Keep the GameBoy alive. (on GameBoy Advance) by Timo Strating 2020-04-21T01:03:18Z
nicely done!
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → xfinktion
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | 53 | Delivery | Holy Ghost Kitchen! | compo | 310 | 3.13 | 3.25 | 3.13 | 3.50 | 2.91 | 3.41 | 3.13 | 3.25 | |
| 2023 | 52 | Harvest | Grim Gardener | compo | 209 | 3.31 | 3.42 | 2.81 | 3.55 | 2.92 | 3.44 | 2.91 | 3.13 | |
| 2020 | 46 | Keep it alive | Dryad | compo | 680 | 3.27 | 3.25 | 2.57 | 3.72 | 3.12 | 3.44 | 3.42 | 3.17 |
nicely done!
First off, the anibuns are absolutely adorable!
When I was playing with the keyboard, the guard button didn't seem to be working. Refreshing seemed to have fixed it for a little while and then it stopped working again. I looked through the source code a little bit and it seems that having a controller connected causes the guard keyboard control to stop working. (I think the problem line is line 170 in KeyState.hx btw)
But other than that, very nice!
Pretty good! Was a little confused why I got an arm from talking to the first pinkish dude, figured out that was showing what I needed. A little prompt similar to the "You Got" would have been nice. Writing (overlooking some minor typos) made me smile and the fog of war effect was well done. Good Work!
The mechanic was cool (once I figured it out properly). The initial issue I had with it was I clicked were the arrow was pointing in the tutorial and the pellet would go behind Fishy and he went down with it. Could be a feature about the movement once you understand how it works though.
Also, while the sharks have a distinct "programmer art" feel, Fishy is pretty cute :)
Not bad. Suggestions for improvement would be making the UI standout more. A panel (as Unity calls it) at the top and bottom behind the Stats / Actions would have been nice. Also, there's not much incentive to use the military other than player patience. Maybe a time limit to cure the disease would test the morals of the player more? Congrats on completing your Ludum Dare!
Very good mood throughout. Loved the "ghost" / after-image effect on the walking.
Only minor nitpick I can think of is what @uberardy mentioned.
All in all, very nice! Congrats on a successful compo attempt!
Very well done! I thoroughly enjoyed the gameplay twist in the middle two levels with having to remember allergies.
A very minor nitpick is some of the text colorings in the story portion don't have enough contrast with background colors. Admittedly it could be my inner web dev talking, but it could be an accessibility issue for color-blind people. Just something to keep in mind if you decide to do more with this!
Also, had the same issue closing as @almighty-games
Very minor quibbles aside, very fun entry!
Neat! The music effects really added to the atmosphere. I liked how the character picked up speed over time.
A suggestion would be to add a little variation to the ground texture. When the sticks were getting far away from the fire, I wasn't sure if I was making progress or hitting a world boundary.
Also, the ending made me giggle.
Nicely done! Only complaint is that your idiot/friend walks faster than the platforms extend so he will walk off while you're on the button if you barely made it to the button. Solid entry!
Some good potential here. Really liked the concept and the tutorial levels. Was expecting a more frantic final level.
Some suggestions: 1.) Maybe have the VIP change shape. As it stands, there's not much reason to shapeshift away from a circle and disregard squares that'll heal the VIP. It could having a more hectic final level (which would be more fun imo) 2.) In the endless level, some of the projectiles seem to spawn too close to the VIP. Pushing the spawns a bit further away from the VIP would be a welcome change
All in all, not bad! Congrats on your first compo! :)
Nice entry! Music does a nice job of setting the ambiance and art style fits that mood nicely.
Really only criticisms I have is in regards to the weapon. I ran into some things that felt a little odd. The enemies having a kill on collide when not detected was one. Was sneaking up on one and guess I got too close and got killed without the guy turning around. And the other (happened twice) was that I would konk an enemy, they would go to the downed sort of in between state, get up, and kill me. Not sure if they just had more than 1 health on those levels or if it was a bug. If it was a bug, it seemed to happen when the enemy turned around during the swinging animation. I think it might also be nice if the weapon could be used as a "ah crap" button if you get sheparded into a dead end. As far as I could tell, you couldn't use it effectively once you were detected by/facing the enemy.
These minor quibbles aside, nice work! :D
Love this idea! Actually seeing the plants being carried by the bear is nice touch. I appreciated that the spiders got whipped around when hit with a knockback seed, got a big laugh from me. My favorite seed was a homing and a dandetiger mix
Good work! :D
Good stuff! I don't play many tower defenses, so this is my first time seeing/playing one where you can build your own path. Very cool :D
Liked the chopper, was a god send late game. With the number of big melons I found myself using them to replace some of the sprinklers when I could afford it. Perhaps it could be cheaper, though it is pretty powerful if you find a good spot for it (on the corner of your path, for example)
Only two suggestions:
1.) Zoomed out the tile highlight for where you're building is kinda faint and can be a bit hard to see zoomed out. I think it could be a touch brighter.
2.) I'm assuming this is an exploit. But if you have a one tile wide path to the exit, you can place a turret in front of a melon. Doing so, the melon will be knocked to the previous tile and sit there and take free damage while it (I assume) recalcs the path the exit. I wonder if you could maintain a list of tiles that block the exit and prevent any placement in those spots to fix the exploit? Haven't worked with navmesh much so you probably have a better idea than I do.
Was fun trying to build an optimized path and pop some melons! Once again, nice work! :D
Adorable :) Graphics and music were fantastic. Was confused by the sfx when I pushed something off the table. Thought I might have been doing something incorrect, so I tried to push the cake at a spot where the cat wasn't but got the same sound. Saw the points went up though, so I figured it out :)
Managed to get all but one that stayed floating in the air. It looks like be the sixth cake from the cat and closest to camera that is off grid, which I'm guessing is causing it not to fall. (In the Grid Fix game btw).
I think it would be interesting to see something on the table to force the player to balance getting cakes to their friend and agitating the cat. Perhaps the holes like @shimmerscale mentioned or another mouse that the player can chase off?
Was a fun entry :D
Very nice! SFX were really satisfying and the intro music was a bop. Played this longer than I thought I would and managed to "break" the visuals. Got too many columns added and had the grid off the screen :) The auto feed for the footsies and the apples was a really nice touch; really allowed the possibility for multitasking and clever planning. Plant variety was very good for a compo game, and I would be interested to see where you would take this going further! :D strange_garden.PNG
Interesting twist on the fishing mechanics as others have said. Was super fun to launch some fish with a red hit. The eye expressions for the bear and the "Splash, Splash" fx were cute touches. Feels good and plays well, would like to see where you take it :D
Decent little entry! I must say that your styling of the reaper has been my favorite of the games I've seen so far, the soul pickups are also very clean. Was a big fan of the stitching to close up the holes, nice touch! I can definitely tell that you put a lot of focus on the art :)
My only real complaint is that when you die, the little "bewooo" slide sound effect is played/stacked over and over before the game is reset. It can get quite loud if the game doesn't reset fast enough. It was a decent jumpscare but I'm not sure that was intentional :)
Definitely has potential! What you were able to finish was nice. Really would like to see more in this style :D
@jaonewguy Thanks! I wasn't sure if I was gonna compete in this jam, saw the theme, and started making the title/level select music. I was too happy with it to not share!
The tutorial was on next my list, but some gamebreaking issues cropped up at the last minute that I figured it would be more time efficient to use the description to explain what I wanted while I wait for builds to finish. This will teach me to manage my scope better and not refactor too late :)
@najimi
Thanks! I was particularly happy with how the Green Thumb enemy art turned out :) As for the things the thumb spawned, they were originally a placeholder for a tutorial I had planned to show off the dodging/attacking mechanics. Then I made the thumb boss and needed something for him to spawn and I only had the Scaresnip as the other enemy made. Eventually, the deadline made my placeholder art not so temporary. I called them SpitterPlants in the code :D
@jason-wilson
Thanks for playing and the feedback!
I did have a small healthbar for the player next to the enemy healthbar. I didn't have the chance to make sure it was labeled properly (or at all), so it's understandably missable. But 3 hits was the player's health.
I did question if I had made it too difficult, though. There were attacks for the Scaresnip and the Corn bosses that I did rework to make them slightly easier and more predictable. The Scaresnip had a delayed projectile that spawned on the charges that flew toward the center of the screen and the number of projectiles spawned from the corn's exploding ones were randomized. In hindsight, I should have either buffed player health, decreased player hitbox size, and/or lowered enemy health. Would have been a relatively quick change that could have made the game feel more balanced and more forgiving.
@automatonvx Thanks for the feedback! Absolutely could have used some juice; never really got to the "polish" part of the development, unfortunately. Pretty much the fade out and some particles were as far as I got in that regard. I had planned out some on hit fx for the bosses, like a "white out" flash on the enemy sprite and a subtle screen shake.
I'm by no means an artist, so any sort of positive feedback on the art is a gold star for me :D
Once again, thanks for trying it out! I will keep these suggestions in mind when I do jam #3 :)
Very solid entry! Loved the enemy graphics. Reminded me of those old LCD handheld games. The "boing" sfx for the movement got a laugh out of me :) Not exactly sure what the sprinkler does, but the fx were cool for it!
I had a lot of xp that I couldn't reach around the sides and the bottom of the screen, but that was a very minor issue. Also, as it gets later, I think you could ramp up the enemy spawn rate even higher. Because while I was saying "Dang Crows!" at the beginning, the enemies were definitely saying "Dang scarecrow!" by the end.
Great work :D
Well, that gets the gamer juices flowing! Great execution on the mechanic, sound, and gfx :) A tad difficult but thoroughly enjoyable. Only quibble (a very minor one) is that after dashing into the boss, you can't quite walk out before the the boss can collide with the player again, depending on where you dash into it. Definitely enough chance to dash out again, just needed to remember to do that. Very well done :D
Interesting take on a tower defense! Just would have liked more with regards to the multitasking; felt like I was more waiting for the wheat to spawn, than managing my time. If the wheat rotted away after some time, along with a planting mechanic like @scilly-guy mentioned, may make for a very hectic experience!
The assets that you did make turned out pretty okay. The road, bin, and wheat were pretty decent, actually. Music was repetitive, but was a fine little diddy.
Also I played this in a sandbox (as I do with all downloaded games, just in case), and I noticed the win screen lettering is a little wonky on different resolutions. Here are some screenshots.
At large resolution:
large_ss.PNG
At a small resolution:
small_res.PNG
Maybe this was just a result of how I was running he game, but if not, I think this may be something Canvas Scaler's UI Scale Mode could fix. I usually use "Scale With Screen Size" and "Expand" for the Screen match mode. But this could very well just be user error on my part due to how I ran the game and you were already using a scaler mode other than the default constant size scalers.
All in all, pretty nice. Fun idea with a good gameplay core. If you decide to continue developing, I would be interested to see where you take it. Might make for an fun little mobile game too!
Solid job! Art style was fun, unique mechanic and great sounds :D
I had missed the red dots for the top part alerts initially, so I thought there was another carrot on the side of the screen that was being attacked. The wincing carrot (which is a cute touch btw) helped me figure out that wasn't the case. Maybe larger red dots for the top part or centering the alert on the attacked carrot would be helpful? Honestly, might be reaching for a suggestion but it's the best I could think of. I really enjoyed this :D`
Enemies could have used some variety in terms of their behavior to make combat more engaging; maybe some enemies that shot back at you would be cool. The maze was pretty fun. Broke out a notepad to find the 2 enemies I had missed. Music was very well suited to the darker aesthetic of the graphics. Loved the design of the main character too! Nice work :)
Lovely game! Map aesthetic is really nicely done. Wasn't sure how I felt about controls at first, but then I caught a few hundred fish and I was hooked. Only thing that I would want different is a way to view the fish to give a better idea of what shapes to look out for.
I saw you suggest you didn't like at full speed you couldn't reel in fast enough in a different comment. I did think that was a pretty fun (if unintended) feature. Zooming around looking for the goldfish with a bunch of fish on the line was really entertaining for me :D Maybe limit it to a certain range from the ship if you do decide to change it?
Liked the graphics and the menus rotating towards the camera was pretty slick! The tips and the speed up were definitely nice additions. I think it would be interesting if had to shoo away things in the downtime; maybe things like birds, raccoons or deer?
But as it is, this is a nice little relaxing game. Good work :D
Nice job! Audibly was saying "Nooooo" when I got the "We goin faster"s. Music does it's job and makes me anxious as it speeds up. very fun to whack hearts around. The art style is beautiful! Exactly the kind of look I imagine when someone mentions pixel art. Impressive first game.
As @pennycook mentioned, the collision problem is likely due to how fast the hearts are moving. Here's a more detailed explanation based on my memory, if you're interested:
In Unity (and maybe Godot has this option too), this can be mitigated by using a more costly collision detection (Continuous) vs the one that Godot is likely using (Discrete). I'm not sure if these are Unity specific terms but the gist of it is: Discrete collision detection is only run after a physics frame has done is calculations. This means if an object moves past the collision area of another before the frame finishes its calc, it will not collide with the other object. Continuous and other types of collision detection algorithms can mitigate this issue, but they can be less performant. I don't exactly remember how they work, though. Just know that, with a lot of objects, you may see some performance degradation because of them.
EDIT: Found the youtube video that I was remembering this from https://youtu.be/6h5FoPi3SY0
But I will be honest and say that the "tunneling" was actually kinda nice when I was buried in hearts :D
I loved the aesthetic on this! If you take this further in the future, I think it may be cool to have monsters in some rooms that need to be avoided. Good work! :D
Fun take on the theme! Really liked the graphics on the characters.
Glad you were able to shoehorn your original idea into the Delivery theme. Probably be one the of the sillier game ideas for this jam! Good job! :D
Nice little game. Music and sfx are nicely done! I would have liked some meter markers on the ground to better gauge distance. A different sound for being in the target but not within the score range (I think it's under 15-20) would have been nice. But all in all, very nice! :D
Edit: After reading velvetlobster's comment, I wanted to see big of a number I could get. Turned up my mouse sensitivity and threw opposite direction. This was my best :)
Screenshot (7).png
Nice work! Before i got used to the system, I thought it was too swingy. But once I kept the rage underneath apologize range, I was able to win the argument. I agree with another comment that being able to hold a card(s) would help make the main game feel more strategic, letting the player intentionally set up combos.
Interesting take on the theme. And the joke about the spirit's appearance was a big hit for me! Has potential with many possibilities for amusing scenarios/arguments. had fun! :D
@xwilarg
Thanks for the feedback and helping out ZenBreaker! I think I'll scale down the chopping to make the minigame time more consistent with the others if I do a post jam release.
@zenbreaker
Glad you were able to get it to work. I'll see if I can get an alternate build on gamejolt that will be more friendly with non chrome based browsers. I will also add a target indicator for chopping to my list post jam list to take out some of the guess work with the chops as well. Thanks for playing! :)
@pauvictor
Thanks! I did bork up the resolution when I built it for the page. It's not gamebreaking, per se, so idk if I'm allowed to update that :/ It does have a fullscreen button underneath the game window, so it can look like it's supposed to. At least I assume this is what you're referring to.
The "clockwise/counterclockwise" words had escaped me while I was developing, but definitely would have been more clear. Thanks again for the feedback! :D
@khaokg @jdah
I was definitely hoping for the Delivery theme because I wanted an excuse to make a cooking game! I have a target line indicator on my list for a potential post jam build, so hopefully that will mitigate the sizing uncertainties. Thanks for the feedback and kind words! :D
@poppy-entertainment
You got me nervous that I accidentally published as a jam game (I have done it before). lol This is a compo game.
Art is probably my weakest point, so I'm happy it's only "kinda" lacking ;) Definitely agree I could use some improvement on the art side, though! Glad you enjoyed the gameplay :D Thanks for the feedback!
@ryusui Lol yeah. It was supposed to be an onion but, now that people mention it, I can definitely see the fish XD.
For the chopping game, I was taking some notes from Ore No Ryouri (PS1). I always thought it was cool to control the chop size, and I never really see cooking games attempt it like that. It is a "twin stick" sort of cooking game, so maybe that's why more don't attempt it on PC. I did want to support controller for this, but I was nervous I wouldn't have enough time.
But I will play around with other styles of chopping to see if I can get something that feels a little better for a post jam release. Thanks for the research topic!
@antti-haavikko The points/time bonuses are given at the end of a 'recipe', which is why the pots (generally the last step of a recipe) / nachos (one step recipe) immediately give the scores. I definitely don't think I made this clear enough, and I think I may have a bug where sometimes a recipe won't give a bonus. Will definitely need to work on the minigame balance and readability!
Thank you both for playing and the detailed feedback!
@salyon
I hadn't thought about it as a mobile title but it definitely could be! :D Thanks for the idea and for playing!
@antti-haavikko A recipe works like a queue of minigames. The white boxes at the top of the UI show the current step of the recipe
For example, the salsa one works like:
1.) Chop minigame (cleaver icon)
-> On complete, turn into
2.) Mortar and Pestle minigame (sledgehammer icon)
-> On complete, score and clear slot
Not sure if that helps the design at all, or if it was a flawed concept from the start. I had originally planned to be able to complete the same step in multiple recipes but I ran out of time to actually implement it. I spent way too long figuring out how to dynamically split sprites for the chop game.
Nice work! I had 20 babies delivered before I learned about the strats others had mentioned. The little variations between the mothers was a welcome touch. Was fun :D
I saw you mentioned experimenting with instruments in another comment. If you would like some realistic sounding sample libraries to play around with, here are some free ones I know about:
Spitfire LABS
Orchestral Tools SINEfactory
Project SAM (Haven't used it myself but it seems to sound pretty good, requires the verison of Kontakt Player)
I had 4 mini games in a row where I got the USB in first try. Never had that kinda luck in my life!
Minigames and the time constraint made it feel hectic, which was enjoyable. I do feel the switches and the USB mini game could be more clear. Perhaps a smaller screen showing the current value switched up would help people who weren't familiar with binary. The multiple USB ports made me think I was supposed to find the correct port to plug in. When I figured out how it worked, it did make me chuckle, though.
But other than that, I really enjoyed this. Good work! :D
I'm pretty bad at these kinds of games, but I had fun with it! A color difference with the moveable and immovable tiles would have saved me a bit of time on the later level with all flat pieces. I also would have liked to be able to move objects in test mode.
The puzzle design was interesting. Spent more time than I intended to optimizing my setups. Nice work! :D
Very well done! Everything fits together nicely and is quite polished. Only critique I could make is the gold gain may need some balancing in the later levels. I had enough gold to cover the screen with cannon mk2s and got enough gold back to do again the next level.
But other than that, great work! I liked that aliens could spawn where you couldn't place turrets, encouraging the use of the other tools. :D
I really enjoyed this! A nice gameplay loop and quite stylish, in that minimalist indie sort of way :) I feel there was a bug where the last package for your life didn't heal you if you hit the "mailbox" target, as it seemed to do otherwise. Maybe I misunderstood something. But other than that, good stuff! :D
A nice creepy vibe! :D Failed the first time (thought all black letters went to the pedestal and expired another), was expecting to be jump scared. Was pleasantly surprised I wasn't! Great job building the atmosphere, and I would be interested to see how you would have expanded the mail sorting.