Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → very dark lord
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Category | Score | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 👥 | 🥈 | 2024 | 55 | Summoning | The Demon Ate My Homework | jam | Humor | 4.66 |
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | 59 | Signal | 👥 | We're Going to Hell for This | jam | 317 | 3.72 | 3.65 | 3.37 | 2.92 | 3.42 | 4.00 | 3.55 | |
| 2025 | 57 | Depths | 👥 | Flat Mates | jam | 243 | 3.79 | 3.81 | 3.83 | 4.10 | 3.66 | 4.18 | 3.64 | |
| 2024 | 55 | Summoning | 👥 | The Demon Ate My Homework | jam | 79 | 4.14 | 4.14 | 3.95 | 4.52 | 3.86 | 4.15 | 4.66 | 4.45 |
| 2023 | 54 | Limited Space | Spaceout | jam | 447 | 3.68 | 3.58 | 3.18 | 3.06 | 3.40 | 3.64 | 3.27 | ||
| 2022 | 51 | Every 10 seconds | 👥 | Telepeter | extra | |||||||||
| 2022 | 50 | Delay the inevitable | 👥 | Don't Drink and Dive | jam | 608 | 3.57 | 3.34 | 3.31 | 3.50 | 3.44 | 3.92 | 3.52 | |
| 2021 | 49 | Unstable | 👥 | Glown-Up | jam | 435 | 3.74 | 3.81 | 3.50 | 4.01 | 3.57 | 3.61 | 3.79 | 3.87 |
| 2021 | 48 | Deeper and deeper | 👥 | Shovel is just Love Spelled Backwards | jam | 244 | 3.95 | 3.61 | 3.47 | 4.14 | 3.64 | 3.45 | 3.75 | |
| 2020 | 47 | Stuck in a loop | 👥 | Hyperloop | jam | 90 | 4.14 | 3.81 | 3.03 | 3.47 | 4.44 | 4.43 | 3.05 | 4.40 |
| 2020 | 46 | Keep it alive | 👥 | Friendly Fire | jam | 130 | 4.09 | 3.92 | 3.30 | 3.80 | 4.12 | 3.88 | 4.18 | 3.93 |
| 2019 | 44 | Your life is currency | 👥 | Sick Business | jam | 17 | 4.23 | 4.23 | 4.04 | 3.96 | 4.20 | 3.78 | 4.04 | 3.95 |
| 2018 | 42 | Running out of space | 👥 | Grave Heart | jam | 40 | 4.11 | 4.04 | 3.73 | 4.08 | 3.81 | 3.97 | 4.00 | 4.08 |
GLUTEN IS POISON!!! Haha, love it. Was just sitting here giggling the whole time. I see you're making proper use of your PHD skills here. :)
The whole time I wasn't quite sure if this was a puzzle game or an adventure or something else. I think I'm calling it a fuzzle now. That sounds fitting. Well done I say, this game certainly was a local maximum in my testing.
Got 670! Cute graphics and quite funny premise. Destroying tractors with arrows, I'm feeling like Rambo here. Diagonal movement would have been a nice addition, other than that it turned out quite well!
Interesting concept, the kind of game where you can probably spend a lot of time refining your strategy until everything works perfectly. I found it a bit difficult to assess which symbols were what - it might have been better to use the symbols in the descriptions as well, instead of text. Also visual bars instead of numbers (or additionally to the numbers) would have been helpful for the resources. I didn't quite understand the corruption behaviour, so just surrounded it with walls on all sides - unfortunately walls seem to be quite expensive, so I couldn't keep up getting enough metal. Lost after covering 2/3 of the map. Also, building stuff via number keys or something would be nice. Building stuff on top of the map was quite a struggle due to the large distances to cover with the mouse. :D Fairly interesting mechanics though, good work!
Not bad! One of the rare games which actually feels like a proper game, with levels and learning curve and everything! I really like the level transitions which make it feel like a continous world. Very well done I have to day! Only made it to level 7 though, couldn't solve that one. :( I hope I haven't missed out on any spectacular features after that. Really well done though, great entry!
Funny little game. I like how the rows explode tetris-style when they're full. And just like @pamoy I ended up invincible on my second attempt and just watched the madness unfold. The game actually looks quite impressive once the speed goes up and boxes keep exploding all around you. :)
What on earth! Such a weird and unexpected game. I really struggled with the controls, but I guess that's to be expected when you control a guy who's bound to a chair. Definitely interesting stuff. Great atmosphere and graphics. Unfortunately I didn't make it out alive. :(
Really cool! I like these games that are extremely easy to grasp, yet take a bit of experimentation to win. Took me 3 or 4 tries until I had a reasonably good strategy. Ate the hunters first and then had to lure the lumberjacks to a position where I could hunt them without them running off the grass too soon, which worked out well. Am a happy lonely lion now. Well done!
I don't know how to feel! This is absolutely the funny kind of weird. Hilarious premise, and quite polished overall. I just wish there was a bit more to the gameplay.. :) Well done though!
Can't say I didn't like this one! The idea is cool, and the solar systems and shadow casting planets are very well done. Strengths were definitely the atmosphere (it's oddly immersive actually) and innovation. I also appreciate you stayed with only 3 levels and thus made it easy to finish the game.
The only thing that could need some improvement imho is the physics / controls. Steering the spaceship is somewhat daunting and not very rewarding - even though probably physically sound. Having less inertia, and more control over where you're going, would probably make for a more enjoyable experience.
Also kudos for using LÖVE, and even making it playable in web. Good work. :)
@rahim-pxr your link isn't quite right, I guess it should be https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/42/spacelab-42 (without the a).
Well, what can I say.... not dark enough! Ha, no, just kidding, haven't played it yet but I will soon, and then we shall see who's the darkest lord in the land!
Definitely among the better ones I've played! Quite a great little puzzle game you got there. Impressive for the little time you apparently had to make it. Have to confess, this lord is indeed rather dark. Not quite as dark as me probably, but way up there. And funny as well! I also have to confess, I stopped at level 11, as there didn't seem to be much variation at that point. Some fresh gameplay elements would certainly have helped, but then again, given your limited time, this is more that good enough! I guess a few levels less would still have been alright though in this case.
Otherwise, maybe a different background might have been worth a try. The whole game is so eerie, yet there's this happy bright background. I'm getting a little picky though. Congrats on the game. Very well done!
Really innovative! Running out of keys was a nice idea. Also some interesting gameplay elements that work well together. I was really surprised how tough puzzle 2 turned out to be, but ultimately beat it. The third one however defeated me - it looked so easy at first, onyl to turn into a monster after a few moves. :D
I personally would have liked captions on the keys. The way it was, I always had to look back and forth between screen and keyboard to make sure I always hit the right key and don't accidentally die. Mouse controls would have worked as well, but I admit pressing virtual keyboard keys with your mouse in this game would have been somewhat weird.. :)
9100! I feel like this is a decent score. Very cool concept, and fun and engaging to play. Not to mention the whole setup is just the right kind of ridiculous. I love the confused shopkeeper just constantly getting in trouble, aimlessly wandering into the gold.
Quite a fun game actually, really flowy in the beginning, until the lag begins. :P I like the complex behaviour of the turrets. The only downside for me is that pushing the boxes doesn't really feel necessary, as, at least for me, it was never a problem of too little space, but a problem of too many bullets. The lag actually added its own weird depth to the gameplay, and it becomes more strategic than intuitive to judge where the bullets will move in the next frame. :D
Also very nice audio, and the particle effects work really well.
Have to say I'm a bit torn. Atmosphere and most of the graphics is really nice - like the animations, the fire, the trees in the back - but the ground really doesn't fit the art style, and the environment interaction seems like you ran out of time before properly implementing it. Also the game got extremely laggy every time the camera moved with the player.
It took me a while to figure out how I was supposed to overcome the obstacles, but that worked out well after a while. Even though I still don't know how a piece of what appears to be rock not only destroys a wooden wall, but on top of that turns into a nice bridge. :D But well, a bit of game logic is certainly welcome in jam games.
All in all good work despite the mentioned issues. Maybe next time use keys that work for all players though - although I realize it must be really irritating for you to encounter all these WASD games, right? :D So maybe some due revenge actually.
This is quite cool! Funny premise. Hitting robots is surprisingly satisfying due to the good feedback (push pack, sound and animation). Also good work with the programmer art. :D Well done.
Haha, well done guys. I was torn between rating highly on sound or on humour. Went for the latter as my ears are hurting.. :D I assume I lost when the counte reached 0? Good effort, keep it up, your games will only get more awesome over time!
Dude, the music! I take from it not being part of the rating that you didn't create it yourself? It's really getting into my brain, man. :)
Funny little game. I just wish there was an AI to play against, instead of just being on your own in Singleplayer.
I definitely like the idea of having a snake game with a richer environment. Regarding the theme, it seems the snake is already running out of space all by itself due to growing (without eating apples, how strange). The shrinking room is a nice addition, but it started so late it didn't really seem to affect the game very much - but maybe I'm just not good enough a player. Reached 149 before dying in the acceleration area because I didn't take into account turns are accelerated as well. Good effort overall, and bonus points for making it playable in browser!
Thanks a lot for your feedback everyone! We very much appreciate it and will make sure to test your games as well.
Note: we had to update the Web version with a small hotfix, as we realized there was a way players could accidentally but lastingly lose access to the graveyard shop (which would be rather game breaking, as you need the shop to survive).
Got to admit, we're a little overwhelmed by all your reactions. :) Thanks a lot for all the kind words, we're really glad you enjoy the game! For those of you interested, make sure to check this page again after the Jam - we're inclined to work more on a post Jam version with smoother controls and a few additional features.
@szekeres-szabolcs your comment made my week! We weren't even sure it was possible to beat the game (which you basically did, because the difficulty curve ceases to grow that strongly after some point) without any cheats, but you certainly proved that with your strategy. :) Sorry about the bug though - if this happens to anybody in the future, it would be really helpful if you could have a look into the browser's developer console if there are any errors that caused the crash, and let us know.
@martintristan we actually considered adding a bit of a backstory to who "they" are, but in the end had different priorities (like, you know, adding references to pop songs of course). Thanks a lot for your feedback!
Really good and funny take on the theme. Got to floor 6, then I made the mistake of holding a guy while the others entered and thus got trapped on a falling tile. Noooooooo!
I like it, well done!
I really didn't expect this to be so stressful! Damn. So much to do, so much death, so many bombs, ooof! As others said, this is surprisingly polished. Visually this might be the best game I've seen so far. Gameplay and presentation are also top notch. I just wish it was a little easier, I couldn't manage to get past the 3rd or 4th level as it just took me too long to destroy the crystals. Great game though, really impressive!
Really nice to see an entry like this, didn't expect it, but looking at it now it's actually one of the more "obvious" interpretations of the theme... I'm even a bit ashamed I didn't even think of this despite many hours of brainstorming.
There certainly isn't much gameplay, but for a game like this there really doesn't need to be. It's a short experience, conveying a message, and some kind of fun engaging gameplay really wouldn't add anything to the overall experience, so I personally am fine with just being able to "walk right" for a while and see the events unravel.
Well done, and thanks a lot for putting in the effort to do something like this.
I like this a lot! Got to age 85 and tried pretty much every job and learning opportunity I could find. Became a UX designer in my late 70s. Only sad part about the game is the 2 years of misery I had to endure as an infant. :D
Holy shit guys. That's really all I can say. Absolutely in love! Might be the most stylistically amazing LD game I've ever played. Brilliant!
Neat! The mighty Flurplepede brought a lot of terror to the world, but in the end fell victim to climate change. :) Really like these sketchy visuals and the variety of enemies in the game.
@cozmic thanks for trying! It seems Edge is having trouble with a relatively recent JavaScript-Feature. We're looking into whether Edge can handle it after we replace it with an alternative right now and will let you know if we find a way.
At everyone else, thank you so much for your kind feedback, really makes our day!
@cozmic Unfortunately there are more issues with Edge we couldn't resolve yet. For now we'll have to ask players to use Firefox or Chrome instead. Sorry about the inconvenience, and thanks for letting us know!
@rahtainka thank you! Regarding the theme: Our hospital is run like a business, and the patients are considered valuable in that they earn us money while they're alive (they pay rent for the bed they use, and we can do our lucrative surgeries/treatments on them. When they die, we pay a penalty). That's the main way in which we incorporated the theme.
On top of that, but that's more of a lucky coincidence, your own life is coupled to the money you possess due to the nature of your relation to the mafia. The amount of money thus always reflects the player's risk of dying themselves.
@denzil-gomes The pill throwing game is indeed the hardest one, we've made it somewhat easier in the (not yet published) post jam version by adjusting the throwing angle and thus make it more forgiving. The placebo minigame however is much simpler than it looks - you can basically just drop the ball immediately and win. The only thing to avoid is hitting the patient. The game doesn't explain this very well, so that minigame is confusing as it suggests to players you have to keep up the ball, which is not actually the case. Sorry about that. :)
@peachtreeoath "I wasn’t even too sure how the metagame was supposed to play out, just a vague idea of mafia money and cops" - absolutely, we realized while working on it that there's a lot of complexity that's hard to communicate to players, but at the same time it also isn't really necessary to have a good time playing, so we didn't see any strict necessity to fix this and stayed with that game design. A lot of things go on that players don't (and honestly probably can't) notice during the first playthrough.
"I see you have a decent sized team, did you split the coders off to do different minigames?" - of our 7 members 5 were mostly involved in coding, three of them part time (one "pair programming coder" who was focusing mostly on banter and keeping us entertained, plus two coders who mostly worked on tilemap, doctor/patient & treatment logics), and two for the full three days, one of them working mostly on characters, collision, the facility manager NPC, mafia and cop mechanics, and the other one worked primarily on the minigames.
"I also laughed pretty hard when I first missed my organ deployment, just like in the real world." - next time I need an organ replaced I know who to ask!
Lovely and impressive! So much content, and so well put together. And even autosave of your progress! Really terrific work. It also reminded me of Rogue Legacy with the grim reaper thing and the balloon game (which I won in an impressive manner*, just to let you know). Thanks for this!
*by mashing all the keys frantically
I'm really surprised by the rankings - expected this to easily end up in the top 25 or so. Maybe it's just bad luck with the game's strengths not really fitting the given categories too well, or there was just too much content so many players missed out on most of it. Gameplay- and level design-wise it was my favorite of what I've played this time around!
Is there a way to access the jam version of the web build? Or is the web version only available as post jam? (If the latter, you should maybe clarify that in your download links, as this will probably be the version most people will play and rate)
Pretty much what @duke said. But I also have to say I really dig the way you let the player discover all the gameplay elements one by one without any text. That kind of Portal-esque explorative tutorial gameplay/level design is really neat! Well done.
Quite polished, nice visuals and really cool how you started it with a cutscene. I found the controls very slightly confusing though - took me a short while to realize I was moving between 4 invisible lanes, after wondering why the character didn't move as I wanted him to. :D Also, there weren't enough hearts imho. Played like 7-ish rounds, with barely anyting new happening since the start, and I still only had the cheapest 2 upgrades and not enough hearts to buy a new one, let alone become a functional member of snail society. Still, great entry!
Sorry for your bluescreen. Game turned out really well though, nice and shiny, and great music! Only managed to reach 9000 points after several tries, but I think I'm satisfied with my plebby performance.
Apart from the game being funny, with lovely audio, a generally great premise and a lot of creative freedom with how you interpreted the theme, I especially like how this game has a really narrow set of mechanics and still manages to be complex enough for the player to develop different "strategies", or at least learn something new after one or two playthroughs. Despite its simplicity I "discovered" several things while playing, namely that you can drop the cats or throw them in from a distance, that there are *two* sides to your trailer (this one was important), and that it's a good idea to throw cats away before the children hit you. Also it may be a good idea to spend some time away and just throw cats in the general right direction before returning to your trailer yourself. It's like the balance between the game's simplicity and its implications on how to play the game is just right. Also it required basically zero explanation of how to play which is always a plus.
The only "complaints" I'd state are that 1) I think it's too difficult to evade the children, felt almost impossible most of the time, and 2) a background would have been nice, this black void is a little sad to look at. :D Great job though, well done!
Cool concept! I briefly considered doing a TD game too, but our team went with a hospital simulation in the end. Took me a bit to figure out what to do, as I thought I had to micro manage the towers or something - but the minimalistic approach to controlling your base works quite well actually. Not sure what the best strategy would be, my approach was to focus mostly on the poison towers, which brought me to wave 10. Seemed decent enough, but not like a sustainable strategy in any way.
This may also be the first TD game I've played where you can basically commit suicide by buying an upgrade. Not sure if this should be considered a bug or a feature though. :D
Well, the level generation, animations, visuals in general, and game description are pretty spectacular!
Very neat entry, well done all along. Some well placed jokes too. Is there a way to activate the TV? Apparently I missed at least one way to die, and I assume the TV to be one of them. That may also explain why I had to "grind" a bit before I was able to get past the puppies.
There were just few things I felt could need some minor improvement, namely
- walking past the puppies got old quick, even if it just takes 3 or so seconds, you have to do it like 10 times to finish the game. Making the slowdown less severe would certainly improve the experience a bit - sound volume seemed quite high, and that music room cut pretty strongly from the left to the right speaker while passing it - may be just me, but I didn't quite get what the magazines (?) which I could pick up did
However, these are just minor inconveniences in a great entry. Great idea and unique art style too!
Very cool game! I really like such handcrafted stories. A lot of surprises and references and details and jokes and little twists here. Well done. :)
So cool! Had this tab open for a few days but hesitated to play it, as "time travel" sounds like something that, well, takes some time to play through. :D And I was not disappointed. Even in the end I was still a bit confused about the timeline stuff and what my other selves were or were not doing and what deleting them would have for effects, but I somehow managed to find my way through this maze of sad alternate realities and ended up in the one that, I guess, was sad as well but at least met the game's end condition, so yay!
Very well done. I quite dig the aesthetics, the narration is great, it's certainly a very innovative game, and the writing is very funny. I've got nothing to complain about!
So well done! With all these nice backgrounds and scripted events. Super cool! Amazing style, very atmospheric and immersive.
Really innovative mechanics, and you don't shy away from highly morbid ideas it seems. :D Well done, very interesting game!
Also had quite a bit of fun with your youtube channel btw, these "4 games same artkit" videos are super entertaining.
Basically what has been said before - really nice drawings, some more gameplay and sound would be nice though. :)
Really impressive, especially for a compo entry. So polished! Such a clear to the point idea and execution. Perfect length and depth for a Ludum Dare game. The only tiny nitpick I could come up with is that it would have been nice if there was a pause function to think things through, and each level started in a paused state. This way I always had to drag a random tile just to be able to think about my next step, which felt a little unnatural. Still, impressive entry, I'd be very surprised if this doesn't end up in the top 10. Well done!
This tree is responsible for quite a number of deaths... but who cares, I did it! Buuut my tree didn't grow in the ending sequence for some reason. I think it just flickered once and then went back to its former thin state (played the web version). Well balanced game I must say, took me two tries to internalize the concept and once I knew what to do everything worked out. Satisfying! Also, the introductory text with the symbols embedded into the text is quite well done. Overall I'd call this game the definition of "solid" - Good work! :D
Wow! This is utterly amazing. Probably the most fun game with the best mechanics I've played this time around. Visuals are exceptional as well, and the writing is hilarious and just as meta as I like it. Oh my, and it's even a Compo game?! How on earth did you do that. :D
Only few nitpicks I could come up with:
- cancelling an action would be nice, but it seems you've already worked on that for future versions? - I wish there was some growth in player capabilities with each level, e.g. more action points, ability to run further, drawing more cards, maybe special cards that allow you to e.g. confuse single enemies or disable them for a turn or two, and maybe ways to have defensive actions be more permanent than they currently are - it's a little intransparent when/how far enemies will move, and how much hp they have left; may be intentional, but I would have preferred to see these things somehow - I think there are a few typos in the story - blue orbs were mentioned, but I didn't encounter them, as far as I know, despite reaching the end of the game - restoring HP (after each level or when picking something up, or with certain cards you randomly draw) would have been nice
But none of these prevent the game from being outstanding as it is. Playing it was super fun. Can't wait for the post jam version!
@harry-alissavakis That's some quite in-depth second degree feedback you're giving. :D Now after a few hours have passed since I played the game, I can say I still crave seeing more of it. Honestly, I'd easily be willing to pay $5 for something like this with more content (and a bit more polishing here and there of course). Gameplay-wise this is the most engaging thing I've played in a while. It just hits this sweet spot of being the *fun* kind of difficult where I constantly feel like enemies are overwhelming me, but then the only thing that's overwhelming is the satisfaction of destroying them all with a few swift moves just before they reach me.
But enough of this. Let's just say I'll keep an eye or two on what you'll be doing with this. :D
Love it! Just the kind of game I always hope to find when playtesting LD games. Minimalistic but spot on. Brilliant atmosphere. Just the right amount of complexity in the levels. The graphics suit the game really well. Really, I've got nothing to complain about here, small but good idea and flawless execution. (Also: beat it on my first attempt, which made me feel proud so I may now like your game a little more than I would otherwise :D)
Very nice art style! And great atmosphere, tense and still kinda relaxing. Got to level 3 and then when phone was at 100% and I thought it was over, I "proceeded" into the abyss to the right, thinking it would lead somewhere, but it seems that's not what I was supposed to do considering my character and phone just vanished into the void. :D
Cool! Indeed a really nice art style, I really liked the characters. Just wish there was some way to beat the game (I don't think there is, right?), so all I could do was work my ass off until I ultimately didn't pay enough attention to one of the four resources and/or the PC broke in an unfortunate time and watch the poor fella die. Well, that's life I guess! Well done.
Cute game, and fantastic pixel animation. Gameplay could obviously benefit from some variety or challenge, but hey, it's nice to look at and engaging with the dialogs. That's certainly good enough for 3 minutes of entertainment. Well done!
I can pretty much only confirm what others have said before - a really cool game, with great ideas and fun mechanics, only the controls are tough to get used to (especially the wall jumping) and all these delays between death and restart diminish the experience, as this way I spend like 30% of my playing time just waiting to respawn (because, you know, I tend to die *a lot*).
That all being said, this is seriously quite impressive. The game has its very own feel. Even if the controls are tough, I'm almost certain after playing the game for a few hours you would just feel like a god gliding through the levels. Plus the whole goldfish story and mechanics around it are great. Love the idea, and I think with a bit more work (and playtesting by unexperienced players :D) this could turn into something amazing.
Neat! Love the glow effects and the catchy music, and especially how the music shifts when you're dead.
Came back to listen to the soundtrack again. It's so short but lovely. :D Can't get it out of my head.
We updated the build by fixing two potentially gamebreaking bugs: - made sure to disable one dialog initially that players could trigger prematurely, and only enable it once all necessary preconditions are met - one issue in the final sequence where players could softlock the game
@keybol Thanks a lot! We indeed wrote everything from scratch, except some minor pieces of code (I think for sound handling, and the bitmap font) which we used from our previous ludum dare project a year ago. @kayahr worked on the collision handling and controls.
Also thanks everybody else for playing and for all the great feedback. We might push a further update later on where the dance games are less difficult, as it might stop people who are 99% through the game to see the final sequence, which would be sad. We'll keep you updated!
Thanks to you all for your kind words and valuable feedback. :)
We now pushed another fix, as we realized the final dance sequence was basically impossible to beat with certain keyboards that for some reason don't recognize 1 and 2 keys being pressed at the exact same time. With the fix, hopefully even people with unfortunate hardware will be able to see the end. Sorry to everyone who went through such frustration!
@zimennik if people call our ~15 minute Ludum Dare game short, that's certainly quite a compliment! :D Thank you. We're working on a post jam version @rodrigo-castro although so far we're focusing more on polishing than on new content. But who knows...
@feingehacktes quite some attention to detail! As we had no new dialogs for them, I had simply deactivated all their lines once the final sequence started, to make sure they didn't say unrelated confusing stuff. Would make sense to have them comment on stuff though, although we hoped to convey a feeling of urgency and panic, and didn't expect players to just walk around and talk to the other guys. :D (unless of course you didn't know what to do like a few other people who didn't see the clouds, in that case some guidance really would make sense - yeah, I guess we'll add that to post jam).
@lorwon Ohhh unfortunate, sorry about that, first time I'm hearing of a crash. Which browser were you using? And can you tell us anything more, did the game simply freeze? Or did it crash your whole browser?
@trigueiro yes! More hints for the player are on our little post jam roadmap. Happened to a few players that they went through the dialogs and didn't pay full attention as it was a little unclear what was just random banter (which there's a lot of obviously) and what's actually relevant for story progression.
@natasza Thanks a lot! Can you tell us more about where/when/how you managed to fall off the map?
@farbeyond-studio Sorry about the ending! There appear three clouds above the fire which you can dance on, so the rain will shrink it down again. If you'd like to see the ending, we provided a playthrough video above in the download section. Regarding the huge team, about 4 of us were ~full time involved along the three days, and the others had some other obligatoins throughout the weekend. Except the initial brainstorming phase, we had usually 4-7 people coworking at once, communicating over discord and sometimes pairing up sharing screens. Worked out surprisingly well. 3 of us were mosly focusing on art and level design, one on music, and the other ones on coding.
@joamd thanks for checking out our other games as well. :) I would have played your game, but am on a linux machine unfortunately.
@boboman Thanks a lot for the feedback! English is not our first language, so it's not all that surprising a few grammar errors survived. We'll ensure to have a native speaker check our dialogs for the post jam version just to be sure.
@josephbyam Please tell us what you were doing when it happened! Being dumb is alright (possibly even encouraged), you shouldn't be punished by falling into an endless void. :)
@bubbadubc Thanks for your feedback! Are you referring to the dance music being hard to hear due to the loud primary track? Or is the primary track itself the issue?
@god-colo Your comment makes me go YES! :P Thank you!
@duke @1punnyguy44 We should of course still make sure to fix "falling through floor (and platform)" issues nonetheless. If we manage to do that, we'll let you know! Thanks for reporting. :)
@retrome Thanks for your detailed feedback, the points you mentioned indeed require some more polishing! We're currently working on a post-jam version, and I'll put these things on our list.
@weeping-rupee Thank you, that's super helpful! You're surprisingly patient, and sorry you had to go through everything twice because of that "lost the pine cone dialog after having already planted it" bug, this is the first time I've seen that, laughed pretty hard when that newly spawned pine cone just drifted away to the side. :D Will fix that part. There are quite many different game states and dialogs in this game, it seems despite our best efforts we messed up a few combinations where you can have conversations that make little sense in the given context, or lead to problems as the one you experienced. Or such as talking to the wing "upgrade" in the clouds during the final part of the game. Goes on our list as well. And we already planned to make the whole stone "arc" of the story a bit more clear to the player. Thanks again, really cool that we could watch your whole playthrough.
@halflemonstudios @tropos @rewzu @ultrabill @frederika @zerohbeat @nickavv @nathalia-hohl Thank you all! Glad you enjoyed the game. :)
@kjscott Indeed you're right, there's a brief timeout after the dialogs to prevent players from accidentally skipping lines without having had the chance to read their options. You're certainly right the current implementation isn't ideal and sometimes feels unresponsive. Not sure what the best approach is in that case, possibly applying these timeouts to player options only and not while NPCs are talking... might update that for a post-jam version. Thanks for the detailed feedback!
@coleslaughter Thank you! During development we weren't quite sure whether the "dangerless nature" of the game was a good idea, or whether we should add some challenge/time pressure to spice things up. Decided to keep it that way though, and I also feel like it works well in the end. So thanks for pointing that out!
@xdsilentstorm @yy404 Thank you both! Highly appreciate the kind words. :)
@red-ash You're right, the dialogs are effectively more linear than they appear. Sometimes you can get different kinds of information out of them, but in the end it comes down to the same actions you need to take to get to the ending. It would be nice to have some more serious variation in story progression, but there really wasn't enough time for that, so in the end the dialog system may actually be a bit gimmicky, but as long as it's entertaining I'd say it meets its purpose. Sorry for the frustration though! And thanks a lot for your feedback.
@pineapple-po @johnfn Glad to hear you liked the ending, as I put a few frantic hours into building it on the final evening of the jam! :D
@lunacyecho "if i could’ve just snapped my fingers at the beginning of ludum dare and had any game i wanted to appear in front of me, this is probably what it would’ve looked like" thanks! Probably one of the coolest compliments we've received, it's really nice to read that. :)
@deathstorm yes indeed, the lack of real challenge (except the dancing parts I guess) was intentional, but we still weren't quite sure whether that was a good decision for some time. We're quite happy with how it turned out however, and I'm glad you were too in the end!
@marcmagus Thank you, you streamers are adding quite some value to Ludum Dare! Haven't watched it yet, but will this evening. Always super interesting to see others play our games. :)
@gustavo-christino Thanks a lot for that super in-depth review. In two languages even. :D Really appreciate it. You're right about the dialogs, the different paths to take don't make that much of a difference and that probably is a little obvious while playing. For this game to be worth money to people, we'd probably have to add quite a bit more content. But we are already evaluating ways to at least get it on a few bigger platforms with the post-jam version. We'll see!
So kinda Don't Starve, but different, and you're an Octopus? I'm in. :D Also the tentacle cursor is a nice touch. And you seem to have put a lot of thought in the "two dimensions of fire", i.e. heat and size and how they affect gameplay, which is nice. Quite a bit deeper than I initially expected.
Splendid! Very well written, I'm not sure if I usually even like this kind of game, but this one was highly enjoyable, and surprisingly funny. Didn't beat it yet, but it's very intriguing. Also great fantasy music you've got there. Remarkably well done overall!
Took me 3 or 4 tries to finally survive the night. Quite tricky to get past all these bats for the higher up pieces of wood! And as others have mentioned, controls need a little getting used to, but 5 or so minutes of training seem to be enough to get along in the level.
Sound and atmosphere is quite good and I appreciate you kept the game as brief as made sense given the availble mechanics. :)
Ohhhh! I get it now. First I had no idea why IT eats paper planes, and why these small people are running around, and why the water always changes back in random ways. Now I feel stupid and it all makes sense. :) Great that you didn't feel the need (and rightfully so) to explain everything in the game using text but just let the player learn on their own. Even if it took me a minute to see it through, it was a nice experience. Well done! Only reached a highscore of 1500 though, which I assume isn't all that much.
Visually stunning and very atmospheric. :) Really nice experience. Love the fire effect you pulled off, and with the music, darkness and almost tangible wind the whole thing is really quite immersive. Great job!
Stylistically this was really great! Lovely visuals, great music and the voice acting adds a lot. Gameplay of course is somewhat limited and repetitive, although the beer spilling is a nice touch.
Really cool game! If it only wasn't so darn difficult and always made me start from the very beginning. Why, oh why couldn't you just respawn players in the same screen when they die? :D
Super polished though, you can tell a lot of work has gone into this. The screen transitions with that fade out really stand out. Well done!
Really cool! Super creepy and well animated monster. I did my best to raise it vegetarian, but that didn't work out that well. :D Great idea turned into quite a high quality game.
I also played your Boil Them game from last year btw, which is also great. You seem to have quite a knack for these strange little horror games. Well done!
Can't run it right now, but let me tell you that it looks really nice! I really like the backgrounds and the characters. Looks very atmospheric. Hope I'll be able to try it out later.
Spent way more time with this than I thought I would. :D Got to the end. Brought havoc and devastation to the world, but hey, animal liberation!
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I found the machinegun to be way more effective than the flamethrower, so I went for two machine guns as early as possible. Most of the "bad guys" didn't even react to getting shot as I guess the distance was too high for them to see me. So they just stood there and and died in peas.
Your inventory actually being visible in the game and rotating around you is a pretty fierce detail btw. Had fun, great game, well done!
@duke I also had trouble with the slow running initially, until I realized it was caused by recoil (because just to be sure, I kept shooting ahead of me all the time). I then turned to shooting behind me in hopes to accelerate, although I'm still not sure whether that made a difference to not shooting, but it certainly felt like it did. :D
By the way, I found the initial possession of 25 eggs combined with the prices in the store pretty good, it basically made "peashooter + shield + basket" the only reasonable seeming option (to me that is), so the game basically "forced" me to discover the key mechanics on my own in a space where I dind't have much to lose. That's the kind of thing easily overlooked during development, when to you all the mechanics are perfectly clear and you sometimes fail to realize players have no clue what's going on initially. So whether that piece of "balancing" was fully intentional or not, it certainly proved helpful.
Nice! Clean concept, good atmosphere, nice effects. The only thing I would have personally changed is being able to restart in the generation you ended at as opposed to having to start all over. May not be 100% in line with the idea behind the game, but would probably make it more fun to play. At generation 6 I think (with the two tornados) I thought to myself "oh well, let's just move right and see whether I'm lucky", which of course I wasn't. :D Respawning at generation 1 however wasn't what I expected to happen. Also, a minor point, but I probably would have preferred to just see the "enemies" and their behaviors as opposed to reading in detail what they do. Observing and figuring out their deal would have been satisfying I think. Great work though!
Really cute, well done. And I've never played a game where putting trash into a bin felt so satisfying. :D I like the many little challenges you added to the game, none of which feels too hard or unfair. My only nitpick would be that there could be more player feedback. E.g. I kept losing because I overfed my birdies without really knowing when that would happen. The falling apples created some tension and made me pick them before they fell down, just couldn't resist... so that way I killed my family twice. D: Also, the car smoke stuff - it seemed like flying through it made it fade away, but I wasn't really sure if that was actually the case and what effect it would have otherwise. I assume I did the right thing there, but the game left me guessing a bit.
Otherwise great job, a very likeable little game!
Nice one! I like how you told a little story around the theme, as opposed to just having it be reflected by the gameplay as many games do. The atmosphere is very nice. Also a cute character you have there.
Only nitpick I have is that it's very easy to die even if you know what awaits you, simply due to the low visible range. Oh yeah, and I really don't know what all the badges do - I think the bird one made me jump higher? For the rest, I didn't notice whether anything changed. And I either misunderstood something or maybe there was a bug - at one point I'm reasonably sure I collected a stick, then went back to the fire, but pressing E didn't do anything and the fire wasn't restored. So not sure what happened there!
Still very good job, had fun playing this. :)
@doritolord Oh well, I admit I was too lazy to open the instructions menu as I expected them to just contain the controls which I had already read. Probably should be more patient! And looking at it now, the menu is of course sufficient - I guess it might have made sense to just show it automatically once when starting the game for the first time, although I agree that in principle "leaving it up to the player" also makes sense. I probably *would* have read it weren't it for the Controls description outside the game I saw beforehand. :D
Nice one! Congrats on your first LD game. Hope it won't be the last one! :)
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I did what I can, probably not too impressive though. :D
Really funny little game! Love the sound effects, and the whole idea is just.. splendid. :D
Nice drawings! Love the title, loading & game over screen. :D The art is really nice, and you added quite a few elements gameplay-wise. Oddly reminds me of Edge of Tomorrow, in that I always die of something, then learn from that mistake, start over and avoid one more obstacle than I did before. Except sometimes when the slippery controls cause Pit to fall into the floorless void, hehe.
Well done!
Really nice visuals! Everything looks very good and polished. Sadly can't play it myself as I'm using Linux. Your making of video was very good though, wish more LD people would do that. :)
After many, many tries I finally managed to get the little man to the second platform. Couldn't get there myself though as I couldn't walk up the ladder and didn't find any way to get there while carrying the ladder either. So a little hard to judge the game based on the tiny amount of it I've seen (not sure how much there is after the second platform). I'd love to see a playthrough of this though, in case anybody records one. If that happens please let me know. :D
Also the animations are really cute. A little sound would be nice though.
Edit: Tried once more, now got to the third platform. Progress!
Can't play it unfortunately as I don't have windows, but will gladly do so when a web version is available (would be cool if you mentioned me then so I get notified). Judging from the video though, I like where this is going. Platformer with physics object and wall jumping is certainly a promising direction! I agree with @duke though that some hit feedback would be extremely beneficial.
Good job, keep it up!
Tiny dinosaurs! Cute. :D Quite funny idea, and gets so frantic! Thanks for this.
Lovely aesthetics! And the atmosphere is on point. Great work. :) Furthest I got was 34.1m.
This game hurt my brain. And I'm reasonably sure it hurt my computer as well. xD
Seriously, I'm feeling quite funny after playing this for a while, trying to make it into the top 10. Without success unforunately. My python skills are lacking. :(
Great job though, one of the most unique ideas (and executions) I've seen so far.
Thanks for all the nice and helpful feedback! :)
@blue-pin-studio Regarding the theme, it's sort of a play on words. You're riding the hyperloop ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperloop ) and get stuck and need to repair it. So the theme affected the setting/story of our game more than its mechanics.
In other news, we're going to push a fix today for an issue where low frame rates caused the player to lack the jump height necessary to pass certain points in the level. For for all of you who did get stuck because of that, sorry! And feel very free to try again once the bug is fixed.
@peachtreeoath thanks a lot for your comment! Firstly, I agree coordinating such a big team is quite a challenge. It worked pretty well for us for a number of reasons: - we're all work colleagues (well, 12/15 are) and most of us have worked with each other for years - around half of us have worked together on previous game jams (e.g. Friendly Fire in April's Ludum Dare) - we were able to relatively cleanly split into sub teams, e.g. ~4ish people focused mostly on sound and music, 2 on graphics and level design, and one or two who spent much of the time playtesting. From what I can tell (but may be biased) the biggest challenge was having ~6 coders coordinate properly, 5 of which weren't really familiar with the engine @kayahr had developed over the months; so we did a lot of teaming up there where people who didn't yet know how to do something themselves would watch one of the other coders using discord or VS Code Liveshare, but it didn't take much time until everybody had their own couple of features to develop in relative isolation, which worked quite well, I think - also, 15 people may sound more than it was from a pure workload perspective, as many didn't have the full 3 or even 2 days - the brainstorming itself was quite intense and took probably around 4 hours, most of which we spent discussing variations of time loops, until we unexpectedly settled with the Hyperloop idea in the end instead. I was indeed surprised we managed to end up with an idea all of us seemed to be reasonably happy with (I hope this is true and people weren't just too shy to communicate their real preferences.. :D)
Did we have to cut a lot of content? Surprisingly, I don't think so. There were a few ideas we scrapped in the end due to lack of time, such as avoiding Game Over scenarios altogether by having a second pod replace the first one, with a new team of 5 individuals. Or small things such as having the player character react to things more often, such as the corpse. I for some time had "make light cast shadows" on my list, but then other things were more important and the not so accurate lighting seemed to work well enough. I'd also have liked to have the dialog scenes a bit more dynamic, with proper sitting animations, and the designated problem-solver actually getting up and walking to the door. But in the great scheme of things, that's all not too relevant and we imho ended up with a game much more complete than in our previous iterations. (update: talked to the team about this, and turns out I just forgot a lot of things. Among them are a "proper" intro and outro with the character walking around in the non-hyperloop-world, a flamethrower which you'd find in the level, but also needed to find fuel to use it, death traps in the level, and an Elon Musk appearance of course because why not)
I'm glad you managed to get to the end, and sorry (as well as thank you) to everyone who dislikes horror games and still gives it a shot. Actually managing to create an effective eerie atmosphere and have working jump scares in the game was a great motivation and interesting challenge for a jam game which we hadn't tried before.
As usual, thanks for playing and for your comments everyone! We appreciate it a lot. :)
@tricky-fat-cat yeah, leaving the HUD out of it was a decision we made in order to maximize immersion and that feeling of isolation/helplessles. We didn't even all agree all in our team that this was a good idea, so it makes sense some players feel similarly about this and dislike the missing information. Hope you still had a good time with it! And thanks a lot for your feedback.
Also @matootsy R lets you reload, in case that wasn't clear (it's mentioned in the start screen, but not in the game itself, so it's easy to overlook - with just a little more time we surely would have made sure to add a little hint to the game itself instead of leaving people surprised once they run out of ammo the first time).
Very nice art style! Chuckled a bit when I realized the shadow was jumping with the character though. :P I got to level 3 before I even realized what was happening and how the puzzles worked, and even from then it sometimes felt that just trying to use the switches more or less randomly was the easiest way to make progress. It really is kind of peculiar to play a puzzle game where understanding the puzzle mechanics make not that much of a difference. :D Sure, in the end I understood (mostly?) what all the elements did, but since the puzzles went over multiple screen lengths and you can never see everything at once, I kept running into situations where I was just too lazy to try to memorize everything and think through what I needed to do, and just went with trial and error instead. It's a very innovative game though, and I really like the visuals and perfectly smooth looping of the levels. Great work!
@erlioniel Definitely, hope my comment didn't sound too critical – I think it's a great game, and it's pretty amazing you came up with these unique mechanics as well as so many levels containing puzzles with such varying complexity! Level design for this must have been a pretty unique challenge. :)
Very nice game, a cool twist on the tower defense genre. Also lovely tutorial, the instruction texts had me laughing a few times. I did experience some issues:
- performance when enemies die - after the first three or so waves, there were no calm moments anymore and everything was constantly flooded with enemies - would have been nice to have some time here and there to build stuff without frantically running around and rightclick spamming the bows (which appeared to be much more effective than the pressure plates), also this way there was no time to properly experiment with the unlocked new traps - the trap selection order seemingly changed arbitrarily and I'm 90% sure the pressure plates just vanished from the menu altogether for a while, or maybe I was just too stupid to find them
That all being said, it is a great basis for a very engaging and enjoyable TD game. With some more polishing this could surely turn into quite an itch.io hit. :) Great work!
@roboolet thanks for your feedback! Indeed, controls could be improved. Will definitely be the case in the post jam version. And indeed, we're about to rate more games, just didn't get around to doing so until now. :)
@labete might I ask which browser you've been playing this in? Car monologue looks fine to me, but the rendering may differ depending on environment. Thanks for playing!
@labete thanks for the screenshot! Peculiar, haven't seen that before. If anybody else encounters the same issue please let us know! We'll have a look, but given we haven't been able to reproduce that so far ourselves, I doubt we'll find a solution quickly.
Thanks everyone for all the feedback!
@vixenmink indeed, for the postjam version we're considering having a healthbar, or some other way to indicate when drowning happens. Right now that's pretty intransparent and surprising when it happens I guess. :D
@collin-visser I slightly adjusted the level to make that part easier. In case you're still up for playing the rest, the game should still know which levels you had unlocked, given you're playing in the same browser. It's possible though that there are issues with loading the level that make them impossible - we haven't seen these in a while, but I can't rule out that it may be happening for some players. Hope that's not the case, either way, sorry for the frustration!
The green water is actually acid, and it even reacts nicely with other substances. Sadly we had such little time for level design towards the end of the jam that we weren't able to demonstrate that, despite how cool it is. :( So in the end the acid is pretty pointless in the game's jam state sadly. Will be much more prominently featured in the postjam version.
@goldone Thanks a lot! To be honest, the slow pace wasn't fully intentional. Rather the crunch time was so intense that we didn't manage to tweak such obvious things as there was just too much super essential stuff to get done within very short time. In the end it would just have been changing two variables in the code, but we couldn't be sure the levels would still work with those adjustments. Really sad as that's the major point of criticism, but we'll learn from it and hopefully do better in future jams. :)
Really nice! Felt almost sorry for the little guys at first. Until level 8 or so when they just seemed like bullies. It's also kind of funny how this radioactivity apparently only has positive effects on you. :D The upgrades persisting between rounds is a nice touch. One small thing I would have liked would be to have a few seconds at the beginning of each level to orient without getting attacked immediately. Apart from that, some variety in the AI would of course be nice - right now they're seemingly always running to the next best spot with a free line of fire. Adding some randomness beyond that (e.g. picking a new spot nearby every few seconds) might make the whole thing feel more natural. Great work overall. :ok_hand:
Very nice and polished. Good choice of music and neat animations too. Initially I thought I was fighting against dinosaur trumps and didn't realize they were spiders. Also managed to run three rounds around the empty map until I found the boss (which died very, very quickly since I had all the upgrades). :D
Movement speed could have been a bit higher, but this is true about my game as well so who am I to judge! Had a good time with this, great work!
Really cool! Very well polished and great presentation. Loved the visuals and music, really didn't feel like a jam game but rather something that at least weeks of work went into!
It's also quite fun and engaging. I just think I was unlucky with my map layout and there was no way for me to win, as after a good third of the map there was just no other way to expand as everything was blocked by stone. Not sure if there was a way for me to win the game in these circumstances. But maybe I'll have a nother go later on and see if things work out better. :)
Only tiny complaint I have is that the UI could be a little more streamlined. E.g. upgrading could surely be handled with fewer clicks and extra windows, especially considering there are only two upgrades to begin with. But that's really all I could come up with. Great work!
To repeat what others have said, super nice graphics, amazing music, and very, very difficult! Smaller hitboxes would be nice, and, but that's of course quite a lot to ask for a jam game, I think something like rewinding time after death would work really well here (unless of course the difficulty level is intentional and repeating levels over and over until you basically solve them by muscle memory is part of the deal).
Really great work!
Got to say these are some lovely drawings! And nice dialogues indeed. :)
Good job, lowly programmer! I did in fact stack the things all the way up to space. Initially I was worried I had to actually go all the way up, but luckily the game was very forgiving in that the floor moved up way further than my previous stack. :D
Great job for a 1-person project!
@bak nice one!
This is pretty cool! Dig the concept. Also great variety, some of these weapons feel really great and powerful, and you quickly get that feeling of becoming stronger and better, which I always like in these games.
I just wish there was some more time to relax and build your ship - the way it is, it's quite stressful, and in the end I kept dying despite having numerous parts, mostly because one of them (the flat gray one with 2 red lines I think) required such precision to place that I was unable to do so at all, and I also couldn't drop it. Maybe I misunderstood how to use it, but in one session it took me ~15 seconds and like 50 clicks to place it, and in two others it just ended my round as I wasn't able to add anything to my ship. Let me know if I've doing something wrong. :D Seemed to me that I had to hit the exact right pixel, which was seemingly impossible while the ship was shaking and moving around. Otherwise great entry, maybe I'll have another try on another day and see if I can get further.
115k points. Not sure how good that is, probably not so much, it it *felt* as if I was doing good, and that's what matters I guess! Very fun, well done. :)
So coool! Really amazing atmosphere and visuals (tiny nitpick would be that the asteroids look somewhat out of place due to having such a different style). That moment when gravity stopped and it turned from a "typical 2D game" into something truly unique was really magical. Also very nice level design and lighting. Probably the best game I've tested so far.
Thanks a lot for the feedback! :)
@subsage the "die in vat" soft lock has been fixed by now. When it happens (and it does, to all of us) the "hire new staff" screen will open as it should.
@tomssuli we didn't get around to adding a win condition, but I think day 21 would have triggered it. :D Well done, and indeed there's no cure (only a "permanent" "cure", ahem). Avoiding radiation happens via a) high resilience characters, b) iodine intake (machine can be bought), c) clean reactor upgrade, and d) generally spending little time near glowing things. But even then this only delays the ultimate fate of turning unstable. Glad you enjoyed it!
@tomssuli Wow, that's great to read! :) Yes, the AI is (partially deliberately) imperfect. The characters have an "intelligence" stat, which affects how often they do stupid things. So every now and then it happens that even a sane coworker either wastes time, or does something counterproductive, or even throws another person (or themselves) into the reactor. Or carries you around for no particular reason. I think the extreme unpredictable-ness is part of what makes it fun. But of course the flip side is that sometimes it can be game-ending. :sweat_smile:
Also indeed many things are not very clearly (or not at all) communicated. E.g.: - radiation affects you to a certain radius of green glowing things - waste disposal is almost useless (sorry :D), it's enough to drop things down the shaft and not care about them any further - coffee intake speeds you up for something like 15 seconds (gradually fades away so you don't really notice when it stops) - iodine intake increases your radiation resistance for ~15 seconds - both caffeine and iodine are stackable in principle, but doesn't help much given the cooldown times of the vending machines - how the stats affect workers and AI behavior - every stat has some notable impact
There most definitely will be a post jam version. We've got quite a few ideas of how to improve things and polish it up further. But if you'd like to see anything in particular, let us know and we'll see what we can do. :)
@simonl Thanks for the thorough feedback! You can indeed throw things onto the outside of the building, but that's not recommended. :D Things don't really disappear, they're just stuck behind a visual foreground layer but still sit around there. The waste still radiates happily, and it will even confuse the AI every now and then because they'll try to pick that item up but won't be able to find a working route there, so they might just start running against a wall (which is arguably an improvement to their regular behavior hehe).
@corbeng you're absolutely right, we're really sad we weren't able to add a tutorial in time. I actually started working on one like 20 minutes before the deadline, but just wasn't quite able to finish, so we left it out and kind of hoped that observing the coworkers initially would be enough to figure out what the most important actions are. It's not ideeal, but things will look better in the postjam version for sure. :)
@aevek thank you! Indeed it wasn't easy to balance the "AI does stupid things that sometimes are really funny" thing, given it could at times just be frustrating. For the postjam version we'll probably add a limit to how long they'll carry you around, or even a "struggle button" to get released earlier.
@montazhnikus Absolutely, for the post jam version we're considering to add ways to cure workers again.
@sarah Definitely a feature! :D Glad you enjoyed being sacrificed to the great reactor. :pray: Thanks for your feedback!
@emaigualmc2-art impressive! :D You may be only the second person in existence who managed to unlock all the upgrades. And indeed more nuanced feedback about the radiation level of the workers has been a major point of criticism. We don't have a perfect solution for that yet and don't want to clutter the screen with too many bars, but we'll see what we come up with for the postjam version. Some kind of "hospital" feature is planned as well, although that would shift the game's balancing quite a bit, so we have to see how we deal with that exactly. Thanks a lot for your feedback and I'm glad you enjoyed the game. :)
@jonathan-lorenz sorry about the mysteriousness! We didn't manage to add a tutorial in time, so were just hoping that things would work out somehow anyway. :sweat_smile: The basic tasks in the game are:
- throwing fuel rods (the bright green bars) into the reactor - throwing water buckets into the reactor - bringing nuclear waste to underground disposal site - occasionally buying upgrades and hiring new workers
In the first minute or so the other workers do this more or less diligently. Afterwards however they fall victim to radiation and turn mentally unstable, at which point they start acting randomly. So at that point they're not great role models anymore. :D
Glad you had some fun despite the lack of clarity!
This was hard! I played it together with my girlfriend, and after two crushing defeats caused by both unlucky deck shuffling and very unlucky dice rolling, we decided to relax the rules a bit and change "less than" to "less than or equal" for some of the cases. Which helped. :D We were still close to extinction early on, but then managed to explode our population and become almost invincible.
I think it would be nice if there was a way to push the Assyrians back again after they take over your land. E.g. we had the case that the sea people attacked already weakened Assyrians once in our last game, and then just decided that this would push them back from Kissawatna to Nuhasse.
Also, while the current balancing really fits the "unstable" theme, from a pure game design standpoint I would personally prefer if it was somewhat easier to recover from weak states, and also easier to get weakened when the population is really strong. Currently, e.g. civil uprising is worse the fewer people you have. On the other hand my experience with game jams has been that there's just *never* enough time to get the balancing perfectly right anyway. :D
Really good job overall. First time I've seen a board game here, and I think it turned out really well. Very interesting concept and a great start for something that could become really engaging with a bit more fine-tuning.
Great! Small scope, but executed really well. Atmosphere and visuals are great, controls work well, and it has a good (albeit short) difficulty curve.
Great mood, I really like the look and feel and what you did with the audio. I'm not quite sure if I made it to the end - at some point the game said "Thanks for playing", but it happened pretty randomly without me having finished a level, I think. Also, there generally were a lot of bugs involved for me, sorry to report that! :D
- fullscreen in Firefox was practically unplayable as the mouse controls were pure chaos. Small version works well though - after dying 3 times or so, everything turned way brighter than before - the restart menu with the two buttons was glitchy, I usually had to hit the Restart button twice, sometimes one button would remain after restarting and only fade away later while playing - the first 5-8 levels roughly worked OK, then weird things started to happen and I often won the level very unexpectedly - which ultimately made me win the game apparently :D
Good work though
Very nice game! Lovely art, glowing things are great. And really nice how the temple collapses. One of the most well polished games I've seen so far, it really does look close something you could get on Steam.
Phew, well done! And honestly that's an amazing settings menu. :D I love the UI sounds. I was surprised I made it through the game without error despite the stress and (apparent?) time pressure.
Not bad, quite a lot of gameplay elements in there, and well used together! Especially enjoyed the last level. Level 2 (I think - the one with ice) turned out to be hardest for me. Took me like 10+ attempts to get past it. Otherwise well done, very uplifting little game, and good amount of content for a compo entry. :)
Side note, there appears to be a debug output at the top e.g. while pressing right arrow key.
Ha, this is great! Got to 38 after a few tries. There is no way to rotate the houses, as in tetris, but they simply fall down right? Or did I miss a key or something? Either way, super fun, and the "socialist prefab block vibes" are great. :D
@belickim now that is a good point I hadn't considered! :point_up:
Thanks a lot everyone! @itooh Yeah we didn't communicate that very well in the game - there are (occasionally) huge blue bubbles, these do refill your oxygen somewhat. The small omnipresent bubbles however indeed don't do anything.
@velvetlobster glad you could find something likeable on the title screen given that's all you got out of this game so far. :D We kinda forgot to add an instruction there - pressing Enter should start the game. Does that work for you?
@human-writes-code thanks for trying again, and glad it worked then! We also experienced some iniconsistent issues with the sound during development that we haven't fully figured out yet. So not quite sure what's going on there and sorry for the inconvenience!
@radetech the lost items bug is fixed by now, sorry that you were one of the few early people affected by it! :D
@duke thanks a lot for the thorough feedback! Appreciate it a lot, and will certainly take it into consideration in the not so unlikely case of building a postjam version. And good point about WASD of course... in the heat of the moment such small comfort features often fall under the bus, even if it would just take a minute to implement them. :)
@tomssuli oh no! That was not the intended ending - there's even a cutscene after you make it through. The idea is (attention, spoilers ahead!) that you find four items relatively early on in the shallow regions of the ocean, namely compass, fins, flashlight and oxygen tank - these allow you to dive much deeper, where you'll find a transponder, and if you go even deeper you'll find a battery. Once you have the latter two, your character will contact the crew on the boat and basically tell them to fly home.
If the game froze then that's probably some crash we haven't seen before - if you happen to play again and can reproduce that issue, it would be great if you could then open the browser dev console (usually via F12) and let us know in case you see any error inside. Either way, thanks a lot for playing and for your feedback! :)
+1 to what many others have said -- great atmosphere, lovely visuals, smooth controls, nice tutorial, very well done!
Love it! Took me ~20 minutes to finish the game. Skipped only one level in the middle, the one with a skewed road crossing and a lot of traffic, that one was brutal, but the rest I kind of managed after enough tries. :D Probably one of the funniest games I've ever played that has no dialogue/text. The way the game made you disregard the needs of all the other traffic participants is just hilarious - particularly that one bus level with the ticket, and of course that one fully occupied parking lot that really made me appreciate the physics engine. Also really liked the visuals, these roads just all look really nice. Also the plants, very nice slick design! Great job. :)
Very nice! And kinda addictive. I liked the varying shapes of islands you can add, and generally the gameplay just has a nice feel to it. If I were to suggest any improvements, it would probably be to add a bit of challenge to the game, because it seemed rather easy to me. Plus till the end I had no idea what that second resource is about - neither what it represents, nor how I get more of it. I think I got more through houses somehow, but didn't really understand the pattern behind it. And finally, explain in the game the win/loss conditions. Still, great game, would love to see a post jam version of this!
Very cool game, and suits the theme super nicely, well done! Only little issue I had is that I wanted to talk everyone before deciding anything, but then couldn't quite remember the details about people. :D But I think I ended up with some good people.
Hahaha, amazing game! "How about that!" Don't know what to say other than that it's a really great effort, super well done, very funny, lovely pixel art. :) Can definitely see this ending up high up in the rankings! If I were to look for something to improve, the only thing that comes to mind is that it lacks a bit of progression, it's like 5 (or so? Didn't count) levels that are mildly different but don't really differ very much in difficulty as far as I can tell. I was quite unsure until the end whether there's even any ending, or I just get endless randomly generated levels. :D But didn't take too long anyway and the ending screen was a nice touch. :ok_hand: Great job. :)
Thanks for the kind comments everyone! :pray: I just released a small hotfix, because it turned out a few players experienced random crashes between levels. This should not occur anymore, sorry if anyone here was affected!
@gossian Thanks a lot for playing and for your kind feedback! :) Regarding the graphics category - maybe, I'm not sure. When I made my entry, the rules still said something like "we're not sure yet what to do about AI generated content", and I too wasn't sure what to do about it. The game contains purely "original art", and over the weekend I've probably spent around ~8 hours on the graphics. I'd very much like to get feedback on it in form of a rating, but at the same time wouldn't want to compete with people who manually crafted their own art. Ultimately I'm happy to follow any official decision here, but given the circumstances decided to keep the category while being upfront about it, hoping that it's a good enough compromise. :slight_smile:
Thanks a lot everyone! I see there's some disagreement about whether the last level is fun or not. :laughing: I guess it's a bit slow and drags on, but at the same time it leads to some of the most interesting gameplay with the asteroid doing unexpected things, and speeding up over time. But yeah I agree, levels could certainly be improved, and I hope to bring some more interesting (and faster) levels (or even game modes?) to the post jam version. :)
Scandalous! I had a capacity of 3, had 3 pupils inside, and the message said I left kids waiting despite having empty seats! :( But very funny game, love the hectic energy of the swarm of children. Would of course be nice to have a goal or something and have the game end after n busses and get a score or so. But it's a great and very entertaining start. :)
Also, as has been mentioned, it seemed very pointless at first when I used space as this didn't yield any feedback - but after reading here that this is different when clicking the button with the mouse, I switched to that strategy and that worked. :D
Got 1440 and am happy with that. :D Cool concept, I remember playing a rather similar board game many years ago. But this virtual version has much less of the chaos of dozens of small bricks eventually crashing down onto a table haha.
Nice game and concept! Controls were a little finicky at times - it is really hard to get away once you landed on a planet, and I wish it was possible to just launch away from the planet instead of having to do it in a weird sideways manner. :) Also, after a while I encountered a bug, and while I was on Earth and getting around it, I bounced off Earth and then very slowly drifted away from it without gravity having any effect anymore. While we're at it, I liked the idea of repelling planets, was a nice touch and fun to play around with!
Nice music and general atmosphere! Also I very much appreciate how quickly one can just play the game without much reading or explaining being necessary. I would have loved to see where this goes, but honestly found it too hard - tried like 10 times and never got more than 2 coins because I kept running into walls. If at least you could run into them sideways without losing immediately, that would improve things quite a bit, but the way it is it just demands perfection from the player. :D
I ran into the same bug some others here mentioned - for a time it seemingly allowed me to have multiple files on top of each other, but ultimately it made me lose a file which vanished as soon as the round started, which happened to made me just weak enough to lose the round. :(
Very nice game though, really like the audio & visuals & general mood, also the banter by the virus was really fun. With some adjustments and more (transparent) variety in the files it could become really quite addictive I think!
Nice one! Loved the enemy design. Gameplay reminded me a bit of the very old game Gubble, which I played like 25 years ago (but which was great). Would have liked everything to be a bit more fast-paced, but otherwise really cool, great atmosphere, nice levels, a surprising depth to that relatively small amount of gameplay, I was strategizing quite a bit about how to overcome these enemies. :)
Took a bit of playing around until I roughly knew how to do everything, but ultimately worked out pretty well. In my first playthrough I got stuck because I harvested apples but had no crates (I had destroyed them because I didn't think there was any use for empty crates), so I didn't find a way to drop the apples anywhere and had to restart because I couldn't perform any actions that way. Later I had a much better run but died, despite abundance of resources, because I didn't notice one stat had dropped to 0 - so I guess some indicator, maybe some flashing of the UI once hunger or thirst gets severe, would be helpful to avoid that. Otherwise pretty nice, interesting mix of being a bit frantic but also relaxing, nice art style, and good match for the theme, well done.
The most beautiful moon I've ever seen. :heart: :P Interesting take on the theme though, well done. I just wish there was more I could have spent my money on. :D Pretty soon I felt like horses + archers were the best approach for the situation, and then could just wait and watch. Don't quite get why I lost though, suddenly my base dropped from 400 to 0 in a matter of seconds while I thought I was doing pretty well for myself.
I'm impressed by the scores posted here, didn't get anywhere close to that. :grin: Nice idea though, coming up with your own puzzle game like this is always cool!
Loved the intro. :D And I was so engrossed in the game I didn't even notice my girlfriend brought me a hot chocolate! Overall one of the funniest games I've playes this time around, both the writing and the forklift gameplay, great job. :ok_hand:
Phew this is pretty difficult! For like 5 rounds I thought it was impossible because the towers always kept spawning outside-in for me, so I was effectively unable to ever use the contact destruction, and they crept in to the middle before I could ever build a second factory. Gave it one more go however and was much more lucky with the spawn points. But still, money came in too slowly and eventually the towers kept destroying my buildings until I eventually perished.
Pretty unique concept though, well done, maybe this would even work nicely as a round based game.
Pew pew pew indeed! Man that was difficult to get used to. :D Game overed by flinging myself far out of screen it seems, before finally making it. My strategy in the end was to just stay on the right half of the screen and wait for the asteroids to destroy the items on the left, as it was just far too dangerous to fly out there. :D
As others have said, currently not working:
Error The following features required to run Godot projects on the Web are missing: Cross Origin Isolation - Check web server configuration (send correct headers) SharedArrayBuffer - Check web server configuration (send correct headers)
I checked in Firefox, Chrome and Edge, same for all. Will happily try again later in case it gets fixed.
Good job! I know the struggle with not finishing things on time (and getting sick during game jams even), but it's a very nice basis! Really like the double jump + dash mechanics, and I think with some additional obstacles in the game, and maybe even moving level parts, it can become a great little platformer.
Hahaha, oh man, this felt too real, and these trade-offs when deleting files were harsh as hell. :D Really funny idea, well done!
Veeeery cool! I really like the art style and overall mood and the floaty animations. Also quite funny albeit the darkness. Only thing I was unsure about is if there's any way to save your crewmates - they are often hungry or thirsty and then just die without there being any possibility to give them food or water I think? Plus, I don't think any of the items I brought impacted the game. And of course it would have been nice for the people to look a bit differently. :D But all that aside, really well done!
Nice game! Took me a bit to find the last mineral, but got there eventually. I liked the faster rockets, was nice tagging along. :)
This has so many similarities to a game I made for Ludum Dare 50, Don't Drink and Dive: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/dont-drink-and-dive - e.g. the upgrades (only that in DDaD you have to find them rather than craft), the exploratory "get deeper and deeper over time", the plant and fish types, and I guess our landscape generation is also pretty similar. :) One difference though is that your game's vibe is much more relaxed. :D Very cool, great job!
Thank you all for the many kind comments! We're glad you enjoyed the game. :)
I've just pushed a fixed version of the game with two changes: 1. The two-musics-at-once bug that happened occasionally should be fixed (in case this still happens to anyone after starting the game, maybe reload and try again, as I don't think it happened reliably) 2. As the dialogues were quite quick and hard to follow for non-native speakers, the game now waits for pressing any key after each dialogue line. For those fast enough to understand everything though I'd recommend pressing Q for the originally paced experience. :upside_down:
@chrisaltoft Thanks a lot for your feedback! :pray: Please note that there's also the option of skipping the summonings with Shift+Enter, which we added from the beginning due to our experience of balancing in jam games being really hard to get right. :see_no_evil: And as mentioned above, the music bug should be fixed now, I think.
@liu-pa-yueh Thanks so much for playing! In case it helps, the latest fix version allows waiting for key presses after each dialog line, so there's more time to process the subtitles. Not sure if it helps, but maybe worth a shot in case you want to give it another try. :blush:
@k-toll Thank you! And sorry for the music issue. If you have a minute, would be terrific if you could check if this still happens, or if you get the proper audio now. :slight_smile: :pray:
Nice entry! The music and art are really charming. Did not expect these real time "shadows". :D Worked pretty well for me for the first four or so levels, but tbh I just gave up on the giant star because it's so hard to stay oriented. Plus, not sure if that's an issue for everyone, but the spellbook for me (in fullscreen mode) renders quite uneven pixels. As you can see here, many of the pixels are not square, which several times caused me to accidentally go a tile too far.
spellbook_pixels.png
Also, it was sometimes hard to tell which tile you're standing on, so a few times I made errors because I was apparently just standing a few px off to one side without realizing. Overall great job though. I hope I didn't miss out on too much due to stopping early. :upside_down:
Amazing game! Stunning visuals and great atmosphere. And these pepe drawings are just lovely. The degree of polish really reminded me of a full fledged indie game. Gameplay is a bit limited, but that's easy to forgive with all the other great things going on. :) I also fell down on the very end, but luckily you uploaded the walkthrough video where I could verify I didn't miss all that much. :grin:
Very cool game! Took a while to get through it all, particularly the maze, even once I had the necessary spirits, and I feel like you maybe overdid it with the darkness a bit. :D But still very nice puzzles and it felt like a real achievement to solve them all. Plus it's always a cool feeling when you unlock some new ability and immediately can see what you can use it for. I loved the way the spirits mystically fly from where you find them to their place in the center. Very nice concept, and obviously fits the theme well. The ending animation was unexpected and great! And the megaphone made me chuckle. :D
Personally if I were to suggest any improvements, I'd probably say that it might still make sense to brighten the game up a bit, at least increase the view distance when carrying the torch (I get that you need complete darkness in the maze otherwise), and maybe open up the puzzle rooms one by one so that it's a bit clearer where to focus one's effort at first? Was quite confusing and disorienting with everything available directly. But of course that also made the solutions a bit more satisfying. But these are detail and maybe just personal taste. Great job overall. :ok_hand:
Honestly I'm a bit surprised by the ratings not ending up better for this one. This game just had this special something that I rarely find in LD games. Not sure what it is exactly. Maybe some mixture of being really hooking/engaging while also having a surprising depth of content. It also felt very unique and memorable. Maybe these qualities aren't perfectly captured by e.g. "fun" and "innovation", or people interpret them differently than I would. Either way, just wanted to say again that I really enjoyed it, and I think it deserves more recognition! :D
Pretty cool! And a surprising amount of upgrades! Played this for way longer than I expected. I think this could turn into a very worthwhile web game with some adjustments:
- finding ways to make the basic combat a bit more satisfying (which of course is easier said than done :D but I guess more visual + acoustic cues, particles, decals, maybe "recoil") - maybe adding some versatility to the movement (e.g. vaulting over cars, or dash/roll) - I think every(?) level came with a hoard of the weakest enemies (at least for the first 15 levels or so), would be nice to also have some mixed in between without them to change the pacing a bit - speaking of the weak enemies, some randomness in their behavior would be nice to not have them flock together so predictably all the time - a man can dream, but at some point being able to build turrets or traps would be very cool, or having some supportive drone following you around
That being said, I could give somewhat similar advice to my own game. :D
Lovely art, and nice touch with the little tutorial level before the boss fight starts. :)
The web version doesn't really work for me :( The game starts, but it takes none of my key inputs, only mouseclicks work. Looks very cool though!
Man what a frantic and funny game. Surprising depth with the many level elements too, and the currents and everything. Not super close to the theme, but still probably my favorite entry I've played so far. It's the kind of game where I'd love to see someone skilled at it play through it. :D So @the3rdhunter in case you're good at your own game, please post a playthrough video. :grin:
@the3rdhunter hahaha, nice video! The editing! :D I didn't even get far enough to see these floating bears man! And to be honest I didn't quite get either that there were routes of different difficulty level. I took the "difficulty signs" as just another deadly obstacle and just avoided them without paying much attention to what they showed. :D
Very cool! I liked the sin() based (I presume?) platform movements, always annoys me when moving platforms move linearly. :D There was just one such platform, I think in the last level that contained enemies, that was so fast that I could only land on it when I speculated when to jump. Because if I waited for it to be visible, then it would be too late for me to make the jump.
Great work though, I'm always impressed playing such well-rounded game jam games. :)
In one of the levels there was maybe a bug for me - not sure, but the anchor moved downwards *much* more slowly than in the other levels. Also in many of the levels the only way for me to win appeared to be to move past what looked like the level bounds and then stick to one of the corners from the outside. Not sure if that was the expected solution, but in the middle parts, there was often nothing obvious to hold on to.
Still a very cool and unique entry, agree about the intro animation being great and generally some lovely pixel art. Plus it's just inherently funny to have a sentient anchor exploring the deep sea. Never knew that's how these things worked.
I found the game a bit confusing, as I never made it past the quicktime events but still somehow managed to beat the game after replaying the other level types several types. What I liked is that this game gave me quite some The Witness vibes - this "oh there's a puzzle and I must figure out what the rules are" kind of thing. So seeing each screen for the first time and wondering what this is all about and what the button colors mean etc. was pretty cool!
Haha, what is this! Played with mouse wheel and the controls seem pretty random, often I'm not entirely sure if anything I do really affects the game or not, but I did manage to get to level 5 I think? Then, suddenly, my car started floating and the front wheel drifted far away to the right, then my screen turned gray and nothing happened. At the bottom of the console, there was this error:
index-out-of-bounds.png
Not sure if related or perhaps that was there before already.
Either way, hilarious idea, I love the title, the graphics are a real fever dream and I'll now give this another go to see if I can get past this level without my car falling victim to demonic possession.
Edit: I played again, and this time the game crashed one level earlier (the one where the floor is ~4 large rotating wheels), and also in this level the FPS dropped to about 1, which was not the case on my first playthrough. At least this time my car didn't start floating and expanding ominously. :D
Very funny! But I'm afraid I wasn't able to figure out how to move the right antenna? Left one worked out with W/S keys, but the right one never moved, no matter what I did to my mouse. Still managed to get 3 of the endings somehow, haha!
Also, the PostLD version link is not working currently. :(
This was delightful! Best game I've played. :) Very nice mechanics, well thought out, great learning curve. The visuals are adorable and the proclamations are very funny, albeit a little repetitive. Played up to level 28 so far and will finish the rest soon. Great work!
@demian4ik Indeed the randomness can occasionally be harsh, and one thing we still want to improve on is making it more "random-but-charitable", in the sense of the randomness being skewed slightly in the player's favor.
@oleksandr-marynenko Ouhhh sorry about that! Not the first time I'm forgetting about this during a game jam. :upside_down: I'll see if I can get this fixed (edit: pushed a fix, hope WASD works as expected now for non-English keyboard layouts!). As for the healthy people dying accidentally: this was due to a bug in the pathfinding, which I just hotfixed. The healthy NPCs already had logic to avoid the tracks whenever the train signal is active, but at some point during the hectic last few hours yesterday that broke, and suddenly they started spending a lot of time running around confused where they shouldn't.
Thanks for playing!
@tomssuli Oh wow, that's amazing. :D I'm honored you played that far haha. And sorry for the soft lock, but maybe better this way. :P To be honest, the last few hours until the deadline were so stressful that I didn't even manage to test/see the win condition in action before uploading everything. Only afterwards was I able to even verify it was possible to "beat" the game. It never occurred to me to play *that* far. :laughing: I also completely forgot about that invisible wall at the bottom - that was from an earlier map design, but I forgot it existed because in my tests I never ventured that far off the path. :grin:
@miltage thanks for playing! And damn, I think the game didn't explain itself very well then. :D So, what is supposed to happen (that as I now realize is actually explained, ooops) is that you:
- pick up the items that people occasionally drop - then carry depressed people to the psychiatrist, who will diagnose them - once they're diagnosed, they tell you what treatment they need (based on the items) - once you give them their treatment, they happily walk off
And once all depressed people per round are either dead or healed, the round is over and you have a 1-1 with God, get some upgrades, and then proceed. After 3 such rounds, a win condition is introduced, and then all you have to do is save 8 people within a round.
Ouh that 1 FPS thing sounds bad, I observed that once initially, but thought I had fixed it, at least it then worked on all my devices. Did the low FPS rate not stop once the God dialogue showed up?
flappy-bat-24.png
I'm proud of my accomplishment! Funny idea. :)
pizza-game-over.png
We brought so much pizza into the solar system! Lovely protagonists! And the wordling became somewhat easier once we realized it doesn't use a dictionary.
I, for one, have entered the matrix.
Screenshot 2026-05-02 at 21-59-59 Mama Duck Hero ldjam.com Ludum Dare game jam.png
It's a surprisingly brutal game, did not see that coming. :D Nice idea! As others have said, controls and general feedback to the player could need some work. But now I'll go for another round to see if I can get any of them to actually survive.
Edit: 3 adults! Wohoo. But man, the little ones are a little stupid, I basically have to route them precisely such that they stumble into food and otherwise won't eat despite being hungry. :D
Definitely nice visuals and atmosphere! But the controls confused me. Is it really the case that I just have to keep pressing a button at a never-changing interval, and the symbols at the top have no impact on the gameplay at all? Or did I miss something? :D
The game says "perfect" every time, so seems about right, but still nothing really happens. It seems it turned into an accidental puzzle game. :D
Very cute game! Gameplay is perhaps a little limited, but it was still fun to guess what to do with all these people, and the cat is indeed tremendous.
I'm afraid I lack the ambition to persevere :D Nice idea with the theme interpretation, and could need some work on player feedback, and not making it hurt my eyes so much. :P
Ohh took me a while to figure out the deduction part based on the info on the right, but then it turned into a pretty engaging deduction experience. Nice job, and really adorable art style!
Very nice drawings and funny idea!
I can't believe I played through this. :P But parkouring away from the stalking children was surprisingly fun. :D