Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → WetDesertRock
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | Co | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | 40 | The more you have, the worse it is | M - (name is too short) | jam | 493 | 3.52 | 3.27 | 3.54 | 3.29 | 3.76 | 3.52 | 1.91 | 3.81 | ||
| 2017 | 39 | Running out of Power | Mars | unfinished | |||||||||||
| 2017 | 38 | A Small World | Bulwark | jam | 2.50 | 3.50 | 2.00 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.50 | 2.00 | 3.00 | |||
| 2016 | 36 | Ancient Technology | Smoke Signals | jam | |||||||||||
| 2016 | 35 | Shapeshift | PaperFlap | jam | 189 | 3.65 | 3.29 | 3.24 | 3.88 | 4.65 | 4.47 | 4.12 | 22 | ||
| 2015 | 34 | Two Button Controls / Growing | Learning to Dance | jam | 181 | 3.71 | 2.12 | 3.50 | 3.81 | 3.50 | 4.68 | 2.74 | 4.34 | 45 | |
| 2015 | 33 | You are the Monster | Monere (unfinished) | compo | 22 | ||||||||||
| 2015 | 32 | An Unconventional Weapon | Hair Dryer Nightmare | compo | 512 | 3.21 | 2.44 | 3.39 | 3.78 | 3.21 | 3.67 | 2.47 | 3.63 | 28 | |
| 2014 | 31 | Entire Game on One Screen | Fluidity | compo | 423 | 3.32 | 3.10 | 3.23 | 3.77 | 3.97 | 3.30 | 2.11 | 3.35 | 47 | |
| 2014 | 30 | Connected Worlds | Drempt | compo | 438 | 3.32 | 3.15 | 3.32 | 2.77 | 3.37 | 3.84 | 3.54 | 49 | ||
| 2014 | 29 | Beneath the Surface | Paranoia | compo | 323 | 3.43 | 2.80 | 3.60 | 3.34 | 3.83 | 4.00 | 2.52 | 4.05 | 74 | |
| 2013 | 28 | You Only Get One | Before Night Falls | jam | 305 | 3.03 | 3.11 | 3.24 | 2.60 | 2.03 | 2.22 | 2.05 | 2.61 | 74 |
Very interesting, I couldn't figure out who I needed to shoot though, so I shot a guard in an act of defiance.
Also, the idea for gun assembly is very similar to the game reciever http://www.wolfire.com/receiver
Hah, was not expecting to see a game with the same mechanic as mine.
I'd suggest reducing the amount of unnecessary switches, and haveing more puzzle mechanics.
Your music kept starting (but not stopping) whenever I died, so I had to eventually turn off my sound because of music overlapping itself.
I like it, but I wish that you could stomp on the people. I think it is a good game, you just needed to flesh it out more.
Similar to portal in the concept. I really enjoyed the randomization of the levels, however some sort of way to track your achievement would be nice, like a score.
Thanks for the feedback!
Yeah, I discussed at a little more in my postmortem, but I found that my playtesters were not understanding of the game mechanics after the first part of the tutorial. So after discussing with them I had a list of changes I needed to make. Most were interface changes, but I also thought more tutorial levels would help them learn. Seems like its not the same. Sorry for the ratio of tutorials to real levels.
If you have a retina display mac, try doing what this answer on stack overflow says: http://stackoverflow.com/a/17257977
Besides that, I'm sorry, I cannot help too much. The only issue preventing you from playing it is on the main menu. If you can figure out the mouse offset to hit the play button, you will be able to play the rest of the game easily with just your arrow keys.
A fair amount of you are commenting about the levels. Just for an explanation: I'm sorry they are slow, but I figured it was more of a crime to make it too hard and not introduce people to the game than it was to make it slower to start. Unfortunately, in making easy levels I cut out the amount of harder levels I was able to make in the timeframe. I do plan on adding in more levels and fleshing it out.
Very powerful, not expecting something that dark for a 48 hour contest. Trying not give away any spoilers here so if its cryptic, sorry: The way you gave the users options was very powerful. Probably one of the most powerful depictions I have seen.
Good job.
I found this game slightly frustrating to play. The fact that your progress wasn't saved was a major bummer for me, also with the weird and unexpected bullet patterns.
I enjoyed playing through the game. Along with what I told you on IRC, there were a couple more things to mention. Hate to be that person, but Neptune's gravity is greater than that of earth, so you might want to explain the cosmonauts super jump skills.
Also, the wall to the left of the lander is a bit awkward. But oh well, its 48 hours, what are you going to do?
I think this game had good level design, and as I said, I enjoyed the gummy worm enemies.
I'm kind of confused about the point of the game. Seems like you intended on reading more? I'm really interested to see what it would develop into.
Also, the door automatically closing isn't a necessity, might be fun to jump out and ride on top.
I'm not sure I understand the point of the game. I shoot things and it makes fire balls, sometimes the planet shoots at me, but thats about it?
I enjoyed the game, however the browser issue seem to have issues with mouse grabbing, so it made it much more difficult to navigate. Still, I thought it was pretty cool.
I AM TRAMATIZED, before I knew the minesweeper-esc technique to playing the game, I was horrified to jump, and then immediately explode. I screamed. My girlfriend screamed. It was not good.
I did really like your game though. If you had more time, I can imagine you actually producing an in game tutorial or such.
Also, technique I found that only failed me once was:
red -> long jump
green -> short jump
And FYI, I had to get someone who wasn't partially colorblind to help me play this game. Perhaps you can use colors that stand out more. This means red and green are out when put together, or just change the shades of the color.
For your game, you could do something like dark green and bright red.
Good job :)
parDal, thank you for your review. No worries about being bold, that is what makes a good review.
Alas, I am not a creative writer, so the story isn't the best. I tried though! Pushed my limits.
I was at a dead end with the gameplay, I had a hard time figuring out new things to do. In terms of difficulty, same. I couldn't figure out how to make a difficult level, the last was very stumbled upon.
About instructions, they are in game. They are under each block of text.
Taugeshtu, oh bugger. I know why that bug exists, but it might require some hacks to fix, and its really rare. Restart and play agin?
I liked it, though the engine noise did get on my nerves after awhile.
I enjoyed the lighting you had, the visuals of the game were perfect for the game, really enjoyed the sub turning around.
As other people said, the camera was kinda of jerky when you ran into things, and was detracting away from the game.
Your control scheme was also kind of wonky? On QWERTY keyboards (I realize this might not be your keyboard scheme), WASD and tab are kind of odd. I got used to it after awhile though.
I loved hearing the sub sound when my depth changed, that was a nice touch.
Good entry :)
I have to say, I rather liked this game. I'm curious what all you could do with this. Do you plan on extending it?
Were those things at the end something you were planning on implementing?
The way you set up this game is amazing. It is super intense hearing/seeing the steps and waiting. Hoping they don't find you.
Probably the most solid entry I've played thus far, good job.
Its really confusing to have the ability to catch air in a lightbike. As well as the fact that you shoot each other rather than the normal cutting the other person off?
Well done, wasn't sure what I expected, but this was certainly more than what I was expecting.
I liked it.
The art was wonderful, I really like the styles you bring to the board. Also would like to acknowledge the reference to a virus as an enemy.
Gameplay is what I think I have the most to say about. I was always a bit lost about what I was doing. Perhaps this was the mood you were going for, but I think its the wrong mood to ever go for. Its okay to be lost knowing that its alright to not know everything, but in this game I wasn't sure if I was missing anything important. Perhaps you should've had a goal to find in each dungeon, or explained the dungeon crawling mechanic more. The enemies were too easy for me to beat, so I wasn't sure of their purpose.
The music as many other people mentioned got repetitive. The most simple solution is to create a track around 3 minutes long (if not longer), and have several melodies inside the track. Strong rhythmic repetition can also tire out the ear, so if you have a strong rhythm (like the dungeon), switch it up. One idea on how you can do that is to switch from doing 4/4 to 3/4 or something like that. Even then make sure it isn't getting too repetitive.
The music matched the mood, I liked it.
Overall I like the game, but you could've used more time to flesh it out and make it easier to play. I enjoyed the voice acting. Perhaps your help screen should be the first thing the player sees?
Really enjoyed this game. Looked forward to the new comments from the robot.
Good job :)
This game was kinda lacking. First thing I did was find two world with a great trade route and got tons of money. Didn't know where to go from there. I o like it though, just needed a goal.
In terms of a LD game, this one is very well thought out (or at least seems like it) and planned out well. Everything has its own sound, and everything is designed like how you would see it in a game done without time constraints. Obviously there are improvements that you could do with more time, but for a LD game I say its pretty solid.
Of course, the only things I would complain about would be the control structure (I can jump with space and w, but not move with asd, nor can I jump with up arrow?), and the fact that it wasn't full length. The latter complaint is just an issue of time though, so good job!
(Music wise, I like both tracks, good job there)
Running Mac, Control-Arrow shifts the desktops ;)
This added another layer of difficulty to the game.
Forgot to mention, I like the game a lot, but the music was starting to get repetitive (to me) towards the end. I think you did a good job of pulling off the mechanic you were playing with. The graphics were effective and I liked them.
Good job :)
I'd have to agree with other people, the biggest lacking aspect was a change besides color when you switch worlds.
Audio got a low score because I'm pretty sure it was auto-generated, graphics would've gotten a 5-star, except for the text on the about page was wonderful, but I had to try hard to read it. Also the score counter was just boring font.
I like it, good job.
I couldn't get the rat and cheese part either, I got as close as I could to the rat, but nothing really happened when I clicked on the rat, cheese, or spoon.
Also, the text would sometimes go away before I had time to finish reading it, perhaps it was registering mouseup as a way to make the text go away?
So, the game was a maze. Thats alright, the main problem I have with it is that I couldn't see where I was going, and I moved too slow to get an easy grasp of where I was.
The building graphics also got boring and repetitive pretty fast. If you want to make in more of an experience, vary things up, detail will be your friend there. Many games get away with a lack of detail because of the intense gameplay the user is involved in. However, in a maze game you have to have other strengths, such as detail.
I'm sorry, I couldn't stand the "voice-acting", if you wanted to get a roboty voice, record yourself and then apply a ring mod.
I really hated not being able to jump with w. I really like the parallax floor effect. Wish there was sound.
Ran this on OSX 10.8.5. It ran well.
I have to say this is the best use of the theme in this round of LD. I haven't seen one that I liked as much anywhere.
I might suggest putting the picture before the game somehow. A button to actually load the game might be nice, so it doesn't auto play.
I like the idea of the game. Main gripe is with the jumping, which is majorly bugged. I like the game, really enjoyed how the platforms kind of rolled out of the wall, added a lot of extra depth to the game.
Hempuli, I agree that it needs to be more visible, but aside from making the line bigger and hacking into the lighting library I was using, there wasn't much I could do. It can actually be quite effective, if you play long enough there is skill in making your motions so that the tail gets the most coverage it can.
Holy bajeebus. Have to admit, you made me jump, and if you were on IRC I'd be yelling at you right now.
The mood is a solid 5 for sure. I have a feeling that any complaint is something that you would've fixed if you had a few more hours. The main thing I wish is that you had a little more content. You could've added onto why the hospital was so empty or something like that. Also, maybe a bit more than picking up keys ;)
But as I said, I suspect that would all be fixed with more time. Good job!
I liked it, however there were collision problems, as well as some other odd behaviors.
I liked the basic concept, however it seemed like the teleport pads were just a drop in replacement for moving to the new place by ladder or just walking. It mostly seemed like this because there wasn't anything stopping you from changing level by walking, dropping or hopping. I did like the basic idea you had, and I enjoyed the trickyness you employed in some of the level design, I just felt like some of the gameplay idea was lost when the importance of the teleport pads was reduced.
I think the pulsing with the beat was a bit too obvious, it just seemed a bit too much. Maybe if you made it more subtle. Sound effects need to be had, for instance I was never sure if I was dying or moving to the next level. I know at one point I went back to the main screen, but not sure if that was because I was dying or if it was a bug or something.
Might I suggest a way to switch platforms via keys, or have a phase in the beginning where you can lay down the platforms ahead of time, it was tiring laying down platforms as I needed them.
I liked it, however I found that the screen would get in my way at times.
Have to say, the interface was confusing. Didn't know if when I failed if it went to another sequence, or if I could try again. Nor did I know why I kept failing even when I thought I did it correctly. Only time I got a green check mark was when I didn't have them talk at all.
This is a brilliant game, the graphics are well done and the sword effect is very well thought out and is really fun to learn how to use more effectively.
10/10, fits the easter theme the best.
All jokes aside:
Have to say I may of rage-quit there during one part. 12 eggs left and I was stuck at the far right most side of the map (as far as I know). Me being bad at platformers probably had something to do with me quitting early. I do want to find that last egg sometime though.
Anyways, I like your music a lot. It fits, but yet doesn't attract too much attention. One complaint is that I was tired of the first track after awhile.
The sound effects were really good and cohesive, and I loved the big whooom sound. It was everything I expected and more.
The art is very interesting and I liked how you built up your landscape. Nothing is ever still, which is always great. One issue I have is that your blue background block things seem to be in the foreground.
Loved this entry. Music was fun, I enjoyed the sound effects and the levels had a smooth build up of difficulty. Well done and solid entry.
Also liked the mini dialogs.
The rock mechanics were a bit wonkey. I'd push it and it wouldn't go the correct direction it seemed, I'd blow it and sometimes it wouldn't blow the right way. Maybe it was just me.
I like it. One thing I'd suggest is working out the mechanics so when moving your portal gets placed on whatever row you are closest to. I found I would switch rows and then right before I finished switching I'd fail to place a portal in the right spot. Also seemed like row switching could happen faster.
It seems like the map wasn't fully proc-genned or something? Was getting the feeling like everytime I restart I went through the same things.
Music was good, liked the portal sound as well.
I think you really got the spaceyfeel down. Loved the audio (although it somewhat seemed like a loop?)
The patterns created by the orbiting was nice. Almost wish there was a little more depth to the art style, I wasn't getting a definite feel for the style of art you were trying to go for.
I did love the ability to shoot energy, however they seemed unaffected by gravity and the bouncing off of the spaceobjects was a bit comical.
Overall I did like this game though, great feeling and I had fun exploring.
I enjoyed this a lot, an even with the more checkpoints in the post compo I can't say I got very far. I'm not very good with platformers to say the least.
I know you were looking a lot into music and trying to do better this LD. One thing I notice about your melody is that its pretty similar to ones I come up when I'm sitting at a piano and they just feel like a dead end to me. One way to get around this is to take one note in your melody, an then when leaving it go a different direction. So taking your main melody for example. It goes something like do-re-do-ti-la-ti-sol [...] (probably not perfect), if you don't know solfege just match the notes. Instead of going down from the ti I might go up instead. So do-re-do-ti-re-sol [...], just play around with it until you get something you like. Even if you don't like what you have, just keep playing around with it. Dunno if this helps or was coherent, but hopefully it will help give you ideas.
Sound effects were bfxr so I won't comment on them. They matched the game so thats a plus. If you want tips on pther things to do with the sound effects feel free to ask in IRC.
Played this with someone else!
I liked it, however the game play got a bit repetitious. Couple hints on how to break that up:
- Maybe break it out of the 1 dimension and make it two dimension?
- Add time to move between spots. This may slow it down but induce more strategy
Another thing you could add would be the "Best 4 out of 5" or some sort of score keeping thing. It makes these sorts of games much more competitive.
I have to say I was a bit confused as why your music didn't play throughout the whole game. I thought it was pretty neat but couldn't hear a ton of it. With custom composed music, let it shine!
Another suggestion, perhaps make a 1 frame moving animation for the buckets?
Anyways, I liked it, and had fun playing it.
Loved the songs. Wish the map would highlight which country I selected. Also was wanting to click on the map rather than use the list. I found myself laughing a lot. Good job.
I fully understand what you meant by being afraid that not everyone will get it. Its true, many people don't get it, however the tradeoff is that people who do get it will get a much deeper experience when playing the game.
I thought your music was wonderfully fitting, the qualms I had when listening to it outside of the game beforehand were gone when listening to it in context. My only problem with the sound was with the interaction sound. Many games use similar sounds, and I'm not sure why. It is annoying to hear more than once and doesn't fit into any atmosphere. I'd like something lower pitched with a bit more growl or noise in it, almost fitting into the background but with enough contrast it obviously is triggered by the player.
The graphics worked wonderfully. The 4 tone pallet really made the experience complete. For instance, when you see an un-lit villager there is the perfect silhouette made already.
The interaction was a nice touch, but I almost wish there was more variance in how you interacted. You can still have the gibberish, but there was little reward to interaction. Kinda made it feel like I was cheated because I got through the end and none of my interactions did anything different. Except maybe when I trapped a villager and interacted with him? I let him go and a second later he vanished. Almost made me wonder if I was normal and the villagers were ghosts.
Overall, nice game, great submission.
Really enjoyed this entry. Except for the bit where I got a freebee after using the 250M checkpoint.
The art was of a fantastic style that I haven't seen in LD before. I was fascinated by it, however some of the animations were slightly confusing.
The music was wonderful, however I felt like it could've use a little less repetition. Maybe it could change for each check point, however that sounds like it may require more coordination than the Jam could allow for.
The gameplay worked well, if nothing new. The jump canceling and such made it much more enjoyable. I do wish I understood what made me die. It seemed like I had multiple chances, but I didn't understand how many I had or if they would reset after a bit of time. Perhaps you could change how far apart the two sprites are based off of the times you messed up. On that note, I felt like it was pretty forgiving.
Good job ya'll, I really liked it.
I like seeing a nice proc-gen in these challenges.
Overall I wish there was more you could do. You could poison the well, but not flood things, or make villagers go bobbing for apples. I do love the walking dead feature(bug?), where the dead always walk back to the house before truly dying.
Another thing which would've been nice if you were more of a literal monster that could move faster. Moving that slow distracted from the game, especially when there wasn't a ton you could do.
I did enjoy poisoning the well and watching as everyone died!
Mantlair, crash log is always apperciated. However, if it is one about finding "Edgedrawer" or something like that, just redownload.
Cardboard, the orbs did look out of place. Originally they were supposed to just be the lack of light. Not sure what I screwed up, but my lighting method isn't made for removing light.
I liked this entry.
The music worked very well, you choose a good style, and you pulled it off well. It meshed well with the story and provided a nice background to the game. My only complaint about it was that it never changed. I kinda wish each episode had new music, perhaps getting darker and darker as the story went on.
I'm less a fan of interactive stories, but as I enjoyed this one. It was one that was new. Not something you hear about all of the time. The message was a good one as well. One thing I think it could've use more was interaction. Even if the story ends up the same, I believe you could make more puzzles not based on dialogue, and more based on an inventory system and using stuff in the right places. This would serve a couple purposes, keep the player thinking, and also make the player more invested in the story.
I liked the graphics style, I think the cycling to saturated to unsaturated was a nice effect, however I wish the unsaturated point was less to make the effect more subtle.
Oh, I should note that again I mentioned things that you may of already thought of, but couldn't do due to time constraint. Dunno, sometimes its hard for me to know what people would do if they had more time. Also, the music comment wasn't saying the music you had was repetitive, just that I believe your game would've benefited a lot from music that interacted with the story more and changed.
Hey! You cannot edit these.
Another thing I wanted was more sound effects, your game would've benefited a lot from a subtle few interface clicks, maybe a sound byte of you speaking the language you cannot recognize, wind sounds, footsteps, etc.
I like the idea of where you are one of those easy to kill mobs (yet when I play platformers they without fail kill me), and it is your job to kill the hero.
I wish there was more interaction between you and Marius. Definitely would require more in-depth programming. But if he could juke you, and you could trick him, that would be fun. Of course this would require making it easier to control Bernie.
Also, adding names was fantastic. The music was fun, I also appreciate doing this all without the canvas.
Yeah, the font is from The League of Movable Type, who produce some pretty interesting fonts, Raleway being a nice clean font. Although the commas and periods are a bit ambiguous.
https://www.theleagueofmoveabletype.com/
https://github.com/theleagueof/raleway
The leaves do represent the growth. The choice to model the spites after branches and leaves was a pretty simple one made without much regard, the choice to make the "Player" (the solo dancer during Mvt. 2) grow more leaves was an intentional one with more thought behind it.
Yeah, for this LD I wanted to make sure I built something that I wanted to, and not let things stress me out into making a game I didn't enjoy making (like the last LD). So, the way it went made it more artsy and less gamey.
I enjoyed playing it. I know the programming bogged you down, so a lot of feedback I could give may be things that you didn't get around to.
Your graphics are pretty simple, and while they may not be a style you would want in the end, I think a few simple things could make this style work for you much better. One thing is the fact that the only things on screen are things you care about. While its true that everything on screen should have a function, not everything has to relate directly to the gameplay. So maybe things like minimalistic patches of grass (pretty easy to make with the simplex noise generator included in LOVE), maybe patches of water, dead dinosaurs, or just various things like that.
Also, I'm not sure about the background color choice for the battle screen. The battle screen could have some sort of background art to it.
This brings us to the biggest issue. I killed dinosaurs, but couldn't eat them. I don't care if I'm not made to eat them, if they taste disgusting, or the fact that my teeth just aren't cut for it. I worked hard to kill them, I want my reward.
On a serious note, maybe some factors could guide your evolution. Like the fact that I tried becoming a carnivore, but couldn't.
Doing a clone isn't bad, but you shouldn't really rely on previous knowledge of the clone to help explain the game to people.
For what this game is it seems a bit unrefined. The things you shoot do not start at the middle of your character, but rather the edge meaning that (especially later on) it is harder to hit enemies on your lower left side. The difficulty curve seemed to be off, as I wasn't sure where I could go wrong.
Great visuals, I was just hoping for more of a music, or maybe a way to move the shapes and have them drag each other around. The waves were great and made me think about the ways you could make musical beats appear in the visual landscape. I think you had a lot of room to expand here. Love the minimalist style.
Had fun, it was hectic, but fun.
Couple suggestions, your controls were probably one of the hardest things about the game (for as far as I got), because I would always throw the hoe, or would try to pick up something while I wasn't standing on it. A couple ways to fix this would just make it so you don't have to aim to pick things up, just press e to pick up whatever you are above. Not sure of other methods, but I know there are some and that could improve the game a lot.
Your colors were a bit cluttered feeling, and I have a feeling that may either be a style thing (and I just don't like the style) or a color palette choice. Maybe different colors for tiles and pick ups. Your fourth screenshot and the wheat are a good example of what I am seeing.
Bug fix would be to prevent the water from eating your gun, or make it so you had to fish it out again. This is especially important since you throw your gun rather than set it down so its much easier to accidentally throw in the drink.
I really enjoyed the fact that the enemies (save the zombie) were not fighting you, but your crops. Maybe in a a post-compo version (which I think you should consider pursuing) you could make it so if you made fences, some animals would come and hurt your fences while doing non-destructive things, or in general portray the feeling of you against nature rather than you against fighting things.
Agreed with the other people, more leeway is needed in the beginning, while it would be good for a hard mode, its not great for a LD game where everyone are novices. I think the idea of putting bread or wheat in crates is a good idea, because it doesn't have lasting implications for the game (where as making wheat grow faster or your hunger go down slower would change the rest of the game).
You were saying things on IRC or somewhere about the ideas you had for your game including traders and whatnot. I think that is a good idea, and think this game has a lot of potential. I really want to see where you go with this in the future.
Wanting to see a full game
Oh, and forgot to mention your music. You were getting pretty annoyed at LMMS, but I think you pulled the music off really well for being in such an annoying unfamiliar environment. Kept to your style and was interesting and dynamic. In playing it I didn't think the music was a weak element at all, so good job working around that annoyance.
I appreciated the interplay of mechanics. The tree could help clear the path, but you had to risk yourself to get the balloons. I kind of wish there were more cheese burgers littered about, the only times that I saw them they were either too hard to get or I was full up on health.
I kind of wish there was less noise in the background. Even if that is what a microphone picks up when it is in a city, the constant background noise isn't what we hear. It would be good to get some isolated traffic sounds as well as isolated bird sounds and lay them on top of each other. I also think music would be a good choice for this type of game.
Nice game.
You could've used music, nothing says DANGER like some DANGEROUS music.
Glad there is a way to skip a level, because now I might come back and see if I can beat it, but I had to stop because my chicken was simmering (still is, just had to tend to it).
The graphics were neat looking, I like it. Were the levels randomly generated?
I think I would've preferred it if in 3rd person mode when getting knocked around that the camera stayed more or less centered on the ship. When it was offset from the ship I felt like I was at a disadvantage because I couldn't see properly. It made it difficult and didn't seem like that difficulty was meant to be there.
Wasn't sure what the non-tanks were on the tank level (saw them in the second tank level). What did they do?
The intros into the levels (particularly the tank ones) could be much shorter. I also think you could maybe turn the boost into a fire button during the tank levels. This would up the skill level from just flying by the tanks fast into actually dodging and firing at the tanks.
I like it.
I liked it, I think the overall aesthetic worked well for you all, the music felt planty, the graphics had their own unique style which was neat.
I felt the main thing that could've been worked out was polish. I seemed like things worked, but they _just_ worked. For instance, going up and down plants worked, but going down them seemed too slow, would've been nice to have it so you could slide down the plants. This is especially important because you couldn't really fall down from the plants. It was also hard to start climbing the plant when it was coming up from a one wide gap in the floor.
The music was nice, however I was kinda wanting more of it. It seemed well done through out and worked nicely for the game, but I almost wondered if you could've made a variation on it (keep the material but change some, kinda a cheaty way to get more music in a jam environment), and used that for the second part of the game, especially when you would spend more time on levels.
The sound design was nice, but a bit flat. What I mean by this is that it portrayed your interactions with the environment, but it didn't give the environment its own sound. Stuff like wind, leaves rustling, mice, birds, anything you hear in the woods you would add in. Tim, I know you spend a lot of time hiking! Next time you head out into the woods, figure out what conveys your location to your ears. What makes the woods sound like the woods? Not just the sounds, but how do they bounce off the trees and leave their origin? Are they mostly higher or lower frequency? Just kinda close your eyes and appreciate the soundscape. Even if you didn't do the sound design for this project perhaps thinking about this would help you later on. Another thing contributing to its flatness was the fact that it didn't have a huge variety of sounds.
The art was really interesting, and had its own style which I enjoyed. One thing about it is that it seemed a bit cluttered an in the way of the understanding of the scene. For instance, the leaves sometimes seemed like I should be able to walk on them. It also seemed like the focus was on the whole scene, rather than the foreground and character/gameplay elements. Perhaps these magical plants could give off a glow like the floating water buckets. Consider making the individual palettes for non-important background or other elements less contrasting, that would make them seem less important. Similar to the sound design, I think more activity could've been created. The forest is a really active and dynamic place to be in, there is always activity. You are surrounded by life, that is something that could be conveyed in this game. One way to do this could be making the background flow or react to imaginary wind. Make grass entities that blow, leaves could float by, mice scurry around.
The level design was interesting as well. The first few levels were really easy and didn't seem to go anywhere. Then suddenly we had "Into the Trees" which was much more difficult than the rest. Made me realize I had to plan out exactly what I had to do. It seemed like there could've been a bigger build up in the difficulty. The later levels also seemed a bit easy, just had to look out and it came apparent the necessary flow to it. I'm no good at level design myself, so I can't really help out. Only thing I've found is that when I'm doing level design, its always the last few levels that are of a difficulty that I wanted them to be. Of course its a jam so I don't know how to overcome this. For a jam game, I think the levels were pretty well designed.
Props to everyone on the team, I think you all did a good job. I enjoyed the game and thought it well done. What I posted above is places to expand a team member found that they didn't have much to do. Not everything has to be done sequentially (as I'm sure you know), such as the sound design can come before the art, vine climbing can be done before vines, levels can be thought out and drawn on paper thinking of more effective objects to include to make them more dynamic.
Good job ya'll.
I liked it. Probably one of the more unique ideas for this jam. I apperciate the wealth of material you recorded for it.
One of your main problems is the fact that there was a lot of sitting and waiting. I felt like maybe you should've gave the player more to do rathe than sit and listen to radio casts. Maybe I was just bad and should've multitasked more, but then again there really wasn't a timelimit or a lose condition that made the user more hasty.
Bu I did enjoy playing it.
I was really wishing there was music or sound effects, that would've really helped the mood as well as gameplay of the game.
You kept trying to sell yourself short on IRC. Good thing I knew you were lying.
**SPOILERS**
The background sound was actually quite effective. Although drones are used everywhere in LD games, I'm a big fan of the minimalistic backing track. An idea that may (or may not) spark your fancy is the use of a texture rather than a drone. While the drone sounds nice and I enjoy it, perhaps using something clicky or more mechanical. I know I'm not explaining myself well. Instead of trying to think of it like music, think of it as an ambient aural accompaniment. Players will frequently forget about the music anyways while playing a game, so you can really replace it with anything acoustically pleasing that makes sense with the theme of the game. For an example or two of things like this, look at my LD game Fluidity, and rxi's Fragment.
Again, I did like the drone and I think it was a good choice, but other accompaniments are possible as well as relatively unused in the LD world.
Initially I thought the footsteps of your massive robot were underwhelming. However, thinking about it after playing the game, they make sense. You have to think of the footsteps as being heard from inside the cockpit. I still think the footstep could've been modified to be more effective, but I also think you could've added more sounds to put the listener into the spot inside of the robot rather than outside.
I liked how your slimes were portrayed, and I liked what they represented, however I don't know if it makes sense with the story itself. The fact that they are just representations of whats in the playing field could be portrayed a bit better. Such as overlaying them with a grid, keep the slime but show the quads/tri (triangles make more sense, quads look better) that go into the slime shape would help enhance the effect that you are looking through the computer's eyes.
Another small thing would be to make the robot's on and off position different. Maybe droop its head or have it sit like a chicken when it is booting up. It would be a nice detail, but also indicate to the player that they can't control the robot. In fact, at the end of the story I stopped controlling before I went to the next area (joke, there wasn't a next area) and didn't realize that I actually lost control until I was idly pressing buttons.
In the end, your terminal was really well done, it felt real and not faked, it gave a nice bookend approach to the story telling, and it added background information that couldn't be easily shown. Your graphics may of been hacky in the backend, but came across great in the front end. Seeing things through walls was well done, as well as the general white-wall dirtyish style.
I think you did a great job!
I liked it. However, it seemed a bit unfair with a small green followed by a big red. Couple ideas: Make the circles appear with the beat of the song, that would possibly give the player more ability to predict what is going on. You could also give indicators of what colors were coming from where so you had a little more warning. Make big circles travel slower than small ones, this is because big circles collide with you much faster than small circles. Maybe you did that already, but not enough?
Last idea is to make the play field circular, this makes more sense as well as evens out the reaction time needed no matter where the circles come from.
I thought this was a rather clever game, however I think you probably didn't give yourself enough time to balance it. Maybe it was the UI glitches, but I found it really difficult to stay afloat and continue building. Fixing the the UI so it doesn't try to click on a hex when you click on a UI button is probably the most critical. For awhile I think I kept upgrading random hexes because I didn't know it was switch to a new hex after I hit the upgrade button the first time. I'd also give a better indication if you could buy an upgrade or not, such as coloring the text, I'd also put the price right next to the upgrade. This holds true for building a new hex. Just those things would make the game easier to play because they give better feedback to the player. As well as more animation on the repair and shields. I wasn't sure where my shields were holding up, how often they were going down, or what my repair cells were doing. Something like flashing green when repairing, and more shield outlines and changes when the shield is down. I'd also make it so new cells always cost the same no matter how many you buy. And the ability to destroy dead cells (I also couldn't tell what they were before they were dead).
Sound wise I didn't think everything meshed so much. I felt like your music should've been up tempo or whatnot to go along with the frantic ship fighting. Maybe some cutsey hoppy thing would work quite well.
I really liked the visual style (although refinements to the UI were needed). The cell animations were fantastic as well as the spinny missiles. The concept is also really wonderful, and I'd like to see it in a full game.
Oh, also just remembered, I wanted a bigger screen or the ability to zoom out. It got too packed for my taste.
I didn't manage to beat this until I came back to it to listen to the music again. I'm not very good at platformers, and the controls didn't help (and yes, I saw I could change them via patching them). I did get more used to them after awhile. I'd have to say that was my main complaint.
You were afraid that it was a rather short, game, and for me I spent around 30-40 minutes not beating it (and then ~7 minutes beating it while writing this). So that says something about your game and about my skill. I didn't get too tired of it, and I'm not very good.
Your graphics were spot on, you had a concrete style, nothing out of place (maybe the tweens on the death screen were out of place, not sure I care though), and everything was cohesive.
Sound wise, nothing stood out to me. The sounds were generated in sfxr, which is alright (in the style of the game), however I never find those super interesting.
The music was good, however now that I think about it, I think its weakest point is the fact that there isn't a ton of space in the song. No chance for it to breathe. It wasn't just one part, I think it was a combination of factors. Every part by itself sounds good.
* Your bass line is super active (and maybe could use a low pass filter? Probably just personal preference at that point)
* Your melody line compounds on top of the bass line
* Drums are a bit present in the mix
* Nothing really has any release, no trails after the notes.
I preferred the winning music (although I'd probably say it wouldn't fit in the main game).
All that being said, I don't think your music is bad, I just think it was a bit claustrophobic.
The level design was well done, the difficulty progression very smooth.
That being said, I wish there could've been bonuses along the way. It didn't seem to have a "plot". The challenges were similar, they just got harder. However, it is a LudumDare game after all (and my game didn't really have level design itself, so who am I to say).
Really well done, I think this entry is spot on.
Alright, got a windows version up!
I really liked what you did with the game. The physics felt "right" however they did bug out once and awhile.
Your game was also really frustrating at points for me. Reasons why may of been the controls, sometimes I mixed them up. However I have a feeling that is a me problem and not a game problem. Another thing I noticed is that it seemed like a guessing game for when I needed to lift off and what not, it made it really hard to reproduce what I did in the previous attempts. There are a few methods you could use to help this. The first would be added details in key spots (ie a light where you need to switch to a plane). That however may be a bit too obvious and you want your player to make their own decisions. The next method is just adding more detail to the game. It is pretty sparse as is, and adding grass, lights, a sky, any sort of prop would help give the player something to know where they are. All of the landscape looks the same, making it hard to know where you are. The last method I could see to help this is to zoom out the camera. You are really close to the player, and while this may be nice, zooming out would help you see more of the stage at a time. You could get even fancier and have the camera be dynamic, zoomed in when you were slow, and zoomed out more when you got faster. Or something like that.
Your sound was grating. I think you could've mixed your car revving sounds much lower. It was too loud and got annoying after a bit. Another thing you could try is to make it a little more dynamic, have it rev up and simulate it shifting gears. You could also ry putting a low pass filter on it. Higher frequencies tend to get more annoying faster. Or so I have found.
Your music is also at a constant volume, it never seems to let up. Perhaps making the lead synth get quieter when the whole ensemble gets introduced. You can also have it drop out once and awhile. Maybe try adding a delay to it. The drums were also too present in the mix I think. A good way for mixing drums is lowering the kick and raising it up until you can just hear it. Same for the rest of the set (this works the best when they can be controlled individually). You have a lot of interesting aspects to this song, and your lead synth tends to cover them all up.
Another part to it being too "loud" is the fact that I never heard the second part of the song where the lead synth actually does drop out for 10 bars or so. The music restarts whenever you die. Perhaps you should make the song loopable and loop so the player can hear the whole track.
I think this may be one of my favorite uses of the theme that I have seen this LD. Enjoyed the music and the lumberjack feel.
My suggestions for improvement would be to:
Make it so you could click on people coming through the door
Make it less random when you get a customer, although this isn't really a big deal.
Make the razor shave in lines rather than splotches, so it draws a line of removed hair between where it last was and where the mouse moved it to.
Maybe have the razor not rotate after you start shaving?
I did enjoy how they never said anything negative. "I'm sure you will be a great barber someday!"
The sounds were also top notch, good job :D
Top marks!
Got 1st place on the second track!
I enjoyed about every aspect of this game. Of all games with this idea of balancing act, this one worked the best and has the most strategy with it. I did feel like the flamethrower was a bit weak. At some point you just were balancing out how much fuel you would get on each pitstop and trying to stay in the lead. I'm not sure how to fix it, maybe cause a flame thrower'd car to spin out a little more and make it cost more? It felt like I would use it, and then hit the person I flamethrower'd only causing both of us to slow down. The AI was also very good.
The game felt complete, there were several tracks with varying themes, the music fit perfectly and the sound effects weren't too annoying and were complete (there wasn't anything that I felt was really missing).
One thing I felt hindered by was the readability of the game. My car wasn't unique enough to track it all of the time. You should think about maybe adding a "halo" (which could be colored for multiplayer), or maybe even a movable camera centered on the car. Or you could make it look significantly different than the other cars.
@josefnpat, that was the idea. I wanted the game to eventually be so cluttered that you would want to be switching them off. As well as game mechanics, I wanted the more mechanics that were added to be making it feel worse. But that is LD, always missing half the game.
Thanks!
@aman1822 Instead I just added direct links to builds for Windows and MacOS. I forgot that my packaging script was in good working order.
@eli-delventhal thanks for the catch. It seems like I uploaded the wrong files. Seems like my packager should be improved still.
@sparewizard if you download the updated files (mac/win) they should work for you.
@Shinyogre
Yeah, if I had one recommendation coming out of this LD it is do not use tiled for this type of map. Tiled isn't very optimized for lots of objects.
I'm not sure how the render would look, reason being that my focus was what the player would see at one time. A large render would probably not look super cohesive.
@the-dankasaur, thanks for your feedback!
Regarding #1 I was actually looking towards doing that when you turned on the color switch. It was just one of those items I kept forgetting to do even though it would take almost no time at all.
I think it would've been nice if you put a little more reward to getting more than one box at the end. I didn't feel like there was any reason to try for balancing more than one box. Well done overall, the sound was quite good and everything meshed well together.
It never gave me an object besides the guardian one. Which was a little sad. Felt like more time should've gone into ensuring a bug free game. You had a lot of assets so I feel like perhaps too much time was devoted to those instead of the programming. Perhaps you should've made a minimal product with the last 3-5 jams, and then once you finished the concept you make more and more items.
This game definitely got me raging a bit. At parts you didn't provide any cover so there was no refuge from the rockets and that was a bit terrifying. The platforming was very well done, the controls were well done, the movement was done well as well.
I think your usage of the theme felt like it was really just an excuse for your game to have a difficulty progression, which it should've had anyways. The text in between levels was good, but when you don't give the player any choice besides to collect the crystals it really just amounts to a difficulty progression.
The other complaint I have is with the player movement. Overall it was really good, but I had one complaint. Maybe it is just me being bad at platformers (I am), but I felt like the jump should've been made more powerful or you should've allowed the player to let go of the jump key after awhile. it felt like I had to hold it down forever to get maximum jump velocity and made me miss my jumps pretty often.
The audio was well done, the dying effects were a great touch and the music fit perfectly. Did you speed up the music at all as the game progresses? If so great touch, if not, do it next time!
Anyways, good game! Great LD entry.
@IcyLava, yeah, I sometimes write walls of text.
One response:
> I’m using would only allow to change the speed with the pitch
This is pretty common, I think if you ramp it up slowly and very slightly people wouldn't even notice unless they restarted the entire game. People typically don't have perfect pitch and gradual changes aren't really detectable.
Is there a web build? I'm not seeing one on the itch.io page.
Alright then, I just downloaded it.
High score: 769830/383/383
I find this game disturbingly relaxing. I think the mood was great. The music wasn't too in your face, for some reason I was thinking of Crazy Taxi with it plaing. The bodies flying every which way was awesome, and the art style matched everything else so perfectly.
My main criticism would have to be the difficulty. As shown in my high score, it is too easy to kill everyone with one combo. Might I suggest making combos harder to get? You could also change that number to be the max number of people killed in one swing. That could cause a strategy of killing only a few while herding the rest and then getting a massive kill for the score. I think another possibility might be having to avoid killing certain people. While I did get killed by love once, I think it was fairly weak and easily avoided something more difficult needed to be added to make it a little harder.
I enjoyed your entry very much, good job!
Very good game, you nailed the ambiance.
One issue I noticed while playing your game is that the audio was only on my right side. I then went back and found out that the problem is something with my computer. yay...
Anyways, I'm not finding much to comment on about this game. I think it was a super solid LD entry. With the limited time given you split your attention across all of the important elements and didn't let anything get dropped. Good job!
Probably the first time that I've ever had a chair ask me where it put it's hat! Good game.
Nice game! I enjoyed the idea and thought the rotational momentum was a neat factor to include in a spaceship game.
The biggest drawback was the audio. The audio that was there was awesome, it was what was missing that was critical. In short, you had three sounds that were really missing: Spaceship damage, magnetograbber, and music. I do realize this is a jam game and not everyone wants to spend their precious time doing audio, but I think in your case you were really close to getting there.
First sound is the easiest, damage is pretty easy. Especially when you have a destruction sound. If you were feeling short for time, I would've taken your explosion sound, cut off the first chunk of it (0.1-0.3 sec), made it fade out, and then maybe add a short-tight reverb to smooth it out. The issue there would possibly be a repetitious sound that becomes tiring to bumbling players. A good jam-technique for that issue is to play each iteration of the sound with a slightly random pitch and volume. In my code I frequently have these two lines: ``` sound.setPitch(math.random() * 0.05 + 1) sound.setVolume(math.random()*0.1 + basevolume). ```
This helps add enough variety to remove a ot of the annoyance factor.
The other sounds are a bit harder. Magnetograbber wouldn't be super hard. It is up to you of course, but I'd experiment with some sort of humming sound, take a mic to your AC unit, or even your throat when you hum.
Music/ambiance is a bit harder, but in this case I think it is pretty critical. It would really help the mood. Space games tend to be a bit easier because all you need is some sort of thin pad doing ambience, and then some sort of basic interest factor, high pitched tinkle sound maybe, or sporadically placed bloops. Again, this is up to your skill level and interest, but I think it would really enhance the mood and bring in the player more.
The other aspect of your game that I felt needed a little more attention was the controls. The relation of your game to the theme really hinged on your controls. I think you had a great start. But I think maybe you should've made it easier and more responsive at the start, and then much less responsive when picking up point things. Maybe even have it to the point where it starts easier, and then once you get ~3 pick ups it is to the point where it is now.
Anyways, I think your graphics worked well. I could tell it was jam graphics, quickly done and done with the intent of getting something decent looking into the game. But I think it worked really well like that. The simplistic feel really works well for me and the look you came up with was really easy to read.
Gameplay wise I think you nailed the scope for a jam game. The controls and idea behind the game was simplistic and easy to follow. But yet it filled out a complete game. Frequently LD games have the idea but not the execution, or everything is there but it is just hard to follow. You nailed all of that.
All in all, good job! Sorry if I talked too much about audio, its just part of gamedev that I really enjoy.
I really enjoy the spinning graphics for when you run, very satisfying.
The thing that bugged me the most was the sound. The music didn't seem to really fit with the game, and the coin sound started to get very repetitive. I'd suggest making the most repetitive sounds very quiet and fit into the background. Another thing that helps is varying the pitch/volume or even sound. Essentially you shouldn't hear the same sound more than twice in a row.
Good job!
Top mark! I love the visuals, you got that papery feel that I really like. Honestly, the visuals looked like they were made for a full game. Spot on. Other great part of the game was the audio. I loved the voices and all that. Was that a real language or was it just gibberish? If it is gibberish I love it, achieved the perfect effect. If it was a real language, I don't care, sounded great anyways.
The main thing I thought was a bummer was that there wasn't a ton of different mechanics to it. The two levels didn't seem too different and it seemed a bit thin on mechanics. I'd be really interested to see where this would go in the future.
FYI, your source link is dead. I was wanting to look at what your shaders were.
Nice game good job!
I felt like the concept was a bit abstract. For instance I couldn't really understand what was going on first play-through, second time was after I read the idea and then it started making much more sense. I have to say that the ghost enemies were a great touch. That interplayed with the "health" system was great. You could have an infinite number of ghosty friends theoretically. It provided a very real way of increasing the difficulty that wasn't artificial (new stronger enemies, more enemies). Your core mechanic still was a bit too abstract, even after learning what it was I realized there wasn't really a way to control it, I just had to hope I killed one with that bullet. I'm not sure what could be done to improve that.
The sounds were great, although I felt like the music was perhaps a bit too repetitive.
The art was great, the abstract shapes worked perfectly.
The only other two comments I have are on refinement. If you have highscores, it felt weird that there wasn't a "restart" button. In fact I had to reload the page, which got rid of my highscore. It is a Jam game though so that was probably left out for a higher priority task. The other thing was the screen size. I felt like I was running backwards into enemies too much. I didn't have enough time to react when they were approaching from behind. I think just increasing screen size would work just fine.
I agree with most of the previous comments on here (from the people who could play your game).
One thing I haven't seen is that the enemies don't really stand out from the background. it took me awhile before I really noticed the first enemy. You could try doing something with shading or just changing the spaceship color to not be a similar color as the cars and road.
It was really hard to aim, but I think the perspective (not top down but a more 3d approach) is very interesting and was a good factor. You probably needed to make it a little easier to see things and aim at things. One possibility would be to shoot faster, a line of bullets is always easy to see.
Anyways, good game. I really did enjoy the voxel art style, it worked quite well!
Well done, I think? I really cant get anywhere because I don't have access to the shop. I would love to play this game when you have the shop button again.
Well done!
I think the weakest part of this game was the puzzle. It didn't feel like it had any sort of reasoning behind it. I did this and suddenly I get the item I need to progress? While you can say that is how dreams work (and they do sometimes), the player isn't actually dreaming so whatever tenuous explanation you can give them is good. Even if your explanation makes no sense, if you pretend it does then it will be better.
I think your audio was on point, the subtle knocking sounds, the slow ambiance, weird chanting sounds, all on point. I'm not sure if they achieved the feeling you were going for. Some people felt like it was closer to a horror game than a dream like game, which makes sense. All of your sound affects are dark and dramatic. Horror games frequently use the concept of isolation to make things scarier. Along those lines if you wanted something more dreamy less horror-ey then add more ambient sounds. The TV could use some noise, add some muffled talking, a slurred lullaby, maybe the clock could have an offbeat rhythm to go with its crazy antics. Any talking or TV needs to really be clear and audible (think about simulating receptive aphasia, the inability to understand speech), it should just be there to provide context and make the game less cold and isolating. Unless this is what you want, then bravo! It worked well as a creepy game!
The graphics were amazing. The avatar going more and more transparent, the wavy graphics, everything worked out to enhance the feeling that you were going for. The only complaint I have is use of cues for player interaction. In Mirrors edge the colors mean something about the routes the player can take. Glowing items is another pattern to use to guide players to the right choices. You used glowing items as well, but there were some things I couldn't interact with that were glowing white. This caused confusion and some frustration at the game because at that point you can't trust it. The things like the glowing chair could've been glowing with less intensity or maybe glow a different color (like the TV).
You should include a .love file! It is cross platform and would allow cross platform play for those who currently have LOVE installed!
@azdraws, just realized you were probably in the LOVE game filter because of your game name. What engine did you use?
I liked your game a lot!
The main issue I found is that it felt that the number of levels you could do were mathematically limited. Going with the idea I'm not sure of the best way to fix it. It would probably be best to make it more of a balancing act. Getting ammo decreases your health, but getting a debuff increases it again? I don't know, but there is some room for expansion there.
One of the parts I enjoyed most was the gun reloading. The animation was simple, but wonderful. Maybe you pulled it from somewhere, but it felt really innovative to me. I also found that I could get the robots to shoot the cabinets to find me treats without me spending ammo. That was nice too.