I am Death and Fire by derr 2015-09-12T16:25:00
I will be back as a Harbinger of Death and Fire! (High score: 3189 souls devoured)
Excellent game. Everything about this game is done well; the gameplay provides an excellent high score challenge with plenty of variety, and the graphics and audio work together to truly make you feel like a dragon bringing about death and destruction.
Because this game is good enough to replay over and over again, two balance flaws stood out to me, though:
- Balloons are too difficult to destroy. They dominate the airspace, and with how hard they are to destroy it is better strategically to remain close to the ground. It would add a lot of depth if coming up to destroy them would be a viable (hell, required for a good score) tactic.
- Wizards aren't effective enough. You can just fly through their barrier, and immediately start breathing fire again once you're out of the barrier. Your breath regenerates fast enough that by breathing in short bursts, you can still deal more than enough damage consistently even if your breath is reset to 0. It might be better if wizards stop or slow your breath regeneration in addition to slowing it (or if breathing in short bursts is nerfed entirely).
Due to these two issues, staying close to the ground and breathing in short bursts (using continuous breath against towers) seems to be easily the dominant strategy for getting high scores, which doesn't feel like the right way to play a dragon.
But that's nitpicking. For an LD game, this is beyond excellent.
LD34 — Two Button Controls / Growing (16)
Defuse Run by dreadzilla 2016-01-04T20:38:00
An interesting game, despite its technical shortcomings. Though the 'no brakes' idea has been done before, combining it with a Trackmania-like stunt track feels surprisingly fresh.
That said, having to manually restart whenever you flip over in a lightweight car on a track apparently designed to flip you over is more frustrating than fun. The game would've been much more fun if you could just respawn with a time penalty or something like that. The tendency for the car to flip over in midair after a ramp as well as the bumps in the road nearly guaranteed to flip you over felt rather unfair. The challenge to get the boxes despite your lack of control was fun though, when it worked properly.
S.E.N.T.I.N.E.L. by rnlf 2016-01-04T20:02:00
Great graphics and really fitting audio.
The gameplay, however, felt slow-paced, too easy and especially lacking in variety. It was just positioning yourself right and repeatedly pressing the attack button until everything is dead, with only a slight difficult ramp as you progress through the game. It just didn't feel very interesting.
I agree that the terminal was extremely well-executed. The plot (or, pretty much, the twist, as there's not much to the plot beyond that), however, was extremely predictable (I saw it coming when I first saw the boot-up failures at game start); the twist is too obvious and overdone, as well as lacking in any impact (even if I didn't see it coming, I'd have probably just thought 'oh, so that's what I've been doing'). This is not helped by the disconnect between the mech vs slimes gameplay and the 'real' situation; the enemies behave nothing like they should (plot-wise), you die if you do not kill them, and you are a mech (read: murder machine).
In this game, you can not jump by pta2002 2016-01-01T15:54:00
This game has some potential, but ends way too soon (just when I expected the game to really start) and has a lot of technical/design issues that make the current content not very fun.
The amount of non-tutorial content is way too small for how much tutorial there is; if I have to sit through a tutorial, I expect the rest of the game to make it worth my time. There's tons of design space left unused; the tutorials are made to be near-impossible to fail, so all that's left is two short platform challenges (the climb and the drop/bounce) and a "puzzle" (finding the exit). Even disregarding the tutorials, that just isn't enough content to make a fun game.
Collisions/hitboxes were very weird. It was never clear to me what ways of touching enemies were lethal to me and which ones allowed me to bounce; particularly the climb had me moving into enemies sideways a lot, which just felt plain weird. If you fall on top of the box in the drop/bounce challenge you go right through it (and get killed by an enemy while you're standing still in confusion). The invisible block before the exit is apparently intentional, but is very poor design as it feels like a glitch; there is no indication it is not a glitch until you've "solved the puzzle". Likewise, the "puzzle" itself is a matter of trial-and-error; the only way to find the solution is by giving up and trying to kill yourself, which generally happens before you even realize it's supposed to be a puzzle. This could be remedied somewhat by having the hidden block become visible when you approach it, but even then 'find the off-screen object' rarely makes for a fun puzzle.
The graphics were okay and worked for the game, but were not particularly memorable in any way. I didn't like the humor and felt that it tried too hard to be funny, but humor is very subjective. The awkward timing of the text also didn't help; frequently I was busy doing gameplay things while text appeared in the background (I didn't even see the 'you can jump on enemies' until I'd already jumped past the platform), and I didn't read it until after the fact. Timing is crucial for humor.
Asteroid Panic by Finestep 2015-12-31T11:50:00
I felt this game was fun, but it does little to make it stand out among other Asteroids variants/dodging games.
I liked how bumping into asteroids costs you fuel, making risky maneuvers viable in certain circumstances (like when a fuel block is touching an asteroid). I also like how turning costs you much more fuel than going straight forward; this has a noticeable effect on my playstyle. However, these innovations are relatively minor and the game is otherwise a relatively unremarkable 'dodge objects to grab other object' game.
I felt that the difficulty takes too long to ramp up. To get a higher score, I first have to play through the much safer early game before the real challenge begins. In this sense, I also felt the merging of asteroids to be counterproductive difficulty-wise; it is far easier to dodge one large asteroid than it is to dodge two smaller asteroids, particularly when you need to move to a specific point (which could be between two asteroids).
The graphics are, simply put, ugly. The spaceship and fuel are in a similar style, looking like the original Asteroids did but in color, but the Asteroids are just gray...somethings. They look ugly and look like they don't belong with the spaceship and fuel. As they also all look the same, this makes the game rather boring to look at. I do like the effect on spaceship movement, and the fact that you can tell where each game element is and what its role is at a glance.
Audio was functional, but boring. The sound of the spaceship felt fitting but hearing it constantly made it feel boring. There was no music and the only other audio was collecting fuel and crashing into something, the latter not occurring much if you're doing it right.
My high score is 30. I could get higher, but the game doesn't feel interesting enough to work my way up to a decent score again.
There's a tiny bug in the game; if you pick up a fuel thing (due to inertia) after running out of fuel (game over), the game suddenly resumes again.
MineCo by UnraveledMnd 2015-12-21T20:22:00
This feels more like a tech demo than a game, though even as a tech demo it feels rather boring and unfinished. There is no challenge in the game; once you have a single gathering/production combo up your money will only go up, never down. There is no challenge (not even something simple like a timer, 'earn as much as you can before time runs out') or goal. The game feels extremely unfinished as half the resources are not present on the map anywhere and there is no way to create many of the items. Not that there is much point to crafting different items - they're all practically the same, simple money generators without any other effect on gameplay.
A game needs something to challenge the player or to keep them interested somehow. I never felt like I was being challenged or that I was achieving anything in the game, and watching numbers tick up by themselves is not interesting enough on its own.
The Two Button Dungeon by Conker534 2015-12-21T19:49:00
I felt this game was exceedingly dull. As there is no way to lose the game (you will defeat every enemy by just holding right from the start of the game until you get tired of it), nor even any more optimal to progress in the game let alone beat the game, there is no challenge. Your actions in the game are meaningless, not affecting the game other than having the game not progress if you're not holding right.
There are rare cases where games can be good despite a lack of meaningful interaction, particularly in narrative and art games. However, this game does not present a sufficiently interesting experience (it's a typical RPG scenario without any twists) and is too repetitive (you're fighting the exact same enemies over and over again, without even a change of scenery) to be interesting as a barely-interactive game.
The pixel art is really nice, but unfortunately the gameplay doesn't do it justice.
As phi6 pointed out, the window was inconveniently small. I had to lower my resolution to 800x600 (from the 1920x1080 I usually use) to be able to play the game properly, and even then it looked small. Also, the button to start the game was very counter-intuitive; at first I thought the game didn't work on my machine and was about to report this "bug". A starting command more in line with the controls (say, starting by pressing right) or some explanatory text ("Press right to start"/"Click button to start") would help players understand how to start the game.
SAUROPOD vs THEROPOD by Tijn 2015-12-20T14:24:00
Great game, my favorite this LD so far. Running around, dodging enemies, eating plants and evolving was fun.
As others have said, balance issues drag the game down after a while. Wonky AI movement behavior causes them to combine into an impenetrable wall of death if you're unlucky, locking you out of the starting area where the plants are. They never attack each other or give up chasing you, and once you get in combat with them it's often impossible to escape - right after running, you get into combat again the very next turn. You're forced to just muscle your way through, which seems to be entirely luck-based. It's also slightly frustrating that combat is purely detrimental; you get no reward for victory other than your continued survival, so strategically it's best to avoid combat at all times. It would be nice if the player was rewarded for strategic combat choices, like attacking weaker animals, if only through something like improved combat capacity in the next evolution.
The music was great and the sounds were fitting and added a lot to the experience. However, I would've loved to see different sounds per dinosaur for attacking and being hit; as it is right now, you repeatedly have the exact sample playing twice in a row every turn, which just sounds weird in addition to not making it clear whether it's the 'attacking' or 'being hit' sound.
Graphics were great but a bit too repetitive. I like the minimalist look, but you can't easily deduce an enemy's (or hell, your own) characteristics by their look, and many different enemies look the exact same (not even color differences).
Snek - A modern snake clone for millenials by ahmeni 2015-12-20T01:00:00
Although it took some time getting used to, Snake with 360 degrees rotation ends up causing rather interesting gameplay. (It's not really Snake due to the tail not being gameplay-relevant, but it's close enough.)
However, the game has significant technical issues that really drag it down. Corpses don't disappear after death. Rendering too much (for example, several of your previous corpses) causes a massive reduction in frame rate. The collectable circles bug out after you die. Collision detection is wonky, and sometimes you don't collect a circle you're definitely touching. And are there only two levels (plus the intro level), or is there some bug causing the freeze upon completing level 2?
Design-wise, feedback is sorely missing. You don't get any sound or graphical effect indicating you just lost HP, and some auditory feedback on collecting a coin would also be nice. There is also no quick way to check if you've finished collecting them all or if there are still some left. I also found some of the level design parts were too harsh. Most notably, the bottom right circle in level 1 is nigh-impossible to get and return without touching a side. A slightly more gradual difficulty buildup would've helped here.
SpaceHex by Sheep 2015-12-19T19:48:00
While I like the idea, and conceptually the game is very solid, the fact that it's hard to know what's going on around your base and the fast pace of the game combine to make a disappointing game.
The UI is rather clunky and lacking in information. I can't just zoom out and immediately get to the room I want to view/edit. Vital information on room productivity (how many spiamonds/sec does this generate? How much damage does this shield absorb?) is lacking from the interface, while other information is only visible on mouse-over, or sometimes has to be deduced after mouse-over (what level is this room's productivity at? How much does it cost to upgrade?). The menu for building rooms is slow, and the lack of any confirmation when upgrading means you need to do it slowly or risk upgrading too much or too little.
But the most frustrating is how little you know about your base at any given time. You don't even get audio cues to signal you're being attacked and the attack penetrated your defenses somewhere. There really need to be warning signals indicating when things require your immediate attention. There is no way to view your entire base to get a good idea of where you should focus your efforts, it's not possible to view shield/weapon ranges unless you have that specific room selected, room damage is too subtle, it's hard to see where there are spots for building rooms with an energy connection, and the rooms look too much alike to immediately glance how much firepower/defense/repair/etc you have in a given area. All in all, you don't know enough about what's going on until it's too late and the enemy's approach is already unstoppable.
In a turn-based game, this all would be fine. But as this game is real-time, and the effect of falling behind is self-reinforcing (losing rooms makes it harder to defend your base, which makes you lose more rooms), these issues entirely ruin the interaction with the enemies. Either you build your base right quickly enough that the enemies pose no problem at all (also a frustrating process considering the interface issues), or you get completely devastated by the enemy without any hope of rebuilding. If you have to respond to the enemy, it's already too late.
These issues are made worse by the way things get more expensive as time goes on. Building defenses in time is no longer possible when they're made so expensive by your earlier defenses, especially not when they've just blown up your mining room. The cost of repairing rooms is extremely prohibitive, yet at the same time not repairing rooms leaves you far too vulnerable.
Overall, the gameplay has a lot of potential, but it just doesn't work the way it is now. It's a speedrun building game where you lose if you haven't built your base in time, rather than a base management game where you defend your base from enemies.
The graphics look very nice, but unfortunately they're not sufficient on a functional level (see 'hard to see what's going on' stuff above). The audio is very atmospheric, but is utterly lacking functionally (you don't even hear your rooms blowing up when you see it happen!).
-1 to Overall and Fun for making balance changes to the version being judged. Please upload a post-LD version if you want to have players play a better game; the version to be judged should be what you made in the 48 hours, complete with balance flaws. Balancing is hard and takes time, and many games would be better if only the creator had more time. Getting that right is part of the challenge too. (And yeah, I failed that part pretty hard on mine this time.)
Rude Bear Recreation by Alex Rose 2015-12-19T18:19:00
It's a fun if simple and short platformer. I feel you made good use of the movement gimmick, though it was all a bit by-the-book; the level design was solid, but never surprising.
The graphical style and the effects were great, as were the graphics that are in the game. However, the visuals did feel a bit lacking; every part of the level looked pretty much the same and the background was mostly just a solid color, which was a bit boring. As others have mentioned, lack of graphical feedback isn't too much of an issue but is a bit disappointing. Audio was pretty good.
I also agree the link to the theme is a bit weak (I'll respond to your post after this), though it is clearly there. I also agree having a different button for dropping would probably play better, it feels far too counter-intuitive as it is now.
All in all, it's a solid game, it just never really goes beyond just being a solid game.
Attrition by Team Buttfacę 2015-12-19T16:25:00
While I liked the idea, the execution just doesn't seem to work out.
You're supposed to be making strategic choices at the right times to get your people to prosper, but with the simplistic cards (never any reason not to play a card immediately), high degree of randomness (you keep drawing Sacrifices when you're at full mana and your people are prospering), very restrictive hand size combined with no card draws when at the limit (you can't discard cards to make place for more useful cards) and wonky game balance (the civilization grows too easily, then becomes entirely unmanageable as you don't get enough food/water cards to sustain them and have no reliable way of culling them), there isn't really anything to do except for play whatever cards you draw. Again, you don't even get the option to keep them - you need to keep playing cards to get new ones. The game gives you no chance to make strategic decisions, which means you're pretty much left watching a civilization build up and destroy itself.
The UI could also use some serious work; elements moving on mouse-over is very annoying when you're trying to click something, the text rewriting itself as it zooms in makes it hard to read until it's fully zoomed in, and as it's impossible to see the effect of area effect cards you can't be sure what area you're affecting.
Shaman Flower by SaintHeiser 2015-12-19T14:27:00
It's a great game, however it's a bit too hectic and there seem to be some weird balance issues. (Don't worry, the rating is high, these details are just nitpicking and explaining why I'm unlikely to replay the game much.)
There is too much going on at the same time. You are trying not to get crushed, avoiding spikes, dodging enemies and killing enemies. At the same time, you are collecting clouds and torches, picking up healing items, touching weapon upgrade things and grabbing score pickups. This all is done while repeatedly switching between two characters with significantly different gameplay, which can both independently switch between weapons. Interface-wise, you have to keep track of the sun gauge and the rain gauge and your health while you're doing all this. It's just way too much to handle in a fast-paced game like this with no breaks between the action sequences.
Feedback also seems slightly lacking; though I generally grasped what was going on, it wasn't entirely clear to me when I was hit (there are too many things going on at the same time - was that the enemy being crushed just now or did I get hit by the enemy?), and I could never get a grasp on how much health I had left (it's only subtly visible all the way at the top of the screen; I am not reminded of it when I am hit and there are no audio cues telling me I'm about to die). Similarly, I never really knew where the sun/rain gauges were at unless the platform was stopped and I had both the time (not much going on) and incentive (something's wrong, must be the gauges) to check it out. Audio cues might have helped here.
The weapons seem extremely inconsistent. Some weapons completely obliterate everything, while others seem to hardly do anything even if you spam them in the enemy's face. Combined with the 'one weapon at a time' replacement mechanic, this leads to situations where one moment you're destroying everything and the next moment you're suddenly utterly helpless. You're screwed in particular when both of your characters have a weak weapon.
Although for the most part the level generation was great, never feeling dull, there were some weird designs, notably parts where you apparently can't grab a weapon without being crushed? There was also this weird inconsistency where on some designs you could move up by jumping, while in other designs your high jump just wouldn't reach. It also seemed a bit strange how much superior the Rain Shaman's jump was to the Sun Shaman's; even a perfectly executed Sun Shaman jump doesn't reach as high or far as a Rain Shaman jump. Jumping as the Rain Shaman always seems preferable.
The distance goal seems ridiculous. Rather than not being able to survive to that point, I don't think I can play for that long in a single session without getting bored; it seems like it would take way too long to get there. Particularly with the non-stop action without any breaks, I don't think I would want to play for that long in a single session. The difficulty also seems too unforgiving in an inconsistent way; I can get hit by enemies many times, but a single positioning mistake getting me crushed ends the game immediately. If the game is intended to be that long, that's just way too harsh. Instant death becomes exponentially harsher as more progress is lost by it.
Still, all of this is just nitpicking, issues that keep this from becoming an 'amazing game' rather than just a 'great game'. The graphics and audio were great as always, and it was fun to play.
URBO by hadesfury 2015-12-15T20:19:00
I'm with the others; the gameplay is a bit unclear and feels rather random. For that matter, I never felt like I was building a city; I was making random choices while a city appeared in front of me. There was no goal for me to work towards - not even a personal goal, as I had no idea what I was doing - and no challenge to struggle against.
The graphics are great, the sound effects are very fitting, and I like your interpretation of the theme.
Unfortunately, I'm rating this as a game, not a tech demo, and as a game it just seems entirely lacking in fun. The first minute or two was interesting to see the city grow, but the time I played after that kind of felt like I was just wasting my time, and I can't really say I had fun playing it.
Dizzy Dazzle by Tselmek 2015-12-15T19:56:00
I fully agree with what silkworm_sweatshop said. I am a boring person, and I immediately noticed that just mashing the buttons is a far superior strategy to playing the game as intended; it takes much less time to hit both buttons once than it takes to determine which button to press next and pressing that button. I dislike it when a game doesn't properly enforce its rules, because where do you draw the line between playing seriously and cheating? I could focus more on speed and less on accuracy, but would that be cheating? It could be a valid strategy if you were punished for inaccuracy, depending on how harsh the punishment is.
Trying to play as intended (avoiding pressing the wrong buttons) reveals some design flaws which make the experience rather unfun. The arrows look too much alike, making it hard to distinguish between left arrows and right arrows. (DDR has each arrow in its own lane to distinguish them, for example. It also has different outline and fill colors on the arrows to make them easier to distinguish.) The initial game speed feels too high for just starting the game. But worst of all, a single miss means instant game over. This is okay in button-mashing mode since it's the result of slowly losing ground, but when playing carefully a single moment of carelessness makes you lose the entire session. Not fun at all.
The style, however, is awesome. The graphics give it a lot of style, and the audio fits perfectly.
Bicycle Simulator 1984 by Eigen 2015-12-14T20:22:00
I'm not really sure what to say here. Everything is very well-made and polished...but it just isn't fun. It's the most basic form of 'push button to win game' with nothing at all to spice it up except for a whole lot of style. The only challenge is how fast I can push buttons, and that got tedious even back in the C64 era when it was combined with timing challenges (long jump games and the like).
The only real criticism I can offer is that the audio seems a bit lacking. There's only a single piece of music, which gets rather repetitive, but more importantly there's no audio feedback in the gameplay. I can't hear myself cycle, I can't hear how fast I'm going, I can't hear the start sign, and I can't hear myself cross the finish line. It would add a lot to the experience if you heard sounds produced by in-game events.
Captain Ninjabeard by GhostBomb 2015-12-14T19:58:00
Great game. Using shooting mechanics for movement works well with the gameplay of avoiding enemies, and the precise movement (and motion reset!) caused by the katana works very well to balance out the imprecise control of the gun recoil movement. Having them work in opposite directions also creates an interesting contrast. The game has quite a learning curve due to the unorthodox controls, but it gets more fun as you get better at it.
Minor nitpicks: The laser enemy seems to be too powerful, as it completely dominates the game once it starts appearing; it often comes from off-screen, is hard to dodge, and the movements required to dodge it frequently cause you to run into enemies/bullets. It deals several times more damage to me than all other enemies combined. Also, feedback on being hit seems to be too subtle; sometimes I don't even notice when I'm hit, and when I'm hit I'm not always sure what dealt the damage.
The graphics look nice, though I'm left wondering what's with the pirate theme when you're floating in the air propelled by some machine gun-like weapon, being attacked by flying enemies (including some that shoot lasers). The audio is nice and functional.
I can't say I'm very impressed with the implementation of the theme. Sure, you have two buttons, but the most important part of the controls is the mouse movement. You could call pretty much every single PC strategy game ever a two-button game like that.
Regarding controls, I think the game could be further improved using twin stick controls. Mouse movement is slow when you try to move large distances, particularly when you need to reach the exact opposite location (when trying to katana in the direction you're already moving, for example); something like dual analog sticks could make this much more convenient. It would also help with the awkwardness of mouse controls near the edge of the screen.