The Freakency by khofez 2024-04-18T19:22:57Z
Nice little mini-game - wanted more!
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → willhoit
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | 55 | Summoning | 👥 | Summoner's Tower | jam | 1002 | 3.17 | 2.95 | 3.24 | 2.67 | 2.67 | 2.50 |
Nice little mini-game - wanted more!
Really enjoyed playing - though I felt I was just brute forcing the permutations rather than having a logical theory for why I was extending my patterns. (Maybe I missed some clues in the art or text?)
Liked the pixel art and the free-form nature of the little puzzles, though maybe they were a bit easy? I thought the interaction worked okay - my biggest stumbling block was on maybe the 5th puzzle involving some triangles I didn't realize were interactive. (I think I should've realized I needed to explore more from the third puzzle.)
Nice job. simple fun game with lots of replay value - took me a couple tries to understand how my interactions modified the light though.
I liked planning my combos to take down chains of enemies - around level 6 it started to get frantic and I felt limited by how quickly I could navigate the icons! I wonder if every ability had a unique key (QWE/ASD/ZXC) it I could go further.
I liked the art and it was was a fun little clicker... but I didn't feel like there was any way I could lose so maybe some type of timer would make me want to reply it to beat my previous time? Also I'm not sure if any of my upgrades ever took, the unit displays didn't show any change and I didn't know if I was upgrading all of them or just the last one clicked? (Also, in general I couldn't tell which unit I had selected.)
Surprisingly addictive! I really wanted to save my astronauts... and figure out the range on the gravity! Got to the second ship, but had trouble figuring out how to land it. I also gave up on trying to destroy asteroids - not sure how many hits it takes but it seems like a lot!
The introduction was great - I really liked it's art style and the voice over! I was super excited to explore the mansion. (Kept getting crashes so didn't get to finish the game unfortunately.)
Really nice to see games that focus on bypassing the enemy instead of destroying it! Flying the ship takes some practice... and collisions get a little weird by the asteroids.
Best I've played so far! Wasn't sure if it was going to loop forever though... (one nit: web version, sometimes a second key press wasn't registered)
Did not get very far but was definitely running and firing. It ran well on Firefox but I couldn't bring the spell book up. On Chrome I could bring the spell book up but the framerate was unplayable and the screen was clipped.
I love fun typing games! I really feel like typing correctly and quickly is a lost art - glad to see things that bring it back. While some repetition was nice, I felt like the word bank was maybe a bit small and I got tired of seeing the same ones (or maybe I didn't get to a high enough level!0. I especially like the touch there you had to type the menu names to work the menu (though maybe if you click on them it should show a hint at the bottom.) Good use of simple 2d art too.
Neat graphics, I liked the game overall. I expected some sort of melody to arise out of the music I was playing - maybe the patterns could fit a piece of standard music in their order/timing and "keeping rhythm" would control the sanity? Thanks!
Fun! It's a little hard to tell what is happening in the battle early on (maybe that's by design?). Got everything leveled up to 30+ and needed levels 4+!
Thanks for the feedback!
Balancing how likely it is that your next block will come from your tower is a big part of our game. We kicked around ideas on how to weight the probabilities to balance the risk vs. reward, but that does make it harder to intuit the probability. Post game jam, we want to add a more developed level progression that would adjust the odds as you increase in level. (We think numbering them would make it more puzzle like and less push-your-luck, but maybe some information on the odds would help.)
Also each shape does have unique properties - score contribution, mass, friction, etc Plus the higher in the tower they are the bigger the multiplier! We'll experiment with surfacing this information to the player... though we're trying to keep the ux minimal.
@jared-york - Glad you like it. I find that moving the camera angle helps me place pieces more accurately on top of one another - and don't forget to switch piece types, those wedges are hard to stack. Good luck!
@choisicles - we like the risk-reward too! I often found myself drawn into it while debugging! But, to the point @jamieok made, it can sometimes seem a little harsh. We've been experimenting with a weighted progression system that would lower the odds of pulls from your tower initially, but approach the even distribution as you climb skill levels. Post-jam we're also planning on improving the animation (and audio) for the summoned block, so it'll be easier to tell where they are coming from.
@jamieok - we were trying to keep the 3d placement simple, but we're experimenting with a way to fine-tune your placement without adding too much complexity.
@goddoesplaydice - this was my first bevy project (though I've used Rust and other ECS systems). I was pleasantly surprised by how well it worked but compared to a raylib project (in C) the compile times are quite noticeable
Really brought back tech support memories for me! Rushing from place to place to repeat the same almost mindless procedures but the list growing faster than the you can solve them...
Nice! I had fun defending my castle against the waves. The music really works with your concept. I kept running into a problem where I couldn't pick up more tree leaves - sometimes even at the beginning of the level when I had 0! Bones always seemed to work. It also seemed weird that I could plant trees on top of each other, and it'd be nice to be able to select units with the keyboard so I wouldn't need the mouse.
(Edit: I played a few more times and it seems like there is some progression in the maximum I can pick up, so maybe that's an element of the game - of course not being able to pick up any at the beginning seems like a bug.)
Sounds like a neat idea - I couldn't make it work though. Sound didn't play consistently, movement was extremely hard to control and keys often didn't register as being pressed - hopefully you'll get the issues worked out. Good luck with your debugging!
Looks incredible, really love the art style - any chance of a web version?
Really enjoyed the interactive fiction and it's great that choices actually lead to different dialog and endings. I played through to two of the four endings, and while I completed my mission I'm not sure I could have done it in one try without getting lucky (but maybe I missed some clues). The art worked well and the audio too. My main feedback would be that the text pace was a bit slow (even when sped up with space) and it didn't seem like the order I asked the question in mattered (so that felt like a "false choice"). Thanks for the story!
Really cute cat art and nice music. I ended up trying every possible combination trying to find one that summoned all the cats at once looking for some logic puzzle. To be honest it felt more like a little piece of interactive art more than a game - still fun though!
Exploring the world was a lot of fun, though I raised too many skeletons... I wasn't sure what to do after exploring, so I mined all the resources... but didn't figure out if there was an end (although the screen went tinted green at some point?) The simple graphics really work. Thanks!