Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → vilya
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | Co | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2014 | 29 | Beneath the Surface | Project Tethys | compo | 625 | 3.12 | 3.07 | 2.19 | 3.43 | 3.16 | 3.18 | 1.76 | 2.92 | 100 | |
| 2013 | 26 | Minimalism | Dungeon Runner | jam | 426 | 2.75 | 2.50 | 2.39 | 2.89 | 2.36 | 1.75 | 1.87 | 2.71 | 46 | |
| 2012 | 24 | Evolution | Invaders: Evolution | compo | 417 | 2.90 | 3.04 | 2.28 | 1.88 | 2.29 | 1.12 | 3.59 | 2.77 | 94 | |
| 2012 | 23 | Tiny World | Solar Sailor | compo | 765 | 2.43 | 2.32 | 2.88 | 2.45 | 1.94 | 1.00 | 1.50 | 1.92 | 62 |
Very cute! Using the moon as a score gauge was a nice touch & the way the planet scales down as you eat more is good too. I found the music a little annoying (but at least you had some) & I wished there was more to the gameplay. Overall though it's a pretty good job!
Werxzy: thanks for trying to try the game! :-)
You'll need a WebGL-enabled browser to play it. Recent versions of Chrome, Firefox and Safari all work, but in Safari you have to explicitly switch WebGL support on. I'll add some instructions to the notes section above.
Unfortunately Internet Explorer, as of version 9, still doesn't support WebGL.
Rob: thanks for the kind words. In hindsight the controls *are* pretty confusing. The WSAD keys control your directional acceleration (i.e. W accelerates up, A accelerates left, etc), but I think most people expected W and S to accelerate/decelerate and A/D to turn.
Next time I'll make sure I put in a tutorial! :-)
Andrew: sorry about that! I thought about putting up an alternate version running in a 512x512 window, but forgot in the last minute rush to meet the deadline. If it's not against the rules, I'll put one up now - it's just a matter of changing the width & height attributes on the canvas tag in the html.
The controls actually control acceleration rather than velocity; if you let go of the button you stop accelerating but you keep going at the same speed. So tap the button to speed up instead of holding it down. I thought that would make it more fun, but it looks like it's just been too confusing. Oh well, lesson for next time...
Shigor: I wasn't intended to be quite so minimalistic, I just ran out of time! :-/
davidwparker: It was my first time using WebGL & loved it. Will definitely use it again. I see you used it too - off to play your game now...
mortehu: thanks for sticking with it! Would have loved to do more levels. My content pipeline came together really nicely... about an hour before the deadline. :-)
It's kind of nice to see that comments here are mostly about things I wanted to do but didn't have time for. Validates the idea at least, if not the execution. Thanks everyone! :-)
RobProductions: rather than sprites, I really wanted to do a geometry wars style line-drawings-with-glow-effect. I wasted a fair bit of time trying to get that working but had to cut it in the end. Music... yeah. I really need to figure out how to do that. I think that's the #1 lesson from this effort.
R3ason: you can press Esc to quit the game and get back to the menu & and if you press Esc again from there you go back to the title screen. Yet another thing I forgot to mention anywhere - sorry.
jwolf: Thanks! Did you try the link to the smaller window version? It runs at 512x512 instead of 1024x1024.
schnerble: I was trying to keep everything frame rate independent, so was scaling acceleration by the time since the last frame. Unfortunately, if there's a long slow-down, it'll be scaling by a lot. I hindsight, I could have dealt with this easily by capping the scaling factor - it just didn't occur to me during the comp.
KevinWorkman: sorry it didn't work for you! Have you been able to run any other WebGL-based games? If not, it might be because firefox refuses to run WebGL on certain graphics cards. They have a web page saying which ones are blocked here (I'm not sure how current this list is):
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Blocklisting/Blocked_Graphics_Drivers
If your card is on the list, that's probably why you're seeing the blank page. There are instructions at the bottom of that page on how to force-enable WebGL, which you can try if you're feeling brave. Alternatively, you might have better luck running it in Chrome instead.
Hope that helps!
This is a great effort but could really do with a tutorial or some kind of gentle introduction to the gameplay - especially when it comes to the double jump (I thought the game was glitching the first few times I tried it!). It's impressive that you managed to get in a cut-scene for the intro in the limited time you had!
Loved the music, but the gameplay is a bit slow-paced. Might have been because of the FPS being pretty low (around 20 during the game)?
Also I found that if I was under the middle of the foot when it started to descend, there wasn't enough time to get out of the way - even if I was already moving at the time. Maybe either make the foot slightly slower or show some kind of warning before it comes down.
Great game! Love the gameplay mechanism and the motion blur effects were a nice extra.
I liked the way you introduced an additional game mechanic with each level & the dividing sound effect was great. Really good use of the theme too. The gameplay just didn't feel that compelling though, unfortunately.
Great fun! Really good work. It wasn't always clear whether my missiles were actually hitting the enemy or being shot down just before the arrived - maybe you could make the enemies flash when they get hit or something? That didn't detract from the gameplay though. Again: great work!
Music is very atmospheric and the story is interesting, but the slow movement speed made playing a bit tedious.
On my first try I just got a blue screen, but reloading sorted it out. It's a very absorbing game, the pacing is just right. Maybe a little too easy, but very nice work all the same.
Love the background - looks beautiful! It's still a bit buggy (I got stuck somewhere I couldn't get out of), but I really like the idea.
Good game! Really liked the way the exterior of the moon fades away to reveal the interior - that was a nice touch.
That's really good! Nice graphics, nice sound effects, simple but effective gameplay concept... I wish there were more levels so I could keep on playing!
Quite an achievement in the time you had! My guy died for no reason I could tell on my playthrough. Unlike others have been saying, I liked the pacing - it suited my playing style. The game didn't really have anything much to do with the theme though now, did it...?
Well done! Simple but effective. The music was very atmospheric. You did a good job of introducing each change to the game mechanic too. Great use of the theme too!
BTW, congratulations on getting your game featured by Edge magazine!
There are a couple of things here I really like and a couple I really hate.
The graphics and music are great - fantastic job on those!
Having an installer is awful - please don't require that next time. With 1400 games to evaluate, the extra hassle made it tempting to just skip the game (I'm glad I didn't though!).
Also, the fact that it *has* to be multiplayer meant that I couldn't see the game at it's best: one ship was sitting there idle while I controlled the other.
This game has so much promise. I really hope you develop it further after the judging period. It would be amazing to see a single-player version running in a web browser (Unity, perhaps...?).
Full marks for innovation - I've never seen *anything* quite like that before! Loved the screaming sfx too,. Are you supposed to be keeping everything on the platform or off it though?
I couldn't get the game to run on Windows 7 (64-bit) - got a crash on startup every time. I installed the XNA 4.0 runtime. Any other suggestions?
This game is amazing! The teleport mechanic is really well done & above all it's great fun to play. The only problem is that it's an extremely tenuous connection to the theme...
Just wanted to say: I keep coming back to this game. I love it! I was actually punching the air when I finally beat the last boss. I wish it ran on Linux too so I could play it at work (on second thoughts, maybe it's just as well...).
We've actually printed out your title screen and stuck it on the wall at work - that's how much we like it!
The game is great fun too. That snail can really shift! :-) There were some minor issues with the controls (it seemed like it was taking a while for them to re-orient after the camera rotated?) but apart from that I love everything about this game!
Very polished and nice relaxing pace. Well done!
It's a nice concept & well polished, but I'm afraid the gameplay didn't do much for me (not your fault, I just tend to prefer action over strategy). Also, by the time I'd figured out how to play it was too late to undo my beginner errors from earlier & I was far enough in that I didn't want to restart either. However it's nicely different from the other entries I've played so far, so good marks for innovation.
Pretty cool! Navigation is a bit confusing as others have said, but the story is good and it all hangs together nicely.
It's a bit difficult to play and there are a few glitches (e.g. I got stuck between a wall and a tree I'd just planted at one point). The graphical style is beautiful though!
When I downloaded this, Chrome gave me a warning saying "this appears to be malicious". Tried it out anyway after running virus scans and everything and... it's really nice! Love the look, the music, the gameplay - the tension between controlling and shooting is great. The only downsides: it's a bit hard to control and it was a bit confusing trying to figure out what was happening when I died. Overall, great job!
I liked the minimalist look, but I couldn't really figure out what was going on. I wasn't clear if I was controlling the planet directly or some sort of crosshairs (and, if the latter, how to get the enemies to run into my planet).
Is it possible to lose this game? After fighting a few monsters the health bar looked like it had gone negative. Also the island shrank down to less than the size of pixel - i.e. it was completely invisible - some time before the game ended.
Wow, that's hard! I couldn't get past the first or second obstacle on any of the levels I tried.
The music wasn't really to my taste but suited the feel of the game. In fact, the whole things feels pretty polished - nice job!
Great game, very polished. I seemed to get stuck on the scenery a few times when it looked like there was a large enough gap to walk through, but that only happened once or twice. Could be improved by adding a limit on the number of lives as well, perhaps? Oh and a finish screen too. :-)
Nice to see someone attempting something a bit different! The puzzles were a bit obscure for me though, I had to use the hints page.
Really enjoyed this! Had a glitch at one point where I managed to get the fisherman stuck outside of the room so I couldn't progress, but I restarted and got past that point next time around. Great job!
I think a tutorial that guided you through exploring, managing energy and the rest would make this game a lot more accessible. (I do understand how hard it is to find time for that as well as everything else though)
Liked having the choice of game length - nice idea. Particle effects were cool too. Gameplay is a bit shallow though; maybe certain worlds could be friendly & you lose points if you click on them, or something?
Love the look you've got going with the graphics & the audio is really good too. The gameplay was a bit confusing (to me) and I died pretty quickly - I think there's just so much going on on-screen that it gets a bit overwhelming!
Looks cool from the screenshots, but applets don't seem to want to run in my browser so I couldn't play it. Sorry!
It's a well-polished effort & you managed to get quite a lot in, but the gameplay is all basically grinding - there's no challenge anywhere. Also found it a bit annoying that you couldn't hit things immediately in front of you. But add some enemies either defending the planets or trying to mine them before you do & I think you'd quite a good game on your hands.
Needs a background, like others have already said. I found it really hard to hit the enemy bugs too, especially when they were up close. Maybe make them move slightly slower, so you have more time to target them?
The bunnies are quite cute. It's a great concept too. Shame you didn't have more time to spend on it during the comp!
He was selling high powered radios which just happen to operate at a frequency that turns human brains to jelly - easy mistake to make when you don't know the biology of your customers. :-)
panda: Sorry about that, I tested in Chrome, Firefox and Safari but not IE. I was using a custom font, via the @font-face css attribute, to draw the invaders. I guess IE doesn't support it yet. I'll update the entry details to mention that.
kevincorrigan: sorry for the freeze, I'll try to figure out what happened and fix it. Thanks for letting me know!
I think I've fixed that freeze now. Thanks for letting me know about it!
Schnerble: the spawning logic is really buggy. The aliens are supposed to turn up in nice regular rows like in the original, but I didn't manage to find the bug before the deadline. I guess it adds to the challenge though. :-)
dredlockz: um... it's an evolution of the original game formula...maybe? :-)
That comic is awesome! Thanks for the link!
With the green aliens, it doesn't matter if you shoot some of them - so long as you don't shoot too many of them. You win when the ratio of green aliens to white aliens is high enough; and if it sinks too low, you go to the other ending...
This is quite a fun game!
This is hugely ambitious, but I think it suffers from the extremely complex controls. You really need to streamline them for this to be playable. I'd suggest something like (for example) left-click and drag to move the cursor, right-click and drag to move the camera, plus some clickable on-screen icons for each of the different things you can build.
I hope you do a post-compo version of this with better controls - I think it's got some great potential.
Wow, amazing! Loved the grain effect in the graphics, awesome music and you even managed to include a tutorial. Hat's off to you, that's magnificent!
Just wanted to say: I kept on playing this and finally managed to beat it - and boy was it worth it! The difficulty made it feel like a real achievement. Thanks for making this game!
Pretty decent game. Minimal, but it kind of works. It could do with some kind of indication when you're getting hit by the zombies.
Oh and please don't make an installer next time - especially one which then goes and downloads the game. It's a nuisance having to uninstall afterwards & it gets in the way of me running my virus checker over the files before they launch. A plain executable is much more friendly. :-)
How *does* your mind work...?
Oh man, I sympathise: I had to restart about 32 hours in too. Good job though: you've made a fun little platformer. I kept having trouble with that first jump after the water, was happy when I figured it out.
The speech bubbles were taking up way too much space. Other than that, it's very very polished - and really quite hard. Great work! Didn't seem to have too much to do with the theme though.
This is really hard to play on a laptop keyboard with a trackpad!
I couldn't get past the first level! Do you need to eat everything in the level to progress? The graphics and music are great, but the controls are fiddly (at least on the first level) and it needs some kind of progress indicator to stop you from giving up. Nevertheless, I'll be playing this again for sure!
Not bad! Controls are nice and smooth, but jumping did feel a bit floaty.
I had a crash though: when I collect enough to mutate, the game freezes. The javascript console has an error saying you'd called gl.vertexAttribPointer without having an ARRAY_BUFFER bound. This is on Chrome, tested on both OS X and Windows.
So it's 4 person multiplayer? Unfortunately no-one else was online when I tried to play so it didn't really make much sense to me. Well done for tackling multiplayer in just 48 hours though!
You really need better instructions for this - if it wasn't for DaveDobson's comment here I wouldn't have been able to figure out how to play! Once I saw that comment, I got a few games in. I think the balance is a bit off (too many things, spawning too quickly) but the tension between staying afloat and protecting yourself is a good mechanic.
Bizarre, but I love it! Especially the sounds when the goats step into the ring.
Great work on the graphics! The gameplay could be better though: there's no real feeling of progression, it's not clear how many times you can be hit before you die and there doesn't seem to be a way to restart when you do (apart from reloading the page). I'd suggest starting the player with the same initial weapon each time and only releasing the more powerful ones after certain milestones have been reached. A score counter and a high-score table would be an easy way of adding some feeling of progression too. I do think there's the seed of a good game in there though & would love to see a post-compo version.
The curse of ambition. :-) Too bad you couldn't finish it, looks like an interesting start.
Good work. Nice smooth animation, intuitive controls. Could use some sounds, and a bit of polish on the graphics.
This is brilliant! Fast, frantic fun. Beautiful graphics. Great sound. It's got it all. One bug: it froze when I finally lost all my health - but hey, I'd already died by then. Love it! I'll be keeping this one bookmarked, for sure!
Very innovative, unfortunately typing games aren't really my thing (sorry!). There seemed to be a big difficulty jump at level 3, but that may just be my poor typing skills...
I couldn't seem to hit anything with the regular attack, so if I wasn't lucky enough to get an offensive ability at the start of the level I was reduced to just dodging for the whole level (I never did make it past level 1, unfortunately). That said, it seems like a pretty solid game - and I do like side-scrolling shooters.
Interesting game. It's not really to my tastes but that's not your fault, it's because I've never really been a fan of this genre (I prefer more action-oriented games). I think you've done a pretty solid job with the concept.
It could have really done with name-tags floating over the horses - I kept forgetting which was which & having to click to check. Also when starting a race, you have to basically remember the stats for the horses in order to decide which one to use; it would be good to show the full stats on that screen as well.
Interesting game & innovative use of the the theme.
I tried the web link, but unfortunately I'm on a linux machine at the moment and there's no Unity Player available for it. I'll try again from my windows machine when I get home.
Great idea, very very innovative! Kept me wanting to go back and improve my placing, too. Well done!
Neat way to interpret the theme!
Hiya, the link to your game seems to be broken now - I just went to try it out and got a 404.
It took me a few goes to figure out how to play. It really needs clearer instructions! But once I figured it out, it's actually a pretty good little game. Well done!
Hey, that's pretty good! Nice work!
What a great looking game! Beautiful ambient music & sounds too.
Are teletubbies the future of the human race?!?
Love humour and it's fun to play too. I think there might be a glitch in the future level: after a little while the enemies seemed to stop firing and I was moving them down with impunity. Which was kinda fun for a while too, actually...
Excellent way to use the theme & great game too! Limiting movement and firing to 8 directions made it a bit hard to hit things; I think it would work better if you could move & fire in any direction.
Overall though, very nice work. Oh and good job on the music too - really liked it!
Very very nice. I didn't want to give up until I'd completed it & I actually laughed out loud when I finally did & saw the ending screen. Well done!
I like the minimal art style & the music is great, but the controls are really awkward. After a while it just stopped for no reason I could spot & asked if I wanted to continue, but I couldn't actually figure out how to say yes. :-(
Heh, that's actually pretty neat. :-) I think the controls need a little bit of work: putting them all on the mouse or all on the keyboard would be better IMO. It's a great concept though & quite good fun!
Really liked the graphics, shame there was no sound. I wasn't really sure what was going on in the game. A tutorial level or maybe some nice pictorial instructions would be good. Some kind of progress feedback would also be good. I'm guessing you ran out of time...? Would definitely like to see what you could do in a post-compo version of this.
That's kinda cool, simple but effective gameplay mechanic, fits the theme, etc. Not bad!
It's a neat idea & good use of the theme. It kinda felt like I could have just left it running though - not really enough player interaction for my tastes.
Started out as little confusing, but quickly got fun. Good job!
The enemies seem to converge a bit too quickly on the centre and then spend too long once they're there, so you're mostly just shooting into the centre. I'd suggest making them move a bit slower, giving the seeds less health and maybe putting the seeds in a few other locations too.
The other thing that seemed a bit odd was that you couldn't get hurt by the enemies (unless I'm mistaken?). That could add an extra element of strategy and tension to the game.
Also, some shapes other than boxes for enemies would be nice. :-)
I had a hard time figuring out what was going on (I *did* read the tutorial) and it didn't help that things kept moving offscreen. Despite that, this still feels like a good quality game & it's a really nice idea. Good work!
Great concept & innovative use of the theme! I think you should make the meteors move a bit faster though, I found the gameplay a little slow. Otherwise though, very well done!
I did read the instructions, but I couldn't figure out how to influence the outcome of the game. Nice graphics though!
That's really rather odd... but there's some great ideas in there, the visual style is really distinctive and the music pretty decent.
I didn't really get this. Can you do anything other than open and close the bridges between islands?
Why didn't you have the death music playing during the main game instead? It would have been great for that!
The controls could use a bit of work - it felt like you had too much momentum - but overall it's a pretty decent effort.
Good job on the physics! Thought the graphics could use some improvement & it didn't seem to have that much to do with the theme, but the gameplay is pretty solid.
Interesting. First impression was that it was just down to luck in choosing the right configuration for your space station and I kinda dismissed it. It wasn't until my second go that I started to appreciate the depth and the amount of control you do have.
It does still feel a bit dependent on luck. Perhaps if you could rotate the space station to try to bring your guns to bear on the asteroids it would work a bit better?
Great job on the music, btw!
Neat idea but a bit hard to play. Partly because the icons for the creatures were so small & hard to see, partly because I think you need to give more feedback to the player about whether their actions are working. That said, when I figured it out I did spend a bit of time clicking around trying to see if I could boil the minnows. Is that wrong? :-)
BTW I got a crash when I tried changing the resolution to 1920x1080. Also, the map zooming is good but I couldn't figure out if there's a way to pan the map?
Two criticisms before I get to the gushing praise: I had a few problems with falling through platforms; and the enemies adapted to my weapons to quickly, so that I basically spent all the time just trying to dodge them.
Now for the gushing praise: I loved it! I think this may be the most memorable character out of this entire LD! Last time around we had the neckbeard snail from chambers' Recluse; this time it's DGP Space Lion! Loved the one-liners, the music (especially the Rickroll), the cartoony art style.
The only thing that could make this better would be some save points thoughout the level, because it's actually quite hard...
Good game! There's a great progression here.
A few minor criticisms: the card-choosing interface was a bit awkward; I got stuck both times when I needed to talk to the professor to progress, because I was used to using the 'x' key with him by then; and the sound effect when you land after a jump was a bit annoying. Those are all pretty minor though - and other those, you nailed it!
I like the concept - kind of like Asteroids, but in reverse. Graphics were really good too. It felt like 3 minutes per game was a bit too long, because there wasn't really enough variation in the gameplay to keep it going. It's definitely got the makings of a good game though & I'd be interested to see a post-comp version which adds a bit more to it.
Very nice idea & a lovely peaceful ambience to it. My one criticism: I couldn't really figure out what the criteria were for scoring the photos. Some info about that would make it even better.
The sound is good, I like the minimalist graphics style and the controls are nice & simple. I just wish I could figure out how to play it! It's rather cryptic...
Does something happen at some point? If so, it might be worth speeding up passage of time in that period until it does.
Like the idea, nice twist on the theme. I think the gameplay needs a bit more balancing: you can do pretty well just by flicking the mouse straight up and down as quickly as possible, it would be nice if there was something about each level which meant you had to vary your tactics a bit (but I have no idea what that could be). But I did enjoy playing it, so... :-)
Liked the quotes, but I kept missing the ball because I was reading them. The inertial control was a bit difficult too - for Pong you really want to be able to change direction quickly. Great work for only 4 hours though & a clever way to interpret the theme.
Really interesting game. I didn't feel like I had enough control over the outcome for it to be fun, but it *was* kind of mesmerising & the artwork was good (the variation in the cats was very well done!).
Sound and graphics are really good. I found the game a little hard to play; had to read through some of the comments here to find some hints. Once I started to figure it out I realised there's really quite a lot of depth to this! Well done!
BTW where's the link for the source?
Nice concept, and the pacing is good too. Shame you didn't have time to implement those extra abilities - sounds like they would have helped keep it interesting for longer. BTW this is probably just me, but I thought the sound didn't fit the game too well - based on the graphics I was expecting something more ambient sounding.
Wow, brilliant art style! Nice simple game mechanics, easy to understand and play. Shame there was no sound - when you mentioned being able to hear the carrots deep underground, I thought there'd be some sound effects for them. But overall it's a great package - I'm really impressed!
I like it! Easy to pick up and play, but with a bit of depth to the gameplay and enough challenge to keep you coming back for just one more replay. Great stuff!
I guess you need to dig pretty deep holes for the bones? I didn't manage to get any of them buried. Still, I love the idea & the humour. I had fun just watching Jesus jetting around on his yellow-green butt spray - good work!
I like the puzzle mechanic you've got there & it fits the theme really well. Great to see a well implemented tutorial too!
I thought the movement speed was a bit low and it's disorienting getting thrown into the air when you pass through an evolution gate.
Overall though, definitely a thumbs up from me!
I think the balance was a bit off - energy seemed to run down too quickly while just moving about, so chasing after the green guys for food was a bit pointless. I think you also have to repeat the same action (flirt, bump, etc) too many times to get a result. Adjust that & I think you'd have a pretty compelling game, because the basic mechanics are pretty sound.
This is a good start, but it kinda feels like you ran out of time? Like the graphics though!
There were a few long period were the opponent on a few of the levels was just standing there, not throwing anything. Maybe I was unlucky with your random number generator? Otherwise, pretty solid effort!
This is really addictive! The gun with the bouncing bullets was a nice touch too.
I don't think I really got it, ended up just clicking randomly & listening to the beeping. Sorry. Two suggestions: add an in-game tutorial; and add some kind of countdown, so you know how long you've got left.
Brilliant! Love the look, the music, the unobtrusive tutorials, everything. The only complaint is that it's a little tricky to position yourself over the narrow holes so you can drop through. Everything else: brilliant!
Thanks for the comments!
@daredevildave acceleration is a great idea - I'll add that to my post-compo version. PlayCanvas doesn't really sound like my cup of tea though, sorry - for my personal projects I prefer to stick with open source frameworks.
@doos I was thinking Orcs... :-)
@Tyro not having a way to attack was deliberate and not JUST because I ran out of time. :-) I thought it might detract from the running aspect of it. But I did think about having maybe something you could throw behind you to slow down your pursuers.
Not a bad idea, but needs a bit of variation in the gameplay in my opinion.
This is amazingly atmospheric & the music is incredible. I really liked the introduction of colour too. The one criticism is that it's more of a story than a game... but one I really wanted to see through to the end!
The music cut out a few seconds after loading (which was actually a good thing because I find chip-tunes a bit annoying in general).
I like the aesthetic you've come up with and the controls are well implemented. There were a few glitches and I wasn't really sure what I was supposed to be doing. I'd say: great start, could do with a bit more work.
Something of a flawed masterpiece this, I'd say. Lovely art & sound, nice mechanic and very well put together.
Some suggestions:
1. You shouldn't have to use the mouse to click on next, when all the other controls are on the keyboard.
2. The first light should be activated automatically - bit annoying to have to backtrack because you didn't realise/forgot that you needed to activate it.
Fantastic! I haven't been able to beat the wizard yet, but I really want to come back & try. Great job!
Reminds me a little bit of Qix!
I liked the humour, but I thought presenting it as popups was too interrupting to the game. Not bad though!
I'm on Windows but tried the web version and couldn't actually do anything - as soon as I pressed a key it was game over.
Hey that's actually quite fun! Nice one! And thank you for explaining the controls on the intro screen, too.
I like that there's an idle animation for the fox! The problem was, I only noticed it because I was having a hard time figuring out how to drop the food when I got back to the den & was having to try each key in turn. Some instructions would be good. Also, why 'q'? You've used 'space' to pick up, why not the same to drop? I thought the fox was a really nice character, could imagine him(?) appearing in a sequel...
Good little game! Would be even better with an AI opponent to play against.
I love the idea of switching to the art dimension. Very nice!
Another great entry. Well done!
How are you supposed to start the game? Space didn't work, nor enter. I eventually tried mashing every button on the keyboard and one of them started it, but I've no idea which. Likewise for firing. I'm a bit puzzled...
I guess it's not really a game, but I liked it a lot anyway. Something about it just makes me chuckle. Nice one!
The levels seemed a bit repetitive, but I really liked the way the colour fills in as you go.
I've tried it twice and I'm afraid I still don't know what's going on here!
The intro text is very hard to read in the default position. Could use some info about what the controls are - first time around I didn't realise I could use ASDW instead of the arrow keys, so had a hard time getting anywhere.
The music is very atmospheric. Great job on that!
Nice and polished. There seems to be an element of luck in where the tornadoes get placed?
Good concept and the flash light is nicely done. It'd be great to see a more complete version of this, it's a promising start.
I don't know whether I missed something, but as far as I could see all there was to do was walk up and down the same hill repeatedly? Beautiful visuals & great sense of atmosphere though!
152.7 seconds.
Very minimalist game, really nice aesthetic. I think possibly a bit *too* minimalist - in gameplay terms - for my tastes though.
For any of you trying out the standalone versions for Linux or Mac: I've built them (using Unity) but haven't had a chance to test them. Please let me know if you find any bugs!
Thanks zebi24 & oatsbarley! The music was all made on my iPad believe it or not. GarageBand FTW!
oatsbarley: I actually had drag and gravity in the game early on & it was more submarine-like, but I thought it felt less fun so I took it out.
Thanks a lot for the nice comments so far everyone!
icereci: I do actually limit it, but it's allowed to go a little way beyond the edge of the screen. What you might be seeing is that the enemies sometimes bomb each other, because they're spawned randomly & I didn't have time to add logic to keep them separated.
martinysa0311: well spotted, thanks! I used one light per bullet & I think it ended up being too much over to one side of the bullet geometry.
aaronjbaptiste: the enemies keep spawning at the same rate, so I guess if you're fast enough at clearing them the difficulty will remain low. I should have thought of that & had the spawn rate going up over time, or something. Thanks!
Franklins Ghost: I agree about the bomb noises. Sorry about that!
orangepascal: thanks, that's exactly the reference I was aiming for!
Romko: great tip about the sounds, much appreciated!
Thanks again everyone!
littleball: a mini-map was one of those things I kept thinking about while I was making the game, but kept putting off for "later". In hindsight I really wish I'd done it.
GarethIW: it's not just any sub, it's a super advanced attack sub which can... um... defy the laws of physics when it moves. :-)
JayPC: awesome, Defender was one of the main inspirations - and it's a great game. Thanks!
noom & HybridMind: thanks a lot for the feedback! My original plan was to have enemies arriving in predefined waves of increasing size and complexity. I'd planned 4 different enemy types and a bunch of different offensive & defensive power ups. I also wanted to have friendly little scientists swimming around that you can rescue or the enemies can kidnap. Unfortunately only a few of those plans survived contact with the deadline. :-)
Regarding the movement, a few people have been making that point. I thought it was more important to have fast & responsive controls, but perhaps that was the wrong choice? In hindsight I think maybe I could have kept it sub-like and had a speed boost power-up, to get the best of both worlds. I'll try that out in the post-compo version. Thanks!
Thanks lightsoda. You can use left Ctrl instead of LMB if you prefer - these are the two things that Unity maps to the "Fire" action by default.
Thanks for the comments everyone, it's great to hear.
JimmyBoh: that's an excellent idea! I'd originally hoped to have little people coming out of the base that you had to protect as well, but didn't have time to fit them in. Adding additional bases is a much simpler way of getting the same result. Thanks!
Jupiter_Hadley: thanks a lot for trying the game, it's awesome to have a chance to see what someone does in the game when you're not watching over their shoulder! I think I agree about the base, in hindsight.
Fast and frantic, I love it! I couldn't really get used to the movement controls: in this kind of game I expect pressing left and right to move that direction instead of turning. Everything else is great!
Amazing (and kind of gruesome!) use of the theme here. Love the music! Took a while before I figured out how to play it, but once I did it was pretty engrossing. Good stuff!
P.S.: Hi, how's things? :-)
This is a very well made game. I really like how it introduces the controls one by one in a nice unobtrusive manner. The jumps at the start seemed to be quite long and require a lot of precision - more so than ones later on when in theory the player has gotten the hang of it. That's kind of the wrong way around, I think. But other than that, fantastic!
This is cool! I want my own pet hellworm now. It was a bit fiddly to time the jumping, but that seems like it would get easier with practice.
Big fan of "Heroes of Loot" too, by the way!
I'd love to try your game, but I'm having the same problem as raulincze. I'm using Chrome 34, on Windows 7. I've tried soft and hard refreshing (F5 and Ctrl+F5), clearing the cache, using an Incognito window, even tried loading the site in Firefox instead. All other sites are loading fine for me, so it's not a problem with my internet connection. Do you have any alternate location to host it?
I think there's a bug: my first go I only ate one piece of food, but the score at the end said I'd consumed around 45000g. I like the concept and the controls are nice & straightforward, but I think it could do with a tutorial.
There needs to be some actual challenge to finding the treasure - it's a bit unfulfilling as is. I liked the music though & the ripple effect though.
I tried again and was able to play it this time. That chrome bug seems to be affecting everything that uses the Unity web player. By the way, another workaround is to hit Ctrl and + to increase the size of the page. For some reason that works too.
Anyway, about your game: very nice! I like the abstract glowy tiles and the audio that goes with them. The difficulty curve is good too, a nice introduction but not too slow to get difficult. Good job!
Good attention to detail here. It felt like a platformer should, long press for a higher jump & things like that. Love the piano as well. Good work!
I like the idea in theory, but in practice I found it really irritating having to run back and forth between the different terminals to control the different functions. Also, having to switch between mouse and keyboard all the time.
The graphics & sounds are good and you've got quite a lot of game in there, but I couldn't really get into it because of the controls. Sorry!
I love the music and the voice acting & it's a really innovative idea. Top stuff!
Cool idea, liked it!
Awesome music & lovely background art.
Weirdly addictive! The sound effects when you crash into another worm are a bit much & I don't really see much connection to the theme, but there's lots of replay value to be had here. Nice one!
The collision detection seems to be a bit off sometimes. The gameplay is not bad, but I found myself just sticking to the top of the screen most of the time. I do think there is potential in this idea if you wanted to keep working on it. Not really anything to do with the theme though, as far as I could tell?
There's more depth to this than I thought at first. Some nice designs on the monsters and the wall jumping actually added quite a lot. Nice!
On the downside, I found the controls were a bit difficult to get used to & I think the pacing was a bit off.
I found it a bit annoying having the doors offscreen when you were triggering them.
That's a fun game! It feels like a dungeon-crawler. Would be great to see it with some character artwork too, but the rest of the graphics were actually quite good I thought. The theme music was excellent!
Nice to see someone else making an action game like this! It was a nice touch that you could jump on the aliens to reach higher platforms, but I think it takes too many hits to kill each alien. It'd be nice to have a variable height jump too (short press for a small jump, long press for a high jump) or even a double jump. And maybe zoom the camera out a bit more, so you can fit more action on the screen. Overall I'd say it's not that polished yet, but it's a solid start & the core gameplay is fun.
Does it have an ending? I left it running until wave 21 (by that time I had enough pirates to instantly destroy any zombie that came aboard) and it looked like it would just keep going. It's a great idea though & nicely implemented. Varying the enemy types might help keep it challenging for longer.
Really nice to see someone using Rust, I've been watching it's progress from the sidelines with interest. It'd be great to read about your experiences making a game with it (especially on this short a timescale). It'd also be great if you could provide a Windows binary for the game though - I'm afraid having to check out & compile the game in order to try it out was a few steps too far for me (sorry!).
It starts a little slow, but gets better and better. Lots of variation in the enemies and a nice difficulty curve. Great job!
Once you figure out the mechanics, it's all over very quickly! A bit of variation - more puzzles to solve - would be great. Love the art style and the concept though, very original.
I think this might work better as a 3rd person game - I found it really hard to time the jumps and ducks without that sort of feedback. I only made it over the first jump once, in fact! Maybe just increasing the time you stay airborne/crouched for would make a difference?
When you start the game for the first time the mouse pointer gets hidden, but it doesn't unhide after the game ends so clicking on the buttons is very difficult. I'm using Chrome 34 on Windows 7, maybe the problem is specific to one or both of those?
The game itself is pretty decent. It could do with a tutorial to tell you that the capsules are the people you're supposed to rescue, but I figured it out. :-)
The controls felt a bit floaty to me. I guess that's because you're going for that underwater feeling? I think I'd have preferred to have more responsive controls instead.
I wish there were more enemies, but that each one took fewer hits to destroy. To me that'd make it more fun.
Also, make it longer! If the game was longer, I'd have kept on playing longer - because despite all my nitpicking I quite enjoyed it!
Love that glow effect, looks really nice! The action moves a bit too slowly, I think speeding it up would make the game more fun. Also, the walls are quite dark - a couple of times I ran into them simply because I diddn't see them.
It took me while to get the hang of controlling the fish & it wasn't too clear what I was supposed to be doing at first. Once I figured it out though, it's not a bad little game.
I think using the space bar to restart the game is a bit confusing - I restarted the game a few times accidentally before I figured it out. I didn't manage to catch the goblin so I never saw the ending that other posts have been mentioning.
It feels a bit incomplete due to not having a title screen or any of those niceties, but I think the idea & the gameplay is sound.
Picking the bowls isn't a real choice in terms of the game: one bowl seems to be just as good as another and the player has no way of knowing what's going to happen when they choose one. That takes away from the impact of the story fragments - which themselves are excellent.
It's a brave idea, but could be presented a lot better.
Also, in a game that depends heavily on written text it's a bit jarring to have spelling and grammar errors. It'd be worth getting someone else to proof-read the text for you - it can be hard to spot your own mistakes!
Very good game. It feels very complete and polished & kept me interested right through to the end. I think you should have made the player sprite a little smaller or the tunnels a little wider though, it was a bit fiddly lining up with them.
I like the idea, but I could never really tell whether I was going to hit something or I was clear of it. I think it would work better with a 3rd person perspective, so you get more feedback about that. It would also give you a chance to spot the fireballs coming at you from behind before they hit you!
Nice! Took me a few goes before I made the $10,000. Love that banjo soundtrack!
It seemed like sometimes the controls didn't work when I tried to move. Whenever I started by trying to run to the right, I was stuck in place.
I love classic arcade-style gameplay (my game was inspired in part by Defender) but this kind of threw you in at the deep end without enough time to figure out how to play. I'd suggest making everything move a bit slower to start, then ramping up the speed over time. Do that - and sort out the bug with the controls - and I think you'll have a great game on your hands!
I think this needs a minimap. Because the landscape keeps changing it's unnecessarily difficult to find your way back to the story teller.
Besides that, the game is well made & the music is very atmospheric, but the gameplay felt a bit lacking. There didn't seem to be any real sense of player agency: you were just walking around hoping to stumble upon the right thing. Adding some puzzles to solve that would lead you to the right thing would be a big improvement, I think.
Fantastic! One of the best games I've played so far!
Very nice work! It'd be great to have a timer or some other kind of indication of how well you're doing. Other than that, it's brilliant!
Wow! Absolutely amazing!
This is awesome, I love it!
There are a few issues: I thought the controls were a bit twitchy, that everything was moving just slightly too fast and that it was sometimes hard to see the foreground sprites against the supercolorful background. But none of that was enough to stop me wanting one more go. And another. And another...
Brilliant!
Whenever I built a bunker the hooded figures just walked around it & it wasn't clear how I could create more soldiers.
The music was a little piercing, but the gameplay was solid and pretty good fun. Nice idea & nice execution.
Interesting idea. Nice to see something a bit different, even if it's only a tenuous connection to the theme. :-)
The animation is good and the background music is too, but that rolling noise for the walnut got annoying really quickly!
It took me a while to realise that I could still bump the ground after the walnut had been released - I assumed once you pressed go you just had to wait and see. That might just be me being dumb (wouldn't be the first time!) but maybe that's worth mentioning somewhere?
Beautiful! The bunny animation was excellent. It was a great way to interpret the theme, too. Very impressed.
It's a very well made game & turn-based stealth puzzles make for a really interesting mechanic. Great stuff!
Brilliant! And I absolutely love the papercraft look, works perfectly for a game like this.
Wow, amazingly atmospheric & great graphical style too. It was a bit too difficult to see what was going on though.
Interesting idea. I don't think anyone else was online at the same time as me? I'd like to see it when other people were active. Nice graphical style too.
Looks neat, but I'm afraid having to install and set up a PSP emulator in order to run it is a step too far for me. Sorry!
The main game area seemed to have different houses in it after exiting the shop?
I think I found a bug: my ship flew off the screen and I couldn't get it to come back. Good game though!
That's really beautiful!
The only flaw is that the random placement of jellyfish & air bubbles sometimes meant that the game became impossible at some points. Easily solved by restarting though.
When I started there was a big pop-up dialog covering the game with nothing but a missing image and a close button. Is that supposed to be there?
It's a bit slow & without a win/loss condition it felt a little pointless. That said, it's a nice concept & I could see it turning into something quite fun given a bit more time.
On my first playthrough I dug into the planet core without realising that was a bad thing to do. It took me a while to figure out why it was suddenly game over. Maybe the governor could say that you've drilled into the core, instead of just exclaiming "what have you done!?".
On my second playthrough I spent too much on radars and then couldn't do anything else other than wait for the game to end. "Selling" the radars didn't seem to return any resources to me, it just destroyed the radar.
I think this game would be a lot more accessible if you could add a tutorial for it, which introduced the different elements one at a time. It does seem quite polished though & feels very complete. Good work for 48 hours!
That's kind of disturbing. Great sense of atmosphere about it!
It's not bad, but takes a bit long to get going for my tastes. Loved the little "haha" from the devil when he throws his spear though. :-)
I like the main character artwork, it would be great to see him fully animated. The map felt too large, which meant the game felt a bit unfocussed. Maybe a minimap would help with this?
Oops, forgot to leave a rating with my earlier comment.
Good graphics and very moody, but I found it really hard to pick up the weapons and couldn't get used to the arrow keys not controlling the movement. Apart from that, great work!
Very nice! Love the aesthetic & that dark brooding sound. It took me while to get my head around the fact that you're not supposed to collect any of those things. My best time so far was about 35 seconds by the way.
It's a decent tech demo...
Great graphics, like that look a lot. The gameplay is tricky, but a good challenge. Some music would be a great addition.
On my first attempt the robot wouldn't move to the left for some reason. Restarting cleared it up though, fortunately & in the end I liked this game quite a lot.
The puzzles are good and it's a really nice use of the theme. The controls are a bit imprecise so I ended up missing a few jumps, which was frustrating, but overall I like what you've done here!
I think this needs a tutorial - I didn't really understand what I was expected to do, or how to do it. I was playing on the keyboard & found I couldn't jump while moving, although could move during a jump, which was a bit weird.
I'd suggest next time getting your keyboard and/or mouse controls working first: not everyone who plays it will have a controller, but everyone's guaranteed to have a mouse & keyboard.
I like the control scheme you've got for this, it works really well for the game. Good job!
Good game! Love the graphical style, it's so nice to see something a bit different from the usual pixel art. I sniggered the first time I saw "Willy clean" too :-)
I hit a bug at one point where Willy wouldn't climb up a ladder, meaning I was stuck & had to quit. A minor blemish on an otherwise very good game!
Too bad you didn't finish it, you've come up with a great look for it & I'd love to play it again if you ever do go back and finish it.
I get the same error message as jrap.
Great fun! I played the web version and the edges of the text went slightly off screen, but not enough to spoil anything. Good work!
Visually very arresting & a really novel gameplay mechanic.
You weren't kidding when you wrote that it can be hard! The gameplay is solid and the presentation is excellent. Some music could really help add to the ambience. Oh and it would be nice to have an option of using the arrow keys instead of A/D too.
Simple and fun, I like it!
Very atmospheric game. The music is really haunting! I like the nice simple mechanics too, but I felt the difficulty didn't ramp up quickly enough and there wasn't enough variation. Still thought it was pretty good though!
That's really quite fun! Nice simple concept, fast and frantic action - just the sort of thing I like. Graphics and sounds could have been a bit better I suppose, but the important bit - the fun - is spot on. Nice work!
I like word games and this is a nice twist on the genre. I didn't have any idea what the power-ups would do though - in fact I kept forgetting I had them. Maybe a tutorial or something would help?
The "joke" at the start put me off playing it. Sorry. :-/
I like the look you've gone for but the gameplay seemed a bit awkward. I couldn't really tell whether I was doing the right thing or not. GUI elements were often overlaid on each other too, making it hard to see what was going on. Overall though it's a nice idea & a great use of the theme.
Beautiful looking game!
I went bankrupt really quickly the first few times and almost gave up. It might be better to make the first level a bit easier and the later levels a bit harder, because once I'd learnt how to pass the first level I basically just had to keep doing the same thing to pass the subsequent levels.
The controls are a bit fiddly & it needs some kind of visual or audible feedback to indicate when you've hit something good vs. something bad. Nice concept though!
I saw another comment about background music, but using Chrome on Windows 7 I'm not hearing any?
Nice simple concept and really well executed. Great stuff!
Sorry but on an English keyboard those controls are horrible. Why not use the arrow keys?
I didn't actually manage to figure out what I was supposed to do, but at least there was some nice atmospheric music to listen to while I tried!
Nice idea & well implemented. It'd be nice to be able to fire a second ball while the first is still moving. Also, it's really hard! Maybe increasing the ball count for the first level would help?
I love your help screen, brilliant idea! I thought the controls felt a bit floaty for a game based on platforming though.
Also, and this is probably more just a personal preference, but I don't really think a first person view works for this. A third person view give you much better feedback about how close you are to edges, that sort of thing.
The lighting from the balls is a good idea, I really liked the look you achieved.
Lovely graphics!
Interesting to see an Android-only game, but unfortunately it meant I couldn't play it.
Love it! Amazing graphics and I really enjoyed the gameplay too. Pity there's no sound, but everything else about the game is great!
Very nice visuals. Love the font! It took me a while to figure out how to play, partly because the Unity webplayer didn't seem to want to take the input focus for some reason (pretty sure that's not a problem with my browser though, not your game). Once I figured it out it was relaxing and fun, if a little slow moving.
There's quite a lot there, all things considered. Great job! There are still a few bugs: once I died for no reason I could discern; and the "restart from save" option probably shouldn't be there if you don't have a saved game. But those are forgivable, because it's quite good fun!
Interesting idea! It's nice to see people trying something a bit different. The slow pace you're forced to move at in order to keep the candle alight was very atmospheric at first, but after a little while it just started to feel like it was taking too long for anything to happen. I'm not sure if there's a way to speed it up while keeping the atmosphere?
I love the old fashioned terminal look (although I'm not sure why a culture advanced enough to have space travel still has them?!?).
The problem I have is that the game seems to give you a lot of choices that you don't have enough information to make. You said in the description that figuring out how it works is supposed to be part of the game, but it just didn't motivate me to do that. Sorry!
Very atmospheric and creepy! I found the key and the fireplace with candles, but unfortunately got stuck at that point. Also, why use 'e' as the interact button instead of something obvious like the space bar?
The instructions need a bit of work. It told me to left click to dig, so I tried that and nothing happened. It told me to right click to use a weapon so I tried that and nothing happened. It took quite a while to figure out that I needed to (a) construct a pick & a sword first; and (b) equip them, before I could carry out those actions.
The text saying "set your recipe by left and right clicking on materials" never disappears - after it appeared, it stayed on my screen for the whole playthrough. I tried closing the browser tab and opening it up again in a new one; same result.
I found I could click on blocks that I couldn't actually reach & they would still disappear.
The aim of the game was never explained. Am I trying to get as deep as possible? Am I trying to collect something specific? Am I trying to find materials so that I can craft something special? Without that it all felt a little pointless.
That's quite a few negative points, but don't get disheartened: I've only been able to comment on these things because you got far enough along in making the game to begin with. That's more than a lot of the entries I've played!
Also, I really liked your music & thought the graphics were well done: that vignetting really suits this kind of game. You got quite a lot of different game systems implemented & working within the time as well, which is impressive.
I think my advice for next time would be to try for fewer gameplay elements but spend more time polishing them. What you have here is good, but feels rough around the edges.
The graphics are really nice. They remind me of the indie game Race The Sun (which looks beautiful, so that's not a bad thing!). I found it impossible to hit the enemy ships. I think if you could sort that out - maybe some kind of limited auto-aim? - you'd have quite a hit on your hands!
Only three hours? Wow!
There's not a whole lot of game there (as you'd expect for only 3 hours work!), but it's pretty amazing how well it all works and I couldn't help but smile when the music kicked in.
It won't start for me on Windows 7. All I get is a dialog box saying "The application was unable to start correctly". Sorry!
Working for me now too.
I liked the transition animation when moving between the above and below worlds. Also liked the way it builds up with different types of enemies. Found it all a bit confusing though.