Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → WFMG
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | 54 | Limited Space | The Little House That Had Been Very Good This Year | jam | 994 | 3.02 | 2.94 | 3.05 | 3.84 | 3.63 | 2.88 | 3.02 | 3.50 | |
| 2022 | 51 | Every 10 seconds | Police Mayhem | jam | 1197 | 2.60 | 2.66 | 2.43 | 2.91 | 2.90 | 2.68 | |||
| 2022 | 50 | Delay the inevitable | Tyranny Defense Simulator 2984 | compo | 452 | 3.20 | 2.80 | 3.07 | 3.62 | 3.15 | 3.57 | 3.47 | 3.37 | |
| 2020 | 47 | Stuck in a loop | Timeline | jam | 2.29 | 1.80 | 2.29 | 2.60 | 2.80 | 1.33 | 2.50 | |||
| 2020 | 46 | Keep it alive | Strongman Jim: The Con-Quest for $$$ | jam | 2525 | 2.34 | 2.17 | 2.38 | 2.34 | 2.72 | 2.68 | 3.32 | 2.20 | |
| 2019 | 45 | Start with nothing | The Pumpking | jam | 1104 | 2.47 | 2.31 | 2.44 | 2.21 | 2.86 | 2.64 | 2.55 | ||
| 2019 | 44 | Your life is currency | S:C:U:M - The AutoVore Division | jam | 925 | 3.02 | 2.80 | 3.17 | 2.60 | 2.76 | 2.38 | 3.38 | 2.88 | |
| 2018 | 43 | Sacrifices must be made | The Time Gnelf and the Quest for the Missing Golden Cogs | compo | 474 | 2.62 | 2.42 | 2.20 | 1.81 | 2.77 | 2.20 | 2.38 | 2.62 | |
| 2018 | 42 | Running out of space | Feedrun | jam | 936 | 3.07 | 3.02 | 3.16 | 3.28 | 3.14 | 3.22 | 3.05 | 2.80 | |
| 2018 | 41 | Combine 2 Incompatible Genres | Rainy Day | jam | 963 | 3.03 | 2.77 | 2.81 | 2.70 | 3.53 | 3.09 | 2.71 | 3.42 |
This is the best game I've seen here by far! It's amazing! The atmosphere, the storytelling, the cute main character, the mood, the pacing of the gameplay. This is amazing and whoever made this is a master of game development. I've rated this game 5/5 on all categories because I genuinely can't justify a lower score. This deserves to win! Well done!
It's very simple for sure, but it's fun, and wouldn't need much more to reach its potential. Only things like having some audio at the very beginning so you know your volume level and don't get blasted by noise once you start the game, making the jump lower and quicker... that's about what I can think of. At first, I was confused as to what to do, but it didn't take long before I figured it out. Only about a round or two.
I like that the high score remains even if you close the page and open it again. That's almost creepy.
Your game is a great example of how to find fun gameplay efficiently. While I probably put more effort into my game and made it much more complex than yours, I'd say your game is a great deal more fun. If you'd like to prove me wrong (or right!), please do! It's called Feedrun. Thanks!
These are my ratings: ratings.jpg
I really like the game. It's very clever, rather eerie, and nice. I personally got stuck on Level 3, but that's because I'm impatient and not very good at games.
There are a few things you could've improved on. I wish you'd included that really creepy music you made. It was really really good. It would've been good if you'd made the main mechanic more clear to the player.
Other than that, awesome game! I'm glad you included fullscreen windowed mode after all!
Your game is rather unique when compared to all of the other LD submissions. The writing is pretty good, the music is great, and it really contributes to the mood.
The main issue I find with it is audience retention. I gave it a fair shot, but around the time I got to the battlefield, I was already so worn out from reading and reading, and I decided to give up.
Really cool! I found it a bit too difficult, but I liked it a lot! Good game!
I am impressed by this, and I am excited to see where it will go. The compo version does lack some of the things to make it a full and proper game, however. It really needs some audio, a UI that scales with the screen size, and a better explanation of what's going on. I know this is stuff you're working on, however. I gave this game some of my best ratings so far, including my first five on innovation. It's not every day someone comes up with something this clever and unique. Well done!
Nice game! I realised that it was fairly easy to avoid the falling tiles by just standing the the corner where the walls meet and shooting zombies. I didn't manage to hop down in time to avoid the game crash, but whatever. Nice game.
@wrimo Haha yes! I hoped the help menu in the top right would be enough to stop people being confused, but it seems that was just the bare minimum. Early on in a game, which is the entirety of an LD game, you really need to hold the player's hand, and it's hard to know how far to go with it.
About it being short: I think that's because Feedrun has something in common with my previous and first submission, Rainy Day. I wasn't sure on the end game until the last day. The difference here is that I had thought of this ending initially, but then tried to go for something else.
Did you experience any performance issues? What are your computer specs?
Thanks! :smile: :lemon:
@agwblack I believe you encountered functioning gameplay. There are three modes in the game. Frying, where your cursor is not visible, and you can move the frying pan. Selecting, where you can pan your camera within a range horizontally, as well as selecting different food types to cook. Feeding, where you control the doggo and hop around.
When you press V, you toggle through them, so starting at selecting as I've programmed it to do, it would go to doggo mode, and then to pan mode. You would need to press V again to get back to selection mode. I'm not saying this was the best solution; it was just how I ended up programming it.
It was a very fascinating and well-written story. I like it. I didn't get emotional, but it is very well-crafted, and I am rather stoic. Honestly, I'm only 17 years old and yet I'm wondering if maybe I'm also at risk for alzheimer's later in life given how forgetful I can be, and how cloudy my head can be sometimes.
Alright! I played this game, and I was a bit confused. In fact, I was very confused and unable to figure out how to play the game or why "were all gonna die". It dawned on me that it probably has something to do with making tea, as the description said, this conclusion being aided by the massive teapot. I figured out how to get the teabags from the thing on the wall and I button-mashed to get the pot thing or whatever it is. I couldn't figure out what to do next, however, and suddenly I died, again.
I feel like this is a typical dev game. It makes perfect sense and is very playable to the developers who designed and programmed all of the mechanics. To an outsider, however, it just does not make much sense, I'm sorry to say. I can see the potential here, but the current product is not really enjoyable.
The biggest issue I had with this game was that it launched at an extremely loud volume, and it took many attempts before it would let me press the Windows key to open the volume control.
The graphics are alright, but not amazing.
The main mechanic is cool, but not really explained blatantly enough. I noticed there was a tutorial there, but unless you force the player to play it, the vast majority of them will not do it. It's a cool concept, but it could be better in practice.
The game is fun, but it is limited by the cursor orbiting mechanic. It's rather confusing trying to get moons and planets placed. That said, the premise is good, and it is loyal to the theme.
The music itself is pretty good, but it gets a bit annoying when it restarts every time a new scene is loaded.
Well done! Will play soon!
The game was alright. I hold you to a lower standard because I know this was your first submission. It was rather basic and used art you did not create; you did not take the photos of the doughnut, sugar cube, :lemon:, etc.
The graphics were just inconsistent. That's the main issue with them.
Food would spawn in the snow and in the hole. This is rather annoying. I also didn't seem able to beat the game in either mode, which is surprising considering I beat the LD 42 entry Ramboom.
The idea is great, but the execution wasn't the most fun. I played the original version, as I want my review to be fair to everyone else.
I see what you're going for, but it's not very intuitive. The lack of audio is a bit disappointing, the objective is confusing, and I still don't quite understand how to avoid the car. Is the yellow ground the road? Because that's where the car goes.
It's a good submission, and for only 48 hours, but I think it suffers from dev-goggles. It's hard to understand what the player sees and thinks about one's game, and that can result in things you think are obvious becoming huge obstacles. I should know. My game suffers from that to a certain extent as well, even though I had already learned about this happening with my LD 41 game, which suffered from it even further.
Overall, good idea, could be better in practice.
@yorisfresh You ranked higher, though, and for good reason. Your product is much more of a game than mine is. Well done.
I really like this! The world is very believeable despite the very simplistic and minimalistic graphics. The character interactions are really interesting, and I got really immersed in this.
I won't complain too much about the tiny flaws given the context, but things that could be improved upon in continued development would be making it a bit more clear that you can enter certain buildings, which took me a while, make it a bit more clear what calling Fourier on the phone does, and perhaps adding a map, but without all that hand-holding that modern AAA games are known for.
I rated this game a 4 overall. Good stuff. I'm impressed and hope to see you make something even better in April!
This is a really cool game! The concept is very innovative, the way you really have to think about whether or not it's worth it to get each building and consider what's more valueable.
The graphics may be simple, but they're pleasant and artistically cohesive. They are reminiscent of classic Runescape, at least according to someone who never played that.
The music may just be one looping track, but it's a good and fairly long one. It also has these really nice sound effects.
I find this very impressive, especially for being made in what appears to be your own Java engine. Very cool. This is a good example of how to scope your project appropriately to a short deadline.
It would have been nice if the enemies had health bars and if there were some indication of from where the enemies would come next, but I understand that even just implementing the bare minimum is tough in a game jam.
This really deserves more ratings, but to get that, you really need to start rating more games yourself. Why not give mine a go? ;P It has a web build! (It takes a while to load, but it will start.)
I will recommend this game on the Discord server.
It's an interesting concept, and the unicorn thing is quite weird and interesting. Of course, making a sacrifice without knowing its purpose is very different from making one for a known reason. Unfortunately, I can't bring myself to find out what that's all about, because the game drags on too long, and it's just so repetitive. It's just so boring to calculate the most efficient route every time in an endless pattern of road choice, stats, shop. Sure, you can say no, but that's all it really is.
I know I'm being a bit harsh about it, but it feels too programmatic to me. Too robotic. Basically, it feels like a "give these inputs to win" type of game, and I don't like that.
Some other minor gripes are that the game is in the left corner, rather than the center, and that there are some spelling mistakes and grammatically awkward phrases and sentences. That's fine for an LD game, but it's something to be aware of.
So what did I like about it? I liked the idea of it, the intrigue of what happens at the "calamity", and the idea of resource management. I feel like this could've been so much better if it had some simple, pixelated graphics of a car on a lonely road, at a small pit stop, etc., and with some ambient audio.
In short, I don't like the execution, but I do very much like the idea. It's very innovative, and since I base my overall score on about the average of my other ratings, that raised this game up to a 3.5/5, though mostly just on innovation.
I really like your videos, and I enjoyed you playing my LD 41 and 42 games Rainy Day and Feedrun. You're very talented; this idea just needed more time and a different engine. Danke schön von Schweden! :)
Great game overall. Quite fun and fits the theme well.
A glitch I encountered was that sometimes the default direction vector (when no button is pressed) was not Vector2.zero, meaning I had to hold the opposing button not to fly into the wall and die. This also meant I couldn't move in that direction.
Refreshing the page fixed it, however.
I enjoy the concept, though the screen space is definitely quite cramped. The hijacking mechanic is rather innovative and interesting.
It's a rough diamond in my opinion.
I rated it 4 stars overall.
For transparency: I played the web version.
I played the Web build, and I rate this 3.5/5. It's a good game.
Quite spooky, indeed, and the monsters do look a lot cooler in this lighting than in the Blender screenshots you sent on the LD server. Very cool. The audio adds to the mood, and the game is very artistically and creatively cohesive.
The gameplay, however, is a bit confusing and flawed. It's good, at the very least as good as my game, but it's a bit opaque. While the controls were easy to gather, I could not figure out how to make either of the spells affect the monsters, nor could I figure out exactly what the objective/win state is. I didn't find avoid the monsters that hard, so I ran up to them with the spells, but I got killed.
Something that kept me from playing any further is the opening cutscene. I wish you could skip it. It's really annoying to sit through every time.
While it is interesting in concept, Bokeh is a bit confusing in practice. I can't quite figure out what firing actually does. It's as if there's a separate interface for that whenever you fire, but I don't know how to affect that.
The audio is very interesting. It definitely achieves the feeling of wonder and awe while still being ambient and subdued.
Cool game. From one near-sighted person to another: Good job!
Very fun game! I like the way the flower murdering sound effect interacts with the music.
It took me a short while to realise that the clouds in level 2(?) were platforms, but no big deal.
Looks like we both are a few ratings short of actually getting to see our result.
@blodyavenger Thank you! He dematerialises into the 11th dimension for the sake of longevity.
@flaterectomy Thanks for your feedback! I want to answer some of your questions and ask you some in return.
Firstly, the victory feedback. That is almost certainly the biggest flaw with my game. I couldn't quite get the dialog box to work properly. Because I used a coroutine to read through all of the dialog, I couldn't manage to clear the queue while it was being read. Rest assured that you did win if you saw the six cogs spinning in the machine once you came out of the final hut at the final platform. Due to me not figuring out a proper solution, it ended up going through the whole queue of every message it's ever had in there every time dialogue was triggered. This was not great, but I had to submit it like this. If I ever come back to this, this issue will be one of the most important ones to fix.
Secondly, the hitbox. I wasn't quite sure about that. I'm glad to get an opinion on that so I know to make it bigger in the future. I experienced the walking about the pickups as well.
Thirdly, the audio. I would've loved to add more sound effects and music as well, but I ran out of time. I actually spent at least two hours working on a song for it, but it ended up as a really noisy, low-quality recording of like 30 seconds of the nutcracker on an electric guitar. It would've lowered my ratings, so I didn't put it into the game. I agree that the audio is quite barren.
Now for my question: Several people's gripes with the slowdown feature. People want a speed up feature, but I don't understand why or quite in what way. What is it that's too slow? I really want to know so that if there is ever, say, The Time Gnelf 2, I can fix that.
@giovannibarrottu @driagonv You have to go into the hut on the final platform and you will come back to inside the snow globe. There is victory dialogue, but because of the messed up dialogue system, the impact is lessened to quite an extent.
Something that can be seen, though, is the set of cogs spinning in the machine back in the globe once you beat the game.
@flaterectomy I understand the issue now. I've been away from this site for a while, been busy.
My jumping is completely physically based and parabolic. It is scientifically accurate, but also not very appropriate for a video game. "Better jumping in 7 lines of code" or whatever the video's called comes to mind.
Thanks for the feedback! Sorry for the delay!
@secretpocketcat It does work. It just takes a long time, and you have to ignore an error.
@tgiant Thank you! That's the fault of it being physically accurate. Had it been more gamey, it would've felt much better. I just didn't have the time to do that.
@levidsmith You've got the full ending. There is dialogue for the ending, but the dialogue system is unfortunately broken. I probably could've fixed it with another day, but it was a school day anyway, and I wanted to enter into the compo.
As for the boxiness, well, he's meant to look low-poly.
@ava-skoog Thank you very much! I appreciate the advice and criticism a lot! I enjoyed your entry very much! LD is a great opportunity to learn, and you've just taught me a fair deal!
It took me a little bit to figure out how to play, but it's really clever! The graphics are very stylised and cohesive, the concept is very innovative, and the gameplay is quite fun. It might perhaps have done well with some music during gameplay as well, but that might also have been too lively.
The only real flaw I can think of is that the buttons for the map and the digging are right next to each other, and thus it's easy to hit the wrong one by accident, in the worst case ending your game without you really deserving it.
This is a brilliant take on the theme! You should be proud of your game! I wish I were this clever!
This is really cool! It feels like it had 3 professional dedicated artists, the same amount of musicians, and one intermediate programmer with a good spirit behind it. :P I love all the graphics and the soundtrack is fantastic. The fact that you managed to cram a voiced cutscene into your game boggles the mind! Well done! However, again, I did mention it seemingly having one intermediate programmer to the other two aspects' three each. There are some quirks with this game that I don't quite understand.
Firstly, you've removed the default resolution/setting option window that comes with Unity, but the game only runs in a rather small window. This makes it hard for me to see, not only on my 1080p monitors, but also on my main 4K one. I take it this is supposed to be part of the PS1 aesthetic you're going for, but it becomes impractical. Just setting the game to 4:3 in fullscreen would've been enough.
Secondly, the controls. They are weird. It's third-person tank controls and you can only move the camera by moving the player. This makes avoiding the enemies feel quite clumsy and way too difficult. This is especially true when you've accumulated some gems or coins. It is practically impossible to get up the sword with anything accumulated, which makes gathering anything rather pointless. I just hope the objective isn't to collect ALL of the gems and coins.
These two things make the game harder and more frustrating than it has any right to be. It's great and hindered by these two things. It's a shame, really. I've still given you mainly high ratings and I congratulate you three on your hard work! Well done!
Really engaging despite the slight clunk. The controls are a bit weird, the dub is slightly unintentionally funny, and the jumping is not fantastic. I recommend this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KiK0Aqtmzc Nonetheless, this game is really engaging. You keep wanting to play "just one more time". It would've been nice if you could restart the level without restarting the whole game, though. The graphics are superb and I love the music! Well done!
Excellent game! Very thematically appropriate, consistent, and dark. There isn't much more to say. It's just great (and so much better than Zoccer).
The itch link doesn't work.
It's well-produced but not that fun or appropriate to the theme. I can tell you didn't get the full time of the jam, but that's okay. With more time, this could've been really great.
Really good! Just wish you'd used a different font and been a bit more clear about what constitutes the life force. Both Terabyte04 and I thought the things on the side were the life force for a while.
Really amazing art and music! The health tradeoff mechanic, while simple, is perfect for this game and works really well with the theme. I did find using space to attack to be a bit weird, and the same goes for X, even if a bit less so. I also dislike it when these games are windowed, because I can't tell what's going on. Overall, however, well done! This game got high ratings from me! You should be proud of what you accomplished, all three of you!
Hello, future readers of this comment! I'm speaking to you from the other side!
...of St. Paddy's Day. :stuck_out_tongue:
@gruni Well, technically they are only AutoVore once they have been processed into it. They are called Honder otherwise and are the natives of this planet. I wanted to integrate more of the stages into it, but I ran out of time.
@eelstork The game is certainly flawed and if I had had just another hour, I would have spent it on adding more stuff, like proper models for at least the packaged AutoVore, as well as interaction with more stages of the process as I described in the narration. I simply ran out of time. However, for the record, the Honder (green doggos) are supposed to intersect. The same with the different types of AutoVore. Otherwise, the physics go crazy and you get a very unperformant explosion of doggos and stuff.
Anyway, thanks for playing and rating my game!
@hugonun Overscoping is everpresent, unfortunately.
@aterlamia Yeah, I ran out of time. I included the original concept for the game to try to make up for it, though.
@drskort I'm glad you found my game fun to play. I don't know if that's what you're referring to here, but the way the Honder and AutoVore intersect without a collision is intentional. I know it looks a bit weird, but it's the most effective and efficient way of eliminating exploding clusters of prefabs, where a bunch of Honder or whatever it may be intersect with each other and then explode everywhere with a chaotic energy.
@borys @ivan-garcia-filho It's true that the game is too easy and that's something I regret, but I can at least tell you why it happened. The time was about 2:53 AM local time on the final day. I was almost done with the game, but I had about 7 minutes to do 7 different things, and so I had to compromise. In my tiredness, I set it to give you S300 for every single piece of AutoVore while the only three pieces of machinery that I had time to make interactable only drew S10 per second and only rarely needed to be on.
Just as with the rest of these suggested features, if it weren't for the 72 hour time limit, I would have added these things, and I like to think I've learned from this and made myself a better game developer for it, just like with every other LD I've done. There is actually a reaction sound on the Honder when you click on them. They pant. It might not be very loud to you, I'm not sure.
Thanks to all of you for playing and rating my game!
While this game is quite rudamentary and not very polished, it is a positive result and a success given the context of its creation. Yes, the music is really obnoxious, the movement and shooting are simplistic, and it's all quite rough, but it shows potential, ambition, and drive. Since I know you personally, I know your history with game dev so far, and it looks good. In fact, I couldn't have created something like this when I was your age. If you keep working, keep improving, and keep trying, all with a critical eye and with accepting that while it's okay that you are where you are now, it's crucial for you to keep improving, you will develop plenty and become a great programmer. You just have to have patience, self-discipline, and truly try your best * 1.1f;
Pretty good! I just wish it were fullscreen and that it wasn't so hard. It feels unfair to be booted back to the start of the game for one mistake. I think this game suffers from dev difficulty syndrome. You get used to how it works and expect everyone else to be as good as you are. The controls are a bit jank and the music loop could be longer. It fits well with the theme, though.
Wow! What a polished and focused game! This feels almost like a finished product! I kept wanting to play and play. The fact that you have fully-featured settings, including difficulty settings was absolutely astonishing! This came from just one person! Amazing! I played it like I tend to play Doom. The difficulty didn't seem to suffer from devitis, either. It seems appropriate.
This feels like a proper late '90s FPS but with the polish of modern game dev, especially for the time constraint. I don't know how much FTE QuakeWorld does for you, but still! Great! I was a bit disappointed with how subdued the shotgun noise was and how mellow the soundtrack was compared to the gameplay.
For 24 hours, this is great. However, such as with many LD games, it's more of a testament to the achievements and newfound skills of the dev than an amazing game in itself. The gameplay is pretty tedious, especially with these annoying AddForce() controls. It's still good and very gamey.
The graphics are very nice and stylised. The music is good and fits the mood of the game quite well, but just isn't very long. A longer loop would have been nice, but I know how much goes into these things, so I get it.
Overall, well done! You did a good job, especially considering the extra time constraint. In fact, it took me about 10 hours from when the jam started to when I started programming anything worthwhile, and even so, that original concept was scrapped the next day in favour of the much more fun gameplay of what S:C:U:M - The AutoVore Division ended up as. I did manage to repurpose quite a few assets, such as the conveyor belts and some scripts/parts of scripts, though.
Again, well done!
Really fun and professional game! You can tell that you guys are a serious studio with a big Steam game on the way! This deserves the attention it gets! The graphics are extremely stylised and cute, be it the art style, the shaders, or the animations. It's very cute. The premise is simple and you hit the nail on the head about it being relaxing. I will say it's not perfect. I had a few bugs where the robots were a bit confused and kept going in random directions and turning after a little bit, as well as the sheeps (^-^) going in circles in a corner by the little stream. However, on the whole, very good. Now, I will say, there is an issue with the web version. I believe I had 77 sheeps left to throw when I got this error: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/477349680586555392/573504608605831188/unknown.png I don't know if this is present on Windows as well, but it certainly is annoying. Nonetheless, fun game, well-made, extremely professional! Well done!
I really like this game! It's intuitive, concise, and fits perfectly with the theme! The graphics are wonderful, and the concept is just really clever! Of course, it can improve. It's an LD game. However, you've done amazingly! Definitely one of the best games of this LD!
I couldn't get up to the first door. At first I thought touching cucumbers gave you another jump, but that turned out to just be a double jump. I don't really get this game, I'm sorry. It looks really cool and sounds nice, but you don't let us rate your game in those categories.
Cool concept, but a bit tedious and obtuse at times in practice.
Really funny and personality-filled game! The controls for the branches are a bit weird and could have done with some highlighting as to which branch is selected, as well as just making them go up and down with W and S instead of A and D. However, overall, this was really fun! I like this game! Well done! The graphics are super cute and the OwO-compatible tree just adds to the charm!
Haha very cute and fun! The realisation of this being about what is gained from mutually beneficial trade, even in an offset chain, was a really cool one. Well done!
This game has a lot of potential and it feels very gamey. However, the main issue with it for me is the way zoomed out view. I feel like this kind of pixel scaling would have worked if my monitor were the same resolution as one of those IBM PCs from the early '90s that this looks like it came from. Alas, my monitor is 4K. I think you need to set your pixels per unit to 16 or 8 or something like that.
Regardless of that, it's a pretty hard platformer by my skill levels. Mind you, I'm not amazing at these games, but still. It looks to have a lot of potential, but I lost the will to keep on playing after a while of not making that much progress. I noticed and liked the way that shooting uses up your health, but I found it a bit hard to notice, especially with how tiny the UI was for me. Are there health packs or something later on? I couldn't seem to refill my ammo once it was depleted.
The moddable aspect is really cool for an LD game. I like that. Maybe it's not the thing to prioritise in this type of development, but it's still very cool. I don't think spending time on that is what caused the issues with your game, especially considering how quick it would be to fix the ones I've mentioned (and noticed). Overall, would be more fun if I could see what's going on with my old grandpa eyes, but well done!
Oh my god! This is so weird but so fun! It's probably fun because it's weird. I like it! I was able to appreciate it even more than the majority of LD participants because I am Swedish. "Ge mig!" :P Anyway, this is of course not filled with activities. It's more just art, and for that, it's amazing. I could see someone like Vinny/Joel of Vinesauce fame playing and reacting to this. This is good stuff.
Well done!
This was a fun game, and very Phil Strahl. I enjoyed it, though the humour could get a bit too insecure at times. It did live up to the theme very well, ergo the 5 stars it got there. I like the art style, and it'd be cool to see a bigger game from you with it at some point, although with some animation as well. The camera having the player at the same screenspace position all the time was a bit meh, along with the slow character speed. Then again, I understand what this game is. It's funny, and most of its value are in its adherence to the theme, its humour, and its cool art style. Reminds me a bit of 10000 BC, your LD 37 (?) caveman game, at least in how the main character looks.
It's a nice concept, though as you said, it needs to be worked on some more to be proper fun. It took me a while to figure out how to get to the next level, and I actually got to level 3, then I got tired of playing, honestly. There are some issues:
*The hitboxes of the boxes can be rather inconsistent.
The way their physics work, when they stop, why, and how they'll get launched, are all a bit unclear. To be clear, I put the boxes in the pit in the first level in order to get across, building an incomplete bridge. I don't know if that was intended or not, but the blocks stop, seemingly randomly, at various points in this pit.
There wasn't any direction inside the game to tell me what to do. For a full game, of course, the first level at the very least, must really hold the player's hand in most games.*
**END OF ISSUES**
I really like the kinds of games where you construct your own path, create things yourself to move forward, and don't just jump. I like the visuals. It's very simply, and the high contrast can hurt your eyes when you're playing at 2:30 AM like I was, but on the whole, the graphics are nice and could definitely be something iconic to you if you so desire. I don't know if you're a really talented artist when it comes to detailed work or not, so maybe this style is too simple for you to associate yourself with.
Conclusion: Have more confidence in yourself, your abilities, and your games! Not only is it appropriate, but it is the only way of progressing and getting somewhere in your career, your skills, your life in general. This is a good game, or at the very least, a good base of one. Good night, gamer!
Nice game, man! It was a little opaque to me, but it made sense after a little while. I learned quick that I needed to keep some parts to upgrade with, and that it didn't need to have four legs, a torso, and a head in order to work. It's not really my kind of game, but it is a lot of people's game. This is one of those games that many people would probably play on their breaks at work or school and get really good at. Well done!
@nerdysl0th I haven't heard about this error. What is it?
@flaterectomy Unfortunately, it takes too long to load in the web version. It's a video. It's essentially just what is written right below the game on the itch page.
@starblast Oh, you ask too much too fast. What is coming out on Halloween, however, is Cool School. You can find everything about it on helmersoft.epizy.com!
Well done, Yoris! I agree with @nerdysl0th about that stuff. My game has just 5 levels (not including the main menu and ending), and that's pretty normal. The mechanic is fun, though it took me a little while to figure it out. I thought I couldn't progress past level 2 for a bit there. This has full game potential, no doubt. It's not the most innovative or bizarre idea, but it's executed well. You should be proud of this game. Also, 5/5 in all *cat*egories for that cute cat at the end! ;P
Another avant-garde masterpiece from ditto! You always have the best graphics, and usually the most creativity. The gameplay wasn't that exciting. It took me a while to realise that you have to dodge the bright rocks, and not the others. I wish I couldn't fly off the screen and die, either. Otherwise, cool game. I agree with Appox about the intro, too. The mood was excellent, the graphics great, and it took me a while to realise that this was not just two dudes with their pps out (kinda hot ngl :flushed:) doing nothing. I kept trying to press A and nothing else. :P
Loved the graphics, as everyone agrees. The game was a bit short, though. Short and pretty weird. I wish the FOV had been higher and the camera controls had been the other way around, but overall, nice. Weird, but nice. Feels very gamey. That's something to chew on.
Pretty fun, though the memes were a bit overbearing and not that funny. The gameplay is also very difficult. It seems to be a bit of a developer game in that it's too hard for people who didn't make it and know the ultimate strategy to it. You seem to have to be perfect in order to save a significant amount of people. Pretty good overall, though.
This is really cool. It really is Flappy Bird 3D. However, I noticed that I could easily cheat by flying to the top of my range and flying above everything. Some more polish, a road between the houses, and this is a masterpiece.
Kinda quirki doe! :flushed:
Just be careful you don't piss off people thinking that you're putting a virus on their PC.
Amazing! Lots of talent there! It was extremely immersive.
It's very interesting visually and the concept is cool. As a musician myself, I enjoyed this concept, though it got a bit repetitive in practice. That said, it is clear that all of you are talented game developers. Well done! The mood was really relaxing. I just kept forgetting about the fire.
@shawarmaexpress Ah, yes. The early bird gets the unpublished itch page. Try again now. The build has some issues not present in the editor, however.
It's a well-made tower defence game, but it's a bit long-winded for an LD game. It's not the most innovative thing in the world, but I think you might have a commercial hit if you work on this some more.
Fun game, though the meta commentary was not always accurate. I just don't know how you could possibly beat that boss. Whomst'd'veever does that is a true GAMER MOMENT.
Very fun game! I enjoyed holding down so many buttons. I truly felt my skills were put to the test. This was a very creative idea and you executed it well.
It's a fun game, though it lacks some of the ambience that would make it feel more imposing. This is partly due to the lack of contrast in the lighting, as well as the somewhat irritating music. I enjoy throwing the sticks around, but it took a while before I realised I had to light them on fire.
The particle effects are nice and the graphics are pretty great overall. It's a nice and cohesive style and it fits that "polished retro" look quite well.
In one round/attempt, it seemed that no enemies would spawn, no matter what. I don't know what would cause this, but it's a minor issue since you can just refresh the page.
Took a second to figure it out, but it's a good game. The pixel scale of the graphics is a bit inconsistent, but that's how it goes in an LD game. It is impressive how far it goes, as can be seen in a previous screenshot, and I like the idea of collecting resources as a more interactable process. Almost inspirational. That's really good.
I almost beat it, but then it crashed! So frustrating! It becomes pretty methodical rather quickly, but it surprisingly sucks you in a lot despite having no fullscreen mode or particularly amazing graphics. The music is nice.
Oh my god. Wow. These graphics are literally AAA. How are you guys so talented? The game is peaceful too. It has more gameplay than a lot of LD games, and yet the gameplay is not the focus, nor does the game feel stressful or intense in that way. I wish I could create graphics like this. The only issue I found was that the poems faded out a bit fast, though I was reading them out loud for the stream. Amazing.
It was fun, though only once I realised I had to use my arrows keys to move properly. A and D move the character as well.
Really nice graphics. I didn't expect the execution to be this great. I do wish there were a respawn timer, though. That and a few seconds of invincibility when you first respawn.
@namidasai There's lot of truth in that. When I started on this, I had already decided I wouldn't make an entry for this time around and I had lost about half the jam. The point of it is the scrolling, unlike what @sisyphean-games thought. It's about a timeline of events that unfold. I would definitely have liked to add more to the scrolling, but there wasn't any time. I was proud enough of getting the phone screen to work, to be honest.
This whole thing is something I would like to explore in a big title later as a way of giving some backstory.
The putting down of the phone was meant to signify giving up on the pointless and damaging nature of social media and looking outside the screen.
I'd really like to know what you would've done to make the scrolling more addictive, as you said. Other than the scrolling being a bit sluggish, which was unfortunately inevitable if I wanted the timeline to be on the phone screen, rather than on top of it or something, I don't really get it.
The inability to scroll back is deliberate. The scrolling is meant to signify a large span of time and misinformation is an important aspect of it that couldn't be so successful if you could go back and check what happened. Ergo "The Leader NEVER said ...". It is supposed to invoke a desolate, weary, hopeless, and oppressive mood, which is the main point of the game. I figured that points, gameplay, control in other words, would go against that.
I appreciate the feedback and I really want more details because I want to improve this really cool mechanic. Don't apologise for criticism. It is valueable and if it upset me, that would be my loss.
This is a really clever idea and it is pretty entertaining. The problem comes when your past self kills the impostor because he's in the same spot as the guy you killed last time. It also gets a bit wild when you go into the door too quickly. These are things to do with polish and can be fixed. I like the play on the Among Us idea and it's really interesting. It's pretty hard to see the characters closely enough with the small, unchangeable window, though. A higher resolution would have been better.
Great job, though! You can credit people who helped you in your game settings by adding them to your team, if they have an itch account as well.
The biggest issue with these sorts of games is the evident bias that comes from assigning right or wrong to political opinions, and it becomes tiresome to read the to me rather outlandish similes for real-world events, and certainly the strawmen you put on. It becomes very easy to win because the game is really just an "agree with me" simulator. This is why my game doesn't have any upvotes or downvotes that the player can interact with. All of this took the fun out of the game and it made it very uninteresting to refresh the page. I felt like I was the main character of my game.
This is not a fault on you as a game developer. It is programmatically sound, looks pretty good, and has had a lot of effort put into it. However, this is not something you should expand upon into a full release unless you want to rather permanently divide your audience and make yourself a political actor, rather than just a game developer or a storyteller.
I don't think there's much more to it, so I will finish with this. I compare our games because they have a good share in common, but a fundamental difference is the value and role of social media in each game. In mine, it is an oppressive, misleading, unhealthy piece of work that does essentially all harm and no good. This is the clear narrative of the game. In yours, while I find some unhealthy tendencies typical of social media, just as in my own, it is clear that in your game, social media does not receive any blame for this, rather the problem is groups of people who have opinions. I think this misses an opportunity to take a step back and look at just what we're doing and if we truly can justify the abstraction between the real world, especially as it has been in the past, and how social media makes us think and act.
Pretty cool. It's fun to shoot those aliens despite the lack of gun graphics, but it really seems like the only reasonable strategy is to evacuate right away. These enemies keep multiplying and they never stop. That's an unwinnable battle. The engine seems to dislike DPI scaling. I run 4K at 150% and it didn't work right when I set the .ini file to 3840x2160 and fullscreen. I'll attach a [screenshot](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/477349680586555392/964852130387218482/unknown.png) here to show you what it did with that.
I like the art style. The bright white, sort of glowing hills. Even though it's simple and your engine is limited, you managed to make some nice-looking graphics. It was interesting how you showed the pathfinding lines, but it makes sense in this game, especially since you have to patrol such a large area.
I didn't like the unskippable intro or it being the only place in the game to figure out how to evacuate people or the Esc to instaquit.
Good job!
I like this! It's pretty fun, but it has quite a few glitches, like the movement bug, and it isn't that clear what to do sometimes. I didn't realise I could attack the moving vines on the tiles as well as the vine guys. I like the range on the sword, but the camera is too zoomed in. The UI is not properly scaled when doing different resolutions (I did fullscreen at 4K). That's not too important, though. I like the music. I think you have experience making music because this was good musically and produced well. It fit the game very well. The growling sound effects are pretty bad, though. This is one of those LD games that could go on to become a proper game on Steam, even if it might be pretty inexpensive once there. Good job!
Good job on getting an LD game done! Not easy! To be honest, I could tell that you're artists first and foremost. I come from the other side of things myself and I wonder who fares better during LD: artists or programmers. Anyway, this is an interesting concept, but the implementation didn't work out. Winning is almost just a matter of clicking once, maybe once more to hold the moose back a little. The grammar can be a bit weird in the level intro texts, but it's still fun to read. Your art is great, though, and you did think of a very cool idea that just needs more love and polish. Individual obstacles, rather than just turning them all on/off at once, some more depth, and it'd be a much better game! Good luck and may your future endeavours be ever greater!
SPOILERS: I played through it and while I won't be sour or all negative, I won't be as blindly positive as others have been. I like the graphics. The mix between more detailed pixel art and flat-shaded stuff is perfect. Best part of the game. The music is really enjoyable too. Atmospheric and rich. However, the game is just TOO SLOW. I had to spend thousands of mouse clicks of my MX 518 to get through the game and there was no way I was going to do a second playthrough to get the other ending. We need to be able to buy more than one unit at a time. At the start, I felt confused because it was so very slow until I started buying a lot of fruit pickers. Then, later, it was too slow to move the narrative along. If this had been a commercial game, the pacing would've been more appropriate, but here, it felt maybe 5-10 times too slow.
It's hard in these variable-increasing games like clickers and RPGs to get the progression right, but the army part was just pointless. I had well over 100 guards, a bunch of walls and cannons, and it was literally instaclick to win. Then it was just sit back and wait for the next stage of watering. I didn't quite understand how to water the tree at first, but I figured it out pretty quickly. I'm not sure if watering the tree is necessary to increase the growth rate of the fruit, or to progress the story, and when something requires such substantial effort, that should be more clear. Moving on to the story, I think it's interesting, but I got ending 2 because it didn't sit right with me. I see the euphemism being made and I do not intend to let my political views affect my opinion of the story. However, it just didn't seem believable. I mean, the killing was only for defense. I was employing 1036 fruit pickers and 800 water carriers. I was creating lots of jobs. I can see the water being an issue depending on just where this tree is located, but if this is about the euphemism, the rivers grow larger as the wealth of the kingdom increases. And then, the fruits of this magical tree being the only thing to eat shouldn't be a problem. It is the fruit of our labour and it is everything we gain. If this were merely a literal fruit tree, it would not suck up enough resources to be unprofitable, and it would be far from the kingdom's only investment. We'd be buying orchards along with the aqueducts and walls. It's pretty hard to keep the euphemistic from the literal. In the city they mention, how do the people there create food, before the water dries up? Do they work? Or does it just... *grow on trees?*
Still, I don't mean to end on a sour note. I will again commend you on the art and music, and the idea is very cool. It's just that the story is a bit rough and not believable, and though it obviously isn't a large game, the less you have to say, the more important each word you speak is. Not that I believe myself to be the story master or anything. My game has a pretty low amount of dialogue in its context and part of that limit came down to my imagination. It's pretty cheesy too. :P Anyway, good job!
If it still says "*Completed in time for the compo, but decided to mark as a Jam game anyway.*", it's because for some reason it won't go away.
@doomshmuck @woetnie @diego-escalante Turn that sh- up! :sunglasses: @mateusboga @binroot @rosymaple @diego-escalante @melik-cagan-oduncuoglu Thanks to all of you for telling me you like the voice acting! I got a professional microphone not long before this LD, but I felt like the voice acting was a bit dopey. I've basically pinged everyone already, so I won't bother with that anymore.
Thank you all for your feedback! It's very fun to see people react to the game, and I've got quite good feedback this time around! There are definitely some great suggestions here - benign messages, slowing the game down more, waiting to make the prompt spawning really logarithmic until reputation drops below a certain number, and the volume, and there are definitely things I would've done differently if this game had had a longer development time. There is a certain conflict between thematics and fun gameplay and I can see that more clearly with your feedback.
The idea is that suppression *inevitably* fails and as it says in the ending: "it doesn't make much difference". Initially, the messages started increasing in frequency even faster, making the difference between a good and a bad performance even smaller. I didn't want to make a long LD game, so I was happy with the <2 min gameplay, and made sure to put tiny, nicely formatted fractions of a second, on the screen. I'd probably ramp up the acceleration after a certain reputation threshold, but if they all came at the exact same speed before that, it'd be boring. Maybe randomising the time a little before the threshold is reached would work. Or I could tie the rate more directly to the reputation number. **The end time is not scripted, but since the increase in frequency between each prompt spawn is exponential, the differences are pretty minor.**
@zettelkasten is right that it has a lot more potential for story, and this is something I said before any feedback even came in. **Unfortunately, by the time adding more prompts was an easy job, there was very little time left.** Maybe if I'd gone another day, but I felt terrible staying up that late as it was. I wanted to make a compo game anyway.
The volume is loud. **That's a part of the game. It's supposed to be uncomfortable and overwhelming when your tyrannic regime is confronted by the truth.** Great example of the conflict between thematics and gameplay. I would not do this in most games.
As for benign messages and slowing the game down enough where you can read the prompts: **I did consider adding benign messages for you to sort through, and it would add more depth to the gameplay, but I didn't want to expand the scope this way.** The way I work, if I add benign messages, I need to add different consequences for censoring/not censoring them, where censoring them would harm your reputation, but not censoring would help it. This would require much more balancing and testing and I did not want to overscope. I also had trouble coming up with the messages, so spreading my imagination thinner wouldn't have helped the game. **I also didn't want the feeling of blindly following orders and not being able to hear the other side out to be diluted.** My LD 44 game, [S:C:U:M: - The AutoVore Division](https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/scum-the-autovore-division) has the regime pawn face personal consequences for failing, and the same would happen to the player in this game if it were not just a simulation. That way, the censorship affects the grunt workers of the regime as well. **Yes, there is lore. I will eventually release something that will blow your minds.**
Thanks again! I'm glad you like the voice acting, graphics, and general theme!
This is definitely one of the most well put together games this jam! The presentation is great. Like others have said, the graphics are fantastic and fit the mood very well. Beautiful pixel art. It's also a fun game and not too long, so people have time to finish it during play+rate without no-lifeing it. Great job!
This is a pretty fun game exactly as it is. The shooting feels pretty solid and I like there being high scores. You did pretty well all in all, but there is a lot of missed potential. I am reviewing it from the perspective of a game dev and meathead.
First, in terms of gameplay: 1. You should indicate in some way which zombros are carrying dumbbells so you know who to prioritise. 2. You should make the spawn acceleration curve less steep, as others have said. 3. You should zoom the camera out farther or make the gym smaller. It's okay if we see zombros spawning. With more time, you could add an animation for that anyway. 4. You could add further attacks using the gym equipment, as already suggested. For example, you could throw weights at the zombros and it'd do more damage if it's heavier. I know that adds a lot to the scope of the game, especially as you'll need to create a generic weapon motor and controller and use polymorphism. 5. Kind of not nice to make the "save high score" button the same as the "replay game" button.
Secondly, in terms of graphics: 1. The zombros are NOT NEARLY SWOLE ENOUGH. What are these, DYEL zombies? Pfft. 2. The graphics are pretty crude overall. Some more appropriate sprites to make it feel more like a real place would make the game feel much more professional. 3. There needs to be more variation. You could have barbells, curl bars, loose weight plates, atlas stones, etc. Probably not treadmills because "Pfft, cardio.".
Thirdly, in terms of audio: 1. It deserves more voicelines. The voice acting is pretty good and convincing as a swole zombie. It's just way too few. 2. The music doesn't feel good on the ears. It just pops and pops and it doesn't help that the game is loud by default.
Finally, in terms of thematics: 1. This game really could have benefitted from knowledge of fitness culture. It is ripe for references to all sorts of people and things: Zyzz, Jujimufu, Brian Shaw, Eddie Hall, Thor (strongman as a whole), Kyriakos Grizzly, Back Guy... the zombies could say "'mirin, brah?", "I'm very excited", "I'm very, very dehydrated!", "I'm gonna knock your 'ead off!", "AAAAAA!", etc. You could put funny exercise equipment in the gym, like 400 kg on a bar atop some chairs and even more plates, for zercher shrugging with, atlas stones, No. 4 CoC grippers, etc.
I'll have to admit, it makes me want to make something similar, but then I'd also have to license the rights to each and every character in it. And maybe you'd be mad with me and want to fite me irl, but idk if you even lift. :sunglasses:
I don't think I've ever seen this type of game on LD before! Pretty cool, but there isn't much content or feedback. I enjoy being able to track high scores between all players, but the actual gameplay is a bit of a let-down. I expected it to be more like those WPM typing tests, only competitive, and I think it would've been better off that way. It's not very fun to type the same few characters over and over. Maybe you chose to do it this way because it's very hard to correct typing mistakes when you don't know what you've written, but there's a clear and better solution to that. Gotta mimic those WPM tests. Longer texts, WPM result, your typing being visible, and it'd get much better ratings from me. The competitive nature of this game is the best part.
Funny and creepy at the same time. It's a bit simple and some of the controls are a bit awkward, like the aforementioned right mouse button thing. However, it's a fun idea with cool graphics and it could become one of those trendy horror games that are popular on YouTube with more gameplay features, incentives, and polish.
Haha. I like the "known bugs" section. Now that's a real man's game. Just slam yourself in the opposite direction and the velocity will balance out! It's up to us to straighten it out. Cool game!
Interesting concept. Reminds me of that sonic fan game where you're bringing eggs to the Dr. Robotnik creature. A little bit unpolished in some places, like sound effect implementation, but that is to be expected with an LD game. I'm not good at this game, but it's cool!
Man does that guy walk slowly or what? Hehe, anyway. Nice game! I got stuck on the second level because even though I got both the slingshot and the bunch of roaches thing (the only two collectible things in the level), I was not able to throw anything into the window. I'm a bit confused there. I liked the click-through cutscenes, but there should be a "press any key"-type prompt to make it clear that the game hasn't just frozen or something.
The graphics are nice. Most sprites I saw are pretty clean and keep to the same style. Reminds me a little bit of Earthbound.
The music fits pretty well. Kind of '80s: very relaxed, innocent, and MIDI. I like it. It really adds to the mood and makes the game more fun. Rest of the audio serves the game well too.
It's a conventional but still creative interpretation of the theme. You're not stuck in the current game dev conventions about what's appropriate to make, and you've created something original because of it. I had more fun with this game than with most I've played for LD 50.
The Blubs are very cute and it really feels like an alien planet, but the interaction is a bit diffuse. It took me a while to figure out they're on predetermined paths and will go to eat eventually. It's also very hard to keep track of the predators. There should be a way to switch between each blub/wide view directly instead of just cycling through them. Very innovative game.
I had a lot of fun with this! It wouldn't have been nearly as entertaining if you hadn't been aussies! Few minor issues: the gun doesn't scale with the size of the screen, so it was just a picture in a small part of the screen. I didn't realise talking to the banana man over and over was how to progress the game at first. I also [got stuck](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/477349680586555392/964856702635749386/unknown.png) atop the left side of the stairs, behind the columns, once.
Anyway, it was fun to move around and build up momentum. Any faster and it would've become unwieldy. The banants were possible to fend off, but it felt like when I got hit, the wave ended, every time. I think the gun is a bit slow between shots and that's annoying.
The music is fantastic. At least one of you makes music professionally to some extent. I liked the difference between passive and battle music, but there was no interlude between them. Regardless, I did bob my head a little.
SPOILER FOR FEW-MINUTE LD GAME BELOW:
I liked the twist and the boss at the end, but I shot him off the side of the map instantly and thought I'd outwitted the devs, but then a bunch of banan'ts came around and the game faded to black. I didn't know what "leaving" meant anyway.
"You will not last 20 seconds playing this game!" Absolutely glorious! Hilarious. Love the use of the music. A little simple in mechanics, but I know it's a lot of work to implement bullet hell already. Hard game imo. The confidence and radiance of this masterpiece is brilliant.
Interesting and the use of Blender in this way is rare, but overall not a very stable game.
Interesting game. The post-effects are a little bit extreme, but the graphics overall remind me of '60s sci-fi, early Star Trek, with solid colours and sharp edges.
The idea is cool, but the execution less so. Sloppy controls, high mouse sensitivity, a bit hard to figure out how to play at first. It took me a while to figure out I was the chef. It's a shame you didn't make the snail's audio 3D with how easy that is in Unity. Just one slider. Anyway, with better controls, more thought out orders that get harder over time (but maybe earn you more money), and more polish, this could be cool, which is why I rated you highly on innovation. Cooking games aren't new. I'm sure they've done FPS cooking games before too. However, this snail element in combination with the rest of it really makes it unique. Hardly anybody is going to play this version for long enough to get to the exit, though. Especially since it's so easy to die and have to restart. The graphics were generally good, but the snail is pretty rough and most models are not animated. I know it's a game jam and everything, but it still affected the feel of the game. The models feel like they were done from photo references, which is a good technique. Good job, but work on polish, the big picture of progression, and finding the fun.
Cool game! It's fun to go through the caves. I've always liked this setting.
Jo, nu har jag varit på bonnegårda en god lång stund, men ingenting händer. Koa är helt från vettet och fåret alldeles löjligt. Hönsen trodde jag dessutom skulle börja bokstavera ut ena riktigt läbbiga ord. Jag samlade iallafall ihop 12471 riksdaler, men inte kom banken. Måste jag bara vänta? Känns som dåligt planerat. Blev lite långtråkigt efter ett tag, även om kons galna dans och långa spene var underhållande.
@coda-highland You need to wait for the cow to get bigger, then pull its teet into the bucket and click again.
This is very cool and has a few things in common with my game, but there are a few things that unfortunately make a big negative impact on the game. The menus almost look professional, but they don't scale with your screen resolution. The graphics look realistic for the most part, but the game places high demands on the computer. The concept of driving away from the cops (no doubt one of my officers) where visibility and speed are factors is a great one, but it's difficult to tell when each feature is recharged and you can barely tell a difference when you use the light feature. There ought to be some sort of overlay (with consistent style) that tells you that they are recharged. An example of a game that does this (with nitro) is MotorStorm: Arctic Edge. The cop cars are cool, but they are nothing more than a sign that you have failed. If you see them, you have lost. The object of the game is staying on the road. I think the vision is too obscured, to where it feels almost out of your hands whether you win or lose, but this only marginally. When you do lose, it's anticlimactic. Just a simple game over menu. Even just pasting it over the gameplay with a transparent background would've made it better, or you could've made some sort of sequence/image to represent your apprehension. Like a newspaper talking about your arrest. If only there were some hope for the player character, there would be more of a reason to continue playing. A hope of something new happening, maybe of getting away, or anything like that. Here, it's more like the old theme of "Delaying the Inevitable".
I think that so long as you focus on game development over excuses, something not everyone can do, you're a promising team of developers. This game definitely has potential as more than an LD game, because it doesn't do well as one. It needs these crucial details sorted out, your engine difficulties the same, and you could have something worth buying.
@jk5000 No, it's not Polish NOOOOOO! LOL. It's a Swedish police car. :)
@jk5000 Vulvo :flushed:
@baylock Yeah, that sure was a factor...
@vozme Yeah, this game made it clear to me from the beginning that it was destined for something greater than just being an LD game, so I saw LD more as a way of showing off what I had done. It is definitely unfinished, but so are most LD games. The difference is that most people spend hours stressfully, and as a result, poorly, implementing features to support the illusion that it is a complete game. Quick main menu, game states, features you didn't have time to get working, and audio that isn't nearly as good as the game deserves, or you are capable of producing given more time. I decided I didn't want to waste my time doing these things, because they would more or less just have to be deleted before I could continue working on the game. It may hurt me in the ratings, but that's not my main purpose. I just spent about 11 hours that weekend making a new game that made me happy to make, that I enjoyed making more than I've enjoyed making any game for a long time, and I wanted to share it with the world. I am happy. I accomplished what I set out to do. :slight_smile: I hope to have this as an actual full game on Steam in time for the Christmas season.
Good job getting the turn-based stuff down. Not my go-to genre, but this is competently made.
I really liked your take on the theme. Very intelligent.
It's pretty disorienting this way, and the platforming itself isn't that great. It's hard to tell where to go, and the jump button shouldn't be up.
Good stuff: All the graphics, concept of exploring 4 different planets searching for artifacts, music, sound effects.
It was a very intelligent take on the theme. I made it 4 minutes and 10 seconds. What it needs is a visual indication that you've moved on to a new minigame, because sometimes it's the same type and you don't even realise. It also needs more minigames. It's a great foundation, though.
There is some jankiness going on here. It's pretty annoying, because the game itself could be really cool. Just looking at that sheet and trying to keep up with what they're saying, the timer, all while they're doing that voice mumble thing is very very disorienting, not to mention the gavel is unwieldy. There's no reason to be able to strike it in two dimensions. Its hitbox is also small, so it's almost impossible to use it instinctively. It's also pretty unforgiving, with no warning when you're low on time. There's no "restart" button either. There are some typoes and even more grammatical errors as well. Good concept, doesn't work nearly as well as it should. Fix these things and make a better game out of it.
I liked the graphics, especially of the 3D assets, but I had a bit of a hard time with gameplay.
It's too fast! It's a shame they specified 10 seconds in the theme, because for everything you need to do here, 10 seconds is too harsh. Besides, moving the right pieces in the right order without being able to bonk them until it's all assembled if you want all the pieces together. Then you have to paint, and then take the picture. I think you should've make the current tool automatic, and the same for the photo stage. When you've assembled all the pieces, clicking the toy automatically bonks it, and when you've bonked it, you're immediately selecting colours.
I did enjoy this game enough to choose to spend my time writing extensively about it. I liked the theme and I love Christmas in general. I think I intended to make a game like this at some point, but I never did. The "Santa's Workshop" stuff. Anyway, the graphics are nice and appealing. I don't care so much about inconsistent pixel scaling or such, especially with the short deadline - the graphics were nice, pleasant to look at, fit the theme, and didn't get in the way. The music was a clever choice. It's easy to invoke Christmas sentiments through public domain songs, but you thought to make it faster to convey the stress. Good choice. I thought the game was pretty funny, too. On their own, things like "no pressure" and "bonk" aren't exactly the pinnacle of humour, but everything was well-utilised. I am impressed, and I think you are a competent game dev. Now go waste your time like I am if you want ratings!
This is one of my favourites, tbh. I wish for things like fullscreen, etc., and it can be disorienting once you start moving the save points around because it all goes so fast. You have to strategically die when the spawn point is moved and you have to keep track of which is which. However, this felt fun, to hurry to the next portal/save point with the platforming. More polish, with mario-style jumping, and it's a good game.
You can only submit one game per LD
I got past the obstacles on my second try, but nothing more happened. No more levels? No "congrats"? I is winnar? Perfectly adequate platformer, but I didn't see a story. I must have missed something. The colliders for the platformers are a bit weird, at least on the edges of them. Idk how they're made in Construct, but it's a little issue.
bnuy
They're very cute and sweet and I almost don't even want to keep the bnuys out!
@robean skill issue
nah jk I appreciate it. I considered randomly moving or lerping the aim a little after every placement, but I just never ended up doing it. I hear ya, and I would've remedied these things if this were a bigger project. Thanks for the feedback and I'm glad you enjoyed it.
@asilvers But that'd optimise all the fun out of it. The aiming is done with the mouse movement. Imagine the scene from the top. Your mouse position is your reticle position. Thanks, anyway!
@illia-kryvolapov In the code, the height of the preview present/present emitter is meant to be the second most recent present plus an offset of, I believe, 1.5 meters (5 feet). I'm glad you enjoyed the stacking. That really is the main appeal of this little game. It's fun to stack them and watch them fall down.
@fupi Yes, I talked about that with others in the LD voice chat while I was making the game, but I never ended up making any such challenge. With more time, I definitely would've. My ratings are probably gonna reflect that. Oh well. I'm glad you enjoyed all the things that you did. :)
You have a great future ahead of you in game development if you want it!
I won't talk about the balancing issues, the inconsistent wording on the different options, or any other results of sleep deprivation and limited time. What matters is the core of this game. I told you I wouldn't be able to play this because it's not how my brain works, but I was actually able to play it just fine, and *I even felt a little proud of my colony*. I had a very food-biased colony. https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/753365892255186947/1158588764902404226/image.png?ex=651ccb5f&is=651b79df&hm=e16ea83be82993d60a67634468a83185397f5c4d0be015b601b6e5080ad2244c&
What you need to do is build upon your skills and develop your understanding of the "why" behind each decision and practice in game dev. This game could be a great learning opportunity to figure out what makes a game great because it has a very strong foundation, but it does not stick the landing if it were a commercial game. That's not strange. It's not a commercial game, but the thing for you to figure out is "Why is that?", because that's how you learn how to see a game through to that stage. But I'll give you some hints:
1. There are no threats. Everything is just positive, and all ants lost are lost off-screen. We'd be more invested if we could perceive the threats better.
2. There's little motive to keep going once you've figured out how to optimise the fun out of the mechanics that are present. The surface isn't some luscious, diverse landscape. Only grass. There is no major overarching goal. No reason for fighting. Nothing to strive for.
3. It becomes monotonous. There isn't really enough variety for the long haul. There's usually only one right answer, or a few where the order of operations doesn't really matter.
A lot of these things would at least be eased by just developing the game further, adding more options to it, etc. But it's something to chew on.
Additional notes: I liked the idea that they live in houses and apartments. That's sweet. The game has an optimism to it that's nice to experience. Ant house :)) I liked that your fate is in your own hands, even if there isn't any threat. You get to design the colony to make it more efficient - you get bonuses for using your mind. And you're good at spritework. Very smooth and clean stuff, especially for a youngun.
Good job!
Hold your places!
The game looks and sounds really nice, but I found it difficult to figure out how to defend the houses.
I had to restart the game to figure out that the action key is G, and then I couldn't fight against the exploding zombies. I could extract bones from the ground and wood from trees, presumably to rebuild the houses, but I couldn't figure this out. It wasn't very intuitive, and the player placement for performing actions was a bit too strict in my opinion.
It's a cool game, but it doesn't perform that well on lower-end systems.
The graphics are pretty nice, though. With more polish, this could be a fun little game.
I did really enjoy this game, though it was a bit repetitive and the graphics could be slightly better, at least with the cobblestone texture.
I find it cool how you were able to create procedural generation in a Ludum Dare game.
Very cool game, but it definitely needs more polish. I first played the game at Ultra settings, but it was too laggy, so I restarted at Medium settings. This made the game a lot darker. I bet you set the colour space to Linear without checking what happens to that at lower video settings. I managed the same thing in my game, I'm afraid.
I do like the concept, the audio is rather nice if you did make it on your own, and it could certainly be really nice. I just wish it weren't as dark, that there was a bit more polish, the grammar was tidied up, and the art style was a bit more cohesive. You've got a realistic axe with cartoonish, almost TF2-like trees, a block of a main character, and then an untextured fire pit. Maybe I'm just addicted to polish? ;P
A suggestion I have for you if you decide to keep making this game or make something similar at some point is that you don't use WASD in this way, and that you instead have WASD correspond to the player's local directions (transform.forward and so on), and have the player constantly looking at wherever the cursor is in 3D space, making him follow the cursor.
I must say it was a bit confusing at first, and I was dissappointed to find I could not enter the hut. I see the potential in this game, though. I don't know about the winter theme, and I don't know what the two genres are, but overall, good game!
Cool cool. Will play this when I get the chance. You did your best. Be proud of yourself.
Newgrounds in 2018! What a surprise!
This is a good game, but it's not very user friendly. It took me a while to figure out how to play it, and even now, I have trouble predicting where the football will land.
The graphics are okay, but nothing special. Same with the music. It's a decent loop, but it's rather short and basic. It fits the game just fine.
Overall, I like this game, but it could definitely be improved a lot.
Pretty cool game, overall, but it could be better. One thing would be to turn off the bilinear filtering on the textures.
It seems very cool and interesting, but I carry the same sentiment that @LeReveur does. It's too complicated for a game jam submission. People don't have the time to round up a bunch of friends and play.
@BitJester Media Imagine that you're playing labyrinth in real life. If you pull back, the board responds with the equal and opposite vector. I found this much more intuitive than the other way around, personally, but I appreciate the feedback.
The reason for the "Passive" genre is the ending. I don't want to spoil it, but trust me: It makes sense. :smiley:
@Jima That's not a feature; it's a bug. The ball's friction sticks it to the sides of the walls. The reason for this is the same as the reason for the falling through bug. It's Unity physics.
The most I could do for the first issue is change physics materials, and the other issue is just an isue with Unity's dodgy colliders.
To be fair, you shouldn't move the mouse that fast to win, anyway.
Thanks for your feedback!
@nander Well, I think the listed minimum requirements are a bit higher than what is accurate, but I will agree that it isn't the most performant. It's a bit hard to cater to less powerful machines when you're on a beast developing the game.
I hope you were able to play the game anyway!
@PhilStrahl Yeah, I saw that video. I understand your frustrations. This was actually the first game I actually finished, so while I see how crap the game can be, I'm proud that it got anywhere whatsoever.
I will be making a post-mortem, and it will realistically be out in June, but that should explain the problems I had in better detail. I'll be sure to forward it to you when it's done.
The video on here actually works if you click on it. I think I marked it up incorrectly, but it still works. It's the release trailer, and it shows the ending.
If you want a brief synopsis of why the game is the way it is, well:
I improvised almost everything down to the last second. I was balling so many different ideas around that I thought I'd never make it on time.
Thanks for your attention, my man! I look forward to your documentary, as I've always enjoyed them, but I sort of wish you'd made a Unity game for this one.
@iLoveYourFace It's not supposed to make you a pro, but I suppose it does in reality.
Yes, the physics are very janky. I should've set the Rigidbodies' collision to Continuous Dynamic and used some other way of rotating the board, perhaps, rather than directly writing to transform.eulerAngles.
I understand the complaints concerning the perspective.
The **_intent_** was to provide the player with a sense of playing the game as if actually sitting by a desk and playing it. In the end, the camera was too low, but what's done is done.
I really like your game.
Hahaha! That was hilarious and really bloody entertaining! Well done! I felt an emotional connection to this 1987 Suzuki Carry, even if he is a whole 13 years older than myself. ;P
Hilarious game, no bugs that I could find, easy to understand and play, and it goes on for just long enough. I've giving you my highest ratings so far, because you made me laugh! :laughing:
Very nice game! It didn't take long for me to realise what to do, and I had fun doing it.