time.
level 8 involves only using waiters and jenny to block the dbags, moving the nerd first out to the top left, then getting the meat, then going all the way back around bottom and getting jenny while the waiters block the top row of dbags(getting out of line of sight to right quickly) then proceeding back around to the exit.
i made that level way too hard but figured i'd allow it to be skipped. if i had more time and was more adept with game maker, i'd have made a level select/skip feature.
Haha, the 'ending' cracked me up. This was amazing and a very fun kind of frustrating. i love it!
despite how glitchy it can get, there's a lot of potential here. coupled with the recorded sounds, just spamming a bunch of goofy clones everywhere to see where you end up catapulted was rather humorous!
I just adore games like this.
This was cute. Nostalgic a bit of finding secret places in very old Final Fantasies. At first I was annoyed that the text boxes didn't freeze enemies and they'd wail on me until I realized what was actually occurring and it made sense that I'd be getting hit while people talked at me.
so i tried to escape multiple times but after multiple levels of being hunted would eventually get caught. if there's supposed to be more to it, i didn't really have the patience to sit through to find it. i tried playing different sequel games with the same results. i give up!
This was pretty fun. I would have loved for the thought-reading to be important in my escape, though.
i couldn't quite grasp the strategy here. in first-person view, it's quite difficult to run somewhere while dodging/hiding from instant death behind you. it's unfortunate, too, because i did just run backwards to watch the thing's reaction and it's really quite ominous, peeking over your hiding spots staring at you with a laser eye. i loved that.
Luring bloodthirsty cavemen into pits was far more satisfying than hacking at them.
oh my god, miserlou is perfect. hahaha. i need to figure out how to 8bit-ize that song and throw it in there.
edsploration: that's better than even I can do. i'm impressed.
jedi: i had no idea how to appropriately do a 'wave' animation and didn't want to get bogged down redoing it over and over so i just went with my first draft.
thanks for all the comments, guys. aside from actually making a game, reading these are the best part of ludum dare.
It was at once powerfully nostalgic and meandering. All it'd need is a new ability or two or a different enemy. Also I was annoyed at not being able to kill some of the tougher enemies because they'd eventually wander offscreen into some other part of the map and disappear or get stuck in rocks and water.
I did play through to the end and enjoyed it, nonetheless. And I'd do it again.
Ha ha, Langdell. Satisfying.
i love these kinds of games and the art style is awesome. there are some just annoying mechanics, though. there are a couple of room where if you walk into them you will likely just immediately die from having held the 'walk forward' key. and more frustrating was that grabbing a rope was pressing up instead of holding up.
Haha, I loved this. Perfect sound effects.
JUMP JUMP SLICE
haha, i like it. the treefalling animation was satisfying and i deforested the island because of it.
the game guide would have really helped in explaining a few things. like initially i thought the blue bar was time left in the day and each action took a chunk of the bar that represented the time it took to complete.
also this reminds me how much nicer a game feels with a title screen and a game over screen. the intro was perfect but being able to skip it would have been nice since i died a few times figuring out what to do.
is the second jump supposed to be possible? i couldn't make it. you shouldn't really put that kind of obstacle right in the beginning of your game. you can likely only make that with a thorough knowledge of the engine or luck/practice. no one wants to jump into a pit several times before even playing the game, no matter how nice the pit looks(and the art is superb)
hah, wow guys. i must say i'm really enjoying these comments!
@evilseanbot: some of the controls i purposefully made a bit sticky to show her age, and some of them i just didn't have time to make smooth(or didn't know how, haha)
@yoman: i did the lighting in the simplest, most brute-force way possible since i'm not too adept on the programming side. i took a giant black image, erased random parts in the middle, and layered it animated over the character.
@ian i love nonkilling games also, but not as much as i love oldschool boss fights, hence the vamp. also you may notice a pointless room with a blue mouse in it. i had planned to have a wolf you could kill there and save him, then if you killed no mice he'd join you on the last screen as a sort of easter egg but i could never get the wolves to be fun(and wasted way too much time trying)
@sonny haha, after reading this i had to check my code worried i'd put some horribly obscene names for variables; i find it helps me remember their names as the program gets more complex. and without comments even now, the code is so convoluted that i don't even know without looking what half of them do.
as for music, i do like using tracker programs and may still try and write something for it, but people seem to like what's there so far that i'd be worried about messing it up actually. i do think some sfxr sounds will be solid though. when holidays are over i may try and motivate myself to add those things. i do thank you for the kind words and promotion. you're why this community is awesome and infectious despite my introversion. maybe i'll even make a holiday version and write up a postmortem!
i swear i can dig myself out with my little leg wheels. this is just fun to play around with regardless of the story, and the dialogue made me laugh. can we get a version with little arm wheels for digging?
this was a blast. i love card games, anyway. i won with a score of 84 and totally ignored the tap mechanic somehow. proletariat pat was a lifesaver. time for a replay!
i was too awesome!
these are all valid criticisms. i was halfway through getting a little popup map coded, but i just bit off way more than i could chew through with this. but the map was the next on the list and admittedly very important.
@jeremias: man i feel awful now! i'll not make this mistake again, regarding the key layout.
VDZ you are a thorough and awesome reviewer. the only of your complaints i purposefully added was the nonsensical ending; i love sudden anticlimactic stops, though certainly not everyone will.
and i'll definitely be scaling way back to add polish. exactly the lesson learned here, thanks for the great review!
well, I made it with game maker and I know there is some mac version of it, but I don't know if I can just compile it from GM8 windows straight to a mac file.
haha, this was pretty fun. and don't let the detractors get to you - the flute playing was perfect. it's exactly how little gnomes would have played it and i chuckled thinking about that the whole time. 5-starring that audio!
haha, excellent. very funny and feels complete. the laugh is really quite perfect. take all my stars!
with a little polish, this could be really fun. the magnet power was slick, gave a real feeling of empowerment. after the room with the four guys, i was stuck in a wall outside a cell. was it a recursive end?
man, i love roguelikes. it's just swell when a good, long game pops up in LD that i can sink a couple hours into, much to the detriment of others i should be reviewing! the controls take some adjustment, but i've played dwarf fortress for ages and those are no picnic either. this is probably the only game i've reviewed so far that i'd go back and play again.
yeah this is the good stuff right here. high fucking five!
this is kind of meta-villainous, i like it
i can dig it! but it does need a bit of polish in controls and exactly which way walls swap, as well as some means to prevent getting stuck in the walls you swap. i do like the concept quite a bit, though
yeah, this concept deserves further exploration. it felt like an evil version of lemmings, and that felt good.
yeah, don't sell yourself short. pixel art is about being iconic, and i immediately recognized what everything was supposed to be, i like the big-head sprites a lot.
the game was pretty fun, and what it could really use is a lemmings-style scan of the stage while paused before it starts, so i can get out of the way of immediately getting shot right off the bat in later levels, or plan my route. when things got hectic, the hold-space swaps while wasd-moving started to get kind of confusing, but i don't really have a suggestion to make it smoother.
this was pretty entertaining, but is there an end? even after i let her steal all the documents/deadline ran out, i just kept making money.
the whip charge-up with the guys' recoil animation was very satisfying. actually the whole thing looks great, i love this sprite style!
how do i do a babality? i bet kittenboy is adorable!
haha, yeah the end is intended. it's a game_end, not a crash
@GG love thorough critiques like this, though i'll take issue with the last comment. i make LD games mostly for myself, and i think they're funny!
i did kind of purposefully make it not intuitive what you had to do, again probably because i just like those kinds of games. i'll probably avoid doing that again for the next LD!
loved it, the fighting instantly reminded me of watching crossbow dwarves in dwarf fortress, which i adore
I like to think that since I'm the villain, I give the goat painful diarrhea.
i quite dig this. i've always been interested in a 'lock and key' metroidvania being procedurally generated. and this is that in its most minimal form. pretty cool. also i loved the controls and sounds. i got a big zzt vibe, which i hadn't though about in many years.
this is a pretty cool mechanic. it's one of those games where you carefully keep things going, then one fuckup sends you into panic mode and things spiral down. pretty well done with one button. i can never get back into a rhythm after a couple room switches!
the game was a bit glitchy, but i adored the graphics and good god, the music is so very good. that is some chunky retro badassery. mr. garcia is a talented motherfucker
spot on moodsetting with absolutely no details, i love it.
i just wish the maze wasn't so large or that the lights flickered more often. perhaps if scanning could reveal a bit of your surroundings also. there was a lot of standing around waiting, which can heighten tension when used carefully, just that there might have been a tad too much waiting - which can have the opposite effect.
regardless, it's a minor pacing nitpick. this was an entertaining game, and man do i love the sound effects. very ominous.
haha that music is just amazing. after the second puzzle i chilled out enjoying it for awhile. also i have no idea if the wires help with solving the puzzles, i just clicked off any of the tracks that sounded 'off' until shit worked. (i also liked some of the dissonance from leaving the off parts on) did you use a tracker and silence/pitch shift various tracks of the songs for this? it was really slick
Tuber
Very fun playing from a tablet. Like a mix between those old marble and hole mazes with the treasure room from gauntlet. Speaking of which, adding some +time items or something could really add tension, though I guess it'd be less minimalistic.
i knew this was 5 star audio as soon as my like game was done downloading or whatever.
Maybe I'm already too tired, but I was just guessing combinations near the end and damn that ding!
Pretty novel idea, and very on-theme
this was pretty hilarious. i thought getting under the stairs would lead to something cool, but i just fell off the edge of the world! great concept, but man were the controls frustrating. also the blind jump off the bird with very little background to judge even how far it'd moved wasn't cool. throw in a marker somewhere!
also best ending sequence
damn yes, near perfect. my only complaint is the pace of the levels becomes slightly tiresome after you introduce the baddies then have us walk around traps a bit with no baddies. i get that that increases tension for when they do come back, but it still might have been a level too long of tension building. regardless this is the best game i've played all dare. awesome job
Never mind the loose control complaints, the game thrives on them being loose, in my opinion.
haha this is awesome, but it ramps up to impossible too quickly. stagger the introduction of the higher ramps for a more gentle learning curve!
it's really a pretty brilliant design, though.
android me this game!
Played with a tablet, and it has all the markings of a fun, frantic casual game.
Thanks guys! Yeah I couldn't make the hidden ending easy enough to get, adding it so late. Its pretty simple though: don't rip the little girl's hair. Sit quietly at her feet. I wanted you to just be able to perch anywhere near her to trigger it but fucked up the hit box. Ah well.
This is really fun. played on nexus 7. This makes me want to play guardian legend with this control structure. Loved the audio in this as well.
Cool game. On android, it was a pain losing track of the fact I was touching the screen. A bit of that could be alleviated if stopping a line just after all the colors didn't just give the game to red. Having to cross the screen's edge at the very end was often where it'd lose track, and it was pointless white space by then anyway. Frustrating! I'll try on the PC after work.
Bees jacked my gobbler right as I entered a new level! Come on!
This was really quite enjoyable. Went for several rounds. I fully expected to have some trickery like writing color words in the wrong color. I would have laughed. Well, more than I did from the base game anyway.
There's not a lot of feedback to direct what works and doesn't. I ended up just rapidly clicking all the words I could see hoping for some new effects. Not sure if I won or lost!
The idea seems cool, and the memories were entertaining. Just a bit confusing.
This is actually pretty playable with two on my nexus 7. Not original by any means, but I could totally see busting this out waiting somewhere with friends. Thanks!
I love this control scheme on racers. Super Sprint was one of my favorite nes games. I feel like there needed to be more powerups or a wider view to see more racers to really feel like I was more in control of orchestrating a second place finish. Also I'd randomly drop from first to fourth.
Knowing where and how many hedgehogs were coming would go a long way to making the game feel more puzzle-like. Also then limiting the amount of blocks. Worked perfectly on nexus 7
Similar problems here on nexus 7. Tiny background, can't interact with it.
The first few levels were all about waiting, but thankfully it picked up with the blinking platforms. The music was great, and I don't think it needs a visual timer - audio is a much more elegant cue.
However, the very tiny platforms surrounded by black were extremely unforgiving, if they were platforms over pits, it'd be considerably more bearable and you could make them even smaller and still be fun.
I can't get the android version to run on my nexus 7. I get a purple screen or a black screen with blue bars that turns red after a countdown.
Yeah, got 10017 on the last one! Pretty relaxing game, I loved this. Would be entertaining to have a nonrelaxing version filled with noise and music and action to see how bad it messes you up.
While it is way too simple for me, my four year old cousin is having a blast. It's easily understood and forgiving, and no menus to mess with so she can easily navigate everything about it. Bonus points!
Really fun. 18 really stumps me for some reason. Can do 17 in 8 seconds. Suddenly one more and I'm slow as hell. I'll be back to this one! Good job.
Haha, caranha thanks! Its so valuable to see reactions like that. It becomes more aapparent how poorly I explained the core game! The phase ability needs to be held down to fully dodge - you can be invincible as long as you hold it. Sorry About the frustrating play through, man and thanks again for the videa reviews - you're a true champion of ludum dare!
Love the android port as usual. It definitely starts off slow. Do they ever ask for four-topping pizzas? It seems like it'd be pretty hard to tell what they ordered at that point, though I think that chaos would really add to the game.
Man, you've definitely been getting better through these LDs. Everything feels really polished and as always the music is awesome.
The timing on the game was pretty fun, except i kept shooting early, probably because the sound effects make me assume it's not a time freeze, but just a time slow-down. I keep thinking I gotta lead just a hair to make the shots!
Would definitely have been nice to replay individual levels.
Also I read the readme.
This is my favorite pixel art style: really fat pixels that don't by themselves show much, but tons of fluid animation to make them pop to life. Really well done.
I spent a crapton of time in between levels waiting for them to load, though!
Thanks guys. Yep, got beaten by the theme this time. Kind of, since I still made something anyway.
@sonny yeah all the slimes jumping with you was going to maybe be an ability you earned or something later. I don't even know haha. I think I just over thought the theme and hamstrung myself. I learn a new lesson each dare. This was to just start making anything.
i liked the idea, but the controls were pretty frustrating. it was pretty easy to spam jumps to get around spikes only to at last land and then jump back off again.
it'd be nice also if going around lower corners were smoother - using the metroid wallcrawler mechanic where you're 'stuck' to a block until actually jumping would have made the game much smoother.
the atmosphere was great. got too frustrated to see what's past all those blue spikes, though.
I started with almost the same idea, except using orange/purple etc for mixed colors. parallax is a much better implementation. I didn't like having to cycle through colors and its clunkiness is part of why I abandoned the idea. No way around that, though. Everything else is extremely well done here. I enjoyed it a lot. And yeah, music was awesome.
i ended up with the more magical ending. i like that it diverges depending on the material in the clicked phrases. wish more of them altered the story even if just a bit.
it needs an ending where you eat the drum burger
i usually don't like message games like this, but the music and art was so great. totally love pixel line art. i also like single pixel eyes opening up, probably from playing the first zelda. you got me. i don't even care about the message. had fun.
totally not a game, but i felt more 'connected' than in any other game so 5/5 theme, man. i love listening to people as well as writing on dead trees. thanks for the chat
great puzzles. i feel some of the later ones were easier than the first few, though that's minor. pretty stellar entry.
great music and ideas. i like the various takes on the same basic mechanic, but am not a fan of that amount of clicking. my favorite was the comets one. i feel like the clicking area should be larger on all the games, however. also this'd be a blast on a touchscreen.
really solid. when i'm wishing there were more levels, you did a good job on your ludum dare.
i think with checkpoints this would have been amazing. i tend to 'check out' how things damage me when i first go through games and restarting every time kind of killed it. was having fun otherwise, though!
I didn't like backtracking to buy more ladders all the time. Seems like the game is just set up to trap you - You can waste too many ladders early on and be unable to complete it. Would be a bit easier if you didn't have to buy them in groups of three. Also there's lots of ways to just simply get stuck when you run out of ladders.
If the controls were less finicky, I'd probably sit through another few tries to actually complete it. Got close enough to see the bed. A few coins shy, though
I got stuck breaking the wrong bricks! Worked solid on my nexus. I loved the floppy armed baddies. Best part of the game for me.
i need it fasterrrrrr
i like the exploratory nature of this. i don't think it needs more direction. However, it could use a bit more speed in movement or smaller worlds. The portal world was the right size. Fitting music as well.
Great job!
yeah, run n jump but with a failsafe mechanism. makes these games so much more enjoyable, i think. and building the level around the midair jump was cool too. i like it.
solid intro, the game could use an escape mechanism like teleporting to the middle and some baddies to dodge
i like minimal graphics like this. sound fit well. whenever i clicked the mouse, i lost all control for the rest of the session and had to reload. this is playing via web. I was having a bit of fun, though, just dodging stuff. the double jump might need to be on keypress since i seemed to burn it just tying to do one jump.
not quite done with it yet, but liking the art and music a lot. would love some variable-height jumping in this. what does the music-changing flower do if not invincibility? that was my mario-based assumption and i killed myself on many things testing it!
eat plant, trip out, kill self. this is a morality play
relaxing is exactly right. i miss this style of racer, too. nicely done
i can't get past the start button. i think it's a unity issue maybe. mouse input doesn't work at all for me on a few unity games.
thanks everyone!
need a checkpoint after the first puzzle, which is a bit finicky to complete. nice art and sound.
amazing graphics, great sound. the 'feel' of the game is perfect. planet swapping needs more impact than killing faster, since it's not much faster than just punching the shit out of things and punching is already pretty fun anyway. is it possible to lose? i stopped playing after a few waves.
5/5 would curse at again
i think the game was interesting. was the green faction just some other hackers? took forever to finish, partly because i had to lag behind the red and green guys while reading hints - research should really pause the game.
the ending didn't really explain much, though i got a few hints about the girl in the other logs.
Music is great. I had to play a second time just to listen to the whole track since the game is so quick. However I guess that's quite variable based on drunkeness or sleeplessness. The sword was awesome but I kept seeing small bits of pornography in it! That's a pretty weird bug, man.
Well, everything here is so damn polished. However, I can still totally find some criticism. Three different attacks and the scoring system were too complex for a 6 year old. She still enjoyed it anyway, though.
I can't say enough, though, about how perfectly you nailed the title and theme. There should be a category for titles. You're a master.
Man, the range and hitboxes were rough, but I think the only real problem I have with combat was how the enemies would bounce off of each other and walls right onto you. If they were guaranteed to just be knocked back, the combat would feel a ton more fair (and this would allow you to make the mobs more varied and difficult.) You could make, like, slime blobs that keep the bounciness for later levels.
I'll echo some of the other issues: the unskippable parts at startup were too long. I didn't mind the other unskippable parts because they sounded so damn good while running. The fucking level-up menu music is my favorite. Putting up the soundtrack anywhere?
Speaking of leveling up, the orbs are far too rare. Instead of increasing the amount spawned, you could just get a free one for completing each level. Seems like a fair balance and would not make beating a level feel so pointless when none spawned.
Doesn't need to be said, but I will anyway because it's great to hear compliments: the music and sound effects are fucking perfect. The guitar weapon is so satisfying to hit things with just for the noise.
Looks, sounds, and plays great. You can get through the whole game just using left click. I get that left is good for spraying and right for moving, but I wish there was more distinct uses for the right click(and maybe some hint that it's there - it really makes the game much more enjoyable).
The level where you're climbing up was my favorite. You turned the thing that gives you power into a punishment for falling. Frustrating in a very satisfying way. (also totally avoidable but damned if I didn't keep dropping right on that son of a bitch)
In making me feel horrible, you have evoked more emotion than probably any LD game I've ever played. Five stars for mood, you bastard.
With a bit more work, this could be an amazing piece of art.
Your style is so great, I had to replay enough times to see all the bad endings. I sat away from the baby for quite awhile expecting some kind of cutscene, only to discover upon returning you were forced to watch the carnage! Harsh!
Everything here fits perfectly together. The sounds and graphics, the bouncy animation and the cadence of the music. The explanation of controls and game. Everything is extremely simple but still expresses a lot. Really well designed.
The only complaint I have here is that it's also clearly designed for one play-through. Any kind of variation in level and the ability to skip all the dialog would make it a blast to go through multiple times.
This is an example of perfectly setting your scope and polishing it up in the timeframe given.
Fantastic art and good storytelling. Some of the choices seemed superfluous as far as I could tell in a few play-throughs.
My only issue was asking her 'What's in it for me?' implying I expected some payment, then I have to tell her she owes me nothing afterward. C'mon! I'm a capitalist! (or I misinterpreted something)
This is relaxing. The mood is perfect and the weapon is already fun to play with, just needs something to do.
Getting up over the system and looking down was very satisfying, seeing the little looping paths the orbits make. Though I got flashbacks to the harder levels of Osmos.
Tilting makes the whole thing feel so much more real. I wish you could get caught up in the orbits. I'd love to see what patterns my little planet makes.
I lost all my energy when I left the system, and watching it from outside is quite surreal. I spent way too much time dicking around in here with nothing to do, so you should probably make something to do so I have an excuse to come back and dick around some more.
i'd also suggest mouse controls - as well as trying it on a touchscreen. some audio feedback would go a long way to making it more enjoyable as well.
at some point does the screen just get instantly filled with blue blocks? i always mess up my flow when they spawn in my spot
Arrgh I had 4 of those things left! It's hard to tell exactly when they're damaging you and when they're not. With so many on the screen, they should only damage you in 'attack' mode, but I couldn't quite tell if that is the case already.
Gonna have to replay some more to try and get the boss, but it takes so long!
So, this game is probably a bit beyond my tolerance level for frustration. The physics were way too floaty for a puzzle platformer, throwing the light was a bit too imprecise, and the weapon itself was so tiny. None of these would have been too grating except that failure often meant restarting a long level sequence. Maybe I'm not a hardcore platformer kind of guy. If it weren't for the ability to skip levels occasionally(which was a fantastic addition, by the way), I might never have been able to finish the game.
It's really, really rare to say this for a Ludum Dare game, but: this game might have been a bit too long.
The level where you're waiting for it to come to you while dodging bullets was not only an exception to my complaints, but probably my favorite level overall. It started out with that slow roll and I was already getting mad about it, but as it played out I couldn't help but enjoy the simplicity of it. I love levels that play nothing like their predecessors.
I realize I'm complaining a bunch, but I enjoyed playing most of the levels. The longer ones could have been split up into smaller separate levels and might not have complained about anything! Failing a bunch of times on the long levels colored my view of the game, I think.
The art is inspiring, it's ridiculously simple but sets a fantastic mood. The shaders are impressive as hell, as always.
I'm slightly upset that home-row typing isn't the best way to win, but man is this a smart game. The flow of the keyboard is perfect - sets up space as the catch-all last line of defense. Typing to get through menus is so damn classy. I love this.
I never thought I'd be giving a tower defense game 5/5 for innovation, but here we are.
I actually had to stop playing from getting tired of mashing buttons. If there were a playstyle that encouraged quick reflexes and hitting the right keys at the right time, i'd be physically capable of playing longer. And I want to play longer.
it took me an obscene amount of attempts to beat this game. I used to be pretty good at like guitar hero. I think the lack of lines or really anything clearly representing the beat makes it exceptionally hard. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, and I don't think lines will help the game, but maybe different demon types/colors could come to represent the beat?
Or maybe make the threshold to continue a bit more lax. The second song is an extreme difficulty ramp from the first and i'm guessing not many people played to see the third.
Another way of making it more difficult on the other side of things would be to have them come from different locations and at different speeds. would that be too hard? I'm curious. it'd probably look cool to see someone flawlessly play through crazy shit like that.
Game plays awesome, though, and i did enjoy repeatedly going at it. I didn't feel like i missed anything due to computer error - it was always me fucking up the beat. The music was awesome, and the visuals represent everything effectively.
This game screams 'enemies from both sides'. Put him in the middle of a horde! Zombie birds divebombing! As is, it doesn't feel much like a game, yet.
@srakowski yeah, mostly. they did that kind of thing back then right? also easier to animate!
i'm glad it managed to be intense for some of you. and while i wasn't watching Clash of the Titans, it was one of my childhood favorites and fit the theme.
I feel like there's room to polish this up and make it more fun. It's definitely not quite where I'd wanted it, but that's Ludum Dare.
Thanks! And yeah I spent way too much time trying to make the idea work at all, then figure out how to do shadows. I really wanted to do some visual representation of sound echoing around but was way beyond my skill and time.
Yeah, I realized too late that closing your eyes and killing something with its reflection just isn't really a good game mechanic. There's probably a way to make it compelling, but not by me. Not in 48 hours!
I shouldn't have tried so hard to make something so unconventional. I spent a ton of time thinking 'how the fuck is this even going to work?' I think everything BUT the gorgon is fun part of the game, sadly.
Thanks for trying it out, though!
allowing crafting weapons is great. i think the time limit for a turn is too lenient - even with how difficult it is to move around.
however, the controls are extremely difficult to use. and there's not a lot of feedback on some of the attacks to know what's going on. the easiest craft is barely visible on screen.
additionally, if you didn't buy something for someone, they should start with some weak default weapon so people don't have to craft/stock up for each character.
This can just go on forever can't it? I feel like there should be some pressure either with a time limit or a more strict limit of people. I'll never lose!
I can definitely see the seeds of this being a puzzle game. Especially if there are other enemy types that could aid you in some way - even if they just are blocking shots from different ones. Finding a way through the level and finding the right order to kill things in.
Controls and fighting felt very fluid. Get it? Some feedback for when you're spraying enemies would be helpful. The boss wasn't too bad, but everything took a touch too long to kill. Lower water supply and lower number of shots to kill things will speed up the action while keeping the game pretty similarly balanced.
this reminded me of worm womper for the intellivison, which was a game I totally forgot about until just now, so thanks for the wicked nostalgia there. The big problem is not being able to see your projectile. That adds so much to the experience that it just can't be left out like this!
Art and music is great, but the animation is so stilted. You'd almost be better off taking a south park style single-frame jiggle for walking under these time constraints. That's LD for you, though.
Hopefully you still had fun even if your first idea fell through.
Game plays solidly! The core physics feel great if maybe a touch too loose - being able to more slowly set up jump-throws would make them more accurate. I felt like I was just flailing and hoping a couple times trying to chuck it up high.
I went right for those red circles thinking they were a goal or something and about died before I realized they were hurting me. Maybe make them more obviously 'bad', since they currently share the same color as the good things you're grabbing. (I didn't read your notes til after I played) Also audio feedback would fix this.
Would have loved a big room to just play around in and get a feel for the distances your throws go and what you can easily climb before entering the tower.
I really feel like if the box could become sticky and the controls really smoothed, it could be very fun even as some kind of action game.