Abiogenesis by radmars 2020-04-27T16:50:55Z
The art and sound on this is seriously cool.
really fun to manage the split vines too1
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → windfall890
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | 55 | Summoning | 👥 | Need to summon more time | jam | 1214 | 2.33 | 2.13 | 1.92 | 2.92 | 2.40 | 2.31 | 2.88 | 2.31 |
| 2021 | 49 | Unstable | 👥 | Urban Llama Farmer | jam | 1102 | 3.24 | 3.64 | 2.76 | 3.92 | 2.46 | 3.76 | 3.15 | |
| 2021 | 48 | Deeper and deeper | 👥 | Rover in a Hole: The Quest for the ULTRA STONE | jam | 1142 | 3.38 | 3.23 | 2.74 | 4.08 | 3.55 | 2.98 | 2.22 | 3.10 |
| 2020 | 46 | Keep it alive | 👥 | Nessie Alliance | jam | 1997 | 3.13 | 2.90 | 3.63 | 3.65 | 2.93 | 2.82 | 2.97 | 2.69 |
The art and sound on this is seriously cool.
really fun to manage the split vines too1
This was awesome! I liked how clean the UI was and the nice isometric viewpoint.
Assembling the station was a blast.
I love thunderstorms, the gray palette and storm noise was awesome.
It took me several minutes to under stand the 'guiding light' and i was less excited to explore once i realized i had to follow it.
Thanks for sharing!
I do think there is something fun about the chaotic "WHAT DO MY BUTTONS DO?" feeling. With more feedback to the player, and some more lenient tuning of the city health i think it could work with these controls.
A very QWOP aesthetic!
Thanks for sharing with everyone!
Surprisingly frantic for such a peaceful setting!
I had a lot of fun running around searching for water.
Tell your kids they did an awesome job!
one tiny thing: After a respawn, gravity seems to be enabled on the player, so he falls!
Deeper than I expected at first glance.
I loved the 'carry' mechanic and the different enemy types.
The humor writing down in the menu's was an awesome touch too.
I really love the mood, the ominous music, the moving fish effect and the water effects on top. The coral reef visuals and the 2.5d style work really well here, I think with the tiniest bit of animation or water effects over the main camera the reef would have looked even better.
I also love the bubbles and shadows, though the turning down the sharpness on the shadows would probably work well , they look a little too strong.
The boat-as-shop tracking the player was clever and worked well also, nice job getting and upgrade system in and working!
The broken/unlit texture on the currency really made it hard to figure out what it was and that was a bummer, but once I realized what they were the gameplay worked well. The currency popping in on screen also felt strange, but I can see why it was added to prevent progression blocks.
Nice work!
wow, this is simple but _really_ well executed. The little touches: lighting, music, gem flash, player animation really elevates the otherwise pretty straightforward gameplay.
And being straightforward is _not_ a knock! this game shows you that plan and gives you the tools for the job and gets right out of its own way. Let your fists do the talking!
I like the level generator, and the use of empty space as a puzzle mechanic. planning the route feels great. The progressive color change on the blocks is clear and simple UX and works well.
I didnt really understand how the stamina system worked but it didnt slow me down too much.
Nice work!
I cant believe this hasn't been rated more.
this is an atmospheric and delightful spin on the theme. it more than makes up for it in style. My hand is now tired because I _HAD_ to see the rest of the pictures.
- The stylus feels so right. Large motions dont work, you really need to get in there and meticulously chip away at it. The details on the ragged edge of the brush shape as you scrape are a great touch too. Only nitpick is that it jitters tracking the mouse.
- The transition effect is just stellar. When it happened It made caught me off guard and I was stunned. and the ambiance all combined together is awesome.
- I didn't figure out how to make the secrets system work until after "the core", and that was a bummer because its a very cool system and once i discovered it it really helped to make this more fun.
- I liked the sound design a lot, i really wish the ambient sounds changed for each scene, that would heighten the already excellent mood.
There is a tension between wanting to preserve the newly colored image and needing to destroy it to go deeper and it just nails the theme. The ending was perfect.
This is a beautiful project.
Gonna go ice my hand now. Wish I had read about the space bar control first!
Wow that was an intensely frustrating 40 mins. LETS DO IT AGAIN.
The mechanic is great, I love being my own worst enemy on a mission to really _stick it_ to that dragon.
Speaking of, she is full of life and sass, just like all of the characters. The mechanic alone would definitely not have been enough, but its surrounded by such a fun world and such gorgeous animation that it all meshes together perfectly.
Really incredible work.
Its a shame the layout and UI are so bare because this is a really great spin on matching games. Moving from 'inside' the game physics is a really great touch, and I think it was a very cool feeling to weave into and out of the falling blocks looking for combos as they passed by.
The sprites are very funny too, really loved the face.
I stress this on _every_ jam game pretty much, but put controls into the UI in a text box! Its _so worth it_ no matter how trivial they seem. With some UI work and some cute GBC-like sound effects this would be a pretty charming matching game.
Great work getting a solo project out the door in such a short jam!
Really solid!
I like the weapon upgrades, the missiles felt responsive and packed a punch.
I love the water textures and red texture on loss.
Nothing really innovative here, but its executed tightly and it controls smoothly and thats not easy to pull off in such a short jam.
Nice work!
- I managed to click into the [I] menu and somehow flip the game state to be paused when out of the menu and active in the menu! not sure how I did it.
The simple but effective light mechanics were great, I love the pressing sense of darkness and the red lights on the trail marker.
There is a story book quality to the paper cut out graphics that works really well with the atmosphere and the 2d-in-3d animation effects.
Would love to have seen more of the journey, but it was a very pleasant few minutes for sure.
_post pictures on the LD page! your style is very nice, show it!_
The lighting built into the sprites really pops on the game tiles. This oozes Enter the Gungeon vibes with the sprite outlines and weapon mechanics
The floor tile UI tips are awesome, so many games miss out on in game control hints and its a great feature, They did blend into the BG tiles a bit, i almost missed them.
The mouse scroll wheel to change was giving me a lot of trouble on my crappy mac mouse, but then i realized num keys also worked! then I started having a lot more fun. This is vert polished and i had a blast playing it.
- the Flamethrower was awesome looking, all the weapons stood out. - Snakes in boots were excellent, all the enemies felt cohesive and worked well. - The white outline and animation on pickups is a great touch, really helped me to keep track of them in combat.
nice work!
Im pretty much in agreement with above, this is a really impressive TD/mining game, with balanced and interesting systems, but it suffers from UI/UX problems.
The levels feel organic and large, the resource spawn system is great, and I really like the low color, squares and circles aesthetic, reminds me of great old Web tower defense games!
I think with some feedback for player actions, controls in game (I cant stress enough how important this is in a jam, just throw a panel with the controls in!) and some cleaner tooltips this would be extremely fun to play.
I can tell you poured time into the spawner and upgrade/towers system, and it is a really awesome cave generator. Nice work!
Simple and executed well. Nice job for finishing! The color palette as you dive really works well.
I also think some variation and difficulty balance to the one interaction(dive) would have gone a long way to help keep it engaging.
Right off the bad _really_ cool to get a high score system in. major props for that. _And_ the animated control UI hints on the menu are a big win. Too many jam games don't spend the few minutes to put their controls in game and its a BIG boost to getting people to come play past the first few seconds.
The visuals are a bit inconsistent, but I can attribute that to the dream/nightmare strange theme of the game. The sprite have a nice retro touch to them.
It definitely looks flashy. The animation on the player and enemies were great, and the frightening nightmare really makes you want to fall faster.
The falling controls were simple but felt good, same for the lone attack. Nothing groundbreaking in the actual gameplay, but it handled well enough for me to give it multiple plays!
I think combining a 'going down' theme with the 'dream deeply' idea is an excellent use of the Jam theme, and the whole game hangs together pretty well!
Nice work!
The lighting and atmosphere is great, i really liked the detail with the tree shadows and taillight especially. The rain effect is also a great touch.
The lose condition is spooky, and works very well for an infinite runner. The gameplay is a bit simple but most importantly it _works and is complete_ which is hard to pull off in such a short jam and still have time for visual polish, so nice work!
I think a sense of momentum and maybe sprites for leaning into turns on the bike would help ground it better, but it was still great fun to race down the road1!
the ambiance sound in game UI hints and tile set were gorgeous. Movement feels off, im not sure why I kept stopping and starting, and it wasnt super clear where i could and could not move.
I love the generational progression and the unnerving theme contrasted with the lush green level.
You all fell into my Ultra Trap and delved TOO DEEP just like the dwarves of Moria!
Really what it is is that the economy is overbalanced at the start. It was my first time designing an upgrade system and level generator and geometric scaling for balance. I learned a lot from this try, and I have already noted some post jam adjustments to make the economy more fun.
The puzzle mechanic of accidentally rushing past important loot is intended to be a 'doh' moment, but it comes very late. i would rather it happen in the top 15ish blocks to not feel like Im wasting the player's time for a whole doomed run!
Thanks so much for the feedback.
The lowpoly style from @zerocomms really set us on track for this jam.
@Cirtapk Thanks for the awesome feedback! @nounka, @chimp, @snip-man thanks for the play, hope you had a nice few minutes of peaceful digging!
The economy balance didn't get hammered down until _moments_ before launch. as a 2 man team of young dads, its pretty much impossible to predict how much polish time we were going to have, so we chipped as many small touches in as we can. Stuff like sound effects were only iterated on once! while we made several passes at rover movement (and very glad we did)
I definitely wish we had gotten in some chill alien music, more dynamic and interesting spawns, and another mechanic or two.
If there is one thing I wish had panned out better for what we did end up shipping it would be difficulty. In the final moments I threw the balance lever to "super easy" to make sure the level could be completed and resigned myself to leaving it as a chill experience for the jam.
@ZeroComms adorable rover ended up cementing the entire aesthetic, we rallied around it midway through design and he really gave the game a lot of personality.
We are actually working on a refined post jam version, and we will update the links here to include one once we get back to it! We are prioritizing difficulty and variety and looking to add a new mechanic for falling, then double down on the cute rover with animation and extra doodads.
I managed to get a pretty flexible level generator done for this, so I don't think it will be very hard to add some variety to it. I just played it very safe for the short deadline.
Also you are so right, Jam games (and working on a small team) have forced me out of my comfort zone in wonderful ways. For example this is the first 3d project where I didn't use built-in physics or colliders, and the first time I have used Unity ScriptableObjects for data _and_ for pub/sub event architecture. Also the first time I built a scaling upgrade and econ system. Most of my projects until have been simple puzzle/action physics games.
You should _definitely_ update your LD listing to not attribute the link type as 'source code'! I was looking for a quick HTML5 hosted game to play and almost skipped this one.
I absolutely loved the commitment to hand painting a big pile of silly graphics. The log and grass on the first level stand out especially.
Its not super cohesive level to level, but I was _very sure_ we were getting Deeper and Deeper. Nice work
I love the theme of dealing with these random tasks with the structure of an epic adventure. The writing worked well, and the concept of trading and upgrading items from quest to quest is cool too.
The hyper minimalist UI would probably work well if it was polished enough to make a statement and progression was more clear, instead it falls a little extra flat.
ultimately I think there is not enough cohesion to make progress, and no indicator if what the player is doing is working or not working. It feels so close to working too! A few more UI elements pointing the player in a new direction, or a more concrete understanding of what rewards do and how to use them correctly would turn this into something very neat.
Nice job for getting it done and and really clever use of the theme (from someone who literally made a game about going down a hole...)
A fun twist on a shooter.
First off nice work running a solo jam entry! I like the use of light around the player and the cues when ore boys wake up and run.
It definitely feels mysterious and wide open around you in the mine.
Echoing everyone above, yes missing out on sound really was a bummer, its so hard to get all the smaller systems working in such a short jam.
This could have used maybe one or two other interactions to be more fun, its a shame it feels like there is not a lot to explore past finding ore boys.
Oh, Also nice work on the hosting page, the matching black works so well with the light, and you really put some care into your instructions and look and feel of the itch page and it shows!
I like the idea of bouncing light down into a mine! Wnfortunately I really couldn't make any sense of where I was in the mine or what the controls did.
I love the hook movement and use of the mouse to target it. The sub rising quickly is a nice touch as well.
Seems small, but I love the button design! the whole UI hangs together well.
The pressure/hull breach system is a flavorful touch as well.
I really wish this had gotten a sound effect and animation pass, its so charming even with none!
Ambitious game for a small team, nice work!
I'm a big sucker for color palette based games!
as a compo this is double impressive, I cant imagine jamming something so cohesive together in the 48 hour window. congratulations for accomplishing such a cohesive game under those restrictions!
Sure I do think the levels are linear, but it is so stimulating to progress across the color shades and see the clever design on the next screen.
I love the pac-man effect and how it is introduced to the player on level 1.
the avatar really pops and is fun to watch run around. The small details like her their idle animation, the pop jump sound, and the particles and 'color switch' animations really glue everything together.
Nice Job!
Really like the theme and the concept of a fuel based space runner.
I love the little face on the player and the msPaint style graphics. I really do get a kick out of quickly the hand drawn art in jam games.
I think the idea of resource consumption and refilling on the hydrogen pickups works well too.
a few things held it back for me. - It feels very punishing up front, one wrong move can kill you and you often just get trapped with no way out. - this is compounded by how rare the hydrogen spawns are and how little they refill.
Also the sliding friction (auto stopping of the player) feels odd in a game set in space.
First off, the audio is all :fire: . The bounce effect is especially fun, as is the shatter. Its been said above, but wow the difficulty spike from side one to 2 is incredible. Maybe more checkpoints in solo mode or less spikes in 2p, but its really a wall that sucks the fun out of bouncing around the first half.
Still, this is polished, visually awesome, and reached really far aiming for 2p mode! Nice work bringing this to life in such a short time!
I think the mechanics work great, with the exception of items not sliding with the carried object. The animation on the player, and the 'slam' mechanic were flavorful and interesting.
I also think the early levels are highly overtuned for a jam game, I wanted to see more of the objects but got bored trying to get through the earliest stages.
It controls smoothly, and has nice complete menus, scores, audio design. So great polish work in such a short time.
Echoing above comments, WASD for isometric controls are a bit odd. Concept is great though, and I liked the audio design for interactions as well as the icon based tooltips on the map.
Nice work!
This is awesome and clever. The interactions for combat took me a second to figure out, but once I did it was hilarious to play.
This project is carried by the audio design honestly. Its funny and it pairs great with the 90's web comic aesthetic of the rest of the game.
The title screen alone is witty enough for a few stars, and the game is well concepted and fun on top. Including local multiplayer in a jam game is also very cool.
Nice work
loved the animation on the stretchy pickaxe and the character model. nice work!
It may be the saddest day, but the Emojis still made me happy. Truly contemporary art. POP/10